Maybe better is instead of calling these clearly deranged, pathological people deplorable, maybe they should just be treated as deplorable.
Anyway.
What I found interesting is -- as always -- Porky allowing the demonstrators to exercise a little violence in a way, well, let's just say white privilege. No need to defund the police though; it would hurt their feefees, making them even nastier. All we can do is empower Porky to do what he wants and hope for the, well, not best but the less bad?
OTOH, given my newest old fart theory that we already had the coup long ago and the corpse of democracy is being used as, well, an opiate of the masses to keep them chill about living in a state that hasn't given a fuck about them (which is to say us) in decades. The disregard of the state of the masses is clear and documented -- just look at the national responses to the pandemic: letting people die and tens of millions to be impoverished. Please. You can tell me I'm wrong but not sure I can be proven wrong. Pieces fit too well.
I get your point. I will say that a disinterested observer would look at most of the first 15 presidencies and say, huh, a slaveocracy! But then you get Lincoln. The bastards course-corrected pretty good soon after, and observers might say, a retrograde state bucking the universal tide of progress! But then you get FDR. Our emergences into actual democracy are spotty but glorious when they happen.
I throw out my old fart coup theory as a possibility, although I'm convinced that the Powers That Be are really, really opposed to any democratic institutions and have been paying a shit ton of pols -- mostly but not only, the GOP -- to make it so. So given what the PTB want and their extractive economy, I wouldn't bet on a New Deal-like flowering of democracy. Of course, I can be wrong.
Eh. On one hand, you have an attitude based on documented behavior, on the other hand, you have an opinion of a reality denying person. I know that they deserve the same weight per corporate media pros but I don't know that I would say that.
Possible silver lining (or is it a golden shower?): bipartisan support for abolishing the Electoral College. Not likely given its favor for Big Whitey, but a gurl can dream...
The obstacles to eliminating the Electoral College are huge, but votes for women and black people were once unthinkable to most Americans. If there's a crack we can get a wedge in, it may come true in my grandkids' lifetimes.
If nothing else, as Trump's stooges turn every step into a pitfall, we're all getting a real-time introduction to the entire stupid electoral college process: from the appointment, meeting and voting of state electors, to the signing and certification of electoral votes, to the delivery to the President of the Senate and the counting of electoral votes in the full Congress, and the declaration of the winner. Since this sequence was pretty much pro forma in the past, I'm betting most of us took it for granted and had no idea what was involved, or how precarious it all is. Maybe knowing how nuts it is now will help convince a few more people the EC should be scrapped.
How bipartisan now? No respectable Republican would seriously support it if it could actually happen. It's the only way to get a Republican elected POTUS.
I'm waiting for Trump to call on the Proud Boys and other militia types to violently overthrow the government. Sad to say that I think there is a very real possibility that Trump will call for violence and insurrection.
Not his modus. Michael Cohen describes Trump’s mob boss approach to ordering crime: never say it directly, never put it in writing. “Something should be done” is as close as he would come to telling Cohen to ratfuck someone.
These goons are good for terror but, like the insurrectionist Gomer Pyles one sees in the survivalist treehouses and comments sections, they would make a poor army. I think the PBs just enjoy going to cities, ganging up on and beating people, then disappearing into their hotels. They've been waiting their whole lives for someone like Gavin McInnes to bring them together with other like-minded sociopaths, and they're not going to give it up for anything that might end with them dead.
Living in DC, you really do only see the worst people. Having lived in three rural parts of the upper Midwest you do see these people but they're usually dismissed as the local nuts. Which is why they travel to DC to make all their noise. If they did this where they live, their neighbors would go from ignoring them to openly mocking them.
When you see these protests in red states, note that they're always in the capitol cities.
My apologies to everyone who lives in a city and has to put up with the folks whose neighbors wisely discourage them from acting out at home. Sadly, when you live where the power is, that place inevitably becomes a shit magnet.
Most people in rural areas would appreciate if you'd just arrest them and keep them. We don't want them back.
"note that they're always in the capitol cities" Yeah, Jericho March had satellite events planned for swing-state capitals and I haven't explored but I assume they were like any other weekend nut-cluster.
