Normally wouldn't even screencap Newsmax, but this tweet so aptly encapsulates the Brokebrain Mountain underlying conservative thinking, which hinges on the idea that only some people matter, and the only way they matter is by agreeing with conservative thinking.
This is the immediately laughably obvious problem with the tweet for those not in the cult of republicanism.

But we can miss the actual point being made which is: since she isn't a republican, it doesn't MATTER if he raped her or not.

"Did Donald Trump rape E. Carroll Jean?"

For a Republican, the answer isn't yes or no, it's: "who gives a shit?"

The next step is finding the reason not to give a shit.

Any reason will do.
"Any reason will do" effectively is no reason at all.

Which is why the defense can constantly shift and even contradict itself, sometimes even within the same statement.

And why evidence changes nothing. The real reason is, "Who cares? You don't matter."
"Other people were racist; therefore I don't have to care about racism."

Point out that current KKK, pro-confederates, neo Nazis, etc, emphatically define themselves as anti-Democrat? Watch the excuse change.

The underlying point is, they don't care.
They don't care so much, they resent even the suggestion they should care.

They use the fact that people think they should care as a reason to not care.

Again, any reason will do.

It's not about the reason. It's about not caring.

The appeal of Trump is permission to not care.
We can't understand how every single awful boorish stupid uncaring callous and downright hateful thing he says doesn't torpedo him

It's because that's the whole appeal. The fact that he doesn't care about the harm he does is license to not care

More: to not even have to pretend
What we're learning is just how many people have been pretending at the most basic human decency

They've HATED feeling compelled to pretend. They so love the license to stop

They can't imagine anybody isn't pretending

When they run into virtue, they call it "virtue signalling"
Most fine qualities have their corresponding sneering epithet, designed to allow the person viewing it to avoid the natural conviction toward decency, another excuse to avoid caring:

Empathy? "Snowflake."
Inclusivity? "Safe Space."
Integrity? "Social Justice Warrior"
The entire framework rests on a bedrock assumption, that some people matter, others don't, and it's perfectly fine to say or do anything you want to defeat those that don't matter, for whatever value of "defeat" you can get away with being seen making yourself comfortable with.
And the greatest offense is that anyone would expect you to give even the slightest shit for even a second about somebody who doesn't matter.

Once you see it, you can't unsee it. It's everywhere, everywhere.

They. Do. Not. Care.
This is how you can tell. Ask them if they care about [thing any human should care about]

Answer: OBAMA DID IT FIRST

What is that?

I'll tell you what that is.
It's permission to not care.

Is it true Obama did it first? Answer: So what?

Even if true (usually not), so what? Do you, human being I'm talking to, give a shit?

Answer: No. They don't. Their only program is to convince themselves YOU don't.

So they can go back to not caring
"DEMOCRATS FOUNDED THE KKK"

What is that? It's permission to not care about racism today.

It's license to not give a shit about the KKK, or confederates, or those who would ally with them, or where those people align ideologically, today.

Any excuse will do.
Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

The only thing you can do is insist that every person is a unique and irreplaceable work of art of unsurpassable worth.

So let's keep doing that.

It'll piss some people off.

And I don't care.
Or maybe it's easy to discount the hatefulness of hateful words and deeds when the hate isn't targeted at you.

Again, the desire is to find any reason to not care; even the offense caused by reminders of the moral duty to care is used as that reason.
Nonsense.

The internal monologue with which they’ve furnished themselves to give them license to not care about the atrocities they support is irrelevant.

The whole point is finding a self-justified reason to not care.
Yes, and every concentration camp guard had a reason. And who cares what it was.
People of cruel intent don’t need your support. To join with them, they require only that you don’t care about their cruelty, and they don’t care what excuse you use to arrive on their shores.

To release yourself from the inconvenience of caring is to join with the murderers.
“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.”

-Elie Wiesel
Worth showcasing this effect in action.

Example: the people calling this “mental illness” do not care about mental illness.

“Mental illness” is just the reason not to care about this killing, its victim, or the ways the killer’s ideology matches theirs
The priority for Very Fine People of any age is to find the reason to not care about what they’re doing to others.

No society committed atrocities without first convincing themselves they were far too good to ever commit atrocities.
In action again:

The answer to the question: "Does Jeffery Epstein represent systemic enabled abuse embedded in our society?" is not "yes" or "no," but rather "who cares?"

The mission then becomes to find a reason to not care. Any reason will do.
In action, again. The mission is for an evangelical christianist to find a reason to let himself not care about child rape. Solution: create an false equivalence with a recent instance of christianist bigotry against boys in drag. Mission accomplished!
And, as @KevinMKruse points out, Erickson is well-practiced at finding reasons to not care about sexual predators.

