#the true believer

[and-then-there-were-n0ne]

The readiness for self-sacrifice is contingent on an imperviousness to the realities of life. He who is free to draw conclusions from his individual experience and observation is not usually hospitable to the idea of martyrdom. For self-sacrifice is an unreasonable act. It cannot be the end-product of a process of probing and deliberating. All active mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. They do this by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude outside it. The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ. “So tenaciously should we cling to the world revealed by the Gospel, that were I to see all the Angels of Heaven coming down to me to tell me something different, not only would I not be tempted to doubt a single syllable, but I would shut my eyes and stop my ears, for they would not deserve to be either seen or heard.”

To rely on the evidence of the senses and of reason is heresy and treason. It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs. The fanatical Communist refuses to believe any unfavorable report or evidence about Russia, nor will he be disillusioned by seeing with his own eyes the cruel misery inside the Soviet promised land.

It is the true believer’s ability to “shut his eyes and stop his ears” to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy. He cannot be frightened by danger nor disheartened by obstacles nor baffleed by contradictions because he denies their existence. Strength of faith, as Bergson pointed out, manifests itself not in moving mountains but in not seeing mountains to move.

And it is the certitude of his infallible doctrine that renders the true believer impervious to the uncertainties, surprises and the unpleasant realities of the world around him. Thus the effectiveness of a doctrine should not be judged by its profundity, sublimity or the validity of the truths it embodies, but by how thoroughly it insulates the individual from his self and the world as it is. What Pascal said of an effective religion is true of any effective doctrine: it must be “contrary to nature, to common sense and to pleasure.”

The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth. It must be the one word from which all things are and all things speak.

Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for self-sacrifice if they are accepted as the sole, eternal truth. It is obvious, therefore, that in order to be effective a doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength. [...]

The devout are always urged to seek the absolute truth with their hearts and not their minds. “It is the heart which is conscious of God, not the reason.” Rudolph Hess, when swearing in the entire Nazi party in 1934, exhorted his hearers: “Do not seek Adolph Hitler with your brains; all of you will find him with the strength of your hearts.”

When a movement begins to rationalize its doctrine and make it intelligible, it is a sign that its dynamic span is over; that it is primarily interested in stability. For, as will be shown later, the stability of a regime requires the allegiance of the intellectuals, and it is to win them rather than to foster self-sacrifice in the masses that a doctrine is made intelligible.

If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable. [...] When some part of a doctrine is relatively simple, there is a tendency among the faithful to complicate and obscure it. Simple words are made pregnant with meaning and made to look like symbols in a secret message. There is thus an illiterate air about the most literate true believer. He seems to use words as if he were ignorant of their true meaning. Hence, too, his taste for quibbling, hair-splitting and scholastic tortuousness.

— Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Quote of the Day. stevebrodner.substack.com

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 13, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 13, 2024

“He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country…a fascist to the core.” 

This is how former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer and the primary military advisor to the president, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council, described former president Donald Trump to veteran journalist Bob Woodward. Trump appointed Milley to that position. 

Since he announced his presidential candidacy in June 2015 by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, Trump has trafficked in racist anti-immigrant stories. But since the September 10 presidential debate when he drew ridicule for his outburst regurgitating the lie that legal Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their white neighbors’ pets, Trump has used increasingly fascist rhetoric. By this weekend, he had fully embraced the idea that the United States is being overrun by Black and Brown criminals and that they, along with their Democratic accomplices, must be rounded up, deported, or executed, with the help of the military. 

Myah Ward of Politico noted on October 12 that Trump’s speeches have escalated to the point that he now promises that he alone can save the country from those people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.” He falsely claims Vice President Kamala Harris “has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world…from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens.” 

Trump’s behavior is Authoritarianism 101. In a 1951 book called The True Believer, political philosopher Eric Hoffer noted that demagogues appeal to a disaffected population whose members feel they have lost the power they previously held, that they have been displaced either religiously, economically, culturally, or politically. Such people are willing to follow a leader who promises to return them to their former positions of prominence and thus to make the nation great again. 

