Mastodawn

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen May 20

A parting shot (until I resume chattering away on the bus or the train): as someone with a scientific education (in part) I am of course infuriated by right-wing #Christian pretensions to be the true guardians of science and the intellectual traditions of "the West". They've been attempting to build that impression of themselves ever since #CSLewis taught Christians how to pretend as if their Christian faith was the product of reasoned decision, and it's quite false and insidious and I hate it. But they have embraced this position out of scientism, the fallacious employment of science or concepts from science as if they were moral precepts or articles of religious faith. The Christofascısts wish to pretend that all of their beliefs, especially the most hideously bıgoted of those beliefs, are backed up by empirical science.

But still more infuriating and bewildering is the game that these right-wing Christians play with freedom and the concept of human rights. Even more flagrantly than with science, extremist Christians assert themselves to be the sole protectors of human freedom and even of democracy, and somehow they can do this with a straight face even though both their religion and their politics (which merge with one another) are nakedly authoritarian. They really do not seem able to grasp the self-contradiction. To this day, Christofascısts refuse to treat with the notion that they're authoritarians. Challenge them on the subject and they'll either run away or start screaming nonsense about Muslims or leftists by way of deflection. They stick hard to the pretence that they're the sole custodians of all the noble values of "the West", not just liberty but all ethics, all morality. They say none of these would exist but for the Christian faith.

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen May 20

I am not entirely sure how they can keep up this pretence, but they do—they are sensationally good at this game, so good at it that the Republican fascisti have the mainline #Democrats completely befuddled and cowed (or bought or blackmailed, perhaps) and in awe of the Republicans' ostensibly supreme commitment to rights and principles.

The GOP has learned that if they bray loudly enough in unison about the morals they clearly don't possess and the rights they openly wish to be suppressed, almost the whole Democratic establishment will believe them, and thus go on believing that the Republicans are people who can be trusted to uphold a bargain. To reinforce the pretence, the GOP assigns a couple of their "moderates" to spend their entire careers in a show of elaborate waffling about sacred principles (e.g. Olympia Snowe).

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen May 20

The Democrats as a body never seem to notice or care that these Republican "moderates" always side with the fascist majority after their waffling, but the Democrats as a body refuse to acknowledge that their Republican opponents are in fact a fascist party, and I would hazard to guess that top Democratic lawmakers feel bound by secret agreements with ostensibly "moderate" Republicans to prevent descriptive words as "fascist" or "racist" from sticking to ANY U.S. representative.

The GOP pseudo-moderates must be promising in turn that Trumpism is a temporary inflammation and if the Democrats would only be lenient and forgiving enough (invoking the sacrosanct American principle of compromise, which the Republicans also routinely traduce) then the inflammation will pass and the GOP will once more be the fiscal conscience of the nation or whatever.

But why do Democrats fall for GOP lies?

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen May 20

Christianity is the answer to that question! Christians of a very particularly zealous and hyperpolitical sort took over the GOP for good as part of the Reaganite fascist counterrevolution, the first open eruption of Christofascist national government in the United States.

Reagan did not, as later waves of more extreme GOP politicians would eventually do, openly proclaim that his job was upholding Christian values. But his most visible allies were reactionary Christian fanatics such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and the tenor of his Presidency was relentlessly moralistic and borrowed heavily from the rhetoric of right-wing Christian preaching and media-savvy "televangelism".

Ever since the Republican Party has advertised itself, somewhat sneakily at first but with ever-increasing loudness and fervour, as the party of #faith. "We are the people who actually believe in things," is the Republican cry, "not like those hypocritical poll-driven Democrats."

And you know what? They're not wrong.

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen

This is a lesson that Democrats and their partisans are loath to learn about themselves: the Republicans have the party leadership clocked. The Democrats, as a whole, adhere to no sound principles whatever. The Democrats freely imitate the methods and rhetoric of their fascist opponents and indeed the Party seems generally to wish it were more like the GOP: more centralized, more authoritarian, better able to whip its voters into loyalty behind a single person, and more "working class" according to the racist and cartoonish idea of "working class" put forth in GOP dogma and embraced by mainstream U.S. politics and media.

As a result of the Democratic longing to mimic the ways of the GOP, the Democratic Party has betrayed every principle they have ever pretended to uphold in the name of preserving a "big tent" and an open-door policy towards conservatives, while heaping vitriol and contempt upon social democrats and leftists for being "divisive" and concerned with "purity tests" for having the cheek to attempt holding the Party to its supposed values.

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen May 20

The Democrats exalt compromise as a core virtue while forgetting that true compromise only comes after a fight; instead the Party is so shapeless and spineless that it offers compromises before the fight even starts, hoping I suppose to plea-bargain their way to a brisk efficient political process—despite decades of experiences which should have taught them that the Republicans enjoy wrecking such plans. The last thing the GOP wants is smoothly functioning government. They thrive amid maximal chaos.

But again I return to the depraved but genuine sense of #faith which pervades U.S. conservative politics. You can tell the faith is genuine because Democrats fall for it, again and again, continuing to believe the nonsense that their GOP colleagues tell them because it's said with such burning intensity and profound sense of conviction. No mainline Democrat knows how to believe in anything that much. Determination to uphold a principle, ANY principle, is foreign to their way of doing politics.

