Basic Glitch @ AcidiclyBasicGlitch @sh.itjust.works

Researcher in the U.S. trying to stay informed and help others stay informe

---

Read more

Posts

48

Comments

41

Joined

3 wk. ago

Moderating

---

I don’t think anyone has to be trained into this. That’s the problem. This is humanity’s default.

I think to some extent, that is the default when the amygdala is kicked into hyperdrive by fear and the prefrontal cortex goes offline.

But dividing the U.S. into such black and white extremes of left vs right is directly the result of the heritage foundation creating the whole moral majority narrative, and essentially creating an advertising campaign out of abortion and Roe v Wade.

Originally Americans weren't even very divided on the issue, but Paul Weyrich seized the opportunity and targeted evangelical Christians several years after the Roe v Wade decision was even made.

Even leaders of the southern baptist church weren't opposed to Roe v Wade at the time the decision was made.

I grew up in the southern Baptist church in the 90s, so well after the pro-life narrative had been established as unquestionable in the church. In no way was it some kind of rosey utopia back then, it was pretty awful, but even since then it's gotten more extreme and politicized. Straight up denial and disgust with the literal word of Jesus and saying things like "empathy is a disease," is something new that is being gradually inserted into everyday "Christianity," so that eventually (just like abortion) it will just be accepted without question.

Strict hierarchy isn’t their goal: it’s how they think everything already works. I cannot overstress: everything. If a rightful authority moved a “falling rocks” sign, the rocks would fall somewhere else.

I don't think it's all conservatives, but I think this relates to an inability to understand what empathy actually is. When people see it simply as a "weakness," or a tool used to manipulate and gain sympathy, they're either ignoring or missing a very important aspect of how useful it can actually be.

Empathy is a nonverbal means of emotional communication, and it allows you to "think about what others are thinking," and how it may or may not align with your own thoughts and conclusions.

The inability to do this, is actually itself a very big weakness that results in all or nothing/naked tribalism behavior. Then when people are like "why the fuck would you do that?" That's when you start getting the justifications like if I didn't do it somebody else would have, bc that's what I would do, and I can't really comprehend on a non surface level that other people aren't me.

I was listening to a podcast today about the Iran Contra and the advisors to Reagan during his first administration. This was when the Heritage Foundation presence was really strong.

They tried to keep Reagan from ever interacting with Americans at a one-on-one level, because they knew if he heard about something from an individual (rather than just an abstract group of strangers), he would often feel compelled to help solve the issue.

I believe that's kind of the case with the majority of conservatives, and humans in general. It's a lot easier to ignore something if you can't relate to it or if you just don't let yourself think about it too much.

It was still shitty that Reagan's policies ultimately harmed so many people, and definitely helped us end up where we are now. But it's also kind of insane to think that the people advising him literally tried to shield him from the reality of what his policies were doing to individuals, because they saw his very basic level of empathy as a weakness, and the individual Americans who were asking for help as "manipulative," simply because they were turning to their president to solve the issues he had created and had the power to fix.

I honestly believe the whole movement we're seeing on the right by Christian nationalists to convince people that "empathy is a disease" is a way to keep their base brainwashed and under their control. If they train people that anger and accusations of manipulation should be the default response to anything that makes you stop and think too much when something feels morally wrong or unjustified, it makes it easier to outgroup/distance from and label the people that are being mistreated as other or somehow less than human.

I'm not joking, this is the Soviet dissident that helped create and still runs the business (Russia House) to this day.

Look a little familiar?

Also, if you think that's bad, look at what they were up to just before the fall of the Soviet Union

And the fact that Weyrich was involved in the shadows of the Reagan administration when he wrote this op-ed after the Iran Contra.

Odd that Heritage Foundation members Weyrich and Krieble spent so much time in Moscow just before the fall of the Soviet Union...

Also odd they were there, and had everything set up and ready to create the first of its kind go between for U.S. and Russian businesses as soon as it fell.