The Fraud That Wasn't

"I’ve learned to interrogate my conclusions, especially when those conclusions do one of two things: make me feel better about myself—superior to someone else—in the immediate moment or give me a reason to be angry. (...)

And it’s the main reason, not my mathematical prowess, that I didn’t fall for the nonsense almost everyone on the center-right and right did this week.

This heuristic—“If something makes me angry, especially in a way that fuels a sense of superiority, I should assume something important is hiding in my blind spots and find it before doing anything else”—is a lifesaver.

It works just like “If it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is” does against financial scams. (...)

Why the Right Fell For It

Before diving into why these fraud-on-a-galactic-scale claims are nonsense, I want to address why the right fell for them.

Three factors, in varying degrees, explain why so many on the right and center-right fell for this.

• The emotions that my therapist has taught me to use as a clue that something very important might be standing in the center of my blind spot, superiority and anger, and especially the combination of the two: superiority-fueled rage. This narrative instantly triggered self-righteous fury on the center-right and right. All along, the goddamn Democrats had been bankrupting the country—$200 billion a year in payments to dead people! They knew it! They always knew why taxes were so high and government so bloated! And now, a month into our side’s greatest comeback, we’re fixing it!

• The center-right and right have been treated so shabbily by institutions and elites that when someone with power and influence says something they believe—or want to believe—the dopamine rush is staggering. There’s a reason grown-ass adults attend rallies for a politician, something that ought to be embarrassing. Trump making average Americans feel welcome and seen in their own effing country, finally, is not unlike a neglected child seizing a rare scrap of parental approval. This is why Trump, a thrice-married serial adulterer and hedonist, the antithesis of traditional values, commands such rabid devotion on the right: he makes them feel seen, heard, welcomed, and respected.

• The idea that Woke functions like a religion is both common and obvious. Woke is the dominant faith on the left [ed. hardly.]. Most on the right already have a religion—and don’t need another. But it also means the right has the mental framework to follow a leader—especially one who makes them feel important, valued, and cared for. This isn’t a criticism. I’ve often written about how much I wish I could believe in God. I’m simply noting that many on the right are primed to follow a leader with complete trust—and far too much benefit of the doubt. They’re vulnerable to this, just as someone with a serious trauma history (like the MathNerd in my mirror) is vulnerable to self-sabotaging via rationalizing, not taking risks she should take.

Trump sits squarely at the intersection of these three forces. Musk, in turn, inherits Trump’s goodwill—along with the entirely deserved gratitude he earned for buying Twitter and ensuring at least one place online remains where saying “Men aren’t women” won’t get you banned.

If you see yourself in these patterns and feel insulted, I hope you’ll still let yourself think about it. If you’re on the right or center-right and don’t see yourself in this, good for you—this section wasn’t about you."

by Holly Mathnerd, Holly's Substack |   Read more:

Images: uncredited

[ed. Good advice.]