{"id":619,"date":"2023-05-26T17:22:05","date_gmt":"2023-05-26T17:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/john-shirley.com\/blog\/?p=619"},"modified":"2023-05-26T17:35:24","modified_gmt":"2023-05-26T17:35:24","slug":"the-linchpin-of-their-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/john-shirley.com\/blog\/the-linchpin-of-their-minds\/","title":{"rendered":"The Linchpin of Their Minds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The linchpin holding together the minds of plutocrat rightwingers is essentially a never-ending process of rationalization. They are making excuses, somewhere in the substructure of their whirring little minds, that they don&#8217;t even know they are making. The functional self-deceit of &#8220;this is for the good of America&#8221; is a tight knot of denial (&#8220;scientists are lying, we&#8217;re fine&#8221;), convenient self-deception (&#8220;I&#8217;m not enabling gun violence&#8221;), raw cynicism (&#8220;everyone does it&#8221;), externalizing blame (&#8220;socialists force us to keep blacks from voting&#8221;), and disguised hatred &#8220;anyway,liberals are satanic&#8221;).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And yes, the basic fiber of that knot is greed for power and money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The linchpin holding together the minds of plutocrat rightwingers is essentially a never-ending process of rationalization. They are making excuses, somewhere in the substructure of their whirring little minds, that they don&#8217;t even know they are making. The functional self-deceit of &#8220;this is for the good of America&#8221; is a tight knot of denial (&#8220;scientists&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Linchpin of Their Minds - John Shirley Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/john-shirley.com\/blog\/the-linchpin-of-their-minds\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Linchpin of Their Minds - John Shirley Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The linchpin holding together the minds of plutocrat rightwingers is essentially a never-ending process of rationalization. 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