In-groups to protect, out-groups to bind. Many people consider themselves part of the in-group that the GOP represents. They get like a chemical high when their group wins, and a existential pain when they’re not winning. They even feel bad if someone else is winning in a way that doesn’t affect them, because they think in zero-sum terms.
They’re bad people. Ideals we hold up like fairness and justice don’t matter to them. All they care about is their tribe winning.
To add into this, those who aren’t benefitting in the now are told, and believe, they’ll benefit in the then, some anomalous point in time in which they “win” the whole game.
They’ll suffer with a smile because “my time will come”. It’s genuinely analogous with a lot of religious rhetoric, the belief that actions now will be rewarded in whatever form of afterlife.
And, much like how one will never truly be pious enough, when the time comes, they inevitably collapse on their own kind.
In-groups to protect, out-groups to bind. Many people consider themselves part of the in-group that the GOP represents. They get like a chemical high when their group wins, and a existential pain when they’re not winning. They even feel bad if someone else is winning in a way that doesn’t affect them, because they think in zero-sum terms.
They’re bad people. Ideals we hold up like fairness and justice don’t matter to them. All they care about is their tribe winning.
To add into this, those who aren’t benefitting in the now are told, and believe, they’ll benefit in the then, some anomalous point in time in which they “win” the whole game.
They’ll suffer with a smile because “my time will come”. It’s genuinely analogous with a lot of religious rhetoric, the belief that actions now will be rewarded in whatever form of afterlife.
And, much like how one will never truly be pious enough, when the time comes, they inevitably collapse on their own kind.
Maybe I should take it as a comfort that I can’t relate to bad people?
But it’s so hard not to feel dread and disbelief that there are so. Many! Bad people.
Sometimes it’s really hard fighting for a better world for all when you realize the number of cruel people who inhabit it.
Do I want to make their world better too? Yes. Ugh, yes I do. They just don’t make it easy to want to.