Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
That's an interesting article. One question it prompts for me is, when people like that talk about "burning it all down," what do they mean? I think very few of them mean that literally, so what *do* they mean? I suspect it's the violence of rhetoric rather than the rhetoric of violence -- they thrill from saying such things. Also, I think the article talks a lot about social media, which really just means that anyone can publish stuff now that other people can see, instead of needing an expensive printing press or broadcasting license -- i.e., the supply side -- but it misses the demand side -- that the technology powering Facebook and Google and others lets you choose how you're informed, and a lot of people would rather get information that makes them happy than information that is accurate or new to them.
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I suspect it's people who feel like if the systems were erased, they'd have a chance to succeed. I think this thinking runs alongside conspiracy theories because both provide people with a narrative about why they haven't gotten what they think they deserve out of life.
Like Little Bill at the end of
Unforgiven, they've not yet grasped that randomness is a big part of life, and "deserve's got nothing to do with it."
I think a sense of fairness infuses a bit of it. That's where the Bernie and Warren people meet the Trump people. They all feel like there is something unfair in the system. They're right. Show me your zipcode at birth, and I'll show you some pretty solid odds on where you'll wind up in the social hierarchy.
This is why I think Warren, and anyone who talks "fairness," has legs.
Mix this up in a stew with accelerating income inequality and you have a delightful powder keg of crazy.
But wait... I'm not done yet. Because here's what I think is the most important connection this author overlooks: Evangelical obsession with apocalypse. Evangelicals love the concept of "end times," of catastrophic events changing humanity. All the kooky Old Testament horseshit. The biggest link this writer missed is between the Need For Chaos crowd and the Megachurch Crowd. There's a direct link between the people who want to burn it all down and the tens of millions who made books like the
Left Behind series long running best sellers. Rotating the connections between evangelicals and NFCers is beyond my pay grade. Some anthropologist needs to do that analysis. But I do know that's a significant connection, and this article needs a follow-up linking the two. Because this might explain Trump's evangelical following.
And it might explain why religious types with political leanings have started calling Trump an "imperfect vessel" from which biblical change will emanate. (I'm not kidding... I've heard that from a few devout conservatives.)
We've only begun to scratch the surface of Trump Nation, Bernie Nation, perhaps Warren Nation, I think. But I suspect these factions will align more in the future as inequality accelerates even more. I'm a bit afraid of it. I don't think the alleged "elites" have control anymore. I think they're buying land in New Zealand for good reason. And the one silver lining in a "burn it all down" scenario - grabbing assets cheap and making outsized gains when the govt props everything up to save the economy - might not be available next time around.
Then again, as Lemmy said when given a terminal diagnosis, "Fuck it... I've had a good run." Never be greedy. We've all been quite lucky. Mathematically, statistically, insanely lucky.*
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* On top of what's stated in the following quote, we happened to be born in the wealthiest nation on Earth, and found ourselves somewhat near the upper echelons of its hierarchies:
“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?” - Richard Dawkins
How dare I whine I might have to drink a lesser gin, or eat second tier lox?
