At least from the standpoint of life in the year 2025, legitimizing "things as they are" unavoidably means getting people to go along with a great deal that is blatantly and undeniably stupid and vile. (Indeed, this is one of the principal jobs of those whom conventional wisdom hails as "experts" in such areas as finance or national security.)
Those who do the legitimizing go about their jobs in different ways, with the poses they strike as they speak their "truths" striking me as worthy of comparison and contrast at the moment.
There is the pose of thoughtful humanity facing a world that is not what it would like it to be but from which it bravely refuses to shrink, and which after much soul-searching it has found cannot be changed. ("Human nature" and all that.) I wish it were otherwise, they say, but "it is what it is," they tell us--often as they pull that "smelled a fart" expression that stupid people think conveys gravitas.
Then there is the gleeful "Welcome to the real world!" swagger that says "This is the way the world is, and if you're not okay with it that's your problem because you're not clear-eyed and tough like me." Of course it is just the pseudo-machismo of an idiot bully who will prove anything but clear-eyed and tough when they deservedly find themselves the ones at the sharp end, but they are probably not smart enough to know that their obnoxious pose is a pose.
Considering those poses I don't know which hypocrisy is worse.
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