Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Weaponized Morality

Weaponized Morality

Indeed, the only people who actually do seem to believe the ideals underlying liberal democracy on their own terms are American conservatives, who are eternal losers that can serve only as gullible fools or controlled opposition.

This is not to say we are without idealism. We have a vision of hierarchy, of glory, of the upward path. But in what used to be our country, what should be sacred is cast in the dirt and what belongs in the gutter is trumpeted as an ideal. Our idealism is fueled by this terrible sense of betrayal, the raging fury that the institutions and figures who were supposed to secure our future have abandoned their responsibility and betrayed their duty.

Donald Trump, for all his faults, is a better man than anyone in the political class. Our own supposed leaders proudly boast they are plotting our deliberate destruction. The people who talk the most about “propriety” and “tone” are the same people who have unleashed death and chaos in pointless wars around the world.

“Morality?” Today, it’s just a shit test on a global scale, a public relations campaign, a marketing scam. To see a “Republican strategist” or a Beltway journalist pontificate about decorum is self-discrediting. To see the same people who celebrate the Folsom Street Fair suddenly clutch their pearls is revolting. It’s not about being “beyond good and evil” or denying standards. It’s about not falling for this same old con anymore.

No comments: