Damn: "Hitler’s SA — the Sturmabteilung — isn’t just a street gang with uniforms; it’s a brotherhood of disaffected men who have been handed power for the first time in their lives. Hans finally gets what he craves: the chance to punch down, to hurt the people he’s been told are the cause of his suffering."
So much this. I work in tech, and the general belief is that Tech is flush with Gen Z and Millennials that are liberal or progressive, but that is not even remotely true.
The number of MAGA people I have on my team, and who I have to deal with will make you cry. And they LOVE pointing out their proclivities, expound upon Trump's inanities, and in general being the ugly middle aged white dudes that hate DEI because they feel that they got where they were by their merit and superior intellectual affectations.
My generation, Gen X, is the fucking worst. It shouldn't surprise me, being part of the cohort that was hands off parenting, latch-key kids, but it does. We were on our own for 12+ hours a day, and for some fucking reason that made us think that we were gods.
Fellow Gen-Xer here. You probably already know this, but Gen-X had the highest number of Trump voters in the past election. Sigh.
MAGA tech is a tricky one. They seem to think technology will save the world and give them an edge over the creative class.
And they are correct. But fascism always eats its young.
The early 20th century also saw rapid industrial advancements—electrification, mass production, and automation (assembly lines, synthetic materials, mechanized agriculture). This increased productivity but also eliminated traditional jobs in farming and crafts. By the late 1920s, Germany had over 6 million unemployed, many of whom saw their skills rendered obsolete by new machines.
6 million jobs gone due to technology is a lesson we shouldn't ignore. Multiply that by the size of the US.
MAGA tech brags that AI will make the world more productive while ignoring what job loss does to societies.
Alas, I work in IT education, and my company (a fortune 500 company) is making it very difficult to hire people. The mantra from leadership is “justify why you need a body, instead of just using AI”, and reality is, Gen AI really doesn’t know anything, and it doesn’t think.
Do we use AI tools to help us build content? Hell yeah.
Do we trust it to replace a thinking meat-space intelligence? No fucking way.
But the Technorati and the leadership classes seem to want to ignore the elephant in the room, that AI without a lot of Human oversight and assistance is hot garbage.
In my case, I fall back to asking it something I know. Like quantum mechanics. And it gets it about 80% right. But if you don’t know what it spews that is wrong, that just enables people to be authoritatively wrong.
A lot of people are happy with that, but that level of slop is unacceptable to me.
I laugh at all the articles claiming they can tell when something is written by AI. Here's how you tell - the writing is bad. It's lifeless and it follows a pattern and never breaks from it. (Humans are not that perfect.) I am not saying AI doesn't have its uses - I ask it to scan long research documents and summarize them. It's great at that. But writing...nah.
Only people who care not for accuracy, quality, or fitness for purpose use AI to write for them.
It is great to synthesize a syllabus and a lesson plan, but a wise user of it uses that to seed their process, and edits to make it useful.
Far too many people are happy to neglect that second half of the equation.
Hell, our senior execs love it, because LLMs are great at high level, airy, yet cohesive narrative arcs (for executive decks), they assume that this wonder of the modern age should work for all levels. It just doesn't except at the lightest, airiest edges of real work.
Wow. You have articulated much of what I have been saying in bits and pieces to friends for months. Thank you. MAGA is an identity - a trauma-bonding revenge cult - to say this victim story is impervious to factual rebuttal is an understatement. Suffering IS the point. Yet, you call for empathy because they are lost, bitter, and hurting for good reason. (I am having a bit of pause in the juxtaposition of empathy and "ignoring them.") But WE ARE in a race to have an environment where radicalization loses its appeal - and we are currently losing. Yes, moderate voters must be reached. (I believe the narrative must be to reclaim economic populism on the Left - "They are stealing your money and jobs!" "Forget" cultural issues.) You have touched all the right psychological bases, e.g., denial and cognitive dissonance. The analogy to 1930s Germany must be underscored over and over. I have shared your post with Facebook, a few friends, and my brother, who has a son named "Marge." Your writing (and thinking) is a gem of insight and service. Good job. Stay on it!
Steven, You probably got to this point much sooner than I did. I have been trying to intellectualize the problem for months. I reason and plead with them. I show them facts. I try pulling on their heart strings to make them see the people they are hurting.
