The anti‐Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith; at the outset he has chosen to devaluate words and reasons. How entirely at ease he feels as a result. How futile and frivolous discussions about the rights of the Jew appear to him. He has placed himself on other ground from the beginning. If out of courtesy he consents for a moment to defend his point of view, he lends himself but does not give himself. He tries simply to project his intuitive certainty onto the plane of discourse. I mentioned awhile back some remarks by anti‐Semites, all of them absurd: “I hate Jews because they make servants insubordinate, because a Jewish furrier robbed me, etc.” Never believe that anti‐Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.
If then, as we have been able to observe, the anti‐Semite is impervious to reason and to experience, it is not because his conviction is strong. Rather his conviction is strong because he has chosen first of all to be impervious.
He has chosen also to be terrifying. People are afraid of irritating him. No one knows to what lengths the aberrations of his passion will carry him — but be knows, for this passion is not provoked by something external. He has it well in hand; it is obedient to his will: now he lets go of the reins and now he pulls back on them. He is not afraid of himself, but he sees in the eyes of others a disquieting image‐his own‐and he makes his words and gestures conform to it. Having this external model, he is under no necessity to look for his personality within himself. He has chosen to find his being entirely outside himself, never to look within, to be nothing save the fear he inspires in others.
-Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew
I have seen condensed versions of this quote, but the pieces surrounding the oft repeated quote are worth including.
In other words, in respect to how the current Republican and conservative groups communicate:
Always has been. 🌎🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
It’s not like the economy isn’t purposefully being wrecked by the current government administration or that they’re not trying to purge as many workers as possible to pump up unemployment and reduce the number of people who can patronize a small business and it’s not as if the government isn’t picking winners and losers and it’s not as if the tariffs don’t impact small business more than big business and so on and so forth.
But sure, believing stupid shit like you can fight and survive in a rigged economy where competitors a hundred times your size want to crush you economically and legally totally makes sense and isn’t moronic at all. /s
This post references this is [USA] in the title and even when it comes to Wall Street the entire economy is hinging on a small number of massive businesses with absurd valuations at the moment.