I would not have believed you if you had told me they had the engineering and operations talent to prevent personal data leaks, among many other things.
> There is a headphone jack, but it's on the top of the phone.
They say that like it is a bad thing. I've always preferred the headset jack on the top because if I'm using the device while sitting and the jack is on the bottom it interferes with resting my phone holding hand the table if I'm at my desk or on my chest or leg if I'm the couch.
The main argument I've heard for jack on the bottom is that most people normally put their phone in their pocket with the top down, so if the jack is on top you have to flip it.
Google is telling me that jack on top was the norm in the early days of smartphones but gradually changed as the pocket argument won out.
Of course this wouldn't matter at all if more phones rotated the screens so that the display was upright even if the phone is upside down. Then everyone could have the headphone jack where they want.
I think it's about when you put your phone in your pocket, you have to have it top-up while most people put it top-down, shortening the lenght of the cable and pushing against the connector. In that optic top jack is worse, I believe
They went instead with "Assembled in the USA" printed on the box, which means that the phone was put in its box in Florida.
"Official" MAGA hats now say "Made in PRC" as if their wearers are too stupid to realize that means People's Republic of China, after the backlash against "Made in China". It's not a bad bet, actually: a media outlet back in the day polled a bunch of Republican voters and asked "If the government were to introduce, instead of Obamacare, some form of Affordable Care Act, would you be opposed?"
(And the number one Google query on the last election day? "Did Biden drop out?")
There have been quite a few punctuations proposed for indicating sarcasm, but interrobang not one of them - that (‽) is literally a combined ? and !, and is (per wikipedia) for "a question in an excited manner, expresses excitement, disbelief, or confusion in the form of a question, or asks a rhetorical question".
This page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation - has sarcasm ones (but I don't think any are as well known as the interrobang, which itself isn't exactly universally used... though personally I'm weird enough to have a keyboard shortcut to type it on my phone)
My grandpa is almost 80 years old.
He blatantly complains about stuff he doesn't understand but because he was once a big shot he think he does. He takes decisions almost as random as a 20 side dice but the numbers are just options and have no correlation among each other.
Eventually he does something that seems to make sense, but if you live enough time with him you'll see that's by chance.
> The company said there was no breach of Trump Mobile’s network, systems, or infrastructure.
Wait... what?
"I didn't lose your money because somebody broke into my house -- I only lost it because I left it sitting on the sidewalk. My house is actually fine, don't worry!"
The spokesperson said that the exposure was linked to a third-party platform provider that supports “certain Trump Mobile operations.” Walker did not name the provider.
Assuming somebody left a database open or password exposed.
What are those? Our intern Bradley types victim, sorry Customer information in an excel spreadsheet all day and then emails it to his manager, who he's never met.
I'm surprised that the idea for the Trump Phone was even conceived.
I had thought that the drug king-pin Pablo Escobar pretty much owned the market for gold smartphones, and thus tainted it for anyone else.
Coffeezilla bought one of these thinking they’d never be delivered about a week before they announced they would be shipping soon. He wanted to do an exposé on the delays and thought Trump would never release the phone He will now end up with a crappy phone and his personal info exposed
The 1989 board game is supposedly an acceptable variation on Monopoly. I guess it's sales were a disappointment for the publisher, but not catastrophic.
The only surprise would be that it is not deliberate. Previously, the Trump White House deliberately exposed citizens' personal data. That's what customers should expect.
Hey it's no biggie they are exempt from all rules, norms, and principals. Their customers love it even more when rules are broken so this is more like a bonus for them.
> Their customers love it even more when rules are broken so this is more like a bonus for them.
You joke, but this is actually a pattern I see a lot. Is there a term for this sort of brain dead contrarianism? Ive noticed it for years, mostly among GenX where they will zealously defend any idea/action they heard thats against mainstream narrative.
It’s like a “stick it to the man teenager” stereotype but these people are fucking 50+ years old now.
Someone who is anti-intellectual doesn't believe that their theory of the world being flat (or whatever) is actually a rigorous idea. Being "right" isn't even part of the thought process. They have an issue with science and the intellectual process itself and see those who practice it to be an outsider to their worldview.
This is why so many people fail to convince flat-earthers that the world is round. Because they don't really give a shit about what shape the earth is, they just have contempt for the intellectualism that says it is.
