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Tag: politics

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    When politics become religion

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    1–2 minutes

    The increasingly eerie echoes between traditional religion (captured by the political right) and the atheist left (grievance/recognition politics) show how humans coalesce around meaning and values.

    The disturbing part is that beyond having fundamental doctrine, rites, and hypocritically righteous exclusion on both sides, the premise of many religions is a forthcoming utopia. There will be a day of retributive judgment, which will open the gates of heaven for the chosen to enter the sacred land.

    For both traditional regressive religion and the anti-capitalist indentitarian left, the utopia of a new world requires a singular communal body without strife or division, requiring a great culling of nonbelievers.

    Despite the claims at open forgiveness and empathy, it ultimately requires a violent end to pass into peace and harmony.

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    Facism: aestheticization of politics

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    1–2 minutes

    Fascism is fear and pain amplified until we beg for strength to save us.
    Fear is created through a conspiracy without facts: we can protest for our rights without affecting change. In this neutered, weakened state, we turn towards strength, even if it is only an image of strength, a memory of power.
    Once affiliated, communally anxious quick fixes are applied: symbolic interactions and stylistic switches. Watchwords, repetitious dogma, flags, and costuming precede conversation, curiosity, or insight. In so doing, we sacrifice self to the tribe.
    What must be considered is that we would love to remain individuals, strange and selfish, but when stripped and trapped, we will turn back to primal instinct and scapegoating. The reason for fear is because it is natural.

    "Benjamin said that fascism tends towards an aestheticization of politics, in the sense of a spectacle in which it allows the masses to express themselves without seeing their rights recognized, and without affecting the relations of ownership which the proletarian masses aim to eliminate." ~ The aestheticization of politics, wikipedia
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    Politics today: control

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    "There are only two vital forces in American politics today: those who wish to control everything, and those who wish not to be controlled." ~ Martin Gurri

    To extend: There are only two options today: a lying state working hard at the appearance of control, and an obviously lying state proudly out of control.

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    Political disgust as pleasure

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    1–2 minutes

    Political anxiety and disgust can transform into a source of enjoyment, where emotional investment—"libidinal investment"—eclipses rational thought. This emotionalism drives an addictive engagement with conflict, prioritizing outrage over reason because one derives "perverse" pleasure.
    from Slavoj Zizek
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    Manifesting Positivity in Tough Times

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    1–2 minutes

    Given our bleak and contracting economic and political landscape, we are increasingly told to “manifest our destiny” through hope and positivity. We should vote for “joy.”

    To rely on positivity for survival is akin to prayer: a placebo for a tool. Instead of relying on the hard work of a meritocratic existence, agency escapes us, leaving us only psychological coping mechanisms: giddy, blind optimism ignoring reality in favor of insane positivity.

    Indeed, our mutability to parrot glee in the face of hardship is directly proportional to our fear: we will say, do, or be anything to survive, no matter how outragious.

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    Technocrats Reshaping Sovereignty

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    We are witnessing a shift in political power. Sovereignty is moving away from traditional democratic systems and into the hands of a new elite, what might be called a "Humanitarian Party." This entity consists of "technical experts" and "moral authorities" from corporations, universities, media, and NGOs, who use their influence to reshape governance. (aka the "managerial elite.")

    Their legitimacy is based on the idea that they protect vulnerable groups—racial and sexual minorities, the immunocompromised, and others—whom they elevate as mascots of social programs driven by compassion. While these programs claim moral high ground, they centralize power in the hands of technocrats and bureaucrats, eroding common sense and traditional practices.

    As a result, the majority’s voice is increasingly sidelined in favor of the expert-driven rule, which expands managerial control and concentrates authority in a sprawling parastatal network.

    Like any infestation that becomes destructively parasitic, this transformation risks undermining democratic accountability while advancing a biased vision of moral superiority, which disguises self-serving motivation, all confounded with technical and linguistic arcana.

    from Matthew Crawford
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    Your democratic role: participant to witness

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    1–2 minutes

    As democracy wanes into managerial technocracy, with some celebrity cameos and oligarchic influence, we are offered the gift of becoming witnesses instead of full participants. We are not in "Survivor;" we are watching "The Bachelor."
    We are necessary as the voting audience, but we no longer need to involve ourselves in the messy moralizing, risky responsibility, or carry the burden of concern. Sit back, enjoy, or wring your hands, but please don’t disturb the show.

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    Political hygiene

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    1–2 minutes

    When a movement (such as the woke left or far-right) feels it cannot change the wider world (dethrone or enthrone Trump), it turns on those it can control: the people in its party or tribe.

    Inside the group, they increase the need for "ideological purity" to weed out interlopers and enforce/institute a hardcore of radicalized ideas, which demand alignment or at least lip-service obedience to remain in the party. (Since we have not made progress, we must go harder: you are either with or against us.)

    Examples of pejorative othering are terming: cuckservatives as in-party shaming on the conservative right or naming them a moderate or an ally to stack the progressive left hierarchically.

    Any criticality is erased, bad ideas flourish, and extremism distances what should be united.

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    Overemphasizing Human Rights

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    Post-Cold War overemphasis on human rights has skewed discourse, sidelining issues like ecology, climate change, income inequality, and nuclear proliferation.

    Human rights have become sacrosanct, yet they are oddly always under threat. This allows broad arguments concerning the species’ survival to slide into the more punchy, impossible, short-term trumpeting of moral indignation instead of retaining focus on realpolitik issues.

    While the rationality needed for long-term survival has its pitfalls (such as quantifying the value of life), the emphasis on human rights has drifted into emotional protectionism.

    This is a significant danger: when human rights are conflated with subjective emotions, the threat is to dismiss rights, as is often done with emotions.

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    the right to equal stupidity

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    We tend to consider intelligence as the primary solution: the government and politicians have more information and, therefore, should make wiser decisions. Yet, we find our elected leaders obscuring evidence, colluding and manipulating messaging, repeatedly (obviously) fucking up, and blaming others.

    For the survival of our democracy, we are supposed to be intelligent enough, wise enough, and parental enough to see through it: we are required to vote better, be better, to alter the bureaucratic state.

    The fault is placed back onto the citizens to do better.

    But we have every right to be as stupid and misguided as those in charge. They are surrounded by an edifice of checks, balances, advisors, and responsibility oaths, while we work two jobs and consume politics over beers.

    We are praised as smart when we are manipulable, and told we are dumb (wrong-headed) when we don’t accept the lies.