Thread by @RadioFreeTom

Watching footage of the Loser Sturm overrunning the Capitol during the Beer Belly Putsch, I am struck again by how much of what plagues us is an addiction to the narcissistic idea that everyone is the most important person ever, that everyone should be the boss of everything. /1

The raging narcissism, particularly of the cosplaying men who now deny that they wanted no part of any of the seditious stuff, is striking. Men who have a huge reserve of self regard that does not extend to shaving or wearing a clean shirt or other basic signs of adulthood. /2

These are people - again, especially the men - trapped in the eternal drama of adolescence. They are creatures of a leisure society, bored by the ordinariness of life, angry that the world is not more interesting and that others refuse to pay them their heroic due. /3

As Eric Hoffer noted - h/t @WindsorMann - this is the fetid breeding ground of extremism: "Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves…Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and meaningless."
/4

Even in 1951, Hoffer knew the danger of society of bored children: “There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society's ripeness for a mass movement than the prevalence of unrelieved boredom."
This, not rights or freedom, was what the past years of Trumpism are about. /5

There is no seriousness here, no sense of injustice, no actual injury to rights. Merely the aggrieved boredom of men (and some women) who never learned that life is not ceaselessly interesting and dramatic. That life, even the best life, is boring and repetitive on most days. /6

This is why the legal and *social* response should swift and clear. To remind people that life is not a TV show. It is not Twitter dunks and Facebook memes. To show that hurting other people out of boredom and childish narcissism has real consequences. /7

People who want to be heroes seem to have no patience with a normal workplace or the self-disciple involved in showing up and doing your best no matter what the job is. After all, Thor and Captain America didn't have to listen to their supervisor. /8

But life is heroic exactly when it is not dramatic. Taking care of your loved ones, looking after a sick friend, letting someone go ahead of you at a stop sign, hold the door for someone at a store. Adults know this. Stunted, selfish, undisciplined, stupid adolescents do not. /9

I am exhausted by turning on the news and realizing that the blessings of life in a liberal democracy have also produced a stubborn knot of bored children who think guns and flags and dumb slogans will give their lives meaning. /10

All I can do is suggest to other people in this society to treat these brutal, overgrown adolescents with as much distance as possible. To show them, by example, what stoicism and seriousness look like. To be the adults.
I know it's hard. I'm not consistent about it myself. /11

But amidst all the calls for unity, it's important to remember that unity and understanding can only happen between adults who agree to live peaceably. The people who defended sedition - and especially those who instigated it - are not those people. Those are armed toddlers. /12

I don't know what will change us. I sometimes think that a bit of social pressure on a man to wash his face in the morning and to dress differently from his pre-teen son might help. Other days, I think that nothing will work and pure, vulgar decadence will just end us. /13

And don't get me wrong: I don't underestimate the danger these people pose. They have threatened me directly and many other people I know. But there's not much you can do about that. But I don't have to pretend that "dangerous" means "serious and worthy of respect." /14

So maybe, now and then, we should all ask ourselves if we're taking things seriously enough - and if they are the *right* things to be taken seriously. And whether we are setting that example for others around us. Again, not sure I do that enough myself. /15

None of this means not to be light-hearted. I am, so often, utterly immature and unserious. (Except I'm right about Led Zeppelin.) But when it comes to living as an American, I hope I am as serious as can be. It's something we can all do. And we can insist on it from others. /16x