One of the questions that a person who is in on a temporary psychiatric hold is asked to determine if the person is sane and with it, is “Who is the president of the United States?” For the first time in history an inability to answer that may indicate mental imbalance, but not the way you think.
Here’s a MAGA at Saturday’s Alabama rally. She believes that Trump never left office. He’s still president. She’s a bit confused about what number of president he is, because she’s been ingesting a lot of sovereign citizen, the U.S. is really a corporation, conspiracy theory, but whatever number he is, she’s convinced that Donald Trump is still the leader of the free world, running the country from a golf club in New Jersey.
Woman in line at the Trump rally today says she is hoping that he is about to reveal that he is still the president and “never left … He’s the 19th president of the Republic … It’s going to happen soon, because God is in this, and God wins!” pic.twitter.com/ahDwklt94r
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 21, 2021
How do people get to this level of illusion? Take nine minutes and watch this video on the nature of mass movements and the philosophy of Eric Hoffer. Hoffer nailed it back in the 50’s. This explains the Trumpkins to a tee.
What’s amazing is that so many of the MAGAs and QAnoners are “normal” people meaning that they have jobs, raise children, shop at the market, buy presents at Christmas, participate in society. It makes you wonder how long this culture of ours is going to hold up with two different versions of history, two different schools of thought as to who is running the country, two perspectives about how elections work, two theories about the nature of the global pandemic and all its permutations, so on and so forth. At some point we need to get on the same page.
Maybe 2022 will illustrate how disillusioned rank and file Republicans have become. If there’s not a large turn out at the polls, that may be enough of a death knell for the GOP to where they dismantle their insane facade of the Big Lie. Right now it appears that the Republicans are banking on rage to take back both chambers of congress. Maybe it will work out that way or maybe the troops will decide to stop voting altogether. And if change isn’t made through the democratic process anymore, then maybe another civil war isn’t so far off.
Well, Trump is the 19th Republican president since Abraham Lincoln. Apparently Democrats don’t count.
We count well enough to know he LOST the election.
I will pray u find ur brain, ur heart, & ur mind…but YOU need 2 look since it is no way to go into the grave being this cruel, stupid, & lazy. At least get ur IQ above ur hat size.
I listened to the Hoffer clip. Essentially he attributes all mass movements to social and personal psychology. Of course psychology is a significant factor, and we all know people who fit the profiler of his “true believer” to a T. All this is highly relevant to the MAGAs. However, Hoffer (at least according to this summary) as an explanation of “mass movements” in general, which it purports to be, it is extremely inadequate. It leads to the following conclusions: all mass movements are essentially the same, and bad; collective hope and collective action, the cause of mass movements, are bad; specific issues and which sectors of the population are roused to action are irrelevant; the lone creative artist responds properly to social discontents (boredom? loneliness?), but intellectuals, even indirectly, help to cause of mass movements because they articulate and amplify discontents that allegedly stem from social and political conditions.
This sounds remarkably like the world view of a 1950s conservative, which is what Hoffer was. And although the great majority of MAGAs are certainly “true believers” (most of them were already true believers in a very un-Christian form of Christianity long before Trump arrived), this is not a particularly insightful explanation even of them; does it really explain the MAGA phenomenon to say that it has the same essential causes as the rise of Islam, the American Revolution, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Nazi movement, the anti-Fascist underground, the Chinese Revolution, the anti-Vietnam War movement, Black Lives Matter, etc., etc. ? Yes, “true believers” may be found to varying extents in all of these; discontent for sure, without which there would be no motiveation; but that is hardly an explanation, and the very fact of lumping all mass social movements together obscures the real factors involved in each of them.
For a more detailed critique, read
https://fau.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fau%3A32495/datastream/OBJ/view/Would_you_believe–____an_introductory_critique_of_the_True_believer__and__Eric_Hoffer_and_Cold_War_ideology.pdf
I listened to the Hoffer clip. Essentially he attributes all mass movements to social and personal psychology. Of course psychology is a significant factor, and we all know people who fit the profiler of his “true believer” to a T. All this is highly relevant to the MAGAs. However, Hoffer (at least according to this summary) as an explanation of “mass movements” in general, which it purports to be, it is extremely inadequate. It leads to the following conclusions: all mass movements are essentially the same, and bad; collective hope and collective action, the cause of mass movements, are bad; specific issues and which sectors of the population are roused to action are irrelevant; the lone creative artist responds properly to social discontents (boredom? loneliness?), but intellectuals, even indirectly, help to cause of mass movements because they articulate and amplify discontents that allegedly stem from social and political conditions.
This sounds remarkably like the world view of a 1950s conservative, which is what Hoffer was. And although the great majority of MAGAs are certainly “true believers” (most of them were already true believers in a very un-Christian form of Christianity long before Trump arrived), this is not a particularly insightful explanation even of them; does it really explain the MAGA phenomenon to say that it has the same essential causes as the rise of Islam, the American Revolution, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Nazi movement, the anti-Fascist underground, the Chinese Revolution, the anti-Vietnam War movement, Black Lives Matter, etc., etc. ? Yes, “true believers” may be found to varying extents in all of these; discontent for sure, without which there would be no motivation; but that is hardly an explanation, and the very fact of lumping all mass social movements together obscures the real factors involved in each of them.
For a more detailed critique, read
https://fau.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fau%3A32495/datastream/OBJ/view/Would_you_believe–____an_introductory_critique_of_the_True_believer__and__Eric_Hoffer_and_Cold_War_ideology.pdf
“…1950s conservative, which is what Hoffer was.”
Putting ideas or people in context usually leads to a deeper understanding.
These people who believe this nonsense about the US being a company and no President has been legitimate are beyond stupid. If NONE of the Presidents since that “incorporation” deal were legitimate, how then was Trump’s presidency “legitimate?” He was elected under the EXACT SAME SYSTEM that elected every other president since “incorporation” so either his Presidency is just as invalid as all the rest OR all the other presidencies were fully legitimate–there is no “in-between,” no “third option” available.
I’d also suggest that every single person who claims to follow the “sovereign citizen” movement should be reminded that they have no legal right to participate in any election that they consider illegitimate. That would cut down a large portion of the GOP base right there.
They’re making things up to get the results they want.
The personality cult ha become something else. It has it’s own demented mind. We are in uncharted waters.
Is it water or an ocean of shit?