trigger pwn own libs

premature, disambig? nope promote 2nd b/c raision detre anglo-saxon caucus

= troll?

see macho misogyny

see provocateur eg milo; coulter does standup?!

see troll caucus

bad faith with a dash of irony/vengeance

see vice signal performative

beck and rush used to retreat when busted as just entertainer/clown

alt rt trollsget to spew hate then say, just kidding, just pwning/ owning the libs, can't believe you fell for it?

ok to trigger the snowflakes, yet rt is under attack, free speech being crushed, identity politics, victim narrative (mirror)

---

aha:trms? says fox reason to exist is attack left, not good on trump defense? also gop esp rising stars no intent or ability to legislate[b/c RR sez govt is the problem so regulation inherently bad(plus corp dark $ and 1 percent do not wants taxes, regs/equity]; plus mcconn strat again is deny biden/dems any wins, and so prove govt does not work [then get elected again, trash sell-out system and prove yet again it does not work, then dems have to clean us mess/crisis [2 santas?]

-----

---

MMA 2 25

Fox News has largely dodged reporting President Donald Trump’s February 15 declaration that he is above the law as long as he “saves his Country,” with much of the network’s sparse coverage focusing on how the president’s nakedly authoritarian statement triggered the libs.

When Trump posted, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” midday Saturday, the response was fierce. Trump’s remark — a quote “often attributed” to Napoleon Bonaparte, who overthrew France’s post-revolutionary republic and crowned himself emperor — followed calls from his allies to defy court rulings that strike down administration actions as illegal.

Numerous critics on the left and a handful on the right pointed out the danger inherent in Trump appearing to place himself above the law. MAGA influencers like Jack Posobiec (who recently received special access to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s first overseas trip) cheered. “America will be saved,” the notorious Pizzagate conspiracy theorist wrote. “What must be done will be done.”

It should go without saying that a similar remark from Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris would have triggered days if not weeks of apocalyptic coverage from Fox. But the right-wing propaganda network’s response to Trump’s comment has been notably muted, with only about 6 minutes of discussion through noon ET on Tuesday.

The bulk of Fox’s coverage — more than 4 and a half minutes — came from a Sunday segment on The Big Weekend Show in which anchor Griff Jenkins and his panel mocked Democrats and journalists for criticizing Trump’s statement.

Jenkins introduced the discussion by reading Trump’s quote and describing it as “the left’s latest ammunition for vilifying Trump.” Jenkins then aired a series of criticisms of the remark as a chyron read “left melts down over out-of-context Trump post,” before providing the purported missing context: “Trump said only days ago that he does in fact plan on abiding by the law.”

Video

Citation

From the February 16, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Big Weekend Show

Jenkins, having awarded the president credit for saying he would follow the law before saying that actions aren’t illegal if done to save the country, then added: “In fact, many people wonder if the ones not following the law are actually those on the left who have relentlessly gone after Trump over the past four years with questionable cases.”

The segment’s panelists celebrated Trump’s remark as a deliberate act of misdirection aimed at his political opposition.

“I am really grateful that President Trump did troll them on this, and I think he knew this was going to be their reaction,” offered Fox contributor Sara Carter.

Medical contributor Nicole Saphier added that Trump “puts up tweets like this because he knows that they are going to lose their mind. He has Democrats and left-wing media in such a tizzy.”

Fox prime-time host and Trump adviser Sean Hannity also responded by mocking Trump’s critics, tossing in a reference to the remark during a Monday recitation of purported instances of the media’s anti-Trump hysteria.

“It's like Nazi, fascist, racist, now it's Napoleon, now it's Margaret Brennan, now it's Saturday Night Live,” he moaned. “I mean, to be honest, it's like 10 years of this and they still haven't learned a thing.”

Fox contributor Andrew McCarthy offered a more cautious take on Monday’s edition of America’s Newsroom, suggesting that Trump’s comment could undermine his administration’s legal fights before the Supreme Court.

“Look, I think that some of the things the president said over the weekend about his, you know, authority, that — like, you don't violate the law if you are saving the country, and some of the stuff that has gone on with the Justice Department — I hope they haven't spooked the justices,” he said. “Because if you are going to ask the justices to uphold the law, you have to act like the law is important.”

But Trump’s remarks undermining the rule of law are not anomalous. He vowed during the campaign to act as a “dictator,” though only on “day one” of his presidency, and promised to unleash the Justice Department on his political enemies and journalistic foils. He has cited as his model the Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban, a self-described practitioner of “illiberal democracy.” Trump regularly praises murderous authoritarian rulers like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, and even touted the “strength” China’s leaders deployed in violently suppressing the Tiananmen Square uprising.

And Trump’s actions suggest he means what he says: He regularly signaled during his first administration that he wanted law enforcement to act as an extension of his will, and now he has put that into practice in his second term.

Pushback from the Justice Department stymied his efforts to take authoritarian steps like prosecuting his political foes and overturning the 2020 election. But since he returned to the White House, Trump has issued mass pardons to the January 6 convicts who attacked law enforcement in a bid keep him in power; purged federal prosecutors and FBI leadership; and nominated his own former personal lawyers to lead the Justice Department and a sycophant with an enemies list for FBI director. His appointees have overseen an effort to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams in exchange for his support for Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts and an attempt to open a probe into a Biden-era contract, both of which triggered resignations from career prosecutors.

Trump has functionally ensured that his allies will remain beyond the reach of federal law enforcement for the next four years. What a troll!

---

===

amanda

an 12 24 no pix twt

it was too laughable not to share it: On his Twitter knockoff site Truth Social, Donald Trump posted on Wednesday about a "MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT tomorrow," which included a video of him dressed as a superhero shooting lasers out of his eyes.

IFrame Content

It's what the kids online call "cringe" — and oh man, it couldn't have been more perfect for the online churn of public mockery. I'm on a Twitter diet, but I totally sent this dumb image to my friends, so we could join in the hilarity. So many questions! Is Trump really so delusional about his physical form that he thinks he looks like Superman? How can his fans not perceive that he does not, in fact, look like that? The lasers-out-of-the-eyes thing is directly out of the "Dark Brandon" meme liberals use to celebrate Joe Biden's accomplishments. Does Trump not know how desperate he looks, trying to bite Dark Brandon's style? How dumb is he anyway?

Trump has not returned to Twitter, even though Elon Musk reinstated his account and publicly begged him to come back. But he managed to dominate Twitter on Wednesday anyway, as one liberal hater after another retweeted screenshots of the superhero meme, making sure that every Beltway journalist was well aware of Thursday's "MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT." The silliness of it guaranteed much more coverage than if Trump had tweeted out a vaguely normal picture of himself.

Unsurprisingly, the actual announcement was not just underwhelming but an even higher degree of self-pantsing:

IFrame Content

But here's the part we cannot ignore: Trump is going to sell a lot of those dopey digital trading cards. As viral marketing campaigns go, this one was a solid win. Not only did all that liberal dunking garner news coverage and dramatic social media spread, but he also conveyed an important message to his supporters: Those liberal elites are laughing at you. And the way to strike back, proving that you're in on the joke and making the liberals cry, is to buy this worthless crap and send Donald Trump more of your money.

Since my book "Troll Nation: How the Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set on Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself" was published in 2018, its central thesis — that the modern right is motivated by an obsessive desire to troll the left — has become a lot more widely accepted.

Just this week, Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent pointed out that Musk has gotten into the troll business because he understands that "for large swaths of the right-wing media ecosystem, the Triggering of the Libs has become an end in itself." By tweeting repulsive things and drawing liberal outrage and condemnation, Musk can get more engagement while sucking in more fans who love how angry he makes their perceived enemies.

