The term Phantasm is going to haunt me. Not just recognizing it in others but in me.
Also, I’m curious if it bothered anyone here but the question “Is Seattle a clean city?” an incredibly loaded question that wasn’t addressed.
Actually now that you mention it, that’s absolutely true.
Yeah, ‘we have a huge homelessness problem’ is a perfectly reasonable answer to ‘is this a clean city?’ because it’s plainly not saying ‘yes.’ Grinding poverty does not tend to coexist with spotless sidewalks… or all the city’s drug addicts keeping that shit at home. The sidewalk is their home.
That is both a systemic problem as a cause and an illustrative example of a symptom. It’s a concise and direct response to the plain meaning of the question.
I’ve been trying to capture this idea for years! I’ve been trying to explain to my friends and family that we’re all susceptible to this “magical delusional thinking” that somehow we believe we are immune too when in fact we are not.
Thank you Abigail for finally giving me the word that captures the idea to provide me mastery over it!
Phantasm
The way I’ve been putting it since about 2017 (for some reason) is - reality is a team sport, to some people. They’re not privileging some claims and discounting others. They do not evaluate claims. That is not what claims are for, in a worldview built on tribal loyalty.
We are all susceptible to this, but for some folks there is nothing else. This generalized form is closely associated with ring-wing nutjobs because fascism is just tribalism cranked to eleven. It is a worldview spread exclusively through emotional manipulation. It fits how human beings naturally like to think. Self-reflection and rational argument are learned behaviors… and they suuuck. You’re always wrong and it feels bad and you just want a respected member of your ingroup to tell you who’s to blame. Surely they’ll never blame you, next.
I think conservatism is this behavior.
Right-wing politics are overwhelmingly an expression of that core conservatism, and the exceptions are always run off as turncoats and plants. Mitt fucking Romney gets called a RINO because his dumb ass bought some Reagan-era set of convenient excuses, and he stuck with them even as the party lurched toward new scapegoats. He wouldn’t kiss The Idiot’s ass over an honest-to-god failed coup, so he’s not a true Scotsman anymore.
And since this conservatism isn’t the same as right-wing… there are also left-wing conservatives. There are people who spout the ideals of socialist or anarchist movements, but only because someone in their ingroup hierarchy said so. The irony is completely lost on them. They do not evaluate claims. This category is rare compared to right-wing conservatives, because leftism fucking loves nitpicking self-criticism, and kneejerk chest-thumping ‘[blank] did nothing wrong’ defenses stick out like a sore thumb.
What the “phantasm” framing misses in that process is how it shifts to maintain interpersonal loyalty rather than specific ideas. This is what the tribe is doing now - conform or be excised. Russia good, doctors bad, we have always been at war with Eastasia.
This is so endemic to the right that they will act visibly confused when we don’t do it. People in this mindset genuinely believe it is how everything works. If you’ve ever been treated like a fool for criticizing one of ‘your guys,’ or hit a brick wall trying to get the tiniest factual acknowledgement of hypocrisy from one of ‘their guys,’ that was this loyalty at work. Their stated ideals are ad-hoc justifications of whatever needs to be true, next. They do not evaluate claims. On some level, they think putting their own meteorologists on the teevee would change the weather.
