Their Fevered Brows
Meanwhile, over at Salon, where the delusional hyperventilate, Mr Chauncey DeVega once again rails against Donald Trump. Today we’re being warned of his “political thuggery and mobster-style behaviour.” The current President is, we’re told, a “dictator.”
The question is… whether anything or anyone is capable of stopping him.
To embellish this tale of impending doom, Mr DeVega turns to academia. Specifically,
I recently spoke with historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat in an effort to better understand where America is on its road to fascism and authoritarianism in this fourth year of Trump’s regime.
It’s a regime, you see. Mr DeVega likes this word and uses it no fewer than nine times, as when telling us, confidently, that,
The American people are in a manic state because of Trump’s regime.
Not just Salon columnists, then, but the entire population. Apparently, 300 million people are teetering on the verge of a psychotic episode.
Dr Ben-Ghiat, a lecturer in Italian Studies, is of course on-message:
I’m very upset that there are in fact Trump supporters and I have zero sympathy towards them.
This is followed by pointed references to Hitler and Mussolini – because hey, why not? – and whisperings of a cowed and fearful media:
Many people in the news media are afraid to really engage the fact that Trump is an authoritarian because if they do so then reality becomes too threatening, and therefore they would have to take a different stance publicly.
Readers are invited to take a moment to reflect on Mr Trump’s famously warm and not at all fractious relationship with the mainstream media, which never, ever calls him names. Like “proto-fascist,” for instance. Or when MSNBC’s Niccole Wallace breathlessly announced that the President was genocidal and, for reasons left to the imagination, clearly bent on “exterminating Latinos.” Or when the same broadcaster’s Frank Figliuzzi suggested that Trump’s lowering of flags following a shooting tragedy was actually a coded salute to Adolf Hitler.
Apparently, these things never happened, are not in fact bizarrely routine, and the pundits at CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, NBC, Salon, etc., are just too terrified and deferential to admit, as Dr Ben-Ghiat puts it, that “they are living in the middle of a fascist, authoritarian takeover.”
At which point Mr DeVega interjects with more of his own signature understatement:
The end goal is for Trump, Barr, the Republican Party and the conservative movement more generally to have their own secret police.
To do away with all those fearlessly subversive and in no way unhinged Salon columnists, one assumes. Such is their immense importance. Dr Ben-Ghiat then warns us that prolonged exposure to Mr Trump will cause the entire country to “lose all sense of reality.” A process seemingly well underway, at least in the pages of Salon.
Mr DeVega’s unhappy mental processes have entertained us before, as when informing the world that, “Donald Trump leads a political cult whose members want to literally be inside of him, to become him, to have a libidinal relationship with the Great Leader.”
What, you didn’t know?
Trump Derangement Syndrome is real.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is real.
Not entirely unrelated.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is real.
He’s going to get re-elected again, isn’t he?
To heighten the surrealism, the responses on Twitter are, so far, overwhelmingly positive and remarkably uncritical.
They can’t stand the idea that someone not of them, someone who’d actually done some jobs of work in his life, had built and made stuff, and didn’t thus share their cultural-Marxist wrcker-views about normal-people, could get where he is.
The position of President was supposed, now, to be reserved only for People Like Them.
My Dear First Wife (of course of fond memory) who I married straight after we went down from our university, who got the Top First of our Biochemistry year, actively supporten the Clintonne; she maintained that “Trump will got to war with Russia and kill Mexican refugees, but Hillary won’t!”
(She bought into the Clorinated Chicken business, wholly too.)
OT: Mr. King, the author, gets in some hot water….
https://twitter.com/xas7wcrg9e/status/1217409886281175040
Replying to a reply to:
https://twitter.com/StephenKing/status/1217058366394130433
> As a writer, I am allowed to nominate in just 3 categories: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Screenplay. For me, the diversity issue–as it applies to individual actors and directors, anyway–did not come up. That said…
https://twitter.com/StephenKing/status/1217058848403599361
> …I would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality. It seems to me that to do otherwise would be wrong.
Naturally, the offendorati are up in arms, since insufficient consideration is, apparently, being given to those ‘qualities’ that qualify for victimhood points, in favour of the qualities that the majority of people would consider slightly more important.
Like actually being able to write readable stuff.
“The current President is, we’re told, a ‘dictator.’ “
To wit:
“Give me all your stuff! Do what I say! Think as I say!”
“No.”
“Fascist!”
”Chlorinated Chicken”
?
> > ”Chlorinated Chicken”
> ?
Some people in the right-pondian country that washes pre-packaged salad in chlorinated water[1], have the vapours over a left-pondian practise of washing it’s chicken meat in chlorinated water[2], by somehow pretending it’s the use of chlorine that makes it unacceptable when it’s more likely the fact that it will result in cheaper food for the proles.
