trumpista2bak bak

perhaps belated 819

held together by evil fox trinity: hanty, ingraham and tucker

aha 1/20 promote primary, evil pending; trump only hope to stay in power, so pander to end times homo trans phobia, 1st anti-abortion march; 2x whammy b/c smash and grab anti BO voodoo tax cut to oligarch and corps

BAK 820 html

conscience will

this bak 1120 html collective imag

---

an 10 23 common dr

as GOP Congressman Jim Jordan tried (and failed for the third time) to claw his way up to Speaker of the House this week, he deployed the MAGA base to pressure those representatives who were reluctant to vote for him. Some extremist MAGA supporters even made death threats to fellow Republicans who didn’t support Jordan.

Who actually forms the backbone of this MAGA base that Jordan desperately turned to?

Media and social media enterprises have reinforced the idea that the MAGA base is composed of uneducated white working-class voters. Supposedly, these are the very voters who Hillary Clinton, as Democratic nominee for president in 2016, infamously described as a “basket of deplorables,” (racist, homophobic, xenophobic, sexist.) With the vivid images of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol burned into our national consciousness, if we’re honest, many of us now add ‘violent’ to Clinton’s picture of these working-class deplorables.

"These strivers don’t care all that much about ideology or issues or making America great again. What they care about first and foremost is the power and money they can gain for themselves."

While researching Wall Street’s War on Workers, however, our Labor Institute team found compelling data that turns this image of the right-wing Republican base on its head. It is a destructive stereotype that doesn’t square with reality.

Let’s start with the Tea Party, which sprung to life in 2009. It is usually assumed that it was driven by disgruntled white working-class reactionaries who fundamentally resented intellectuals and the media. But a comprehensive study by Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism(2012), provides an entirely different view of the socioeconomic status of Tea Party members:

“Tea Party supporters and activists are better-off economically and better educated than most Americans. . . . Most are not truly wealthy, however. Comfortable middle-class might be the best way to describe grassroots Tea Partiers.”

White? Yes, almost entirely so. Working class? Decidedly not, as defined by income, education, or occupation.

What about Republican primary voters? The 2018 Primaries Project at the Brookings Institution provides detailed profiles of Republican primary voters during the Trump presidency:

They were disproportionately white compared to the rest of the country: 86.4 percent.
They were better educated: Nearly 75% had a college degree, postgraduate study, or some college. Only 15% had finished high school or dropped out.
They were richer: Republican primary voters were considerably richer than the rest of the population in their primary districts. For example, 26.9% of Republican primary voters (and 21.5% of the Democratic primary voters) had household incomes above $150,000 per year, compared to only 15.4% of the general population in the average district.
They were also older than the general population.

How about the January 6th insurrectionists?

The Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago published demographic information on 656 of the 861 insurrectionists who, as of July 22,2022, had been charged with illegally entering the Capitol or Capitol grounds. The study found the following:

92% of the insurrectionists were white.
50% were white-collar employees or business owners.
Only one-quarter were blue-collar (no college degree).
And 25% had a college degree, slightly more than the 23.5% for the country as a whole.

The study does not say how many of the insurrectionists had graduate degrees, but we do know that the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes (sentenced to 18 years in prison for sedition and other charges for his January 6 activities), is a graduate of the ultra-elite Yale Law School, the same law school from which Bill and Hillary Clinton graduated.

*January 6, 2021, was not a working-class riot.

To be sure, members of the working-class form a significant portion of the MAGA base, but not disproportionately so. Instead, we see that the true MAGA base is disproportionately higher-income, white-collar white people who are enthralled by MAGA politics. And when we step back a bit and look at the many conspiracists who organized, staffed, and drove the election lies, this makes sense. Nearly all are lawyers and businesspeople, many with advanced degrees, backed by a vast ultra-right media and social media ecosystem of highly educated influencers. You don’t find labor union activists leading the MAGA charge.

The real drivers of the MAGA base—the ones the Ohio Republican was calling on to support his ultimately failed bid to become Speaker of the House—are financially successful people who are hungry for more power and wealth. MAGA is their ticket to move up the political ladder, to amass greater influence, and to garner more resources for themselves.

These strivers don’t care all that much about ideology or issues or making America great again. What they care about first and foremost is the power and money they can gain for themselves. And precisely because they are not burdened by ideological consistency or deeply held principles, they rely on one overriding trait—a formidable will to power.

So, as many of us do, let’s not lay blame on white working people for the decline of our democracy or today’s rise of Jim Jordan. The authoritarian, oligarchical—yes, even violent—impulses of political life today are really the responsibility of a basket full of highly-educated elites. And because they are so unencumbered by principle, they are really dangerous.

---

rural sm town hit 1st and worst [// EJ POC] in terns of systemic trend eg health care/hospitals and

[doh i had seen as escalator/echo source of hype fear]

an 7 22

The internet and the digital revolution have changed journalism dramatically in the United States and other countries. What were once strictly weeklies (Time, Newsweek) now function as dailies on their websites, and daily newspapers like the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune aim for a national audience. Moreover, something that would have been treated like strictly local news 25 or 30 years ago — for example, two people getting into an angry political argument in a local convenience store in Nevada — can easily become a national story in online journalism.

In the high-tech journalism landscape of 2022, according to Axios reporter Sara Fischer, one of the things that is suffering the most is local journalism. And Fischer, in an article published by Axios on July 4, points out that this “local news crisis” is aggravating the United States’ political divisions.

Discussing a new report from Northwestern University in the Chicago area, Fischer explains, “Around two newspapers in the U.S. are closing every week, according to a new report, suggesting the local news crisis spurred by the pandemic will worsen in coming years. Why it matters: Hyperlocal communities are being disproportionately impacted by the fall of local newspapers compared to bigger cities.”

Penelope Muse Abernathy, a visiting professor at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications and the report’s primary author, described theshortage of local journalism as “a crisis for our democracy and our society” in an official statement on the report. And she elaborated during an interview with Axios.

Abernathy told Axios, “While the economic decline in many communities was occurring prior to the rise of news deserts, the loss of a local news organization will leave local residents without the critical information to begin to address those problems. At a minimum, the loss of local news worsens the political, cultural and economic divisions in this country."

Fischer notes that “news deserts” in the U.S. tend to have more poverty and less education than areas that aren’t news deserts.

“The average median annual income of a home in a news desert is $15,000 less than the average U.S. household,” Fischer observes. “Only 20% of adults living in news deserts have bachelor’s degrees compared to 38% in the U.S. The lack of reliable local news compounds governance issues that make communities less efficient and prosperous.”

Fischer describes the “local newspaper sector” as being “in in a state of terminal decline.”

“More than 360 newspapers shuttered between late 2019 and May 2022, according to the report,” Fischer explains. “The vast majority of those papers were printed weekly. At this rate, the country is on track to lose more than one-third of its total newspapers by 2025. It's already lost more than a quarter, 2500, since 2005.”

---

1/6 analysis // TP redux

ref oath and proud

https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/trump-captiol-riot/

12 21 raw an

The Jan. 6 rioters’ composite profile reveals an insurrectionary base willing to resort to political violence to resist challenges to the dominant position of white Christendom and patriarchy in the United States.At about 8 a.m. on a Thursday morning in late June, FBI agents in tactical vests appeared at the front door of Casey Cusick, a 36-year-old Christian evangelical pastor, in Palm Bay, Fla.

Dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, Cusick met the agents in his front yard, and they placed him in handcuffs. His 4-year-old child asked Cusick’s wife: “Mommy, why are they locking Daddy’s hands?”

Cusick, vice president of Global Outreach Ministries church, was charged with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and other violations in connection with the Jan. 6 assault on the US Capitol. His father, Jim, the founder of the church, along with David Lesperance, a member of the church, have also been charged.

Months later, recording a podcast while awaiting trial, Casey Cusick reflected on how his father had noted before Donald Trump was elected that 1 Corinthians 15:52 says, “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,at the last trump: the trumpet shall sound.”

To Casey Cusick and his father, the word “trump” couldn’t be a fluke of translation.

“Now, you can’t tell me that it’s coincidence that the last president was Donald Trump,” Cusick insisted. “And here we go reading the scripture right here where it says, ‘The last trump for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.’”

The Cusicks had traveled with Lesperance to Washington DC on Jan. 6 to support Trump.

“We went up to DC to attend the rally because we believed what Trump said, and we believed that he won the election,” Casey Cusick told the far-right news outlet Newsmax. There, Trump told his supporters: “Our country has been under siege for a long time, far longer than this four-year period. You’re the real people that built this nation.” He added, “And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Now, 10 months later, Casey Cusick was telling his podcast listeners: “We’re in a situation right now of combating this stuff in our country. We need to throw away all these love messages and faith messages, and start teaching our people and letting ’em know what is going on in our country. And if you don’t fight — fight back against this tyranny that’s happening — they’ll shut our churches down. We already saw what happened with COVID-19. We saw them literally shut our churches down.”

Since Jan. 6, the FBI has arrested more than 675 people in connection with the assault on the US Capitol; they are spread across 340 counties. Almost a third of them face charges of assaulting or impeding law enforcement, according to Department of Justice. The rioters came to hear President Trump proclaim his false assertion that the election was stolen, and some, outfitted in tactical gear and weaponry, surged towards the Capitol before he had finished speaking, intent on preventing Congress from certifying Joe Biden as the winner. They condemned the US government as “tyranny,” called members of Congress “traitors” and chanted, “Hang Mike Pence,” while casting themselves as the spiritual successors of the patriots of 1776. They falsely asserted that the incoming Biden administration was captured by theCommunist Party of China.

“We won’t let you steal this country,” Oliver Sarko of Columbus, Ohio said on his Snapchat as he roamed the halls of the Capitol on Jan. 6. “Fight for Trump!” he yelled. And then, “Beijing Biden will never be president, we reject communism.”

Underneath the professions of patriotism and conspiracy-minded beliefs that the Biden administration and the Democratic Party are under the control of a sinister global cabal, therioters’ composite profile reveals an insurrectionary base willing to resort to political violence to resist challenges to the dominant position of white Christendom and patriarchy in the United States.

“It’s not just being a Trump loyalist,” Amy Cooter, a sociologist at Vanderbilt University, told Raw Story. “A good majority of them feel like their version of America is under threat in a variety of ways. They’ve had those fears exacerbated by the pandemic. They were genuinely afraid of the protests after George Floyd’s killing. Whereas people of color, especially Black people, grow in size population-wise and grow in terms of political power, white people lash out through a variety of means, including gerrymandering. Some white people, to use a technical term, are freaked out. Trump becomes a symbol of resistance to all of these problems they perceive.”

The counties that sent insurrectionists to Washington DC on Jan. 6 defy easy categorization, from Los Angeles County, with 13 (roughly one defendant for every 1 million residents) to a handful or rural Kentucky counties with populations ranging from 15,000 to 45,000 that host one defendant apiece. Among the counties with the highest levels of participation, where at least one person for every 100,000 is facing charges related to the assault on the Capitol, some like Brevard and Marion in central Florida are booming, while others, like Putnam and Dutchess in New York’s Hudson Valley, lost population over the last decade. They include Democratic strongholds like Nashville, Tenn. and Columbus, Ohio and counties that Trump carried in the 2020 election like Macomb, in Michigan, and Brevard, in Florida.

Research by the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats, or CPOST, has pinpointed one correlation between the insurrectionists and the demographic trends of the counties where they live. As reported by Barton Gellman in the Atlantic: “Other things being equal, insurgents were much more likely to come from a county where the white share of the population was in decline.For every one-point drop in a county’s percentage of non-Hispanic whites from 2015 to 2019, the likelihood of an insurgent hailing from that county increased by 25 percent. This was a strong link, and it held up in every state.”

CPOSTsurveyed 1,070 Americans and found that 9 percent believed that use of force was justified to restore Trump to the presidency, and that a fourth of adults agreed, in varying degrees, that “the 2020 election was stolen, and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.” The survey found that 8 percent of Americans, equivalent to 21 million adults, held both of those radical beliefs.

“Today’s 21 million adamant supporters of insurrection also have the dangerous potential for violent mobilization,” wrote Robert Pape, CPOST’s director.

CPOST’s research also found that63 percent of “adamant insurrectionists” believe in the Great Replacement theory based on their agreement with the statement: “African American people or Hispanic people in our country will eventually have more rights than whites.”

Rooted in white-power extremist thinking, Great Replacement is typically expressed in more apocalyptic terms as a false belief that white people are facing imminent genocide due to a combination of immigration and declining white birth rates. White power extremists like Brenton Tarrant and Patrick Crusius, respectively responsible for massacres of Muslim worshipers at two mosques in New Zealand and of Latinx shoppers at Walmart in El Paso, Texas, both in 2019, used Great Replacement theory as justification for their mass murders. White nationalists chanted, “Jews will not replace us” during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. in 2017, and Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson has recently embraced Great Replacement theory.

Amy Cooter, the sociologist at Vanderbilt University, told Raw Story she thinks the Great Replacement theory is not exactly the right framework for understanding the motivations of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.

“I think Replacement theory is an overt neo-Nazi perspective where they are consciously concerned about being outnumbered by Black people,” Cooter said. “From folks I have observed for a long time, they don’t have that conscious belief. Many of them are genuinely oblivious to racism and oblivious to how much harder it is to obtain the American Dream if you’re a person of color."

Cooter conducted ethnographic research with Michigan militia activists about 10 years ago, and sees a strong crossover with the insurrectionists who mobilized on Jan. 6.

“Their ideology is shared across a broad swath of conservatism,” Cooter said of the militia activists. “The real power is trying to get at the cause of the insurrection. If you just think the insurrectionists are white supremacists, then we’ll miss some important insights about how to stop the next insurrection.”

Analysis by Raw Story suggests that racial anxiety over declining white population tells some but not all the story about the underlying motivation for the Jan. 6 insurrection. Raw Story identified a dozen “hotspot” counties where at least four people are facing federal charges related to the assault on the Capitol, excluding counties where all defendants were part of the same family or traveled to DC together. The counties were also selected based on a criterion that at least one of every 200,000 residents face charges in connection with the Jan. 6 assault.

All 12 counties saw some decline in their white non-Hispanic populations between 2015 and 2019. By far, the sharpest decline was seen in Collin County, in the suburbs north of Dallas (4.2 percent). Other counties that experienced a significant drop in the non-Hispanic white population were Franklin County (Columbus), Ohio (2.7 percent); Marion County, Fla. (2.3 percent); Macomb County, Mich. (2.1 percent); Camden County, NJ (1.8 percent); and Brevard County, Fla. (1.7 percent).

The remaining six counties saw their non-Hispanic white populations decline at rates equivalent or less than the national average of 1.5 percent: Bucks County, in the suburbs north of Philadelphia (1.5 percent); Dutchess County, NY (1.3 percent); Jefferson County (Birmingham), Ala. (1.0 percent); Allegheny (Pittsburgh), Pa. (1.0 percent); Erie (Buffalo), NY (0.8 percent); and Davidson (Nashville), Tenn. (0.5 percent).

Beyond the decline in white population across the United States, there’s a much more dramatic shift afoot. A 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center found that the share of Americans who describe themselves as Christians dropped by 12 percentage points over the past decade. And a Gallup poll released in March 2021 found that the share of Americans who attend a church, synagogue or mosque dropped below 50 percent in 2020, down from 70 percent around the turn of the 21st century. The share of Americans of Americans who call themselves Christian has declined among all racial and ethnic groups, but none more so than white non-Hispanics....

1/6 analysis, sm sample here

12 21 raw an relationship coach kind // life coach?

...Both men overtly invoke the apocalypse, and self-consciously make QAnon references in their respective podcasts.

“What is going on here in America?” Cusick said in the Oct. 19 episode of his podcast. “They have us — we’re enslaved…. When the pilgrims came to America in 1620 — four hundred years from then goes to 2020 — when did this awakening start in the United States? Everyone started realizing what was going on with our elections, with Hollywood, with all these elites. It started in 2020, thanks to our president, Donald Trump.”

Cusick offered an allegory, comparing Americans from the settling of the colonies in the 1600s to the Israelites who, according to the Old Testament, were enslaved in Egypt under the pharaoh. By way of explaining how the United States, which after all, was supposedly “founded on Judeo-Christian principles,” had been “enslaved” since before its founding, Cusick claimed that “it was infiltrated and it became Satanic.”

For Cusick, Trump is to be credited for awakening a sense of nationalism in Americans and helping them define an enemy, which happens to be their fellow citizens.

“Trump’s the one who made people all of a sudden realize we have a country, and we have an opposition, whether you were on the left side or the right side,” Cusick said.

While concerned with something entirely different — helping men have more sex, as opposed to saving souls for Jesus — Stedman offered a similar chronology in his Dec. 9 blog post entitled “Why Your Woman Stops Wanting Sex.”

“We have been experiencing a gradual dark night of soul these past 100 years; as I write this in December 2021 we are near the culmination of it,” he wrote. Then, he went straight to the apocalypse: “In this collapse all that has been hidden is becoming seen. We are living through the apocalypse— the great revealing. The great awakening.”

After invoking apocalypse as a force for a transformation in gender relations, Stedman advised young men that they should strive for “consensual polarity” while making it clear that he was not advocating for equality: In his view, the men are protagonists; women are material to be “forged.”

“Such a relationship is well within your grasp,” Stedman advised. “In spite of all the programming, suitable women are all around; though many do need guidance — you will need to help forge them. But the limiting factor is you. Because you can only take a woman as far as you yourself have gone.”...

---

NEW

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/trump-base/

How do we know anything at all about the 74 million people who voted for Trump in 2020? Are they mostly racist? Sexist, homophobic, xenophobic? Are they white working-class males who suffer from status anxiety as the U.S. population grows more diverse? Are Trump supporters wealthier voters or poorer? Are they anti-elites, or elites themselves? Are working people becoming the core of the Republican Party, as Senator Josh Hawley proclaimed on election night? Or did Joe Biden bring them back into the Democratic fold?

Answers to these questions traditionally come from exit polls supplemented by what we hear from political commentators, labor union officials, and community leaders. An NBC poll (February 21, 2021) reported that the news is not good for labor progressives:

The GOP is rapidly becoming the blue-collar party.

In the last decade, the percentage of blue-collar voters who call themselves Republicans has grown by 12 points. At the same time, the number in that group identifying as Democrats has declined by 8 points.

Are working people really flocking to the party of their bosses? Or are the polls really screwed up? Given the massive polling errors during the Trump elections, there is reason to be skeptical. Just recall the pre-election polling of the critical "Blue Wall" states. On the morning of November 3, 2020, Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight poll-of-polls had Biden up by 8.4 percent in Wisconsin, 7.9 percent in Michigan and 4.7 percent in Pennsylvania. That forecast was off by 3.5 percentage points in Pennsylvania, 5.1 points in Michigan and a whopping 7.8 points in Wisconsin, thereby underestimating the Trump vote by 16.4 points in these three key states alone. And in the Senate race in Maine, the poll-of-polls had Susan Collins losing by 8 percent the day before the election. She won by 10.6 percent. Exit polls, which analyze who voted for whom demographically, are even less accurate.

This is why we have been searching for another way to determine whether or not the political inclinations of white working-class voters are radically different from their Black and Brown brothers and sisters. Is it possible that the polls are missing critical features that bind working-class people together rather than divide them by racial and ethnic identities?

Asked another way: Is there an alternative to polls?

Yes. Political polling can be avoided by examining the actual election results, precinct by precinct, and then linking those precincts to the census tracts that contain those precincts. This approach doesn't rely on any political questions and therefore is not subject to misleading subjective responses to hot-button issues. It also doesn't depend on whether someone tells the pollster the truth, or doesn't recall their vote correctly, or if the poll sample is skewed. The Census doesn't ask people their political preferences or their stances on various issues, or even their religion. It just gathers information on hundreds of demographic features like race, ethnicity, age, gender, income, occupation, housing, and the like.

Since we know the actual results in each election district and since we know the demographic information of the neighborhoods connected to each voting district, we are able to determine (to a high degree of certainty) if neighborhoods with more white working-class people disproportionately support Trump. To do this, we use a statistical method called multiple regression.

A Few Notes on Methodology

How multiple regression works: Imagine an average neighborhood in Pennsylvania with a given percentage of old, young, Black, white, Hispanic, working class folks and a certain median income. Now what would happen to the Trump vote if we moved to a new neighborhood with exactly the same demographics except that the percentage of white people increased? Our guess is that the Trump vote would go up and in fact it does. A multiple regression does that with each characteristic at the same time. So we can say what happens to the Trump vote if we increase the percentage of white working class men in the neighborhood and change nothing else.

There are limitations using this approach to be sure. Polling, while imperfect, does have the benefit of tying individuals and their characteristics to their individual behaviors (how they say they voted). This provides a more fine-grained analysis assuming that the responses and polling samples are reasonably accurate. Using census data is constrained by the fact that we are looking at how groups (neighborhoods), not individuals, are voting, and therefore there will be more uncertainty since neighborhoods are not demographically coherent. So pick your poison: Use polls that may be skewed due to the passions Trump engenders, or focus on neighborhood census data which is less precise, but free from the Trump phenomena. We're going with the neighborhood approach.

Lastly, the independent variables are income or education or working class occupations plus gender, Black, Hispanic, Asian and size of the precinct vote. The dependent variable is the percentage of the Trump vote in the precinct. The model explains 70 to 80 percent of the variation in the Trump vote depending on which definition of working class is used. All the independent variables are highly significant (all p values smaller than 0.000).

What the Study Found

Our study focuses on 3,058 voting precincts and their surrounding neighborhoods in the all-important swing state of Pennsylvania.

Finding #1: The Pennsylvania white working class in general shows significant Trump support.

We didn't want this answer, but there it is: White working-class neighborhoods strongly support Trump. This is the case no matter how working-class is defined: by education (high school or lower); by income (below the median); or by occupation (non-management service and blue-collar occupations). Pennsylvania neighborhoods with a preponderance of these white working-class groups lean significantly towards Trump.

Finding #2: The Pennsylvania white working-class neighborhoods do not form a coherent political entity. They are divided politically by higher and lower paying occupations.

Our findings show significant splits among white working-class neighborhoods, including among white working-class men.

Overall, white neighborhoods strongly support Trump while Black neighborhoods do not. But that homogeneity breaks down when white working people are defined by different types of working-class occupations. To see this clearly, we focused on neighborhoods with lower-paying service jobs (Low Service Neighborhoods), and higher-paying blue-collar construction and production neighborhoods (Blue-collar Neighborhoods). Low Service jobs, which make up approximately 16.4 percent of all Pennsylvania occupations, consist of four census-defined occupations (with May 2019 median Pennsylvania wage estimates noted in parenthesis):

Healthcare support occupations ($13.53/hr.)
Food preparation and serving related ($10.72)
Personal care and service ($11.58)
Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance ($13.60)

Blue-collar job categories (23.3 percent of the state's occupations) include:

Natural resources (($15.21)
Construction ($23.91)
Maintenance ($22.60)
Production ($18.17)
Transportation and moving, ($15.61)

Our statistical method allows us to focus in on the white workers in these occupations.

The Results:

Read the above chart as follows: For every one standard deviation increase in the neighborhood variable in the demographic column, what is the percentage increase or decrease in the Trump vote, holding all the other variables constant? For example, if the percentage of Black residents in an average neighborhood goes up by one standard deviation (about 21%), the Trump vote would go down 11.5% holding constant all the other independent demographic variables.

And to be clear:

At the neighborhood level, we find that an increase in white blue-collar males has about seven times the positive impact on the Trump vote as the same increase in white blue-collar women. [Note: The regression shows that if the percent of white blue-collar men and women is increased by one standard deviation, the rise in the Trump vote would be 9.2% for these men and only 1.4% for these women.]
At the neighborhood level, an increase in Low Service white women correlates with an increase in the Trump vote. But there was no impact at all from a similar increase in Low Service white men. (That an increase of women in any occupation would have bigger impact than a similar increase of white men is a counter-intuitive surprise that deserves more careful study.) [Added note: With the gracious assistance of Oberlin politics professor Michael Parkin, we tested and retested this result. The finding remained: Women in lower paid service occupations had a small but positive impact on the Trump vote whereas the men in those same occupations did not.]
Overall, the neighborhood increase in the percentage of white blue-collar workers has a much larger impact on the Trump vote than a similar increase in white Low Service workers.

The blue-collar occupations in our study earn wages that are near or above the median hourly wage for the state, which is $18.99 per hour. While Trump has modest support from Low Service and Blue-Collar white women, the guts of his white working-class support seems to be centered with more middle-income blue-collar white men.

This suggests that millions of white male working people in low-paying service industry jobs—from waiting tables to cleaning building—did not support Trump. And there is only weak support for Trump among white women in the same occupations.

Finding #3: Pennsylvania neighborhoods with increased percentages of Hispanic residents between 2010 and 2019, increased their support for Trump between 2016 and 2020.

This is a shocker.

We compared 2016 and 2020 election precincts in Pennsylvania: 1280 precincts showed percentage increases in the Trump vote, and 1760 precincts showed percentage decreases. Next we calculated the change in demographic factors between the last census in 2010 and the latest data for 2019 in the "more-for" and "less-for" Trump precincts. As we would expect, the "more-for-Trump" neighborhoods, showed, on average, increased percentages of blue-collar workers, of those with lower educational levels, and of those with lower incomes. Also, there were fewer Black and Asian residents. But much to our surprise, the percentage change in the Hispanic population in the last decade was significantly higher in the "more-for-Trump" neighborhoods than in the "less-for-Trump" neighborhoods.

Why?

There are two very different theories that might explain this disparity. The first is that a significant number of Hispanic voters may have increased their support for Trump in Pennsylvania for reasons similar to the shifts that took place in southern Florida and Texas. Perhaps more Hispanic middle class/small business owners in Pennsylvania viewed Trump's economic policies as good for their work and standard of living. Perhaps more had become involved in law enforcement, which Trump strongly supported. Perhaps more believed Biden was too "socialistic" and would head the country towards the problems of Cuba and Venezuela.

A second explanation, based on "the Great Replacement" theory, is more novel. It comes from a study produced by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago which examined the characteristics of the 377 individuals who took part in the Jan 6th riot at the Capitol, and who have been charged with crimes. The study claims that the insurrectionists were very likely to come from counties in which the Hispanic populations were increasing relative to the white population: "Odds of sending an insurrectionist is six times higher in counties where the percent of non-Hispanic whites declined." Furthermore they report, "Among Americans, believing that Blacks and Hispanics are overtaking Whites increases the odds of being in the insurrectionist movement three-fold."

