It’s also interesting to note how Hassett’s perpetual conviviality, regardless of the topic, is a pantomime-esque performance of white innocence. It highlights the way that any (im)moral content can be converted into aw-shucks goshdarnadoodily goodness through the mannerisms of white suburban piety.

He's a particular kind of liar. Trump is just a mendacious bastard who doesn't care. Johnson feels /entitled/ to lie because the people he is lying to are satanic while he is anointed by god to defeat the wicked. That's where his shit-eating christian smirk comes from.

Correct about the validation and supply of rationales but underemphasizes deliberate brainwashing. Much of what people find "validating" is only because it is the viewpoint they have invested themselves in even if it does not in any way serve their actual interests.

All these guys' goal, which also makes sense of their willingness to incinerate US influence in the world, is to control the US internally. They always want to empower the unit-size (family in personal sphere, nation in political sphere) that they can control. Globalization disempowers them.

Not only that, but Klein also commits the classic blunder of failing to define what the line even is. Trump voters live in a curated unreality and are blissfully unaware of countless events, so what are they even endorsing? This is an unseen blindness of US punditry that falsifies everything.

The point is that prayer is an abdication of responsibility if you are simultaneously refusing to do what is in your power. It has nothing to do with believing in prayer or not.

The targeting of Lisa Cook is the latest example of how selective enforcement is the linchpin of the American racial hierarchy. Accused of a triviality by a major criminal who is White, she becomes the criminal and he remains "law-abiding." It is the main mechanism of modern American racism.

The problem is that they value their guns more than they care about YOUR children. They don't expect their own kids to be affected.

It also perfectly illustrates how selective enforcement is the modern linchpin of maintaining the American racist hierarchy and people still fall for it all the time. A crime that’s not a crime if you’re White gets discovered by aggressive searching and presto, Black criminal / White law-abiders.

Not only that, but more and more people make themselves complicit and thereby align their interests with regime’s even if they are not otherwise aligned with it. The lukewarm and even opponents can gradually become its supporters and even its henchmen as their self-image becomes entwined with it.

Simple: It was the argument that allowed them to square their selling-out to stay relevant under a new regime with their self-image as morally unimpeachable guardians of civilization.

Trump forces people to compromise themselves to get/keep what they want and then they do his work for him.

The only comfort in this image is the body posture of the troops: casual and disorganized, a candid reflection of their and everyone else's knowledge that they are not needed. It's frightening because they're there all the same, but still reminds us of the limits of Trump's lies.

The social approval factor is true but there is also a strategic aspect that explains why demonizing others is as important as positioning themselves. They want to define themselves as the default because that is the way to have advantages while claiming only to want fairness. Zero-cost privilege.

He's Hambo, the Sandwich Rambo.

It absolutely is a vital feature because the alternative is a free-for-all that dominated by power. Expertise is an alternate, more accessible system that limits the scope of influence of other forms of power and legitimacy. These guys just want to eliminate forms of power that they can’t control.

It goes hand-in-hand with the equally unexamined fact that Trumpism is based on co-optation. Like the general public, the more the media acquiesce to Trump out of self-interest/to maintain access to their own power, the more they find self-legitimizing rationales to explain it.

People recoil at the downgrading of their human specialness but then frame the offending assertion as saying that “machines have the special sauce” instead of the more accurate “the special sauce isn’t really special.” We humans also just mimic human intelligence. It doesn’t hurt to accept that.

The question measures how socially acceptable it is for them to admit it (high and rising – notable in itself). But the true number is 99%.

The arbitrariness also implicitly removes the promise of protection that the law engenders. Having lived his life in a bubble of protection and impunity created by wealth and celebrity, Trump regards rules as just a nuisance; for us, the intact rule of law is the only means of enforcing our rights.