Do you even read articles you comment on?

Paulo Kirk

May 19, 2026

Puke, again, puke: Yaron Brook was born and raised in Israel. He served as a first sergeant in Israeli military intelligence and earned a BSc in civil engineering from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. In 1987 he moved to the United States where he received his MBA and PhD in finance from the University of Texas at Austin; he became an American citizen in 2003. For seven years he was an award-winning finance professor at Santa Clara University, and in 1998 he cofounded BH Equity Research, a private equity and hedge fund manager, of which he is managing founder and director.

Brook serves on the boards of the Ayn Rand Institute, the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism and CEHE (Center for Excellence in Higher Education), and he is a member of the Association of Private Enterprise Education and the Mont Pelerin Society.

She’s monster because of her staunch dismissal of altruism and her championing of extreme individualism. Critics—such as Gore Vidal, who once famously described her philosophy as “nearly perfect in its immorality”—argue that her worldview justifies selfishness, breeds contempt for the vulnerable, and lacks basic human empathy. Others point to troubling elements in her personal life and early journals, including an initial fascination with the psychopathic serial killer William Hickman. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

[Ayn Rand was born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum to a secular, middle-class Jewish family in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1905. She later abandoned religious traditions, became a staunch atheist, and immigrated to the United States in 1926. How Ayn Rand Helped Turn the U.S. Into a Selfish, Greedy Nation: The ‘Atlas Shrugged’ author made selfishness heroic and caring about others weakness.]

Now, before I’m investigated for having taken the un-American stand that sex is a minor department of morality, let me try to show what I think is morally important. Ayn Rand is a rhetorician who writes novels I have never been able to read. She has just published a book, For the New Intellectual, subtitled The Philosophy of Ayn Rand; it is a collection of pensées and arias from her novels and it must be read to be believed. Herewith, a few excerpts from the Rand collection.

• “It was the morality of altruism that undercut American and is now destroying her.”

• “Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society. Today, the conflict has reached its ultimate climax; the choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequence of freedom…or the primordial morality of altruism with its consequences of slavery, etc.”

• Then from one of her arias for heldentenor: “I am done with the monster of ‘we,’ the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: ‘I.’”

• “The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man’s first duty is to himself.”

• “To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men.”

• “The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral….”

This odd little woman is attempting to give a moral sanction to greed and self interest, and to pull it off she must at times indulge in purest Orwellian newspeak of the “freedom is slavery” sort. What interests me most about her is not the absurdity of her “philosophy,” but the size of her audience (in my campaign for the House she was the one writer people knew and talked about). She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the “welfare” state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts. For them, she has an enticing prescription: altruism is the root of all evil, self-interest is the only good, and if you’re dumb or incompetent that’s your lookout.

She is fighting two battles: the first, against the idea of the State being anything more than a police force and a judiciary to restrain people from stealing each other’s money openly. She is in legitimate company here. There is a reactionary position which has many valid attractions, among them lean, sinewy, regular-guy Barry Goldwater. But it is Miss Rand’s second battle that is the moral one. She has declared war not only on Marx but on Christ. Now, although my own enthusiasm for the various systems evolved in the names of those two figures is limited, I doubt if even the most anti-Christian free-thinker would want to deny the ethical value of Christ in the Gospels. To reject that Christ is to embark on dangerous waters indeed. For to justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil. For one thing, it is gratuitous to advise any human being to look out for himself. You can be sure that he will. It is far more difficult to persuade him to help his neighbor to build a dam or to defend a town or to give food he has accumulated to the victims of a famine. But since we must live together, dependent upon one another for many things and services, altruism is necessary to survival. To get people to do needed things is the perennial hard task of government, not to mention of religion and philosophy. That it is right to help someone less fortunate is an idea which ahs figured in most systems of conduct since the beginning of the race. We often fail. That predatory demon “I” is difficult to contain but until now we have all agreed that to help others is a right action. Now the dictionary definition of “moral” is: “concerned with the distinction between right and wrong” as in “moral law, the requirements to which right action must conform.” Though Miss Rand’s grasp of logic is uncertain, she does realize that to make even a modicum of sense she must change all the terms. Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life a right action is consideration for the welfare of others. In the one case, through a state which was to wither away, in the other through the private exercise of the moral sense. Miss Rand now tells us that what we have thought was right is really wrong. The lesson should have read: One for one and none for all.