Sadly, the collective liberal/left is warring with itself on social media because Jimmy Dore incited a mob to yell at AOC to stand up to Nancy on m4a. Which cannot pass the Senate which makes this whole 'force a vote' thing more like wearing kente cloth than working towards actual victory.
I'm strongly beginning to suspect Pelosi had someone put a bug in Dore's ear (or is just opportunistically seizing the moment to crank up the volume). Win/win for her. If AOC embarrasses her into passing m4a, Pelosi gets to say "I told you so. Now let the grownups get back to business and we'll find some scraps for you." And if AOC fails, she loses credibility weakening her and the Squad and Nancy gets to nod wisely for the cameras.
Gotta love the comrades shitting on the people without power -- thanks in part to the comrades refusing to support them -- for failing to act in the manner of people with actual power. Taibbi and Greenwald are the au currant examples.
Should have added that it looks like DSA approved candidates in House races did at least as well as DNC approved candidates. Probably better but I know not to trust my memory.
I'll be honest - I thought that sheep's face thing was pretty cool.
Do you go in any sort of disguise, a red white and blue kerchief perhaps or do you stroll amongst them perfectly normal, taking pictures like an Ohio tourist on Venice Beach? However- great photos - Thank you for your service!
That "Child of Darkness" thing was extremely unsubtle. Extremely.
Good thing the Billionaires bankrolling this are too cheap to come off any real money, like say, paychecks for the New Confederate Soldiers. The Civil War lasts just as long as there is vacation days to use - minus the yearly trip to Myrtle Beach.
“And then your own government conspires against you! You see General Flynn was known to the Deep State... because what he did was he spoke truth to power” How? By passing classified information to the Russians?
All the people in these photos are stunningly ugly. The freak show outfits they wear (Grotesque Patriot Chic?) only accentuate their homeliness and make them look even more stupid.
Finally, as a long time resident of the DC area, it makes me sick to have these Nazi assholes commit violence and vandalism on city streets that I'm long familiar with.
Trump is not, and never has been, capable of accepting failure or blame when things go wrong. Caught doing something illegal? Sue more. Caught trying to overturn an election? Assemble crazies to yell dumbshit on your behalf.
That's why this whole thing has been fascinating and dangerous. He's had this asswhippin' coming for decades. Problem is he's reflexively trying to protect himself--and no one else. If the country goes to hell? Oh well. . .
Well, this is their moment. The gun-loving, 2nd amendment-protecting, "tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants"-quoting right-wingers are finally confronted---in their minds---with the fantasy that they've been braying about for decades. They believe a corrupt and tyrannical government has ousted a duly-elected incumbent president by nefarious means, which according to them can be remedied only one way.
But of course, we then have to ask how many of them *really* believe this. And of those who do, how many are *really* about to go out and die trying to overthrow the government. And of those who will, how many will get *really* scared the second the minute they bump against real resistance---like the military. Yes, the Proud Boys are out there and the police are unlikely to stop them, but that's not enough. For anything to get done, all the keyboard warriors have to get out of their recliners, hop on to their Rascal scooter, and be willing to put bullets into innocent people they don't know. I don't think there's anywhere near enough of them.
Which is to say, right-wingers are and always have been full of shit.
It doesn't take a whole militia, just a few nutcases inflamed by none other than the fucking President to wreak some bigly havoc. Think Pittsburgh and El Paso shooters, or imagine if Cesar Sayoc actually had bomb making skills.
If life ran along sitcom lines, this would be the moment when some nerd with spectacles would announce that, since the ammosexuals' theory was that the 2nd Amendment was inviolable because patriots needed their guns to prevent an anti-Constitutional takeover; and since they had signally failed to do so, in the face of what they described as the most obvious and monstrous such takeover in the history of the world; therefore, according to the doctrine of *laches*, the 2nd Amendment, having failed to be used in a timely fashion, was now void.
I remember right-wingers complaining that our side was worshiping Obama too much. Hell, I even remember one of them complaining that we were worshiping Al Gore. Just more proof that "it's okay if you're a Republican" is their default.
Whenever someone links to a truly abominable tweet -- poor people should starve to death, we've got all the guns it's time to start shooting, let's bring back slavery, the worst hateful shit -- the twit profile invariably has something like "Christian dad" or "Jesus is my life" or some such in it. I don't remember any "blessed are the shitheads" beatitude but it's scary-nuts how they seem to. That all this religiosity is in service to Donald fucking Trump leaves one speechless. All the more reason I'm grateful that you not only venture like Gulliver among the whackjobians but document your travels with such great words and pictures.