But what is too often overlooked in these discussions is how much this empire of trolling relies on the right's inferiority complex. At the root of the trolling mindset is defensiveness. Conservatives perceive, not always incorrectly, that liberals are laughing at them for being a bunch of tasteless rubes with boring sex lives and expanding beer guts. This perception does not motivate a desire toward self-improvement, but instead a longing for revenge, mostly in the form of imposing their grossness on the supposedly more refined existence of those they despise.

This inferiority complex is why the term "elite" has become common currency on Fox News. They don't use it accurately — say, to describe those who hold excessive wealth and power, but as a swipe at the perceived progressive values of college-educate cultural tastemakers in coastal cities. It explains how Musk, who until very recently was ranked as the richest man in the world, can get away with styling himself as a populist hero. Childish as it may be, Musk and his fanboys are still agitatedabout their perceived rejection by the Cool Kids.

The slavish fandom that people like Musk and Trump attract is generally confusing to folks on the left, because those two guys are such embarrassing losers. Trump's superhero meme has its brother in Musk's recent bout of social media thirst:

IFrame Content

It was already pathetic enough that Musk has been reduced to begging right-wing douchebags to like him. The items in that image make it worse, creating a virtual bingo card of terminal dweebness: Caffeine-Free Diet Coke. A painting of George Washington that was uncool when our grandparents were kids. A fake gun. In order to get the women of Tinder to swipe left faster, all you'd need would be a pet iguana and a decorative sword. (Arguably, the vajra on the table of a non-Buddhist counts for the latter.)

That doesn't just appeal to those who already identify as conservative, either. Musk's cult is part of a larger ecosystem that seeks to redirect angry young men toward fascist politics. Musk may be running Twitter into the ground financially, but as a right-wing political project, his takeover of the company is going great: He's adding 200,000 new followers a day.

In his recent book "Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind," journalist Robert Draper explains that, in his many conversations with Trump voters, it became clear that they were not confused about the actual nature of Donald Trump's personality. In fact, he writes, "the MAGA faithful adored their emperor without clothes." As he told Salon, "everything that we would ordinarily view as a vice they found to be to be virtuous," often precisely because it pisses off liberals so much.

you see this all the time on social media, when conservatives make jokes about how liberals hate the "bad orange man." In making that joke, they're indicating that they know Trump is a weird-looking guy who wears orange makeup every day and also that, by any reasonable standard, he sucks. But none of that detracts from his allure in the slightest. He's basically a human pile of dog poop they get to rub liberal noses in, an animated and endlessly whiny punishment they can inflict on those who make them feel insecure.

Shame is an odd emotion. It can sometimes motivate a person to slow down or stop behaviors that cause it. Just as often, however, it can backfire, creating a defensive reaction that causes the person to double down. Trump's dumb superhero meme is a good example of the latter tendency in action. Liberals have mocked conservatives for years for their hero worship of Trump. But rather backing down, they just go at it harder — admittedly, with a bit of ironic distance — by churning out cartoonish images that reimagine Trump as Superman or Elvis or Rocky or some other masculine icon.

Of course these folks are still suckers. They may think they're sticking it to the liberals, but as usual Trump is just squeezing them for cash. But as long as they keep nursing their grievance over real or imagined liberal mockery, Trump fans will never quite be able to see how much the bad orange man has been using them all along.

===

aha 10 24

lately trump unhinged rants he preface the worst with my staff does not want me to say // i won’t say then immediately/inevitably DOES // they go crazy when i say X some racist lie [jdv PR joke, gee humorless PC cannot take joke b/c snowflakes [feminist no sense of humor?]

“go crazy” // ARE crAZY LUNATIC LEFTISTS

mma

October 29, 2024, edition of WZFG The Flag's What's On Your Mind?

CLETA MITCHELL (ELECTION INTEGRITY NETWORK): And so there have been a lot of different changes that have been made in legislation and in statutes around the country. And that's a good thing but it's not enough. We have to do more.

But the biggest thing I think is that the RNC, to their credit, have filed a lot of lawsuits. They haven't won as many as I would have liked but at least they've been aggressive before the election and the other thing is we have citizens, we have so many volunteers who are trained who now know the election code better than most lawyers in their state and they are involved and they're engaged and they're working as poll observers and many of them have become election board members and election officials and so we have a presence and we have eyes on the process that we really didn't have in 2020And of course it makes the left's collective head explode. They hate it. T. hey hate me, they hate the Election Integrity Network, and they hate everything that we're doing which tells me we're on the right track.

---

tucker is unelected member of troll caucus

aha [amanda] earth2 = --> fascism

an 2 23

The political media fascination with Rep. George Santos, the New York Republican who appears to have faked approximately 95% of his life, is such that it was inevitable that it would draw a "savvy" backlash piece scolding the press about their priorities. The wannabe party pooper finally emerged last week at the Washington Post in an opinion column headlined, "Real people don't care about George Santos." In it, self-assigned buzzkill David Byler argued "America doesn't seem to care" about Santos, which he can tell based on Google search traffic.

Our nation was founded by puritans, so as soon as people had a laugh over Santos, inevitably someone would shake their finger disapprovingly. But there were some flaws in Byler's argument, starting with his assumption that Santos' own embarrassed constituents are not "real" people. There's also the fact that Google Trends isn't a very exacting measure of interest in a subject, as it only measures if people are searching out information. It doesn't capture people who read articles they saw on social media or directly on a news website. Traffic to stories about Santos is plenty healthy on that front.

But perhaps most importantly, this narrow-minded focus on search traffic ignores what a lot of the sneered-at political observers saw coming a mile away: The imminent George Santos makeover into MAGA's Next Top Superstar.

Santos may not matter to "average" Americans, but his story is being leveraged directly into the right-wing propaganda machine that currently controls the Republican Party. On Thursday night, for instance, Santos was sanctified into the echelon of MAGA saints by the Pope of neo-fascism himself, Tucker Carlson. In a typically dishonest segment on his wildly popular Fox News show, Carlson painted Santos as a hapless victim of the bigoted news media by pretending that the only thing Santos lied about was his volleyball career. (Which is one of the more minor fake careers and hobbies Santos has claimed on his resume.) Media Matters has a sample of the extremely silly diatribe:

It was a tissue of lies constructed to deceive the American people. There was no volleyball scholarship. There was not a single dollar of volleyball scholarship. George Santos made it all up out of whole cloth, out of thin air. George Santos is an ersatz volleyball player. A fraud, a ghoul. People voted for this man believing he had played collegiate volleyball on a scholarship and he hadn't.

And yet tonight ladies and gentlemen, this thief of volleyball glory strides the halls of the United States Congress unimpeded by law enforcement. It's like another insurrection.

Carlson doesn't really have arguments or evidence, but he does do a bang-up impression of someone sarcastically brushing aside nonsense. Except what he's brushing away is usually pretty serious stuff, such as fascist attacks on democracy, attempts to save lives during a pandemic, or, in this case, unbelievable amounts of fraud that look potentially criminal in many cases. With Santos, the number of lies Carlson is ignoring is truly staggering. Santos lied about his resume, his religion, his marriage, his family history, and claimed connections he doesn't have to the Holocaust, 9/11, the Pulse nightclub shooting, and an assassination attempt that appears fictional. It is really no exaggeration to say it's easier to list the things he hasn't lied about (his age and his birthplace in Queens).

But just as Catholic saints get their status through martyrdom, the saints of MAGAdom must get theirs through falsified tales of victimhood at the hands of "woke mobs" or the "fake news media."

People right-wingers hate are alarmed at Santos and his staggering trail of fraud. So if the "libs" have a negative reaction to Santos, in the troll-based logic that drives the modern GOP, that must mean he's their newest champion. And let's just state for the record that, while Byler may not see left-leaning news consumers as "real people," he probably wouldn't say the same about the millions of Trump voters whose entire worldview is shaped by the crap that Fox News pours into their heads every day.

