Donald Trump pardoned Andrew Paul Johnson for his role in the January 6 insurrection.

[nazokiyoubinbou@mastodon.social]

@randahl You know, I'm starting to think that people who thought it would be good to violently assault the government and attempt to install a dictator maybe aren't the best people.

[nazokiyoubinbou@mastodon.social]

@mister_shade02X2 @randahl Well, for starters, I don't think he's useful in that way anymore. The pardons for the attempted coup were just for show to show that loyalty to Trump over country will be rewarded.

But also I think this might be at a state level? For now the dictator can still only pardon federal crimes. I'm sure that will change once we finish transitioning past the last vestiges of democracy, but there are still *some* limits for now.

[zii_0@corneill.es]

@randahl I guess pedophiles get each others back
@joaocosta

[chrisholladay@mastodon.social]

@randahl
Maybe he will answer to Hey !!! Short Eyes !!!

[csstrowbridge@mastodon.social]

@randahl

Serious question: Who has committed more sex crimes against children per capita? Ice agents or January 6ers?

[gdinwiddie@mastodon.social]

@csstrowbridge @randahl Or those who are both?

[su_liam@mas.to]

@randahl Trump gonna pardon him again?

[jackmexa4@mastodon.social]

@randahl

So many of those people. Fascists and sex offenders. Right wingers and pedophiles. Violent men and rapists.

[unruly@mastodon.social]

@randahl

Incuding the pardoner.

[blustoftimes@mastodon.scot]

@randahl they’re not pardoning their best

[ghostonthehalfshell@masto.ai]

@randahl
Yes, I watched a video of a news station reporting on the sentencing by the judge in the action of this individual. I’m pretty certain it was him.

When I say things like Epstein Society, or that Epstein was not a bug but plumbing, I mean it in a tangible real sense.

The elite strata in the United States, as well as many supporters of epstein Society are participants in a culture that does crime against humanity.

This is their culture. It’s an abomination and must be ended.

[timjclevenger@infosec.exchange]

@randahl Not a drag queen. Not trans. Just the usual suspects.

[geofcox@climatejustice.social]

@randahl

How exactly is the political right linked with sexual abuse ?

That there is an association seems undeniable, given the number of cases of right-wing politicians and activists caught up in cases of paedophilia or violent misogyny (and near zero on the left - even in power).

Is it their well-documented lack of empathy ? Perhaps dark desires are a-political, but because the right-winger can't see things from their victims' perspective they don't care who they hurt ?

Or is it entitlement - that I-should-have-whatever-I-want mentality ? Or the more generalised belief in social inequality - women etc are there to serve alpha men ?

Or is it the other way round ? They are just violent sociopaths who adopt extreme right ideology as convenient self-justification ?

[andii@mas.to]

@GeofCox @randahl
I think all of those things converge. The mix differs individual to individual but the characteristics from a self reinforcing system.

[drahardja@sfba.social]

@GeofCox @randahl I think it’s a belief in a strictly hierarchical caste system, in which they (white, Protestant, cis-het, men) are the top, and therefore allowed to do anything to a member of a lower class (women, children, foreigners, nonwhites) with impunity.

I also think they find this expectation reasonable, because it has been true in the US for most of its history: white men *were* able to abuse anyone else outside their class with impunity.

[passenger@kolektiva.social]

@GeofCox @randahl

There's a psychological effect you get among people who are anxious about their status:

- This law binds the small people
- Higher status must have its rewards
- Therefore, if I am bound by this law, I am no better than one of the small people
- It would be intolerable to suggest that I am no better than one of the small people
- Therefore, I must not be bound by this law
- I should break this law to prove to myself that I am not bound by it

We see this everywhere. In covid-lockdown breaking behaviour, in the way people drive, in the way men treat women. Once people become anxious about their social status they very often start manifesting this sort of deliberate rule-breaking to reassure themselves.

Fascism, of course, is the very essence of a declining middle class anxious about its status.

[geofcox@climatejustice.social]

@passenger

Interesting. I've thought for a long time conservatism is really about fear - the obvious fear of losing what you have, but this is a fear which is never far from a general fear of change, which in turn - since change is the essence of life - is also really at bottom a fear of life and death itself (Sartre explored this in some depth - and linked it with the irrationality of the right, the desire to stop thinking, to become like a stone, since for humans thinking and feeling are part of living-change).

But it never occurred to me that at the extreme, this fear of losing what privilege they have is what prompts them to transgress, to demonstrate their privilege - to themselves as much as anybody else.

@randahl

[janvenetor@mastodontti.fi]

@GeofCox @randahl I feel it's not sexual or based on desire, except desire for power, and conservative belief in natural hierarchy.

Dark triad bullies all the way up.

One does not actually have sense of power if one does not *demonstrate* it in personal sphere.

There is no hierarchy of any value if you can't abuse "lower value" vulnerable people at will. Your wife, your kids, someone else's kids. Or bomb them.

They would abuse the shit out of their slaves if they still had some..

[passenger@kolektiva.social]

@GeofCox @randahl

Yeah, that's well said.

I think it's part of what prompts people's radicalisation from conservatism into fascism: when that generalised fear of change ("I might, hypothetically, lose status at some future time") becomes actualised into a specific real panic ("I am currently losing status, this is a crisis"). In particular I think it's why fascists are so obsessed with reinforcing conventional gender roles, and why they're so weird about rejecting environmentalism.

This is also part of why pointing out hypocrisy in fascism doesn't work. Of course they hold others to different standards than they hold themselves. To them that's the point.

[simon_brooke@mastodon.scot]

@GeofCox @randahl I don't believe this is 'the political right'. I believe that this is people who are powerful, testing just how powerful they are.

I wrote about it six years ago, and I still believe this is fundamentally true.

#EndViolenceAgainstWomen
#Billionaires
#TheAndrewFormerlyKnownAsPrince

https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2020-07-24-rape-grouse-and-the-pathology-of-power/