Why is everyone so mean?? US Politics: September 2022

The Dems outperformed the polls in the most recent special eleictions, though.

Yep. It’s a good sign. Plus the post-roe voter registration. It’s not all doom

!!! a fake brochure promising eight months cash assistance, food, job training/placement, help with housing + more was given to migrants who were lured by @GovRonDeSantis into boarding a flight to martha’s vineyard. @JuddLegum obtained a copy: https://t.co/nSIwWOE6Zh pic.twitter.com/RLtqoeLPC8

— Marisa Kabas (@MarisaKabas) September 19, 2022

"WhEre iS THE OUtRAGE evEry Time BIDeN relocATeS imMIGrAnTS?"

At the end of his speech, eerie music began to play on the loudspeakers as Trump reached the part of his remarks where he ominously goes through a list of all the many ways America and the world are becoming an apocalyptic hellscape without him as president. The music was a song inspired by the QAnon conspiracy theory. And while this was happening, many in the crowd raised their arms and pointed a finger upward. It’s not clear what the gesture meant.

https://i.imgur.com/UOFwg2a.png

i've been reading this book from 1979 with interviews with 18 people who sought enlightenment via the Divine Light Mission. in 1973 they held an event at the astrodome that got very hyped up among the community beforehand, like, something was definitely going to happen at that event and the whole world would be tuning in to hear guru maharaj ji (who was 15 years old) speak and they would be transfixed and turn toward the Knowledge, etc. and then, of course, it didn't quite go that way at the astrodome. the movement didn't end there, but a lot of people drifted off and sought other gurus or joined other enlightenment groups.

anyway, nothing to do with q

Trump is actually 15 years old, which explains several things, and will be with us for at least another 60 years.

republicans have gone absolutely off the rails because what is this LMFAO pic.twitter.com/jX2SBjJ0bF

— matt (@mattxiv) September 18, 2022

Mastriano also getting in on the weird-salute game. Both this and the finger-in-the-air to me look very evangelical — arms reaching heavenward, you see a lot of that in megachurch videos. But they're merging it into these sort of rally salutes. Quite a thing.

Yes, this is a Nazi salute, at a Doug Mastriano campaign event in Pennsylvania. In 2022.

Democracy is literally on the ballot in November.

pic.twitter.com/unKyQKDN9A

— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) September 18, 2022

file under Things that just have to be Tim and Eric skits

i find it incredibly creepy. i don't have too many things that really get to me immediately, on contact, but white evangelicals and fascists and their obvious alliance is one of them. they want a king

anyway probably not a great idea to focus on the salutes & hand gestures as this is exactly the sort of thing that conservatives *want* the conversation to be about. of course it's all white power shit but they do it cuz they know the libs sound crazy when they complain about it.

josh marshall's comments on it from just now:

At his rally in Youngstown, Ohio on Saturday Donald Trump appeared to take a decisive new step in embracing the Qanon conspiracy. He’s been dog whistling about for years. But at this rally there was an especially dark and fetid tone and the rally concluded with what was either the Q movement song or one that was so similar as to be indistinguishable from it. (Yes, there’s a movement song.) The crowd responded with an index finger salute – also a Q movement trademark – as they swayed to the music and Trump’s rhythmic incitement. This comes after various posts on Trump’s ‘Truth Social” Twitter clone site which now openly embrace Q.

What it means is the obvious thing: Trump gravitates toward what secures his deepest and surest hold over his supporters. He’s in a mutually reinforcing cycle of radicalization with his biggest followers. It also seems likely that his rapidly intensifying legal exposure and predicament are fueling this shift. The Q fantasy has always been based on belief in a corrupt and evil liberal “deep state” which will result to all manner of criminality and threats and crimes against Trump before finally being vanquished in a dramatic turning of the tables in which Trump gets his violent revenge against his enemies.

Trump and his supporters have created a dynamic in which the predictable and perhaps inevitable result of his own criminal behavior now validates their narrative about his persecution and inevitable violent triumph over his foes. It also makes Trump’s reliance on the hardcore of MAGA/Qanon supporters more of an all or nothing thing.

i don't know, it seems bad to me. it seems bad because there is a big overlap between white evangelicals and Q -- a shared belief in a violent revenge that will take place in their lifetimes, and of which they themselves see themselves as potential participants in, while awaiting signals from a higher divine authority.

