As I keep ranting the cruelty started in the 90s or so with the rise of both right wing talk radio and the selling point as it were that whites (actually honky reactionaries) were the true victims.
Things progressed from there, then in 2015, we get fPOTUS licensing people to be free espousing their hate and other manifestations of hate, cruelty, etc.
Really, it's all been a project since the 30s (except for the interruption of WWII) and here we are.
What I remember of that time (the 80's and 90's) was that they still had some confidence that their ideas were winning, that liberalism was a thing of the past, right-wing "Young Guns" were the future! Now, nobody believes that shit.
Back then, there was something of a schism between the party line and talk radio which, well, talked to and for the people. Gingrich started closing the gap with pandering to R voters with non-substantive initiatives in the House and, now, here we are.
The fucker had a goal since the 30s and have mostly gotten their success. Making us a de facto one party state would only be a bonus. The likelihood of a Dems undoing neoliberalism is approximately zero, or at least nothing I’ll see in my lifetime.
There’s a lot of people who would undo, but no one with the power to do so. Maybe attitudes might change in a generation or twelve but not in my lifetime so, you know it’s all kind of hypothetical.
Yeah, just think about how fucking excited they were over their success in the 1994 elections. Republican Revolution! The Tide Turns! Conservative shows on PBS!
And then Bill won re-election and they all went apeshit and fucking wasted the country's time and resources on impeachment, BECAUSE HULK SMASH.
The 90's were when I began my career as a tree-hugger for hire out here in the wild West. It may not have been war rhetoric we heard, it was more like "Mebbe we can just pick-off a couple. Give 'em something to think about." People for the West was their flagship organization.
I’d point to the gloriously still dead Limbaugh and Newt’s contract on America as the pivot point towards modern day right-wing faux-servative insanity, supported by the never-gonna-succeed impeachment attack on Clinton. Palin on McCain’s ticket was the new North Star of the GOP cult of idiocy, and posturing, over anything close to substantive (with the exception of The Cruelty)
It had already been going on for quite a while by that point. What Gingrich did that was revolutionary was to blow up bipartisanship (with the exceptions proving the rule).
Arguably, the Big Bang of the shift back to capitalist control was the capitalists' attempt at a putsch against FDR in the 30s, followed by their support of Nazi Germany and resistance to war with same -- which necessitated FDR's Pearl Harbor gambit.
They are more pants wetters, gibbering in fear types than strong, bold freedom fighters. Hitler had a large cadre of exceedingly battle hardened veterans. Trump has mostly out of shape near geriatrics whose biggest commitment to the cause is watching 10 hours of Fox News everyday.
Yesterday I mentioned the New Yorker piece about the Vermont MAGA gun humper who is ruining his corner of the state because he can. He advertises himself as a proud veteran but it turns out he was given his walking papers by the Army after, I believe, two weeks. Because the actual military will not put up with their Man Baby bullshit.
Oh yeah, read the story, if this guy was just a few cards over in the Sherwin-Williams paint display he would have gotten the same treatment that MOVE got from the Philly police.
Resolved: the modern conservative movement, for reasons irrelevant to me, has somehow become home to mankind's lesser angels.
To that end on the rare occasions I even bother discussing politics anymore unless with the proverbial choir (which, *yawn*, there's no utility to that), I've found the following challenge to conservatives fun and entertaining.
I ask them to name their better angels along with each corresponding lesser angel (charity-greed, for example) and let's discuss those duos in political terms.
I like to imagine (and it is "imagine" because I don't know any conservatives) asking them about the kind and generous things they do. Do they volunteer at the church? Help out a neighbor in need? And then I'd ask them if the Republican party ever draws on this side of who they are, or if it only pushes those other buttons, the hate and fear buttons. See, I know you don't care about me, but being a Republican is bad for YOU, they draw only on your worst, and never your best. What happens over time when someone does that to you?
It really is at bottom a case of grown-ups saying if you don’t play the game by my rules, I’m taking my toys and going home. So while on the one hand, yes, conservatives are merely throwing tantrums, on the other hand the thought of heavily-armed toddlers mid-tantrum should chill everyone’s blood.
And Roy, thanks for pointing out the Karl Rove move on election night 2012. I’d forgotten about it, and it indeed was an early manifestation of the GOP’s election denialism. Of course, back then the GOP eventually accepted math. Now it’s fake news and fake numbers all the way down.
Even McConnell got into the act. Remember his famous declaration the it was his duty to make sure Obama’s presidency was a complete and utter failure. Talk about setting one up for failure at the expense of the entire American electorate....:)
"But... but... it can't be our IDEAS that turn people off? No, ridiculous, forget I even asked, clearly it's the Italian spy satellites and Chinese thermostats."
"It’s good to remember that very few of them would try that boogaloo bullshit they like to talk about."
Not them--they don't want to get their hands bloody. They'd rather the Super Elastic Stochastic Method. This is why what happened to Shaye Moss and Lady Ruby--Trumpers literally threatening to kill them for exercising their constitutional rights--should not be discounted.
Hopefully they will eventually see at least a few million of what the jury awarded them. Rudy's bankruptcy likely won't discharge that kind of malicious debt.
And yeah, if you rile up enough resentful people, statistically you're going to find a couple in the group who will act. Then the group closes ranks to minimize or deny what happened.
Yeah, it’s really the same as every accusation is a confession. Every aggressor is really the victim. So Ashli Babbitt breaks into a Federal building and tries to crawl through a door to stop the certification of a Presidential election *while a gun is trained on her and she is being warned to stop,* but she’s the victim. Rittenhouse shoots three people, but is the victim. Really, conservatives have become as predictable as the sunrise.
