The paranoid style of the governing class isn’t new, you’ll find old records of them fear mongering about the threat of “birchers” and people like that. Their conspiracies and fears always center on a very primal realization that their systemic control of narrative (lippmannism) is really all that stops the masses from deciding it’s acceptable to just redact them with their big pickup trucks. Thus any sign they may be loosing that narrative control to various unauthorized actors triggers genuine hysterics in their ranks even if these actors are merely impotent right wing conspiratards
I often work with lower-mid level bureaucrats in county and municipalities and their attitudes towards the “unwashed” are the same. I had a few too many whiskeys at a conference a few years back and challenged one of them to the claims of all rural people/ people outside the coasts are “racists”. These people truly believe they are better than the rest of us because of their fanatical extremist ideologies, which they are often not intellectually equipped to wield or fully understand. The smarter ones will at least try to hide their biases (because, you know, they work in government and they ostensibly serve everyone) but basically all women and most men will let you know what great people they are and how terrible the “other” is at the drop of a hat. Can’t count the number times I’ve had to bite my tongue in front of a client with these morons.
“The book reduces mass political dissent across the political spectrum to a set of psychological types and suggests that the content of dissent is irrelevant to the motivations of mass movements”
How dare Russia inflame racial hatred.
How dare they step into the MSM's and DNC's monopoly of Balkanizing America.
The paranoid style of the governing class isn’t new, you’ll find old records of them fear mongering about the threat of “birchers” and people like that. Their conspiracies and fears always center on a very primal realization that their systemic control of narrative (lippmannism) is really all that stops the masses from deciding it’s acceptable to just redact them with their big pickup trucks. Thus any sign they may be loosing that narrative control to various unauthorized actors triggers genuine hysterics in their ranks even if these actors are merely impotent right wing conspiratards
I often work with lower-mid level bureaucrats in county and municipalities and their attitudes towards the “unwashed” are the same. I had a few too many whiskeys at a conference a few years back and challenged one of them to the claims of all rural people/ people outside the coasts are “racists”. These people truly believe they are better than the rest of us because of their fanatical extremist ideologies, which they are often not intellectually equipped to wield or fully understand. The smarter ones will at least try to hide their biases (because, you know, they work in government and they ostensibly serve everyone) but basically all women and most men will let you know what great people they are and how terrible the “other” is at the drop of a hat. Can’t count the number times I’ve had to bite my tongue in front of a client with these morons.
“The book reduces mass political dissent across the political spectrum to a set of psychological types and suggests that the content of dissent is irrelevant to the motivations of mass movements”
These context creators getting on my nerves.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WFWTBlEooFU