This is how movements become machines. Not because they win over the rational, but because they reroute rationality. They flip the moral compass and then punish anyone who still feels it pulling north. The cruelty becomes virtue. The collapse becomes prophecy. The pain is not only justified—it’s required.
This is how movements become machines. Not because they win over the rational, but because they reroute rationality. They flip the moral compass and then punish anyone who still feels it pulling north. The cruelty becomes virtue. The collapse becomes prophecy. The pain is not only justified—it’s required.
You’re right that the clownery and chaos aren’t bugs. They’re bonding agents. They create a shared trauma, a kind of psychological sunk cost that makes turning back feel like self-annihilation. If you admit it’s all been a lie, you don’t just lose your politics. You lose your place in the tribe, your sense of self. So instead, they double down. Again and again. Because the alternative is looking in the mirror and seeing the rubble.
And yes, the media machine exists to make sure that mirror never shows a clear reflection. It doesn't inform, it confirms. It doesn't expose, it shelters. When a narrative breaks, it doesn’t get corrected, it gets replaced.
You’re describing the shape of the thing we now live inside.
If there’s any hope, and I mean any, it’s in naming this clearly. Without euphemism. Without false comfort. Just calling it what it is, so those who haven’t signed their souls away might still have a chance to choose something different.
That’s not optimism. That’s the last act of realism.
And I’m right there with you, hoping, somehow, that we’re wrong.
Yes. Exactly.
This is how movements become machines. Not because they win over the rational, but because they reroute rationality. They flip the moral compass and then punish anyone who still feels it pulling north. The cruelty becomes virtue. The collapse becomes prophecy. The pain is not only justified—it’s required.
You’re right that the clownery and chaos aren’t bugs. They’re bonding agents. They create a shared trauma, a kind of psychological sunk cost that makes turning back feel like self-annihilation. If you admit it’s all been a lie, you don’t just lose your politics. You lose your place in the tribe, your sense of self. So instead, they double down. Again and again. Because the alternative is looking in the mirror and seeing the rubble.
And yes, the media machine exists to make sure that mirror never shows a clear reflection. It doesn't inform, it confirms. It doesn't expose, it shelters. When a narrative breaks, it doesn’t get corrected, it gets replaced.
You’re describing the shape of the thing we now live inside.
If there’s any hope, and I mean any, it’s in naming this clearly. Without euphemism. Without false comfort. Just calling it what it is, so those who haven’t signed their souls away might still have a chance to choose something different.
That’s not optimism. That’s the last act of realism.
And I’m right there with you, hoping, somehow, that we’re wrong.