Based on the behavior of the feral GOP officeholders (which is to say, most of them) in recent days, I think something like the following scenario is plausible, although I venture it as a speculation rather than a prediction:
Trump leaves office next month, still insisting that he is the rightful president, still denouncing “fraud” and “theft.” Meanwhile, out in Real America, one or more Republican-dominated states, through their governors and/or legislatures, make official statements (even if these be mere “resolutions”) that the Biden/Harris administration is illegitimate and that any policies and regulations it may promulgate are accordingly null and void and without force of law. And if one brazen state assumes such a stance, others will surely follow, and the right wing media will take up the meme with gusto.
Now, talk is cheap, and I daresay that any serious, consequential attempt by a state to thrust a stick into the federal spokes would generate some meaningful pushback, which even the officeholders must realize, but the mere proclamation will be enough to rile up the mouthbreathers with whom most of these jurisdictions are abundantly provided. It’s hard to see how further stoking the grievances of armed goobers yields anything but, from our standpoint, suboptimal results. Alex Jones knew perfectly well what he was conveying with “one way or another,” and so do the pols.
That fourth photo - the one in which the woman is taking a photo of the helicopter - is emblematic of who these people tend to be. To me anyway. She's probably younger than me, she looks well-nourished but not fat, she's not showing her teeth but I'm sure she has 'em, she's appropriately dressed. She could be my daughter*.
These are "regular" people; they're not hillbilly or rural or dim-witted "others". They're not ignorant (except willfully). Every time I see a parody of them as stupid, ignorant, drawling Southern-Fried half-wits, I want to cry and say "No, no. They're everywhere. They're having fun. They're having the time of their lives". Look at how fiercely thrilled they are. For the first time in their lives they feel exhilarated and they love that we're watching. I grew up with these people, my parents were these people. They're not the majority, but we can't locate them in one particular place in the USandA; they're everywhere.
'These are "regular" people; they're not hillbilly or rural or dim-witted "others". They're not ignorant (except willfully).' Exactly so. The average Trump voter makes more money than the average Biden voters, and has more faith in rule by the rich.
My question is, Do they mean all this? Do they take it literally? Or is it like an NFL game, going to the stadium and drinking and screaming and carrying on *as if* it really mattered? I'd say "or to church," but I assume most of them DO take that literally, and mean it.
I suppose Trump--like all demagogues--works like this:
1. Validate the individual's aggrievement.
2. Amp it all up by aggregating the individuals into crowds, thus--
3. Relieving each individual of their sense of responsibility, rationality, and common sense.
4. Instructing the mob what to do.
Of course, the same process is sort of at play at any mass entertainment event--sports, movies, musicals, etc. But (mostly) those crowds know it's make believe, and aren't set against enemies outside the theater/arena. Not to be too technical, but these people are NUTZ. And their mania invite and supports a violent faction like the Proud Boys.
I dread, a little, what might happen on Inauguration Day.
I don't worry much about the fucknuts running around various cities showing their ass to everyone. I feel bad for the people who live in those cities though.
I worry about the actual institutional Republican Party having signed on to insurrection, sedition and rebellion. I don't see how the country can survive as currently constituted. I'll keep saying it. The country is ungovernable and such situations do not last.
And Joe Biden will not go big. Nancy will not punish the insurrectionists in the House. Democrats are and always have been cowards so forget any national reconciliation committees or investigations of wrong doing in the Trump administration. Mitch McConnell will be the fuckwad who is actually running the country. Sorry, I don't believe either of the Democrats in Georgia will win so we all get to have McConnell with the USA's nuts in a vice in perpetuity or until McConnell is pushing up daisies. Oh, and the judiciary... Democrat laws and executive orders are all unconstitutional. It's a given.
"I worry about the actual institutional Republican Party having signed on to insurrection, sedition and rebellion."
The GOP knows they have nothing but BS for the people because their policies are repugnant to the majority. So they have no choice but grabbing power by any/all means.
"I don't see how the country can survive as currently constituted."
