That the USA is a 'misogynistic and racist nation' is sadly right, though I would make the point that it's even deeper. When some enterprising anthropologists and later folklorists studied the music in the remote regions of the southern mountains they found more primitive versions of the music there than there were in their places of origin.
I think the same thing is true of their religion. It's primal as hell, and a form of extreme Calvinism further perverted by slavery and the Great Awakenings movements which made a deal with the devil to the effect that black people could hope for justice in the afterlife but that they were screwed in this world with God's mandate and approval.
The point is they hate all of creation for its corruption and impurity. They hate themselves for their corruption and impurity, and so long for the life after. Women and minorities are archetypally perceived as closer to nature and less pure. And seen as sinful and the occasion of sin. Also as prone to enjoy life, which they find scary and abhorrent.
So it's not just about persecuting and hating on people. They long to see the end of the world. This is so nuts it works in their favor. People can't see it or doubt it if they do, let alone that this minority outlook could overtake the country but it has by virtue of the Southern Strategy. Republicans kept throwing this voting bloc bad, race-baiting stuff.
They got into a self-reinforcing cycle, a doom loop. The crazies got crazier and the Republicans more powerful and entrenched, and Republicans increasingly had to give the nutcases what they demanded to satisfy them. That gets us to Trump, their end-times man. An absolute wrecking ball. So it's not just about women and minorities.
It's about an utter contempt for life and a desire to see the world go up in flames. Look into the popularity of the 'Left Behind' books. They're more crazy than you can imagine and it's mostly unconscious. Michelle Goldberg wrote typically well on this, including in an old article 'Fundamentally Unsound' in Salon if I remember right.
I cannot disagree with you. I was not aware of the music aspect, but sounds about right!!! (No pun intended). I wrote this piece after reading, watching and listening to an unending litany of excuses for the results which to me seemed to be just a way of avoiding the obvious. There is far more data now available to study but I am neither a data analyst nor an anthropologist to comment in any way that adds to the debate. However, they do not seem to negate my gut instinct that if you add together those who voted for Trump and those who abstained, you have a significant majority who did not find Trump sufficiently obnoxious to overcome their objections to voting for Harris. To me, as an observer from the UK, but with significant links to the USA (mostly the south) the implications could not be denied. I think part of the problem is "American Exceptionalism". Most of our friends who would agree with me have travelled, lived or worked outside of the USA and have a wider view of the world, see in a bigger framework. If you hold to Exceptionalism, you cannot learn from the mistakes/experience of others.
OK, that's important. I have traveled--and have lived overseas for long periods of time--and I do see us from a different perspective than most of my friends. But I can also see MAGA "circular thinking" inside logical fallacies and dogma far more easily than I can all Americans, including Democrats and Independents, as suffering from the same thing in a different way. We always think of ourselves as the Children of the Empire, and that makes us SO dangerous to ourselves and the rest of the world. Some people in the Third World have demanded that U.S. elections be open to non-citizens residing in other countries. I don't agree with that, but I understand it. Americans are just 4.3% of the world's population but control almost 26% of total world wealth, making it the world's largest economy. We here don't think about our impact on the rest of the world. We must dismay so many, many people.
Exceptionalism is a huge problem, and I think there's an especially bad spin on it among evangelicals. There it's combined with a horrific degree of fatalism. I think if you could convince them they were working for Satan many would be fine with it because it would have to be God's will and destiny and the role they were intended for in bringing about the fulfillment of prophecy and the 'second coming' and so on.
It's just so nuts. I had read George Lakoff years ago when so many others did and thought he was excellent in explaining the differences between Democrats and Republicans by considering their views on family life, as it plays out in a society as a larger kind of family or naturally metaphorically similar. I hadn't revisited Lakoff since Trump came on the scene until recently and Lakoff's take is even more compelling now.
Because, Trump is such a ridiculous outlier and incomprehensibly unbalanced as an authority figure. It's hard to believe he even exists, he's so far gone, let alone that anyone would think it appropriate to have him be responsible for the welfare of others. But Lakoff makes it intelligible, which doesn't in any way diminish the outlandishness of it. I feel it more so accepting Lakoff's perspective, since it means seeing Trump as a father figure.