Ayn Rand’s “philosophy” is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society. Moral values are in flux. The muddy depths are being stirred by new monsters and witches from the deep. Trolls walk the American night. Caesars are stirring in the Forum. There are storm warnings ahead. But to counter trolls and Caesars, we have such men as Lewis Mumford whose new book, The City in History, inspires. He traces the growth of communities from Neolithic to present times. He is wise. He is moral: that is, he favors right action and he believes it possible for us to make things better for us (not “me”!). He belongs to the currently unfashionable line of makers who believe that if something is wrong it can be made right, whether a faulty water main or a faulty idea. May he flourish!

How meaningless jobs became the norm | Catherine Liu vs Yaron Brook

[Fucking Jews — Aaron or Yaron — every fucking where: Birth and Heritage: He was born in Jerusalem to Jewish socialist parents who had immigrated from South Africa.

• Israeli Roots: He grew up in Haifa and served as a first sergeant in the Israeli military intelligence from 1979 to 1982.
• Education: He earned his undergraduate degree from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology before moving to the United States for his graduate studies…. Host of the Yaron Brook Show, renowned speaker, best-selling author and Chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute]

Shit: Unedited Anti-Imperialism— Joe Emersberger replied to your comment on Delcy has overthrown Chavismo.

First the guy writes:

Delcy Rodriquez, became the acting president after Maduro was kidnapped by Trump in an attack on Caracas that massacred over a hundred people. Though dismayed by her policy of swallowing humiliation by Washington, I was convinced by comrades to see this a strategic retreat, to see it as Delcy waiting things out, avoiding the installation of U.S.-backed fascism under a genocidal lunatic like Maria Corina Machado, and avoiding a costly war against the US or its Venezuelan proxies.

& then this:

Was Delcy always this bad? Was Cabello? Were they dissembling all these years? I don’t think so. Rank opportunists and frauds tend to reveal themselves much earlier on. But relentless pressure from a superpower can eventually make people give up, rationalize betrayal as realism, and anti-imperial struggle as pointless.

I write this:

He suspends me?

Paul Haeder/ Terminal Velocity: Man Lost of

User was indefinitely suspended for this comment.

Oh, we find cunts everywhere:

PETA is Silent While Israeli Settlers Club Dogs and Torture Lambs: From Chained Dogs to Poisoned Sheep: Settler Violence Against Animals

The club rose and fell on Lucy’s skull with a wet brutal thud. She was chained in her family’s yard in Atara, near Ramallah. The video continued recording an Israeli settler raising the club then smashing it against the dog, there was no snarl and no lunge, just the sound of wood on bone and the low, broken whimper that followed each strike, Another dog was watching in the corner, yapping at the settler, in a desperate plea. The masked settler kept hitting with full force. Blood ran from her eyes, her fractured skull as she laid motionless, but the settler didnt stop, he hit harder. The camera, held by a neighbor, did not shake, I really don’t know how it didnt shake, were they used to seeing this brutality from Israelis? Were they in shock? I have been watching my family and friends in Gaza burn alive, forcibly starved and hollowed inside out, my body was shaking watching this savagery. I already knew it would end with another Israeli “investigation”, and nothing would happen. Not because it’s a dog, but because they do the same to humans.

Last month the same shiver went down my spine when I watched a French nun get pushed and kicked to the ground by a settler in occupied Jerusalem. Other Israelis stood there watching her being beaten. I know Israeli terrorism very well, but it still shakes me. It still shocks me every single time.

Days earlier, the same village saw settlers throwing rocks at cats during another violent raid. In Hebron, three dogs belonging to one Palestinian family were killed, some poisoned, others beaten, part of repeated assaults that also took their sheep. In the South Hebron Hills, footage captured settlers bludgeoning lambs in pens, slitting throats, then abusing the carcasses. B’Tselem has documented settlers beating livestock with clubs, slamming them to the ground, running vehicles over herds.

UN OCHA records tell the larger count: thousands of sheep and goats stolen or killed in settler attacks since late 2023. One March 2025 raid in the Jordan Valley alone took or killed over 1,400 animals. Donkeys are led away. Water troughs smashed. Grazing land turned into settler pasture while Palestinian flocks starve or scatter. These are not accidents of “tensions.” They are tools to empty land.

