There comes a point in the history of a society that has become pathologically rotten and soft, when it even sides with its attacker, the criminal, and indeed, in a genuine and serious way. Punishment: that seems unfair to it somehow, – what is certain is that it hurts and frightens society to imagine ‘punishment’ and ‘having to punish’. Is it not sufficient to render the criminal undangerous? Why punish as well? Punishment itself is terrible! – with this question, herd morality, the morality of timidity, draws its final conclusion. Assuming one could completely get rid of the danger, the reason for being afraid, one would have got rid of this morality at the same time: it would no longer be necessary, it would no longer regard itself as necessary any more! – Whoever tests the conscience of today’s European will always have to draw out the same imperative from a thousand moral folds and hiding places, the imperative of herd timidity: ‘our desire is for there to be nothing more to fear some time or other!’ Some time or other – the will and the way there is called ‘progress’ everywhere in Europe today.
– “Beyond Good or Evil,” Friedrich Nietzche
A Skeptic’s View of the President’s Actions
In January, I tried to track Trump’s executive actions, but a handy website beat me to it. But with a new authoritarian at the helm, banal summaries don’t cut it. So now I’ve set up a ChatGPT task to do the heavy lifting: provide a brief analysis of each week’s presidential orders from a radical left perspective. No blind trust, no propaganda—just a bullshit detector for the modern age.