Worth noting that the justices on the Colorado Supreme Court are being deluged with death threats over their decision to toss the Turd from the ballot. It definitely shows just how bankrupt your politics are when the very first thing you do in reaction to something you don't like is to issue death threats.
Agreed. Funny you should mention the Boogaloo shit. In fact, I got into it with a republican the other day. He claimed the moral decay of this country began with Clinton and Lewinsky. Or that the BLM marches were more violent than the J6th insurrectionists and they were also sanctioned by the DNC.
It’s all projection. I told him to look in the mirror; and almost impossible to respond to. Even when I point out that tens of millions marched with very few violence by the protesters, or that all the deaths during the BLM marches were caused by right-wing counter protesters; Rittenhouse in Minneapolis or the Boogaloo Boys killing two federal agents and wounding a third in Oakland; it falls on deaf eyes. Not to mention five killed on J6th and 140 officers wounded.
Or the fact that while he provided no evidence for his baseless claim that the marches were sanctioned by democrats, I calmly said that the right to assemble is enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and perhaps he should read the constitution.
As to Clinton, I retorted that “you actually think lying about a blow job is worse than Watergate, Iran/Conta or the manufactured war in Iraq, which brought crimes against humanity and torture programs, killed thousands of US soldiers and tens of thousands of casualties, 500k Iraqi dead and cost trillions? His response was the usual; it’s all the liberals fault.
Bottom line: you can’t win with these people. Obama’s presidency brought out all the anger manifesting from the Civil Right’s Era that led to Nixon’s southern strategy. He was essentially a reminder that the world is changing, and white domination over others is no longer morally acceptable or permissible.
Personally, I don’t blame all republicans for the hatred. I blame right-wing media and republican politicians who continually feed their flock with despicable lies like Obama is a Muslim or was born in Kenya. When you get your news from nefarious news sources, and the politicians and leaders continually fan the flames, the results are inevitable.
Bottom line, these pond scum are desperate and despicable...:)
Nah, I blame all Republicans. As Roy has shown, the Party has been driven by hate and bigotry for decades, with anti-democratic disasters like Nixon (and his pardon), Iran-Contra, Bush v Gore dismissed with lies and hand-waving. It’s now at the point of “what show trials?” American Communists’ and “I didn’t know about the death camps” American fascists’ denials by “normal” Republicans. There’s no moral defense of Republican policies, whether it’s cutting Social Security or demonizing refugees. It’s all about being against Democrats; just look at the knots they tie themselves into over Biden and Israel: they can’t support Palestinians but they know some young voters hate the Gaza genocide, so somehow they have to blame the war on Biden, as if he, not Netanyahu, was president of Israel. You can’t argue with Republicans because they refuse to look at their Party’s history.
Agreed and well said. My point is the continual reinforcement of the these nefarious practices and dissemination of the news. Remember, many in the MAGA mob voted for Obama...:)
We heard a lot about the Obama-Trump voters in 2016, and the media was able to scare up a few, but it's hard to know how numerous they really were. The ones I saw interviewed didn't strike me as "MAGA mob", more like perpetually clueless. The type of people who vote for the new guy because "It's time for a change." A convenient rubric, because it requires you to know nothing about anything, except who the President is now, a question we ask of people who have suffered head trauma.
Agreed, but the vote totals meant a lot of independents who lean right and many in the northern rust belt that went to Trump in 2016 voted for Obama. In 2008, he won 364-173 electoral votes and states that included Ohio, Florida, Indiana and WI, that all went MAGA in 2016.
I can't speak for those other states but Trump won Wisconsin (by 23,000 votes) primarily because of low turnout among Democratic voters. Some of this was just a lack of enthusiasm for Clinton, some of it was complacency, a lot of the fault lies with the Democratic party of Wisconsin, which is - thank God - in much better hands now. But Obama-Trump voters were like catnip to the media.
Well, you don't have to be a monster to be a Republican, but it sure does help. The rest just have to get so good at "LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" that they don't even have to stick their fingers in their ears.
Trump was the thing they had been working toward ("Working Towards the Fuehrer") for the past fifty-plus years; he was just bright and venal enough to seize the opportunity they offered. They thought they were getting a figurehead.
This is a good one. Quite a scope. It’d be hard to convince a recently-emerged under-rock-dweller, but you’re fair and measured.
In the mainstream there’s no story. Just a bunch of stuff that happened over my lifetime (I’m 52). Move along, nothing to see here. Ramshackle “fair,” both sides garble that must never even smell Left while in fact feeding, restating, normalizing the Right.
I’ve been stupid and naive to degrees in my anti-fash but now it’s clear I was never wrong or premature in the broad strokes. Ineffectual, yes.
Maybe. Thing is, the GLOP* has been lying about essentially everything for over 4 decades now (at least that's about when I came to that conclusion) because lies are all they have. The media of record (such as they were/are) failed to call them on it if they bothered to mention it at all. The formerly outlier media simply stated the GLOPs were correct, in worshipful tones.
Thanks for the thoroughness of this, we can use it for the patient history when they're finally admitted to Bellevue.
Only thing I'd add is the fight over gay marriage, which sent so many of them fully around the bend. Not the gay marriage itself, of course, but the fact that the public turned so decisively against them, to the point where they've mostly been embarrassed into silence about it (and for people who are incapable of embarrassment, that's really saying something.)
It's got to mess with your mind, being told by GOD that this thing is EVIL and will DESTROY AMERICA, and then here we are, ten years on, and it only elicits a yawn and America remains stubbornly un-destroyed. Could I have been mistaken? No, it is the children who are wrong.
Remember when Karl Rove was considered a GENIUS for doing this? And it did get Bush a second term, while losing an entire generation for the Republicans. That's what we need, more Republican geniuses like Rove.
