He's Schrödinger's Brandon: Too strong and too weak at the same time. I wonder if there is an ideology that typically uses this tactic to define an opponent?
this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
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Fascism trait #8:
Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.
Ur-Fascism by Umberto Eco
This whole piece is excellent, thanks for sharing
He's Schrödinger's Brandon: Too strong and too weak at the same time. I wonder if there is an ideology that typically uses this tactic to define an opponent?
There is, and the answer is as clear as the nose on your fascist.
Face! I meant face. Stupid autocorrect.
Oh sure, it's clear to most, but today's conservative minds need to carefully do some warm up stretches before they can absorb this truth, or they'll tyranny ligament.
Not sure if this is sarcastic, so for thise who don't know: It's a common tatic of fascists.
It's gotta be democracy because the Republicans are adamant they are defending it right?
I'm pretty sure the republicans recently explicitly said they don't like democracy
Same as it ever was. The Nazis did the same thing with the groups they scapegoated, simultaneously an incompetent drain/liability and and a hyper-competent threat that cannot be ignored.
Critical thinking and reasoning must be taught, without that, people will follow their feelings anywhere, and those are easy to manipulate.
Starving public education into complete and utter ruins for half a century to cut rich sociopath's taxes, and the rise of tens of millions of proudly counterfactual, willfully ignorant nitwits as a political force is not a coincidence.
Garbage in (refusing to pay to educate kids to critically scrutinize the information they take in), garbage out (The United States of duhhhhhhhhhhh).
Hell, Republicans have been doing this for decades. Remember all the lazy handout-demanding Mexicans who are stealing all our jobs?
The saddest part for them is, I've read about studies that say a better-educated populace is a more compassionate populace. Guess who will care for them when they are too old to care for themselves?
The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
Edit: I guess I can’t bold in a quoted passage, so here it is: Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.
Umberto Eco
But my favorite piece is at the end. I remind everyone all the time and nauseum that facists are stupid:
Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
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The comments from the article were surprisingly not bad. One made a good point:
The POTUS started his SotU speech with:
“Now it is we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the Union. And yes, my purpose tonight is to both wake up this Congress, and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either. Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault here at home as they are today.”
I have watched a lot of state of the union addresses and I cannot remember one that began with this stark of warning.
Yet, all the articles being posted are about MTG and whether Biden looked/didn’t look old and who clapped and who didn’t.
That’s a 5-alarm fire bell he just rang, broadcasted out to the entire country and world, pay attention to what’s important
The majority of the USA is behind Ukraine, it's the magats that are being dumb russian puppets.
Yes. Every other thing is rage bait to distract you.
I worry that at this point if people haven't figured that out they're never going to
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He's too low-energy, he's old! He's too high-energy, he's... uh... Whatever! Vote for the guy who wants to do away with voting!
These guys, I swear 🙄
The forklift moving the goalposts just broke the sound barrier.
Which is wild because forklifts really can't go much faster than a brisk jogging pace. Not unless you strap a rocket to it. Coincidentally Rocket Propelled Forklift is my new band name
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The qons have installed wheels on the goalposts long ago.
Ah, those times when reality reads like an onion article.
Fox News was ready to criticize Biden about his energy levels - they realized sleepy Joe wouldn't land so they had to pivot. This is honestly feeling like 1984 satire, I expect to see footage from rallies were Trump supporters are quoted as saying "Biden is so angry and sporadic, I'm voting for Trump because he's much more calm and composed" and the one guy that didn't get the memo that they've always been at war with East Asia will hold up a "Sleepy Joe" sign before being shunned and photoshopped out of the rally.
I laughed because I thought it was an Onion article at first glance. Holy shit.
SLEEPY JOE HAS AWOKEN.
"Too woke! More sleepy please"
Republicans will complain about literally anything to make anyone who opposes them look worse.
We should only listen to Republicans in order to decipher (it ain't hard, they aren't subtle) what new atrocities they are going to be attempting next.
Not complain, they will attack literally anything.
And if they ever run out of things to attack, they will create things to attack. Remember that recession that was going to happen?
Migrant caravan and bears oh my!
The “he was too partisan” comments annoyed the shit out of me. Republicans are nothing if not hypocritical snowflakes.
That's why i stopped giving their words any weight. They'll complain no matter what, so fuck em
"JOE BIDEN IS TOO (insert current thing Joe has done well)"
"Intelligible!"
"Knowledgeable!"
"Sane!"
"Capable of completing a thought!"
Republican media has convinced their viewers that Biden is basically constantly confused and just slackjawed and drooling constantly. They set expectations for him so low, when reality didn't bare out their caracicture they had to pivot. I think the implication they are going for is Biden was dosed with something to make him seem coherent, basically the weekend at Bernie's president. Dumb, but so are Fox News viewers, so I'm sure it'll go over just fine with them.
That said, it did seem like Biden was yelling a lot. The few moments where he slowed down to talk about some somber topic came as a relief to me. To put a metric to it, I saw in Politico that the written version of his speech contained 80 more explanation marks than last year's speech.
Their viewers aren't watching the raw state of the address. They're watching the sound bites, so the conservative media can sell it whatever way they want
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Gotta love these idiots' logic.
GOP: "SLEEPY JOE!!!"
Dems inject him with Adderall or whatever juice to get him going.
GOP: "HE'S TOO POWERFUL!!!"
Biden: "muahahaha!"
honestly I hope he did take stimulants- by all accounts a river of lab grade amphetimines and benzodiazepines flowed through the trump whitehouse. gotta level the playing field
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LOL.
It's wrong for someone to talk quickly trying to destroy people with facts and logic! No President should be allowed allowed to angrily yell at a crowd in a long speech! I need to watch Ben Shapiro and Trump for hours now because I'm so angry about these things Biden did!
I finally just watched it, and especially paid attention to verbal missteps that people are talking about ……
….. I saw lots and took way too long to realize YouTube search had given me the 2022 state of the union. Oops
….. back on track with the current one, and the President was on fire. So much livelier and more expressive than two years ago! Definitely kicked ass and laid to rest the idea that he is too old
Why are people still even talking about his verbal missteps? I ignore anyone who rags on his stutter. He's got a legitimate medical condition, and he works hard in his speech therapy to talk as well as he does. It has nothing to do with his mental ability, as there are young people with the same issue.
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