Then there's my old fart theory that we had the coup a couple of decades ago and democratic institutions exist without power just so the people don't think we're a fascist state unresponsive to the will or well being of the majority of people.
Yeah, that's like my "soft fascism" theory. I can't pin exactly when it was that the US government stopped giving a shit what the voters think about anything but it's been clear for at least a couple of decades that it was the case.
'This was too much even for crypto-fascist ex-Catholic Rod Dreher, whom events have pushed into the hilarious position of old lefty professors in the 60s crying “It’s your means I question!”)'
Dreher's reaction to the 'Stop the Steal' movement has been one of the more peculiar sideshows (and shitshows) of late. He tried to get down with the Trumpists by supporting Kyle Rittenhouse and warning about 'soft totalitarianism,' only to be caught off-guard by some paranoia that doesn't quite mesh with his paranoia. He must feel like the ad exec in "Joe." He proclaims that the liberals are taking over the 'culture' and then his audience decides to shoot hippies.
Maybe better is instead of calling these clearly deranged, pathological people deplorable, maybe they should just be treated as deplorable.
Anyway.
What I found interesting is -- as always -- Porky allowing the demonstrators to exercise a little violence in a way, well, let's just say white privilege. No need to defund the police though; it would hurt their feefees, making them even nastier. All we can do is empower Porky to do what he wants and hope for the, well, not best but the less bad?
OTOH, given my newest old fart theory that we already had the coup long ago and the corpse of democracy is being used as, well, an opiate of the masses to keep them chill about living in a state that hasn't given a fuck about them (which is to say us) in decades. The disregard of the state of the masses is clear and documented -- just look at the national responses to the pandemic: letting people die and tens of millions to be impoverished. Please. You can tell me I'm wrong but not sure I can be proven wrong. Pieces fit too well.
I get your point. I will say that a disinterested observer would look at most of the first 15 presidencies and say, huh, a slaveocracy! But then you get Lincoln. The bastards course-corrected pretty good soon after, and observers might say, a retrograde state bucking the universal tide of progress! But then you get FDR. Our emergences into actual democracy are spotty but glorious when they happen.
I throw out my old fart coup theory as a possibility, although I'm convinced that the Powers That Be are really, really opposed to any democratic institutions and have been paying a shit ton of pols -- mostly but not only, the GOP -- to make it so. So given what the PTB want and their extractive economy, I wouldn't bet on a New Deal-like flowering of democracy. Of course, I can be wrong.
Good news! Everyone hates the cops now: https://twitter.com/copingmaga/status/1338544283981328389?s=21
Eh. On one hand, you have an attitude based on documented behavior, on the other hand, you have an opinion of a reality denying person. I know that they deserve the same weight per corporate media pros but I don't know that I would say that.
Possible silver lining (or is it a golden shower?): bipartisan support for abolishing the Electoral College. Not likely given its favor for Big Whitey, but a gurl can dream...
The obstacles to eliminating the Electoral College are huge, but votes for women and black people were once unthinkable to most Americans. If there's a crack we can get a wedge in, it may come true in my grandkids' lifetimes.
If nothing else, as Trump's stooges turn every step into a pitfall, we're all getting a real-time introduction to the entire stupid electoral college process: from the appointment, meeting and voting of state electors, to the signing and certification of electoral votes, to the delivery to the President of the Senate and the counting of electoral votes in the full Congress, and the declaration of the winner. Since this sequence was pretty much pro forma in the past, I'm betting most of us took it for granted and had no idea what was involved, or how precarious it all is. Maybe knowing how nuts it is now will help convince a few more people the EC should be scrapped.
How bipartisan now? No respectable Republican would seriously support it if it could actually happen. It's the only way to get a Republican elected POTUS.
I'm waiting for Trump to call on the Proud Boys and other militia types to violently overthrow the government. Sad to say that I think there is a very real possibility that Trump will call for violence and insurrection.
Not his modus. Michael Cohen describes Trump’s mob boss approach to ordering crime: never say it directly, never put it in writing. “Something should be done” is as close as he would come to telling Cohen to ratfuck someone.
True. Donnie's all wink'n'nods.
These goons are good for terror but, like the insurrectionist Gomer Pyles one sees in the survivalist treehouses and comments sections, they would make a poor army. I think the PBs just enjoy going to cities, ganging up on and beating people, then disappearing into their hotels. They've been waiting their whole lives for someone like Gavin McInnes to bring them together with other like-minded sociopaths, and they're not going to give it up for anything that might end with them dead.