Look up his article to find his reasons, if you like. The reason doesn't matter. Any reason will do.
@KevinMKruse So we know Erickson doesn't care about powerful predators, at all—he cares about anti-queer bigotry.

He uses the false conclusions about queerness his bigotry presents as "proof" that his opponents share his unconcern. Then he uses this "proof" as an excuse to not care

Presto!
@KevinMKruse A conspiracy theory like Pizzagate can perhaps be understood as a preemptive strike against caring.

Trump's connection to Epstein has been known for years.

Solution? Create a *fake* ring of child rape for elites, and care about *that*.
@KevinMKruse A conspiracy theory provides 2 paths to unconcern:

1. Believe in it, and use your opponent's failure to care about the fake one as license to not care about the real one

2. Recognize it as a fraud, and use that as license to claim all such stories are frauds

Any excuse will do
@KevinMKruse In action, again.

For Republicans the answer to the questions "are these concentration camps" and "is this a crime against humanity" is "who gives a shit?"

All that's needed after is a reason to not give a shit.

Any reason will do.
@KevinMKruse In action again.

The answer to the question "Did Donald Trump rape E Jean Carroll" can even be "yes," once you have a reason to not give a shit.

Imagine being so empty that this could be your reason.

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More from @JuliusGoat

Feb 21
Gay kids will die because of this, which is the desired purpose of the bill.
To those who scold that we mustn’t assume evil intentions into the actions of people who consistently pursue absolute evil with steadfast dedication and unshakable resolve: yes, we should.
I guess the ultimate answer to "you don't know what their true motivations are" is "who gives a shit what their motivations are?"

I care *that* you want to burn down my house. I only care *why* you want to burn down my house to the extent it helps me stop you.
Read 18 tweets
Feb 20
Father: *strangles my brother*
Me: help help my father is murdering my brother
Centrist Cousin: it’s that sort of us vs them thinking that’s tearing this family apart
Me: no look literally he’s murdering my brother right in front of us

Centrist Cousin: he’s never going to want to stop if you keep vilifying him with overheated black and white language; I’ve engaged many stranglers and learned a lot about the complexities

Brother: gkkk gkk gk
Me: Look he’s about to die, for real; I really think we just need to stop my dad from killing him right now

Centrist Cousin: that’s exactly the sort of judgemental escalating bad thinking on our side that we need to criticize, I refuse to let myself become just as bad as he is
Read 4 tweets
Feb 19
If you want to live in a modern enlightened society and you vote for Republicans, no you don't.
To be clear, that's any Republicans at any level for any position at any time, and honestly we may want to expand that to include Democrats willing to work with Republicans.

Shut the whole party down, out, and over.
If you want to live in a modern enlightened society and you vote for Republicans, no you don't.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 14
As a Wordle pro on the tour, I feel I should share the best starting word, which all the pros know. The word is XYLYL.
(My own personal favorite starting word is COCCYX, but if I show amateurs how to guess 6-letter words I will be banned from the Wordle Pro Tour and forced to sit next to Bret Stephens in the NYT cafeteria.)
Wordle is a game of constantly shifting strategy; I recommend you get the latest version of my strategy compendium, v14.
Read 6 tweets
Feb 13
I want to propose a different way of thinking about conservatism and progressivism.

I suggest we think about the two positions not as detectable ideologies themselves, but as situational orientations around an existing order.

getrevue.co/profile/julius…
Specifically with this order. The one that exists. This reality. The way our systems and laws are set up, the way they’re codified and the way they’re operationalized. What they claim to intend to do, and what they actually do.

“The way things are,” in other words.
Let’s think of conservatism as being, in its essence, an orientation that desires to keep the existing order just as it is, or to make slow and deliberate calculated minor adjustments, to the existing order.
Read 29 tweets
Feb 8
In BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, Mickey Rooney played I. Y. Yunioshi, dressed up in buck teeth and a cartoon squint, a grotesque caricature of a Japanese person.

So I suppose in that sense “you wouldn’t be able” to make BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S today.

Which seems somehow preferable.
Now: what interests me is what it means to say *you can’t* make BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S these days.

It doesn’t mean you CAN’T. Unlike teaching, say,The Bluest Eye to Texas schoolchildren, there exist no laws to prevent Will Ferrell from putting in the teeth and playing Yunioshi.
So actually you *can* make BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S today, I.Y. Yunioshi and all, and throw in Long Duc Dong if you want.

You can if you want wear blackface and dance around in white gloves, like Fred Astaire in SWING TIME, if you want to.

If you want to.
Read 20 tweets

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