“I Don’t Care How High The Waters Rise, As Long As You Drown.”

This looks like laughable bullshit, and it is. But it gets to the heart of something that too many people who want to believe in the goodness of people and the sanctity of our system and institutions are refusing to see.

These chickenfucking dipshits are only going to get more and more extreme, because the only thing they have is this mechanic where they use kneejerk reactionary contrarianism to get into public conflict, where they use thought terminating cliches and mindless insults to get validation from other people’s frustration and anger.

It is not, never was, and never will be, a real argument. It is a pathological, maladaptive coping mechanism derived from NPD, as evidenced by who they idolize, and the behaviors they exhibit.

It is a core identity disorder, where an idealized external identity needs cruelty, power, and victimhood to feel valid. None of it has to be real, it just has to give that mix of supremacy and persecution that feeds the basest, weakest ego, and protects from shame and the pain of self awareness. This is the basic functionality of a variety of trauma reactive personality disorders. And how cults are built.

This kind of trolling – saying something obviously moronic and incorrect or untrue, and then answering every criticism with “lol cope and seethe” or “just what a [r-slur] would say” or more bad, pre-chewed arguments from various bad faith outlets whose entire job is to provide these safe spaces of non-thought – is a fundamental component of this current political climate.

And while yes, it is a rain that falls on us all, and a strategy adopted by individuals across the political spectrum (anti-vaxxers are notoriously multi-partisan, for example), it has truly metastasized on the Right, and it is that monolithic machine that needs immediate attention.

There is no good faith governance here. Only in-group identity performance, and the leaders are as fucking warped and useless as these idiots. Mindless conflict on the pettiest of battlefields while making all the rules to ensure “victory”, grown men with years of bad faith debate experience going to yell at college Freshmen like Kramer in the dojo.

Whether tilting at imagined or fabricated windmills, or devolving every position to some delusional gotcha framing, every waking moment must be spent misery farming to feel alive at all.

The “abortion is murdering babies” trope is a perfect example of this positioning to feed this toxic loop.It is an intractable, absolutist moral position that simply cannot be budged. It’s a nonsense position by any definition of reality – it’s not murder, they aren’t babies, robust access to abortion has huge public benefits, it has been established law for 50 years, it’s a fundamental right to choose when one has children, etc. Robust access to abortion is unequivocally the correct position, and indisputably best policy. And ethically, every abortion reduces suffering, full stop.

But all you have to do is frame any position in intractable moral terms, and then howl about it. Because personal morality cannot be argued.

Want to argue against regulation? Well, you can’t do it historically, because the data is not on your side. Deregulation has a nifty history of collapsing entire industries, if not the whole ass economy. So what can you do? Frame it morally – don’t you love FREEDOM?? – and then power word NO to any rational argument. “I don’t have to listen to the data because I’m in the moral right here.” And again, personal morality cannot be argued.

“That’s just what I believe” is an emotional position, not an intellectual one. And therefore, cannot be uprooted by data. Turns out, it’s their feelings that don’t care about facts. Shocker.

This is why they wield the Culture Wars, they’re all Moral Panics. Lying about litter boxes in schools gives them the easy emotional layup, despite being completely untrue, and really, just not a thing that affects the larger body politic. THEY’RE MUTILATING THE KIDS is another thought terminating, intractable argument from emotion that follows this pattern. No, they aren’t being mutilated, kids can’t access any medical care without adult supervision or consent, and unless you’re going to call Angelina Jolie’s cancer preventive double mastectomy AND subsequent implants “mutilation”, shut the entire fuck up.

But throwing this dogshit around to provoke a reaction, and then playing the Righteous Victim^tm to Heroically Defend The Children is the deep fried chocolate covered butter stick of the ego, and performing that identity over and over and over provides a validation loop so insidious, it makes heroin or fenty addiction look like an mild craving.

It becomes entirely pathological – not in the pejorative sense, but literally part of or caused by a disease or disorder.

Freedom only goes one way here. and morality is absolute. And if you can paint literally EVERY issue in terms of “morality”, not only do you shut down good faith debate, because, one more time for the cheap seats, personal morality cannot be argued, but you put any detractors on the defensive, as the “immoral” side. Perfect, flawless victory, every time.

The added layer to this is a twofold mechanic : one, the group identity must continue to get more extreme as the users demand more and more of the drug to feel the same effects, and two, individuals must get more extreme to assert their superiority within the in-group. In a superiority cult, not only do you need to be a shithead, you need to be some form of supershithead. This is where we see the death spirals occur, with even wilder claims and moral panicking, and even more extreme simping, and even more hierarchical differentiation. Like kids on a playground trying to make themselves the coolest, most important, most special character they can imagine (“I’m dark, gothic MAGA”, Elon? Fucking seriously?), it’s this competitive fantasyland that exists solely to perform greater and greater acts of power, cruelty, and victimhood, based on a warping of self and an addiction to ego.

Any attempt to deal with modern politics has to recognize this fundamental fact: that our global society is designed to create this loop, manipulate it, and defend it at all costs. Reason and rationality are absolutely meaningless to this global gestalt. This must be addressed before any meaningful headway can be made in improving governance at all. And those advocating compromise and cooperation with these fucking lunatics need to realize the fantasyland of their own.

This is not an argument, this is a power struggle. This is not a political movement, it is a misery farming Narcissism cult. They do not care who it hurts, as long as it hurts.

“I don’t care how high the waters rise, as long as you drown.”