Aha4bak

estb 1 25

aha3bak --> aha 4 12 23

merri ok

field miss err msg on both 2? 621

html haymarket

bak 12 21

capt 622

aha/doh hype fear --> strong man fascist

....// outrage? social media only good at a couple emotions}:

see emotion anger fear

see identity victim / grievance --> rw civil war

see they are coming for you (gubmint but also AA)

coming for your kids indoctrinate groomer

see target

see violent crime loot burn riot racist

see rhet god devil term, anti-commie sino-phobia

see border bs

see violent rhetoric (nb fighting words/ god/ devil terms lead to violence w/o explicitly calling for it)

see islamophobe

see us vs them enemy, polarization SEE BORDER bs INVASION

see conspiracy --> fear --> grift

see apoc anarchy soc brkdn

Some Donald Trump supporters are dismissive of arguments that the former president is a would-be dictator, claiming that Democrats, via "wokeness" and "cancel culture," are the real authoritarians.

But other Trump voters have flat-out said they would welcome a strongman leader, and they aren't offended by Trump's praise of far-right authoritarian leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Russian President Vladimir Putin. And members of the Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank that has become increasingly MAGA in recent years, have argued that liberal democracy is failing the United States.

In an article published by The New Republic on July 18, journalist Susan Milligan details reasons some Americans believe that rejecting democracy would be a good idea.

The "very uncomfortable and inconvenient truth," according to Milligan, is that "a big chunk of the public actually wants an authoritarian leader." The journalist notes that 32 percent of Americans favor a military regime or authoritarian leader for the U.S.

"Why would people want to live under an authoritarian's thumb?" Milligan writes. "It's rooted, experts say, in a psychological need for security — real or perceived — and a desire for conformity, a goal that becomes even more acute as the country undergoes dramatic demographic and social changes. People also like to obey a strong leader who will protect the group — especially if it is the 'right' group whose interests will be protected."

Joe Pierre, a health sciences clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco's Weill Institute for Neurosciences, told The New Republic that people who favor authoritarianism believe it will be used against others rather than against them.

Pierre told The New Republic, "For those of us who value representative democracy, the fact that some of our fellow citizens might prefer authoritarianism can be surprising or even unfathomable…. Authoritarianism and a 'strongman' leader who's willing to trample over civil rights can sound like a very appealing solution. In turn, democracy — which tells us that our ideological opposites deserve to be heard or should be given equal voice — can sound like the root of the problem."

Kets de Vries, who teaches business at INSEAD in Paris, had similar insights.

De Vries told The New Republic, "Human beings are actually very primitive. They are looking for a father figure to take care of them. They are willing to be blind to all the defects of Trump. He appeals to their most primitive instincts."

*Read Susan Milligan's full article for The New Republic at this link.

===

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-=-=

AHA DOH: no transparency --> corrupt; buy election ~ democ; gig econ , crypto, online sport bet, pred mkt, mil surveil contractors have to capture govt to function

MTA GMAIL 8 28 26

A new class of political kingmakers is emerging in the 2026 elections—and they are not voters.

Artificial-intelligence, cryptocurrency and online-gambling corporations have poured approximately $344 million into efforts to influence the 2026 federal elections. Overall, corporations contributed a record $646 million to Super PACs and other political committees during the 18 months ending in June 2026—already 40 percent more than the $461 million disclosed during the entire 2024 election cycle. These totals exclude undisclosed contributions to dark-money organizations, meaning the true level of corporate political spending is likely even higher.

Companies including Coinbase, Ripple, OpenAI, Anthropic and DraftKings are helping build political operations designed to shape congressional races and the regulations governing their industries...

-=-=

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AHA doh: 3 26

FLYNN WANTED MIL TO GRAB BALLOTS/VOTING MACHINES; TRUMP T2 IS USING DOJ LAWFARE RETALIATION NO RULE OF LAW TO DO IT; SHERIFF / OATHKEEPER COPYCAT TO PLEASE DEAR LEADER, BUT BUILDS CRED FOR BIG LIE ~ 2026 MIDTERMS

TRUMP SENDS FBI DOIJ TO GRAB BALLOTS BASED ON DISCREDITED BS; USES MIZZOU OUT OF STATE USAG TO DO IT; SEND MARTINE TO LA CHIC BASED ON LIE THAT CRIME VIOLENCE THERE IS NOT CAN NOT BE DEALT W BY CORRUPT INEPT DEM-ONIZED LEADERS

REVIEW OVERLAP BETWEEN MILITARIZATION AND CRIMINALIZATION, BOTH FASCIST?

AN 3 26

In Riverside County, California, Sheriff Chad Bianco — a Donald Trump supporter and former Oath Keepers member who is running for governor of California as a Republican — recently announced that his department had seized 650,000 voting ballots cast in a 2025 election. Bianco, at a, told reporters, "This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes reported.""

MS NOW's Steve Benen, in an opinion column published on March 24, argues that Bianco is conducting an "investigation that appears entirely baseless" and could be used as a "template" for MAGA Republicans to challenge election results they don't like.

"For those inclined to be charitable," Benen explains, "there is a relatively benign interpretation of these developments. It's possible, for example, that Bianco is simply trying to generate attention for his longshot gubernatorial candidacy. Relatedly, the sheriff likely realizes that ballot seizures will please the White House, which in turn, may lead to greater institutional support from his party in the coming months. The move, in other words, may very well be little more than an elaborate campaign stunt that will have little practical impact and will be largely forgotten after Bianco loses. But then, there are the less benign interpretations of what transpired."

The "Rachel Maddow Show" producer notes that Bianco's investigation "comes on the heels of Trump sending the FBI to seize election materials in Georgia in response to other assorted conspiratorial complaints."

"The broader concern is that a template is taking shape, offering precedents for law enforcement to start making plans to seize ballots in areas nationwide — after or even during official counts," Benen warns. "What's more, the more frequently this happens, the more Americans may be led to believe it's normal and routine for law enforcement officials to seize and impound ballots — despite the fact that this is neither normal nor routine."

---

aha 28TH REQUIRED FOR TRUST IN SYSYEM

mta email 1 26

WATCH: On Senate Floor, Kelly Leads Colleagues in Marking 16 Years Since Citizens United Ruling, Highlighting Impact of Big Money in Politics on Working Families - Senator Mark Kelly

january 16, 2026

WATCH: On Senate Floor, Kelly Leads Colleagues in Marking 16 Years Since Citizens United Ruling, Highlighting Impact of Big Money in Politics on Working Families

*“The loudest voices in Washington became billionaires, not every day Americans.”

In case you missed it, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly led a series of floor speeches with his colleagues marking the 16^th ^anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision, which opened the floodgates for big, dark money in our politics.

In their remarks, Kelly and his colleagues connected the rise of dark money and super PAC spending to real-world consequences for Americans, highlighting how unlimited corporate and billionaire spending has warped priorities in Washington and driven up costs for working families, underscoring the need to restore accountability and transparency so that our democracy answers to voters—not special interests.

*Sen. Kelly speaks on Senate floor.

Watch Kelly’s full speech here. See key excepts from Kelly and his colleagues below:

*Sen. Kelly: “In 2010, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that put a ‘for sale’ sign on our democracy. The Citizens United ruling opened the door for corporations and billionaires to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence our elections, often without the public ever knowing who’s behind it. The Court decided that spending money in elections is the same as political speech, and that corporations should have the same political rights as individual Americans. The result was predictable – and it wasn’t limited to a courtroom. It changed how this place works. The loudest voices in Washington became billionaires, not every day Americans.

*Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI): “I was here before the Citizens United decision. When robust meaningful bipartisan climate legislation was constant here in the Senate. I can think of four major bipartisan bills here in the Senate. And I remember my friend, John McCain, carrying the Republican banner into the presidential election with a respectable climate platform. Well, right after Citizens United, all of that stopped. The barrage of fossil fuel dark money into our politics killed bipartisanship on climate change instantly. It is still a problem today.”

*Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR): “The growth in dark money has been stunning because there’s so much money among the oligarchs and billionaires, they want to spend it to create laws that favor the oligarchs and billionaires and they are spending at an extraordinary rate. Six years ago, it was about $300 million, but according to the Brennan Center […] dark money hit a record high of $1.9 billion in the 2024 races. That’s a six-fold increase in six years. That’s the rich and powerful buying their government. It is an absolute travesty. No one in our founding community of our nation who wrote the Declaration of Independence, who wrote the Constitution, wanted to design a system where the mega rich ran the place as a cabal of elites. But that’s what we have and that’s what we have to change.”

*Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN): “In the 2024 elections, secret money groups spent $1.9 billion – nearly double the amount spent just one cycle before. This undermines our democracy and shakes the public’s trust because unlimited, anonymous spending in our elections doesn’t encourage free speech – it drowns out the voices of American people who are seeking to participate. We must fight for a more transparent democracy where every voter’s voice is heard.”

*Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ): “We live in the time of the greatest distrust in modern history. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can have a politics that restores and grows trust, instead of actively degrading it. This year is the 250th anniversary of the independence of our nation. This is our moment to free Americans from the influence of big money and give them their voice back in their democracy.”...

---

---}:

AHA MEBBE DOH: THEY THEY CAn be tyRant gUbmint = above or POC BELOW

mma

Daily Wire host calls for Republican candidates to “pledge to defend white men from the onslaught of racial discrimination that they will face if and when Democrats regain power”

Written by Media Matters Staff

:{:{Published 01/21/26}:

:{:{Video}:

Citation

From the January 21, 2026, edition of The Daily Wire's The Matt Walsh Show

MATT WALSH (HOST): In places like Canada and Virginia and New York and Minneapolis and every other jurisdiction controlled by leftists, those anti-white crimes will soon be excused if they aren't being excused already. We can't allow this to continue.

But Democrats will continue racking up wins like this unless we start fielding candidates that will recognize what the left is doing and call it out openly, and pledge to defend white men from the onslaught of racial discrimination that they will face if and when Democrats regain power.

You know, Republicans that are not afraid to say — to explicitly say that. These people hate white men and want to punish them for their — for the sin — for their perceived sins, and we're gonna stop that from happening. We need Republicans who are willing to just say that out loud. You know, we've mostly defeated the trans agenda, which would have been — you know, would have had civilization-ending consequences if we had failed. And now we have to confront the left's anti-white agenda, which as the rise of Democrats across the country demonstrates, will be a much harder campaign to vanquish.

---

AHA MEBBE

TRUMP-ISM RUNS ON UR-MYTHS, JUST MINED?

LIB MEDIA, PINKO PROF

CROOKED TAMMANY HALL POL, DEAD PPL VOTE, IMMIGRANTS

WELFARE QUEEN MINNESOTA SOMALI BLK BROWN PPL LAZY CHEAT DISHONEST

ONLY HERITAGE XIAN WHITE PPL MEN WHOULD VOTE/RULE = REAL AMERICANS

DEM WOMAN LUNATIC IRRATIONAL EXTREME MISO

SPARKED BY

TRUMP SAYS TO GOP MOC ALL ELECTIONS ARE STOLEN?! NO PUSHBACK 1/11/16?

AN 1 26

President Donald Trump is rapidly losing faith in one of his most senior-level Cabinet members, and his complaints about her have lately become more frequent.

That's according to a Monday article in the *Wall Street Journal, which reported that Trump views Attorney General Pam Bondi as "weak and an ineffective enforcer of his agenda." The *Journal cited unnamed administration officials and others close to the president in reporting that Trump is angling for Bondi to be more aggressive in using the Department of Justice (DOJ) to pursue his political enemies.

The Journal further reported that Trump is now considering naming various special counsels to handle investigations into his opponents, as he is unhappy with the pace of Bondi's DOJ in filing criminal charges against his chief rivals. The president is reportedly upset with how the DOJ has handled the investigations of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) in the Eastern District of Virginia.

The cases against Comey and James were ultimately dismissed after Lindsey Halligan — who Trump appointed to the replace U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert after he was pressured to resign for saying there was insufficient evidence to bring cases — was found to have been improperly appointed.

Trump is also reportedly upset with Bondi over her handling of documents pertaining to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. According to the Journal, the president publicly agreed with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles when she told Vanity Fair that Bondi "completely whiffed" on the Epstein files and caused months of political consternation for Trump. The president is also reportedly upset that Bondi hasn't done more to investigate the 2020 election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

The complaints with Bondi also reportedly run deep within Trump's MAGA base. Former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon claimed that Bondi was "bleeding support" from Trump's "most loyal troops" due to a perceived lack of urgency.

"Folks are desperate for action and just haven’t seen it," Bannon said.

The Journal's report comes on the heels of a recently announced DOJ investigation into Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell renovation of its Washington D.C. offices. Powell has maintained that the investigation is due to him refusing to accede to Trump's demand that the Fed lower interest rates. Despite the report, the White House is praising Bondi on the record, with Trump telling the outlet: "Pam is doing an excellent job. She has been my friend for many years. Tremendous progress is being made against radical left lunatics who are good at only one thing, cheating in elections and the crimes they commit."

Click here to read the Journal's full report (subscription required).

---

see emotion anger fear

see identity victim / grievance --> rw civil war

see they are coming for you (gubmint but also AA)

coming for your kids indoctrinate groomer

see target

see violent crime loot burn riot racist

see rhet god devil term, anti-commie sino-phobia

see border bs

see violent rhetoric (nb fighting words/ god/ devil terms lead to violence w/o explicitly calling for it)

see islamophobe

see us vs them enemy, polarization SEE BORDER bs INVASION

see conspiracy --> fear --> grift

see apoc anarchy soc brkdn

Some Donald Trump supporters are dismissive of arguments that the former president is a would-be dictator, claiming that Democrats, via "wokeness" and "cancel culture," are the real authoritarians.

In an article published by The New Republic on July 18, journalist Susan Milligan details reasons some Americans believe that rejecting democracy would be a good idea.

Kets de Vries, who teaches business at INSEAD in Paris, had similar insights.

*Read Susan Milligan's full article for The New Republic at this link.

---

===

AHA EXPERTISE / TRUST RELATIONSHIPS FAST EASY CHEAP POPULAR TO BREAK BUT VERY SLOW EXPENSIVE TO REBUILD

DOGE CUTS?

AN 12 25

The New York Times reports U.S. diplomacy is floundering with fully 98 percent of diplomats reporting plummeting workplace morale since the Trump administration took over in January.

“The Foreign Service is in crisis,” said John Dinkelman, president of the American Foreign Service Association, or A.F.S.A. “Damage is being done to America’s diplomatic service that we will be paying for for decades to come.”

An upcoming A.F.S.A. report warns that “America’s diplomatic capacity is being decimated from within” as seasoned diplomats are laid off or abandon their government roles. The Times reports findings are consistent with “countless anecdotal complaints from both Foreign Service officers, trained professionals who work in embassies and consulates abroad, and the civil servants who mainly staff the State Department’s headquarters in Washington.”

Likely fueling the dissatisfaction is a sense among current and former U.S. officials that, under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the department has become more political and less relevant, despite Rubio initially assuring department workers that he valued their expertise and wanted the department to play a greater role in foreign policy.

Surveys show 86 percent of employees say it has become harder to carry out U.S. foreign policy. Just 1 percent reported an improvement.

Diplomats say their years of experience and input is not welcome, especially if it diverges from President Trump’s views.

“They have watched from the sidelines as much of America’s most sensitive diplomacy is conducted not by … Rubio but by Trump insiders such as Steve Witkoff, a real estate mogul with no prior diplomatic experience, and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, often acting with little or no assistance from career diplomats,” the Times reports.

Just this week Witkoff and Kushner traveled to Moscow to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, just after leaked transcripts show Witkoff coached Putin apparatchik Yuri Ushakov on how to manipulate President Donald Trump with flattery.

Until this year, the Times reports the State Department had a strong ethos of nonpartisanship, and “many career officials have blanched at the appointments of relatively inexperienced ideological conservatives to senior positions.” A more politicized workplace has also led diplomats to self-censor their observations and advice, according to Dinkelman. Additionally, orientation training for new workers no longer informs them of the State Department’s “dissent channel,” which was created in 1971 in response to concerns that unwelcome opinions about the disastrous Vietnam War that proved accurate were ignored or suppressed.

“If I’m not telling you everything I know because I fear that you might not like the answer to the question, then what is the value of diplomacy?” Dinkelman said.

Read the New York Times report at this link.

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AHA HMMN BIZZ CRM VERY INVOLVED IN SNAP FIGHT

CRUEL? STRICT FR? LOSING SIDE OF SHUTDN FIGHT?

MMA

Myths and facts about SNAP

As the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program runs out of funds, right-wing figures have suggested food insecurity is an “illusion” and called program recipients “entitled”

Written by Noah Dowe

Research contributions from Helena Hind & Jane Lee

Published 10/31/25

With SNAP benefits set to expire on November 1 due to the ongoing government shutdown and the Trump administration’s refusal to shift emergency funds, many right-wing media figures have seized the opportunity to spread false claims about the program and its users.

These figures have claimed, contrary to government data, that food insecurity is overblown, and suggested the program leaves taxpayers being “ripped off by the poor.”

They have also wrongly suggested that “a lot” or even “most” of SNAP recipients are “not even Americans,” arguing the program is “redistributing the wealth away from productive Americans to foreigners.”

As SNAP funding runs dry, the Trump administration has decided not to use emergency reserves to maintain it

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725

AHA EPSTEIN IS EPISTEMIC CRISIS/ MENTAL BREAKDOWN, POLITICAL CRISIS/SCANDAL? COGNITIVE DISSONANCE; PEDO CONSPIRACY THEORIES PART OF TRUMP THE DISRUPTOR AND INFLUENCERS HE ALONE CAN OVERCOME/THE STORM OR DISCLOSE EVIL CABAL

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===

DIPLOMAcy soft power

redumbdant? nope not since trUmp jdv musk RUBIO dismantled it

12/17 see Dept of State

RUBIO JAILS KICKS OUT FOREIGN STUDENTS ~ HARVARD

AHA 6 25

TRUMP FASCISM IS ABOUT ASSERTING POWER THRU FORCE OR ECONOMIC BLACKMAIL = TARIFFS

DIPLO SOFT POWER REQUIRES LONG TERM ACCRETION OF TRUST, RELATIONSHIPS, UNDERSTANDING OTHER PPL COMPLEX SITUATION VS EXTRACTION. COERSIONTRANSACTION

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AHA NOT PM WHEN POL OR TECH LORD BECOMES ISOLATED FROM PPL AND REALITY BY YES MEN THEY DEGRADE

AN 5 25

Since the start of his second term in office, US president Donald Trump has cultivated a political atmosphere that discourages freedom of thought. He also actively villainises and punishes any dissenting opinion. Worryingly, this atmosphere looks like it is spreading across other democracies.

Commentators have described Trump as both narcissistic and authoritarian. Yet, running parallel to these factors, one character trait is glaringly common among Trump supporters: sycophancy.

You just have to examine the pre-election rhetoric of Trump loyalists. One backer, Stephen Miller, declared him “the most stylish president … in our lifetimes”. Miller is now deputy White House chief of staff.

And South Dakota governor Kristi Noem gifted Trump a four-foot Mount Rushmore replica – with Trump’s face added alongside the original four presidents. Noem, who is now secretary of homeland security, epitomises the elevation of loyal sycophants over those with arguably better credentials.

Research has examined the dangers of sycophantic behaviour in the workplace, finding it reduces peer respect and morale, and leads to dissonance and lower productivity.

Other research has shown that someone who chooses to employ these tactics can enjoy improved promotion prospects, rewards such as the first refusal on business trips, easier access to company resources and a higher salary compared to their peers. But studies have also shown sycophants often suffer emotional exhaustion from the dual stresses of manipulation and responsibility.

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INTERESTING // TO CONSPIRACY // ALT FACT EARTH 2? HYPE FEAR ANGER

AN 5 25

London-based journalist Phil Tinline, who spent 20 years as a BBC reporter and authored the 2023 book "The Death of Consensus: 100 Years of British Political Nightmares," is known for his expertise on authoritarian movements. And he doesn't exclude the United States and the MAGA movement from his scrutiny.

During a Q&A interview with Salon's Chauncey DeVega published on May 7, Tinline discussed President Donald Trump's second term and where he believes it fits in with anti-democracy movements around the world.

"Trying to keep up with the new Trump Administration and the implications of its actions is disorientating and exhausting," Tinline told DeVega. "I've spent a lot of time over the last 20 years researching the history of the fear that democracy is about to die, mainly in the U.K., but also, in the U.S. Historically, we have worried about this many times without our nightmares coming to life. This led me to be very wary of people airily predicting that democracy was finished, and made me alive to the way that, paradoxically, such nightmares can actually damage democracy."

Tinline continued, "But since Trump’s speech at the airport in Waco, Texas, two years ago, and especially since January this year, I've been forced to the conclusion — as many others have — that constitutional democracy in America really is now under severe threat. I hope that, as has happened before, this crisis will force politicians to break free from old taboos and find more effective ways to restore ordinary Americans' trust that democracy can make their lives better — and then to actually deliver on that."

IFrame Content

During the interview, Tinline discussed the role that conspiracy theories play in far-right movements. According to Tinline, conspiracy theories are "one of the warning lights on the dashboard of democracy."

"They express how people feel about power," Tinline told DeVega. "More people who care about democracy should have seen those lights flashing red and acted accordingly much earlier. But now here we are. The only way that I can see America recovering from this situation is for democratically elected politicians to show that they can and do make ordinary people’s lives better."

Tinline added, "The problem is that, meanwhile, conspiracy theories are a very useful way for other politicians to stoke distrust and division in pursuit of power."

*Chauncey's DeVega's full interview with Phil Tinline for Salon is available at this link.

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{{ ===

NOTE CONSPIR AS COPING MECHANISM

JAN 6 QANON VAXX CROSS-FERTILIZE ANTI-GUBMINT DEEP STATE BILL GATES BOGEYMAN ELITE

ROLLING STONE

On Christmas Eve, Steven Brandenburg, a Milwaukee-area pharmacist, attempted to destroy more than 500 doses of coronavirus vaccine, because, he admitted, he feared the Moderna drug would “alter the recipient’s DNA.” Described in law-enforcement documents as a “conspiracy theorist,” Brandenburg, 46, had reportedly warned his wife that “the world is crashing down around us” and that “the government is planning cyberattacks and plans to shut down the power grid,” according to divorce-court documents.

IFrame Content

If you’re surprised that a scientifically educated medical professional, trusted with dispensing lifesaving medicine, could suffer a rebellion against reason and give himself over to discredited conspiracy theories, you haven’t been paying attention. In the America of the 2020s, respectable men and women surrender to this kind of unreal thinking every day. (Brandenburg pleaded guilty to federal tampering charges in January; his lawyer would not discuss Brandenburg’s conspiratorial beliefs.) The phenomenon is known as “red-pilling” — a reference to a scene in The Matrix where Keanu Reeves’ character chooses to take a red pill and discover the hidden truths of the world — and it affects those whose once-rational skepticism swallows them whole, pulling them into a networked community of like-minded conspiracy theorists. While the public record does not indicate Brandenburg traveled this far, many find a home in the big-tent conspiracy of QAnon, whose members increasingly see vaccination as part of a diabolical plot by the “deep state” to enslave humanity.

:{:{Why has the nation become gripped with conspiracy theories — including so many revolving around the shots that could end this devastating pandemic? “It’s precisely because we’ve had 450,000 deaths, and so much uncertainty and so much fear, that there’s fertile ground for this stuff to take hold,” says Ashish Jha, a physician and dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health. The pandemic is also occurring in the context of a 20-year decline of American trust in institutions, says Ethan Zuckerman, who formerly directed the Center for Civic Media at MIT.}:

He describes the QAnon cult as a reservoir at the bottom of that slippery slope. “Q is what happens when you take that mistrust in a really damaging direction,” he says. “It’s usually people who lost trust in one institution and then found a coherent worldview that says, ‘Don’t just mistrust this one institution — mistrust all the institutions. All of them are in it together.’ ” This full rejection of confidence in doctors and drug companies, in media and philanthropy, in politicians and government agencies, Zuckerman says, is “how the anti-vax movement underwent almost a merger with QAnon.”}:

For most Americans still grounded in reality, the arrival of safe, effective inoculations against Covid-19 has sparked hope. The nine-month dash to design, test, and begin to administer inoculations against the devastating pandemic was an unprecedented medical triumph. The rollout of these drugs has already delivered protection for millions of the elderly and medically vulnerable. For younger, healthier people awaiting their shots, vaccination promises a -ticket out of social isolation and back to a life of packed concerts, subway trains, restaurants, and nightclubs.

At present, America’s great challenge is ramping up supply to meet overwhelming demand. But experts caution the country will, sooner than later, confront a formidable wall of vaccine resistance that could block our return to “life as normal.” A Pew poll in December found that only 60 percent of Americans intend to vaccinate and nearly 20 percent — or roughly 50 million adults — are dead set against it.

If that many Americans abstain from vaccination, the coronavirus will continue to circulate, and to mutate, posing a grave ongoing threat to public health.

Vaccine hesitance can be rooted in reasonable concerns, says Jha. Were the new vaccines rushed to market too quickly? Did the Trump administration’s overt politicization corrupt the approval process? Are side effects severe? Will our notoriously racist health system prioritize and safeguard communities of color that have been hardest hit by the pandemic? “We win no battles by minimizing” these worries, Jha says, “or suggesting that those people are being unreasonable or anti-science or anti-vaxxers. They’re raising legitimate concerns that should be addressed.”

But for millions of others, dread about vaccines defies logic or reason, and bleeds instead into belief systems of what Zuckerman has dubbed “the unreal” — that we’re pawns in a diabolical global game run by ruthless elites and that vaccines are somehow not medicine but poison. “Concerns about -safety have been absorbed into this other way of viewing the world,” says Jack Bratich, a Rutgers professor and author of Conspiracy Panics. “It’s about a plan to inject people with controlling substances. That’s where QAnon overlaps with the anti-vax movement.”

As demonstrated by the January 6th storming of the Capitol, perpetrated by many Americans immersed in the QAnon cult, this red-pilling can have deadly, destabilizing consequences, and not just for conspiracy-theory believers. “This may be the most important public-health issue of our time — misinformation, disinformation,” Jha insists. And unlike the coronavirus, the contagion of conspiracy theory is one against which we’re largely defenseless. “We have been blindsided,” he says. “We as public-health people have to figure out how to counter it in a way that’s effective. And we don’t have the tools.”

Exploring conspiracy theories and mass delusion can inadvertently popularize misinformation. So inoculate yourself with facts: The novel vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna are revolutionary and take advantage of our own cellular machinery to safeguard recipients against future coronavirus infection.

If you’ve seen computer renderings of the coronavirus, you know its surface is covered by spike proteins that create the “crown” that gives coronaviruses their name. Humans get infected with Covid-19 when these spike proteins pierce healthy cells, allowing the virus to invade, infect, and begin replicating.

Traditional vaccines have relied on exposing people to an inactivated (killed) or attenuated (weakened) virus. As the immune system reacts to a non-threatening inoculation, it gains the ability to fight off infection from the real pathogen. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines don’t include any virus at all. Instead, they use genetic code — messenger RNA or mRNA — to activate a few of our own cells to become spike-protein factories. The vaccine consists of tiny strands of mRNA encased in fat — a lipid particle — that allows them to slip inside a cell without being attacked. Once inside, the mRNA functions roughly like computer code, instructing cells to begin assembling coronavirus spike proteins out of amino-acid building blocks already in our bodies.

The presence of these strange proteins triggers our immune systems to create antibodies to neutralize them. Our immune system also summons T-cells to attack and shut down cells that were coded to produce spike proteins. Together, these immune responses prepare the body to fight off a real potential coronavirus infection. “It’s very elegant,” says Jha of the vaccine design. “It’s also de-risked it a lot. There’s no physical way to get Covid from this thing.” As for the conspiracy theory that an mRNA vaccine alters your own genes? “It literally doesn’t,” he says. “It doesn’t become part of your DNA.”

An anti-vaxxer at a MAGA rally in Washington, D.C. A Pew poll in December found roughly 50 million Americans are planning to abstain from vaccination, threatening herd immunity.Erin Scott/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Taming the pandemic will require both individual immunity — as produced by the vaccines — and community-level “herd immunity” created when a critical mass of individuals are resistant to infection. Herd immunity is like a firewall in public health; a localized flare-up of infection among a few individuals will be unable to spread broadly, instead burning itself out.

So far, the drugs appear to be living up to their billed efficacy of 95 percent protection from infection. And apart from some rare (and treatable) allergic reactions, the side effects seem well tolerated. But vaccine avoidance is already emerging as a troubling trend, particularly among health care and nursing-home workers on the front lines of the pandemic. Through mid-January, the CDC reported that only 32 percent of eligible nursing-home workers nationwide had chosen to get vaccinated.

Distrust of the vaccine is also high among communities of color. The reasons for this, while complex, are not difficult to understand. American public-health history is marred by institutional racism, including the horrific 40-year “Tuskegee Experiment,” in which hundreds of black men with syphilis were promised treatment that was, in fact, deceptively withheld, leading to 128 deaths. Our current health care system produces wildly disparate outcomes for people of color, including a maternal death rate that’s 2.5 times higher for black women than for white women. In the pandemic, communities of color have been hardest hit. These Americans disproportionately work in frontline positions, live in more crowded housing, have poorer access to doctors, and higher incidence of comorbidities. Meanwhile, crucial technologies like pulse oximeters, which use light to measure blood oxygenation and guide treatment, have been found to routinely malfunction on dark skin.

The hard truth is that returning to the point where Americans can go back to work or enjoy a night out at a crowded bar and be confident no one is going to get sick will require persuading millions to overcome their fear of vaccination and take a jab for the team. The 60 percent of Americans currently intending to get vaccinated is simply not good enough to establish herd immunity. “We’ve got to address the issues that help us get closer to 80 percent vaccination,” Jha says. “I’d love to get up to like 90, 95 percent.”

The larger the group of unvaccinated individuals, the more chance the virus can mutate to pose a danger, even to the already vaccinated. “Large outbreaks anywhere can give rise to variants that can escape vaccines everywhere,” Jha writes. “It’s the nightmare scenario of a never-ending pandemic.”

Long before the coronavirus hit, America had been gripped by a fierce anti-vaccine movement, which had itself become increasingly unmoored from scientific critique and drifted into conspiratorial waters.

Vaccines have always inspired popular fear. Decades ago, it was justified: The rollout of the polio inoculation in the 1950s tragically infected 40,000 children, paralyzing hundreds, and killing 10, because of botched manufacturing that failed to disable the live virus. Even with modern safety advances, vaccination campaigns expose a particularly American tension between personal choice and public safety. “In the U.S., there’s this suspicion or refusal around bodily sovereignty,” Bratich says. “People don’t like stuff stuck in them.”

Contemporary anti-vax culture took root in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when a startling rise in autism was hypothesized to be connected to childhood vaccinations. Robust science has since debunked any relationship between vaccination and autism. But at the time, the specter of vaccine injury sparked real concern among reasonable people.

In 1998, the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet published an article purporting to link the measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) vaccine to “developmental regression in a group of previously normal children.” In the U.S. a year later, a federal review of mercury in drugs highlighted that a mercury-based preservative in childhood vaccines could expose infants, over the first six months of life, to a potentially harmful quantity of the neurotoxic metal. Out of an abundance of caution, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that the preservative, thimerosal, be phased out of vaccines. In 2005, Rolling Stone and Salon co-published a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. piece, “Deadly Immunity,” that helped push the provocative hypothesis that thimerosal triggered autism into wider circulation. The piece drew swift criticism and required significant corrections, including to a key statistic about childhood mercury exposure.

By the turn of the decade, both hypotheses had collapsed under the weight of scientific evidence. In 2009, a paper inClinical Infectious Diseasescited “20 epidemiologic studies” to conclude that “neither thimerosal nor MMR vaccine causes autism.” The Lancetretracted its MMR paper in 2010, with the journal’s editor saying he felt he’d been deceived, while calling the paper “utterly false.” In 2011, Salon retracted the Kennedy piece, writing, “The best reader service is to delete the piece entirely.” The story no longer appears on Rolling Stone’s website.

Fear of vaccination, however, didn’t disappear because scientists said it should. Instead, anti-vax beliefs spread widely, popularized by celebrities like actress Jenny McCarthy and then-Apprentice star Donald Trump, who infamously tweeted in 2014: “Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn’t feel good and changes — AUTISM. Many such cases!” In a 2016 survey, 77 percent of parents who chose not to vaccinate their children cited a feared link to autism, and 71 percent cited fear of vaccine additives.

That same year, faced with a public-health threat from schools where up to 40 percent of kids were unvaccinated, California eliminated a “personal exemption” to vaccination, effectively requiring shots for all kids to attend public school. Measles had been eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, but declining vaccination rates contributed to outbreaks infecting more than 1,200 across dozens of states in 2019. That year, the World Health Organization listed vaccine hesitance as one of its top “10 threats to public health.”

Today’s anti-vax movement has grown increasingly cozy with theories about dark agendas, ruthless profit motives, and powerful enemies, reserving peculiar animus for billionaire Bill Gates, whose foundation promotes vaccination globally. For his part, Kennedy continues to promote unfounded links between vaccines and autism, even though thimerosal has been phased out of childhood vaccines: “They replaced it with aluminum,” he says, “which is almost as bad.” (Aluminum salts have been safely used in vaccines for more than seven decades, according to the CDC.) “People like me get vilified and ridiculed,” he says, “but I will debate anybody about this.”

Kennedy now runs the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense, where last April he published an article titled “Gates’ Globalist Vaccine Agenda: A Win-Win for Pharma and Mandatory Vaccination.” The piece purports to be grounded in science, but Kennedy gets the facts twisted. He claims, for example, that a 2010 Gates Foundation-funded trial of a malaria vaccine was responsible for “killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects, including paralysis, seizure, and febrile convulsions, to 1,048 of the 5,949 children.” In reality, the trial was not implicated in the death of any child, and only 13 malaria-vaccine recipients had significant side effects. The trial was conducted in a region of Africa with high child morbidity and mortality, and the terrifying numbers Kennedy touts come from tallying up every health crisis experienced by the kids in the trial — both malaria-vaccine recipients and those in control groups — and brazenly attributing every dark outcome to the jabs. This includes deaths from head injury, HIV, malnutrition, and drowning. (Confronted with these facts, Kennedy admits error: “One can never definitively say that a particular death was or was not caused by a vaccine,” he says. But he adds without evidence that every death was “plausibly attributed to the vaccines,” while also baselessly alleging that the use of different vaccines, rather than placebos, in the control groups was “an act of fraud that appears designed . . . to mask death rates in the study cohort.”)

The rest of Kennedy’s piece paints Gates as a reckless and unaccountable billionaire pulling the strings of global institutions. He points to a TED Talk that Gates delivered boasting that expanded vaccine use “could reduce population.” This is meant to sound nefarious, but Gates has long spoken of reducing childhood mortality as a key to stabilizing populations in the developing world. As the conspiracy-debunking site Snopes explains: “Gates is not interested in using vaccines to reduce the population by using them as an agent of death or a tool to sterilize unsuspecting masses. Rather, Gates is interested in keeping more children alive in order to reduce the need for parents to have more children, thus limiting the overall population growth rate.”

If Kennedy dabbles in the Bill Gates conspiracy waters — writing that the coronavirus has given Gates “an opportunity to force his dictatorial vaccine programs” on all Americans — millions of others are performing cannonballs. A gee-whiz proposal, supported by the Gates Foundation, to use tiny subdermal markers for patients in the developing world to track their vaccination history, without needing a clinic to keep the paperwork, has morphed into a widely embraced conspiracy theory that Gates wants to microchip the citizens of the world. A YouGov poll last May found that 28 percent of Americans believed Gates wants “to use a mass vaccination campaign against Covid-19 to implant microchips in people that would be used to track people with a digital ID.” The belief rose to 44 percent of Republicans and to 50 percent of dedicated viewers of Fox News.

Conspiracy theories have been part of the lifeblood of American politics for centuries. In the 1820s, so many Americans were convinced that a shadowy and perhaps satanic cabal threatened the republic that they formed the Anti-Masonic Party and elected dozens of members to Congress. In the Red Scare of the 1950s, the far-right John Birch Society accused President Dwight Eisenhower of being “a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy.”

Trump rose to political dominance promoting the birther conspiracy theory that Barack Obama had been ineligible to hold office. And he won and sustained the presidency by encouraging his white, working-class supporters to blame their social woes on the merciless “globalists” of the “deep state.” Conspiratorial thinking, academic research shows, often takes root in groups, like many in Trump’s base, that are experiencing economic or social dislocation. “People often turn to conspiracy theories when bad things are happening around them,” says Karen Douglas, a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent in England. “They are looking for ways to cope, people to blame,” she says. “If people believe that powerful, secret forces are responsible, then it isn’t their fault that things are bad for them,” and they can make themselves feel better without having to “tease apart the complex reasons for their disadvantage.”

The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 created a “perfect storm” for new conspiracy theories to take root, says Bratich, the Rutgers professor. The pandemic overwhelmed government institutions, creating enormous fear and economic uncertainty. Lockdown life also created super-spreader conditions for paranoia, with Americans searching for answers in online forums where unreal ideas circulated unchecked. New converts were then able to spread these ideas, in real life, to their pods of close family and friends under lockdown.

Eric Oliver is a political-science professor at the University of Chicago who has studied conspiracy theories since the 1990s. He argues that conspiracy belief helps conquer anxiety by giving people a feeling of “I understand what’s happening in the world. I have a narrative that explains things.” They also root free-floating fear in something that feels solid: “ ‘The reason I’m feeling anxious is there’s a secret cabal doing something terrible. And now I’ve identified it.’ ” A reinforcing factor is “a certain narcissism,” he says. “The conspiracy theory gives them a sense of special knowledge: ‘I know something that’s going on that nobody else does.’ It feels empowering to them.”

A protester holds an anti-vaccination sign as supporters of President Donald Trump rally to reopen California as the coronavirus pandemic continues to worsen, on May 16, 2020 in Woodland Hills, California.David McNew/Getty Images

A paradox of conspiracy theories is that they’re not full flights of fancy. They involve imagined and invented connections between real people, phenomena, and events. There’s a structure to the irrational belief. “Conspiracy theories are not the product of a disordered mind; they’re the product of an overly ordered mind,” insists Zuckerman. “Conspiracy theories happen when you have an enormous need for order in a disordered universe.” Zuckerman quit his post at MIT in protest of the university’s links to disgraced sex-criminal financier Jeffrey Epstein and now teaches at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “I do not subscribe to the theory that Epstein was killed in prison,” he says, but points to the myriad conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein as a case in point: “Having a genuine villain out there is really important for conspiracies to root themselves sufficiently in reality so that we continue to pay attention to them.”

This search for order has taken millions of Americans to a dark place — the nihilistic worldview of QAnon. The QAnon belief system is a crossover between a conspiracy theory and a religious cult, and its ideology takes strands of many past conspiracies and weaves them into a big tent where priors are welcome and almost any theory can find safe harbor.

The core of Q is familiar. It posits that the surface world of respectable politicians, well-intentioned government institutions, and a media seeking to hold them accountable, is an illusion. The real power in the world is wielded by shadowy power brokers in the government, Hollywood, and the media called “the cabal” or the “deep state.” QAnon takes this conspiratorial boilerplate to wild extremes. The “deep state” is alleged to be insatiable in its thirst for power, and willing to do anything — from launching wars to spreading pestilence — to move closer to global domination. The Q ideology has no room for subtlety. The conspirators are believed to be the embodiment of evil, actual “luciferians” and pedophiles.

The theory may sound lunatic, but QAnon is no longer relegated to the fringe: A Civiqs tracking poll finds that even after the attack on the Capitol, 10 percent of Republicans describe themselves as “supporters” of QAnon. Tenets of the Q belief system are even more widely held: An NPR poll released at the end of 2020 found 17 percent of Americans rated as “true” the statement that: “A group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media.”

In the Q mythology, the heroes fighting to expose the deep state include an alleged intelligence officer, known as Q, for the “Q-level” clearance he or she is alleged to hold. The conspiracy has elements of a massive role-playing game. For years, the anonymous “Q” dropped cryptic hints or “crumbs” on message boards like 8chan and 8kun, which QAnon adherents then sought to “bake” into coherent narratives about coming events. The community also revered Donald Trump as a lonely fighter, seeking to undermine, arrest, and vanquish the deep state.

How did the anti-vax movement — which thrives in far-left communities like Portland, L.A., and Marin County, California, — get mixed up with a quasi-religious cult that held up Donald Trump as its savior? “It was very surprising to see the anti-vax community cross the streams” with QAnon, says Zuckerman. “Anti-vaxxers are people who often identify as leaning politically left. They often come to this stance because they’re anti–corporate, and they’re really concerned about Big Pharma making money.”

American political ideology is most often conceptualized as a straight line running from left to right. But an alternate visualization presents the spectrum instead as a horseshoe, where the left and right extremes bend back toward one another. Conspiracy theories can bridge these far ends like a powerful electric spark.

Oliver’s research has shown that openness to conspiracy theory is correlated to intuitive thinking over evidence-based thinking. Conspiratorial beliefs take hold in people who make gut-level decisions and place disproportionate weight on symbolic costs. He offers a questionnaire that helps tease out the personality trait.

Would you rather: Stab a photograph of your family five times with a sharp knife? Or stick your hand in a bowl of live cockroaches?

Would you rather: Sleep in laundered pajamas once worn by Charles Manson? Or pick a nickel off the ground and put it in your mouth?

Would you rather: Grind your heels into an unmarked grave? Or stand in line for three hours at the DMV?

A person avoiding actions with high symbolic costs (stabbing a family photo, sleeping in Manson’s PJs), he says, “is a very strong predictor of believing in conspiracy theories — regardless of where they are on the ideological spectrum.”

Oliver points out that conservative religious Americans — “evangelical or orthodox communities” — tend to have very high intuitionism scores, and receptivity to conspiracy theory. But so do New Age communities associated with the American left. “People who believe in conspiracy theories also believe that GMOs are bad,” he says. “They tend to like organic food or natural health remedies.”

The leap from anti-vax theories to QAnon is less mysterious, Zuckerman says, when you “think about how lonely it is to be an anti-vaxxer. You have the small group of friends who are willing to listen to you talk about mercury in vaccines,” he says. “But suddenly you have a whole group of people” in QAnon adherents “who say, ‘Oh, yeah, not just this, but did you know about this?’ You may be willing to go further, and say, ‘Sure I’ll buy this next part of the conspiracy.’ ” Finding such affirmation and community in the unreal, he says, makes it easy to surrender your hold on fact-based beliefs. “Red-pilling,” he says, “is when you move from your origin conspiracy theory to this full-conspiracy worldview.”

The anti-vax and Q movements began to merge with the release of a viral video last May. “We saw it in earnest around Plandemic,” says Zuckerman. Plandemic is the project of Mikki Wills, a 53-year-old self-described “investigative filmmaker” with piercing blue eyes and a salt-and-pepper goatee, who works from the coastal California enclave of Ojai, halfway between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.

Willis is politically liberal and his bio touts him as “a virtuoso of positive energy.” He tells Rolling Stone that he was inspired to shoot Plandemic because of his concern over the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed. “The idea that [the] administration was going to rush an experimental vaccine to market, then have it distributed to the masses by way of the U.S. military,” Willis says, “felt insane and reckless at best. I felt compelled to shine a little light on it.”

The slickly produced 26-minute video centers on discredited former federal scientist Judy Mikovits, whom Willis platforms as an Erin Brokovich-style whistleblower. Mikovits claims without evidence that her career was derailed by a federal conspiracy directed by Anthony Fauci. And she makes myriad wild, false, and unsubstantiated claims, including that the coronavirus was released from a lab and that mask wearing causes illness. The film baselessly insinuates that Fauci, Gates, and others have enormous financial interests in the pandemic. In one key exchange, Willis poses to Mikovits: “If we activate mandatory vaccines globally, I imagine these people stand to make hundreds of billions of dollars that own the vaccines.”

The film was roundly debunked, including by Science, which said in part: “Science fact-checked the video. None of these claims are true.” Major social media companies banned the video, but not before it was viewed millions of times. Willis insists he’s “absolutely not” a conspiracy theorist and knows “very little” about QAnon. But his video became a cause célèbre among the Q set. “In many ways, Plandemic is much more of an anti-vax video than it is a QAnon video,” Zuckerman says. But it fits with the nihilistic Q worldview that elites are not simply misguided or incompetent, but so evil as to unleash a global pandemic and then seek to profit from a vaccine. “The Q community loves it. Right?”

The film hit the bull’s-eye of what Bratich describes as the overlapping “Venn diagram of the antivax movement and QAnon.” At the margins, he says, anti-vaxxers have long feared there exists a dark agenda behind inoculations, and these people have found in QAnon a “ready-made, tight narrative — it’s about the great reset, it’s about a new world order, it’s about Bill Gates — that explains the vaccinations.”

The full convergence of the anti-vax movement and QAnon belief can be seen in the trajectory of Larry D. Cook — a onetime healthy-lifestyle guru who became a high-profile anti-vaccine activist before he red-pilled, choosing to anchor his beliefs in the open harbor of QAnon.

Cook is 56 but looks perhaps a decade younger. He has a lanky runner’s build and an open, calm, somewhat flat affect when he speaks. He has made his home in Los Angeles for the past 15 years, and a profile picture on his personal website shows him beaming at a farmers market, holding aloft a bunch of kale in each hand.

In 2005, Cook wrote The Beginner’s Guide to Natural Living, touting the optimal conditions to express “the divine intelligence flowing through us.” He describes having become a vegan in 1990 and preaches the virtues of organic food, yoga, and alternative healing. There are seeds of distrust in Cook’s writing: He encourages readers to “question toxic medicine” that “makes more money by keeping us slightly sick.” But little in Cook’s rhetoric would have been out of place in a left-coast magazine like Mother Jones from the same era. He urges caution of “mainstream media . . . owned and controlled by its advertisers,” and of a government that can be “hoodwinked into allowing harmful products onto the market.”

Cook’s career path is nontraditional. He jumped from “being a sound guy in Hollywood” to a gig as executive director of the California Naturopathic Doctors Association. Cook did not respond to interview requests but told a radio interviewer that his fear of vaccines took root when he was researching a book about attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and “came across some information that mercury in vaccines cause autism.” As a side gig around 2010, he started creating YouTube videos interviewing doctors who pushed the thimerosal hypothesis and parents whose children were allegedly harmed by vaccines.

The hobby would become a calling, and a conviction, for Cook in 2015, when California proposed ending the personal-belief exemption from public-school vaccination requirements. Cook started a site called Stop Mandatory Vaccination to oppose this and future legislation and describes how this anti-vax activism got him “fired” from his executive-director post and led to his becoming a full-time activist. “I found my voice,” he said. The deeper he dove into the anti-vax world, the more distrustful Cook became, decrying what he calls the “cover up” of children who die after being vaccinated as “a medical mafia conspiracy.” (No serious science suggests vaccination is secretly killing kids.) In 2016, Cook voted for Trump, he explains in a recent court document, because of Trump’s own claims that vaccines were linked to autism.

To popularize his anti-vax beliefs, Cook came up with a “system,” which involved raising money on GoFundMe to pay for alarming Facebook ads that he’d target at young mothers. “I was doing things in a certain way,” Cook explained. “Grabbing attention of parents and driving them into my Facebook group, where they could get their questions answered.” The idea was to spur the young moms to “go anti-vaccine. . . . Once they learn the truth,” he said, “they become activists.” A 2019 study by the journal Vaccine revealed that Cook was second only to Kennedy in promoting anti-vax sentiment on Facebook. “Many advertisements featured stories of infants allegedly harmed by vaccines,” the study reports, “using tag lines like, ‘Healthy 14 week old infant gets 8 vaccines and dies within 24 hours.’ ”

The social media giant didn’t have qualms about taking tens of thousands of dollars from Cook to promote the outrageous claim that vaccines kill babies until it was called out in a letter by Rep. Adam Schiff, who demanded information from Mark Zuckerberg in February 2019 about the company’s practice of monetizing and promoting misinformation about vaccines. Facebook soon tweaked its algorithms to stop recommending anti-vax content, which was instead downgraded on the platform. The move decimated Cook’s online reach from 2 million views a month to about 100,000. Facebook also turned off his ability to advertise on the site. YouTube likewise demonetized his channel.

This throttling by social media giants only appears to have pushed Cook further away from the mainstream. As he described his own conversion, in February 2020, Cook read a QAnon book titled Calm Before the Storm that opened his mind to the Q worldview. And he “red-pilled,” as he described in an hour-long video posted last July, in which he appears flanked by a giant Q in one corner and an American flag underscored with the hashtag #WWG1WGA — short for the Q battle cry of “Where We Go One We Go All!” — in the other.

Cook described how discovering QAnon suddenly gave him a context for his distrust of mainstream medicine and his sense of being persecuted and silenced by social media. “When you wrap your head around the idea that it’s the deep state that is facilitating the vaccine mandates,” he said, “all of a sudden it makes complete sense.”

