The Definition of Goodness

Again, writings from Twitter. I didn't expect this thread to be much of a deal, but in context of events today, it's a deal, because it illustrates what's happening in DC.

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Let's talk about this lie from the White House/Donald Trump brief. Yeah, the case is over. He lost. Again. But this needs explaining, and more importantly, people need to know some whys and hows about how we got here.

Walk with me. I'll explain.

[CNN IMAGE - FALSE CLAIM: Cites the "prohibition of local independent observers at polling stations" as a factor demonstrating that the election there was "not free and fair."]

I've spoken about how fundamentalist _culture_ took over GOP culture in the late 90s. It came out of not getting what they wanted from Reagan, of being told "you're with us, but not _of_ us; you need to put in the work."

So they did, for real. Signed up, did that work.

And they brought their political culture with them. As would, I note, _any_ already-organised mission-oriented cultural group moving into a political party.

But the relevant part of that culture here is their particular moral compass about what makes something _right_.

In their case, what makes something good and right is: _Does it Serve God?_

If it does, literally _anything_ goes_. It's all good and right as long as it Serves God, and God's Desires.

(See also how they tolerate no middle ground. That's another discussion to be had.)

It's not a lie if it serves the Greater Truth of God, regardless of any factual variance from worldly "truth." It's not cheating if it Serves God regardless of any worldly law.

It's all fair game as long as it advances the Will of God, God who is the _sole_ definition of goodness. All else is evil, and of Satan.

(Again, I speak of American political evangelical fundamentalism.)

And this is what they brought with them.

This is how they could quote a gay newspaper in San Francisco as editorialising that "Paedophilia is the foundation of homosexuality" and repeating that quote for _years_ on shows like, oh, Concerned Women for America.

But it's not just a made up quote. It's worse.

They wanted to avoid libel, you see. They quoted a real lgbt newspaper (Bay Windows) and that opened them up for libel in a big way.

So they'd quote the editorial accurately, by removing context to invert the intent.

The editorial was condemning a NAMBLA attempt (when they were actually a thing) to get into Pride. They were quoting NAMBLA to show why that REALLY shouldn't happen.

But the the fundamentalists would quote it as the paper's position, without ever _quite_ saying that.

Neat, huh?

Now let's look at this quote in this filing.

Is it accurate?

Technically, yeah.

Is there removed context?

Boy howdy, is there removed context.

The quote is from Mike Pompeo. He was talking about Belarus. _Not_ about _this_ election.

But the way he's quoted, they make it look like it's about 2020 and the US, and put de facto words in his mouth - that he's saying there weren't observers here, when there were.

That's the form of the lie.

But what makes it right? Serving God?

No. That maxim was a fundamentalist Christian cultural maxim.

Trumpists aren't fundamentalists. They just share a political culture. Their version of the maxim applies to the God-Emperor.

Trump.

If it Serves Trump, it's good and right. It doesn't matter how vile it is, how bankrupt it is, or far from reality it is. Because its _goodness_ isn't judged by rational valuation, and its _truth_ isn't judged by mere correlation to _reality_.

That's the wrong metric. Reality, rationality? Irrelevant. They have simpler rules.

For fundamentalists, it's Does It Serve God?

For Trumpists, it's Does It Serve Trump?

That's the metric; that's why it's a cult.

You can't really learn how to deal with all this moving forward - how to react, what to do - until you understand what they are. As COVID-19 has shown, they really don't care about reality. It's the wrong metric.

Even with him _out_ of office, that's what we're dealing with: a _literal_ reality-defying made-up-their-own-fantasy-world _cult_, where every lie is true and every fantasy is literally _inarguable fact_ - as long as it serves God-Emperor Trump.

React appropriately.

Why Trumpists are threatening to destroy the GOP

Today we have MAGAts on the DC streets pledging to destroy the Republican Party. But what does that mean? [Thread on twitter] [first linked thread] [second linked thread] Transcript:

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Holy christ there is so much to talk about here. Where do I even start?

THREAD, with links to _other_ threads.

[EMBEDDED VIDEO: Pro-Trump protesters pledging to destroy the Republican Party]

FIRST: Everything I said yesterday. In particular, the parts about the literal _definition of good_ is what helps Trump: https://twitter.com/solarbirdy/status/1337558659212083200

SECOND: everything I said in "Fox News and the Very Bad No Good COVID-19 Infections Map" thread, here:

https://twitter.com/solarbirdy/status/1336422328012398593

(Also here if twitter threads are annoying: https://solarbird.dreamwidth.org/1780738.html )

THIRD: How much do you know about Stalin and the Third Communist International? Because this is Stalin and the Third International's Seventh World Congress.

And that's kind of obscure.

What it means is purging everyone _allied_ with you, but not _of_ you. It's a power play.

Authoritarians all have something in common: you can't be a peer. You can't be an ally. You have to know who the fuck is in charge and know it's not you, and that everything you have, you owe to the authoritarian, who can take it at any moment.

In Stalin's case, that meant wiping out all other _communist_ movements, and declaring all non-communist _socialist_ movements to be Enemies of the Working Class, whether they were working class or not. Because they weren't Stalinists, and authoritarians don't share power.

If you wanted to be a Communist, you _had to_ be Stalinist, or you wouldn't be around much longer. They'd make sure of that, and did. (Just ask Trotsky! And many others.)

