I don’t know about that. It sounds like some kind of moral failure. What I’m thinking of is an idea that leads to moral failure.
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Exactly. Such a better model than the inherent and lower-level conditions that we call mental illnesses. Thank you @realgeek for this metaphor.
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My understanding of Dawkin’s original intended meaning of the term is that the different bands of racism would be considered memes themselves.
I feel I’ve no way of verifying this however, since Google results for ‘meme’ are so tightly anchored to its much more highly iterated meaning for ‘a thing one shares on Reddit and Imgur’.
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Thank you.
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Being an evolutionist he’d probably see them as variants or mutated versions of a base originating meme, still carrying the core “DNA” of hatred for a generic Other.
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Ah, so alleles of a particular meme. That makes sense.
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Right? Like we’re just one ultra-powerful meme away from total submission. 
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Look, I don’t suspect right wing militias are going to rise up and start killing people. They don’t have to, the systemic destruction of our republic and a sitting white nationalist as president is doing all the work for them. Unless something very dramatic happens such as a military coup at the highest level kiss our nation goodbye. I live in Utah. I don’t trust my neighbors, but just in case they do decide to start ‘purging’ I’m prepared if needed to defend my home, because I know for a fact I have crazy white people living within a stones throw of me. Am I afraid of MS13 or Mexican drug cartels? No, btu I am afraid of white nationalists who if they feel the system is tilted unfairly against them, they will strike out. Right now, they don’t have to, but when you have these other hateful mouthpieces in the media goading them to kill, we all need to be prepared. I believe we may be on our own. the U.S. military will aid the white nationalists unless the coup comes from the top down.
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Bringing it back on-topic, this is why we can’t say “It Can’t Happen Here”. Scheuer is trying to spread a mutated version of political eliminationism that can bind successfully with Americans in 2018. This raises the further question of why the immune system of the American body politic is so weak at this moment (35+ years of steady attacks on it by other, less bloodthirsty memes is one factor; the mass media and then the Internet as force-multiplier vectors is another).
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I am seeing far right commentary characterizing objections to Trump as a “radical left move to dispose a democratically elected president”. It could be a frightening prelude to violence.
However the revelations of the Russian indictments gives me a feeling that we are already in the midst of a coup d’etat orchestrated by the Russians with the complicity of Trump, and apparently the bulk of the GOP.
The election results are increasingly looking tainted and illegitimate. The question becomes will the GOP band with the coup d’erat, or uphold our democracy and impeach Trump.
What do you think it will be?
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Yes. But this is not mental illness. It’s a calculated political statement.
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The GOP has spent the last 20 years gerrymandering to cement their strangle hold on the electorate. They’re not going to do the right thing while they hold the reins of power.
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I know you aren’t being serious, but it needs repeating that LGBTQ people were amongst the first to be targeted by the Nazis. The original book burnings included the destruction of early research into transgender people and gender dysphoria (The Nazis kept the list of people who had treatment, of course).
Unfortunately I have encountered the far right and their useful idiots using that particular form of holocaust denial too many times.
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Well, yes and no. I’m mocking those Jews who think that they’re not on the hit lists of American right-wing authoritarians at all when, as always, they’re an inevitable target. It’s serious stuff.
The reality, as you and anyone else who studies history is aware, is that fascists don’t go after their scapegoat groups one-by-one, eliminating one before moving onto the next. That’s part of the message of Pastor Niemoller’s famous poem.
Yes. They went after the work of this scholar in particular. For the Nazis the fact that he was Jewish was almost a side issue as they moved to wipe out any evidence of sexual liberation during the Weimar era.
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In America, incitement to murder is considered protected speech.
In America, urging that the President be murdered will land you in the slammer.
We’re the undisputed masters of the double standard, land of the ‘free’, etc.
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I’ve taken some time to look at his situation, and I’m pretty convinced he’s only in this to sell books and get paid appearances as a pundit.
It’s simply that it takes this level of vitriol to get yourself noticed in the right wing political circuit, so this is a calculated statement and not one made because he’s lost his grip on sanity. The fact that this drivel could bring civilization to a halt is merely an acceptable risk for the filthy lucre he stands to gain hawking his wares.
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Yeah, but the President was a hate filled home grown American bigot well before he was a Russian agent. The NRA has been a cabal of racist death merchants before the Russians spent a dime. The largest peddler of disinformation in American politics was an Anglophone operating in the open. The reason the Russians were so successful with a small outlay of resources is a strong and enduring streak of racism and authoritarianism that has been living in the heart of American politics for ages. So yeah, it is probably best to assume bog standard American fascism, simply because it is way more common than purchased fascism.
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@frauenfelder, these are not the words of someone who learned English in the USA during the 20th Century, you know.
Totally agree, but seriously, look at this text. It reads like something churned out by a Indian thesis mill or Macedonian agitprop club.
I mean, do the necessary? Does anyone of this guy’s era ever say that? Ever? Guys from that generation get angry over that phrase.
This is a shame. I read Scheuer’s book “Imperial Hubris” shortly after 9/11. It was an excellent book. However since that time Scheuer has become increasingly unhinged.
He must have watched that double negative Schoolhouse Rock.