For decades, Humans and animal rights organizations have monitored and recorded settlers poisoning grazing fields and water sources, killing dozens of sheep in single attacks. In 2005, settlers poisoned scores of sheep and even gazelles near Tuwani. In 2012, thirteen sheep died after poison was sprayed on fields near Hebron. Similar poisoning of dogs, sheep, and entire flocks has recurred in Hebron hills, Jordan Valley, and near Jericho. Donkeys stabbed to death, herds run over by vehicles, lambs tortured in pens, these tactics stretch back years, forming a consistent weapon to force Palestinian families off their land.

In January 2026: B’Tselem published videos of clubbing and stone-throwing at tied and penned animals. May 2026: Lucy’s beating, caught clearly, “investigated” by Israeli police only after viral outrage. Haaretz reported it straight, a dog tied and attacked in its yard then the army blocked its rescue by the Palestinian family.

PETA is Silent While Israeli Settlers Club Dogs and Torture Lambs

Where are the Western animal rights organizations? PETA, loud on fur farms, circuses, and lab animals in the West, has stayed largely silent on this systematic cruelty under occupation. Protests have formed outside their offices demanding accountability. Their occasional statements speak of “animals suffer in all wars” while Palestinian pets and herds are targeted as policy extension to ethnically cleanse the humans. They have criticized Palestinians before, but settler clubs on chained dogs draw no campaigns, no emergency appeals and no boycotts.

[Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco started People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). They established the non-profit animal rights organization in March 1980. Newkirk, a British-American activist, has remained the face and primary leader of the organization since its inception. Pacheco, who initially co-founded the group to launch direct action campaigns against animal testing and exploitation, later resigned from the organization in 1999. ]

They never ever start off with statistics on how many lives the Jews and Chabad Trump have killed, are killing and are lost in these Jew Wars. FUCK THEM. Cold, calculating economists?

Trump had hoped to go there in triumph after an easy victory over Iran. He actually went there in despair, hoping for China’s help in cleaning up the mess he made there. Last year, he had hoped to cow China into submission with his tariffs, only to push himself in a submissive position. In Beijing, the very tone of his comments – what a great leader Xi is, how wonderful China, is, how well he gets on with everyone, and how the US and China are going to have a ‘fantastic future together’ shows that for all his grandiose plans to project US power, he has ended exactly where China wanted him, having to accept parity with China. How else did he manage to expose the reduction of US power in Beijing? Given that the meeting was initiated by the Chinese, how well did they realise what they wanted? Who budged or blinked on all the major issues: tariffs, investment, Hormuz, Taiwan, Iran’s nuclear programme? How will this summit re-shape the contest between China and the US that has shaped the 21st century? Will the retinue of CEO’s that went there get what they want? Where will it leave the Iran war? and, above all, where will it leave the world which the Trump regime, shall we call it that, has landed in chaos of one sort or another since Trump’s election, let alone his inauguration…..

This is what toothlessness and EuroTrash Talk look like:

United Nations on Monday issued a stark warning to Israel, urging it to take all necessary measures to prevent acts of “genocide” in Gaza, while condemning what it described as increasing signs of “ethnic cleansing” in both the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.

The warning came in a new report by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, who described Israeli actions since the outbreak of war on October 7, 2023, as serious violations of international law. The report stated that some military practices and policies may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Türk renewed calls for Israel to comply with the 2024 ruling issued by the International Court of Justice, which ordered measures aimed at preventing genocide in Gaza. He stressed the need for Israeli authorities to ensure their forces do not commit acts of genocide, prevent incitement to such crimes, and hold perpetrators accountable.

[Volker Türk is an Austrian lawyer and United Nations official. He has been the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights since October 2022.]

PETA going to defend these Homo Sapiens, uh?

Judge Jeremy Johnson secretly ruled that, despite not being charged with “terrorism,” there was a “terrorist connection” with the six, due to the activists attempting to “influence” the Israeli government.

MeTOO#? Nah, not in AmeriKKKa.

Fucking dirty Jews and dirty Christians:

“The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other pro-Israel interest groups have uncorked over $9 million in a bid to unseat Republican Rep. Thomas Massie on Tuesday in a competitive primary that has shattered spending records. Prominent pro-Israel GOP donors have funneled millions more into a super PAC stood up by President Donald Trump’s political operation that has spent nearly $7 million on the race. Overall ad spending has topped $32 million, making it the most expensive House primary on record, per tracking firm AdImpact.”

