The Comfort of False Equivalence
There’s a seductive kind of cowardice masquerading as wisdom in modern discourse: the insistence that all extremes are created equal. It’s what allows the centrist to shrug and say, “Well, both sides are dangerous,” as though morality and method exist on a balanced scale, and history is simply a record of shared mistakes. For MAGA, this rhetorical laziness isn’t just useful. It’s strategic.
This bit stands out to me pretty strongly
This helps explain why MAGA so often feels impervious to evidence. Logic isn’t the foundation of the worldview, identity is. And any fact that threatens that identity is rejected, not because it’s untrue, but because it’s unwelcome. The very structure of MAGA thinking is built to preserve the self, not challenge it.
I’ve been saying similarly for ages. We’re all emotional to some degree, but the right wing often turns it up to 11. Facts don’t matter. In-group belonging matters.
I don’t know a better word for it than “Stupid”, but it is deeply what I’d call stupid. Doesn’t care about facts, consistency, outcomes. Just feeling good about being a member of the group.
The oatmeal did a comic about this: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe
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The left is a loosely knit confederation of groups who often dislike one another but dislike the right even more.
I’m not sure this is true. There are some leftists who hate Democrats far more than Republicans, especially here on Lemmy.
Some are actually supportive of the Trump regime because they believe it will bring about a collapse that will lead to a communist utopia (lol).
While you’re over there on Substack, report this guy, Russian ultranationalist, Aleksander Dugin (Putin’s brain). I won’t be visiting there again and deleted my account yesterday. They leave this stuff up and have a reputation of doing so. The commenters were all on board. There’s not an option to report this for what it is. An excerpt of this was on RT previously
The Transgender Ukrainian Nation
Alexander Dugin draws a parallel between the fall from grace of transgender individuals in the United States and the impending abandonment of Ukrainians by the West…
That’s truly disgusting. I can fathom neither how sick one would have to write this nor how stupid one would have to be to believe it.
I did a thread on Bluesky about tracing down that particular piece and it was not a road I’d been down before. First, there was a screenshot with an even more inflammatory headline from RT. Eventually, I found a direct link to Substack from a “paleoconservative” POS maintaining a wordpress blog. I get that people actually growing up in Russia their entire lives have learned this stuff and don’t excuse it but at least can understand that to some degree. But I grew up in a very progressive bubble and never experienced people like this in my life. The blogger and the commenters were clearly programmed deeply from various corners of more hellish places. It’s sick but it’s also taught disinformation etc.
Ukrainians are collective transgenders. Russians who have changed their sex, their ethnicity, for an abstract, imaginary, and absurd alternative.
Yes Sasha the more schizo the shit you say is the more true it is.
Every accusation is a confession. I’ve spent many years in close quarters with conservatives. Usually when they’re making an absurd claim about people to the left of them, it’s either to justify them doing it in “retaliation” (such as election interference), or that they believe their way of thinking is natural for all people, being that everyone has gods and thought leaders they believe uncritically.