In our study, there was a significant correlation between the increased percentages of Hispanic residents in "more-for-Trump" precincts from 2010 to 2019. This was not the case in "less-for-Trump" precincts. So it is possible that that Hispanic voters themselves did not shift to Trump. Rather, it might be the case that neighboring white voters increased their vote for Trump as the percentage of Hispanics increased all around them. Perhaps, this demographic shift triggered "replacement" anxieties among a growing number of white residents of all classes.

The University of Chicago study also provides a cautionary tale about our perception of the January 6th rioters. Those charged with crimes did not come only from white working people. The study found that 14 percent of those arrested are business owners and 30 percent are white collar. These groups include: "Owner, Ameri-I-Can Ammo; CEO, marketing firm Cogensia; Owner, Wholesale Universe, Inc.; Owner, Matador Sport Fishing; Google Field Operations Specialist; Regional Portfolio Manager at BB&T Bank; Doctors, Attorney, and Architects."

(And let's not forget the three Texas real estate agents who got arrested after flying in on a private jet, as well as the eight financial elites from Memphis who arrived on their private Bombardier Challenger 300 jet.)

These reports suggest that the Trump phenomena should not be heaped solely on the backs of the white working-class. Trump's base also includes a large percentage of well-to-do professionals and entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, there are far more Trump supporters in the ranks of labor than working class leaders (and labor educators) ever wanted to see, especially among the better paid, blue-collar workers.

For those of us doing educational work in the labor movement, the message is crystal clear: Stay on it …and then some!

Acknowledgements: A deep debt of gratitude to Peter Kreutzer for his data wizardry and editorial support. Also thanks to Kris Raab and Sharon Szymanski for their edits and sage comments. Thanks to Bob Kuttner for his tough-love read of the first draft. And special thanks to Professor Michael Parkin of Oberlin College for his statistical guidance, and for the generous donation of his time to this project. Any and all methods and findings, however, are the sole responsibility of the author.

Les Leopold, the director of the Labor Institute in New York is working with unions, worker centers and community organization to build a national economics educational campaign. His latest book, "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice"(Oct 2015), is a text for that effort. His previous book is "The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It" (Chelsea Green/2009).

From Your Site Articles

Evangelical Christians

Trump’s followers are a diverse alliance. Southerners who feel ignored are just one faction within a broad alliance of citizens who feel that the national government does not serve them. One other easily identifiable group are evangelical Christians.

Non-Americans tend not to realize the scope of evangelical Christianity in the United States and are often puzzled by the many references to God in speeches by politicians, especially federal politicians.

These are references to the idea that Americans are God’s chosen people. This is, however, not a homogeneous group, despite media generalizations. Not all are anti-abortion and anti-gay, but many have a sense that America is sliding backwards morally.

That explains why a segment of the movement supports a president who is almost certainly a serial adulterer — his speeches and his actions correspond with their concerns.

Trump was the first president to attend the annual March for Life this past January, and supporters also welcomed his appointment of social conservatives to the Supreme Court, bringing it closer, they believe, to overturning Roe vs. Wade, which legalized abortion.

Xenophobes, the economically disadvantaged

Another segment of hard-core supporters feel strongly that America is under attack by foreigners, including Central Americans crossing the southern border. They also falsely believe the Chinese sent COVID-19 to kill Americans.

Sixty years ago, these supporters would have been in the “my country right or wrong” camp supporting American involvement in the Vietnam War. They believe they are supporting traditional American values, free enterprise, hard work and white society against destructive change.

For these supporters, Trump promised the wall along the southern border to keep out “rapists,” talks often about “the Chinese virus” and says kind things about counter-protesters, even excusing the actions of the young man, Kyle Rittenhouse, accused of killing two people at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Wisconsin.

A sizeable segment of Trump supporters, and the ones who often get the most attention, are the economically abandoned. When Trump was elected, some in the media were quick to dismiss his supporters as lacking education, and therefore unable to grasp that Trump lied, embellished the truth and stoked bigotry.

That’s unfair on several levels.

For one, as corporations move their manufacturing offshore and the U.S. economy relies more on high-tech jobs, the less educated have lost their jobs, whether in the coal mines of West Virginia or the industrial areas of the Midwest.

Understandably, they’re attracted to a president who slapped tariffs on foreign countries, including China and Canada, in the hopes manufacturing jobs will return to America.

Not surprisingly, people who believe they’ve watched the American dream of “work hard and you will succeed” vanish have lost patience with politicians on Capitol Hill who seem only to care about power. And so they’ve turned to a populist, someone who seems to understand. A lot of them don’t care about Trump’s lies; they only care that he talks about their problems.

And not all of those suffering economically are manufacturing or industrial workers service with poor education. There are middle-income earners who have been hurt by the flight of industry, which resulted in regional downturns in the economy.

The news industry

Fifty years ago, a sizeable portion of the American population would tune in every evening to the nightly news on one of three networks and listen to a trusted anchor deliver the news. Now many choose either CNN or Fox, throwbacks in many ways to newspapers of the 19th century that supported one political party and framed the news to favour that party.

Not surprisingly, this approach reinforces existing views of what is going on in the United States. The traditional networks have lost the large audiences of earlier years andlocal news in most markets has become infotainment.

Many people, even those who didn’t bother watching news in past, now get a quick fix from the internet, the source of much of the “fake news” that Trump claims the mainstream media circulate, but really originates in the minds of internet fraudsters.

How many times, for example, have we heard that COVID-19 is a Chinese biological weapon, sent to destroy the American population?

Can we blame lack of education for Trump support when even well-educated individuals have their views of the world reinforced by what they see on the internet or on a cable news channel?

Throw in a number of militant supporters of small government and lower taxes, and you have the hard-core Trump supporters.

Violence a real possibility

Many who identify with these different groups may fall into more than one category; for instance, evangelical Christians who are angry about the de-industrialization of America.

Why are Trump supporters likely to make the situation worse this election?

The answer should be obvious. When a group feels that something critical has been denied them for a long time, its members will protest. If the protest still does not bring about change, some or all will resort to violence to try to force change.

Among the staunch Trump supporters are those who will merely vote for him, those who will demonstrate for him — something Trump encourages — and those who willuse violence in order to ensure the re-election of the man they see as their only potential saviour. Violence is a real possibility as the campaign progresses.

Should Trump lose to Joe Biden, the new president must quickly show sympathy towards the economic issues embodied in the pro-Trump movement and empathy towards the more contentious goals of Trump’s supporters, or it is almost certain the violence will escalate.

Ron Stagg, Professor of History, Ryerson University

---

c d v

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/inside-trumps-liar-circus/

as of Friday morning, the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States stands at roughly 198,000 people. Epidemiologists and other public health experts warn that the real number of deaths is much higher. By the end of this year, the virus may well have killed at least 300,000 people, conceivably many more. If the Trump regime is permitted to pursue its preferred “herd immunity” strategy, it’s reasonable to assume that several million people will die.

Journalist Bob Woodward’s new book “Rage” reveals that Donald Trump knew that the coronavirus was a highly lethal plague that could potentially kill millions of people in the United States. The president chose to publicly lie about that fact and minimize the danger. Moreover, Trump has actively sabotaged coronavirus relief efforts in the United States for his own (perceived) personal, financial and political gain.

In this season of death, Trump is once again holding political rallies across the country where thousands of his followers gather, most not wearing masks, and revel in their defiance of public health. Attendees at such events can potentially spread the virus to thousands of other people. In essence, Trump’s followers are a type of human biological weapon.

Trump insists on holding these rallies because he is an apparent sociopath who lacks empathy, care or concern for other people. His need for narcissistic fuel is more important than the lives of others. what of Trump’s followers? Why do they continue to flock to his rallies, which are literal death traps?

To most outside observers, such behavior appears as mass insanity, proof that Trumpism is a form of religion, a literal death cult.

But the reality of TrumpWorld is perhaps even more frightening than that conclusion.

Carl Hoffman is the author of the critically-acclaimed bestseller “Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller’s Tragic Quest.” Hoffman’s writing has also been featured in such publications as National Geographic Adventure and the Smithsonian.

Beginning with Trump’s impeachment and ending with the first few weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, Hoffman traveled some 5,000 miles across the country attending Trump rallies, and spent almost 200 hours talking with the Trump faithful who attend those events. Hoffman documents these experiences in his new book, “Liar’s Circus: A Strange and Terrible Journey Into the Upside-Down World of Trump’s MAGA Rallies.”

In this conversation, Hoffman explains that Donald Trump’s rallies function as a form of alternate reality for his followers. This “upside-down world” is tied together by conspiracy theories, ignorance, racism and a longing for an earlier time in America where life was “simpler” because nonwhite people, LGBTQ people, women and other marginalized groups “knew their place” and white Christian straight men were understood as the most essential Americans. Hoffman also explores the similarity between Trump’s rallies and evangelical church revivals where the sick are healed, sinners are “born again” and the charismatic preacher is seen as a semi-divine prophet.

Hoffman also warns that Trump’s rallies — and the realm of Trump believers more generally — are infused with delusions like the fast-spreading QAnon conspiracy theory, and that such beliefs pose a grave danger to American democracy and society overall.

This conversation has been edited, as usual, for clarity and length.

You have a unique insight into TrumpWorld given that you have attended so many of his rallies. Given all that has happened and is likely to happen in these final weeks before the 2020 election, how are you feeling?

I follow the news closely. I read the New York Times every day, I read the Washington Post. In general, I am a voracious consumer of the news. And yet I found that there is a profound difference between reading about something and being in the literal world of Trump at his rallies. That world was shocking to me.

I was shocked to see how Donald Trump has an urge, a type of deep need, for authoritarianism. I don’t think it’s a plan. He is not smart enough. But with Donald Trump — and you see this at the rallies — his ego is everything. Trump is such a damaged human being. He is empty inside and has to fill that space. He cannot lose. To lose is the worst thing in the whole world for Trump, psychologically. I saw it at the rallies. It makes one’s hair stand up to watch this urge toward power in person. As I explain in the book, Donald Trump is a dangerous person and anything can happen with him as president during the 2020 election.

What does the mainstream media, along with the general public outside of TrumpWorld, fail to understand about his power over and appeal to his followers?

It’s weird to be at a Trump rally. The first place I went to for a rally was Minneapolis. I went the day before the rally to get a sense of what was happening. I didn’t know what I was doing. I had never been to any of his rallies before that one. The first 10 or 20 people were lined up. In line was a Black man wearing a stars-and-stripes baseball shirt and a MAGA hat. I didn’t talk to anyone. I left. The next morning, I got there about 6 a.m. and the line had grown exponentially throughout the night. I learned that I had to start getting in line much earlier.

At first, I was shocked because there were many more Black people there than I had anticipated. But then, as I hung out at more Trump rallies, I realized that 100 or 200 Black people out of 22,000 is nothing. And then. of course the Trump campaign people pick Black people out and put them in “Blacks for Trump” T-shirts and then have them standing behind Donald Trump’s podium so that the cameras can pick them out.

Donald Trump is a racist and a Trump rally is an overwhelmingly white event. Whether you see people engage in flagrant displays of outrageous racism or not, it’s a terrifically racist event. That slogan “Make America Great Again,” what does that even mean? What is a “great” America for people who are at a Trump rally? What they want is a world that looks just like a Trump rally.

The people at a Trump rally will tell you that what is great about being there is how everyone is alike. They are upfront about that. It is a very white world. The people at Trump rallies are very happy to have token Black people there who are wearing MAGA gear. Trump supporters do not want social change. The Black people at Trump rallies do not have any power. They do not threaten power. If you ask the people at the Trump rallies — I like to call them “Trumpians” — they will say right away, “Well, liberals always accuse us of being racist, and we’re not racist.” In reality, of course they are.

Trump’s rallies are a type of theater and scripted performance. What is the format?

Donald Trump’s world is an upside-down one. It is a fantasy world. One of the most popular songs at a Trump rally is “YMCA” by the Village People. There are 22,000 people pantomiming the letters YMCA at a Trump rally. The next person that comes on the stage is Vice President Pence. Out of 22,000 people, untold thousands of them are fundamentalist, evangelical Christians who think homosexuality is a sin. And yet their favorite song is a disco hit about having anonymous gay sex at the YMCA.

This detachment from reality happens over and over again at a Trump rally. Trump will come out and say, “How many union people are here? Trump is for the working man. Trump is for the union man,” even though the Republican Party has relentlessly attacked unions for decades. A Trump rally is really a wild place where this man appears and says he is going to fix everything wrong in the world. He is going to fix every problem that you have in your life. Trump says the other people, the Democrats and people who don’t support him, are just dirt, they’re trying to ruin your life. They’re coming after you. But Donald Trump? He is going to fix your life. And he’s going to fix you too.

Donald Trump has been credibly accused of sexual harassment as well as sexual assault by numerous women. He has cheated on all his wives. He also wants to take away women’s reproductive rights and freedoms. Yet millions of white women are devoted to Donald Trump. How do they explain themselves?

The women at the rallies are some of the most incredibly zealous Trump supporters. One of the great cultural strains at play with the Trumpians are issues with work and masculinity. This is particularly true for white, non-college-educated men who traditionally were able to make a living — and a relatively good living — and support a family just with their hands and the strength of their back and their work ethic.

Such white men have seen the world shift in some pretty dramatic ways. Women and people of color have become much more educated and much more integrated into the workforce during these last few decades. Women are more educated than men now in terms of degree attainment.

Many of the men who support Trump feel really lost. The women who are their partners feel the same way. Maybe those women had to work too, as teachers or as nurses. But they bought into a very old, traditional model of masculinity. With that world shifting, Trump’s “working class” supporters feel completely adrift. At a Trump rally one sees so many women buy into those emotions.

What are some of the shared values and beliefs at a Trump rally?

At a Trump rally, the biggest shocker for me was the extent to which everyone believes in the worst conspiracy theories. They do not read newspapers or follow the mainstream news. Trump’s supporters live in an upside-down fantasy world.

QAnon, for instance, is not some weird tangential belief held by a minority of nuts. QAnon is a mainstream cultural phenomenon among tens of millions of Trump supporters. It is also taken for granted that the American press is the “enemy of the people.” This would be repeated over and over again at Trump’s rallies on the speakers and the Jumbotron screen.

Moreover, there are a lot of people at Trump rallies who do not even watch Fox News. Again, they don’t watch any news at all. It was quite frequent for me to talk to somebody at a Trump rally, and they would tell me, “I do independent research.”

Trumpians are not doing critical thinking. They are looking at Twitter. Many of them are also into OAN, the One America News Network. OAN makes Fox News look progressive.

The role of right-wing evangelical Christianity is very important in understanding Trump’s appeal to these people. Many of them believe we are in the end times. That makes it easy for them to succumb to conspiracy theories. It is all fertile ground for the fantastical world that Donald Trump inhabits.

Why do Trump’s followers listen to him? Because they are used to listening to fire-and-brimstone preachers raging about the end of the world and the end times. They listen to him because there are tens of millions of non-college-educated white people who feel their privilege somehow ending. The world is changing, and they are very frightened of that. These are not people who live in Chicago, New York or Washington.

Is Trumpism a cult? Are the rallies cult meetings?

I do not believe that Trumpism per se is a cult. But I do think that Donald Trump plays off one of the great icons of American history and culture, which is the preacher.

When I first went to a Trump rally my assumption was that the lights would dim, and that Donald Trump would come out on the stage and there would be a spotlight on him. I was shocked and surprised to see that at a Trump rally it is hyper-lit — it is incredibly bright and there are no shadows. I shared that observation with a woman in Dallas. She explained to me that it is like church. Trump’s rallies are like a church revival. You want to see the preacher, and the preacher wants to see you. The idea of being “born again,” what does that mean? To be born again means you have to die. For an urban secular person, such thinking is very strange and foreign. But for millions of Americans it is all very mainstream and normal.

The idea of being reborn is something that happens because the preacher convinces you that the world is evil, and that you’re sinning so badly that you essentially die, and then he brings you back. At a traditional church revival, people faint, they pass out and then they come back to life and they are reborn. I have seen this happen at Trump rallies. I have watched people fall out at a Trump rally and then be carried out on stretchers and placed near the front row. To my eyes it is very clear and purposeful that the people who organize and plan Trump’s rallies are well aware of these echoes of the church and religious fundamentalism.

What do you think happens if Donald Trump is defeated by Joe Biden? As a group, will his followers become violent?

That is hard to answer. Most of the Trump people that I spent time with at the rallies were not violent. They were not carrying weapons — you can’t bring a weapon into a Trump rally anyway. I believe the Trump people I spoke with at the rallies would accept the outcome of the 2020 election.

Yes, there is certainly a much smaller subset of people who are potentially violent and dangerous. And I don’t know what happens with them. Perhaps I am being too optimistic? Maybe I believe in the goodness and innate people of human beings too much? I do believe that Donald Trump will do anything to win and that he does not like to lose. But I do hope that if Trump loses by a wide enough margin that will, in and of itself, be enough for a peaceful transition of power after the election.

You immersed yourself in TrumpWorld through all these rallies. What do you know now that you did not before?

I am shocked at the deep and widely held belief in conspiracy theories and the extent to which the right wing, from Fox News to Donald Trump, have perverted the truth to the point where people question if the truth even exists.

I believe that the truth exists. I believe it is reported in such newspapers as the New York Times and the Washington Post and other places, every day. But there are many tens of millions of people who regard anything that comes out of the country’s leading newspapers as “commie propaganda” or what have you. Such beliefs do not bode well for the United States.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/mass-delusion-why-trumps-followers-believe-their-leader-has-given-their-lives-meaning/

within the next few days, we will pass a grisly benchmark: more than 200,000 Americans dead from the coronavirus.Public health experts predict that number may rise to 400,000 by the end of the year. If the Trump administration pursues a “herd immunity” strategy, where the disease is allowed to spread unchecked throughout the country, then millions of people may die.

During Tuesday night’s ABC News town hall broadcast, Donald Trump admitted that allowing the coronavirus to infect the American people en masse is his preferred strategy.

It is clear that wearing a mask that covers one’s mouth and nose is the easiest way to slow the transmission of the coronavirus. If a national mask mandate had been instituted across the United States in March, many thousands of lives would have been spared, and the country’s economy might not now be in ruins.

Why then do so many Americans refuse to wear masks during this pandemic?

Social scientists and other researchers have reached several preliminary conclusions.

People with lower cognitive abilities find it difficult to follow directions about when to wear a mask and when it is appropriate and safe not to do so. Moreover, when the rules about wearing a mask are inconsistent, it becomes even more difficult for people with lower cognitive abilities to wear masks consistently and correctly.

Researchers have also found that people who exhibit the “dark triad” of behavior and personality traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy) are also more likely not to wear masks as compared to others.

Among men,** a refusal to wear a mask is connected to a sense of fragile and embattled masculinity, in which masks are viewed as being “weak” and “feminine” and “not cool.” For such men who lack confidence in their sense of self and overall identity, not wearing a mask is a selfish act which they view as strength and perhaps as evidence that they are “alpha males” who can win a primitive test of “survival of the fittest.”

In Scientific American, Emily Willingham suggests that masks are also viewed as a “condom of the face” by men who are afflicted with “toxic masculinity”:

So, they go maskless. In doing so, they expect that their masculine ideology group will accept them, respect them and not reject them.

The irony is that these men think they’re manifesting the ideal of the rugged, individualistic American, when their refusal really traces in part to a fear of what other people will think about them. Drunk on a toxic brew of self-interest and that masculine ideology, they mistake their refusal to protect themselves and others as a mark of character when instead, it’s a mark on their characters.

Moving from the general to the specific, what is known about the relationship between wearing a mask during the coronavirus pandemic and a person’s political values and beliefs?

Unsurprisingly, political partisanship and support for Donald Trump and the Republican Party is highly correlated with refusal to wear a mask and opposition to other public health initiatives which are intended to stop the pandemic.

Such thinking and behavior also reflect the fact that Trump supporters, Republicans, and other conservatives exist in a media echo chamber which has assured them that the pandemic is a “hoax” or “fake news” crafted by liberals and intended to hurt the Trump administration. As has been repeatedly shown by media scholars and other researchers, the right-wing echo chamber is a system ruled by epistemic closure in which incorrect information, outright lies and conspiracy theories dominate. As is often cited, viewers of Fox News actually know less about empirical reality and the world as it relates to current events than people who watch no news programs at all.

The politicized quality of wearing a mask is the result of extreme asymmetrical polarization in which movement conservatives, leading Republicans, right-wing news media, white right-wing evangelical churches, and other influential figures on the right have politicized broad areas of public and private life — to the point where basic questions of public health and the common good are transformed into partisan issues of personal identity and the self.

Donald Trump leads an authoritarian cult of personality. Given that, his ability to influence the thinking and behavior of his followers is extreme.

Trump’s repeated suggestions that his followers should not wear masks, should feel free to ignore social distancing rules and attend his rallies, and should even take up arms against Democratic officials such as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan have a direct and measurable impact on public health by encouraging the spread of the coronavirus.

But Trump’s power over his followers reveals something much more dangerous and troubling about American society than “just” the coronavirus and its season of death — and even more than the underlying social inequalities and pathologies that made this pandemic so much worse than it should have been.

Beginning in the 1980s, American conservatism has morphed into a type of religious politics in which fact and reason have been subsumed by faith. This manifests in many ways: anti-intellectualism and anti-rationality, racism and white supremacy, hostile sexism and misogyny, a worship of ignorance and greed, right-wing Christian fundamentalism, a disregard for truth and empirical reality, and contempt for expert knowledge.

At its root, faith is a belief in that which cannot be proven by empirical or other ordinary means. The Republican Party’s policies on taxes, the environment, social inequality, education, public health and other issues (tax cuts pay for themselves!) are rooted in faith. They are easily refuted and disproved by the empirical data. In practice, that makes no difference to those who are true believers.

If today’s American conservatism is a type of religious politics, then Trumpism is one of its most dangerous sects and a de facto cult. In the age of Trump, refusing the mask is a form of sacrament, a political-religious symbol that signifies loyalty to Donald Trump and his movement.

Authoritarianism and other fake populist movements gather power through their ability to transfer the leader into a type of godhead, an extension of an embattled and fearful self that is made immortal through loyalty to the Great Leader. Moreover, authoritarianism — and fascism in particular — is a type of death cult where the followers will willingly sacrifice themselves for the greatness of the Leader. Trump’s followers, as their predecessors did in Germany, Italy and elsewhere, are prepared to kill or die for their leader.

At the heart of Trumpism is a form of existential angst, what is a fundamental crisis of meaning and human value.

Writing at the Metta Center for Nonviolence, UC Berkeley professor emeritus Michael Nagler explains this:

Because of my background in ancient religion and culture I have special reason to be alarmed by the frequent references to the psychopathology of the president and his followers as a “cult.” Not that I find these references misleading — on the contrary, they contain a truth that’s more dangerous than we may realize.

I’m old enough to remember “the Jonestown massacre” of November, 1978, in which some 900 Americans committed what they called “revolutionary suicide” at the behest of a deranged demagogue. After the horrific event sunk in, I could not stop asking myself, “How could 900 presumably educated, mature adults, poison themselves — and in some cases their own children — and do it for such an obvious egotist? What was wrong with them? What were they lacking?”

Strangely no one seemed to be asking this obvious question.

The question, Nagler continues, “has come back to haunt us with greater urgency. But this time it’s not just a circle of deluded followers — it’s the whole country that’s at the mercy of an egotistical demagogue.… And the cup he’s offering is not cyanide but ecocide: the extinction of all life on earth. … As we know from the nightmare of Nazism, when the ‘leader’ supports the delusions, the conspiracy theories of a deluded element in the society, as the current president is doing, the combination can reach extremely dangerous proportions.”

At the Wire, cultural theorist Sibaji Bandyopadhyay explained the role of collective narcissism and sadism in attracting profoundly damaged people to neofascist movements and political cult leaders like Trump:

It is therefore quite feasible to imagine that at certain historical conjunctures there may arise situations in which the vacuous ego of one megalomaniac succeeds in superimposing itself on many an ego by the conduit of primary narcissism. And indeed, the ‘art’ involved in the deal offered by Donald Trump is squarely predicated upon what may be termed transactional narcissism. In this scenario, to use the formula of Freud, people accept Trump as their “high ego-ideal” and “exchange [their] narcissism for homage to [it]”. In short, it is not a tale of isolated, solitary self-love but that of interdependence and reciprocity: rising to the level of being a fully-exposed syndrome, Trump’s Other-abjuring narcissistic persona both feeds on and flares up the mostly latent similar sort of narcissism of the mostly forgotten masses.

But, this is not all.

Whoever courts an ego-ideal, secretly pines for the tantalizing interplay of pleasure and pain. By transferring primary narcissism to the safe-keeping of some supposed strongman, more often than not, s/he automatically takes on the role of being passively active in some theatre of sadomasochism.

As journalist Bob Woodward has recently revealed, Donald Trump knew from the beginning that the coronavirus was lethal, not a hoax. Trump simply chose to lie to the American people about the pandemic, as well as to actively sabotage relief efforts, and in doing so committed a crime against humanity. Trump’s political cult members are not moved by these facts. They continue to gather at his command at rallies where thousands huddle together unmasked to bask in the glorious revelation of his presence. At Trump’s rally last Sunday in Nevada, thousands of his followers actually ran into the arena, as though they were on fire with joy.

It was perhaps too irresistible to liberal schadenfreude, this image of Trumpists enthusiastically running into a pandemic petri dish as though it was the healing fountain at Lourdes.

Journalist Carl Bernstein told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “We are witnessing a homicidal president convening ― purposefully ― a homicidal assembly to help him get re-elected as president of the United States instead of protecting the health and welfare of the people of the United States, including his own supporters whose lives he is willing to sacrifice.”

To those outside the Trump cult such behavior makes no sense and is just further proof that Trump’s followers are human “deplorables” – in this example fulfilling their role as human bioweapons for Trumpism.

But such an analysis ignores the power of Trumpism and today’s version of “conservatism” as a type of religious politics. Trump’s followers run toward death because he and his movement are providing them with emotional nourishment and meaning in their lives.