But to cement their loyalty, the leader has to give them someone to hate. Who that is doesn't really matter: the group simply has to be blamed for all the troubles the leader’s supporters are suffering. Trump has kept his base firmly behind him by demonizing immigrants, the media, and, increasingly, Democrats, deflecting his own shortcomings by blaming these groups for undermining him. 

According to Hoffer, there’s a psychological trick to the way this rhetoric works that makes loyalty to such a leader get stronger as that leader's behavior deteriorates. People who sign on to the idea that they are standing with their leader against an enemy begin to attack their opponents, and in order to justify their attacks, they have to convince themselves that that enemy is not good-intentioned, as they are, but evil. And the worse they behave, the more they have to believe their enemies deserve to be treated badly.

According to Hoffer, so long as they are unified against an enemy, true believers will support their leader no matter how outrageous his behavior gets. Indeed, their loyalty will only grow stronger as his behavior becomes more and more extreme. Turning against him would force them to own their own part in his attacks on those former enemies they would now have to recognize as ordinary human beings like themselves.

At a MAGA rally in Aurora, Colorado, on October 11, Trump added to this formula his determination to use the federal government to attack those he calls enemies. Standing on a stage with a backdrop that read, “DEPORT ILLEGALS NOW” and “END MIGRANT CRIME,” he insisted that the city had been taken over by Venezuelan gangs and proposed a federal program he called “Operation Aurora” to remove those immigrants he insists are members of “savage gangs.” When Trump said, “We have to live with these animals, but we won’t live with them for long,” a person in the crowd shouted: “Kill them!”

Officials in Aurora emphatically deny Trump’s claim that the city is a “war zone.” Republican mayor Mike Coffman said that Aurora is “not a city overrun by Venezuelan gangs” and that such statements are “grossly exaggerated.” While there have been incidents, they “were limited to several apartment complexes in this city of more than 400,000 residents.” The chief of the Aurora police agreed that the city is “not by any means overtaken by Venezuelan gangs.”

In Aurora, Trump also promised to “invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.” As legal analyst Asha Rangappa explains, the Alien Enemies Act authorizes the government to round up, detain, and deport foreign nationals of a country with which the U.S. is at war. But it is virtually certain Trump didn’t come up with the idea to use that law on his own, raising the question of who really will be in charge of policy in a second Trump administration.

Trump aide Stephen Miller seems the likely candidate to run immigration policy. He has promised to begin a project of “denaturalization,” that is, stripping naturalized citizens of their citizenship. He, too, spoke at Aurora, leading the audience in booing photos that were allegedly of migrant criminals. 

Before Miller spoke, a host from Right Side Broadcasting used the dehumanizing language associated with genocide, saying of migrants: “These people, they are so evil. They are not your run-of-the-mill criminal. They are people that are Satanic. They are involved in human sacrifice. They are raping men, women, and children—especially underaged children." Trump added the old trope of a population carrying disease, saying that immigrants are “very very very sick with highly contagious disease, and they’re let into our country to infect our country.” 

Trump promised the audience in Aurora that he would “liberate Colorado. I will give you back your freedom and your life.”

On Saturday, October 12, Trump held a rally in Coachella, California, where temperatures near 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) sparked heat-related illnesses in his audience as he spoke for about 80 minutes in the apocalyptic vein he has adopted lately. After the rally, shuttle buses failed to arrive to take attendees back to their cars, leaving them stranded.  

And on Sunday, October 13, Trump made the full leap to authoritarianism, calling for using the federal government not only against immigrants, but also against his political opponents. After weeks of complaining about the “enemy within,” Trump suggested that those who oppose him in the 2024 election are the nation’s most serious problem. 

He told Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo that even more troubling for the forthcoming election than immigrants "is the enemy from within…we have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics…. And it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military."

Trump’s campaign seems to be deliberately pushing the comparisons to historic American fascism by announcing that Trump will hold a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on October 27, an echo of a February 1939 rally held there by American Nazis in honor of President George Washington’s birthday. More than 20,000 people showed up for the “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas.

