The economic model is that of private equity, with the U.S. as a captive country in the mandibles of a spider.
Once the value (power and money) has been extracted and the population is helpless and impoverished, it can be run by an authoritarian and/or Christian oligarchy. That oligarchy is waiting in the wings.
Trump knows he's not the endgame. He's just the spider.
WOW - you nailed it!! That’s the model they are using! Obtain control, strip the assets (even attempting to sell the CIA Headquarters and other Federal buildings) then leave the workers out in the cold.
And the Supreme Court let them do it.
Good thing I was raised in Detroit while the Unions were powerful and we weren’t exactly the safest city in the world much less the country.
Ok - do you want to play a game???
We the People aren’t going to starve or be ordered around by bunch of soft billionaires. Even your thugs can’t overwhelm us
When will the reckoning come? I look around me and everyone just seems to act as if this is just another Labor Day weekend. Just another opportunity to attend your team’s football game and cheer like everything is the same as it has always been. WTF?
Thank you Prof Ghiat, you deserve the medal of freedom.
On your live interview today, please don't forget to bring attention to the live press conference tomorrow (Wed. 9/2 @ 10:30) with Epstein/Ghislaine victims.
This could be the one thing that brings Trump down. He is trying everything to avoid the press discussing it, including the rumor he's very ill, and troops going into Chicago at the end of the week. We can't let this story be hijacked.
He and his admin are master manipulators, but we can't let this sexpionage scandal be forgotten, including that Epstein did not die from suicide, just like Ghisaine's father didn't "fall off his yacht." Follow the money, including the enormous money laundering by Putin (in the 90's) and his criminal oligarchs injected into our economy, with plenty of thanks to one of his helpers, Trump and his children.
If you're interested in more in-depth reporting there are many people covering this story in detail for years: Nina Burleigh, Vicky Ward, Zev Shalev, and Craig Unger's books densely footnoted, has long chapters on Maxwell/Epstein/Trump.
He wasn’t just incompetent manager of his multiple businesses. He made a lot of money from those while knowingly or unknowingly laundering Russian money through those failed assets. He did learn from those. As POTUS, he just has a bigger operation to sabotage, and has already made millions/billions.
Your Substack posts are vital if we are to keep apace, and understand the underlying causes of the authoritarian lunge for our drmocracy. Thank you for all the hard work.
Yes to everything you said. And yet there are three critical things I find missing in virtually every Trump focused narrative. 1. The pathological focus on Trump as the problem rather than focusing on the networks of bipartisan corruption supporting him and that will continue to exist long after he is dead. 2. The lack of organized solution building. We, the opposition, are starving for solution focused strategic thinking. To think we simply need to get our "democracy" back is to live in a world of delusion about what we had, how we got here and prevents building any kind of real solution. 3. We must collectively be the change, to be the society we want to have. Want democracy? Be democratic. (Looking at you Indivisible!) Right now we are acting like all we have to do is study more history, file more law suits and elect more Democrats. That only continues the behavior that let corporate greed and corruption grow to a Stage IV cancer that has spread to most, if not all, our business, education and political institutions. If we continue to fight the networks of corruption with Trump focused, outdated thinking and fifty year old tactics it is going to be a long darkness.
“If our religion is based on salvation, our chief emotions will be fear and trembling. If our religion is based on wonder, our chief emotion will be gratitude.”
— Carl Jung
Grace and gratitude—ruptured.
“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.” ~Nietzsche
Suffering and meaning—ruptured.
We have built a civic faith on fear.
Fear of irrelevance.
Fear of consequence.
Fear of silence.
Awe is absent in such a structure.
Lost in the architecture.
We no longer recognize it.
We suffer—without meaning.
We survive—without reverence.
We do not bow.
We are a people trying to survive without meaning and awe.
Dear Dr. Ben-Ghiat. Your writing has never been clearer. I particularly liked the previous post you referenced
"And then, one day, there will be a reckoning. It will come after the revelations and realizations of the terrible damage done by this autocratic government to the social safety net, to data privacy, to our well-being, to the very concept of human dignity in labor and life."
The anxiety I share has been once the reckoning occurs, what will be the final cost?
