6335

I take it a step further still: do we REALLY live in a country where roughly 25%-30% of the people are mentally ill? Is that true of the entire planet? Anyone who believes Q, or Pizzagate, or anti-vax, or a host of other things, in my opinion suffers from mental illness, and yet the crazification factor seems scarily accurate. Apparently a large percentage of the humans on this planet are not entirely rational. And that doesn’t even take into account religion.

6336

The United States is way more f*ed up than any other Western Nation. Chalk it up to constant instability and having almost no social safety net.

6337

I don’t find that surprising at all, it fits my experience of people over decades of adult life.

6338

I would argue that the conspiracy theorists are not necessarily mentally ill. They are more looking for something in their life that they do not have. Maybe their lives of quiet desperation need something more. A higher purpose or a meaning to life outside this secular world.

There is another organized belief system that appeals to people in the same way.

Qanon is the religion of the 21st century. You and I might argue that all religion is a form of mental illness, but a number of people might disagree.

6339

Correct. When people lose faith in institutions or authority or their society the lazy answer is “mentally-ill/moron/evil” but it’s seldom the right answer. You can’t find the answer while asking “what’s wrong with these people?” because that’s the wrong question. The right question is, “How have we failed people so badly that they don’t trust society or authority any more?”

6340

This is really well put. I have been pushing my own thinking this way when confronted with antisocial behavior (riots, to wit) in my own city. Not “what is wrong with these people?!” but “how have their lives gotten so fucked that burning down the police station sounds like a great idea, and what can we do about that?”

It’s absolutely fair to apply that same rubric to e.g. rural Republican voters. Yes, there is misinformation to combat, and anti-science attitudes that we need to figure out how to delegitimize, and all that, but really the core question we need to answer if we want more progressive legislation is to ask how we can convince those people/districts that they want to be represented by more-progressive legislators.

6341

Unfortunately any answer necessarily starts with burning the Murdoch empire to the ground, and salting the earth. Until that happens, nothing will change on that end.

6342
  1. Created and left a pandemic playbook for the incoming Trump Administration
  1. Trained the incoming Trump Administration on how to respond to a pandemic:
  1. Wore a mask. Still does.
6343

Yeah yeah yeah but whatabout Burisma amirite? Sleepy Joe, cognitive decline! Checkmake!

6344

Burisma? ;) You mean “curveball” from Dick Cheney’s neocon plot to lie us into the Iraq War by cherrypicking known false intel - yeah, that well-known liar of an intelligence source… like this one ?

/s

6345

This is not true.
Every nation is fucked up, in different ways.

You think it’s fucked up, because it’s a dominant world power and you have direct experience with its fucked up nature. And, as an American… you probably have less awareness of everyone else, because that’s just how we roll.

But if you start looking at other countries… you see that they totally have all kinds of fucked up stuff going on.

For instance, look at France. They totally have a pretty strong fascist movement. They have immigrants forced into what is virtually a permanent underclass, and the specific religion of Catholicism occupies a pretty central roll in their supposedly secular society. I remember a while back, noting that France had some totally insane number of cars set on fire, all the time. Like here’s an article about it on new years day:
https://qz.com/877789/french-car-burning-on-new-years-eve-has-increased-for-the-first-time-in-four-years/#:~:text=The%20French%20are%20burning%20more%20cars%20again&text=It%20happens%20every%20New%20Year’s,could%20be%20in%20the%20mix.

The thing is, it talks about new years day, but that’s not the only time the French are burning cars…

According to that piece, some 40,000 cars are torched each year in France… that’s kind of nuts. On a new years eve, over a thousand cars get torched in Paris alone. Consider the nationwide protests in the US recently, and how you’ve seen a few cars on fire… but nowhere near that many.

And ultimately, even if you could make the case that the US also has a bunch of car fires from riots (which I don’t think it does), the fact remains that it’s indicative of France having something fucked up going on under the covers.

I think every nation’s fucked up, in various ways… it’s just that it’s kind of like airlines. The worst airline is the one you fly the most, not because it’s actually worse than others… they all suck… it’s just that you’re most aware of that one sucking.

6346

…each fucked up country is fucked up in its own way.

-Tolstoy, sort of.

6347

This

6348

Thanks for posting. Rubin’s a better writer than I am, so I’m going to be stealing some of her lines in the future. But in the meantime, my lawyer is going to be having chat with her lawyer about her plagiarizing at least a dozen of my posts in the last few years /s

Seriously, it is comforting to see so many Republican say the same thing. Being pretty moderate, I often second guess myself. 2016 election was really hard for, this election is easiest of my life, I’ve never been so sure that support Joe Biden is the right thing for the company.

6349

Better question: “Why is there an entire political party and media apparatus dedicated to making people distrust society and authority?”

6350

You have given yourself away capitalist! To the Penbladian education facilities with you!

6351

Me, longing for the simpler times of the mid-2000’s when the top outrage was over Fox News “jewifying” people’s faces and “accidentally” slapping a D in front of every Republican caught committing a crime.

6352
6353

That tweet just has me wondering if Eric Erickson even remembers Sotomayor at all.

6354

The Federalist hires people who don’t know how English or anything works.




And finally, of course:

“I was stupid, got dogpiled by the entire internet from both sides, but it was all jokes or something. Hahaha!”