My hot take is that "bullying" is a term associated with childhood and something we think of as "childish" not really because adults do it less but because we actually make more excuses to protect adults who do it https://twitter.com/dreamingnoctis/status/1291584154958798850

Like WEB DuBois' thing about the "psychic wage of racism"

It is a "wage", in and of itself, to be able to belittle and dehumanize people

It's not a means to an end -- it can be, but it's also an end in itself

It feels good, it's fulfilling, it's what some people live for

Like, *that's what people spend money ON*

People don't fuck with people as a strategy to climb the ladder and become the boss

They become the boss *so they can fuck with people*

That's the reward, that's the reason you do it

John Wilkes Booth stated in so many words exactly why he felt the need to assassinate Lincoln, even though he was very likely to die himself in the process

He could not imagine living in a world where if he insulted a Black man, the Black man could make him back down

It wouldn't be worth it, it would be like not living at all

Like never having an orgasm again, or never being able to eat food or listen to music

I've talked a lot of shit about Orwell recently and the unrealism of his nightmarish image of totalitarian societies but surely everyone knows the *feeling* he was describing came from a very real, universal place

The paranoia that they're out to get you just to get you

Because, you know, sometimes they are

The torture chamber doesn't support the government, the government supports the torture chamber

The atrocities aren't in service of the revolution, the revolution is in service of the atrocities

Boots stamping on faces forever etc

I think that traumatized people, like Orwell obviously was, often do what CBT therapists call "catastrophizing" and "universalizing", like you really think an overwhelming conspiracy of schoolyard bullies out to fuck with you personally runs the world ("cancel culture")

And that leads to some very bad places, in fact if you don't put up any walls against it there's no bad place it can't lead

Orwell preparing to go McCarthyist on his deathbed, making a blacklist of Stalinist fellow-travelers, etc

Hurt people hurt people, and all that

But you gotta acknowledge the emotional place it comes from is real

The sick feeling when you come up against a situation where you can't bargain or negotiate your way out of getting fucked with because your pain is the actual goal

And a lot of the Trump voter discourse keeps missing this, refusing to accept that the "psychic wage" IS A WAGE

"Why do these people vote against their own economic interests"

Well, even assuming that that's actually true, they think they're getting fair value for their money

They're not being conned, the deal is upfront and square

Ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a whole economic future in return for your enemy's abjection and humiliation

They can afford it and they'll pay it because it's worth it, nothing else gives the same bang for the buck

Hence the takes about why this or that abusive rich person -- including the one in the White House right now -- doesn't just retire and enjoy their money

Enjoy it how? How many Big Macs can one person actually eat? How many golden towers can you build before you get sick of it?

The only two things you can really do with money after you hit a normal human being's satiation point (which let's be realistic is *long* before even $1 billion) are help people or hurt people

And hurting people is easier, faster, cheaper and gives a much more intense high

It's sativa to helping people's indica

Most people dabble in both, for variety, but it's the hurting people that really gets your blood pumping