Cook cast mandatory vaccinations as just one expression of the deep state’s “luciferian” agenda of “controlling everyone on the planet.” The mandates are “all part of the deep-state plan,” he claimed, because “when you inject poison into someone, you can incapacitate them very quickly, especially if you’re doing it at birth . . . as soon as a soul comes in — incarnates.” He called vaccination of children a “deliberate assault designed to suppress their consciousness, designed to shut off their connection to God.” But there’s hope, he insisted: “If you take the deep state down completely, we take down the vaccine mandates.”

Through the same jaundiced lens, Cook sees the coronavirus pandemic as part of the deep state’s sinister plot: “It’s a plandemic,” he said, borrowing Willis’ coinage. “It was planned, it’s a false flag. . . . Q would say these people are sick. They want complete control of our planet . . . And if that means killing . . . millions of people, they could care less.”

For Cook, as for most QAnon adherents, the fight is overtly political. “Democrats are lockstep with the deep state,” he insisted. “Our role is to educate the rest of humanity . . . who’s on the side of justice and truth and who’s on the side of God.” The good guys, for Cook, are Trump and the “Q Team.” And he celebrates the promise of redemption: “You shut down the deep state and we can have heaven on Earth,” he said, adding: “We are in the throes of the final battles.”

The attack on the Capitol on January 6th was a wake-up call for America that online conspiracy theories and QAnon’s nihilism are a serious threat not just to the mental health of individual believers but also to innocent life, not to mention the functioning of our democratic government.

The mass delusion of conspiracy-theory belief also constitutes a public-health crisis. As the WHO put it last fall, an “infodemic” is “endangering countries’ ability to stop the pandemic,” adding that “misinformation costs lives,” and that a lack of trust in science will cause immunization campaigns to “not meet their targets, and the virus will continue to thrive.”

Public-health experts say the addictive appeal of conspiracy theories has left them exasperated, but with few solutions. “I really had this mental model,” Jha says, that “you get the evidence, you speak it in plain, simple terms, and share with people what is true — and that’s it. Like, you win the game,” he says. “I have learned very much the hard way, from April on, that that is just naive.”

In January, a mob of anti-vax protesters briefly shut down a mass inoculation site at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, holding up signs like “COVID=SCAM,” “Don’t be a lab rat,” and “Tell Bill Gates to Vaccinate Himself!” The inability to respond effectively to this kind of mass delusion, Jha says, is a “huge liability in the public-health community. We should try to engage with people,” he insists. “But it is not done by giving them facts. They’re not actually lacking in facts; they don’t believe.”

Zuckerman says the core obstacle with QAnon is that its doctrine of blanket distrust leaves few avenues for intervention: “ ‘Scientists? Oh, they’re all at universities; they’re all part of the deep state. What about the media? Oh, my God. The media actually run the deep state.’ That’s epistemic closure,” he says.

Social media companies that had profited from allowing such conspiracies to run riot have recently booted QAnon and anti-vaxxers from their platforms. But that also creates problems, says Bratich. “It’s just riled up the radical emerging right that sees themselves as being not just censored, but persecuted,” he says. This brings with it notions of a “dangerous self-sacrifice and martyrdom” and risks “more conflagrations before it subsides.”

Shortly after the election, Cook found himself completely de-platformed. In mid-November, he was kicked off Facebook as part of the social network’s purge of QAnon. Twitter shut down his account simultaneously. Cook has attempted to launch his own social media properties: Covid-19 Refusers — which features a 14-part video indoctrination on why to reject vaccination — as well as Medical Freedom Patriots: a $5-a-month, subscription-based group he touts as “Anti Vaccine, Pro Alternative Medicine, QAnon friendly.” Cook makes plain he’s seeking to spread the gospel of QAnon: “We are in an INFORMATION WAR,” he writes. “The first step is for us all to be informed — I am giving you the path to that — and then to share it yourself with others.”

As with many, many Q believers, Trump’s election loss has been hard for Cook to absorb. On December 7th, he posted on Parler that Americans should consider fleeing to “Republican held states” to avoid forced vaccination. “This is war,” he wrote. “We don’t need to be up front getting the kill shots when we know there’s Higher Ground.” In late January, he posted to Telegram his belief that the military would help Trump reseize control of America: “I have now seen enough pieces of the puzzle to believe that *THE PLAN* is in fact going EXACTLY as it was PLANNED to go for our US Military and President Trump to secure the United States of America and thereby *end* the Deep State’s rule over us once and for all,” he wrote. “In fact I do believe it will be BIBLICAL.”

Zuckerman argues that what’s required to reach the far edges of the anti-vax and QAnon communities resembles cult deprogramming. “The question that I think everyone would love to have a definitive answer to is, ‘Can people be unpilled?’ ” he says. He points with encouragement to forums on Reddit for people who have escaped Q and are trying to help others. “They talk about the incredible damage — that this is a belief system that ends marriages, ends friendships.” Bratich likens these groups to “QAnon recovery” and suggests that “the deprogramming that happens might be as networked and distributed as the way these people [originally] came together.”

But Bratich cautions that the pull of QAnon remains devilishly strong, and that the conspiracy theory has shown itself to be incredibly plastic and adaptable. He warns that as the notion of Trump as superhero fades, the fight against vaccination may well open up as the organizing battle in QAnon’s resistance against the deep state. “If Trump goes away or goes to the margins,” he says, “I think this will be the next thing that becomes front and center.” The far edge of the anti-vax movement, he says, “keeps talking about how the vaccine is ‘the beginning of the end.’ For QAnon there’s a code in there,” he warns. “It’s the beginning of the end of America, right?”

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Although negative reactions have been relatively rare, the numbers are used by many extremist groups to try to bolster a rash of false and alarmist disinformation in articles and videos with titles like “Covid-19 Vaccines Are Weapons of Mass Destruction — and Could Wipe out the Human Race” or “Doctors and Nurses Giving the Covid-19 Vaccine Will be Tried as War Criminals.”

If the so-called Stop the Steal movement appeared to be chasing a lost cause once President Biden was inaugurated, its supporters among extremist organizations are now adopting a new agenda from the anti-vaccination campaign to try to undermine the government.

Bashing of the safety and efficacy of vaccines is occurring in chatrooms frequented by all manner of right-wing groups including the Proud Boys; the Boogaloo movement, a loose affiliation known for wanting to spark a second Civil War; and various paramilitary organizations.

These groups tend to portray vaccines as a symbol of excessive government control. “If less people get vaccinated then the system will have to use more aggressive force on the rest of us to make us get the shot,” read a recent post on the Telegram social media platform, in a channel linked to members of the Proud Boys charged in storming the Capitol.

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A “Stop the Steal” rally at the Pennsylvania State Capitol in November.Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

The marked focus on vaccines is particularly striking on discussion channels populated by followers of QAnon, who had falsely prophesied that Donald J. Trump would continue as president while his political opponents were marched off to jail.

“They rode the shift in the national conversation away from Trump to what was happening with the massive ramp up in vaccines,” said Devin Burghart, the head of the Seattle-based Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which monitors far-right movements, referring to followers of QAnon. “It allowed them to pivot away from the failure of their previous prophecy to focus on something else.”

Apocalyptic warnings about the vaccine feed into the far-right narrative that the government cannot be trusted, the sentiment also at the root of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The more vaccine opponents succeed in preventing or at least delaying herd immunity, experts noted, the longer it will take for life to return to normal and that will further undermine faith in the government and its institutions.

Last spring, a common purpose among far-right activists and the anti-vaccination movement first emerged during armed protests in numerous state capitols against coronavirus lockdown measures. That cross-pollination expanded over time.

On Jan. 6, while rioters advanced on the Capitol, numerous leading figures in the anti-vaccination movement were onstage nearby, holding their own rally to attack both the election results and Covid-19 vaccinations.

Events overshadowed their protest, but at least one outspoken activist, Dr. Simone Gold of Beverly Hills, Calif., was charged with breaching the Capitol. She called her arrest an attack on free speech. She was one of several doctors who appeared in a video last year spreading misleading claimsabout the coronavirus. Mr. Trump shared a version of the video, which Facebook, YouTube and Twitter removed after millions of viewers watched it.

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Dr. Simone Gold in a video for America’s Frontline Doctors, an organization accused of spreading misleading information about the coronavirus and possible treatments. She was later charged with breaching the Capitol.

In the months since inoculations started in December, the alliance grouping extremist organizations with the anti-vaccination movement has grown larger and more vocal, as conspiracy theories about vaccines proliferated while those about the presidential vote count receded.

With their protests continuing, far-right groups deployed many of the same talking points as the vaccination opponents. Prominent voices in both the “Stop the Steal” and the anti-vaccination movements helped to organize scattered rallies on March 20 against vaccines, masks and social distancing in American cities including Portland, Ore., and Raleigh, N.C., as well as in Australia, Canada and other countries around the world.

In April, a conference with the tagline “Learn How to Fight Back for Your Health and Freedom,” is set to bring together Trump allies like Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell along with high-profile members of the anti-vaccination effort.

Maligning the coronavirus vaccines is obviously not limited to extremist groups tied to the Capitol riot. There is deep partisanship over the vaccines generally.

One third of Republicans surveyed in a CBS News poll said that they would avoid getting vaccinated — compared with 10 percent of Democrats — and another 20 percent of Republicans said they were unsure. Other polls found similar trends.

About 100 members of the House of Representatives, roughly one-quarter, had not been vaccinated as of mid-March, according to Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader.

It is unclear where Mr. Trump will fit into the vaccine battle. The former president, who has been vaccinated, endorsed getting the shot recently, provoking some disbelief in QAnon and other chatrooms. “I would recommend it, and I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it, and a lot of those people voted for me frankly,” he said in an interview with Fox News.

Image

Protesters at anti-vaccination demonstrations are using similar imagery as those at “Stop the Steal” rallies.Credit...Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

Across right-wing channels online, certain constant memes have emerged attacking the vaccine, like a cartoon suggesting that what started with mask mandates will end with concentration camps run by FEMA for those who refuse vaccinations.

Numerous channels link to the government website called VAERS, for Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, to energize followers. It had reported 2,216 deaths among people vaccinated for the three months before March 22, with 126 million doses administered. The Covid-19 vaccines in use, like most vaccinations, are considered overwhelmingly safe, but inevitably a small percentage of recipients suffer adverse reactions, some of them severe. The deaths have not been directly linked to the vaccinations.

The raw, incomplete VAERS statistics are meant for scientists and medical professionals, but are widely used among extremist groups to try to undermine confidence in the vaccine. One video consisted of a person reading the details from the chart aloud barking “Murder” where the chart said “Death.”

On Telegram, channels frequented by tens of thousands of QAnon followers are full of videos warning of the dire consequences of taking the vaccine.For example, David Icke, a British serial conspiracy theorist, posted a video called “Murder by Vaccine” saying that it transformed the nature of the human body. (The claims that the vaccines change human DNA are false.)

Mr. Icke was previously best known for pushing the idea that the world was controlled by shape-shifting alien lizards who inhabited a global network of underground tunnels.

The general proliferation of conspiracy theories by QAnon followers for years has helped to create a shared vocabulary among far-right organizations, experts said, which smoothed the way for spreading false information about the vaccines. “The last year with Covid has just been a perfect storm that whatever your crazy conspiracy belief is, there is someone who has a Covid conspiracy to match it,” said Melissa Ryan, chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation.

Image

Anti-vaccine protesters shouted and waved signs at health care workers waiting in line to enter the Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla., in February.Credit...Zack Wittman for The New York Times

The vaccines are sometimes referred to as a “potion,” sometimes as a “bioweapon,” and there are claims that vaccinated people are “shedding mutant viruses.”

Telegram is the locus of much of the disinformation and fear mongering. On one channel, there are claims that the vaccine is an instrument of depopulation. “A massive death wave will be witnessed later this year among those who took the vaccine,” read one posting.

In Idaho, the far-right activist Ammon Bundy helped to push for a proposed state law to ban any mandatory vaccines, although work stalled after the legislature suspended its work on March 19 for more than two weeks because too many lawmakers contracted the coronavirus.

The question is where this newly forged alliance goes from here. Some analysts believe its life span will prove limited, with the far right pivoting to some other issue, like immigration. Eventually, hundreds of millions of Americans will be vaccinated, they noted, and vaccine skepticism is not the same thing as being anti-vaccination. Some doubters will soften if time proves the vaccines effective.

A new reportby the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University noted, however, that although the de-platforming of extremist groups made their campaigns harder to follow, the alliance has the potential to meld disparate factions into a large anti-government movement united around public health issues.

“It increases the opportunity for a big tent enemy,” said Joel Finkelstein, a fellow at Rutgers who runs the institute. “If you are feeling dispossessed, like all these right-wing groups are, boy do I have a tent for you.”

Ben Decker contributed research.

Neil MacFarquhar is a national correspondent. Previously, as Moscow bureau chief, he was on the team awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting. He spent more than 15 years reporting from around the Mideast, including five as Cairo bureau chief, and wrote two books about the region.

:{:{A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Moving On From ‘Stop the Steal,’ Far Right Now Vilifies Vaccines}:

See more on: U.S. Politics

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4 25 duck qanon vaxx

Rolling Stone

https://www.rollingstone.com › culture › culture-features › qanon-anti-vax-covid-vaccine-conspiracy-theory-1125197

QAnon: How the Anti-Vaxxers Got Red-Pilled - Rolling Stone

The full convergence of the anti-vax movement and QAnon belief can be seen in the trajectory of Larry D. Cook — a onetime healthy-lifestyle guru who became a high-profile anti-vaccine activist ...

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aha

in doge coup 2025, trump musk going after any opponent in the way of implementing his agenda/will by doing it IN THE NAME OF, using pretext of, acting in the name of some cherished value like civil rights when he is in fact doing the opposite, dismantling DEI. bad faith jiu jitsu? // projection/rubber glue, self defense? THEY used weaponization/ lawfare against me, so its only fair they should be punished/vanquished by their own bad actions/ taste of own medicine

TRUMP ATTACK HARVARD IN THE NAME OF ANTI-SEM

AN 4 25

An afternoon huddle at the White House revealed a double standard that President Donald Trump does not mind wielding against organizations that cross him.

“In your first term, your attorney general apologized to Tea Party groups targeted by the IRS in the Obama administration,” said one reporter. “Why is it OK for the IRS to change the tax status of Harvard because of a policy disagreement you have with that university?” He added, “If that was wrong why are you considering changing the tax status of Harvard?

“Because I think Harvard is a disgrace,” Trump said. “I think what they did was a disgrace. They’re obviously antisemitic. And all of the sudden they’re starting to behave. But when you see where they—what they were saying, what they were doing — when you see the way they took care of events— when you watch that woman, that horrendous president that ruined the image of Harvard, maybe permanently, in the halls of Congress. When you take a look at what happened there, it was horrific.”

Trump was unclear about the particulars of how Harvard “behaved,” or “what they were saying” and “doing.” And he offered no details on “the way they took care of events,” or seemingly that “woman” who is a “horrendous president.” Alan M. Garber is the current (male) president of Havard who soundly rejected Trump’s demand to jettison diversity programs and accept a political commissar to act as an adjunct of the federal government in Harvard business and education matters.

IFrame Content

In the same breath, Trump tried to distance himself from his own recent call to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, however.

“… I’ve looked at—a lot having to do with it—I’m not involved in it,” he added abruptly. “It’s being handled by lawyers. I’ve read about it, just like you did, but tax-exempt status is a privilege and it’s been abused by a lot more than Harvard.”

While personally denying his direct influence in the removal of Harvard’s tax status, Trump also promised he would be directing the IRS to investigate and possibly remove the tax-exempt status of certain non-profits who have angered him, particularly immigrant rights groups and environmental groups. A different reporter asked if he would like to see tax-exempt status removed from, “Immigrant rights groups? Environmental groups?”

READ MORE:['Treasonous fool': JD Vance challenged over 'insane fabrication' about Biden administration

“Could be. Could be. I mean, look, environmental — I have a group named Crew. Crew. Ever hear of it? I think it is c-r-e-w. And they have — the guy who heads Crew — it’s supposed to be a charitable organization, and the only charity they had is going after Donald Trump, so we’re looking at that. We’re looking at a lot of things.”

Trump could possibly be planning to target the non-partisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) anti-corruption non-profit, or CREW Land & Water Trust, which is a non-profit land trust in southwest Florida working to preserve the 60,000-acre watershed for water, wildlife and public use. If so, the announcement may not be a surprise coming from an administration seeking to significantly limit the Endangered Species Act's power to preserve wildlife habitats by changing the definition of one word: harm.

Watch the videos below, or by[clicking this link.

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aha sorta not me

takes a long time and effort to build stuff incl trust, but can be trashed fast; doge coup chiansaw gets rid of DATA, instiit memory

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2 25 NOT QUITE SURE I SEE MYTHIC STATUS, BUT DOMINATED ELECTION 2024 AND IN EUR] THE COURTS ARE ASSAYING THE METAPHOR/REALITY

PLUS GONE FROM FRINGE TO GOP ORTHODOXY

AHA DOH INVASION IS A MYTH // GRT VIOL RHET, HYPE FEAR --> MASS SHOOT

AN 2 25

When it comes to talking about immigrants, the word “invasion” is both explosive and inaccurate, experts and human rights advocates say. Yet with Donald Trump back in the White House, it’s showing up on official orders and other communications — and it’s being echoed by Ohio politicians.

Just in the waning weeks of January, Trump issued two executive orders using the language — “Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion” and “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.”

On Thursday, more than 80 civil and human rights organizations sent a letter to congressional leaders calling on them to reject what the groups said was a “false and bigoted conspiracy theory.”

As at times past, numbers of migrants spiked at the U.S.-Mexico border at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic and severely strained resources. That led certain politicians on the right — including Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and now-Ohio U.S. Sen.Bernie Moreno — to claim it was an invasion even though migrants weren’t driving tanks, carrying machine guns, or even functioning as an organized group. They don’t even committed crime at rates as high as native-born Americans

“Immigration policy is an important topic that demands congressional discussion and debate,” the groups’ letter to Republican and Democratic congressional leaders said. “We implore Senate and House leadership not to support or fund efforts that are led by a fictional and dangerous conspiracy theory purporting an ‘invasion.’ Congress should not provide the justification for continued attacks on our democracy.”

In Texas, Abbott has tried to portray what has happened at the border as a military invasion as he seeks to take border-security responsibilities into his own hands. Such powers have traditionally been reserved for the federal government because it would create chaos if each of the 50 states was in charge of its own policy and security when it came to dealing with foreign countries.

Also, the places along the border that Abbott claimed were the site of a military invasion are among the safest communities in the country. So, even when immigrants showed up in large numbers, that didn’t amount to the military invasion Abbott claimed in an attempt to get around federal primacy, a judge ruled last year.

“Contemporary definitions of ‘invasion’ and ‘actually invaded’ as well as common usage of the term in the late Eighteenth Century predominantly referred to an ‘invasion’ as a hostile and organized military force, too powerful to be dealt with by ordinary judicial proceedings,” U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra wrote last year as he blocked Abbott. “This Court could not locate a single contemporaneous use of the term to refer to surges in unauthorized foreign immigration.”

After briefly lifting it, the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year upheld Ezra’s stay and is scheduled to hear Texas’s appeal in July.

Meanwhile, many experts have said false claims of invasion have prompted murderous rampages against vulnerable communities. For example, Patrick Crusius in 2019 drove from Dallas to El Paso, posted a manifesto saying he was stopping an “invasion” at the border and went to a Walmart. There he used an AK-47 to murder 23 and injured 22 more.

Some experts say the fact that such false, incendiary rhetoric can be deadly isn’t just incidental, it’s part of the point. It scares immigrants and others from standing up to those who use it, and that serves the political ends of those who use such rhetoric, those experts say.

Not to fight false claims that we’re being invaded undermines democracy, a program director at one of the groups that signed the letter to congressional leaders said in a statement.

“Depicting migrants and refugees as an ‘invasion’ is not only a dangerous and bigoted attempt to fearmonger, it is now the basis of an authoritarian power grab,” said Liz Yates of the Western States Center.

In their letter, all the groups said the harm will only spread unless those in power stand against claims of an “invasion.”

“This bigoted narrative has already been leveraged to promote policies that have and will continue to have a devastating impact on immigrant communities,” the letter said. “It has also inspired a pattern of white nationalist and antisemitic deadly attacks across the nation. Use of this bigoted conspiracy theory as justification for a policy agenda poses a public safety risk not only to the immigrant communities who are targeted for policy enforcement, but also to Jewish, Black, Brown, Muslim, LGBTQ+, AANHPI, Latinx and many other communities who are implicated in this conspiratorial rhetoric. It also constitutes a direct threat to our democracy.” Congress must refuse to further legitimize this bigotry by sanctioning or funding policies in its name.”

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.

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AHA DOH MODERATION BUFFER

MUSK IS IRON MAN DIRTY HARRY MEL GIBSON LETHAL WEAPON ROGUE COP NOT BY THE BOOK BUT GETS RESULTS/JUSTICE EFFECTIVE VIA FORCE?

AN 2 25

According to the Washington Post, as many as 200,000 federal workers may be fired because of efforts by the Trump Administration and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to greatly downsize the United States' federal government. And the criticism of their efforts is coming not only from Democrats, but also, from voices on the right.

Former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pennsylvania), during a February 17 appearance on MSNBC, slammed Trump and DOGE for carrying out mass government layoffs in a "haphazard" way. And the next morning, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough (a Never Trump conservative and ex-GOP congressman) argued that while government "waste" needs to be reduced and the U.S. needs to balance its federal budget, the Trump Administration and DOGE are recklessly jeopardizing "food safety" and "air safety."

The Guardian's George Monbiot also fears that Trump's second term could trigger some type of major crisis.

In a February 18 opinion column, Monbiot lays out a variety of frightening scenarios and offers some tips for surviving a worst-case scenario.

"Though we might find it hard to imagine," Monbiot warns, "we cannot now rule it out: the possibility of systemic collapse in the United States. The degradation of federal government by Donald Trump and Elon Musk could trigger a series of converging and compounding crises, leading to social, financial and industrial failure…. A financial crisis in the U.S. would immediately become a global crisis."

Monbiot continues, "But the hazards extend much further. Musk, calling for a 'wholesale removal of regulations,' sends his child soldiers to attack government departments stabilizing the entire U.S. system. Regulations, though endlessly maligned by corporate and oligarchic propaganda, are all that protect us from multiple disasters. In its initial impacts, deregulation is class war, hitting the poorest and the middle classes at the behest of the rich. As the effects proliferate, it becomes an assault on everyone's wellbeing."

The columnist warns that undermining regulatory government agencies could make everything from a pandemic to "future climate disasters" worse.

"As Trump rips down environmental protections and trashes federal responsiveness," Monbiot explains, "the impacts will spiral. They could include non-linear shocks to either the insurance sector or homeowners, escalating into U.S.-wide economic and social crisis. If, or when, another pandemic strikes, which could involve a pathogen more transmissible and even more deadly than COVID-19 — which has so far killed 1.2 million people in the U.S. — it will hit a nation whose defenses have been stood down."

Monbiot urges Americans — as well as residents of the U.K., where The Guardian is published — by doing a lot of networking.

"So, though there is no substitute for effective government, we must seek to create our own backup systems," the Guardian columnist advises. "Start with this principle: don't face your fears alone. Make friends, meet your neighbors, set up support networks, help those who are struggling. Since the dawn of humankind, those with robust social networks have been more resilient than those without. Yes, we also — and urgently — need national and global action, brokered by governments. But it's beginning to look as if no one has our backs. Prepare for the worst."

*George Monbiot's full Guardian column is available at this link.

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aha if X hates america [which God loves?] , wants to destroy it, thus they want to destroy me and my loved ones so they must be defeated/killed, ends justify means? self defense, eliminationalist

Fox News’ Will Cain says “I truly believe that DEI could have killed America”

01/22/25

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AHA NOT ME THIS IS BASIC POLARITY NOW

INK 1 25

...

And that brings us to an open question — or, rather, questions:

What does society still need from social media, and from digital platforms in general? Are they actually meant to take — are they even capable of taking — the place of the public square, functioning as a digital commons? Or can it just be a place to nerd out on niche interests and connect with friends? And can any of that coexist with the business interests that drive the platform owners? Does anyone really want an everything app that covers it all, from banking to gaming? Should any digital platform really try to be everything to everyone?

And why are they in the business of arbitrating the public trust anyway, even if that’s to establish the definition of what’s neutral? If, as polling suggests, we don’t trust institutions anymore — the media, government agencies, elected leaders, the courts — who do Americans trust? Who is the proper arbiter of the public trust?

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AHA NOT ME THIS IS BASIC POLARITY NOW

INK 1 25

...

And that brings us to an open question — or, rather, questions:

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DN 1 25 digiTal authoritarian req EARTH2 ECHO

trump does not read, has little factual info, but constantly says he is smarter /better than experts like generals

musk blew up budget bill b/c does not get process

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an 1 25

Historian: Trump’s 'us v. them' response to LA wildfires shows inability to handle 'moments of crisis'

IT HAS TO BE FAult of dem, vs agw

an 1 25

President-elect Donald Trump took his complaints about the wildfire disaster in California to a new level on Thursday, with a Truth Social post baselessly suggesting that Gov. Gavin Newsom was withholding water firefighters could be using to protect homes and businesses.

"Governor Gavin Newscum should immediately go to Northern California and open up the water main, and let the water flow into his dry, starving, burning State, instead of having it go out into the Pacific Ocean," Trump said. "It ought to be done right now, NO MORE EXCUSES FROM THIS INCOMPETENT GOVERNOR. IT’S ALREADY FAR TOO LATE!"

Trump has repeatedly claimed that California officials are somehow blocking firefighters from accessing water — which appears to be a confused misinterpretation of long-running political battles in the state over how to allocate water between agricultural, commercial, residential and environmental use.

He made similar accusations in 2018 about water being denied to firefighters during an aggressive fire season in Northern California, prompting the state fire agency to issue a statement clarifying this is not true.

Firefighters have struggled to maintain water pressure as they have tried to save neighborhoods like Pacific Palisades Experts say it's because aging water infrastructure in Los Angeles is being overstressed by the sudden spike in demand, depleting tanks faster than they can be refilled.

In previous fire disasters, Trump has also accused California officials of failing to properly manage forests, at one point suggesting they should have raked leaves to prevent wildfires, like Finland does — a remark that led to widespread mockery from Finns on social media.

He made similar claims about the latest fire disaster, which forced a reporter on Fox News to point out that forest management was irrelevant given that the fire in Malibu began in a residential area.

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aha DEI is useful BS reductionistic explanation for a various more comlpex and various and inconvenient ideologically problems?

mma 1 25 deflection?

Fox News' Jeanine Pirro responds to New Orleans attack by calling the police chief “a DEI hire”

01/03/25

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aha dark side inverse of transaction is retaliation

tariffs are reductionism; also punishment of enemy ppl we do not like/fear POC foreigner xeno; now alo apparently way to extort/extract bribes; bonus explains why am mfger rust belt gutted b/c they cheated [like they are sending fentanyl that we have no interest in]; trumpista fine with being collateral damage as longas their fighter is seen to be hurting enemy more.// empty pool syndrome

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parasocial rogan manosphere no left equiv

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aha // yikes:

msnbc divide not left right, not quite college vs not but fact vs not

dean col sch jrnl on drones 12/24?

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Fox News totally ignored new report showing violent crime is down — while running more than 4.5 hours of violent crime coverage 08/15/24 mma

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aha

YIKES THUGSWARM INSITUTIONALIZED? DEMONIZATION REQUIRES RETALIATION --> FAscism ; term online = radicalized?

AN 12 24

any Never Trump conservatives have argued that the Republican Party's Ronald Reagan era officially ended when Donald Trump won the 2016 GOP nomination and went on to defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the general election.

Since then, the GOP has only grown more and more Trumpified. Many conservative Trump critics are no longer in Congress, including former Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Wyoming), ex-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), and ex-Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona). And outgoing Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) decided against seeking reelection.

Trump's narrow defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election only tightens his stranglehold on the GOP. The Dispatch's David M. Drucker, in an article published on December 17, stresses that when he returns to the White House on January 20, 2025, he will be "flanked by an army of outside enforcers prepared to squeeze any Republican who resists his agenda."

"Once Trump is inaugurated," Drucker reports, "this MAGA-aligned network will shift to strong-arming obstinate House and Senate Republicans to support the president-elect's agenda, be it executive orders or legislative proposals. Critically, MAGA insiders tell The Dispatch, they won't be sitting around waiting for direction from Trump to join a particular fight."

One of those MAGA insiders is "War Room" host Steve Bannon, who told The Dispatch, "The ecosystem on the right is going to be a force multiplier…. What I think you're seeing now is the institutionalization of what had been a self-organizing effort."

Bannon, according to Drucker, is "describing" what "amounts to the rise of a new Republican establishment, complete with well-funded activist groups and influential media figures."

Bannon, now 71, has been involved in far-right politics for decades. But Trump's MAGA loyalists aren't necessarily Baby Boomers or members of Generation X.

In a New York Times article published on Dec. 16, reporter Shawn McCreesh describes a New York Young Republican Club gathering that took place Sunday, Dec. 15.

Bannon was the keynote speaker, but many of the "true believers" in attendance were much younger. And according to McCreesh, they are fine with "retribution" against Trump's detractors — if unclear about the form it should take.

"This club's members are, by and large, a terminally online, trollish, far-right collective who would consider any sort of tack toward the center by Mr. Trump or those guiding him to be an act of betrayal," McCreesh reports. "They are the prime audience for retribution rattling. And yet, on Sunday, many seemed at odds about just how much retribution they could expect, or who precisely should be targeted, or how.

Preston Parra, a 22-year-old MAGA Republican at the gathering, said of Trump's foes, "We want to throw the book at them because they deserve it. They're godless demoniacs…. The leftist, elitist cabal, whatever you want to call it. Nancy Pelosi. Mitch McConnell."

READ MORE:['How long it’ll be until he sues an economist': Experts blast Trump's lawsuit against pollster

*Read The Dispatch's full article at this linkand the New York Times' reporting here (subscription required).

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aha huge pay rationalized by capitalism gets biggest brain who will create effic that will benefit us all but actually gives motivation for crime, corruption inefficiency wealth redistrib up --> inequality --> chaos

12 24

no lnx

Alternet+ Login

When profits kill: The deadly cost of treating healthcare as a business

Thom Hartmann December 10, 2024

The recent assassination of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare — the health insurance company with, reportedly, the highest rate of claims rejections (and thus dead, wounded, and furious customers and their relations) — gives us a perfect window to understand the stupidity and danger of the Musk/Trump/Ramaswamy strategy of “cutting government” to “make it more efficient, run it like a corporation.”

Consider health care, which in almost every other developed country in the world is legally part of the commons — the infrastructure of the nation, like our roads, public schools, parks, police, military, libraries, and fire departments — owned by the people collectively and run for the sole purpose of meeting a basic human need.

The entire idea of government — dating all the way back to Gilgamesh and before — is to fulfill that singular purpose of meeting citizens’ needs and keeping the nation strong and healthy. That’s a very different mandate from that of a corporation, which is solely directed (some argue by law) to generate profits.

The Veterans’ Administration healthcare system, for example, is essentially socialist rather than capitalist. The VA owns the land and buildings, pays the salaries of everybody from the surgeons to the janitors, and makes most all decisions about care. Its primary purpose — just like that of the healthcare systems of every other democracy in the world — is to keep and make veterans healthy. Its operation is nearly identical to that of Britain’s beloved socialist National Health Service.

UnitedHealthcare similarly owns its own land and buildings, and its officers and employees behave in a way that’s aligned with the company’s primary purpose, but that purpose is to make a profit. Sure, it writes checks for healthcare that’s then delivered to people, but that’s just the way UnitedHealthcare makes money; writing checks and, most importantly, refusing to write checks.

Think about it. If UnitedHealthcare’s main goal was to keep people healthy, they wouldn’t be rejecting 32 percent of claims presented to them. Like the VA, when people needed help they’d make sure they got it.

Instead, they make damn sure their executives get millions of dollars every year (and investors get billions) because making a massive profit ($23 billion last year, and nearly every penny arguably came from saying “no” to somebody’s healthcare needs) is their real business.

On the other hand, if the VA’s goal was to make or save money by “being run efficiently like a company,” they’d be refusing service to a lot more veterans (which it appears is on the horizon).

This is the essential difference between government and business, between meeting human needs (social) and reaching capitalism’s goal (profit).

It’s why its deeply idiotic to say, as Republicans have been doing since the Reagan Revolution, that “government should be run like a business.” That’s nearly as crackbrained a suggestion as saying that fire departments should make a profit (a doltish notion promoted by some Libertarians). Government should be run like a government, and companies should be run like companies.

Given how obvious this is with even a little bit of thought, where did this imbecilic idea that government should run like a business come from?

Turns out, it’s been driven for most of the past century by morbidly rich businessmen (almost entirely men) who don’t want to pay their taxes. As Jeff Tiedrich notes:

“The scariest sentence in the English language is: ‘I’m a billionaire, and I’m here to help.’”

Rightwing billionaires who don’t want to pay their fair share of the costs of society set up think tanks, policy centers, and built media operations to promote their idea that the commons are really there for them to plunder under the rubric of privatization and efficiency.

They’ve had considerable success. Slightly more than half of Medicare is now privatized, multiple Republican-controlled states are in the process of privatizing their public school systems, and the billionaire-funded Project 2025 and the incoming Trump administration have big plans for privatizing other essential government services.

The area where their success is most visible, though, is the American healthcare system. Because the desire of rightwing billionaires not to pay taxes have prevailed ever since Harry Truman first proposed single-payer healthcare like most of the rest of the world has, Americans spend significantly more on healthcare than other developed countries.

In 2022, citizens of the United States spent an estimated $12,742 per person on healthcare, the highest among wealthy nations. This is nearly twice the average of $6,850 per person for other wealthy OECD countries.

Over the next decade, it is estimated that America will spend between $55 and $60 trillion on healthcare if nothing changes and we continue to cut giant corporations in for a large slice of our healthcare money.

On the other hand, Senator Bernie Sanders’ single-payer Medicare For All plan would only cost $32 trillion over the next 10 years. And it would cover everybody in America, every man woman and child, in every medical aspect including vision, dental, psychological, and hearing.

Currently 25 million Americans have no health insurance whatsoever.

If we keep our current system, the difference between it and the savings from a single-payer system will end up in the pockets, in large part, of massive insurance giants and their executives and investors. And as campaign contributions for bought off Republicans. This isn’t rocket science.

And you’d think that giving all those extra billions to companies like UnitedHealthcare would result in America having great health outcomes. But, no.

Despite insanely higher spending, the U.S. has a lower life expectancy at birth, higher rates of chronic diseases, higher rates of avoidable or treatable deaths, and higher maternal and infant mortality rates than any of our peer nations.

Compared to single-payer nations like Canada, the U.S. also has a higher incidence of chronic health conditions, Americans see doctors less often and have fewer hospital stays, and the U.S. has fewer hospital beds and physicians per person.

No other country in the world allows a predatory for-profit industry like this to exist as a primary way of providing healthcare. Every other advanced democracy considers healthcare a right of citizenship, rather than an opportunity for a handful of industry executives to hoard a fortune, buy Swiss chalets, and fly around on private jets.

This is one of the most widely shared graphics on social media over the past few days in posts having to do with Thompson’s murder…

Sure, there are lots of health insurance companies in other developed countries, but instead of offering basic healthcare (which is provided by the government) mostly wealthy people subscribe to them to pay for premium services like private hospital rooms, international air ambulance services, and cosmetic surgery.

Essentially, UnitedHealthcare’s CEO Brian Thompson made decisions that killed Americans for a living, in exchange for $10 million a year. He and his peers in the industry are probably paid as much as they are because there is an actual shortage of people with business training who are willing to oversee decisions that cause or allow others to die in exchange for millions in annual compensation.

That Americans are well aware of this obscenity explains the gleeful response to his murder that’s spread across social media, including the refusal of online sleuths to participate in finding his killer.

It shouldn’t need be said that vigilantism is no way to respond to toxic individuals and companies that cause Americans to die unnecessarily. Hopefully, Thompson’s murder will spark a conversation about the role of government and the commons — and the very real need to end the corrupt privatization of our healthcare system (including the Medicare Advantage scam) that has harmed so many of us and killed or injured so many of the people we love.

ALSO READ: CEO shooting suspect’s manifesto claims violence is answer to health care industry: report

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AHA democracy is slow, fascism is fast; biden quickly moved to fix supply chain in covid, re-booted chips mfgr, kamala did deal to slow central am immigration = systemic, but voters blamed biden for inflation tho best in world, thot unemployment was record HIGH?!; trump prevented no carrier AC factory from moving, and his foxcomm plant never built; infra week literally a joke, vs biden infro act bipartisan rebuilt bridge hit by ship in record time; gop mitch showed up to cut ribbons on bills they voted against; only notice pothole, not roads;

AN 12 24

During the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump relentlessly attacked President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the economy — blaming both of them for post-pandemic inflation in the United States. And the message resonated with enough voters for Trump to pull off a narrow victory over Harris.

According to the Cook Political Report, Trump defeated Harris by roughly 1.5 or 1.6 percent in the popular vote and picked up 312 electoral votes compared to 226 for the vice president.

A victory of 1.5 or 1.6 percent is hardly a "landslide," as Trump's allies have been claiming. But it's a victory nonetheless, and Trump will be sworn in for a nonconsecutive second term on January 20, 2025.

Some of Biden's supporters have argued that history will be kind to the outgoing president — not unlike the kind words for the late President George H.W. Bush after he lost the 1992 election to President Bill Clinton. And history, they argue, will remember Biden's job-creation record and the low unemployment of his presidency.

In October, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), U.S. unemployment was 4.1 percent.

In a December 2 post on X, formerly Twitter, Alex Armlovich — a senior housing analyst for the Niskanen Center — praised Biden's record on creating manufacturing jobs. And he made his point by tweeting a chart from Joey Politano, who publishes a financial newsletter.

Armlovich tweeted, "This rise in US manufacturing construction spend via @JosephPolitano is absolutely mindblowing. So many CHIPS & IRA-fueled factories are about to start opening in January you're not gonna believe it."

READ MORE:[Bombshell report details 'dangerous' new allegations against Trump Cabinet nominee

In a separate tweet, Armlovich laments that Trump, in 2025, will get the credit for Biden's economic achievements.

Armlovich predicts, "Trump's name will be on every IIJA, CHIPS, & IRA ribbon cut b/c key Dem factions thought NEPA red tape was more important than permitting reform to finish projects in <4 yrs FDR didn't respond to the 1930s by saying 'Mussolini is too fast we need NEPA.' He just started building."

===

---

aha not mine wicked; // bolster neg attack ads dark $

no lnx

alternet-

Until there’s a liberal media apparatus, the Democrats will live in Trump’s America

Donald Trump gestures next to Patty Morin, whose daughter Rachel was killed in Maryland last year, during a campaign rally at Santander Arena in Reading, Pennsylvania, U.S., November 4, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

John Stoehr November 21, 2024

It takes time for things to stick properly, so please bear with me while I say again that Kamala Harris did not lose the election because of things she said. She lost because of things Donald Trump said she said.

So Democratic Party critics are basing their criticism not on what Harris said but on what Trump said she said, as they are accepting as true the allegations of the president-elect against the vice president.

By focusing on things that Trump said she said, rather than on things she said, these critics are missing the real lesson from the 2024 election – that her policies were not the determining factor in her defeat. It was the ear-splitting volume of the accusations against her and the absence of equal and opposite accusations against him.

In the final weeks of the election, the Trump campaign spent more than $29 million on television ads attacking Harris on trans rights. It was “by far, the biggest focal point when it comes to Trump’s ad spending — one of the best barometers of messaging priority there is,” wroteThe Bulwark’s Marc Caputo on October 24. “By contrast, the campaign has spent $5 million over that same time period on TV ads on the economy, making that topic their fifth-most emphasized.”

According to a new study by a Democratic pollster, Trump’s attack ads largely explain the outcome of the election. The report calculated the percentage of swing voters who voted for Trump in the belief that Harris supported federal funding of transgender surgeries on undocumented immigrants. It was a whopping 83 percent.

Conclusion:

“These voters — who remained open to persuasion until the very end — delivered not just a rejection of Harris but what they believed the Democratic Party stands for, absorbing rightwing narratives.”

Harris didn’t lose because of things she said.

She lost because of things Trump said she said.

Critics of the Democratic Party will point out that, ackshually, Harris did say she supported access to gender-transition care for undocumented immigrants. But that was once, in 2019, during her first run, and it wasn’t a campaign pledge. She wasn’t running on it. She gave an affirmative answer to an ACLU questionnaire. This year, her campaign explicitly rejected the questionnaire as having any bearing on her platform as the 2024 nominee. Indeed, she did what critics say she should do. She backed away from lefty woke things like trans rights.

And it didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter because what she said, the substance of her message wasn’t as important to the outcome of the election as the volume of it, which is to say, the substance of what she said could not be heard through the din of the rightwing media apparatus. As media expert Matthew Sheffield said today, nothing was going to get through that, not even the shared reality of the economy. “Through seven TV channels, more than 1,500 talk-radio stations, and millions of social media posts. Republicans sold a fictional narrative about the economy to unsuspecting Americans. Trump inherited a strong economy from Obama and then destroyed it. Democrats never told the story.”

They couldn’t. No one was listening, because no one could hear it. Trump’s attack ads worked in tandem with thousands of media sites, including the one formerly known as Twitter, that have been operating around the clock since 2020, often in parallel with the Washington press corps. They were able to take one small thing Harris said years ago and turn it into a caricature so ridiculous that a convicted felon like Donald Trump could look like a viable candidate by comparison.

It was so loud some voters didn’t know what the Democrats stand for.

And that includes some Democratic voters.

Harris won more votes than Trump did in 2020 (she now has 74.3 million to his 74.2), but she did not win as many as Joe Biden in 2020. (He won 81.3 million votes, the most ever, while Trump won 76.8 million this year, the second-most ever.) Where did they go?

You could say voter suppression laws, but I think a bigger source of “voter suppression” was lies and propaganda, directly or indirectly from rightwing media outlets or from anti-trans attack ads, or in the form of “false-flag efforts” funded by billionaires, including Twitter’s Elon Musk, to make Democratic voters feel like there’s no point in voting for Harris. “The entire goal of the campaign was to push her numbers down,” a top Trump adviser told the Post. Clearly, it worked.

The volume of the rightwing media apparatus, especially when it’s in sync with the Washington press corps, is so loud that it can feel like the ultimate arbiter of our political reality. As one CNN anchor put it this morning, this is Donald Trump’s America. We’re just living in it. Until there’s a liberal media apparatus, one that can meet bad info with good info, the Democrats will continue living in Trump’s America, too.

---

aha: tax dodge = amplifying feedback --> inequality/ polarization --> instability --> crisis

aha2 // billionaires hide $ in fam fdn, attack gubmint, degrade ability to work, trash more rinse repeat downward death spiral, deconstruct admin state burn it down bannon trump clown car cabinet

an 11 24

A study published Tuesday estimates that tax dodging enabled by the United States, the United Kingdom, and other wealthy nations is costing countries around the world nearly half a trillion dollars in revenue each year, underscoring the urgent need for global reforms to prevent rich individuals and large corporations from shirking their obligations.

The new study, conducted by the Tax Justice Network (TJN), finds that "the combined costs of cross-border tax abuse by multinational companies and by individuals with undeclared assets offshore stands at an estimated $492 billion." Of that total in lost revenue, corporate tax dodging is responsible for more than $347 billion, according to TJN's calculations.

"For people everywhere, the losses translate into foregone public services, and weakened states at greater risk of falling prey to political extremism," the study reads. "And in the same way, there is scope for all to benefit from moving tax rule-setting out of the OECD and into a globally inclusive and fully transparent process at the United Nations."

The analysis estimates that just eight countries—the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Japan, Israel, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand—are enabling large-scale tax avoidance by opposing popular global reform efforts. Late last year, those same eight countries were the lonely opponents of the United Nations General Assembly's vote to set in motion the process of establishing a U.N. tax convention.

According to the new TJN study, those eight countries are responsible for roughly half of the $492 billion lost per year globally to tax avoidance by the rich and large multinational corporations, despite being home to just 8% of the world's population.

"The hurtful eight voted for a world where we all keep losing half a trillion a year to tax-cheating multinational corporations and the super-rich," Alex Cobham, chief executive of the Tax Justice Network, said in a statement Tuesday. "The U.K. and the U.S. are both among the biggest enablers and the biggest losers of this lose-lose tax system, and their people consistently demand an end to tax abuse, so it's absurd that the U.S. and U.K. are seeking to preserve it."

"It's perhaps harder to understand why the other handful of blockers, like Australia, Canada, and Japan, who don't play anything like such a damaging role, would be willing to go along with this," Cobham added.

TJN released its study as G20 nations—a group that includes most of the "hurtful eight"—issued a communiqué pledging to "engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed." Brazil, which hosted the G20 summit, led the push for language calling for taxation of the global super-rich.

The document drew praise from advocacy groups including the Fight Inequality Alliance, which stressed the need to "transform the rhetoric on taxing the rich into global reality."

The communiqué was released amid concerns that the election of far-right billionaire Donald Trump in the U.S. could derail progress toward a global solution to pervasive and costly tax avoidance.

The new TJN study cites Trump's pledge to cut the statutory U.S. corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% and warns such a move would accelerate the global "race to the bottom" on corporate taxation.

"People in countries around the world are calling in large majorities on their governments to tax multinational corporations properly," Liz Nelson, TJN's director of advocacy and research, said Tuesday. "But governments continue to exercise a policy of appeasement on corporate tax."

"We now have data from these governments showing that when they asked multinational corporations to pay less tax, the corporations cheated even more," Nelson added. "It's time governments found the spines their people deserve from their leaders."

===

---

~ democ klepto DoD warrior bd loyalty purity test

omfg desantis would pick

an 11 24

If Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is confirmed as President-elect Donald Trump's next secretary of state, it could open the door for Trump's family to get an even deeper foothold in the federal government.

Any Senate vacancy in Florida has to be filled by Governor Ron DeSantis (R) until the next election, which wouldn't happen until 2028. And MAGA is now pushing for Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara, to be appointed senator in Rubio's place should his seat become vacant. The Daily Beast reported that Lara Trump herself is now actively offering herself as a replacement for Rubio.

"This is my home state now and has been for three years," the Republican National Committee co-chair told Fox News' Sean Hannity, adding that she would "love to serve the people of Florida." Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) also endorsed the idea of Lara Trump's appointment. And CBS News' Scott MacFarlane posted to the social media platform Bluesky that Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) is also reportedly on board.

Ric Grenell, who was Trump's acting Director of National Intelligence in his first administration, was thought to be a front-runner to helm the State Department before the news of Rubio's appointment was made public. Tara Palmieri of Puck News tweeted that DeSantis was not in the loop, and learned about Florida's senior U.S. senator being nominated as the nation's potential next top diplomat while he was on vacation in Italy.

Trump tapping Rubio to head the State Department is particularly noteworthy given that they were bitter rivals in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. In a debate, Rubio took a jab at the size of Trump's hands, implying that the billionaire reality TV star was small elsewhere. This led Trump to say there was "no problem" with the size of any of his body parts.

Political strategist and columnist Cheri Jacobus, who is a former communications staffer for the RNC, offered one potential explanation for Rubio's appointment to one of the most high-ranking Cabinet positions — "to open the seat for his daughter-in-law."

"I think that may be the main reason Trump picked Rubio," Jacobus wrote on Bluesky.

However, not all Republicans are as enthusiastic about the prospect of Lara Trump joining the Senate. Conservative columnist Scott Morefield called it a "bridge too far" in a post on X.

"Yes, Donald Trump should get his Cabinet picks, but the Senate pick is DeSantis’, not Trump’s," Morefield wrote. "And it would be a bad idea because it would make the seat vulnerable when election time rolls around."

Like Rubio, DeSantis is also a former Trump rival, having run a short-lived campaign for the Republican nomination in 2024. The two-term Florida governor went all-in on the Iowa Caucuses, only to come up short to Trump. He suspended his campaign shortly afterward and endorsed Trump.

Click here to read the Daily Beast's report in full (subscription required).

READ MORE:[All in the family? How Marco Rubio's Senate seat could go to a DeSantis or a Trump

---

===

wanna be enforcers??

aha short window for shock and awe smash and grab, recess appt in maj sen; bannon beat chest, to puff up signif of win and his role in it; push advantage/ big mo?

Fox News’ Jason Chaffetz threatens Republicans who refuse to confirm Fox & Friends weekend co-host Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense

11/12/24 MMA

Charlie Kirk threatens to remove Sen. John Thune (R-SD) as majority leader

11/13/24

---

WICKED SMART

mma

MAGA propaganda machine helped carry Trump back to the White House — and it’s not done poisoning America

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 11/07/24

Donald Trump was reelected president on Tuesday, four years after fomenting a coup which saw a mob of his supporters storm the U.S. Capitol and then leaving the White House in disgrace. He owes his return at least in part to a rankly dishonest right-wing information ecosystem that helped carry him through countless scandals that would have ended the careers of most politicians, driving his comeback to the pinnacle of power.

