All in all, his appointment makes me take seriously the possibility that Trump's second term will focus seriously on setting a policy foundation for the future versus just being cult-of-personality stuff.
Why would you believe this?
How could you actually believe this?
An entire generation of would-be intellectuals attempted to treat Trump as a politician with policies instead of as an incompetent authoritarian using overt fascist rhetoric, creating a cult of personality. The Republicans are still calling out 'civil war' and then realizing this makes them dramatically unpopular.
And TracingWoodgrains continues to think: could this ancient person who just today or yesterday claimed to be a 'young vibrant man' turn his focus towards setting a policy foundation?
Remember (for those who haven't been paying attention), after all the fascism was invited into Scott Alexander's culture war threads in 2016-2020, they turned so violent that Trace created /r/theschism.
And this is one of a few places where the pseudo-intellectuals who couldn't perceive the fascism, but could believe that wokes were out to get them, retreated to in a world where one party was fascist, and the other party tended to insist on calling out that fascism.
It boggles my mind that Trace could be appalled by the violence, but never understand that the violence was the fascism. And now the 'dissident right' is nodding very seriously about Trump's policy positions, as if there is anything to the Republican Party but a bunch of authoritarian sycophants tripping over each other to praise Trump more while they state directly that they'll engage in civil war if they lose.
The Onion says it best: Trump vows to unite nation against common enemy of other Americans.
TracingWoodgrains is the sort of person who believes Trump when Trump calls for unity. TracingWoodgrains requires that we live in the reality where a few kind words erase years of violent rhetoric.
Why, TracingWoodgrains, are you so easily duped by Trump?
When will the greater SFBA Rationalist Cult wake up from the fugue of confusion brought about by Woke Derangement Syndrome?
Scott Alexander semi-ironically tackles 'an orgy of vengeance.' He starts to unravel, hopefully, the failure of the ideological wasteland of his home ground, in his recent essay: Some Practical Considerations Before Devolving into an Orgy of Vengeance.
I was cancelled from the culture war threads. I didn't take it personally, at least in the sense that I didn't think: all rightoids are like Scott, or all rightoids are like the moderators, who were crippled by their necessarily authoritarian connection to the space: whatever Scott said was true.
Cancellation is just part of human nature. The most egregiously obnoxious position of the SFBA Rationalist Cult is that it is somehow above or better than cancellation.
Scott Alexander gets close:
Liberals invent a fictional entity called "The Right", which is full of all of the most racist and fascist things that NYT was ever able to produce an out-of-context quote showing one Claremont guy saying, then believe that any action is justified against "The Right" because it's an ontological threat against democracy, then rile up a mob against a Google guy who sends the wrong memo.
What a terrible paragraph.
Scott Alexander was part of the Woke Derangement Syndrome crowd.
But the NYT doesn't have to produce out-of-context quotes demonstrating Trumpism's authoritarian dialogue.
The problem is that Scott Alexander suffocated his worldview with racism. Never forget: he self-consciously invited fascists and racists (neoreactionaries) into his audience. This level of racism and fascism became normal for Scott--and for TracingWoodgrains.
You have an entire coup attempt planned by Trump in the wake of the 2020 election, starting with the fake elector plot and culminating in January 6th. And Scott Alexander's take is that the liberals (HE IS INVENTING A FICTIONAL ENTITY HERE) are inventing a fictional entity around it and hallucinating its racism and fascism. (To put it in idiot SFBA Rationalist Cult terms, his priors are 'trapped.')
Trump is an "ontological threat against Democracy"
And if you don't understand this, there is in fact a very basic political intelligence test which you have failed. It's ok. The fascism fools people.
The fascism fools young men especially. Young men who feel persecuted by a society that doesn't care much for them. (And to be clear: society does not care for young men. It treats them as disposable, and always has.)
