Freedom is freedom from the fear of death. Freedom is freedom from fearing you’ll be gunned down at school. Freedom is freedom from fear your kids won’t come home from school. Freedom is freedom from fear of going to the grocery store. Freedom is freedom from senseless violence. Freedom is freedom from murderous rampages replayed […]
Demagogues
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The demagogue is the creature the Founders of America most feared: the authoritarian-style leader who would stir the passions of the mob and use them to overthrow the more moderate democratic norms and checks and balances of the republic in order to stay in power. Yet the United States has had a flirtation with demagogues […]
Great Replacement Theory
Great Replacement Theory is a conspiracy theory animating the radical right wing that claims non-white immigrants are being brought to the U.S. and the west to “replace” white voters with their woke political and cultural agenda. Those who believe this white supremacist ideology see routine immigration policy as a white genocide and extinction of the […]
Dogma Deprogramming
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Freedom from Dogma The world had been ruled by dogma for thousands of years until The Enlightenment burst onto the scene — and it holds sway still, in many parts and pockets of the world. Freedom from dogma was one of the greatest gifts of the intense period of scientific and empirical discovery of the […]
Gaslighting
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Gaslighting describes the act of professing skepticism, disbelief, or denial of another person’s lived experience, feelings, or perceptions of reality. It’s one thing to disagree respectfully with someone; it’s another thing altogether to deny the validity of their point of view to the point of aggression, and attack them with hostility. Gaslighters are engaging in […]
What is DARVO?
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DARVO is an acronym that stands for “Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.” It refers to the reaction often exhibited by perpetrators of criminal or unethical behavior, especially sexual offenders. One common frame is to allege that the perpetrator is actually the victim in the scenario, because of the other party’s false accusations. The […]
What is “cultural Marxism”?
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Cultural Marxism is a conspiracy theory originally promoted by ultraconservative American political operatives William S. Lind and Paul Weyrich, claiming the existence of an organized conspiracy against the “traditional Christian values of America.” It’s a modern derivative of the Nazi propaganda term “Cultural Bolshevism,” which was used as a derogative slur against anything progressive, modernist, […]
Radical Right
The radical right is a fervent anti-government strain of Libertarian ultraconservative, emerging out of the anti-New Deal ideology of the 1930s. From McCarthyism to the John Birch Society, from fiscal conservatives to Christian nationalists, the radical right contains some of the most extreme ideologies in the right wing. Conservative ideology has gotten more and more […]
Democracy vs. Autocracy Timeline
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In America we tend to have a view of our politics as exceptional — and specifically, impervious to authoritarian takeover. We think of ourselves as the democratic shining city on a hill (even Reaganites!) that will act as a beacon to other nations, steadily rolling back despotism and dictatorship around the world. It hasn’t quite […]
Loser Politics
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Loser Politics is the psychology of the right wing — the mentality of Confederates through the ages. It is the also rans, the disaffected former military or government personnel, the failed actors and artists, closet gays, and all those jealous jerks who are butthurt over their own assorted failures. It is the mindset of the […]
What is QAnon?
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The phenomenon of QAnon may have come seemingly out of nowhere to some, but will be familiar to many as a much older series of conspiracy theories that have been used repeatedly throughout history to stoke fear and hysteria, thus controlling populations more easily. At its core,Β QAnon is a recycling of theΒ Protocols of the Elders of […]
Two Americas
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Twin visions were there at the start and here they still remain — we’ve been oscillating around the same set of unresolved issues for centuries, like a pair of neutron stars. There have always been two Americas: one egalitarian and Enlightened, patterned after Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin; and one haughty and zero-sum like John […]
What is supremacy?
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Supremacy is the magical thinking that one’s ingroup is the only source of truth. It’s the ultimate conspiracy theory, and the apotheosis of a hierarchical worldview. Supremacy is a common worldview shared by narcissists and totalitarians. Supremacist groups in American history White supremacy in particular is both a psychological condition and an institutional condition — […]
Legitimate political discourse? π€
The Republican National Committee, in perhaps the most stunningly stupid self-own in the history of modern politics certainly in my lifetime, finally said the quietest part out loud: that in their official pronouncement, the events at the Capitol on January 6 constituted “legitimate political discourse.” Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were censured by the […]
January 6 Attack: A “dagger at the throat of America”
President Biden and Vice President Harris commemorated the 1 year anniversary of the January 6 attack on our democracy with morning speeches and a day of remembrance inside the Capitol rotunda with Representatives and Senators giving a number of moving speeches in their respective chambers. The tone on TV news and blue check Twitter was […]