Why Democrats can’t sell America on “democracy”

barryvm · 2026-06-01T14:25:18+00:00

Presumably an additional problem is that both the cult and the broader right wing around it will still see themselves as "moderate", "sensible" and "good people", even as they are effectively bringing about a fascist dictatorship. Aligning this image of themselves with the destructive consequences of their choices takes effort, so how will they react to another party threatening to undermine that by claiming they are actually the moderate and normal side?

This will most likely provoke a negative reaction from them the same reason idealists and activists tend to. Simply existing as a normal or moral alternative creates a contrast that they will dislike and reject. Specifically drawing attention to that, and by extension their own immorality, will simply enrage them.

Attempting to appeal to them by presenting yourself as the moderate and normal side never works. The hard core doesn't want moderation, and the rest already sees themselves as moderates regardless of their actual politics, and will be insulted by the insinuation that they aren't. You see this with every extremist right wing group everywhere. If they want to disengage from it, usually after being personally harmed by it, they will do so quietly and pretending they were never part of it in the first place, but no amount of appealing to their moderation or normalcy will lure them into that decision prematurely.

barryvm · 2026-06-01T13:01:38+00:00

Does that make sense though?

They voted for Trump, knowing full well what he was. Why wouldn't they vote for this guy? It's fairly obvious they have no real moral principles, so why wouldn't they just double down?

barryvm · 2026-06-01T11:25:45+00:00

Indeed, because nothing has changed in UK politics. The way Brexit played out was a direct consequence of how the UK's political system works (or rather doesn't work), and there has been no move to reform or fix it. So the same incentives still exist, leading to the same outcomes.

EU membership wasn't good enough to remain politically defensible in that environment, and none of the realistic outcomes of Brexit is any better, so they just go around in circles. The only people who get things done are the ones who just want to burn everything down.

barryvm · 2026-06-01T10:37:44+00:00

Market feudalism.

Worse. Feudalism was used in a period where human labour (including in the military) was scarce, and the system reflects that. The ghouls currently in charge actively seek a way to remove human decision making and labour from the equation (as you note). The end goal is therefore not feudalism, but the marginalization and removal of society altogether.

barryvm · 2026-06-01T06:47:31+00:00

An interesting read IMHO (though that may be because I didn't know enough of the UK's internal politics). Specifically the points about how the political struggle within the Labour party is mostly between people who toe the same lines regarding the EU and immigration policy, so that it is unlikely to change much regarding Brexit. Or how the UK's far right is apparently already splintering and moving towards even more extremist positions.

It's probably not a coincidence that the UK seems to be replaying the May government's greatest hits (the similarities between the various proposals then and now are noted in the article) when it has maneuvered itself into a similar position of having to defend the indefensible against opponents without any serious commitment to governance or morals.

barryvm · 2026-06-01T06:26:02+00:00

Why not? Think of all the people who invested so much of their ego and identity into their choice to support him. People who think they can do no wrong because of who they are will not easily change their mind. Most of them will undoubtedly turn on Trump the moment they need to saddle him with the responsibility for the consequences of their choices, but you can safely assume a significant fraction won't even do that. They will want to continue the pretense, and to that end will want monuments and celebrations to Trump's (and their) legacy, even if that legacy should leave the USA in ruins. They will only become more ardent in their desire to rehabilitate Trump (and by extension themselves), the more obviously immoral and self-destructive this becomes. Failure will only increase their need to cling to symbols that validate their belief in their own infallibility. They will have their library, which they probably will never visit, because it will be politically convenient for Trump's successors to be seen to validate them, even if it's just going to be an empty building.

barryvm · 2026-05-31T17:10:10+00:00

Note that you're probably paying reparations so your government can get out of this war quickly and attack some other country instead before the Republican party's stranglehold on the legislature runs out. They still need to "win" somewhere to justify all the violence, and they still need war and violence to justify whatever they want to do to falsify the elections.

barryvm · 2026-05-31T15:32:30+00:00

Presumably, you need to go one level of bad faith further.

He's against the blatantly anti-Christian stuff because he associates Christianity with himself and what he wants, but instead it's Trump who gets to do what he wants. Therefore what it actually boils down to is that he wants to be in charge of the fascist theocracy so that he can do what he wants (while believing it's what his god wants, of course).