Trump’s neofascist movement will not disappear even if the Great Leader is voted out of office on Election Day and decides to step down. Such people will just latch onto another American fascist and demagogue, in whatever form he or she may take. Decent Americans may see the Trumpists and others of their ilk as tainted, but they themselves feel touched and empowered. In living the faith of their right-wing political religion, Trump’s followers have found “salvation” through a leader who is simultaneously “like them” but is also a type of semi-divine prophet whose example they aspire to imitate or emulate.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/herd-developed-trumps-cult-would-rather-get-19-than-admit-they-were-wrong/

an 920

Herd developed’: Trump’s death cult would rather get COVID-19 than admit they were wrong

Amanda Marcotte / SalonSeptember 16, 2020

Trump was doing spectacularly bad science again, this time during a town hall in Philadelphia hosted by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday night. The event went about as well for the president as anyone who has been awake during the past four years could have predicted, which raises the important question: Wasn’t his new campaign manager supposed to be *competent*?

When asked about an audio clip captured by journalist Bob Woodward in which Trump talks about the coronavirus pandemic and how much he “wanted to always play it down,” Trump slid right into his don’t-believe-your-lying-ears mode, claiming that he, in fact, “up-played it.” Whatever that means. Then the “very stable genius” currently squatting in the Oval Office rolled out his brilliant plan to lick the coronavirus problem (as transcribed by the invaluable Aaron Rupar of Vox):

TRUMP: It is going away.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Without a vaccine?

TRUMP: Sure. Over a period of time.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And many deaths.

TRUMP: It’s gonna be herd developed.

He also used the phrase “herd mentality.”

Trump’s English comprehension is garbled by decades of being unable to listen to anyone speaking about any topic that doesn’t directly concern his greatness or his personal finances. But he appeared to be talking about the concept of “herd immunity,” which is generally understood to require 70 to 90% of the population to be immune to a given infectious agent. This “let everyone get it” plan has been a favorite of Trump’s from the beginningof the pandemic. Recently, he has hired a borderline quack named Dr. Scott Atlas — a radiologist with no expertise in virology or epidemiology — to keep telling him it’s a good idea. But even Atlas knows this is a crackpot plan, and has so far refused to admit to reporters that he’s the source of Trump’s incoherent muttering about “herd impunity” or “herd magnanimity” or “herd it on the grapevine.” (To be clear: Kidding! He hasn’t said any of those things. At least not yet.)

right now, somewhere around 2% of Americans have tested positive for the coronavirus — which is still a whopping 6.6 million people, more than any other nation on Earth — and of that group, just over 196,000 have died as of Wednesday afternoon. I leave it to readers — who, unlike Trump, didn’t pay someone to take their SATs for them — to figure out how many more people are likely to die if we go with Trump’s brilliant plan of infecting perhaps 35 times as many people with the virus as have now tested positive.

(Or, skip the algebra and read this article from the Washington Post, which estimates that Trump’s “good brain” plan would kill nearly 3 million people}:

Here I thought that Trump had crammed thousands of his followers, without masks, into an indoor rally in Henderson, Nevada, just because he’s a terminal narcissist who prioritizes his insatiable need for applause over the lives of the very swing-state voters he would need to win the election. But hey, it might also be that he’s using the bodies of his own supporters — who tend, on average, to be older and likelier to die of COVID-19 — for his grand experiment in “herd development.”

Move over, Burning Man: It’s time for a new desert festival! Donald Trump’s Coronafest 2020: The drugs aren’t as good, and you’re way likelier to end up dead.

The wild thing is how many people turned up for the dubious pleasures of risking their lives to hear Dr. Bleach-Injector’s whiny, singsong cadence for more than an hour. *Thousands* of people showed up at the Henderson rally, putting it all on the line to show the world that they’re willing to get sick or even die rather than admit it was a bad idea to elect a racist reality-TV host with the moral compass of a serial killer to the highest office in the land.

In the first year of Trump’s presidency, I wrote a piece warning about the powers of rationalization, and suggesting how far Trump supporters would likely go rather than admit they made a mistake in voting for the man in 2016.

“[T]he answer to the question of when Trump voters will come around is somewhere between ‘a long, long time from now’ and more likely ‘never,'” I wrote in June 2017.

I quote myself only to say that, holy yikes, did I understate the case. No matter how confident I was that Trump supporters would contort themselves into ridiculous pretzels or sign onto outrageous beliefs to justify their 2016 vote, even I had no idea how wacky things could get. Here we are, three years and change later, and this is the lengths Trump voters will go to avoid having to say, “Oops!"[twt/pix/vid?]

or check out this rally in the town of St. George, Utah,which happened a few weeks ago but has now gone viral, due to the I-can’t-believe-this-isn’t-satire aspect of it all. That report doesn’t come from a progressive media outlet of any kind, just the local news station. It features a bunch of angry white people comparing having to wear a face mask to George Floyd being killed by police in Minneapolis, or claiming that “most child molesters love” masks.

No doubt it’s tempting to dismiss these examples as nut-picking, no different than when right-wingers grab the occasional anarchist-flavored vandal at a Black Lives Matter protest and use him to demonize the whole movement. But the difference is these loons don’t actually sound much different than their beloved president.

Trump has also suggested that people only wear masks to spite him. He was clearly coached by his campaign staff to sound vaguely pro-mask during the Tuesday town hall, his true feelings came out when he kept repeating variations of “a lot of people think the masks are not good.” (When Trump says “some people” or “a lot of people” are saying something, he is just stating his own opinion and, like the incorrigible coward he is, refusing to own it.) And like that “child molester” lady, who is obviously a QAnon follower, Trump loves pushing Q-friendly conspiracy theories, even retweeting a QAnon adherent who recently accused former Vice President Joe Biden of being a pedophile.

Despite all this, Trump’s approval rating sits right around 42 to 44%, and is apparently immovable. The phrase “in for a penny, in for a pound” has never been more relevant. Apparently, anything is better than admitting that the liberals were right that voting for Trump was a bad idea — even getting COVID-19 is preferable to that. That’s why the conspiracy theories must get more baroque all the time, because trying to tell a story in which Trump voters are the good guys is harder than trying to explain to the cops why you have a freezer full of human body parts.

Hell, maybe it was a smart idea for the campaign to throw Trump on TV, thereby guaranteeing that liberals would mock him and the fools who vote for him without mercy. As the past four years have demonstrated, it just makes Trump’s supporters more defensive, and more determined than ever to stick it to the libs one more time. Because heaven forbid that Trump’s 2016 voters should demonstrate a conscience by acting like realgood guys would: Sucking it up, admitting they were wrong and making better choices this November.

---

an 920

Herd developed’: Trump’s death cult would rather get COVID-19 than admit they were wrong

Amanda Marcotte / SalonSeptember 16, 2020

Donald Trump was doing spectacularly bad science again, this time during a town hall in Philadelphia hosted by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday night. The event went about as well for the…

---

9/15/20 kpfa report hit and run on ~ trump crowd, i hosp? several knocked down CA?

---

no lnx twt

Trump vaccine that actually works

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly September 9, 2020

If you talked politics over the last few days with Trump supporters, you probably got a good lesson in how they have become inoculated against information that contradicts their assumptions about the president.

Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in the Atlantic about how Trump referred to Americans who have died in war as “losers” and “suckers” was published last Thursday—just in time to ruminate over the three-day weekend. It included three to four sources per quote and was eventually confirmed by the Associated Press, the Washington Post, Fox News, CNN, and the New York Times. As David Frum documented, the reports seemed plausible based on all of the other times Trump attacked members of the military. The silences are also resounding.

Amid the clamor, it’s easy to overlook those who are not yelling, those who are keeping silent. Where are the senior officers of the United States armed forces, serving and retired—the men and women who worked most closely on military affairs with President Trump? Has any one of them stepped forward to say, “That’s not the man I know”?

How many wounded warriors have stepped forward to attest to Trump’s care and concern for them? How many Gold Star families have stepped forward on Trump’s behalf? How many service families?

The silence is resounding. And when such voices do speak, they typically describe a president utterly lacking in empathy to grieving families, wholly uncomprehending of sacrifice and suffering.

It wasn’t long before Trump responded with attacks against Goldberg, The Atlantic, and Laurene Powell Jobs, the magazine’s majority owner.

Most of the president’s supporters didn’t need the prompt, however. It quickly became labelled “fake news.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who had been preparing to launch a book tour this week, defended Trump by describing a president most of us have never seen.

While Sanders says that she has witnessed Trump showing heart and demonstrating respect, we’ve never actually witnessed that kind of behavior from him in public. It makes her denial much less plausible. But her description of the president is something his supporters desperately want to believe. So they utilize the closure mechanisms Trump has provided for them by calling The Atlantic report “fake news,” which automatically makes the president a victim. It is exactly the process described by Julian Sanchez in his explanation of the term “epistemic closure.”

Over the weekend a chorus arose asking for John Kelly, who was present during most of the discussions cited by Goldberg, to address what happened. Underlying that call is the assumption that the former White House Chief of Staff could actually clear things up. While I think that he should do so for the sake of his own conscience, it is absurd to think that Trump supporters would listen to him any more than they did when former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis called the president a threat to our Constitution.

The president’s supporters are not going to change their minds about the most dishonest and corrupt man to ever occupy the Oval Office. While it remains important to document his incompetence and malfeasance, it isn’t likely to have any impact politically. Trump has one vaccine that actually works: He’s inoculated his supporters against anything that might threaten their loyalty to him.

new

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/a-republican-explains-the-psychology-of-conservatives-that-keeps-so-many-supporting-trump/

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/why-trumps-denials-of-his-contempt-for-the-military-are-likely-just-more-lies-and-why-it-matters/

Donald Trump is likely lying, of course, in denying a new report by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic that accuses the president of calling the fallen American soldiers of World War I “suckers” and “losers.”

We know this because of Trump’s pathological pattern of telling lies, first of all. But also because in his tweeted denials, Trump now claims he never called the Sen. John McCain a “loser” for being captured during the Vietnam War, even though there’s a recording of him doing so, in the same rant during which he declared, “I like people who weren’t captured.” Trump was so proud of this smear of the late Arizona Republican that he tweeted it out at the time.

Beyond his implausible but vehement denials, Trump’s other tell is that he falsely accuses others of doing what he himself has done. In this case, Trump has spent years bashing athletes who kneel during the national anthem, falsely accusing them of dishonoring veterans and war dead. In truth, the tradition — started by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick — was formed with input from a former Green Beretas a way to speak out against racism and police brutality while still honoring the troops.

This is the same guy who found out that Russians were offering bounties to Afghan fighters who killed American soldiers and shrugged it off. Hetold a grieving widow of a U.S. Army sergeant that “he knew what he signed up for”, and then accused her of lying when she spoke out about it. He smeared the family of Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who was killed in action in Iraq, when Khan’s parentsspoke at the Democratic National Convention. In between Trump’s badly acted efforts at pretending to care about the troops, his actual contempt has often shown itself.

all of this is why it would be unwise to hold your breath waiting for this story to put a dent in that stubborn 41 to 43% approval rating, below which Trump has rarely dipped throughout his entire presidency. Nor will Trump’s voters be fussed about the Washington Post adding to Goldberg’s reporting with a story sourced to a “former senior administration official” that Trump had “told senior advisers that he didn’t understand why the U.S. government placed such value on finding soldiers missing in action because they had performed poorly and gotten caught and deserved what they got.”

The Trump base, which is stable enough to keep Trump within stealing range of the 2020 election,loves to talk about how patriotic they are and to make a big show out of how much they supposedly love the troops. As this unquestioning loyalty to Trump makes clear, it’s all nonsense. Given a choice between white supremacy and support for the men and women of the military, Trump voters will pick racism every single time.

As with Trump, much of the flag-hugging and declarations of love for “our troops” is just an act for the conservative base. As with the showy piety of the Christian right and the outrage over imaginary pedophilia play-acted by QAnon adherents, the ostentatious “honoring” of troops is just another performance meant to put a moralistic gloss on the deeply immoral ideology of the right.

This was blatant in the way Trump and his supporters weaponized their phony love of the troops to bash Black Lives Matter protesters in pro sports.

The real reason conservatives are angry at Kaepernick, or other athletes who kneel during the national anthem — who are predominantly but not exclusively Black — is plain old racism. Conservatives are loath to admit out loud that it bugs them to see athletes show support for racial equality, since admitting that comes uncomfortably close to admitting to racist beliefs. Instead, they pretend to be outraged about the supposed insult to “the troops,” even though there has never been an insult to the troops embedded in this somber and respectful form of protest.

The very notion that there’s anything disrespectful to the troops about demanding racial equality also overlooks the long history of how people of color have served with honor in the military, while continuing to face discrimination and abuse at home. A number of civil rights activists in the 50s and 60s were World War II veterans motivated by anger over how much they had sacrificed for America, only to return home to be treated, as activist Hosea Williams once said, “like a common dog.” The Tuskegee Airmen, a predominantly Black group of fighter and bomber pilots in World War II, were as famous for the work they did to desegregate the military and fight for civil rights in civilian lifeas they were for their feats of bravery during the war.

Currently, 43% of active duty military arepeople of color. There is no conflict between the fight for racial equality and supporting the troops. Indeed, doing the latter requires the former.

Right-wing pieties about flag, troops and country have often been a bunch of hot air meant to disguise what is really forceful opposition to what are supposed to be shared American values of freedom, justice and equality. Consider how many people on the right love the Confederate battle flag, valorizing an act of rebellion in the name of racism and chattel slavery that led to the bloodiest conflict in American history. In his typical ham-fisted fashion, Donald Trump simply lays bare how much of right-wing patriotism is pageantry designed to wrap racist impulses in the flag.

As I wrote on Thursday, polling data shows that the majority of Republicans have turned their backs on American values, the ones our troops take an oath to protect, such as freedom, equality and the rule of law. If protecting white supremacy requires abandoning bedrock American values, such as the universal right to vote, so-called conservatives seem distressingly eager to do so.

There’s literally nothing Trump can say or do to insult the troops, even those who have died in service to the nation, that would cause his supporters to turn away him. What’s become clear is that they never really believed that stuff in the first place. This is and always was about their commitment to racism, a commitment they believe — reasonably enough — that Trump shares. As long as he keeps delivering on that toxic current in American history and American life, his supporters will forgive him for everything else.

mental health experts break down the 4 main psychological factors driving Trump supporters to cling to the president — despite his many failures

Alan D. Blotcky, David M. Reiss, John M. Talmadge / DC Report, Raw Story September 3, 2020

A looming question in today’s political climate is: Why do Donald Trump’s devotees continue to support him despite the carnage of his well-documented failures? Although we are in the middle…

guys generally angry for a while at loss of status [but anger by ppl more generally to McC for no aid bill covid 3?]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/columnist-explains-how-the-rnc-dressed-up-the-fury-smoldering-at-the-center-of-the-populist-republican-party/

alex h

during the 2020 Republican National Convention last week, it was painfully clear that President Donald Trump was emphasizing white grievance along with fear-mongering. Some of the speakers tried to soften Trump’s image and show empathy, including First Lady Melania Trump and White House Senior Adviser Ivanka Trump (the president’s daughter). But journalist David Ignatius, in his Washington Post column, stresses that Trumpism continues to be a very bitter and angry ideology.

Republicans, Ignatius writes, “dressed up their rage in prettier colors at this year’s convention.”

“Speakers from First Lady Melania Trump to Vice President Pence tried to make the GOP sound like a party of healing and tolerance,” Ignatius explains. “But smoldering at the center of the populist Republican Party, there’s still the bright orange ball of fury that is Donald Trump — wounded and angry and promising white men in his trademark, code-worded slogan that he’s going to ‘Make America Great Again.’”

The United States, Ignatius stresses, is a very “wounded” country in the Trump era. But he applauds former Vice President Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, for calling out Trump’s racism as well as violence at protests. And he warns that Trumpian rage is as strong now as it was four years ago.

"When historians try to understand what happened to the United States in these years, they will study what spawned the Trump spasm of rage,” Ignatius argues. “Perhaps the most striking demographic change in the years preceding his election was the catastrophic decline in the health, income and cohesion of white men without college educations. That group voted 64% for Trump in 2016, making it one of his largest voting blocs, according to the Pew Research Center. The best account of this white collapse is ‘Deaths of Despairand the Future of Capitalism,’ published this year by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton.”

Research by Case and Deaton showed how high suicide rates have become, in recent years, among whites who lack a college degree. And Ignatius cites “the loss of income and respect for working-class white men” as one of the things that fuels the anger and bitterness of Trumpism.

“For white men without a college degree,” Ignatius explains, “their ‘median earnings lost 13% of their purchasing power between 1979 and 2017,’ even as per capita national income rose 85%, write Case and Deaton….A freewheeling democracy that prizes individualism is our great American gift. But it’s also why we need good leaders so badly — to hold together and avoid the abyss of social disintegration.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/experts-explain-the-**4-main-psychological-factors-that-drive-trumps-rabid-fan-base/

no lnx

a looming question in today’s political climate is: Why do Donald Trump’s devotees continue to support him despite the carnage of his well-documented failures? Although we are in the middle of a deadly pandemic that is surging and not contained, Trump seems to maintain a base support of 35% to 40%. What are the psychological factors that influence or underpin his supporters’ attraction to him? And might this provide some perspective on how to change these supporters’ minds?

Multiple psychological factors seem to influence and explain his supporters. We have divided these factors into four major categories: Rebelliousness and Chaos; Shared Irrationality; Fear; and Safety and Order.

Rebelliousness and Chaos [DISRUPTOR? BROWNSHIRTS HOODLUMS?]

Some Trump supporters have a strong desire for rebelliousness and chaos, and view Trump as the perfect vehicle for achieving their personal goals. These supporters tend to become “anti-establishment and anti-government,” even when it is against their best interest. Many are unhappy with their station in life and believe chaos in the political system will bring them important gains. They seek immediate and sweeping changes and believe a rebellious attitude and rebellious behavior are what is necessary. They would rather have chaos, even dangerously or regressively so, than the status quo.

These supporters believe in Trump’s professed anger and rebelliousness, while often ignoring the content of the issues at hand. Trump’s talk of“draining the swamp” [SHORTHAND FOR DESTROY DC POWER PPL? NEWT CALLED DISEASE?] and of eschewing “political correctness” is attractive to them. They react emotionally and irrationally in embracing Trump’s decisions to create chaos, such as by sending federal troops into American cities to provoke hostile conflict with protestors. They enjoy and thrive upon Trump disavowing norms, rules, and laws. Rebelliousness and chaos can be a major psychological influence, but it can have serious negative consequences such as undermining the chance for real change.

Shared Irrationality

The Dunning-Kruger effect. Some people are under-informed and misinformed and are completely unaware of their lack of information. They tend to overestimate their level of knowledge and hold onto that position. They develop “illusory superiority” from their inability to recognize their true lack of knowledge. In other words, some people think they know more than they do and hold firmly to their opinions. These people are resistant to change their political thinking because they believe they are the knowledgeable ones. Trump and some of his supporters have this psychological phenomenon in common; they are unable to remedy their own limitations of knowledge and their inaccurate thinking.[QANON?]

Magical thinking.This is the belief that one’s thoughts, feelings, ideas, or words can bring about effects in the world. Or, similarly, that one’s thoughts, feelings, ideas, or words can cause something to happen. Magical thinking presumes a causal link between one’s internal, personal experience and the external physical world. This often emerges from an inability to distinguish fully between emotions and logical thoughts. Relying totally on emotion or “gut reactions” results in magical thinking. Trump engages in magical thinking almost constantly. This is especially dangerous regarding the pandemic: “It will disappear very quickly,” “We have it under control,” “We may have some embers or some ashes…” Many supporters engage in magical thinking and are encouraged and validated by Trump, leading them to align strongly with him.

Obsession with celebrity. Some people are obsessed with celebrities and reality television. Trump entertains them and amuses them. Some supporters are always waiting to see what outrageous thing he says or does next. These supporters are happy as long as they are being entertained by him. They act as if life is a “game” or a “show” that is somehow disconnected from the difficult realities of everyday life, but it is not.

Shared omnipotence. This is a fantasy based in childhood experiences during our earliest years–due to our complete dependency upon parenting persons–that if one can find the “right” leader, then everyone can live harmoniously together forever. While this dynamic is often seen in romantic relationships, especially during the early infatuation period, this exact same dynamic can be seen in political relationships as well. In this case, some people believe that Trump is the “right” leader who can take them to a place of harmony and never-ending happiness and success. This is an infantile fantasy that is unrealistic and unachievable because it is not rooted in the real world of adult life. Even so, a childhood fantasy can be intense and not easily given up.

Fear

Brain reactivity to threats. Research shows that some people have an exaggerated fear response to threats. When presented with specific perceived threats–immigrants, democrats, protestors, socialism–conservatives’ brains light up in activity and experience a need to seek safety. Trump actively encourages his supporters to experience exaggerated fear responses, such that their brains remain energized.

Fear mongering. Terror management theory explains why fear mongering works. When people are reminded of their mortality, which happens with fear mongering, they reflexively defend those who share their world view and their natural and ethnic identity. Tribal identification is an outgrowth of fear mongering. Racism and bigotry are related to fear. Trump appeals to racist and bigoted supporters when he calls Muslims “dangerous” and Mexican immigrants “rapists and murderers.” This fear mongering by Trump is aimed at supporters who are vulnerable to racist and bigoted thinking because it fits with their world view. Another major fear among Trump supporters is falling behind financially and losing the economic capacity to control their lives and protect themselves. A third major fear among Trump supporters is of socialism and believing that capitalism is being threatened and even destroyed. Trump is very adept at focusing on these specific fears among his supporters, using key words and names to trigger and stoke their emotional concerns NEWT]. Trump supporters believe that he is capable of protecting them from their fears. And when they feel protected, they overlook his offensive and outlandish behavior.

Conspiracy theories. Certain people are attracted to conspiracy theories because of their vulnerable personalities and even by mental illness. Life is complex and perplexing and at times dangerous. It is not simple or safe. Research shows that feelings of anxiety make people think more conspiratorially. A conspiracy theory can provide comfort by identifying a convenient scapegoat and thereby making the world seem much more straightforward and controllable. Fantasies that remove fear and doubt can be especially attractive, even if they are unrealistic and irrational. People who believe in conspiracy theories are more likely to overestimate the likelihood of co-occurring events, to attribute intentionality where it is unlikely to exist, and to have lower levels of critical thinking. Trump has voiced many conspiracy theories: Spygate, Obamagate, Deep state, Trump Tower wiretapping, and others.

Security and Order

Social dominance orientation. People who score high on social dominance orientation prefer an established societal hierarchy. They are attracted to Trump because he promotes and normalizes the belief that high-status people and groups should be dominant over low-status people and groups. Trump’s clear distinction between groups on top of society (Whites) and those “losers” on the bottom (immigrants, Blacks, and Latinos) is a classic social dominance view. Individuals who are high on social dominance orientation are typically domineering, tough-minded, disagreeable, and relatively uncaring seekers of power. As such, these individuals have an attraction to authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism. Several traits characterize authoritarianism: deference to authority, aggression toward outgroups, a hierarchical view of the world, and the belief that the world is dangerous and threatening. Some people believe in having an authoritarian leader because they feel protected and safe by a strong, powerful presence. Trump’s authoritarian leanings are highly attractive to these supporters. Interestingly, research studies have shown the joint power of authoritarianism and social dominance orientation to predict far-right-wing voting in the United States and Europe.

How To Change Supporters’ Minds

Based on our understanding of these psychological influences, each Trump supporter must be considered individually. Not all supporters are connected to Trump in the same way or for the same psychological reasons. For each Trump supporter, an individual assessment is required as to whether it might be best to address rebelliousness and chaos; shared irrationality; fear; and/or security and order. Rational arguments aimed at each of these categories, separately or in some combination, might be most effective.

Trump supporters are tied to him based on multiple and complex psychological principles and phenomena. To continue to respond to them as if they are psychotic or evil is a grave mistake and will not lead to change. Identifying the category or categories of psychological influence for each person can be a much more productive strategy.

There are three months to go before our presidential election. Let us use this time to focus our energies on changing minds based on an understanding of psychology. Name-calling and dismissive statements will not work. Lumping all supporters together will not work. Psychology holds the answer.

Alan D. Blotcky, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in Birmingham, Alabama.

David M. Reiss, MD, is a psychiatrist in Rancho Santa Fe, California.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/heres-your-field-guide-to-the-5-main-types-of-pandemic-deniers/

:{:{}:

no lnx

Sophia A. McClennen / Salon July 26, 2020

:{:{}:

Every day there is more data to prove the dangers of the coronavirus. Yet, bizarrely, the more proof we have of the damage of the pandemic; the more vicious and hysterical its deniers. It is hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of uninformed, deluded ideas covidiots spew on a daily basis. We mourn not just the lives lost and the bodies damaged, but the collective intelligence of our nation. With international news consistently depicting the United States as the dumbest nation in the developed world, it is as if news of the covidiocy is almost as depressing as news of the virus’s spread itself.

:{:{}:

The trend to what is described as America’s move from freedom to “freedumb” has sadly been a long time in the making. The pandemic only painfully reveals a process that was well-documented by Charles Pierce’s 2010 book “Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free.”

:{:{}:

Pierce opens with a story of Americans descending on the Creation Museum in Kentucky, where homeschooled children on field trips can behold a dinosaur wearing a saddle. With stories like these it is not hard to understand how this country lost its grip on even the most basic scientific concepts. It is not a big leap from dinosaurs in saddles to believing that face masks make us sick.

:{:{}:

Shortly before the 2016 election we started to hear that part of the problem with America’s stupidity was the fact that social media allows us to exist in information silos or echo chambers where our ideas aren’t challenged and where we get a daily dose of confirmation for our brand of personal wackiness. Surely, information silos are a problem, but as the pandemic deniers have shown, there is actually a fairly diverse array of covidiocy types.

:{:{}:

In fact, when we lump all pandemic deniers together into the same pile, we miss the fact that what plagues America on a cognitive level is a far more serious disease, one that has neither one symptom nor one easy cure. Here are five main types of covidiots to look out for:

:{:{}:

The Eye Rollers

:{:{}:

The eye rollers think that all of the news over the pandemic is exaggerated hype. This is the line of reasoning that suggests that if we didn’t test for the virus so well, our numbers would be more in line with other developed nations. The eye rollers think that the coronavirus is just like the flu and that its mortality rates are of no real significance.

:{:{}:

You’d think all you’d need to do with an eye roller is show them the inside of an ICU or have them hear stories from those who have been gravely sickened by the virus. But the key to the eye roller is that they aren’t going to believe a single piece of evidence because, from their view, all proof of the dangers of the pandemic is manufactured to produce hysteria.

