The rapidly escalating pettiness of Trump's fights. He's doing us a favour, making visible the mimetic crisis…

The rapidly escalating pettiness of Trump's fights. He's doing us a favour, making visible the mimetic crisis that is the true threat to our societies. Humans desire what others desire. The object of desire is irrelevant, the toy here. We desire it because others do. /1 https://t.co/dFP7ufYm5t

That's why humans imitate one another, above all else. They imitate what others desire, in imitative rivalry. If your neighbour has a wankpanzer ute, you want one too. It's not about the ute. It's that the neighbour has one, and you don't. You COVET it. /2

Trump's increasing pettiness reveals a society with uncontrolled imitative rivalry. Which is what populism produces, by reducing apparent *separation* between people, in rank and status. That separation - hierarchy - is normally what stabilises societies. /3

Both monarchies and religions are also social technologies to prevent violence. By creating hierarchies of status, to keep separation between people. To suppress and control imitative rivalry. You can't imitate a god, or a magnificent palace. It's idolatry, or delusion. /4

Populism, or Trumpism, destroys all of that. Down with the 'elites'! Everybody is an expert in everything, everybody is equal. This creates uncontrolled imitative rivalry. Everything becomes a rivalry, an attempt to differentiate again in a mass imitative sameness. /5

What begins looking like arguments over actual things - the 'toys' of adult life - quickly reveals its true mechanics, unconstrained rivalry. That's Trump's pettiness. Rome is burning and he's kept awake by his imagined rivals. Everything is rivalry and revenge. /6

Social media society is a society of rampant imitation. It is driving us towards mimetic crisis. The closer we get to that crisis point, the more petty the rivalries will seem. The leadership of the free world will become the purest incarnation of this photo. /end https://t.co/d8lsVtblZa