Robert Reich, today: Reality is a Communist Plot, subtitled “Of MAGA and the totalitarian mindset”
As always, this isn’t about MAGA in particular. It’s about the lingering of the atavistic part of human nature that sees everything tribally, and doesn’t understand and rejects change. Reich summarizes the MAGA fantasies:
The Covid vaccine didn’t work, and vaccines cause autism. But hydroxychloroquine worked, and so did ivermectin. Anthony Fauci killed millions of people.
Climate change is a hoax. Wind power caused a massive TV blackout during the Trump-Biden debate. Solar power is useless because the sun doesn’t shine at night, and batteries don’t exist. Smoke blanketed North America, not because of climate change, but because Canada didn’t rake its 2 million square miles of boreal forest.
We’ve destroyed Iran’s military, and the Iranian regime is begging for a deal. Also, the U.S. isn’t running out of precision weapons as a result of the Iran war, and furthermore the shortage is Joe Biden’s fault.
The economy is in a “golden age.” Prices are down. And Trump has a 59 percent approval rating.
Trump won the 2020 election.
Communism is the greatest threat facing America.
The modern American right is very good at hating. MAGA hates immigrants (unless they’re white South Africans); it hates liberals; it hates scientists.
And this. Perhaps the inescapable part of human nature.
What the ongoing show trial of Fauci — which motivated this post — has really driven home, however, is that what Trump and his supporters hate most of all is reality. They know what they want to believe. They fly into paroxysms of rage whenever someone points out that the world isn’t what they want it to be. And they always want to shoot the messenger.
This may be why humanity is doomed; and perhaps this is the solution to the Fermi paradox, i.e., this happens with all intelligence species.
This ties back to the “willful ignorance” point in yesterday’s post.
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Briefly:
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- Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, yesterday: Monty Fritts Plans To Discriminate Against Muslims If Elected Governor Of Tennessee
- So much for freedom of religion.
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- Robert Reich, today: Trump’s huge hidden upward redistribution, subtitled “The truth about Trump’s war, Trump’s tariffs, and Trumponomics”
- Conservative policies are always about making the rich richer.
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- The new 60 Minutes correspondents include conservative NYT columnist Ross Douthat.
- Who’s an opinion columnist, with no experience in actual journalism. Of course.
- Yahoo: ‘60 Minutes’ New Religious Zealot Says He Witnessed Miracle in a Bar
And.
- The Guardian, Margaret Sullivan, today: No TV experience? At CBS News, that’s no problem
- No experience necessary if you’re on the right team!
