In the last couple of weeks we’ve seen big big protests in Israel about the direction of travel of the state. We’ve had another IPCC summary report (number 6 in the franchise – the body count ever higher, the deaths more elaborate) and just yesterday Boris Johnson in front of the Privileges Committee.
What all three of these shitshows have in common is that intelligent, principled people (albeit often of the wrong colour, ethnicity, gender, wealth, accent etc to be taken seriously) have been saying for DECADES that there was serious trouble ahead.
And they were at best ignored. If they forced their way into the conversation, they were ridiculed as ignorant, smeared as anti-semitic, anti-growth, anti-“The People”.
And their critiques? Their critiques were right.
And you hear any reflection on this? That those warning of garrison states destroying liberal principles, of infinite growth eating the future, of the dangers of pandering to/enabling malignant narcissists were, in fact, right all along.
No. No you don’t. Just… crickets.
This is not (merely) the ego-protective carapace of brittle narcissists who cannot admit they were wrong (though there is that too). This is how a class of people, an ideology, defends itself. These brittle narcissists are incentivised and selected for within the regime/system/whatever academic buzzword makes you feel warm.
It is not that they have not been trained to be cognitively humble and therefore can’t do it.
It is that they’ve been trained NOT to be humble or reflective. And any that show signs of too much backbone, too much caution in swallowing the party hook line and sinker are regarded with suspicion, fear and jealousy, and shunted sideways and then out.
How else can a regime/system/whatever function?
And here we are, on a being-murdered planet, with the clock running down.
Fun times.
marchudson.net 
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