Nah - sorry. I'm not buying it.
Granted that most of those at tte top are not dumb and are instead evil, greedy, power-hungry and entirely self-serving, most of the rank and file have to be dumb.
Either they're so dumb that they think that the lies they're told are true, or they know that they're not true but go along with them anyway because they think that the face-eating weasels aren't going to eat their faces, which is just a somewhat different sort of dumb.
The vast majority of them are that dumb. Even a surprising number of their politicians are genuinely dumb.
But yes - they're most certainly not all dumb. The people at the top very much are not.
But even they realize that most of their supporters genuinely are dumb. In fact, they count on it.
As I said, it depends on where someone falls on the right-wing "credulous idiot to lying sack of shit" scale. They all fall somewhere along it, necessarily, with the rank and file almost entirely on the idiot end and the handful of genuine powers on the sack of shit end.
I keep wondering the same thing.
It's especially galling when I see some cautionary piece in the legacy media about how some Republican policy "might" lead to some negative consequences. As if the Republicans are unaware of that and it's up to the media to gently nudge them and point it out.
The Republicans are fully aware of the harm their policies are going to do and that's much of the point. They quite simply want everyone who's not one of them to die. They're not only okay with that - they're eagerly looking forward to it.
Israel is a rogue state.
That's what they do.
Far right is a fundamentally dishonest position. It's based entirely on lies - the lie that the nation/world was better off under some older system, the lie that the problems today are caused by progressive values, the lie that diversity is bad and racial purity must be defended, the lie that authority is good or even necessary, the lie that men deserve to dominate and women should submit, on and on and on, it's all lies.
So when they lose, as they deserve, they just automatically fall into the lie that they should've won. That's what defines their entire worldview - they claim a set of truths, and when the world contradicts them, they convince themselves (or pretend, depending on where they fall on the far right scale of credulous idiot to lying sack of shit) that it's some sort of conspiracy to deny them what's rightfully theirs, when the reality is simply that they're wrong. About everything.
Heathers changed my world in more ways than one.
Weird that the Trump administration is trying to collect a national database on people with autism even as they're eliminating programs to help them or even merely to oversee how they're treated by other institutions.
If the goal of tracking them down and keeping tabs on them isn't to help them, then what is it?
(That's a rhetorical question).
I really don't understand Adobe.
They have some of the most well-established and respected software in the world, including the graphics program that's so much the standard that its name is synonymous with computer graphics. They could settle back into being a venerable institution - market themselves as essentially the Rolls Royce of software.
But instead, they insist on being more like the software equivalent of a Nigerian prince scam. They're not just scummy, but overtly and obviously scummy, as if they literally can't even imagine being anything else.
Why? What the hell is wrong with them? It's as if the corporation itself is deranged, and it warps everyone who works for it and every decision they make.
Edit because too many people seem to be missing the point.
I'm fully aware of how enshittification works - that's not what I'm wondering about.
What I'm wondering about is why Adobe isn't just enshittification, but enshittification dialed up to 11. Even such stalwarts as Google and Microsoft can't hold a candle to the sheer scale and brazenness of Adobe's shittiness. If enshittification was a competition, Adobe would be undefeated world champions, and would've held the title continually for the last 30 years or so.
And that stands in such sharp contrast to the fact that of all of them, Adobe has the least need to engage in any of that. Photoshop is so dominant and so well-respected that Adobe, more than pretty much any of them, could maintain a comfortable near-monopoly without even lifting a finger toward enshittification.
Which to me, is just weird.
Imagine being such a philosophically and ethically bankrupt coward that you're compelled to devise a strategy for silencing critics.
How does someone even live that way? They have to know at some level that they're foul, pathetic pieces of shit - how does that not eat away at them?
To the degree that fascism has a distinctive economic system, one of its most notable qualities is a combination of private ownership of the means of producton with government/corporate partnership and a "revolving door" by which powerful individuals pass back and forth between business and political leadership positions.
United Healthcare Group pays off Trump in 3, 2, 1...
Yes - absolutely.
The authoritarian personality is actually weak and frightened and terribly insecure. That's a lot of what drives them - they have to have as much control as possible because the thought of not having control terrifies them.
Odd though it might seem, there's a great lesson in all of this in the movie Tank Girl.
The villain, fittingly played by Malcolm McDowell, is a cold, sadistic, arrogant manipulator. He's trying to turn the protagonist Rebecca, who he recognizes as a potential strong ally. And she not only defies him, but continuously makes fun of him and belittles him. He ends up sending her off for a particularly horrific psychological torture, at the end of which he calmly and malevolently expects her submission, and instead she's still making fun of him. His pose finally collapses and shaking with rage he grabs a gun and points it at her, and she just looks at him and smiles and croaks out, "I win."
The authoritarian has no sense of personal power. That's why they have to surround themselves with the trappings of their adopted and assembled power - because that's all they have.
There are two broad types of powerful personalities - the would-be tyrant, who preens and manipulates and schemes and struts and surrounds himself with conjured and desperately protected authority, and the stolid, quiet person who simply sits off to the side, wholly determined to manage their own lives as they see fit and wholly confident of their ability to do so.
And of the two, the latter is far, far stronger than the former. And the former know it.