Carlson didn't reach the conclusion that Santos is the latest MAGA idol all on his own. Practically from the moment that Santos's deceit was exposed by the New York Times, Steve Bannon, the Joseph Goebbels-wannabe who frequently sets the GOP agenda with his popular "War Room" podcast, was championing the pathological liar. Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia have also rallied to Santos' side, claiming he's only a target because he's a "fighter." It's unclear who he has ever "fought" for besides himself, but then again, the same could be said of most MAGA figures, from Donald Trump on down.

It's not a mystery why these leaders think the right-wing audience is ready to accept Santos as the next MAGA savior. All that matters to the modern right is "owning the liberals," and who better to do that than someone who lies constantly for no apparent reason other than the sheer thrill of it?

Certainly, Santos seems to grasp that the move that will take him from a low-level con man to the ranks of the richest MAGA grifters is to lean into trolling. So he's been rolling out the standard issue liberal-owning stunts for weeks now: Flashing the white supremacist-aligned "OK" hand signal during a House vote. (He even knew how to do it so it was clear enough to photograph but so quick he could pretend later it wasn't intentional.) Wearing an assault rifle pin while playing dumb about why it offends people to celebrate the preferred weapons of mass shooters. Feeding the press donuts and actinglike they had somehow become complicit in the evil by eating them. Getting into Twitter fights with drag queens, who are the favorite punching bag of the authoritarian right. (Santos seems to have a past as a drag queen, as well, but this is just part of a favorite right-wing trolling tactic, to recruit members of a hated minority to speak out against their own.) Dunking on former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., for criticizing him by tweeting "cry about it."

Reports suggest Santos is delighted by all the negative attention he's getting in the press. An exceptionally short-lived aide recorded a conversation in which Santos was dressing him down, and right in the middle of it, Santos suddenly exclaims, "Don Lemon just texted me — I'm sorry, I'm listening to you — Don Lemon just texted me!" Getting his name on CNN, even during a story on how he is the worst, was just that thrilling to Santos.

Santos even hired former Steve Bannon employee and professional troll, Vish Burra, as a top aide. Burra's defense of Santos is cynical and self-congratulatory: The lying is a form of "shitposting," which is internet speak for saying outlandish things to draw outrage and attention. For the Trumpist right, aggressive trolling is what politics is all about.

Imagining that they're outraging the left is what the GOP audience gets out of this. (No one tell them that the left's reaction to Santos is more amusement than genuine fury.) But there's an even darker reason that Carlson, Bannon, Taylor Greene, etc. have decided to rally round Santos: He's very useful as a weapon in their larger war on truth.

As with Trump, it's overly simplistic to look at these people, with their non-stop disinformation, as mere liars. Liars are people who are sincerely trying to deceive people. In many cases, it's not at all evident that right-wing audiences actually believe the asinine B.S. that is rolled out by the likes of Carlson and Bannon. For instance, the "outrage" over M&M spokescandy shoe choices is less sincere anger than it is a collective bit of performance art. Both Carlson and his audience merely pretend to be mad as a way to keep ironic distance from their own weird sexual hang-ups. Similarly, conspiracy theories like Trump's Big Lie are often less about true belief and more about displaying fealty to their tribe.

There's a point to right-wingers constantly saying and "believing" things they know not to be true. It's about devaluing empirical reality. Fascists want "truth" to flow from what the right-wing authority figures say is "true," not from lived experience or verifiable facts.They are trying to construct a world where facts don't matter, and only power does. The first step is getting their tribal community to agree collectively to stop distinguishing between true and false and to only claim to believe what is convenient for their leaders or their cause.

For that goal, Santos is useful. He is living the fascist dream of a man whose entire existence seems unmoored from the power of facts. If the MAGA leaders can turn him into a hero, he'd be a living exemplar of their post-truth yearnings: "Truth" can be whatever you want it to be. After all, right-wingers already hate the way facts — Trump lost the election, COVID-19 is real, LGBTQ people exist — get in the way of their desires. They just need permission to let go of that last tendril of reality and start living purely in their authoritarian fantasy world. Santos shows the way. It's unlikely he will be going away any time soon.

---

aha: gt replacement mainstreams licenses racism/xenophobia "you won't have a country anymore"

strict fr, cruel is the pt /state of exception/margin makes persecution ok; desantis and abbott have duelling deport stunts (even after martha v blowback); own the libs: you say u are compassionate and there's plenty of room, prove it/ YOU deal w/ it. the coastal blue state elite have no idea how tough/dangerous it is down here on the border, so we will educate them give reality check

https://www.alternet.org/greg-abbott-migrants-christmas-dc/

---

// alt rt

https://www.alternet.org/musk-trump/

an 12 22

no lnx twt pix

It was too laughable not to share it: On his Twitter knockoff site Truth Social, Donald Trump posted on Wednesday about a "MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT tomorrow," which included a video of him dressed as a superhero shooting lasers out of his eyes.

Trump has not returned to Twitter, even though Elon Musk reinstated his account and publicly begged him to come back.But he managed to dominate Twitter on Wednesday anyway, as one liberal hater after another retweeted screenshots of the superhero meme, making sure that every Beltway journalist was well aware of Thursday's "MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT." The silliness of it guaranteed much more coverage than if Trump had tweeted out a vaguely normal picture of himself.

Unsurprisingly, the actual announcement was not just underwhelming but an even higher degree of self-pantsing:

But here's the part we cannot ignore: Trump is going to sell a lot of those dopey digital trading cards. As viral marketing campaigns go, this one was a solid win. Not only did all that liberal dunking garner news coverage and dramatic social media spread, but he also conveyed an important message to his supporters: Those liberal elites are laughing at you. And the way to strike back, proving that you're in on the joke and making the liberals cry, is to buy this worthless crap and send Donald Trump more of your money.

Since my book "Troll Nation: How the Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set on Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself" was published in 2018, its central thesis — that the modern right is motivated by an obsessive desire to troll the left — has become a lot more widely accepted. Just this week, Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent pointed out that Musk has gotten into the troll business because he understands that "for large swaths of the right-wing media ecosystem, the Triggering of the Libs has become an end in itself." By tweeting repulsive things and drawing liberal outrage and condemnation, Musk can get more engagement while sucking in more fans who love how angry he makes their perceived enemies.

But what is too often overlooked in these discussions is how much this empire of trolling relies on the right's inferiority complex. At the root of the trolling mindset is defensiveness. Conservatives perceive, not always incorrectly, that liberals are laughing at them for being a bunch of tasteless rubes with boring sex lives and expanding beer guts. This perception does not motivate a desire toward self-improvement, but instead a longing for revenge, mostly in the form of imposing their grossness on the supposedly more refined existence of those they despise.

But it's a mistake to conclude that Musk's fans simply fail to understand how uncool the Tesla CEO has revealed himself to be. He's created a cult of dork solidarity around him, one committed to a "Revenge of the Nerds"-style fantasy of ruining Twitter for all those blue-checked people who make them feel bad about themselves. That doesn't just appeal to those who already identify as conservative, either. Musk's cult is part of a larger ecosystem that seeks to redirect angry young men toward fascist politics. Musk may be running Twitter into the ground financially, but as a right-wing political project, his takeover of the company is going great: He's adding 200,000 new followers a day.

In his recent book "Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind," journalist Robert Draper explains that, in his many conversations with Trump voters, it became clear that they were not confused about the actual nature of Donald Trump's personality. In fact, he writes,"the MAGA faithful adored their emperor without clothes." As he told Salon, "everything that we would ordinarily view as a vice they found to be to be virtuous," often precisely because it pisses off liberals so much.

you see this all the time on social media, when conservatives make jokes about how liberals hate the "bad orange man." In making that joke, they're indicating that they know Trump is a weird-looking guy who wears orange makeup every day and also that, by any reasonable standard, he sucks. But none of that detracts from his allure in the slightest. He's basically a human pile of dog poop they get to rub liberal noses in, an animated and endlessly whiny punishment they can inflict on those who make them feel insecure.