I suspect many of these people are insecure about their own lack of knowledge, and so by rejecting a mainstream narrative of science they can feel in-control of their own sense of intellect.
I think this is an unfortunate consequence of the state of politics in the US (and in many other countries tbh).
Collectively we should really be getting angry with wealth inequality but those with wealth stir up any number of other issues (e.g. race, religion, gender, etc) in order to divert attention from them continuing to get richer at our collective expense.
Those "distractions" would be brought up regardless of any wealth inequality. They're entirely unrelated.
Depending on who you ask, those same topics are considered distractions from any other topic including each other.
What you're really describing is the attention bottleneck in a western democratic society where everybody wants the world to see things their way. That's the wrong mindset for democracy to work. If you want people to believe something it's simple: don't be wrong. Don't be vague and don't be misleading. Stop assuming the opposing side is stupid. Just speak clearly.
We really should blame ourselves for coming to every discussion with trivially incorrect arguments. People are so lazy these days. Slacktivism and terrorism used to be the extremes reserved for the ignorant. We used to shame and mock those people.
> Collectively we should really be getting angry with wealth inequality
But individually we're unable to abandon YouTube, iPhones and Windows 11. America's biggest B2C companies can do whatever they want and we'll all lap it up.
Absolutely, I'm highlighting that you're a captive audience and every single FAANG exec knows it when they kiss the Trumpian ring.
Microsoft, Google and Apple all decided to side with the fed. Your outrage is inconsequential to them, and with the sum they spend on lobbying it's doubtful that your vote even matters to them either.
I think that's always been a feature of contrarianism itself. It's so much more difficult to be contrarian and correct than simply contrarian that it applies most of the time, especially if someone uses that label explicitly.
Boomers get all the hate but GenX really is the absolute worst. They took the me-me-me of Boomers without the civic minded temperance of their G.I./Silent grandparents. Life goals of that generation include climbing mount everest, writing a novel, really anything that would make you sound "cool" at a cocktail party, but they never realized that nobody cares unless you've made the world a better place for others.
I strongly disagree with this assessment. (I am GenX so take this with a grain of salt).
GenX grew up during an era when hyper-capitalism began to take off. Manufacturing was offshored and layoffs became commonplace. Government institutions were privatized and subcontracting gave companies ways to abdicate responsibility. The corporate world didn't care about building a company and brand for the long haul, it was shareholder value and quarterly earnings. We watched our parents work their assess off for companies and then get tossed out in the name of a few more cents per share. So no one was motivated to follow the traditional Western dream when there was no assurance of any sustainable life at the end of that grind.
GenX was far more civic minded than you give them credit for. The term "political correctness" entered the lexicon because of the work GenX college students were doing to try to combat racism, sexism, and homophobia. We marched against apartheid, raised money for Amnesty International and Greenpeace, and AIDS awareness. We were the first to carry around reusable mugs for coffee and drinks and got recycling mainstreamed.
Generational warfare, like class warfare, is designed to keep us at each others' throats instead of realizing that, no matter what generation, a wealthy few hold the true power.
We were told, non-stop and repeatedly, that we would probably all die in a nuclear holocaust before we reached adulthood. And yeah, lots of my generation decided that they'd rather spend their few remaining months touring South America rainforests or hiking Nepal than doing the "productive" things that the people likely to blow up the world wanted us to.
And then they didn't blow up the world. Well, crud. What do we do with ourselves now?
I'm not even slightly exaggerating, by the way. About half the popular media was depictions of how the US would blow up Russia, Russia would blow up the US, or what live would be like after the US and Russia blew each other up. Red Dawn. Most movies with Sylvester Stallone. The Day After. Threads. I assure you those weren't kitschy, ironic things we winked at. We generationally kinda reconciled ourselves to the idea we'd never grow old enough to drink. And then, we were labeled "slackers" for not having followed the same traditional routes as previous generations.
I'm hugely sympathetic to Gen Alpha. I get it, kiddos. I see you there, and I understand.
I like "...lead is responsible for the loss of 824,097,690 IQ points as of 2015" which is something I never hear from the people who are so interested in IQ and who can't stand it that the rest of us aren't.
Life goals of that generation include climbing mount everest, writing a novel, really anything that would make you sound "cool" at a cocktail party, but they never realized that nobody cares unless you've made the world a better place for others.
Replace "cocktail party" with "social media" and you've described Millennials.