:{:{}:

The eye roller is disturbing for the fact that they have a long history of not taking a single critical issue in this nation seriously. So, coupled with their eye rolling over what they perceive as coronavirus hype, they are also likely to believe that we have no racism, no sexism, in fact, no significant problems whatsoever. For them, liberals manufacture issues that aren’t real so that they can create social anxiety and elevate their policy platform. These are the people who disparage the Black Lives Matter movement as reverse racism and mock #MeToo as a problem of thin skin.

:{:{}:

The Shoulder Shruggers

:{:{}:

The shoulder shruggers are your Ayn Rand-style covidiots. These folks get the numbers and the science. They have a full sense of the dead bodies and damaged lungs, but they simply don’t care. They epitomize the “profit over people” worldview.

:{:{}:

This is the line of reasoning we saw on display by Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrickwho suggested that grandparents should be willing to die in order to save the economy for their grandkids: “My message: let’s get back to work, let’s get back to living, let’s be smart about it, and those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves.” According to him, there is no reason to “sacrifice the country” in order to save a few old people.

:{:{}:

Like the eye rollers, the shoulder shruggers have a far more pernicious mindset that shapes their views on a wider set of concerns than the virus. These are the folks who see in the virus neoliberal opportunities to capitalize rather than empathize.

:{:{}:

The Narcissistic Hedonists

:{:{}:

The hedonists simply don’t want to be inconvenienced by the virus. They want their manicures, haircuts and happy hours. Their own selfishness dominates their behavior and clouds their ability to consider the wellbeing of others. They see the entire world from the vantage point of their pleasure-driven egos and they outright refuse to be inconvenienced for the benefit of others.

:{:{}:

The narcissistic hedonists talk about how they have a right not to wear a mask and how those who worry over the pandemic should just stay home. “You’re infringing on my rights,” they scream any time they are told they can’t enter a store without a mask. “This is a free country, and I’m here to shop.”

:{:{}:

The narcissistic hedonists have no commitment to a social project nor do they care a wit about the common good. They have weighed the costs and risks of their behavior and they think that their own desires are more valuable than their grandparents’ lives.

:{:{}:

This strain of covidiot also has a long history in this nation. Unlike the eye roller who thinks everything in the nation is already great or the shoulder shrugger who cares more about the economy than society, the narcissistic hedonist places their desires at the center of everything. And, even worse, they think that their own destructive ego-driven behavior is their “right” as Americans.

:{:{}:

The Self-Proclaimed Scientists

:{:{}:

The self-proclaimed scientists are a unique strain of covidiot that derives from this nation’s long resistance to expertise. The self-proclaimed scientist will tell you that you should not listen to Dr. Anthony Fauci. Instead you should listen to them, since they have done “research” and they know more about the virus than world-leading scientists.

:{:{}:

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently warned of the dangerous consequences of our national anti-science bias: “One of the problems we face in the United States is that unfortunately, there is a combination of an anti-science bias that people are — for reasons that sometimes are, you know, inconceivable and not understandable — they just don’t believe science and they don’t believe authority.”

:{:{}:

Yet, as Pierce documents in the book I cited earlier, theAmerican tendency to eschew expertise and disparage science has extremely deep roots in our collective history. It is tied not just to religious extremism, but also to the history of anti-intellectualism in the U.S. The urge to put down teachers and professors alongside scientists is part of the American habit of distrusting smart people and it is tied to the idea that some folks would prefer a president they want to have a beer with over an intellectual or even highly educated president.

:{:{}:

The anti-expertise sickness that plagues the United States is sadly to blame for much of the failed U.S. response to the pandemic, but its negative impact on the functioning of our nation goes well beyond flaws in our healthcare system and public health policy. As long as we continue to be skeptical of knowledge and attracted to BS, we can expect our nation to continue to look less and less like a developed nation.

:{:{}:

The Conspiracy Theorists

:{:{}:

One of the special features of conspiracy theorists is that they are found on both the left and the right, unlike a lot of the other strains of covidiots. They converge in the bizarre alternate reality of anti-vaxxers. But, regarding the coronavirus, the conspiracy theories are largely skewed to the right.

:{:{}:

The range of conspiracy theories about the pandemic is simply too broad to cover in this piece. It spans from theories that the virus was deliberately started by China or by Bill Gates to theories that the virus simply isn’t real at all. Nature reported in March that “the website Biohackinfo.com falsely claimed that Gates planned to use a coronavirus vaccine as a ploy to monitor people through an injected microchip or quantum-dot spy software.”

:{:{}:

Healthline reported in June that 25 percent of people believe unproven theories about COVID-19. This is all to show that there is a strange urge in this country to attach to fantasy theories rather than facts.

:{:{}:

The danger to the conspiracy theorist is not just their refusal to accept evidence that challenges their views, but rather their paranoid worries that any evidence is actually propaganda designed to dupe them and cause harm. The conspiracy theorist is so worried thinking that information is manipulation that they lose any sight of what the truth actually is. And as coverage of a Palm Beach County Commission meeting that went viral for the outlandish arguments presented by residents against a mask ordinance (which the Florida county did pass) shows, covidiots tend to mix up their reasons for refusing to wear masks and take the pandemic seriously. Trying to follow these arguments against wearing masks will hurt your brain.

:{:{}:

What’s worse is that having to “debate” matters of science and evidence-based medicine tends to leave us fighting each other rather than the virus. Even more disturbing, there is no vaccine for covidiocy: It promises to linger well after the virus has been contained, wreaking havoc on our society, taking up resources and frustrating progress. It’s a condition that has plagued our country for decades and it won’t be cured until and unless we make a collective effort to prevent its spread.

:{:{}:

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/how-trumps-psychosis-infects-his-followers-and-how-to-get-them-better/

:{:{}:

Many believe that the falling poll numbers for Donald Trump are a measure of his mishandling the coronavirus pandemic to the point of calamity or his divisiveness in the face of a racial crisis. While these things may be partially true, there is a far more important, overriding factor: his inability to hold ongoing rallies.

His loss of continual exposure to the public has meant his supporters would separate enough to see reality for themselves. This is a phenomenon mental health experts have spoken about in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: how his continual exposure through the presidency would make him uncontainable, and we issued a “Prescription for Survival” in March 2020, to highlight how his removal or, if not, at least removal of influence was necessary for our collective health.

Mental disease could be more contagious than other forms of infection since it does not require physical exposure but only emotional bonds.

There are many medically unjustifiable misconceptions we have about mental disease, but none is perhaps as consequential as the denial that it can be contagious. Indeed, its contagion could be more efficient than other forms of infection since it does not require physical exposure but only emotional bonds. We noted at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic that the more important pandemic to gain control over was “the mental health pandemic.”

Weakened hosts, an environment that facilitates transmission, and our lack of consideration even of the possibility—even among some psychiatrists wedded to an atomistic view of people—has made Americans more vulnerable. In addition, poor mental health contributes to denial, and therefore those who are the most affected are the least likely to admit that anything is wrong. Bioterrorism is frightening, but psychological warfare even more so, for it hijacks the very mind that is capable of protecting itself.

My focus as a preventive psychiatrist has been the ecology surrounding individuals. Contagion of mental symptoms is common in public hospital and prison settings, where there are high concentrations of untreated, severe mental disturbances. Severe symptoms can spread among family members, criminal co-conspirators, gangs, and other tight-knit groups. A colleague and collaborator at the World Health Organization, Dr. Gary Slutkin, has long advocated that we consider violence and other behavior an infectious disease whose spread we can interrupt. International terrorism and suicide are known to be contagious, for example. Effective prevention, therefore, requires population-level interventions and application of psychiatric principles to systems, institutions, and cultures. The last course I designed for students at Yale Law School was one of translating law into social policies that prevent violence and further societal health.

Three conditions are necessary for the spread of mental symptoms:

1 Severe pathology in an influential figure

The transmission of mental symptoms has been given different names: induced delusional disorder, shared psychosis, folie à deux, trois, quatre,…, or millions—depending on the number affected—or mass hysteria when affecting a whole population. All describe the same phenomenon, but none are satisfactory. The latest, induced delusional disorder, focuses on the most commonly transmitted symptom, delusions, but does not cover other possible symptoms, such as mood. Shared psychosis captures the syndrome-like severity, but is a misnomer because it often does not involve actual psychosis. Folie à deux, or “madness in two,” is perhaps the most preferred but a foreign phrase. Finally, “mass hysteria” describes well the frenzied quality that arises from the sharing of symptoms among crowds, but often does not actually involve symptoms of “hysteria”, or histrionics. The important feature is that mental symptoms are not confined to the person; they take hold and spread across interpersonal boundaries, just as they initially take over one portion, and then eventually the whole of the mind of an individual.

Severe psychopathology in an influential figure, therefore, transmits to others or a group, until the exposed persons or groups come to feel, think, and behave as if they had the same disorder as the primary person. Unlike normal social dynamics, where enthusiasm, common purpose, or even outrage can be “infectious” but individuals retain their uniqueness, the spread of pathology is especially efficient and deleterious, taking over the personalities of those involved.

Transmission happens more readily in vulnerable persons, but those who succumb are not necessarily of unsound mind to start. Delusions of persecution or general paranoia are the most common to transmit, but even bizarre beliefs, such as the primary person being of divine origin, are not rare. Exposure to actual delusions is unlike exposure to strategic lies or simple misinformation; they are more infectious because the primary person is genuinely convinced of them and the emotional pressures for others also to believe them is stronger. For example, when an influential figure holds the paranoid belief that a serious viral pandemic is a “hoax”, orchestrated by one’s enemies to bring down one’s presidency, it can be more emotionally persuasive than any reality and is difficult to correct.

2 Group members with high emotional investment

Another condition for the spread of mental disease is emotional investment. Folie à deux describes shared madness within a pair, but here we will focus on folie à groupe, or the spread of mental symptoms in a group. The group can be a household (folie à famille), a prison dormitory or cell-block, a religious or other highly emotionally-bonded group, a community, or a nation. Members may have high emotional investment in the primary person because of family relations, gang affiliation, cultic programming, or similar symptoms to start. Pathology in the primary individual facilitates transmission: a compulsive drive to “tweet”, a desire to deny reality coupled with propaganda, intolerance of uncertainty leading to pressures of conformity, and an insatiable need for adulation driving addiction-inducing, hypnotic rallies. These symptoms create the ideal conditions for additional transmission of symptoms.

As symptoms spread, cognitive distortions, delusions, and other manifestations take on an emotional power that are difficult to match with normal responses. Induced delusions function like primary delusions, wherein resistance is too great for evidence or truth to gain traction. Those who try to maintain their grounding in reality experience stress, anxiety, ostracism and exhaustion and may eventually submit. When it originates in disease, it is different from culture but is more aptly called a “cultural disorder.”

3 An environment that fosters contagion

Conditions of isolation, either physically or through filtered information, especially when they “immunize” against alternative viewpoints through phrases such as “fake news” or “the enemy of the people,” combined with constant, high levels of exposure to the symptomatic primary individual, is the formula for shared delusions. The environment, therefore, is very important.

Many have remarked on the cult-like quality of the leader-follower arrangement we see with the president and his supporters. The dynamic alarmed my colleagues in the mental health profession enough to write entire volumes. Existing arrangements of “viral” social media, profit-driven news programs that rely on ratings, and rallies that reinforce herd mentality and conformity, all contribute to the spread of symptoms.

How is the recognition of shared psychosis, or folie à groupe, helpful? We know from the scientific literature that, when contact with the inducing individual is removed, the shared symptoms usually subside just as dramatically as they have appeared. If removal is not possible, we know that reducing exposure can be helpful. We can prevent epidemics from occurring in the first place by screening for mental impairment before individuals take positions of influence. Further, we can take steps to protect ourselves in the future by promoting public mental health and education about mental disease, as well as reducing environmental “toxins” that include propaganda, brainwashing, and filtered information. Knowing that mental compromise can contribute to physical demise, and recognizing the distinct, characteristic patterns of disease, we can better avoid mistaking it for a normal choice or just another ideology that excites people.

:{:{}:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/what-trump-will-do-if-he-loses-is-the-wrong-question-what-matters-is-what-his-supporters-will-do/

:{:{}:

hnn

:{:{}:

It looks like Biden will beat Trump badly and the Republicans will suffer disastrous losses across the country in November.Although the polls have just been inching toward the Democrats, suddenly articles about what Trump might do if he loses are multiplying, here, here, and here.

Trump might declare the elections fake, go on FOX News to say he had really won, call out the National Guard, barricade himself in the Oval Office, order the Secret Service to shoot Biden on sight.

But what he will do is the wrong question. What matters is what his supporters will do when they lose.

Three groups of supporters are crucial to observe. The media will focus at first on Republican politicians.Will Senate losers in Montana, Arizona, Colorado, and other states jump on the fake news bandwagon? Would Mitch McConnell go quietly if Amy McGrath beats him in a very close race? Maybe Susan Collins will accept defeat in Maine, but what about QAnon promoter Jo Rae Perkins in Oregon? How about Lauren Boebert, QAnon enthusiast and House candidate in Colorado, and the other 7 Republican congressional candidates on the ballot who have expressed support for QAnon?

The whole Republican Senate delegation has already cast doubt on the results by allowing their leader to proclaim unchallenged that the election will be fraudulent. On June 22, Trump said the 2020 election “will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history”. In 2018, the National Republican Senatorial Committee followed up a Trump tweet about “electoral corruption” in the Arizona Senate race by charging that the election they lost there was rigged. Stripped of power, perhaps for years, it’s not hard to imagine Senators Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham, among others, casting doubt on the results.

Thus far the bravest Republicans in Washington, aside from Mitt Romney, are Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, who called Trump’s pardon of Roger Stone a “mistake”, and Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who said she won’t campaign against Joe Biden. The majority of Senate Republicans cowers in silence.

Will Trump’s toadies now running our intelligence services and justice system speak up and what will they say? Across the country, Republican state legislators who lose their gerrymandered majorities could join the chorus.

A second set of Trump supporters use their control of media to send waves of influence into every corner of America. Will FOX News report the official results or attack them? How about the other people to whom Republicans listen, even more partisan and less connected to reality, like Limbaugh, Breitbart, InfoWars, Drudge? Will powerful evangelical pastors Franklin Graham and Robert Jeffress proclaim that their God-given leader was cheated?

The third group is the most important and hardest to gauge – the MAGA-hat-wearing, Confederate-flag-waving white supremacists and conspiracy partisans who make up his legendary “base”. Will they see the end times coming as their messiah is defeated? Will the dozens of armed militia groups adopt 2^nd Amendment remedies to the impending takeover of America by radical socialist pedophiles? What will Ammon Bundy, the boogaloo boys, the Oath Keepers, and the more than 500 other anti-government groups loosely allied in the so-called “patriot movement” identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center do? Will the NRA call out its members to fight the commies?

Trump could scream himself hoarse with no effect unless his supporters sing along. As full election results trickle in the days after November 3 and as the implications sink in with the approach of Inauguration Day on January 20, 2021, a coalition of supporters in Washington, state governments, media, and on the ground might throw our country into an existential, not merely Constitutional crisis.

It’s certain that Trump will do nothing brave himself, will commit himself to no action that he can’t back out of. But the radicals who drive their cars into Black Lives Matter protesters, who bring their assault rifles to the pizza palace, and who believe anything “Q” says are much more volatile, unhinged, and violent.

Whatever answers such questions might elicit now will change over the next few months, as Trump stokes more fear among his supporters, pushes them further away from the American center, and forces his Republican allies to come along.

Watch Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), Matt Gaetz (Florida) and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (California), Gov. Ron DeSantis (Florida), and Mark Meadows, White House Chief of Staff. Watch wily Mitch McConnell, who shares with Trump a powerful belief in the importance of his own survival.

And watch out for America.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/if-trump-loses-and-drags-down-mitch-mcconnell-expect-the-gop-to-get-even-scarier-political-scientist/

:{:{}:

yikes // sherman below

:{:{}:

Trump’s poll numbers are bad and getting worse, and Republicans are bracing for a possibly devastating loss in November’s election.

The coronavirus pandemic has proven to be an anchor on the president’s political fortunes, and his failures may drag down Mitch McConnell’s Senate majority and increase the Democrats’ House majority, according to political scientist Daniel Drezner’s new column for the Washington Post.

“Let’s assume this outcome for a second — what does it mean for the GOP?” wrote Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. “Politics is a coldblooded game, and even before Trump has been declared a political dead man walking, speculation is beginning about what comes after.”

Some Republicans have already jumped ship and become #NeverTrumpers, but Drezner is doubtful that the GOP will engage in deep self-reflection about the conditions that led to that downfall.

“Even if Trump crashes and burns, his cult of personality will command significant loyalty from his #MAGA base,” Drezner wrote. “That alone is enough to influence party primaries that in turn influence the party’s future leaders.”

Right-wing conspiracy theorist and anti-immigrant bigot Allen West was elected this week to lead the Texas GOP, and Drezner sees that as a sign that a post-Trump Republican Party could move even further to the fringes.

“The scary thing about a post-Trump GOP is the prospect that it learns nothing,” Drezner wrote. “After getting pasted in 2006 and 2008, the GOP adopted an obstructionist posture during the Obama years. The more disaffected voters were during the Great Recession, the better this strategy worked.It is all too conceivable that the post-Trump GOP changes itself not at all. It can count on the vagaries of partisan politics in the United States to eventually inherit political power once again.”

===

Jeremy Sherman July 19, 2020

:{:{}:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/this-is-the-rhetorical-trick-most-likely-to-cause-our-species-extinction/

:{:{}:

For all the invective we throw and recycle at the MAGA cult, we have yet to put a finger on, let alone driven a stake through that cult’s mindless, heartlessness. Our invective is at most therapeutic for us with little effect on them.

They’re shape-shifters, masters of deflection, but it’s not a blur of various identities. They’re shape-togglers shuttling fluidly between two identities, prude and brat, pope and punk, saint and cynic, family-values and incel revolt, high-horse parent and petulant child, defenders of the status quo and cultural wrecking crew, upholders of moral propriety and anarchist dismantlers.

Yes, that’s just another example of the cult’s hypocrisy, but I think it’s the pivotal one, the mother of all of their hypocrisies. It’s how they declare us losers for not meeting their moral standards and losers for caring about moral standards. These shape-togglers reproach us for our political incorrectness and conversely for being PC.

Holy war is an oxymoron: Holiness is a commitment to righteousness but all’s fair in war. There’s no racket one can’t dignify with holy war because there’s no deed too dirty for the saints who wage it.

They don’t just go low. They go above and below, anywhere but meeting us at eye level. They’re pedant parents talking down to us, or petulant teens complaining about how domineering we are. That’s how they escape adult-to-adult debate. It’s “shame on you!” when that’s to their advantage and when we try shaming them, it’s “So what? You do it too” cynicism.

You don’t have to be dumb to become one of these shape-toggling assholes fluidly shifting between playing saint and boor. You just have to be a little hungry, lazy, or swept up in some supposedly holy war.

The dumbness comes easily with time. Thinking about your inconsistency only gets in the way. Discover this shape-toggling trick and your mind just atrophies. You’ve found a more efficient way to thrive: Ignore words. Listen for sounds. If you hear threats to your authority, ape saintly high-horse condemnation. If you hear concern and care, ape crass ridicule and contempt. That’s all. Two buttons; two pre-recordings. You’ll find you no longer need a mind or a heart. Nothing purges a conscience as fast as outrage and with shape-toggling you have the only two routes to outrage you’ll ever need – caring and not caring about moral standards.

Their cardinal sin is something viral. It’s not alive and yet it’s a parasite that makes zombies of people – not just the MAGA cult – that’s just the current epidemic. There have been epidemics of it throughout history.

No deed too dirty for the holy followers of Christ, Hitler, Stalin, the Jihadists. It’s how anyone plays God, eternally omnificent, omnipotent and omniscient. It’s the ass-holy trinity whereby saintliness licenses sin, sin wins and winning “proves” saintliness.

This zombie-like rhetorical end-run is, I’d argue the most probable cause of human extinction. Why? Because there’s no talking to those infected. Reality, which zombies refuse to heed gives them the ultimate smackdown.

:{:{Here’s a four minute video I made about it: }:(style="box-sizing:border-box;outline:none;margin:0px;padding:0px"/maxresdefault.jpg)}:

Jeremy Sherman, PhD. I am a psychoproctologist. I do non-partisan research into the nature of absolutists, regardless of what they pretend to believe. How do people become total jerks? What's gotten into them? Actually, It's what they fall into, a shell within a shell for protection from life's doubts and possibilities, first some comforting doctrine and since that's not protection enough, a sealed shell of empty rhetoric. The narration: You’ve seen them, acting lofty yet slithering beneath all dignity with dead yet piercing eyes and vaporous yet overbearing presence that they lord over you. Nobody’s home and yet they take up so much space, insisting on having their way, whatever way they happen to be swinging in the moment. What’s gotten into them? Where’s the human? All you get is inhumanity playing God. They claim they’ve found truth, different truths yet all the same. They loom and boom most at each other, reactionaries and counter-reactionaries, cults and counter-cults. In The Book of Revelations, the right and righteous drop their mortal bodies, beamed up to heaven, there to sit incorporeal and eternal by God on high, forever at peace with the One True Way. That’s how they act no matter what they claim to believe, Godly or Godless, like zombies, the undead howling with authority. One can’t influence what’s already dead. And they take up so much space. It’s not what got into them; it’s what they got into, a shell within a shell as protection against uncertainty, the sandstorm of possibilities we humans trudge through, clothed only in our wits and a smattering of comforting thoughts. Sometimes the comforting thoughts congeal into a comforting doctrine, a shell woven from comforting thoughts intertwined, though with gaps. People tuck or fall into a comforting doctrine for extra comfort, safer than winging it like a human, though it’s still exposed to the elements. The sandstorm’s sting of discouraging counter-possibilities still sears through. For still more comfort, they burrow into a second layer of protection. Gapless, hermetic, it’s thin yet opaque, an impenetrable film of empty rhetoric that converts all possibilities into self-affirmations, all discouragement into encouragement, harnessable energy as they swagger and barrel through the sandstorm in complete comfort. Nothing can challenge them now. Same shell of empty rhetoric regardless of their comforting doctrine. That’s why they all sound the same. It’s what gives them that airy inaccessible loft. There’s no getting to them. They have an empty rhetorical answer for everything. They’re now two shells in and all but gone, first burrowed within a comforting doctrine and then within the shell of empty rhetoric within which selves decompose. Selfhood interferes with the smooth operations of empty rhetoric. Gone then is all concern with one’s integrity, honor or reality. The comforting doctrine decomposes too, converted to lip service wielded by the empty rhetoric. The empty rhetoric sedates the self with a comforting story of transformation. Revelation is the archetype: The right and righteous will shed their mortal beings, beamed up to heaven, there to sit incorporeal and invincible, forever at peace with the One True Way, no reason ever to return to human hardship. Godly or Godless these people split, the tawdry self going low and decomposing, the empty rhetoric going high and eternally insubstantial. You, a human, can no longer meet them at eye level.

:{:{}:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/trump-is-bleeding-support-from-the-only-voters-who-have-stuck-with-him-since-2016/

:{:{}:

620 an raw story

Donald Trump is losing support from his evangelical base as he lurches from one crisis into another.

Numerous polls show that religious Americans, like most other Americans, disapprove of the president’s performance, and that could imperil his re-election chances, reported the New York Times.

Nearly 80 percent of white evangelicals — a group that’s already shrinking as a share of the electorate — approved of Trump’s performance in March, but his handling of the coronavirus pandemic has bled 15 points from their support, according to a new poll from Public Religion Research Institute.

“He had an opportunity in March when people were looking to him,” said Robert Jones, the institute’s chief executive, “and then within four weeks he squandered it.”

Those losses could be offset by efforts from activist group’s such as Ralph Reed’s Christian Coalition, which plans to spend tens of millions of dollars to identify and register new religious conservative voters and rallying right-wing Christians.

And another PRRI poll from last year found that 31 percent of white evangelical voters said there was almost nothing Trump could do to lose their support.

===

aha: this has existed for a while as dirty tricks tactic (us vs them enemies; dirty germy foreigners; we are victims? amplifty and acclerate by trump and soc med echo escalator post truth; bktv 5/20 re-imagine capitalism says inequality acknowledged by all, even ceo; increases social instability and will --> left or rt populism and you won't like either, ceo's [lipton tea, aetna min wage]

:{:{}:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-uses-his-weird-grip-on-republicans-to-stoke-a-nihilistic-culture-war/

:{:{}:

no lnx pix

:{:{}:

trump uses his weird grip on Republicans to stoke a nihilistic culture war

:{:{}:

Donald J. Trump holding a rally in Panama City Beach, Florida, on May 8, 2019 // Office of the President of the United States/Donald J. Trump

:{:{}:

Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon May 29, 2020

:{:{}:

I don’t think there’s ever been a U.S. president with more influence with his political base that Donald Trump. All presidents are defended by those who support them, of course. Even the most unpopular failures have diehard fans who stick with them to the bitter end.

:{:{}:

But Trump is unusual in that he has only ever attempted to govern on behalf of the people who support him and has no feeling of responsibility toward any other citizens. He has taken the already polarized Republican Party and turned it into a cult of personality. His influence over the 40 to 45% of the population who seem to idolize him is immense.

:{:{}:

Perhaps it’s because Trump was a celebrity with a TV show long before he entered politics that makes his fans love him so unconditionally. Whatever it is, Trump and his supporters have an unusually personal and almost intimate bond. It’s clear after three and a half tumultuous years that they will follow his lead no matter what.

:{:{}:

The political implications of this are profound. This weird relationship between president and base now completely dominates the Republican Party, apparently making it impossible for any prominent national figure in the party to allow even the smallest daylight between himself or herself and Trump. (Frankly, very few even seem to be trying.)

:{:{:{}:

}:}:

The red MAGA hat serves as an official symbol of Trump loyalty, and there is a certain part of his following that uses it as a tool of intimidation. Even more disturbing, there has been a spate of mass shootings and other acts of violence by people who have named Trump or his ideas as motivation.

:{:{}:

In order to maintain his supporters’ devotion, Trump has stoked the culture wars at every turn, ruthlessly dividing the country in order to keep his fans engaged. They receive such hypocritical gestures of solidarity as his newfound “pro-life” zealotry with enthusiastic gratitude — but what they really love are his brutal assaults on those they consider their political and cultural enemies. In that, Trump and his base are one.