Conservative audiences are dependent on a right-wing media complex that bombards them with falsehoods and grievances while dissuading them from consulting any alternative sources of information, be they legacy news outlets or government officials or medical experts.

Once Trump captured the GOP and ascended to the presidency in 2017, that bubble served him and his interests. Within it, for example, his supporters were convinced by a sprawling conspiracy theory portraying the then-president as the victim of a shadowy “deep state” cabal that justified vast retribution.

The January 6 insurrection presented Trump’s propagandists with a crossroads. Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire includes right-wing bastions like Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and New York Post, privately sought for him to become a “non person.” But Tucker Carlson and his allies at Fox and elsewhere instead went to work creating a counternarrative in which Trump was blameless. People who knew better either played along or actively participated in the whitewashing of that day.

Trump’s various indictments for a host of crimes provided additional hinge points. Right-wing media figures who could have used evidence of his abject criminality as a rationale for cutting him loose instead rallied to him and sought to delegitimize those seeking to bring him to justice.

The right-wing media bubble’s eagerness to excuse Trump’s actions gave him a dominant position in the Republican primary. As he romped to the nomination, his opponents complained that they were unable to gain traction because the party’s propaganda wing had united behind him.

Trump again became the nominee of one of the two major parties. He selected Ohio Sen. JD Vance, a Carlson favorite, as his running mate, and demonstrated the importance of the right-wing echo chamber by giving Carlson himself a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention.

With the general election set between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, right-wing propagandists went to work holding the GOP base together with a combination of grievance-mongering and silence.

They flooded the zone with a bogus narrative of “migrant crime” while ignoring evidence that violent crime was actually plummeting from its Trump-era high.

They instructed their audiences to treat immigrants as a scapegoat, falsely claiming that federal disaster aid desperately needed to respond to hurricanes had been siphoned off to benefit migrants and ginning up grotesque lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets.

They lashed out at the press, urging the Republican base to treat Trump’s poor showing in his debate against Harris as the result of media bias.

When an unprecedented string of former Republican officials and Trump’s own former administration aides came forward with dire warnings of what Trump did in his first term and could do in a second one, they hid the news from their audiences.

And they kept quiet on a host of unpopular aspects of Trump’s policy agenda, from Social Security to reproductive rights, while beating back burgeoning scandals over his alleged January 6 crimes, communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and a political event at Arlington National Cemetery.

Journalists and political strategists will spend the next weeks and months grappling for explanations as to how Trump returned to the White House. But without the support of the right-wing propaganda machine, he would not have been in position to sweep his party’s nomination in the first place — and in an evenly divided country amid a global anti-incumbent wave, that provided a strong position to win the presidency.

Now, the same propagandists who helped him back to power are poised to help him carry out his extreme agenda of destruction and retribution.

---

AHA 11 24 YIKES

AHA CONSPIR IS REDUCTION TO ONE FACTOR / BOGEYMAN TIKTOK DISINFO HYPE FEAR GRIFT

recall supply demand invis hand BS

AHA YIKES 11 24 TRUMP BUILD WALL, MIGRANT VIOLENT CRIME ILLEGAL VOTE STEAL; TARIFFS, DRILL BABY, NO TAX TIPS HYPE FEAR GRIFT

---

MSG CULMINATION ORIGIN IN ALT RT TROLL, PROJECTIONS poc ARE RACISTS AND OCEAN WIND KILLS WHALES?

===

10 24

aha:

PUTIN ACTIVE MEASURES DISINFO FOREVER TO DEGRADE FAITH IN INSTITUTIONS ESP CENTRAL ONE ELECTIONS

// TRUMP BIG LIE if dems cheAT violence is our only option

BANNON OUT OF JAIL STOKES militia revival, const sheriffs

BIGGEST LIE IS ILLEGAL ALIEN VOTERS INCORPORATES RACISM; THEY DARK ENEMY ARE STEALING YOUR MOST SACRED PRIVILEDGE = VOTE/RULE

RELATES TO PSEUDO-POPULISM? THEY are all corrupt so no matter if trump and putin aRE? watters sez all pols have an enemies list eg bannon navarro...

nihilism started in alt rt machosphere?

state of exception margin

1/20:(

anti-terrorism?:(

aha-ish: 1st they came for...:

at the border, inner city, prisons, on the margins authoritarian power, violence, violation of civil/human rights can be test, done w/o much scrutiny

BLM trump wanted to shoot in legs by military // unmarked van border guards in Portland

see dapl water protectors, indigenous green, baby jail trump border?

recall gen mike kelly cos def of fascism built in natural racial hierachy;

legit righteous glorious to use violence to keep THEM in their right place[low south down in shithole 3rd world]

one really rough hour by cops on brown venezuelan gang savages enough to scare those cowards into subjugation/fear

---

===

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?]

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. They 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.

:{:{}:

===

rww July 31, 2024

Ali Alexander offers some advice to the Trump campaign: “YOU HAVE TO GET NATIVIST, RACIST, NATIONALIST, AND CATHOLIC! TO WIN!”

AHA EFFORTS TO RE-CLAIM ---NATIONALIST BUT 1ST FOR RACISM? // THEY ARE GONNA CALL US BAD NAMES/RACIST NO MATTER WHat we do so we might as well own it/ do what we like/ push back on pc woke attacks?

aha:

kremer // jdv on eat pets earth2? not sure he admitted lying/making up stuff, but he admitted to making memes, which are justified in bringing injustice/gubmint failure to light.

plus recall disaSter/evil of dem win justifies any ACT, INCLUDING LYING

*real* Florida family walking through floodwaters as they return home after Hurricane Helene. AP

There has been no shortage of gut-wrenching photographs from communities in the southeast devastated by Hurricane Helene, which caused extreme flooding and killed at least 215 people — pictures of houses destroyed, families trapped on rooftops, wreckage from mudslides and roads washed out by torrential rains. But rather than focus on the actual victims or damage, many right-wing influencers and politicians have extended their sympathies to a nonexistent girl and her puppy (who is also not real).

The AI-generated image they’re sharing depicts a crying girl in a boat, seemingly alone except for the little dog she’s clutching. She wears a lifejacket and appears to be adrift on floodwaters caused by a major storm. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah posted the picture on X on Thursday, writing “Caption this photo,” apparently inviting his followers to vent their outrage at the Biden-Harris administration for allowing American children to suffer such misery on their watch. After users pointed out that he’d fallen for AI slop, he deleted the picture. (The image originated on the Trump web forum Patriots.win, where several users immediately recognized it as the product of an AI model.)

IFrame Content

Others, however, have left the misleading picture up on their social media accounts — and some are defending it as an accurate representation of Helene’s effects even though it’s fake. Far-right conspiracy theorist and Donald Trump associate Laura Loomer called the image “sad,” quote-tweeting a post from Buzz Patterson, columnist for the conservative blog RedState, who wrote of the picture: “Our government has failed us again.” Neither have taken their posts down as of press time. Amy Kremer, RNC National Committeewoman for the Georgia GOP and co-founder of Women for Trump, tweeted on Thursday that the image had been “seared into my mind.”

Informed that she was not looking at an authentic photo, Kremer doubled down. “Y’all, I don’t know where this photo came from and honestly, it doesn’t matter,” she replied. “There are people going through much worse than what is shown in this pic. So I’m leaving it because it is emblematic of the trauma and pain people are living through right now.”

A large anonymous blue-check account on X that routinely attacks Democrats did remove the picture but similarly argued: “Even though that image was AI, it spoke a truth about the disregard Harris and Biden have for ordinary Americans, as evidenced by their criminal non-response to Helene.” Another X user posted a since-deleted screenshot of a more succinct response from an apparent family member advised that the image was bogus. “Who cares,” they answered.

The little girl and her puppy — there are AI-generated variants of the more viral image floating around as well — have been widely presented by MAGA world as evidence of a failed disaster response in the aftermath of Helene. Similar fake images depict girls or women clutching Bibles as floods rage around them. Trump himself is pushing lies about the U.S. government not being able to fund relief efforts, adding an overtone of racism with the groundless claim that the White House “stole” money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and “spent it all on illegal migrants.” (The irony being that in 2019, the Trump administration itself redirected millions in disaster funds, during hurricane season, to pay for detention centers at the border.)

...

===

---

aha

vic of bubble gertz finally implodes?

bubble provides praise and protects from crit/reality no court jester? mil and head of state laughing at you, fired by 81 million ~ fascism

his plan was to doinate, tie her to failed biden policies, only in final stat why not done it? he stood over/behind hillary creepily, kamala shook his hand broke his space;

satis b/c jiu jitsu biden old man attacks; he was crazy uncle out of touch gpa

9 24

MATT GERTZ (MEDIA MATTERS SENIOR FELLOW): If you go through the fact-checking in the debate, it's like four things. One of them is, "Actually, there were no pets being eaten in Ohio." One of them is, "You didn't actually win the 2020 election."

JOHN FUGELSANG (HOST): Small detail.

GERTZ: You know, it's just that we're talking about, like, basic stuff. You know, "Actually, violent crime is down, not up, according to the FBI." And I think the fourth one is --

FUGELSANG: And then "Women aren't murdering their newborn babies. Women aren't committing infanticide with the help of doctors and hospitals."

GERTZ: And, so, that's the whole list. Like, if you can't get through that level of fact-checking in your debate and you're also getting dramatically more time than Kamala Harris did -- I think he had, like, eight more minutes total, something like that. He can't actually drive a message. And the reason he can't drive a message, as I've written, is because he is so deeply entrapped in this right-wing media bubble. He just is focused on the bizarre fixations of the weirdos who love him and have their own TV shows.

FUGELSANG: That's it.

GERTZ: And, you know, at that point, you end up saying you you end up talking about how dogs and cats are being eaten in Ohio and saying things that are not just wrong, but if someone came up to you at a bar and started talking to you about that, you would move to the other end of the bar. Like, you would not want to be near someone who is randomly screaming about how the pets are being eaten. It's just, it is totally incomprehensible.

...

But if you're a normal person, like, if you're just going about your daily life, and all of a sudden -- and you say, "Huh. I think I want to find out some information about the presidential election. I'm gonna watch the debate tonight." And all of a sudden, one of the candidates is screaming about cats being eaten. You just -- that is not an appealing situation for you. And that, I think -- it's a huge problem for Donald Trump. It's a huge problem for the Republican Party as a whole that all of these crazy weirdos have such a huge impact on the party's message.

...

FUGELSANG: I mean, Donald Trump completely failed to bring anybody new to his ticket. But, Matthew, this has got to be because he's listening to these right-wing influencers. He doesn't seem to be -- listening to the people he pays to give him advice.

GERTZ: Yeah. I mean, I think that's a huge part of it and also that he is personally addicted, to getting his news from these crazy people. Like, on the one hand, they're speaking to him directly, like Laura Loomer apparently is now traveling with him to campaign events. But also, I mean, he gets his news from watching Fox News and seeing what people are Truth Social-ing at him and, you know, basically immersing himself in these crazy places.

This was the largest audience that either candidate is likely to see for the entire election cycle. Right? This was, it was 57 million people tuned into this debate. Dramatically more than either of them got for their convention speech, way more than, obviously, either of them will get for any other speech or television appearance or anything else. A huge opportunity to speak to people who might not be inclined to vote for you and make your case. And he just couldn't do it. He couldn't come close to doing it. He ended up babbling and ranting about all manner of nonsense partly because Kamala Harris was incredibly effective at baiting him, but partly because he is psychologically incapable of not taking that bait under any circumstance.

===

---

9 24

left used to call out/ name and shame racism, wingnuttery, so now they just own it/ admit it yes i am white nat’l xian natl conspir theorist

note aha right as victim, do not win b/c silenced by academia, media and gubmint [globalist says candace owens]

also back handed compliment: you and your ideas are so important and powerful that powerful sinister forces must unfairly use power and dastardly deeds to suppress your righteous awesomeness [ vs commies and satan violence will be justified/needed?!

see PC 3 cancel silence / woke

also media bias and social media bias BS

aha doh THERE’S NO DISENCENTIVE TO BAD ACTORS

OMFG

CNN

A prominent Latino advocacy group asked the US Justice Department on Monday to investigate Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton after his office launched a series of raids the group says was at the homes of Democratic activists and leaders on allegations tied to voter fraud.

In a letter to the Justice Department’s civil rights division, the president and the CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens requested “immediate action” by the federal agency.

“We believe that his conduct constitutes a direct attempt to suppress the Latino vote through intimidation and harassment, in violation of the Voting Rights Act and other federal civil rights law,” LULAC President Roman Palomares and CEO Juan Proaño wrote in the letter.

The Justice Department confirmed to CNN it received the letter, but a spokesperson declined to comment further.

[

Related article Latino advocacy group wants federal investigation of Texas AG over home searches tied to voter fraud probe](https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/26/us/texas-latino-voting-rights-investigation)

So far no charges have been filed as a result of last week’s raids. Paxton’s office said search warrants were executed in Frio, Atascosa, and Bexar counties as part of what his office described as an election integrity probe dating back to 2022.

In a release last week, the attorney general’s office said its election integrity unit was investigating a referral from Audrey Louis, the district attorney in the state’s 81st judicial district, involving allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting.

“Secure elections are the cornerstone of our republic,” Paxton said in the release. “We were glad to assist when the district attorney referred this case to my office for investigation. We are completely committed to protecting the security of the ballot box and the integrity of every legal vote. This means ensuring accountability for anyone committing election crimes.”

Paxton’s office did not respond to a request from CNN on Monday about the investigation and its details.

In a statement to CNN on Tuesday, the district attorney said, “Prosecutors are very limited in discussing pending criminal cases.”

“This rule of professional responsibility ensures due process,” Louis said. “I cannot discuss the pending criminal investigation. I can confirm sending the request for an investigation and that our office takes the allegations of voter fraud seriously and will prosecute those responsible for undermining integrity in the election process regardless of who the person is or their party affiliation.”

Paxton has been accused of using intimidation tactics before.

He took up the voter fraud cause after President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, filing a federal lawsuit to overturn the results in four key swing states. The US Supreme Court threw that suit out and the State Bar of Texas sued Paxton in 2022 for misrepresenting claims of substantial voter fraud.

Earlier this year, Paxton took aim at an El Paso nonprofit that helps migrants, accusing it of facilitating illegal entry to the United States, alien harboring and human smuggling, before a judge halted his efforts to “run roughshod” over the group “without regard to due process or fair play,” the judge’s decision said.

He’s pursued the medical records of transgender youth – including those that some say are protected by patient privacy laws – seeking gender affirming care at out of state clinics.

And under the state’s strict abortion ban, he publicly named both a patient seeking an abortion and her doctor in an open letter threatening potential first degree felony prosecutions and civil penalties of $100,000.

[

Related article Judge rules against Texas AG in battle with nonprofit serving migrants](

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/12/us/texas-judge-ken-paxton-migrant-nonprofit)

At a news conference Monday outside the attorney general’s office in San Antonio, members of LULAC and Democratic activists condemned the raids and criticized Paxton for launching what they called a campaign of intimidation against Latino voters.

“Attorney General Paxton is using his position of authority to harass and intimidate Latino nonprofit organizations, Latino leaders, and LULAC members,” Palomares said. “This is point-blank voter intimidation, and LULAC will fight for the right of very Latino to exercise their right to vote.”

Those whose homes were raided included Cecilia Castellano, a Democrat running for a state House seat, as well as a 73-year-old woman and an 80-year-old woman, LULAC said. Castellano is one of 12 Latinos in three south Texas counties targeted by Paxton, according to LULAC.

“You don’t go after our grandmothers. You don’t go after our great-grandmothers,” said Domingo Garcia, another leader at LULAC. “And you don’t go after them because they are just trying to vote.”

Castellano told CNN’s Laura Coates on Monday night that her phone was taken during the search of her home.

“I was shocked. I’m still shocked. … I’m more mad because my son was a few feet away,” Castellano said.

An investigator found evidence that the target of another warrant was hired to collect mail ballots for several candidates, an affidavit for a search warrant states.

CNN is not naming the person whose cell phone was seized under the search warrant – a longtime political operative in Frio County – because they have not been charged with a crime.

[

Related articleTexas attorney general targets Georgia clinic in another attempt to obtain private medical records of transgender youth](

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/30/us/texas-transgender-records-georgia-clinic)

Under Texas law, it is illegal for a person who is not a relative or roommate of a voter to deliver that voter’s mail ballot unless the assistance is disclosed on the ballot. Being paid for “vote harvesting” is also illegal in Texas.

The sealed affidavit obtained by CNN says that, in addition to helping voters fill out mail ballot applications, some voters said in interviews with an investigator that they had received a ballot despite never filling out an application for one.

“Several interviews were conducted and witnesses who had voted by mail had confirmed that (the operative named in the affidavit) either influenced their vote, prepared their ballot, and/or took possession of their carrier envelope to mail their ballot,” the affidavit states.

CNN reached out to the individuals named in the affidavit, and messages were not immediately returned.

The affidavit also says Frio County election administrator Sylvia Santos was among those under “spot surveillance” by the attorney general’s office. It says the subject of the search warrant was seen receiving “what appeared to be sample ballots from Santos behind the election office on February 15, 2024,” suggesting those could have been used to indicate the subject’s preferred candidate to voters.

However, Santos told CNN on Tuesday that providing sample ballots is simply part of her job. “The only thing I can say is that anybody and everybody that calls or walks into this building and requests a sample ballot, I don’t question them,” Santos said.

Lidia Martinez, an 87-year-old activist and LULAC member who has long helped to register voters, told reporters at Monday’s news conference that armed officers with Paxton’s office showed up to her home at the break of dawn August 20 with a search warrant. She said they told her the search was related to fraud and questioned her for three hours. She said they also made her stand outside in her front yard, still in her nightgown.

[

Related article Texas AG sues a nonprofit that helps migrants, accusing it of ‘alien harboring.’ But the group calls the lawsuit ‘unfounded’](

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/27/us/ken-paxton-migrants-nonprofit-texas)

“It was just embarrassing, intimidating, (and) harassment,” she said, growing emotional. “They searched everything in my house.”

She said she was questioned about other LULAC members, and she blasted the search as a “Gestapo-style” raid. Her devices, personal calendar, and voter registration materials were confiscated, according to LULAC.

“I don’t do anything illegal. I follow the rules of the elections office, and I have never done anything illegal as, as far as voter registration or mail by ballot or any of the things that they’re looking for,” she said. “I don’t know who’s doing it. And, and I don’t care to know; I’m not associated with them. I’m not guilty of it, but I’m being harassed. I’m sick.”

In the letter to the federal government, LULAC argued the recent raids reflected a broader pattern of voter intimidation in Latino and Black communities.

“Attorney General Paxton’s actions are not isolated incidents but are part of a concerted effort to suppress the growing political power of minority communities in Texas,” the letter stated. “These actions are reminiscent of past attempts to intimidate and disenfranchise voters through fear and coercion.”

*CNN’s Andy Rose, Hannah Rabinowitz and Lauren Mascarenhas contributed to this report.

===

aha odd own goal? famous dog adopt after gov wn 10 yo son Gus

reverse irresistable greens kill whales?

trump lie is big liability origin townhall

contest post story no shoot gravel pit

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/tim-walz-dog-scout-right-wing-conspiracy-1235088197/

Conservatives Have Invented a Conspiracy About Tim Walz’s Dog

Right-wing commentators are once again barking up the wrong tree

By Nikki McCann Ramirez

August 26, 2024

Gov. Tim Walz holds Scout during a news conference to announce his adoption ohn Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019. Anthony Souffle/Star Tribune/AP

Like dogs with a bone, the right won’t drop their efforts to malign Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

On Monday, prominent conservatives circulated an absurd allegation that Walz was faking the identity of his family’s dog Scout.

“This is Tim Walz tweeting about his dog Scout. Only problem is that these are two completely different dogs,” Dustin Grage, a columnist at the right-wing website Town Hall, wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

IFrame Content

The post contrasted two images of Walz. One was of Walz with Scout — a black labrador mix — celebrating the pup’s birthday in June of 2022. The second showed Walz petting a different dog on October 19, 2022. “Couldn’t think of a better way to spend a beautiful fall day than at the dog park. I know Scout enjoyed it,” the governor captioned the image.

The same day, Walz posted a video on Instagram featuring Scout and several other dogs at a dog park. In the video, the governor is sporting the same jacket, beanie, and dog toy seen in the photo, and the dog featured in the X post is also clearly visible. In the clip, Walz jokingly asks Scout if he’s “jealous” of the attention he’s giving other dogs before giving him an affectionate rub. The photo of Walz at the dog park has seemingly been removed from his X account.

Given that Scout has been in Walz’s family since 2019, and recently got his own *Vogue* profile, reasonable bipedal thinkers might assume that Walz was simply posting a photo with a friendly dog he met at a dog park — not concocting an elaborate scheme to trick voters about his family pet.

Nevertheless, the right ran with Grage’s post like a hound who’d just stolen the Thanksgiving turkey off the dining room table.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) quoted Grage’s post with the caption: “Why would Tim Walz do this? It’s Creepy™️ and Weird™️.”

IFrame Content

“Tim Walz is an all-time legendary liar,” Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk wrote in a now-deleted tweet.

“Wait so Walz is even lying about his dog? Ruff stuff,” wrote former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is currently engaged to Donald Trump Jr.

---

MSNBC News

Republicans' latest attack line against Tim Walz: His dog?

1 hour ago

Rolling Stone

Conservatives Have Invented a Conspiracy About Tim Walz’s Dog

1 day ago

Salon.com

Republicans invent “desperate” and quickly debunked conspiracy theory about Tim Walz’s dog

24 hours ago

More news

Tim Walz faces backlash as GOP strategist invents ...

Monday, several prominent Republicans launched their latest attack on Tim Walz, this time coming after not his background or his policy, but his dog Scout.

“This is Tim Walz tweeting about his dog Scout. Only problem is that these are two completely different dogs,” right-wing columnist Dustin Grage wrote on X.

He shared two photos Walz had previously posted. One photo is from June 2022 and shows Walz with his dog Scout, who is a black labrador mix, and is captioned: “Sending a special birthday shoutout to our favorite pup, Scout.”

The other photo is from October 2022 and shows Walz petting a different dog at a dog park. “Couldn’t think of a better way to spend a beautiful fall day than at the dog park. I know Scout enjoyed it,” the caption reads.

Republicans falsely claimed the photos showed Walz was lying about the dog he’s very much had since 2019.

Sen. Eric Schmidt, R-Mo., wrote that Walz's dog posts were “creepy” and “weird.”

“Wait so Walz is even lying about his dog?” wrote Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host and the fiancee of Donald Trump Jr.

The rumor was quickly debunked by video of Scout and the other dog pictured running around the dog park together on that same day.

This is just the latest attack from Republicans on Walz. From questioning his military background to his relationship with his son, none of their criticisms have landed, argued MSNBC host Jen Psaki. They’ve now gotten so “desperate” they’ve come after his dog, Psaki said. “Better luck next time, guys."

---

FAKE NEWS comeback 7 24? AA reporter april --- starts w/ tough but fair questions, you’re ABC? fake news...

AHA: back in the enemy of the ppl phase, rubber reverse term, you’re the puppet becomes a cudgel to deflect crit [origin in Newt debate had done something horrible to wife, he attacked press out of the gate; become std for GOP to trash press before answering any question as a sort of pre-emptive prophylactic tactic?

IF YOU NEUTRALIZE FACT CHECK, SHARED REALITY YOU GET POLAR ECHO ESCA FROM THE FEVER SWAMP --? ALT FACT EARTH2

ironically there is lots of fake news, it's just all made by the right

eg...

===

}}}:

---

aha 7 24

algorithm:

see hype 3 fear anger echo escalator polarization misinfo disinfo soc med facebook meta

see google

AI machine learning

see monetize

boost influence provocateur vs expertise echo escalator fever swamp conspiracy alt fact earth 2 no correction

see extraction corps silicon valley monopoly max profits cancer amplify

note de-platform correction filter fail b/c of $ max extraction corps

--> radicalization --> civil war 2 violence

see amplifying feedback

---

RNC 7 24 projection olympics req Earth2

note they are irrrational thus compromise impossible, their fault // self-defense

strong manly will never surrender compromise principles, submit to X

we are normally the good compassionate forgiving xians

note trump is the calm man even when being shot at

agw religion // alarmist hysterical fem

TUCKER REDEMPTION PENSION?

7 24 rww

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson closed out the all-day Heritage Foundation policy fest on the first day of the Republican National Convention. He warned the crowd that they are in a “spiritual battle” against “anti-human” forces that want to “eliminate” Christians.

In a strange choice for talking to political activists, Carlson began by describing politics as a “repulsive” process and politicians in general as ruthless and power-hungry and miserable people. But he said he is “thrilled” by Trump picking Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate, because “every bad person I’ve ever met in a lifetime in Washington was aligned against J.D. Vance.” Carlson said that was because “they thought he would be harder to manipulate and slightly less enthusiastic about killing people…that he would be an impediment to their exercising power.”

Carlson veered into spiritual warfare rhetoric, saying that since he spoke at the Heritage Foundation’s 50^th anniversary celebration 15 months ago, he has experienced “a total change in the way that I see the world,” explaining, “this is not ultimately political. This is much deeper…There is a spiritual battle underway.”

From Carlson’s remarks:

And I think what happened on Saturday, the assassination attempt against President Trump, reminded a lot of people this, or awakened a lot of people to this. There is a spiritual battle underway. There is no logical way to understand what we’re seeing now in temporal terms. You just can’t.

These are not political divides. There are forces, and they’re very obvious now. They’ve decided, for whatever reason, to take off the mask, whose only goal is chaos, violence, destruction. And there are the rest of us who, once again, are not always certain we’re right, but we know that that’s bad and we’re against that, sort of standing, watching, thinking, ‘Is someone going to explain to me why this is politics?’

This is not politics at all. This is much deeper and older and more recognizable than that. This has been going on since the beginning of time. And I do think, by the way, that the more literal among us, and I would count myself in that category, fail to see this because we’re so desperate to ascribe some kind of recognizable human motive to what we’re seeing.

So we call it leftism or neoliberalism or communism or anarchism. We come up with some phrase to describe it, but those phrases are inadequate. They do not describe what’s actually happening. So what you’re seeing now is really not at all different in substance from what you saw in 1789 in France, from what you saw in 1936 in Spain, from what you saw in 1917 in Russia, from what you saw in 1975 in Phnom Penh. It’s all the same. These are forces of chaos and destruction which are fundamentally anti-human, which are against people.

Carlson railed against a number of movements he described as “anti-people,” including what he called “the climate cult.” He told the activists to pay close attention to what makes “them” angriest.

What group do they dislike most? What group are they absolutely terrified of and hoping to eliminate? Well, it’s Christians. That’s who it is. It’s Christians. … The group that makes them angriest, triggers them most, I guess we would say now, is Christians. Christian nationalism. People pray outside abortion clinics. People celebrate Easter, not trans visibility day. These are their real enemies.

Carlson talked about religious persecution during the Cultural Revolution in China and the French Revolution. He said at the start of the Spanish Civil War, the “anti-Christian” side opened fire on a statue of Jesus. “If you find yourself firing bullets at a statue, what you’re really doing is revealing your deepest priority, and that’s to kill Christians,” he said.

“I don’t know if any Christians here or people who are interested in continuing to live in the country you grew up in, but these are the terms and these are the stakes,” Carlson said. “They are not the ones that we’ve been told they are–left versus right, Republican versus Democrat.”

Carlson also talked about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, saying that Trump’s show of strength—fist raised in defiance—had won him the election, because people want and need strong leaders.

After delivering his remarks, Carlson engaged in some Q&A with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts. In response to a question about what kind of conversations people could have to bring their friends and neighbors into the MAGA movement, Carlson said they should pray for people who are willing to accept the status quo. He then veered into a diatribe against “weak men,” saying that fathers should be willing to beat up school counselors who “indoctrinate kids and try and turn them into freaks, circus freaks.” Roberts agreed, saying that “what we’re all yearning for is just a return to normal. And it is normal for a strong man, for a man period, to respond the way you describe to the school counselor.”

Asked about what kind of message the Trump team should be delivering, Carlson said the campaign was trying out a “unity message,” to which he responded:

And a lot of people hear “unity” and they think, well, unity implies some sort of compromise conversation. You can’t have a conversation with people who are unwilling to compromise. The left, which is a religious movement, is unwilling to compromise on any level at all. They won’t even admit men can’t become women. So you how can you have unity with people like that? And of course, you can’t.

Carlson recommended that Trump’s team ignore his critics and simply show through his actions that he is calm and in command. He urged activists to take Trump’s bravery as a model for their own political engagement.

Tags: Kevin Roberts Tucker Carlson Christian Persecution Election 2024 Republican National Convention Spiritual Warfare Heritage Foundation Republican Party

---

===

AHA DOH TRUMP WANTS TO RUN AS CHANGE CAND THO INCUMBENT, AND UTTER FAIL SO JUST CREATES NEW REALITY EG GOOD ECONOMY DESPITE EMPIRICAL FACTS

HOW BIG IS VIOLENT CRIME AS ISSUE? // BIDEN OPEN BORDER CRIME WAVE, BIDEN CRIME FAMILY

NICE RIPOSTE HONKY GOOD SPOX FRONT MAN DEM HELLHOLES CITIES

ABC News host Jonathan Karl fact-checked Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) after he claimed that violent crime was up under Joe Biden's presidency.

During an interview on Sunday, Karl asked Scott if he agreed with the Supreme Court's decision to strike down a ban on bump stocks, which allow some guns to fire more rapidly.

"We trust and believe and respect the decision of the Supreme Court," Scott opined. "What we need to focus on, Jon, is the violence that we're seeing across this nation. Under Joe Biden, we've seen the greatest increase in violent crime in my lifetime."

Karl pointed out that Scott was in error.

"Actually, Senator, as you probably know, the latest stats on violent crime and on the murder rate, they're actually down this past year," the host said.

"Under Joe Biden, neighborhoods like the ones I grew up in have never been ravaged [more]," Scott insisted.

Watch the video below from ABC.

---

aha

meme migrates? this is another thing that THEY are forcing down our throats, we do not even have the right/freedumb to question, we have to obey/submit like biotches

mma 4 24

April 12, 2024, edition of Daily Veracity with Vincent James, streamed on Rumble

HARRISON SMITH (INFOWARS HOST): There's, like, two different versions. Right? There's lowercase “h” and capital “H” Holocaust where, like, were there terrible things that happened in World War 2? Obviously, fucking obviously.

You don't even need the gas shit. Like, ditches of dead bodies. I mean, it was horrible. So there's, like, just the reality of civilian deaths in World War 2, civilian mistreatments in World War 2, on, you know, ethnic basis or whatever. But then there's the capital "H" Holocaust, which is basically religious.

I mean, it basically has tenants that you have to accept, and you have to take it on faith. I mean, it has all of the qualities of a religion, that you can't — because a religion, you can't question. You know? It's even more so than, like, the Inquisition, right?

...

You could probably even question, like, the Resurrection during the Inquisition more so than you could question the Holocaust now. And, again, it's, like, it's not even, like, definitely one side or definitely be the other. It's exactly what you're just pointing out, Vince, where, like, you hear the way that it's literally illegal to question. And it's like, OK, I'm clearly missing something here, so I'm not getting the whole picture.

So, I better start looking into this, and the only thing that gives you any nuance at all is actually the complete other side. So that's what, you know, like, the documentaries, like [Europa: The Last Battle] or whatever. It's basically just the inverse of what you see on History Channel. History Channel is “the Nazis never did anything good for anybody ever.” And Europa is “the Nazis never did anything wrong ever.” And it's like the truth is somewhere in between those two things, but it's the dichotomy that's unhealthy because it leaves people just completely deluded on either side, I think.

# Alex Jones and Infowars air report that questions Holocaust death toll

11/03/23

### Alex Jones agrees with caller who claims the Holocaust death toll should be revised

12/06/22

### Rapper Ye goes on an unhinged antisemitic rant on Infowars

12/01/22

---

===

aha get rid of racism by cutting it from history textbooks, and stop collecting data:

2025 pjt

an 4 24 tom disp

First Up: Stop Discriminating Against Discriminators

I’m sure you won’t be shocked to learn that the opening salvo of that chapter is an attack on federal measures to reduce employment discrimination based on race or sex.

Its author, Jonathan Berry of the Federalist Society, served in Donald Trump’s Department of Labor (DOL). He begins his list of “needed reforms” with a call to “Reverse the DEI Revolution in Labor Policy.” “Under the Obama and Biden Administrations,” Berry explains, “labor policy was yet another target of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) revolution” under which “every aspect of labor policy became a vehicle with which to advance race, sex, and other classifications and discriminate against conservative and religious viewpoints on these subjects and others, including pro-life views.”

You may wonder what it means to advance “classifications” or why that’s even a problem. Berry addresses this question in his second “necessary” reform, a call to “Eliminate Racial Classifications and Critical Race Theory Trainings.” Those two targets for elimination would seem to carry very different weight. After all, “Critical Race Theory,” or CRT, is right-wing code for the view that structural barriers exist preventing African Americans and other people of color from enjoying the full rights of citizens or residents. It’s unclear that such “trainings” even occur at the Labor Department, under CRT or any other label, so their “elimination” would, in fact, have little impact on workers.

On the other hand, the elimination of “racial classifications” would be consequential for many working people, as Berry makes clear. “The Biden Administration,” he complains, “has pushed ‘racial equity’ in every area of our national life, including in employment, and has condoned the use of racial classifications and racial preferences under the guise of DEI and critical race theory, which categorizes individuals as oppressors and victims based on race.” Pushing racial equity in employment? The horror!

Berry’s characterization of CRT is, in fact, the opposite of what critical race theory seeks to achieve. This theoretical approach to the problem of racism does not categorize individuals at all, but instead describes structures — like corporate hiring practices based on friendship networks — that can disadvantage groups of people of a particular race. In fact, CRT describes self-sustaining systems that do not need individual oppressors to continue (mal)functioning.

The solution to the problem of discrimination in employment in Project 2025’s view is to deny the existence of race (or sex, or sexual orientation) as a factor in the lives of people in this country. It’s simple enough: if there’s no race, then there’s no racial discrimination. Problem solved.

And to ensure that it remains solved, Project 2025 would prohibit the Equal Economic Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, from collecting employment data based on race. The mere existence of such “data can then be used to support a charge of discrimination under a disparate impact theory. This could lead to racial quotas to remedy alleged race discrimination.” In other words, if you can’t demonstrate racial discrimination in employment (because you’re enjoined from collecting data on the subject), then there’s no racial discrimination to remedy. Case closed, right?

By outlawing such data collection, a Republican administration guided by Project 2025 would make it almost impossible to demonstrate the existence of racial disparity in the hiring, retention, promotion, or termination of employees.

:{Right-wingers in my state of California tried something similar in 2003 with Ballot Proposition 54, known as the Racial Privacy Initiative. In addition to employment data, Prop. 54 would have outlawed collecting racial data about public education and, no less crucially, about policing. As a result, Prop. 54 would have made it almost impossible for civil rights organizations to address the danger of “driving while Black” — the disproportionate likelihood that Black people will be the subject of traffic stops with the attendant risk of police violence or even death. Voters soundly defeated Prop. 54 by a vote of 64% to 36% and, yes, racial discrimination still exists in California, but at least we have access to the data to prove it.}:

There is, however, one group of people Project 2025 would emphatically protect from discrimination: employers who, because of their “conservative and religious viewpoints… including pro-life views,” want the right to discriminate against women and LGBTQ people. “The President,” writes Berry, “should make clear via executive order that religious employers are free to run their businesses according to their religious beliefs, general nondiscrimination laws notwithstanding.” Of course, Congress already made it clear that, under Title VII of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, “religious” employers are free to ignore anti-discrimination laws when it suits them....

---

see death threat/ violent rhetoric/ violence

aha/doh note social media is used to target ppl, esp by trump see fbi attacks i love trump 4 24

anonymous, plus fox and soc media enragement hype fear polarization echo bubble

Bomb threats follow Libs of TikTok's campaign against Planet Fitness | Media Matters for America

---

aha founding fr secular saint (or godly xian pilgrim // xian nat’l theocracy

abe gets included bc he is everyone’s fav or b/c // JC martyr that got rid of sin/stain of slavery?

up good god freedom vs down dark devil tyranny

note he claims he has sacrificed/fought on behalf of good godly patriots, unselfishly, tho clearly careerist who tried to pump lackluster gig by jumping on trump train/coup

armed = $

he has to go hard on freedom to counter the truth/mainstream narrative that trump tried to steal election and end democracy?

city on a hill is up and light [and freedom]; a beacon projects light, guides those that are lost, attracts to the side of good/god beacon inst koch BS shop

rww 3 24

john Eastman, a right-wing attorney who is in serious legal trouble for his intensive efforts to help former President Donald Trump stay in power after losing the 2020 election, continues to raise funds for his legal defense fund from Trump’s religious-right supporters. Eastman was the featured speaker at an online event hosted Monday night by the Salt and Light Council, a group that promotes “biblical citizenship.”

Eastman portrayed himself as making a heroic stand for truth and against tyranny, as he did last fall while fighting efforts by the California Bar Association to have him disbarred. Eastman used that trial to make the case that his 2020 claims about election fraud and illegality were legitimate but had never been fully considered by the courts. The judge’s decision in the disbarment trial was expected by March 1.

During his Salt and Light presentation, Eastman promoted his page on the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo, where people have contributed more than $630,000 to his legal defense fund so far. He said he’s “about a million in the hole beyond that right now,” adding that he thinks his total legal costs will run between $3 million and $3.5 million.

Eastman’s appearance made it clear that he remains as unrepentant about his work for Trump as he was last August, when he promoted debunked claims about the 2020 election and asserted that “the very existential threat that the country is under” justified his and Trump’s actions. On Monday’s Zoom call with Salt and Light activists, Eastman made similar claims. Citing the Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln, Eastman said, “And now, in this century, this is the fight comparable to those—the defense of freedom.” He went on:

And will this great shining city on a hill that has been a beacon to the rest of the world continue to be that beacon of light? Or will we go into an age of darkness? I can’t imagine anything more important than that fight. And so here we are on the front lines, and let’s just make sure we’re as well armed for it as we can.

Eastman portrayed himself as a defiant warrior for freedom and the future of the country:

Our country is on a precipice of losing our freedoms. And for whatever reason, I’ve been cast in the forefront of this battle. I’m on the battle lines, I’m on the ramparts. And I consider it one of the greatest honors of my life to be in the front of this fight for freedom, and fighting against tyranny. And I will do, I will engage in that fight with every fiber of my being as long as I’m able.

And he seems to have no doubt that he is up to the task:

I’ve been fighting for principled positions for my whole career. I’ve got one of the best law degrees and academic careers you can have. I clerked at the Supreme Court of the United States. I was a dean. I’ve got the skill set, God has given me the skill set to be in a position to fight this probably, at least as well as anybody else in the country. And so that’s what I do. And I’ll do it, you know, I’ll do it with a law degree as long as I have it. And I’ll do it without the law degree if they try and take that away from me, because this is an important fight to have.

Eastman had harsh words for his opponents, whether he was talking about the people trying to impose “a one world order,” public school teachers who undermine parents’ authority, members of the congressional Jan. 6 committee, or officials seeking to silence people who question the official line on vaccines, critical race theory, or transgender youth:

The folks we’re dealing with are evil. They don’t consider destroying our country as collateral damage for their overall mission, they consider that icing on the cake for their overall mission. I mean, we have to understand that we are dealing with pure evil, and the way you gotta, just you got to arm yourselves in truth and light, salt and light.

He urged the Salt and Light activists to get their churches politically engaged:

Your congregations, that’s a massive force, get them engaged, sign them up to vote, get the voter guides out in their hands and let them know who the decent people are, and who the folks that are mouthing platitudes are, whether in the primary elections or the general election. Get them engaged. Get them educated. This is an army that cannot be stopped if we would just launch it.

Salt and Light Council founder and President Dran Reese portrayed the ongoing legal prosecutions over the 2020 election in spiritual terms, praying that God would “overcome the devil in this case around John Eastman and President Trump.”

Video excerpts (full video linked above):

===

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aha // GIG ECONOMY LOBBYING? // LEGAL POT EG lINDSEY gRAHAm? revolve door

axios

Meanwhile: Perry has also joined the Sports Betting Alliance, the group lobbying to legalize mobile sports gambling in Texas — though he opposed any expansion of legal gambling while in office.

"This one's different because this is not an expansion of gambling," Perry tells Axios. "There's $6 billion worth of mobile sports betting going on in the state of Texas, and the state of Texas doesn't get a dime of that. It's not regulated."

Between the lines: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has said he won't bring a sports betting bill to the floor without the support of Senate Republicans. Perry says he believes Patrick will change his mind.

"I think the lieutenant governor is a true public servant," Perry says. "He does not want to be the individual who stands in the way of something that could help lower property taxes substantially."

---

OFFENSIVE --> = FASCISM

aha 12 23

was powell level playing field ever legit true? when why was line crossed? see crypto

suppression is often about reputational damage, deprive actor of agency/voice

evil b/c it is often about using/twisting the rules of a domain or laws to reduce power of opponents

do we need a new category = DEFENSIVE? NOTE RIGHT JIU JISTSU CANCEL CULTURE AND CO-OPT DEFANG “FAKE NEWS” NOTE ATTACK ON ALL DISINFO AGY/ORGS preemptive? defense from defense?

ACADEMIC/ STUDENT SUPPRESSION BUILT ON PINKO PROF FOUNDATIONAL MYTH AND STRICK fR. desantis takes lead/furthest takeover of college, threaten teachers/librarians refuse to clarify rules b/c can’t be done legitimately because the bnogeyman is not real, plus it takes work, plus vague generates useful fear?

ACTIVIST SUPPRESSION: INGREDIENTS: LIBERAL MEDIA MYTH; PAID PROTESTORS LOWEST MOTIVE greenpeace and scientists make & on climate? kids so strict fr again; foundational myth Commies eg Green New Deal

voter suppression of kids so strict fr again , ppl of color NOT REAL AMERICANS gaining demographically, boosted by Dem import Great Replacement.

Legal suppression just about power imbalance (and maybe ctr attack as CRM and greens used law to good effect (indeed for Big Green FOUR so successsful it became primary strategy?). // bribery converts $ into laws, legal suppression stops activists from going/filming animal agriculture but fear of bankrupty RICO greenpeace CBS tobacco Corps; SLAPP contaminated eggs? tort reform liberal ambulance chasers collective lawduit (climate , class action lawsuit good for racism/ sexism and bad products when did that stop, Walmart beat women time ran out?)

Union suppression: right to work, collective esp worker organize = commie (contract is sacred, real men stand up alone individually atomistic thatcher no society); greedy lazy workers need strict FR CEO to tell them what to do and make them productive.

Judicial suppression: new/ provisional) Horner NotEPA has no wins? significant delay? of?

Foundational myths: liberal media and profs brainwash (both commies?) which explains why our ideas are not popular/accepted/law

strict father is also foundational/baked in? we old white men who have power deserve to have it, and crucial that we maintain our power (by any means necessary) because the alternative is catastrope: commie takeover...welfare state where lazy young POC will not work...regulation will strangle economy nanny state green police

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hmmn mystery solved iowa caucus: anyone who criticizes am am values etc including acknowledging slavery HATES america and roots for contributes to its decline

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weaponization 1 24 triggered by rubber reverse eric trump, but also jordan comer comm vs gubmint

AHA RUBBER REVERSE: originally used for trump norm busting early autocratic fascist lie power any means, hijack rubbered by benghazi 2 BS (impeach Biden, retaliation, muddy waters make term meaningless like fake news? war on eg xian is about victimization/ white grievance, but that means we GOP need a warrior to get our white priviledge back

// SARAH HUCKABEE REPLY TO SOTU BUT NOT SO CODED/ JARGONY // DAD STUMP RALLY RAMBLE?

an 1 24

eric Trump broadcast a barrage of fabrications and falsehoods about America, Democrats, and President Joe Biden, while promoting blatant propaganda supporting his father, Donald Trump, as voters went to the polls Tuesday to cast their ballots in the New Hampshire presidential primary.

“You know there’s an all out war on family in this country,” Eric Trump declared while speaking to Newsmax. “There’s an all out war on God and religious freedom in this country. There’s certainly an all out war on freedom of speech and [the] First Amendment, you know, in this nation you guys have seen that, you’ve covered it probably every single day for the last three years.”

“People are sick and tired of nonsense,” Trump continued, offering up no examples to support his claims. “People want our economy back. They want low gas prices again, they don’t want World War Three to break out all over the world. They want to be able to, you know, worship God and speak freely and not be censored and not be de-platformed, and not have war waged against them and their their quality of life every single day. People are sick and tired of the games, and you know, they want to be able to live the American dream and that’s what my father did.”

IFrame Content

Speaking to Ben Bergquam on the far right wing website Real America’s Voice, Eric Trump claimed, “they have weaponized the system so viciously, so nasty, that they thought he would actually drop out,” referring to Donald Trump’s presidential race.

Donald Trump is facing 91 criminal charges across four cases in three jurisdictions. He is also facing civil cases involving business fraud and defamation, and is now an adjudicated rapist, according to a judge.

“That was always their intent, you know, make it so painful for him that he didn’t want to stay in the race that he wanted to drop out that, you know, he realizes that his life and Mar-a-Lago would be exponentially nicer and more comfortable and everything else and give it back to the political elites in DC and, frankly, he did the exact opposite.”

He also claimed, “they weaponized every AG [attorney general] and DA [district attorney] in the country to go after him similarly, civilly and criminally.”

“It’ one sham after another,” Trump said, referring to efforts in multiple states to implement the 14th Amendment’s automatic, self-executing requirement that insurrectionists cannot hold office.

“And frankly, I think he’s made a lot of Americans really question their government, which is necessary, certainly in the world that we live in now, it’s so apparent what they’re doing. It’s also very sad because you would expect that America would be a lot better than that.”

“Democrats spent 20 years weaponizing every single system of government that we had, they weaponized the military, they weaponized DOJ, they weaponized the FBI, they’ve, they’ve weaponized all of it,” Eric Trump claimed.

IFrame Content

Eric Trump also spoke with right-wing British politician turned broadcaster, Nigel Farage, in a Great Britain News interview, saying, “being president is the last thing that Donald Trump needs,” and claiming his father “can be living a much better life than getting indicted for nonsense because they want to weaponize the entire system.”

“Every single one of us. We get subpoenaed every day. We get this,” Trump declared. “Donald Trump’s better life is not in politics, and he does it every single day because he loves it. He loves his country, he loves the Western world.”

Also on Real America’s Voice, Eric Trump declared, “Joe Biden is the worst president that we’ve ever seen.”

Speaking to NBC News’ Kristen Welker, Eric Trump claimed the enthusiasm in New Hampshire is the best he’s ever seen. Some journalists have said the enthusiasm is not there.

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aha :

yikes // experts say truth degrades trust?!

mma 1 24

As many regions of the country experienced dangerously low temperatures, right-wing media used the cold weather to push climate change denial, delegitimize climate protesters at Iowa caucus events, and gripe about supposed bias toward science-based climate reporting.

Millions of Americans were under wind chill advisories and winter weather advisories this January as an arctic blast brought subzero temperatures, snow, and ice across the Northeast, Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and South. At least one power company made an appeal for energy conservation.

Amid the cold weather, figures across right-wing media have yet again been making claims that global warming is a “hoax,” and that the scientists and politicians who discuss it are part of a “cult.” Several influencers and climate scientists debunked the claim that cold weather means global warming is not occurring, and pointed out its absurdity.

Substack author Andrew Wortman called the conflation of cold weather with the absence of climate change “hopelessly stupid.”

“We will always have winter even as our climate continues to warm,” wrote meteorologist Marshall Shepherd in a Forbes article explaining how we can have a polar vortex in a warming world. Former columnist for The Boston Globe and Union of Concerned Scientists fellow in climate and energy Derrick Z. Jackson. also amplified this message:

"Despite the skepticism from those Republicans that cold weather and climate change can co-exist, it’s important to remember that, for many of us, the cold snap is just a moment of discomfort, while climate change is a long-term disaster. … All signs point to an overall trend of warmer winters."

Right-wing media falsely claimed that the spate of cold weather discredits global warming

The drumbeat of climate change denial during cold weather persisted this winter, as right-wing media figures conflate day-to-day weather with long-term changes to the climate.

