I get the sense that the media is not purveying as sincere Republicans' calls for healing and unity. I think at least some of the mainstream media types are saying "Wow! After 40 years of Republicans saying Democrats are anti-American terrorist-loving pedophiles, perhaps Republicans calling for unity and healing is a bit of a stretch."
And, yeah: Sedition needs to be rooted out, publicly tried, and severely punished. You cannot be a patriot is you're calling for the violent overthrow of the government.
I don’t think any conservative pundit stood a chance with the “let them down easy” approach as long as their God King continued to scream about the election being stolen. We even saw Fox lose viewers when it tried this approach, the nuts just moved to OANN and Newsmax because those outlets were telling them what they wanted to hear.
And the important thing is I doubt most of the nuts REALLY believe Trump won, although if you stick a microphone in their faces that’s what they’ll tell you. They just think the herrenvolk votes should be the only ones that count – literally and figuratively.
I got your healing right here: the Democratic Party of Wisconsin has started running ads on the local TV stations we olds, including the Maga fans, watch every day telling Ron “Sedition Man” Johnson to resign. Unfortunately we can’t recall the dumbest Senator in the Treason Caucus, but we have apparently started the 2022 election, getting a considerable jump on the party of irresponsibility.
•Donnie's Dr. Feelgood just passed away. (Reminder: Taxis pass, people pass away.) What will Crazy Donnie do now???
•Poor liberal media! First, that they're liberal is not fact-based when it comes to politics but is just a conservative shibboleth. Which is to say 110% pure bullshit. When it comes to all things political, they're straight establishment which, I hate to break the news, is pretty much conservative. The risk to the media now is their reduced credibility which is to say their propaganda is less credible.
•What Donnie did, as is constantly mentioned and immediately ignored or forgotten, was to make the believed but unspoken instead shouted at the top of his lungs and fat little fingers. But the true Americans, the fine people, have believed that bullshit for decades, since Tricky Dick and his Southern Strategy. Which is the true 1970s-to-now through-line.
•For what little it's worth, I'm not certain yet that Old Joe will be inaugurated; I'm'a not counting out some "fine person", some "patriot", some "good American" whacking him. Because that's pretty much the kind of nation we are. I'm sure my prediction is, uh, dead wrong but I won't believe it &c.
Thailand's Prime Minister came to power in a very old-fashioned, check-all-the-boxes coup (tanks on the street, previous PM exiled and her cabinet members told their services were no longer required, martial law imposed, etc.) and for the next year or so all the TV stations had to play a literal "Unity!" song every night at 6 PM.
It was in Thai, obviously, but my wife translated it for me and it was just about what you'd expect, which meant you'd contemplate suicide if you had to listen to it every night. Generally she just muted the TV when it came on, but occasionally she just left it on and ignored it. When she did, I found myself singing (to the tune of The Happy Wanderer),
UniTEE,
UniTAH,
UniTEE,
UniTAHAHAHAHAHAHA
UniTEE
UniTAH
My - tanks - are - in - the - street.
...until she had to tell me she didn't want to hear it one more time, and I saw that she was not fucking kidding.
So anyway, you can see how this isn't a message which really resonates with me.
"None of these people, nor many other conservatives, had the nerve to just tell the MAGA mob, Fuck off, you people are nuts."
Because there were two points when right-wing pundits learned they couldn't push back without losing their audience---in 2015/2016 before Trump got the nomination and when QAnon started picking up steam.
Specifically, I remember how anti-Trump Glenn Beck was (he even contributed to National Review's "Against Trump" special issue!). It wasn't the only reason, but his audience largely abandoned him during that time, and Glenn had to claw his way back in by groveling at Trump's feet. It's a lesson a lot of right-wing pundits have learned over the last few years, the same one that GOP reps in congress have also had to learn: people don't listen to you because they're interested in what *you* have to say; they listen to you because you're a vessel for the messages they want to hear. And once you stop becoming a useful vessel, your audience will abandon you. There are plenty of other channels.
Totally agree with this: these garbage rage clout-chasers have been all in on fomenting revolution & are as expected attempting to weasel back out, hoping their Mercer/Moonie lucre keeps the dream alive. So many yeses:
But I'm starting to see this, here & elsewhere, and I will futilely try to argue against it:
* "Qtard" -- We're better than this. An ablesist slur that implies DD folks are more violent or dangerous than others, which we know is absolutely not the case. [this is only moment approaching a "call-out" -- the others are just trends in media.]
