And beyond the exhaustion, this is how representative democracy is supposed to work. We have an election, everyone decides which candidates are taller and have better hair, then we go back to our lives and let the politicians worry about politics until the next election.
Shits always been like this. Well, maybe not exactly like this, but this level of fucked or worse. There was just a brief blip after WWII when things were relatively stable, and now that its ending things feel a little out of control.
The way its used in conservative circles in the 21st and late 20nd centuries does mean that they see the empathy as performative and either self serving or naive, not that they think the person simply cares too much. Up until about a decade ago they might have even seen empathy as a noble trait, as long as it was backed up by personal action.
Its not just that. Its refering to people expressing extreme performative empathy, backed up self serving or useless actions. There are liberal grifters out there, just like there are conservative ones, and the phrase is used to label a person as one of them.
I didn’t say there was anything new about it. People are, and always have been, capable of monstrous evil. It is normal human behavior, but that doesn’t make it any less vile.
It would be easier to believe they think they are doing the right thing if they weren’t so excited about all the people they want to hurt.
These sort of stories are important because they bother him personally. Once he knows that people think a particular underling is the real power behind the throne he inevitably dumps them. This constant churn of anyone who tried to take a lead helps keep his team in turmoil and minimizes the harm they can do to the rest of us.
That would only be ironic if they did it to the UK.
It might not be a bad strategy. Trump is famously undisciplined and his lackeys are treacherous. The best chance for survival might very well be to sit back and let them fuck up. Last time around he didnt manage to build the wall or repeal the ACA, not because activists stopped him, but because his own allies couldn’t stop tripping over their own feet. Without someone like McConnell to hand him finished packages to rubber stamp, he could go four more years spinning in circles without implementing much of anything.
And peaceful protest is a nonstarter. Hes itching to have people killed, and giving him four years to sift through the general staff to find officers willing to do it will make things much worse in 2028.
It is relevant. Congress is mostly going along with him because they are afraid of being primaried. If he dips much lower we might suddenly see unexpected people speaking truth to power.