God help us. Also it becomes clearer that evangelicals couldn't be further removed from being Christians or patriots or consistent with the letter or spirit of our Constitution. The Bible couldn't be more against identity thinking and tribalism -- the point is that all of humanity is our tribe and, I would argue, by extension, nature as well in some sense. And the Constitution is a rational and Enlightenment document through and through.
So evangelicals are totally nuts. Here's some Lakoff ...
James Flanagan, what you've described is a Manichean world-view, one which was ultimately rejected by the early Church. Growing up in Mississippi in the '50s and '60s I saw this for myself, and completely agree with your analysis. I didn't understand what I was seeing until many years later, when I began reading the Penguin History of Christianity (I also came across Mani and his followers more formally in my studies of the Ancient Near East). The roots of this cultural and religious outlook in the Deep South have also been laid out beautifully by Professor David Hackett Fischer in his magnum opus, 'Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America'. Large numbers of the early settlers in the region were what he calls 'North British Borderers', steeped in centuries of violence.
Yes, thank you for commenting. The Catholic Church formally rejected Jansenism, its version of extreme dualism, as heretical. The Protestants I'm less familiar with but I think it occurred mostly piecemeal over the different denominations as they started rowing backwards against the early tides of a vindictive, fatalistic, persecutory form of Calvinism. I knew a few of the anthropologists who got the music thing started. The movie Songcatcher is fun and portrays some of the work on mountain music. I think it starred Aiden Quinn and Janet McTeer, again from my sometimes faulty memory but I think that's right ...
May I throw another spanner into the works, log on the fire (pick your own metaphor). I have long had an interest in Constitutions (I am by no means an expert) and before I retired I was responsible for changes, interpretations etc of the Local Authority's Constitution, Terms of Reference etc., Rules etc. and it seems to me that part of the problem in the USA is a common attitude towards the US Constitution. I remember more than a decade ago asking if anyone was considering if a Constitution written in the 4th quarter of the 18 Century was still fit for purpose in the 1st quarter of the 21st. From the responses I thought I might be heading for at least the Ducking Stool, if not being burnt as a heretic. The "Founders" expected it to be changed and it has been regularly but lately I think I have seen a growth of a view that sees the document to be (in the words of Rusty Bowers) "Divinely Inspired". Such an approach is to put it politely, unhelpful. It is also dangerous when it can be shown as "fatally flawed" thanks to recent rulings by the Supreme Court. How are you going to get rid of the Electoral College? Of Gerrymandering for starters? The Senate where I believe 70% of the senators represent 30% of the people? Our 1st past the post is bad enough but I have done revisions of electoral boundaries and that you still allow this beggars belief over here. We faced a similar structural problem here more than 100 years ago when the unelected Lords vetoed popular legislation from the Commons. The PM brought forward legislation to reform the Lords to remove their veto. How did we get the turkeys to vote for Christmas? The King (George Vth I think) who understood his role in a Constitutional Monarchy, told the Lords that if they did not pass the reforms he would create enough new Liberal Lords to change the politics of the House for generations. They voted for Christmas. If your Constitution has such a get out card, please tell me, because otherwise I really cannot see a peaceful answer to the problem - perhaps there is no problem? We are over thinking it? Or is it beyond repair, fatally flawed? I hope I am wrong and am not proving to be a modern Cassandra. I am looking at things from a long way away, after all, but I can already see some signs of the rot setting in here. So please be quick.
The explanation is simple. The Democratic Party’s hubris denied that Corporate America was determined to control American governance in a protracted war. Worse is that their hubris of invincibility led them to ignore representing all of the People’s interests for the last 50 or so years thus enabling such a takeover. Otherwise they would have created a single overriding message and action plan about 40 years ago to combat Lewis Powell’s long term plan for business interests, and eventually MAGA, to become the dominant force. Simply stated, the Democratic Party forgot that its strength was in representing people, not cultural issues.
My mother had the gall to say to me, "If your family is directly harmed by the republicans, I'll never vote for them again."
She also told me that she didn't believe dump will be a dictator and that he's not associated with Project 2025. "He said he wasn't connected to them!"
It's almost laughable, a man who has demonstrated that he is practically incapable of not lying, she thinks he wasn't lying about Project 2025. 🤦🏻♀️
MAGAMIND as I call it is a MATRIX of logical fallacies spoon fed to these people by others who convince them if they follow, they will be able to elevate themselves and their racial group and fuck over the people they want to hurt and disenfranchise. Sorry, but that's what I think.
