A Conversation with Terry

From: Karl Horak <karlhorak@comcast.net>
Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2025 10:04 AM
To: Terry 
Subject: Re: This is a must read

 

A long read indeed!  Thanks, Terry. 

 

FELON47 has taken the lid off a simmering pot of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and anti-intellectualism -- now it's on full boil.  I find it difficult these days to run through a loving kindness meditation that wishes happiness, health, peace, and ease of living to these assholes.  That said, it is probably an economic & cultural system (corporate democracy and capitalism) that is leaving them without hope, turning them to darker outlets.  FELON47 personifies this with his strongman bullying combined with whining victimhood. 

 

The comments were edifying.  Some were advocating fighting fire with fire  Others were saying they won't vote Dem until party "leadership" changes (talk about self-defeating!).  Dopamine hits were even invoked. Clearly, there is no consensus on a solution. 

 

I had hoped that the Biden years would've ended MAGA, but that was not to be.  Garland frittered away our chance to put Trump in prison and now we're paying the price.  Maybe we'll be faster on the draw next time Dems are in the big chair. 

 

Sometimes I think it just comes down to stupidly simplistic things like the perceived economy.  Funny thing to be cheering on a recession so there will be a Blue wave in '26. 

 

Thanks for listening to my TED Talk!  

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It is a good TED talk Karl. I am super aware that the way I think about things—generally on a fairly rational side—is a bit outdated or maybe uninformed. I think I have been disregarding some virulent realities like some of the thinking that is going on with the young men profiled in the article. I can see the groypers as occupying some of the same niches that tea party did—espousing ideas that may seem off the wall yet gain traction and flow into something larger. Yeah, the libertarian capitalists have been playing the long game, and while I do not think there is some kind of great Oz directing all of this or taking advantage of the related and even opposing strains, there is something foul emerging that is cruel, undemocratic, immoral, nihilistic. No, the Dems have no plan and frankly, how could they unless they decide to embrace the same tactics—and I mean MOST of those tactics. It will not happen nor should it. Holding the line on what made people flourish, generally, in the later 20^th century, which had its source in Enlightenment thinking and humanism, which surfaced in opposition to slavery, which surfaced in opposition to fascism, which surfaced in opposition to the larger cruelties of capitalism—we have to hold on to that until its day comes again. And then try, in this country, to run the show better in terms of justice and equity and well-being.

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From Jennifer Victor today:  

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter that the bill is unpopular, because populism doesn’t mean you’re popular and need to maintain likability; populism means you reinforce a two-tiered society, where the political allies that keep you in power remain disadvantaged so that you can stoke their anger toward a group of outsiders that you identify for them. It doesn’t have to be rational, reasonable, or logical. In fact, a successful populist movement is intentionally not rational, reasonable, or logical.

So long as populism is the dominant component of one America’s major political parties, we should expect public policy to reinforce the conditions of populism, not to fix circumstances that generate it in the first place.