It's all about the privilege

[CC27]

unblock (51,229 posts)


It's all about the privilege

PRIVILEGE

So much about right-wing behavior, logic, philosophy, and rhetoric can seem bewildering and hard to comprehend. How can they tolerate such obvious lying, hypocrisy, incompetence, grifting, and government actions that work against them? What did they ever really see in donald trump, who was largely a disaster even for republicans, with the notable exception of a few billionaires?

It's actually really not that hard to understand.

iIt's all about the privilege.

Privilege, perhaps a bit simplified, is that set of advantages on group of people has over another group of people; most importantly, for, well, stupid reasons such as race, sex, gender, orientation, national origin, religion, etc. Wealth is a slightly more complicated reason in that *some* privilege is probably justified on the basis of *measured, legitimately earned* wealth, but there are too many opportunities for undeserved wealth and outsized earned wealth, and too much privilege associated with it, making it on the whole a stupid reason in practice. But most of the other reasons for privilege are just unambiguously stupid.


The right wing philosophy is allllll about privilege. Defining it, encoding it, enforcing it, reinforcing it, and leveraging it for personal, social, political, and financial gain.


"HYPOCRISY"

So, when we think they appear hypocritical because they appear to be enforcing a rule against democrats (say, it's important to balance a budget so we must vote no on helping ordinary Americans, while ramming through a tax cut for billionaires when they have the chance), that's not really "hypocrisy".

It only appears to be hypocritical because they are lying when they say they believe in some principle about balancing the budget. they don't. It's just something they say because tactically it works to harm the Democratic brand by denying us legislative victories, and it works to deny help to poor people (in this example, or minorities, etc., depending on the legislation).

True hypocrisy is when you actually believe in a principle, but then violate it yourself. This is the moralist who rails against marital fidelity, then has an affair. With true hypocrisy, the hypocrit recognizes that what they are doing violates their own principle. But they do it anyway, perhaps out of a sense that they won't get caught or simply out of weakness.

Usually, in cases of hypocrisy, there are apologies and shame and promises to do better to live up to their principles. But today's right wing doesn't is incapable of feeling or expressing shame.

Rather, they fundamentally believe in a two-tiered system, depending on how they divide people into groups. Whites over blacks, straights over gays, cis over trans, christians over non-christians, etc. Rules apply to the out of favor group and do not apply to the in favor group. The rules are meant to define who is in the in favor group or the out of favor group, what the privileges are for the in favor group, how things are to be enforced against the out of favor group, etc.

It's not really hypocrisy because they are living their true philosophy, which is that the in favor group can violate rules that are really only meant for the out of favor group.


which brings us to:

DONNIE

Donnie's days may be dimming, but can still be baffling to try to see what anyone ever saw in him. He was always an objectively stupid, and incompetent man, the world's most thoroughly documented liar, a grifter, an obvious national security/blackmail risk, plausibly accused of financial and sexual/violent crimes, a serial adulterer, and a highly secretive many with thousands of confidentiality agreements, with a strong reputation of stiffing suppliers, abusing customers and employees, screwing creditors, and so on.

And yet, a third of the country went bat-shit crazy for him. Why?

It's all about the privilege.


Donnie does one thing and only one thing amazingly well. He is the epitome of privilege. *Everything* he has in life he owes to privilege. His wealth? Privilege. Born with it, inherited it. Multiple bankruptcies and overall performed worse than had he just kicked back and invested it in the S&P. He certainly didn't earn it.

But all his incompetence; cruelty; back-stabbing of partners, creditors, suppliers, employees, and customers; ethical failing, criminality, ties to our adversaries, and everything rotten he does only further proves that it's the privilege that got him everything he has. Because you can't attribute anything to talent or smarts or contributions to society or merit in any way. He didn't earn anything. He got it all be leveraging privilege.

So if your entire philosophy is about privilege, then donnie is your shining star. Because no one will ever be a more perfect example of privilege, of completely unearned status and wealth and power and success.

And when he was president and most of us objected to him tweeting all day instead of working? We missed the point. He *was* working. He was busy defining privilege, enforcing privilege, leveraging privilege. Constantly remining people that stupid crap like race and sex somehow matter, that it's against the rules for black people to protest about getting killed by government officials and so on.