Trump’s full-throated embrace of Nazi “race science” and fascism is deadly dangerous, but there is something notable about Trump’s recent rallies that undermines his claims that he is winning the 2024 election. Trump is not holding these rallies in the swing states he needs to win but rather is holding them in states—Colorado, California, New York—that he is almost certain to lose by a lot.

Longtime Republican operative Matthew Bartlett told Matt Dixon and Allan Smith of NBC News: “This does not seem like a campaign putting their candidate in critical vote-rich or swing vote locations—it seems more like a candidate who wants his campaign to put on rallies for optics and vibes.” 

Trump seems eager to demonstrate that he is a strongman, a dominant candidate, when in fact he has refused another debate with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and backed out of an interview with 60 Minutes. He has refused to release a medical report although his mental acuity is a topic of concern as he rambles through speeches and seems entirely untethered from reality. And as Harris turns out larger numbers for her rallies in swing states than he does, he appears to be turning bloodthirsty in Democratic areas. 

Today, Harris told a rally of her own in North Carolina: “[Trump] is not being transparent…. He refuses to release his medical records. I've done it. Every other presidential candidate in the modern era has done it. He is unwilling to do a 60 Minutes interview like every other major party candidate has done for more than half a century. He is unwilling to meet for a second debate…. It makes you wonder, why does his staff want him to hide away?... Are they afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable to lead America? Is that what’s going on?” 

“For these reasons and so many more,” she said, “it is time to turn the page.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[carolinemillerbooks]

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/the-overthrow-of-reason/

The Overthrow Of Reason

When a high-speed train is barrelling down the track, a person who knows the trestle ahead has been washed away has one obligation–to run in the direction of the impending disaster in the hope of assisting survivors.  Those of us who sense our country is nearing a failed state face the same obligation. Explanations may vary about how our democracy came to this pass. One reason is fear.  Many of us feel our way of life is threatened by a growing number of strangers different from ourselves. Feeling alienated, some of us fall into a frenzy, hoping to preserve what’s familiar but ending up morphing into agents of chaos, ready to destroy the country in a misguided effort to save it. The philosopher Eric Hoffer once noted that the human psyche requires us to believe in the devil.  Hitler depended upon our dark side. If Jews didn’t exist he once said, they would have to be invented. (The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer, Harperennial, Modern Classics, 1989, pg. 91.) Hate has its purpose, Hoffer admits. It releases us from the burden of thought and narrows freedom to a one-way street that ends in tyranny.  The absolute right to bear arms, for example, absolves many from guilt when they see children murdered in their classrooms.   Those who cry, “Right to Life” are similarly infected. Religious conservatives who are willing to impose their absolutes upon believers and non-believers alike seem unmoved by the reality that antiabortion laws result in women’s deaths. Fanaticism, if allowed to grow, drives a stake through the heart of reason. What flourishes in its place are lies. Donald Trump insists the 2020  Presidential election was stolen from him.  His flock echoes the refrain until the lie gains the ring of truth. Oddly enough, there is a reason for this phenomenon. Scientists have proved that people accept lies more readily than truth. Why?  No one knows. Yet it is a fact that robots detect falsehoods better than humans. Lies are common in politics.  A majority of voters believe Democrats are spendthrifts and Republicans are better at handling the national debt. The truth is the opposite.  Reagan took the deficit from $70 billion to $175 billion. Bush 41 raised it to $300 billion. Clinton got it to zero. Bush 43 took it from zero to $1.2 trillion.  Obama halved it to $600 billion.  Trump raised it again to a trillion.     People even lie to themselves. Republican House Representative Lauren Boebert imagined she took a high moral ground when she warned Drag Queens to stay out of her district. Yet, while attending a performance of Beetlejuice, she was escorted from the theater for engaging in heavy petting with a man who owns a bar that hosts Drag Queen shows. Hypocrisy isn’t new.  It has plagued human beings since recorded time.  What’s changed is that shame no longer appends to it. A nation with no respect for truth isn’t choosey about its leaders. The line between private and public benefit gets blurred in the minds of the greedy and self-interest passes for the country’s welfare. A would-be tyrant like Donald Trump may exhort his followers to engage in insurrection under the guise of patriotism, but he makes dupes of them and vulnerable to rudderless malcontents who would destroy democracy for no other reason than they believe it’s possible.     What are we to do, those of us who see our democracy like a train hurtling down the track to its doom? We must vote, of course, in both local and national elections. Walking a precinct or making phone calls for a candidate is important. Writing a check to support a political campaign is also a good idea. But before we take these actions, let us be resolved in this.  We must choose reason and truth in the defense of our country.  …thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.  (Margaret Mead.)

