They’ve already got hyper-exclusive communities and cultural privileges nailed down and lavish lifestyles funded by cheap-ass loans and ready access to tax shelters and such. Next up: Life Extension. Serfs will have to scrabble in the fields.
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Exactly. The enemy is stupid, ignorant and incapable - unless they are being savvy and are successfully stopping us from doing the cruel, awful things we want to do. All they seem to be able to do is froth at the mouth.
And as others have mentioned, she has promoted voting for quite a long time.
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Within the foul, dank corridors of the GOP, “policies” would never be in quotes.
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this turn of phrase really bothers me. immeasurable amount? dude! people [followers] can be counted, so that means they are measurable! which also means they are not an amount, but a number [of people]. the correct way to express this ridiculous idea would be more that [she has][an] inestimable number of fans [followers].
/pedantry
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In his 1995 essay “Ur-Fascism”, cultural theorist Umberto Eco lists fourteen general properties of fascist ideology.[13] He argues that it is not possible to organise these into a coherent system, but that “it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it”. He uses the term “ur-fascism” as a generic description of different historical forms of fascism. The fourteen properties are as follows:
- “The cult of tradition”, characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.
- “The rejection of modernism”, which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.
- “The cult of action for action’s sake”, which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.
- “Disagreement is treason” – fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.
- “Fear of difference”, which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.
- “Appeal to a frustrated middle class”, fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.
- “Obsession with a plot” and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society (such as the German elite’s “fear” of the 1930s Jewish populace’s businesses and well-doings; see also antisemitism). Eco also cites Pat Robertson’s book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.
8. Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak”. On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will. - “Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy” because “life is permanent warfare” – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to not build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.
- “Contempt for the weak”, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate leader, who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.
- “Everybody is educated to become a hero”, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, “[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.”
- “Machismo”, which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold “both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality”.
- “Selective populism” – the people, conceived monolithically, have a common will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he alone dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer represent[ing] the voice of the people”.
- “Newspeak” – fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.
The fascists have pretty much made a clean sweep of the 14 points, but #8 is the one that is applicable here.
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… that’s sort of a stereotype but it doesn’t seem to be true — I mean she’s popular with everybody
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There you go, white suburban Democrats. The very last people the fascist want to be encouraged to vote! They are very interested in restricting the franchise to certain types of voters. Eliminating the 14th and 25th amendments are very high on their list.
Oh, hell, forgot, the 19th as well. Very high, that one!
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…and women, and democrats, and POC, and naturalized immigrants, and and and…
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Thank you! That was bugging the crap out of me, too.
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He’s mad at people registering to vote but I’m sure he’s fine with the way his people handle things.
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Well, but he can’t count too high, so it must be immeasurable!
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As Beau points out, both reading and voting are apparently anti-Republican.
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Fair enough. I like the songs of hers that I’ve heard, but can’t say I follow her closely.
That said, popular with everyone is not something you can say about Republicans, who appeal to a very specific demographic. The cross section of people at a Swift concert looks a hell of a lot more like America than the people at a Trump rally.
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Yep! I’m pretty sure I heard about this (from 2018) here at BB, in the first place:
Go to vote.org and you can find all the info. Happy Voting!
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“One phrase I find myself saying nearly every day is: ‘at the centre of every galaxy there’s a supermassive black hole’. I say it so casually. It’s a throwaway remark; like the sky is blue, the Earth is round, or Taylor Swift is the greatest lyricist of my generation.”
– Dr Becky Smethurst, Research Fellow at Oxford University Department of Physics. Quote from her book ‘A Brief History of Black Holes’.
Dunno why it’s so hard to imagine young women and girls being worth listening to, but some people really struggle with the idea.
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His tee shirt:
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