The most influential super PAC behind this Zionist attack on Thomas Massie is “the MAGA KY super PAC started by former Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita and pollster Tony Fabrizio,” which Politico noted is bankrolled by “$1 million from hedge fund manager Paul Singer and $750,000 from a super PAC linked to casino magnate Miriam Adelson. Another group, the Christians United for Israel Action Fund, has spent six figures on billboards targeting Massie.”

Paul Singer has been one of the lead funders of AIPAC and an endless list of Zionist and Neo-conservative pro-war think tanks and was behind “$2 million given to AIPAC tied-groups this election cycle” in the 2024 election cycle.

Singer has similarly been one of the lead funders of Neo-conservative think tanks that paved the way for the war in Iran.

[director at the Republican Jewish Coalition]

Do these cunts just learn to shut the fuck up for a month? No discussion FIRST or wherever about the hundreds of thousands dead!!!!

On 18 May 2026, I was on Glenn Diesen’s podcast talking with him mainly about the prospects for escalation in the Ukraine war, but also the Iran war. Regarding Ukraine, it is clear that Ukraine, with help from Europe, is ramping up its drone attacks on Moscow and promising even bigger attacks in the future. The Russians, however, have made it clear that the present situation — not to mention the promised future — is untenable and they will escalate if necessary to create deterrence. Given there is virtually no bargaining space between the two sides and there are clear hints from the Russian side that attacking NATO states is a possibility, we should be deeply worried. Glenn and I also talked about the dangers of escalation in the Iran war, where there also appears to be no bargaining space between the rival sides and where a desperate President Trump is constantly threatening to start bombing Iran again. Should he do that, it will have disastrous consequences for the international economy. All of this is to say that the chances for truly dangerous escalation are real in both the Iran and Ukraine wars.

Interesting Substack today:

I am legally obligated to tell you that I am completely ignoring the giant, shiny golden ego trip on the right. If I even breathe a word about it, The Wise Wolf immediately sheds fifty paid subscribers and Lily fires off a text warning me to stop tanking the business. So please, just enjoy the pretty gold colors and let the nice people worship their bovine metallurgy in peace.

I am writing this through a lovely antibiotic haze that makes my screen look like I am viewing it through a shower door. Possibly through two shower doors. The surgery prep drugs are doing interesting things to my vision, which is either a fascinating side effect or I am just going blind. Hard to tell. Could be both. Either way, I feel like absolute garbage right now and this article is probably not going to represent my usual standards of excellence. (The joke here is that nothing I write represents excellence. Excellence left the building with Elvis a long time ago.)

But we need to talk about something that has been bothering me for years, something that got whitewashed so thoroughly that most Christians have no idea they are reading sanitized scripture, something that raises a question nobody in institutional Christianity wants to answer because the answer leads somewhere very uncomfortable. If you cannot serve two masters, why were the Levites making sacrifices to a fallen angel? And why does nobody want to talk about the possibility that this practice never actually stopped?

One Goat for God, One Goat for the Demon in the Desert

Your English Bible tells you about the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16 as if it is a clean symbolic ritual. Two goats. One gets sacrificed to God. The other becomes the “scapegoat” and gets sent into the wilderness carrying the sins of Israel. Makes sense in a religious studies class sort of way. Symbolic purification. Moving on.

Azazel shows up in the Book of Enoch (you know, that book the institutional church decided you should not read) as one of the Watchers, the fallen angels who came down and slept with human women and taught forbidden knowledge and created the Nephilim. Azazel specifically gets credit for teaching humans warfare and cosmetics, because apparently, fallen angels have diverse skill sets, and sometimes those skills include foundation matching and stabbing people.

In Enoch, Azazel gets bound and thrown into the desert until the final judgment, which creates an interesting question about why the Levitical priesthood was sending him care packages in the form of sin-bearing goats, but we will get back to that.

So the ritual is this: The high priest takes two goats. Identical goats. He casts lots over them. One lot for YHWH. One lot for Azazel. The goat that gets the YHWH lot gets slaughtered on the altar. The goat that gets the Azazel lot gets the sins of the nation symbolically transferred to it, and then it gets sent out into the desert, to the place where Azazel is bound, carrying those sins TO him.

That is not a metaphor. That is a delivery service. One goat to God, one goat to the demon in the desert, and the text presents this as if it is perfectly normal, commanded, and holy.