Hmmm, magamind. It's unfortunate that that is the most apt explanation I've so far come across as to why and how college-educated, "news-following", affluent White people like my parents could have not only fallen for it, but zealously defend it. "I've researched it. I've watched all sides of the news and what you're saying is not true. You know, Kamala is a liar, too." It doesn't make sense. I watch all sides of the news, and somehow I know that one side is completely lying bullshit.
Are these her final words? I have feared I might die without ever seeing the end of Trump. What a life I have lived, only to have it end in complete disaster!
What Trump was looking for, I think, was a get-out-of-jail-free card--and he got that in spades, didn't he. But he's looking for something else: HE LIKES TO PUNISH. And he will, and he will sell women to the Radical Right and the Christofascists--and the manosphere. He owes the last the January 6th insurrection as 3 out of 4 major groups that took part were FOUNDED UPON OR DEEPLY ESPOUSE the subjugation of women to the home and the dilution of their rights and freedoms. ... AND a year ago Trump promised his supporters they would only have to go to the polls one more time: that after the election that he just "won" (allegedly), THEY WOULD NEVER HAVE TO VOTE AGAIN. Whether Trump lives or dies, it's that we have to contend with, for Project 2025 and the Manosphere and the religiou Radical Right want it all, and they want it forever.
I can’t argue with you. You’re probably right, unless those of us who profoundly disagree with such policies and ideas do something huge by way of resistance. I for one do not intend to go gentle into that good night. However I can.
Do you think the Dems will challenge? If there's even a shadow of a doubt, we should. God help us either way, as challenging the racism and misogyny that took the election, not to say the graft, might cause a civil war. We are in very serious trouble. I'm trying not to be as scared as I am.
We’re going to be okay. We’ve got to concentrate locally now. Make sure your neighbors and those you care about are okay or as okay as they can be. It’s gonna get ugly, but we’ll get through the other side if we stick together. I’ve voted mostly democrat and never Republican all of my life. The Democrats have signed their own death warrant. It’s too late to stop much of this, at this point. Much love to you and yours. If you’ve got kids, hold them a little tighter tonight.
To me the ultimately most damning thing is that Trump got elected, not once but twice! 😱
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” comes to mind.
I’ve read the analyses, pondered the sociology, psychology, economics and theology.
For me it’s still like being told your dearest friend just died of a heart attack, intellectually I understand that but in every other way my being finds it utterly incomprehensible.
Thanks Helen. As a Brit living in the USA for the last 20 years (and, I have to say, the recipient of much friendliness and kindness) I am terrified at what's in store for us. The most depressing thing is that many of the people I encounter on a daily basis must have voted for this despicable individual.
I do understand what you mean. I have had similar responses from close family and friends. Going back to covid, close family who have serious health problems were pretty disgusted by the reactions of "friends" who refused to mask and have the vaccine because in their minds, both / either, were contrary to their constitutional rights. This was seemingly more important to them than the safety of their friends. A number of respondents have mentioned the fact that for the great majority of Americans, their experience of anything "different" is non-existent. Most of the older members of my husband's family had rarely been outside their State and the idea that things might be different elsewhere, not to mention better, was simply inconceivable. I have been proposing some changes to the constitution for years. However, we are not all that great a role model ourselves and I am thinking that perhaps I now know how Cassandra must have felt in Ancient Greece. Friends are enquiring as to where they could go if necessary. At least you have the UK to return to, I assume. Not such an easy choice though.
The so-called media ushered a criminal traitor into power without any thought to the consequences to people outside the U.S. and future generations. We deserve to destroy ourselves as humans. We have the intelligence to stop all wars and feed and house every person. But because of the greed of the few and the complicity of many, we’ll destroy every other innocent, miraculous species in the process
That the USA is a 'misogynistic and racist nation' is sadly right, though I would make the point that it's even deeper. When some enterprising anthropologists and later folklorists studied the music in the remote regions of the southern mountains they found more primitive versions of the music there than there were in their places of origin.
I think the same thing is true of their religion. It's primal as hell, and a form of extreme Calvinism further perverted by slavery and the Great Awakenings movements which made a deal with the devil to the effect that black people could hope for justice in the afterlife but that they were screwed in this world with God's mandate and approval.