Gomer Pyle libelz! Gomer was too sweet and innocent to get involved with these goons.
Fair enough.
I wouldn't bet on that. I could see Gomer tagging along with them specially since he wouldn't know better.
See also Kyle Rittenhouse.
If I was going to start a badass strike force of Street Fighting Men I think I would pick a name a little less J M Barrie.
Surely there's a line of bullshit that would convince them of the error of their ways.
Living in DC, you really do only see the worst people. Having lived in three rural parts of the upper Midwest you do see these people but they're usually dismissed as the local nuts. Which is why they travel to DC to make all their noise. If they did this where they live, their neighbors would go from ignoring them to openly mocking them.
When you see these protests in red states, note that they're always in the capitol cities.
My apologies to everyone who lives in a city and has to put up with the folks whose neighbors wisely discourage them from acting out at home. Sadly, when you live where the power is, that place inevitably becomes a shit magnet.
Most people in rural areas would appreciate if you'd just arrest them and keep them. We don't want them back.
"note that they're always in the capitol cities" Yeah, Jericho March had satellite events planned for swing-state capitals and I haven't explored but I assume they were like any other weekend nut-cluster.
Sadly, the collective liberal/left is warring with itself on social media because Jimmy Dore incited a mob to yell at AOC to stand up to Nancy on m4a. Which cannot pass the Senate which makes this whole 'force a vote' thing more like wearing kente cloth than working towards actual victory.
I'm strongly beginning to suspect Pelosi had someone put a bug in Dore's ear (or is just opportunistically seizing the moment to crank up the volume). Win/win for her. If AOC embarrasses her into passing m4a, Pelosi gets to say "I told you so. Now let the grownups get back to business and we'll find some scraps for you." And if AOC fails, she loses credibility weakening her and the Squad and Nancy gets to nod wisely for the cameras.
Good times.
"If AOC embarrasses her into passing m4a" LOL if only!
Yeah, kinda forgot something there, like the part about the Senate not letting any such House bill ever get out of committee.
Gotta love the comrades shitting on the people without power -- thanks in part to the comrades refusing to support them -- for failing to act in the manner of people with actual power. Taibbi and Greenwald are the au currant examples.
Should have added that it looks like DSA approved candidates in House races did at least as well as DNC approved candidates. Probably better but I know not to trust my memory.
I'll be honest - I thought that sheep's face thing was pretty cool.
Do you go in any sort of disguise, a red white and blue kerchief perhaps or do you stroll amongst them perfectly normal, taking pictures like an Ohio tourist on Venice Beach? However- great photos - Thank you for your service!
That "Child of Darkness" thing was extremely unsubtle. Extremely.
Good thing the Billionaires bankrolling this are too cheap to come off any real money, like say, paychecks for the New Confederate Soldiers. The Civil War lasts just as long as there is vacation days to use - minus the yearly trip to Myrtle Beach.
I'm an old white man. No disguise needed.
Tomorrow belongs to us!
It's only a day away!
Die Annieweltanschaunggeist, eh?
I get my Broadway Tomorrow songs mixed up. What can I say -
It's a hard knock life!
I always thought some enterprising company should have stuck the "Annie" Tomorrow into Cabaret.
Or the other way around.
That would be like later 20th century avant grade stuff. I thought it's all retrograde now. Avant grade is dead.
“And then your own government conspires against you! You see General Flynn was known to the Deep State... because what he did was he spoke truth to power” How? By passing classified information to the Russians?
All the people in these photos are stunningly ugly. The freak show outfits they wear (Grotesque Patriot Chic?) only accentuate their homeliness and make them look even more stupid.
Finally, as a long time resident of the DC area, it makes me sick to have these Nazi assholes commit violence and vandalism on city streets that I'm long familiar with.
You didn't like the bare assed message to Antifa?
Yes, they’re right, dark forces are conspiring to destroy America. Can you say, “Republican Party?” - I know you can.
Everything shitty about the nation is covered with conservatives' fingerprints, right up to the sociopathic response to the pandemic.