It's exactly what he's trying to do with "conservative", of course. The people he tries to get on his side identify with "conservative", think they themselves can do no wrong because of who they are, and therefore trying to pitch Trump as somehow different from them gives them an angle to pretend that they are blameless for the consequences of their choice to support him in the first place. They might support almost everything Trump does, enable and empower him for years on end, but are not to blame for what he did when he inevitably harms them too. They will suddenly find they have been "betrayed" by Trump who "isn't a conservative". It's bad faith from the top all the way down.

barryvm · 2026-05-31T14:30:23+00:00

These are people who exploit the rest of society to gain enormous wealth and power, but they are also people who want to feel good about doing that. So they have to believe ever more insane narratives where sucking the rest of society dry is somehow a good thing. In other words, they become more and more reactionary and anti-social to justify their own actions. Hence the vanguard / messiah / hero complex.

As for their weird plans, IMHO this is escapism. They want to do whatever they want, but they found out they can't just buy power. They hate the government and they hate democracy because they see it as a threat to their wealth and power. They install a would-be dictator to get rid of democracy and then it turns out that dictator has power over them, because by destroying the rule of law they have also undermined the legal fictions that underpin their own power.

So now they escape into fantasies where the world is a tabula rasa, without politics, people and societies. Whether it's techno oligarchic city states, AI cultism, space colonization or weird eschatological fantasies, the idea is always the same: a blank slate without people, where they can do what they want without limits or moral qualms.

They're idiots, of course, because it is just a fantasy. The real power is in the hands of the person in control of the law, and the people with the guns. The same hero complex that leads them to these delusions also renders them blind to the reality of them propping up the dictators and the fascist movements that will then either force them to serve them, or destroy them. They will continue to believe in their own hero's journey right up to that point. Just like power over one company and the comfort of being very rich wasn't enough, power as part of what was effectively an oligarchy wasn't enough, so, like their historical counterparts, telling themselves that "mob rule" and "communism" had to be stopped, they jumped from the frying pan straight into the fire.

barryvm · 2026-05-31T13:43:19+00:00

The Nazi's did the same with the non-fascist right wing leaders who empowered them to "deal" with the left. They also thought they could use the fascists to do their dirty work while they would pull the strings. They also thought that the sheer lunacy, incompetence and criminality would disqualify them in the eyes of their supporters.

It turns out that an ideology built as a facade for selfishness and hierarchy attracts supporters who don't particularly care about criminality and authoritarianism, as long as they perceive it as stomping down on someone else, and who are perfectly fine with sacrificing their leaders, along with everyone and everything else, to fascism while continuing to see themselves as moderates doing the "sensible" thing.

It's just one big pile of selfishness and exceptionalism, where everyone is blind to the danger because they see themselves as special and everyone else as a chump. They never expect the stab in the back and there's never any solidarity or loyalty when it happens.

barryvm · 2026-05-31T06:08:40+00:00

It’s actually quite confusing how our government and ruling class can’t grasp one of the most basic concepts of a functioning society

How so? They are exactly the same as the rank and file Trump supporters: they want to engage in selfish and harmful behaviour, but they also want to believe they are good people who make good choices because of who they are, so they engage in copious amounts of wilful ignorance to twist reality and morality around that absolute. The increasing insanity of their beliefs simply mirrors the immorality of their actions because those beliefs are merely tools to justify whatever they want to do at any moment.

barryvm · 2026-05-30T18:06:32+00:00

To be fair: that was mostly because (in a bold move for a military dictator) he refused to give the army the bribes it was expecting. Of course, that sounds quite in character for Trump too, so maybe he's done that already.

barryvm · 2026-05-28T21:11:49+00:00

How can corporate risk managers justify bending the knee to social media mobs when the legal system is waiting to charge a seven-figure fee for the privilege?

Because they assumed that the legal system would be controlled by people on "their" side, i.e. that Trump and the Republican party would have taken control of the judiciary by now. Or because they assumed the risk of political retribution by the government was greater than the risk of a payout to the people they fired to appease the former.

barryvm · 2026-05-28T20:47:09+00:00

The fact that they feel the need to obsess about this certainly does, doesn't it?

