Fascism

How do we stay hopeful when fascism is on the rise?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “How do leftists stay hopeful/resilient in times like these where fascism is on the rise and history is repeating itself?”

History has shown us that fascism always gets beaten back when the public realizes how much less they like fascism than the chaos of democracy. Every time and after enduring a period of suffering under the rule of despots, voter turnout makes a strong comeback as fascism encourages the apathetic non-voters to rethink their strategy of staying home.

Think of fascism as a lesson in consequences where people need to suffer enough to realize just how precious the delicate balance of freedom is in society and how vital the sausage-making process is, no matter how boring and dry it may otherwise seem.

People eventually learn they prefer to get off the couch and go to the polling stations to cast their votes for people they want to trust to represent their best interests. They also eventually learn that no matter how much the fascists want to paint their opposition as being identical to them, they’re not. The fascists inevitably piss off the people enough to go to war against them, and that’s precisely what Trump and Musk are inviting from the world.

They’re poking a tiger, and they’re going to get burned while they set the world aflame.

The only real question left on the table is, Just how much more pain will the people endure before the riots break out?

This isn’t even about being hopeful because we already know, just like everyone who’s been pushed past their limits, that once the anger takes over, there’s no stopping it. That neighbour who’s been pissing you off with their loud music invariably gets an earful that may embarrass you afterward. Still, it’s an emotional explosion that can’t be controlled during its moment of emotional release.

My guess is that if Luigi Mangione gets the death penalty, that might be the final trigger before all hell breaks loose. It’s hard to tell because Americans seem able to tolerate incredible horrors without doing anything substantial about them.

I know that if I was living in Flint, Michigan, for example, and I had a kid who died from the poisoned water, I would have pulled a Luigi myself. If a kid of mine were gunned down in a school while my local representative did nothing to institute sensible measures to prevent this from happening again, I’d lose my shit.

As it stands right now, from what I’ve been put through on a personal level, I’m already doing everything I can to keep from doing something stupid while attempting to resolve an issue in the most civilized manner possible. As it stands, the bullies responsible for destroying my life are behaving as if they’re going to walk away without suffering any consequences for their actions as they tell me to shut up and die quietly.

I know I’m not the only person at the end of their rope, and all it will take is the right match to set this nightmarish dystopia ablaze.

People like Musk will have to come around or beef up their security because it’s only a matter of time before their arrogance blows back like a nuclear bomb in their faces.

“Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution necessary.”

The trouble with this dynamic is that millions of people have to be pushed to their breaking point before they realize how much less pain there is in risking death in a revolution than to continue enduring a walking death in slow motion toward oblivion.

This is all just history repeating itself.

It’s not new by any stretch of the imagination.

Those who refuse to learn from history force us all to replay it, and we all get uglier about it each time we must endure the stupidity of people who refuse to read the writing on the wall.

The only salient aspect of hope in this mess is that we can avoid the worst chaos before returning to sanity.

Why do MAGA come off as spoiled rotten, whiny and ungrateful babies?

This question as it was originally posted on Quora in its complete form is: Why do so many MAGA elitists come off as spoiled rotten, whiny and ungrateful babies who are in desperate need of a diaper change?

Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist, and his success at achieving such a high degree of public awareness and top of mind bolstered by all the corporate media driving him to the Whitehouse with their tacit support for his return to power is like a Midas Touch inspiring narcissists everywhere.

That’s why Elon Musk, owner of the world’s most enormous megaphone, fawns over the grifter in chief.

Donald Trump appears to naturally have what Elon had to pay $44 billion to have and with less fawning attention as he’s finding his audience of worshippers dwindling instead of doubling down in their support of him as a saviour equal to Trump. (That must also not be very pleasant for him because he is naturally much more intelligent than Trump.)

He’s like catnip for ego masturbators everywhere, and every single one of them is characterized by the image of a spoiled rotten, whiny, and ungrateful child. Anyone who has had any direct experience with a malignant narcissist, and chances are that it’s more than most realize because many still don’t get what that implies, will see the pattern in his behaviour and understand it for the malignancy that it is.

Powerless narcissists everywhere see him as the embodiment of their dreams of power for themselves, even on the smallest of levels, by permitting them the ability to act locally on their toxic impulses. It’s why hate crimes escalated while he was in office. His presence there was a license for every narcissist, malignant and covert, to feel justified in every destructive action they took against those they deem their enemies.

When we say a leader leads by example or when a role model sets the stage for all the performers to play similar roles, this is what is meant. Humans emulate acceptable behaviour. This is how we learn to socialize.