Scott Alexander took these young men and said: it's ok, the evil SJWs are evil and bad and we can create our own little space where we don't cancel people for their beliefs. Then he pulled the people with the worst beliefs on the planet into his space, and leftists were driven away by their racism and violence. This is what happened.
What they never seemed to understand is that you can in fact treat an egregore as an entity with beliefs and conditions provided you are careful to make distinct the voices. A mob of rioters that burn down their police station is in fact different from a mob of rioters instructed by a president who attack our Capitol.
Thus a vast wasteland of pseudointellectuals. Right now the King Pseud is Elon Musk, who is bewildered that other people find Trump morally repugnant. "Shouldn't we treat politics as an exercise in getting what we want?" thinks Musk. "All of these intelligent people in my circles are supporting Trump hoping for policy implementations," reasons Trace.
None of these people possess reasonable social skills. They're perpetually confused by politics, but worse? They think that's the problem of the people who can understand politics.
Which is why I'm here, where they can't cancel me.
**210 BC: The First Emperor of China dies
His plan was for a dynasty to last the millennia. His son was to be the next in line.
Instead, immediately after his death his preferred narrative is abandoned. His son was killed. Others ruled the throne through proxies.
Andronikos oversaw a 'terror state' of reckless bloodshed against his political enemies in his paranoia. When he was finally killed,
At last he was led to the Hippodrome of Constantinople and hung by his feet between two pillars. Two Latin soldiers competed as to whose sword would penetrate his body more deeply, and he was, according to the representation of his death, torn apart; his remains were left unburied and were visible for several years afterwards.[18] He died on 12 September 1185.[19] At the news of the Emperor's death, his son and co-emperor, John, was murdered by his own troops in Thrace.
69 AD: The Year of Four Emperors
A bunch of delusional people swear loyalty to anyone who happens to be a leader. The temple of Jupiter burns.
If there's one thing I would do to Scott Alexander in person, it's slap him so hard he falls to the ground and then put my knee on his back and force his face into the mud and whisper into his ear: your sh*thead following believes in effective emperors. They believe in a Caesar. They believe in Augustus.
Force is the only way to get through to these people through their woke derangement syndrome.
But the problem of succession is so fricking huge that the one genuine accomplishment of our American system is the peaceful transition of power. This is what Trump threatened on January 6th and if you don't understand that you're a fricking idiot who should never have written about politics.
Trump is an "ontological threat against Democracy"
And Scott Alexander continues to fluff Trump in his mock political debate writing. Scott Alexander is thus a pseudo-fascist: one who propagandizes Trump as an effective politician.
Honestly I have to admire the irony: Scott Alexander doesn't understand why the left freaks out about the things Trump does. Scott assumes that explanations of Trump forcing their reaction are true, so Trump must be effective as a politician, because he produces a desired result through his speech.
Scott does not put these things together, that because the desired result of Trump's violent rhetoric is violence, this is what makes Trump dangerous, this is what makes leftists broadly correct.
There is nothing more to a narrative of state than the people following the story of its leader. The competing narrative of Trump as to the legitimacy of the 2020 Election makes Trump a dangerous instability to be reckoned with forcefully. By any means necessary, including slicing up the worldviews of people like TracingWoodgrains, Scott Alexander, and Elon Musk.
TracingWoodgrains continues to tell the story, bizarrely, of a man who might turn to serious policy.
Scott Alexander continues to tell the story, bizarrely, of a left that is producing 'out-of-context' quotes.
Musk is in a pathetic search for legitimacy on Twitter, getting told by other rich people of his mistake.
Thankfully, Biden has promised to 'finish the job' and I think we'll soon be rid of this old person boomer confusion. (Just because he's incompetent as a leader doesn't mean the movement around him isn't fascism.)
But I haven't forgotten the weakness of the pseudointellectuals whose Woke Derangement Syndrome prevented them from perceiving the authoritarian fascist movement which began in 2016. They still have a chance to correct their answer, before the history books close on them as collaborators with the insurgent traitor Trump.
Soon Impassionata can retire.
