on the phone with dad. he does NOT get how our president's people still support him. he reeealllly doesn't get it.

he understands authoritarianism, he understands that there are all these people who have been trained since childhood to "just believe, just have faith". he understands cults of personality. he's from the former USSR for pete's sake. he knows how these things go.

he knows all these things intellectually, but he doesn't get it-get it.

i'm not sure what to tell him. i told him what @saltphoenix told me once: that there are plenty of people who would rather hurt themselves if it means that the other guy gets hurt worse. for example, during desegregation, municipalities closed down public pools before they would let black people use the pools. so no one gets to swim!

that kind of thinking is hard for me to understand as well, because i'm all "well, we can work together and BOTH of us get things because we're stronger together," but that is not the point of view for loads of people.

i don't think i'll be able to give dad an intellectually and emotionally satisfactory answer because it's very hard for a non-authoritarian to understand an authoritarian's willingness to go along with the worst shit. 🤷

if we use a family metaphor, it might go something like "well, daddy does hit me every so often, but he ultimately has our best interest in mind."

#authoritarianism #USPol #politics #fascism #antifa