Christian apologists will bend themselves into theological pretzels trying to explain this away. They will tell you Azazel just means “complete removal” (it does not). They will tell you it means “rocky precipice” (it does not). They will tell you it is symbolic of Christ removing sin (which is a creative retrofitting of Christian theology onto a Jewish ritual that predates Christ by over a thousand years and also does not explain why you would name Geography after a fallen angel).

They will tell you anything except what the text actually says, which is that the Levitical priesthood was worshipping Satan and God by performing a parallel sacrifice, one to YHWH and one to Azazel, on the most holy day of the Jewish calendar.

You do not perform a parallel ritual with two identical animals if one is going to God and the other is going to Geography. That is not how ancient Near Eastern religion worked. The parallelism IS the point. The equal treatment IS the point. One for the Lord. One for the Other Guy. And if you think the Israelites did not understand exactly what they were doing, you have not been paying attention to how much time the Old Testament spends yelling at them for doing exactly this kind of thing.

More inhumane economist: By Michael Hudson, The Crisis Finance Capitalism Can’t Escape

Rising Rates, Oil Shock, and Debt Collapse Threaten a Global Depression

Trump is threatening to escalate his war against Iran, and Iran is prepared to destroy the oil production and transport capacity of Arab OPEC countries that do not act to stop the US attack. The result will be to deepen the world depression that already is underway.

Yet the stock market has continued to rise, as have interest rates. The latter cannot stay up without crashing the real estate and stock markets. Yet the media and many investors view interest rates as rising so as to compensate investors for the risk of inflation. The reality is that higher interest rates will increase the economy’s inability to cope with the breakdown that already is in progress.

How did the myth of interest rates rising in response to price inflation begin?

The moral rationalization is to protect the purchasing power of creditor claims on debtors, as measured by the purchasing power of debt claims over consumer prices.

The pretense is that creditors use their interest receipts to buy goods and services. But already in the 18 century, critics of debt financing recognized that bondholders recycle most of their money into new loans. When they do spend part of their interest income into the “real” non-financial economy, it is mainly to buy prestige real estate, primarily in major financial centers, and secondly on luxury goods—mainly imported from Italy in the mid-18th century, just as today.

By the 19 century, creditors sought some excuse to justify their interest charges by depicting these as compensation for the risk that they might have to suffer a loss through loan defaults or by a loss of their purchasing power over goods and services as prices rose, and more to the point, over the labor that produced these products.

Austrian economists such as Böhm-Bawerk went so far as to claim that interest was a payment for the “service” of abstaining from consuming their income, but using “time preference” to consume more later. Having to pay interest, thus was depicted as the price of “impatience.” It was as if wage earners (“consumers”) had a choice to abstain from running into debt, lacking prudence when they did so. This prompted Marx to quip that the Rothschild bankers must be the most abstinent family in Europe. It was as if there was no financial sector of bankers and bondholders acting independently of the economy of production and consumption.

DELCY RODRIGUEZ HANDS ALL OF VENEZUELA’S WEALTH TO THE UNITED STATES



According to US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Venezuelan oil exports have reached their highest level in eight years, with current volumes double those recorded in December of 2025 weeks before the kidnapping Maduro. This was a direct result of the easing of sanctions imposed by the first Trump Administration in 2017.



However, under US law and the recent oil and mining privatizations, Washington is not required to transfer the revenues of oil and mineral production to the Venezuelan government because they have total control over the distribution and sales. This means that in exchange for political power, Delcy has given the green light to have Venezuela’s resources plundered and its wealth handed off to US corporations at the expense of the Venezuelan working class.



As a result, the revenues that were once used by Chavez and Maduro to develop healthcare and education have completely evaporated, while ending up in the pockets of Chevron and the Israelis. But that’s not surprising given that Delcy has become a colonial administrator, purging Chavistas like Alex Saab and handing them over to the DOJ, while also mass releasing known CIA terrorists from the opposition and betraying their friends in Iran after they came under attack by the US and Israeli regimes.



Even key founding members of the PSUV like Mario Silva, who was also purged, have turned against Delcy’s regime on the basis that she has turned the country into a vassal of American imperialism and a debt colony for the IMF. Delcy’s father had been murdered by the CIA in 1976 and she decided to betray her family legacy and her people in exchange for financial and political gain.



Before January 3rd, Venezuela’s President was a working class bus driver and now it’s a professional managerial class lawyer who sold the country out to the Epstein ruling elite.