Trump is not, and never has been, capable of accepting failure or blame when things go wrong. Caught doing something illegal? Sue more. Caught trying to overturn an election? Assemble crazies to yell dumbshit on your behalf.
That's why this whole thing has been fascinating and dangerous. He's had this asswhippin' coming for decades. Problem is he's reflexively trying to protect himself--and no one else. If the country goes to hell? Oh well. . .
Well, this is their moment. The gun-loving, 2nd amendment-protecting, "tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants"-quoting right-wingers are finally confronted---in their minds---with the fantasy that they've been braying about for decades. They believe a corrupt and tyrannical government has ousted a duly-elected incumbent president by nefarious means, which according to them can be remedied only one way.
But of course, we then have to ask how many of them *really* believe this. And of those who do, how many are *really* about to go out and die trying to overthrow the government. And of those who will, how many will get *really* scared the second the minute they bump against real resistance---like the military. Yes, the Proud Boys are out there and the police are unlikely to stop them, but that's not enough. For anything to get done, all the keyboard warriors have to get out of their recliners, hop on to their Rascal scooter, and be willing to put bullets into innocent people they don't know. I don't think there's anywhere near enough of them.
Which is to say, right-wingers are and always have been full of shit.
Fantasies of killing people who they have been told are coming to take their freedumbs but will never, ever shoot back.
"how many are *really* about to go out and die trying to overthrow the government" they like grievances; causes are too great a lift.
It doesn't take a whole militia, just a few nutcases inflamed by none other than the fucking President to wreak some bigly havoc. Think Pittsburgh and El Paso shooters, or imagine if Cesar Sayoc actually had bomb making skills.
That's what worries me -- the possibility that somewhere out there, the next Timothy McVeigh is just waiting to make his move.
Oh, he is, and he's not the only one. For the moment, we have to accept that and be ready to respond.
If life ran along sitcom lines, this would be the moment when some nerd with spectacles would announce that, since the ammosexuals' theory was that the 2nd Amendment was inviolable because patriots needed their guns to prevent an anti-Constitutional takeover; and since they had signally failed to do so, in the face of what they described as the most obvious and monstrous such takeover in the history of the world; therefore, according to the doctrine of *laches*, the 2nd Amendment, having failed to be used in a timely fashion, was now void.
''Try to imagine this kind of wounded worship offered to any other President.''
Yeah. Usually they have to be dead for a while before we start slobbering over them to this degree. Give people time to forget.
I remember right-wingers complaining that our side was worshiping Obama too much. Hell, I even remember one of them complaining that we were worshiping Al Gore. Just more proof that "it's okay if you're a Republican" is their default.
Without hypocrisy, they're nothing. (Ditto the DC press corps.)
Whenever someone links to a truly abominable tweet -- poor people should starve to death, we've got all the guns it's time to start shooting, let's bring back slavery, the worst hateful shit -- the twit profile invariably has something like "Christian dad" or "Jesus is my life" or some such in it. I don't remember any "blessed are the shitheads" beatitude but it's scary-nuts how they seem to. That all this religiosity is in service to Donald fucking Trump leaves one speechless. All the more reason I'm grateful that you not only venture like Gulliver among the whackjobians but document your travels with such great words and pictures.
They're not true Xtians but heretics. Don't buy their self-delusion.
Based on the behavior of the feral GOP officeholders (which is to say, most of them) in recent days, I think something like the following scenario is plausible, although I venture it as a speculation rather than a prediction:
Trump leaves office next month, still insisting that he is the rightful president, still denouncing “fraud” and “theft.” Meanwhile, out in Real America, one or more Republican-dominated states, through their governors and/or legislatures, make official statements (even if these be mere “resolutions”) that the Biden/Harris administration is illegitimate and that any policies and regulations it may promulgate are accordingly null and void and without force of law. And if one brazen state assumes such a stance, others will surely follow, and the right wing media will take up the meme with gusto.
Now, talk is cheap, and I daresay that any serious, consequential attempt by a state to thrust a stick into the federal spokes would generate some meaningful pushback, which even the officeholders must realize, but the mere proclamation will be enough to rile up the mouthbreathers with whom most of these jurisdictions are abundantly provided. It’s hard to see how further stoking the grievances of armed goobers yields anything but, from our standpoint, suboptimal results. Alex Jones knew perfectly well what he was conveying with “one way or another,” and so do the pols.
