dasfoo
9mo ago
If you're like Charlie Chaplin, doing it explicitly as a satire making fun of Hitler, it's fine.
Well, yes, Chaplin did satirize Hitler in the 1940s, but he also wore that mustache long before Hitler rose to power, starting in the 1910s.
dasfoo
9mo ago
A friend of mine who is an accountant got sick of living in the Portland area and moved to rural Kentucky where he was able to buy a lot of land. He's been there for two years and can't find any clients in his new state. He's a good networker, but they do not trust outsiders (and, according to him, are largely too dumb to understand what he does). It's friendly but he's not one of them. He gets a majority of his new clients from our referrals in the purpler Portland suburbs and comes out twice a year for in-person meetings.
dasfoo
9mo ago
At what point are Trump's allies tacitly seconding accusations that Trump is an authoritarian and his "movement" a cult of personality, by treating him as though the accusations are true?
Isn't this just all politics during the age of social media? Every candidate is idealized because to show any misgivings is to give aid and comfort to the other side. No nuance is allowed, or else you will be beset by purity trolls who will question your loyalty. It's gross and tiring, but it's the same dynamic that made every Democrat pretend to be all-in on Joyful Kamala within one day and previously pretended that Joe Biden was as sharp as ever right before he obviously wasn't.
dasfoo
11mo ago
Wasn't there also a Denzel Washington movie in which he takes a hospital hostage over something similar?
dasfoo
11mo ago
Except that this was obvious. How can you credibly sell your ability to win elections when you can’t predict something that obvious.
The people they are selling themselves to share the same self-delusion, so it's to their benefit to affirm the delusion to get more work. This assumes that they are self-aware enough to know that their delusion is false, but most delusions persist because the deluded will not challenge them.
Anecdotally, in the last day I've seen Reddit threads, Facebook posts, and have heard directly from acquaintances who work in government that they worry about their work being impacted. Don't discount the social media effect wherein everyone wants the positive attention that comes with signalling victimization at the hands of the bad man, even before they know if it's actually happening.
The argument previously formulated by these same groups -- "No, it's not happening, but if it is happening it's good" -- is probably a safe fallback response. We can empathetically help anyone who loses their important government job move into the private sector, where their important skills will surely remain valuable.
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