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen May 20

I would suspect that persons of a skeptical or worldly bent might sneer at my commentary, and at my assertion of the centrality of faith to the efficacy of GOP politics. "It's all lies," an atheist might say. Perhaps, but does that matter? Human beings are capable of placing apparently unshakeable faith in bald-faced lies, lies that seem as if they should be refutable on the spot—until one tries to do it, and finds out that the faithful person merely dismisses anything that gets in the way of their faith. Christians trust their propaganda. Flat-Earthers confidently write off all photos from space as fabrications. It is not actually possible to win against such a person, and they laugh at the idea of compromise.

Faith works for those who embrace it. They see practical advantages in it, feeling vindicated every time an opponent reels away from them, bewildered and dejected and forced to take consolation in derision and excoriation. The Christian fanatics are especially used to such treatment and they think it's funny. "See how angry I made them? They know I'm right, LOL."

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen May 20

Nor does accusing the faithful person of hypocrisy achieve much against the person who's welded to faith as a pillar of their being. Again the Christian extremists are particularly well-fortified here, schooled to regard any criticism of their faith as a malicious attempt to destroy faith—far worse a sin, in their mind, than some trifling accusation of hypocrisy.

I am NOT saying that it's fruitless to go up against zealots armed with a powerful sense of faith! But I am suggesting that only a more powerful belief in some other set of principles can hope to gain any ground against such zealots. One must dare to have faith in something abstract, I contend, and demonstrate that this faith is not easily unsettled when challenged.

One must be that scary and unfashionable thing: ideological.

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen May 20

Here again the #Democrats and liberals and so-called centrists in U.S. politics and media have tamely accepted the Republicans' framing of ideology, which is that ideology is practically equivalent to tyranny.

The faux-independent journalists who clog up Substack and The Atlantic and other press organs with centrist orthodoxy are congenial with the Christofascist condemnation of ideology and the ideological, which the Christofascists have adopted as a permanent distraction from their own intensely ideological nature. In the centrist view, ideology is the reason for tyranny and it's dangerous (not to mention personally unpleasant to themselves) to believe in anything too sincerely.

But what use are politicians who have no principles? What use are politicians without ideology?

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen May 20

The Democrats who embrace perpetual spinelessness seems to think that their faithlessness to all principles, excepting their feeble commitment to such false civic virtues as "compromise" and "norms", should make them appealing to everyone. The "Big Tent" rhetoric suggests a hapless try at inclusivity. But the Democratic leaders routinely betray everyone to their left, and their constant blandishments and reassurances that they're open to compromise on the right aren't real fly that convincing to Republicans who is pse overall aim for decades has been reducing the United States to effective single-party rule. And it doesn't matter how often the Democrats betray leftists in order to make a demonstration of solidarity with conservatives: the GOP knows they can always win by smearing the Democrats as Communists and terrorists.

There is NOTHING to be gained from refusing to be ideological, refusing to have any certain belief in anything aside from winning elections. One does not actually win elections by believing in nothing.

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen May 20

It's especially damning to the liberal and centrist distaste for ideology, I think, that nobody in U.S. politics is louder and more obnoxious about the evils of ideology than Christian fanatics. Doesn't that mean anything to Democrats who copy their rhetoric? The Christians in conservative politics are merely trying to clear the field: they want to have a monopoly on faith and belief and thus they're trying to destroy all possible competition by pretending that they're moved by a principled disdain for ideology, rather than a self-serving desire to maintain ideological supremacy.

Do Democrats even really believe in #democracy any more, or have they made common cause with their enemies in regarding the U.S. people as contemptible and fit only to shepherded round with trickery and false promises?

The Democrats impeached Trump TWICE, the American people elected him TWICE, the Democratic party is not the problem here.

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen May 20

@HakeemG sure they are! they are responsible for their own electoral defeats. if they really do think that the people generally are too stupid and corrupt to vote for them then why are they even still in politics, other than to reap the advantages of being second banana to the GOP fascists? The fascists offer the Democrats a cosmetic share of power—and that really does seem to be enough for some Democratic politicians, anyway.

If I go to a job interview, nail the interview, and the company hires some bumbling idiot, you think that's my fault? I think the company shit the bed and is about to get everything they deserve.

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen May 20

@HakeemG the analogy makes no sense: the population of the United States is not a business and in a democracy, they get to reject anyone they like and it's the politicians' responsibility to be appealing to the people.

Even MAGA voters have figured it out, maybe one day you will catch up to them.

“Apparently I’m an idiot.” Woman at Pennsylvania gas station who voted for Trump rips into him, calls him “a worthless pile of sh*t”.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-voter-went-viral-cursing-163225154.html

A Trump Voter Went Viral for Cursing Out the President Over Gas Prices. The Real Story Is the 3 Voters at the Same Pump Who Didn't

A clip of a Pennsylvania woman cursing out President Trump at a gas station has been tearing across social media this week — and for ... Read More

Yahoo News

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen May 20

@HakeemG I'm not sure why you're insulting me; I have reliably voted Democratic myself, every election. And it's still on the Democrats' heads for losing. That's democracy for you!

I'm not insulting you, I'm telling the truth, if that offends you that's fine. The American people fumbled the bag, you're defending the absurd. The Democrats are not responsible for your decisions or those of anyone else, these people wanted a fascist Nazi dictator, they got one.

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen May 20

@HakeemG and...now what? you've condemned the American people. perhaps they deserve the condemnation; I am not arguing that.

But what do you propose to do about it?

I have no idea. Not my problem to fix. I can tell you that in order to fix a problem you have to correctly identify it.