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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">EricS -<br>
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:D0640CF6-9C3D-4D04-827B-1A6EB69ADFC8@santafe.edu">
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You may need to care about the degree of institutionalization of
corruption and terror, and the timescale relative to people’s
developmental timescales (generations or parts thereof). </blockquote>
<p>both Russia/USSR and China have a few (or many) generations of
totalitarianism supported by cruelty/terror. The US, for all it's
faults has had a much milder version of that up to McCarthyism for
example? Even then it was narrow-focused and somewhat limited
(compared to Stalin/Mao?) in it's extremity. Trump, et-al are
trying to raise those stakes up to that level (over many months?)
and across a similar scope (though starting with extant
marginalized groups like immigrants, LGBTQ, accused criminals,
women, minorities in some sort of descending order of severity).</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:D0640CF6-9C3D-4D04-827B-1A6EB69ADFC8@santafe.edu">The
problems that graspers of power need to solve are somewhat
different in earlier and later contexts, and so the solutions that
get kept probably are different as well.
<div><br>
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<div>When a movement is really a social phenomenon, like fascism
or bolshevism in their rising phases, it is not heavily
institutionalized. There are communities pushing to see who
will take over the larger society. By which I mean: people are
not atomized. There, what the demagogue needs to do to survive
and succeed is convert the masses into a mob. He doesn’t yet
have an intricate interlocking structure that makes him hard to
get at, and he needs to utilize the social and non-atomized
nature of mobs to suppress the still-large part of the society
that wants to stop him.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>If the disease can get installed and hang on through some
transition phase, it needs to then eat away at both character
and community. Example is West Point at the moment. Most of
the cadets trained there in the past probably wouldn’t
immediately shoot U.S. civilians if told to, and they probably
believe that the people who carried out their educations had
some notions of courage and moral agency. That is the thing
that is being reworked now. Demonstrate that those running the
place are in fact not brave, and not sure enough of themselves
to exercise moral agency, and thus can be bought out and made
collaborators. The cadets for whom that was the lesson of their
education will not be the same kind of developed people as those
who believed (even if it had not been tested and shown, for
them) that the rules were otherwise. These cadets are more
likely to have the calculus that Jonathan Shay describes in
Achilles in Vietnam: better to shoot the civilians in front of
me than to get shot by my own commanders from behind, since I
know they would do that. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>As a latent draft-dodger (SS registration was lifted months
before I turned 18) I have always suspected the military hierarchy
of having values that are not aligned either with that of their
troops nor that which they publicly espouse. I wasn't a
potential draft dodger because I was sure the war was unjust or
because I was afraid of losing my life. I was such because I felt
I couldn't (easily) know before I was so committed (say, on the
front lines in 'nam, forced to risk killing civilians, or having
to kill my commanding officer and his sycophants, or face my own
death/court-martial? or all of the above). A lot to ask an 18
year old boy who thinks he is a man and is manipulated to prove it
under extreme conditions?</p>
<p>good analytic essay (above and below) as usual!</p>
<p>- Steve<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:D0640CF6-9C3D-4D04-827B-1A6EB69ADFC8@santafe.edu">
<div>Put on low heat and cook for a generation. While people are
growing into that different worldview, build up your mafia
hierarchies, where everybody is pitted against everybody and the
notion of whether or where you are safe gets re-evaluated with
each new day, based on what you can learn about what changed
overnight. You can start with the ones who were already cynical
and amoral or immoral, since there will always be some of them
in the society and you just need to put out a red lantern and
let them find you. And as more of the rest get tipped over into
cynicism and amorality, you can expand the collaborator pool as
they come online. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>In that world, the mafia organization, much like a modern
economy with respect to consumer and labor choices, people are
atomized, do not act socially (w.r.t. these questions), and act
instead with institutions as their counterparties. When
everyone faces only an institution as the certain or predictable
part of life, and when the institutions are mafia institutions,
building up the social mentality of the mob is not “needed”, and
perhaps building up the shared identity of the mob is not even
desirable (since who might come to control it if it becomes
cohesive; maybe somebody other than you). There can be a
pretense of demagoguery, as in Castro’s hours-long speeches, or
Maduro “teasing” a listener that the listener must be on “the
Maduro diet” (meaning starving, while Maduro got fatter and
fatter), and there will probably be some rump of the
eternally-aggrieved for whom that does something. But they are
not the same mob that put the current capo in power before the
institutions were built. I don’t think probably nearly anybody
feels warmth and affection toward Kim Jong-un, even though there
probably were many who felt that way toward Kim Il-sung. The
situation of Bekele in El Salvador right now may be interesting
in that regard. He got re-elected with a huge majority, but I’m
not sure it was because people responded to the demagoguery so
much as, like the support for Duterte in the Philippines, they
were more afraid of immediate daily presence of violence, and
would back somebody who seemed to be big enough to suppress part
of it.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Eric <br id="lineBreakAtBeginningOfMessage">
<div><br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>On May 10, 2025, at 7:27, Jochen Fromm
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:jofr@cas-group.net"><jofr@cas-group.net></a> wrote:</div>
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<div dir="auto">Hmmm I am not sure, but I think the
emotional connection between the demagogue and his
followers is important, at least in some systems, but
not in all. President Xi in China and president Putin
do not show much emotion or create an emotional
connection to their people, right? I am reading Peter
Hessler's last book "Other Rivers" and he says in
China they call it "chen mo" if people turn silent
because they are frightened of a negative government
reaction.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">I scribbled this graphical description.
