[selfreflection]

This is a really unfortunate perspective. The people that you are casting as "more ape than man" believe you to be doing the exact same thing you accuse them of; emulating and elevating people they think are also ruining the world.

I genuinely don't understand how you can comfortably make such sharp insults towards people who don't agree with you. I understand that it's easy to get caught up in echo chamber - which any website that uses upvote/downvote based ordering and hiding schemes inherently encourage - but the people that disagree with you politically aren't apes. They're not narcissists. You are not special or above others.

[gooseus]

I think this article explains where I'm coming from better than I ever could, stumbled on it today quite presciently:

https://open.substack.com/pub/claireberlinski/p/impeach-him

Ironically, I'd say what characterizes a "man" vs an "ape" is their capacity for self reflection... which is your moniker.

A narcissist, as described in the article, has no capacity for self reflection because it requires them to enter a reality outside of their ego from which to observe themselves objectively.

[gooseus]

I can comfortably make these observations (not insults) because I'm describing what I have observed over the last many decades, not reacting to some news ephemeral news item.

What amazes me is that this is a conversation about Elon Musk and Donald Trump and their sycophants... people who are even more caught up in echo chambers and more insulting to our fellow humans, all while being far more insulting in their online speech.

And what is rich is you trying to cast me as the one who thinks they're special because I'm insulting the people who blindly follow Musk and Trump in their naive belief that they're helping to "save humanity" or "America" or whatever.

I live in the real world, not echo-chambers, this is the place I post most frequently and it's still like once every other week/month (and declining). My comment was directed at a group of people in general, while yours makes all kinds (very incorrect) assumptions about me personally.

You actually sound very much like the person who is "too online" and "in an echo chamber" since you seem to respond to the least charitable interpretation of what is said in order to score internet points.

It's certainly a lot easier to respond to my comment as if I was dehumanizing entire swaths of the public based on their voting choices or political beliefs... much more difficult to consider that I'm speaking about a very narrow segment of the population defined by their specific belief that Musk and Trump are special and can do nothing wrong and will not countenance any evidence to the contrary.