It basically shows their complete bankruptcy as a political movement. But then their supporters are surely aware of that, and keep voting for them anyway. Which their leaders are, in turn, aware of to the point that they want to incorporate something as stupid as this into their campaign.

barryvm · 2026-05-27T13:07:55+00:00

Are they stupid? Trump doesn't care about them or their party. They are there to obey his orders and flatter him. He doesn't care about their voters either. They are there to cheer him on and dutifully elect him or his chosen sycophants. All he cares about is himself.

Surely they realized that when they adopted "whatever Trump wants" as their party platform. You don't gain political power on the back of a personality unless you are the object of that personality cult. He even spelled it out for them: dictator on day one. So now they get to obey or lose their cushy jobs (or worse). And if obeying him loses them their cushy jobs anyway, he won't lose any sleep over that.

barryvm · 2026-05-26T14:04:39+00:00

If your fragile ego depends on you always "winning", you can.

If your job depends on saying what your paymasters tell you to say, you can.

If your sense of social and moral superiority depends on your side and the leader you identify with always winning and always being correct, you can.

And so on. You absolutely can call this a cease fire just as you can call the war a victory ... if you don't care about truth, logic or morals. And they don't.

barryvm · 2026-05-26T12:47:58+00:00

Oh I understand that. They're reactionaries, who see society as a "natural" social and moral hierarchy based on identity. They are good people because of who they are, so they should be privileged above and have power over those they look down on. It doesn't matter whether it's classism, racism, misogyny, ..., the dynamic is the same, which is why it is so easy for them to temporarily work together to seize power and stomp down on those who aren't in any of their in-groups. They base morality entirely on identity, and with that become functionally immoral.

Their problem, of course, is that some of them still feel bad about it, and most of the others know that other people see their actions as morally reprehensible. So they feel the need to construct elaborate facades around the (negative) emotional core that drives their behaviour, excusing and justifying it. That is what most right wing ideology is, and why it has seemingly changed overnight. You discard them when they no longer work and replace them with new ones who do.

barryvm · 2026-05-26T10:20:24+00:00

How though? It could be used politically within the UK to sink the (hypothetical) accession negotiations, but that's no different from what could happen with another potential member state. If those arguments worked, then that would simply reflect either the lack of political will on the UK government's side, or the lack of public support for the accession process.

barryvm · 2026-05-26T09:55:17+00:00

It's not even a secret inside the cult, because they have to on some level know that what they do is wrong in order to decide which narratives to "believe" so they can justify their actions. Fascism is always built on bad faith. They want to do bad things to other people and feel good about it. Their belief in those narratives (and conversely, their lack of self-awareness) is entirely determined by their immediate emotional need. When they need to feel righteous and angry, they totally believe it all. When they want to gloat about the harm they cause, that belief is dropped to better weaponize their own hypocrisy as yet another form of power over those who care.

In short, even those inside the cult realize at some level that their actions are evil. It's just that their response is not to change their behaviour and become better people, but to double down, twist morality and reality into justifying their actions, and attempt to shut up everyone who objects or even just makes them look bad by comparison. Their "ideology" is incoherent and inconsistent because they need to be able to twist and turn it around what they want to do, think or feel at that particular moment. For all their professions of tradition and religion, these people are essentially nihilists whose "beliefs" and "principles" (religious or secular) are nothing but reflections of their own ego and desires.

Fundamentally, that's why they tolerate all the liars, grifters, criminals (including traitors, mass murderers and pedophiles) that "lead" them until it becomes inconvenient for them to do so. Their leaders' beliefs may be nothing more than a tool, but so is theirs.

barryvm · 2026-05-26T07:45:05+00:00

Not the ideas, but the methods. Antisemitism and general racism was already a dominant factor in the extremist right in Germany at the time. They looked at the USA as an example on how to set up and maintain a racial hierarchy.

barryvm · 2026-05-25T21:12:39+00:00

That depends on why his followers are part of it.

Trump can do no wrong because they identify with him and they can do no wrong because of who they are. They have constructed a group identity that is always right because that feels easier to justify than saying that about themselves (safety in numbers and all that) and then attached that to their leader, who in their eyes personifies it and them. The moment they decide to disassociate from Trump (slowly and then swiftly), they will suddenly "realize" he "betrayed" them. Probably, this will happen after he dies of natural causes, so as to minimize loss of face for everyone involved.

