ben chambers 🏴"Roman satirist Lucian: “[a] cynical ideologue who denounces the critics of power to the powerful and cultivated as ambitious lunatics. His critical activities have turned into opportunism trimmed to the irony of those in power, who want to make fun of their existential critics.” Sounds all too familiar."
"In a more attenuated and Americanized form, that is also what Trumpism says, “you live in a brutal, competitive society, you are a striving atom of self-regard, drop the humanitarian pretenses, live without hypocrisy, express some well-deserved sadism, and enjoy it.” But, of course, this demand for absolute self-assertion is also a demand for absolute conformity, for doing what everyone else does. Back to our friends in the commentariat, perhaps the most typical character of the age is “the non-conformist conformist:” someone who says what everyone else says while flattering themselves that they are telling a bold truth that no else one has the courage to say. Well, it’s easy to be courageous in a crowd."