In my IMHO, it's always been about money. Period. (What else, in a capitalist society, *could* it be?) The worst thing that ever happened to conservatism and the GOP (the Gag-Me-With-A-Spoon Old Party) was the defeat of communism. Until then, their pitch to the rubes was easy: "Vote for us--we'll protect you better from your enemies (the Reds) than those sissy Dems." It had the turbo-charged benefit of stoking fear and paranoia AND making it all feel like patriotism. But the purpose of all that was to get political power, so as to reduce taxes and Burdensome Regulations (TM), and distribute subsidies and defense contracts.
With the Commie menace gone, what else did the GOP have to scare people? Easy: The Other. Obama, black people, brown people, immigrants, Muslims, queer people and, inevitably, Jews. (Quick brainstorm: Three days ago Adam Kinzinger posted a tweet mentioning Trump's "odor," and now "Trump Smells Like Ass" is trending. How fun would it be if someone posted a tweet revealing that "genetic science" has disclosed that Trump is actually Jewish? BIG fun!). Now their pitch is, "Vote for us. We can protect you against your enemies--the Democrats."
What would happen if the Dems campaigned on that? Meaning, not just "here are good things we'll do for you," but "The Republicans are your enemies, and here's why..." I mean explicitly. Because why not? It's not "nice"? Fuck "nice."
As Brutus says to the crowd before Antony speaks, "I pause for a reply."
Sure, on the professional politician/conservative media level, there’s money to be made, grifts to be grifted, in the Second Great Civil War threat. But down at the grassroots, the asshole-in-your-neighborhood level, let’s not forget the most precious of commodities: attention. How many of the idiots covered in MAGA swag had much to say about anything until the Creamsicle Menace came along and gave them an identity to inhabit? How many of our fellow citizens became, virtually overnight, That MAGA Guy (or Gal)? They weren’t doing the freedom dance for Romney or McCain or Bush. Some of them stumbled all the way to DC and got themselves arrested, thereby ruining their lives. Having already given so much, at least some of ‘em won’t be able to back down (whatever that means).
This sounds like you're suggesting some form of IDENTITY POLITICS is responsible, but that can't be right, because we all know that's a thing only leftists do.
When white Christian men do it, it's reestablishing the Norms Of Western Civilization. I expect there are grad students all over the country doing dissertations on when and how conservatives adopted "Western Civ" as a euphemism for patriarchal white supremacy. But none of them go to grad school in Florida.
What you talkin' about? I go to Florida whenever I have to meet the boat from Cuba with the shipment of counterfeit money! Yeah, coupla years, maybe we get prohibition back, then we'll be back on top again! Now bring me some pompano, cooked in a brown paper bag how I like it.
If any of them could name more than 2 Shakespeare plays besides "Hamlet," or state who invented calculus and when, or explain what a "Pyrrhic victory" is, I'd eat my hat. They know somewhat less about Western civilization than my pet hamster.
That's a huge part of it: when you invest so much in a movement or politician, lose family and friends over it, it seems the instinct (or the conservative instinct, anyway) is to dig in your heels and double and triple down. Otherwise, you're a mark.
So the death threats are a defense against receiving death threats?*
*Should add here that considering how many death threats there reportedly are, seems like the whole genre has been de-signified. If everyone who received a death threat got killed, we'd all be dead.
The death threats are coming from the the most weak-minded MAGAs about 9/10 of the time. Of course, it's the unstable 1/10th that you have to watch out for.
Great compilation of history so recent, and so swept under the rug. Some good context on how the basics are so old, they were invented for the war against Reconstruction: “Since the end of the Confederacy, the cult of the ‘taxpayer’ has provided a socially acceptable veneer for racist attacks on democracy.” Article: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-austerity-politics-of-white-supremacy/
Good point about taxes, that they can be a source of rabble-rousing some taxpayers, and a weapon against others. And if codified Jim Crow is considered to be over, then it can always be Those People's Own Fault.
This thing where majority-black cities send more than their share of taxes to the state government, which then refuses to return any money to them... it's almost like some form of TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION.
I witnessed a version (pre-cursor?, test run?) of this in Canada through the most dire months of Covid. What began as a pathetic half dozen stragglers waving hand-made signs along busy streets in the summer of 2020 grew into a genuine movement of well-agitated angry thousands descending on Calgary’s inner neighborhoods with vehicles and flags each Saturday by early 2021. Culminating in the Freedom Convoy in February, 2022 that blocked two major border crossings and occupied downtown Ottawa for weeks. There was violence and menace in the air by then.
Alberta is known as a conservative province. Of the older rural style in the hinterlands like it’s always been. In the suburbs ringing Calgary, you get the 21st century manifestation. Pissed-off and conspiracy-prone. Impervious to reason.
Calgary’s inner core, on the other hand has become a liberal bastion in the last few decades. Students, artists, musicians. Service workers living in modest apartments. Trendy in a nice way. Not too gentrified. So of course this is where our health mandate rebels brought their protests. I lived there then. Each Saturday beginning around 1:00, the honking began, a din that didn’t let up until late in the afternoon. They occupied a large park so their leaders could give bullhorn speeches. The meek “measured” response by our sympathetic police only encouraged them. They harassed health workers going in and out of the community’s urgent care facility. Anyone wearing a mask near the gathering was risking a spittle-flecked tantrum in their personal space.
The threats of violence were mostly of the “come here and say that” variety—at least when I told a group of them blocking a bike lane to grow up—but the ratcheting levels of fear and unrest they were bringing us each weekend was quite real.
The city finally got serious about it around the same time they all went east and stormed our capital. The premier declared the pandemic officially “over” and almost overnight we got our Saturdays back.
I agree that most of these shitheads are too out of shape and addicted to comfort to actually win a civil war, but the seething, incoherent resentment and hatred of liberal values bubbling under the surface is very real and doesn’t offer much comfort.
