> According to his sources, Colby’s team picked apart the pope’s January state-of-the-world address line by line and read it as a hostile message aimed directly at the administration.
So "calculated" maybe, but only because AI could come up with the answer, I have serious doubts that many of these people possess more than basic literacy much less the ability to come up with something like this. Or some CIA analyst who hates their job came up with this to mock their bosses.
They are also immune to embarrassment.
No, they, especially one of them has EXTREME anxiety about his image, just not in the way that normal people do. He's got the psychology of an anxious child wanting to please a neglectful father. This is why TACO. And why every third word is some ridiculous boast about something nonsensical. This is insecurity driven politics and its WHY HE GOT ELECTED. Fear and insecurity electing what they imagine strength to be.
What would the stupidest, most insecure, adult child think is the pinnacle of strength? ... yup.
And the attention economy is being set up to exploit this demographic because it's the lowest common denominator and it WORKS.
Evolutionarily it's some kind of mechanism to weed out the weaknesses in a population by exaggerating them so it's easier for natural selection to weed them out? Or punishing the rest of us for not doing enough about it before it got so bad... something like that.
Since whatever happens to Trump is always somebody else's fault, why should embarrassment come into the picture? They're the ones who should be embarrassed! And so on.
Trump's followers are also utterly shameless, and they're the ones that matter since they vote in such large numbers. Just like their leader, if they could be embarrassed, they would be, but they're not.
They're blustery cowards. This is how that kind of person acts.
They're not shameless, they're overflowing with shame and acting out because of it. Leaders and supporters.
They can be both stupid and unhinged. The power they wield is worth taking seriously but that doesn't necessitate pretending that these are serious people
A lot of religious people are extremely knowledgeable about historical stuff related to their religions.
They might draw the absolutely worst conclusions from their historical knowledge and have incredibly biased takes but they’ve actually read and discussed these things which is more than you can say for your average person.
It ultimately comes from their personal identify being so intricately tied to the religious organization that they are a part of — on some level they view these historical events as their own personal history as they identify as a ‘evangelical Christian’ or ‘orthodox Jew’ more than they view themselves as a person named Dave who has a family and stuff.
At the end of the day it’s all just more Hatfield and McCoys or tribal warfare over a goat that was killed centuries ago bullshit.
There are subtleties to this particular pissing match that aren't immediately obvious. The Vatican is starting to rein in the Opus Dei cult-within-a-cult. After John Paul II canonized its founder in 2002 on shaky grounds, later Popes have started to think that maybe they went a little too far. Meanwhile, Opus Dei has focused on gaining more secular influence in government (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/26/kevi...).
Elbridge Colby is also Catholic, and some of his religious beliefs factor into his policy preferences. Groton, Harvard BA, Yale Law, hard-to-get service medals.
I’m not saying I like the guy, but his knowledge and background should not be underestimated as some nearby are doing.