The point is they hate all of creation for its corruption and impurity. They hate themselves for their corruption and impurity, and so long for the life after. Women and minorities are archetypally perceived as closer to nature and less pure. And seen as sinful and the occasion of sin. Also as prone to enjoy life, which they find scary and abhorrent.
So it's not just about persecuting and hating on people. They long to see the end of the world. This is so nuts it works in their favor. People can't see it or doubt it if they do, let alone that this minority outlook could overtake the country but it has by virtue of the Southern Strategy. Republicans kept throwing this voting bloc bad, race-baiting stuff.
They got into a self-reinforcing cycle, a doom loop. The crazies got crazier and the Republicans more powerful and entrenched, and Republicans increasingly had to give the nutcases what they demanded to satisfy them. That gets us to Trump, their end-times man. An absolute wrecking ball. So it's not just about women and minorities.
It's about an utter contempt for life and a desire to see the world go up in flames. Look into the popularity of the 'Left Behind' books. They're more crazy than you can imagine and it's mostly unconscious. Michelle Goldberg wrote typically well on this, including in an old article 'Fundamentally Unsound' in Salon if I remember right.
What a BRILLIANT comment!!!! Thank you. WOW!
I cannot disagree with you. I was not aware of the music aspect, but sounds about right!!! (No pun intended). I wrote this piece after reading, watching and listening to an unending litany of excuses for the results which to me seemed to be just a way of avoiding the obvious. There is far more data now available to study but I am neither a data analyst nor an anthropologist to comment in any way that adds to the debate. However, they do not seem to negate my gut instinct that if you add together those who voted for Trump and those who abstained, you have a significant majority who did not find Trump sufficiently obnoxious to overcome their objections to voting for Harris. To me, as an observer from the UK, but with significant links to the USA (mostly the south) the implications could not be denied. I think part of the problem is "American Exceptionalism". Most of our friends who would agree with me have travelled, lived or worked outside of the USA and have a wider view of the world, see in a bigger framework. If you hold to Exceptionalism, you cannot learn from the mistakes/experience of others.
OK, that's important. I have traveled--and have lived overseas for long periods of time--and I do see us from a different perspective than most of my friends. But I can also see MAGA "circular thinking" inside logical fallacies and dogma far more easily than I can all Americans, including Democrats and Independents, as suffering from the same thing in a different way. We always think of ourselves as the Children of the Empire, and that makes us SO dangerous to ourselves and the rest of the world. Some people in the Third World have demanded that U.S. elections be open to non-citizens residing in other countries. I don't agree with that, but I understand it. Americans are just 4.3% of the world's population but control almost 26% of total world wealth, making it the world's largest economy. We here don't think about our impact on the rest of the world. We must dismay so many, many people.
Exceptionalism is a huge problem, and I think there's an especially bad spin on it among evangelicals. There it's combined with a horrific degree of fatalism. I think if you could convince them they were working for Satan many would be fine with it because it would have to be God's will and destiny and the role they were intended for in bringing about the fulfillment of prophecy and the 'second coming' and so on.
It's just so nuts. I had read George Lakoff years ago when so many others did and thought he was excellent in explaining the differences between Democrats and Republicans by considering their views on family life, as it plays out in a society as a larger kind of family or naturally metaphorically similar. I hadn't revisited Lakoff since Trump came on the scene until recently and Lakoff's take is even more compelling now.
Because, Trump is such a ridiculous outlier and incomprehensibly unbalanced as an authority figure. It's hard to believe he even exists, he's so far gone, let alone that anyone would think it appropriate to have him be responsible for the welfare of others. But Lakoff makes it intelligible, which doesn't in any way diminish the outlandishness of it. I feel it more so accepting Lakoff's perspective, since it means seeing Trump as a father figure.
God help us. Also it becomes clearer that evangelicals couldn't be further removed from being Christians or patriots or consistent with the letter or spirit of our Constitution. The Bible couldn't be more against identity thinking and tribalism -- the point is that all of humanity is our tribe and, I would argue, by extension, nature as well in some sense. And the Constitution is a rational and Enlightenment document through and through.
So evangelicals are totally nuts. Here's some Lakoff ...