> Is there a term for this sort of brain dead contrarianism?
Reactionary[0]? Trump and the MAGA movement embody this desire to return to the "golden age" which is an idealized period in the 1950s where you had a factory job, a house, a family, and a simple life. Of course, "idealized" is the keyword there because it ignores the state of civil rights, medicine, workplace & car safety, etc. at that point in time.
Anyway, I think that's the term you're looking for. Contrarians are annoying, reactionaries are more akin to cult followers.
That's pretty good, but the Wiki page is far more diplomatic about definitions than my understanding of the word.
They have decades of Fox News brainwashing them into radicalization. The groups they hate are "plotting against them and looking down on them." The concept of returning to some idealized past is a superficial veneer over their actual desires: to harm the groups they disdain.
This has nothing to do with contrarianism, but all to do with the foundations of right-wing and fascist psychology, and more precisely, hierarchy.
Things like this allow you to prove for one that your leader is above you, and that you are loyal, unlike some other people who hence are beneath you.
This is why evangelicals can stomach Trump, he gives them an opportunity to have someone above them and for them to struggle with loyalty. It is more important to them than whether he has pressured someone to have an abortion or somesuch that does not fit the ethics they promote.
It is also why so many on the right and in fascist movements endure suffering caused by their leaders and don't hold them accountable to their promises. The ongoing wars of aggression that the US is partaking in is splitting the MAGA movement into the more conservative wing that isn't as uncompromising with their lust for hierarchy as the fully neo-fascist wing, who are going to try and weather pretty much any absurdities, any suffering they are exposed to.
I would not have believed you if you had told me they had the engineering and operations talent to prevent personal data leaks, among many other things.
I would not have believed that they had 'engineering' or 'operations'.
"Hello, Aliexpress seller? Can you paint them gold?"
Is about how I expect it all went.
This has to be an absolute treasure trove for scammers. A list of the most gullible people around.
Has anyone yet seen one of those phones? Was it a honeypot all along? (A la https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield)
Edit0: they seem to exist and they have a headphone jack? Incredible.
> they have a headphone jack
And an American flag with the incorrect number of stripes. I wonder which 2 colonies they decided weren't worth including on their phone.
I'm going to guess New York and Massachusetts.
The two surplus stars are going to Alberta and Greenland.
Why all the hate for headphone jacks?
It’s insufficiently iPhone-like.
In theory, maybe? This is behind a paywall...
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/gadgets/trump-mobile-phone-revi...
Title: Trump Mobile T1 phone test: device no longer ‘Made in the USA.’
Heading: We tested the Trump Mobile phone. It was 9 months late and no longer ‘Made in the USA.’
And then there's https://www.cnet.com/pictures/the-t1-trump-phone-is-the-same... (linked in the sibling comment at The Verge)
"Trump Phones Are Finally Here—And People Aren’t Happy"
From the CNET article:
> There is a headphone jack, but it's on the top of the phone.
They say that like it is a bad thing. I've always preferred the headset jack on the top because if I'm using the device while sitting and the jack is on the bottom it interferes with resting my phone holding hand the table if I'm at my desk or on my chest or leg if I'm the couch.
The main argument I've heard for jack on the bottom is that most people normally put their phone in their pocket with the top down, so if the jack is on top you have to flip it.
Google is telling me that jack on top was the norm in the early days of smartphones but gradually changed as the pocket argument won out.
Of course this wouldn't matter at all if more phones rotated the screens so that the display was upright even if the phone is upside down. Then everyone could have the headphone jack where they want.
> Of course this wouldn't matter at all if more phones rotated the screens so that the display was upright even if the phone is upside down
Generally I don't want to get my skin oils all over the lenses on my really expensive smart phone.
I think it's about when you put your phone in your pocket, you have to have it top-up while most people put it top-down, shortening the lenght of the cable and pushing against the connector. In that optic top jack is worse, I believe
They went instead with "Assembled in the USA" printed on the box, which means that the phone was put in its box in Florida.
"Official" MAGA hats now say "Made in PRC" as if their wearers are too stupid to realize that means People's Republic of China, after the backlash against "Made in China". It's not a bad bet, actually: a media outlet back in the day polled a bunch of Republican voters and asked "If the government were to introduce, instead of Obamacare, some form of Affordable Care Act, would you be opposed?"