* The insurrectionists are crazy or stupid: Some certainly are, but most are not. Also people wth mental illness are again no more violent or dangerous than anyone else statistically. We might make the gate then what's "irrational" & that's slightly better. Fascism is an irrationalist philosophy, so that at least charts. BUt USian society clings together entirely through irrational beliefs: Jesus came back from the dead, Sky Daddy watches you while you jerk off, America means freedom, white men invented civilization, trickle-down theory works. These are contrafactual credos that lots & lots of otherwise "normal" folks adhere, and many of them would kill for.
I keep saying this statement from Ibram X. Kendi, & no one pays any attention here or elsewhere, but his argument is that white supremacism doesn't come out of ignorance but a lizard-like awareness of what one believes to be their own self-interest. That's in fact what most psychologists would probably call a rational decision, even if it results in bizarre actions & statements. [It's the name, isn't it? The name scares people off...]
* The insurrectionists are ignorant Southern crackers: again, not proving to be the case as a whole. We're seeing doctors & lawyers, college-educated dudes. Northern liberals need this myth of superiority (it's a part of toxic white innocence), but it only leads to the abandonment of the vulnerable in red states, like the kind that led to the unchecked reign of the KKK and Jim Crow laws. [And ignores that the worst police violence against BLM protestors happened in Northern Democratic cities this past year...]
Why do we need these [irrationalist] myths of our own?
Mr. Roso gets out of the boat enough & shows us why: the rot that creates this fascist insurrectionary movement is in the code of modern politics, in the two-party system, in the history of whiteness, in American exceptionalism, in the West as the source of human civilization, in anti-Communist hysteria. This list right here? I guarantee more than a few of us or your circles of friends assume most of these things are either basically okay or are unchangeable facts of life.
The point isn't that I'm "triggered, lib?" -- an ugly kneejerkoff reaction that many on all sides are prone to fall into when challenged. This argument rather insists we have to think about what work these linguistic tags & cultural assumptions do to hinder our collective effort to extirpate white supremacy from this society. White people want to get through this by disavowing it & pretending it's not us [hence saying that neurodiversity or illness explains it all] -- but it absolutely is, and every white non-fascist person must take responsibility for bringing it down.
I'm happy to report that ex-Aussie Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is continuing his attack on Rupert Murderoch and his propaganda team with a steady stream of video exposes.
His 1/2 million signatures petition for a Royal Commission to ensure a strong, diverse Australian news media has been presented to Parliament. As the current Australian government is a cesspit of ultra conservative/'religious', corrupt, reactionary, thieving, lying buffoonish ideologues, this unlikely to happen any time soon.
So, I would be very happy to see the U.S. web community led by Media Matters (who have been faithfully documenting the Fox and other media atrocities), in conjunction with many other prominent, upright, progressive web stalwarts (*ahem) , take advantage of the current fortuitous political climate and petition to demand a Senate inquiry into the media's role in this seditious shitfuckery. Wouldn't it be nice to see the father of Hate Radio, Gush Pimpwhore on the stand? Along with his hatemonger ilk, Newt Gingrich, Anne Coulter, Stuart Varney, etc etc ad nauseum. And, simultaneously bring back the Fairness Doctrine !
I'm also hopeful that the political miscreants that supported and fomented this treason, i.e. Cruz, Grahame and McConnell and their multitude of malodorous minions are marched in front of a suitable judiciary and politically castrated, and that they are prosecuted FIRST.
Because, although there were some murderous dolts and a multitude of Nazi and KKK weasels in the crowd of LowIQanonens, who all sorely deserve some gaol time so that they can partake in some compulsory comprehensive education in civics, I would be sorely distressed if it was only Drumpf's Gumps who were the fall guys for this, the most inept coup evah.
The creeps who call themselves "patriots" and then advocate and advance acts of sedition need to be charged, tried and convicted, and punished to the full extent of the law. The law will deter further political crimes by these and other bozos. I guarantee none of them will stand up and shout give me victory or death when a judge sentences them to fines, imprisonment, and a lifetime labeled as an anti-American terrorist. Spell out the ways they have violated the Constitution and give them copies to read in prison. These are not folks who have some learned and thoughtful understanding of the course of human events and historical trends. They live in an alterverse more like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and National Treasure.