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2969613/Washed-NOT-ready-eat-bagged-salads-doused-eight-hour-old-tap-water-unhealthy-levels-chlorine.html
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51054700
The American people are in a manic state because of Trump’s regime.
As our host would say, lefties project.
With a proper diet of pressures and rewards, you, too, can induce individuals to gaslight themselves.
On the other hand, it also quite possible that both Chauncey and Ben-Ghiat are simply cynical opportunists who know what sort of words they have to mouth to keep their paychecks coming in.
With a proper diet of pressures and rewards, you, too, can induce individuals to gaslight themselves.
Heh. As with his previous appearance here, Mr DeVega does seem quite excited to be departing from reality, an activity he indulges in wildly, frequently, and seemingly without consequence or editorial pushback.
Well, OK; as has been said, as authoritarian “regimes” go, seeing as how anyone can say anything about it, they are doing a pretty lousy job of authoritarianing.
I guess they didn’t get the message over in Hong Kong.
The absolute lack of near daily unhinged protests over nothing since Trump was elected has been one of the things I have enjoyed.
At this point, if they are just not just blindingly ignorant, they are just making stuff up to play to the crowd.
Dr Ben-Ghiat, a lecturer in Italian Studies
Studies? I can tell you everything you need to know about Italians right here, right now.
They are gregarious, family-oriented, generous, friendly in the Mediterranean Guest-Host tradition.
They work hard and are self-reliant. Wonderful musical people with a proud past. Don’t cross them.
There, I just save someone thousand of dollars they would have paid to find out what I just told you here.
Why, it’s as if Chauncey DeVega has read my mind.
“I guess they didn’t get the message over in Hong Kong.”
Even more telling – and even more terrifying, of course – Drumpf put-out a tweet of support to “the brave and suffering Iranian people”; it’s currently the most liked Persian tweet in the history of Twitter.
Don’t these people know he’s LYING TO THEM? Or is he just the only one who’s told them a lie they wanted to hear since the Shah was run out of town?
These people are utterly humourless. They don’t understand hyperbole, irony escapes them and yet they unconsciously use both all the time.
It’s no wonder the left doesn’t get memes.
This reminds me, every time, of an office secretary at my company in the early 2000s who insisted on referring to George W Bush as “King George”. Because he was so authoritarian, you know.
Perhaps the liar here is Y. Knott.
It’s always projection; ALWAYS. Whether it is what they have actually done, or what they aant to be able to do.
“Perhaps the liar here is Y. Knott.”
I’m sorry – did I forget the “/sarc” tag? Poe’s-Law much? *SMH*
The American people are in a manic state because of Trump’s regime.
It’s like listening to the Democrat Candidate
Clown showDebate last night. That the USA is a land of suffering serfs, life has never been more horrible for working & middle classes, death and disease everywhere and WAR IS COMING — in the face of all evidence to the contrary.It’s like a reverse Potemkin village.
did I forget the “/sarc” tag
Yeah, I had to read that a couple times myself. It’s so hard to tell anymore in a world where Iran shoots down an airplane of civilians, half of whom are Canadian and the Canadian prime minister blames Trump. Or where comedy skit level realities happen in presidential debates such as:
Monty Python oughtta sue.
Trump is less dictatorial than Barack “I have a pen” Obama.
People have argued endlessly over the meaning of fascism, but a few features seem essential:
1. Totalitarian. Everything within the state, nothing against the state, no one against the state.
2. No individual rights or freedoms. You behave as the state instructs you to behave.
3. Militaristic and imperialistic.
4. Nationalist rather than globalist.
Of these, Trump can at most be accused of #4. That on its own falls far short of what it takes to properly be called a fascist, as politicians throughout the political spectrum can take strongly nationalistic stances.
Whether fascism requires socialism is up for debate. Hitler and Mussolini were in theory socialists, but in practice tolerated capitalism. One thing neither did, however, was let capitalists have much power. The leaders of industry answered to the state, and risked expropriation or jail (or both) if they resisted.
Presumably, Mr DeVega imagines that conservatives want “their own secret police” in order to do away with unhinged Salon columnists. Fearlessly radical creatures that they are.
I want to know what rights Americans have lost under Trump “authoritarian policies” that make him a “dictator”?
Has Trump sicced the IRS on organizations and individuals he considers his political enemies? Had the FBI lie to the FISA court to get warrants against journalists, citizens and political opponents?
Correction: Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.
Inspiring words, if you’re an ant.
I want to know what rights Americans have lost under Trump “authoritarian policies” that make him a “dictator”?
Not being trained leading media voices, there is no way any of us could possibly know, but if they tell us they have been, it must be so, because they said so, and who are we to argue with trained leading media voices trained in the finest
clown quartersschools who have never been wrong about anything ever, after all ?Goebbels would have admired Chauncey and, indeed, all the projecting, lying lefty-loons.