I remember this feeling after Scott Walker's election as Governor of Wisconsin. "Oh, so half of my state, people who I have never had any interaction with whatsoever, absolutely HATE me? Good to know!"
Yes, the "liberal bastion" as a provocation which cannot stand. In the US, too, terrorism worked when the death threats result in the official end of the pandemic. Jan. 6, 2021 didn't quite work in reversing our presidential election results as intended. Study of a demographic sample of participants has since found a significant number lived in proximity to places that had voted for Biden, and also were undergoing a decline in white population numbers. Which suggests all sorts of reasons for resentment, what with that daring to happen in the faces of the rightful masters. The demographic analysis is Robert Pape's (this seems not to be paywalled): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/06/capitol-insurrection-arrests-cpost-analysis/
I was talking to some of my Madison-lefty friends the other day, and we got to the question, "What would these people do if we didn't exist? How would they know what to think?" If they didn't have "the opposite of Madison" to guide them, they'd be lost.
Even more infuriating, Madison not only continues to exist, it actually thrives, with new businesses, more wealth than ever before, rent at record highs (because nobody wants to live here, of course.) How have the rural Walker-supporting areas done over the same time period? They continue to age-in-place, the youngs fleeing as soon as they get the chance, many of them to Madison, which is all our fault, of course.
Nice firehose of history, Mr. Edroso. I can't remember if it was Lenin or Yogi Berra who said the ratchet of history only goes one way. The trash-talk threats were always around on the fringe, visible to the general public as the butt of slapstick satire, like Illinois Nazis or little old ladies in tennis shoes (yes kids, that was a thing once). But the Nixon plan of harnessing white resentment for votes could only ratchet one way, and so it has. I stole this from some random Xitter post, but it fits. It's as if the Republican Party is Pavlov, and the base is his dogs. At some point, as you say probably around when Barak HUSSAIN Obama got re-elected, the dogs figured out how to ring the bell to get Pavlov thinking about feeding them. I can't imagine how any of this de-escalates, short of a North Korean invasion of Colorado. So we can expect more of this Death Wish cosplay, which is kind of what the mass shooters are all about. Bernie Goetz has $5 for each of us, so we'd better think of something.
How do things de-escalate? It's not so hard to just walk away when you're completely full of shit and have no principles are are just on the carnival ride as long as it promises plenty of LULZ. That describes most of Trump's voters, I think. As it becomes increasingly clear that Trumpism offers nothing more than endless electoral defeat and prison, lots of them will decide to develop an even greater interest in bass fishing and lawn care. Unfortunately, the remainder will be more than enough to fuel Trumpism's evolution to its next logical step: Truck-bombing Terrorist Organization.
I've said before I believe the real threat to democracy is the Republican Party, because they've enabled and supported him since 2015 until today. The idea that a chunk of MAGA will get bored with politics once Trump joins the Choir Invisible is reasonable enough, but as you say the Party will still be pouring gasoline on whatever is still burning. They won't stop until something forces them to stop, because based on the last 7 years they literally have no other ideas on how to hold onto power.
Just to be clear: He doesn't have to die, just lose. And lose. And lose. Maybe losing in 2024 is enough, or maybe they'll nominate him again in 2028 so he can lose again. They're not very quick on the uptake. But losing sucks, as we all know, and really gets tiresome when it's all you get (ask this former Green Party voter how I know).
"but will now buy T-bone steaks with your money and cause you to suffer by laughing about it"
It's true - many has been the time I have used food stamps to buy steak and lobster and rare delicacies, and laughed long and loud at the checkout counter.
Golden Years Await!
Await, hell! They positively BECKON!
I knew everyone would be squicked out.
Pretend I didn't say anything
You're misreading: As a practicing old, I'm fer it!
Carry on, carry on.
As I keep ranting the cruelty started in the 90s or so with the rise of both right wing talk radio and the selling point as it were that whites (actually honky reactionaries) were the true victims.
Things progressed from there, then in 2015, we get fPOTUS licensing people to be free espousing their hate and other manifestations of hate, cruelty, etc.
Really, it's all been a project since the 30s (except for the interruption of WWII) and here we are.
What I remember of that time (the 80's and 90's) was that they still had some confidence that their ideas were winning, that liberalism was a thing of the past, right-wing "Young Guns" were the future! Now, nobody believes that shit.
Back then, there was something of a schism between the party line and talk radio which, well, talked to and for the people. Gingrich started closing the gap with pandering to R voters with non-substantive initiatives in the House and, now, here we are.
The fucker had a goal since the 30s and have mostly gotten their success. Making us a de facto one party state would only be a bonus. The likelihood of a Dems undoing neoliberalism is approximately zero, or at least nothing I’ll see in my lifetime.
Yeah who’d have the time to undo neoliberalism? It’s hard when you’ve got a full plate of bigger fish and low hanging fruit.
(If anyone needs a metaphor I’ve got the mixer warmed up.)
There’s a lot of people who would undo, but no one with the power to do so. Maybe attitudes might change in a generation or twelve but not in my lifetime so, you know it’s all kind of hypothetical.
But with bigger fruit and/or low hanging fish we'd have a chance...
Oh, I am SO looking for the next opportunity to tell someone "I have bigger fruit to fry!"
Yeah, just think about how fucking excited they were over their success in the 1994 elections. Republican Revolution! The Tide Turns! Conservative shows on PBS!
And then Bill won re-election and they all went apeshit and fucking wasted the country's time and resources on impeachment, BECAUSE HULK SMASH.
The 90's were when I began my career as a tree-hugger for hire out here in the wild West. It may not have been war rhetoric we heard, it was more like "Mebbe we can just pick-off a couple. Give 'em something to think about." People for the West was their flagship organization.