That whole scene from Michael Clayton -- where the line 'do I look like I'm negotiating' comes from -- is well-written, powerfully acted and incredibly satisfying. It resembles real life about as much as anything from Avengers: Endgame, but it's a wish-fulfilling salve in these trying times.
Anyone notice Trump saying "our movement" three times in his little "no violence" post-Impeachment II video? That's gotta be a special Stephen Miller fantasy for his fellow kleine fascista out there. (Not to mention Trump saying "no true supporter of mine" three times. He's in his own little Cult of Me at this point.)
Thanks to four years of the Piece Of Shit, his lunatic cult, and Republicans pandering to him and it (e.g., Michigan State Leg: Wanna carry AR-15's in the statehouse? Sure, why not!), I've become a paranoid nailbiter. When I read that Trump's newly installed lackeys at the Pentagon are overseeing 15-20,000 fully armed National Guard troops for the Inauguration, the first thing that entered my mind was the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Nuts, isn't it? But then, how many law enforcement and military McVeigh types have we already seen in his "movement"?
America has a long and proud tradition of mocking and denigrating politics and politicians, it's considered a basic right. One side-effect is that a majority (according to noted authority Dr. Otto Yerass) have little to no understanding of what politics is or how it is supposed to work. You combine that with many Americans, young and old, taking a good look at the future and they Do Not Want. At All. Olds see the glorious past, when you could tell a pretty girl to smile without getting arrested and everything cost a nickel lost forever, and the knucklehead yoots see no future for them at all. With that audience, any neckbeard with a comforting theory or babe with a glock and a YouTube channel has a shot. As a well-known political theorist said, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Ironically, the only thing that might save the United States is if people start taking it unironically.
I wonder what they think JFK Jr. is doing now.
Eric Munshel was in my son’s HS class in Blue Ridge GA: Ross says he was aggressive and not to bright?
No clue what is wrong with his mama.
I get the sense that the media is not purveying as sincere Republicans' calls for healing and unity. I think at least some of the mainstream media types are saying "Wow! After 40 years of Republicans saying Democrats are anti-American terrorist-loving pedophiles, perhaps Republicans calling for unity and healing is a bit of a stretch."
And, yeah: Sedition needs to be rooted out, publicly tried, and severely punished. You cannot be a patriot is you're calling for the violent overthrow of the government.
I don’t think any conservative pundit stood a chance with the “let them down easy” approach as long as their God King continued to scream about the election being stolen. We even saw Fox lose viewers when it tried this approach, the nuts just moved to OANN and Newsmax because those outlets were telling them what they wanted to hear.
And the important thing is I doubt most of the nuts REALLY believe Trump won, although if you stick a microphone in their faces that’s what they’ll tell you. They just think the herrenvolk votes should be the only ones that count – literally and figuratively.
I got your healing right here: the Democratic Party of Wisconsin has started running ads on the local TV stations we olds, including the Maga fans, watch every day telling Ron “Sedition Man” Johnson to resign. Unfortunately we can’t recall the dumbest Senator in the Treason Caucus, but we have apparently started the 2022 election, getting a considerable jump on the party of irresponsibility.
A few points:
•Donnie's Dr. Feelgood just passed away. (Reminder: Taxis pass, people pass away.) What will Crazy Donnie do now???
•Poor liberal media! First, that they're liberal is not fact-based when it comes to politics but is just a conservative shibboleth. Which is to say 110% pure bullshit. When it comes to all things political, they're straight establishment which, I hate to break the news, is pretty much conservative. The risk to the media now is their reduced credibility which is to say their propaganda is less credible.
•What Donnie did, as is constantly mentioned and immediately ignored or forgotten, was to make the believed but unspoken instead shouted at the top of his lungs and fat little fingers. But the true Americans, the fine people, have believed that bullshit for decades, since Tricky Dick and his Southern Strategy. Which is the true 1970s-to-now through-line.
•For what little it's worth, I'm not certain yet that Old Joe will be inaugurated; I'm'a not counting out some "fine person", some "patriot", some "good American" whacking him. Because that's pretty much the kind of nation we are. I'm sure my prediction is, uh, dead wrong but I won't believe it &c.