That fourth photo - the one in which the woman is taking a photo of the helicopter - is emblematic of who these people tend to be. To me anyway. She's probably younger than me, she looks well-nourished but not fat, she's not showing her teeth but I'm sure she has 'em, she's appropriately dressed. She could be my daughter*.
These are "regular" people; they're not hillbilly or rural or dim-witted "others". They're not ignorant (except willfully). Every time I see a parody of them as stupid, ignorant, drawling Southern-Fried half-wits, I want to cry and say "No, no. They're everywhere. They're having fun. They're having the time of their lives". Look at how fiercely thrilled they are. For the first time in their lives they feel exhilarated and they love that we're watching. I grew up with these people, my parents were these people. They're not the majority, but we can't locate them in one particular place in the USandA; they're everywhere.
* I forgot to have one.
'These are "regular" people; they're not hillbilly or rural or dim-witted "others". They're not ignorant (except willfully).' Exactly so. The average Trump voter makes more money than the average Biden voters, and has more faith in rule by the rich.
My question is, Do they mean all this? Do they take it literally? Or is it like an NFL game, going to the stadium and drinking and screaming and carrying on *as if* it really mattered? I'd say "or to church," but I assume most of them DO take that literally, and mean it.
I suppose Trump--like all demagogues--works like this:
1. Validate the individual's aggrievement.
2. Amp it all up by aggregating the individuals into crowds, thus--
3. Relieving each individual of their sense of responsibility, rationality, and common sense.
4. Instructing the mob what to do.
Of course, the same process is sort of at play at any mass entertainment event--sports, movies, musicals, etc. But (mostly) those crowds know it's make believe, and aren't set against enemies outside the theater/arena. Not to be too technical, but these people are NUTZ. And their mania invite and supports a violent faction like the Proud Boys.
I dread, a little, what might happen on Inauguration Day.
I like your NFL analogy, except the hometown coaches are out on the field exhorting the fans to kill the opponents.
I don't worry much about the fucknuts running around various cities showing their ass to everyone. I feel bad for the people who live in those cities though.
I worry about the actual institutional Republican Party having signed on to insurrection, sedition and rebellion. I don't see how the country can survive as currently constituted. I'll keep saying it. The country is ungovernable and such situations do not last.
And Joe Biden will not go big. Nancy will not punish the insurrectionists in the House. Democrats are and always have been cowards so forget any national reconciliation committees or investigations of wrong doing in the Trump administration. Mitch McConnell will be the fuckwad who is actually running the country. Sorry, I don't believe either of the Democrats in Georgia will win so we all get to have McConnell with the USA's nuts in a vice in perpetuity or until McConnell is pushing up daisies. Oh, and the judiciary... Democrat laws and executive orders are all unconstitutional. It's a given.
Can't last. It won't.
"And Joe Biden will not go big." We'll see. Operators like Biden know when to fish or cut bait, and this is fishing time.
I'd love to be proven wrong.
"I worry about the actual institutional Republican Party having signed on to insurrection, sedition and rebellion."
The GOP knows they have nothing but BS for the people because their policies are repugnant to the majority. So they have no choice but grabbing power by any/all means.
"I don't see how the country can survive as currently constituted."
Then there's my old fart theory that we had the coup a couple of decades ago and democratic institutions exist without power just so the people don't think we're a fascist state unresponsive to the will or well being of the majority of people.
Yeah, that's like my "soft fascism" theory. I can't pin exactly when it was that the US government stopped giving a shit what the voters think about anything but it's been clear for at least a couple of decades that it was the case.
Exactly. Sounds paranoid except the pieces fit and the facts don't support anything else.
'This was too much even for crypto-fascist ex-Catholic Rod Dreher, whom events have pushed into the hilarious position of old lefty professors in the 60s crying “It’s your means I question!”)'
Dreher's reaction to the 'Stop the Steal' movement has been one of the more peculiar sideshows (and shitshows) of late. He tried to get down with the Trumpists by supporting Kyle Rittenhouse and warning about 'soft totalitarianism,' only to be caught off-guard by some paranoia that doesn't quite mesh with his paranoia. He must feel like the ad exec in "Joe." He proclaims that the liberals are taking over the 'culture' and then his audience decides to shoot hippies.