What are you talking about?
I can't tell if he's a prophet or a Republican, but in either case that's the thing: A part of American culture that raised its progeny not simply to be wary of the crazy preacher dude with a sandwich board, but to take satisfaction from his misfortune, are finally becoming the crazy preachers with sandwich boards.
Here's a joke: Once "liberty and justice for all" actually came to mean it was for everyone, wypipo called it off.
The short form is that the people who have largely been in charge want to imagine history has oppressed them, so they can hide their bloodlust in the passions of vengeance as justice. That is to say, the people who want to inflict harm are lining up for vendetta. They literally need the effed-up, delusional narrative in order to justify themselves as freedom fighters instead of institutional oppressors.
It's actually a large-scale political threat: Pogrom as self-defense. And they're actually excited at the prospect of the harm they might cause.
†
It is important for people to recognize what they are actually seeing; at Sciforums, for instance, I've always thought it was a bad idea to pander to these people, but that's the thing: Rational discourse has the inherent effect of disqualifying irrational arguments. And so, for years, when people would pretend to be striking some enlightened position in which rational discourse itself becomes anathema, this sort of incoherent, bloodlusting antisocial dysfunction is what they were protecting and advancing. The thing is, this sort of appeal to "free speech" has the effect of quieting or drowning out discourse that is not dysfunctional, and for many people that dampening was always the point. And over time, one volatile aspect is some people who claim to not support this stuff eventually have to reckon with the effects of their own rhetoric, and instead of stepping away to not be part of it, like they would otherwise have claimed, they dive in.
And while I might have plenty to say about enabling and empowerment, the actual important point is to to make clear that people are dealing with an actually dangerous phenomenon.
The most straightforward explanation is relativistic and circular: The expressed concern is that Sciforums becomes too liberal, elitist, and tyrannical if we hew to rational discourse, valid evidence, rhetorical integrity, and good faith. It is not utterly baseless; a political argument that relies on deception, misrepresentation, and bad faith will have a hard time if obliged to good faith, rational consideration of valid evidence, and generally rational discourse.
If you look back to G's heyday around here, you'll find the place could be pretty brutal. It was different, then, compared to now; it's one thing to concede certain market realities, but when push came to shove, we simply abandoned the complicating principles as quietly as possible. Nobody has ever come out and explicitly called off rational discourse, but any expectation asserting a threshold of rational discourse is actually considered inappropriate, viewed as a tool intended to silence political dissent and actively guarded against; I've had that discussion a few times over the years.
†
So here's the subtle difference: Once upon a time, we let people like G roam around ostensibly in the name of free speech and not freaking out over every little thing; we did not want to silence political views. The problem with that is its underlying, tacit presupposition of good faith, without which impassioned political argument becomes nothing more than a heap of meaningless insults delivered for the satisfaction of someone or other's freedom.
Here's an outcome: Obviously, it's not that what happens here determines what goes on in the world, but I'm thinking of an
old staff dispute that spilled into public view, and for once it wasn't actually me. I dug it up last year, while looking for an obscure reference point, but it came to mind recently when a governor's press secretary popped off on Twitter—the subsequent conservative noise about grooming just keeps reminding.
So, once upon a time, one moderator dropped one of those rough political lines on another, a homophobic bit accusing of some context of child sexual abuse. How granular should I be, because it is important to note that connecting the dots between what was said and how that constitutes child abuse was something of a reach, which the other described as creepy and perverted. The one started a separate thread to bawl about it, and the result coming down the ladder was that more was expected of staff than calling someone a creepy pervert. As near as I can tell, accusing child abuse like that is just part of politics, and gets a little more room. Or something approximately like that.
But if the day Pushaw went off about grooming recalled the tender oversensitivities of a supremacist and the indignity of a woman talking back, it has to do with reflections on the history leading to this American societal moment. There is a tenedency to mitigate the fact of certain supremacism. We might infantilize—
i.e., oversimplify—it, in order to pretend it is not dangerous; sometimes we pretend it's just good people blowing off some steam¹; and sometimes we hide it in the noise of acceptable political speech², or bow to perceptions of market demand, &c., ad nauseam. So:
No, some 2014 episode at Sciforums is
not the reason why conservatives are going there today. However, it provides an example of everyday people doing their part. Society made enough excuses³, and for a while, now, the sort of barfly and gutter talk that was supposed to stay in the pubs and gutters has guided American conservative politics.
And, look, if there is a story about a moderator deleting criticism of his post denouncing Central American migrants as an invading army, no, that episode from 2010 is not the reason Donald Trump gave that rhetoric the prestige of White House imprimateur, nor a right-winger subsequently including it in his manifesto before killing twenty-three, but I might toss a coin, being unable to decide what to tell you:
Heads, compared to simply doing our part, it's also an example of how important it was to be able to talk like that.
Tails, it ought to have been impossible to reasonably imagine, nearly a decade before the El Paso shooting, how far things would go.
†
And here's the twist: For as much as I might disagree with James about a whole lot of what goes on around here, the idea that
G wants to beef with him ought to be absurd. G's heyday comes from before staff disagreements had their present context, and includes the fabled golden age of ferocious dispute.
Anyway, it's actually rare that I can speak anywhere near to common 'twixt James and me, but one thing that stands out is the extraordinary intensity of G's anger. Compared to once upon a time, he's in a bad mood. It's almost like we might wonder if he's tired of all that winning.
It's one thing if G wants to throw at me; his loathing is nothing new. But this is just angry noise. What did James ever do to him, except show extraordinary accommodation to infamous politics G might happen to appreciate?
But if part of his point is to just roar, that is what the anger has become.
Look, what you're seeing is actually a real thing. This fixation on judgment, fancy toward triumph, and dark talk of repayment, extraneity, numbers,
lining up↗, and swinging pendula is not just some one-off. They're dreaming of the pogrom. This is actually something that really does go on, these days.
In our history at Sciforums, G is an emblem of a certain long-ago that is not entirely irrelevant. Compared to the stuff of later periods, he is a marker of something that has been going on in society more generally for a long time. Watch institutions panic about protesting and the Supreme Court in a way they just don't when the controversy at the heart of it isn't so conservative. The reason that imbalance is so evident right now is that our society has never really discouraged it. As we emerge from our traditionalist brutishness, our society still suffers and sympathizes with pangs of heritage.
At the heart of it is an increasingly desperate antisociality angry at the fact of its own alienation, and, yes, much of it is strangely self-inflicted.
In truth, I suspect part of the problem is that they are not utterly unaware that not only is their need irrational in itself, but contrary to their own self-righteousness. Increasing nakedness of the growing depravity about their argument further erodes their sociality in stinging winds of neurotic distress. It's one thing to wonder how many believed their own bullshit, but far more interesting to learn how they came to believe.
As it is, in the U.S., at least, things are weirder and more dangerous than usual.
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Notes:
¹ (I might have mentioned this before)
² … which is not without its own significance, but that is its own discussion.
³ If I have a joke about the felons bringing a documentary film crew to the felonious meeting at which the felons conspire toward further felonies, it's actually a true story, and toward the present consideration reminds something about the excuses we made, because not every iteration of political violence would be so accustomed to a certain expectation of accommodation; the violent right-wing traditionalist-supremacists might never have thought of the criminal-evidentiary question in that context because why would they—society had made enough excuses for them up until then.