Isn't it weird how completely unsubstantiated claims of voting machine manipulation can lead Republicans into believing that they are justified into committing real acts of voting machine manipulation?
Now expand that into almost every issue and this is the real threat facing America.
People can be told that some other group is doing something evil, and they will not only believe it without question or evidence, but they will feel justified in doing the exact same evil, that they know to be wrong, in "self-defense."
It is a moral sickness that plagues our nation.
This is the effect of preaching capitalism as a moral stance. These people have mistaken the questionable ethics of capitalisms (and to a smaller extent Ayn Rand style libertarianism) for moral character. They see other people as competitors.
Not trying to apologize for any of that, but what I described is fascism, not capitalism. It's not competition driving that mindset, but tribalism. While Ayn Rand and Adam Smith both described very detailed frameworks for morality and stressed that good moral behavior was essentially for capitalism to function.
I think you're both correct.
I think all three of you are right. What Vic described as the real threat to the US today, I believe is and has always been the real threat to humanity, justification of any action as moral because it is rationalized as a defense against an opposing opinion that challenges the validity of a sacred cow one has been inculcated to believe is factually just that. sacred.
All of this is the result of having been compared as a child to all the imaginary good children to whom you were never able to measure up, the inability to remain conscious of of the pain that caused hence the creation of a protective defensive competitive ego with the preservation of that ego armor the driving force behind the fanaticism in preserving that so called sacred belief. The real motivation is to never allow into conscious awareness the pain we were made to feel. And this happened to all of us and the reason why we only approximate our understanding by focus on symptoms.
This will happen to fascist and capitalists alike, has been happening from the beginning of human speech, the capacity to emotional cripple others with words, being put down with words accompanied with the threat of rejection.
When one sees the real root of the problem the symptoms of that disease are obvious. Only the real motivation remains hidden because the problem isn't actually out there in the world; it is within us. The world will continue to spin of this Wheel of Karma without conscious awareness of the real issue.
Everyone cheers when the diagnosis is pointed out as external, a problem with those others out there, but when it comes to seeing the problem at its source we run for the high hills.
Competition is hate based on having been compared and judged inferior. The judgment is false, there is nothing wrong with anybody, but the belief creates its own reality. Hidden feelings of worthlessness are the reason we feel contempt. We were told that to be real is to incur contempt. So we abandoned ourselves and enslaved as cult members of whatever group espouses our externally generated sacred cows.
To awaken is to be free even for a moment from that self identification, to come to the end of thought, the creator of fear hatred and evil, to experience oceanic bliss, to return from the place from which we came.
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