🧵 Reactionaries evaluate moral choices through identities rather than principles.

What others may see as hypocrisy is actually consistent commitment to the power dynamic they obsessively follow.

The rightfulness of an act is not determined by moral principles but by identity of the person or group committing it. #philosophy

Reactionary morality flows downward in a hierarchy. The higher one is, the more rightful their actions are.

With some variations it is as follows:
1) The maximum leader (Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, etc)
2) Political party
3) Wealth
4) Religion
5) Race
6) Sex
7) Locality

In this framework, it is not wrong for Donald Trump to engage in actions that violate Christian teachings. Nor is it wrong for wealthy people to do so.

Being in a less favored identity group means your actions are more likely to be immoral. But you can accrue greater regard by belonging to other identities.

Normally, a Black woman of low income would be viewed as inherently immoral, but if she identifies as a Republican Trump supporter, her actions automatically are imbued with rightfulness.

So long as she refrains from criticizing Republican elites, she will have greater moral authority than a White Democratic man.

Reactionaries are inherently anti-intellectual so they never will explicitly state or even implicitly acknowledge their moral frameworks, but it's observable in all of the decisions they make.

Example: Most reactionaries call themselves "pro-life," but they also uniformly oppose social welfare spending or regulations to protect parents and children...

This seems like hypocrisy to a non-reactionary, but it isn't. Social welfare policies for families are wrong because they will benefit poor people or people from racial minority groups. These people are inherently immoral in reactionary thinking, so they must not receive any benefits.

The only thing poor people should receive is religious instruction to make them virtuous.

Donald Trump was shocked when he first encountered reactionary morality. It was almost unbelievable to him, and he expressed that publicly in his infamous remark that "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters."

He was 100% correct in this. Shooting someone would be immoral based on Christian teaching, but because he is the tribal leader, this action would either be of no moral consequence or actually be a positive action.

@mattsheffield Now the question is who put Trump as the "tribal leader" as you mentioned above? Isn't it the today's Christian religious leaders in America. They are not far different from religious leaders and the Pharisees in Jesus' days.
@tanhana_dm In his case, most of the religious leaders supported Ted Cruz first. Trump actually obtained his authority from the base by reupping the authoritarianism and by dumbing it down. He beat the religious manipulators at their own game. And then they in turn submitted.
@mattsheffield But, didn't the religious leaders already support him since 2016 election? I know many Southern California church leaders who openly endorsed Trump from the pulpit. I doubt that they really supported Cruz this time since all I heard is they preached the Republican gospel which is "Elect Republicans because they are from the party of family values and never vote for Democrats because they are devil's off springs." Well, some people really need to look at themselves with the mirrors more.
@tanhana_dm Yes they support Trump now. But you asked me how did Trump become the leader earlier. That's the question I was answering.