Today, I understand that in Washington DC, open firearms carry will be allowed. The timing of this announcement is inherently evil, coming a week after another school massacre in Minnesota. Having lived in Washington DC Metro during a period of obscene violence generated by turf wars among drug traffickers and authorities, lack of open carry laws was not an obstacle to the ease of murder of over 1,000 people. I flash back to January 6 - imagine the consequences if open carry was allowed at that time. Think of the lives of public officials who lives will be threatened. Think of the enhanced danger some officials will be facing as their security detail privileges have been revoked. The final reckoning will not occur as a result of nature taking its course or by accident. To reach the final reckoning, we must resist, every day, and using any means at our collective disposal.
Speaking of "laboratories of autocracy", I was recently defenestrated as a productive, well-reviewed, tenured full professor in a Trump-loving red state. Like the German emigrés of the 1930s, I have self-deported to a blue state, just as you (Ruth) predicted I would in one our first Lucid chats.
"But domestic power consolidation is only half of it. The most shocking and tragic part is that this sabotage of America by a sitting U.S. president is also designed to benefit America’s adversaries —countries that for years have sought to displace America as a global military and economic power." I understand the domestic power consolidation but I don't understand weakening America's power around the globe. Doesn't Trump want to rule the world? And, while I agree that there will be a reckoning, it's hard to imagine that the reckoning will come in time.
The Party of Lincoln has Become the Party of Vandals
Institutional hyper-socialization refers to the process by which authoritarians manipulate social environments to foster unquestioning obedience and conformity to authority. It goes beyond simple socialization and actively shapes individuals' beliefs, values, and behaviors to align with the regime's ideology, often through propaganda, censorship, and suppression of dissent.
Authoritarian hyper-socialization doesn't simply disappear when someone grows up. The effects of such an upbringing are often deeply ingrained and can continue to influence individuals in adulthood. These impacts can manifest in various ways:
1. Internalized patterns and behaviors
Individuals may struggle to trust their own judgment, constantly seeking external validation and approval.
They might develop perfectionist tendencies, leading to anxiety and stress.
Difficulty with decision-making and problem-solving can persist due to the lack of autonomy during childhood.
They may struggle with self-esteem and confidence.
Emotional regulation issues and suppressed emotional expression can lead to difficulty forming healthy relationships and potentially result in emotional outbursts or internalized stress.
2. Relationship dynamics
Individuals may find themselves mirroring the controlling behavior of their parents or becoming overly submissive in their adult relationships.
They might struggle to communicate their needs and feelings, leading to unhealthy relationship dynamics.
A fear of conflict and authority figures can impact their interactions with others.
3. Mental health challenges
Increased risk of mental health problems like anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem is associated with authoritarian parenting.
The pressure to conform and meet high expectations can lead to chronic stress and anxiety.
4. Rebellion
In some cases, individuals may rebel against strict authority during adolescence or adulthood, seeking freedom through secretive or defiant behavior.
Mary L. Trump, Donald Trump's niece and a clinical psychologist, has offered strong opinions on his mental maturity and psychological state, in her book, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man."
Mary Trump has stated that Trump is essentially "stuck" at a very young developmental stage, akin to a three-year-old, and is "incapable of growing, learning, or evolving". She emphasizes that this lack of personal growth makes him potentially dangerous as a leader. Psychological traits that are foundational in Trump's vandalization of our American Democracy include:
Developmental arrest: Mary Trump suggests that Donald Trump is essentially trapped in a childlike state, unable to grow or learn, and still seeking validation from his father, Fred Trump Sr., who she describes as a "high-functioning sociopath". This, according to Mary Trump, led to a personality disorder characterized by a lack of empathy and a need for constant admiration.
Fragile ego and grandiosity: She describes his ego as extremely fragile, constantly needing reassurance and prone to grandiosity as a defense mechanism to cover deep-seated insecurities. He may believe himself to be superior and deserves special treatment, while struggling with criticism or setbacks.
Potential for several psychological issues: Beyond what she describes as a severe form of narcissism, Mary Trump has suggested that Donald Trump may also exhibit traits consistent with Antisocial Personality Disorder, Dependent Personality Disorder, and a long-undiagnosed learning disability impacting his ability to process information.