:{:{}:

So it should come as no surprise that when Trump faced the first crisis of his presidency that was not of his own making — and failed to meet the challenge — he would reflexively fall back on culture-war tactics to reinforce his base. His response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been abysmal, with the death toll now over 100,000 and the economy in dire straits. After bungling the response so badly that it will be studied by historians for centuries as an example of poor leadership, Trump is returning to his original instinct, which was simply to deny that the whole thing mattered, or was even happening.

:{:{}:

His supporters have eagerly followed his lead, defying public health guidelines and demanding that their governors “reopen” immediately (or in Trump’s own words of incitement, that they “liberate” their states.) Trump clearly believes that he can wish away the virus — or at least people’s concern about the virus — by pretending that the crisis is over and that we can go back to normal.

:{:{}:

As we speak, he’s arguing with the state government of North Carolina about the Republican National Convention, which is scheduled for late August in Charlotte. Republican officials had reportedly been discussing how they could stage the event while observing CDC social distancing guidelines, and everything had been going smoothly. Trump, however, wants his big party, and wants it to be crammed with people screaming ecstatically at his every word. What he doesn’t want is anyone wearing masks.

:{:{}:

In fact, wearing a mask, or rather not wearing one, is fast becoming as much of a symbol of Trump fealty as those red MAGA hats. Trump’s allies on Fox News have pushed it hard among the faithful (with the unexpected exception of Sean Hannity.)

:{:{}:

Acyn Torabi

@Acyn

Laura’s war against masks continues

:{:{}:

Embedded video

:{:{}:

As Salon’s Igor Derysh reports, studies show that people who watch Fox are far more inclined to defy public health guidelines. But really, it’s Trump himself who has turned masks into a culture-war symbol by ostentatiously refusing to wear one.

:{:{}:

This makes little sense, of course, if he genuinely wants to reopen the country in a way that allows workers and consumers to feel safe going about their business. Masks and social distancing are common-sense ways to begin doing that, and normalizing that behavior will bring back the economy more quickly. But Trump has decided to pretend that the crisis is over, as I said earlier, and mask-wearing and social distancing don’t exactly send that message.

:{:{}:

I also suspect that his resistance is largely due to vanity. The man truly believes that wearing one will make him look foolish (which can only be described as amazing) and he may also have concerns about the mask rubbing off his thick orange makeup.

:{:{}:

All of this comes as he’s also implying it’s somehow weak, unmanly and un-American to wear one. In fact, he’s seized upon this as a new attack line against Joe Biden:

:{:{}:

Judd Legum

@JuddLegum

:{:{}:

New Trump ads on Facebook mock Biden for wearing a mask

:{:{}:

View image on Twitter

:{:{}:

Some Republicans are actually pushing back on this, notably state governors who will have to deal with the resurgence of cases if people follow Trump’s dangerous example. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has urged people to wear them. It’s hard to know why these dissenters are stepping up now, but maybe it’s because they see something really dark and ugly taking hold among the Trump faithful.

:{:{}:

For instance, Republicans in the Pennsylvania legislature who have been railing against public health measures turned out to have concealed the fact that one of their own members had contracted the virus. They quarantined themselves but never told their Democratic colleagues, allowing them to potentially expose their family members and loved ones without knowing it.

:{:{}:

According to the Washington Post, there are businesses in various parts of the country now barring customers from wearing masks in their establishments. This was from an interview with Kevin Smith, proprietor of the Liberty Tree Tavern in Elgin, Texas:

:{:{}:

“If we’re only allowed to be at 25 percent capacity, I want them to be the 25 percent of people that aren’t p—–, that aren’t sheep,” Smith told The Washington Post. “Being scared all the time isn’t good for your health. It suppresses your immune system.”

:{:{}:

Trump posted this tweet yesterday, cutely pretending that he was just making an observation:

:{:{}:

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

:{:{}:

So many different viewpoints! https://twitter.com/leesmithdc/status/1265629746450358273 …

:{:{}:

Lee Smith

@LeeSmithDC

:{:{}:

Terrific ?@molmccann? piece in ?@FDRLST? — masks aren’t about public health but social control. Image of Biden in black mask endorses culture of silence, slavery, and social death. https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/27/mandatory-masks-arent-about-safety-theyre-about-social-control/ …

:{:{}:

39.6K

5:16 AM - May 28, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

20.7K people are talking about this

:{:{}:

The science is clear on this: Masks work. If everyone wore them when they were out in public it would make a significant difference in slowing the transmission of the virus. These people are pretending to be tough, but in reality they’re just following the example of the president and living in denial.

:{:{}:

Imagine a world where, instead of behaving so foolishly, Trump modeled sensible behavior by wearing a mask and social distancing and encouraging businesses to open up responsibly? His followers would buy red MAGA masks by the truckload and turn social distancing into the mark of macho American individualism. But he can’t do that, of course, because stoking the culture war is literally his last hope of winning re-election.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-trolls-the-libs-with-100000-dead-and-39-million-out-of-work-and-his-fanboys-love-it/

:{:{}:

memorial Day weekend will likely be remembered by history as one marked by unimaginable tragedy. The official count of people dead from COVID-19 approached 100,000 — a milestone that will surely be passd on Tuesday or Wednesday — and the actual death toll is likely much higher. The weekend kicked off with new reports of soaring unemployment, putting the number of Americans who have filed benefit claims at 38.6 million, nearly one of every four workers in the United States.

Donald Trump, who currently occupies the White House despite losing the 2016 popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million, could not care less about all this suffering among the people he is purportedly there to serve. We know this, because he spent his weekend ranting on Twitter about pretty much anything — including obviously false conspiracy theories about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough — except the crisis he prefers to pretend isn’t happening at all.

What’s equally upsetting is the soul-deadening knowledge that Trump’s voters, who could well hand him another electoral victory even in the face of a near-certain popular vote defeat, also don’t appear to care about his sociopathic behavior. On the contrary, many of them seem to relish the fact that Trump continues to “trigger the liberals,” even as the nation falls apart around him.

:{:{}:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/heres-why-people-stick-with-trump-and-fox-news-even-when-their-lies-kill/

:{:{}:

no lnx

:{:{}:

Here’s why people stick with Trump and Fox News — even when their lies kill

:{:{}:

Written by Ian Reifowitz / Daily Kos April 26, 2020

:{:{}:

Why are Trump supporters so devoted? The simple answer is that they are members of a death cult. Call it the #TrumpDeathCult. Beyond that simple answer, there’s this: When your identity rests on Trump and his party being right, to admit that they are wrong—or worse, that they don’t even give a rat’s ass about you and yours—requires rethinking everything you are. I guess for some people, dying is easier.

:{:{}:

Donald Trump and his state propaganda sycophants over at Fox News hyped hydroxychloroquine as a “game changer,” until it was game over. We learned this week that taking the drug not only doesn’t help people recover from COVID-19, it makes it more likely that they will drop dead. Why doesn’t this make hordes of Republican voters say, “What in the world am I doing listening to these shameless liars?” The fact that they don’t is what makes them dangerous.

:{:{}:

But wait, there’s more.

:{:{}:

If this news, reported by The New York Times, doesn’t make a person run screaming from the land of Trump, Fox News, and bald-faced lies back to the world of facts and science, then I don’t know what will.

:{:{}:

The official who led the federal agency involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine said on Wednesday that he was removed from his post after he pressed for rigorous vetting of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug embraced by President Trump as a coronavirus treatment, and that the administration had put “politics and cronyism ahead of science.”

:{:{}:

In a scorching statement, Dr. Bright, who received a Ph.D. in immunology and molecular pathogenesis from Emory University, assailed the leadership at the health department, saying he was pressured to direct money toward hydroxychloroquine, one of several “potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections” and repeatedly described by the president as a potential “game changer” in the fight against the virus.

:{:{}:

“I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the Covid-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” he said in his statement. “I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science — not politics or cronyism — has to lead the way.”

:{:{}:

Folks, we are living in 1984, and we have been for some time now. To paraphrase George Orwell: Hydroxychloroquine is a game changer. Hydroxychloroquine has always been a game changer. We will not speak of hydroxychloroquine. We have never spoken of hydroxychloroquine.

:{:{}:

And yet I still can’t believe these people don’t stand up and reject their right-wing masters. I’m like Charlie Brown, who thinks that this time—despite it never having happened before—Lucy will let me kick that ever-loving football. “What’s wrong with these conservatives?” I scream in my head. Don’t they care about themselves? About their own friends and families? Do the Fox News viewers even notice that suddenly no one is talking about hydroxychloroquine anymore, after it was hyped for weeks? Don’t they care?

:{:{}:

Of course, this is even bigger than just hydroxychloroquine. Even though they had been warned—and thus knew better—Trump, Republicans, and Fox News have been lying about the severity of the coronavirus since the start. Then, once the bodies started piling up, they began lying about the fact that they had lied.

:{:{}:

Will large numbers of Trump supporters and Fox News true believers ever get angry enough about being peddled deadly lies that they turn against Republican candidates? The answer appears to be no. Are they really more interested in “owning the libs” than the lives of their loved ones?

Sadly, the answer appears to be yes.

:{:{}:

Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh’s Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas).

:{:{}:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trumps-anti-intellectualism-didnt-come-from-nowhere-the-gops-disdain-for-science-has-endangered-us-all

:{:{}:

no lnx

:{:{}:

Trump’s anti-intellectualism didn’t come from nowhere — the GOP’s disdain for science has endangered us all

:{:{}:

Written by The Washington Monthly April 24, 2020

:{:{}:

Donald Trump recently created a stir by retweeting a call by a Republican politician to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci. The reason: Fauci had the temerity to contradict the president on scientific facts. Then, whether out of fear or a willful suspension of intellect, the president’s coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx proclaimed that Trump has been “so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data”—in contradiction to the avalanche of lies Trump puts out in his daily propaganda rallies masquerading as pandemic briefings.

:{:{}:

Yet these are but surface examples of an ongoing tension between experts and Trumpists.It is a dynamic that has been at play since the very beginning of the administration: the war between experts and propagandists, between actual facts and “alternative facts.” Driving it is a wave of anti-intellectualism growing in America. And now, in this era of pandemic, tens of thousands of American lives are at stake. So, too, is the nation’s credibility. Given Donald Trump’s relentless antipathy toward truth and expertise, the outlook doesn’t look promising.

:{:{}:

As the novel coronavirus rampaged across the country, a storm broke out in the White House over how to respond. Rather than taking dramatic actions early on to curtail the spread of the virus and prepare states and hospitals to meet the coming surge, the administration reverted to its profound anti-intellectualism, all in a bid to deflect its own failure in protecting American lives.

:{:{}:

Disturbingly, Trump promoted the anti-malarial drug hydroxychlorine to tackle the virus, despite the fact that it hasn’t gone through the proper testing and approval process. After hearing about a country doctor in upstate New York who claimed to have treated patients for the disease with a cocktail of hydroxychlorine and other drugs with positive results, the president ran with it as a magic bullet. “I’ll tell you what, what do you have to lose?” he said. A just-released Veterans Administration study shows not only no benefit from use of hydroxychlorine, but there were more deaths among patients given the drug.Then, Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro asserted that studies have showed the drug to have “clear therapeutic efficacy” in treating Covid-19 patients. Asked his qualifications for making such a claim, Navarro told CNN, “I’m a social scientist.” Others also trumpeting the medicine include the president’s usual Fox News chorus, led by Sean Hannity, and Rudolf Giuliani. This has had real impact: the White House directed health officials to put the anti-malarial medication ahead of other efforts to combat the outbreak. The federal government has since stockpiled 29 million pills.

:{:{}:

Scientists, however, are counseling caution. “In terms of science, I don’t think we can definitively say it works,” said Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top epidemiologist. American Medical Association President Patrice Harris added: “You could lose your life. It’s unproven.” Axios reported a major blow-up in the situation room at one point between Navarro and a skeptical Fauci, who has confided to colleagues that Trump “almost always” ignores the advice he gives him before the daily press briefings.

:{:{}:

Trump’s own CDC issued a statement on April 7 saying, “There are no drugs or other therapeutics approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to prevent or treat COVID-19.” Medical experts are cautioning it will take a minimum of 12 to 18 months to come up with a vaccine.

:{:{}:

In the meantime, Trump is putting the public health at even greater risk by propagating lies and misinformation. As of this writing, the coronavirus has claimed more than 47,000 American lives. Fatalities far surpass those in China, a nation with four times our population. And the rate of confirmed cases is growing faster in the United States than in all of Western Europe. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicts some 67,000 Americans could die by August. Right now, one American dies of coronavirus every 45 seconds.

:{:{}:

How many more will die depends on who is calling the shots: experts or hacks.

:{:{}:

The Trump administration’s attitude toward science can only be described as contemptuous.There has been an 85 percent turnover of federal agency senior executives,and President Trump has failed to appoint anyone to nearly half of the federal scientific leadership positions. More often than not, Trump appointees are unqualified and ideologically driven.

:{:{}:

Trump’s disdain for science comes with grievous consequences.He was alerted by the intelligence community of an emerging pandemic in January. Still, the president squandered more than two months before treating the issue seriously. That came after he disbanded the National Security Council’s pandemic team and defunded a $200 million USAID program for detecting virus outbreaks overseas. Simply put, the president rid the government of some of its best resources to prepare for and respond to this kind of emergency. These actions come on top of the administration’s measures to marginalize science and fact-based research, including denying climate change.

:{:{}:

But Trumpism did not come out of nowhere. Undergirding the president’s war on expertise is a recurrent strain of anti-intellectualism in America’s social and political DNA. As the late writer Isaac Asimov observed, “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”

:{:{}:

Trump panders to rightwing populists’ contempt for empirical facts and expert knowledge. Rush Limbaugh, whom Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, has named science as one of his so-called Four Corners of Deceit, which also include government, academia and media. The coronavirus, Limbaugh said, “appears far less deadly” than the flu, but the government and the mainstream news media “keep promoting panic.”

:{:{}:

The evangelical movement, a bedrock of Trump’s base, promotes an anti-science culture that rejects critical thinking.Pro-Trump Pentecostal preacher Rodney Howard-Browne has called his followers to attend church services in defiance of social distancing restrictions, dismissing coronavirus as a “phantom plague.”

:{:{}:

Of course, it’s no surprise that anti-intellectualism also extends into the halls of Congress, where a sitting congressman declared a few years ago that evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell,” and where the chairman of a Senate environmental committee brought a snowball into the chamber to prove that climate change is a hoax.

:{:{}:

The coronavirus is not a hoax. It’s a mega-killer. A month after President Trump assured everyone that it would “go away,” more than 850,000 Americans have tested positive and the U.S. leads the world in the number of Covid-19-related deaths. Now, with his call over the weekend to “liberate” states imposing shelter-in-place orders, and red-state governors taking a care-free approach to social distancing, the risk of these numbers burgeoning out of control becomes very real.

:{:{}:

Perhaps reality will sink in as the body count rises. Statistics, after all, are stubborn things. No amount of bluster, bluffing, and bullshit by the president and his enablers can obfuscate or contradict them. If there was ever a moment when it should be clear to voters why the nation needs a return to policies based on facts, knowledge, and science, this is it.

:{:{}:

trump base protest ohio, mi [devos freedom fund] , kty

aha TP koch astro creation that cd be pointed at whatever eg aca, // trumpistas? via fox?

:{:{}:

trumpistas the most vuln to covid, and getting least help rural small bix has no big bank relation

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-fans-cant-admit-hes-to-blame-for-this-crisis-so-theyre-launching-nonsensical-protests-instead

:{:{}:

no lnx

:{:{}:

Trump fans can’t admit he’s to blame for this crisis — so they’re launching nonsensical protests instead

:{:{}:

Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon April 16, 2020

:{:{}:

On Wednesday, a crowd of right-wing nuts — complete with their oversized but underworked utility vehicles, Confederate flags, guns and other such overcompensation accoutrements — descended on the State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, to whine about the temporary pause to dinners at Applebee’s and accidental brushfires at gender-reveal parties. The deep fear of emasculation driving the protest was not particularly subtle at this protest, as the crowd chanted “Lock her up” at Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who is accused of no other crime other than making deeply insecure men fuss about a woman in power.

:{:{}:

The ostensible purpose of the protests was to pressure Whitmer to relax some of the restrictions on businesses and movement under the coronavirus lockdown. In reality, of course, this is happening because a bunch of Fox News-loving Trump supporters have been poisoned by propaganda that has convinced them the coronavirus is overblown or a hoax, all being spread by the libs to destroy Trump’s chances at re-election.

:{:{}:

Well, that, and the fact that they’re a bunch of sexists who hate having a female governor, which goes a long way toward explaining why the Michigan protest was bigger than others in Ohio or North Carolina, whose governors are male.

:{:{}:

The immense Trump propaganda infrastructure is marshaling these folks for one simple reason: This crisis is Trump’s fault, and he desperately needs someone to blame for his failures, which have led to the spread of the virus and the collapse of the economy. So these numbskulls are being organized to protest the governors who are trying to clean up Trump’s mess, which is a little like protesting the doctors who are treating patients who got sick because Trump refused to do anything serious to limit the spread of the virus.

:{:{}:

Oh wait — they did that, too, by blocking ambulances trying to take patients to the hospital.

:{:{}:

The protest is incoherent. Everyone wants to reopen the economy, but the main reason we can’t is because Trump, in his incompetence and malice, has persistently refused to take steps to institute the widespread testing that’s necessary before lockdowns can be eased. If these conservatives want the economy to restart, they should stay home, stop watching Fox News and give money to any Democrats running for anything, because the only way this country can survive this is with competent leadership that’s willing to do what needs doing.

:{:{}:

That incoherence goes even deeper than the immediate idiocy of blaming the people who are trying to fix the problem instead of the orange menace in the White House who caused it. These protests also lay bare the larger incoherence of the right-wing mythology that conservatives are rugged individualists who are tougher and better prepared than those supposedly soft, effete liberals in the big cities.

:{:{}:

Right-wingers love to talk a big game about how tough they are, compared to the avocado-toast-eating class, but what Wednesday’s protest revealed was a bunch of spoiled brats ready to fall apart in the face of even the slightest inconvenience.

:{:{}:

Rosanne Ponkowski, one of the protest’s organizers, complained to the Daily Beast, “We can’t take our boats on the water if they have an engine” and added, “We can’t buy paint and go paint our house.”

:{:{}:

Other massive infringements on liberty: The inability to buy patio furniture, Legos or bug spray. It’s not easy to hire somebody to mow the lawn. You literally can’t make this stuff up.

:{:{}:

What is immediately clear is that these “rugged individuals” fall apart completely at the first sign of even the slightest hardship. For all the History Channel documentaries about World War II they might consume, they aren’t exactly the hard-bitten warriors they dream themselves to be. Instead, they’re a bunch of whiny babies who have spent their entire lives in the consumer bubble, and react to the prospect of giving up fishing for a few months as if their legs were being forcibly amputated.

:{:{}:

Turns out that these individuals are, in fact, highly dependent on the communities they live in, so much so that a few weeks of needing to curtail shopping and socializing has led to a total meltdown.

:{:{}:

The obvious truth here is that times are hard on everyone. That’s especially true for the 22 million Americans who’ve filed for unemployment, the more than 600,000 who are sick, and the families of the nearly 30,000 people who have died from this virus. But there’s plenty of room to feel compassion for the rest of us who are going stir-crazy, who are fighting with family members or who are suffering from social isolation.

:{:{}:

Hell, there’s nothing wrong with being grumpy that you can’t get your garden planted in time this year or that you can’t go fishing. People deserve pleasure, especially during a crisis when the small things are often what keep us going. State governments should certainly strive to write quarantine regulations that strike a balance between public heath needs and ordinary people’s desire to find joy in their daily lives.

:{:{}:

But it’s really rich for the self-proclaimed “rugged individuals” of America to be such big, whiny babies in the face of this.

:{:{}:

We’re forever hearing from right wingers how the rest of us need to toughen up a little. People on food stamps just need to “get a job,” even though most food assistance recipients already have one. If millennials can’t afford to buy houses, it’s because they’re over-indulged hipsters who eat too much avocado toast. (Reality: They’re trapped by soaring housing costs and saddled with too much student debt.) A woman who doesn’t want to be forced into childbirth should have just kept her legs shut.

:{:{}:

Right-wing Americans have little sympathy for millions of their fellow citizens who face real hardship, but an endless amount of self-pity because they have to skip a fishing trip. No wonder they love Trump, a man who can’t be bothered to care about Americans dying, but is in full-blown panic mode because he might not get re-elected.

:{:{}:

In reality, this pandemic has exposed how we’re all in this together and none of us are “rugged individuals.” We need those health care workers and grocery store employees and teachers. We are all dependent on each other, not just for the basic necessities of life, but the luxuries like boating and gardening. Right wingers have spent decades denying this fact, clinging to their Ayn Rand fantasies that they’re not dependent on the rest of us and are under no obligation to pay their taxes or by treating others with decency and compassion.

:{:{}:

But it turns out that conservatives are more dependent on the system that all the people they deplore as weak, so much so that a minor interruption in their daily life causes a full-blown temper tantrum like the one we witnessed in Michigan this week. More are coming, we can be sure of that.

===

ref 1

https://www.salon.com/2020/04/16/trumps-tea-party-are-right-wing-open-the-country-protests-an-astroturf-operation/

:{:{}:

no lnx

:{:{}:

Dawn Perreca protests on the front steps of the Michigan State Capitol building in Lansing, Mich., Wednesday, April 15, 2020. Flag-waving, honking protesters drove past the Michigan Capitol on Wednesday to show their displeasure with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's orders to keep people at home and businesses locked during the new coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)]

:{:{}:

Trump's Tea Party: Are right-wing "open the country" protests an AstroTurf operation?

Right-wing donors are overtly funding this feeble wave of protests — and it could be a Trump campaign operation

:{:{}:

SOPHIA TESFAYE

APRIL 16, 2020

:{:{}:

Familiar chants of "Lock her up!" rang out during Wednesday protests at the State Capitol in Michigan, a state Donald Trump flipped in 2016. The day before, protesters carried the "Don't Tread on Me" Gadsden flag, repopularized by the far right in recent years, at a North Carolina rally. In Ohio on Monday, more than 100 protesters swarmed the governor's daily press briefing on the coronavirus response, carrying signs that claimed "the cure is worse than the virus."

:{:{}:

This backlash from the far right against attempts to "slow the spread" of the deadly pathogen is a textbook example of what happens when faith in public health experts is undermined — in this case, due to a deliberate, decades-long campaign to erode trust in expertise.

:{:{}:

Perhaps all this was to be expected. One of the first signs was the venomous response to workers, like those at Amazon, Instacart and Target who deigned to protest their safety conditions in the midst of a global pandemic. Laborers who called for increased pay and protections to correspond with surge demand were unfairly exploiting a crisis, some right-wing commentators argued. Others in "Trump's death cult," as Salon's Chauncey DeVega has described them, rushed to demand that the powers that be "reopen the country," even as the coronavirus continued to spread, and well before — shelter-in-place orders had a chance to do their work. The American way, they made clear, means markets must be valued over human lives.

:{:{}:

So while Trump's campaign rallies have indefinitely relocated to a socially-distanced White House, it comes as little surprise that his supporters have taken to openly flouting CDC guidelines in order to protest the call for personal sacrifice to help ensure the safety of the community. One unanswered question is whether this is an organic movement or a more organized effort, akin to the AstroTurf Tea Party protests that were prominent on the right during the Obama years.

:{:{}:

The protests come just as President Trump's short-lived "rally around the flag" polling bump begins to subside, and as Democratic governors across the nation see their job approval ratings rise. Beginning in Ohio on Monday, then North Carolina on Tuesday and Michigan and Kentucky on Wednesday, with more planned for Arizonain the coming days, these modest gatherings certainly suggest a degree of national coordination. Call it Trump's Tea Party or the right-wing Resistance — no matter how the pushback has been organized, it's clear that the political objective of these protests goes beyond any specific policy outcome.

:{:{}:

Protesters against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's shutdown orders had promised a car-bound event dubbed "Operation Gridlock," but at least 200 people physically gathered at the steps of the State Capitol in Lansing on Wednesday, armed with Confederate flags, pro-Trump banners and anti-Whitmer signs, some comparing the governor to Hitler. Most protesters did not wear masks. Republican House Speaker Lee Chatfield greeted the protesters by waving an American flag from a window at his Capitol office.

:{:{}:

Thousands of people from all over Michigan are converging on our state Capitol today to protest the governor's restrictive "Stay Home" order and get their voices, and car horns, heard. #OperationGridlock pic.twitter.com/bgjH4wKCUQ

:{:{}:

— MI House Republicans (@MI_Republicans) April 15, 2020

:{:{}:

Whitmer, a co-chair of Joe Biden's presidential campaign, has become a target of the right after she publicly tangled with Trump over the federal government's inadequate pandemic response. While Whitmer's management the coronavirus outbreak in her state received a 71% approval rating in a poll released this week, Trump's handling of the crisis was rated considerably lower, with only 51% of Michganders approving.

:{:{}:

This week, six Republican House members from Michigan released a letter calling on Whitmer to amend her order, accusing her of "needlessly shutting down large sectors of the economy and further restricting the lives of residents." Announcing their plan to defy Whitmer's shelter-in-place orders, four Michigan sheriffs argued the governor was "overstepping her executive authority." Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel tweeted that Whitmer was turning Michigan into a "police state."

:{:{}:

"Gretchen, stop auditioning for VP & do your job," she said.

:{:{}:

Similar protests took place in Kentucky on Wednesday, directed at Democratic Gov.Andy Beshear's stay-at-home order and organized by a onetime political appointee of former Republican Gov. Matt Bevin. The GOP operative recently made headlines for claiming, without evidence, that Beshear defeated Bevin last November due to vote "hacking."

:{:{}:

On Tuesday, more than 100 protesters in Raleigh, North Carolina, came together to oppose Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's stay-at-home order. The protest was organized through a private Facebook group named #ReOpenNC started by a stay-at-home mother who told the Raleigh News & Observer that she is "against mandatory vaccination." The group said it plans to hold weekly rallies, a promise also made by the 100-plus protesters who interrupted Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, on Monday.