(And the number one Google query on the last election day? "Did Biden drop out?")
I was going to say that I saw some unwrapping videos online, but then I saw... https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/936018/trump-mobile-t1-phon....
Personally, I still use my BidenPhone, which was an upgrade from my 2009-era ObamaPhone brick. /s
The real joke is the "Obama Phone" meme from back in the day, is from the Lifeline project that was started by Reagan.
It's funny to see how all the history has been scrubbed from the Wikipedia entry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lifeline_(FCC_pro...
Was the /s needed?
You misunderestimate the gullibility of the average human. The \s is always needed (though the interrobang is also acceptable).
There have been quite a few punctuations proposed for indicating sarcasm, but interrobang not one of them - that (‽) is literally a combined ? and !, and is (per wikipedia) for "a question in an excited manner, expresses excitement, disbelief, or confusion in the form of a question, or asks a rhetorical question".
This page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation - has sarcasm ones (but I don't think any are as well known as the interrobang, which itself isn't exactly universally used... though personally I'm weird enough to have a keyboard shortcut to type it on my phone)
> I'm weird enough to have a keyboard shortcut to type it on my phone)
I'm not the only one‽
You thought you were‽ <3
(Unrelated, do you work at Paradox? Or 3 letters in your username coincidental to their abbreviation?)
PDX is the airport code for Portland, OR.
-- mikeSEA
I find all "/s" tags to be offensive to comedy.
Can you imagine "A Modest Proposal (/s)" ?
Given the facts of who it is that's impacted, isn't this the first good thing the administration has done?
I'm sure those good people have nothing to hide.
this is especially problematic because now hackers have a comprehensive list of the most gullible people on the planet
I wouldn’t call this a problem.
This is the dildo of consequences.
Every problem, looked at from the right perspective, is actually a solution.
My grandpa is almost 80 years old. He blatantly complains about stuff he doesn't understand but because he was once a big shot he think he does. He takes decisions almost as random as a 20 side dice but the numbers are just options and have no correlation among each other. Eventually he does something that seems to make sense, but if you live enough time with him you'll see that's by chance.
"Walker said Trump Mobile is evaluating whether it needs to notify customers of the exposure of their personal data."
It was confirmed home/payment addresses were leaked, how is that not worthy of notification?
There are regulatory rules on when disclosure must occur. They're saying they're not going to bother if it's not required.
Even if they are required, who will hold them accountable? The FCC?
There was a time when telcos would print this information in a big book and deliver it to your porch for free.
Hell, in some states you can find these details rather quickly since there's so much that is considered public record.
relevant username.
Not quite true, though, because that book charged money in exchange for privacy.
Because who's going to make them?
It's worthy if they think they'd get good click through rate on "privacy protection service" scam links in the emails.
They must have hired the same developers as every other mobile operator.
Or the same devs as GiveSendGo and every other right-wing gifting platform
Gifting, or grifting?
Grifting!
This isn’t surprising. The entire enterprise was a grift to take advantage of gullible adherents to the name.
Right up there with the rest or telco.
By the headline, I was half expecting "Trump Mobile was found selling customers' personal data"
> The company said there was no breach of Trump Mobile’s network, systems, or infrastructure.
Wait... what?
"I didn't lose your money because somebody broke into my house -- I only lost it because I left it sitting on the sidewalk. My house is actually fine, don't worry!"
Well trump mobile almost definitely doesn't have a network, systems, or infrastructure to begin with. So I guess they are technically correct.
The spokesperson said that the exposure was linked to a third-party platform provider that supports “certain Trump Mobile operations.” Walker did not name the provider.
Assuming somebody left a database open or password exposed.
My money is on unauthed mongodb or public s3 bucket
What are those? Our intern Bradley types victim, sorry Customer information in an excel spreadsheet all day and then emails it to his manager, who he's never met.
I'm surprised that the idea for the Trump Phone was even conceived. I had thought that the drug king-pin Pablo Escobar pretty much owned the market for gold smartphones, and thus tainted it for anyone else.
What is the US president, if not the king-pin:est of drug kin-pins?
https://www.amazon.com/Fort-Bragg-Cartel-Trafficking-Special...
Oh, no! What an unexpected tragedy. In other news...