Not sure if it makes sense? In authoritarian systems
you are not allowed to criticize the ruler, in
totalitarian systems neither the ruler nor the ruling
party.</div>
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id="cid:storage_emulated_0_Android_data_com_samsung_android_email_provider_files__EmailTempImageHEV_1746829057729_jpg_1746829057750"><.EmailTempImageHEV_1746829057729.jpg></span></div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
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<div dir="auto">-J.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
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<div>-------- Original message --------</div>
<div>From: steve smith <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com"><sasmyth@swcp.com></a> </div>
<div>Date: 5/9/25 10:43 PM (GMT+01:00) </div>
<div>To: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:friam@redfish.com">friam@redfish.com</a> </div>
<div>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Your personal truth </div>
<div><br>
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<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Jochen wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span
style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Knowing
*their* emotions could be the key. Maybe one major
reason why Donald Trump's followers find him so
persuasive is that they have the impression he
knows what they feel, because what he says fits
exactly to how they feel. The most selfish and
narcissistic person who is incapable of empathy
gives people the feeling that he knows what they
feel. It is a little bit paradox, isn't it? <br>
</span></div>
</blockquote>
<p>Unless of course, he is appealing to every(wo)man's
inner selfish-narcissist? First you tweak up fear
(and maybe greed in the background) and then appeal to
the (very natural?) narcissistic and selfish
sensibilities that come with that?</p>
<p>Also Trump has a penchant for a type of vagueness
which makes it easy for a motivated listener to map
their own worst hopes/fears onto everything he says
(very polarizing). He blathers so much nonsense about
so many things it is easy to pick and choose what you
want to get excited (or incensed) about.<br>
</p>
<p>As for me, the (rare?) times something the Donald
does or says appeals to me I can usually find a limbic
system level greed or fear trigger of my own that he's
touched on? Gilded embellishments in the background
of the White House, Supermodels and Pornstars and
Inappropriately Young Women hanging off his arm (or
waiting just out of sight) and Personal Jumbo Jets
and Golf Resorts (with fake fake-gold trophies) and
outrageous rhetoric about immigrant crime and the
"unfairness" of global trade/relations really do just
the opposite for me. Total turnoffs. But for many I
think those things give them a little tweak... gives
them hope for their darkest desires and confirmation
on their darkest fears.<br>
</p>
<p>When I hear that maybe Social Security income won't
be taxed, I get a little bump to my limbic system
thinking of the 2 or 3 figure savings I might get on
my tax bill (unless of course I go full tax-revolt as
I preach to others). When I saw the big fentanyl
roundup in NM/AZ/NV/OR I was heartened to imagine
that the "worst of the worst" had been at least mildly
subdued, even though I'm pretty sure a careful look
will see a lot of collateral damage to people, at
worst, on the periphery or victims of the "worst of
the worst" themselves.</p>
<p>Musk used to appeal to my latent (or mostly
recovered) inner libertarian, convincing me that just
good old fashioned elbow grease and innovative
thinking (and acting) could save me from the
existential risks of our own thoughtless
self-destructive ambitions and the selfishness of
others. I was raised on a similar Good Old Fashioned
Future SciFi canon he apparently was (maybe the
SoAfrica SciFi literary centroid was a decade or so
behind the US/Europe?). I can't tell he read anything
with a "cautionary tale" built into it though...<br>
</p>
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