:{:{}:

Will be forever haunted by this image of protestors in Ohio demanding the governor open businesses back up pic.twitter.com/P0nivaYSsY

:{:{}:

— future canon (@futurecanon) April 15, 2020

:{:{}:

So who is behind the sudden sprouting of right-wing resistance? Unlike with the Tea Party movement of the recent past, the mega-donors behind today's right-wing rallies are making no effort to hide their involvement.

:{:{}:

FreedomWorks, the instrumental force behind the Tea Party, "is holding weekly virtual town halls with members of Congress, igniting an activist base of thousands of supporters across the nation to back up the effort" led by right-wing commentator Stephen Moore. the Associated Press reported. Other right-wing groups vocally opposing shutdowns include Americans for Prosperity, an organization funded by the Koch brothers, and the conservative Heritage Foundation.

:{:{}:

There is even a connection to the family of Trump's Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. As Michigan's governor noted, the DeVos family foundation helped fund Facebook ads for this week's protest. While noting that the Education Secretary ended her political spending when she joined Trump's Cabinet, a spokesperson for the family took a swipe at Whitmer. "They understand the frustration of fellow Michiganders, however, as elements of the governor's top-down approach appear to go beyond public safety," Nick Wasmiller told MLive, adding that "Michigan deserves competent governance."

:{:{}:

Trump's acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell, posted an image to social media on Wednesday suggesting that stay-at-home orders were unconstitutional. That same day, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told Fox News' Tucker Carlson, "We've gotta reopen, and when we do the coronavirus is gonna spread faster." Rep. Trey Hollingsworth told an Indianapolis radio station on Wednesday that it was time for lawmakers to put on their "big-boy and big-girl pants" and prioritize "the American way of life" over the lives of actual Americans. "It is not zero evil, but it is the lesser of these two evils," Hollingsworth said, "and we intend to move forward that direction."

:{:{}:

It's clear these small groups of protesters share more than a sense of irritability with being inconvenienced. After all, protesters have been beaten, strikers have been shot, and freedom of assembly has been infringed plenty of times in the past — and those crackdowns have been loudly applauded by the same right-wing, pro-capital protesters now complaining about social distancing guidelines. Recall that after Trump's election, Republican state legislatures rushed to pass laws restricting the right to protest. In Arizona, where right-wing protests against shelter-in-place orders are scheduled for this weekend, Republicans tried to pass a bill allowing police to arrest anyone involved in a nonviolent demonstration. Now the same people who rally around a "back the blue" campaign whenever police shoot an unarmed black person or when anti-fascists take to the streets are righteously exercised about civil liberties.

:{:{}:

"Are you goons of [Gov.] Cooper or servants of the people?" one North Carolina protester reportedly yelled at law enforcement officers this week.

:{:{}:

This redirected right-wing rage comes as Trump continues to change direction, hoping to find a pandemic response that makes him look like a leader. Whether this so-called protest movement isorchestrated by his campaign or not — and that seems highly plausible — ultimately it's a PR stunt conducted on his behalf, meant to avoid a grim new reality as the bodies pile up.

:{:{}:

SOPHIA TESFAYE

Sophia Tesfaye is Salon's Deputy Politics Editor and resides in Washington, D.C. You can find her on Twitter at @SophiaTesfaye.

:{:{}:

===

ref 2

:{:{}:

no lnx

:{:{}:

AMANDA MARCOTTE

President Donald Trump, with members of the president's coronavirus task force, speaks during a news conference in the Brady press briefing room at the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Hey, Trump supporters: He'd rather endanger your health than lose an election

Trump and his trolls downplay coronavirus to protect him — and may be encouraging their fans to take dumb risks

:{:{}:

AMANDA MARCOTTE

FEBRUARY 27, 2020

Donald Trump lies, all the time, about everything. Right-wing media and congressional Republicans back him up on these lies. As many a liberal who has confronted Trump supporters over the relentless lying has found, a lot of his voters simply don't care if he lies. They view his lying as fair game, because it's all in service of sticking it to the hated liberals. If Trump lies, cheats and steals — as his base sees it — he's doing it for them, so they can claim big wins in the culture war. Therefore it's all justified.

:{:{}:

But this may be Trump's biggest deception of them all, because, in truth, he doesn't actually care for his own voters one single whit. The only person Donald Trump cares about is Donald Trump. While his supporters bray in glee over the way Trump's lies drive "the libs" nuts, they're falling for his biggest con of all — because he wouldn't hesitate to screw over every single one of his supporters, if he thought it would help him.

:{:{}:

Trump's ease with betraying even his most loyal followers has been evident in his response to the threat of coronavirus, the apparent viral epidemic that began started in China and has now spread to at least 47 countries, including the United States. For most leaders who don't have a crippling case of sociopathic narcissism, the threat of this disease turning into a global pandemic would cause concern for the well-being of the nation, and of humanity at large. The response of any normal president, of whichever party, would be guided by the principle that the most important thing is the health and safety of Americans.

:{:{}:

For Trump, however, the main priority — in fact, the only significant one — is to make sure this viral outbreak doesn't harm his chances of getting re-elected in November. If that means lying to his loyal supporters, even in a way that puts their own lives in danger, he won't hesitate to do that.

:{:{}:

That much was made obvious in Wednesday's White House press conference on the epidemic. Even as Trump's own health officials noted that there have been at least 60 cases in the U.S. and they expect many more, Trump dismissed the situation, suggesting that the disease has already been beaten back. "We've had tremendous success," he said, asserting that the whole thing was likely to end quickly, with "just one or two people [infected] over the next short period of time."

:{:{}:

Instead of admitting how serious this situation looks, Trump — who only sees other people's actions through a Trump-centric lens — has suggested that his enemies have exaggerated the threat of the disease to hurt him. He tweeted on Wednesday that the media was "doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus [sic] look as bad as possible" for the purpose of "panicking markets" to hurt his re-election.

:{:{}:

(In fact, most of these media figureheads Trump hates so much stand to lose lots of money if the stock market tanks. But Trump is incapable of understanding that people have motivations that have nothing to do with him.)

:{:{}:

It's not especially surprising that Trump, who projects his own ugly impulses onto others, would believe that people are exaggerating or inventing the coronavirus threat for political gain. After all, that's what he would do.

:{:{}:

He has done that, in fact, as my colleague Sophia Tesfaye noted in a Thursday-morning piece in which she reminds readers that Trump and the Republicans deliberately hyped up the threat of Ebola virus to spread racist fears about Africans and damage Democrats in the 2014 midterm elections.

:{:{}:

Similarly, one of Trump's favorite things to do at his rallies is to claim, with absolutely no evidence, that "windmills," as he calls wind turbines, cause cancer. He just made this up out of whole cloth, and the purpose is obvious: Trump despises the push for clean energy, and believes he can use it as a culture-war campaign issue about nanny-state liberalism. He will say literally anything, no matter how false or inflammatory, in order to demonize any energy source that doesn't involve burning fossil fuels.

:{:{}:

But this isn't just about Trump's sociopathic solipsism. Right-wing media in general is all too happy to threaten the health and well-being of its audience by telling them that the media is overhyping the threat in order to undermine Trump. Rush Limbaugh, who now has stage 4 lung cancer after years of denying that smoking was dangerous, has accused the media of lying about coronavirus, suggested that it's no worse than "the common cold," and implied that leftists are making up the threat of a pandemic, just as they made up the climate crisis. (In actual reality, both things are real.) Laura Ingraham has advanced a nutbar conspiracy theory that China is somehow lying about the virus to hurt Trump.

:{:{}:

To make it worse, the Trump-supported media has decided to attack one of the remaining competent people in charge, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They're furious that Messonnier has spoken to media outlets, commenting on the threat of the virus and asking health care workers to prepare themselves.

:{:{}:

To punish and discredit her for the sin of putting the public health over Trump's political interests, Limbaugh, aided by right-wing bloggers, has been spreading a conspiracy theory accusing Messonnier of being part of a "deep state" conspiracy against Trump. Their evidence? She is the sister of former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a Trump appointee now hated by Trumpers because he got fed up with lying for the president and started telling the truth. These lurid and false conspiracy theories should be contrasted with the mildness of Messonnier's actual comments, which have focused on the CDC's plans to slow the spread of the disease.

:{:{}:

What's interesting about Trump and his minions ruthlessly and relentlessly lying is that the audience for these lies is mostly Trump's supporters, not the general public. Most Americans, who don't support Trump, know perfectly well that he's a liar and don't believe a word he says. The people who are being told to take risks with their health and ignore advice from Messonnier and other public health officials are Trump voters themselves.

:{:{}:

This is hardly the first time that Trump has risked the safety of his own supporters in service of his own ego. Last summer, he infamously used a Sharpie to fake a map in order to make it seem like Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama, even though weather experts said it would not. He did this entirely to save face, because he had previously tweeted that Alabama was under threat and was angry about being publicly corrected.

:{:{}:

The incident went viral, partly because the fake map was so badly done, but also because it showed that Trump won't hesitate to put his own supporters in danger, for the slightest, pettiest and most self-serving reasons. Luckily, the map was not remotely convincing, and did not lead to panicked evacuations, which sometimes cause injury and death in accidents.

:{:{}:

Trump's lies about coronavirus, on the other hand, are a big deal. The advice from health officials on how to prevent transmission is fairly standard — wash your hands; pay attention to travel advisories — but it's now being counteracted by Trump and the right-wing media encouraging their audiences to be distrustful of all such expertise. Will some people in MAGA America, eager as always to stick it to "the libs," forgo hand-washing rather than betray their faith in their leader? It's possible. Trump simply don't care if his fans get sick or die, as long as he feels his own interests are being protected.

:{:{}:

AMANDA MARCOTTE

Amanda Marcotte is a politics writer for Salon who covers American politics, feminism and culture. Her new book, "Troll Nation: How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself" is out now. She's based out of Brooklyn and can be followed on Twitter @AmandaMarcotte.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/leading-cult-expert-explains-how-trump-trained-his-followers-to-believe-no-one-but-him-and-why-his-mind-control-cult-now-faces-an-existential-crisis/

no lnx

Leading expert explains how Trump trained his followers to believe no one but him — and why his ‘mind control cult’ now faces an ‘existential crisis’

:{:{}:

Written by Chauncey DeVega / Salon April 7, 2020

:{:{}:

During the 1970s, Steven Hassan was a senior member of the Unification Church, an offshoot Christian sect led by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Hassan was so loyal to the Unification Church that he pledged to die or kill at Moon’s command.

:{:{}:

After escaping the Unification Church, Hassan dedicated his life’s work to freeing other people from mind control organizations and destructive cults. He is now one of the world’s leading experts on mind control and cults.

:{:{}:

Hassan is a direct personal witness to the way cult leaders are defined by their use of money, power, greed, sex, lies, charisma and violence to control their followers and empower themselves. In 2016 Hassan saw those traits personified in the form of Republican nominee Donald Trump. He then tried to alert the public to the danger that a cult leader would become president and that ruin and despair for the United States would be the inevitable result. Hassan’s new book “The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control” attempts to explain how this all came to be.

:{:{}:

While many pundits and others have remained in denial about the existential threat posed by Donald Trump and his movement, Hassan warned early on that Trump’s followers were effectively cult members and would not be swayed from supporting their leader for any reason. With the coronavirus pandemic, Trump’s power over his followers is on full display, as he and his spokespeople are now suggesting that older and other vulnerable Americans should be willing to risk their lives in order to “save the economy” — and of course to aid Trump’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

:{:{}:

I recently spoke with Steven Hassan about Trump’s death cult and the power the president has over his followers. Hassan also explains how Trump resembles notorious cult leader Jim Jones and why Trump’s followers remain in love with him even as his decisions are literally making them sick. Hassan also explains how Fox News and other parts of the right-wing disinformation machine are key elements of Trump’s mind control powers over his political cult.

:{:{}:

Hassan also warns that Trump’s followers are capable of committing acts of great violence against their fellow Americans, should their leader command it.

:{:{}:

You can also listen to my conversation with Steven Hassan on my podcast “The Truth Report” or through the player embedded below.

:{:{}:

As usual, this conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

:{:{}:

Donald Trump continues to make ridiculous statements, such as claiming he was the first person to call the coronavirus a “pandemic,” or that there will be a magical flash of light and all will be well. It is clear he is mentally unwell. How do you make sense of his behavior?

:{:{}:

Trump grew up in the church of Norman Vincent Peale. Peale taught magical thinking and that if a person just believed something 100%, God will magically make it come true. Trump was trained to be amagical thinker as a child. It’s been described as a type of solipsistic reality where Trump defines his own world and what is real or not. That is a type of thinking which is very common to cults.

:{:{}:

In this way of thinking, if Trump says the coronavirus pandemic is just going to somehow get better then it is going to happen. And when that does not happen, then Trump can deny ever saying such a thing, blame the Chinese, the Democrats or anyone else, instead of just saying he was wrong.

:{:{}:

How does Donald Trump fit the profile of a cult leader?

:{:{}:

Donald Trump fits the stereotypical profile of all destructive cults. These traits include malignant narcissism. Trump can easily be compared to Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon, and other cult leaders. Trump always had a cult of personality around him in terms of his businesses and his social interactions with people. But once Trump attained the presidency, he took over the Republican Party and instituted a fiefdom where he rewards loyalty and punishes anyone who displeases him.

:{:{}:

As for definitions, a “destructive cult” is an authoritarian pyramid-structured group with someone at the top who claims to know all things and says God is working through him or her. Trump does that as well. Donald Trump is also trying to control people’s behavior, the information they have access to, and their thoughts and emotions, to make them dependent and obedient and under his control. Consider the novel coronavirus pandemic and how Trump has all these followers who do not trust real experts and only take what Trump says to be true. Trump’s followers also don’t believe in science and medicine.

:{:{}:

Do members of cults know that the leader is lying but convince themselves it does not matter? Or have the cult members totally lost the ability to think rationally?

:{:{}:

Unfortunately, when a person is in a mind control group, critical thinking does not take place. Thinking in a cult does not depend on independent verifiable data. Information about the world — empirical reality — goes through a filtering system where the default is to support the cult identity and the cult leader and what they tell you to believe. The way to escape a mind control cult’s power and influence is for a person to find a way to access who they were before they got involved in the cult. A person in that situation needs to separate themselves from the ongoing indoctrination.

:{:{}:

In the case of Trump and his movement, that can be through Fox News, right-wing religious TV or radio shows, the internet, smartphones,etc. Phones are a key part of how these Christian and other religious cults work where they send the members emails and texts. The brain needs a respite from all that communication. To escape Trump’s cult, the members need to regain perspective on reality and develop the cognitive tools to say, “Yes, Trump lied to me.” They need to say that to themselves and realize that Trump is not for the average person. He’s not making America great. He’s making things worse. He’s dividing us. He’s enriching himself. He’s undermining the separation of church and state. He’s undermining the rule of law.

:{:{}:

What is the role of Fox News in Trump’s power over his followers, especially during this pandemic?

:{:{}:

Fox News is the main propaganda arm of Donald Trump and his true believers. Fox News is continually disseminating and reinforcing Trump’s messages. Fox News is a dangerous entity.

:{:{}:

Donald Trump and his Republicans, right-wing media and various churches have been saying that older people should be willing to get sick and die for the sake of the “economy.” Moreover, they suggest that to die from this disease is an act of “patriotism” and “piety” and “love.” This sounds like human sacrifice to an ancient mythological being. Specifics are critical here: is Donald Trump leading a death cult? And how are death cults different from other types of cults?

:{:{}:

A death cult is a type of cult where the leader is telling the followers to kill themselves. A death cult also does not cherish the sanctity of life. It is very simple in terms of how it views the world in binary black and white terms. If the “last days” are here and God is going to return to somehow magically renew the world and send true believers to heaven, then it does not matter if those people who are not in the death cult die.

:{:{}:

I would say right now it is premature to say that Donald Trump leads a death cult. But at the point where the coronavirus pandemic overwhelms the health care system, Donald Trump would then be the leader of a death cult.

:{:{}:

For people outside Trump’s cult and the Republican Party, it seems ridiculous and evil to suggest that people should go out and die from the novel coronavirus to save the economy. But Trump’s followers seem willing to do so. What is going on in their minds?

:{:{}:

If you are in a cult where the leader is claiming to be some type of apostle or prophet who gets revelations directly from God, and who says “just believe in me” and tells you to reject reality or outside information, then you believe that you will be fine. You will be “saved” and go to “paradise.” Therefore, if Trump or his other spokespeople tell people to go out, get sick and then die, it is fine because the cult members believe they are going to heaven.

:{:{}:

Unfortunately, there are millions of Americans who believe that Donald Trump is doing a good job with the coronavirus pandemic because they are not looking at any other source of news or reality testing. These people are doing a lot of praying and they have put their faith in an authoritarian leader who continually tells them, “I know better than everyone else, the experts, the doctors, etc.” Trump says that all the time. He always tells his followers that he knows better than the scientists, generals and other experts. Trump is telling his followers that he is omnipotent.

:{:{}:

What happens to a person’s mind when it becomes subsumed by the cult leader?

:{:{}:

As someone who was in a cult, the way I try to explain it is that mind control is a type of dissociative disorder where there is a split between who you really are and the cult identity. Cult members do have moments where their real authentic self re-emerges. For example, they miss their families. But then the cult part of the mind reasserts itself through fear or thought stopping or any number of other techniques to suppress the authentic self again.

:{:{}:

As long as a person stays in the cult, they are receiving constant reinforcement of the cult identity. What is happening at present is very different from my experience in the 1970s. Then, you had to be taken to an isolated place to have your brain conditioned and programmed by the cult. Now the Internet, YouTube, Facebook and other types of media can program a person into a cult identity. Fox News and right-wing talk radio are obvious ways that Trump’s followers are indoctrinated into his cult. Sleep deprivation by having people constantly tuned into the cult programming is another form of programming.

:{:{}:

Trump’s policies are actually causing real, measurable physical and economic harm to his “white working class” followers, as well as others. Yet those people remain among Trump’s most devoted supporters. The coronavirus pandemic is a literal life and death example of the harm that Trump is causing his cult members. Yet they still love him. How does a person’s mind reconcile such an outcome?

:{:{}:

Donald Trump constantly tells his followers that he loves them. His people need and want to believe that Donald Trump loves them. Trump’s followers have a deep investment in him emotionally and personally.I would tell Trump’s true believers the same thing I would tell people in other mind control cults: Think back to what you thought you were getting involved with, and now think about where you are now. If you knew then where you would be three and a half years later, would you have ever gotten involved with Donald Trump in the first place?

:{:{}:

I would also tell Trump’s cult members to think about his lies. They need to realize that they made decisions based on things proven to not be true. Now Trump’s followers know better. It is time for them to leave his cult. I would tell his cult members that it is time for a new chapter in their lives. They need to reboot their minds and behavior. Trump’s followers need to think about the future, how they want to live and how they want to raise their children.

:{:{}:

How will the coronavirus impact how Trump’s cult members think about reality? How do they reconcile their love of Donald Trump with seeing people die all around them?

:{:{}:

The cult part of their psyche is going to say it was their time. If Trump’s followers are religious, they will simply rationalize it as the dead are going to a better place in heaven. These people will believe that the deaths are good because it is the end times or something of the sort. As they see their loved ones die, the authentic self may reassert itself. If it does, those people are going to get very angry and upset at Donald Trump.

:{:{}:

Trump and his mouthpieces are now trying to blame Barack Obama and the Democrats for the coronavirus disaster. Trump and his media are also blaming Asians and Asian-Americans. There has been a rise in hate crimes as a result. What comes next as the pandemic continues?

:{:{}:

One of the main things that cult leaders do is to project outward on to false enemies, to deflect their own irresponsible behavior and blame others. I can imagine scenarios where Trump’s cult members, his followers go out and hurt other Americans. They would even go so far as to hurt their neighbors if Donald Trump and his spokespeople told them to.

:{:{}:

I’m an idealist at heart. I want to have hope. I want people to rise up to their higher self and not descend down to barbarism and tribalism. Unfortunately, it really takes a great deal of energy to think critically, to look at data and not allow emotions to sway you to doing things that you will regret later.

:{:{}:

covid

trumpistas perfect venn diagram?!

atlantic art'l

:{:{}:

copins?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/some-trump-supporters-delight-in-defying-pandemic-protocols-to-own-the-liberals-report/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/heres-the-data-that-proves-americans-who-rage-against-political-correctness-are-the-most-xenophobic-and-most-likely-to-vote-trump-in-2020

:{:{}:

no lnx

:{:{}:

Here’s the data that shows Americans who rage against political correctness are the most xenophobic — and most likely to vote Trump

:{:{}:

Written by Samuel L. Perry / Religion Dispatches March 24, 2020

:{:{}:

Admittedly, Trump’s initial references to “the Chinese Virus” earlier in March seemed rather ad-hoc. Though clearly xenophobic in context and implication, it seemed that Trump was casually parroting the language of other far-Right commentators like Charlie Kirk. Within the past week, however, Trump has ramped up his labeling campaign, often going out of his way to refer to COVID-19 as “the Chinese Virus” in Twitter storms and White House press briefings.

:{:{}:

Two key strategies likely drive Trump’s efforts here. Both involve distracting Americans from his own administration’s failings at dealing with the coronavirus earlier on. The first is simply to blame China, laying responsibility for America’s situation solely at their feet. The fact that a Chinese propaganda director recently suggested the virus may have originated with American soldiers who brought it to China provided the perfect (and tacitly justifiable) motivation for Trump to remind the world forcefully and repeatedly where the virus originated.

:{:{}:

The second factor also involves distraction from Trump’s failings, but one in which “China” is only incidental. They are merely a stand-in for all “dangerous outsiders.” By repeatedly and brazenly referring to “the Chinese Virus,” and provoking a media backlash against the xenophobic implications of his language, Trump wishes to remind his base who our internal threats are: politically correct liberals who care more about defending foreigners than they do the American people.

:{:{}:

Though Trump has previously raged against political correctness explicitly, and indeed, campaigned on it in 2016, when it comes to this recent COVID-19 labeling campaign, other far-Right thought-leaders have been doing this for him. For example, in a March 14th interview on Fox News, Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton stated, “Anyone who complains that it’s racist or xenophobic to call this virus the Chinese coronavirus or the Wuhan virus is a politically correct fool, and they ought not to be listened to about anything.”

:{:{}:

And March 20th, Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly told Glenn Beck: “The worst thing in this pandemic virus outside of the actual illness itself of course is the political [sic] correct media still, still peddling garbage that hurts the American people.” Quoting an ABC News reporter, O’Reilly said in a whiny, mocking voice, “A lot of people think it’s racist if you call it the Chinese Virus. …It’s sickening.”

:{:{}:

But survey data confirm that white Americans—like President Trump, Senator Tom Cotton, Bill O’Reilly, or their followers—who attack politically correct language as the enemy are in fact the most likely to hold racist or xenophobic views. In a nationally representative survey fielded in February 2020, we asked Americans to indicate how much they agreed with statements about using politically correct language. We also asked Americans for their views on refugees from the Middle East and America’s control over its Southern border.

:{:{}:

In the first figure [left], we see that, as Americans’ agreement with the statement “Too many people are easily offended these days over language” increases, the more likely they are to believe that the federal government should do more to secure the Southern border and that Middle Eastern refugees pose a terrorist threat.

:{:{}:

In the second figure [below, right], we see a similar trend, but in the opposite direction. The more strongly Americans disagree with the statement “People need to be more careful with language to avoid offending people,” the more likely they are to hold xenophobic views about refugees from the Middle East and to want stricter border control.

:{:{}:

In sum: both figures show that white Americans who voice the strongest opinions against politically correct language also hold the strongest anti-immigrant attitudes.

:{:{}:

Just as important, they are also the group most likely to plan on voting Trump in 2020.

[no graf]

:{:{}:

The last figure [left] shows the percentage of white Americans who indicate they plan on voting Trump in 2020 by their level of agreement with our two statements regarding politically correct language. Nearly 80% of white Americans who strongly disagree that “People need to be more careful with language to avoid offending people,” or who strongly agree that “Too many people are easily offended these days over language,” intend to vote for Trump in November.

:{:{}:

Seen in light of these data, Trump’s dual strategy is clear. By unapologetically referring to COVID-19 as “the Chinese Virus,” Trump is first able to signal to his white base that he too is disdainful of scheming, disease-ridden outsiders. But he can also intentionally provoke a backlash against his hurtful and xenophobic language, which he and his followers can dismiss as leftist “political correctness.” Trump shores up support against both a perceived external threat (immigrants) and an internal threat (liberals) with a single dangerous and offensive swipe.

:{:{}:

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/how-right-wingers-and-trump-apologists-could-get-people-killed-with-coronavirus-disinformation-columnist/

no lnx

:{:{}:

How right-wingers and Trump apologists could ‘get people killed’ with coronavirus disinformation: columnist

:{:{}:

Written by Alex Henderson March 10, 2020

As the death toll from coronavirus continues to climb — passing 4,200 worldwide on Tuesday, according to John Hopkins University in Baltimore — many figures in the United States’ right-wing media believe that their job isn’t to provide accurate information but to defend President Donald Trump at every turn. And by doing so,Never Trump conservative Max Boot asserts in his Washington Post column, they are helping to make a bad situation even worse.

:{:{}:

“President Trump has been widely and correctly excoriated for the way he is dealing with the novel coronavirus,” Boot notes. “By minimizing the danger, he heightens it. Even on Monday, Trump was comparing covid-19 to the ordinary flu — even though its mortality rate appears to be many times higher and its economic effect infinitely greater.”

:{:{}:

Boot quickly adds, however, that “Trump could not spread disinformation all by himself.”

:{:{}:

“A herd of right-wing pseudo-journalists has jumped the shark along with him,” Boot writes. “They are promulgating narratives so at odds with reality that they are likely to get people killed.”

:{:{}:

Boot goes on to cite some examples, including familiar Trumpistas at Fox News and Fox Business.

:{:{}:

“On Monday,” Boot notes, “Trish Regan was on Fox Business denouncing coronavirus concern as ‘yet another attempt to impeach the president.’ In her demented view, Trump’s opponents are deliberately inducing stock-market losses — presumably, Democrats don’t own 401(k)s — in an attempt to ‘to demonize and destroy the president.’Naturally, Trump — Fox News viewer No. 1 — retweeted her diatribe.”

:{:{}:

Breaking911

@Breaking911

Fox Business’ Trish Regan says coronavirus is a “scam” to “impeach the President”

:{:{}:

Embedded video

Boot is equally critical of Fox News’ Sean Hannity, who insisted on Monday that the president’s critics are trying to “bludgeon Trump with this new hoax” and that they are “scaring people unnecessarily.”