Wow!
It worked so well in Kent State!
and if they wear Forest Service or BLM (or better yet, Fish & Wildlife) uniforms we get extra points!
I’d point to the gloriously still dead Limbaugh and Newt’s contract on America as the pivot point towards modern day right-wing faux-servative insanity, supported by the never-gonna-succeed impeachment attack on Clinton. Palin on McCain’s ticket was the new North Star of the GOP cult of idiocy, and posturing, over anything close to substantive (with the exception of The Cruelty)
It had already been going on for quite a while by that point. What Gingrich did that was revolutionary was to blow up bipartisanship (with the exceptions proving the rule).
Arguably, the Big Bang of the shift back to capitalist control was the capitalists' attempt at a putsch against FDR in the 30s, followed by their support of Nazi Germany and resistance to war with same -- which necessitated FDR's Pearl Harbor gambit.
Yup.
They are more pants wetters, gibbering in fear types than strong, bold freedom fighters. Hitler had a large cadre of exceedingly battle hardened veterans. Trump has mostly out of shape near geriatrics whose biggest commitment to the cause is watching 10 hours of Fox News everyday.
Yesterday I mentioned the New Yorker piece about the Vermont MAGA gun humper who is ruining his corner of the state because he can. He advertises himself as a proud veteran but it turns out he was given his walking papers by the Army after, I believe, two weeks. Because the actual military will not put up with their Man Baby bullshit.
The cops, on the other hand...
Heavily-Armed White Man-Baby always draws the response, "Hey, now, everyone settle down, let's see if we can't resolve this amicably, OK?"
Your theory is melanin-dependent.
Oh yeah, read the story, if this guy was just a few cards over in the Sherwin-Williams paint display he would have gotten the same treatment that MOVE got from the Philly police.
So basically Trump has the Reich army along about early 1945.
It's like that scene in Downfall where they're enlisting 12 year old girls.
LIBERTARIANS: "12 year old girls? Sign me up!"
I'm sergeant gaetz, your CO!
"Now drop and give me... well, pretty much everything, actually."
while you're doing pushups he quietly removes your wallet from your pocket and disappears into the night
Resolved: the modern conservative movement, for reasons irrelevant to me, has somehow become home to mankind's lesser angels.
To that end on the rare occasions I even bother discussing politics anymore unless with the proverbial choir (which, *yawn*, there's no utility to that), I've found the following challenge to conservatives fun and entertaining.
I ask them to name their better angels along with each corresponding lesser angel (charity-greed, for example) and let's discuss those duos in political terms.
It never gets far.
I like to imagine (and it is "imagine" because I don't know any conservatives) asking them about the kind and generous things they do. Do they volunteer at the church? Help out a neighbor in need? And then I'd ask them if the Republican party ever draws on this side of who they are, or if it only pushes those other buttons, the hate and fear buttons. See, I know you don't care about me, but being a Republican is bad for YOU, they draw only on your worst, and never your best. What happens over time when someone does that to you?
It really is at bottom a case of grown-ups saying if you don’t play the game by my rules, I’m taking my toys and going home. So while on the one hand, yes, conservatives are merely throwing tantrums, on the other hand the thought of heavily-armed toddlers mid-tantrum should chill everyone’s blood.
And Roy, thanks for pointing out the Karl Rove move on election night 2012. I’d forgotten about it, and it indeed was an early manifestation of the GOP’s election denialism. Of course, back then the GOP eventually accepted math. Now it’s fake news and fake numbers all the way down.
Even McConnell got into the act. Remember his famous declaration the it was his duty to make sure Obama’s presidency was a complete and utter failure. Talk about setting one up for failure at the expense of the entire American electorate....:)
You'd think, for people who lose as often as they do, they'd get better at handling defeat, but no.
Cannot fail, can only be failed.
"But... but... it can't be our IDEAS that turn people off? No, ridiculous, forget I even asked, clearly it's the Italian spy satellites and Chinese thermostats."
You neglect the Jewish space lasers at your peril
NOBODY expects the Jewish Space Lasers!
there's plenty of room for that war in their heads, since the battleground is otherwise quite empty.
They've never had a thought that hasn't died of loneliness.
originalists who never had an original thought.
"It’s good to remember that very few of them would try that boogaloo bullshit they like to talk about."
Not them--they don't want to get their hands bloody. They'd rather the Super Elastic Stochastic Method. This is why what happened to Shaye Moss and Lady Ruby--Trumpers literally threatening to kill them for exercising their constitutional rights--should not be discounted.
Hopefully they will eventually see at least a few million of what the jury awarded them. Rudy's bankruptcy likely won't discharge that kind of malicious debt.
And yeah, if you rile up enough resentful people, statistically you're going to find a couple in the group who will act. Then the group closes ranks to minimize or deny what happened.
Minimize, deny . . . or even celebrate as they have done with that little asshole who shot three people to death at a BLM rally.
Yeah, it’s really the same as every accusation is a confession. Every aggressor is really the victim. So Ashli Babbitt breaks into a Federal building and tries to crawl through a door to stop the certification of a Presidential election *while a gun is trained on her and she is being warned to stop,* but she’s the victim. Rittenhouse shoots three people, but is the victim. Really, conservatives have become as predictable as the sunrise.
Worth noting that the justices on the Colorado Supreme Court are being deluged with death threats over their decision to toss the Turd from the ballot. It definitely shows just how bankrupt your politics are when the very first thing you do in reaction to something you don't like is to issue death threats.
Well, not the *first* thing -- they probably beat their kids before sending out death threats.
The dog wasn't handy?
Or the missus?
She probably saw the breaking news on the TV and was out the back door in a flash.
