Link sent by Richard.
You know, I like to think that the human capacity for credulity is unlimited, unfettered. But the human capacity for self-deception— the ultimate self-credulity — is also unfettered, unlimited. I look at him and I think to myself: You can’t really believe this stuff. And yet, for all intents and purposes, he does.
What I can’t really understand is what happened to America after 2016 and the election. I can’t understand the wholesale abandonment of American values by so many, many, many, many people. That I can’t understand. And that I find horrifying and depressing.
The latter is an instance of the former, as well as a great example of what I am calling “bad faith” these days. To abandon a value does not mean you are totally disassociated from it. Minimally, its spectre haunts, and all forms of rituals and incantations are performed in order to keep it at bay. Things just get worse to a point where your chosen leader pisses and vomits on every value. Now what?