Fox Business host Larry Kudlow said that “the immediate danger from global warming is a hoax.”“What about all the subfreezing, subzero record temperatures we're talking about?” he said. “That sounds like global freezing. I even remember the big freeze cover of Time magazine way back in the early 1970s. … The immediate danger from global warming is a hoax. It's a left-wing Biden-esque hoax. It’s a socialist Green New Deal hoax. And there may be climate change over the next hundred years, but like Bjorn Lomborg or physicist Steve Koonin, I'm more than willing to wait for technological innovation and economic growth to take care of all that, but there is no immediate threat.” Fox Business, *Kudlow*, [1/12/24]

Newsmax host Chirs Salcedo said that the cold temperatures in Iowa are “contradicting the Democrats’ man-made global warming religion.”Newsmax, *The Chris Salcedo Show*, [1/13/24]

Trump loyalist and America First Policy Institute ambassador Nick Adams: “This is how cold it is at Arrowhead Stadium tonight. Where is your global warming now, Democrats?” Twitter/X, [1/13/24]
Right-wing political commentator and serial plagiarist Benny Johnson: “Can’t wait to experience Global Warming first hand in Iowa!” Twitter/X, [1/14/24]

Right-wing troll account Catturd: “The global warming cult sure is quiet right now.” Twitter/X, [1/15/24]

Right-wing social media personality Amuse: “Brrr… illegal aliens believed the global warming hype pushed by the WEF and now they’re complaining it is too cold in the US.” Twitter/X, [1/16/24]

Right-wing media targeted bundled-up climate protesters disrupting Iowa caucus events

This year’s Iowa caucuses were the coldest on record. Climate protesters interrupted several campaign to voice their opposition to the candidates’ climate change denial or refusal to address the climate crisis.

On Newsmax’s Wake Up America, hosts and guests delegitimized climate protesters at the Iowa caucus because “it was below 20.” “OK, by the way, that was a climate change protester. It was 20 below in Iowa yesterday, so I don't know. What are they — ‘It's too cold now?'”asked host Rob Finnerty. Guest Hogan Gidley then asked whether they were “protesting for global warming because it's so cold.” Newsmax, *Wake Up America*, [1/15/24]

Fox host Dana Perino suggested cold weather in Iowa delegitimizes the message of climate activists there. “I would just say that it reminds me of the day that…Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth in 2002 or 2003; it was the coldest day of the year,” she said. “That’s what these climate protesters remind me of. It’s ridiculous and they’re persuading no one.” The Daily Beast, [1/15/24]

Mainstream media were baselessly accused of downplaying coverage of the Arctic blast to push a “green agenda”

Even though the cold weather was widely covered, right-wing media complained that coverage of extreme heat has been purposefully exaggerated in comparison. Some figures also suggested that reporting on a wide range of extreme weather events in the context of climate change, including winter storms, somehow made media outlets dishonest.

But as some mainstream media outlets are correctly reporting, cold weather doesn’t mean climate change isn’t happening. A warming winter looks different in different parts of the world. Even if there are some unusually cold days, overall, temperatures are trending upward. Other countries, such as Oman and Argentina, have seen record-high temperatures in January.

As The New York Times explained, “Global climate change unfolds a history of extremes: Historically wet areas are likely to experience increased precipitation (sometimes in the form of snow), while historically dry areas may see more drought.”

Climate denier Steve Milloy said the Times needs to “get its story straight.”He added: “Jan. 2: Global warming to end snow. Jan. 12: Global warming to increase snow. That is the say-anything 'science' behind the climate hoax.” Twitter/X, [1/13/24]

The Five accused The New York Times of “trafficking global warming hysteria” by allegedly publishing contradicting stories. The segment featured the chyron “Climate Confusion: NYT cries ‘end of snow’ days before saying ‘increase’” and was seemingly inspired by a tweet from climate denier Steve Milloy from a few days prior. “Well it was global warming, and then, I don’t know, every time it was snowing or blizzarding, then Democrats want it to be climate change,” said America Reports co-anchor Sandra Smith. Fox News, *The Five*, [1/17/24]

Larry Kudlow asked, “Why hasn’t there been front page stories?” and called climate change a “hoax.” “There's a story in the Washington Post today, 60 degrees below normal, parts of Montana, where we were married, minus 40 degrees,” he said. “ This is The Washington Post. So, I just want to know of Mr. Kerry, whatever happened to global warming? Why hasn't there been front page stories? I mean every time you get a little heat wave or every time you get a bad rainstorm, everyone runs with these crazy stories about global warming, global warming, global warming, and climate change. … The whole thing is a — I just want to — it is a hoax. Global warming is a hoax.” Fox News, *America Reports*, [1/12/24]

Right-wing media personality Tim Young: “The AP is covering for the climate grift today… Can't let the extreme cold weather disprove the obvious.” Twitter/X, [1/17/24]

Arizona Sun-Times and Townhall reporter Rachel Alexander asked where are “all the dramatic headlines they run like when the temperature is hotter than expected?”She wrote: “Oh no, global warming hitting Arizona now. They're saying this cold spell is expected to linger. Where's all the dramatic headlines they run like when the temperature is hotter than expected?” Twitter/X, [1/12/24]

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INCeNTIVE STRUCTURE related to permission structure?

is there a hierarchy? is it saME AS // TO ESCALATOR?

INFLUENCERS?

AHA: RECALL HAS REAL-TIME ANALYTICS; WHEN THEY GUESS RIGHT OR TWESK TO BOOST PERFORMANCE, THE ALGORITH WILL BOOST AMPLIFY, WHICH BOOSTS MONEY FOR GRIFTER/INFLUENCE AND FOR PLATFORM

recall classic def of celeb as someone well-known for being well known paris hilton, no discernable talent but ability to get attn? info economy --> attn economy?

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aha 12 23

XIAN: interlocks with Strict Father, male

Free Market Capitalism deregulation favored by corporations/ oligarch/ Kochs VS FRICTION?

Military: is male, xian? chaplains; interesting that vilified when refuse trump coup, also (maybe in the wake of colin k NFl) corps become woke (Desantis Disney big booster) when move to DEI AA or take the wrong side on any wedge/culture war BS, which some CEO clearly recognize as bad for biz. They get feedback immediately and cannot ignore # from a broader base than trumpistas.

bc WARRIOR is male preserve, any woke gets strong pushback // gamergate, incursion of female onto our turf.

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{{ ---

DIRECT ACTION GEN Z

aha throwing your body on the gears is the last line of defense, a way for activists to try to offset corporate power (see various suppressions) so not surprising CRC/notEPA tires to tie "extremist" Extinction Rebellion to "foreign Billionaire" [well, British anyway Hohn? holm? sp]

AHA 2 HOLDING ACTION B/C HARD TO WIN POLITICS CORRUPT CONGRESS, FOX bs, ff $ LOBBYISTS SO BODY IS LAST WEAPON // SUICIDE BOMBER? NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR ROUTINE BAD NEWS ABOUT POLAR ICE MELT OR EVEN WILDFIRE, SO ONE OF FEW WAYS TO GET ON NEWS; PLUS CACHET/SUCCESS OF CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT?

//see millennial

see renta-todd gen z 320

bak capt 12 23 gen z young ppl bak

see student suppress/ voter suppression

this is about sane left, see RW kirk and campus free sp bs, also academia

ntbcw gen zero

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SEE sjw snowflakes: {{ see other node

imported: see wedge culture war

rubber inverse of hypocrisy/ fake outrage? projection of bad faith on left /gen z // lowest motive

see vice signaling

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unpack virtue signal: any word or deed in support of left ideas whether sincerely held or not? if sincere naive dumb or duped by pinko commie prof or lamestream media or woke____; mere tribe solidarity or worse/more probable cave to peer pressure (of what is fashionable vs what is rt principled? / SJW

aha often accuse young ppl gen z of being naive or worse, too emotional thus // fem vs manly men who see world realistically // alarmist

useful b/c young ppl Greta direct action, punch above wt

feminization?

see man male

see FIRE greg coddle

see strict father

see provocateur eg milo; coulter does standup?!

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

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

hypocrisy/ 2x st’d/ inversion:

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

virtue signaling, social justice warrior

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"fuck your feelings" (unless it's white xian ID under attack/tyrany

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safe spaces don't actually exist?

see FIRE coddling guy

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see story 1 crt rufo censor book ban

aha: trumpista maga qanon gop base about making AM dominant again, keeping power for shrinking white patriarchy rural less educated? that cannot win fair election

so must glorify mythologize past, which means denying slavery original sin, thus lost cause BS

an 12 23 no lnx

What Nikki Haley’s gaffe reveals about the GOP also tom cotton

John Stoehr

December 28, 2023

The new Nikki Haley news is that she refused to say that slavery was the cause of the Civil War. During an event in New Hampshire, she said that the bloodiest conflict on US soil was about, well, anything but slavery: “how government was going to run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” she said, among other ridiculous things.

Magdi Jacobs, an Editorial Board contributor, said that “the fascinating thing about Haley's response was her discomfort. You could feel her flailing as she reached for the perfect combo of a pre-Donald Trump conservative ‘states’ rights’ answer to appeal to centrist voters, all while knowing that the insurrectionists want more racist red meat.”

“This is a balance no one can strike,” Magdi concluded. “It shows how fundamentally weak the current GOP is, even if our political media doesn't want to admit it. You can't win without Trump. I firmly believe – and I think Haley does, too – that you can't win with him either.”

More precisely (and I think Magdi would agree) is that this balance is impossible to strike because there’s nowhere to put it. There’s no such thing as a moderate position inside today’s Republican Party. There’s no foundation on which to build the broad coalition of voters that’s necessary to winning (ie, candidates need more than a base.) If such a position existed, Haley would have found it. It doesn’t, so all she can do is reach for a reason, any reason, as the true cause of the Civil War.

To her credit, Haley quickly walked back her remarks. Perhaps she sensed something was at risk in sounding so unreasonable. “Of course, the Civil War was about slavery,” she said. “We know that. That’s the easy part of it.” Then she went on to say that it was about “more than that,” citing, among other ridiculous things, “the role of government.”

That she walked back her initial remarks may seem “reasonable,” but it won’t matter. Remember, even if she wanted to strike a balance between “conservative states’ rights” and “racist red meat” – and that’s apparently what she wanted to do – there is no foundation inside the Republican Party on which to put it. There is no moderate position.

To be a moderate, you have to sound reasonable, but according to David Atkins, a frequent contributor to the Washington Monthly, the GOP base “doesn’t want even the perception of a more reasonable candidate. They want a dictator to punish their enemies.”

“Haley has zero chance of winning” the presidential election, David told me. “Even if she did win New Hampshire, it wouldn’t help her any more than it did Bernie Sanders in 2016 and Pete Buttigieg in 2020.”

There’s always makebelieve, though. Fortunately, Haley has a lot of help in that regard. The billionaire Koch brothers gave her their blessing. So did the popular governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu. They portray Haley as the champion of “conservative values,” as if “conservative values” was still shorthand for “moderate,” and as if Donald Trump’s gravity has not pulled the entire party to the far right.

While makebelieve is a powerful force in politics, it’s probably not going to be enough for Haley or any of the other GOP candidates. Oh, sure, they did OK while the neutral press was casting them as “legitimate alternatives” to Trump. But once the neutral press gets bored – and the neutral press always gets bored – whatever promise these “legitimate alternatives” once had melts into the air. It happened to Ron DeSantis. It happened to Vivek Ramaswamy. It will probably happen to Haley. Everything begins and ends with Trump. As Magdi said, the GOP can’t win with him and it can’t win without him.

In the following interview with me, David Atkins explains not only why he thinks Haley is doomed, but why, in 2024, the Republicans are, too.

JS: New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu endorsed Republican candidate Nikki Haley after the Koch network did. Could that be enough for her to win New Hampshire? And will that matter in the long run?

DA: GOP megadonors need to come to terms with the reality that their base cannot be controlled. They let the MAGA flames burn out of control and now they get to reap the whirlwind. Haley has zero chance of winning absent some issue impacting Trump’s health, because the GOP base doesn’t want even the perception of a more reasonable candidate. They want a dictator to punish their enemies.

And let’s be clear: Haley is also a radical rightwing extremist, as her embrace of a six-week abortion ban makes clear. She just doesn’t seem like she wants to destroy the entire federal bureaucracy, send Democrats to gulags, weaponize the Justice Department and the IRS against all their domestic opponents, and institute mass deportation camps of immigrants. So she’s not the candidate of the GOP base, which does want those things and wants Trump to deliver them.

The Republican Party’s base isn’t in the thrall of Trumpism; Trump is the avatar of their desires, which is why he will be the nominee. Also, even if Haley did win New Hampshire, it wouldn’t help her any more than it did Bernie Sanders in 2016 and Pete Buttigieg in 2020.

JS: You said the culture war is over. Taylor Swift won, Elon Musk lost. I have written that obituary, too, only to see myself proven wrong.

DA: The culture war is over in the sense that people under the age of 50 in the areas of the country that make up more than 80 percent of the national GDP despise the theocratic conservatism that animates Republican activists. That isn’t going to change.

This doesn’t mean that Republicans can’t win elections, and institute rearguard policy actions, like restricting abortion and LGBT rights. They can. The threat of hard-right fascist dictatorship is very real.

But most of the culture wars can be explained by the fact that the marketplace responds primarily to 18- to 45-year-old consumers in cities, while the electoral system responds primarily to 65-plus-year-olds in exurbia. The electoral system can produce a fascist takeover, but it will do so by oppressing a majority that wants nothing to do with it. Such tyrannies rarely last for long.

In the meantime, the weight of popular culture is increasingly shifting to treat cultural progressivism as normative, if for no other reason than that’s the population advertisers want to appeal to. The engines of capitalism are working against social conservatives now, which is why you see such a growing rift between the evangelical base and the urbanite business Republican crowd.

JS: You said the GOP will lose 2024. You cited the fact that they have lost every special election. Special elections attract partisans. Presidential election attracts everyone. Am I wrong in noting the difference?

DA: It’s no secret that Trump and Biden at the top of the ticket will make for an interesting dynamic in 2024, since neither are popular, at least at the moment. But in this environment, a generic Democrat is consistently beating a generic Republican. If the public’s concerns about both Trump and Biden as individuals were sidelined, and the voters were to choose a party and its policies, Democrats would be marching into a confident victory in 2024.

The key will be to remind voters of the tremendous legislative accomplishments of the Biden administration, emphasize Trump’s rampant criminality and danger to democracy, and remind people that no matter what they think of the candidates, the policy choices are very real. Republican rule would be a cruel disaster.

JS: I think the GOP is going to impeach Biden. How does that factor into your thinking, if it does, that the Republicans are going to lose 2024?

DA: Republicans want to play tit-for-tat by impeaching Biden to take some of the sting out of Trump’s double impeachments. More generally, if they can make impeachment into a routine partisan clown show, then it minimizes and defangs the one tool in the Constitution that’s designed to stop an authoritarian, criminal unitary executive.

The flip side of doing this is that any impeachment of Biden by Republicans on flimsy pretexts is likely to have as minimal an impact on voters as Trump’s impeachments apparently have.

JS: What if there's a major polling error and Trump isn't really a mile ahead of every other Republican candidate? Most of us just assume he's going to be the nominee. Iowa and New Hampshire might be stunners?

DA: What’s particularly interesting about Trump seizing the GOP nomination is the low-key panic among many Republican activists. While Trump’s indictments have so far not impacted his popularity, we are in uncharted territory. It’s impossible to predict what impact multiple public trials and possible felony convictions of the sitting GOP nominee might have on public polling and electoral outcomes.

One could speculate that the polling might be wrong, and GOP voters in Iowa and New Hampshire might choose a different nominee out of self-preservation. But Trump has developed a cult-like following, and one thing that we know about cults is that they are largely impervious to even their leaders going to jail. If anything, it makes them feel like martyrs. So I find it extremely unlikely that Iowa and New Hampshire will surprise us by selecting a Haley or Ron DeSantis.

---

aha yikes

an 12 23

one of the few foreign correspondents to be granted personal access to Adolph Hitler and his inner circle in the dark winter of 1933 was Welsh journalist Garreth Jones. Assigned by his home paper, the Western Mail,to cover Hitler’s push to absolute power, Jones accompanied the newly appointed chancellor and his entourage to Frankfurt for a massive political rally that was held on March 2 of 1933.

*This article originally appeared on Truthdig.

Jones’ eyewitness account of the event is bone-chilling because it looks so much like what we are seeing today at Trump rallies.

“For eight hours, the biggest hall in Germany has been packed with 25,000 people for whom Hitler is the savior of his nation,” Jones began his story. “They are waiting, tense with national fervor…I have never seen such a mass of people; such a display of flags up to the top of the high roof, such deafening roars. It is primitive, mass worship.”

Then Hitler took the stage to a “roar of applause and the thumping and the blare of a military band and the thud of marching feet.” Hitler, Jones observed, “is … a master in repeating [his] leitmotiv in many varied forms, and the leitmotiv is: ‘The republican regime in Germany has betrayed you. Our day of retribution has come.’”

As a form of political behavior, discourse and ideology, Trump and the MAGA movement are clearly fascist.

The rally closed with Hitler’s pledge to “complete the work which I began fourteen years ago as an unknown soldier, for which I have struggled as leader of the party and for which I stand today as Chancellor of Germany. We shall do our duty.”

“Again,” Jones wrote, “the hall resounds.”

Three weeks later, Hitler secured passage of the Enabling Act, bringing the Weimar Republic effectively to an end.

Flash forward some 90 years and you can hear echoes of Hitler’s Frankfurt address in the persistent messaging of Donald Trump. Speaking at the ultra-right Faith and Freedom Coalition’s 14^th annual “Road to the Majority” conference in Washington, D.C. on June 24, the former president proclaimed:

In 2016, I declared: I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.

Trump delivered a similar message earlier in June, telling an audience of enraptured supporters in Columbus, Georgia, that he was being persecuted by federal and state prosecutors. He insisted that the “deep state” was also out to get those who followed him. “In the end,” Trump complained, “they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way.” This was the usual stuff of Trumpian spectacle. In a rambling tirade delivered on Veterans Day in New Hampshire, Trump vowed to “root out…the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”

Trump’s fixation on Hitlerian imagery, memes and tropes is not an accident. The orange-haired demagogue has had a longstanding fascination with Hitler. According to a 1990 Vanity Fair article, Trump’s first wife Ivana, who died last year, told her divorce attorney that the former president kept a compilation of Hitler’s speeches in a cabinet by his bed. Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender remarked on Trump’s interest in Hitler in his book on the 2020 presidential campaign, “Finally We Did Win This Election.” Bender writes that Trump told his then-chief of staff Gen. John Kelly during a 2018 trip to Europe that “Hitler did a lot of good things,” particularly for the German economy. (Trump vehemently denied Bender’s account.)

The cult-like bond between the movement leader and his most ardent followers, a bond characterized by pledges of mutual aid, threats of revenge and shared delusions of victimization, is one of the bedrock features of fascism. This was graphically illustrated by the ascent to power of the two pillars of 20 ^th-century fascism, Hitler and Bennito Mussolini, whose personal style Trump is often said to emulate.

“Mussolini put his hands on his hips, thrust his chest, jutted his lower jaw,” Jonathan Blitzer wrote in a 2016 New Yorker article that profiled the work of New York University history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, one of the fore most authorities on fascism. “It’s all about showing that he cannot be contained,” Ben-Ghiat told Blitzer. “It was the same with Mussolini.”

“I’ve been studying cult leaders for a hundred years’ worth of them,” said Ben-Ghiat in an appearance on Democracy Now last June. Trump “has all the signs. He is not a conventional politician of either the Democratic or Republican [Party]… He is a cult leader. And the GOP has long been…submissive to him. He put them under an authoritarian discipline, and then he made them complicit. And this is what corrupt, violent authoritarians do. They make you part of their crimes.”

As I have written before in this column, fascism is an emotionally loaded and often misapplied term. But if understood correctly, it can never be dismissed as a vestige of the past. As a form of political behavior, discourse and ideology, Trump and the MAGA movement are clearly fascist. There is no longer room for debate.

Fascism has deep roots in the United States, from the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, to the rise of the German-American Bund in the 1930s, to the ascendance of Depression-era demagogues, and, fast-forward almost a century, the election of Trump in 2016.

There’s a long-running class factor in the current of American fascism. University of London professor Sarah Churchwell’s June 2020 essay in the New York Review of Books exactly nails it when she quotes rabbi Stephen Wise: “The America of power and wealth is an America which needs fascism.”KPFA? POD? 12 23 WHEN INEQUALITY GETS TERMINALLY SKEWED Fascism is last/only defense

Churchwell’s essay, fittingly titled, “American Fascism: It Has Happened Here,” offers a working definition of fascism. She notes that while fascist movements differ from nation to nation, they are united by “conspicuous features [that] are recognizably shared.” These include:

*“[N]ostalgia for a purer, mythic, often rural past; cults of tradition and cultural regeneration; paramilitary groups; the delegitimizing of political opponents and demonization of critics; the universalizing of some groups as authentically national, while dehumanizing all other groups; hostility to intellectualism and attacks on a free press; anti-modernism; fetishized patriarchal masculinity; and a distressed sense of victimhood and collective grievance. Fascist mythologies often incorporate a notion of cleansing, an exclusionary defense against racial or cultural contamination, and related eugenicist preferences for certain ‘bloodlines’ over others.”

If he is reelected next year, Trump could make the January 6 coup attempt look mild. The Washington Post and Politico have reported that Trump and his allies on the extreme right hope to transform the federal government into a virtual presidential dictatorship. Trump and his allies, states Politico, are “collecting the ingredients and refining the recipe for an authoritarian regime.”

The fear is that Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to deploy the military. This vision of horror includes Trump in the Oval Office using his immense power to quash civil unrest and dismantle civil service protections for government workers in order to secure their loyalty. And all this while weaponizing the Justice Department to do his bidding.

The New York Times warns that a second Trump term will be especially dire for undocumented immigrants, with mass arrests and the construction of detention camps on a scale not seen since the racist “Operation Wetback” of the Eisenhower era. The Times also reported that Trump plans to cancel the visas of foreign students who participated in anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Fascism thrives in moments of widespread social anxiety and moral panic, when large segments of the population are persuaded that liberal democracy no longer serves their interests. We are living in such a moment now. The urgency we face cannot be understated.

---

brexit and trump WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED BUT FOR GT RECSSION, JUST AS WEIMER COLLAPSE --> HITLER WW2 the men who stole the world prime/11 23

---

see claim no evid

aha

he gets away b/c of 1 demonization 2 tammany daly machine holdover BS 3 everybody does it, all politics is corrupt/crooks 4 endless rep of lie Big Lie is tribal signifier

// sure we use dirty tricks but they did it 1st so we had to defend ourselves/ make level playing field [plus they are so evil any ends justify the means)

an 12 23

Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski is calling for Republican Bob Spindell to be removed from the Wisconsin Election Commission for being one of the fake electors who, in 2020, tried to help former President Donald Trump overturn the election results in that state. When Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) appeared on CNN on Monday night, December 11, host Kaitlan Collins asked if he favored removing Spindell from the Commission in light of his role in the "fake electors scheme."

Johnson, in response, accused Democrats of using fake electors and told Collins, "These folks did nothing different than what many Democrats have done in many states. It has happened repeatedly."

Collins asked Johnson to back up his claim, and The New Republic's Ella Sherman notes that he was "left flabbergasted" when he couldn't offer any evidence.

POLL:Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

Johnson told Collins to "just check the books" for examples of Democratic fake electors, but when she asked, "Which books?," the Wisconsin senator had no specific examples to offer.

Sherman notes, "Johnson is right that fake elector schemes have been found across the country — but they were all backing Trump. In addition to Wisconsin, Nevada, Michigan, and Georgia have all charged fake electors in their states. There is yet another investigation into a similar scheme in Arizona. Meanwhile, Trump faces separate charges in Georgia for the whole plot."

*Watch the video below or at this link.

---

aha

he gets away b/c of 1 demonization 2 tammany daly machine holdover BS 3 everybody does it, all politics is corrupt/crooks 4 endless rep of lie Big Lie is tribal signifier

an 12 23

Johnson, in response, accused Democrats of using fake electors and told Collins, "These folks did nothing different than what many Democrats have done in many states. It has happened repeatedly."

Collins asked Johnson to back up his claim, and The New Republic's Ella Sherman notes that he was "left flabbergasted" when he couldn't offer any evidence.

POLL:Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

Johnson told Collins to "just check the books" for examples of Democratic fake electors, but when she asked, "Which books?," the Wisconsin senator had no specific examples to offer.

*Watch the video below or at this link.

---

aha big lie, vaxx, agw denial are proof of bona fides, legit member of tribe

see

an 10 23

a British journalist and academic is warning that because the Republican Party and its members are cementing belief in Trump's big lie about the 2020 election in its national identity, democracy is at risk.

In an essay for the Guardian, Peter Pomerantsev — a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University — opined that the recent election of Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) as the next Speaker of the House is a sign that the GOP is embracing election denialism as part of its core identity. Pomerantsev added that adherence to lies is a typical tactic of some of the world's most authoritarian governments.

"Agreeing to Trump’s claims about the rigged election is the absurdity you have to pledge allegiance to in order to show you belong to the tribe. It ensures your fealty by making you complicit," Pomeratnsev wrote. "For anyone who has lived in authoritarian regimes, it’s a familiar sight."

To illustrate this point, Pomerantsev noted that even though Johnson had unanimous support from his caucus in the speaker's race, many Republicans "have admitted both publicly and privately that the elections were, in fact, not falsified."

"Yet when journalists faced a gaggle of Republican congressmen and questioned Johnson’s record on this blatant lie, his colleagues jeered and he mockingly said: “Next question” – as if the facts were irrelevant here," Pomerantsev wrote. "And in a sense, they are."

Pomerantsev's essay elaborated that because Republicans have to believe in a claim they privately know is false in order to maintain power, right-wing media must follow suit in order to sate the tribalist nature of their audience. Because of this, he argues, "it will be hard to fact check our way out of this situation."

"The issue can’t simply be resolved by “trusted” sources, even those on the far right, who can communicate the truth about the election to Trump supporters. Instead, sources only become trusted if they agree to the lie," he wrote. "Pledging loyalty to the 'big lie' is more about identity than knowledge – and to fight it entails understanding the need for belonging and meaning it fulfills."

"Authoritarian propaganda can give the illusion of status and at its extremes a sense of supremacy to compensate for the lack of real agency," he added.

Click here to read Pomerantsev's essay in full.

---

aha

thom 8 23 polarization // inequalityRight to Work for Less $

---

aha pix bypass think brain eg nazi Leni R

i am YOUR retribution, you have no power to strike down your enemies (demonization, polar) bit i do // retaliation/ transaction

strict fr fascist angry old man Jehovah; make AM white YOURS again [thom not 1950 beaver but 1870 reconstruction]

an 8 23 no lnx

The fascist who doesn’t want America to think

['A harasser and an abuser': Donald Trump seethes at special counsel Jack Smith]

Robert ReichAugust 27, 2023

I want to talk about symbols, images, and fascism.

Here is Trump’s mug shot from his arraignment yesterday in Georgia. It’s a look of defiance — which I’m sure he practiced repeatedly beforehand — intended to make his supporters and his Republican base feel defiant, too.

:{:{}:

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this is Trump’s thousand-word response to Wednesday night’s Republican debate, which he declined to attend.

He timed his arraignment in Georgia for yesterday so that it — and this photo — would dominate Thursday’s and Friday’s news, rather than anything or anyone emerging from the debate.

:{:{}:

But a defiant photograph isn’t “news.” It’s a symbol, an image. Which is exactly what Donald Trump is. He has no political platform, no specific policy agenda, no new ideas, and no plan for what he’ll do if he gets a second term.

:{:{}:

He exists as a symbol for the anger, discontent, bigotry, and vindictiveness he has unleashed in America.

:{:{}:

He is as close as America has come to a fascist leader, who doesn’t want his followers to think or analyze. He wants them only to feel.

:{:{}:

Trump’s lackeys fell in line, expressing the defiance Trump projected in his mug shot.

On Newsmax, Sarah Palin called for civil war.

Fox’s Laura Ingraham told viewers that Trump’s arrest was proof that government officials are trying to “take them out.”

Fox’s Sean Hannity said the Department of Justice will target Republicans “until there’s nothing left of the party.”

All brainless bile.

Last Thursday, Trump complained that Fox News “purposely show the absolutely worst pictures of me, especially the big ‘orange’ one with my chin pulled way back. They think they are getting away with something, they’re not. Just like 2016 all over again … And then they want me to debate!”

Of course he’s angry. For the man who’s all symbol and image and without substance, a photo like the following conveys a brainless buffoon. It must drive him crazy.

But Trump is not a brainless buffoon. He’s a cunning marketer, adiabolic manipulator of the public, a sly producer of his own daily reality show. His lead in the GOP’s presidential sweepstakes has grown. He will almost certainly be the Republican candidate for president next year — even if he’s in jail.

How to debate a symbol? How to take on an image? How should Biden and the Democrats, and everyone who cares deeply about this country, respond to a demagogue who obsesses over what he projects rather than what he stands for? How to deal with a fascist who doesn’t want followers to think but only to feel rage?

Expose him for who he is.

---

NOTE 7 23 SOLAR IS SAVING TEXAS FROM HEAT KATRINA?!

aha: alt fact echo chamber/ tribal creates pre-conditions for

stunning bad faith alt fact earth2, verge on evil perversion on whales, not ENOUG enviro review?! regulation

guk ref no lnx gfx

Alarm at rightwing push to reverse clean-energy success in Texas and beyond

Supporters of clean energy say they expect further battles ahead to prevent state’s progress in solar and wind from being unwound

Oliver Milman and Dharna Noor

Thu 8 Jun 2023

:{:{}:

In the scramble before the end of Texas’s legislative session last week,a must-pass bill was amended to impose new costs upon renewable energy.This came amid a barrage of anti-solar and wind power measures pushed forward by Republicans to reshape a state that has become the US’s powerhouse of clean energy.

But the conservative lawmakers had help.

Sections of the bill that impose new burdens upon clean energy providers were directly crafted and edited by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (or TPPF), a conservative group that has led the backlash to renewables and to make what it calls “the moral case for fossil fuels”, according to a copy of the draft language seen by the Guardian.

Several dozen edits were made to the bill’s amendments by Brent Bennett, a TPPF policy staffer, the document shows, and Texas lawmakers subsequently passed parts of this language along with the key TPPF desires – to impose new transmission costs on renewables and require them to source fossil fuel “backup” power when the sun isn’t shining or wind isn’t blowing.

The passage of the bill, which funds the ongoing operation of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, was the flagship victory for TPPF even as a raft of other Republican bills that would have “shut down the renewable energy industry in Texas”, as energy analyst Doug Lewin put it, faltered.

The burgeoning influence of TPPF, an organization substantially funded by fossil fuel interests and publicly lauded by Greg Abbott, Texas’s Republican governor, is the catalyst to a rightwing attempt to crimp the stunning progress of renewable energy in the state, whichnow produces more than a quarter of all wind-powered electricity in the US.

The group’s agenda is now extending far beyond Texas, bankrolling efforts to halt offshore wind turbines in Massachusetts and to prop up coal power on native American land in Arizona while spearheading efforts to crack down on sustainable finance in energy-producing states like West Virginia.

“We are very influential, we are meeting with policymakers to share recommendations and we’re having success around the country,” said Jason Isaac, a former state representative and now director of TPPF’s energy initiatives. Isaac said that TPFF regularly helped craft “certain aspects” of bills in Texas related to the state’s electricity grid or environmental, social, and corporate governance (or ESG) issues.

“I think conservatives are slowly but surely moving away from variable generation and towards reliable generation,” he said of the group’s quest against renewables. Isaac claimed renewables have been unfairly propped up by a “cult-like fascination” among politicians who have pursued what he called a “dangerous and deadly” agenda to reduce planet-heating emissions.

The aggressive push against renewables in Texas has alarmed environmentalists who fret it will undermine the state’s nation-leading wind industry and threaten the revenues solar and wind generates for local communities and farmers. More broadly, the template used by TPPF in Texas could hobble efforts by Joe Biden’s administration to tackle the climate crisis.

“We are seeing a rush of these bills attempting to wind the clock back on renewables and TPPF really are at the point of the spear on this,” said Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas. “They are transparent advocates for the fossil fuel industry and I think they pose an incredible threat to renewables. TPPF have gained incredible traction, they really are shifting the narrative in Texas.

“They’ve won over the top politicians in the state, which is very dangerous. Texas is going to be critical if the US going to get to net zero emissions, so we should take this threat seriously.”

TPPF’s impact can now be found thousands of miles from its base in Austin, Texas, with the group filing a lawsuit in 2021 on behalf of six east coast fishing businesses – collectively calledNantucket Residents Against Turbines – targeting a major windfarm currently under construction off the coast of Massachusetts. Slated to come online by the end of the year, Vineyard Wind will be the first major offshore wind project to be built off the US east coast.

The lawsuit claimed federal agencies did not sufficiently analyze how the project, which is set to deliver enough electricity to power 400,000 homes, would affect wildlife – specifically the endangered North Atlantic right whale – and thereby violated the Endangered Species Act and slew of other environmental policies.

Meghan Lapp, a seafood dealer and longtime offshore wind critic who was a plaintiff in the suit, told Reuters in 2021 that TPPF got involved in the suit at her request. As it announced its involvement in the case, the thinktank also took the unusual step of releasing a trailer called “A Heavy Wind”.

The case was ultimately unsuccessful after a federal judge dismissed it last month, but the idea that wind turbines kill whales has been seized upon by conservatives, especially since December, when dozens of whales began washing up on the Atlantic coast in what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) calls an “unusual mortality event”.

Noaa has said there is no evidence that offshore wind power is killing off whales, with fishing practices, boat strikes and the climate crisis among the primary dangers to marine mammals, but congressional Republicans have called on the White House to pause offshore wind development, while Tucker Carlson, then of Fox News, aired a critical series of segments called “The Biden Whale Extinction”.

:{:{}:

The assault on renewables by TPPF and its Republican allies has stunned conservatives who remain supportive of the longstanding bipartisan enthusiasm for clean energy.

The reversal has been particularly stark for Texas which, blessed with the capacious, flat terrain and amenable climate for abundantwind and solar energy, was championed as a bastion for renewables by previous Republican governors George W Bush and Rick Perry, even as they embraced the ubiquitous oil industry.

More than 40% of Texas’s electricity came from carbon-free sources last year, with the state now producing more wind and solar than the next three states – California, Iowa and Oklahoma – combined. This imperious status now seems uncertain.

“I don’t recognize the state sometimes any more from our elected leaders. It’s like we are in a twilight zone where up is down and day is night,” said Matt Welch, state director of Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation.

“I fear we’re losing our lead in the nation and the world as the source for clean energy advancement. It’s just amazing we’ve rolled up the welcome mat and told wind and solar operators they’re just not welcome here any more.”

The Texas Public Policy Foundation was founded in 1989 by James R Leininger, a San Antonio-based physician who made his fortune selling hospital beds, and initially focused on the issue of charter schools before branching out into other topics such as energy. The thinktank is a member of theState Policy Network, a network of far-right non-profits across the country that fight climate-focused legislation.

In 2021, the most recent year for which records are available, donations for the thinktank totaled $25.6m. Publicly available data shows that – like many State Policy Network affiliates – its largest known funder isCharles Koch, the billionaire industrialist who made his fortune from fossil fuels. Entities tied to Koch have contributed at least $8.8m to the group since 2012, according to an analysis by researcher Connor Gibson.

:{:{}:

Tax filings show that the group has received donations from fossil fuel companies including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron, but, as a non-profit, the full extent of TPPF’s fossil fuel funding is unknown.

Issac said, however, it has been “many years” since large oil firms such as Exxon have donated to TPPF as these companies now ostensibly support decarbonization and environmentally responsible corporate governance, which conflicts with the foundation. He insisted that the foundation is committed to “free enterprise and individual liberty” and the eradication of “market distorting” subsidies, not just for renewables but also fossil fuels.

But Welch said that Republican lawmakers, backed by TPPF, have ditched any ideological consistency by heaping onerous restrictions on renewable energy development on private property, in some cases attempting to impose requirements absent from oil and gas drilling, and trying to slash subsidies for the industry at the same time as offering state support for the buildout of new gas plants.

One proposed bill that didn’t get sufficient backing in the latest Texas legislative session would have placed stringent new rules for wind and solar projects, including written permissions from neighboring property owners and setbacks of up to half a mile from the edge of a property for wind turbines. Another would have cut all subsidies for renewable energy.

“On a Tuesday these lawmakers will be adamantly for private property rights, but on a Thursday they will want to stop the growth of renewable energy even though it’s on somebody’s private land,” Welch said, adding thatTPPF was once full of “mini Milton Friedmans for years until recently, and now all of a sudden they throw that out the window.

:{:{}:

“It’s been a shocker. It’s so hypocritical,” he said. “I used to be an acolyte of TPPF but they are now driven by oil and gas billionaires who want to stop alternative forms of energy to benefit their own bottom line. They’ve sold their soul to the almighty dollar.”

Renewable energy remains broadly popular with the Texas public for delivering cheap, clean power along with an injection of cash for entities such as school districts, but affection has somewhat curdled among some of the state’s Republican leadership. A devastating winter storm in 2021, which left millions of Texans without power and led to several hundred deaths, was a major accelerant of this trend.

:{:{}:

In the days following the crippling event, known as winter storm Uri, Abbott and other leading Republicans pushed the blame for the power blackouts upon renewable energy, with misleading pictures of frozen wind turbines from Europe quickly circulating social media as the supposed cause of the grid’s breakdown.

:{:{}:

Subsequent studies have made clear the primary cause of the blackouts were frozen gas pipelines and a lack of infrastructure resiliency to extreme weather, rather than renewables per se, but the perception of faulty wind and solar has stuck, eagerly fanned by TPPF.

“I still believe [renewables] deserve a lot of the blame,” said Isaac. “The storm was helpful in educating people who just assumed when they flip a switch the lights come on that there are issues with grid reliability, that solar panels covered in snow don’t produce electricity.”

Isaac said the foundation accepts that the climate is changing but disputes that this is harmful to people,claiming that the benefits of burning of fossil fuels “far outweighs” any negatives, including deadly air pollution, which he asserts isn’t an issue for the US and its “near natural” air quality. Scientists have, in fact, found that the climate crisis poses huge and growing risks to humanity, with airborne pollutants from burning coal, oil and gas linked to an array of different health problems.

While the most severe of the anti-renewables bills pushed forward in Texas didn’t pass the legislature this year, Isaac said that TPPF remains undaunted and will continue to agitate against what he called “the false panacea of variable power”. Supporters of clean energy said they expect further battles ahead to prevent Texas’s progress in solar and wind from being unwound.

“With the growth trajectory of renewable energy, TPPF can either get on the train or lay down in front of the tracks,” said Welch. “I suspect they won’t rest on their laurels. They’re going to come for renewables again and again and again.”

---

aha uniquely vulnerable to grift b/c not soc med savvy, ppl get more conserv as age, easy to scare /hype thus con

note no left equiv

https://www.alternet.org/gold-ira-right-wing-media/

no ln 7 23

How 'gold IRA' industry ads became a 'mainstay of right-wing media': report

Fox News' Laura Ingraham In July 2022 (Gage Skidmore).

Alex Henderson July 25, 2023

For many years, right-wing media outlets have been aggressively promoting gold as a safe haven for retirees. Anyone who has spent a lot of time consuming right-wing media, be it Fox News, Fox Business and Newsmax TV or AM talk radio, has likely come across gold commercials.

:{:{}:

In a report published by the Washington Post on July 25, journalists Jeremy B. Merrill and Hanna Kozlowska stress that the "gold retirement investment industry" has "become a mainstay of right-wing media."

"An analysis by The Post of political newsletters, social media, podcasts and a national database of television ads collected by the company AdImpact found that pitches to invest in gold coins are a daily presence in media that caters to a right-wing audience and often echo conservative talking points about looming economic and societal collapse," Merrill and Kozlowska explain. "The Post found no similar ads for gold retirement investments in mainstream or left-wing media sources in the databases."

READ MORE: Fox News' relationship with Turning Point USA is 'basically over': report

Lawsuits against "gold IRA" companies, according to Merrill and Kozlowska, are not uncommon. One of the companies that has been sued is Lear Capital, a Fox News advertiser that sells gold and silver coins.

The Washington Post reporters note that "over the past decade, more than 30 customers in 20 states have sued a dozen gold IRA companies."

Terry White, a disabled retiree, told the Post he invested $174,000 in gold coins with Lear and found out the company charges a 33 percent commission. White said he lost almost $80,000.

"For years," Merrill and Kozlowska report, "gold IRA industry advertising has echoed accusations against Democratic politicians commonly found in news segments on conservative outlets. The ads tout the coins as a safe haven from economic uncertainty and social upheaval. Most of the coins are manufactured by the Royal Canadian Mint, which says they're bullion — a kind of coin whose value is determined by the underlying metal. As such, they meet IRS rules for retirement investments."

READ MORE: 'They must comply': Newsmax employees subpoenaed in Smartmatic defamation lawsuit

According to Merrill and Kozlowska, an "analysis of ad data and financial records" shows that the"gold IRA" industry "spends millions of dollars a year to reach viewers of Fox, Newsmax and other conservative outlets."

:{:{}:

"Former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani have promoted the coins," the Post reporters observe, "while ads for Lear's competitors have appeared on a podcast hosted by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Newsmax broadcasts of former President Donald Trump's political rallies."

READ MORE: Tucker Carlson's Twitter viewership falling as battle with Fox News stalls: report

Find the Washington Post's full report at this link (subscription required).

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Sean Hannity — under oath — admits he 'didn’t believe' election lies 'for one second': deposition ›

Mike Lindell sees 'My Cousin Vinny' as a blueprint for victory in Dominion lawsuit ›

How Tucker Carlson could become even more dangerous after Fox News ›

Joe Rogan keeps platforming conspiracy theorists and skeptics of human-caused climate change, driving misinformation

In the January 18 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the host brought up “the Adam and Eve” theory and asked Corsetti, “How much of that is agreed upon, that there could be a time where the magnetic poles actually shift?”

Corsetti replied that “This is science,” explaining, “The Adam and Eve Story", the theory on that is that it happens in cycles of 6,500 years and that it’s a 90-degree flip, but six days later, around the seventh day, it corrects itself.” He continued to describe “a planet flip, 90 degrees, and that because of it the Earth essentially does a standstill, the sun will be direct — will basically stay in the same spot, causing heating like we’ve never experienced — and that the wind and the waters continue with their momentum, because essentially the wind travels at approximately 1,000 miles an hour at the equator, so the theory is that when that event happens it’s going to be cataclysmic.:

[vid]

corsetti’s nonsensical explanation was widely shared on TikTok, with one viral clip receiving nearly 11 million views.

In reality, NASA reports that pole reversals, when Earth’s North and South Poles swap locations — which “take place over hundreds to thousands of years,” not a mere seven days— have occurred “183 times in the last 83 million years, and at least several hundred times in the past 160 million years.” Notably:

Plant and animal fossils from the period of the last major pole reversal don’t show any big changes. Deep ocean sediment samples indicate glacial activity was stable. In fact, geologic and fossil records from previous reversals show nothing remarkable, such as doomsday events or major extinctions.

Additionally, there's “no evidence” that any magnetic excursion event (periods of “shorter-lived but significant changes in the magnetic field’s intensity”) has impacted the Earth’s climate within the last 2.8 million years. Scientists aren’t sure when the next pole reversal will occur, but a recent study suggests that won’t be anytime soon. And if it is, a doomsday scenario is unlikely.

Corsetti acknowledged this but claimed that scientists “don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Rogan has previously drawn criticism for leveraging his massive reach and influence to amplify climate denial, and his podcast has catered to guests such as Michael Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomborg, who use cherry-picked and decontextualized talking points to downplay the devastating impacts of climate change and to attack climate solutions. He has also hosted figures who downright deny the fact that fossil fuel consumption is driving climate change, such as Steve Koonin, Jordan Peterson, and Randall Carlson, who has appeared on the podcast at least six times and said that and that actions.

In their discussion of The Adam and Eve Story, Rogan and his guests also downplayed the impacts of climate change that millions of people are experiencing and praised Donald Trump for suggesting that the Earth is actually cooling.

“Right now we should be grateful that it’s nice and cozy because we can live when it’s warm,” Corsetti said.

Rogan then cited r Carlson, saying, “Global warming’s not scary. It’s global cooling, that’s what’s really scary.” The host further suggested that climate change is “ this narrative that just gets repeated over and over and over and this fearmongering and everyone gets freaked out. It’s not to say that we aren’t polluting, we certainly are, and it’s not to say that we shouldn’t improve, we certainly should, but if the fucking magnetic poles might shift and we might get hit by a giant rock from space, we might have bigger problems. If we’re going to be concentrating on nonsense, which is really par for the course with human beings, we’re going to be concentrating on these things we’re really not going to fix over the short-term, when something might happen that makes all of it a moot point.”

Media Matters also identified two viral clips of this exchange on TikTok with 2 million and 2.6 million views, respectively.

What is The Adam and Eve Story?

The book was written in 1965 by Chan Thomas, who worked in the aerospace industry and claimed to be a psychic. The book was not available to the public until 2013, however, when 57 pages were released by the CIA, and this censorship has captured the imaginations of conspiracy theorists. Since its declassification, The Adam and Eve Story has worked its way into the broader conspiracy theory ecosystem.

Thomas argued that the Earth’s magnetic poles shift every several thousand years, causing cataclysmic events such as tsunamis that destroy civilizations and drastically alter Earth’s geology — one example he used was the flood in the Noah’s Ark narrative in the Bible’s Book of Genesis. Chan predicted that such an event would occur in the near future, and some are now framing increasingly extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods, and droughts as evidence that the next cataclysm is approaching.

A TikTok account for a podcast called No Regulars posted a March 1 video that has been viewed nearly 18 million times in which host Darris Watkins says that the book’s explanation of cataclysmic magnetic pole shifts actually “makes sense” in describing climate change and “explains a lot” because “the Sahara desert used to be green and like Antarctica used to have forests … So now like some places turn cold, some places turn hot.[pix?]

the popularity of these conspiracy theories among TikTok users may indicate one way that climate misinformation is evolving to reach young people.

Climate misinformation disguised as ancient civilization conspiracy theories

At the time Thomas wrote The Adam and Eve Story, the public at large was not informed of the consequences of anthropogenic climate change. Despite fossil fuel companies being aware of the potential for human-caused global warming as early as the 1950s, people weren’t yet experiencing the ecological effects of increasing temperatures. But when the book was declassified in 2013, it was released into a world grappling with the dire effects of climate change.

While it was not written to provide an alternative explanation for climate change, The Adam and Eve Story provides a framework for interpreting its effects outside of an anthropogenic explanation. This narrative, which shifts blame away from our fossil fuel economy onto planetary forces beyond human control, can serve as climate misinformation.

Rogan’s guests and other proponents of this conspiracy theory purport to be interested in its ramifications for scientific understanding of ancient civilizations, but climate misinformation often serves as a backdrop for their discussions. At one point in their interview, Rogan suggested “that there was incredibly sophisticated technology that existed and … was wiped out. And that we’re talking about a really advanced civilization that lived a long time ago that’s more advanced than we are today but moved in a different direction, like we moved in the direction of combustion engines and electronics and they moved in some other direction but achieved maybe many thousands of years more sophistication in that direction than we have with our internal combustion engines.”

While climate change may not take center stage in these speculations, the implications that humans are not having any influence over our warming planet and that near-apocalyptic events are always inevitable as a result of natural cycles in the Earth’s magnetic field are nonetheless harmful misinformation that lets politicians and fossil fuel companies off the hook for their role in the climate crisis. (Meanwhile, the world’s biggest oil and gas companies just raked in record first-quarter profits.)

Cataclysm narratives as climate sedatives

Narratives that frame climate change as an inevitable disaster caused by forces beyond our control are a key argument of climate denial: If climate change is caused by changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, then there is no point in implementing sweeping action to curtail fossil fuel emissions. In the past, the Earth’s orbit, the sun, and cosmic rays have all similarly been used to provide alternative explanations for climate change.

There is overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels. The only way to avert increasing social, political, and ecological effects of climate change is by transitioning away from a fossil fuel economy.

Despite its appearance as a conspiracy theory about ancient civilizations, The Adam and Eve Story is being used to undermine the scientific consensus regarding the cause of climate change. As TikTok ramps up the enforcement of its new climate misinformation policy, the platform should account for the ways climate denial is often incorporated into seemingly harmless conspiracy theories.

Finally, Spotify still has no clear policy regarding the promotion of climate misinformation on its platform. Spotify reportedly paid $200 million for exclusive rights to Rogan’s show, which was the top podcaston its platform in 2022. As Rogan’s contract is expected to expire in 2023, Spotify will have to decide whether platforming his misinformation and hate speech is worth the profit.