Agreed. Funny you should mention the Boogaloo shit. In fact, I got into it with a republican the other day. He claimed the moral decay of this country began with Clinton and Lewinsky. Or that the BLM marches were more violent than the J6th insurrectionists and they were also sanctioned by the DNC.
It’s all projection. I told him to look in the mirror; and almost impossible to respond to. Even when I point out that tens of millions marched with very few violence by the protesters, or that all the deaths during the BLM marches were caused by right-wing counter protesters; Rittenhouse in Minneapolis or the Boogaloo Boys killing two federal agents and wounding a third in Oakland; it falls on deaf eyes. Not to mention five killed on J6th and 140 officers wounded.
Or the fact that while he provided no evidence for his baseless claim that the marches were sanctioned by democrats, I calmly said that the right to assemble is enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and perhaps he should read the constitution.
As to Clinton, I retorted that “you actually think lying about a blow job is worse than Watergate, Iran/Conta or the manufactured war in Iraq, which brought crimes against humanity and torture programs, killed thousands of US soldiers and tens of thousands of casualties, 500k Iraqi dead and cost trillions? His response was the usual; it’s all the liberals fault.
Bottom line: you can’t win with these people. Obama’s presidency brought out all the anger manifesting from the Civil Right’s Era that led to Nixon’s southern strategy. He was essentially a reminder that the world is changing, and white domination over others is no longer morally acceptable or permissible.
Personally, I don’t blame all republicans for the hatred. I blame right-wing media and republican politicians who continually feed their flock with despicable lies like Obama is a Muslim or was born in Kenya. When you get your news from nefarious news sources, and the politicians and leaders continually fan the flames, the results are inevitable.
Bottom line, these pond scum are desperate and despicable...:)
Nah, I blame all Republicans. As Roy has shown, the Party has been driven by hate and bigotry for decades, with anti-democratic disasters like Nixon (and his pardon), Iran-Contra, Bush v Gore dismissed with lies and hand-waving. It’s now at the point of “what show trials?” American Communists’ and “I didn’t know about the death camps” American fascists’ denials by “normal” Republicans. There’s no moral defense of Republican policies, whether it’s cutting Social Security or demonizing refugees. It’s all about being against Democrats; just look at the knots they tie themselves into over Biden and Israel: they can’t support Palestinians but they know some young voters hate the Gaza genocide, so somehow they have to blame the war on Biden, as if he, not Netanyahu, was president of Israel. You can’t argue with Republicans because they refuse to look at their Party’s history.
Agreed and well said. My point is the continual reinforcement of the these nefarious practices and dissemination of the news. Remember, many in the MAGA mob voted for Obama...:)
We heard a lot about the Obama-Trump voters in 2016, and the media was able to scare up a few, but it's hard to know how numerous they really were. The ones I saw interviewed didn't strike me as "MAGA mob", more like perpetually clueless. The type of people who vote for the new guy because "It's time for a change." A convenient rubric, because it requires you to know nothing about anything, except who the President is now, a question we ask of people who have suffered head trauma.
Agreed, but the vote totals meant a lot of independents who lean right and many in the northern rust belt that went to Trump in 2016 voted for Obama. In 2008, he won 364-173 electoral votes and states that included Ohio, Florida, Indiana and WI, that all went MAGA in 2016.
I can't speak for those other states but Trump won Wisconsin (by 23,000 votes) primarily because of low turnout among Democratic voters. Some of this was just a lack of enthusiasm for Clinton, some of it was complacency, a lot of the fault lies with the Democratic party of Wisconsin, which is - thank God - in much better hands now. But Obama-Trump voters were like catnip to the media.
A little catnip here, a little catnip there, and pretty soon the whole planet has cat scratch fever!
One small correction: "The type of people who vote for the new guy because "I saw him fire them people on that show, and he was funny!"
"What could go wrong? It's just the most powerful job on the planet!"
"He showed Omarosa what's what, bring on Putin!"
Biden's the President of Israel, Trump is still the President of America. It all makes sense now!
Well, you don't have to be a monster to be a Republican, but it sure does help. The rest just have to get so good at "LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" that they don't even have to stick their fingers in their ears.
Trump was the thing they had been working toward ("Working Towards the Fuehrer") for the past fifty-plus years; he was just bright and venal enough to seize the opportunity they offered. They thought they were getting a figurehead.
A nice example of "Be careful what you wish for."
A small correction to your excellent comment: Rittenhouse did his killing in Waukeshau, WI.
Thank you...:)
Actually it was Kenosha.
This is a good one. Quite a scope. It’d be hard to convince a recently-emerged under-rock-dweller, but you’re fair and measured.
In the mainstream there’s no story. Just a bunch of stuff that happened over my lifetime (I’m 52). Move along, nothing to see here. Ramshackle “fair,” both sides garble that must never even smell Left while in fact feeding, restating, normalizing the Right.
I’ve been stupid and naive to degrees in my anti-fash but now it’s clear I was never wrong or premature in the broad strokes. Ineffectual, yes.
Maybe. Thing is, the GLOP* has been lying about essentially everything for over 4 decades now (at least that's about when I came to that conclusion) because lies are all they have. The media of record (such as they were/are) failed to call them on it if they bothered to mention it at all. The formerly outlier media simply stated the GLOPs were correct, in worshipful tones.
*Greatly Lying Opulence Protectorate
Nicely written, thanks.
Thanks for the thoroughness of this, we can use it for the patient history when they're finally admitted to Bellevue.
Only thing I'd add is the fight over gay marriage, which sent so many of them fully around the bend. Not the gay marriage itself, of course, but the fact that the public turned so decisively against them, to the point where they've mostly been embarrassed into silence about it (and for people who are incapable of embarrassment, that's really saying something.)
