@nicholasajones.bsky.social
Reposted
i have written about this before but i have become extremely civic republican virtue pilled as a result of all of this. democracy will not work without an active effort to cultivate virtue among ordinary people!
trump is unique in that his depravity creates the very cynicism he feeds on. it is necessary to uphold the idea that we are capable of better even if that belief is counterfactual. which is why we need to tell the bureaucracy that their work is valued and that they are holding the line for us.
Taking the President's symbolic roles as essentially being the central rituals of American civic religion, Trump's inability to perform them- to actually be presidential- signals that the civic religion is hollow and without power, that there are no consequences for blaspheming it.
January 30, 2025 at 11:18 PM
i have written about this before but i have become extremely civic republican virtue pilled as a result of all of this. democracy will not work without an active effort to cultivate virtue among ordinary people!