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Something to think about.
Jan. 24th, 2017 02:19 pmFull disclosure: I was a "9/11 truther" until the report came out sometime in 2004. The part of me that still has truther sympathies is kind of worried right now, because last time a Republican president was ridiculed this hard, a major terrorist attack happened on US soil, and suddenly everyone was buying yellow ribbon magnets and wearing crying eagle sweatshirts, and talking about how we had to "respect the office."
After the report came out it still wasn't a good look for the Bush administration, due to epic bungling.
For years I was of the opinion that the Bush administration knew something was going to happen, but did nothing because it was convenient for them - one of my first LJ entries was on that subject. Then my opinion changed, and I decided that they had just been incompetent and complacent - but that they used the event after the fact as an excuse to drum up support for Bush, and for war in Iraq, even though none of the 9/11 terrorists were Iraqi, and there was no Al Qaeda presence in Iraq before the 2003 invasion.
According to some stuff I remember from the time, Bush had wanted to go back to war with Iraq prior to 9/11, but there was just no support for any kind of action, and no intel that anything was happening there for us to be worried about. Saddam Hussein was soundly beaten in Desert Storm 1991 - but it wasn't the "redemption" for losing in Vietnam that some people wanted it to be, because he'd escaped.
And if they knew something was about to happen and did nothing to stop it, it may not technically qualify as a false flag - but it still served its purpose of getting people to line up behind GW Bush and support a military action against Saddam Hussein that no one was in support of before.
But then 9/11 happened, and the Bush admin railroaded us to war. And the "we have always been at war with Eastasia" doublethink that conservatives adopted after 9/11 and leading up to the Iraq war laid the groundwork for what is going on right now with Trump. They want to be right, and they want reality to reflect what they think it should be rather than what the evidence says is actually going on. They want to feel good about themselves again after Vietnam and Nixon and Iran Contra and eight years of GW Bush. And everything they do to that end makes them look worse and worse, and deep down they have to be aware of this. But as usual in cases like this, they double down on the fantasy.
They're so deep in their fantasy right now that they're okay with Nazis. This is how far it's gone. When confronted about the worrying fact that so many white nationalists have essentially taken over the Republican party, the standard response is "You libs will call ANYONE a nazi" even though they straight up called Obama Hitler for eight years.
I think that the dissemination of the Richard Spencer punching video may be a wakeup call for some, but others I have talked to are like the "Nice Neighbors" from that one macro, who never rocked the boat and never spoke out of turn, or made trouble for anyone - and who refused to worry about their neighbors being dragged away by the SS or the Stasi.
The problem boils down to the fact that they just don't want to have to think about it.
I mean they can't even admit that Trump's just a trashy reality TV star who closelined Vincent McMahon and cheated on his wives and "grabbed women by the pussy," defrauded college students, and sold shitty vodka and subpar steaks. They have to act like he's some kind of anointed god to even be able to cope - something that they accused Democrats of doing with Obama even though there hasn't been any documented evidence to back this up, as there has been with Republicans doing so with Trump and George W. Bush.
It would be better if they just straight up admitted "we know he is a trashy reality TV star, we just voted for him as a protest vote and to piss everyone else off." But that doesn't make them feel good about themselves. And Republicans are reactionaries who respond to primarily to feeling.
This wasn't something I realized until someone in a FARK.com thread explained it to me, using Newt Gingrich as an example. Republicans experience no cognitive dissonance when New Gingrich, a serial adulterer, talks to them about Republicans being the party of "family values" - not because of the evidence of what he has done, but because of how his words make them feel.
You can present evidence to Republicans until you're blue in the face, and it won't matter - only feelings matter to them. They primarily respond to emotion. And they want to feel good about themselves.
This is why they hate "Social Justice Warriors." They don't want to think too hard about how the things they say or do may effect other people, and they don't want to be made to feel guilty for it. Their reaction is not introspection; their reaction is to angrily lash out at "Social Justice Warriors" because they made them feel bad. Yet the fact that feel bad means that on some level, they know what they are doing is wrong.
Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.
They voted for a hostile, blustering, psychopathic narcissist who has promised to do things which will hurt his own base the worst, if he is allowed to do it; because we made them feel bad.
Think about that. Think about it especially the next time one of them calls you a "snowflake."
