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Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

18 Jan

@normative

Reading this piece from last summer by @normative, I realize that there is a parallel here between Qanon's "Storm" and the Cold War cults that sprang up at various times, but especially in the 70s and the 80s. Bear with me. /1

washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/0…

@normative

@normative "The Storm" is a moment, like nuclear war, after which everything is different, even if there's bloodshed. It's purgative, restorative, resets all the social relationships, ends all traditional and normal social structures. It's shaking society like a huge Etch-A-Sketch.
/2

Why is this so attractive to so many broken people? Precisely because it *is* a reset. It's awful, but it's an awfulness that sets everything - including all social differences - back to zero. The high and mighty are smited, and the Common Folk live by their superior wits. /3

Read 10 tweets

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

14 Jan

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

Read 16 tweets

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

14 Jan

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1349543248277061633

So, with all the talk of Orwell, I want to point out that this is not "1984" level un-personing, but it's Soviet style denunciation. It's not even ambitious or interesting enough to be Stalinism; it's more like moldy Brezhnevism. This is the "Sovietizing" of the GOP. /1

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1349543248277061633

In the post-Stalin, post-Khrushchev USSR, the Party had lost all ideological conviction and was completely exhausted and bereft of any dynamism. (Sound familiar?) The only thing left was Party solidarity and loyalty to the leader. (Sound familiar?) /2

This was a party that relied on stale formulations and buzzwords and formulations, enforced by "leading comrades" in the Party journals and outlets. (Sound familiar?) Falls from grace could come fast for suspected disloyalty or any kind of creative thinking. /3

Read 7 tweets

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

11 Jan

https://twitter.com/dnvolz/status/1348465635580391428

This WSJ story is a must read, like a script that wrote itself. /1

"a solitary existence"

"lives alone in a worn, wood-heated house: for 40 years he has pieced together a living" out of odd jobs

"on Medicaid but says he doesn’t use it"

“I checked with the Lord,” he says

https://twitter.com/dnvolz/status/1348465635580391428

"a couple of run-ins with the law"

"Friends from Arkansas told him Mr. Clinton was one of the biggest cocaine smugglers in the U.S."

'soon concluded Mr. Obama was actively trying to destroy the country, citing infrastructure spending and the cash-for-clunkers program." 🤷‍♂️ /2

"liked was Mr. Trump’s defense of Confederate war memorials"

"went to Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally"

(broke and living alone, but gets around)

"gets his news from the internet and the pro-Trump news stations, Newsmax and One America News"

/3

Read 5 tweets

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

8 Jan

@RameshPonnuru

@RameshPonnuru @McCormackJohn @Timodc @Peggynoonannyc Until this moment, I did not know how you voted. All I can say is that this was a time that seemed to me full of moral clarity, and I do not fully grasp how anyone else didn't see it that way. /1

@RameshPonnuru

@RameshPonnuru @McCormackJohn @Timodc @Peggynoonannyc As for for an approach to politics, I think fudging moral differences is how we got here. I thought one of the things we used to agree on as conservatives was this kind of moral clarity about people like, say, Bill Clinton. I thought that notion united us, once upon a time. /2

@RameshPonnuru

@RameshPonnuru @McCormackJohn @Timodc @Peggynoonannyc I also thought we were the people who had the courage to say "yes, 47 percent of the public can be totally wrong and I don't need to go figure out how to split the difference with them so that they don't feel bad about being wrong." /3

Read 4 tweets

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

7 Jan

A thread on how much you should be worried.

You guys always tease me about not letting you panic. Don't panic. Panic is a useless emotion. But after yesterday, you should be very, very alarmed right now. /1

I have said for a while that we're at the political version of DEFCON 1. Trump is doing what a lot of us knew he would do, attacking our institutions while leaving us nearly defenseless: The Capitol was breached last night, with the VP and Congress having to run for safety. /2

To protect the Capitol itself, the VP and the Acting SecDef had to go around the President - who, by many reports, has now become completely detached from reality. This is a government breakdown of the kind we usually only think of happening in other countries. /3

Read 8 tweets

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