Nov. 9th, 2016, was the 82 year anniversary of Kristallnact, the Night of Broken Glass in Germany.
To half of the United States, the totalitarian takeover by the American Right had finally been realized, it was a matter of time before Women and Black, Indigenous, LGBTQIA++s of Color would be deprived of all their rights.
The President at the time had just been elected after normalizing rape to millions via an Access Hollywood tape.
The 2022 midterms message was that “Democracy is on the line!” despite normal post pandemic elections being held with few shakeups.
The big issues haven’t changed – gender and racial disparities, climate justice, systemic racism – they’re all the same, except worse. The Republicans and pundits were predicting a good old fashioned, tough on crime Red Wave.
It simply didn’t materialize.
There are many explanations, but the most plausible driver was that Abortion was on the ballot and women and Democratic men, who are sympathetic with Democratic women, came out in droves to protect it, regardless of other issues.
Reproductive rights are a very motivating issue for this block of science-conscious voters.
I predict over the Holidays, one will find that many Trump supporters are utterly convinced that every election they lost, nationwide, was stolen.
Some may also cry “Kristallnact!” in their collective outrage.
The last 8 years have seen unprecedented numbers of collective hysterias seemingly beginning with Trump coming down the escalator and metastasizing with Derek Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck.
In reality, our Democracy seems relatively sound, all things considered, and showing all signs of continued existence, until the next Election Day, when it will predictively be on the line all over again.
In this 8 year period, we’ve faced a lot of realities on what racism, sexism, homophobia, islamophobia, Antisemitism, transphobia is, and a lot more of what people believe it is.
What seems important is that much of this identity-driven, puritanical ideology is spreading more harm than good.
We have experienced more than our share of collective hysteria, much of it exported from Minnesota to the rest of the world. Maybe it’s our strong German heritage.
Either way, as soon as you start talking about people in groups, people inevitably start to sound like Hitler.
Invariably, when you begin asking people about government policy, people really, really, begin to sound like Hitler.
While this “Everybody Sounds Like Hitler” meme has been the source of much amusement to the “Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings” crowd, people and groups are moved far more by emotions than they are by facts.
Also, people change their minds far less frequently than they believe they do.
Silliness aside, quite a bit of mockery has come about from comparing one side of the political argument, comically, as them being like ”Hitler, Nazi, Communist, Pedophile, Racist Antisemites.”
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I’ve explored most of the topics and taboos that hinder open dialogue and discourse and the taboo enforcement surrounding them at great length.
I know both sides’ claims, and the accusations.
It seems most people agree that we’re seeing a general hysteria running through the party-base of the other political side and the lunatic fringe.
One team sees Woke Inc. The other team sees QAnon; I see two sides of the same coin. It looks far more universal to me.
Perhaps it’s a good thing for us to be on alert for things that look authoritarian, racist, or bigoted.
The authoritarian impulse seems pervasive, if not total.
Totalitarian mass effects seem inevitable, on the other guy’s team, as social media creates paranoid, siloed, pseudo-realities driven in part by bots and NPCs.
What a future.
Overwhelmingly we’re discovering it’s impossible to detect a totalitarian ideology, despot, or authoritarian impulse if we agree with it.
Perhaps being on alert for things “Like Hitler” and “Like Nazi’s” is a good thing, even if it’s sometimes irrational.
Yes, I said it. Perhaps, sometimes being irrational, even collectively irrational, can serve the group.
From the post-George Floyd unrest to Jan. 6th, we’re beginning to see the new fruits of human beings acting in groups in unprecedented ways.
Wokeness and QAnon are a coin flip: Global Conspiracy, Puritanical, moral certainty, all armed with potentially career-ending sticky accusations or authoritarian slurs.
Monsters on both sides, summed up succinctly in the 2017 song, Every I Don’t Like Is Literally Hitler which lampoons both the Left and Right’s collective hysteria.
To be certain the last few years have shown mankind’s impulse toward authoritarianism and totalitarianism in new ways, 10’s of 1,000’s of times faster than ever before.
It’s right there on your phone, before you’ve even had your coffee.
It’s safe to say at this point that social media is increasing our collective stress and turning people in groups into #PedoProLifeCommieNaziSwampMonsters.
Unfortunately, this social media hysteria seems to be in a feedback loop.
It’s easy to find things designed to alert you on social media, especially if they involve ingroup behavior and outgroup behavior.
It’s worth knowing women and conservatives report greater disgust sensitivity which regulates group dynamics and women display far greater ingroup cohesion than men.
Research suggests this is true even if individual women hate other women, or are generally unsympathetic, it’s still often beneficial for women to help other women.
Evidence of men being rewarded for helping other men, as a class, remains as illegal as it is illusory, but still a fundamental requirement for feminist orthodoxy
It is illegal in our society for men to prejudice decisions in favor of other men and men don’t seem to mind.