It's got to mess with your mind, being told by GOD that this thing is EVIL and will DESTROY AMERICA, and then here we are, ten years on, and it only elicits a yawn and America remains stubbornly un-destroyed. Could I have been mistaken? No, it is the children who are wrong.
Yes, adding a referendum on same-sex marriage to an election was always a reliable turnout booster for conservatives. Until it wasn't.
Remember when Karl Rove was considered a GENIUS for doing this? And it did get Bush a second term, while losing an entire generation for the Republicans. That's what we need, more Republican geniuses like Rove.
In my IMHO, it's always been about money. Period. (What else, in a capitalist society, *could* it be?) The worst thing that ever happened to conservatism and the GOP (the Gag-Me-With-A-Spoon Old Party) was the defeat of communism. Until then, their pitch to the rubes was easy: "Vote for us--we'll protect you better from your enemies (the Reds) than those sissy Dems." It had the turbo-charged benefit of stoking fear and paranoia AND making it all feel like patriotism. But the purpose of all that was to get political power, so as to reduce taxes and Burdensome Regulations (TM), and distribute subsidies and defense contracts.
With the Commie menace gone, what else did the GOP have to scare people? Easy: The Other. Obama, black people, brown people, immigrants, Muslims, queer people and, inevitably, Jews. (Quick brainstorm: Three days ago Adam Kinzinger posted a tweet mentioning Trump's "odor," and now "Trump Smells Like Ass" is trending. How fun would it be if someone posted a tweet revealing that "genetic science" has disclosed that Trump is actually Jewish? BIG fun!). Now their pitch is, "Vote for us. We can protect you against your enemies--the Democrats."
What would happen if the Dems campaigned on that? Meaning, not just "here are good things we'll do for you," but "The Republicans are your enemies, and here's why..." I mean explicitly. Because why not? It's not "nice"? Fuck "nice."
As Brutus says to the crowd before Antony speaks, "I pause for a reply."
Seems like a lot of women have gotten the "Republicans are your enemies" message whether the Democrats said it or not.
Well, when the GOP is full of the kind of dumbshits who harass and assault them, it's probably not a difficult choice.
Excuse me, I believe you meant to say "Republican voter outreach"
Republican voter outta reach
Sure, on the professional politician/conservative media level, there’s money to be made, grifts to be grifted, in the Second Great Civil War threat. But down at the grassroots, the asshole-in-your-neighborhood level, let’s not forget the most precious of commodities: attention. How many of the idiots covered in MAGA swag had much to say about anything until the Creamsicle Menace came along and gave them an identity to inhabit? How many of our fellow citizens became, virtually overnight, That MAGA Guy (or Gal)? They weren’t doing the freedom dance for Romney or McCain or Bush. Some of them stumbled all the way to DC and got themselves arrested, thereby ruining their lives. Having already given so much, at least some of ‘em won’t be able to back down (whatever that means).
This sounds like you're suggesting some form of IDENTITY POLITICS is responsible, but that can't be right, because we all know that's a thing only leftists do.
It's only IDENTITY POLITICS when the skin is dark or there's a uterus involved.
When white Christian men do it, it's reestablishing the Norms Of Western Civilization. I expect there are grad students all over the country doing dissertations on when and how conservatives adopted "Western Civ" as a euphemism for patriarchal white supremacy. But none of them go to grad school in Florida.
If they have a lick of sense, they won't go to Florida for ANY reason.
What you talkin' about? I go to Florida whenever I have to meet the boat from Cuba with the shipment of counterfeit money! Yeah, coupla years, maybe we get prohibition back, then we'll be back on top again! Now bring me some pompano, cooked in a brown paper bag how I like it.
If any of them could name more than 2 Shakespeare plays besides "Hamlet," or state who invented calculus and when, or explain what a "Pyrrhic victory" is, I'd eat my hat. They know somewhat less about Western civilization than my pet hamster.
"who invented calculus and when"
Oh, let's not get the Newtonians and the Lebinitzians started again. It's like Sharks vs. Jets but without all the singing and dancing.
Or when, YOU KNOW, you're doing the sex thing wrong.
Careful now, you're leaving yourself wide open for another deletion.
That's a huge part of it: when you invest so much in a movement or politician, lose family and friends over it, it seems the instinct (or the conservative instinct, anyway) is to dig in your heels and double and triple down. Otherwise, you're a mark.
So the death threats are a defense against receiving death threats?*
*Should add here that considering how many death threats there reportedly are, seems like the whole genre has been de-signified. If everyone who received a death threat got killed, we'd all be dead.
@IknowIknowsomedeaththreatsarereal
The death threats are coming from the the most weak-minded MAGAs about 9/10 of the time. Of course, it's the unstable 1/10th that you have to watch out for.
Now we need to relate that new attention to their belief said attention is obligated of everyone in a hundred mile radius.
Look at me look at me look at me look at me look at me look at me look at me - Laurence Olivier on why he became an actor
Great compilation of history so recent, and so swept under the rug. Some good context on how the basics are so old, they were invented for the war against Reconstruction: “Since the end of the Confederacy, the cult of the ‘taxpayer’ has provided a socially acceptable veneer for racist attacks on democracy.” Article: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-austerity-politics-of-white-supremacy/
Author interview: https://majorityreportradio.com/2021/01/14/1-14-the-austerity-politics-of-white-supremacy-w-vanessa-williamson
One of the many reasons I read Michael Harriot is because he points out occasions where Black people paid taxes to maintain institutions that only White people are allowed to use. An example: https://thegrio.com/2022/09/08/white-water-welfare-jackson-baltimore-and-the-other-racial-wealth-gap/
Good point about taxes, that they can be a source of rabble-rousing some taxpayers, and a weapon against others. And if codified Jim Crow is considered to be over, then it can always be Those People's Own Fault.