===

AHA: racism does not exist, US not founded on slavery, lazy POC just want to leech off govt soc safe net; us is divided, but trump/fox/gop to blame despite hype blm violent crime riots in democrat run urban; nikki blames BO

---

race hustle

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-host-rachel-campos-duffy-some-say-america-runs-dunkin-democrat-party-runs-racial

===

aha before any gop dirty trick ok rationalized b/c THEY dems are baby murderers; now secession --> dog whistle for violent civil war [also (white) xian nat'lism?:

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/tucker-carlson-guest-says-secession-necessary-because-democrats-are-so-unclean-and-are mutilating kids

===

yikes

aha2 ghost dance god would extract enemies, and bullets no harm; trump says i am your retribution against enemy who took away your country/ hegemony; retaliation armageddon end times civil war Earth2

aha social media thus amp ?! , but trump rally is call and response? dream logic // magical thinking?

https://www.alternet.org/gop-voters-2659695517/

an 3 23

no lnx

author Jeff Sharlet has spent years interviewing conservatives and found many unassuming Americans are ready and eager for violence against their political enemies.

Sharlet's latest book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, is the result of more than a dozen years of reporting on the religious right, compiling numerous interviews conducted throughout the Midwest and Great Plains, and he's more worried than ever about the possibility of civil war, reported The Guardian.

"I’ve been writing about the right for a long time," he told the newspaper. "I’m always interested in the margins of things that tell us about what’s happening at the center. An undertow is a metaphor for that, for the force that’s been pulling us to this place for a long time. If you’d asked me 10 years ago if I ever thought another civil war would be possible in the United States, I would have said no. But to think so [now] is to not understand that the right in America is as dangerous as it is."

He cited a "nice-looking" family he met near Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who seemed like "ordinary" conservatives, as the newspaper described them, but harbored bloodthirsty fantasies rooted in extreme conservative politics.

"[The father said] he had a 'Let’s go Brandon' sticker because he didn’t want to swear around his son," Sharlet said. "They’re a middle-class dad and mom. They were always gun people, but not a lot of guns. Now they’re up to 36, now they are arming up. The father had always been anti-abortion. But now it was like a dream had moved into his and his wife’s mind. He described, in incredibly violent detail, the process of abortion. Then he described, in incredibly violent detail, the punishment he thought he and others were going to give to abortion doctors. They were ready for executions."

The current political moment was rooted in a decades-old struggle against fascism, and Sharlet said Donald Trump, intentionally or instinctively, used its "dream logic" to spellbind his followers, who fill in the unfinished thoughts in his pronouncements with their own beliefs -- and that creates the illusion that he's speaking their truth into existence.

"The free association that happens at Trump’s rallies, the ways people make connections that make no sense – it has dream logic," Sharlet said. "One minute, a scary man is crawling into the window to rape your wife, and then the next minute we’re laughing at windmills, and then the next minute we’re sad for the birds that were killed by windmills. And then, in the next minute, we’re yelling, 'Lock her up.'"

:{"This is dream logic, and there’s vanity in it, right?":{ Sharlet added. “'I will interpret what they’re saying and I will bend it.' It’s the vanity of the base, the vanity of the mob, the aggregate grotesque imagination of power.}::{ It becomes a spinning whirlpool that pulls more and more people in. These are people for whom reality is not enough."}::{}:

The illusion that's created for Trump and his followers feels interactive and very real to them, Sharlet said, and that's where the twice-impeached former president gains his power.

"This is why the right feels they are more democratic than the left," he said. "The intellectual rightwingers are like, 'F*ck democracy, we don’t need it.' But the everyday people, they’re like, 'This is the most democratic I’ve ever felt. I am not only receiving – I receive, I interpret and then I transmit back.'"}:

:{:{Sharlet sees a similar dynamic at work within the anti-abortion movement, which the left sees as an effort to control women's bodies, but the right sees as a cause so righteous that violence is necessary.}:

"Yes, the project is misogynist to the core," he said. "But it is not experienced as such by many on the right. Once you make that move, that we’re talking about children, what kind of person are you if you don’t want to save that child?"}:

"It’s astonishing there hasn’t been more violence," Sharlet added. "I think we’ve had a shield from that violence for a long time and now that shield … I sound like Jerry Falwell saying the hand of God is being removed from America."

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INSANE! Twitter Censors Anti-Critical Race Theory Account

Kayla Sargent

June 11th, 2021

Twitter’s rampage against conservatives has not stopped with the platform now seemingly taking its orders from the left.

Rachel Bovard, Senior Director of Policy for the Conservative Partnership Institute, said that Twitter suspended the conservative think tank Citizens for Renewing America (CRA) after the group posted resources combating Critical Race Theory (CRT). She tweeted: “So @amrenewctr issues a toolkit for parents to help stop CRT in schools, Media Matters issues a baseless and wildly untrue hit on the Center, and mere hours later, Twitter suspends their account. Big Tech working very hard to protect racist ideologies from criticism.” Her tweet included a screenshot of what appears to be a message from Twitter that said, “We’ve temporarily limited some of your account features.” Bovard is a MRC Free Speech America board advisor.

CRA President Russ Vought provided more insight as to why the organization’s content may have been suspended. “Twitter is now saying that our Renewing America accounts were suspended by ‘enforcement bots’ but wouldn't tell us what was flagged. This occurred soon after we launched an important anti-CRT tool kit and a radical left outlet put forward wild conspiracy theories about it,” he tweeted.

CRA recently published a toolkit for “Combatting Critical Race Theory in Your Community.” The toolkit said: “This guide is meant for anyone of any knowledge and experience level who is concerned about what children are being taught and how they are being treated, with an emphasis on making the banning of Critical Race Theory (CRT) the central theme by which you reclaim your schools.”

Leftist group, Media Matters for America, however, called the toolkit “a conspiracy theory about the overthrow of America’s constitutional system.” It also somehow drew an arbitrary connection between the toolkit’s language and what the organization called the “infamous white nationalist march in Charlottesville, Virginia.”

Media Matters for America received more than $1.5 million from liberal billionaire George Soros between 2010 and 2014.

Twitter has long silenced conservative voices on its platform. Its massive push to censor conservative voices resulted in the platform receiving a “F” grade from the Media Research Center in its first Big Tech Report Card. Twitter removed former President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol after he called for “peace.” The platform also slapped a “sensitive content” label on a graphic from the MRC. The graphic described the results of a recent poll in which fifty-three percent of respondents answered “no” to the question: “Should biological men be allowed to compete in women's sports?”

Twitter did not respond to a request from MRC Free Speech America to confirm whether it had suspended CRA.

===

7 22

neo-con is // neo-libtard Bush 43

aha GULF WAR 2 POSTER CHILD FOR CASCADE OF FAILS:

JRNLISM FAIL

set off refugee surge --> brexit [CAMBRIDGE anal ] , alt rt, authoritarian [eu la penn] ; wolfie neo-cons wanted it for decades , cooked the intel, hunted the whistleblowers Plame

SEE WMD BS YELLOWCAKE CHENEY

de-Bathification --? al queda, CNP fail ministry of oil

pvtization blackwater halliburton? tigerswan

===

aha: cable tv $ show (santelli rant); [social] media hypes fear then charges to allay it: investor advice

economist manly rational truth teller, hard nosed empirical #'s guy vs eg ben stein pundit always wrong, (provably) but never in doubt/ out of demand

reductionism

cheerleaders for capitalism, social darwinism (if you're ppor, you are dumb, lazy, immoral

cable TV $ show: 1/20 brainfart, spark by kudlow, mnu on cnbc

networks have too

jrnlism free zone? libtard vulnerable?

7 22 aha remember newltr end of world grift hype fear

sage/savvy savior will warn you before so protect/profit

gold std --> constitutional currency?

bitcoin grift? libtard?

----

reboot cold war paranoia?

7 22

Kevin Freeman talks with Frank Gaffney about the landmark court victory known as Jarkesy v. SEC and the Chinese economic warfare in the U.S. Patent and...

We are in an Economic War.

By Kevin Freeman

economic weapons deployed media coverage patriotic investing May 21, 2022

Kevin Freeman talks with Frank Gaffney about the impact of the Economic War we are facing from both domestic and foreign forces.

The Economic War Room

The Economic War Room monitors critical pressure points on an ongoing basis. We report who, what, when, where, and why they will impact you. More importantly, we bring in top experts to help you understand and respond to the threats they pose and how you can respond!

What People Are Saying About Kevin Freeman:

“Kevin Freeman understands the threat of financial terrorism as well as anyone. You’d have to be negligent to ignore his timely advice about protecting your family from the economic attacks that are clearly on the horizon.”

—FRANK KEATING,

Retired President and CEO, American Bankers Association, former governor of Oklahoma

“Along with the Internet our markets, banks, and other financial systems are vital institutions that are far more vulnerable to complete disruption than we would hope, especially to carefully-planned intervenors with the opportunity, motive, and means to, say, bring down the dollar. Freeman explains persuasively and clearly why we may be beginning the third act of a monetary and fiscal tragedy. You don’t care about dark pools, huge Middle-Eastern sovereign wealth funds, naked short selling, and bear runs? I’m afraid you will, and rather soon.”

—R JAMES WOOLSEY

Chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former Director of Central Intelligence

Become an Economic Patriot

Get access to top National Security, Cyber, and Investment talent.

Watch Economic War Room and other great BlazeTV content.

===

aha/hhmn: essence of conspir is that there is ONE evil cause of all our problems, a secret group with a plan/agenda to enslave the world, and mark is invited in/to the expose;

since the Jews hollywood CA coastal elite control media Tech titans except elon] , the truth has been hidden from us, so they admit there's an Earth2, they just claim THEIRS is real.

soc med allows wackos to find each other, bolster and remix hybridize [and monetized click and Old Scool direct mail grift] algo delivers endless carefully incremental higher doses --> radicalized. increases polarization, ups demonization, and we know THOSE PPL are irrational, evil will cheat and use violence, so we gotta be ready to defend ourselves MAGA end times 2nd civil war.

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/soverign-citizen/

yikes militia have guns, xians want Armageddon

remix?

no lnx

Sovereign-citizen members bolster their audiences by adding QAnon beliefs to their mix

Image via Screengrab.

David Neiwert and Daily Kos June 26, 2022

The “sovereign citizen” movement—comprising scam artists and their gullible followers who claim that, by filling reams of documents full of pseudo-legal babble, ordinary citizens can declare themselves free of government rule at any level, thus becoming the law unto themselves—seems to have figured out how, after a couple of decades of mostly lurking on the fringes of the extreme right, to expand its reach and revive (if not entirely rebrand) itself: Go full QAnon.

Last weekend, onetime Pennsylvania Republican candidate Bobby Lawrence boasted that he and his “American State Nationals” operation filled a room in Keene, Texas, with 650 people who paid $120 each to take their special “training”—which teaches that birth certificates are satanic documents that enslave people by subsuming them under a corporation, but they can free themselves by filing their prescribed “redemption” documents. They also ardently promote Qanon conspiracy theories, including the claim that John F. Kennedy Jr. was secretly Trump’s real vice president.

The Anti-Defamation League has been warning about this coalescence since January, with Lawrence and his cohort David Straight, who have been holding these seminars around the country and, thanks to the fresh appeal of absorbing QAnon beliefs into the similarly conspiracy-fueled worldview of sovereign citizens, have increasingly been packing them in.

As their backgrounder explained:

Lawrence teaches sovereignty with a QAnon bent, urging his followers to become “American State Nationals” before Trump is reinstated as president. “American State National” is one of many terms that sovereign citizens use to distinguish themselves from citizens under the jurisdiction of the illegitimate, de facto government. “Trump is working on the ‘Fall of the Cabal’ which will allow our Constitutional Republic to Rise again, however the newly partially restored Constitutional Republic will need We The People of restored status via ‘The Great Awakening’ to fill and function in the newly partially restored Constitutional Republic,” Lawrence posted to Telegram in October 2021. “This will only be accomplished via We The People reclaiming our Birthright by becoming American State Nationals... As the number of American State Nationals and one of the People increases, so will the Function of the [sic] our Constitutional Republic. It will start at the absolute local level (you and your neighbors) and then grow and grow and grow.”

Sovereign-citizen and QAnon beliefs meld together almost seamlessly, as the ADL explains, because their fundamental worldviews involving a massive global cabal nefariously conspiring to enslave mankind are so similar. The sovereign movement’s belief that the current U.S. government is illegitimate serves to support their view of the Biden presidency as fraudulent, as well as the means for “freeing” themselves from such “tyranny.”

Lawrence primarily promotes a version of sovereign-citizen beliefs called “Redemption Theory,” which deals with the core concept that everyone who is an American citizen is designated a “strawman” corporate entity at birth, making them subsidiary properties of America Inc. “Redemption” is the process by which they split the strawman from the flesh-and-blood human, and its purpose is two-fold. As the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) explains:

Once separated from the corporate shell, the newly freed man is now outside of the jurisdiction of all admiralty laws. [Arrrrh me hearties] More importantly, by filing a series of complex, legal-sounding documents, the sovereign can tap into that secret Treasury account for his own purposes. Over the last 30 years, there have been hundreds of sovereign promoters packaging different combinations of forms and paperwork, attempting to perfect the process. While no one has ever succeeded, of course, they know with the religious certainty of a true cult believer that they’re close. All it will take is the right combination of words, say the promoters of the redemption scam.

Lawrence regularly regales his audiences with his version of the “redemption” scam, but with a powerful QAnon flavor. At an April 21 “Patriots Arise” event in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania—where he shared the stage with Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano—Lawrence launched to into a rant that manifested that commingling two conspiracist universes produces twice the crackpottery.

He explained how modern births and the birth-certificate process are actually satanic rituals:

Fred read a quote from [Woodrow Wilson adviser] Edward Mandell House where they talk about this construct, where they’re gonna make slaves of us all, through a system of pledging, where we pledge our children as surety through something called a birth certificate, and a satanic ritual that takes place. …

So I’m gonna walk you through a satanic ritual that takes place, and it started with the birth certificate, which was actually chartered under the Department of Transportation. And everything is Admiralty. We all live under the water, and what is law, and where does law come from? Where does the word “law” come from? Land, air, and water. And where the founders of this nation thought about what law was, was the Bible, the Geneva Bible, the King James Version 1611 edition, where we got the word law from. And land, air, and water was in Genesis Chapter 1, verse 24 through 28, “and God created the heaven and the earth.” And God giveth man dominion over the earth, and God giveth man dominion over the land, and all the creatures that walk and creepeth. And God giveth man dominion over the air, and all the birds that fly, and God giveth man dominion over the water, and all the fish that swimmeth. And this is law.

Lawrence then repeated stock sovereign-citizen beliefs (all every bit as risibly false as his etymology for the word “law”) that there are three tiers of law: Canon law, common law, and Admiralty law, each reflecting rule over air, land, and water respectively. Then he went on:

So how do they get you to pledge your child, and how did our parents and our grandparents pledge us as property[slavery?] , as surety, in our personification, all capital names? It was through an evil, satanic ritual called the birth of a child.

You see, a mother goes into a foundling center, and she goes to see the doc—tor; a tor is a bill of lading when a ship arrives at the dock—and the mother puts her feet up on the stirrups and the mother’s water breaks, and the child comes out of the water through the birth canal, like you berth a ship, into the air, into the hands of the dock—tor. And then, historically speaking, a satanic ritual would take place—a child was smacked on the butt, turned upside down, cried out in fear and pain. And then before the child could put their feet on the land and take the breath of God as a free creation of God, a legal bond document came out. It’s on bond paper because it’s a banking instrument, it’s a surety bond.

And the child’s soul was taken on the back of that document. It was called the soul print. And then the umbilical cord and the afterbirth was thereby dead and abandoned by the mother, because that was part of your birth, part of your being born. The construct, the evil says that now that is dead, a part of you died and now you are a dead vessel, you are an all-capital legal fiction. They called you a person. If you look at your driver’s license, if you look at every document that government or any business sends you, it’s in your all-capital name. Your personification. Now the Bible tells us not to take on the persona, not to take on the person.

Lawrence also harkened to the stock radicalization belief in “red-pilling”: “We are living in Babylon right now,” he said. “It’s a corporate construct. It’s a Matrix. Keanu Reeves has said publicly that The Matrix is a documentary of how we are living our lives. Your money’s not real, you don’t own anything.”

And near the end, he wrapped it all up with a classic QAnon-style claim that Donald Trump is secretly One Of Them:

Yes, President Trump has done many things for us. And I won’t go into a lot of them, because quite frankly a lot of folks aren’t ready for it. And it’s hard to verify. But Donald Trump has told you all, if you go back to his speeches, he’s told you that when he comes back, he’s gonna be little letters, lower case. Look to his speech in 2021 at CPAC in Texas. He said when we go back to the White House this time it’s going to be in little letters. He told you at another rally that people are sovereign. He told you at another rally that you’re all millionaires. He told you in another rally that you’re the elite. And they’re the scoundrels. He told you at another rally that the Bar Association is corrupt. He tells you on and on—he might talk for two hours, but only four sentences are for those who are awake. And there’s a huge difference between being woke and awake, is it not?

Lawrence has formed close associations with leading QAnon influencers such as Ann Vandersteel, Allen and Francine Fosdick, the Pennsylvania-based hosts of the QAnon show Up Front in the Prophetic, and David Straight.

Vandersteel posted proudly announced on Gab that she was “officially an American State National,” meaning she no longer was beholden to the U.S. government. She touted the supposed benefits of becoming an “American state national,” such as freedom from paying federal taxes to getting to “vote as a delegate, which has the power of four votes,” in an appearance on “The Conservative Daily Podcast,” hosted by Joe Oltmann and Max McGuire.

She said she had been introduced to these ideas by Lawrence, who ran for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania in 2018. Vandersteel indicated that Lawrence was radicalized afterward through his contacts with David Straight, a sovereign citizen activist who also promoted QAnon theories. Vandersteel claimed that Straight was a “commissioner on President Trump’s child sex-trafficking commission.”

ADL analyst Mark Pitcavage explained Lawrence’s rant on Twitter, noting that “redemption theory” originated with a sovereign-citizen guru named Roger Elvick back in 1999, and it became widespread within the movement.

“Basic redemption theory is something like this: In 1933, the US went off the gold standard and could therefore no longer pay its debts to the international bankers. To get around this, the government turned humans into collateral by converting birth certificates into stock,” he wrote. “They did this in part by creating fictional duplicates of every person (dubbed ‘strawmen’). You can tell when a document refers to the straw man instead of the flesh and blood person because the name will be in all caps, not upper and lower case.”

He also noted that much of the talk is devoted to explaining the sovereign-citizen belief that the conspiracy which infiltrated and subverted and replaced the original, legitimate government with a de facto tyrannical government had done so by replacing constitutional law with inferior “maritime” or “admiralty” law.

“Finally,” he noted, “the Satanic references thrown in there are derived from QAnon and presumably designed to make these theories more palatable to QAnoners.”

Given the size of Lawrence’s audiences now, and the regularity and breadth of “American State Nationalist” training sessions, the ADL’s January warning—“Given the flexibility of the sovereign citizen movement and its pseudo-legal tactics, it is quite possible that increasing numbers of QAnon adherents will find sovereign citizen ideas attractive in the future”—seems more than prescient. It may, in fact, prove to be understated.

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===

aha GOP cognitive dissonance: beleive they say in democracy, but realize they cannot win in mktplace of ideas, demographic shift, and they are inherently winners (b/c blessed by god?); thus if # say they lost election, it must be b/c dems cheated [tammany hall machine pol hillary corrupt]; or like eastman/rudy will pretend to beleive voter fraud if enable hold on to power // auth fascist disable norms, institutions and shared sense of reality/ empirical fact THUS BIG LIE has fundamentally crippled/corrupted body politic, peril to democracy (heads on slender thread of norm , as maddow says, like Bowers to uphold norms despite unprecendented pressure [// Lady Ruby personally and publically [jumbotron rally and presumably twt soc media]

---

testified day 4 praise RR on election day transfer miracle; dtr term ill, big pathos; xian // VP staff/lawyer in basement 1/6?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/donald-trump-rusty-bowers/ attack cohen ctr-punch BS?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/arizona-gop-lawmaker/

An Arizona Republican lawmaker is speaking out about the pressures he faced from former President Donald Trump, his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and the former president's allies amid Republicans' attempts to overturn the presidential election.

According to NPR.org, Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) recently testified and shared details about his conversations with Giuliani where he claimed undocumented voters were responsible for casting illegal ballots. He also claimed votes had been cast on behalf of a substantial number of deceased individuals.

But instead of just running with Giuliani's claims, Bowers and other Republican legislators requested he provide solid evidence to back the tall accusations. "In my recollection," Bowers said of Giuliani, "he said, We have lots of theories we just don't have the evidence.'"

Bowers also recalled how Giuliani also "pressured him to call the Arizona legislature back into session — a unilateral move Bowers said he cannot do — to recall the electors that would be going to President Biden after Biden beat Trump in the state."

"It is a tenet of my faith that theConstitution is divinely inspired," he said, growing visibly emotional. "I would not do it."

He noted that the former president also echoed similar sentiments but he didn't believe the evidence they provided to back their claims "merited a hearing."

"You are asking me to do something against my oath, andI will not break my oath," he said he told Trump and Giuliani, to which the former New York mayor said: "Aren't we all Republicans here? I would think we'd get a better reception."

Trump-supporting lawyer John Eastman also contacted Bowers by phone as he echoed Trump and Giuliani's demands. "His suggestion was that we would do it, and I said I can't," Bowers said, adding that Eastman pressured him by telling him to "just do it and let the courts sort it out."

In addition to pressure from Trump's allies, Bowers also noted that the former president's supporters also expressed concern about the outcome of the election. He revealed, per NPR.org, that "his office was subject to over 20,000 emails, thousands of voicemails and texts from those who believed he was wrong to not recall the electors."

"Up until recently, it is a new pattern in our lives to worry what will happen on Saturdays," he said of his family. "Because we have various groups come by."

Bowers has also faced a litany of accusations including being called "a pedophile and corrupt politician" as video trucks drive through his neighborhood and threaten his neighbors."It was disturbing," he said emotionally as he recalled what transpired.

3% gun on hip verbally threat neighbor "I knew I had to get close" to WHAT?!

---

===

aha systemic reductionism fail; biden approval # low, esp on economy (mid 20's?)

but prez has little control of gas price or inflation; even opening public land has a lag built in, longer than US short term memory; as w conspiracy, ppl want to think do X/silver bullet will get Y result. simple supply-demand: ~ oil is worldwide commodity, so no guar it will stay in US; other countries have similar inflation, and it started before biden [set up by bad trump policies?)

edit b 6 22 longish

...These polls are a picture of systemic displeasure with a president who isn’t doing enough to bring down the price of gas, food, housing and more. Evidently, Joe Biden should have considered inflation before going off half-cocked in allied defense of Ukraine’s national sovereignty.

Democracy is great and all, but seriously.

Is it more important than cheap gas?

No, said Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan: “Real America [white people] doesn’t care about the January 6 committee. Gas is over $5 per gallon!”

To which we liberals say: no. Real Americans are all Americans, because all Americans have a stake in the continuation of this democratic republic.

===

long term systemic plan went off rails?

aha: koch dad JBS --> libtard movement --> anti-gubmint --> trump --> coup

CDV note sys

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/donald-trump-an-american-monster/

quite long]

...Dowd surmises that it never occurred to Donald Trump that a president openly plotting a seditious coup "would be a debilitating, corrosive thing for the country. It was just another way for the Emperor of Chaos to burnish his title." The House Jan. 6 committee's first prime-time hearing, she writes, played out as "a horror story with predatory Proud Boys and a monster at its center that even Mary Shelley could have appreciated":

In his dystopian Inaugural speech, Trump promised to end 'American carnage. 'Instead, he delivered it. Now he needs to be held accountable for his attempted coup — and not just in the court of public opinion.

...But who created this American monster? Donald Trump was not built by a deranged scientist in a secret lab. He is not an orphan, and did not emerge out of nowhere. He was the almost inevitable result of a decades-long assault by the "conservative" movement aimed at ending American democracy (especially multiracial democracy) and replacing it with a pseudo-democratic authoritarian state, perhaps organized under the system political theorist Sheldon Wolin described as "inverted totalitarianism."

As part of that long-term assault, most or all the historic victories of the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, the gay rights movement, the labor and environmental movements and other struggles for human dignity and a more just society are being rolled back. If this project succeeds, America's already threadbare social safety net will be virtually eliminated. White Christian fascists and corporate plutocrats will forge a ruling coalition with near-total dominion over American life and society. The separation of church and state, along with the guarantee of free speech and most of the Bill of Rights, will disappear.

There is no longer a "normal" or "traditional" version of the Republican Party for so-called conservatives to return to. Even those conservatives who have disavowed or denounced the Trump movement are implicated in his rise. They are like political Dr. Frankensteins, horrified by what they have created but unable to kill it. Over the course of decades, they painstakingly built the monster and created the blueprint for American fascism.

As Wajahat Ali wrote this week in the Daily Beast, some of Trump's "most prominent enablers" are now trying to distance themselves from the "ongoing, concentrated, right-wing effort to overturn the 2020 election":

Even though most of these ex-Trumpers will fail up in their careers—as is often the case in Washington, D.C. — it's important for the rest of us to recognize them as utterly complicit actors who deserve to wear that MAGA hat on their heads until the end of time….

If you believe that there is a 'team normal' in the modern GOP, then you'll also probably believe that fewer doors and arming teachers will reduce mass gun shootings, banning books will save your child from being transgender, and climate change is a hoax created by China.

Either way, you're not acknowledging that the GOP is now a weaponized cult that no longer produces 'rational' Republicans, but instead caters to the festering, fevered paranoid swamp of dangerous conspiracy theories and white supremacist ideologies. This persistent right-wing disinformation has now radicalized its base, in which many membersbelieve violence is necessary to 'take back' their country. The reality is that Team Normal and Team Crazy both play for the GOP, wear the same uniforms, and, for now, worship the golden calf known as Trump.

Ultimately, Donald Trump is not some type of monstrous Other or outsider. He was not conjured up in some other dimension ruled by Lovecraftian demons, only to descend on America out of the ether to sow destruction, chaos, misery and death.

In reality, Donald Trump — as a man, a symbol and a political leader — and everything he embodies is the product of our society, driven by extreme social inequality, consumerism and greed, unfulfilled dreams, widespread alienation and loneliness, anti-intellectualism, racism and white supremacy, the cult of the spectacle, our fetish for violence and a range of related antisocial and anti-human values and tendencies.

In a recent essay for ScheerPost republished at Salon, Chris Hedges offers a powerful diagnosis of our corrupt and failing American political system, arguing that the House Jan. 6 committee will do nothing to correct it:

The two established wings of the oligarchy, the old Republican Party represented by politicians such as Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the committee, and the Bush family, are now united with the Democratic Party elite into one ruling political entity. The ruling parties were already in lockstep for decades on the major issues, including: war, trade deals, austerity, the militarization of police, prisons, government surveillance and assaults on civil liberties. They worked in tandem to pervert and destroy democratic institutions on behalf of the rich and corporations. They desperately work together now to stave off the revolt by enraged and betrayed white working men and women who support Donald Trump and the far right.

There are other systemic failures as well. America's mainstream news media, through both habit and laziness, have approached Donald Trump, and American politics more generally, as a running narrative of "great men" (and, more recently, "great women"), singular figures who are the main characters in an unfolding drama largely independent of history, culture or economic reality.

This partly explains the media's obsession with polling and public opinion, the addiction to horserace coverage and the drive to identify "winners" and "losers" on a daily basis. Of course the mainstream media is also driven by profit, and compelled to shape the news so as not to offend advertisers or alienate the political establishment and other social and cultural elites.

Media practitioners are also trained to avoid moral language when describing domestic politics, although they routinely use such language when discussing foreign affairs, and especially Americans' official enemies. The result is that most mainstream American political journalism remains an exercise in stenography and superficial commentary, almost always bending the knee to such totems as "moderation," "normal politics," "fairness" and "balance," concepts that were likely never helpful or transparent and are now totally inadequate to the task of confronting America's democracy crisis.

Many in the media still refuse to see the Trump movement and the modern Republican Party as destructive revolutionary forces, rather than as traditional political movements with an investment in the existing system. At this point, the media's willful or compulsive refusal to comprehend the nature of the threat has become a pathology. Journalists at mainstream outlets would benefit greatly from reading "The Authoritarian Playbook: A Media Guide," a new report from the nonpartisan nonprofit group Protect Democracy. It offers the following advice:

To the extent that the authoritarian playbook has a central theme, it is that democratic erosion is a process of power concentration and consolidation. While all political actors seek to accumulate power, authoritarians, uniquely, seek to entrench that power and protect it from external checks. Experts generally agree that democracies don't tend to die at the hands of individuals alone. Rather, contemporary attacks on democracy only succeed when they are coordinated, systemic, and undertaken by broad parties or movements.

If Donald Trump the American monster is somehow banished from American political life — through criminal prosecution, advancing age or some other force — another such monster will rapidly appear. In fact, Ron DeSantis and other leading Republican-fascists are eagerly waiting for Trump to leave the stage, and could well turn out to be more competent and more effective than him. Trumpism is a hydra-headed movement, no longer dependent on Trump as an individual: Chop off one of its heads and another will grow. The only long-term solution is to drain the swamp that birthed the monster.

===

aha-let: note we have empir evidence that more guns does not work, but xian BS gives false humility and get out of jail free card from having to deal with empir facts:

gohmert plays old televangist BS that bad events are punishment for our sins, making god mad; ~AGW god promised not to flood the world again; humans too puny to ~ his power/will.

also corp $ NRA lobby gop anti-gubmint ideology ~ gun control; plus bonus paralysis help gop in 2022 elections?

an 6 22

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said recently that he would tell parents of young children killed in the Uvalde school shooting that "God has a plan."

Paxton, who took the leading role in a failed Supreme Court case aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 election, went on a media blitz to fight calls for gun restrictions shortly after an 18-year-old shooter killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in the West Texas town of Uvalde.

In an interview with right-wing radio host Trey Graham, Paxton acknowledged that it is "difficult to give comfort" to families who lost their kids. "If I lost one of my children I'd be pretty devastated, especially in a way that is so senseless and seemingly has no purpose," he continued. "I think ... I would just have to say, if I had the opportunity to talk to the people I'd have to say, look, there's always a plan. I believe God always has a plan. Life is short no matter what it is. And certainly, we're not going to make sense of, you know, a young child being shot and killed way before their life expectancy."

Paxton's comments last week came ahead of emotional testimony by parents of Uvalde victims in the House last week. Kimberly Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter Lexi was killed in the attack, pleaded for Congress to take action on gun safety in response to the massacre.

"We understand that for some reason, to some people — to people with money, to people who fund political campaigns — that guns are more important than children," while testifying with her husband, Felix. "Somewhere out there, there is a mom listening to our testimony thinking, 'I can't even imagine their pain,' not knowing that our reality will someday be hers. Unless we act now."

Dr. Roy Guerrero, a Uvalde pediatrician who treated some of the victims, made a similar plea as he described how children's bodies were "pulverized" and "decapitated" by the bullets from the AR-15-style rifle used by the gunman, to the point that "the only clue as to their identities were the blood-spattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them."

"Making sure our children are safe from guns, that's the job of our politicians and leaders," Guerrero said. "In this case, you are the doctors and our country is the patient. We are lying on the operating table, riddled with bullets like the children of Robb Elementary and so many other schools. We are bleeding out, and you are not there. My oath as a doctor means that I signed up to save lives. I do my job, and I guess it turns out that I am here to plead, to beg, to please, please do yours."

But after the heart-wrenching testimony, all but five Republicans in the House voted against a package that would raise the age to buy an AR-15 from 18 to 21 and toughen existing gun laws. Senate Republicans have already ruled out any new gun restrictions, as have Republican state leaders in Texas.

Paxton's immediate response to the shooting was to call for arming teachers, which some schools in Texas already do despite strong pushback from teachers.

"We can't stop bad people from doing bad things. We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly. That, in my opinion, is the best answer," Paxton said following the shooting.

Other Texas Republicans have also tried to blame anything but widespread easy access to guns. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called for "door control" in schools and Gov. Greg Abbott pushed an emphasis on mental health — despite slashing funds for mental health treatment.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, after Wednesday's hearing suggested that the answer is more "prayer."

"Look, maybe if we heard more prayers from leaders of this country instead of taking God's name in vain, we wouldn't have the mass killings like we didn't have before prayer was eliminated from school," he said.

Paxton in particular has a long history of opposing gun restrictions in response to mass shootings in Uvalde, El Paso and Sutherland Springs, arguing that mass shooters are "not going to follow a single gun law" even though gun laws prevented the shooter from getting a gun until he turned 18 — the legal age to purchase an AR-15, but not a handgun — just days before the attack.

Paxton has a close relationship with the gun lobby. The NRA, the Texas State Rifle Association and the Gun Owners of America Political Victory Fund have all contributed heavily to his campaigns. Paxton also signed an amicus brief backing the NRA's petition asking the Supreme Court to strike down California's ban on high-capacity magazines. He even "welcomed" the NRA to Texas after the group tried and failed to file for bankruptcy to dodge a corruption investigation by New York's attorney general.

After a gunman killed 26 people in the 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting, Paxton argued that the only answer to gun violence was more guns.

"In Texas at least we have the opportunity to have concealed carry," he told Fox News. "And so if it's a place where somebody has the ability to carry, there's always the opportunity that gunman will be taken out before he has the opportunity to kill very many."

After another gunman killed 23 people at an El Paso Walmart, Paxton again argued that more guns were the answer rather than fewer guns.

"The best way is to be prepared to defend yourself," he told CBS News.

Ironically, Paxton himself cannot buy a gun under federal law, because he has been under indictment since 2015 for breaking state securities law.

Researchers have found no evidence that arming teachers or other school personnel has any effect on school shootings. A review of 89 journal publications and media reports by researchers at the University of Toledo and Ball State University similarly found that armed school resource officers, restrictions on the number of school exits and active-shooter drills do not help either.

The "ideal method for eliminating school firearm violence by youths is to prevent them from ever gaining access to firearms," the researchers concluded, adding that "unfortunately, studies have found an alarming rate of firearms accessible to youths."

===

aha abortion key to polarization; kava home attack (pray harder and get a better dr]

attempt to grab moral high ground ( -phobes), obligates them to nothing aside from attack other tribe (at min vote?), vs adopt a kid or even pay taxes for decent schools

az gop mtg kegger big fat guy claimed ex cop started rant w/ baby killer, mantra, BLM guy knocked down, blake masters defend womanhood

===

[[aha: 5/7/22 see alarmist devil term = fem = elite plot tyranny slave take control /freedumb agenda 21 anti-commie

see wrong predictions

corps and sellout shill have to/want to prevent action (regulation that hurts profits) so have to deny danger/costs are real;

heartland reverse engineer: anti-commie (then take corp $ to lie/front]

this is // am exceptionalism, 2 stories

alarm: used to be hysteria explanation was just wrong/ honest error? --> anti-left psycho-babble [ anti-fem vs manly] but Morano (now) uses propose UN one world global elite takeover ploy/plot

ggl alert 5 22

https://thenewamerican.com/report-links-climate-change-to-a-future-increase-in-pandemics/

james murphy new am may 4

study published on April 28 in the scientific journal Nature makes the claim that so-called climate change may greatly increase the odds that species-jumping viruses such as Covid-19, which may have moved from bats to humans, could become pandemics.

The study, Climate change increases cross-species viral transmission risk, makes the highly speculative point that space competition driven by climate change will cause humans to interact with different species, thus increasing the risk of another coronavirus-type pandemic in the near future. The abstract of the study states:

At least 10,000 virus species have the capacity to infect humans, but at present, the vast majority are circulating silently in wild mammals. However, climate and land use change will produce novel opportunities for viral sharing among previously geographically-isolated species of wildlife. In some cases, this will facilitate zoonotic spillover—a mechanistic link between global environmental change and disease emergence.

The study speculates that new incidents of “viral sharing” between humans and animals will increase due to climate change, particularly in “biodiversity hotspots” and in areas of high human population density, such as Africa and Asia.

Climate change-driven geography shifts may promote “more than 300,000 first encounters” between humans and possible carrier species, the study claims.

“We are probably well into those changes. We are not keeping a close eye on them and they make pandemic risk everyone’s problem,” said the study’s lead author, Colin Carlson of Georgetown University.

“Our study shows that unequivocally, in every simulation we do, climate change is creating innumerable hotspots of future and present-day zoonotic risk right in our backyard,” he said.

According to Carlson, wet markets such as the one in Wuhan, China, are especially ripe for this type of risk, as unhealthy animals are often distributed in such places.

“We worry about markets because bringing unhealthy animals together in unnatural combinations creates opportunities for this stepwise process of emergence — like how SARS jumped from bats to civets, then civets to people. But markets aren’t special anymore; in a changing climate, that kind of process will be the reality in nature just about everywhere,” he said.

As Carlson pointed out, researchers believe that the process is already underway, even though the planet has not yet reached the 1.5° Celsius global temperature increase that the United Nations Paris climate agreement calls for the world’s nations to stay under by switching from fossil fuels to so-called renewable energy sources.

“Even now, this process has likely been taking place, mostly unobserved and below the surface,” said co-author of the study Gregory Albery, a postdoctoral fellow in biology at Georgetown.

Great, yet another “unobserved” consequence of climate change that we just need to take on faith is occurring.

“This is happening. It is not preventable, even in the best-case climate change scenarios. And we need to put measures in place to build health infrastructure to protect animal and human populations,” Albery claimed.

It’s yet more bad news driven by climate change: “This mechanism adds yet another layer to how climate change will threaten human and animal health,” he noted.

But according to Climate Depot’s Marc Morano, it’s just another way to sell climate fear to the masses.

“The climate movement is now merging their focus on linking viruses to ‘climate change’ and thus making fighting climate change a part of fighting deadly viruses. Global warming promoters know that they should never let a crisis go to waste. They are pouncing on any opportunity to inject climate change into the COVID-19 issue,” Morano said. He explained:

They want to keep both climate and COVID fears humming along to push their so-called solutions, so what better way than to merge the two issues? Worried about COVID-19, then support the UN Paris climate pact, the Green New Deal, carbon taxes, etc., or else you are a gramma killer!

The same globalist political entities have spent decades warning us of overpopulation, global cooling, the supposed hole in the ozone layer, and global warming and its rebranding, climate change. To date, their success in generating fear has yielded sparse results.

As Morano points out: “The climate establishment spent decades trying toscare us about overpopulation, global cooling,the amazon [sic] rainforest (allegedly disappearing), and finally, climate change and they utterly failed. A virus came along in 2020 and they realized that this cut across ideologies, cut across political affiliation and they were able to declare an emergency and suspend normal democracy. They were able to achieve their one-party state with an unelected bureaucracy.”

Climatistas have long envied the terrorizing effect that the Covid-19 pandemic had on the planet’s population, with millions of people ready and willing to give up their freedom for the illusory safety of masks, social distancing, and risky, under-tested vaccines. Now it seems that theclimate hystericswish to join the virus-scare bandwagon and make it their own.[do not mention 1m dead US, new study 15m in world?]

:{:{}:

----

yahoo may 5

the end of last year was nearly 15 million—triple the amount previously thought, according to new estimates by the World Health Organization.

The new 14.9 million figure is calculated based on the number of excess deaths, or the difference between the average death rate recorded before the pandemic and the number of deaths that occurred during.

Excess mortality includes deaths directly linked to COVID-19 through infection of the disease and indirectly from the pandemic’s impact on health care systems and society.

Previous estimations by the WHO reported only 5.4 million people deaths.]]

aha its rubber glue inverse defense/deflect from border baby jails, the original sin of trump admin?

note ali alex xian nat'l all suddenly? 4/22 they are coming to tear your kids away, cut off genitals?! // //rev ken copeland OK

4 22 rww

Christian Nationalists Gather in Oklahoma to Spread the Big Lie

By Kyle Mantyla | April 22, 2022

Televangelist Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel held a special broadcast of its weekly “Flashpoint” program Thursday night on the campus of Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma, where the Christian nationalist host and speakers railed against the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and spread the Big Lie that it had been stolen from former President Donald Trump.

Host Gene Bailey opened by acknowledging the various elected officials who were in attendance, such as Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor, multiple state senators and representatives, as well as various members of law enforcement and local elected leaders. Following the introductions, Bailey led the audience in praying that these leaders “cannot escape” God: “No matter what they do, they’re gonna run right into you.”

Bailey then began the program by declaring that “there’s one thing that I know for sure, and this is the raw truth: The raw truth was on Nov. 3, 2020, President Donald J. Trump won the election.”

“We’re still waiting on the election to be corrected, and we’re not going anywhere,” Bailey. “That election was rigged. It was stolen. But I got news for you, and I got news for you watching on television: There’s thousands of people in this room that say, ‘We’re taking our nation back!'”

“There is an agenda that’s not Democrat versus Republican,” Bailey proclaimed. “The agenda that’s in our nation right now is good versus evil—and I’m not calling any party evil although you can figure out probably where I’m coming from. … If you’re not willing to give up your nation to a woke agenda that’s not left, it’s liberal—it’s so far liberal, it’s out to destroy the very fabric of this nation, rip your children away from your families. … They want to educate your children. They want to take your kids from you. They don’t want you to do anything that resembles Christianity or stand up for what’s right or stand up for what’s truth.”

After leading the audience in a round of cheers and applause for Trump, Bailey was joined on stage by self-proclaimed “prophet” Hank Kunneman, who declared that President Joe Biden belongs in prison for treason.

“The thief is being found,” Kunneman said. “They’re being exposed by the hand of God.”

“There is a payback coming,” he bellowed. “They’re talking about Biden’s poll numbers, what they really need to be talking about is cell numbers—not phone, prison cell numbers. These guys have committed a crime! They have committed treason against the United States of America and its Constitution. They did not care about you, your pocketbook, or your children, and they want everything inside of their demonic agendato bring you down and this nation. But I’m here to tell you that they are standing against something greater than all of us: It is Almighty God who loves the United States of America, and he loves his church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.”

----

rww 4 22

Ali Alexander, an organizer with the so-called Stop the Steal campaign, told radical conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Wednesday that “there is a time for legitimate violence when there is legitimate tyranny.” The two agreed that now is not the time but began to discuss what would constitute “legitimate tyranny.”

Alexander and Jones are people of interest to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Alexander organized the rallies and strategy of the Stop the Steal campaign, which perpetuated the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump and worked desperately to keep him in power, while Jones and his InfoWars’ crew spoke at the rallies and advertised the campaign on their networks.

In December, Alexander sat for eight hours of testimony in front of the House select committee and threw fellow rally organizers, Amy and Kylie Kremer and Katrina Pierson, under the bus;Jones says he pled the Fifth when he met with the committee. Last Friday, Alexander told the New York Times through a lawyer that he would cooperate with the Department of Justice in its investigation of the attack. But by Tuesday, Alexander joined Jones on “InfoWars” to suggest he would never do so.

On the Wednesday edition of “InfoWars,” Alexander repeated part of his conspiracy theory that he shared with Jones the day prior: that the Jan. 6 investigations were part of a “deep state” plot to get rid of elections, the Republican Party, and Christians, with the goal to usher in a “stateless New World Order.” A civil war orchestrated by the deep state would be central to this effort, according to Alexander. In response to Jones asking how to avoid such a civil war, Alexander suggested viewers pray, before discussing “legitimate violence.”

“The second byproduct of prayer is that it makes us sane,” Alexander said. “So when we’re getting this deluge of persecution, we’re not saying, in our gut primal level, ‘We need to go bomb something, we need to go shoot something’; it’s ‘I will not give them an inch or become the monster they want us to become.’”

“Now, folks, I’m going to say something really crazy,” Alexander continued. “I’m not going to deny that the people have the right of revolution. I’m not going to deny 1776. I’m not going to deny there is a time for legitimate violence when there is legitimate tyranny. And by the way, the Declaration of Independence even outlines—”

“Says it’s your right and duty,” Jones interrupted. “But they are just losing right now, we’re winning politically. We don’t want to do it yet, but you’re not denying we have the right.”

“Right,” Alexander replied. “I’m not denying the—I’m saying it’s not the time now, that’s for sure.”

“But it’s definitely a card we have in our hand we’re allowed to play,” Jones said.

“Right! Right,” Alexander said.

“When all else is lost you gotta do it,” Jones said.

“If they start ripping your children from your home and doing reassignment surgeries—” Alexander began.

“Everyone knows when the time is,” Jones interrupted. “The point is,anybody trying to lure you into plots to kidnap governors, anybody who wants you tooffensively attack, that’s not what we do.”

“Frankly, a discerning mind and a mind in prayer, frankly, would not punch cops at the Capitol, would not kidnap governors,” Alexander said.

“You know it makes us look bad!” Jones said

“And it won’t be successful,” Alexander said.

“Not only do I not want to randomly punch cops, it’s dumb!” Jones exclaimed.

“It’s very dumb,” Alexander agreed. “It’s dumb, and it displeases God I think. But you know, these cops need to stop complying with COVID orders and lockdowns and stealing.”

“Yeah, no, they’re putting themselves in that position,” Jones said.

Alexander regularlyuses violent rhetoric and has called for civil war and rebellion. On the eve of the insurrection, Alexander led a Stop the Steal crowd in chants of “Victory or death!” and declared “1776 is always an option.”

As Luke O’Brien reported in HuffPost, Alexander considers violence a “natural right”:

On Twitter, Alexander had called violence a “natural right.” He was a prominent influencer on the platform, with almost 200,000 followers. “I am a sincere advocate for violence and war, when justified,” he tweeted in 2019. “I recognize no law above what is natural and good.” A militant Christianity has permeated his extremism; he has spoken often about being an agent of God.

Tags: Alex Jones Ali Alexander Capitol Insurrection conspiracy theories Jan. 6 violent rhetoric InfoWars

===

mtg NWO remix of anti-commie one world commie gubmit [agenda21], satanic XIAN , conspiracies

rubber glue no insurrection = their big lie

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/marjorie-taylor-greene-says-legal-challenge-to-take-her-off-the-ballot-is-a-globalist-ploy-for-a-one-world-government/

rww

rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene testifies in a Georgia courtroom today in a hearing to determine whether the far-right congresswoman can be barred from running for reelection for her role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. In preparation, she spent the day prior with Alex Jones—the radical conspiracy theorist who is underinvestigation for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection—insisting that the legal challenge to disqualify her candidacy is all part of the “globalist” ploy for a “One World Government.”

Georgia voters and a supporting legal group, Free Speech For People, filed the challenge against Greene, winning a victory last week when a federal judge ruled that the case could proceed. At the heart of the case is a provision in the 14th Amendment that forbids any member of Congress who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” from serving in office. The provision was passed years after the Civil War to prevent former Confederates from returning to their seats in Congress.

In making their case, lawyers for Free Speech For People point to evidence like a Jan. 5 tweet by Greene calling Jan. 6 a “1776 moment.”The judge on the case will make a recommendation to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who will then decide whether Greene remains on the ballot.

On Jones’ “InfoWars” Thursday, Greene insisted that the hearing was a “show trial” that has “nothing to do with Jan. 6,” and that she did nothing wrong. “They know there was no insurrection,” she told Jones. “That is their big lie.”

Jones agreed that the challenge was “so villainous,” declaring, “this is next level tyranny.”

“Clearly the globalists want to implode the country, Cloward and Pivento make us dependent and take control. And all the polls show a total collapse and realignment of Republicans,” Jones said. “How do you think the Democrats and the deep stateare going to try to stop this populist peaceful uprising?”

“They don’t want me in there,” Greene said. “So theseglobaliststhat are completely trying to destroy our country and move us into their global economy and theirOne World Government to where NATO is telling us what, who they should go to war with, and the UN is running the entire world. This is what Democrats want. They know to achieve these goals they have to get the strongest fighters out. That’s why they’re coming after me, and they’re coming after Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar, they went after Madison [Cawthorn].”

And who does Greene believe is behind it? Greene claimed that the attorney group lodging the challenge “is totally funded by George Soros dark-money groups.”

“They hope that we have a civil war,” Jones said, adding that it was the “devil system.”

Earlier in the show, Jones also compared Greene’s hearing to his own legal troubles stemming from comments he made about the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting.

“Well, I’m dealing with the same thing where I was found in default in a case of not giving them documents, but they have all the documents, and then I’m supposed to have a jury trial about how guilty I am but were not even allowed to speak at that trial,” Jones protested.

===

AHA SYSTEMIC ANALYSIS:

tax dodge -->amplifying feedback inequality /polarization --> instability --> crisis; violent crime spike b/c covid disruption, social isolation [robbery not up?] BBB redicing inequality and gives us ability to invest in ourselves

an 4 22

Whenever progressive Democrats talk about billionaires, it’s in the soft tones of fairness. Men like Warren Buffet and Elon Musk, we are told, should pay proportionally what normal non-billionaire people pay. The debate is steeped in the inoffensive language of “their fair share.”

The debate is backwards.

Instead of starting with “their fair share,” we should start with a question fundamental to every democracy that’s existed, to wit:

Should billionaires exist?

Should their influence be legal?

