The moral core of the anti-fascist writing on this site grows more apparent to me, and from more and more writers i read weekly. Heather Cox Richardson is hard to read today. So is Margaret Sullivan. It's like i am on an adventure for good. And i am reading from thinkers who are also fighting evil and resisting cruelty. And things aren't going well. But we persist.
The point is we are being ruled by evil men (and i think we can refer to them as *monsters*, if we remember the frame "humanism" is our only reliable thought gig, and then citing Gramsci). Our societies around the world are in constant transition now, with multiple crises affecting us all.
We are moralizing now because we see the danger of evil getting bigger and closer. They have established they are gonna grab anybody they want and are continuing to kill anybody they want. They are grabbing undocumented residents in terrifying ways, often snaring citizens and documented residents along with them, and resisters.
Now they are trying to establish that they can use anybody they want anyway they want. Their first feature is doing whatever they want with young girls. I am beginning to read reports that they are next gonna put on a show of "taking care of" the homeless (in concentration camps, like one being built, so i hear, in Utah).
I am very glad to have subscribed to your writing. Thank you.
Wonderful post. Keep thinking lately about the part of Epistemology of the Closet where Eve Sedgwick talks about the power of ignorance, how it allows the ignorant person to set the boundaries of what can be discussed and how not learning about something is often a conscious strategy to hold on to power. I think that's ultimately why Trump only knows about Trump, because if that's all the most powerful person on Earth knows then it's all we can talk about too, to express curiosity in something would mean giving room and power to something besides himself.
This column is a thing of beauty on so many levels. I always learn from you and see a new point of view. Today I also laughed and laughed.
I fully agree with you on the use of language to describe why Trump is unfit, and yet I know in my casual conversation that I use the language of mental illness to describe Trump and his partners in evil. I will work on this.
In my opinion his lack of curiosity, constant lying and inability to speak rationally are grounds for removal, but that would be less true if the people around him who are supposed to be running things were competent and actually cared about the well being of average Americans. I wasn’t concerned about Biden’s decline because I trusted the people around him. (Also, I think it was massively overblown by the media, but that’s another topic.)
Thank you for reminding me to think before I speak. And helping me laugh. And being fun and smart.
Spot on. The other day I saw a comment where someone used that perhaps Trump (or was it RFK Jr?) might be on the spectrum. That seems like a pointless observation. There are countless wonderful people on the spectrum, people who move through life doing good, being curious, loving others, exercising their creativity. The only thing that makes someone a ghoul is making evil choices of their own free will.
Sure, there are some cases where a stroke or incident that causes traumatic brain injury completely changes a person's personality, but I think we can safely say that's not the case here, Trump is just becoming more of who Trump always was.
"Mainstream media, and I think Democrats and progressives, are often more comfortable with using medicalized language when talking about morality than they are in using…well, moral language. We say that fighting to starve children is deranged rather than saying that it’s evil; we say murdering people on Latin American fishing boats for giggles is sick, rather than saying that it’s wicked."
We don't use "moral language" because morality has been weaponized by the Right to mean "Somebody we don't like having sex we don't approve of" or "People not our skin color engaging in a religion not ours".
"Moral language" has fallen into into disfavor same as "woke" and "DEI" have, because those KKKhrister Right scum have twisted it around so much that people now see Donald Trump as "good" and Barack Obama as "evil".
If we want to reclaim moral language, we need to start saying anything on the Right? Is WRONG, and Evil, and deserves to be destroyed violently, humiliatingly, and permanently.
If ever a column was deserving of a Pulitzer Prize, it’s this one.
thanks!
The moral core of the anti-fascist writing on this site grows more apparent to me, and from more and more writers i read weekly. Heather Cox Richardson is hard to read today. So is Margaret Sullivan. It's like i am on an adventure for good. And i am reading from thinkers who are also fighting evil and resisting cruelty. And things aren't going well. But we persist.
The point is we are being ruled by evil men (and i think we can refer to them as *monsters*, if we remember the frame "humanism" is our only reliable thought gig, and then citing Gramsci). Our societies around the world are in constant transition now, with multiple crises affecting us all.
We are moralizing now because we see the danger of evil getting bigger and closer. They have established they are gonna grab anybody they want and are continuing to kill anybody they want. They are grabbing undocumented residents in terrifying ways, often snaring citizens and documented residents along with them, and resisters.
Now they are trying to establish that they can use anybody they want anyway they want. Their first feature is doing whatever they want with young girls. I am beginning to read reports that they are next gonna put on a show of "taking care of" the homeless (in concentration camps, like one being built, so i hear, in Utah).
I am very glad to have subscribed to your writing. Thank you.
Wonderful post. Keep thinking lately about the part of Epistemology of the Closet where Eve Sedgwick talks about the power of ignorance, how it allows the ignorant person to set the boundaries of what can be discussed and how not learning about something is often a conscious strategy to hold on to power. I think that's ultimately why Trump only knows about Trump, because if that's all the most powerful person on Earth knows then it's all we can talk about too, to express curiosity in something would mean giving room and power to something besides himself.
oh wow, that's a great insight!
Kate Manne has been talking about male emotional withholding as a strategy of control, and I think there could be a parallel there too.
Undoubtedly the perfect MRI found a perfectly empty skull..no soft tissue brain at all
This column is a thing of beauty on so many levels. I always learn from you and see a new point of view. Today I also laughed and laughed.
I fully agree with you on the use of language to describe why Trump is unfit, and yet I know in my casual conversation that I use the language of mental illness to describe Trump and his partners in evil. I will work on this.
In my opinion his lack of curiosity, constant lying and inability to speak rationally are grounds for removal, but that would be less true if the people around him who are supposed to be running things were competent and actually cared about the well being of average Americans. I wasn’t concerned about Biden’s decline because I trusted the people around him. (Also, I think it was massively overblown by the media, but that’s another topic.)
Thank you for reminding me to think before I speak. And helping me laugh. And being fun and smart.
Spot on.
Spot on. The other day I saw a comment where someone used that perhaps Trump (or was it RFK Jr?) might be on the spectrum. That seems like a pointless observation. There are countless wonderful people on the spectrum, people who move through life doing good, being curious, loving others, exercising their creativity. The only thing that makes someone a ghoul is making evil choices of their own free will.
Sure, there are some cases where a stroke or incident that causes traumatic brain injury completely changes a person's personality, but I think we can safely say that's not the case here, Trump is just becoming more of who Trump always was.
"Mainstream media, and I think Democrats and progressives, are often more comfortable with using medicalized language when talking about morality than they are in using…well, moral language. We say that fighting to starve children is deranged rather than saying that it’s evil; we say murdering people on Latin American fishing boats for giggles is sick, rather than saying that it’s wicked."
We don't use "moral language" because morality has been weaponized by the Right to mean "Somebody we don't like having sex we don't approve of" or "People not our skin color engaging in a religion not ours".
"Moral language" has fallen into into disfavor same as "woke" and "DEI" have, because those KKKhrister Right scum have twisted it around so much that people now see Donald Trump as "good" and Barack Obama as "evil".
If we want to reclaim moral language, we need to start saying anything on the Right? Is WRONG, and Evil, and deserves to be destroyed violently, humiliatingly, and permanently.
I think there's somethign to that...but as I said, I think also people think ableist language is more objective and more stigmatizing.
Is ableist language more "objective"? I know it's stigmatizing, but what's more objective about "You're a cripple"...?
Doc-TOR! My Brain! Hurts!
https://youtu.be/9uhn14zrd48?si=2moDGfIW7bTBw7As