Impact of family dynamics: Mary Trump argues that the family environment, dominated by her grandfather Fred Trump Sr., fostered a lack of empathy and a focus on wielding power and making money, leading Donald Trump to mimic this behavior. His father's harsh treatment and bullying of his older brother, Freddy, shaped Donald's fear of weakness and failure.
What, then, do we also known about Trump's followers and their propensity for vandalism?
Consider the likelihood of nihilists on the far-right. Last year University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter in the The Hedgehog Review wrote that he identified nihilism as the central feature of contemporary culture: “A nihilistic culture is defined by the drive to destroy, by the will to power. And that definition now describes the American nation.”
He pointed to our culture’s pervasive demonization and fearmongering, with leaders feeling no need to negotiate with the other side, just decimate it. Nihilists, he continued, often suffer from wounded attachments — to people, community, the truth. They can’t give up their own sense of marginalization and woundedness because it would mean giving up their very identity. The only way to feel halfway decent is to smash things or at least talk about smashing them. They long for chaos.
One version of nihilism holds that the structures of civilization must be destroyed, even if we don’t have anything to replace them with.
According to David Brooks, Opinion Columnist with the new York Times nihilists don’t believe in what the establishment tells them to believe in. They live in a world in which many believe in nothing. But still, somewhere deep inside, that hunger is there. They want to have faith in something. For the nihilist all of America has been a sham, that democracy and everything that has come with it is based on lies.
Faith in God has been on the decline for decades; so has social trust, faith in one another; so has faith in a dependable career path. A recent Gallup poll showed that faith in major American institutions is now near its lowest point in the 46 years Gallup has been measuring these things.
The F.B.I. now has a new category of terrorist — the “nihilistic violent extremist.” This is the person who doesn’t commit violence to advance any cause, just to destroy. Last year, Derek Thompson wrote an article for The Atlantic about online conspiracists who didn’t spread conspiracy theories only to hurt their political opponents. They spread them in all directions just to foment chaos. Thompson spoke with an expert who cited a famous line from “The Dark Knight”: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
Nihilism is a cultural river that leads nowhere good. Russian writers like Turgenev and Dostoyevsky wrote about rising nihilism in the 19th century, a trend that eventually contributed to the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. The scholar Erich Heller wrote a book called “The Disinherited Mind” about the rise in nihilism that plagued Germany and Central Europe after World War I. We saw what that led to.
The Purdue Policy Research Institute (PPRI) 83% of all 2024 Trump voters were either adherents to Christian Nationalism or supporters.
Many, like Donald Trump, may thus be exhibiting a form of authoritarian hyper-socialization.
According to a 8 Feb 23 research report from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), white voters without a college degree are twice as likely to hold Christian nationalist beliefs than their counterparts with college degrees. PRRI also found Christian nationalism adherents are nearly seven times more likely than Christian nationalism rejecters to support political violence.
"Trump’s rise over the past three election cycles “accelerated and completed this political realignment based on education that had been forming since the early ’70s, at the beginning of the decline in the middle class.”
Lack of education can leave young people feeling disenfranchised and seeking alternative avenues for belonging and validation, which can sometimes be found in rigid social structures.
Trump has gotten away with telling voters that "foreigners pay tariffs" because many of Trump's supporters are less educated. “The biggest single, best predictor of how someone’s going to vote in American politics now is education level. That is now the new fault line in American politics,” according to the “CNN Political Briefing” podcast. Why do you think Trump is attacking our universities?
Put another way, college graduates hold about three-quarters of the wealth in the US, but account for only about 40% of the population.
There's a direct correlation to politics. In 2020, according to CNN’s exit polls, voters with a college degree accounted for 41% of the electorate and they supported President Joe Biden 55% to Trump’s 43%. Trump got the support of about two-thirds of White voters without a college degree, but he lost White college-educated voters. And our education system is now reeling from his vandalization.
Finally, Steve Schmidt, former Schwarzenegger, George W. Bush, and John McCain adviser, asserted in a 24 August 2018 PRWEEK article before he co-founded the Lincoln Project that, "The Republican Party I was born into was a personal responsibility party, not a victim party. Nowadays everybody’s a victim – and Trump made this virtuous,"
This MAGA grievance may well be be fueled by an intergenerational loss of status and control, which in turn is leading these folks to blame their insecurity on the improving status of others such as non-Christians, minorities and the educated.