[bluepurpleviolatte]

''All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance. All movements, however different in doctrine and aspiration, draw their early adherents from the same types of humanity; they all appeal to the same types of mind.''

-Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

[chloesimaginationthings]

William is the most divorced man in the FNAF universe

[paullovescomics]

Nonfiction books that I read in the second half of 2023, part 2 of 2

The Du Bois book is highly recommended. It's in the public domain, so you can get it on gutenberg.org.

[mythicalcoolkid]

You don't wish your disability was worse or more visible, you wish your disability was taken seriously. Please stop confusing the two, I guarantee you would not get the support you need JUST by being more severe or more visible. Please listen to visibly disabled people when we tell you it isn't better on our side

[catmask]

with that said there are characters that a fat maybe not canonically but they are spiritually. to me. they may not be drawn that way but i know whats true. ive seen it like a sort of prophet

[ryanhugh]

One of my fave stories ^

Also, Hugh constantly mentions living at Ryan’s house so he genuinely might as well have been there, who knows lmao

[maibeloved]

More gravity falls doodles! Currently reading and decoding Journal 3! Its…its alot 😭

[and-then-there-were-n0ne]

People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident. To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. They are eager to barter their independence for relief from the burdens of willing, deciding and being responsible for inevitable failure. They willingly abdicate the directing of their lives to those who want to plan, command and shoulder all responsibility. Moreover, submission by all to a supreme leader is an approach to their ideal of equality. [...]

The frustrated are also likely to be the most steadfast followers. It is remarkable, that, in a co-operative effort, the least self-reliant are the least likely to be discouraged by defeat. For they join others in a common undertaking not so much to ensure the success of a cherished project as to avoid an individual shouldering of blame in case of failure. When the common undertaking fails, they are still spared the one thing they fear most, namely, the showing up of their individual shortcomings. Their faith remains unimpaired and they are eager to follow in a new attempt.

The frustrated follow a leader less because of their faith that he is leading them to a promised land than because of their immediate feeling that he is leading them away from their unwanted selves. Surrender to a leader is not a means to an end but a fulfillment. Whither they are led is of secondary importance.

— Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The mental stress and burden which this form of government imposes has been particularly well recognized in a little book about which I have spoken on several occasions. It is "The True Believer," by Eric Hoffer; you might find it of interest. In it, he points out that dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems—freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions. But while this responsibility is a taxing one to a free people it is their great strength as well—from millions of individual free minds come new ideas, new adjustments to emerging problems, and tremendous vigor, vitality and progress. One of my own major aims and efforts has been to assist in every way open to me in giving our people a better understanding of the great issues that face our country today—some of them indeed issues of life and death. Through being better informed, they can best gain greater assurance regarding our nation’s situation and participate in establishing policies and programs which they think to be sound and right. The quest for certainty is at best, however, a long and arduous one. While complete success will always elude us, still it is a quest which is vital to self-government and to our way of life as free men. —Dwight D Eisenhower, letter to Robert J Biggs, Feb 10, 1959

[Robert Scott Horton]

[carolinemillerbooks]