I want to know what rights Americans have lost under Trump “authoritarian policies” that make him a “dictator”?
Speaking of authoritarian dictators…Remember that time, that time when Hitler got impeached? And like, when that time that Joseph Goebbles was out to dinner with his wife and they got chased out of the fancy restaurant by protesters? How they would make fun of Hitler’s mustache, ‘member that? And then when Ferdinand Porche shook hands with Hitler, there was such an uproar. The people they screamed for Porche to be fired. Oh, and the protests in Berlin. Remember that dictatorship? Dictators, man. They’re all alike.
Just another day in tRumP’s AmeriKKKa…
Your initial comment read as a pitch-perfect ‘orange man bad’ screed.
That I misunderstood your intent is, I think, understandable if regrettable.
“Just another day in tRumP’s AmeriKKKa…”
Yeah, I was curious why AmeriKKKan police would be wearing Russian police uniforms, and why the smaller writing on the Greenpeace recycling bin would be in Cyrillic – DANG, AmeriKKKa is a weird place…
“Your initial comment read as a pitch-perfect ‘orange man bad’ screed.”
‘Tis I who should apologize – that’s an effect I work hard at achieving, the better to twist Leftie knicks – sorry you fell for it 😉
How the flat earth theory began.
So on the off chance that, instead of being an unstoppable tyrant, Trump makes an orderly exit in 2021 or 2025, depending, where does everyone who had to endure 4-8 years of needless fretting go for their apology?
…where comedy skit level realities happen in presidential debates…
I actual LOLed when I heard that CNN moderator because it so much reminded me of lines from one of MauLers excellent, endless, devastating unbridled critiques of Star Wars: The Last Jedi:
They have a character point this out personally. This place is not Hoth, people, it is NOT Hoth.
Anyway on Hoth…
But of course, that was supposed to be ironic.
Speaking of devastating critiques, I also enjoyed Alistair Williams’ analysis of why the whole of Britain is raaaaaycist for not allowing poor oppressed Princess Meghan to wear her favourite tiara.
More unintentional comedy.
Drive-by comment here.
People who holler about fascism don’t realize that it’s just another flavor of socialism and just as destructive. Mussolini, a socialist, adopted it after being indoctrinated in the 1920s, then got hanged by his own people. Then there was that guy with the funny mustache who embraced the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Yeah, those tyrannical forms of government were spawned by leftist utopians.
You may laugh at Mr DeVega slowly going around the twist worrying about a 3 a.m. knock at the door by some future Conservative Secret Police, but that’s exactly how a future Conservative Secret Police will operate. By cunningly not existing, the CSP will slowly torture the valiant Mr DeVega by never knocking on his door. His suffering will be drawn out and exquisite. Cheap too.
I wonder what Chauncey DeVega’s real name is?
I’m very upset that there are in fact Trump supporters and I have zero sympathy towards them.
We know. That’s why he’ll win.
We know. That’s why he’ll win.
Yes, it’s an odd election-winning strategy – telling everyone, endlessly, just how much you despise as inferior the millions of people who dare to disagree with you – how you wish they didn’t exist. It doesn’t seem likely to deter them on polling day.
She’s an intellectual, you know. They both are.
We know. That’s why he’ll win.
Yes, it’s an odd election-winning strategy
I suspect that it is, at least in part, simply the very old leftist strategy of doing everything possible to polarize politics, driving everyone to one extreme or another: It’s best if the entire populace becomes communist, but if half become violently anti-communist that is almost as good because what communists hate and fear most of all is a large population of moderate, reasonable, peaceful citizens who will have no truck with violence and tyranny of any sort.
I’m very upset that there are in fact Trump supporters and I have zero sympathy towards them.
Commenter Lazar from this NYT article will see the zero sympathy and raise you a gulag.
Speaking of which, at least they will be democratic gulags…
I feel obliged to remind readers that, as of typing this, the overwhelming majority of Twitter responses to Mr DeVega’s article are still positive, practically gushing, and devoid of even mild equivocation. Among them, a retired school administrator named Patricia who describes herself as a “Trump resistor” and boasts “my opinions are based on facts and data.”
It’s a strange world out there.
“… as of typing this, the overwhelming majority of Twitter responses to Mr DeVega’s article are still positive, practically gushing, and devoid of even mild equivocation.”
– Who reads Salon anyway? – and honestly, what’s the point of telling him he’s unhinged? All his (few) friends agree with him, and he despises everybody else because they can’t see how woke he is. If Dunning Kruger wasn’t invented already, we’d have to invent it for him.
How to tell if you are living in a dictatorship?
You are able to declare in public that you are living in a dictatorship… twice.
Who reads Salon anyway?
