Sam Harris: "I don't care if he had corpses of infants in his basement."
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It was always obvious that this was how Trump is regarded by millions. It is their emotion truth. We should trust them when they tell us that Trump is an existential threat to their lives and the lives of their loved ones. It's why it was always clear that election fraud was on the table, with the only defense against it being fear of getting caught.
The fact that people are so easily swayed into that emotional space of defense against existential threats, is why the human race is doomed. We get very destructive when we believe we are fighting those sorts of fights. TDS sufferers are the canary in our mutual coal mine, and their psyches crumble way too easily.
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Sam Harris remains my favorite thinker and the public purveyor of opinions who resonates most with me, but he is unfortunately among those who detach from reality when it comes to Trump. Though I think between 2016 and 2020 he was making gradual inroads towards acceptance that his was an overreaction. For instance he began to take the question seriously, about whether the country would be better had Hillary been elected. The answer was, at least, not self-evident. Then Jan 6 happened and his psyche bunkered down, probably permanently.
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It's one of those frustrating times when the sane among us see so clearly that an entire culture, inhabited by millions, would be perfectly ok with election fraud, as long as it went undetected. It would be some broken eggs to make their democracy omelette. A necessary, even brave, sacrifice. You can't claim Trump is this existential threat on the level of a meteor of death, without also allowing for that corollary. You are willing to destroy nearly anything, break nearly any covenant, to prevent it. Then you can work to rebuild after the disaster is avoided. That's how disaster avoidance works.
But then they claim no, no, I wouldn't be ok with that. And of course they are lying when they say that. It's frustrating to be confronted with such blatant disingenuousness.
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The primary symptom of TDS is that it makes the sufferer say dumber things about Donald Trump than they ever say about anything or anybody else. So actually, in order to know someone has TDS, you have to know how smart they are when they're not talking about Donald Trump. Then you can measure the TDS viral load by the difference between that baseline, and the shit that comes out of their mouths about Trump.
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Sam released a response on his podcast. Something about how Trump is one of the worst humans in the world. His coup wasn't a coup but is exactly the point about why he's such a threat. You could walk a thousand miles in any direction in any country on the planet and not cross paths with a worse person than Trump. Media bias against him is fine, censorship policies against him in big tech are fine. But Sam wants everybody to know that he is against breaking the law when opposing Trump. Also, Trump's policies by and large are fine, and better than the opposition's. But January 6.
It's really just a case of the feelings one feels in response to Jan 6. Sam's feelings are very strong. Myself, I can't say it moved my meter much. It was embarrassing for Trump supporters, but I did not feel our democracy was meaningfully threatened. It is certainly enough to make me oppose any future presidential bid for the guy. But if he does turn out to be the candidate, I will continue to feel our democracy is more than strong enough to contain his douche baggery, and I'll gladly take the policy stuff. Sam notes that the country will go crazy if he is elected again. I agree. But I'm not going to allow my political opinions to be held hostage by an entire culture in a destructive moral panic, because they know better than I do about who should be President. Go fuck yourselves. I'll be in Texas, and likely armed.