There is also an opportunity here for social engineering on a mass scale, if we'll take it - especially if we manage to use the Church Of Kek's own playbook against them. It's just that so many leftists feel like ain't nobody got time for that anymore. But if there is another terrorist attack, or anything of you nature, you can bet the Trumpettes will take advantage of it and rally the fence-sitters into full compliance - exactly the way they did after 9/11, and leading up to the War in Iraq.
After the report came out it still wasn't a good look for the Bush administration, due to epic bungling.
For years I was of the opinion that the Bush administration knew something was going to happen, but did nothing because it was convenient for them - one of my first LJ entries was on that subject. Then my opinion changed, and I decided that they had just been incompetent and complacent - but that they used the event after the fact as an excuse to drum up support for Bush, and for war in Iraq, even though none of the 9/11 terrorists were Iraqi, and there was no Al Qaeda presence in Iraq before the 2003 invasion.
According to some stuff I remember from the time, Bush had wanted to go back to war with Iraq prior to 9/11, but there was just no support for any kind of action, and no intel that anything was happening there for us to be worried about. Saddam Hussein was soundly beaten in Desert Storm 1991 - but it wasn't the "redemption" for losing in Vietnam that some people wanted it to be, because he'd escaped.
And if they knew something was about to happen and did nothing to stop it, it may not technically qualify as a false flag - but it still served its purpose of getting people to line up behind GW Bush and support a military action against Saddam Hussein that no one was in support of before.
But then 9/11 happened, and the Bush admin railroaded us to war. And the "we have always been at war with Eastasia" doublethink that conservatives adopted after 9/11 and leading up to the Iraq war laid the groundwork for what is going on right now with Trump. They want to be right, and they want reality to reflect what they think it should be rather than what the evidence says is actually going on. They want to feel good about themselves again after Vietnam and Nixon and Iran Contra and eight years of GW Bush. And everything they do to that end makes them look worse and worse, and deep down they have to be aware of this. But as usual in cases like this, they double down on the fantasy.
They're so deep in their fantasy right now that they're okay with Nazis. This is how far it's gone. When confronted about the worrying fact that so many white nationalists have essentially taken over the Republican party, the standard response is "You libs will call ANYONE a nazi" even though they straight up called Obama Hitler for eight years.
I think that the dissemination of the Richard Spencer punching video may be a wakeup call for some, but others I have talked to are like the "Nice Neighbors" from that one macro, who never rocked the boat and never spoke out of turn, or made trouble for anyone - and who refused to worry about their neighbors being dragged away by the SS or the Stasi.
The problem boils down to the fact that they just don't want to have to think about it.
I mean they can't even admit that Trump's just a trashy reality TV star who closelined Vincent McMahon and cheated on his wives and "grabbed women by the pussy," defrauded college students, and sold shitty vodka and subpar steaks. They have to act like he's some kind of anointed god to even be able to cope - something that they accused Democrats of doing with Obama even though there hasn't been any documented evidence to back this up, as there has been with Republicans doing so with Trump and George W. Bush.
It would be better if they just straight up admitted "we know he is a trashy reality TV star, we just voted for him as a protest vote and to piss everyone else off." But that doesn't make them feel good about themselves. And Republicans are reactionaries who respond to primarily to feeling.
This wasn't something I realized until someone in a FARK.com thread explained it to me, using Newt Gingrich as an example. Republicans experience no cognitive dissonance when New Gingrich, a serial adulterer, talks to them about Republicans being the party of "family values" - not because of the evidence of what he has done, but because of how his words make them feel.
You can present evidence to Republicans until you're blue in the face, and it won't matter - only feelings matter to them. They primarily respond to emotion. And they want to feel good about themselves.
This is why they hate "Social Justice Warriors." They don't want to think too hard about how the things they say or do may effect other people, and they don't want to be made to feel guilty for it. Their reaction is not introspection; their reaction is to angrily lash out at "Social Justice Warriors" because they made them feel bad. Yet the fact that feel bad means that on some level, they know what they are doing is wrong.
Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.
They voted for a hostile, blustering, psychopathic narcissist who has promised to do things which will hurt his own base the worst, if he is allowed to do it; because we made them feel bad.
Think about that. Think about it especially the next time one of them calls you a "snowflake."
There is also an opportunity here for social engineering on a mass scale, if we'll take it - especially if we manage to use the Church Of Kek's own playbook against them. It's just that so many leftists feel like ain't nobody got time for that anymore. But if there is another terrorist attack, or anything of you nature, you can bet the Trumpettes will take advantage of it and rally the fence-sitters into full compliance - exactly the way they did after 9/11, and leading up to the War in Iraq.