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2017/05/02/berkeley-author-george-lakoff-says-dont-underestimate-trump
Thanks for the link. Makes me feel a bit out of my comfort zone but helpful. may throw it towards our Priests at Church for a view.
James Flanagan, what you've described is a Manichean world-view, one which was ultimately rejected by the early Church. Growing up in Mississippi in the '50s and '60s I saw this for myself, and completely agree with your analysis. I didn't understand what I was seeing until many years later, when I began reading the Penguin History of Christianity (I also came across Mani and his followers more formally in my studies of the Ancient Near East). The roots of this cultural and religious outlook in the Deep South have also been laid out beautifully by Professor David Hackett Fischer in his magnum opus, 'Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America'. Large numbers of the early settlers in the region were what he calls 'North British Borderers', steeped in centuries of violence.
Yes, thank you for commenting. The Catholic Church formally rejected Jansenism, its version of extreme dualism, as heretical. The Protestants I'm less familiar with but I think it occurred mostly piecemeal over the different denominations as they started rowing backwards against the early tides of a vindictive, fatalistic, persecutory form of Calvinism. I knew a few of the anthropologists who got the music thing started. The movie Songcatcher is fun and portrays some of the work on mountain music. I think it starred Aiden Quinn and Janet McTeer, again from my sometimes faulty memory but I think that's right ...
Goldberg article
https://www.salon.com/2002/07/29/left_behind/
May I throw another spanner into the works, log on the fire (pick your own metaphor). I have long had an interest in Constitutions (I am by no means an expert) and before I retired I was responsible for changes, interpretations etc of the Local Authority's Constitution, Terms of Reference etc., Rules etc. and it seems to me that part of the problem in the USA is a common attitude towards the US Constitution. I remember more than a decade ago asking if anyone was considering if a Constitution written in the 4th quarter of the 18 Century was still fit for purpose in the 1st quarter of the 21st. From the responses I thought I might be heading for at least the Ducking Stool, if not being burnt as a heretic. The "Founders" expected it to be changed and it has been regularly but lately I think I have seen a growth of a view that sees the document to be (in the words of Rusty Bowers) "Divinely Inspired". Such an approach is to put it politely, unhelpful. It is also dangerous when it can be shown as "fatally flawed" thanks to recent rulings by the Supreme Court. How are you going to get rid of the Electoral College? Of Gerrymandering for starters? The Senate where I believe 70% of the senators represent 30% of the people? Our 1st past the post is bad enough but I have done revisions of electoral boundaries and that you still allow this beggars belief over here. We faced a similar structural problem here more than 100 years ago when the unelected Lords vetoed popular legislation from the Commons. The PM brought forward legislation to reform the Lords to remove their veto. How did we get the turkeys to vote for Christmas? The King (George Vth I think) who understood his role in a Constitutional Monarchy, told the Lords that if they did not pass the reforms he would create enough new Liberal Lords to change the politics of the House for generations. They voted for Christmas. If your Constitution has such a get out card, please tell me, because otherwise I really cannot see a peaceful answer to the problem - perhaps there is no problem? We are over thinking it? Or is it beyond repair, fatally flawed? I hope I am wrong and am not proving to be a modern Cassandra. I am looking at things from a long way away, after all, but I can already see some signs of the rot setting in here. So please be quick.
The explanation is simple. The Democratic Party’s hubris denied that Corporate America was determined to control American governance in a protracted war. Worse is that their hubris of invincibility led them to ignore representing all of the People’s interests for the last 50 or so years thus enabling such a takeover. Otherwise they would have created a single overriding message and action plan about 40 years ago to combat Lewis Powell’s long term plan for business interests, and eventually MAGA, to become the dominant force. Simply stated, the Democratic Party forgot that its strength was in representing people, not cultural issues.
My mother had the gall to say to me, "If your family is directly harmed by the republicans, I'll never vote for them again."
She also told me that she didn't believe dump will be a dictator and that he's not associated with Project 2025. "He said he wasn't connected to them!"
It's almost laughable, a man who has demonstrated that he is practically incapable of not lying, she thinks he wasn't lying about Project 2025. 🤦🏻♀️
MAGAMIND as I call it is a MATRIX of logical fallacies spoon fed to these people by others who convince them if they follow, they will be able to elevate themselves and their racial group and fuck over the people they want to hurt and disenfranchise. Sorry, but that's what I think.