Feelings of victimization, as we've seen, can be used as a pretext to increase the risk of delinquent behavior.
Vandals try to destroy those things they they can't have or resent!
Trump's behaviors make so much sense when you view him as having evolved from an abused child. Democracy denies him the control he covets.
In short, the vandalistic path of destruction being wrought by Trump and his followers on our Democracy and law and order may be just beginning, as Trump quashes the legal consequences constraining such behavior in the name of getting even.
The Homeland Security Secretary threatens to “liberate” Blue cities with relatively low crime rates of their elected leaders. Republican governors & mayors do not answer why GOP leaders were willing to send National Guard troops to Washington or LA in defiance of the mayors & the California governor while not inviting the same attention to their cities that have comparable or higher rates of crime.
Why won’t Speaker Johnson & the GOP call for Nat'l Guard in Shreveport (3-4X higher crime than DC, not “comparable" ) & other high crime red state cities?
Noting governor DeWine’s office response that there are “no current mayoral requests for National Guard assistance” while disregarding the fact that National Guard have been sent to Blue cities & plan to invade more in defiance of elected leadership is shameful journalistic failure typifying MSM normalization of weaponized lawlessness.
Meanwhile, Kristi Noem proudly proclaims: “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”
One day there will be a reckoning…
You would think people would remember how many died needlessly during COVID but no.
The economic model is that of private equity, with the U.S. as a captive country in the mandibles of a spider.
Once the value (power and money) has been extracted and the population is helpless and impoverished, it can be run by an authoritarian and/or Christian oligarchy. That oligarchy is waiting in the wings.
Trump knows he's not the endgame. He's just the spider.
What a poetic arrow to the heart of what is transpiring before our glazed eyes!
And….(good looking cat you’ve got there!)
WOW - you nailed it!! That’s the model they are using! Obtain control, strip the assets (even attempting to sell the CIA Headquarters and other Federal buildings) then leave the workers out in the cold.
And the Supreme Court let them do it.
Good thing I was raised in Detroit while the Unions were powerful and we weren’t exactly the safest city in the world much less the country.
Ok - do you want to play a game???
We the People aren’t going to starve or be ordered around by bunch of soft billionaires. Even your thugs can’t overwhelm us
No law for you - no law for us
Detroit rules
When will the reckoning come? I look around me and everyone just seems to act as if this is just another Labor Day weekend. Just another opportunity to attend your team’s football game and cheer like everything is the same as it has always been. WTF?
Thank you Prof Ghiat, you deserve the medal of freedom.
On your live interview today, please don't forget to bring attention to the live press conference tomorrow (Wed. 9/2 @ 10:30) with Epstein/Ghislaine victims.
This could be the one thing that brings Trump down. He is trying everything to avoid the press discussing it, including the rumor he's very ill, and troops going into Chicago at the end of the week. We can't let this story be hijacked.
He and his admin are master manipulators, but we can't let this sexpionage scandal be forgotten, including that Epstein did not die from suicide, just like Ghisaine's father didn't "fall off his yacht." Follow the money, including the enormous money laundering by Putin (in the 90's) and his criminal oligarchs injected into our economy, with plenty of thanks to one of his helpers, Trump and his children.
If you're interested in more in-depth reporting there are many people covering this story in detail for years: Nina Burleigh, Vicky Ward, Zev Shalev, and Craig Unger's books densely footnoted, has long chapters on Maxwell/Epstein/Trump.
Mistake in date above, not Sept. 2, but Sept 3rd. I believe today victims will be testifying in the House of Rep. Tomorrow is presser.
saboteurs such as Palantir, today's Krupp
He wasn’t just incompetent manager of his multiple businesses. He made a lot of money from those while knowingly or unknowingly laundering Russian money through those failed assets. He did learn from those. As POTUS, he just has a bigger operation to sabotage, and has already made millions/billions.
Your Substack posts are vital if we are to keep apace, and understand the underlying causes of the authoritarian lunge for our drmocracy. Thank you for all the hard work.
Boom … Ruth nailed it … again …
Thank you !!