Shame is an odd emotion. It can sometimes motivate a person to slow down or stop behaviors that cause it. Just as often, however, it can backfire, creating a defensive reaction that causes the person to double down. Trump's dumb superhero meme is a good example of the latter tendency in action. Liberals have mocked conservatives for years for their hero worship of Trump. But rather backing down, they just go at it harder — admittedly, with a bit of ironic distance — by churning out cartoonish images that reimagine Trump as Superman or Elvis or Rocky or some other masculine icon.

Of course these folks are still suckers. They may think they're sticking it to the liberals, but as usual Trump is just squeezing them for cash. But as long as they keep nursing their grievanceover real or imagined liberal mockery, Trump fans will never quite be able to see how much the bad orange man has been using them all along.

---

an 1 23 no lnx

---

an ah 1 23

In Washington, D.C. smoking is banned from office buildings. But that rule doesn’t apply to the U.S. Capitol Building, where House Republicans have lifted a ban on smoking in that branch of Congress.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and other far-right pundits have been quick to applaud the move. Sounding a lot like the late radio host Rush Limbaugh, Carlson told viewers, “Nicotine frees your mind, and THC makes you compliant and passive.”

In a scathing article published by The Nation on January 23, journalist Joan Walsh slams House Republicans and their supporters for promoting something as unhealthy as smoking and argues that they are “killing” their “own voters.”

READ MORE: 'The smell of freedom': Tucker Carlson and House Republican defend tobacco smoking inside the Capitol

“I honestly thought it was fake news,” Walsh writes. “Just after Kevin McCarthy became House speaker, giving away his power to right-wing antagonists the first week in January, I read about Congress members smoking on the GOP side of the aisle. Just a projection from my liberal allies of Republicans’ intent to erode public health, I assumed. Funny GIF to come. But it was true. Rep. Tom Cole was smoking cigars in his office. Others were reportedly smoking cigarettes in other places.”

Walsh notes that “House lawmakers’ private offices aren’t governed by” either the District of Columbia’s anti-smoking ordinance” or “a Bill Clinton executive order” that “prohibits smoking in federal buildings that are under the authority of the executive branch.”

“Under McCarthy, smoking is allowed not just in members’ offices, but in public areas too,” Walsh explains. “Now comes more carcinogenic propaganda from right-wing losers. Last week, Fox’s Tucker Carlson began preaching a return to smoking as a return to American values. Tobacco is so much more American than increasingly legal and available weed, he told his stoned-on-lies audience.”

On Fox News, Carlson made cigarette smoking a culture war issue, telling viewers that liberals “hate nicotine” but “love THC.”

READ MORE: ‘You gaslighting cartoon’: Kellyanne Conway brutally mocked for conflating opioid deaths with marijuana

Walsh comments, “I shouldn’t be surprised at Carlson’s tribute to tobacco…. Republicans have long opposed anti-smoking measures, at least partly out of fealty to Big Tobacco. Former GOP Speaker John Boehner became infamous for handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists on the House floor in 1995. As Indiana governor, Mike Pence railed against tobacco restrictions and insisted ‘smoking doesn’t kill.’ But the recent pro-smoking crusade seems to be inspired more by culture war imperatives than by defending the tobacco industry.”

The journalist points out that Limbaugh spent decades vigorously defending cigarette smoking on his radio show — before dying of lung cancer in 2021.

“Killing your own voters seems like a bad electoral strategy,” Walsh writes. “Salon’s Amanda Marcotte calls it ‘getting lung cancer to own the libs.’ Sadly, Republicans are mostly giving their base voters what they think they want.”

READ MORE: Tobacco giant exploiting murders of George Floyd and Eric Garner for profit: report

---

an ah 12 22

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top White House medical adviser to President Joe Biden and long-time director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has been serving in the United States’ federal government since the late 1960s. Fauci, who will be celebrating his 82nd birthday on December 24, 2022, has been in the United States’ federal government since the late 1960s. And he has never had a problem serving under conservative Republican presidents, including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

The younger President Bush, in fact, had nothing but praise for Fauci when he presented him with the 2008 Presidential Medal of Freedom.

But during the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci became a major target of the MAGA movement. Countless MAGA culture warriors, consumed with identity politics, have turned hating Fauci into a popular pastime. Tesla CEO and new Twitter own Elon Musk, who supported President Joe Biden in 2020 but often sounds very MAGA in his rhetoric, bashed the retiring NIAID director when, on December 11, he tweeted, “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.” [// desantis BS]

Many Twitter users have been calling Musk out for that tweet. But liberal Washington Post opinion columnist Greg Sargent, in his December 13 column, stresses that Musk is unfazed by such critics because his motivation is appealing to the “right-wing information ecosystem.”

“By now, it should be obvious that for large swaths of the right-wing media ecosystem, the Triggering of the Libs has become an end in itself,” Sargent explains. “In the brutal competition of the so-called attention economy, provoking large-scale outrage and loathing is not an incidental feature of making controversial arguments. It has become a key marker of success.”

Sargent continues, “Over the weekend, Elon Musk called for the prosecution of Anthony S. Fauci, the leading infectious-disease expert in the Biden Administration. 'My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,' Musk tweeted, mocking transgender people for good measure. Musk then endorsed a complicated right-wing conspiracy theory about Fauci’s role in the COVID-19 pandemic. Democrats and other Musk critics reacted with an explosion of outrage.”

Twitter users who vigorously defended Fauci against Musk ranged from Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota to former CIA Director John O. Brennan. The latter told Musk, “Dr. Fauci is a national hero who will be remembered for generations to come for his innate goodness & many contributions to public health. Despite your business success, you will be remembered most for fueling public hate & divisions. You may have money, but you have no class.”

Sargent stresses, however, that while Brennan and Klobuchar’s defenses of Fauci are “reasonable,” they also “seem fundamentally out of touch with basic realities of how right-wing information warfare really works.”

“This sort of info-warring, at bottom, is what characterizes Musk’s transformation into the world’s richest right-wing troll,” Sargent explains. “Tons of pixels have been wasted on efforts to pin down Musk’s true beliefs, but whatever they are, we can say right now that he’s consciously exploiting fundamental features of the right-wing information ecosystem.”

Sargent adds that offending liberals is the whole point of an “info-warring” tweet like Musk’s December 11 attack on Fauci.

“It’s understandable that Musk’s critics are trying shaming and outrage, in that this could further drive advertisers away from Twitter,” Sargent writes. “But paradoxically, it might also help Musk…. In much of the right-wing info-ecosystem, liberal outrage is a sign of an attack’s effectiveness. It can be only confirmation that the Libs Were Owned. Shaming is useless in such an environment, and in some ways can backfire.”

---

also texas az reverse freedom rides; own libs just helping sanct states smirk, cheer; bad faith with a dash of irony/vengeance

https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/us-attorney-doj-ron-desantis/

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troll move, own the libs

A Republican campaign advisor got it from both sides on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday morning after he attempted to defend Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) over his sending immigrants seeking asylum to Martha's Vineyard in what is universally being considered a political "stunt."

During the panel segment, Jennings said what DeSantis was doing was important because it helps illuminate the problems at the border, which led both a liberal and a conservative co-panelist to call him out for disregarding the human factor of shipping people around the country to make a political point.

Former Barack Obama senior adviser Daniella Gibbs Léger got in the first shot at Jennings, telling him, "You know what? You can make a point about border security and we can have a conversation about comprehensive immigration reform and adding more money to support border states, but using people as political pawns -- these are people fleeing communism."

"I thought the Republican Party was the one against communism," she lectured. "To ship them to a place that doesn't have the facilities to take care of them -- you say blithely 'only there for a day.' Martha's Vineyard doesn't have capacity to do that. The Republican governor sent them to a place where there were facilities to take care of them. "

She added, "This is MAGA extremism taking over this party. I get emotional talking about this because I remember when we were separating children, babies from their parents at the border with no care about reuniting them. This is what this is too. These migrants were lied to and misled; they thought they were going someplace else and were given appointments across the country for Monday. So they're setting them up for failure."