Nothing works.
As far as empathy goes - I believe you can empathize with someone's hurt while also choosing to create boundaries - i.e. ignore them. I liken it to empathizing from afar. Empathy doesn't mean we have to try to reason with them. We can hold their pain, while also leaving space for our own.
And thank you for sharing. I know some readers will be angered by this article. But it needed to be said.
Your integration of empathy and "ignoring" is what I thought you meant, nicely articulated; it is tricky but within the realm of emotional intelligence. It is applicable across the board for relationships. Yes, perhaps some readers will be angered, but many, like me, felt validated. It needed to be said, indeed.
I think the part that still shocks me is this: the MAGA agenda leaves the MAGA core out of the solution space. I'm a little disturbed by the implication that by letting the parachute suit guy jump off the Eiffel Tower to his death, we haven't solved the problem by removing all doubt. Like using the courts to stop some of the DOGE harm, the city of Paris could have stopped Reichelt from jumping, leaving plausibility for his claims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Reichelt
One problem here is that like truth, bad news takes it's own sweet time to arrive. In the mean time, the lies have flooded the zone. By the time team MAGA sorts out that they've lost the war, and they are screwed. There is somebody else to blame.
I'm all for getting more people engaged. But do we have any idea what the non-voters think? Past conventional wisdom had it that non-voters leaned left. Do we know that to be true, today? The extra voters MAGA drummed up broke their way, strongly. Would the left have the same good fortune? Would it last more than a single election cycle? Is there a way to cultivate empathy in the non-voter, so they'll vote for decades to come against the gnatwits and the suffering they've brought on?
There was a half-century of boom-bust and labor unrest before the final crash sponsored by margin-trading that started the Great Depression. Is that what we're in for, realistically? The left finally got a working majority, but the social cost was high.
It is a bit confounding- why this country cannot produce great leaders- the last great leader was MLK - before him JFK (maybe we will never know) before him Theodore Roosevelt IMO.
Damn: "Hitler’s SA — the Sturmabteilung — isn’t just a street gang with uniforms; it’s a brotherhood of disaffected men who have been handed power for the first time in their lives. Hans finally gets what he craves: the chance to punch down, to hurt the people he’s been told are the cause of his suffering."
So much this. I work in tech, and the general belief is that Tech is flush with Gen Z and Millennials that are liberal or progressive, but that is not even remotely true.
The number of MAGA people I have on my team, and who I have to deal with will make you cry. And they LOVE pointing out their proclivities, expound upon Trump's inanities, and in general being the ugly middle aged white dudes that hate DEI because they feel that they got where they were by their merit and superior intellectual affectations.
My generation, Gen X, is the fucking worst. It shouldn't surprise me, being part of the cohort that was hands off parenting, latch-key kids, but it does. We were on our own for 12+ hours a day, and for some fucking reason that made us think that we were gods.
Thanks for writing this!
Fellow Gen-Xer here. You probably already know this, but Gen-X had the highest number of Trump voters in the past election. Sigh.
MAGA tech is a tricky one. They seem to think technology will save the world and give them an edge over the creative class.
And they are correct. But fascism always eats its young.
The early 20th century also saw rapid industrial advancements—electrification, mass production, and automation (assembly lines, synthetic materials, mechanized agriculture). This increased productivity but also eliminated traditional jobs in farming and crafts. By the late 1920s, Germany had over 6 million unemployed, many of whom saw their skills rendered obsolete by new machines.
6 million jobs gone due to technology is a lesson we shouldn't ignore. Multiply that by the size of the US.
MAGA tech brags that AI will make the world more productive while ignoring what job loss does to societies.
I wish I could like this more than once.
Alas, I work in IT education, and my company (a fortune 500 company) is making it very difficult to hire people. The mantra from leadership is “justify why you need a body, instead of just using AI”, and reality is, Gen AI really doesn’t know anything, and it doesn’t think.
Do we use AI tools to help us build content? Hell yeah.
Do we trust it to replace a thinking meat-space intelligence? No fucking way.
But the Technorati and the leadership classes seem to want to ignore the elephant in the room, that AI without a lot of Human oversight and assistance is hot garbage.