And:
Via the incredible, Ruth Ben-Ghiat
From Pulitzer prize (not Nobel, TY Jack!) & National Book award winning Journalist & Author, Tim Weiner:
“The President of The United States has gone over to the Other Side; He has joined the Authoritarian Axis. “
“Trump is not Putin’s agent; He is Putin’s ally.”
“An Intelligence Service(s) in the hands of an Autocrat is a VERY DANGEROUS thing..”
Watch / listen at Ruth’s Lucid Substack page !! And share !
Weiner won a Pulitzer Prize, in 1988, not a Nobel Prize.
Yes of course. Both highly prestigious but given for different reasons ! My mistake, thank you !
"An Intelligence Service(s) in the hands of an Autocrat is a VERY DANGEROUS thing..”
Which is exactly what we had during the Allen Dulles reign of the CIA. He was a fascist leaning sociopath.
Yes to everything you said. And yet there are three critical things I find missing in virtually every Trump focused narrative. 1. The pathological focus on Trump as the problem rather than focusing on the networks of bipartisan corruption supporting him and that will continue to exist long after he is dead. 2. The lack of organized solution building. We, the opposition, are starving for solution focused strategic thinking. To think we simply need to get our "democracy" back is to live in a world of delusion about what we had, how we got here and prevents building any kind of real solution. 3. We must collectively be the change, to be the society we want to have. Want democracy? Be democratic. (Looking at you Indivisible!) Right now we are acting like all we have to do is study more history, file more law suits and elect more Democrats. That only continues the behavior that let corporate greed and corruption grow to a Stage IV cancer that has spread to most, if not all, our business, education and political institutions. If we continue to fight the networks of corruption with Trump focused, outdated thinking and fifty year old tactics it is going to be a long darkness.
America: A Ruptured Culture
“If our religion is based on salvation, our chief emotions will be fear and trembling. If our religion is based on wonder, our chief emotion will be gratitude.”
— Carl Jung
Grace and gratitude—ruptured.
“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.” ~Nietzsche
Suffering and meaning—ruptured.
We have built a civic faith on fear.
Fear of irrelevance.
Fear of consequence.
Fear of silence.
Awe is absent in such a structure.
Lost in the architecture.
We no longer recognize it.
We suffer—without meaning.
We survive—without reverence.
We do not bow.
We are a people trying to survive without meaning and awe.
To restore meaning, we must restore awe.
Not by defining it—
but by making it felt.
😀
Dear Dr. Ben-Ghiat. Your writing has never been clearer. I particularly liked the previous post you referenced
"And then, one day, there will be a reckoning. It will come after the revelations and realizations of the terrible damage done by this autocratic government to the social safety net, to data privacy, to our well-being, to the very concept of human dignity in labor and life."
The anxiety I share has been once the reckoning occurs, what will be the final cost?
Today, I understand that in Washington DC, open firearms carry will be allowed. The timing of this announcement is inherently evil, coming a week after another school massacre in Minnesota. Having lived in Washington DC Metro during a period of obscene violence generated by turf wars among drug traffickers and authorities, lack of open carry laws was not an obstacle to the ease of murder of over 1,000 people. I flash back to January 6 - imagine the consequences if open carry was allowed at that time. Think of the lives of public officials who lives will be threatened. Think of the enhanced danger some officials will be facing as their security detail privileges have been revoked. The final reckoning will not occur as a result of nature taking its course or by accident. To reach the final reckoning, we must resist, every day, and using any means at our collective disposal.
Speaking of "laboratories of autocracy", I was recently defenestrated as a productive, well-reviewed, tenured full professor in a Trump-loving red state. Like the German emigrés of the 1930s, I have self-deported to a blue state, just as you (Ruth) predicted I would in one our first Lucid chats.
I’d love to listen to that episode.
"But domestic power consolidation is only half of it. The most shocking and tragic part is that this sabotage of America by a sitting U.S. president is also designed to benefit America’s adversaries —countries that for years have sought to displace America as a global military and economic power." I understand the domestic power consolidation but I don't understand weakening America's power around the globe. Doesn't Trump want to rule the world? And, while I agree that there will be a reckoning, it's hard to imagine that the reckoning will come in time.