Former Donald Trump administration officialAlyssa Farah Griffinthen jumped in.

"Here's the thing," she began. "We have a crisis at the border, humanitarian, national security, full stop. Vice President Kamala Harris said on another network last week the border is secure -- it's not."

"That said, I disagree with the stunt on almost every level," she continued. "We know the Biden administration is relocating people within the country, migrants within the country to take some of the strain off the border states, but we cannot use human beings as pawns."

"If this was a serious effort by Governor DeSantis, he would have called [Massachusetts Republican] Governor Charlie Baker and say, 'I need all resources available, we need to house these people, set up places where they can process asylum claims and meet with you all.' This was meant purely for Twitter and to drive the conversation."

Watch below or at this link:

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an 11 21

After the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse on Friday afternoon, right-wing trolls — many of whom are elected members of Congress — were ecstatic at this prime opportunity to trigger the liberals.Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Madison Cawthorne of North Carolina, and Paul Gosar of Arizona — all Republicans more interested in trolling than governance — made showily public offers of an internship to Rittenhouse. Cawthorne even took it to the next level, instructing his supporters to "be armed and dangerous."

Never one to be out-trolled, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia let loose with some truly unhinged tweets about "radical Marxists" who are trying to start "a race war," proclaiming that "gun rights are the only thing holding back the Communist Revolution the Democrats are waging." And on the Senate side, Ted Cruz of Texas attacked the "corrupt corporate media," skillfully targeting the very people he needs to amplify his message and get that sweet trolling attention.

Right-wing pundits joined in on all the gleeful trolling, as well.

Ann Coulter tweeted a meme equating Rittenhouse with superheroes, and Donald Trump Jr., forever trying and failing at being a Twitter wit, wrote, "The Rittenhouse jury just gave Biden his second colonoscopy of the day." Multiple right-wingers on social media wrote songs to honor Rittenhouse. On Friday, popular and t**rollish YouTuber Steven Crowdercelebrated the verdict by insisting, "it's so wrong that we teach young men that violence is immoral," and encouraged viewers to follow in Rittenhouse's lead by taking up arms against Black Lives Matter protesters. Tucker Carlson, King of the Trolls, will host Rittenhouse on his Fox News show and insisted that he's "not a racist person." This claim is impossible, of course, to square with the photos taken earlier this year in a Wisconsin bar where Rittenhouse partied with Proud Boys and flashed white supremacist signs at the camera.

All of these provocations worked as intended: They got attention and garnered liberal outrage. "Liberal tears" are the most valuable commodity in Republican circles these days, and nothing brings forth tears like senseless violence. For those who subsist on liberal outrage, the dunks were easy and plentiful, because it turns out those silly liberals really do make frowny faces over the celebration of political violence.

The right is reacting to this verdict like they're sports fans whose team just vanquished a rival team in the Superbowl. The excitement on the right was palpable, but also measurable. As an analysis from Raw Story shows, Facebook exploded with conservative celebrations of the verdict, with "18 of the top 20 most engaged page links in the world" originating with conservative American pages. And the pleasure of the moment was explicitly tied to joy over how upset liberals — or at least those perceived as liberals — were. Right-wing figurehead Dan Bongino, who is reliably one of the most popular figures on Facebook, posted a link claiming Chuck Todd "nearly cries" after the verdict. The post garnered over 3,000 shares and 68,000 reactions, the majority of which were the "laughing" emoji.

It's not just that this behavior is tasteless. It also illustrates how violence is the logical endpoint of the right-wing obsession with trolling liberals. If your goal is provoking a reaction, then violence is surely the most efficient way to do it. Unlike mean tweets and "f*ck your feelings" T-shirts, violence simply cannot be ignored. By celebrating this violence, congressional Republicans and right-wing media are openly inviting more of it, because the reward of upsetting people on the left is just so delicious. The distinction between right-wing trolling and violence is collapsing.

To be certain, the escalation of violence-as-trolling has been going on for a while now. As Eric Boehler wrote in his Press Run newsletter, "The flashpoints of Republicans and conservatives promoting political violence have become ceaseless, to the point of frightening normalization," to the point where polling data suggests "that as many as 21 million Americans think that the use of force is justifiedto restore Donald Trump to the presidency."

Much of the month has been dominated by a story about Gosar tweeting out a fan-made video that depicts him murdering President Joe Biden and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. The Democratic-controlled House responded to this unsubtle threat by censuring Gosar and stripping him of his committee assignments, but nearly all Republicans stood by Gosar. The excuse used to defend Gosar's behavior was that he was just trolling liberals for fun. Gosar's digital director even put out a statement saying, "Everyone needs to relax. The left doesn't get meme culture. They have no joy."

However, right-wing "joy" is not mutually exclusive from violence.

Gosar's tweet wasboth trolling to get a reaction from the left and a threat of violence. Trolling is a crucial aspect to both amplifying violent threats and helping conservatives hype each other up for more violence. That's why Gosar doubled down by retweeting the video minutes after being censured for it. The message is clear: If you love outraging the left, then violence is the swiftest way to do it.

Even Rittenhouse's behavior prior to killing two people at a Kenosha, Wisconsin protest last year embodies this troll logic. As Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times observed, Rittenhouse's presence at the protest was clearly a provocation. Rittenhouse carried a showy AR-15 "in part because the rifle "looked cool," and the gun "seemed to invite conflict." Popular right-wing troll Drew Hernandez was at the protest that night, anthat, when some protesters saw Rittenhouse and other men with guns, "they immediately attempted to agitate them, to try and start some conflict with them."

In other words, Rittenhouse's AR-15 functioned both as a troll and as a deadly weapon. The distinction between trying to "trigger the liberals" and actually pulling the trigger on liberals collapsed completely the night Rittenhouse shot three people, killing two. He certainly got what every right-wing troll wants, which is an outraged and dramatic reaction from people he perceived as liberals. The result was two dead bodies — and another opportunity for GOP leaders to troll some more, further reinforcing the idea that, for those who live for triggering the liberals, nothing works better to get a reaction than actual violence.

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The leaders of the Republican Party—Rep. Matt Gaetz and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene—have been touring the nation. Whether this is part of Gaetz's plans for expanding his sex trafficking ring, Greene's recruiting drive for terrorists, or simply a cash grab by both, isn't clear (except for the part where it definitely is a cash grab). What is clear is that it's a keen demonstration of the GOP is making a "star" out of anyone who is merely willing to be disgusting on a regular basis.

As a quick reminder, Greene was taken off her House committee assignments for continually promoting the Big Lie in a way that encouraged violence, and downplaying the events of Jan. 6. Meanwhile, Gaetz is under investigation for his involvement in a multi-state scheme to recruit young women, provide them with fake IDs, and jet them around the country for sex in exchange for cash and prizes—a scheme that is complicated by the fact that at least one of these women was underage. Both these things together, and you have the makings of a modern Republican dream team.

The two have been touring the country making appearances that allow their followers to own the libs by showing that they don't care about details like rape or insurrection, so long as they get to hear jokes about Nancy Pelosi and watch Gaetz sputter on in his obsession with AOC. They also have been talking up a proposed political caucus to defend "Anglo-Saxon" culture by strictly limiting immigration.

But a funny thing has happened when it comes to the West Coast edition of the Gaetz and Greene show. Funny in the "ha ha" sense. Because nobody wants them. For the third time in a week, venues have put out the Not Welcome mat, leaving the pair looking for somewhere to gestate their hate supposedly right on the eve of their next appearance.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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aha note politics no longer about legislation [cf guy said i have no legis staff just PR, // cawthorne] but attacking libs/dems score pts in media eg talk radio and soc med

an 621 ah

no lnx twt

When Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018, the progressive Democrat expected to have frequent policy differences not only with Republicans, but also, with centrists in her own party. However, attacks on Omar from the far right — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and pundits at Fox News — go way beyond policy disagreements, painting her as fundamentally anti-American and an outright enemy of the United States. And on June 9, Omar tweeted a racist, threatening message her office received following a tweet by Boebert and the June 7 publication of an anti-Omar article by Houston Keene on Fox News' website.