Trump’s rhythmic incitement.

Three words that should never get used together.

xp

ignoring it may well be the best way to deal with people boebert, mtg, gaetz and other professional trolls. i'm not sure it's a good idea to ignore it when the guy who has people working for him in every single state trying to steal the 2024 election has a new theme song that causes his audience to point to the sky as he tells them how horrible their lives are. seems important?

again, maybe not. i'll undulate in a josh marshall style, i guess. honestly i look at this shit and i feel like i have completely lost my mind

Trump’s rhythmic incitement

His Deep House Mix, IIRC

I agree this is really scary but it also seems like this is the sort of thing that's gotten Republicans trounced in every virtually election since Trump's victory and doubling down on the crazy is probably not gonna help. though maybe that's somehow worse, if they have to cheat to win they absolutely will

Anyway nothing to do with Q

A key distinction from Q vs more grassroots new age cults is that this is largely a manufactured cult which is highly targeted to key up the most fervent chunk of the GOP base.

More context:

Gen. Michael Flynn is really commanding the show. With his “ReAwaken America Tour”, he’s creating a movement that is nothing short of QAnon 2.0, except with more Christian nationalism and a lot more money behind it. It’s an influence machine, and he knows how to drive it. 12/ pic.twitter.com/DMqcVmjVog

— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) September 19, 2022

i agree that the Q shit is a very bad look for most of the electorate, it hurts the GOP more than it helps, all that.

here's my gloom: i worry about what all of these people will do when it all builds up to a head in 2024 -- think astrodome Millennium '73 -- and then it doesn't happen. again. i don't think they'll drift off, and i think the grifters (who seem to be overwhelming in number?) very much have their eye on exploiting them.

i think it's very rare for people in a cult to fully "leave" and go back to some sort of mainstream belief. i think very often, maybe most often, they double-down, and/or they shift their beliefs and attention to a new group or guru or theory that will let them retain a sense of special purpose, often in a way that accepts and even validates their prior beliefs even as a step toward true enlightenment, rather than rejecting them entirely. they go adrift, which i think in the 1970s often meant seeking a new guru in india or staying at a new commune for a few months on the way to somewhere else -- adrift in terms of physical location and connection to loved ones. i'm not sure that happens so much nowadays. i can see disappointed Q people being adrift on the internet, pretty much, getting scooped up and targeted by people who can spot an easy mark

It is beyond bizarre that this cult has chosen as its avatar . . . Donald J. Trump.

I am never more baffled by Trump than when he's doing that kind of low-key mournful sing-song, like in the above clip. When he's yelling and sneering and all that, he seems a normal bully. But the soft-spoken stuff is creepier, like the almost apologetic tone that movie villains affect as they lower you into the acid vat.

i realize i should step away from my computer, myself, and go do something else for a bit. sorry to get a bit worked up. also, i am so unclear sometimes, i feel like i never get across the point i'm trying to make. even this, from earlier:

honestly i look at this shit and i feel like i have completely lost my mind

for some reason i want to clarify this by saying that when a bunch of creepy white people are pointing toward heaven as music plays and they're all looking on stage toward an older white man who seems to maintain a psychological, even subliminal hold on them, it very much snaps me back to my christian upbringing and how it was all of that, exactly. and how i believed in it, myself, for a while, and how horrible it was to realize what the fuck was happening and walk away from it with a deep sense of shame, fear, and resentment toward people who would do that to themselves, each other, and their own children

xp "Oh, I am afraid they are all quite dead."

And too true about Gen. Flynn---like it says in this AP investigation, part of the forthcoming PBS Frontline doc: https://apnews.com/article/michael-flynn-christian-nationalism-investigation-50fa5dcff7f99cf93409fcd6c1357bee

Man, he's a brand, with the bucks, and so much more (maybe)(also has fucked up plenty in prev careers)

Ostensibly, he had a "good" track record in Afghanistan taking people out.

has people working for him in every single state trying to steal the 2024 election

Thanks for the article Dow.

Yeah I don’t think the well-funded and well-organized cult beholden to the GOP and specifically intent on blocking opposing votes is going to just go quietly into the night, no matter how bad the optics may look from the coasts.

