Day: December 6, 2018

fierceawakening:

invertedporcupine:

morlock-holmes:

fierceawakening:

roseapprentice:

fierceawakening:

the-mighty-birdy:

nyc-conservative:

dixiearistocrat:

nyc-conservative:

I just saw a bunch of conservatives expressing how much they don’t care that a migrant woman got impaled by a pole while crossing the border like what the fuck is wrong with you people? How can you possibly celebrate that? That’s so fucked up.

like how is that even funny? That’s just cruel.

Because conservative tumblr is constantly in a rave to see who can be the edgiest fuck on this hellsite

We need a name for this thing. Like… “turning empathy off on purpose” used to work but people are weird about that word.

I’d say “willful cruelty” but that… it’s accurate, but I think there’s also something else going on. Like, it’s a process. Not many people wake up and decide “today I’m going to laugh at a child being brutalized by my own government.”

But there’s a slow process that begins at “I’m going to be tough and unaffected” and, when encouraged by social environments and powerful leaders, metastasizes into this.

It’s dehumanization as a… mental process, basically.

Once you sell the idea that dehumanizing others is cool, it expands by itself.

How about “Training yourself to find atrocities delightful.”

It’s a defense mechanism people use when they feel like others are exploiting their sense of horror to make them believe false things.

When the things others were trying to make them believe were true after all, it looks like this, and then sometimes there are genocides.

(Also most of the conservatives I know would find this just as horrifying as I do. This is right-wing extremism.)

I feel like I’m not understanding this bit: “people use when they feel like others are exploiting their sense of horror to make them believe false things.” So… people are becoming extremists as a defense mechanism because… they think other people are lying to them?

I get the sense I misparsed… something.

(And yes, I agree. This thing that’s arisen isn’t conservatism. It’s, like… right-wing cancer. All it knows how to do is grow, and as it does it gets more and more absurd and more and more violent.

The same thing can and does arise on the left sometimes too.)

It makes perfect sense to me. Well, sort of.

You read about this poor woman. Then you read a bunch of posts saying,

“This proves we need to abolish ICE!”

“This is why we need open borders!”

And, well, you don’t want open borders. Open borders and free immigration would allow all kinds of dangerous criminals to enter the country and hurt innocent people while depressing the economy.

But if you were to understand this as being as monstrous as it is, you would be strengthening the case for the even worse horrors that would come of opening the borders.

So you train yourself to see it as good, because that’s less psychologically painful and less damaging to your cause then seeing it as a necessary evil or an abomination.

“If my cause was committing abominations, then I couldn’t in good conscience support it. Therefore, my cause must not be committing abominations.”

I have a different take on this.  A substantial chunk of the right is “post-policy”; their primary objective is “owning the libs.”  The fact that these reactions are upsetting to you is the point.  They do not, in fact, sincerely like the idea of people being impaled and would likely be horrified by it if they witnessed it, even if the people in question were brown.

I can kind of see that, but that basically means these people have either 1) actively decided to ignore that owning the libs means approving policies that make this stuff more common or 2) passively decided to ignore that owning the libs means approving policies that make this stuff more common

and both of those are terrible