In a June 8 tweet, Boebert — a supporter of the far-right QAnon conspiracy cult — described Omar as an "honorary member of Hamas" and one of the "terrorist [NOTE SUBS COMMIE-] sympathizers in Congress." Members of QAnon were among the violent extremists involved in the January 6 insurrectionist assault on the U.S. Capitol Building.

In her June 9 tweet, Omar — who is a Muslim and is originally from Somalia — noted that it isn't unusual for her to be "inundated with death threats." And she cited the call that she tweeted as a prime example. That racist caller can be heard saying, "Muslims are terrorists. And she is a raghead n*****. And every anti-American communist piece of shit that works for her, I hope you get what's fucking coming for you."

Omar tweeted that calls like the one she posted are "incited directly by articles like this" — a reference to Keene's article for Fox News' website — and "far-right politicians like" Boebert.

TW: Every time I speak out on human rights I am inundated with death threats. Here is one we just got. “Muslims ar… https://t.co/tKLay3dwdl

— Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan Omar) 1623286390.0

This is incited directly by articles like this and far right politicians like this. And it is enabled by a politic… https://t.co/6Ogf2nXnMX

— Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan Omar) 1623286456.0

Here are some reactions to the racist, threatening call Omar's office received:

@IlhanMN Its really ironic since Boebert is literally a terrorist sympathizer (if not directly involved) when it co… https://t.co/RBMVTRqWyJ

— AnarchyPunished2:ElectricBoogaloo (@AnarchyPunished2:ElectricBoogaloo) 1623287545.0...

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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/06/donald-trumps-parting-gift-to-washington-was-a-party-of-shitposters/

rkj

i've seen many things at the Conservative Political Action Conference over the years, including many things I wish I hadn’t. But until Ted Cruz spoke to a ballroom of activists from the main stage in Orlando in February, I had never seen an elected official interrupt his own speech to promote a podcast.

“Please go subscribe,” barked the Texas Republican, sounding more like a street performer with a SoundCloud than a second-term senator. “Verdict With Ted Cruz! Verdict With Ted Cruz! Click on ‘subscribe.’ Five stars, please!”

One week earlier, Cruz had left his constituents and his poodle behind to wait out his state’s deadly grid failure at the Ritz-Carlton in Cancun. It was the sort of PR disaster that would leave many politicians reeling. Cruz tried to monetize the controversy instead, printing a line of Barstool Sports–chic “spring break” tank tops with a caricature of his nascent mullet. He may never lead the Republican Party, but Cruz always knows its temperature, and in the space of a few minutes in Orlando, between jokes about his ill-advised Mexican vacation and plugs for his side project, he managed to distill this conservative moment to its essence. Increasingly, as world-historical crises unfurl all around them—often exacerbated by their own policies and actions—the GOP’s most ambitious officials view their primary responsibility less as public servants than as content creators, churning out an endless stream of takes, memes, stunts, and podcasts. So many podcasts.

The Republican Party has long been infused with an irrepressible hustle, what the historian Rick Perlstein calls “mail-order conservatism.” Talk radio and direct mail were not only effective at peddling reactionary politics to voters; they were also perfect vehicles to sell products, such as gold and home-security systems. For decades these conjoined strains of politics, entertainment, and marketing have eroded trust in public institutions and the media and provided a template for self-aggrandizement and enrichment. There is nothing really like this on the left; Infowars and Goop sell the same pills, but Gwyneth Paltrow is not fomenting rebellion.

The way conservatism manifested itself over the airwaves has shaped what rank-and-file conservatives expect to be told and how they expect to feel about it. The late Rush Limbaugh’s listeners called themselves “dittoheads,” eager to nod along with everything. Newt Gingrich used to distribute tapes of himself talking so that candidates could emulate his language. In the 1980s, he weaponized C-SPAN’s new House cameras—where members previously addressed each other, Gingrich and his allies began speaking past them. They turned the Capitol into a studio and made politics into a product. Donald Trump easily won the Republican base because it had been primed for someone who could provide both the programming and the commercial breaks, sometimes all at once; in conservative politics, after all, you’re always being asked to buy something.

Trump’s presidency blew past the old frontiers: The performance of politics became the purpose of it.

But Trump’s presidency blew past the old frontiers: The performance of politics became the purpose of it, and the grind of governance became secondary to the responsibilities of posting.

It was as if, after years of awkward but largely profitable power-sharing between conservative politicians and conservative media, the Republican Party at last stumbled upon the ultimate efficiency: What if both roles could be played by the same person? Trump once dreamed of spinning a losing presidential bid into his own media entity.

During the pandemic, in lieu of crisis management, he turned briefings into a variety show, assembling a rotating cast of characters, and plugging an array of sponsors—MyPillow, Carnival, Pernod Ricard. You would not necessarily get good medical advice, but you would learn that Hanes is a “great consumer cotton products company” that’s being recognized more and more.

no lnx

There was no issue grave enough to take seriously and no controversy too petty to weigh in on. Anything could be resolved via tweet, precisely because nothing really can; the ephemerality was the point. And a rising generation of politicians learned an important lesson about what conservative voters wanted. If Limbaugh taught them all how to talk, Trump taught them how to govern. His enduring gift was a caucus of content creators.

Just consider the Republican congressional class of 2021—the new arrivals to Washington who modeled themselves most directly after Trump. They seem almost blissfully detached from the work of Congress. There is 25-year-old Madison Cawthornof North Carolina, who was elected on the strength of a largely invented personal story amplified with loads of influencer-style Instagram posts. He recently posted a 19-second video of himself punching the bark off a tree. Cawthorn boasted to his colleagues that he had built his staff “around comms rather than legislation.” He was in Washington, in other words, mostly just to post.

Cawthorn boasted to his colleagues that he had built his staff “around comms rather than legislation.”

When Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon representative from Georgia, was stripped of her committee assignments in February by colleagues upset that she had harassed fellow members of Congress and blamed forest fires on the Rothschilds, she greeted the news with relief. “If I was on a committee, I would be wasting my time,” she said. Now she was more free to share videos of her CrossFit workouts with the hashtag #FireFauci. Not that showing up for committee hearings necessarily means you’re there to work. Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, who like Cawthorn and Greene spent her first weeks on the job scaring the shit out of her co-workers, recently hijacked a virtual committee hearing by posing like John Wick in front of a shrine of firearms in her living room. (“Who says this is storage?” she responded to critics. “These are ready for use.”)

Cawthorn, Greene, and Boebert were all members of the National Republican Campaign Committee’s “Young Guns” program, which takes its name from an earlier trio of House Republicans—one of whom, Paul Ryan, went on to become a vice presidential nominee and speaker of the House and unite the party behind a vision of budget austerity. There is surely some sort of ideology at work here, too, but it’s more Jake Paul than Paul Ryan; they are treating the Capitol like their own hype house, using the stature of their office for clout.

R. Kikuo Johnson

These younger, gunnier guns are taking cues from their elders. Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a content farm of a congressman who has filmed not one but two Avengers-style videos in which the ex–Navy SEAL parachutes out of airplanes to fight Democrats, also hosts a podcast. So doesDevin Nunes. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz has a podcast called Hot Takes. Before he became publicly embroiled in a federal sex-trafficking investigation (“If you aren’t making news, you aren’t governing,” Gaetz once said), he was considering retiring to take a job at the conservative cable channel Newsmax. In February, more than a dozen House Republicans—including Gaetz and Nunes—skipped work to speak at CPAC with Cruz. They took advantage of a covid-era policy that let members vote by proxy in medical emergencies; to them, promoting their brands is the job.

