Political Terraforming

This observation by David Roberts helped me crystalize some thoughts. I wrote them originally as a reply thread, but have included a tidier and slightly expanded form below that for easier reference.
   —Kent Pitman

Remember, everyone: the tech bros are not "libertarian." There are no libertarians in the wild -- they can only exist in environments separated from the real world, like a think tank or a dorm.

"I don't want my shit regulated & I want my taxes cut" isn't libertarian!

— David Roberts (@drvolts) October 15, 2024

In reply to David:

Rachel Maddow, over the last few weeks, has run some great pieces. In one of them, I recall her quoting one of Vance's idols saying something about just needing to rip out government agencies and install a smart guy who innately knows what needs doing. Your remark on libertarians matches that.

What they propose is utterly self-serving, not defensibly fair. It's full of bias and subject to corruption and degradation. No notion of oversight, like the current Supreme Court overseeing itself. But they soothe themselves that bludgeoning democracy into collective unconsciousness is ‘minimal,’ indulge the claim it's therefore a principled action, and then—in the safety of their own minds—call it a win.

This is why they dislike diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). If everyone were just like them—not diverse, if they had no obligation to include anyone not like them, then equity and fairness would come for free and there would be no one to include.

A need to satisfy someone other than oneself creates a problem they can't solve. They've given it no thought. In that light, it's easy to see why narcissists find DEI troubling. To them it is just an irritating inefficiency to be forced into having a mechanism for dealing fairly with anyone other than themselves.

Attacks on DEI aren't random. Just as attacks on women are not. Nor racial attacks. Nor those related to sexual preference or gender identity. And so on. It isn't just that they disdain these groups, though they do. It's that they want no rights at all. Rights are potential barriers to them. And barriers to them are the only ones they want to remove.

They want no rules. That's the kind of ‘libertarianism.’ they seek. But as I've long said:

“Where there are no rules, bullies rule.”
—me

They, these bullies, are terraforming our world to be habitable to them—at the expense of our pre-existing forms of life, which had previously thrived but which they have no use for.

Author's Notes:

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The graphic was produced at abacus.ai using Claude Sonnet 3.5 and Flux.1. The prompt was “Draw a black and white sketch of a bulldozer mowing down the supreme court's building with a crane and a wrecking ball.”. Using Gimp, I made some adjustments to the image it generated, flipping which side of the “T” the ball was on, adding a public domain image of the scales portion, adjusting the rubble and taking a small bite out of the columns.