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Jennifer Mercieca Profile picture
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Sep 18 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
This thread on the way Trump does fascism is relevant again today.
Here's another short thread about how Trump claimed to be purified to fight for his people:
We've noticed the deification of Trump for some time now:
A couple more examples of the deification of Trump (he encourages it, of course):
And here's a bit on the political implications of Trump's deification:
And this brings us to Trump's current claims that he is a Forever President (President Eternal) who will always have the protections of the Executive Branch, even though he is the FPOTUS. Read @AshaRangappa_ & I on why it's bunk: zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/08/31/fbi…
And I just remembered that I used "President Eternal" before 😳
When Trump is deified, is treated as being guided by God or is God-like himself, this is the "divine-right of Kings narrative" taking over a major American political party. In this narrative the king is unquestionable because he represents the authority of God on earth.
Like I said yesterday, this is pre-Enlightenment rationality in political theory. The American Revolution denied the divine-right of kings narrative, it's anti-American. Yet, Trump claims to be the apotheosis of American exceptionalism and America itself.
Words like "Christofascism" are apt to describe what Trump, et al are up to, but I worry it seems too foreign for American ears (ears that want to hear American exceptionalism). Perhaps the "divine right of kings" language is more persuasive to folks who value American freedom.
Trump's divine-right narrative brings him sycophants who predictably follow power. Those sycophants (& all who profit from Trump's power) have a real interest in maintaining the fiction of Trump's divine-right narrative. They'll prop him up until he loses his supporters.
And, I can't help myself (JenX):

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More from @jenmercieca

Jennifer Mercieca Profile picture
Sep 17
Reification (treating people as objects) gives people permission--people can think of themselves as good people who care & do the right thing so long as they convince themselves that these people aren't real people. Slavery, genocide, capitalism, etc all work on this principle.
If they're not people, then they don't count. What are they if they're not people?

A problem, a threat, dangerous, a plague, an invasion, a Trojan horse, rats, cancer, cockroaches, rapists, drug dealers, murderers, etc.
The word "immigrant" itself is a condensation symbol ("a name, word, phrase, or maxim which stirs vivid impressions involving the listener's most basic values and readies the listener for action")--immigrants aren't people, but a category of threat that motivates people to act.
Read 15 tweets
Jennifer Mercieca Profile picture
Sep 15
How it started How it's going ImageImage
Such a great example of 2022 politics: political spectacle that dehumanizes v treating people with dignity
and look I didn't really want Chino (Christian in name only) to be a thing, but the examples keep piling up this week that it's a useful description.
Read 4 tweets
Jennifer Mercieca Profile picture
Sep 14
more like this please
I really love what he and his family did, but what I like & respect even more is that he is living his values. It's so hard to do. Wow. 🫶 Image
👀 Image
Read 5 tweets
Jennifer Mercieca Profile picture
Sep 9
TIL from @HiddenBrain that Nietzsche coined the term mitfreude: imagining the joy of others and empathizing with them in joy (the opposite of schadenfreude).

What a useful word/concept. 🥰
There might even be a mitfreude in schadenfreude (taking joy in the joy others feel about some other others' misfortune), now that I think about it. The last 24 hours on twitter have perhaps given many folks that feeling. BRB, about to go read some Nietzsche.
"Fellowship in Joy—The snake that stings us means to hurt us and rejoices in so doing: the lowest animal can picture to itself the pain of others. But to picture to oneself the joy of others and to rejoice thereat is the highest privilege of the highest animals,"
Read 8 tweets
Jennifer Mercieca Profile picture
Sep 8
On the one hand, we've never had a Pretender to the Presidency before so it was maybe hard to believe it would happen, but on the other hand SO many people could see it would happen and warned about it happening--as it happened. >>
Long time readers of this account, of course, know that we knew it all along.
Say what you will about Twitter's problems, but one benefit is that it helped me to avoid being gaslit by Trump. It was hard to believe what you saw with your own eyes and if other people hadn't see it too, it would have been a lot easier to dismiss.
Read 5 tweets
Jennifer Mercieca Profile picture
Sep 7
The people who know what Trump was really doing are the FBI/DOJ and Trump. Anybody who is defending him is risking hella while trusting that he’s either trustworthy or going to get away with it. That’s probably not going to go well for them.
But by all means please proceed and find out.
Here’s the WaPo (unlocked) in case you haven’t read it yet: wapo.st/3x0knmU
Read 8 tweets

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