Certainly those at the top don’t seem to demonstrate much care for the men at the bottom.
As for the women, well for sure you’d want to help the women.
You have the largest, most connected, proximal human ingroup in history: Women, who are in sympathy with each other.
You have a group of men, also in sympathy with those women.
This is an enormous and extremely polarizing phenomena that seems to have expressed itself demonstrably in the 2022 elections.
What by all means should have been a good old fashioned landslide, tough on crime Red Wave, turned into pretty much an ordinary election.
With some exceptions, it looks like it pretty much worked. TikTok and other social media very effectively influenced this group in the elections.
Any limitation on abortion seemed to have galvanized women and the men sympathetic to women into voting en masse.
Who Are the Oppressed?
Derek Chauvin and George Floyd poked a hole in the center of the woke-bubble and it popped everywhere, all at once.
Since then, we’ve found identity politics, woke policy, and viral spread through every public and private institution. Other things we have learned…
Women and men who are sympathetic with women:
- Perceive and Signal Outsized Global Threats to the vulnerable (Systems of Oppression | Global Elite Pedophile Rings | Climate Change | Mass Immigration | Inner City Crime)
- Are easy to scare or trigger histrionics in certain ways, especially in groups
- Are armed with several derogatory smears for outgroup reputations
- Remarkably susceptible to jargon, propaganda and rhyming chants
- Prefer group ID over individualism
- Have a Devil they are willing to punish/derogate (Men or Whites/Blacks/Jews)
- Find the Devil conveniently in others (self not-included.)
Add in Puritanical, moral certainty, and we have the Red / Blue Purple Political Hivemind Monster that the rest of us see raise its head on either side every election cycle.
Have you started to notice between elections people we generally agree start making no sense mixing with people we disagree with who make even less sense?
Everyone is also seeming to call for some kind of suppression or limitation of speech and starts spreading some kind of group stereotype.
Tulsi Gabbard left the Democratic Party citing anti-white racism within the party. She was derided with contempt by former allies and given some reward from previous adversaries.
Kanye West and Candace Owens White Lives Mattered America before becoming alleged darlings of Antisemites of all colors, the Black Hebrew Israelites, and White Supremacists.
Are West and Owens Bigots of Color?
Many seem to share this position calling for a reckoning of Antisemitic attitudes in the “Black Community.”
Those attitudes stem largely from identity politics and the Oppressor / Oppressed narratives of the so-called Neo-Marxist Ideologies. In these totalizing identity groups, right or left, propaganda against a group fills in holes in narratives for those who are prone toward propaganda.
White Supremacy, The Jews, Globalists, whomever you can imagine as the oppressive force in your life becomes the go-to explanation for every ill.
All leading Antisemitism organizations agree that Antisemitism is rapidly on the rise everywhere in the world, more than at any time since they’ve started tracking the ongoing rise in Antisemitism.
Here’s a Network Contagion report on Antisemitism.
Notice how by replacing the word Jew in this grid with the word, “white,” “Christian,” “Colonialist,” “Cis,” “Straight,” or “Male,” results in the New Puritan religious dogma.
Try it with Men. Better yet, White Men. Far from a sophisticated theory, this can be taught to anyone on a playground or in a chat room.
How many Jews and/or Women in the United States accept this New Puritan dogma, so long as Jews are not considered white or white adjacent oppressors?
Or so long as you’re not targeting White Women specifically?
Is it zero women or Jews with this magic moral fungibility?
It seems that many Left leaning people in the United States are perfectly content with the tried and true genocidal victim/oppressor narratives, so long as their group is excluded from the oppressors or oppressor-adjacent lists.
Some are seduced into cheering for their group to get listed. Students of the history of this ideology know this is not new.
Who is an Oppressor?
We tend to typecast highly agentic people: Men, Jews, Asians etc, as either Heroes or Villains and their less-agentic counterparts as victims or patients deserving of care.
We’ve been screwing men, particularly white men and boys, without much concern for the consequences, for decades. Openly suggesting that they are privileged, as if Affirmative Action in hiring and education is not the law of the land.
There are more white men in prison, addicted, murdered, dead from suicide, or dead at work than any other group in society, yet, we let teachers call their sons, being raised by single mothers, as universally privileged, the moment they’re 18.
Often sooner.
The question shouldn’t be “Why are there so many school shootings?” It should be “Why aren’t there a hell of a lot more school shootings?”
We’ve established a system that creates school shooters. Maybe it’s time we look seriously at how we value boys.
This article is dedicated to Tory Hart, Eli Hart, Tucker Sparks and Jackson Sparks, you lived your lives in a world openly slandering you for the way you were born.
I pray that at least two of you will grow old in a world that is better than the one you were born into.