Thailand's Prime Minister came to power in a very old-fashioned, check-all-the-boxes coup (tanks on the street, previous PM exiled and her cabinet members told their services were no longer required, martial law imposed, etc.) and for the next year or so all the TV stations had to play a literal "Unity!" song every night at 6 PM.
It was in Thai, obviously, but my wife translated it for me and it was just about what you'd expect, which meant you'd contemplate suicide if you had to listen to it every night. Generally she just muted the TV when it came on, but occasionally she just left it on and ignored it. When she did, I found myself singing (to the tune of The Happy Wanderer),
UniTEE,
UniTAH,
UniTEE,
UniTAHAHAHAHAHAHA
UniTEE
UniTAH
My - tanks - are - in - the - street.
...until she had to tell me she didn't want to hear it one more time, and I saw that she was not fucking kidding.
So anyway, you can see how this isn't a message which really resonates with me.
"None of these people, nor many other conservatives, had the nerve to just tell the MAGA mob, Fuck off, you people are nuts."
Because there were two points when right-wing pundits learned they couldn't push back without losing their audience---in 2015/2016 before Trump got the nomination and when QAnon started picking up steam.
Specifically, I remember how anti-Trump Glenn Beck was (he even contributed to National Review's "Against Trump" special issue!). It wasn't the only reason, but his audience largely abandoned him during that time, and Glenn had to claw his way back in by groveling at Trump's feet. It's a lesson a lot of right-wing pundits have learned over the last few years, the same one that GOP reps in congress have also had to learn: people don't listen to you because they're interested in what *you* have to say; they listen to you because you're a vessel for the messages they want to hear. And once you stop becoming a useful vessel, your audience will abandon you. There are plenty of other channels.
Free market, baby.
Totally agree with this: these garbage rage clout-chasers have been all in on fomenting revolution & are as expected attempting to weasel back out, hoping their Mercer/Moonie lucre keeps the dream alive. So many yeses:
But I'm starting to see this, here & elsewhere, and I will futilely try to argue against it:
* "Qtard" -- We're better than this. An ablesist slur that implies DD folks are more violent or dangerous than others, which we know is absolutely not the case. [this is only moment approaching a "call-out" -- the others are just trends in media.]
* The insurrectionists are crazy or stupid: Some certainly are, but most are not. Also people wth mental illness are again no more violent or dangerous than anyone else statistically. We might make the gate then what's "irrational" & that's slightly better. Fascism is an irrationalist philosophy, so that at least charts. BUt USian society clings together entirely through irrational beliefs: Jesus came back from the dead, Sky Daddy watches you while you jerk off, America means freedom, white men invented civilization, trickle-down theory works. These are contrafactual credos that lots & lots of otherwise "normal" folks adhere, and many of them would kill for.
I keep saying this statement from Ibram X. Kendi, & no one pays any attention here or elsewhere, but his argument is that white supremacism doesn't come out of ignorance but a lizard-like awareness of what one believes to be their own self-interest. That's in fact what most psychologists would probably call a rational decision, even if it results in bizarre actions & statements. [It's the name, isn't it? The name scares people off...]
* The insurrectionists are ignorant Southern crackers: again, not proving to be the case as a whole. We're seeing doctors & lawyers, college-educated dudes. Northern liberals need this myth of superiority (it's a part of toxic white innocence), but it only leads to the abandonment of the vulnerable in red states, like the kind that led to the unchecked reign of the KKK and Jim Crow laws. [And ignores that the worst police violence against BLM protestors happened in Northern Democratic cities this past year...]
Why do we need these [irrationalist] myths of our own?
Mr. Roso gets out of the boat enough & shows us why: the rot that creates this fascist insurrectionary movement is in the code of modern politics, in the two-party system, in the history of whiteness, in American exceptionalism, in the West as the source of human civilization, in anti-Communist hysteria. This list right here? I guarantee more than a few of us or your circles of friends assume most of these things are either basically okay or are unchangeable facts of life.