“To a lot of viewers,” Boot asserts, “it will sound as if Hannity is calling the virus a hoax, even if that’s not what he intended.”

:{:{}:

Boot also slams radio host Rush Limbaugh as “irresponsible” for claiming that reporting on coronavirus is a plot to hurt Trump’s reelection campaign. However, one right-wing media figure who Boot cites as an “outlier of sanity” on coronavirus is Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. Boot points out that although Carlson is “often the most rabid host on Fox,” he hasn’t been downplaying the severity of coronavirus and has correctly warned his viewers, “This is real.”

:{:{}:

Boot concludes his column by stressing that whenever right-wing media figures try to make coronavirus seem less dangerous than it is, they are putting their more gullible viewers or listeners in danger.

:{:{}:

“The ‘conservative’ media have long shown their contempt for facts and science — for instance, by playing down the danger of climate change or Russian election attacks,” Boot warns. “Never has their contempt for the truth been more dangerous than it is today. To defeat coronavirus, we must first combat the mental afflictions — irrationality, conspiracy-mongering and Dear Leader-like devotion to Trump — spread by exposure to right-wing media.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/here-are-5-ways-trump-and-his-supporters-are-using-the-same-strategies-as-science-deniers/

no lnx

:{:{}:

Here are 5 ways Trump and his supporters are using the same strategies as science deniers

:{:{}:

Written by Lee McIntyre, The Conversation November 27, 2019

--=

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-supporters-have-little-trust-in-societys-institutions-heres-why-thats-disturbing/

:{:{}:

https://theconversation.com/trump-supporters-have-little-trust-in-societal-institutions-131113

:{:{}:

...Donald Trump has a history of disregarding advice from experts, including diplomats, military leaders, trade experts and scientists.

Trump is not alone in his distrust. Our unpublished research shows that people who support Trump have lower trust in societal institutions, when compared with supporters of leading Democratic candidates Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden.

Trust ratings

We asked 930 U.S. residents via an online survey how much they trust six institutions that are key to a working democracy.

We chose three institutions that Americans perceive as liberal – journalists, professors and scientists – and three that conservatives either traditionally support or currently control – the police, the Supreme Court and the federal government. Each institution fulfills an essential role within a democratic society, but depends on the others to function properly.

We also asked participants to report how warm or cold they felt toward Trump, Warren, Sanders and Biden on a scale from 0 to 100.

Even when we controlled for age, education, gender, ethnicity and ideology, Trump supporters had the lowest trust in the six institutions, at 3.75 out of 7 – at least 11.4% lower than anyone else we surveyed.

That means that the patterns we are seeing aren’t caused by fitting a particular demographic profile or having conservative beliefs. In fact, conservatives who do not support Trump had the highest trust in these institutions.

This suggests that there’s something about supporting Trump that shapes how much trust Americans have in the country’s core social and political institutions.

When we looked at each institution individually, we found that Trump supporters had significantly lower trust in journalists, professors and scientists – the more stereotypically liberal institutions – than supporters of the Democratic candidates.

[graf]

But the reverse was not true. Democratic candidate supporters trusted the police, the Supreme Court and the federal government as much as Trump supporters. The one exception was Biden supporters, who actually trusted the Supreme Court significantly more than Trump supporters did. A tower of trust

Although our sample was not representative of the U.S. population, we think that these findings provide valuable insight into the state of U.S. democracy.

We don’t yet know which comes first. Does being a Trump supporter lead to lower trust in societal institutions, does having lower trust in these institutions lead people to support Trump, or do both play a role?

If being a Trump supporter leads to low trust, this could be a result of Trump’s influence, given his apparent distrust in expert advice. If people who have low trust in these institutions are attracted to supporting Trump, then this is cause for concern, considering that previous research shows that politicians are more responsive to their supporters than they are to the general public.

Politicians have the trust of their supporters, and those supporters generally trust some institutions as well. That gives those institutions power to hold the politicians accountable. If the supporters don’t trust in institutions, they have less power to enforce accountability.

Research has shown that institutions are most efficient and effective when people trust them.

The interdependent nature of institutions means that if one becomes ineffective, the others will be affected as well. For example, if citizens lose trust in journalists, journalists will not be able to keep citizens informed. If citizens are ill-informed, they may not make the best decisions when voting or lobbying their democratic representatives, which in turn may decrease the effectiveness of the government.

Like a stack of Jenga blocks, each institution that is removed makes the whole stack less stable.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/why-the-alternative-universe-of-trump-loyalists-wont-be-broken-by-the-bolton-bombshell/

:{:{}:

no lnx

:{:{}:

Why the ‘alternative universe’ of Trump loyalists won’t be broken by the Bolton bombshell

:{:{}:

Written by Alex Henderson January 28, 2020

:{:{}:

When President Richard Nixon announced his resignation on August 8, 1974, he was being inundated with Watergate headlines and realized that many right-wing Republicans in the U.S. Senate would join Democrats in voting to remove him from office; Nixon, in other words, quit because he knew he would inevitably be fired.

:{:{}:

But President Donald Trump, in contrast to Nixon, has been able to count on fiercely loyal Republicans no matter how scandal-ridden he becomes. Republicans, during Trump’s impeachment, have adamantly rallied around the president — and journalist Susan B. Glasser, in a January 28 article for The New Yorker, argued that even John Bolton’s bombshell allegations aren’t swaying diehard Trumpistas.

:{:{}:

Bolton, former national security adviser in the Trump Administration, alleges in his book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” that Trump tied military aid to Ukraine to an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, according to multiple reports. Trump and his cult-like defenders have maintained there was no such “quid pro quo” — that investigating the Bidens was never a condition of military aid. But in a leaked manuscript of Bolton’s book, the New York Times reported over the weekend, Bolton alleges Trump and his allies made it clear to the Ukrainian government that there would be no military aid without an investigation of the Bidens.

:{:{}:

Trump loyalists, Glasser notes, have been quick to defame Bolton.

:{:{}:

“The attack on Bolton was swift and predictable: Bolton was a disgruntled former employee, a neocon, a money-grubber with a two-million-dollar book to sell,” Glasser explains. “The president himself led the mob, beginning to tweet and retweet anti-Bolton statements.”

:{:{}:

The Republican National Committee (RNC), Glasser observes, has been “sending out official talking points attacking Bolton.” And many Senate Republicans, she writes, are still opposed to featuring Bolton or any other witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial — no matter how damning Bolton’s allegations are.

:{:{}:

“At any other moment in Washington in my lifetime, I would have predicted with absolute confidence that the Bolton revelation would force Republican senators to switch their position and support witnesses — and not just a few, but almost all of them,” Glasser asserts. “But this is now, and the unthinkable and inconceivable have become increasingly routine. Here it was: the proverbial smoking gun, right in the middle of the trial — crucial evidence that Trump, his advisers, his lawyers and his enablers on Capitol Hill knew about and were trying to suppress.”

:{:{}:

Glasser concludes her New Yorker piece on a somber note, lamenting the fact that no matter what Bolton has to say about Ukraine, Trump’s loyalists and sycophants aren’t budging an inch.

:{:{}:

“Monday proved once again that this alternative universe has become the new normal in Trump’s GOP,” Glasser writes. “It is not the exception but the rule. The post-Bolton-bombshell Republican Party will be largely the same as the pre-Bolton-bombshell Republican Party.”

:{:{}:

signs of life wapo? op-ed text vs tv

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/is-trumps-base-of-support-a-cult-ask-3-people-who-left-it/

:{:{}:

===

as impeach goes So for trump, big push to keep base

Trump expected to give anti-abortion extremists huge gift in an unprecedented move at the ‘March for Life’

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/far-right-white-evangelicals-love-trump-for-many-reasons-including-their-terrifying-obsession-with-the-end-times-report

:{:{}:

===

cf mma RU solanli 1/24/20 split screen silent // scroll of djt accomplishments

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/fox-news-coverage-of-trumps-impeachment-trial-has-been-an-embarrassing-joke/

:{:{}:

no lnx

:{:{}:

Fox News’ coverage of Trump’s impeachment trial has been an embarrassing joke

:{:{}:

Written by Alex Henderson January 24, 2020

:{:{}:

When Rep. Hakeem Jeffries addressed the U.S. Senate on Thursday night as part of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, there was a crucial difference between how Jeffries’ speech was covered on different cable news outlets: while CNN and MSNBC broadcast the speech, Fox News muted the speech while its pundits offered pro-Trump talking points. CNN and MSNBC allowed viewers to hear Jeffries making a compelling case for removing Trump from office; Fox News let views see Jeffries but not hear him. And that Trump-friendly way of covering the trial is the subject of an article journalist Aaron Rupar wrote for Vox this week.

:{:{}:

“Starting with ‘The Five,’ the network’s early evening roundtable commentary show, and continuing throughout the evening, Fox News broadcast portions of screen-in-screen video of the trial,” Rupar explains in his Vox article. “But instead of playing the audio, network hosts provided the normal Trumpian spin. So while someone who just looked at the screen may have concluded Fox News was covering the trial, in fact it wasn’t covering it at all.”

:{:{}:

Fox News, Rupar adds, “went as far as to broadcast screen-in-screen video of the trial during commercial breaks — but again, without the sound that was necessary to make any sense of what was being discussed.”

:{:{}:

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

Fox News has the optics of covering the #ImpeachmentTrial without actually covering it. They've been showing screen-in-screen video of the proceedings without audio. Instead, hosts are providing Trumpian spin. It's propaganda giving the illusion of journalism. Remarkable.

:{:{}:

Embedded video

:{:{}:

Lis Power

@LisPower1

Step 1: Dems try repeatedly to get new evidence into the trial

Step 2: Republicans repeatedly vote it down

Step 3: Fox criticizes Dems for having no new evidence.

:{:{}:

Rinse and repeat.

:{:{}:

Fox's Jason Chaffetz: "It had nothing to do with proving the facts, there was no new evidence"

:{:{}:

Embedded video

:{:{}:

Millions of Fox News viewers, Rupar points out, have been fed a steady diet of “propaganda” and misinformation during Trump’s impeachment trial.

:{:{}:

“The 2.7 million people who have been watching Fox News’ impeachment trial coverage at any given time are being told a story about it that’s completely untethered from reality — one that reinforces America’s deep polarization between the roughly 50% of voters who want Trump removed from office and the 40 to 45% who continue to support him through scandal after scandal.”

:{:{}:

Like Jeffries, Rep. Adam Schiff (the California Democrat who chairs the House Intelligence Committee) has, during the trial, made convincing arguments in favor of removing Trump from office for his impeachable offenses — which, according to Schiff, include trying to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, and withholding military aid to Ukraine in the hope of getting that investigation. Someone who watched MSNBC or CNN got to hear Schiff skillfully laying out fact after fact after fact showing that Trump committed impeachable offenses. But Fox News carnival barkers like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, as Rupar points out in Vox, haven’t seriously addressed the facts Schiff presented — only insulted and defamed him.

:{:{}:

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

Tucker Carlson began his show dismissing the #ImpeachmentTrial by comparing it to "a movie written & directed by children whose ending you already know, & by the way, it's 20 hours long, in Hungarian, with misspelled subtitles." That's how his viewers will process things.

:{:{}:

Embedded video

:{:{}:

Andrew Lawrence

@ndrew_lawrence

Fox News added scary music and, in one section, a red overtone to an Adam Schiff supercut from today

:{:{}:

Embedded video

:{:{}:

“There’s nothing Schiff could have said on Wednesday that Fox News’ evening and primetime hosts wouldn’t have spun as evidence of his mental instability, his obsession with taking down Trump,” Rupar asserts. “And while viewers were being spun on Wednesday, they were shown soundless video of the trial, the misleading implication being that they don’t have to bother watching it since Fox News is on top of it for them.”

:{:{}:

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/maga-activist-karyn-turk-sentenced-to-a-month-in-prison-for-social-security-fraud/

:{:{}:

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/heres-how-trump-weaponizes-crackpot-ideas-to-maintain-a-firm-grip-on-his-maga-base

:{:{}:

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/expert-on-the-far-right-says-its-pointless-to-tell-people-donald-trump-is-bad-heres-what-we-can-do-instead

:{:{}:

no lnx

Expert on the far right says it’s pointless to tell people Donald Trump is bad. Here’s what we can do instead

Written by Chauncey DeVega / Salon December 19, 2019

Donald Trump’s impeachment is a rebuke against the global new right and its assault on democracy and the rule of law.

On Wednesday evening, the House of Representatives finally voted to impeach Donald Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors, including abuse of power and obstructing Congress and the rule of law. There are many possible reasons to impeach Trump, but these relate to his efforts to extort the government of Ukraine into launching a fake investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential 2020 Democratic nominee.

Trump now becomes the third American president to have ever been impeached. But he is unique and distinct in one way, as the only president to be impeached for using his public office to interfere in U.S. foreign policy and betray a foreign ally for personal gain.

Although the power of impeachment is largely symbolic — since Trump will almost certainly not be removed from office — it still marks an act of resistance against the rising tide of the global right, and its assault on democracy and the rule of law.

Cas Mudde is one of the world’s leading experts on right-wing extremism, populism, democracy and the global new right. Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia and a contributing writer for the Guardian. He is the author of several books, including “The Far Right in America,” “On Extremism and Democracy in Europe” and “Populism: A Very Short Introduction” (with Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser). His newest book is “The Far Right Today.”

In our conversation, Mudde discussed how Donald Trump’s authoritarian populist movement is similar to (and different from) related movements led by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other such leaders around the world. Mudde also detailed the goals of what he calls the “populist radical right,” explored its understanding of reality and “common sense” and explained the role of racism and nativism in this global assault against liberal democracy.

Mudde also issued an important warning to the Democratic Party and other defenders of liberal democracy in the U.S. and around the world: They must offer a positive, alternative vision to that posed by global right-wing extremism if they hope to defeat it. If Democrats simply run as the “anti-Trump” party in 2020, Mudde suggests, they will most likely lose.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

You are an expert on the global new right. How does it make you feel to watch their power and influence grow and take hold with Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and many other leaders and movements around the world?

:{:{}:

I feel sad and I feel stressed, in part, because I believe that the type of politics that is truly detrimental to liberal democracy is winning. I also feel that way because the divides in this country are so deep and fundamental that there are more and more people with whom I can’t have a real conversation because we just live in different worlds.

Democracy is prefaced on some shared reality and a basic consensus about the truth. Trumpers and other members of the right-wing have rejected that premise. Without such a common understanding, how is it possible to engage in basic decision-making about politics and society?

This question of “alternate realities” is about much more than people who do not care about the truth. I believe that most people on the radical right actually think that they are basing their arguments on the facts. They believe that we are being swamped by immigrants. They believe that the conspiracies they spread are true and that the only reason other people do not accept these conspiracies as being true is because the mainstream media doesn’t talk about them. This makes matters much more difficult, because if it was just simply ignorance then we could have an argument about the facts.

It goes much further than just different opinions. Those who are members of the right wing and those outside it have different truth organizations. What the New York Times is to many liberals, Fox News is to many conservatives. Fox News, despite how inaccurate it is, is the media of record for conservatives. As such, they hold it in high esteem.

Has this illiberal, anti-democratic right-wing movement constructed its own reality? Or is it something else?

:{:{}:

There are two parts of the far right. On the one hand there are the neo-Nazis who in fact are not very “new” in their beliefs and ideologies. Today’s neo-Nazis stand for roughly the same things as their predecessors.

:{:{}:

But the radical right isn’t that much different from the mainstream. The idea of nativism is pretty much based on the idea of the nation-state, which is a dominant principle in most politics, particularly in Europe . For example, the idea that Germany is a country of Germans. If that’s the case, everyone who is not German is a threat.

:{:{}:

Authoritarians believe in law and order from their own point of view. They even believe in some version of “democracy.” But for these members of the far right, democracy is pretty much just unfettered majority rule.

Minority rights are, for them, almost by definition undemocratic. The far right does not want something completely different than what many in the more mainstream of society want. However, they have a very different interpretation of what “democracy” and “nation” mean.

How did the global new right come into power?

From a more European perspective, it is a result of a combination of changes. For many people, social democracy has outlived its purpose because it has successfully created a welfare state, to the extent the public wanted it. This moment with the rise of the far right is also a consequence of broader globalization and the integration of markets — but also immigration, which has fundamentally changed society and has also created tensions that were always present but just not as salient.

For example, I grew up in the Netherlands. Those years ago, my school was almost completely white. I believe we had one nonwhite student in my high school, and everyone wanted to be friends with him because he was considered cool. If you were to go to my former high school now, it will probably be between one-third to one-half nonwhite.

When I was young, I assumed that Dutch people were white, but that was never an issue me. It didn’t feel relevant to me. At present, issues such as “whiteness” and what it means to be “Dutch” or “Muslim” have all become relevant.

Why are these members of the radical right — and other more mainstream conservatives as well — so compelled toward simple explanations about the world?

Simple things always give people a feeling that they understand the world and that they can control what happens around them. What members of the right-wing — and especially the far right — have is a very essentialist understanding of categories.When they talk about what it means to be “white,” they do so as if that category is objective and fixed and has never changed. Whiteness, in fact, is something different than what many people thought whiteness was 50 years ago in the United States and elsewhere.

When we explain to people who believe in these essential and fixed categories that whiteness is dynamic and changing and that itself is evidence of how social integration is possible, they will still say, “Oh yeah, but certain groups can be integrated and others can’t.” What they assume to be some natural state of being of racial homogeneity is not true. The very ideas of “whiteness” and “race” are constructs.

How do you make sense of the relationship between what was the mainstream right — here in the U.S., that being the Republican Party — and the more radical elements of the far right?

There are significant differences between, for example, the role of far-right ideas and people within the British Conservative Party, the U.S. Republican Party and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France. The mainstream right has pretty much always been pro-market.

Even when they were open to immigrants, they were considered “guests,” particularly in Europe. As guests, they were expected to adjust to the country they were in. Even the whole concept of “tolerance” — which most social democrats, for example, would stand for — is still a hierarchical concept. It means that, I, the real authentic native person, tolerates you, the immigrant. In practice, I have the power to tolerate you. Now, that was never really a problem as long as the number of immigrants was small.

When that number became bigger, it became much more problematic. And you see this in the most extreme form in the United States. One of the key reasons why Donald Trump won in 2016, and why his type of politics win, is a massive fear of the U.S. becoming a “majority minority” country.

A changing society, white fears of becoming a “minority” in “their own country,” and of course 9/11 and rampant Islamophobia helped to create this moment with Trump being president.

In the most basic sense, what do these right-wing movements and parties have in common internationally? And how are they different?

What the radical right has in common, from [Jair] Bolsonaro to Trump to Le Pen, is a combination of nativism, authoritarianism and populism as an ideological core. However, that does not mean that they are all part of one movement. Actually, the ties between the different groups are very slight. This is in part because they are nationalists first. The radical right’s leaders are not very interested in building global networks. On top of that, they come from very different traditions and operate in very different organizations.

Bolsonaro did not even have his own party until a few weeks ago. Trump has taken over the Republican Party. Whereas Marine Le Pen is a product of her party and political culture. This fourth wave of the far right exists in extreme heterogeneity, but they do share some common ideas.

What is “populism”? And how is it being used by the mainstream news media and others, correctly or otherwise?

Populists believe that they are “the voice of the people” where “the people” are never the full population. “The people” are those who share the same interests and values as the populists. However, populism is not by definition nativist or racist. There are inclusive populist movements as well. For example, in both Spain and Greece left-wing populists were pro-immigration. Populists are also not necessarily white either.

But at present, populism is almost exclusively right-wing — I describe them more accurately as the “populist radical right.” Populism is only one part of their ideology. Nativism, which is a more ethnic interpretation of “the people,” is predominant. Therefore, when the populist radical right talks about “the people” they mean the people of a certain nation. That nation can be multiracial, but often it is not.

How does the populist radical right envision the world? What is their version of “common sense”?

The “common sense” of the radical right wing is that “like wants to live with like.” This means implicitly that whites want to live with whites. The Dutch want to live with the Dutch. In Europe, we do not like to talk about “races.” We talk about “Dutch culture” and the like.

:{:{}:

The “common sense” of the right is also shown by how they like to talk about the animal world: “Tigers don’t live with lions.” For them, that is common sense. That’s natural. That’s the other thing that the right has always done, which is to believe in “natural differences.” They believe that it’s unnatural for the state to intervene because that goes against the inherent nature of what human beings are. Human beings want to be with people like themselves. They claim they want to go back to the natural order, and that in a natural order everyone knows their place. That means ethnic minorities, but also women and in various cases, gays and lesbians, etc.

Why do Trump’s followers embrace him given that his policies, and that of these right-wing populists more generally, will hurt most of his own rank-and-file supporters, both economically and in other ways?

The vast majority of voters for the radical right, let alone for Trump, are not destitute. They actually have an economic buffer, as Brexit showed. These voters are willing to pay a price for what they consider to be “freedom.” I’m not sure that Trump’s voters, and other radical right voters, are naïve. I believe many of them just find it much more important that there are fewer immigrants around them. In these voters’ minds, it means they will make more money.

To take one example: There are many people in the United States who find it more important to make abortion illegal than to improve their personal economic well-being. Their voices are as rational as that of someone who votes on the basis of their wallet. They are not being misled. There is another myth about Trump’s voters that needs to be highlighted. Some people argue that Trump’s voters see him as some sort of God. They do not. The vast majority, even among his most ardent supporters, see all of Trump’s flaws.

What they like is, first and foremost, that Donald Trump is not of the professional political class. Trump is screwing up the system. That is what his followers want out of him. What that should tell outside observers is not so much what is wrong with Trump but why so many people feel angry towards mainstream politicians and the political professional class more generally.

In the U.S. there is wage stagnation. We have growing economic inequality. The welfare state is being dismantled in many countries. We have massive corporate interests, and mainstream parties have failed. The Republicans have failed at least as much as the Democrats. But this idea from the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party that if Trump is defeated there will be some return to the so-called good old days of the 1990s is really being blind to the problems that have created Donald Trump and his movement.

How can liberals and progressives do better in the struggle over language? For example, there are all these worries about the health of “liberal democracy” in the U.S. and the West. But too many Americans hear “liberal” and that comes with negative associations about black and brown people, gays and lesbians, and of course “big government.” Conservatives have been masterful in programming that negative association. “Liberal” now means something bad.

The right wing has been incredibly successful in winning the battle over language. I think it is most visible in terms like “political correctness,” which is a weaponized term that has very little to do with what it was originally about. At present, “free speech” is a very potent example of how the right has weaponized language.

“Free speech” in the current context, as used by the right-wing has nothing to do with what free speech initially meant, namely that the state should not prevent you from saying things. Whereas now it is about the idea that the New York Times, for example, must let you write an op-ed for them. This is absurd, this notion that you have a God-given right to an op-ed in the New York Times.

And that free speech should come without consequences.

As used by the right, “free speech” means, by and large, that you can say something racist and I can then correctly identify it as being racist. But members of the right believe that they can say something racist and no one can be critical of it.

Language is one of the weaknesses, at the moment, of the left in general, but even with liberal Democrats. Hillary Clinton is an example of this, but she is certainly not alone. Many Democrats do this when they talk about “hard-working Americans.”

In the United States that language has a very racialized connotation. White people hear “white people” when you say “hard-working Americans.” Whereas many minorities will think, “Oh, you said ‘hard-working Americans.’ You’re talking to white people.”

“Working class” is another example. It is amazing how in the U.S. “working class” is used to mean the white working class. We also quite often speak about the “working class” when we actually mean men and not women. Language is a significant part of the political struggle of the left.

“Moderate” is another example of problematic language. Consider Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Apparently, the narrative goes that they are “radical” and the American people want a “moderate.” Now, first of all, the country is polarized. So what does “moderate” even mean? What does the center mean in a polarized world? Many of the positions that Sanders and Warren stand for are actually supported by a majority of Americans. Why would that be “radical”? But in practice “radical” still has that negative connotation and the term “moderate” has a positive connotation in American political discourse.

What do we do about the old problem that there are individuals, political parties and other groups who use democratic procedures such as voting to infiltrate a government with the goal of undermining if not destroying democracy?

I’m definitely a free-speech extremist. I think that you should be allowed pretty much to campaign for everything. You should have a right to be a member of the Nazi Party and to campaign to create a Nazi state. I actually would prefer to know that beforehand so I can make an informed decision.

:{:{}:

We should also, however, not be blind to the illiberal aspects of many so-called liberal democratic parties. If you look at Europe, for example, freedom of speech is pretty constrained. You can’t deny the Holocaust. You can’t say things that are perceived as racist. Even the U.S. does not have full freedom of speech. A person is not allowed to praise terrorism, for example.

Why should Americans care about British politics and the recent election victory of Boris Johnson and the Conservatives?

I do not believe that Americans should care that much about the recent British election. Johnson is going to take the U.K. out of the EU, but the EU is going to survive and will not be much weaker because the U.K. is not in it. He will try to get a special relationship with Trump and will not get it. I just wrote a column in the Guardian about this. I do not think that there is a strong lesson from the U.K. elections for the U.S. elections.

Johnson’s win does not mean that if a party or candidate goes hard left that they cannot win the election. There are any number of specific factors that played a role in the British election — Brexit, which is unique, being one of them. It is important to see things for what they really are. First and foremost, these were British elections. Boris Johnson might look a bit like Trump, but he is still a British politician set in the British context of politics and culture.

What can be done to stop the global ascent of the radical right?

First and foremost, we should see things in the correct perspective. In almost all countries, the radical right is a minority and the vast majority of people vote for liberal democratic parties, be they conservative, liberals or social democrats. That is very important. Hillary Clinton won nearly 3 million more votes than Donald Trump. The radical right is not the majority. The second question, then, is why don’t these people vote for the radical right? And why are the people who support liberal democracy not mobilized like those people who vote for the radical right?

Advocates for liberal democracy, for the most part, do not offer anything. This goes back to neoliberalism to a certain extent. Advocates of liberal democracy, the political mainstream centrists, do not offer positive narratives. Yes, the U.S. is a bit different with Warren and Sanders, who are in fact providing positive narratives. But in most cases, this is not true.

Defenders of liberal democracy are basically just saying, “Don’t vote for the radical right.” “Don’t vote for Trump.” “Don’t vote for Johnson.” “Don’t go out of the EU because things will be worse.”