Billionaires are not just very obscenely rich. With their wealth comes planetary power.Their decisions affect billions and billions of people, who in turn have no say on whether those decisions should be made.

Why should a democratic republic such as America, which claims to hold power to account – which must hold power to account to survive as a democratic republic – tolerate the existence of billionaires.

We should ask.

We should also awaken to the truth.

We are accountable to them.

Billionaires tolerate the American people and their belief that they are the ultimate sovereigns. It serves their interests for the American people to believe they are more powerful than they actually are.

Are we accountable to them?

Yes.

The American tax code has long been designed to ensure that unaccountable planetary power wins when it’s heads, wins when it’s tails. A democratic republic allowing the existence of such a powerful parasitic class is a democratic republic surviving rather than thriving.

That’s why the debate is backwards.

A debate among progressive Democrats over the question of whether the very obscenely rich should pay their fair share has been settled before it started. It’s a debate the very obscenely rich already win.

We should instead recognize the very real danger billionaires pose to our republic. We should assess how much risk we’re willing to tolerate. How much should be legal, how much illegal? Only then should “their fair share” come into play. It’s fairness as a hedge against systemic risk.

It’s fairness so the people may be free.

To learn more about our tax code, and how upside down, backwards and prolapsed it is, I talked to Amy Hanauer. She’s the director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. She said that, “We do not have to accept a false message of scarcity. Billionaires and big corporations grew much more profitable even in a pandemic.

“We can pay for a better country.”

What is it that normal people should understand about the United States tax code that most normal people do not?

Taxes are essential to providing us with things we need, as families, as communities and as a planet. We can use the tax code to make sure everyone has good schools, to make sure working-class kids can afford college, to have resources to construct affordable housing. [BUFFER: DEBT IS ANTI-BUFFER]

But we can also use the tax code to have the resources necessary for the transition to a clean energy economy, to address racial and economic inequity and to make sure public employees are well-paid.

There are ways to raise revenue that raise resources from rich people and corporations. But unfortunately, the US does far too little to make sure that wealthy people and corporations pay their fair share.

My colleagues at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy did a report last year. It found that 55 profitable Fortune 500 corporations paid absolutely nothing in federal corporate income tax in 2020.

Zero.

A whole bunch of other big profitable corporations paid more than zero but less than half the corporate rate (21 percent).

The big economic legislation that passed the House last year, the Build Back Better Act, addressed this by putting in place a 15 percent minimum corporate tax for the very largest and most profitable corporations. Unfortunately, that bill is stalled in the Senate.

Letting corporations or the very wealthy pay less than their fair share is a choice. It's not a choice that most people agree with. It's also not a choice that most other wealthy democracies make.

In 2019, the most recent year for which data are available, the US collected revenue equal to 25 percent of its gross domestic product(25 percent of its total economic output). Most OECD countries collect more than 34 percent. Only a handful of OECD countries collect less revenue as a share of their economies than the United States. They are all small: Costa Rica, Turkey, Ireland, Chile, Columbia and Mexico.

What can the Treasury do about tax avoidance on its own?

First, to address the enormous problems with our tax code, we need legislation. Things the administration can do without Congress are not a substitute for passing tax reform, which Senator Manchin has said he wants to pass, which Senator Schumer wants to pass, which the House has passed, and which President Biden wants to pass. And not incidentally, which is incredibly popular with the American people.

That said, there are things that the Biden administration will have to do whether the Congress passes something or not.

The Trump administration expanded tax breaks for corporations far beyond what the 2017 law allowed. These regulatory excesses gave corporations and the rich even larger tax breaks than the law did.

Many corporations have admitted they used the expansive interpretation from the Trump Treasury to get bigger breaks.

A second big thing is that when corporations publish their financial disclosures, they are required to list tax breaks they think the IRS is likely to deny. But we found that big companies keep billions in breaks that they had admitted would not withstand scrutiny, simply since the clock runs out before the underfunded IRS has time to investigate.

The IRS should direct more resources to dealing with that.

Another important option is that we don't always know exactly how corporations are avoiding taxes. The IRS could require companies to disclose that. This would help us identify how to make the law better able to address tax avoidance.

So much of the tax code burdens people who work. Shouldn't the tax code burden the people who own and collect rents?

Yes.

One of the big problems with our tax code is that we have a special,lower rate on income from capital gains (which you get when you sell an expensive asset, like stocks or a house, at a higher price than what you paid for it.)

It doesn't make sense to tax earnings from wealth at a lower rate than earnings from work.

But even worse is that the wealthiest people can accumulate wealth without selling their assets, and then can pass that wealth onto their heirs at the new value without anyone ever paying taxes on it.

This is called "stepped-up basis.”

The Biden administration included a fix to that in the BBB plan.But after a heavy lobbying effort led by moneyed interests, the provision was removed before the House committee sent the bill to the floor.

The reforms that did pass the House would raise a lot of revenue and raise them from the wealthiest people and corporations. But long term, we should also go back and revisit these good ideas.

Can you talk about the alleged link between low tax and high growth? That was a very potent argument in the past. Now?

The United States had its strongest decades of economic growth at a time when our tax rates were much higher than today.And that's not surprising. Things that led to high growth required public spending.

In the middle of the 20th century, we put a lot of national resources into helping people become much more educated.

Rates of high school and college completion rose in part because of more spending on K-12 schools, of Pell grants that help regular people pay for college and of state funding to public universities.

We also put resources into improving our national infrastructure, like the interstate. That helped companies get products out to market.

Both of these investments made us much more productive.

Today, we have different imperatives to make our economy more productive but we have nevertheless been underinvesting.

We need to put resources into greening our economy, which would reduce the pace of climate change but also make us more resilient in the face of climate disasters, which are going to be with us.

And we have let inequality – both economic and racial – skyrocket. The result is that many working-class people of all races are left behind.

Addressing both of those things will take public resources but will make us much more economically competitive in the long term.

Did all that growth cause inflation in the 1970s?

Inflation is complicated.

But a lot of rising costs as a result of current inflation could be managed by passing BBB, which would reduce the cost of childcare and health care, two of the biggest costs families face.

Explain please.

For most people, housing, childcare and healthcare are among their biggest costs. BBB has spending that would address all of those, making them more affordable. If we could hold down costs for those items, that would do a lot to keep inflation in check.

We are a very wealthy country.

We do not have to accept a false message of scarcity. Billionaires and big corporations grew much more profitable even in a pandemic.

We can pay for a better country. We have the resources.

We can afford to make college affordable. We can invest in our little kids so their parents can work. And we can and must invest to take on climate chaos. None of us will be protected from it if we don't.

---

===

aha blends light and dark metaphor, god/good light in conflict w/ satan end times armageddon

you act for god, and he will protect you from harm from evil one(s)

jan 6 trump called his troops to fight like hell for him/dark dems who stole power

spiritual battle gets us that bit closer to real violence

https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/gird-your-loins-for-battle-put-on-the-full-armor-of-god-desantis-running-as-a-biblical-anti-lgbtq-warrior/

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis appears to be using the “Don’t Say Gay“ legislation he signed into law with barely any notice Monday as the new flag of his bible-based anti-LGBTQ re-election campaign.

“Gird your loins for battle. We are going to fight. You put on the full armor of God,” the Florida Republican running for re-election says in a video posted to social media this week, with the state flag behind him and a poster reading, “Keep FloridaFree.”

“You take a stand against the Left’s schemes. Yeah, you’re gonna face flaming arrows, but if you stand for truth, you and we will prevail.”

Former federal prosecutor Ron Filipkowski weighed in, saying: “Desantis gets sexual and biblical on the campaign trail.”

The full biblical reference makes DeSantis’ remarks even more disturbing. They come from Ephesians 6:11-18, which mentions the devil and the spiritual forces of evil, It reads in part:

“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood,but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be ableto stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.… In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of theevil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is thewordof God.”

Watch:

---

===

aha: post 2015 Paris money better hidden dark DAF donors trust; plus trade groups have to step up as buffer as corps FF hide, but CFACT heartland are FRONT lines? ron arnold hit man on ppl and orgs; daily signal shock troops for heritage?; // caller own the libs/dems/greens --> putin disinfo w/ fox oann newsmax?

===

FORK 5

3 22 aha analysis: ukraine watershed: GOP/Rt has always used national security (strict ft/macho) to beat up of Dems (soft on communism, crime etc) [tho gubmint waste fraud and abuse is never committed by pentagon or military no bid contractor corps that are huge dark $ donors], and national debt bogeyman never a problem with military spending, 2021 gave $20B more than they asked FOR?]]

gop likes to conflate national security with oil supply [tho heaven forbid we would ever go to war in Gulf twice for oil; cheney secret energy task force of FF ceos requested maps of Iranian oilfields]; US military is greatest user of oil/polluter in world aviva chomsky 3 22];

Occupy network morphed into DAPL etc Water Protectors pipeline resistance, which was effective {Fusion/Feds backed off when veterans started to show up to have their backs after the battle of Backwater Bridge] so early and major Trump donor ETP kelcy needed better tool to beat up/suppress activist, so eco-terror gets resurrected and amped up as Critical Infrastructure = nat'l security [so non-violent hippies and native Am now domestic terrorists]; also good for Press Suppression [and activist suppression thru LEGAL like make DAPL folks come back to appear in ct [mult times ?] a year later just to be postponed?]; initial try to make it OK to run over protestors stymied for a while by HH in Charlottesville [PBUH] but eventually passed in mult states?

Putin is the biggest FF CEO of all, and a fascist [originally "corporatism" under Il Dulce // Il Donald]]; ukraine invasion blamed on Greta and Biden green policy BBB; GOP EPW BS Sea Change [CRC] resurrected 3rd time that Greens took Putin $, tho debunked years ago [NottheEPA is Berman Dr Evil, also Legal/Legislative Suppression]

the old mantra was "energy independence" from unstable or even hostile oil states, but morphed into "energy dominance" during frack fight/trump era? now morphing again to energy security at least in concept with Ukraine invasion, lead to a watershed: do we recognize that war gives us one more good reason, as it we needed one, to phase out FF or do we double down/drill baby drill? API is pushing hard for latter, FOX repeating endlessly [bonus gives them cover from Putin boosting?]

china hoax is trump conspiracy theory: also related to chicom putin dirty money dark funnelled to green orgs Sea Change in an attempt to undermine our American oil corps/industry/economy

Sir Chris Hohn "foreign billionaire" [Soros vs Koch?]

===

aha: war is both a cause and effect of crises [and/or amplifier of chaos]; MIC and PIC are both [male, expensive, strict fr) FORCE we use to cope with disruption/instability

IPCC 6 Guterres ups metaphors, warn ukraine war watershed extraction; putin [disruptor a la Bannon on trump; ignores norms, why not use nukes?] invasion drives refugees [xian blonde into poland that remembers nazi wwII but still, source of instability --> alt Rt EU; also disrupts grain prices --> famine/instability worldwide/africa:

add to that weather disruption/unforseen events like nitrate dump:

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/climate-change-surge-uncharted-territory/

j little tom dispatch

===

[[ AHA: CLICKS --> CLOUT

rt qanon loses mind b/c last bastion of binary thinking B/W rt/wrong good/evil ~ sec hum moral relativism postmod? can cruz usetwitteras effectively as trump? more so b/c he will stay below de-plat level? note he w/ spc media algo gets amplify/boost from algo; twitter has better record on de-plat not cranking up rage algorithm to max profit?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/marjorie-taylor-greene-2657046068/

tells mayor pete and boyfriend to stay out of girls bathroom

===

aha yikes they are monetizing victimization, polarization, demonization see crensharrrrh vs mtg

===

note rubber glue (how much of that is " See they do it too" so not only are they corrupt, they are hypocrites, not to be trusted , morally deficient; how dare they [global coastal elitist) accuse real patriotic americans of wrongdoing; putin disinfo is to tear down trust in system/gov't/civil society/ pols, a pox on both houses leads to apathy if not polarysis; soc med gives instant quantitative feedback (it's an instant poll of your constituents/maga base?

an 3 22

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), like many other Republican lawmakers, has made this week’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings for justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson into more of a political circus than a professional inquisition.

From subtly misogynistic insinuations the blatantly racist remarks, Republican lawmakers have been deeply criticized for their treatment of Jackson.

Now, The Daily Beast's Matthew Fuller is offering an unfiltered breakdown of all that has transpired this week. At one point during the 200th episode of The Daily Beast podcast, "The New Abnormal," Fuller joined the panel to speak with the show's co-host Andy Levy as they rehashed the Republican senator's bizarre behavior.

Fuller, who bluntly describes Republican lawmakers' actions as "the full-flavored version" of “straight racism," weighed in with his reaction to the grotesque displays during the confirmation hearings.

"I think I expected it to be maybe a little bit more coded, a little bit more dog whistle-y," Fuller said. "'Certainly, I knew that they were gonna bring up stupid things like critical race theory. I didn’t expect the line of attack to be just so overtly racist, with false suggestions that 'Jackson is soft on crime, she’s soft on child pornographers' even though her sentencing practices were well in line with the average sentences people were getting.'”

Fuller went on to express concern about the bigger problem as he noted the real reason for Republican lawmakers' antics during the confirmation hearings.

“But the broader issue,” Fuller explains, “is Republicans know Democrats have all the votes. At the end of the day, I'd be very surprised if Jackson is not confirmed, and confirmed with probably a couple Republican votes. They know that, and the hearing is just aboutscoring points, which is why you see Cruz giving his speech and then checking his Twitter mentions. This isn’t about actually moving people. This is about raising money. This is about adding to their own clout. And it’s been frankly a pretty disgusting confirmation.” ]]

---

===

// below aha: added binary to zero sum (// reductionistic, hierarchy) // phobic ~ PC multicultural --> polarization us/them

lose mind on transgender

an 3 22

no lnx

United States is experiencing an existential democracy crisis, with leading Republicans and millions of their voters and supporters either tacitly or explicitly embracing authoritarianism or fascism. Democrats, for the most part, have not responded with the urgency required to save America's democracy from the rising neofascist tide.

American society was founded on white settler colonialism, genocide and slavery. This unresolved "birth defect" at the foundation of the American democratic experiment meant that the country was racially exclusionary by design, from the founding well into the 20th century. At present, American politics is contoured by asymmetrical political polarization, in which Republicans have moved so far to the right that the party's most "moderate" members are far more extreme than the most "conservative" Democrats. This makes substantive compromise and bipartisanship in the interests of the common good and the American people almost impossible.

Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, Trump supporters and Trump-loathers, increasingly do not live in the same neighborhoods or communities. In all, they largely do not socialize with each other, or have other forms of meaningful interpersonal relationships in day-to-day life.

To the degree that "race" is a proxy for political values and beliefs, the color line functions as a practical dividing line of partisan identity and voting. Religion is also a societal space that is divided by politics. For example, public opinion research shows that white right-wing evangelical Christians have increasingly embraced authoritarian views, conspiracy theories and other anti-democratic and antisocial values.

As the new Faith in America survey by Deseret News & Marist College highlights, the basic understanding of the role of religion in a secular democracy has become so polarized that 70% of Republicans believe that religion should influence a person's political values, where as only 28% of Democrats and 45% of independents share that view.

Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, also do not consume the same sources of information about news and politics. Conservatives now inhabit their own self-created media echo chamber, which functions as a type of lie-filled and toxic closed episteme and sealed-off universe. The creation of such an alternate reality is an important attribute of fascism, in which truth itself must be destroyed and replaced with fantasies and fictions in support of the leader and his movement.

America's struggle for democracy and freedom against authoritarianism is taking place on a biological level as well. Social psychologists and other researchers have shown that the brain structures of conservative-authoritarians are different than those of more liberal and progressive thinkers. The former are more fear-centered,emphasizing threats and dangers (negativity bias), intolerant of ambiguity and inclined to simple, binary solutions. Conservative-authoritarians are also strongly attracted to moral hierarchy and social dominance behavior.

Recent research by Darren Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University, demonstrates that America's democracy crisis may be even more intractable than the above evidence suggests. In his recent article "Cognitive Sophistication, Religion, and the Trump Vote," which appeared in the January 2021 edition of Social Science Quarterly, Sherkat examined data from the 2018 General Social Survey and concluded that there are substantial negative differences between the thinking processes and cognition of white Trump voters, as shown in the 2016 presidential election, as compared to other voters who supported Hillary Clinton or another candidate, or who did not vote at all.

Sherkat observes that Trump support has been linked to religion and level of education, but until now not to "cognitive sophistication," which was found "to have a positive effect on voting, but a negative effect on choosing Trump."He notes that "philosophers and political elites have debated the potential effects of mass political participation" for generations, concerned "about the unsophisticated masses coming under the sway of a demagogue." In effect, this debate was always about the quality he calls cognitive sophistication, since citizens who lack it "may not be able to understand and access reliable and valid information about political issues and may be vulnerable to political propaganda":

Low levels of cognitive sophistication may lead people to embrace simple cognitive shortcuts, like stereotypes and prejudices that were amplified by the Trump campaign. Additionally, the simple linguistic style presented by Trump may have appealed to voters with limited education and cognitive sophistication. Beginning with [T.W.] Adorno's classic study of the authoritarian personality, empirical works have linked low levels of cognitive sophistication with right-wing orientations....

Trump's campaign may also have been more attractive to people with low cognitive sophistication and a preference for low-effort information processing because compared to other candidates Trump's speeches were given at a much lower reading level…. While much of the Trump campaign's rhetoric and orientation may have resonated with the poorly educated and cognitively unsophisticated, those overlapping groups are less likely to register to vote or to turn out in an election.

As part of his research, Sherkat evaluated the political decision-making and cognition of Trump's voters, using a10-point vocabulary exam. In a guest essay at the website Down with Tyranny, he explains what this vocabulary test revealed about white Trump voters:

Overall, the model predicts that almost 73% of respondents who missed all 10 questions would vote for Trump (remember, that is controlling for education and the other factors), while about 51% who were average on the exam are expected to vote for Trump. Only 35% of people who had a perfect score on the exam are predicted to be Trump supporters.

Notably, this very strong, significant effect of verbal ability can be identified within educational groups. While non-college whites certainly turned out more heavily for Trump, the smart ones did not — only 38% of those with perfect scores are expected to go for Trump, and only 46% of non-college graduates who scored a standard deviation above the mean. The same is true for college graduates — low cognition college graduates were more likely to vote for Trump. ...

What is really depressing isn't just the poles of the vocabulary exam, it's the average. The mean and median of the scale is 6 — so half of white Americans missed 4 of the easy vocabulary questions.

Sherkat's research also explored how religion impacted support for Donald Trump among white voters: "This study confirms that white Americans with fundamentalist views of the Bible and those who embrace identifications with sectarian Protestant denominations tended to vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 election."

Belief that the Bible is the literal "word of God" also impacted Trump voting: "Viewing the Bible as a book of fables is also significantly predictive of vote choice, with secular beliefs reducing the odds of a Trump vote by 80 percent when compared to literalists, and reducing the odds of a Trump vote by 52 percent when compared to respondents who view the Bible as inspired by God."

In an email to Salon, Sherkat offered additional context and implication on the relationship between white Christianity, American neofascism and cognition:

The problem of the contemporary American fascist right is rooted in education and information. And this problem is not simply about attainment of some quantity of education, but of the quality and content of education, how that leads generations of white Christian Americans to process information about a wide range of issues. The segregation academies that proliferated in the mid-1960s and accelerated in the 1970s have taught millions of Americans a radically skewed version of American and world history and encouraged a continued segregated society. The homeschooling movement augmented this division, and further denigrated the value of knowledge.

White fundamentalist Christians have always segmented their communities from the rest of America, and even exert considerable control over public educational institutions, particularly in rural areas and in the states which embraced slavery. White fundamentalist Christians distrust mainstream social institutions like education and print media, and they actively seek to eliminate public education and to provide alternative sources of information. As a result, people who identify with and participate in white Christian denominations and who subscribe to fundamentalist beliefs have substantial intellectual deficits that make them easy marks for a wide variety of schemes — from financial fraud to conspiracy theories.

If you can't read the New York Times, you're going to believe whatever you hear on talk radio or on television. It's simply impossible for people with limited vocabularies and low levels of cognitive functioning to make sense of the complex realities of the political world. And we now have a population where for 55 years substantial fractions of white people have gone to private fundamentalist Christian schools that leave them both indoctrinated in Christian nationalism and ill-prepared to process any additional information. Worse, we now have over a million children in a given year who are homeschooled by parents who are uneducated white fundamentalists — and that total has been pretty constant for three decades since the homeschooling movement blossomed.

What does this mean for the present and future of American democracy in this time of crisis? Sherkat cited the "disturbing ... influence of anti-intellectualism on American public life," which lends "performative power to ignorant elites":

Spouting off obvious untruths is no longer a mark of shame, because even basic historical and contemporary truths are not recognized. We seem to have a stable set of about 30% of Americans, 35% of white Americans, who are oblivious to political realities and incapable and unwilling to come to terms with any of our key social problems. The increasing control over public education by right-wing fanatics is entrenching ignorance and intellectual laziness in future generations. It does not bode well for the future of American democracy.

Donald Trump and his movement did not create all these American authoritarians and aspiring fascists. Such people have long been a feature of American society. What Trump and have accomplished in recent years is to empower and normalize a dangerous set of antisocial, anti-human, retrograde and anti-democratic values and beliefs.

Saving America's democracy will require a moral and political reckoning and acts of critical self-reflection on a nationwide scale about the American people's character and values, and about how their leaders and governing institutions have failed them.

Changes in laws and institutions are necessary. But on their own, such interventions will not stop the spread of fascism. A lasting remedy will demand that the country's political, cultural, and educational institutions be renewed, re-energized, and reimagined. The questions Americans must ask themselves are simple yet enormous: Who are we? What are we to become? How can we unite in defense of democracy, the common good and the general welfare? Without real answers to those questions, there will be no democratic renewal in the 21st century -- and fascism wins.

===

yikes

aha: // heartland reverse engr: we will be destroyed by evil dems, so therefore they did not win/will not rule? = earth2 ; thus voter suppression is unfair (unAmerican in trad sense) but necessary ; mypillow guy sent gunmen to polls?

an 3 22

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/far-right-biden-presidency/

a Georgetown University history professor is shedding light on the real reason why far-right Republicans still believe the unfounded claim that President Joe Biden's presidential win was illegitimate.

While its no secret that election conspiracy theories and false claims of widespread voter fraud have run rampant since former President Donald Trump lost his bid for re-election, there is a reason why Republicans "are convinced the outcome of the election was illegitimate regardless of whether or not there were specific procedural irregularities."

In an analysis published via The Guardian, Thomas Zimmer, a Georgetown University history professor with a concentration on the United States' democracy, referenced a controversial essay written from the perspective of a far-right conservative.

The essay, titled “ ‘Conservatism’ is No Longer Enough,” was penned by conservative writer Glenn Ellmers for The Claremont Institute's right-wing publication, American Mind.Zimmer notes:

"It is notable that Ellmers makes no claim that the 2020 election was 'stolen' – he doesn’t allege manipulation, voter fraud, or conspiracy, and in fact explicitly acknowledges that more people voted for Biden than for Trump. He does not peddle conspiracy theories. Yet Ellmers maintains that the outcome of the 2020 election is illegitimate and must not be accepted."

Zimmer then highlighted another key takeaway from Ellmer's piece:

"Ellmers is outraged precisely because he accepts the fact that a majority voted for Biden, that 'authentic Americans' have become the minority in a country which they are supposedly entitled to dominate. Here we have a striking glimpse of the depth of despair underlying the pervasive siege mentality on the right. What’s scandalous about the 2020 election, in this interpretation, is not that it was “stolen”, but that “un-American” forces straightforwardly won."

Zimmer's analysis also delved into the disturbing ideology behind the majority of Republican voters' thinking in regard to Biden being an illegitimate president.

"What is most alarming is the underlying ideology that leads so many on the right to consider Democratic victories invalid – even if they concede there was nothing technically wrong with how the election was conducted," Zimmer wrote. "It has become a core tenet of the Republican worldview to consider the Democratic party as not simply a political opponent, but an enemy pursuing an 'un-American' project of turning what is supposed to be a white Christian patriarchal nation into a land of godless multiracial pluralism."

Zimmer added, "Conversely, Republicans see themselves as the sole proponents of 'real' America, defending the country from the forces of radical leftism, liberalism, and wokeism."

He went on to explain Republicans' beliefs of the Democratic Party. "Even if they don’t subscribe to the more outlandish conspiracies propagated by Trumpists, many Republicans agree that the Democratic party is a fundamentally illegitimate political faction — and that any election outcome that would lead to Democratic governance must be rejected as illegitimate as well."

---

===

aha-let: i started gubmint for sovereignty wackos, but // koch libtard gang of 5 BS

ORIGIN OF GUBMINT?: KOCH, FOX, NORQUIST?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/koch/

no lnx

Koch keeps doing business in Russia as top journalist says family fortune came from Hitler: report

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement March 14, 2022

Award-winning journalist Jane Mayer, who literally wrote the book on the Koch Brothers and Koch Industries, pointed to a report published Monday stating, “Koch Industries continues doing business in Russia.” Despite major U.S. corporations shutting down operations after Putin’s illegal war on Ukraine, major U.S.-based multinational corporations, from Apple to Disney to McDonald’s, have responded by pulling out of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Mayer’s 2016 book “Dark Money” focuses on Charles Koch and (the now late) David Koch, the powerful conservative billionaire Koch Brothers.

Monday morning is his widely-read newsletter Popular Information Judd Legum reported Koch Industries doesn’t seem to be joining the American movement to isolate Putin and Russia – even after his forces have slaughtered thousands of innocent civilians in Ukraine.

“Guardian Industries,” writes Legum, “is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries, acquired in 2017. Guardian, a manufacturer of industrial glass and other products, is based in Auburn Hills, Michigan but has production facilities around the world.”

Guardian has two glass production plants that operate in Russia. One facility is in Ryazan, Russia, about 120 miles southeast of Moscow. The company added “a new jumbo laminated glass production line” to that facility in August 2021. Another facility is located in Rostov, Russia, near the border with Ukraine. The Rostov plant, which began operations about a decade ago, cost $220 million to build and produces “Guardian’s high-performance, energy-efficient ClimaGuard(R) (residential) and SunGuard(R) (commercial) glass products for construction of homes, offices, retail, health-care and other facilities.” It is capable of producing “900 tons of glass per day.”

Mayer, an investigative journalist who is a staff writer for The New Yorker, also wrote an article about the Koch Brothers, in 2010: “The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.”

Mayer’s piece suggests the Koch Brothers had funded and fueled the Tea Party almost since its inception.

A Republican campaign consultant who has done research on behalf of Charles and David Koch said of the Tea Party, “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded it. It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud—and they’re our candidates!”

And it paid off.

:{:{}:

“The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to ‘educate,’ fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement.”

So where did the Koch money originally come from?

Mayer on Monday reminded America:

For those who would like more information, here’s The New York Times on Mayer’s 2016 book:

The father of the billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch helped construct a major oil refinery in Nazi Germany that was personally approved by Adolf Hitler, according to a new history of the Kochs and other wealthy families.

Mayer’s “book is largely focused on the Koch family, stretching back to its involvement in the far-right John Birch Society and the political and business activities of the father, Fred C. Koch, who found some of his earliest business success overseas in the years leading up to World War II. One venture was a partnership with the American Nazi sympathizer William Rhodes Davis, who, according to Ms. Mayer, hired Mr. Koch to help build the third-largest oil refinery in the Third Reich, a critical industrial cog in Hitler’s war machine.”

===

aha: a couple COPS have broken down on 1st vs 3rd climate justice/debt/reparations?

//?

BS myth china india 3rd w must go 1st:

standard BS excuse for US action is that more polluting, developing world puts out more ghg and will not cut back, thus it's pointless b/c emissions will go up whatever we do PLUS it will give them an economic advantage over US; reductionistic b/c it ignore the 100 year headstart we had (in both development and pollution, and they don't have the money to act agressively b/c their ppl are poor/hungry; US largely abandoned green R&D that could save them (and we could still lead/sell to the world]

sparked by

Statements of Support

Heather Reams, Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES) Executive Director: “CRES applauds US Rep. John Curtis (R-UT) and the 51 other House Republicans who today announced the creation of the Conservative Climate Caucus and looks forward to working with Members and staff on its agenda. The climate is changing and to address it, our country needs a commonsense approach that works by reducing energy prices, not energy choices;

shrinking our emissions, not our economy; and,

exporting American innovation, not American jobs. Despite what fringe activists and their Capitol Hill champions say, overregulatingAmerica will not lower emissions globally.This caucus understands that climate change is a global issue.Today, 85 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions occur outside of the United States – a share that will increase to 90 percent by the end of the next decade. This means that U.S. climate and energy policy must foster innovation and commercialization pathways that work forIndiana as well as for India. Achieving emissions-reduction solutions are possible with the leadership demonstrated by the creation this caucus today.”

Rich Powell, ClearPath Executive Director: “Republicans have real solutions for climate change – ones that are technologically realistic, economically feasible, and politically sustainable. Over the past decade, conservatives have institutionalized big, bold goals anchored by clean energy breakthroughs as the best approach to solving the climate challenge. Higher taxes and more regulations won’t solve it – and this Conservative Climate Caucus will continue advancing solutions that strengthen the American economy, and reduce global carbon emissions.”

===

aha: af1 is signifier of prez-ity? thus qanon used as proof he was still prez? ceo must have pvt jet; giant flying penis?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/donald-trump-supporters-new-plane/

see pix brochure/online poll]

Former President Donald Trump was flying from New Orleans back to Palm Beach when he was forced to make an emergency landing. Now, he's asking supporters to send him money.

In an email to supporters mere hours after the news broke on his travel issues, Trump was asking them to pay for Trump Force One.

"Do you remember Trump Force One?" the email asks. "Before becoming the greatest President of all time, I traveled the Country in my plane, known as Trump Force One. I have a very important update on my plane, but I need to trust that you won’t share it with anyone: my team is building a BRAND NEW Trump Force One."

According to the email, paid for by Save America JFC, the work on the plane has been "under wraps." He claims that the media doesn't know about it, which is false given the reports that he purchased a new engine for the plane and that it had to make an emergency landing last year in Nashville.

Trump's plane was his personal ride, likely paid for by his company. So, it's unclear if the campaign PAC will be paying for the repairs. If the PAC pays for the repairs it's unclear if that means the Trump Organization can use it for its travel.

The plane Trump was flying on that had the emergency landing over the weekend wasn't his, it was owned by a trustee out of Utah, the Washington Post reported. Trump Force One was repaired in New York after Trump announced last May that he would bring it back. The emergency landing in Nashville was a short stop and it was then flown to Louisiana for other repairs. Trump isn't using it, however.

===

aha: doh press suppression (and presumably all the OFFENSIVE suppressions) damage quality and quantity of info flow, thus impedes democracy (vs corruption and fascism) ~ MODERATION THUS REQUIRED IN RESTORING THE COMMONS

aha: wapo and NYT are papers of record, nat'l institutional memory? ~ memory hole revisionist alt fact Earth2?

apparently not Joe and Greta's fault?!:

no lnx twt

These 5 ‘deeply malevolent’ things that Trump did to hurt Ukraine must not be forgotten: journalist

Alex Henderson March 01, 2022

With Ukraine now being invaded by Russian troops on orders from President Vladimir Putin, MAGA messaging on the crisis has ranged from praising Putin to blaming President Joe Biden for the crisis. One of the most ludicrous MAGA talking points is that Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if Trump were still president.But liberal Washington Post opinion writer Greg Sargent, in a scathing column/listicle published on March 1, stresses that the things Trump did to hurt Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky when he was president must not be forgotten.

“With the Russian invasion of Ukraine getting more horrific,” Sargent writes, “Donald Trump and his allies are frantically erasing the truth about Trump’s relations with Ukraine. Trump absurdly claims that as president, he stood strong behind Ukraine and NATO, even as his spinners comically downplay his corrupt and deeply malevolent betrayal of our ally.”

Sargent continues, “The obvious rejoinder to this spin is that Trump got impeached for withholding military aid to strong-arm Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into manufacturing propaganda to help Trump’s reelection. This came even as Zelensky pleaded for help against Russian aggression, which the world is now witnessing unfold in all its horror.”

The columnist notes that when Trump was president, he repeatedly “aligned our interests with those of Russian President Vladimir Putin and against those of Ukraine, NATO and the West.” And Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman agrees. Vindman, who testified during House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry against Trump in November 2019, told Sargent, “Trump acted against U.S. interests with the consequence of aiding Russian interests.”

Sargent goes on to list and describe five examples of Trump doing things to hurt Ukraine. Trump, Sargent recalls: (1) “spread propaganda about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election,” (2) “ousted the well-regarded U.S. ambassador to Ukraine,” Marie Yovanovitch, (3) “froze military assistance to Ukraine,” (4) “withheld a White House meeting from Zelensky,” and (5) “turned Ukraine policy over to (Rudy) Giuliani.”

“All this has important forward-looking implications, now that Trump may run for president again,” Sargent explains. “As president in 2025, he’d be stewarding relations with Russia, Ukraine and NATO, but after this war has unfolded. Right now, we’re seeing extraordinary unity among the United States and its allies as it imposes harsh sanctions on Russia and otherwise tries to dissuade Putin’s invasion. Trump would almost surely rupture that.”

Vindman, during his interview with Sargent, warned that it will be great for Putin if Trump becomes president again.

“With Trump as president in 2025,” Vindman told Sargent, “we’re quite likely looking at a world in which Russia may have achieved its objectives and folded Ukraine back into its sphere of influence.”

===

aha: woke // RINO? no definition, just a label to hurl at anyone you don't like,? note meme general compounds terms: woke agenda

odd/telling that trumpista GOP is turning on longtime allies held by americans in high esteem, military and corps, call them woke when not loyal to trump?

jbs called ike a commie --> end?

3 22

Fact checker shreds Trump Jr.'s claim about 6 million military hours being spent promoting the 'woke' agenda

Donald Trump, Jr. speaking at the 2019 Teen Student Action Summit, hosted by Turning Point USA at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, D.C., Gage Skidmore

Meaghan Ellis March 03, 2022

A fact-checker is pushing back against Don Trump Jr.'s latest claim suggesting the military's last 6 million hours have placed an emphasis on the so-called "woke" agenda.

The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler highlighted remarks made by former President Donald Trump's son when he appeared at theConservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla. At one point during his speech, he criticized the U.S. military.

“Our generals, the great woke leaders of our military that spent 6 million man-hours training our troops about wokeness — not fighting, not killing bad guys," Trump Jr., said on February 27. "They wanted to learn about White rage, a term none of us had heard of prior to him [Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff] testifying, right?”

[Donald Trump Jr. Bashes Biden Over Ukraine Crisis In Fiery CPAC 2022 Remarks | Full Speech

youtu.be]

Kessler pushed back with the facts about the military's hours spent. He noted that Trump Jr.'s remarks would only make sense to conservatives who rely on information from far-right influential platforms like Fox News and Newsmax. He went on to explain why.

After tracking down the six million figure, Kessler acknowledged that it derives from a letter written by Milley that was addressed to Sen. James M. Inhofe (Okla.), who is a high-ranking Republican official serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee. At the time, Inhofe had requested to know how much time had been dedicated to three key items as under the U.S. Department of Justice requirements. Those items, according to Kessler, are "an extremism 'stand-down' related to the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol, a climate change plan and a new diversity, equity and inclusion training program."

Although Trump Jr. claimed the military had spent a substantial amount of its time on the woke agenda,Kessler pointed out that they actually placed an emphasis on mitigating extremism.

"The biggest chunk of time was devoted to the extremism stand-down — nearly 5.4 million hours," Kessler explained. "Since nearly 2.5 million members of the military participated, that means about two hours per person, which Milley noted is “comparable to other Joint Force periodic training requirements.” The climate change plan (1,059 hours) and diversity training (529,711 hours) brought the total up to 5.9 million hours. But you can see that more than 90 percent of the total related to the extremism course."

Kessler also highlighted Trump Jr.'s attempt to bend words.

"Notice the sneaky trick that Trump Jr. plays here," he wrote.

The vast majority of the “6 million man-hours” and the “White rage” comment concerned the attack on the Capitol by supporters of his father — an attack that the former president has defended and even seemed to celebrate. But his son does not make that clear. Instead, he claims that this is all about a “woke agenda” imposed by the Biden administration. To some extent that might be a matter of opinion, but it seems like a real stretch."

He concluded saying that although the 6 figure number is an actual estimate of real-time hours, "there is no evidence that this relatively minor course detracted from any military training — and Trump Jr. entirely mischaracterizes what the training was for."

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aha3: the pandemic was a social problem we absolutely could have dealt with, we have before, but me vs we gop knee jerk shut down Obama office/capability: trump alt fact Earth2 sociopath denied/ignored; healthcare Obamacare under relentless attack by GOP socialized medicine; covid crisis eg lack of ventilators at least temporarily utterly discredited libtard BS

gop governors resisted/outlawed mask vax requirements b/c mandate = tyranny and way to beat up Biden = gov't who was succeeding (ramped up vax even beyond goals in utter contrast to trump utter fail; canadian trucker BS not 1st convoy try/fal and bunch of anti-gubmint conspir BS on signs

irony/paradox:

freedumb lovers fear left biden green tyranny which does not exist, but boost RW authoritarian tyranny which absolutely does and i rising/winning eg orban/trump/bolsonaro putin:

in so doing they amplify division/ polarizatin, alienation chaos which degrades trust our resilience to deal with chaos/crisis which further fuels distrust /desperation chaos --> fascism death spiral

see civil virtue/ responsibility

aha2 bowling alone (globalization/ outsourcing, corporatization walmarting of rural rust belt] led to kids leaving, all sorts of other problems, rw talk radio proposed enemy/scapegoat solution ol time religion --> echo/escalator polarization that just made problems worse which called for trump i lone can fix it --> nazis on florida overpass /cda truckers....

aha: echo is isolation from Earth1, legit press info (ie ideas/info you do not want b/c does not fit your POV) and escalator= AMPLIFY/ BOOST/ PROPAGATE TO MORE PPL AND MORE INFLUENTIAL/INFECTIOUS PPL/ SOURCES; boost is boosted by algorithm and hype hate anger fear is monetized which is both an incentive and an extra further boost --> runaway mode

an 2 22 edit bd

On February 15, Bloomberg ran a story about the “freedom convoy” that seemed to illustrate Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity.

Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister who was part of the German resistance to the Nazi Party and to Adolf Hitler’s rise. His book, The Cost of Discipleship, is a meditation on “The Sermon on the Mount” in which Bonhoeffer splits the Christian concept of grace in two.

On the one hand is “cheap grace,” which is “without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

On the other hand, Bonhoeffer said, is “costly grace.” It “confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him.”

Indeed, resisting fascism by submitting “to the yoke of Christ” and following him cost him dearly. At age 39, the Nazis hanged him.

His theory of stupidity is featured in a letter written to friends a few years earlier. The letter, which is now known as “After Ten Years,” argues that evil like the Nazis isn’t the worst thing. Stupidity is.

“One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force,” he wrote. “Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.”

Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

Bloomberg reporters Jen Skerritt and Robert Tuttle were covering protests of the Canadian government’s requirement that truck drivers delivering freight across the US-Canadian border must be vaccinated.

Protests in Alberta and Manitoba, dubbed the “freedom convoy,” took the form of blockades of bridges and trucking routes, at odds with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s declaration of emergency powers.

Skerritt and Tuttle interviewed one trucker. His name is Jake Klassen. His two campers and semi were in the blockade. He said Trudeau’s emergency powers were an attempt to “take everything from us.”

Then there is this part:

Klassen said he hasn’t been able to visit his nine-year-old daughter in months. She is receiving palliative care at St. Amant, a care residence in Winnipeg, but due to restrictions that require visitors to be fully vaccinated, Klassen and his wife can’t see her.

“Yes, that's absolutely stunning and sad,” said Victoria Barnett.

Barnett was director of programs on ethics, religion and the Holocaust at the National Holocaust Museum. She’s the author of many books on interfaith history. She edited a 2017 translation of “After Ten Years.” I asked if Jake Klassen exemplifies Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity.

Maybe, but as part of a bigger phenomenon. “After Ten Years” was his attempt to understand the first 10 years of National Socialism and what had happened to his compatriots, his church, his country.

He's trying to figure out why most Germans caved to Nazi ideology and why they became integral to what happened. The historian Klemens von Klemperer (himself a refugee) called the Third Reich a "consensual dictatorship" -- which is a pretty good description.

Go into that a bit more please. How was it consensual?

His main point is that stupidity is a moral failure, not an intellectual one. He's reflecting on the process by which people willfully become part of a larger movement or political group, etc. As they become increasingly involved, two things tend to happen:

They become isolated (or they isolate themselves) from those who disagree with them or challenge them (and I would say also from news sources that would challenge their worldview) and
They get a lot of reinforcement. One of the things that happened in 1933 after Hitler came to power was that Nazi Party organizations were founded for every demographic group – teachers, housewives, kids, etc. Everyone suddenly had a badge, a uniform, meetings to go to, new friends to meet etc. — and that was a big factor in creating a new sense of a larger German community serving a "grander" purpose (in the Nazi mindset).

A big part of that, of course, was identifying enemies and those who needed to be excluded -- Jewish citizens, political opponents, critical journalists, etc. But that early formation of consensus made life much harder, even by the end of 1933, for people who didn't agree with it.

What you're describing is collectivism, no?

The self-understanding of the German Volk was a collective concept personified by the "Fuhrer.” That's a big part of authoritarian or fascist regimes. Authoritarian leaders can do things without parliamentary approval, because they represent the "true" will of "the people."

But that also created a dynamic in Nazi Germany in which there was this mass adoration – almost a mass hysteria – for the person of Adolf Hitler. There are paintings portraying him as a messianic figure.

Bonhoeffer said there is no defense against stupidity. But if it's a moral failing, wouldn't a defense be private and public morality?

Ideally, yes.

Bonhoeffer's essay is an exploration of why that didn't happen. (Elsewhere, he explores the lack of civil courage) But Nazi Germany is a disturbing case study in the failure of leaders, institutions (such as the church), etc., to stand up in an effective way to National Socialism.

The best and bravest people were either arrested early on or got out. But he's pondering (and I think this is autobiographical) the failure of good decent people critical of the regime to be more effective.

That didn't happen. (Along the way, one must acknowledge that many of them became complicit). But by staying in and working from inside the regime, they also failed to offer a clearer example of resistance.

That's why by 1942 Bonhoeffer believes (as he writes here) that "only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity."

The trucker above says he's seeking liberation, too. Liberation from responsibility. How would Bonhoeffer persuade a man that he has agency and can visit his dying daughter by making the right choice?

One thing DB ignores is the psychology of all this. (He describes stupidity as a sociological problem). In Nazi Germany, we're also looking at the pressures and dynamics within a fascist police state.

In other circumstances, however (eg, the truckers' protests), this gets back to the peer pressures within a group that’s getting its information only from certain sources, in which there is a lot of pressure to conform to the will of the group (and a reward for doing so).

I've studied this in terms of the psychology of group behavior in Nazi Germany, but the literature on personality cults, mob behavior, etc., shows that the longer and more deeply a person gets involved in something like this, the less individual agency they perceive they have.

For Bonhoeffer personally -- he wrote as a theologian and person of deep faith -- that faith has the capacity to make someone see more clearly. But “After Ten Years” is a rather bleak assessment.

I'm reminded of something Michael Josephson said in 1989:

Success can be defined so many different ways but right now it is defined in a kind of how high is your position, how many people work for you, how high is your salary. When you get into that kind of yuppie version of success,you’re going to sacrifice things along the way.There’s not enough commitment to the ground rules of civil virtue.

A society focused on "success" (greed, selfishness) is a society in which a man won't do the right thing to see his dying daughter and as a consequence, will make sacrifices he can’t reverse along the way.

He's making an important point about what we value publicly and how that affects the individual's ethics and sense of responsibility.

I've been very disturbed by some of the very callous reactions during the pandemic – eg, the minimization of the deaths in nursing homes, the rush to get back to normal when thousands of people are still getting sick and dying (and when large sectors of the population -- children under the age of 6 -- can't yet be vaccinated).

But as I saw somewhere, the scale of the callousness has been on display for some time now in how we've dealt with school shootings, the high level of violence in our society and the much higher levels of violence experienced by people of color and the poor.

A society is measured in part by what we are willing to live with and by whether we are willing to change to make life better. Bonhoeffer, in his text, addresses this when he writes about the responsibility we are willing to take upon ourselves for the sake of a different future.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to be doing what Bonhoeffer wished more Germans had done. He called out conservatives in the Parliament for standing with the Swastika and the Confederate flag.

I interviewed a number of Germans back in the 1980s when I was working on my first book (a collection of oral histories from people who had been in the Confessing Church) and I recall Kurt Scharf (a very brave pastor, who would later became a bishop) saying that if Germans had held mass demonstrations and marched in 1933 in solidarity with German Jews, they might have changed things.

Impossible to know in retrospect, that’s what’s important here (and for understanding Bonhoeffer as well) -- taking a public position not only draws a line for what can be tolerated, but it also serves as a model to others that it is possible to speak out. That's what he was writing about in the section on the lack of civil courage among Germans.

===

aha yikes 2nd a = 2nd civil war

monetization of hate/violence algo amplify

an 222

U.S. Congressman is calling on Americans to own “sufficient” weaponry to overthrow the government, suggesting they should do so “if 30 to 40 percent agree” the nation is living under “tyranny.”

“If 30 to 40 percent could agree that this was legitimate tyranny and it needed to be thrown off they need to have sufficient power without asking for extra permission – it should be right there and completely available to them in their living room in order to effect the change,”U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) said in a video (below) posted by Right Wing Watch.

Congressman Massie, who recently came under fire for tweeting a quote by a pedophile-pornography possessing neo-Nazi and falsely attributing it to French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, appeared on far-right Youtuber Tim Pool’s show.

Pool’s videos get “millions” of views each day, according to The Daily Beast, which adds he “has racked up more than a billion views and millions in earnings while dangerously whitewashing the far right.”

Massie, known for his assault-weapons brandishing Christmas family photo this week was widely mocked for arguing against Medicare for All, because “Over 70% of Americans who died with COVID, died on Medicare.”

During Pool’s show, according to Right Wing Watch, the YouTuber added that he believes the Second Amendment entitles Americans to own nuclear and biological weapons.

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aha yikes they are monetizing victimization, grievance, polarization, demonization see crensharrrrh vs mtg

mtg huge fundraiser 7m 2/22? demon is flipside of victim: tyranny gazpacho pelosi; likes/donation is a cheap fast hit way to feel you are taking action/sticking it to the woMAN who is oppressing you, stealing US and ruining Am dr = commie socialist; fear anger amplified by soc med algo

===

aha: note trumpista reptile brain sensitive plus soc med algo amp --> qanon?

HYPE FEAR

origin of xian nat'l trumpism? recall his BS about ppl dancing in streets in NJ? birther obama other foreigner secret muslim; muslim travel ban

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/christians-are-right-wing-radical/

k j salon

earlier this week, a new Pew survey found that the share of Americans who believe Donald Trump was largely responsible for the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, has declined by nearly 10 percent over the past year, while the percentage of people who think he bears no responsibility has increased by almost as much. On Wednesday, the Freedom from Religion Foundation and the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty released a new report that helps explain that shift: The same Christian nationalism that served as the unifying principle behind the Jan. 6 insurrection is also driving efforts among the faithful to rewrite the history of that day.

As two of the report's contributors, scholars Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry, co-authors of "Taking America Back for God," noted in a launch event on Wednesday, Christian nationalist support for Jan. 6 rioters has doubled in the past year, while support for prosecuting those rioters has declined by 20 percent. That suggests, said Perry, "that this ideology is powerfully connected to a reinterpretation of these events" in a way that could become "a powerful motivator for future potential violence."

At more than 60 pages and drawing on the work of a number of academics, journalists and researchers, "Christian Nationalism and the January 6 Insurrection" is the most comprehensive account to date of the role of the movement in the attack. Within the political and cultural universe of Christian nationalism, America is a special place: It was created as a Christian nation and its founding documents were divinely inspired. Christianity should and must have a privileged position in public life, and "true Americans" are understood to be "white, culturally conservative, natural-born citizens."

That ideology, argues the report, served both as the unifying theme for the various factions that joined in the assault on the Capitol as well as the "permission structure" that allowed participants to justify their violence. To call those fringe ideas is misleading: Surveys repeatedly find that close to half of the country supports the idea of fusing Christianity and civic life.

Christian nationalism also lends itself to a number of other convictions, notes the report. Surveys in early 2021 found strong associations between Christian nationalist views, such as the proposition that the federal government should declare America a Christian nation, and a whole range of far-right beliefs not directly connected to faith. Those include the disproved claim that Antifa or Black Lives Matter caused the violence on Jan. 6, while Donald Trump was blameless; support for various white supremacist and antisemitic beliefs; and even a willingness to accept the outlandish premises of QAnon.