Evil has zero bounds
The Party of Lincoln has Become the Party of Vandals
Institutional hyper-socialization refers to the process by which authoritarians manipulate social environments to foster unquestioning obedience and conformity to authority. It goes beyond simple socialization and actively shapes individuals' beliefs, values, and behaviors to align with the regime's ideology, often through propaganda, censorship, and suppression of dissent.
Authoritarian hyper-socialization doesn't simply disappear when someone grows up. The effects of such an upbringing are often deeply ingrained and can continue to influence individuals in adulthood. These impacts can manifest in various ways:
1. Internalized patterns and behaviors
Individuals may struggle to trust their own judgment, constantly seeking external validation and approval.
They might develop perfectionist tendencies, leading to anxiety and stress.
Difficulty with decision-making and problem-solving can persist due to the lack of autonomy during childhood.
They may struggle with self-esteem and confidence.
Emotional regulation issues and suppressed emotional expression can lead to difficulty forming healthy relationships and potentially result in emotional outbursts or internalized stress.
2. Relationship dynamics
Individuals may find themselves mirroring the controlling behavior of their parents or becoming overly submissive in their adult relationships.
They might struggle to communicate their needs and feelings, leading to unhealthy relationship dynamics.
A fear of conflict and authority figures can impact their interactions with others.
3. Mental health challenges
Increased risk of mental health problems like anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem is associated with authoritarian parenting.
The pressure to conform and meet high expectations can lead to chronic stress and anxiety.
4. Rebellion
In some cases, individuals may rebel against strict authority during adolescence or adulthood, seeking freedom through secretive or defiant behavior.
Mary L. Trump, Donald Trump's niece and a clinical psychologist, has offered strong opinions on his mental maturity and psychological state, in her book, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man."
Mary Trump has stated that Trump is essentially "stuck" at a very young developmental stage, akin to a three-year-old, and is "incapable of growing, learning, or evolving". She emphasizes that this lack of personal growth makes him potentially dangerous as a leader. Psychological traits that are foundational in Trump's vandalization of our American Democracy include:
Developmental arrest: Mary Trump suggests that Donald Trump is essentially trapped in a childlike state, unable to grow or learn, and still seeking validation from his father, Fred Trump Sr., who she describes as a "high-functioning sociopath". This, according to Mary Trump, led to a personality disorder characterized by a lack of empathy and a need for constant admiration.
Fragile ego and grandiosity: She describes his ego as extremely fragile, constantly needing reassurance and prone to grandiosity as a defense mechanism to cover deep-seated insecurities. He may believe himself to be superior and deserves special treatment, while struggling with criticism or setbacks.
Potential for several psychological issues: Beyond what she describes as a severe form of narcissism, Mary Trump has suggested that Donald Trump may also exhibit traits consistent with Antisocial Personality Disorder, Dependent Personality Disorder, and a long-undiagnosed learning disability impacting his ability to process information.
Impact of family dynamics: Mary Trump argues that the family environment, dominated by her grandfather Fred Trump Sr., fostered a lack of empathy and a focus on wielding power and making money, leading Donald Trump to mimic this behavior. His father's harsh treatment and bullying of his older brother, Freddy, shaped Donald's fear of weakness and failure.
What, then, do we also known about Trump's followers and their propensity for vandalism?
Consider the likelihood of nihilists on the far-right. Last year University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter in the The Hedgehog Review wrote that he identified nihilism as the central feature of contemporary culture: “A nihilistic culture is defined by the drive to destroy, by the will to power. And that definition now describes the American nation.”
He pointed to our culture’s pervasive demonization and fearmongering, with leaders feeling no need to negotiate with the other side, just decimate it. Nihilists, he continued, often suffer from wounded attachments — to people, community, the truth. They can’t give up their own sense of marginalization and woundedness because it would mean giving up their very identity. The only way to feel halfway decent is to smash things or at least talk about smashing them. They long for chaos.
One version of nihilism holds that the structures of civilization must be destroyed, even if we don’t have anything to replace them with.
According to David Brooks, Opinion Columnist with the new York Times nihilists don’t believe in what the establishment tells them to believe in. They live in a world in which many believe in nothing. But still, somewhere deep inside, that hunger is there. They want to have faith in something. For the nihilist all of America has been a sham, that democracy and everything that has come with it is based on lies.
