"Living a moral life in an age of bullies requires collective action; it cannot be done alone. Each of us must organize and participate in a vast network of moral resistance.

This is what civilization demands. It’s what the struggle for social justice requires. It’s why that struggle is so critical today, and why we all must be part of it."

~ Robert Reich

#Trump #MAGA #authoritarianism #morality
/11

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/28/bullies-moral-lives-robert-reich

That's all well and good.

But both sides are equally awful.

Aren't they?

The one that overtly and aggressively promotes fascism.

And the one that does … that does not do that.

Both sides are equally problematic, right? So why this nattering about morality?

#Trump #MAGA #authoritarianism #morality #TechBros #PeterThiel
/10

"[Thiel's ideology] is what Hannah Arendt called 'the banality of evil' in its most refined form: not the dramatic villainy of lesser monsters, but the systematic evacuation of moral weight from decisions affecting millions of lives. Thiel treats democracy like a venture capital portfolio, authoritarianism like a hedge fund position, human extinction like a fascinating thought experiment."

#Trump #MAGA #authoritarianism #morality #TechBros #PeterThiel
/9

"We are witnessing the corruption of human thought itself—not by crude propagandists or obvious charlatans, but by a sophisticated ecosystem of oligarchs and their courtiers who have weaponized the very concept of expertise against the democratic discourse they claim to serve.

At the apex stands Peter Thiel, whose genuine brilliance serves a moral emptiness so complete it takes your breath away."

#Trump #MAGA #authoritarianism #morality #TechBros #PeterThiel
/8

"There exists in Silicon Valley a particular species of intellectual fraud so brazen, so systematic, and so dangerous that it demands the kind of moral clarity that cuts through pretense like a blade through silk."

#Trump #MAGA #authoritarianism #morality #TechBros #PeterThiel
/7

It's not just Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Rev. William Barber II who are talking today about how the crisis in American culture with Trump in the White House is a moral crisis. Mike Brock sounds a similar alarm, focusing on Trump's Silicon Valley epigones and apologists:

#Trump #MAGA #authoritarianism #morality #TechBros #PeterThiel
/6

https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-faux-intellectuals-of-silicon

"And is that one of the reasons why maybe it's not a surprise that there would come along someone like a Trump and MAGA that could move so fast because they're not always asking people to do something that they haven't been already asked to do before?"

#Trump #MAGA #morality
/5

"So that there's a case for this within the American democracy that has been legitimized long before Trump. He's just using it. ...

So we have been constantly in this culture, too often preconditioned to accept the reorientation of our moral values away from liberty, justice for all, love, caring, what not, constantly."

#Trump #MAGA #morality
/4

"But ultimately, the greatest tragedy is that over time, it asks us to betray ourselves, to forget our conscience. And so this is a kind of moral collapse that's collective and individual."

Rev. Barber responds,

"Part of what we have to do in American society, though, is to own that from its inception, the politics of America, or at least part of the politics of America, has always asked us to set aside our moral convictions, our deepest moral convictions."

#Trump #MAGA #morality
/3

"It's a sad and tragic trajectory. And authoritarianism not only requires you to betray others, and there are many ways we can do that betrayal by deciding not to care when we see people taken away or beaten, right? … And they use secret police and informers. There's a whole apparatus to encourage us to betray others."

#Trump #MAGA #authoritarianism #morality
/2

“'Both sides are bad' is how people opt out of having a backbone."

~ Patricia DeAnna

#Democrats #Republicans #fascism #democracy #BothSides #morality
/4

https://www.threads.com/@patriciadeanna/post/DM5uXfwJ7kb

"The attempt to steal an election gets balanced against mean tweets about the media.

This isn’t moral reasoning; it’s moral paralysis disguised as fairness."

#Democrats #Republicans #fascism #democracy #BothSides #morality
/3

"More insidiously, it creates a framework where atrocities and policy preferences become commensurable—as if they exist on the same moral scale and can be weighed against each other. Systematic attacks on democratic institutions get balanced against tax cuts. Corruption gets balanced against deregulation."

#Democrats #Republicans #fascism #democracy #BothSides #morality
/2