Two-thirds of white Americans who strongly support Christian nationalist ideology believe that the 2020 election was rigged; 40 percent of them think that violence from patriotic Americans might be necessary to save the country; and more than 40 percent are convinced that Democrats are engaged in "elite child trafficking," said Whitehead.

The report includes some meditations on the movement's origins as well. Penn religion scholar Anthea Butler, the author of "White Evangelical Racism," writes that white Christian nationalism began moving more firmly into the mainstream after9/11, as the "Holy War" coding of the "War on Terror" helped popularize its ideology, laying the groundwork for Trump's rise. The seemingly contradictory beliefs of Christian nationalism — that America is the greatest nation on earth thanks to its foundation in Christianity, and also that America has been overtaken by alien and even demonic enemies — only serves to keep the movement in a state of tense mobilization, observed journalist Katherine Stewart, author of "The Power Worshippers."

"It's astonishing to so many of us that the leaders of the Jan. 6 attack styled themselves as patriots," Stewart added at Wednesday's event. "But it makes a glimmer of sense once we start to understand that their allegiance is to a belief in blood, earth and religion, rather than to the mere idea of a government of the people, by the people and for the people."

Most of the report was written by Andrew Seidel, a constitutional attorney at the Freedom from Religion Foundation and author of "The Founding Myth." It consists of a meticulous accounting, drawing on hundreds of hours of video footage, of Christian nationalism's ubiquitous role in the lead-up to Jan. 6 and its execution. There are the flags, the signs, the cross and gallows that we've all seen.

There are also some less familiar pieces of evidence, such as the 50-person Christian choir singing about swords and taking possession of the land while the attack was underway. Multiple rioters recounted how God's hand or voice had urged them to enter the capital. One avowed white supremacist had convinced his parole officer to let him travel to Washington that week to hand out Bibles. And then there's the man who broke down Nancy Pelosi's office door, believing that "the crowd would tear her 'into little pieces,'" and later testified in court that God had been on Trump's side: "And if patriots have to kill 60 million of these communists, it's God's will."...

===

"mandate" term like "agenda" has bad connotation, tho not the mystery

great scam because it allows trump-y opposition to rule/bill that is popular or needed, but you get to look like you're standing on principle/values

// to tyranny, big in anti-mask vaxx fight liberty freedumb

but recall exxon lobbyist who says safE to endorse carbon tax b/c politically impossible? [mcc, manchin...]

https://www.alternet.org/:(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}::{2021/03/:(style="background-color:#ff9900ff"):}::{fossil-fuels-and-climate-change/

American Petroleum Institute, a major fossil fuels lobby group that includes members of companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil, has beenopposed to setting a national price on carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. But this week, NBC News is reporting, API reversed that policy — and the group's CEO is acknowledging climate change as a reality.

NBC News' Josh Lederman reports that this change "follows a fierce internal debate within the organization over whether to embrace a carbon price, which several of the group's members had already publicly backed."

Many strident proponents of fossil fuels, from former President Donald Trump to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to Fox News pundits like Sean Hannity, are climate change deniers. But API CEO Mike Sommers, in an interview with NBC News, acknowledged climate change as a reality.

Sommers, discussing API's change of policy on a national carbon emissions price, told NBC News, "It's a recognition of the situation that we're in today and the importance of dealing with this important issue. This is a top priority of the Biden Administration, and we also know that climate change is real and that we need to be part of the discussion on one of the marquee items of our time."

Lederman, however, notes that API "is not endorsing a specific approach to putting a price on carbon." But Sommers, during his interview with NBC News, called for "investments in clean technologies."

Lederman explains, "Although major business and industry groups long fiercely opposed making emitters pay for their emissions, that opposition has ebbed as (the) industry has seen major government action as inevitable and began coalescing around a market-based approach that avoids the federal government issuing mandates. In recent years, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable and other groups have voiced support for a carbon price."

===

aha ultimate ineq is lack of access to feed shelter and medicine

driver profit maximization:

pharma CORPS claim need massive profits for innovation but trump voodoo windfall went to stock buyback ceo bonus?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/pfizer/

public R&D

profiteer, someone's mrna vacc reverse engr from open records? but still need license?!

===

aha socialism is all-purpose attack on anything dems want and auto defense of corporations/capitalism, libtard neo-liberalism?

trump thot would be key to 2020 victory

AHA note // direct mail dark posts neg ads

ref

no lnx

Pharmaceutical industry likely to shatter its lobbying record as it works to shape Democrats’ spending bill

A years-long battle over prescription drug prices reaches its apex as the industry spends tens of millions to alter the plan.

===

aha omg yikes none of these ppl have been pro-democracy, at least when it conflicts w/ profits; zuck says pro regulation as deflection of blame? or // exxon on carbo tax, knowsit will not happen so lip service?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/billionaires-2656489510/

me truthout

Billionaire election spending has drastically increased over the last 12 years as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, according to TruthOut.

Americans For Fair Taxation (AFFT) recently analyzed data that breaks down election campaign contributions. Their assessment suggests that there is an upward trend in billionaire donations to political campaigns. Per the assessment, "billionaires have increased their donations from $31 million total during the 2010 election cycle to a whopping $1.2 billion in the 2020 election cycle, or about 39 times more."

In short, the amount spent in just 2020 accounts for almost 40% of all billionaire political campaign donations since 1990. In fact, spending in the four-year span between 2012 and 2016 is an indication of how trends have changed dramatically.

In 2016, billionaires spent approximately $682 million in campaign donations as opposed to just $233 million back in 2012. So how did the Citizens Unitedruling open this door?

Per Truthout:

"In January of 2010, conservative Supreme Court justices ruled in their Citizens United decision that restricting corporate donations was a violation of corporations’ First Amendment rights – a decision that granted individual rights to corporations and enabled them to spend unlimited amounts of money on campaign contributions. As a result of this decision, vast amounts of money from corporate and deep-pocketed interests have been funneled into elections."

Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness released a statement criticizing the court's decision describing it as "weak taxation of the wealthy" and "anemic regulation."

“On this anniversary of the disastrous Citizens United decision, the escalating campaign donations of billionaires offer the clearest argument possible for why we have to get big money out of politics,” said Clemente. “Weak taxation of the wealthy combined with anemic regulation of campaign fundraising have handed America’s billionaires outsized political influence to go along with their huge economic clout.”

AFFT also released a statement criticizing the ruling.

“Corporations are not people, and billionaires shouldn’t get to use their enormous wealth to pick and choose who they want in office,” Americans for Tax Fairness wrote. “It’s well beyond time for Citizens United to go, and to put real action towards getting big money out of politics. Our democracy depends on it.”

===

sparked by 11 21 kyle BS parasite --> maker/taker --> job creator double god term?

god literally made something from nothing // entrepreneur ayn rand hero iron man musk

aha the bizMAN is rationale and clear-eyed vs hysterical alarmists; relies on numbers and reason; a biz is inefficient, and our ceo/prez will balance out budget/checkbook, eliminate waste fraud and abuse so the taxcuts will pay for themselves by magic, provide only minimal important service like billion$ jet fighters and cut those lazy POC from food stanps so they can be independent/ producers not takers.

ayn rand agenda 21 BS biggest damage?

ayn /maggie say no society--> djt no community of nations:

tisch maine timeline:

2017 (June)

President Trump announces that the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate

Agreement

Stephen Bannon and the anti-globalist, climate denying contingent of White House advisors

trump the personal entreaties of Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Pope Francis, Ivanka Trump, Rex

Tillerson, European Union heads of state and many others. Oblivious to the fact that the

emissions standards under the Agreement are voluntary, subject to revision, and entail no

penalties for noncompliance, the President calls the deal “draconian,” imposing unfair standards

on American companies and employees. “At what point does America get demeaned? At what

point do they start laughing at us as a country?” Trump says. “We don’t want other leaders and

other countries laughing at us anymore. And they won’t be.”

The New York Times observes that

“Mr. Trump’s decision to abandon the agreement for environmental action signed by 195 nations

is a remarkable rebuke to heads of state, climate activists, corporate executives and members of

the president’s own staff, who all failed to change his mind with an intense, last-minute lobbying

blitz. The Paris agreement was intended to bind the world community into battling rising

temperatures in concert, and the departure of the Earth’s second-largest polluter is a major

blow,”* and its editorial board calls the withdrawal “disgraceful.”**Wall Street Journal

headlines declare: “U.S. Climate Pivot Puts a Reluctant China in Driver’s Seat: Trump’s

withdrawal from Paris accord gives China a new opening to exert sway on a big global issue” ***

Some find a May 30 op/ed in the Wall Street Journal by presidential advisors H. R. McMaster

and Gary Cohn as illuminating on the withdrawal decision in: “The president embarked on his

first foreign trip with a cleareyed outlook that theworld is not a ‘global community’ but an arena

where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage.”

:{:{}:

Writes David Brooks in The New York Times: “That sentence is the epitome of the Trump project.

It asserts that selfishness is the sole driver of human affairs.”****

Al Gore’s statement on the

withdrawal declares that “Removing the United States from the Paris Agreement is a reckless and

indefensible action. It undermines America’s standing in the world and threatens to damage

humanity’s ability to solve the climate crisis in time. But make no mistake: if President Trump

won’t lead, the American people will. Civic leaders, mayors, governors, CEOs, investors and the

majority of the business community will take up this challenge. We are in the middle of a clean

energy revolution that no single person or group can stop. President Trump’s decision is

profoundly in conflict with what the majority of Americans want from our president; but no

matter what he does, we will ensure that our inevitable transition to a clean energy economy

continues.”*****

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers states that “We may have our

first post-rational president,” and that “It is possible that last week will be remembered as a

hinge in history — a moment when the United States and the world started moving on a

path away from the peace, prosperity and stability that have defined the past 75

years.”****** The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication reports that US voters favor

staying in the Paris Agreement by a margin of 5 to 1, and that half of Trump voters support staying

in, with fewer than 3 in 10 saying we should not stay in.******* The formal process of

withdrawal will likely take four years, and not be final until after the 2020 presidential election.

[see 2015 (December)]

*Michael Shear, “Trump Will Withdraw U.S. From Paris Climate Agreement,” New York Times, June 1, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/climate/trump-paris-climate-agreement.html

**Editorial Board, “Our Disgraceful Exit From the Paris Accord,” New York Times, June 1, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/trump-paris-climate-change-agreement.html

***Brian Spegele and Te-Ping Chen, “U.S. Climate Pivot Puts a Reluctant China in Driver’s Seat,” Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2017,

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-climate-pivot-puts-a-reluctant-china-in-drivers-seat-1496380249

****David Brooks, “Donald Trump Poisons the World,” New York Times, June 2, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/opinion/donald-trump-poisons-the-world.html

*****The Climate Reality Project, “Statement by Former Vice President Al Gore on Today’s Decision by the Trump Administration

to Withdraw from the Paris Agreement,” June 1, 2017, https://www.climaterealityproject.org/press/statement-al-gore-us-commitmentparis-agreement

******Lawrence Summers, “After 75 years of progress, was last week a hinge in history?” Washington Post, June 4, 2017,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/after-75-years-of-progress-was-last-week-a-hinge-in-history/2017/06/04/2085b91e-47cf11e7-bcde-624ad94170ab_story.html?utm_term=.7ccf9ee984ec

*******Jennifer Marlon, Eric Fine, and Anthony Keiserowtiz, “Majorities of Americans in Every State Support Participation in the

Paris Agreement,” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, May 8, 2017,

http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/paris_agreement_by_state/

---

aha: world is complex. chaotic (made more so by bannon trump disruptor) so ppl seek one simple cause --> soros jewish conspiracy, or ag 21 global elites Commie UN. magical thinking, end time race war boogaloo cleanse.

5/21 someone said democracy depend on empathy (trust, rebuild commons vs rather fill in public pool good than let those undeserving POC use it; rather cut social safety net that i poor rural not well educated ppl need to stay in middle class to make sure brn/blk ppl don't use it b/c lazy. not easy b/c I don't want to ID w/ those sinful lazy losers.

===

aha see hierarchy, black and white thus ~ transgender; putting things/ppl in their rightful place (plus follow leader means don't have to think, plus if feel indiv powerless, join the other cos play militia we the ppl gets corrupted/perverted to doing HIS will, trust the plan, the storm will punish the wicked who have confused/mislead cheated us

BUT rust bible/ poverty belt has watched world unravel, opiod diseases of despair, ghost dance trump, mex workers

an 1 22 corrob

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/scientists-establish-ink-between-religious-fundamentalism-and-brain-damage/

A study published in the journal Neuropsychologia has shown that religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. The findings suggest that damage to particular areas of the prefrontal cortex indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by diminishing cognitive flexibility and openness—a psychology term that describes a personality trait which involves dimensions like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness.

Religious beliefs can be thought of as socially transmitted mental representations that consist of supernatural events and entities assumed to be real. Religious beliefs differ from empirical beliefs, which are based on how the world appears to be and are updated as new evidence accumulates or when new theories with better predictive power emerge. On the other hand, religious beliefs are not usually updated in response to new evidence or scientific explanations, and are therefore strongly associated with conservatism. They are fixed and rigid, which helps promote predictability and coherence to the rules of society among individuals within the group.

Religious fundamentalism refers to an ideology that emphasizes traditional religious texts and rituals and discourages progressive thinking about religion and social issues. Fundamentalist groups generally oppose anything that questions or challenges their beliefs or way of life. For this reason, they are often aggressive towards anyone who does not share their specific set of supernatural beliefs, and towards science, as these things are seen as existential threats to their entire worldview.

Since religious beliefs play a massive role in driving and influencing human behavior throughout the world, it is important to understand the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism from a psychological and neurological perspective.

To investigate the cognitive and neural systems involved in religious fundamentalism, a team of researchers—led by Jordan Grafman of Northwestern University—conducted a study that utilized data from Vietnam War veterans that had been gathered previously. The vets were specifically chosen because a large number of them had damage to brain areas suspected of playing a critical role in functions related to religious fundamentalism. CT scans were analyzed comparing 119 vets with brain trauma to 30 healthy vets with no damage, and a survey that assessed religious fundamentalism was administered. While the majority of participants were Christians of some kind, 32.5% did not specify a particular religion.

Based on previous research, the experimenters predicted that the prefrontal cortex would play a role in religious fundamentalism, since this region is known to be associated with something called ‘cognitive flexibility’. This term refers to the brain’s ability to easily switch from thinking about one concept to another, and to think about multiple things simultaneously. Cognitive flexibility allows organisms to update beliefs in light of new evidence, and this trait likely emerged because of the obvious survival advantage such a skill provides. It is a crucial mental characteristic for adapting to new environments because it allows individuals to make more accurate predictions about the world under new and changing conditions.

Brain imaging research has shown that a major neural region associated with cognitive flexibility is the prefrontal cortex—specifically two areas known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Additionally, the vmPFC was of interest to the researchers because past studies have revealed its connection to fundamentalist-type beliefs. For example, one study showed individuals with vmPFC lesions rated radical political statements as more moderate than people with normal brains, while another showed a direct connection between vmPFC damage and religious fundamentalism. For these reasons, in the present study, researchers looked at patients with lesions in both the vmPFC and the dlPFC, and searched for correlations between damage in these areas and responses to religious fundamentalism questionnaires.

According to Dr. Grafman and his team, since religious fundamentalism involves a strict adherence to a rigid set of beliefs, cognitive flexibility and open-mindedness present a challenge for fundamentalists. As such, they predicted that participants with lesions to either the vmPFC or the dlPFC would score low on measures of cognitive flexibility and trait openness and high on measures of religious fundamentalism.

The results showed that, as expected, damage to the vmPFC and dlPFC was associated with religious fundamentalism. Further tests revealed that this increase in religious fundamentalism was caused by a reduction in cognitive flexibility and openness resulting from the prefrontal cortex impairment. Cognitive flexibility was assessed using a standard psychological card sorting test that involved categorizing cards with words and images according to rules. Openness was measured using a widely-used personality survey known as the NEO Personality Inventory. The data suggests that damage to the vmPFC indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by suppressing both cognitive flexibility and openness.

These findings are important because they suggest that impaired functioning in the prefrontal cortex—whether from brain trauma, a psychological disorder, a drug or alcohol addiction, or simply a particular genetic profile—can make an individual susceptible to religious fundamentalism. And perhaps in other cases, extreme religious indoctrination harms the development or proper functioning of the prefrontal regions in a way that hinders cognitive flexibility and openness.

The authors emphasize that cognitive flexibility and openness aren’t the only things that make brains vulnerable to religious fundamentalism. In fact, their analyses showed that these factors only accounted for a fifth of the variation in fundamentalism scores. Uncovering those additional causes, which could be anything from genetic predispositions to social influences, is a future research project that the researchers believe will occupy investigators for many decades to come, given how complex and widespread religious fundamentalism is and will likely continue to be for some time.

By investigating the cognitive and neural underpinnings of religious fundamentalism, we can better understand how the phenomenon is represented in the connectivity of the brain, which could allow us to someday inoculate against rigid or radical belief systems through various kinds of mental and cognitive exercises.

===

aha? rooted i RR road to serfdom BS death panels

an 1 22

Watch: Tucker Carlson compares COVID-19 vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan experiments

Meaghan Ellis January 22, 2022

Fox News' Tucker Carlson recently compared COVID vaccine mandates to medical experiments that were conducted during the times of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

The conservative primetime host made the controversial remarks on Friday, January 21 during his discussion with Dr. Robert Malone, an anti-vaccination virologist and immunologist known for spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine. Their discussion came just hours after a Texas federal judge struck down President Joe Biden's vaccine mandate.

While discussing the ruling, Carlson criticized the president's vaccine mandate and compared it to the Nazi experiments that were performed on captives held in concentration camps in Germany and the human procedures that were conducted during the period of Imperial Japan.

“After watching what the imperial Japanese army and the Nazis did in their medical experiments, I thought that American physicians agreed that compulsory medical care was unethical, it was immoral, and it could never be imposed on anyone. When did we forget that?”

Malone responded in agreement with Carlson saying, “Apparently, about a year ago was when we must have forgotten that… Thank you for bringing up the Nuremberg Trials, Tucker.”

Carlson's latest remarks align with a history of similar remarks made by Fox News hosts. Back in November, Fox Nation hostLara Logan compared the nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, to Josef Mengele, the Nazi “Angel of Death” who used human beings in Auschwitz for grotesque experiments. Shortly after Logan made the remarks, the network decided to sever ties with her.

===

WWF ritual re-enactment of good triumph over evil [tho we like rooting for outlaw/underdog ubermensch who does not play by the rules, rebels]; thus we don't care its fake any more than broadway play or mass?

populist trump promised to restore prosperity, drain the swamp corruption by which the elite continue to win the rigged game/system; of course those in the corrupt gubmint would oppsed him 9deep state) so he will need the power of patriots to fight them, so 1/6

aha alt right event [scientology? "back to parents basements"] was about manifesting indiv grievance // 1/6? reality TV taken to next level/step?

cdv alludes to amuse self death; reality TV prepared us for post truth world? ruthless darwinian winners and losers?

1 22 cdv

...Consider the fascinating and, at times, undeniably entertaining characters of TrumpWorld. Donald Trump himself is a reality TV star and pro wrestling "heel" who somehow became president. He has surrounded himself with other characters straight from central casting, including corrupt consigliere Roger Stone and "America's mayor" Rudy Giuliani, now a grossly incompetent go-between and a legal adviser of dubious skill and wisdom.

It's easy to laugh, but we cannot overlook those smart and very dangerous foes of democracy such as Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Stephen Miller, John Eastman, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and numerous others. There are also the lesser-known true believers and ideologues who lurk in the shadows of think tanks, interest groups, academia, business and finance, the news media, right-wing evangelical churches, paramilitaries and "tactical culture," military and veterans groups, and elsewhere in the private sector and the world of public policy and consulting.

===

aha: as trms and i think hayes note goal not to govern b/c gubmint inherently corrupt/incompetent and regulation evil; plus they would have to understand how system works and do work and even compromise, and the latter is evil and former unappealing, so do standup like boebert; troll own the libs tickled up from alt rt swamp:

presumably he's looking for adulation like bannon or anyone would get on gab or talk radio, a brave act of speak truth to power, ok to insult an illegitimate prez who stole election?

a bit like 2nd freedumb rightwingers see as absolute with no acctability eg

an 12 21

...Bombarded with criticism for his childish stunt, the 35-year-old Schmeck told the Oregonian, “Now, I am being attacked for utilizing my freedom of speech.” And Obeidallah slams Schmeck for painting himself as a victim.

“Schmeck is now doing the cliché conservative move of saying he's being unfairly criticized because people have slammed his ‘joke’…. Aww, poor ‘victim’ Schmeck,” Obeidallah argues. “Apparently, he thinks he should be able to tell Biden to basically go f**k himself while on a family-friendly holiday call, but no one should be able to take issue with his actions. Sorry, that's not how freedom of speech works.”

Obeidallah continues, “If you want to troll a president to apparently make others on the right happy, you can expect criticism. If you don't want criticism because you are painfully thin-skinned, then don't say ‘Let's go, Brandon’ on a live Christmas Eve special. It's as simple as that.”...

===

12/21 many //

fear hype2

but made me realize it's fox's biz model?!

also facebook algo amplify

see bad faith/ faux fox outrage

phobia fear scam started with entine

vs scam grift ideological entre?

do xians fear or anticipate end of world armageddon?

// outrage? social media only good at a couple emotions

see emotion anger fear

see rhet god devil term, anti-commie

see us vs them enemy, polarization

note trumpista reptile brain sensitive

should direct mail this be sorta generic for hype fear grift online fundraising ? eg

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/freedomworks-hopes-anti-critical-race-theory-organizing-will-bring-massive-right-wing-gains-in-2022/

freedomWorks, one of the many right-wing groups taking part in the dishonest campaign against critical race theory, is fomenting opposition to teaching about systemic racism in an effort to mobilize conservative voters to turn out in 2022 midterms and take over school boards.

The day after Thanksgiving, FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon wrote in a fundraising email that opposition to critical race theory “could be the key to making MASSIVE political gain in 2022.” He claimed that “the Left” is out to “indoctrinate children with CRT – so our kids will start hating our country and our God-given freedoms as much as the Left does.”

FreedomWorks’ Noah Wall followed up with an email a couple days later claiming that “The radical Left has proven that they are willing to do whatever it takes to brainwash future generations to transform America into a socialist nation.”

Brandon’s email touted FreedomWorks’ efforts to recruit and train school board candidates. He claimed that since the group had launched its BEST (Building Education for Students Together) initiative, it had hosted grassroots events reaching 3,700 activists, trained more than 300 activists to run for the school board, encouraged 150 of its Candidate Academy graduates to commit to filing paperwork to run for school board seats, and created partnerships with many of the other right-wing groups rallying activists to take over school boards.

Just a few days later, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah lent his name to a Dec. 1 FreedomWorks fundraising email that focused on other supposed threats from “the Left’s socialist wish list” such as a $15 minimum wage and statehood for the District of Columbia. Lee’s brief note introduced a longer message from Brandon, who asked for money to fight “the swamp” and elect right-wing candidates in 2022. “Whether it’s AOC’s so called ‘Green New Deal,’ Washington D.C. Statehood, Supreme Court packing—or the Democrats’ schemes to seize TOTAL control of our election system—America is facing a GRAVE THREAT.”

FreedomWorks is associated with the State Policy Network, a collection of think tanks and advocacy groups that promote right-wing policies at the state level. Brandon is a member of Council for National Policy, a secretive and influential network of right-wing and far-right activists.

Tags: Adam Brandon, Mike Lee. Noah Wall, Critical Race Theory, Election 2022 School Boards Council for National Policy Freedom Works FreedomWorks State Policy Network

===

aha: slavery is am original sin, thus thugs on a plane antifa is the real threat/promoters of violence/ looing/rioting George Floyd BLM, we white ppl kyle are merely protecting ourselves/sacred property

12 21 see all https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/conservative/**

Some of you will be familiar with DARVO, an acronym for deny, attack and reverse victim and offender. DARVO describes the behavior of psychological abusers when they are being held accountable for their behavior. Donald Trump and his supporters clearly exhibit DARVO habits. Rather than accept blame for anything they do, they turn around and accuse those blaming them of creating the problem. Victimized Bully Syndrome (VBS), as I'm describing it, though, is slightly different from DARVO. With DARVO the abusive behavior comes first and DARVO only emerges if the attacker is asked to take responsibility. But with VBS the cries of being victims come first and are used to justify the underlying bullying behaviors. The bully under VBS is always already acting in self-defense.[// kyle pleads self defense from danger he created, btw claimed to go as 1st aid medic?!]

---

aha: bannon is just latest extension of rove's dismissal of reality-based journalism?

alt rt trolls win by owning the libs, often by making outrageous claim they know to be false to provoke an emotional reaction in weak woman-y snowflakes.

recall early graphic of blogs red/blue but red more insular/echo

flood the zone bannon/ troll it is a deliberate strategy to overwhelm correction [by lamestream media, fake news?!] and thus moderation; you cannot trust news nor gubmint thus civil society erodes and --> authoritartian/fascism strong MAN/strict FATHER to fix, maga

soc media co attempt to tamp down BS evaved by misspell or vol/forved migrsation to gab etc that prides self on lack of moderation [censorship]

flood the zone with shit/disinfo might originally been troll tactic to deflect accurate critiques/blame and rubber glue inverse crypto bizarro mirror world --> Earth2; but always hype fear about THEM enemy threat to all that's good, grift for $ to fight the evil

amplify/accelerate --> radicalization; enemy // target // tyrant

aha echo is the opposite of correction,[WELL THERE'S A SORT OF CORRECTION BUT IN THE WRONG DIRECTION BY A SMALLER AND SMALLER SUBSET OF WACKOS THAT IS IRONICALLY GETTING LARGER AND LARGER AND FINDING/MAKING EACH OTHER [[CRAZIER]]; and algo gives incremental DOSE of crazy that builds on previous slightly less crazy:--> earth2 delusional break from reality is phase shift/level up/ tip pt? doom spiral?

12 21 an salon https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/tucker-carlson/**

the TV was talking to me. I was in the midst of a delusion that the news anchors on CNN were operatives of a shadow government run by the Clintons. Every time I crossed the living room of my father's dingy basement apartment, their heads followed me and the news anchors interrogated me about my role in the Russia investigation. I believed "Russia investigation" was really code for a global conspiracy to enslave humanity through mind control. President Donald Trump and the Republicans were secretly working to overturn this shadow government and end the deep state programs. Targets of torture like me would be set free.

I turned the channel to FOX News. They repeated over and over that Hilary Clinton was a criminal. Even though I was a Democrat and had voted for Bill Clinton twice, I mailed in the form to join the Republican Party. Then I faxed evidence to the Russian consulate and sent a letter to the CIA offering to cooperate in the investigation.

What I didn't know I was that I was in the advanced stages of untreated paranoid schizophrenia. I was experiencing a psychotic break from reality.

It all seemed so real.

When I was eventually treated, my psychiatrist explained to me, "With paranoid schizophrenia it's just like "The Bourne Identity" — there are people for you, people against you, and somebody always has to be the villain."

I know what you're thinking — thank God they have medication for these people. Now, I wonder, is the average American so different from me? Are we all susceptible to paranoid thoughts, conspiratorial thinking and bias when executive function in the frontal lobes and our ability to reason are disabled by fear?

Terrified by a global pandemic, there are people who believe Bill Gates is an evil mastermind who engineered the coronavirus, with plans to depopulate and microchip the world's population, while profiting in the process. Antivaxxers refuse to take a vaccine they think will alter the structure of human DNA. Our brains seek to impose order. Conspiracy theories can provide answers to people who feel overwhelmed. But ideally the frontal lobes should step in to challenge strange thoughts by asking the question: Is what I am perceiving based in reality?

Dr. Oliver Freudenreich, Co-Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychosis Program, states that there is no generally agreed-upon definition on what constitutes a delusion. From a psychiatric or biological perspective, delusions are driven by excessive amounts of the neurotransmitter dopamine. There is a biological basis to them, and treatment can correct this abnormality. A person with such delusions (e.g., somebody with schizophrenia) is expected to respond to being treated with an antipsychotic medication which blocks dopamine. In other words, one can take a pill and think rationally.

However, many people can't do that if their delusional thinking is part of a worldview that is more an ideology. According to Dr. Freudenreich, when people create their own insular groups — where delusional ideas are never corrected, but simply bounce around in an echo chamber — it is much harder to fight those types of delusions.

Policy divides are now often framed as a battle between good and evil. The most obvious consequence of overheated partisan rhetoric is that someone with an untreated psychiatric illness can go on to commit an act of violence against a person or group that they believe is a perpetrator of their suffering. This is rare. More common is the normal person who goes down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole and finds a world that makes sense to them.

On January 6th, 2021, incited by President Trump and believing the election had been stolen, a mob attacked the Capital building. Some in the crowd showed up for the "Storm," which is a QAnon conspiracy theory that posits that Trump was planning mass arrests of a secret cabal of satanic pedophiles and coup plotters, headed by Hilary Clinton and George Soros. Capitol police described the scene as being like fighting a medieval battle.

Social dynamics can propagate conspiracy-based thinking that mimics biologically triggered delusions. But there is no medication that will stop mass violence fueled by conspiracies.

I was a forty-six-year-old filmmaker when I suddenly began to have paranoid thoughts that people were following me. When I lost my day job due to bizarre behavior, I lost my excellent health insurance. I was dumped into America's broken mental health care system that offers substandard psychiatric care to patients on Medicaid, while spending vast amounts of taxpayer money. Misdiagnosed and neglected at the county hospital, I got sicker and sicker … until the TV started talking to me.

Years of my life are now gone. I try not to be bitter that I ended up unemployed, bankrupt and almost homeless, when all I needed was proper medical care. Every day I am grateful that I didn't wind up living on the streets or locked up in prison, like so many people with schizophrenia.

It's easy to mock people who think Bill Gates wants to put a microchip in them with the coronavirus vaccine. But it's much harder to separate conspiracy theorists' larger existential fears from our own. We're approaching the second year of a global pandemic, which is causing mass anxiety and depression. The internet routinely displays images of future roads in major cities as gushing rivers due to climate change. Billions of fish were boiled in the American Northwest and Canada during an unprecedented heatwave this summer. If someone's mind starts spinning with their wildest fears and finds solace in a conspiracy theory, can you really blame them?

Television is a powerful medium. CNN and FOX News repeat the same headlines, the same phrases, over and over in the same news day. Back then, these read to my unhinged mind as coded speech; to the unsuspecting public, it is more akin to propaganda. When I was psychotic, I thought a shadow government had a ministry of propaganda and they colluded across networks. I worry about living in a country where the two major political parties are always at war, unable to get anything done, and the public is fed a delusional world by networks and social media companies competing for viewers.

People with paranoid schizophrenia see patterns that don't actually exist. Just like conspiracy theorists, they are constantly scanning the news for pieces of information to connect the dots about unseen forces controlling events. Both groups believe they are being persecuted by others. I had grandiose beliefs that I was at the center of every news story on TV. My mind was looking to cast a villain to account for the symptoms of a brain disease. The media handed me a culprit to blame. [q or trump sent me]

Dr. Anthony Fauci has complained about the extraordinary divisiveness surrounding the public health crisis created by the pandemic. The current battle is over masks and vaccines. FOX News paints the Democratic Party as a threat to democracy that has invented domestic enemies, such as the unvaccinated, to desperately cling to power. News anchors across CNN repeat the phrase "viral blizzard" to warn the public and scare the unvaccinated about the new variant. Fear mongering is psychologically destabilizing to the most normal person. But this media environment can be toxic to someone with an untreated psychiatric illness. I wish politicians and their media allies would stop contributing to the collective unraveling of the American mind.

aha:

SEE NEW MAIN NODE MAGA TAKE BACK:

FOUNDING MYTH: innocent colonists oppressed by tyrant so no choice but to minuteman pick up rifle to response to attempt to deprive them of guns; they would not submit/surrender, be the bitch of geo III. nanny state cannot force me vaxxer to wear a diaper b/c goes beyond emmaculation to infantilization: helpless, no control, freedumb; after WIN WASP XIAN founding fathers wrote CONSTITUTION

aha a military victory surest proof of god's favor, superiority

gubmint tyrant thus violence justified, the job /duty of a man/real patriot; B/C ELECTION STOLEN BY THEM FROM US, WE HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO USE VIOLENCE TO MAKE IT RIGHT

aha a real man merkin fights to the death rather than surrender (loss of freedom) and become someone's bitch, but the good xian woman knows her place and happily submits to husband, he has dominion over her; in wrestling winner pins defeated down, not unlike rape? winner comes out on top, "you're going down" is taunt/challenge/prediction

12 21 see all https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/conservative/**

Take this example: In a recent interview with Fox News, Dr. Mehmet Oz, candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania suggested that Americans had been victimized by President Biden's "one-size-fits-all" COVID-19 "rules that limit our freedom." According to Oz, U.S. citizens "want government to get out of their way to stop scaring them into submission."

If we set aside the sheer stupidity of a doctor suggesting that we need "as many different approaches as possible" to the pandemic, the critical takeaway is Oz's claim that Biden's policy is designed to victimize the public by scaring them, taking away their freedoms, and destroying their dignity. According to this logic, refusing to wear a mask, get vaccinated, or support public health policy is a valid defense, rather than bullying behavior that puts everyone in peril.

===

aha: erosion of trust 60's viet nam lies pentagon papers, secret plan to end war, nixon lies ---> apollo landing hoax, Area 51 ...koch propaganda libtard Fox --> soc med/ OANN, Newsmax is a blog with video?

// = interlocking isms?

21 21 an 1/6 was practice

Barton Gellman, a staff writer for The Atlantic, has an excellent track record when it comes to predicting the ways in which former President Donald Trump and his allies would assault U.S. democracy. Before the United States’ 2020 presidential election, Gellman predicted that Trump would attempt a coup d’état if he lost to now-President Joe Biden —which is exactly what happened. And Gellman is now warning that Trumpistas will be better equipped to pull off a coup in the 2024 election; the journalist discussed that warning during a December 7 appearance on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show.

Maddow and Gellman’s appearance on Maddow’s show followed the December 6 publication of an article headlined “Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun” on The Atlantic’s website. That article is also available as a cover story in the January/February 2022 issue of The Atlantic’s print edition.

Describing Gellman’s reporting as “terrifying,” Maddow asked Gellman to discuss the possibility of Republicans “throwing out thousands, if not millions, of votes in the 2024 election.”

Gellman told Maddow, “I think it’s very real. I’m personally, just as a citizen, very worried about it. I think you have people who are bound and determined not to allow Republicans to lose another national election — and not to allow Trump to lose another election. And they are giving themselves permission to do it.”

The journalist went on to say, “They are characterizing the Democrats as tyrants, as thieves of an election who actually stole the presidency, as communists, as people who hate America — and they couldn’t discuss it with any more extremity than they’re doing. When you do that, you give yourself permission to take all kinds of steps in opposition. I mean, if you have an existential threat to the United States of America — which is what Republicans are saying about Biden — then what remedy would not be allowed to you?”

Maddow asked Gellman why the “openness to violence” among “Trump supporters” has been “growing worse,” and he responded, “I think there’s a strong ongoing message that is amplified thousands of times by the whole ecosystem on the right that is a propaganda ecosystem, and it is telling people that someone stole the election from them — that the Democrats are destroying the country, that more and more so-called evidence proves these things. And yeah, I think there’s this very large mass of Trump supporters who believe both that Biden is an illegitimate president who stole the office, and that violence is justified.”

===

aha oann fox dems are coming for you // kyle, bannon jok

dr fauci

venom hard to fathom? st'd war on sci by gop grounded in climate denial and just anti-green regs in general?

a really familiar and thus reassuring? face on TV; he was one of 2 actually experts on podium w/ djt

kept correcting nonsense, thus predictably disappeared from press confs, now wm barr, vp

once demonized, anything can be charged?

random 12 21

Right Wing Round-Up: Pelosi’s Fake Mansion

Kyle MantylaBy Kyle Mantyla | November 30, 2021 5:32 pm

Leia Idliby @ Mediaite: Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace Throw Down in Brutal Twitter Feud Over Boebert’s Racist Comments.

Cristina Cabrera @ Talking Points Memo: Another Video Shows Boebert Hurling Islamophobic Slurs At Omar Back In September.

Justin Baragona @ The Daily Beast: Fox Nation Host Compares Fauci to Nazi ‘Angel of Death’: ‘People All Across the World Are Saying This.’

Media Matters: Tucker Carlson calls Dr. Fauci “an even shorter version of Benito Mussolini.”

Jim Swift @ The Bulwark: Conservative Media Makes Up a Fake Florida Mansion for Nancy Pelosi.

Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: Evangelist: Your Circumcised Tithes Will Protect Your Family.

Tags: Lara LoganLauren BoebertMarjorie Taylor GreeneRobin BullockTucker CarlsonRound-Up

===

see lone wolf leaderless resistance mass shooters

in countries with gun control, told to use knife or vehicle (france? cda?)

aha: (thom traces slavery roots to RR to now]

if gov't is tryrant we need guns terroorism to defend oureselves and our freedumb; if gov't merely inept handcuffed by PC we need guns to defend ourselves from antifa thugs commie dems; car kill protester is not that far from PI duetertes death squads to kill dealers and junkies?! note this turns over gov't monopoly on force and hands over to lone wack jobs radicalized by fox and soc med

thom h kyle

...A right-wing militia group in New York celebrated in the streets and then put a punctuation mark on their disdain for the law and simple rules of a civil society by entering the NY subway system through the emergency exit, bypassing the toll booths. "Rules don't apply to us!" they seemed to be shouting, along with, "You can't stop us!"

Trump wannabees in public office who are still trying to capture the white supremacist and white nationhood vote have doubled down on his strategy of fear, hate, and vigilantism.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, for example, recently signed into law legislation that gives legal protections to people who drive their cars into protesters in the street and defines everybody in any protest as a criminal felon if anybody in that protest breaks a window or engages in other illegal activity.

With DeSantis and other Republican governors pre-exonerating people like the driver who viciously killed Heather Heyer and vigilante protest shooters like Rittenhouse, many are worried that we're entering a new era where vigilante shooters and drivers-into-crowds will become as normalized and accepted as Amy Vanderpool documents how normalized daily mass shootings have become in America.

Laws similar to Florida's have been passed or are pending in numerous Republican-controlled states, presumably in anticipation of citizen protests when those states use their newly passed laws to overturn the will of voters in the 2022 and 2024 elections. Object to your politicians handing an election they lost to themselves? You go straight from the streets to the jail, just like in tinhorn dictatorships.

There's always been a fringe movement of violent white supremacist vigilantes in America, particularly since the end of the Civil War, but they've never before been embraced by or succeeded in capturing a political party. Today, astonishingly, that's the case in our country.

So, what's motivating today's vigilantes and the police who often aid and support them, as in the Rittenhouse case?...

===

minor aha that buids on prev:

// me vs we, macho, freedumb, anger, victim

11 21

...Another one of her cartoons, called "Avatar: The Last Airbender," speaks to our current social and political crisis, which I think of as a crisis of humility.

Meaning, there's not enough of it on account of there being not enough demand. That might be a consequence of history. When I was my daughter's age, in 1984, American culture was very worried about children and their feelings of shame. (To a degree, it still is.) The culture asked parents to encourage in their kids a pride of self. Healthy self-directing egos were thought to mean healthy self-directing children, which meant a society of healthy self-directing individuals.

But Uncle Iroh, one of the characters in "Avatar," knows better. For reasons I won't go into, Iroh is something of a pariah by the time we meet him. He has fallen from a great height. As such, he's come to understand the real link between pride and shame. As he tells his young nephew, who insists on being proud: "Pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the only antidote to shame."

READ: Former Trump aide who was 'Anonymous': Why he stayed, why he left and how the GOP became more dangerous than ISIS]

Our culture still seems to think the answer to feelings of shame and insecurity is feelings of pride and self-confidence. You often see this after some kind of disaster, like a shooting massacre. We are frequently told suspects felt shame so they lashed out violently. If they had a more robust inner life, a more secure sense of self, perhaps the violence could have been averted. But as Uncle Iroh understood, high self-esteem is not the answer to low self-esteem. The ego is the source of rage, hate and violence. Humility is where one finds peace.

This has some empirical basis. In the 1990s, social psychologist Roy Baumeister led a team of researchers in finding that threats to the ego can disrupt a person's ability to self-regulate emotions. This can and does result in hate, which, in turn, can and does lead to violence. Baumeister does not address humility specifically, but he does imply it as he points to the problem of being proud instead of being humble.

"The new cultural demands on selfhood make it into a burdensome concern that can produce frequent stress," he wrote in The Self and Society in 1997. "People feel they must maintain a highly positive image of self that requires constant vigilance against dangers and threats. Even if they do not experience major experiences of humiliation or disgrace, the ongoing threat and resulting demand for vigilance may become tiresome and draining. Awareness of self may often be tinged with worry or stress and hence may take on an aversive aspect."

You can imagine how this plays out politically. Since 2008, the political right has stood against democracy on account of democracy electing a Black president. To these bigots and ghouls, America is a white man's country given to them by God to rule with impunity. Every time the outgroup wins a little freedom, the ingroup feels less free. Democracy, moreover, leads to equality. The political right hates that. Equality means bigots and ghouls aren't as super-duper as they believe they are. Equality means they just might have to go out and kill somebody.

You could say the election of Donald Trump, the anti-democratic turn we have seen from the GOP and all the shooting massacres we've seen since the reelection of a Black president altogether constitute one giant wounded ego. The result has been one giant lashing out against democracy the way mass shooters lash out against schools. As Baumeister said, in a different but relevant context: "Cultural prescriptions can exert considerable influence by telling people at what point it is appropriate to turn violent, ranging from 'only when someone is attacking you in a life-threatening fashion' to 'when the person implies disrespect toward you by making eye contact.'"

Ego, pride, shame, hate, rage, violence, fascism. These all have a common source in the human mind. The irony is our culture believes the antidote is more of the same. USA Today's Marco della Cava wrote today that the path toward national political healing this Thanksgiving holiday might be "practicing gratitude." As one of his sources told him: "We learn to appreciate things when we lose them, unfortunately."

How about we appreciate losing them? To be sure, you should have what you need. If that's not enough, rethink your needs. Desire, said Epicurus centuries ago, is what causes so much pain. To minimize pain, and maximize pleasure, you should minimize desire. "Practicing gratitude" can easily slip back to the original problem -- to an ego that can't be satisfied no matter how much self-confidence it has, an ego that can't tolerate the "disrespect of eye contact," and an ego that manifests itself politically as a Republican Party turned fascist.

===

see hierarchy, strict fr property (edit bd and I tie] control, power rape domestic violence, political violence is about keeping THEM in their rightful lower place vs Real Am

11 21

Political violence is on people's minds now that Kyle Rittenhouse has been acquitted. According to USA Today, far-right groups celebrated last week's unsurprising verdict. "Kyle Rittenhouse is the hero we've been waiting for" was posted on the Gab profile for VDare, a self-consciously fascist organization headquartered in the foothills of Washington, Conn. The takeaway appears to be that it's now OK to shoot anti-racists as long as the shooting can be credibly characterized as "self-defense."

Protests broke out in Kenosha, Wis., where Rittenhouse traveled two summers ago to "protect" property while demonstrators, including some violent looters, protested the police murder of George Floyd. These newest protests were accompanied by a father-daughter duo carrying the same long gun Rittenhouse did. Instead of being white, though, they were Black. Instead of protecting property, they were protecting "anti-Rittenhouse protesters," said the New York Post.

Political violence is on people's minds. The right to petition the government for redress of grievances enshrined in the First Amendment seems to be running against the grain of the right to bear arms enshrined in the Second Amendment. After Rittenhouse's acquittal, anti-racists may feel it's too dangerous to petition. (The fascists are taking it to mean they can shoot first and often.) But some won't let the Second Amendment nullify the First. They'll arm up.

When racists with guns meet anti-racists with guns, it's likely the results will be bad, bad, very bad. USA Today, citing a study by Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, said "armed protests are six times more likely to turn violent compared to protests where no guns are present." That study examined more than 30,000 public demonstrations over 18 months between January 2020 to June 2021.

[READ: The dark Trumptopia we inhabit is the world science fiction warned us about]

Lead researcher Roudabeh Kishi told USA Today: "Oftentimes guns can kind of play a role with just increasing tensions. They're used as intimidation and kind of makes a tense environment even more tense. And so sometimes we'll see other types of violence breakout, not necessarily always a shooting," she said. "So it's like an indirect way arms can actually contribute to violence and destruction."

Political violence is on people's minds. Lee Drutman, a political scientist and New America fellow, said today that "violence is the alternative to politics. By normalizing violence, we undermine politics."

But what if political violence is normal? What if it should always be on people's mind. And what if our democratic politics is always already being undermined in some way by political violence. I suggest Rittenhouse's acquittal will not be the cause of future political violence. It is the effect of past political violence always already at work. We don't see it, though. Political violence is so normal it's practically invisible.

Political violence is the predictable consequence of democratic politics seeking to advance the cause of liberty, equality and justice for all coming into conflict with conservative politics seeking to maintain a social order in which white men rule American society with impunity....>Charlottesville defendants found liable for civil conspiracy and ordered to pay millions in damages...Because democracy won't stop, and conservative politics won't stop, that means political violence is always already there. It's better to see Rittenhouse's acquittal not as a cause of future violence but, I think, as an inflection point after which private political violence goes public.

Private political violence? What we are seeing now, in the potential for armed racists to silence free speech through intimidation or murder, didn't come from no where. It started at home, in the family, especially between husband and wife. When women challenge "authority," when children challenge "authority," conservative politics does not turn to democracy as a means of resolving conflict. It turns to violence.

It also covers it up. When a husband hits his wife, when a father hits his kids, our discourse almost never calls it political violence though the maintenance of the man's authority over his wife and children is almost always the reason he hits his wife and children. We call it "domestic violence." We call it "child abuse." These terms are accurate but incomplete. Suffering is a political problem in democratic politics. Suffering is a political goal in conservative politics. Without suffering — without punishment for those people who deserve to feel their pain — anything can happen. Even liberty, equality and justice for all.

Political violence has been growing acutely since we elected a Black president. The violence was enabled by Republicans loosening gun laws after Barack Obama's reelection. The Supreme Court is considering whether to make carrying a firearm openly a constitutional right. The NRA never gloried in mass murders. It did after Rittenhouse's acquittal. The private political violence that inspired the nation's worst shooting massacres is inspiring the institutionalization of public political violence. Where that leaves democratic politics, God only knows.

===

rubber glue reverse (pager ID victim reverse reverse)

fav of trump?

hillary, you're corrupt!

triggered [heh] by shapiro kyle BS

related to mirror and crypto, possibly evil

CRT is racism disguised as free speech? anti-racism? whole lotta quoting of MLK by right wingers lately? "color-blind"

in some way probably just taking standard and correct critiques of right and trying to claim the left does it too (thus ok for right to defend themselves) or everyone does it so ok if we do and you're hypocrits if you call us right out on it in the future.

or most extreme we don't do it only YOU left do.

recall gang of 5 new right we are the true radicals/revolutionies, but that was trying to steal/co-opt a postive (tho somewhat badass) term.

we're not the racist/oppressors/censors, you the left are: AA is reverse discrimination, you are trying to cancel/ silence us, white ppl xians are the true victims.

===

kyle verdict is alt rt boogaloo renaissance?! the power of [biden/feds/ gubmint / courts/law cannot stop us from doing whatever the fuck we want

see pepe

see nihilism happy smiley face "nothing matters" = threat warning: you evil Un-Am scum (or just other tribe enemy) pose such a threat (to our having power) that we will commit genocide.

===

note neo-nazi militia mask/balaclava indistinguisable from SS death grin?

===

aha: like hulk irrational but sorta smart like stark? ingenious sadist?

// trump boost half-crazy: i am a powerful opponent b/c i will hyper-escalate w/o warning b/c i don't care about diplomacy/ rep/the rules

joker can't beat batman in strength or tech (intelligence?) so he uses what instead? the dark knight at darkest is no different? thus no such thing as moral / superiority?

see rhet god/devil terms

guns of course muy macho, kyle said he picked the AR15 b/c it looked cool = manly, warrior, lethal = power

note pedo-commie and bitch (co-opts black thug rap?]

pudgey white suburban so gets invite/summons on facebook to man up and go help the good guy cops who are besiged by black thugs [dylann r radicalized by blk on wht crime]

aha anti commie, fag and semite:

omfg parasite = cockroaches = exterminate vermin carry disease dirty

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/rittenhouse-2655770737/

no lnx pix req

Rittenhouse verdict championed on right-wing social media as green light for killing protesters

[Charlottesville "Unite the Right" Rally. Far-right Oath Keepers patrol Emancipation Park. Credit: Anthony Crider]

David Neiwert and Daily Kos November 21, 2021

The exultation on right-wing social media following Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal has been sickeningly predictable: Mainstream conservatives loudly valorize Rittenhouse as a "hero," while more extremist voices, applying the same logic, demand that more Americans follow his footsteps—urging the likeminded to take to the street now to begin using guns to "be like Kyle." They have even appropriated his name for their future plans, voiced in numerous celebratory threads: Any leftist protester shot by a right-wing "patriot" henceforth will have been "Rittenhoused."