Faith in God has been on the decline for decades; so has social trust, faith in one another; so has faith in a dependable career path. A recent Gallup poll showed that faith in major American institutions is now near its lowest point in the 46 years Gallup has been measuring these things.
The F.B.I. now has a new category of terrorist — the “nihilistic violent extremist.” This is the person who doesn’t commit violence to advance any cause, just to destroy. Last year, Derek Thompson wrote an article for The Atlantic about online conspiracists who didn’t spread conspiracy theories only to hurt their political opponents. They spread them in all directions just to foment chaos. Thompson spoke with an expert who cited a famous line from “The Dark Knight”: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
Nihilism is a cultural river that leads nowhere good. Russian writers like Turgenev and Dostoyevsky wrote about rising nihilism in the 19th century, a trend that eventually contributed to the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. The scholar Erich Heller wrote a book called “The Disinherited Mind” about the rise in nihilism that plagued Germany and Central Europe after World War I. We saw what that led to.
The Purdue Policy Research Institute (PPRI) 83% of all 2024 Trump voters were either adherents to Christian Nationalism or supporters.
Many, like Donald Trump, may thus be exhibiting a form of authoritarian hyper-socialization.
According to a 8 Feb 23 research report from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), white voters without a college degree are twice as likely to hold Christian nationalist beliefs than their counterparts with college degrees. PRRI also found Christian nationalism adherents are nearly seven times more likely than Christian nationalism rejecters to support political violence.
"Trump’s rise over the past three election cycles “accelerated and completed this political realignment based on education that had been forming since the early ’70s, at the beginning of the decline in the middle class.”
Lack of education can leave young people feeling disenfranchised and seeking alternative avenues for belonging and validation, which can sometimes be found in rigid social structures.
Trump has gotten away with telling voters that "foreigners pay tariffs" because many of Trump's supporters are less educated. “The biggest single, best predictor of how someone’s going to vote in American politics now is education level. That is now the new fault line in American politics,” according to the “CNN Political Briefing” podcast. Why do you think Trump is attacking our universities?
Put another way, college graduates hold about three-quarters of the wealth in the US, but account for only about 40% of the population.
There's a direct correlation to politics. In 2020, according to CNN’s exit polls, voters with a college degree accounted for 41% of the electorate and they supported President Joe Biden 55% to Trump’s 43%. Trump got the support of about two-thirds of White voters without a college degree, but he lost White college-educated voters. And our education system is now reeling from his vandalization.
Finally, Steve Schmidt, former Schwarzenegger, George W. Bush, and John McCain adviser, asserted in a 24 August 2018 PRWEEK article before he co-founded the Lincoln Project that, "The Republican Party I was born into was a personal responsibility party, not a victim party. Nowadays everybody’s a victim – and Trump made this virtuous,"
This MAGA grievance may well be be fueled by an intergenerational loss of status and control, which in turn is leading these folks to blame their insecurity on the improving status of others such as non-Christians, minorities and the educated.
Feelings of victimization, as we've seen, can be used as a pretext to increase the risk of delinquent behavior.
Vandals try to destroy those things they they can't have or resent!
Trump's behaviors make so much sense when you view him as having evolved from an abused child. Democracy denies him the control he covets.
In short, the vandalistic path of destruction being wrought by Trump and his followers on our Democracy and law and order may be just beginning, as Trump quashes the legal consequences constraining such behavior in the name of getting even.
The Homeland Security Secretary threatens to “liberate” Blue cities with relatively low crime rates of their elected leaders. Republican governors & mayors do not answer why GOP leaders were willing to send National Guard troops to Washington or LA in defiance of the mayors & the California governor while not inviting the same attention to their cities that have comparable or higher rates of crime.
Why won’t Speaker Johnson & the GOP call for Nat'l Guard in Shreveport (3-4X higher crime than DC, not “comparable" ) & other high crime red state cities?
Noting governor DeWine’s office response that there are “no current mayoral requests for National Guard assistance” while disregarding the fact that National Guard have been sent to Blue cities & plan to invade more in defiance of elected leadership is shameful journalistic failure typifying MSM normalization of weaponized lawlessness.
Meanwhile, Kristi Noem proudly proclaims: “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rp_IcNIki8