cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22447069
The difference between Russian and American authoritarianism
Dont forget, it all starts with:
Greed/avarice = rational self-interest
Greed is a character deficit, a personal failing, and a destructive force. We’ve made it our primary practiced cultural value. We deify the greedy instead of condemning them for their greed. We’ve made greed a virtue, having largely abandoned the term in favor of self-masturbatory, complimentary terms for it.
You don’t get to a place where empathy is a foreign concept, where your capital score is more important than the social contract, without demanding far more resources than most would need for a hundred lifetimes being tolerated by society.
The Gordon Geckos, Ebenezer Scrooges, and Mr. Potters were cautionary tales about bad people with bad values, villains. Yet Oliver Stone supposedly gets letters from fans who thank him for creating their fictional role model.