David Roberts5d ago
Really love this piece, captures something I've wanted to say for a long time. There's an "every accusation is a confession" aspect to this, of course -- nobody is more sweatily obsessed with performance &image than MAGA types -- but there's also something deepers going on.

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qnyq7wies2uc56bzqmfz4q25/post/3mhbjfhylpk2a
Show threadDavid Roberts5d ago
If you're a man performing traditional manhood, it's not performance. It's only performance if it diverges from conventional power hierarchies. If you're a lawmaker passing laws & regulations that enforce sprawl, it's not social engineering. It's only social engineering if the result is different.
Show threadDavid Roberts5d ago
If you're angry & belligerent, it's not emotional. It's only emotional if you evince vulnerability or sadness. If you force clerks in stores to say "Merry Christmas, it's not imposing your values. It's only imposing your values if you ask them to say "happy holidays" to accommodate other faiths.
Show threadDavid Roberts5d ago
If you attack the capital with a mob, you're still "law & order." You're only against law & order if you agitate in favor of egalitarian policy. And so on. I could list parallel examples all day. The point is that conservatism only has one mode of analysis & engagement.
Show threadDavid Roberts
There are things that are done the traditional way, that respect traditional power hierarchies & traditional practices -- which are right & good & normal -- and there are things that are done to reform & improve things -- which are radical, communist, empty signaling, fake virtue.
Mar 17 at 8:02pmWeb
Show threadDavid Roberts5d ago
Conservatives are shitty & selfish, they only care about people like them, their own tribe, and they believe deep in their guts that everyone else is like that too, so they must -- for their own psycic comfort -- dismiss all efforts at helping other people as somehow fake, false, inauthentic.
Show threadDavid Roberts5d ago
Conservatives, individually & as a group, have built up enormous psychic defenses & justificatory worldviews to avoid confronting the simple truth that their fear & selfishness are not inevitable or natural or "authentic" -- it's a choice they're making that others make differently.
Show threadDavid Roberts5d ago
That's why they get called "reactionaries" -- they are desperate to believe & to convince others that the shitty things they do are forced, an inevitable reaction that couldn't have been otherwise. They're terrified of confronting the fact that they are free individuals *choosing* shittiness.
Show threadDavid Roberts5d ago
They're terrified of the thought that others are choosing to be better, and that *they* could choose to be better with some effort & grit. That's why fascists love mobs. When you're embedded in a mob, your individuality disappears, you're no longer making choices, you are simply swept along.
Show threadDavid Roberts5d ago
When you're in a mob, you can turn your brain off & indulge base instincts. It's hard to work yourself up to that when you're alone, because some small voice inside is telling you it's shitty. The mob silences that small voice & gives you permission. That's what they all want: permission.
Show threadDavid Roberts5d ago
They want everyone to admit that everyone is shitty, because it gives them permission to be shitty. When people claim not to be shitty -- when they, uh, "virtue signal" -- it disrupts that dynamic. It reminds them virtue is possible. They don't want to hear it & thus dismiss is as fake.
Show threadDavid Roberts5d ago
As I've said many many times -- and as has become inarguably clear in the last decade -- reactionary politics is not an alternative set of moral & political values. It is a permission structure to disregard values entirely & indulge in atavistic instincts. It's permission to be shitty.
Show threadDavid Roberts5d ago
When people aren't shitty, it makes being shitty look like a choice. Thus shitty people must dismiss all virtue as "signaling." </fin>