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.
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:
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.
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 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!
@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
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.
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
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.
As a Wordle pro on the tour, I feel I should share the best starting word, which all the pros know.
(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.
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.
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.