After watching Cruz’s speech I took his advice and checked out Verdict, which he co-hosts with Michael Knowles, who rose to prominence after publishing an entirely blank book called Reasons to Vote for Democrats. Cruz recorded the first episode at 2:40 a.m. after the opening day of Trump’s Ukraine impeachment trial—hence the name of the show—and returned to the studio every night of the proceedings. Within days of its debut, Verdict had passed Joe Rogan on the iTunes charts.At CPAC, Cruz announced it had been downloaded 25 million times. It is almost certainly the most popular thing he has ever done.

From the start, there were gestures that this was all “for work”; while Cruz plugs his book with regularity, he does not hawk brain pills or sell ads. In the premiere episode, Cruz solicited listener questions he could ask during the impeachment. When Knowles asked him why he was doing the show, Cruz replied with two words: “Substance. Matters.”

This is true in a technical way: Cruz talks on his show about many of the things he and his Republican colleagues talk about in the Capitol. But that Washington conversation is increasingly just an extension of what they talk about on their podcasts. The biggest crises in America right now, according to Cruz, CPAC, and Trump, are the interlocking threats of Big Tech and “cancel culture.” Hearings with tech executives have become a must-watch for conservatives. Cruz advertised his hearing-room clash with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last summer with a Christopher Nolan–ish movie trailer and a poster reminiscent of welterweight boxing—“The Free Speech Champion vs. the Czar of Censorship.” There are substantive things to say about corporate power, but this brand of conservative opportunism zips past what’s real to fixate on what isn’t. Twitter moderators, or someone being “canceled,” is not something Congress is really positioned to do much about. They are just creating content about content creation; this is the uroboros of mail-order conservatism.

Twitter moderators, or someone being “canceled,” is not something Congress is really positioned to do much about. They are just creating content about content creation.

Big Tech and “cancel culture” have emerged as key villains for the new right, not just because of how neatly they fit into long-standing tropes about “cosmopolitan elites,” but because so much of modern conservatism lives online. Offline, there are issues that warrant serious attention from one of the nation’s two governing parties—cities without water, cities soon to be underwater, whole states without power, and a world still suffering from a deadly virus. But with a nudge from Trump, the right has become ever more dissociated from reality, channeling its energy into an endless series of fights over “deplatforming” and who’s triggering whom. During the Obama years, a Breitbart provocateur interrupted a White House press conference to complain about losing his Twitter verification badge. Then, it was a sideshow; now, it’s the whole point. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely presidential candidate, recently signed a law prohibiting social media companies from banning public officials.

The rise of politics as content creation is hardly the sole domain of the right. After his 2016 presidential campaign ended, Bernie Sanders kept his media imprint running. He organized town halls on Facebook Live and recorded a regular podcast. Sanders, who has made no secret of his distaste for corporate-owned media, hoped to build out his own information stream for his supporters. So did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York representative whose prolific posting has gotten her in trouble with other members of her caucus. (Her arrival in Washington precipitated a closed-door meeting in which a colleague pleaded, “Everyone stop tweeting!”)

The content creators of both the left and the right pose some of the same big-picture challenges—the rise of politicians as independent news sources, of politics as stan culture, and the acceleration of the permanent campaign. A Pew analysis found that the outgoing 116th Congress was one of the least productive of the last half-century, but the most prolific ever when it came to posting. Members sent 50 percent more tweets than they did two terms ago; they were still talking—just not to each other. The more politicians function as affinity brands peddling a product to be consumed, the more “politics,” the entertainment vehicle, becomes dissociated from politics, the distributor of power. Barack and Michelle Obama run a media company now and each hosts podcasts, too; the ease with which political figures can rebrand themselves as entertainers speaks to the two spheres’ increasing coziness. This is not what “seizing the means of production” was supposed to mean.

But the way this dynamic is unfolding on the left and the right is asymmetrical. Though you would not necessarily know it from listening to Gaetz, Obama is not in office. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are not angling for TV gigs; nor are they reducing the world of lawmaking to the kind of retrograde distractions that get you booked on Tucker. They use their enormous social media platforms for civics lessons, offering behind-the-scenes glimpses of the legislative process and the work of movement building, in an effort to get more people invested in both. You can buy the “Tax the Rich” sweatshirt Ocasio-Cortez wears when she holds court on policy and procedure on Instagram Live, but it is not the only thing she is selling. She and Sanders are trying to make the online world more engaged with the real world, rather than the other way around, to advance an ambitious governing program. It is a theory of change, of which clout and performance are merely a means, not the endpoint, of politics. That is the opposite of the reductive nihilism of Cawthorn or Boebert, or the eternal stagecraft of Cruz.

In the first few months of the Biden administration, the world of Twitter and real life have become increasingly estranged. In a paradoxical way, the transformation of a major political party into a meme factory has even eased some of Washington’s dysfunction. While Republicans were pitching their podcasts and talking about Dr. Seuss and his imaginary canceling—Cruz began selling copies of Green Eggs and Ham, signed by himself—Democrats pushed through a $1.9 trillion covid relief and stimulus package with little dissent.

In March, Trump, banned from Facebook and Twitter, announced that he was considering launching his own social media network. “I’m doing things having to do with putting our own platform out there,” he promised. “You’ll be hearing about [it] soon.” The website he unveiled didn’t amount to much, but that’s what made it so perfectly Trump—there’s not supposed to be a there there. Meanwhile, younger Republicans aiming to take his place continued their auditions. In April, Marco Rubio called on the government to treat companies that pollute “our culture” just as harshly as it treats companies that pollute our water—sort of like an Environmental Protection Agency for tweets. Cruz, himself accused of poisoning the discourse by John Boehner, polled his hive on whether he should shoot the former speaker of the House’s new book with a machine gun.

But none of the Republicans vying for Trump’s role have embraced the new posting reality as fluidly as DeSantis.In May, not long after guaranteeing Florida politicians the right to shitpost, DeSantis scored his biggest coup yet: passage of a bill to roll back voting access in the state, fueled by Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. When it came time to sign it, local reporters were stopped at the door—only a crew from Fox and Friends got in. DeSantis had turned an attack on fundamental rights into a live television event. Supporters of the ex-president stood behind him, cheering on cue, as the governor bantered with the hosts via satellite. Then he picked up a blue Sharpie, scrawled his name, and held up the embossed legislation for the cameras.

Trump may be gone, but the show never ends.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/conservative-mind/

cody f

observers of the Republican Party and the American right wing have noticed a perplexing pattern of beliefs about the COVID vaccines. While many in conservative media are critical or skeptical of the vaccines, highlighting supposed dangers while also downplaying the risk from the virus itself, many have also insisted that former President Donald Trump deserves much more credit for the vaccine than he's getting.

It creates something of a paradox in the conservative mind: The vaccines are dangerous and overhyped, but also they're something Trump deserves endless praise for having helped create. These ideas do not easily fit together. It's not exactly clear how many people are making these exact claims in parallel, seemingly contradicting themselves, but there's no question that both strands of thought exist comfortably in right-wing discourse without appearing to come into conflict. And there's no real sign of major right-wing figures resolving the contradiction by saying: "The vaccines are bad, and Trump is bad for having had a hand in their creation." Such a thought is anathema.

There have been some conservative figures, such as Fox News' Geraldo Rivera, who have fought against the anti-vax strains in their movement while praising Trump for his administration's role overseeing the development. This is a more consistent view, but it's more marginal in right-wing circles, which tends to be welcoming of anti-vax sentiment, like Fox News prime time host Tucker Carlson.