“Things will be worse” is not a very good mobilization strategy. The Democrats do not need to convince anyone anymore that Trump is bad. The people who don’t see that now will not see that fact a year from now either. Whatever you tell them, the vast majority of people know that Trump is bad. The point is, they don’t think the Democrats are worth coming out for. That is the challenge faced by the Democrats.

Chauncey DeVega is a politics staff writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.

majority of americans favor impeach?! on fox poll 1219 but see 10 things wrong believe

:{:{}:

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/this-disturbing-psychological-analysis-of-trump-supporters-has-exposed-key-5-traits-about-them/

:{:{}:

no lnx

This disturbing psychological analysis of Trump supporters has exposed key 5 traits about them

Written by Bobby Azarian / Raw Story December 16, 2019

The lightning-fast ascent and political invincibility of Donald Trump has left many experts baffled and wondering, “How did we get here?” Any accurate and sufficient answer to that question must not only focus on Trump himself, but also on his uniquely loyal supporters. Given their extreme devotion and unwavering admiration for their highly unpredictable and often inflammatory leader, some have turned to the field of psychology for scientific explanations based on precise quantitative data and established theoretical frameworks.

Although analyses and studies by psychologists and neuroscientists have provided many thought-provoking explanations for his enduring support, the accounts of different experts often vary greatly, sometimes overlapping and other times conflicting. However insightful these critiques may be, it is apparent that more research and examination is needed to hone in on the exact psychological and social factors underlying this peculiar human behavior.

In a review paper published in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology, Psychologist and UC Santa Cruz professor Thomas Pettigrew argues that five major psychological phenomena can help explain this exceptional political event.

1. Authoritarian Personality Syndrome

Authoritarianism refers to the advocacy or enforcement of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom, and is commonly associated with a lack of concern for the opinions or needs of others. Authoritarian personality syndrome—a well-studied and globally-prevalent condition—is a state of mind that is characterized by belief in total and complete obedience to one’s authority. Those with the syndrome often display aggression toward outgroup members, submissiveness to authority, resistance to new experiences, and a rigid hierarchical view of society. The syndrome is often triggered by fear, making it easy for leaders who exaggerate threat or fear monger to gain their allegiance.

Although authoritarian personality is found among liberals, it is more common among the right-wing around the world. President Trump’s speeches, which are laced with absolutist terms like “losers” and “complete disasters,” are naturally appealing to those with the syndrome.

2. Social dominance orientation

Social dominance orientation (SDO)—which is distinct but related to authoritarian personality syndrome—refers to people who have a preference for the societal hierarchy of groups, specifically with a structure in which the high-status groups have dominance over the low-status ones. Those with SDO are typicallydominant, tough-minded, and driven by self-interest.

A 2016 survey study of 406 American adults published this year in the journal Personality and Individual Differences found thatthose who scored high on both SDO and authoritarianism were those who intended to vote for Trump in the election.

3. Prejudice

It would be grossly unfair and inaccurate to say that every one of Trump’s supporters have prejudice against ethnic and religious minorities, but it would be equally inaccurate to say that many do not. It is a well-known fact that the Republican party, going at least as far back to Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy,” used strategies that appealed to bigotry, such as lacing speeches with “dog whistles”—code words that signaled prejudice toward minorities that were designed to be heard by racists but no one else.

While the dog whistles of the past were more subtle, Trump’s are sometimes shockingly direct. There’s no denying that he routinely appeals to bigoted supporters when he calls Muslims “dangerous” and Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “murderers,” often in a blanketed fashion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a new study has shown that support for Trump is correlated with a standard scale of modern racism.

4. Intergroup contact

5. Relative deprivation

If such data is accurate, the portrayal of most Trump supporters as “working class” citizens rebelling against Republican elites may be more myth than fact.

Bobby Azarian is a science writer with a PhD in neuroscience. His research has been published in journals such as Cognition & Emotion and Human Brain Mapping, and he has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, BBC Future, Scientific American, Psychology Today, and others. Follow him on twitter @BobbyAzarian.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/are-blue-collar-white-women-trumps-red-wall/

:{:{}:

no lnx

:{:{}:

Are blue-collar white women Trump’s red wall?

:{:{}:

Written by Anne Kim / Washington Monthly October 25, 2019

:{:{}:

Despite a nonstop onslaught of fresh and damning revelations about his misconduct in office, President Donald Trump has so far maintained his core supporters’ loyalty. As of the start of this week, Trump’s average approval rating holds at 42 percent—only slightly less than the share of Americans opposing the inquiry into his impeachment.

:{:{}:

But for Democrats desperate to oust the president, either by impeachment or the ballot, breaching this “red wall” of support (if, in fact, it can be breached) is a matter of utmost importance. Democrats face two key questions: who are Trump’s most stalwart defenders, and can they be persuaded to abandon him?

:{:{}:

New research suggests an answer to the first of these queries. It’s a group that Democrats should—and could—be winning over: blue-collar white women. While Democrats made crucial gains among these voters in the 2018 election, these women may now be rallying to Trump’s defense.

:{:{}:

Opinion polls have shown increased momentum toward impeachment since evidence came to light that Trump pressured Ukraine to dig up dirt on the Biden family. As of October 21, Real Clear Politics’ average found that 51.0 percent of Americans support an inquiry, whereas 42.8 percent are opposed. Among blue collar white women, however sentiment is moving in the opposite direction, according to Trendency Research, which maintains a longitudinal panel of more than 1,000 Americans polled daily.

:{:{}:

As of October 21, Trendency found that a solid majority (54 percent) of non-college-educated white women either outright oppose or lean against impeachment,while just 37 percent strongly support it. In fact, blue-collar white women are the strongest opponents of impeachment among all white voters (see chart below). This opposition is in stark contrast to college-educated white women, among whom only 26 percent indicated “no support” for impeachment as of October 21.

:{:{}:

Blue-collar white women also seem relatively impervious to the dramatic developments shifting public opinion over the last month. Trendency found that the share of non-college white women indicating “no support” for impeachment has dropped by only one percentage point since the end of September, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formally announced the inquiry.

:{:{}:

Blue-collar white men, in contrast, have swung dramatically in favor of impeaching Trump. While just 26 percent of blue-collar white men showed “strong” support for impeachment as of September 28—with 59 percent who outright opposed—40 percent of these men now strongly support impeachment as of October 21 and a minority of 47 percent now oppose it. (College-educated white men show a similar and even more dramatic swing, as the chart below shows.) Among all adults, Trendency found that 52 percent supported impeachment as of the same date, a figure in line with polling averages maintained by trackers like RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight.

:{:{}:

Trendency CEO Stefan Hankin told me hisfirm has not yet conducted research to understand the seeming divergence in blue-collar white women’s attitudes toward impeachment compared to every other group.

:{:{}:

It’s a question worth urgent exploration.

:{:{}:

By sheer numbers, blue-collar white women are the nation’s biggest voting bloc. According to Democratic political research firm Catalist, non-college-educated white women made up 25 percent of voters in 2018 and 26 percent of voters in 2016. These women outnumber both non-college white men, who accounted for 22 percent of the 2018 voters, and college-educated white women, who comprised just 15 percent of the 2018 electorate.

:{:{}:

Luckily for Democrats, blue-collar white women are still a potentially winnable group. Catalist’s analysis, for instance, found that while Democratic candidates lost among both blue collar men and women in 2018, the margin of defeat among non-college-educated white women was half that among non-college-educated white men. (Democrats lost by 36 points among blue-collar white men and 18 points among blue-collar white women.)

:{:{}:

These women have also shown more willingness to cross the aisle.Although college-educated suburban white women won much of the credit for delivering House Democrats a majority in 2018, blue-collar white women have shown some shifting allegiances, even if not of the same magnitude. Democrats’ performance with them in 2018 was still a three-point improvement over 2016, according to Catalist. (By comparison, Democrats gained 11 points among college-educated white women, solidifying their new status as a core constituency of the party.)

:{:{}:

One potential explanation for Democrats’ gains among white women—a traditionally loyal GOP constituency—is that both college-educated and non-college-educated white women have similar economic priorities, despite major differences on cultural issues such as immigration. A November 2018 poll by Expedition Strategies for the Progressive Policy Institute found that both groups of women cited health care, Social Security, and Medicare as their top three concerns.

:{:{}:

Both groups are also economically anxious. The Democratic economic message, with its promises of a broader safety net, may appeal to many of these women. Post-election focus groups conducted by pollster Stan Greenberg for the American Federation of Teachers found that Democrats’ messaging on health care was especially appealing to non-college-educated white women.

:{:{}:

All of these findings, however, predate the inquiry into Trump’s impeachment. The question now is whether the specter of impeachment has catalyzed renewed support among blue-collar white women for the president and erased the gains from the 2018 election.

:{:{}:

For Democrats, regaining their toehold among these voters means two things. First, and most significantly, it means investing more resources in understanding what’s happening with blue-collar white women—and why. Democrats cannot afford to overlook this vital constituency; they should neither write them off, nor take them for granted. Second, Democrats should continue to push their message on health care and other kitchen-table issues that matter to all voters. The party leadership’s current instincts are correct that impeachment should not overtake the entirety of the political conversation through next fall.

:{:{}:

Ultimately, though, Democrats can’t view this challenge as a test of Trump’s resiliency with the white working-class voters that comprise so much of his base. Rather, Democrats have to see it as a test of whether they can devise a durable economic message that outweighs Trumpism’s appeal and unites women across all socioeconomic lines. It’s a challenge they should tackle now, before it’s too late.

:{:{}:

Anne Kim is a Washington Monthly contributing editor and the author of Abandoned: America’s Lost Youth and the Crisis of Disconnection, forthcoming in 2020 from the New Press.

===

crit of NYT column white educate trumpistas

:{:{}:

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/nyt-steers-dems-away-from-the-obvious-formula-for-defeating-trump/

===

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/heres-a-crucial-element-missing-from-the-media-narrative-about-trumps-white-working-class-base

:{:{}:

no lnx

:{:{}:

Here’s a crucial element missing from the media narrative about Trump’s ‘white working class’ base

:{:{}:

Written by Alex Henderson August 28, 2019

:{:{}:

Much has been written about President Donald Trump’s appeal among downscale white voters who live in the American Rust Belt. One of the most famous lines of Trump’s 2016 campaign was “I love the poorly educated,” and he continues to enjoy strong support among white males without a college degree.

:{:{}:

But New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall stresses that there is one group that the media often overlook when analyzing Trump’s base of support: whites who have a higher income but lack a college degree.

The phrase “downscale whites” has often been used in connection with Trump’s base. But Edsall, analyzing a recent report from political scientists Herbert Kitschelt and Philipp Rehm, stresses that it is quite possible for whites who never went to college to have a higher income — not wealthy, but comfortably middle class.

:{:{}:

And those who fit that description are an important part of Trump’s base.

:{:{}:

“Perhaps most significant, Kitschelt and Rehm found that the common assumption that the contemporary Republican Party has become crucially dependent on the white working class — defined as whites without college degrees — is overly simplistic,” Edsall explains. “Instead, Kitschelt and Rehm find that the surge of whites into the Republican Party has been led by whites with relatively high incomes.”

:{:{}:

And those higher-income whites, Edsall stresses, don’t necessarily have college degrees.

:{:{}:

“High-income whites without college degrees were swing voters 60 years ago, pursued by both parties,” Edsall notes. “Now, they are rock-ribbed Republicans.”

:{:{}:

In an e-mail, Kitschelt told Edsall, “Unlike much of the current debate, the ‘white working class’ — concentrated in the low-education/low-income sector of the white population — is not the category that has most ardently realigned toward Republicans. It’s higher income/low-education whites who are currently still doing well, but fear that in the Knowledge Society, their life chances are shrinking as high education becomes increasingly the ticket to economic and social success.”

:{:{}:

Nonetheless, Edsall notes, low-income whites without college degrees are still an important part of Trump’s base.

:{:{}:

“In the 1950s and ‘60s,” Edsall recalls, “low-income whites without degrees formed the base of the Democratic Party. Now, this group leans Republican.”

:{:{}:

Meanwhile, Edsall reports, another demographic has become increasingly important to the Democratic Party: whites who are college-educated but low-income. That demographic was almost unheard of 60 or 70 years ago, when a college degree practically guaranteed a decent income.

:{:{}:

“Two generations ago, there were almost no low-income whites with college degrees, a group that made up 1.5% of white voters in 1952,” Edsall observes. “These voters were a swing bloc without firm commitment to either party. By 2016, this constituency had grown to form 14.3% of all voters. They have, in turn, become the most loyal white Democratic constituency.”

:{:{}:

Looking ahead to 2020, Edsall asserts that the next presidential race “may well prove to be a base-vs.-base election.” But he quickly adds that “the outcome may lie in the hands of the substantial proportion of the electorate that is undecided: 7%, according to Pew.”

===

Truckers are facing a ‘bloodbath’ in their industry — and it’s turning many in the pro-Trump group against him: report

Truckers are numerous, conservative, and hurting. And despite their widespread…

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trump-and-the-culture-wars-here-are-the-divisive-themes-trump-will-focus-on-as-his-economic-policies-crumble/

:{:{}:

no lnx

:{:{}:

Trump and the culture wars: Here are the divisive themes the president will focus on as his economic policies crumble

:{:{}:

Written by Alex Henderson August 19, 2019

:{:{}:

President Donald Trump, in recent weeks, has been stressing both economic themes and culture war themes. The economic themes were evident during a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire on August 15, when Trump tried to frighten 401(k) owners into reelecting him and insisted, “You have no choice but to vote for me because your 401(k), everything is going to be down the tubes (under a Democratic president). So whether you love me or hate me, you’ve got to vote for me.” But if the U.S. does go into a recession in the months ahead, Trump will have a harder time selling himself as the salvation of the American economy — in which case, he would likely become even more aggressive in pushing divisive culture war themes.

:{:{}:

Although Trump is wildly unpopular in heavily Democratic areas of the U.S., he is still quite popular among his hardcore base — and one saw that playing out in the 2018 midterms. Democrats enjoyed a net gain of 40 seats in the House of Representatives, but Republicans slightly increased their majority in the Senate thanks, in part, to Trump’s ability to rally his base in conservative areas. And Trump’s rally-the-base approach has been painfully evident in recent weeks.

When Trump told four congresswomen of color to go back to the countries they originally came from — even though three of them (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Rep. Ayanna Pressley) were born and raised in the U.S. — it was a rally-the-base move. When he tried to discredit Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings by describing Baltimore (a predominantly African-American city) as a “rat- and rodent-infested mess,” he was clearly trying to rally his base. But when he was discussing 401(k) plans in New Hampshire, Trump appeared to be trying to expand his base and convince non-culture warriors to vote for him.

:{:{}:

The harder it becomes for Trump to campaign on the economy in the months ahead, the more important culture war issues and rally-the-base moves will become for him. It isn’t inconceivable that Trump could pull off a narrow Electoral College victory in 2020 even if the U.S. goes into a recession, but doing do would mean firing up his base as much as possible and benefitting from a low Democratic turnout — and there are many culture war and nativist themes that could become even more important to Trump if the economy declines.

:{:{}:

Abortionis at the top of the list. When he was a Blue Dog Democrat back in the 1990s, Trump was highly critical of abortion yet reluctantly pro-choice; these days, he is vehemently anti-choice and has vowed to only nominate severe social conservatives and “pro-life” zealots to the U.S. Supreme Court. So far, he has made good on that promise with Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh — and he has made it abundantly clear that if he is reelected and more seats become available on the Supreme Court, he will continue to do so and make the Court even more socially conservative.

:{:{}:

As it stands now, Roe v. Wade is likely to be overturned. But that possibility will become even stronger if Trump has a chance to nominate more Supreme Court justices.

:{:{}:

Trump, in the months ahead, is also likely to fan the flames of the Culture War by reminding the Christian right that Supreme Court justices aren’t the only people he would be nominating for the federal judiciary in 2021 and beyond. During a second term, he could nominate more far-right social conservatives to the lower federal courts as well.

:{:{}:

The Christian right, as journalist Chris Hedges has often stressed, is not only a fundamentalist religious movement — it is also a movement with severe nativist and white nationalist tendencies. And Trump can rally his Christian Right supporters not only with abortion or school prayer, but also, with nativism and anti-immigrant rhetoric. The worse the U.S. economy becomes for Trump, the more important issues like immigration and building a U.S./Mexico border wall become to his 2020 campaign.

:{:{}:

The Department of Labor, under Trump, has proposed rolling back Obama-era protections against anti-gay discrimination in the workplace and allowing companies with government contracts to discriminate against those who offend a contractor’s religious views. Christian Right groups like the Family Research Council and Liberty Counsel are applauding the move, which gives Trump yet another thing to campaign on when he is pursuing Culture War votes in 2020.

:{:{}:

Anti-Islam extremism is another issue Trump will likely pander to in 2020. Even President George W. Bush was careful to draw a distinction between radical jihadist Islam and non-radical Islam; Trump’s Christian Right and anti-Islam supporters draw no such distinction.

:{:{}:

Christian fundamentalist support for Israel is another Culture War issue for Trump to campaign on. Bizarrely, the Christian Right believes that Jews are doomed to hell unless they convert to fundamentalist Christianity, yet consider themselves stridently pro-Israel — and claiming that Democrats could never love Israel as much as he does is a way for Trump to rally his far-right base.

:{:{}:

If the U.S. economy goes south, that doesn’t make Trump any less dangerous; if anything, it makes him even more dangerous and more desperate to fire up extremists in his base. And whether he is ranting about abortion, illegal immigration, a U.S./Mexico border wall, Islam, or countries with predominantly non-white populations, Trump will have many ways to pander to his supporters’ worst instincts in the 2020 election.

AN AH

Trump’s tumbling support among ‘the poorly educated’ may crush his 2020 prospects: report

Alex Henderson

When Donald Trump famously declared, “I love the poorly educated” during his 2016 campaign, it was obvious that he was taking a much more populist (or rather, pseudo-populist) approach than…

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trump-our-movement-is-built-on-love-dont-laugh-his-followers-really-believe-it/

:{:{}:

no lnx

:{:{}:

Trump: ‘Our movement is built on love.’ Don’t laugh — his followers really believe it

:{:{}:

Written by Chauncey DeVega / Salon August 20, 2019

:{:{}:

Last Thursday, Donald Trump took his political rodeo to New Hampshire. As usual, he told lies about the Democratic Party being dominated by “socialists” and “hating” America, bragged about the size of the crowd, and threatened that if he is not re-elected in 2020 the United States will face economic ruin. The Trumpian faithful were greatly entertained.

:{:{}:

The “highlight” of the event was when Trump taunted a “protester”:

But while the Democrats rage and rages — that guy has got a serious weight problem. Go home, start exercising. Get him out of here, please. Got a bigger problem than I do. Got a bigger problem than all of us. Now he goes home and his mom says, what the hell have you just done?

:{:{}:

This is political discourse at the level of a six-year-old child. Trump’s supporters loved it. (And the man in question, who was evicted by event security, was not even a protester but a Trump supporter.)

:{:{}:

What Trump said afterward was far more important than his childish taunts. “There’s never been a movement like this,” he told his worshipful following in the Granite State. “Never. Our movement is built on love.”

:{:{}:

Really? What kind of love is that?

:{:{}:

It is the love of a political cult for its leader. It is also Donald Trump’s unhealthy love for himself. It is also the love born of collective narcissism, which is typical of right-wing fake populism.

:{:{}:

At its core, Donald Trump’s love is filtered through fascism and authoritarianism. His form of tainted love rests upon moral inversion, a state of being in which truth is replaced by lies, empirical reality itself is usurped, and the evil and immoral are transformed into the good and the noble. As Hannah Arendt warned in her landmark book “The Origins of Totalitarianism”:

:{:{}:

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.

:{:{}:

In this malignant reality, people who are in thrall to Donald Trump (or the other ignominious fascist and authoritarian leaders whom he adores and imitates) do not know what right and wrong are anymore. When these distinctions are pointed out, Trump’s supporters double down on their investment in the Great Leader and “the Movement,” focusing their rage and violence against the political truth-teller.

:{:{}:

Donald Trump’s love is exclusive rather than inclusive, narrow rather than broad. It is focused inward on the in-group as a way of legitimating violence and meanness towards the out-group. Trump’s love is not a celebration of the best of humanity but is itself inhumane.

:{:{}:

Donald Trump’s love is first and foremost based upon cruelty, As the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer observed in his widely cited essay “The Cruelty Is the Point”:

:{:{}:

Taking joy in that suffering is more human than most would like to admit. Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.

:{:{}:

Donald Trump’s love is easily channeled into cruelty and contempt directed at nonwhite people — especially the migrants, immigrants and refugees who are being detained in his concentration camps. Trump’s love attracts others who feel the same way, such as White House adviser Stephen Miller, a man who has shown himself to be an obsessive racist and white supremacist.

:{:{}:

The Washington Post’s recent profile of Miller includes this reporting:

:{:{}:

Among Miller’s co-workers are a few who believe he harbors racist views. “I don’t know what other principle could animate such a laserlike focus,” said one former career official at DHS. …

:{:{}:

Miller is obsessed, current and former administration officials said, with boosting deportations. Early in the tenure, he tried to persuade [John] Kelly, as DHS chief, to deport anyone here illegally. Kelly wanted to focus on criminal felons, frustrating Miller, people familiar with the disagreement said. “He is singularly focused on how to get people out of the country,” a former senior administration official said. …

:{:{}:

While some in the administration fret over images of squalid and inhumane detention conditions at the border, Miller has argued that they, too, are a deterrent — and that publicizing them is not a bad strategy.

:{:{}:

Trump’s love inspires perverse acts of devotion, including right-wing terrorism and other forms political violence, which he has tacitly encouraged ever since the beginning of his presidential campaign. In Charlottesville, El Paso, Portland and other places around the United States and the world Donald Trump’s white supremacist paramilitaries proudly wear his MAGA regalia while they chant racist slogans and commit acts of violence against nonwhite people, Jews, Muslims and other “enemies” of the Trump regime.

:{:{}:

Trump’s love also takes the form of hatred and contempt for American democracy and the rule of law.

:{:{}:

Predictably, Trump feels deep affection and admiration for foreign dictators and despots like North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

:{:{}:

The full context of Donald Trump’s claims that his “movement” is built upon “love” is even more problematic for what it reveals about his larger political worldview:

:{:{}:

We are continuing our incredible movement, the greatest political movement in the history of our country. There’s never been a movement like this. Never. Our movement is built on love and it is and we love our families. We love our faith, we love our flag and we love our freedom and that’s what it’s about. And add to that the fact that we love our neighbors and we love our country. Together, we are all united by one fundamental principle. A nation’s first duty must always be to its own citizens. Its own. We got to take care of our own. You haven’t heard that from a politician or a political leader in a long time.

:{:{}:

Public opinion polls and other research have repeatedly shown that racial authoritarianism and white rage are the glue that binds together and motivates Donald Trump’s movement. Trump knows this to be true, which is why he and his strategists have decided upon using overt white supremacy — replacing the conservative movement’s traditional “dog whistle” racism of the post-civil rights era — to win the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s electoral coalition, like that of the Republican Party more generally, is 90 percent white. Under Trump, the Republican Party has become America and the world’s largest white identity organization; racism and conservatism are now fully one and the same.

:{:{}:

Ultimately, Donald Trump’s use of the first-person plural, as in “our movement,” “our flag” and “our freedom,” is an explicit appeal to ethnic and racial bigotry. To be a “real American,” for Trump and his supporters, is to first and foremost be a white person. Because of that assumption, the “Americanness” of nonwhites is viewed as being contingent, tertiary, and at its root fraudulent. In effect, Trump and the Republican Party, along with their media and supporters, view America’s multiracial democracy as illegitimate.

:{:{}:

“Our families.” “Our neighbors.” “Our flag.” “Our country.” All these things are meant to signify whiteness — and loyalty to Donald Trump.

:{:{}:

Nationalism and racism have been responsible for some of the greatest tragedies in modern history. The United States once led the world in preventing such horrors. Now, working in league with the racist and authoritarian global New Right, the Trump regime has instead chosen to betray America’s moral leadership on those issues.

:{:{}:

Sydney J. Harris warned, in his 1953 collection of essays “Strictly Personal,” that the difference between patriotism and nationalism could be dangerous: “[T]he patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.”

:{:{}:

Such political combustion is made even more likely when racism and ethnocentrism are added to the mix.

:{:{}:

As demonstrated by his regime’s repeated assault on their rights and dignity, Trump’s “our families” does not include LGBT people. Nor does Trump’s love of “family” include nonwhite immigrants, migrants and refugees from Latin and South America, whom he and his followers take special delight in terrorizing.

:{:{}:

Trump’s love of “our faith” does not include Muslims, a group he previously proposed banning from entry to the United States. Trump’s love of “our faith” is primarily limited to white right-wing evangelicals who want to overturn the U.S. Constitution and install a Christian nationalist regime. Research shows that white Christian evangelicals share Trump’s racist attitudes, with particular hostility toward nonwhite immigrants.

:{:{}:

There are hopeful indications that Donald Trump may be voted out of office in 2020. Early polls and predictive models show him losing to the Democratic Party’s leading presidential contenders. Trump’s defeat is especially likely if the American economy collapses into a recession.

:{:{}:

But these predictions are based on traditional understandings of American politics. These first of all assume that Donald Trump would accept defeat at the polls, rather than, for example, declaring a national emergency to stay in power indefinitely; and secondly do not account for emotions and their role outside of “normal” politics.

:{:{}:

Donald Trump may be defeated in the 2020 election, but he has given permission for a type of American fascist politics that will long outlast his time in the White House. Trumpism is in many ways a dream come true for white supremacists and those sympathetic to their ideas: A sympathizer who shares their goals now leads the most powerful nation on the planet. Whenever Trump leaves office, his American fascist movement will feel great satisfaction that they were at least four years in power — or perhaps eight, or even more.

:{:{}:

Trump’s fanatical followers will not be satisfied until they experience that power again.

:{:{}:

How do you defeat a dream? Moreover, how do you defeat a dream once it has come true?

:{:{}:

These are questions that Democrats, liberals, progressives and other people of conscience will have to answer as they try to repair the damage that Trump and his regime have done to American society. Trump the man may well be removed from the White House. But Trumpism — the idea, and the movement — will linger on as poisons in the American body politic and collective imagination for a long time.

---