re: #368 Randall Gross

You have the right of it, the default mindset for Republicans in this “every privilege is going away from us white christian conservative volken” brave new world is feudal. This goes beyond the spoils & patronage system, they want things to revert to Feudal fealty systems ultimately — and Nikki is placing stepping stones to get there.

The other thing is: this is part of the general “it’s cruelty, not stupidity” rubric.

This is probably a bad idea…if you care about the state efficaciously doing work for its citizenry. But it’s exponents are cruel—they have a clear picture in their head of all the kinds of people that simply do not deserve representation, services, or rights.

They’re not scared they’ll be held accountable for the attempt—they have enormous money and cultural force behind them such that they’ll be given do-overs and comfy sinecures even if this falls flat—because they have no respect for the agree-upon systems of accountability and…accurately…can observe that other statesman have done worse things and gotten away with it.

The liberal-centrist assertion that these people are dumb is based on an assumption of common axioms: the “stupidity” is emergent from a misunderstanding of agree-upon ideas of what government is, what morality is, what power should be used for. But conservatives use an entirely different axiom, one in which position has primacy and morality and law are conditional on position. In this worldview, violence is just the most explicit rhetoric of the entirely natural hierarchy.

It’s like claiming that a cattle baron sending his regulators to burn down your farm is stupid. In his head, it’s entirely feasible that he can do this, that he has done the math and his power and his total goon count means he can kill you and take your shit.