In this MAGA/neofascist moment, what they're putting out here is that if you want to be a Conservative, you _have to_ be a Trumpist, or you won't be around much longer. Politically, at least. For now.

They'll make sure of it.

Their only definition for RINO is lacking absolute loyalty to Trump, _including_ overriding the election results.

If you want to be a Conservative, if you want to be a Republican, you _have to_ support Trump's coup attempt, at _every. turn._, law be damned.

Or they'll take you down.

As Stalin destroyed all other Communists, Trump is destroying any other form of "Conservative" or "Republican" to gain absolute control of - for now, anyway - what it means to be either of those.

To insure you can have no power - no _anything_ - without Trump as your leader.

If you are not as familiar with the history of Communist politics, perhaps you've heard of the Führerprinzip, from fascist Germany.

This? This is the Führerprinzip for MAGAts, on the streets.

An action is legal because it benefits Trump. An action is good because it benefits Trump. Any contradiction or opposition to that must be eliminated, in favour of Trump.

You're seeing their attempt to make that play out _right now_. The Georgia runoffs will test their power. The two Republican candidates need to lose regardless, but the question is whether they embrace Trumpism - including throwing out the election - along the way.

If they do, and win, it benefits Trump, demonstrating his power.

If they do, and lose, it's because The Election Was Rigged, furthering Trump's theft/ressentiment narrative.

If they do not, it's because they were RINOs insufficiently loyal to Trump, and he's demonstrated his power though his base.

Sure, it further destabilises the country and democratic rule. But _by definition_ "Good" is what benefits God-Emperor Trump.

He has no downside here.

So what matters is keeping _all_ of them out of power, _forever_. Fascists hate the "weak," which means losers. Trump is _extremely_ vulnerable at the moment; if he's forced to step down because of the election, that will make him weaker, despite all his bluster.

But it _cannot_ just be him. It has to be _everyone_ who went in with him. Literally every single one.

Trump wants to be the Only Conservativism, the Only Republicanism.

What he _needs_ to be is an electoral death sentence.

Everyone who bent that knee has to go.

Forever.

Writing on Twitter is weird

[Link to thread on twitter, as I'm using Twitterisms for best effect]

Writing on Twitter is weird.

It has its own rhythms, and its own phrasing, and in a way, every tweet is a paragraph...

...even when technically it's two.

Not to mention what tweet breaks do to you. And character limits. Each step of your progression of thought has to fit within them, whether you like it or not.

And it _really_ encourages short, punchy stops.

It's a little like journalism writing in some ways. It promotes short sentences with lots of subtle recapping, lots of making sure that if someone comes into the middle of your thread, they have enough idea what's going on to pull in the rest of the context, whether it's up...

...or back down.

Aheh. But most of all...

...it's all so very first draft. You don't get to go back and make edits, at least, not very far, because you'll break the thread. You don't even want to delete _any_ tweet, even the last one, because you might break Twitter threading. And that's bad.

It really forces you to plan your writing differently.

The informality is freeing, but the inability to revise is a real constraint. It's get it right (or right enough) the first time, or throw it _all_ out and start over, and who has time for _that?_

I know that some people write their tweetstorm threads (like this one) in advance, to get around this whole issue. I don't. I've tried it once or twice, I'm not a fan. I'm writing this live, right now.

I think I do it this way _because_ it's so unlike my usual writing. It's entertaining, like a puzzle box. It makes me think differently about writing than usual, and I think that's good.

But when you take it over to a longer-form media, it _really_ does not hold up as well.

Which is why when I post this stuff over to Tumblr - which I do, when I think it's good - I do it in screencaps, then post the text as a transcription.

It works better that way. My interaction numbers bear that out _quite clearly_.

I think because you get the tweet breaks.

That's not really an option on Dreamwidth. I kind of consider that an archive anyway, so I'm fine with it.

But while I don't bother making corrections on Tumblr (where I have the largest audience), I _do_ make them on Dreamwidth.

Because on a blog, wow, a dropped word or a missing letter turning one word into another word ("them" becomes, say, "the") just _leaps_ out at you.

I don't think that makes writing on twitter _bad_, mind you. It's one particular form. It exercises certain parts of writing, while ignoring others.

But it has a _lot_ of limitations and a _lot_ of constraints and I sure as hell wouldn't want it to be my _only_ form.

And the oddest part - the part I really don't get - is why posting screencaps of my writing here to Tumblr gets so much larger an audience _on Tumblr_ than _here_, on the original threads.

I mean, that's just bizarre to me. Yes, I have more followers there - about twice as many.

But on election night I wrote a thread on the peak Trump map. Then I screencapped it over to Tumblr.

Twitter: 47 likes and retweets. 2375 impressions. For me, that's a lot.

Tumblr: 18,613 likes and reblogs. North of 400,000 impressions - I have to make some assumptions to get that second number, but they're reasonable.

All on a post made of _screencaps_, copied from _twitter_.

And I look at that difference and I just go...

What

_the_

fuck.

That post was exceptional, _but still_.

So when I say "writing on twitter is weird," I mean, _writing on twitter is weird_.

Still, I do it. Partly because it's puzzlebox writing and that's fun, but partly because once in a while... I end up with numbers like _that_.

But _only_ when it's copied somewhere else.

Weird.

Twitter is...

weird.