But the soft-spoken stuff is creepier, like the almost apologetic tone that movie villains affect as they lower you into the acid vat.

Roffle otm

its probably just wishful thinking but the whole MAGA thing feels so long term unsustainable, particularly the degree to which they churn through people. just think of how many folks from Trump's presidency are now either considered traitors or RINOs. virtually his entire Cabinet wound up on bad terms and will likely never do anything in politics again. half of his staffers wrote a book detailing what a dumbass he is. his fixer now works for CNN and appears every time they need to talk about his crimes. Trump's voters literally tried to murder the vice president. the entire movement is being boiled down to people like Rudy and the MyPillow guy. obviously you can win with people like that in Trump +40 districts but you're really asking a fucking lot of your less terminally online voters.

school boards, city councils, public safety

It strikes me that lots of reasonably competent and sane people won't run for these positions because doing those jobs conscientiously would cut sharply into their other duties and responsibilities, like doing their jobs and parenting their children. But the crazies are so focused on their political obsessions that a careful weighing of consequences and a desire to be conscientious and responsible never enters into their decision to run. I'm not sure this can be fixed.

xp

Not like this is front page material for the NYT right? Aren’t they still stuck on exploring both sides of pronouns or whatever?

Reagan started the fine tradition of nominating and appointing people to Cabinet positions and regulatory agencies because they were stupid and incompetent grifters who would undercut public confidence in government.

Things are different now. Republican voters have elected crackpots to school boards because they want positive action like banning books and deepening the hostility to trans children.

Conclusions from the polling firm that correctly predicted the Hispanic shift toward the GOP:

The Latino vote remains stuck in the 2020 moment.
Many Latino voters who in past elections have voted with Democrats are today
persuadable — but Republicans have so far failed to win them over.

● While Latinos shifted toward Republicans between 2016 and 2020, an 8-point
swing toward Trump, we do not see evidence of a further decrease in
Democratic support since Biden's win. In most states, things do not look worse
for Dems with Latinos than they did in the last election, nor do they look
better.

● Even if we are not yet seeing a decrease in our polling, the political
environment has the potential to lead to further erosion of Democratic
support among Latinos.

● Stated simply, conditions are unstable. There is great uncertainty in the vote
(and in the polling)! A meaningful share of Latino voters remain on the fence,
having not firmly chosen a side in the election. These late breakers could move
toward either party, or toward the couch, before the midterms are over. For both
Democrats and Republicans, it is a reminder yet again that a large segment of
the Latino vote is a swing vote that must be persuaded.

And:

The economy is top of mind for Latino
voters, as for all voters. Two other issues that are coloring the political environment —
gun safety and abortion rights — are potential weaknesses for Republicans among
Latino voters. Democrats have opportunities here, but run the risk of seeming
out-of-touch themselves if they hyper-fixate on these issues ahead of economic
concerns.

○ Don't Forget About Uvalde: Gun violence rose to be a top-three issue for
Latinos in many battleground states after the shooting in Uvalde. For Latino
voters, a key question of this election is: who will protect me and my family?
This is true on the economy, and it is also true on an issue like responsible gun
ownership. A strong majority of Latino voters — and an overwhelming majority
of Latina women — are aligned with the progressive stance on gun safety, and
reject the conservative position as a matter of values as much as of policy. Our
polling suggests that if there is a social issue for Democrats to campaign on
alongside the economy, it's this.

Dobbs in Contrast: While some Latino voters balk at strong progressive
messaging on expanding abortion access, knowing that Republicans actively
plan to take away their abortion rights tends to remind persuadable Latino
voters why they have previously shied away from supporting conservative
candidates: the sense that Republicans are more concerned with pushing an
extreme agenda than helping people like them. The GOP’s position, out of touch
with Latinos’ priorities, provides an opening for Democrats to bolster their
central economic argument by communicating how they will fight for what
matters most to Latino voters.