When long-repressed behaviours are allowed to let loose, they do precisely that. We saw that in spades on January 6th. — narcissists like the Q-Anon Shaman dood (Jacob Chansley), through to their flying monkeys, got into the acting out stage of rage against the system of their oppression.

Jacob even requested a special diet of organic food for him during his 41 months of incarceration, which was granted to him for “religious and health” reasons.

“Because of his “shamanic belief system and way of life,” eating food that isn’t organic or has “unnatural chemicals” would cause the client, Jacob Chansley, “systemic responses that are not simply discomforting, but debilitating and, notably, dehydrating,” attorney Albert Watkins wrote in a filing on Wednesday. Chansley had lost more than 20 pounds, and his condition was “declining,” Watkins wrote”

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/03/qanon-shaman-organic-food-465563

Narcissists don’t much care for anything that doesn’t cater to their self-centred sensibilities, and having a malignant narcissist at the top of the power hierarchy meant they were and are entitled to their entitlements.

A narcissist will expect the world to conform to them, and any form of compromise they are expected to make is perceived as an assault against them. Living in society is already a condition of oppression they must conform to if they wish to survive and succeed in life. They don’t want to conform to a world that does not cater to them, but they learn to do precisely that to get what they want.

MAGAts don’t care about anything beyond whatever serves their ego, and that’s why you can hit them with a mountain of facts and evidence. They’ll keep coming back with yet another fiction they can present to avoid the admission of defeat and score what they can conceive of as a win. Their egos will permit them nothing less because that risks a full-blown narcissistic collapse.

They would rather die than face that hit to their ego.

Their incapacity to admit error or publicly acknowledge a weakness is what makes these freaks a severe threat to democracies everywhere. This is how and why they destroy families everywhere.

They are psychological children trapped in adult bodies as a consequence of having their emotional maturity halted at a young age due to severe trauma.

There is no cure for them beyond addressing the cause, and that cause is a horrendous problem statistically represented by a whopping majority (70%-80%) of families being dysfunctional. That also spills out to statistics involving a mental health pandemic visibly affecting a minimum of one in five people today.

We must prioritize mental health in society to have any hope of solving our common problems and preventing another Drumpf catastrophe. Our only other choice is to wait for the next Drumpf to capture public attention, while the media will be much more prepared to ensure the oligarchs win complete control over the nation.

Source:https://www.hrmorning.com/articles/mental-health-in-the-workplace/

Why fascism always appears in economically struggling countries.

Freikorps members flying the flag of the German Empire during the Kapp Putsch, Munich, 1920.

When people suffer from economic struggles, particularly over a prolonged period, they become desperate for someone to step up to the plate and offer solutions they cannot devise for themselves. People become conditioned through desperation for a strong leader to take charge and “lead the way to prosperity.”

Desperation causes people to lose perspective, while critical thinking skills suffer from a need to quell the pain. Anyone who can convincingly present themselves as a saviour will be welcomed with open arms.

Even though the solutions to economic problems may be obvious, they’re also too far out of reach of hope to implement them.

In today’s world, we are dominated by a handful of wealthy people who control all our systems with deaf ears to the cries of the suffering. Most of their focus is on their well-being, fortunes, and plans for their futures and legacies. The rest of us matter only insofar as we can be useful to them.

As our economies have become global and our economic infrastructures have become multinational entities, we have lost our communities.

Only a few decades ago, our communities thrived by our connectedness to each other.

We have lost that, while those who have been the greatest beneficiaries of a global economy have lost their sense of community attachment because the entire globe is their playground.

The plutocrats among us who are most responsible for the economic hardships suffered by millions are entirely due to their wins at the expense of the millions suffering today. Their goal has never been to raise humanity out of poverty, even though that has been the promise of capitalism.

They have their armies of servants at their disposal to secure themselves against resistance and to continue reshaping the world into their image. They are perceived as being too far beyond the reach of laws to allow the little people any sense of hope for justice.

Anyone who can present themselves as a leader capable of alleviating their suffering is welcomed with a total investment of all their hopes and dreams, while a widespread perception of one capable of rising to that need is one from among the untouchable class. That’s why someone like Donald Trump can succeed in assuming control of an entire party through a cult level of worship.

The trouble is that leaders who claim to be their solution also demand their unquestioning loyalty and obedience. That’s the key which opens the door to fascism because the only way for a single leader to wield enough power is to align themselves with the existing status quo of power.

Donald Trump — “Nobody know the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”