In my case, I fall back to asking it something I know. Like quantum mechanics. And it gets it about 80% right. But if you don’t know what it spews that is wrong, that just enables people to be authoritatively wrong.
A lot of people are happy with that, but that level of slop is unacceptable to me.
I fight this battle every day, and I am losing.
I laugh at all the articles claiming they can tell when something is written by AI. Here's how you tell - the writing is bad. It's lifeless and it follows a pattern and never breaks from it. (Humans are not that perfect.) I am not saying AI doesn't have its uses - I ask it to scan long research documents and summarize them. It's great at that. But writing...nah.
Only people who care not for accuracy, quality, or fitness for purpose use AI to write for them.
It is great to synthesize a syllabus and a lesson plan, but a wise user of it uses that to seed their process, and edits to make it useful.
Far too many people are happy to neglect that second half of the equation.
Hell, our senior execs love it, because LLMs are great at high level, airy, yet cohesive narrative arcs (for executive decks), they assume that this wonder of the modern age should work for all levels. It just doesn't except at the lightest, airiest edges of real work.
Wow. You have articulated much of what I have been saying in bits and pieces to friends for months. Thank you. MAGA is an identity - a trauma-bonding revenge cult - to say this victim story is impervious to factual rebuttal is an understatement. Suffering IS the point. Yet, you call for empathy because they are lost, bitter, and hurting for good reason. (I am having a bit of pause in the juxtaposition of empathy and "ignoring them.") But WE ARE in a race to have an environment where radicalization loses its appeal - and we are currently losing. Yes, moderate voters must be reached. (I believe the narrative must be to reclaim economic populism on the Left - "They are stealing your money and jobs!" "Forget" cultural issues.) You have touched all the right psychological bases, e.g., denial and cognitive dissonance. The analogy to 1930s Germany must be underscored over and over. I have shared your post with Facebook, a few friends, and my brother, who has a son named "Marge." Your writing (and thinking) is a gem of insight and service. Good job. Stay on it!
Steven, You probably got to this point much sooner than I did. I have been trying to intellectualize the problem for months. I reason and plead with them. I show them facts. I try pulling on their heart strings to make them see the people they are hurting.
Nothing works.
As far as empathy goes - I believe you can empathize with someone's hurt while also choosing to create boundaries - i.e. ignore them. I liken it to empathizing from afar. Empathy doesn't mean we have to try to reason with them. We can hold their pain, while also leaving space for our own.
And thank you for sharing. I know some readers will be angered by this article. But it needed to be said.
Your integration of empathy and "ignoring" is what I thought you meant, nicely articulated; it is tricky but within the realm of emotional intelligence. It is applicable across the board for relationships. Yes, perhaps some readers will be angered, but many, like me, felt validated. It needed to be said, indeed.
I think the part that still shocks me is this: the MAGA agenda leaves the MAGA core out of the solution space. I'm a little disturbed by the implication that by letting the parachute suit guy jump off the Eiffel Tower to his death, we haven't solved the problem by removing all doubt. Like using the courts to stop some of the DOGE harm, the city of Paris could have stopped Reichelt from jumping, leaving plausibility for his claims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Reichelt
One problem here is that like truth, bad news takes it's own sweet time to arrive. In the mean time, the lies have flooded the zone. By the time team MAGA sorts out that they've lost the war, and they are screwed. There is somebody else to blame.
I'm all for getting more people engaged. But do we have any idea what the non-voters think? Past conventional wisdom had it that non-voters leaned left. Do we know that to be true, today? The extra voters MAGA drummed up broke their way, strongly. Would the left have the same good fortune? Would it last more than a single election cycle? Is there a way to cultivate empathy in the non-voter, so they'll vote for decades to come against the gnatwits and the suffering they've brought on?
There was a half-century of boom-bust and labor unrest before the final crash sponsored by margin-trading that started the Great Depression. Is that what we're in for, realistically? The left finally got a working majority, but the social cost was high.
Your words made me think of a quote from Alexander Tocqueville "...the most dangerous time for a bad government is usually when it begins to reform."
It is a bit confounding- why this country cannot produce great leaders- the last great leader was MLK - before him JFK (maybe we will never know) before him Theodore Roosevelt IMO.