○ The trick for Democrats is not to engage with Latinos on issues such as
abortion or gun safety IN PLACE of economic concerns.

lindsey graham on the role of states in determining abortion access, May 2022:

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, which I believe was one of the largest power grabs in the history of the Court, it means that every state will decide if abortion is legal and on what terms.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) May 3, 2022

lindsey graham on the role of states in determining abortion access, today:

“This is not a states’ rights issue, this is a human right issue,” Graham said. “I don’t care what California does on most things. I care here. I am not going to sit on the sidelines in Washington, D.C., and tell the pro-life community Washington is closed for business.”

it's more like when the "pro-life community" says 'jump', lindsey replies 'how high?'

lindsey graham is one of those guys who can only jump 3 inches

Elephants can't jump — and here's why

Haha, elephant/GOP and an ILX reference all in one! Well done

https://harpers.org/archive/2022/10/the-right-to-not-be-pregnant-asserting-an-essential-right/

In the face of the right’s unremitting fascistic efforts, the Democratic Party has faltered continually, moving between denial, evasion, and concession—weakened by their own trace natalist beliefs, cowardice, and the delusion that their opposition would somehow be appeased. Tragically, reproductive-rights advocacy groups, operating within the same political machine, have mirrored their supposed allies’ suppliant stance, and members of the general public who support abortion rights have been abandoned to the unforgivably self-defeating slogan of “safe, legal, and rare” and the polite-company taboo—accommodated by “my body, my choice”—against even uttering the word “abortion.” In the same spirit of concession, ostensibly pro-choice leaders have long maintained that abortion isn’t, or shouldn’t be, birth control, drawing a hard line between the two as agents of greater and lesser harm, attempting to shore up the definite morality of the latter. Implicitly playing along with the contention that abortion—sometimes, in some cases—is murder has helped pave the way for the conservative movement to force victims of rape and incest, including children, to carry pregnancies to term. There could be no other conclusion: very few would argue that a violated person is allowed to “take an innocent life.”

As Republicans make known their conviction that women, by definition, should be pregnant, and therefore can be forced to be, Democrats and the broader liberal apparatus respond that women want to be pregnant, insisting that people have abortions because they aren’t able to be pregnant right now: they intend to conceive in the future, after they’ve finished college, or escaped a violent relationship, or found a higher paying job; or their pregnancy isn’t viable but they’re determined to try again; or they’ve been pregnant before and are already raising children. Women who have abortions are no longer expected to be broken by grief, and there’s now more room to admit relief, but that’s often coupled with the reassurance that their childbearing duty will be, or has been, fulfilled. Those who have multiple abortions uninterrupted by giving birth, who are child-free regardless of resources, and who refuse to justify or explain their terminations, remain insufficiently sympathetic to warrant inclusion in the liberal narrative, which implies that the principle at stake—bodily autonomy for everyone, an inherent and internationally recognized human right—is negotiable and conditional. Likewise, stories of unwanted but necessary abortions—harrowing and heartbreaking as they are—are degraded as chips in the liberal bargain.

The right to not be pregnant is a concept of autonomy that goes beyond the reactive and reparative. It lays claim to a state of being, not an action, and in doing so obviates arguments about what abortion is or is not (health care, violence) and who or what is entitled to influence a pregnancy’s course (the fetus, the government, the doctor, the family, the provisioner of sperm). Critically, the right to not be pregnant rebukes the notion of non-pregnancy as a luxury or a sin, a widespread, inherently misogynistic idea tacitly conceded by the liberal mainstream.

There is no anti-abortion legislation, not even the third-trimester abortion restrictions masquerading as the reasonable person’s limit, that is compatible with the full personhood of pregnant people. Democrats concerned with public opinion nervously note that late-term abortions are rare and almost exclusively performed because of unexpected medical complications. This is true but beside the point. If any circumstance of a pregnancy forfeits a pregnant person’s autonomy, their pregnancy has reduced them to an object, an instrument, less than human, and they will be used this way by the state.

To designate good and bad, earned and undeserved, permitted and forbidden abortions is a foul and foolish tactic that ends in denying people their rights to themselves. The pro-choice narrative comes at an extraordinarily high price—confirming that people capable of pregnancy exist to create more people—for no reward. Liberal haggling has achieved only self-sabotage. And it has prevented abortion advocates from matching the intensity and focus of our foes. It is time to meet absolutism with absolutism: Every person has the right to not be pregnant.

well worth reading in full

A friend of mine, an environmental lobbyist in Washington DC, wrote on Facebook that a popular debate between “Republican environmentalists” is about major changes or even an appeal of the Antiquities Act.

