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.
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.
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 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.
"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.
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...:)
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.
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.
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."
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/
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
there's plenty of room for that war in their heads, since the battleground is otherwise quite empty.
"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.
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...:)
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.
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.
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."
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
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.
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.
"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.