And who is patient zero, I wonder?

The real question is, why is the Fascism is Fun!"autism" so contagious when the math is exciting autism isn't.

“Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself?”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

the bar is much lower (i.e., there isn't any). some people can be accepted by their peers simply by settling for awful. the people fortunate enough to enjoy the challenges of life might take a basically different view of how to get through it, as if there's a philosophical switch in the brain that can be set to either 'do your best' or 'don't threaten the grade curve'.

Another quote from the same book:

“Bigotry is one of the oldest and ugliest of trends, so persistent it only counts as a fad because the target keeps changing: Huguenots, Koreans, homosexuals, Muslims, Tutsis, Jews, Quakers, wolves, Serbs, Salem housewives. Nearly every group, so long as it’s small and different, has had a turn, and the pattern never changes—disapproval, isolation, demonization, persecution. Which was one of the reasons it’d be nice to find the switch that turned fads on. I’d like to turn that one off for good.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

People are depressing.

some people are awesome. we should focus on them.

Very true.

Before Bannon, Elon's gesture was imitated by Father Calvin Robinson & Laura Smith of the Towamencin Township Board of Supervisors. Both of them lost their positions though.

ah. i hadn't seen those.

https://youtu.be/tkSFdczXkDk?si=WW4lWa2VJhPOO6s1 https://youtu.be/bfdA2AWjxz8?si=cPSIqJXl79bBU4-x