Thread by @mtracey

Bill Clinton once famously exhorted, "I feel your pain." The rising breed of politician increasingly exhorts to the public to instead feel THEIR pain, and if you don't, you are maliciously victimizing THEM

mtracey.medium.com/feel-our-pain-…

Because the "emoting" is always ultimately a power play, even if unconsciously. It's intended to place primacy on their "experience" for the purpose of demanding compensation, whether it be via cultural cache or various political outcomes

https://twitter.com/JaniceBrauner/status/1359559701705465857

It's thus appropriate that the impeachment trial currently underway is mainly predicated on the "lived experience" of members of Congress who claim they were so profoundly victimized by the MAGA goofball riot

All the emotionally-riveting evidence put forward today was intended to convey that our elected representatives were put at unacceptable risk, with more tearful testimonies from members of Congress. It's becoming very bizarre

And the primary argument impeachment advocates are making against Trump is that he "failed to protect us," meaning he failed to "protect" them, the politicians. This whole exercise is about the well-being of politicians, whose "pain" they then attempt to transfer onto the public

It's also amazing how eager the media is to spend day after day proclaiming that society writ large is obliged to validate the victimhood claims of powerful elected officials (but only when those officials share their political priorities, of course)