Likewise, a post on DeVega’s piece over at Metafilter from a day or so ago, and where, again, there was an eerie uniformity and absence of criticism or even mild equivocation. I scrolled through 70 or so comments and no-one seemed to find the claims and language even slightly hyperbolical or absurd. Instead, there were pretentious rumblings about emigrating to somewhere “safer,” because being a middle-class lefty who reads Metafilter is just so dangerous, apparently. Naturally, the word “resistance” cropped up quite a lot.
One commenter asked how to persuade The Unsophisticated Others to become enlightened and vote Democrat, thereby saving the world from The Imminent Nazi Apocalypse. All while endorsing a piece in which Trump and his supporters are demonised as mindless fascistic monsters bent on the oppression and enslavement of all and sundry, but especially middle-class lefties, using their secret police. Obliviously, he added “my friends are mostly liberals.”
If Dunning Kruger wasn’t invented already, we’d have to invent it for him.
I’m afraid I have some bad news that may explain much of this…Can’t find the specifics now as Google has gotten all Trumpety-Trump-Orange-Man-Bad with any search with T’s name in it, but a year or so ago I ran across an interview with either Dunning or Kruger and whichever one seemed quite confident that Trump and his supporters were victims of the D-K effect. Of course with Trump and really any celebrity, including themselves on a much smaller scale, he’s more right than wrong.
Per a comment I made elsewhere, the humble don’t aspire to run the things or to be seen and admired by people that they don’t know. They’re too humble to take on what they understand as a great effort because the ego reward factor that would drive such an ambition is not incredibly strong. Because, um…humble. It takes a significant ego (and to some degree an ignorance/lack of self-awareness) to do so. Significantly intelligent people are constantly self doubting and second guessing. It’s what enables them to learn. People with exceptional confidence rarely question themselves or ignore contradictory information.
I have a theory that we are led by stupid people who by blind luck just happen to possess the right kind of stupid for the moment which enables them to rise to the occasion. I mean, there’s like 7 billion of us stumbling around the planet. Nuts, blind squirrels, some serendipity required. It’s more complicated than that but that’s the Cliff’s Notes version.
“I have a theory that we are led by stupid people…”
I suspect it’s even simpler – smart people aren’t dumb enough to stick their heads in that noose; they can use their brain power to make mucho dinero and retire to their own Caribbean island while still young enough to enjoy it, so why would they want to put-up with all the $hit politicians routinely do?
And why do the politicians put-up with it, for the remote spectre of maybe a bit of power? – stupidity.
…- stupidity. From one of Salon’s rivals in the same.
Say, all you cats and kittens over in the UK, did you know that every time you selfish SOBs see a private doc because you can’t get in to the NHS, it is actually you who are killing the NHS ?
Because there can only be a finite number of docs & nurses in the UK, I guess, speaking of fallacies. But wait, on that very same page we learn the real crisis a “shortfall” of 580,000
straphangerssocial workers.580,000 social workers, vs. 50,000 nurses, or X number of docs. I am just blue skying here, but maybe the problem isn’t not wanting to wait till it ruptures to get your appendix taken out.
“I implore people to stop using private healthcare: it’s killing the NHS”
“When the State has no more use for you, you should go quietly to your death.”
“did you know that every time you selfish SOBs see a private doc because you can’t get in to the NHS, it is actually you who are killing the NHS?”
Similarly, when a Soviet citizen buys food that was privately grown, that “kills” the collective farms. And so on.
Another fevered brow
Another fevered brow
Mental health professional. Let that sink in. Typical, though. Like I was saying above regarding Messrs. Dunning / Krueger.
Another fevered brow…white men marching in straight-pride parades, wielding swastikas, guns and Confederate flags.
So this would be a psychiatrist who strongly believes that it’s not okay to be white.
My mind floods with images…
That sure is a self-flattering way of saying, “I retreat to IMAGINATION LAND.”
Karl Popper saith:
“You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government. I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence “democracy”, and the other “tyranny”.“
It would be interesting to see how many people who consider Trump a tyrant would scoff at the same title applied to Ursula Von Der Leyen.
I personally call the type of persons who prefer tyranny “vermin”.
I admit that I live in a progressive bubble. I’ve never met a Trump supporter in the flesh and the psychiatrist in me is curious: What puzzle pieces of life experience could come together to produce a world-view so opposite to mine? I hope to chat with a Trump voter to try to understand.
He lives in such a bubble, he can’t even find friends that can *pretend* to take the Trump line.
I don’t like Trump — I think he’s a pretty vile as a human being. But I can understand why people do like him, and I can see that he is doing some things well, all without me having to like him. I don’t think that is particularly unusual either. Yet these people cannot even find a person who is in that position? Not one?
Mind you, my latest prized possession is a set of “Trump 2020” socks. I intend to share them out so my group at work are all wearing them on the same day, to freak out my rabidly orangemanbad friend. (He’s not a progressive, nor a liberal — he has just truly got a bad case of TDS and I enjoy giving him shit about it.)