Coffeezilla bought one of these thinking they’d never be delivered about a week before they announced they would be shipping soon. He wanted to do an exposé on the delays and thought Trump would never release the phone He will now end up with a crappy phone and his personal info exposed
They haven't shipped yet. Only 2 media/reviewer mockup phones have been seen in public.
The picture in the article features Trump holding an iPhone.
He doesn't use any of this crap. He also wouldn't go within 100 feet of the vast majority of his supporters if he wasn't working an angle.
I can think of no product with the Trump name that hasn't proven to be a catastrophic disappointment or scam.
The only thing with trump I like is a hand of bridge.
we started using the term obama for that just because we hate saying that other word
The 1989 board game is supposedly an acceptable variation on Monopoly. I guess it's sales were a disappointment for the publisher, but not catastrophic.
The only surprise would be that it is not deliberate. Previously, the Trump White House deliberately exposed citizens' personal data. That's what customers should expect.
Hey it's no biggie they are exempt from all rules, norms, and principals. Their customers love it even more when rules are broken so this is more like a bonus for them.
> Their customers love it even more when rules are broken so this is more like a bonus for them.
You joke, but this is actually a pattern I see a lot. Is there a term for this sort of brain dead contrarianism? Ive noticed it for years, mostly among GenX where they will zealously defend any idea/action they heard thats against mainstream narrative.
It’s like a “stick it to the man teenager” stereotype but these people are fucking 50+ years old now.
It is primarily this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism
Mixed more generally with this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism
Someone who is anti-intellectual doesn't believe that their theory of the world being flat (or whatever) is actually a rigorous idea. Being "right" isn't even part of the thought process. They have an issue with science and the intellectual process itself and see those who practice it to be an outsider to their worldview.
This is why so many people fail to convince flat-earthers that the world is round. Because they don't really give a shit about what shape the earth is, they just have contempt for the intellectualism that says it is.
I suspect many of these people are insecure about their own lack of knowledge, and so by rejecting a mainstream narrative of science they can feel in-control of their own sense of intellect.
I think this is an unfortunate consequence of the state of politics in the US (and in many other countries tbh).
Collectively we should really be getting angry with wealth inequality but those with wealth stir up any number of other issues (e.g. race, religion, gender, etc) in order to divert attention from them continuing to get richer at our collective expense.
Those "distractions" would be brought up regardless of any wealth inequality. They're entirely unrelated.
Depending on who you ask, those same topics are considered distractions from any other topic including each other.
What you're really describing is the attention bottleneck in a western democratic society where everybody wants the world to see things their way. That's the wrong mindset for democracy to work. If you want people to believe something it's simple: don't be wrong. Don't be vague and don't be misleading. Stop assuming the opposing side is stupid. Just speak clearly.
We really should blame ourselves for coming to every discussion with trivially incorrect arguments. People are so lazy these days. Slacktivism and terrorism used to be the extremes reserved for the ignorant. We used to shame and mock those people.
> Collectively we should really be getting angry with wealth inequality
But individually we're unable to abandon YouTube, iPhones and Windows 11. America's biggest B2C companies can do whatever they want and we'll all lap it up.
You’re not going to believe this but I’m a windows, YouTube and iPhone user, and am still pretty angry at the state of things.
You can be a customer of large companies and still be angry that large capital holders are tremendously advantaged in many ways.
Sure, but as a user don't expect to be able to change anything though, because companies know you won't switch away from their products.
Absolutely, I'm highlighting that you're a captive audience and every single FAANG exec knows it when they kiss the Trumpian ring.
Microsoft, Google and Apple all decided to side with the fed. Your outrage is inconsequential to them, and with the sum they spend on lobbying it's doubtful that your vote even matters to them either.
Bonhoeffer's Theory of Stupidity hits the nail on the head here.
He argued that in WW2, the people who were not able to question what they were doing were enabling a lot of the cruelty [0].
[0] https://bigthink.com/thinking/bonhoeffers-theory-stupidity-e...
I think that's always been a feature of contrarianism itself. It's so much more difficult to be contrarian and correct than simply contrarian that it applies most of the time, especially if someone uses that label explicitly.
"Contrarianism" can't be the only qualifying term unless you mean to lump in the majority of HN commenters.
Yes it can
Boomers get all the hate but GenX really is the absolute worst. They took the me-me-me of Boomers without the civic minded temperance of their G.I./Silent grandparents. Life goals of that generation include climbing mount everest, writing a novel, really anything that would make you sound "cool" at a cocktail party, but they never realized that nobody cares unless you've made the world a better place for others.
