"What feels novel in the aftermath of this month’s hurricanes is how the people doing the lying aren’t even trying to hide the provenance of their bullshit. Similarly, those sharing the lies are happy to admit that they do not care whether what they’re pushing is real or not."Horrifying. But is there anyone with judgement and intellectual honesty who can't recognize that this same virus (with a different set of slogans) also infects the extreme left? This isn't a MAGA thing, it’s an America thing.
The 40% of us who've remained immune must stick together like never before. The center must hold. We are the only hope for offering an alternative option to the lifestyle of mouthy stridency about the sacred primacy of MY TRUTH (an end justifying all means, including "burning it all down") for bored, coddled, narcissistic, aristocratic Americans desperate to feel some sense of staunch stakedness.
Amid this vicious cosplay, the rest of us can continue to model other, better ways to score points while tens of millions - including plenty of recently sane people - are unable to even acknowledge the problem from inside a virulent two-headed popular delusion.
The article goes on...
"Republican politicians shared an AI-generated viral image of a little girl holding a puppy while supposedly fleeing Helene. Though the image was clearly fake and quickly debunked, some politicians remained defiant. "Y'all, I don't know where this photo came from and honestly, it doesn't matter," Amy Kremer, who represents Georgia on the Republican National Committee, wrote after sharing the fake image. "I'm leaving it because it is emblematic of the trauma and pain people are living through right now. Kremer wasn't alone. The journalist Parker Molloy compiled screenshots of people "acknowledging that this image is AI but still insisting that it's real on some deeper level"—proof, Molloy noted, that we're "living in the post-reality."Can you manage at least a grudging concession that this kind of thinking has infected both extremes? We are biologically tuned to sensitively detect awfulness in The Other Side, while overlooking it within our own tribe. But can you break through that programming for a moment to see how monstrously this ditzy trend - not intrinsically tied to any one bag of beliefs - has taken over people's sense of self (above and beyond faculties like shame or mercy)? And where it's leading us?
I once wrote that
Scientists keep trying to explain the Fermi Paradox - the absence of evidence of advanced civilization in the Universe. What is the X Factor obliterating civilizations before they can build Dyson Spheres, capturing the totality of a star's energy, or find a way to communicate over the void with brutes like us?
Comfort and wealth, baby. That's the perilous X Factor. Comfort and wealth.
3 comments:
Just a quick question, have you watched any of the videos of the flash floods and mudslides. I know an Atlantic article can really help put into perspective the level and scope of this disaster. But I understand that the people affected have had it so good all their lives too complain about no electricity, people trapped, whole families swept away, the carnage of dead animals and missing loved ones needs to be viewed through the lens of politics. The Federal Government should not be blamed for any off this and there is only so much they can do with being hindered by bureaucracy and all that.
Well, I think people there have every right to "complain", generally, and not all of them have lived splendid lives. But I'd hope, at least in this corner of the Internet, that it's blatantly obvious that attacking FEMA personal and obstructing relief efforts and, as you say, viewing it through lens of politics is inexcusable.
Anyway, what I'm doing here is to try to understand *why they do that*. My tongue is exhausted from tskking. I'm trying to pull the camera back for a wider view. Understanding might not be worth much, but I give it the old college try, y'know?
We are all trying to hold on to some semblance of reality.. The Fact of the matter is we view the world through the information we get. That we have lived through a time that is 'manufactured' as my dear old Dad says it is all bullshit. Real people , the 40% you mention feel the way they do because they understand that 'politics'. as viewed through a couple of media outlets staffed by pardon my French "fucking wankers" is meaningless. We all know no one is coming to 'save us'.... and the parody of politics ever accomplishing anything or having the power to help us is just that. We are waking from a dream. Our whole lives we learned in school all these stories of the great battles fought between the Political parties to bring us to this point of progress.....It is all bullshit. It is not real life and people are sick of hearing about it. Love ya. The last couple of articles you wrote have been amazing..... Al Grey. I don't know why I only comment on your political articles.... Probably because after I read one of your other kind of articles there is nothing for me to say but whoa, thanks, and I hope I get at least half of what you are putting out there. Keep up the great work. I am a recovering Political Junky and I sometimes can't help myself from drifting back into the Frey.
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