Crazy is a power culture
Previously I wrote:
Trump clearly had no interest in traditional conservative ideology and his offer of MAGA while blowing every dog whistle, race, gender, religion and anti-elitism, available to him is pure power culture.
But thinking about it more that isn’t quite true. If you want to be an anti-progressive then the purest power culture is simple crazy.
Race, gender, religion are all much clumsier mechanisms to form an anti-progressive power culture around. Each of them are difficult to define and end up subdividing your base unnecessarily.
As a solution to that problem crazy is quite elegant. The membership test for your power culture is just throwing out anything improbable, like Covid isn’t a virus, and then seeing who backs you up and who doesn’t.
Plus crazy doesn’t just stand in opposition to elites and science, it makes everyone an elite. Everyone can be an instant expert by just spouting any fashionable nonsense.
And knowing what nonsense is fashionable further cements your place as one of the gang. Its like the old story about the prison where inmates just shout numbers and everyone laughs. A new inmate shouts, “Six!” and no one laughs. “Guess you just don’t know how to tell a joke,” says another prisoner.
Crazy as power culture also helps explain the near blackout on the Senate issuing a report that Covid is most likely man made. Admitting that logic and science may not be taking us where we want to go opens the door even further on a terrifying culture of crazy. Truly we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Is there a way for humanity to hold logic and science dear but at the same time not risk technological dystopia? Yes but its a hard road of regulation, caution and knowledge purely for the sake of knowledge. Its a middle ground between progress power culture and crazy power culture that somehow manages to include everyone.