Not only a fallacy, but also a supremely-useful propaganda tool. Claim that something Must or Must Not happen because of “the free market” and you will snow 90% of your audience into automatic agreement. (Because we are so very, very poorly educated.)
I only wish you were exaggerating.
Ah, my face!
Well, sucks to be them.
Oh well. Thoughts and prayers.
Thoughts and prayers? Nots to that!
I’m sending vibes. Not only does it do nothing, but mentioning it actively pisses off the White Christian Nationalists that make up Trump’s base.
May Allah be with them.
I prefer to keep my nonsense spiritual but nonreligious.
I’m sending tchotchkes and tuna.
This hurts my mind.
Wonder when Trump & Company are going to start saying “The Democrats made me do it”? For every unpleasant thing they do that pisses off their base.
I’m continually baffled how my college-educated Trumpist friend can simultaneously think Democrats are stupid and incompetent but also all-powerful and capable of elaborate plans and conspiracies. Doublethink - it is a marvel.
Is it that they think some Democrats are stupid and incompetent, and that some Democrats are capable of elaborate plans and conspiracies?
That’s cute. You believe “thinking” is involved.
This is nothing new. People engaged with conspiracy theories believe in contradictory things all the time. There’s a worldwide cabal of the rich and powerful who control every facet of news. Yet these world overlords are so incapable a random YouTube video reveals it for all and sundry to “research”.
Yes, there exists a non-trivial number of Trump supporters who simultaneously believe Democrats are incompetent while also believing Democrats execute elaborate, world altering schemes. Which one they favor varies on a minute by minute basis depending on what is more convenient to the issue at hand.
Which should be no surprise: it’s a *key component of fascism. Number 8, according to Umberto Eco’s description of Ur-Fascism, actually:
- The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
Emphasis added.
*Although, technically, to call any one component “key” as I have done is a bit misleading, as among Eco’s points is that fascism is more like a bundle of sticks, the bulk of which will be taken up by any given fascist movement, but which ones are left on the table will vary. So no fascist movement is exactly the same as any other, and yet they all bear a certain similarity.
I thought that was the origin of the term.
To be fair, that’s the same way many people see the Republicans - simultaneously a group of bumbling idiots and sinister masterminds. The reality is the party is divided into a majority of bumbling idiots (which includes the party’s supposed leader) and a small inner group of sinister masterminds, who manipulate the idiots.
I can easily see some people seeing the Democratic party from a similar viewpoint. Although I have to question the intelligence of anybody who acknowledges the reality that there is a major political party in America that embodies incompetence, corruption, lying, and law breaking - and then somehow misses all of the evidence of which party that is.
That’s true, but different. The Reich Wing believe Democratic individuals are simultaneously Evil Geniuses and Mentally Incompetent.
Broomstick refers to this person as “my college-educated Trumpist friend”. Given that, I’d merely recommend that Broomstick ask them: hey, do you believe some Democrats are stupid and incompetent? Also: do you believe some Democrats are capable of elaborate plans and conspiracies?
Do you believe they’re capable of giving two “yes” answers? Or would that be too, uh, cute?
A good example of this is that Joe Biden is senile, incompetent, stupid, and even a drug abuser yet at the same time he’s the head of the “Biden Crime Family” and must be so cunning, discreet, and masterful that there’s not a real, tangible shred of evidence of its existence.
Well, a bundle of sticks around an axe, but yes, that’s why I went with the metaphor (which I drew in turn from how I have heard in a legal context as a metaphor for how conceptions of “property rights” have varied across time and cultures). I don’t believe Eco uses the metaphor himself, but he is quite explicit that, in his conception, fascism is best described by a collection of traits, most (but not all) of which will be present in each iteration of fascism.
Well I would say that the vast majority are sinister idiots. In normal times, they aren’t much of a threat but with a compliant media and a public that has no immunity to inflammatory memes and talking points, their messaging carries.
Also, I never really think of intelligence as a single spectrum thing. I think many politicians, on both sides (but certainly more of the GOP) are simultaneously hopeless at skeptical reasoning but also quite shrewd when it comes to winning hearts, minds and money.