Venezuela, the 53 UnUnited Snakes of Israel:

Why is the younger Nicolas Maduro praising Delcy Rodriguez and wishing her a happy birthday just days after she handed Alex Saab over to the US?

A traitor son… what a disgrace you are. Coward, sellout. Do you think your ass-kissing is going to save you? It’s only a matter of time. You’re going to end up in a gringo jail or dead when the little brothers stop needing you.

Islamophobes Can’t Shut Up Even as Muslims Are Murdered at a California Mosque

Three people were shot dead at the Islamic Center of San Diego, amid rising GOP anti-Muslim invective that has been left largely unchecked by the mainstream media, top Democrats, and society at large.

On this day in 2024, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash caused by bad weather. The hardliner would be replaced by the more reform-minded Masoud Pezeshkian, who on Monday said talks to end the U.S.-Israel war on Iran did “not mean surrender.”

Good morning, friends. Prem here. Wishing you a wonderful Tuesday, wherever you are. Unfortunately, I write in the wake of horrific violence in San Diego, California. I share my spirit with all who may be directly affected, and to all who deserve to be able to go without fear to their houses of worship.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we discuss all that led to yet another terrible anti-Muslim attack. Donald Trump, meanwhile, got a near-$2 billion slush fund to dole out to his allies, while Israel illegally intercepted another aid flotilla, kidnapping hundreds, including the Irish president’s sister and Zeteo contributor Alex Colston.

Let’s dig in.

Hating Muslims

Just days after yet another red-faced, fear-mongering Republican congressional hearing on “Sharia law,” a mosque was attacked in the United States. Two teenage suspects allegedly carried out a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego on Monday, killing three people.

While many of the details are still being uncovered, here’s what we know about the attack so far and the apparent motivations: the suspects were found dead, of apparently self-inflicted wounds. One reportedly left a suicide note that contained writings about racial pride, CNN reported, while hate speech was reportedly written on one of three weapons taken from the home of the parents of one suspect. A gas can with an “SS” sticker (a possible reference to Hitler’s Nazi paramilitary force) was also recovered.

Unfortunately, we can become desensitized towards such violence. Violence done with firearms, in a nation with more guns than people. Violence towards Arab Americans, especially since 9/11. Violence towards Muslims, given the posture of US foreign policy for decades on end.

But this attack hits hard, not only because it is at the nexus of so many social ills, but because the fomenting of anti-Muslim hatred in recent months has been so blatant – and so normalized.

For months, Republican members of Congress have unashamedly and publicly spewed venom towards Muslims and Islam, with little press or Democratic Party pushback. Comments that would tank political careers if they were made about any other minority are barely noticed if they are made about Muslims…

DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A recent study published in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology sheds light on how supporters of Donald Trump justify their continued allegiance despite learning about allegations of his sexual misconduct and illegal activities. The research suggests that when people face information that conflicts with their deeply held beliefs, they tend to reduce their mental discomfort by denying the allegations, focusing on policies over personal behavior, or claiming that other politicians commit similar acts.

Fucking Australian has to do this?

The study, “Responses to Belief-Conflicting Information: Justification of Support for Donald Trump,” was authored by Cindy Harmon-Jones, Robin R. Willardt, Thomas F. Denson, and Eddie Harmon-Jones.

Study author Cindy Harmon-Jones, a senior lecturer in the School of Psychology at Western Sydney University.

“I also wanted to take a cognitive dissonance perspective to understanding their answers. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that when people hold beliefs that are in conflict, meaning that both ideas cannot be true at once, they feel uncomfortable. This discomfort motivates them to do cognitive work to bring their beliefs closer in alignment. I was interested in how people justify their support for Trump when reminded of the accusations against him.”

Traumatized: The New Politics of Public Suffering will be available on September 29 via Verso. Preorders are live at your favorite bookseller. Just follow this link. From the publisher:

Trauma culture didn’t just describe pain – it reorganized politics around it. From PTSD discourse to Oprah and the influencer economy, suffering became identity, currency, and moral authority. The result: a politics of false consensus, enforced accommodation, and the quiet erosion of liberalism itself.

This release is serendipitous given Freddie deBoer’s recent announcement of his upcoming book, All in Your Head: Illness as Identity, Trauma as Fashion, and the Desire to be Disordered. Let’s call it unplanned synergy!

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