Combine Angelou's "When someone shows you who they are, believe them" with the truism that in politics, "every accusation is a confession" and you get: "Every time someone accuses you of a vice, they're showing you who they are and you should believe them."
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Strongman rule is a fantasy.
Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman.
He won't.
In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents.
We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something.
But the vote you cast for him affirms your #irrelevance.
The whole point is that the strongman owes us #nothing.
We get abused and we get used to it.
Another illusion is that the strongman will unite the nation.
But an aspiring dictator will always claim that some belong and others don't.
He will define one group after another as the enemy.
This might feel good, so long as you feel that you are on the right side of the line.
But now #fear is the essence of life.
The politics of us-and-them, once begun, never ends.
We dream that a strongman will let us focus on America.
But dictatorship opens our country to the worst the world has to offer.
An American strongman will measure himself by the #wealth and #power of other dictators.
He will befriend them and compete with them.
From them he will learn new ways to #oppress and to #exploit his own people.
At least, the fantasy goes, the strongman will get things done.
But dictatorial power today is not about achieving anything positive.
It is about #preventing anyone else from achieving anything.
The strongman is really the weak man: his secret is that he makes everyone else #weaker.
Unaccountable to the law and to voters, the dictator has no reason to consider anything beyond his own personal interests.
In the twenty-first century, those are simple: 👉 dying in bed as a billionaire.
To #enrich himself and to stay out of #prison, the strongman dismantles the justice system and replaces civil servants with loyalists.
Our Indie Game Somnipathy releases in 9 weeks and I'm kinda freaking out... SO many 'little' things we've been putting off, like icons for achievements as an example, that now look like a HUGE mountain. GAH.
We're not on track for a 'big' hit or really even recouping our time spent, but that we can even consider those topics means we're doing better than many ever get to, yet...
On some level I thought something would go wrong and we wouldn't get this far. Someone critical would quit, or interest would be lost... but it didn't, and that's almost scarier. We are gonna put something real out there, and some people might care. That's a lot.
"Since the start of the pandemic, fewer people are walking to get around. The 100 most populated metro areas in the U.S. saw a decline in #walking of at least 20% between 2019 and 2022, according to a recent report. But even with this decline, #pedestrian deaths have skyrocketed to the highest they’ve been in over 40 years."
"There is something about learning, about admitting 'I don’t know,' that brings you back into that space of childhood, with its mix of excitement and possibility and fear and shame. There is something about being a beginner again."
Today at @longreads, Devin Kelly overcomes the inertia of learning a new skill as an adult to experience joy, not just because of success, but because of perseverance.
good question "Why are we all so angry these days?"
"[..] fear became important as a component... rather than being a defensive mechanism, it started to eclipse the very values that it was supposed to be protecting.... democratic countries have engaged in many dubious moral campaigns over the many decades since World War II, like the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the propping up of brutal right-wing dictatorships across the globe."
F E A R is everywhere here
Under the patio
Under the hard-earned bought and paid-for home
Cushions, scented candles and the lawn
Mowing to the beat and the rumble of the coming storm
We all know about the wars that are raging
All the millions who just cannot see
There's so much more that binds us than divides us
But our f e a r denies it
While the papers stir it
The colours of the flag we wave
Were and will become blood red again
And the madmen all say they hear voices
God tells them what to do
The wars are all about money
They always were
And the money's dressed up in religion
And when it's not showing off, the money's hiding.
Something is cooking inside me...
It ain’t ready, but already…
I'm becoming harder to live with
Becoming harder to live with
You say I'm becoming harder to live with
I’m becoming harder to live with
But you can't see into my head
You can't see into my head
You can't see into my head
No, you can’t see into my head.
And the roads are full of weapons
That slide by in the night
Tanks all covered in yellow mud
Pass you on the motorway
As you drive by with the kids and the buckets and spades
Happy Days.
This is punching back after 50 years of mainstream grift. Cory plays economic observer:
"You know: supply and demand. ... The employer has overheads (rent on the shop, inventory, advertising and administration) that they have to pay out of their end of that surplus. But workers also have overheads: commuting costs, child-care, a professional wardrobe, and other expenses the worker incurs just so they can make money for their boss."
Peter Wehner on how Trump and his supporters have "a deep investment in promoting fear" — e.g., in lying about a non-existent crime wave under Biden.
But "for many Trump supporters, then, fear is not so much the cause of their support for the former president as a justification for it. They use fear to rationalize their backing for Trump."
This is, Wehner says, particularly true for Trump's white evangelical supporters.