Trump Criminally Charged

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

[…]

That said, you do like to use a very broad brush to paint the world black and white. Their side, your side. The good ones, the bad ones. Pipe smokers, cigarette smokers. Cathangladox, everyone else. Vaxers, anti-vaxers. Life is easy if we can put everything in a tidy box and say that everything in our box is good and everything outside our box is bad.

Sometimes though, there really is evil and there really is good. There are those advocating for objectively evil things and those advocating for objectively good things. And such actions have created a real divide between good and evil.

For instance, there really is …

[…]

Thing is, I think the issue is more about the relative merits (or lack thereof) of certain diagnoses of Fascism — diagnoses which demonstrate a need attend Civics 101 post haste, to drill the basic commitments of Liberal Democracy into one's head, and for good measure, to brush up on some History of Philosophy.

I've also heard fine things about Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism.



Though, from what I gather, Paxton's analysis treats Fascism genealogically according to its most historically spectacular iterations, which in practice, means Right-Fascism.

I suspect that it all-but-ignores Left-Fascism (think Black Panthers, the Weathermen, the Zapatistas, and the ironically-named Antifa), which has a greater tendency to move "rhizomatically" — decentralized, just below the surface in nodular networks.

If so, this wouldn't necessarily detract from the merits of Paxton's work, but it would further demonstrate that there's always more work to be done.

[FredS]

No. Seriously. This post has troubled me all night.

I don't "support Republicans." I don't feel any sort of tribal connection to them. They are not my "side."

I do, however, fight purposefully against Democrats. They kill babies. They teach weird sex stuff to our kids in our schools, to the point of despair and self-mutilation and suicides. They destroy whole communities, especially urban Black families. I oppose their immigrant concentration camps, their inhumane border policies, and their encouragement of the criminal cartels.

I hate that they think they can control every minute detail of my life -- what car I can drive, how I cook my food, what meds I must take, forcing masks on my healthy face, how I must speak and use pronouns.

Democrats let criminals rage freely, encourage widespread homeless camps, and enable drug abuse and overdose deaths. They let their fascist thug gangs riot and loot and attack our police. They kneecap our police for trying to protect us.

Did I mention that they kill babies? I oppose them with my time and money and effort.

Inasmuch as Republicans also oppose Democrats (albeit fecklessly and impotently), I appreciate the Republican organization. Somebody has to be the other candidate. A few of them are good allies in the fight for American families. But all too often, Republicans can't even win against brain-damaged Democrats like Biden or Feinstein or Fetterman. And when they do win, they are all too often content to hold the current status quo and call it success. Republicans are not my tribe.

I'm sorry my post troubled your thoughts. CPS should be a fun place, not a troubling place.

That said, you do like to use a very broad brush to paint the world black and white. Their side, your side. The good ones, the bad ones. Pipe smokers, cigarette smokers. Cathangladox, everyone else. Vaxers, anti-vaxers. Life is easy if we can put everything in a tidy box and say that everything in our box is good and everything outside our box is bad.

Sometimes though, there really is evil and there really is good. There are those advocating for objectively evil things and those advocating for objectively good things. And such actions have created a real divide between good and evil.

For instance, there really is such a thing as advocating for the murder of the unborn, and advocating against it. If there exists in reality a standard (let's say...thou shalt not kill) then there really isn't a middle ground. There is no neutrality on a subject like that. One side truly is advocating for an evil, those who oppose are advocating for a good. In a real sense, in situations like that, there are good ones and bad ones.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with that black and white, broad strokes, discussion. There is room for clarification, which I think is what was bothering Del. As we all seek to be on Team Good, we can find ourselves in alignment with weird allies where if the subject were to change, we might be on opposing sides.

There really is such a thing as the spirit of Anti-Christ, thus Christians should not find it surprising that Us vs Them battles pop up across all sorts of situations. Of course there is nuance, but we can sometimes nuance ourselves to death or into inactivity.

Yes, of course. I thought of adding a postscript to say as much but it got muddy when I thought about writing that God Himself allows (not desires, I think) good and bad and all sorts of points in between to mix in this dumpster fire we call life. There is good and evil, and we can see it, and we can be certain that His way is good, and we can (mostly) be certain what His way is for much of it has been revealed.

The larger point though, as Wos pointed out, is that Ds and Rs both point and shout across the picket lines that the other side is fascist. Often without know wtf they're talking about, or consideration of the relative structures both sides are working under.

[Del]

The larger point though, as Wos pointed out, is that Ds and Rs both point and shout across the picket lines that the other side is fascist. Often without know wtf they're talking about, or consideration of the relative structures both sides are working under.

I don't care what anyone calls it.

The old-fashioned word was tyranny.

[tuttle]

The larger point though, as Wos pointed out, is that Ds and Rs both point and shout across the picket lines that the other side is fascist. Often without know wtf they're talking about, or consideration of the relative structures both sides are working under.

I mean, that's a given. But I was riffing off your riffing off Del's Broad Brush TM, which I believe has merit, where most of the time I see people decrying the Us vs Them as altogether the problem. Sometimes the problem really is Them.

[tuttle]

Heads should be exploding, but they aren't. So this is going to continue to escalate. Some people would call this a fascist tyranny.

I see the lack of head 'splosions as mostly a vantage point thing. I think many American's heads are exploding over this and loads of other stuff. But almost no one representing the 'sploded heads visibly cares or does anything about it.

I take this to mean one or more of the following:
1) They don't care about you. Just your vote. Mostly your money.
2) They hate you if you stand in the way. They use you if you agree with them, but are still ambivalent. They are actively seeking to escalate situations in order to further their aims.

It's likely not true of the entire elite (Rs or Ds or Media or Academia or Experts, etc) but I'd reckon they all would easily fall into one of two (and likely overlapped) categories:

Those who worship money and those who worship death. Mammon Cult and Death Cult.

[Del]

Those who worship money and those who worship death. Mammon Cult and Death Cult.

With lots of overlap of these cults.