If you're in the world where it's all about privilege, then Donnie was on task all day every day. Evil AF, but on task. Even the non-stop golfing and grifting (basically embezzling from the government by requiring the Secret Service to stay at his hotel so often). Leveraging privilege. Proving to everyone the value of privilege. Making his believers want more privilege and celebrating privilege. Showing them the (evil) ways of privilege.

That's even why they don't mind getting ripped off or effectively vote against their own interests. They're happy to spend in order to increase their own personal sense of privilege. They'd rather live in a world where the color of their skin entitles them to a better job and more pay than live in a world where they have to compete fairly with black people but then get health insurance. I suppose if you're incompetent and white, it makes some kind of sense.


ALL THE ROTTEN BEHAVIOR

MTG shouting "liar" at the SOTU address. Republican "guests" repeatedly shouting over Democrats on political panels. Interrupting, insulting, making wild and baseless accusations, just plain making up scandals, investigating non-crimes, etc. It's all an exercise in proving they can get away with it (privilege) and keeping the out of favor group down (also privilege).


Everything they do comes back to privilege. It's not hypocrisy. They are actually remarkably consistent. Consistent in their philosophy of for one set of rules for in favor groups and another set of rules for the out of favor groups.

and in truth, nothing has changed since the days of slavery. Slavery is merely on particular example of privilege that they haven't figured out a way to get away with.

Yet.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217635404

What a word salad. 

[Ralph Wiggum]

What a word salad. 

I'm trying to shake that up similar to a snow globe and make sense of it, to no avail.

There is a hell of a lot of elitist white LIBERAL privilege running hog wild in this country.

[ADsOutburst]

All those words to produce a totally counterfactual post.

Self-described liberals (and especially the 'very liberal' variety) exude privilege. They attack rural voters incessantly, even though rural residents don't have nearly the privilege of wealthy leftists.

[CollectivismMustDie]

I'm trying to shake that up similar to a snow globe and make sense of it, to no avail.

There is a hell of a lot of elitist white LIBERAL privilege running hog wild in this country.

The parts of the post quoted in the OP that aren't strait up lies, are pure commie 'accuse them of what you do' projection.


Nobody but nobody has more privilege than democrats and modern day leftists.

[RuralNc]

Dang. Is somebody trying to one-up the likes of Minnesota Moses and Kentuck?

Thats a whole lot of nonsense.

[DUmpDiver]

All Trump ever had going for him:

Better personal and corporate tax policies.
Better trade policies.
Better border policies.
Better economy.

And you DUmmies were privileged to live in this country when Trump was POTUS.

[DUmpsterDiver]

Dummy unblock is full on retard uncocked.  It needs a timeout and a nap FFS.

[Carl]

Hundreds of words that always boil down to the same thing...Gimme

[RuralNc]

Im still waiting for my white privilege to kick in. I have big plans. 

[Wineslob]

The Liberal self hatred is golden.

[jukin]

TL;TD;DR

Too Long; Too DUmb: Didn't Read

[ADsOutburst]

All Trump ever had going for him:

Better personal and corporate tax policies.
Better trade policies.
Better border policies.
Better economy.

And you DUmmies were privileged to live in this country when Trump was POTUS.

That's what I don't get when dems ask "Why do MAGA supporters stand by Trump when he lies so much?".

The thing is, Trump promised to do stuff, and then he did or made an effort to do those things. For once, a politician actually tried to live up to what they campaigned on.

[jukin]

That's what I don't get when dems ask "Why do MAGA supporters stand by Trump when he lies so much?".

The thing is, Trump promised to do stuff, and then he did or made an effort to do those things. For once, a politician actually tried to live up to what they campaigned on.

And that is why the federal bureaucracy (Big Government), a unified media (Big Media), and the uniparty (Big Politics) had to get rid of him, by any and all means possible.  He showed America that it was rather simple and easy to Make America Great Again after a century of the aforementioned groups destroying America.

[CollectivismMustDie]

And that is why the federal bureaucracy (Big Government), a unified media (Big Media), and the uniparty (Big Politics) had to get rid of him, by any and all means possible.  He showed America that it was rather simple and easy to Make America Great Again after a century of the aforementioned groups destroying America.

Yup. And there are trillions at stake for the globalist traitors.

[Dblhaul]

And that is why the federal bureaucracy (Big Government), a unified media (Big Media), and the uniparty (Big Politics) had to get rid of him, by any and all means possible.  He showed America that it was rather simple and easy to Make America Great Again after a century of the aforementioned groups destroying America.

Hi Five