I strongly disagree with this assessment. (I am GenX so take this with a grain of salt).
GenX grew up during an era when hyper-capitalism began to take off. Manufacturing was offshored and layoffs became commonplace. Government institutions were privatized and subcontracting gave companies ways to abdicate responsibility. The corporate world didn't care about building a company and brand for the long haul, it was shareholder value and quarterly earnings. We watched our parents work their assess off for companies and then get tossed out in the name of a few more cents per share. So no one was motivated to follow the traditional Western dream when there was no assurance of any sustainable life at the end of that grind.
GenX was far more civic minded than you give them credit for. The term "political correctness" entered the lexicon because of the work GenX college students were doing to try to combat racism, sexism, and homophobia. We marched against apartheid, raised money for Amnesty International and Greenpeace, and AIDS awareness. We were the first to carry around reusable mugs for coffee and drinks and got recycling mainstreamed.
Generational warfare, like class warfare, is designed to keep us at each others' throats instead of realizing that, no matter what generation, a wealthy few hold the true power.
We were told, non-stop and repeatedly, that we would probably all die in a nuclear holocaust before we reached adulthood. And yeah, lots of my generation decided that they'd rather spend their few remaining months touring South America rainforests or hiking Nepal than doing the "productive" things that the people likely to blow up the world wanted us to.
And then they didn't blow up the world. Well, crud. What do we do with ourselves now?
I'm not even slightly exaggerating, by the way. About half the popular media was depictions of how the US would blow up Russia, Russia would blow up the US, or what live would be like after the US and Russia blew each other up. Red Dawn. Most movies with Sylvester Stallone. The Day After. Threads. I assure you those weren't kitschy, ironic things we winked at. We generationally kinda reconciled ourselves to the idea we'd never grow old enough to drink. And then, we were labeled "slackers" for not having followed the same traditional routes as previous generations.
I'm hugely sympathetic to Gen Alpha. I get it, kiddos. I see you there, and I understand.
Well you didn't die of nuclear holocaust, but the mindset stuck anyways. I call foul.
Gen X was the peak of lifetime lead poisoning contamination.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2118631119
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/117h6n5/ge...
I like "...lead is responsible for the loss of 824,097,690 IQ points as of 2015" which is something I never hear from the people who are so interested in IQ and who can't stand it that the rest of us aren't.
Generation <mine - 1> is really the worst!
Also, drivers in <my city> are really the worst.
Life goals of that generation include climbing mount everest, writing a novel, really anything that would make you sound "cool" at a cocktail party, but they never realized that nobody cares unless you've made the world a better place for others.
Replace "cocktail party" with "social media" and you've described Millennials.
> Is there a term for this sort of brain dead contrarianism?
Reactionary[0]? Trump and the MAGA movement embody this desire to return to the "golden age" which is an idealized period in the 1950s where you had a factory job, a house, a family, and a simple life. Of course, "idealized" is the keyword there because it ignores the state of civil rights, medicine, workplace & car safety, etc. at that point in time.
Anyway, I think that's the term you're looking for. Contrarians are annoying, reactionaries are more akin to cult followers.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary
That's pretty good, but the Wiki page is far more diplomatic about definitions than my understanding of the word.
They have decades of Fox News brainwashing them into radicalization. The groups they hate are "plotting against them and looking down on them." The concept of returning to some idealized past is a superficial veneer over their actual desires: to harm the groups they disdain.
This has nothing to do with contrarianism, but all to do with the foundations of right-wing and fascist psychology, and more precisely, hierarchy.
Things like this allow you to prove for one that your leader is above you, and that you are loyal, unlike some other people who hence are beneath you.
This is why evangelicals can stomach Trump, he gives them an opportunity to have someone above them and for them to struggle with loyalty. It is more important to them than whether he has pressured someone to have an abortion or somesuch that does not fit the ethics they promote.
It is also why so many on the right and in fascist movements endure suffering caused by their leaders and don't hold them accountable to their promises. The ongoing wars of aggression that the US is partaking in is splitting the MAGA movement into the more conservative wing that isn't as uncompromising with their lust for hierarchy as the fully neo-fascist wing, who are going to try and weather pretty much any absurdities, any suffering they are exposed to.
When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the PII.
comment of the year award