Tweet

More from @JYSexton

Jared Yates Sexton

@JYSexton

26 Dec

All the corporations and cable news channels and personalities know climate change is a real and pressing problem, just like they all got vaccinated and lied about it. The whole point is there’s an opportunity for profit and power by selling denial to an audience desperate for it

The denial of unquestionable problems and realities is worth billions in advertising and products and the only means of winning elections for an antidemocratic, authoritarian movement whose only pursuit is protecting white, patriarchal, oligarchic power.

What Fox and other operations like it do is sell a fantasy reality to its consumers that they don’t actually believe. It’s make believe performance for almost all of them except for the wild-eyed true believers, and the grifters are more than happy to work with them.

Read 7 tweets

Jared Yates Sexton

@JYSexton

22 Dec

The ugliness the MAGA Movement represents, a dark, twisted, disturbingly selfish view of life itself, has turned the pandemic into a political game where people's lives are happily sacrificed in the pursuit of profit and power.

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/cynical-self…

The reason so much of the MAGA movement’s positions on the pandemic changes so rapidly - it’s a hoax, then it’s a bio weapon, the vaccine is a plot - is because they shift to whatever makes their “winning” more likely. It’s about a vapid pursuit of power at all costs.

Analysts spend so much time trying to understand the contradictions of MAGA like some of these things are “true” and “sincere” beliefs. They’re not. They’re political and economic calculations dressed up in the disguise of ideology. It’s about power and profit. Period.

Read 7 tweets

Jared Yates Sexton

@JYSexton

19 Dec

The Manchin debacle is a stark, awful reminder that if you want change it’s going to mean getting different people in positions of power who aren’t wealthy or beholden to wealth.

That means getting money out of politics, organizing, and fundamentally changing things.

What you have now is a monopoly of power by the wealthy, who absolutely control our political processes and ensure nothing can be done to actually help anyone besides themselves.

This is an intentional and relentless strategy. And it has succeeded wildly.

You cannot expect a government populated by wealthy people to march into the legislature and vote to compromise their interests. Everything depends on completely paralyzing government as a means of public good. Everything.

That has to change. It has to.

Read 8 tweets

Jared Yates Sexton

@JYSexton

16 Dec

All right, we need to talk about the celebration and marketing of Kyle Rittenhouse by the GOP.

Market forces have corrupted our society, dismantled our politics, and have ensured that Right Wing violence and authoritarianism will only grow with time

1/

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/when-the-fre…

Since Rittenhouse's killings in Wisconsin and his acquittal, he has become one of the hottest celebrities in GOP circles.

Networks flock to him. Personalities fight over his attention. And all of this shows that the GOP is dangerous, but also exposes a massive problem.

2/

The commodification and marketization of this tragedy is as disgusting as it is predictable. Vigilante justice, shooting people down in cold blood, is now not only acceptable in the GOP, but celebrated and rewarded.

It means money. It means celebrity. It means power.

3/

Read 22 tweets

Jared Yates Sexton

@JYSexton

15 Dec

So much vital and important information is hidden behind paywalls. This culture of greed not only ensures a commodification of ideas but also intentionally obscures subversive notions from being widely available.

You have to have the resources or credentials.

Not only do writers and thinkers go their entire lives without necessary support, but the marketization also ensures a narrow breadth of ideas that are acceptable to the continuation of the power system.

To get in, you have to be part of that system and less likely to disturb it

In terms of something like a professorship, where you gain access to that information, your career depends largely on writing to others of the professorial class, largely cutting off populations who don’t have the expertise or even time to begin grappling with the ideas.

Read 8 tweets

Jared Yates Sexton

@JYSexton

14 Dec

To understand Fox News and the modern Republican Party, you have to understand professional wrestling and the concepts of "kayfabe" and "shoot."

What Fox airs is kayfabe, or performance. Those texts from hosts to the White House on January 6th were "shoot" and behind the curtain

There's a whole range of people in the GOP and on the Right in this mess of a crisis. Some of them are true believers and ideologues looking to bring the system down ala Steve Bannon.

A lot of the others are either inbetween or just using it as a grift or to spur ratings.

This moment of GOP/Right Wing radicalism is bizarre and confusing because it's riddled through with layers of belief, conviction, actual ideology, and people looking to make a buck.

It's a constantly evolving thing. People move from one extreme to another.

Read 4 tweets

Share this page!

Jared Yates Sexton

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

More from @JYSexton

Jared Yates Sexton

Jared Yates Sexton

Jared Yates Sexton

Jared Yates Sexton

Jared Yates Sexton

Jared Yates Sexton

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Like this author's thread?