When it comes to the attack on Jan. 6, a similar paradox emerges. Much of the right wing has come around to the idea that the insurrection at the Capitol was no big deal — indeed, the Trumpy outlet "American Greatness" recently even argued that the rioters themselves should be elected to Congress. This reaction, and the fear that Democrats were making too big a deal out of the attack, was a large part of why Republicans in Congress blocked the formation of a bipartisan commission to study it.

But since the day of the attack, there's been an alternative view on the right. In reality, some claim, it wasn't Trump supporters who violently stormed the Capitol, but leftists and Antifa. This idea came up even this Thursday when "Women for Trump" co-founder Amy Kremer claimed that video of a Trump supporter at the Capitol riot didn't actually show a Trump supporter[kremer twt pix]

if this were really true, that the left was responsible for the violence at the Capitol, then surely Republicans would be demanding an investigation that would expose this reality. Of course, it's not true — the U.S. Justice Department has arrested hundreds of right-wing Trump supporters involved in the attack with ample evidence of their identities and beliefs.

There's been some internal pushback among those on the right who suggested Antifa was responsible for the attack — including from many of the right-wing rioters themselves. Still, somehow these narratives — the insurrection was no big deal, and also it was infiltrated by violent leftists who framed Trump supporters — somehow manage to exist peaceably within right-wing discourse.

But there's a unifying explanation for both of these contradictions. They derive from the principle that, in the parlance of the internet,the thing that matters the most is "owning the libs."

This simple phrase has somehow become the dominant motivational force for conservatives. It, of course, explains the success of the uber-troll Donald Trump. The right-wing movement and the Republican Party are defined so much more by their opposition to their perceived enemies than any other coherent principles. That's why they can claim to be defenders of the U.S. Constitution while also arguing it should be ripped up if it will keep Trump in power.

When it comes to vaccines, it's clear the libs love them, which immediately makes them suspicious to many conservative thinkers. And even if the conservative is personally willing to take the vaccine, the liberals' insistence that vaccines should be widely encouraged, is anathema, so they're willing to tolerate and accommodate the anti-vaxxers. But liberals also hate Trump, so it's just as appealing to the conservative mind to demand that Trump get credit for the vaccines that the liberals love so much. Whether this all makes sense is less important than if it can make liberals feel bad.

The same goes for Jan. 6. Obviously, the liberals are concerned about the attack, so dismissing it is one way to "own the libs." But if you can also somehow blame the attack on the libs — all the better.

There's another similar paradoxical thought process I found vexing at the start of the pandemic. At the time, many conservatives, following Trump's lead, dismissed the seriousness of the virus. But they also sought to blame the virus on the Chinese government, often insinuating that it was an intentional attack. These ideas didn't make much sense together. If the virus is no big deal, how is it plausible that it's a bioweapon?

Again, though, it didn't have to make sense. This time, it wasn't all about owning the libs. But it was still about knowing who the enemy was. And the Democrats, the public health establishment, and those taking the virus were clearly the enemy. And so was China (even though just weeks before Trump had been praising Chinese President Xi Jinping). This view didn't provide for a coherent response to the virus, but it triggered the emotions conservative figures and their audiences want to feel. And that's much more important than a little cognitive dissonance.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

NRA board member Ted Nugent responds to anti-fraud lawsuit: “I’m Schindler but I got a whole bunch of more Jews that I’m saving”

Nugent and Alex Jones team up to give away 100 NRA memberships

https://www.mediamatters.org/national-rifle-association/nra-board-member-ted-nugent-responds-anti-fraud-lawsuit-im-schindler-i

tish J burns down nra

NUGENT (NRA BOARD MEMBER): I believe that the attacks on the NRA are the attacks on freedom by freedom-haters and we all see and know who they are. Right now is the time to give away NRA memberships to everybody you know because if itdrives the freedom haters that batty, let’s make them go crazy by getting more NRA--

ALEX JONES (HOST): And how do I do that? I am gonna buy 100 memberships today. I pledge 100 memberships today. How do I call? Do I call? How does the NRA do that?

NUGENT: I’ll tell you what, go to my website. There is a direct link to “Join the NRA” and a discount. Go to TedNugent.com and there's NRA memberships and remember, the NRA is a civil rights organization. It’s about your right to self-defense. How more pure can you get?

JONES: And it’s 140 years old. And I know how nonprofits work, this is one of the beautifulest, best ones ever. If somebody in there did wrong, we were talking during the break, which you’re not saying they did, there’s no evidence of that, then they step down. You don’t get rid of the organization. She let everybody know, I’m going to abolish it because I’m going to take care of the members. That’s like saying I’m going to burn your house down because grandpa ate too many cupcakes.

...

NUGENT: We know this New York attorney general hates gun owners--

JONES: I was about to say, how can you have Hitler investigate, say, Jews?

NUGENT: It’s unbelievable. You know why they hate me, because I’m Schindler but I got a whole bunch of more Jews that I’m saving and the Nazis hate me for that.

JONES: Beautiful. Well, I believe the NRA's done nothing wrong. I’ve had them lie about me with financial stuff, it's total fiction, total fraud. The NRA does a great job, especially since you got involved. It’s really gotten hardcore and we love you. We need to get NRATV going again.

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C&C kathy griffin severed head to sharon angle? bull's eye over rival cands, "2nd amendment remedies"; tiller baby killer, pipe bombs mail; stella ilhan hanged as traitor...

raISE transaction cost

definition? dirty trick? long term play? systemic? just new-fangled term for fighting dirty, win at all costs, working the refs?

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aha: has bs myth rhet allowed trump to do dick-tatorial XO? or just raise transaction cost

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/how-a-notoriously-stupid-fox-news-host-inadvertently-let-slip-trumps-corrupt-plan-media-reporter/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=4673

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/how-a-notoriously-stupid-fox-news-host-inadvertently-let-slip-trumps-corrupt-plan-media-reporter

twt vid]

although President Donald Trump has used Twitter incessantly to promote himself, he has been furious with the social media outlet this week for fact-checking two of his tweets — so furious that on Thursday, he issued an executive order targeting social media companies and claimed that he did so to “defend free speech.” Twitter hasn’t removed any of Trump’s tweets, but flagged or hidden them as inaccurate or violent. While legal scholars have been asserting that the order cannot withstand legal scrutiny, Media Matters’ Matt Gertz stresses that it serves a useful purpose for Trump nonetheless — and that purpose has been identified by the “notoriously stupid” Fox News host Steve Doocy.

“President Donald Trump capped off a multi-day tantrum at Twitter for appending a mild fact-check to one of his false tweets by retaliating with the power of the federal government,” Gertz explains. “The executive order he signed Thursday is slapdash and incoherent, rooted in a false premise, hypocritical and potentially unconstitutional, legally unenforceable yet dangerously authoritarian, with sections that read like a Fox News screed. But to analyze the executive order’s flaws is to miss the point entirely.”

That purpose, according to Gertz, is “raising the cost of defiance until his perceived enemies break” — and the executive order “forces Twitter to expend resources fighting it, but if the company bends to Trump and does what he wants, maybe it will just go away.”

“Steve Doocy of all people — the notoriously stupid ‘Fox & Friends’ host who is one of the president’s favorite cable news personalities — (inadvertently) nailed it on Wednesday,” Gertz notes. “Social media companies would face ‘a big headache’ if Trump tried to repeal the section of federal law that the executive order targets, he exclaimed, so ‘they might think twice about putting a footnote on a tweet from the president of the United States.’”

Gertz emphasizes that with his executive order, Trump is “drawing a line between companies that defy him and are punished and those that work to benefit him and receive praise.” Trump, Gertz observes, “lauded Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for criticizing Twitter’s decision to fact-check him.”

“Zuckerberg is the poster child for what Trump wants from the head of a social media company,” according to Gertz. “The Republican political operatives he hired to run Facebook’s policy wing have carved out exemptions from the site’s rules for Trump and his media allies. Trump is making clear that it is in the interests of other social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube to adopt that same corporate strategy — and he will continue to raise the temperature until they do.”

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