After reading her post, I looked online and I guess it’s been an on-going issue since Trump ordered the Interior Department to do a review of the “size and scope of national monuments larger than 100,000 acres created since 1996.”

This is insane to me.

Admittedly, the number of issues that conservatives and I agree about are limited but in some Aaron Sorkin-like fantasy I believed that everyone agreed that monuments and parks were good.

I went down to the border to learn more about the migrant crisis.

It's clear the only way we can remain free is if we STOP MASS. IMMIGRATION*!

*full policy in video pic.twitter.com/QUIvYMpWUy

— Jeremy Kauffman 🦔 (@jeremykauffman) September 17, 2022

this is batshit

xpost Parks are nice but I mean they just sit there and do nothing like a stoner on the couch. It's time for them to earn their own way, we can't coddle them forever.

Lots of private companies want to get a whack at all those Truffula trees

this is batshit

War is Gaypic.twitter.com/Fgi2AGJHsz

— Jeremy Kauffman 🦔 (@jeremykauffman) August 20, 2022

Libertarian, huh?

From his website:

As he has created independence for data users, allowing them to create and share information without federal control, so will he give you and your family your independence to create and shape your lives as you choose – and not as busy-bodies, bullies, and bureaucrats would impose on you.

I haven't researched his background, but I'll bet he made his money in some hustle like crypto.

And you would be right:

Jeremy discovered the ideas of voluntarism gradually, but would credit Friedman and Huemer as making the strongest cases. Jeremy is the founder and CEO of LBRY.io, a New Hampshire-based blockchain company that produces and maintains a decentralized content sharing and publishing protocol. He moved to New Hampshire in 2015 with his partner Rachel Goldsmith, who is Executive Director of the FSP. They live with their son in East Manchester.

He's part of the Free State Project. Definitely destined for great things.

More on that study of Hispanic voters:

Equis recently released the results of a survey of 2,400 Latino adults, in which researchers looked at the prevalence of a set of false narratives that have taken root in both right-wing and left-leaning communities, and asked Latinos how and where they get their news and political knowledge.

It found plenty of Latinos have heard of the most common false narratives that spread in the last two years, and were likely to not believe them. It also uncovered a large persuadable middle who don’t know what to think about this information and are simply uncertain about its accuracy and whether to believe it.

The most widespread, well-known narratives (“President Trump won the 2020 election and Democrats stole it for Joe Biden,” “The Covid-19 vaccine is more dangerous than the Covid-19 virus itself,” and “Donald Trump worked with the Russians to steal the presidency in 2016”) were the most likely to be rejected by people when asked if they were true. Some of the claims that got the most mainstream attention, like the “Biden is a socialist” line that caused the most panic in Florida, had reached only about a quarter of Latinos and was only believed by about 7 percent of all those polled — about the same as those who believed the Earth was flat. That so many people rejected the most popular lines of misinformation suggests some solutions, including the effectiveness of aggressive fact-checking and public challenges.

But the people who were most likely to believe this kind of misinformation were also the most politically engaged respondents — not only were they the most educated, but they were also more likely to have a personal ideology, and be amenable to narratives that aligned with it. That explains why some liberal respondents in the survey were willing to believe false narratives from the left side of the political spectrum: More people were certain that Trump colluded with Russians to steal the 2016 election than the right-wing claim that Trump won the 2020 election, and more people believed that Trump faked his Covid infection than the Biden-socialism claim. Though some conservatives have pointed out some of these examples of “left-wing misinformation,” they tend to criticize media coverage as biased toward liberals, and attempts by social media companies to regulate speech as censorship, rather than associate it with the bigger phenomenon of modern misinformation.

Dunno about "colluded," but didn't Mueller conclude that Trump did benefit from Russian targeting of suppressible voters---and refer further studies to Congress, because DOJ precedent didn't allow for indictment of Trump? Not an example of xpost false narratives from the left-wing spectrum.
Anyway, it's time to lighten up!

Originally devised to expand Fox News coverage for die-hards, Fox Nation has in recent months expanded into lifestyle programming and has enlisted celebrities including Kevin Costner, Sharon Osbourne, Piers Morgan and Kelsey Grammer for various projects.

Fox Nation said the new special will “feature Ms. Barr’s signature comedic take on a variety of topics, with no subject off limits.”