This thing where majority-black cities send more than their share of taxes to the state government, which then refuses to return any money to them... it's almost like some form of TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION.
Remind me again what I'm supposed to say about slavery...?
ix-nay on the avery-slay
I witnessed a version (pre-cursor?, test run?) of this in Canada through the most dire months of Covid. What began as a pathetic half dozen stragglers waving hand-made signs along busy streets in the summer of 2020 grew into a genuine movement of well-agitated angry thousands descending on Calgary’s inner neighborhoods with vehicles and flags each Saturday by early 2021. Culminating in the Freedom Convoy in February, 2022 that blocked two major border crossings and occupied downtown Ottawa for weeks. There was violence and menace in the air by then.
Alberta is known as a conservative province. Of the older rural style in the hinterlands like it’s always been. In the suburbs ringing Calgary, you get the 21st century manifestation. Pissed-off and conspiracy-prone. Impervious to reason.
Calgary’s inner core, on the other hand has become a liberal bastion in the last few decades. Students, artists, musicians. Service workers living in modest apartments. Trendy in a nice way. Not too gentrified. So of course this is where our health mandate rebels brought their protests. I lived there then. Each Saturday beginning around 1:00, the honking began, a din that didn’t let up until late in the afternoon. They occupied a large park so their leaders could give bullhorn speeches. The meek “measured” response by our sympathetic police only encouraged them. They harassed health workers going in and out of the community’s urgent care facility. Anyone wearing a mask near the gathering was risking a spittle-flecked tantrum in their personal space.
The threats of violence were mostly of the “come here and say that” variety—at least when I told a group of them blocking a bike lane to grow up—but the ratcheting levels of fear and unrest they were bringing us each weekend was quite real.
The city finally got serious about it around the same time they all went east and stormed our capital. The premier declared the pandemic officially “over” and almost overnight we got our Saturdays back.
I agree that most of these shitheads are too out of shape and addicted to comfort to actually win a civil war, but the seething, incoherent resentment and hatred of liberal values bubbling under the surface is very real and doesn’t offer much comfort.
I remember this feeling after Scott Walker's election as Governor of Wisconsin. "Oh, so half of my state, people who I have never had any interaction with whatsoever, absolutely HATE me? Good to know!"
Yes, the "liberal bastion" as a provocation which cannot stand. In the US, too, terrorism worked when the death threats result in the official end of the pandemic. Jan. 6, 2021 didn't quite work in reversing our presidential election results as intended. Study of a demographic sample of participants has since found a significant number lived in proximity to places that had voted for Biden, and also were undergoing a decline in white population numbers. Which suggests all sorts of reasons for resentment, what with that daring to happen in the faces of the rightful masters. The demographic analysis is Robert Pape's (this seems not to be paywalled): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/06/capitol-insurrection-arrests-cpost-analysis/
I was talking to some of my Madison-lefty friends the other day, and we got to the question, "What would these people do if we didn't exist? How would they know what to think?" If they didn't have "the opposite of Madison" to guide them, they'd be lost.
And pre-Trump, how they reveled in a Koch puppet's success at trashing the state. What a provocation the continued existence of Madison-lefty must be.
Even more infuriating, Madison not only continues to exist, it actually thrives, with new businesses, more wealth than ever before, rent at record highs (because nobody wants to live here, of course.) How have the rural Walker-supporting areas done over the same time period? They continue to age-in-place, the youngs fleeing as soon as they get the chance, many of them to Madison, which is all our fault, of course.
Nice firehose of history, Mr. Edroso. I can't remember if it was Lenin or Yogi Berra who said the ratchet of history only goes one way. The trash-talk threats were always around on the fringe, visible to the general public as the butt of slapstick satire, like Illinois Nazis or little old ladies in tennis shoes (yes kids, that was a thing once). But the Nixon plan of harnessing white resentment for votes could only ratchet one way, and so it has. I stole this from some random Xitter post, but it fits. It's as if the Republican Party is Pavlov, and the base is his dogs. At some point, as you say probably around when Barak HUSSAIN Obama got re-elected, the dogs figured out how to ring the bell to get Pavlov thinking about feeding them. I can't imagine how any of this de-escalates, short of a North Korean invasion of Colorado. So we can expect more of this Death Wish cosplay, which is kind of what the mass shooters are all about. Bernie Goetz has $5 for each of us, so we'd better think of something.
How do things de-escalate? It's not so hard to just walk away when you're completely full of shit and have no principles are are just on the carnival ride as long as it promises plenty of LULZ. That describes most of Trump's voters, I think. As it becomes increasingly clear that Trumpism offers nothing more than endless electoral defeat and prison, lots of them will decide to develop an even greater interest in bass fishing and lawn care. Unfortunately, the remainder will be more than enough to fuel Trumpism's evolution to its next logical step: Truck-bombing Terrorist Organization.
I've said before I believe the real threat to democracy is the Republican Party, because they've enabled and supported him since 2015 until today. The idea that a chunk of MAGA will get bored with politics once Trump joins the Choir Invisible is reasonable enough, but as you say the Party will still be pouring gasoline on whatever is still burning. They won't stop until something forces them to stop, because based on the last 7 years they literally have no other ideas on how to hold onto power.
Just to be clear: He doesn't have to die, just lose. And lose. And lose. Maybe losing in 2024 is enough, or maybe they'll nominate him again in 2028 so he can lose again. They're not very quick on the uptake. But losing sucks, as we all know, and really gets tiresome when it's all you get (ask this former Green Party voter how I know).
In the main, Trump is out. Of Maine. For now...
The Trump Train in Maine is plainly down the drain
"but will now buy T-bone steaks with your money and cause you to suffer by laughing about it"
It's true - many has been the time I have used food stamps to buy steak and lobster and rare delicacies, and laughed long and loud at the checkout counter.