If you want to understand intellectual life on the right these days, it's useful to think of it as a series of memes designed to justify authoritarian and sadistic impulses. Friend/enemy distinction = Fight the libs without concerns over morality No enemies to the right = associate with the most hateful people imaginable Immigration destroying the country = excuses to hurt brown people Libs are oppressing us = this is what we'd like to do with them All these arguments are bad and don't stand up to scrutiny. All the data says immigration is good for the country, for example, and that Trump is much more guilty of any offenses you might accuse liberals of. None of the arguments are convincing to those outside the circle because they're just fig leaves for the underlying instincts, a way to signal they hold chimp morality to one another. Movements don't just have policy positions, but vibes too. And the way that the modern right approaches cultural and intellectual pluralism and the search for knowledge has more in common with genocidal movements of the past than anything in American politics today. richardhanania.com/p/the-vib…