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/the-truth-is-the-truth/

The Truth Is The Truth

She’s a star within the Evangelical community, but I won’t identify her for reasons that will become clear.  We met decades ago when I was an elected official. Though I am an atheist, I treated members of the religious right with the same courtesy I gave to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (Madd) when they chose to give public testimony. That’s how it should be. Besides, I understood their reasoning and knew it was heartfelt. If a fertilized ovum is a person, then it has a soul, and destroying a soul would be a sin. I never interrupted to comment that soul and sin had no meaning in secular law. Nor did I point out their logic was flawed. If a soul is immortal, then destroying it would be impossible. What Evangelicals and I do agree upon is that society requires moral underpinnings–an admission that explains how I came to meet a celebrity of the faithful. I was late in arriving at the luncheon to which I was a guest. Sliding into the chair reserved for me, I offered a general apology and then introduced myself to the woman seated at my left. She told me she’d flown into town that day to be the keynote speaker at a spiritual rally that evening.  A woman in her early thirties, she bore a strong resemblance to Doris Day, her smile welcoming and crowned by a row of white teeth. Observing that she was confined to a wheelchair, I never doubted that she lived a life of courage.   We chatted over salads and I learned she was traveling across the country, fundraising to provide wheelchairs for the needy. My ears pricked up like a dog’s at the sound of an electronic can opener when I heard her.  Many of my constituents could have used a wheelchair. I suggested we might work together.     The woman shook her head to reject my suggestion. Her wheelchairs, she clarified, were intended for potential church members.   “You use the chairs to recruit the poor,  you mean?” If I’d sounded incredulous, she didn’t get my drift.  Instead, her lips parted in a dazzling smile.    “Exactly!” By some miracle, I managed to hold my tongue, though I wanted to reply that the church enjoyed tax subsidies, a fact that should entitle believers and non-believers to assistance. Using public money for private purposes was dishonest. Nonetheless, by the time I parted from her, our salads finished and the bread basket emptied, I confess I liked the woman.  My reaction to her duplicity, therefore, was to turn inward. I knew I should have spoken out about the misuse of public funds. Yet, for the sake of peace, I’d said nothing. Returning to my office in the plashing rain, I fell into a blue funk. A lie can be either good or bad depending upon circumstances, but it is always a violation of the truth.  Either way, we humans have practiced verbal deception since we developed a jaw that enabled speech. Many women oppose men-only clubs because absent a feminine voice, they encourage masculine delusions.  At least that’s true for one male.  He admitted that these watering holes were places that allowed men  to exchange ideas and learn from each other without being “canceled” for having the “wrong opinion.”    Many have said a democracy without an informed electorate will fail. When we allow lies to co-mingle with truth, we empower subversives, and that’s why, according to  Eric Hoffer, The character and destiny of the group are often determined by its inferior elements.” (“The True Believer,” HarperPerenial, 2002, pg. 24. To prevent corruption, people should confront those who use free speech to pervert facts. That much is obvious. But a citizen’s responsibility goes deeper. Rooting out the lies we tell ourselves helps us become patriots.   Liz Cheney, recently rejected for the Gerald R. Ford Medal for Distinguished Public Service, is a patriot. She refused to deceive herself in the rough and tumble of politics, though she might have benefited. Instead, she defended the truth and it cost her– unlike the Evangelical celebrity who used charity to be exploitative.  And, also, unlike me who saw the deception and said nothing.    

[stuckinapril]

don't stress about that opportunity that fell through or that friend you lost or that thing you really want to happen but isn't. as long as you keep your chin up and try try try again, better things will replace your losses. i'm looking at my life rn and actually marveling at how every single thing i stressed about, whether it be an opportunity or a person, got supplanted w another thing that is so much better. it really is true that loss makes space for better things. these days i don't get sad when something doesn't work out. i get excited that i'm now open to so many other possibilities out there, so long as i actively seek them. you never lack. you just transition.

[thatonekimgirl]

You do not realize how much that meant to me. What you said to my mother. No one has ever stood up for me like that. Well, I will always stand up for you. Because I love you.

[leqclerc]

Charles Leclerc in Top Gun Canal+ Supersonique