The point isn't that I'm "triggered, lib?" -- an ugly kneejerkoff reaction that many on all sides are prone to fall into when challenged. This argument rather insists we have to think about what work these linguistic tags & cultural assumptions do to hinder our collective effort to extirpate white supremacy from this society. White people want to get through this by disavowing it & pretending it's not us [hence saying that neurodiversity or illness explains it all] -- but it absolutely is, and every white non-fascist person must take responsibility for bringing it down.
It's got to be said -- sorry it's got to be me.
I'm happy to report that ex-Aussie Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is continuing his attack on Rupert Murderoch and his propaganda team with a steady stream of video exposes.
https://www.facebook.com/MrKRudd
His 1/2 million signatures petition for a Royal Commission to ensure a strong, diverse Australian news media has been presented to Parliament. As the current Australian government is a cesspit of ultra conservative/'religious', corrupt, reactionary, thieving, lying buffoonish ideologues, this unlikely to happen any time soon.
So, I would be very happy to see the U.S. web community led by Media Matters (who have been faithfully documenting the Fox and other media atrocities), in conjunction with many other prominent, upright, progressive web stalwarts (*ahem) , take advantage of the current fortuitous political climate and petition to demand a Senate inquiry into the media's role in this seditious shitfuckery. Wouldn't it be nice to see the father of Hate Radio, Gush Pimpwhore on the stand? Along with his hatemonger ilk, Newt Gingrich, Anne Coulter, Stuart Varney, etc etc ad nauseum. And, simultaneously bring back the Fairness Doctrine !
I'm also hopeful that the political miscreants that supported and fomented this treason, i.e. Cruz, Grahame and McConnell and their multitude of malodorous minions are marched in front of a suitable judiciary and politically castrated, and that they are prosecuted FIRST.
Because, although there were some murderous dolts and a multitude of Nazi and KKK weasels in the crowd of LowIQanonens, who all sorely deserve some gaol time so that they can partake in some compulsory comprehensive education in civics, I would be sorely distressed if it was only Drumpf's Gumps who were the fall guys for this, the most inept coup evah.
The creeps who call themselves "patriots" and then advocate and advance acts of sedition need to be charged, tried and convicted, and punished to the full extent of the law. The law will deter further political crimes by these and other bozos. I guarantee none of them will stand up and shout give me victory or death when a judge sentences them to fines, imprisonment, and a lifetime labeled as an anti-American terrorist. Spell out the ways they have violated the Constitution and give them copies to read in prison. These are not folks who have some learned and thoughtful understanding of the course of human events and historical trends. They live in an alterverse more like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and National Treasure.
That whole scene from Michael Clayton -- where the line 'do I look like I'm negotiating' comes from -- is well-written, powerfully acted and incredibly satisfying. It resembles real life about as much as anything from Avengers: Endgame, but it's a wish-fulfilling salve in these trying times.
Anyone notice Trump saying "our movement" three times in his little "no violence" post-Impeachment II video? That's gotta be a special Stephen Miller fantasy for his fellow kleine fascista out there. (Not to mention Trump saying "no true supporter of mine" three times. He's in his own little Cult of Me at this point.)
Thanks to four years of the Piece Of Shit, his lunatic cult, and Republicans pandering to him and it (e.g., Michigan State Leg: Wanna carry AR-15's in the statehouse? Sure, why not!), I've become a paranoid nailbiter. When I read that Trump's newly installed lackeys at the Pentagon are overseeing 15-20,000 fully armed National Guard troops for the Inauguration, the first thing that entered my mind was the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Nuts, isn't it? But then, how many law enforcement and military McVeigh types have we already seen in his "movement"?
This is a such a good article. It should be in the wapo, where, unfortunately, throughlines like this are not drawn. Media fails America.
We're gonna need a bigger Supermax.
America has a long and proud tradition of mocking and denigrating politics and politicians, it's considered a basic right. One side-effect is that a majority (according to noted authority Dr. Otto Yerass) have little to no understanding of what politics is or how it is supposed to work. You combine that with many Americans, young and old, taking a good look at the future and they Do Not Want. At All. Olds see the glorious past, when you could tell a pretty girl to smile without getting arrested and everything cost a nickel lost forever, and the knucklehead yoots see no future for them at all. With that audience, any neckbeard with a comforting theory or babe with a glock and a YouTube channel has a shot. As a well-known political theorist said, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Ironically, the only thing that might save the United States is if people start taking it unironically.