Hmmm, magamind. It's unfortunate that that is the most apt explanation I've so far come across as to why and how college-educated, "news-following", affluent White people like my parents could have not only fallen for it, but zealously defend it. "I've researched it. I've watched all sides of the news and what you're saying is not true. You know, Kamala is a liar, too." It doesn't make sense. I watch all sides of the news, and somehow I know that one side is completely lying bullshit.
Are these her final words? I have feared I might die without ever seeing the end of Trump. What a life I have lived, only to have it end in complete disaster!
What Trump was looking for, I think, was a get-out-of-jail-free card--and he got that in spades, didn't he. But he's looking for something else: HE LIKES TO PUNISH. And he will, and he will sell women to the Radical Right and the Christofascists--and the manosphere. He owes the last the January 6th insurrection as 3 out of 4 major groups that took part were FOUNDED UPON OR DEEPLY ESPOUSE the subjugation of women to the home and the dilution of their rights and freedoms. ... AND a year ago Trump promised his supporters they would only have to go to the polls one more time: that after the election that he just "won" (allegedly), THEY WOULD NEVER HAVE TO VOTE AGAIN. Whether Trump lives or dies, it's that we have to contend with, for Project 2025 and the Manosphere and the religiou Radical Right want it all, and they want it forever.
I can’t argue with you. You’re probably right, unless those of us who profoundly disagree with such policies and ideas do something huge by way of resistance. I for one do not intend to go gentle into that good night. However I can.
I'm with you, Saralyn!
Excellent. I thank you for succinctly pulling the curtain down and revealing what the world sees. We need to hear how others perceive this calamity.
The Taliban accolade is telling given how much misogyny was a major Trump campaign theme
Forget not… this election was not won, it was stolen. Time will tell if I am right or wrong. If I am right, thank god. If I am wrong, god help us.
Do you think the Dems will challenge? If there's even a shadow of a doubt, we should. God help us either way, as challenging the racism and misogyny that took the election, not to say the graft, might cause a civil war. We are in very serious trouble. I'm trying not to be as scared as I am.
I have retrieved my fidget spinners.
We’re going to be okay. We’ve got to concentrate locally now. Make sure your neighbors and those you care about are okay or as okay as they can be. It’s gonna get ugly, but we’ll get through the other side if we stick together. I’ve voted mostly democrat and never Republican all of my life. The Democrats have signed their own death warrant. It’s too late to stop much of this, at this point. Much love to you and yours. If you’ve got kids, hold them a little tighter tonight.
To me the ultimately most damning thing is that Trump got elected, not once but twice! 😱
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” comes to mind.
I’ve read the analyses, pondered the sociology, psychology, economics and theology.
For me it’s still like being told your dearest friend just died of a heart attack, intellectually I understand that but in every other way my being finds it utterly incomprehensible.
This American, her husband & most of the rest of our family have never voted trump, or any of his ilk.
Thanks Helen. As a Brit living in the USA for the last 20 years (and, I have to say, the recipient of much friendliness and kindness) I am terrified at what's in store for us. The most depressing thing is that many of the people I encounter on a daily basis must have voted for this despicable individual.
I do understand what you mean. I have had similar responses from close family and friends. Going back to covid, close family who have serious health problems were pretty disgusted by the reactions of "friends" who refused to mask and have the vaccine because in their minds, both / either, were contrary to their constitutional rights. This was seemingly more important to them than the safety of their friends. A number of respondents have mentioned the fact that for the great majority of Americans, their experience of anything "different" is non-existent. Most of the older members of my husband's family had rarely been outside their State and the idea that things might be different elsewhere, not to mention better, was simply inconceivable. I have been proposing some changes to the constitution for years. However, we are not all that great a role model ourselves and I am thinking that perhaps I now know how Cassandra must have felt in Ancient Greece. Friends are enquiring as to where they could go if necessary. At least you have the UK to return to, I assume. Not such an easy choice though.
The so-called media ushered a criminal traitor into power without any thought to the consequences to people outside the U.S. and future generations. We deserve to destroy ourselves as humans. We have the intelligence to stop all wars and feed and house every person. But because of the greed of the few and the complicity of many, we’ll destroy every other innocent, miraculous species in the process