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Notes -
Partially agree. Judith is making a horseshoe point without realizing it.
2025 Trump is a far-right anti-institutionalist identarian. Sanders and the Squad would be popular analogues on the left. On both sides, these people express glee at the suffering of others (fuck karens, fuck billionaires, fuck immigrants, fuck trans people etc). They're contrasted by painfully indecisive centralists. 'Decision by Committee' is a slur in business, but also the explicit goal of centrist govts.
The reason her point hits home for the ring-wing, is because right wing centrists lost all power. Post-Jan 6, there was a rout, and the likes of Mitt Romney have been purged. On the democratic side, Bernie was successfully sidelined by Biden and 'The Squad' has been dismantled. The left's centrists are strong, so the sadism of their identarian wing is suppressed.
We all have a sadistic side to us. Like epigenetics, we choose to indulge in sadism when our zeitgeist promotes it. Have you only started indulging your sadism post-Trump ? Or has it always been indulged internally, with an external facade to fit into a zeitgeist that promoted restraint ? Even as adults, I know many smart people, who turn into total jackasses when they're around that one dude (we all know one such dude). Those same people have confessed to feeling terrible afterwards, when I talked to them 1:1. Not pretend confessed, I mean 'bawling their eyes out' confessed. You can't always blame unintentional cult members for the sins of a hypnotic leader.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the extreme left's failure has to do with ex-communist nations still being shit-holes. Communism has caused suffering more recently than Nazism. There are people alive who remember how horrible it was. The WW2 veterans are all dead, and the Axis powers are all successful nations now. Italy, Germany, Japan....all great places to live. History is cyclical because only visceral experiences can shape a man. Once those with scar tissue drop dead, no amount of WW2 movies can communicate those horrors to new youth. They must make the same mistakes again.
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