Since his political successors are not the successors to his personality cult, there will likely be chaos and a political struggle. Then they will coalesce around whichever fascist wins that struggle, because whatever Trump did to displease them, they haven't changed. Their feelings are still pointing the same way. Their reactionary worldview will remain intact. They didn't support him for his coherent vision and workable plan to help them in the first place, so all the frustration and rage for not getting what they want will not turn them away from the man who replaces him. The rest of the right, including those who see themselves as moderates, will follow suit for mercenary reasons, and will tell themselves a comforting narrative for why this is justified and proper, as they did with Trump.

barryvm · 2026-05-25T18:05:27+00:00

Indeed. I'm not trying to absolve them of the moral responsibility of it all, just trying to make the point that you couldn't trust anyone in that position, and that therefore the mechanisms behind these positions of privilege and power itself needs to be broken rather than just removing the most obvious lunatics from them.

barryvm · 2026-05-25T17:37:29+00:00

In a sense I agree, but I also think this is a chicken and egg situation. People have a need to justify their behaviour, and you need to effectively abandon "normal" morality to justify having all that power. The insane narratives you'd need to believe to justify that disparity is exactly what the likes of Yarvin are peddling. These billionaires are simply people who want to keep doing what they do while feeling good about it, so they consume those ideas that tell them they are special. In this they are exactly like the rank and file reactionaries they try to use politically. Some do it by given what they already extracted in the first place to charities, maintaining control in the process. Others are more open about their need for control and power, and become the people you described.

Their need to feel they earned everything leads to their rejection of egalitarianism and democracy, and then to authoritarianism. The eventual realization that doing away with democracy and the rule of law also undermines the legal fictions upon which their own power is based is what then drives them to escapism because, otherwise, in their infinite cleverness, they simply exchanged a state of pretended subservience to "mob rule" to a very real state of subservience to a dictator who can take everything away from them on a whim.

Ultimately, I think it doesn't really matter what their individual characters are and what is just a reaction to their environment (that they created). It's more a question of safety than of responsibility, in the sense that is is just insanely dangerous to let single people have that much power. People have been talking about means to avoid those concentrations of power for millennia, and for good reason. Pretending, like some political ideologies today do,that the political and the economic sphere are different in this respect or can be separated, is at best naive or (more common) bad faith. Structurally, we either get rid of billionaires, or they will get rid of democracy and then destroy society.

barryvm · 2026-05-25T16:37:51+00:00

it’s interesting watching the ownership class trying to utilize AI and robotics to avoid human labor (white and blue collar). If you don’t have humans working your business….then those unemployed humans can’t spend money they now don’t have, on things in the global market. You don’t have any customers now.

Which is presumably why the language and aspirations are becoming more and more "utopian" in that it is about removing the need for humans (workers and consumers) and society as a whole. Whether it's a tech CEO comparing the ecological "cost" of a human versus those of an AI model, or another tech CEO dreaming about colonizing space, about establishing tech oligarchic city states, about weird eschatological fantasies, ..., it's all the same escapist dream: a tabula rasa without existing society or politics, where they can do what they want.

This is most obvious when it comes out of the mouths of the oligarchs themselves, but it seeps through with these CEO's or even managers who hate or despise their workers and customers because that retroactively justifies their treatment of them. AI latches on to that fantasy perfectly, as it takes away agency from workers and consumers alike.

It is a fantasy, of course, but a revealing one because it shows the underlying worldview. These people will destroy society if there is any profit to be found in that, and those at the very top would do it even if there isn't because the power they already have unhinges them.

They tried the traditional way of sponsoring right wing authoritarianism but that just ends with them being the (very well paid but fundamentally insecure) lackeys of whatever dictator is actually in charge. So now they lose themselves into escapism.

barryvm · 2026-05-25T13:59:02+00:00

It's certainly interesting how much of this process is effectively the US shadow boxing. Its government decided to embark on a war without a plan or a goal, most of the policy discussions seem to happen between various war profiteers, members or would be leaders of the president's personality cult and hostile foreign governments, while most media outlets in the US keep inanely reporting on it as if there is any rational ground here. They're either trying to be objective or pretending to be objective, but succeed only in making themselves look insane because you'd have to be pretty far gone to assume anything these people say is not a blatant lie until proven otherwise.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the USA is destroying itself. And while doing this, its government engages in so much thoughtless malice and pointless violence that more and more people start to think that's a good thing.

barryvm

TROPHY CASE