As we forecasted, the acquittal is now a beacon-like green light granting permission to violent right-wing extremists to openly wage the kind of "civil war" against "the left"—which ranges from liberal Democrats like Joe Biden to the "antifa" bogeyman they have concocted—that they have been fantasizing about for the past decade. In the words of Charlie Kirk's interlocutor, it's the signal that now they "get to use the guns."

The bloodlust has been palpable. Online trolls celebrated that "it's Open Season on pedo-commies" and boasted that the verdict means "there's nothing you can do about it." A neo-Nazi channel on Twitter urged readers to "let this win fuel your rage." A fan of pseudo-journalist Andy Ngo commented in a retweet: "Every one of these anarchist criminal thugs should be shot in the street like the worthless dogs they are."

Far-right maven Ann Coulter posted a meme showing a gantlet of [marvel nazi nerd wet dr] comic-book superheroes bowing to Rittenhouse. On Facebook, Ben Shapiro framed any future violence as being left-wing: "The Left accepting the verdict in a peaceable manner remains the sizable elephant in the room."

The white-nationalist site VDare also extolled Rittenhouse's heroism:

This much is true: Kyle Rittenhouse is the hero we've been waiting for throughout the turbulent summer of 2020, where a Black Lives Matter/Antifa/Bolshevik revolution has our country on the brink of total chaos.

[Coulter-RittenhouseMeme.jpeg]

Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire blamed the media for there even having been a trial:

The verdict is right and just but Kyle Rittenhouse never should have been on trial at all. Now the media will go to work, like the demons they are, to ensure that Kenosha burns because they did not get their blood sacrifice.

Walsh then added:

I hope Rittenhouse bankrupts all of you dirtbags in media who smeared him as a white supremacist. [sue for libel based on verdict? // charlottesville ~ KKK case finished ] I hope he ruins your life. I want you to suffer. It's what you deserve. It's justice.

Idaho legislator Tammy Nichols, a Republican, posted a meme featuring the Gadsden-flag "Don't Tread On Me" design, but with a graphic of Rittenhouse firing from a seated position as he did in Kenosha.

The Gun Owners of America (GOA)—a gun-rights extremist group headed by far-right militia figure Larry Pratt—joined in the celebration by announcing it was giving Rittenhouse a new gun.

Alert: GOA will be awarding Kyle Rittenhouse with an AR-15 for his defense of gun rights in America. Join us in saying THANK YOU to Kyle Rittenhouse for being a warrior for gun rights and self defense rights across the country!

Other "Patriot" Movement extremists saw the verdict as vindication for vigilantism and militia organizing. The "Washougal Moms," a militia-friendly group from eastern Washington state, opined:

Today the jury and legal system has reaffirmed our rights as citizens. The second amendment in all aspects, to form a well regulated militia, the right to bear arms in self defense, and against enemies both foreign and domestic!

Kurt Schlichter, the right-wing troll with over 380,000 followers, taunted MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan, who had expressed concern about the double racial standard that the verdict reflects, on Twitter.

Your pain delights me. Kyle Rittenhouse killed two leftist catspaws and bisected the bicep of another and there's nothing you can do about it.

A white-nationalist Twitter account called "Based Teutonic" celebrated the verdict by posting a fantasy that Rittenhouse would now embark on an action-hero-like mission—with the help of Judge Bruce Schroeder, who oversaw the trial in markedly biased fashion.

About to exit court room

Judge yells from behind:

Rittenhouse turns around

You forgot this

Tosses him his AR15

Credits roll, Eye of the Tiger plays

"Based Teutonic" wasn't alone in celebrating Schroeder's role in the verdict. On Telegram, a commenter in a Proud Boys channel observed:

Kyle's case shows how important is to have your guys in power on a local level. One vaguely conservative boomer judge made all of the difference in a monumental trial.

Other Proud Boys were more focused on their long-anticipated civil war. "There's still a chance for this country," wrote one. Another wrote: "The left wont stop until their bodies get stacked up like cord wood."

The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights monitored a number of far-right chat forums (particularly Telegram) following the verdict, and found an outpouring of extremist bile, much of it anticipating the ability to inflict lethal violence on "leftists," as well as Black "parasites" and, of course, Jewish people. A user called The Western Chauvinist commented: "The parasites are planning multiple 'protests' across the United States."

One user calling himself "Proud Boy To Fascist Pipeline" replied to one of these comments mocking Black leaders protesting the verdict as "parasites": "Your 17 year olds are already armed and terrorizing our neighborhoods, n----er."

Fittingly, Charlie Kirk fans—following the example of his Idaho audience member—were focused on the violence: "Arm up and tell them f**cking bring it!" one replied to predictions of leftist protests after the verdict. "Shoot these phukers," commented another.

Nick Fuentes' "Groypers" were also unbridled in their anticipation of gunning down their opponents. "The most American thing you can do is Killing Commies," opined one on the white-nationalist forum Gab.

Another Gab user exulted with a meme showing Joaquin Phoenix as The Joker, dancing: "When you find out it's officially Open Season on pedo-commies." Mocking "wannabe street thugs upset with the verdict," another Gab user replied, "you're gonna get Rittenhouse'd. Bitch."

Gab-OpenSeason.png

"Getting Rittenhoused" became a popular way of threatening leftists. After Ngo posted a handful of tweets from leftists angry about the verdict, hundreds of his fans piled on, making threats of violence against them. "Someone will Rittenhouse them too," one responded. Another replied: "I came here to say that!"

Antisemitism also was a common theme. Right-wing troll Keith Woods, who has 23,500 followers on Twitter, declared after the verdict: "Huge L for the Jews." His followers piled on; one responded with a GIF meme of Gollum and the text, "Curse you goyim." Another replied, "hopefully they take an L in Charlottsville trial too. WHITE BOY WINTER!"

White nationalist Eric Striker was more explicitly antisemitic, as well as strategic, in his commentary:

Beating the Jews to the narrative as incidents unfold is more important than anything that happens in court.

Once you frame a story with the facts (and the facts have to be 100% accurate) and disseminate it with an effective propaganda network, Jews will struggle to challenge it once it's cemented.

Notorious white nationalist and antisemite Mike "Enoch" Peinovich put out a statement through his National Justice Party: "This victory for Kyle Rittenhouse over the cosmopolitan elite forces that plague the nation isn't only a victory for the young man himself, it's a victory for justice and for all White people who take a stand," Peinovich said.

On Telegram, a white nationalist commented: "The victory of Kyle Rittenhouse over the jewish forces that plague the nation isn't just a victory for the man himself, it's a victory for justice, and for the masses of disenfranchised White people which populate the globe.

The neo-Nazi group White Lives Matter had this advice for its white-supremacist followers:

Don't let this one victory lull you back to sleep. That's what they want. They know small "victories" can placate the angry masses more than anything else. Instead let this win fuel your rage. Never forget the simple fact that this clear-cut self-defense should never have gone to trial in the first place. Muslim, Hispanic, and African invaders have raped millions of our women, WHITE women. Their time of terrorizing our People with 0 consequences is coming to an end. The Rittenhouse verdict is a single tick in the scoreboard on our side. Our enemy doesn't have a scoreboard big enough for their victories. Fight harder, stronger, fiercer, and with the same remorse they have shown us. None. Get going, White man.

"This might be interpreted across the far right as a type of permission slip to do this kind of thing or to seek out altercations in this way, believing that there is a potential that they won't face serious consequences for it," Jared Holt of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council told NPR. "I worry that that might end up being interpreted by some people as a proof of concept of this idea that you can actually go out and seek a 'self-defense situation,' and you'll be cheered as a hero for it."

===

to apologize is unmanly, admitting defeat, esp to trump/istas for whom loyal tribal solidarity litmus is all; played inevitable victim card? gop minority in both houses explicit aim is obstructionist, gerry maintain minority power yet he bemoan/threatens this will be weapon in future?

aha: polarization --> demonization--> death threat --> death squad pinochet helo rides did nothing wrong Kyle

mantra of demonization can make name eg pelosi into a devil term; she was actively hunted 1/6 shoot bitch in the brain? AOC = commie?

landed here pol cartoon accidentally but interesting analogy? pirate creshaw action here, gosar flies? defeats evil? scott perry chr freedom cocks we must destroy dems/nazis

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/ocasio-cortez-gosar/

put in context of huge surge in death threats and 1/6 attack; gabby scalise shot; how signif is that this is pix? cartoon? anime genre? trump WWF vs CNN?

gosar censored for aoc kill anime, also biden; tired to blame staff? alt rt ploy just kidding? shooting bills in ads cliche so he just escalated to claiming that he was killing a rep/symbol of their policies [that are destroying am // scott perry freedom cock?]; prev border patrol agent vid rape aoc? threw burritos?

pretty good speech:

Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, a far-right MAGA Republican and conspiracy theorist who has never been shy about making inflammatory remarks, has been drawing vehement criticism from Democrats for posting a cartoon that depicts him murdering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City and inflicting harm on President Joe Biden. He has previously been criticized for appearing at a conference organized by white supremacists.

Many House Republicans, however, have been silent about the controversies. And Ocasio-Cortez, during a speech on the House floor this week, called them out them out for it.

The congresswoman, during her speech, made it clear that a much more vehement response from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other GOP leaders is needed.

AOC: "It's a sad day in which a member who leads a political party in the United States of America cannot bring themselves to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of Congress is wrong, and instead decides to venture off into a tangent about gas prices and inflation"pic.twitter.com/fi13Jb396s

— Justin Baragona (@Justin Baragona)1637178021

AOC: "Does anyone in this chamber find this behavior acceptable? Would you allow depictions of violence against women, against colleagues? Would you allow that in your home? ... And if it\u2019s not acceptable there, why should it be accepted here?!"pic.twitter.com/Bas9dS5dfo

— Justin Baragona (@Justin Baragona)1637178312

Ocasio-Cortez told fellow House members, "What I believe is unprecedented is for a member of House leadership of either party to be unable to condemn incitement of violence against a member of this body. It is sad, it is a sad day in which a member who leads a political party in the United States of America cannot bring themselves to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of Congress is wrong…. What is so hard, what is so hard about saying that this is wrong?"

READ: A growing threat is emerging from the theocratic wing of the GOP — but many liberals are missing it

The Democratic congresswoman added, "This is not about me. This is not about Rep. Gosar. But this is about what we are willing to accept."

Gosar has maintained that the anti-AOC cartoon was meant to be a joke, but Ocasio-Cortez stressed that depictions of murder should never be taken lightly.

"This nihilism runs deep," Ocasio-Cortez explained. "It conveys and betrays a certain contempt for the meaning and importance of our work here — that what we do, so long as we claim it is a joke, doesn't matter."

jihad squad: https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/rep-ilhan-omar-torches-lauren-boebert-following-bizarre-rant-on-house-floor/**

===

...// liberal media BS

see hackademics

see koch-ademia

see moral panic for kids bird bird vaxx

aha of course goes back to powell memo but right constant cries of victimhood, oppressed by big tech, big gubmint etc etc etc etc

but recall they have to explain why they fail to win the the much vaunted marketplace of idea / polls

sinecure?

11 21 no lnx

'Thought criminals': Aggrieved conservative elites announce new university dedicated to 'truth' — but who’s funding Ii?

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement November 08, 2021

Bari Weiss. Andrew Sullivan. Jonathan Rauch. Larry Summers.

Those are some of the more recognizable names a new university launched Monday lists on the front page of its website.

Its founder says some of them have been "treated like thought criminals."

The University of Austin (which sounds remarkably like The University of Texas at Austin, founded in 1883,) in an announcement says it is "dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth." It is not currently accredited and offers no degrees.

But some of the people it is attracting have highly-controversial backgrounds. Indeed, some, like Weiss and Sullivan, seem to thrive on creating controversy.

It's clear, from its founder's message, that this is an enterprise dedicated to protect those who use their huge platforms to decry being "canceled."

"Nearly a quarter of American academics in the social sciences or humanities endorse ousting a colleague for having a wrong opinion about hot-button issues such as immigration or gender differences," Pano Kanelos, the former president of St. John's University and apparently the founder of The University of Austin, writes Monday at Bari Weiss' Substack. "Over a third of conservative academics and PhD students say they had been threatened with disciplinary action for their views. Four out of five American PhD students are willing to discriminate against right-leaning scholars, according to a report by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology."

Kanelos discusses some of the University's founding faculty – a prerequisite appears to be having been subjected to criticism.

"On our quads, faculty are being treated like thought criminals. Dorian Abbot, a University of Chicago scientist who has objected to aspects of affirmative action, was recently disinvited from delivering a prominent public lecture on planetary climate at MIT. Peter Boghossian, a philosophy professor at Portland State University, finally quit in September after years of harassment by faculty and administrators. Kathleen Stock, a professor at University of Sussex, just resigned after mobs threatened her over her research on sex and gender."

Its FAQ answers the question "Why Austin?" by jokingly replying: "If it's good enough for Elon Musk and Joe Rogan, it's good enough for us."

The big question of course is who is funding this endeavor? The "University" says it will have a physical campus.

That's expensive, as is paying top names.

"We have secured the seed money necessary to launch the university. But we are in the process of securing $250 million, which will enable us to grow into a comprehensive university," it says.

"UATX has requested and is awaiting a tax-exempt determination from the IRS. At present, UATX is fiscally sponsored by Cicero Research, a tax-exempt entity organized under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code."

An online search for "Cicero Research" nets almost nothing, except a one page listing on Cause IQ, a company to help nonprofits grow.

According to that filing for the year ending December 2020, Cicero Research has no full-time employees, no assets, but under "characteristics" is tagged "political advocacy."

Who's actually funding this is currently unknown.

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===

see morano green fraud book rant/rap at cop26 falun gong tv? how many diff refs to commie he slips in in diff forms?

aha RW conveniently gets their tyranny totalitarian mixed up eg NAZI are socialists b/c it's in the name when nazi killed union leaders and leftists; don't know or won't admit eugenics favored by mainstream and gop rockefellers; sanger gets tagged b/c a woman and birth control and that's close enough to abortion/women's rights to make her target/extremist

kinda hilarious trump right going full authrotaran tiki torch nazi but fretting about eugenics; also // plandemic/agenda 21/ red scare anti-commie de-population great reset?

August 26, 2016

Doug Domenech appeared on the Bill Martinez show where he talked about global warming and environmentalism. Domenech’s talk was titled “Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?” [23], [24]

“The essence of the way environmental people think, when you really boil it down, is that the way we can protect our kids is not to have them in the first place,” Domenech told Martinez.[23]

Referring to professor Travis N. Rieder from John Hopkins University, Domenech said Rieder was lecturing students and claiming that “for us to protect ourselves from global warming, and especially to protect kids and people in Africa, that we should have fewer kids in America.”

Domenech said this was “a complete turning over of the principle that people are our most important resource.” [23]

Bill Martinez went on to discuss abortion, which said was eliminating “some 56 million plus of our labour force [..] because of the eugenics movement, Margaret Sanger, and Planned Parenthood.” Martinez asks, “Is this the same type of philosophy, just in a different shape and form?” to which Domenech replies: [23]

“Well, it is. And you might remember Paul Ehrlich, he’s a noted environmental guy, wrote The Population Bomb. And as well as Margaret Sanger and her eugenics. And Lester Brown is another name—he’s just written a book called Full Planet, Empty Plate. […] The essence of the philosophy of these people is that we need to return the Earth to its pre-human state, and that’s the only thing that’s going to satisfy them.” [23]

Domenech lumps global warming in with a list of supposed non-problems, including global cooling, mass starvation, resource depletion, and species extinctions: [23]

“Back in the 70s, one of the great failed environmental predictions was global cooling,” he said. “In the mid 1700s we were still in the midst of a little ice age, and cooling was a very significant problem, and it remains a big problem. And, of course, that led us to talking about overpopulation—that has not really been a problem.” [23]

He says another “non-problem” is mass starvation, as “our food production is bigger than ever.” [23]

Talking about resource depletion, Domenech pointed to fracking as the reason why “we’ve got more oil and gas than ever.” [23]

“Mass extinction of species – and that has really not happened,” he said. [23]

“That, of course, leads us to global warming, where we are today. These are all these big constructs that we need to worry about, and this is just the latest.” [23]

Domenech had written an article covering similar issues a day prior in RealClear Energy titled “Your Damn Children are Killing the Planet.” [25]

===

me vs we: private property (basis of wealth and class and segregation) trumps HUMAN rights which are secular, collectivist enforced by NATA and that wimp jimmy carter (an actual xian)

strict fr

danger of wellfare/soc safety net is ppl become dep on gov't --> tyranny plus moral decay laziness

recall ACA RR road to serfdom and death panels; recall you do not have to go back to plantation BS when white xian nat'list in fact racist to core

omg npi

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/extremist-christians/

paul r salon

progressive policies and positions are supposed to be rooted in reality and hard evidence. But that's not always the case when it comes to the culture wars that have such an enormous impact on our politics — especially not since the unexpected evangelical embrace of Donald Trump in 2016, culminating in the "pro-life" death cult of anti-vaccine, COVID-denying religious leaders. If this development perplexed many on the left, it was less surprising to a small group of researchers who have been studying the hardcore anti-democratic theology known as dominionism that lies behind the contemporary Christian right, and its far-reaching influence over the last several decades.

One leading figure within that small group, Rachel Tabachnick, was featured in a recent webinar hosted by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (archived on YouTube here), as part of its Religion and Repro Learning Series program, overseen by the Rev. Dr. Cari Jackson. Tabachnick's writing on dominionism can be found at Talk2Action and Political Research Associates, and she's been interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air.

Her presentation sheds important light on at least three things: First of all, the vigilante element of the Texas anti-abortion law SB 8. Second, the larger pattern of disrupting or undermining governance, including the "constitutional sheriffs" movement, the installation of overtly partisan election officials and the red-state revolt against national COVID public health policies. While Donald Trump has exploited that pattern ruthlessly, he did not create it. And third, the seemingly baffling fact that an anti-democratic minority feels entitled to accuse its opponents — including democratically elected officials — of "tyranny."

Some dominionist ideas — such as the biblical penalty of death by stoning — are so extreme they can easily be dismissed as fringe, others have been foundational to the modern religious right, and still more have become increasingly influential in recent years. Those latter two categories are what we need to understand most, say both Tabachnick and Jackson.

"One of the things that struck me, as a relative newcomer," said Jackson, a former Congregationalist minister, "was that there was not sufficient understanding about the theological frames used by many individuals who are opposed to abortion." She continued, "I'm a strategist in a lot of ways, and one important strategy, I believe, must be to understand what the teachings and the theological frames are" on the other side. Which links directly to the question of what progressive activists need to do differently in this changed environment.

This failure to understand the nature of dominionism has hampered activists, not just in the realm of reproductive justice, but across an entire spectrum of political issues, both cultural and economic. Jackson discussed her own background, raised within a conservative Christian worldview.

"I was taught a very individualistic approach," she said, "taught that we shouldn't pay taxes, because doing so enabled people who were not working, and enables people whose lifestyle we don't agree with." There's nothing new about such views, but dominionism provides believers with an even stronger foundation for them.

Jackson describes her current understanding of religious faith as highly intersectional: "We believe that to understand the attacks on abortion also invites us — or even requires us — to look at attacks on voting, to look at attacks on immigrants, attacks on prison reform, attacks on equal pay and on and on," she said. "It's all of the same cloth: They are all attacks on humans flourishing. That's my language. The God of my understanding wants all of us to flourish in who we are."

the language of dominionism is strikingly different, to put it mildly. In her webinar, Tabachnick played a clip of one of the movement's leading figures, C. Peter Wagner, providing a definition:

Dominion has to do with control. Dominion has to do with rulership. Dominion has to do with authority and subduing. And it relates to society — in other words what is talked about, what the values are in heaven [that] need to be made manifest here on earth. Dominion means being the head and not the tail. Dominion means ruling as kings. It says in Revelation chapter 1:6 that "he has made us kings and priests," and check the rest of that verse, it says "for dominion." So we are kings for dominion.

Later she provided a definition from Frederick Clarkson, author of the 1997 book, "Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy":

Dominionism is the theocratic idea that regardless of theological view, means, or timetable, Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions.

Wagner, who died in 2016, is known as the founding father of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), one of the two main branches of dominionism, which grew out of the Pentecostal and charismatic traditions within evangelical Christianity. Dominionists in the other branch, known as "Christian reconstructionism," come out of conservative Calvinism, with a focus on bringing government and society under biblical law. They tend to be more circumspect, often obfuscating their true intentions and avoiding the word "theocracy" in favor of "theonomy," for example. But not Wagner, as can be seen in the title of his 2011 book, "Dominion!: Your Role in Bringing Heaven to Earth." The NAR talks constantly about taking dominion over the "seven mountains" of society: education, religion, family, business, government, arts and the media.

But it's the other branch, the Christian reconstructionists, who have excelled at strategic organizing and providing blueprints across different right-wing constituencies for almost 50 years. They are the ones Tabachnick focused most of her presentation on, specifically two key figures: Rousas John Rushdoony, the movement's master theologian, and his son-in-law Gary North, a prolific strategist, propagandist and networker who was once a staffer for Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian hero.[ayn radical indiv ~ jesus charity]

Christian reconstructionism, Tabachnick explained, is "about bringing government in all areas of life under biblical law, a continuation of the Mosaic law in the Old Testament, with some exceptions." This dispensation would include, "according to Gary North, public execution of women who have abortions and those who advise them to have an abortion."

In a recent private presentation, Frederick Clarkson asked a rhetorical question: "People have long said that there should be Christian government, but if you had one, what would it look like? What would it do? Rushdoony was the first to create a systematic theology of what Christian governance should be like, based on the Ten Commandments, and all of the judicial applications he could find in the Old Testament — including about 35 capital offenses."

But the "Handmaid's Tale"-style extremism of dominionists' ultimate vision shouldn't really be our focus, Tabachnick told Salon. "Nobody cares about the theocratic, draconian future envisioned by reconstructionists because they don't believe it will happen," she said.

What's happening right now, however, is that this ideology has had tremendous impact on more immediate politics. "Christian reconstructionism is the merger of a distinct brand of Calvinism with Austrian School economics," Tabachnick said. "In other words, it's an interpretation of the Bible grounded in property rights." The results have been far-reaching:

For more than 40 years, its prolific writers have provided the foundations and strategic blueprints for the attacks on liberation theology and the social gospel, as well as many other streams of Christianity which do not share the Reconstructionists' belief in unfettered capitalism as ordained by God and its fierce anti-statism.

The larger religious right's attack on public education, the social safety net and most government functions are largely grounded in the writings, strategies and tactics formulated by reconstructionist writers. Reconstructionism is not the only (and certainly not the first) source of interposition and nullification in this country. However, much of what is currently being taught today about using interposition to undermine the legitimacy of government is sourced in reconstructionism.

This idea of "interposition" comes through what's known as the doctrine of the "lesser magistrate," which we'll return to below. But its significance — especially in the post-2020 Republican Party — has only recently become apparent. Reconstructionism's initial appeal was more immediately, as Tabachnick explained in the seminar:

What Rushdoony provided is a package that included attacking what these fundamentalists hated and feared most in society, often expressed in terms of "This is communist. This is socialist." But Rushdoony provided a way to sacralize these ideas, and at the same time not just tear down the old order, but provide a blueprint for the new order.

Everyone didn't have to agree on the blueprint, she said: "Rushdoony's ideas went out in bits and pieces. The Christian right leaders took what they wanted and discarded what they didn't."....

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aha-let: claim 1st amend is just cover for freedumb priviledge // PC cancel culture BS = ID victim = Powell Memo not level field

// lib lamestream media reality has leftwing bias

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/law-professor-expertly-shuts-down-sen-ron-johnson-s-false-claim-that-social-media-biased-against-the-right/

no lnx twt

Law professor expertly shuts down Sen. Ron Johnson's false claim that social media is biased against the right

Meaghan Ellis October 30, 2021

One law expert had a particularly insightful response to Ron Johnson's (R-Wisc.) arguments suggesting social media oversight typically tilts in favor of the left. During the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs on Friday, October 29, Johnson shared his grievances about social media appearing to be more favorable for liberal media.

However, Dr. Mary Anne Franks pushed back against Johnson's claims as she decimated his suggestion of liberal bias on social media platforms. Franks, a professor of law at the University of Miami School of Law and Michael R. Klein Distinguished Scholar Chair, masterfully explained how right-wing extremism is at the root of the problem and why right-wing content must be regulated.

While she did acknowledge that Americans have a right to free speech, she also explained why it does not apply in this particular case.

"Yes, we do have a First Amendment," Franks said. "We do have a right to free speech but we also know, of course, that private companies are not obligated under the First Amendment to take all comers. They are allowed to make their own decisions about what is considered to be high-quality and low-quality content. They can make any number of decisions and I think we would applaud them in many cases to make those decisions.

In a hearing in the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Gov Affairs today, @ma_franks had a sharp response to S… https://t.co/jqiJcjDNjv**

— Justin Hendrix (@Justin Hendrix) 1635450216.0

She went on to pinpoint the real problem with right-wing content and why it appears to be censored more than left-wing content. In short, it has to be.

"When it comes to the questions of conservative vs. liberal bias, this is not a notion that I am suggesting here. This is not about intuitions or impressions although I know that those can go in many different directions," Franks explained.

She continued, "This is about what the data actually suggests. The data actually do indicate that right-wing content is more amplified on these social media platforms than left-wing content and that right-wing content is more disproportionately associated with real-world violence; not hurt feelings, people being upset but, in fact, actual violence, actual armed insurrections, actual notions of terrorism, and anarchy."

trumpistas wounded by gop neo-con BS corp sellout offshore jobs, so must punish someone?

--> cruelty, zealously protect whatever share of pie/priviledge they have left? the strong man will do it for them? the Storm is massive numbers so power but also diffuse responsibility; they are doing the lord/dear leader's work/will?

aha threat used to be Koch CFG tea partiers freedom caucus, with the odd talk show jock but now soc med qanon wackos gohmert a kind to bridge to Anglo-saxon qnaon caucus??

yikes omg sys ampl fdbk? lack of diversity? not possible w/o SOC MED

an 10 21

Ron Watkins, the guy most QAnon experts believe is on half of the duo — with his father Jim Watkins — to be the infamous Q of QAnon (He denies it) is now running for Congress. Watkins has relocated to Arizona from Japan, where he was believed by most QAnon researchers to have written the "Q drops" — along with his father — by pretending to be a high-placed D.C. official in the Donald Trump administration. He's planning to run as a Republican against Democratic incumbent Rep. Tom O'Halleran.

Watkins didn't pick Arizona's 1st district out of any real connection to the area, or even the state. The district has become a hot commodity because, after a robust bout of gerrymandering by the GOP-controlled state legislature, it's believed that that the congressional seat will likely turn over to a Republican. Subsequently, the race is a magnet for a lot of Republicans with congressional dreams and a better base of donors than the denies-he-is-Q guy.

GOP political consultants are quick to downplay the possibility that Watkins could win. Arizona Republican political consultant Stan Barnes told Will Sommer of the Daily Beast that a guy "who's allegedly related to the QAnon phenomenon has no chance of winning." But as Sommer pointed out, "QAnon connections haven't proved disqualifying" for Republicans like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado. Indeed, Donald Trump incited an insurrection on the Capitol that was manned heavily by QAnoners, and he is the current favorite to win the 2024 election. Watkins is squirrelly, will likely be outspent, and his sleazy history includes giving an interview in a brothel — so I wouldn't bet in his favor. Still, he's not crazy to think that he's got a shot.

Blame gerrymandering.

Across the country, Republicans — who already control the majority of state legislatures — are working swiftly to redraw election maps to marginalize Democratic voters and create as many non-competitive Republican seats as possible. Most of the political coverage of this, for understandable reasons, is focused on how this will further enshrine the Republican power, giving them what could very well be permanent control of the federal government, despite the fact that most voters actually cast their ballots for Democrats.

But another, less intended consequence of gerrymandering is that it will speed up the Republican race to the bottom.

GOP gerrymandering empowers an ever-larger cast of idiots, conspiracy theorists, con artists, and open white nationalists to win national office. The situation is bad now, with Congress home to characters like Taylor Green, Boebert and Florida's Rep. Matt Gaetz, currently under federal investigation for sex trafficking of minors. But it's about to get much worse. Very soon the clown car will unload its passengers into primary campaigns for all of these newly safe Republican seats created by gerrymandering.

Here's how it happens: In districts with safe seats for one party or another, the election that counts is not the general, but the dominant party's primary election. This lack of general election competition creates all sorts of problems, but it's less of an issue in Democratic districts, where the diversity of the coalition at least creates real ideological debate in primaries. For Republican candidates, however, the incentives are completely skewed.

The kinds of people who vote in Republican primaries are ... well, not America's best. Without having to worry about running candidates who have to compete against Democrats for moderate voters, GOP primary voters can just go with whatever candidate excites them the most. And what speaks to Republican primary voters is sadism, racism, and a deep commitment to wild conspiracy theories. Gerrymandering makes it so that America's worst voters also happen to be the only voters who count at all in an increasing number of districts.

This is how we got Gaetz, who won with nearly 65% of the vote in his staunchly Republican district, Taylor Green, who drew nearly 75% of the vote, and Rep. Paul Gosar, who flaunts his white nationalist yearnings and got nearly 70% of the vote in his deeply conservative Arizona district. Having a heavily Republican district is an open invitation for the worst people to run, secure in the knowledge that as long as they can win over the Newsmax-addled, Facebook-meme-sharing hard right nuts that vote in GOP primaries. After that, it's a red carpet straight to national office.

Gerrymandering is not just a problem on the district level, either.

We can see from statewide offices what happens when Republicans don't feel they need to compete with Democrats in general elections. In both Florida and Texas, the incumbent Republican governors — Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbot, respectively – are running on what can be fairly described as a pro-COVID-19 platform. Both have waged all-out war on any effort to stymie the virus's ability to spread to as many bodies as possible, with a doggedness that is indistinguishable from what they'd do if they were trying to get their own constituents killed.

They aren't doing this to win any popularity contests in their states. On the contrary, polling shows repeatedly that the majority of Americans want leaders to fight the virus, not help it spread. In fact, their actions are causing Abbott and DeSantis to see big dips in their approval numbers. But neither of them cares because both states passed draconian voter suppression laws that shield Republican politicians from having to answer to the majority of their state residents. Having secured what they likely see as an easy GOP win through voter suppression, both Abbott and DeSantis are focused instead on pleasing Republican primary voters. Doing that means maximizing the sadism and the plain old nuttiness. As Adam Serwer wrote in the Atlantic, Abbott is "too afraid of his own base to act responsibly."

Such fear-based governance will only become more and more the norm as Republicans shut Democrats out of the ability to compete in general elections, meaning that Republican primaries loom ever larger as the only elections that count. The only way to win in many Republican primaries is to show you can out-crazy the other candidate.

So it's no wonder the guy who is alleged to be Q is running for office in Arizona. When all the political incentives favor a race to the bottom, the people who are already living in the sewer have a strong advantage.

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aha charter school several goals: prove gubmint bad/inept/wasteful and corps cap'l do better 2) get kids out of hands of secular marxist indoctrination 3) grab/suck at big public tax payer teat 4) indoc kids with xian creationsim free mkt BS fossil fuels story 1 5 ? undermines the commons/civil society takeover of school bd also incubator pipeline, also way to recruit women // qanon pedophile?

10 21

// TP town hall ~ ACA:

...Moms for Liberty’s creation story is similar to others in the anti-public education universe: “moms on a mission to stoke the fires of liberty.” In a year and a half Moms for Liberty’s Form 990 tax returns are likely to show these two patriotic moms hauling down in excess of $150,000 each.

As for who is responsible for collecting the names of these culture warriors, PDE has something called a director of outreach and that is Erika Sanzi. She is a veteran of privatization operations including, as Ms. Schneider shows, the billionaire funded Education Post. Ms. Schneider details what we know of Ms. Sanzi’s lucrative attachment to the privatization industry: $82,000 from Ed Post in 2015, $120,000 in 2016, $131,000 in 2017, and $121,000 in 2018.

Perhaps it was Ms. Sanzi who recruited another member, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Here is what the Sourcewatch project of the Center for Media and Democracy has to say: “Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has deep ties to the Koch brothers. The organization has received millions in funding from the Charles G. Koch Foundation, the Claude R. Lambe Foundation, and the Stand Together Trust.” The group is also a pet project of the radical right funders Bradley Foundation and a passel of other anti-democracy billionaires.

Or it could have been PDE president Nicole Neily who brought in the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. PDE’s website says “Nicole Neily is the president & founder of Parents Defending Education. She is also the president of Speech First, a national campus free speech organization, and has worked at the Independent Women’s Forum and the Cato Institute.” According to Sourcewatch

Speech First’s president and only listed employee, Nicole Neily has worked for many Koch-affiliated groups. Neily was the president of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, the Cato Institute’s manager of external relations, the coalition relations manager for FreedomWorks’ Center for Global Economic Growth, and a “Koch summer fellow for both the Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.”

Additionally, Neily is associated with other Koch-affiliated groups. Neily served as a board member for Young Voices and Young Americans for Liberty....

===

aha: chicken-egg layers ampl feedback?

cawthorne sez raise boys to be monsters, ayn says altruism is evil; capitalism social darwin says winners deserve to, invis hand means we all benefit; nutron jack welch is a hero, musk? strict father yaweh

an 10 21

It happened three times yesterday, and I only watched or half-watched a few hours of TV news. It happens every day, it seems. Somebody wonders out loud (yesterday's most prominent was Alex Witt with Dr. Anthony Fauci) why over 60 million Americans who are eligible to be vaccinated are still refusing — including hospital workers in some parts of the country.

Everybody treats it like it's a confounding question with no easy answer. The actual answer, though, is pretty straightforward: the psychopaths running the rightwing media ecosystem dominated by Fox "News" and social media, and echoed by 1500 radio stations across the country, have decided people dying and being disabled is both profitable and politically advantageous to them.

When Joe Biden was elected president the Republican Party and their joined-at-the-hip rightwing media did a sudden about-face from praising Trump's "Operation Warp Speed" to encouraging their followers to remain unvaccinated so President Biden would struggle to get the economy back on sound footing.

That, they figured, was their best bet to take back Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024, and they've stayed on-message ever since Biden took office on January 20th. As I noted in considerable detail back in July, death is their political strategy.

And now, as if to put a punctuation point on it, the headline at Raw Story warns: Fox News host uses Colin Powell's death to launch anti-vax rant: "Fully-vaccinated are dying of Covid."

Almost 750,000 Americans have died of Covid and recent research published by the Journal of the American Medical Association concludes that at as many as half of the 45 million Americans who've been diagnosed with the disease will suffer long term consequences, the main ones being dementia, exhaustion and damage to the heart and kidneys.

It used to be in American business that you knew where the psychopaths were: tobacco. It's an industry producing a product that, when used as directed, kills around a half-million Americans every year.

Being able to comfortably fall asleep every night knowing that the product of your workday had killed another 1,300 people is a rare competence that typically requires the mental illness of psychopathy.

About 1% of Americans are psychopaths, although such people tend to be concentrated in some areas: as many as 12% of major corporate CEOs are believed to be psychopaths, and about 15% of people in prison.

A psychopath, for all practical purposes, believes that he's quite literally the only "true human being" on planet Earth.

Everybody else is an actor of some sort, a prop, in the grand play of the psychopath's life. Everybody else is here to make him happy and meet his needs, and he doesn't have to worry about hurting them or not meeting their needs because they are not "real people" like he is.

The clinical terminology is that psychopaths "lack the ability to feel empathy." Weirdly, this lack of empathy can make them more successful in big business and politics, as well as in criminal and prison environments.

Thus, the CEO of Fox "News" — the network that daily spreads vaccine misinformation leading to deaths that are tearing apart American families — tells the Hollywood Reporter that she sleeps "well at night." Just like the tobacco CEOs.

Meanwhile, people who watch Fox and all its imitators across various media are taking the implicit advice of Fox's primetime hosts and avoiding vaccination…and getting sick and in some cases dying.

They're embracing quack cures promoted on the network and across rightwing media, including hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, giving their viewers the false sense of security that if they get sick with this awful disease there's a ready cure at hand…so there's no need to get vaccinated.

Even worse, consumers of this media are doing their best to disrupt rational public health efforts like mask and vaccine mandates by harassing public health officials, school boards, and elected representatives across the country — all leading to even more disease and deaths.

When Americans realized, mostly as the result of massive lawsuits in the 1990s, that the CEOs of the tobacco industry were knowingly killing people (and even reaching out to addict children) we took action.

We limited access to this death-dealing product, from outlawing television advertising to limiting placement of cigarette vending machines and strict enforcement of age-limited retail sales. We also required that the product be honestly labeled: "Tobacco kills."

This isn't an option for media, and rightly so because of our First Amendment protections of the press (including this article). And nobody wants to take those freedoms and protections away.

But the most important and effective campaign our nation embarked on to cut tobacco use was the nationwide campaign to educate people about the dangers of tobacco use. We taught adults and schoolchildren alike how the industry was trying to addict them and showed them the consequences of using that deadly product.

Now that rightwing media has arguably caused more Americans to die in the past year than has tobacco, it's time to consider a similar strategy to balance the lies and misinformation streaming out of them every day.

If we can't rely on the news and social media industries' content producers or executives to stop spreading death-dealing misinformation, we can at least wake people up to the dangers of their products.

#RightwingMediaCausesDeath

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aha omg vax is everywhere basically = neg?!

fox murdochs burn down the world for money and power (vax and AGW) ; koch gop anti-gubmint erode norms,

fox briefly forgot trump TV hacks and acted like a news org and reported FACT that trump lost AZ, immediate thrrat from oann newsmax reb mercer soc media play

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disambig : polarysis vs obstruction? one is structural vs mcconnell obstruction/kneejerk anti-BO djt?

===

recall mcc said when BO elected they would obstruct everything, said // about Biden, BBB? 921 threat to vote ~ debt ceiling "hostage worth shooting"?!

===

aha: story 1 vs 2 gop must prove that we do not need gov't b/c it does not work b/c they make sure it does not; then ramp up disaster cap'l/ pvtization to make $ on chaos, buy up common cheap

===

aha/doh shift platform eg telegram, then use bad spelling, it's resilient b/c it's a network

amplify, algo, radicalization, echo/escalator

https://theconversation.com/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-testified-that-the-companys-algorithms-are-dangerous-heres-how-they-can-manipulate-you-169420

Former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen testified before the U.S. Senate on Oct. 5, 2021, that the company’s social media platforms “harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy.”

Haugen was the primary source for a Wall Street Journal exposé on the company. She called Facebook’s algorithms dangerous, said Facebook executives were aware of the threat but put profits before people, and called on Congress to regulate the company.

Social media platforms rely heavily on people’s behavior to decide on the content that you see. In particular, they watch for content that people respond to or “engage” with by liking, commenting and sharing. Troll farms, organizations that spread provocative content, exploit this by copying high-engagement content and posting it as their own, which helps them reach a wide audience.

As a computer scientist who studies the ways large numbers of people interact using technology, I understand the logic of using the wisdom of the crowds in these algorithms. I also see substantial pitfalls in how the social media companies do so in practice.

From lions on the savanna to likes on Facebook

The concept of the wisdom of crowds assumes that using signals from others’ actions, opinions and preferences as a guide will lead to sound decisions. For example, collective predictions are normally more accurate than individual ones. Collective intelligence is used to predict financial markets, sports, elections and even disease outbreaks.

Throughout millions of years of evolution, these principles have been coded into the human brain in the form of cognitive biases that come with names like familiarity, mere exposure and bandwagon effect. If everyone starts running, you should also start running; maybe someone saw a lion coming and running could save your life. You may not know why, but it’s wiser to ask questions later.

Your brain picks up clues from the environment – including your peers – and uses simple rules to quickly translate those signals into decisions: Go with the winner, follow the majority, copy your neighbor. These rules work remarkably well in typical situations because they are based on sound assumptions. For example, they assume that people often act rationally, it is unlikely that many are wrong, the past predicts the future, and so on.

Technology allows people to access signals from much larger numbers of other people, most of whom they do not know. Artificial intelligence applications make heavy use of these popularity or “engagement” signals, from selecting search engine results to recommending music and videos, and from suggesting friends to ranking posts on news feeds.

Not everything viral deserves to be

Our research shows that virtually all web technology platforms, such as social media and news recommendation systems, have a strong popularity bias. When applications are driven by cues like engagement rather than explicit search engine queries, popularity bias can lead to harmful unintended consequences.

Social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok rely heavily on AI algorithms to rank and recommend content. These algorithms take as input what you like, comment on and share – in other words, content you engage with. The goal of the algorithms is to maximize engagement by finding out what people like and ranking it at the top of their feeds.

A primer on the Facebook algorithm.[vid?]

On the surface this seems reasonable. If people like credible news, expert opinions and fun videos, these algorithms should identify such high-quality content. But the wisdom of the crowds makes a key assumption here: that recommending what is popular will help high-quality content “bubble up.”

We tested this assumption by studying an algorithm that ranks items using a mix of quality and popularity. We found that in general, popularity bias is more likely to lower the overall quality of content. The reason is that engagement is not a reliable indicator of quality when few people have been exposed to an item. In these cases, engagement generates a noisy signal, and the algorithm is likely to amplify this initial noise. Once the popularity of a low-quality item is large enough, it will keep getting amplified.

Algorithms aren’t the only thing affected by engagement bias – it can affect people too. Evidence shows that information is transmitted via “complex contagion,” meaning the more times people are exposed to an idea online, the more likely they are to adopt and reshare it. When social media tells people an item is going viral, their cognitive biases kick in and translate into the irresistible urge to pay attention to it and share it.

Not-so-wise crowds

We recently ran an experiment using a news literacy app called Fakey. It is a game developed by our lab that simulates a news feed like those of Facebook and Twitter. Players see a mix of current articles from fake news, junk science, hyperpartisan and conspiratorial sources, as well as mainstream sources. They get points for sharing or liking news from reliable sources and for flagging low-credibility articles for fact-checking.

We found that players are more likely to like or share and less likely to flag articles from low-credibility sources when players can see that many other users have engaged with those articles. Exposure to the engagement metrics thus creates a vulnerability.

The wisdom of the crowds fails because it is built on the false assumption that the crowd is made up of diverse, independent sources. There may be several reasons this is not the case.

First, because of people’s tendency to associate with similar people, their online neighborhoods are not very diverse. The ease with which social media users can unfriend those with whom they disagree pushes people into homogeneous communities, often referred to as echo chambers.

Second, because many people’s friends are friends of one another, they influence one another. A famous experiment demonstrated that knowing what music your friends like affects your own stated preferences. Your social desire to conform distorts your independent judgment.

Third, popularity signals can be gamed. Over the years, search engines have developed sophisticated techniques to counter so-called “link farms” and other schemes to manipulate search algorithms. Social media platforms, on the other hand, are just beginning to learn about their own vulnerabilities.

People aiming to manipulate the information market have created fake accounts, like trolls and social bots, and organized fake networks. They have flooded the network to create the appearance that a conspiracy theory or a political candidate is popular, tricking both platform algorithms and people’s cognitive biases at once. They have even altered the structure of social networks to create illusions about majority opinions.

Dialing down engagement

What to do? Technology platforms are currently on the defensive. They are becoming more aggressive during elections in taking down fake accounts and harmful misinformation. But these efforts can be akin to a game of whack-a-mole.

A different, preventive approach would be to add friction. In other words, to slow down the process of spreading information. High-frequency behaviors such as automated liking and sharing could be inhibited by CAPTCHA tests, which require a human to respond, or fees. Not only would this decrease opportunities for manipulation, but with less information people would be able to pay more attention to what they see. It would leave less room for engagement bias to affect people’s decisions.

It would also help if social media companies adjusted their algorithms to rely less on engagement signals and more on quality signals to determine the content they serve you. Perhaps the whistleblower revelations will provide the necessary impetus.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/gop-mitch-mcconnell/

corp tax hike?!

salon

After being closely aligned for decades, it appears that Republicans and top business lobbying groups are having a very public falling-out over conservative lawmakers' lack of support for a bipartisan infrastructure deal currently languishing in Congress.

According to digital politics site The Hill, every major business group in Washington, D.C. — including Business Roundtable and the National Association of Manufacturers, among others — has expressed some measure of support for the bill, which was crafted by a group of lawmakers in both parties alongside the White House.

Business groups have long been a key constituency for Republicans, who worked closely with K Street lobbyists to craft a 2017 tax cut that offered hefty benefits to both corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Yet no more than a small handful of Republican members of Congress have agreed to vote for the legislation favored by these groups this time around.

In a conference call with reporters last month Michael Johnson, CEO of the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association, a longtime conservative-leaning lobby that stands to gain heavily if the bill passes, seemed flabbergasted by Republicans' refusal to vote for such a popular piece of popular piece of legislation, which polls well across most demographics, including conservatives.

"That's why it boggles the mind that the progressives in the House have decided to take a very popular hostage and Republican leadership has decided to not rescue that very popular hostage when they easily could," Johnson said.

So what's behind this right-wing change-of-heart?

Neil Bradley, the executive VP and chief policy officer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, blamed "misinformation" surrounding the bill during an interview with CQ Roll Call last month — adding that some House GOP members have privately told him that they'd like to vote for the infrastructure deal but feared angering Trump and the new constellation of ultra-conservative groups that were empowered during his tenure.

"I think there are some unfortunate things going on, and I'm being generous with the term unfortunate," Bradley said.

"If this vote today was occurring on the merits of the bill, the outcome wouldn't be in doubt and we'd have a supermajority," he added. "It's not the substance that people are disagreeing with here."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce in particular has become a flashpoint of conservative ire after endorsing a small number of Democratic candidates in Congressional races last year. The group, along with a number of other influential pro-business organizations, also stopped PAC donations to hundreds of Republican lawmakers who voted to overturn the 2020 election results on the evening of Jan. 6.

Following that news, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has taken to saying the U.S. Chamber "sold out" and that he no longer considers it an ally.

"I didn't even know the Chamber was around anymore," McCarthy told the political newsletter Punchbowl News.

The feud reached a head this week when Republican leaders kicked representatives for the U.S. Chamber off its conference calls.

Brett Horton, the chief of staff for House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., didn't hold back when asked about Republicans shunning the pro-business group.

"People care what their local Chambers of Commerce and business owners have to say, not the U.S. Chamber," Horton told The Hill. "If the U.S. Chamber sent me a meeting request right now, I wouldn't even staff that meeting out to an intern, and I don't see that changing."

In response to being iced out of the Republican inner circle, Axios reported this week, the group abruptly reversed its support for the bill. The Chamber disputed the report by arguing that it still supports the bill "as a stand-alone bill unlinked to the proposed tax and spend reconciliation bill" that it has been linked to from its inception — which makes its support for the infrastructure package merely theoretical.

In addition to the Republicans' beef with business groups over the pending infrastructure legislation, the two sides also clashed over their differing opinions on raising the U.S. debt ceiling this past week. Business groups saw the writing on the wall if Congress decided to default on the country's sizeable debts, and feared catastrophic consequences if the limit was not raised.

But most Republican lawmakers, especially Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, instead concluded that their responsibilities to their constitutents lay in obstructing the Democratic agenda — no matter what.

"Democrats have the full ability to raise the debt ceiling as a part of reconciliation," Cruz told POLITICO on Thursday. "They want political cover."

After a last-minute deal brokered by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the debt ceiling was ultimately raised Thursday night — though only for a few months. McConnell said Saturday that he does not intend to make another deal come December, when the deal will likely expire — regardless of what business groups say.

McConnell's justification for the obstruction appeared to be rooted in a statement Sen. Chuck Schumer made after the Thursday vote, blasting Republican efforts to stymie any change to the debt ceiling.

"I am writing to make it clear that in light of Senator Schumer's hysterics and my grave concerns about the ways that another vast, reckless, partisan spending bill would hurt Americans and help China, I will not be a party to any future effort to mitigate the consequences of Democratic mismanagement," McConnell said in a statement.

===

capitalism is a powerful story, and econ adds math to do tests all the time, but externalities/ biz plan exxon is fry planet; incentive structure all wrong short , term "efficiency"

doh human health depends on enviro/planet health

1021 an comm dr

Just ahead of a major United Nations summits on biodiversity and the climate—and amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic—a global consortium has launched a planetary health declaration in which they "raise an alarm that the ongoing degradation of our planet's natural systems is a clear and present danger to the health of all people everywhere" that must be countered with a fundamental paradigm shift transforming nearly every aspect of society.

"The planetary health science is clear," the São Paulo Declaration on Planetary Health, published Tuesday at The Lancet, states. "We can no longer safeguard human health unless we change course."

Authored by the Planetary Health Alliance, a global coalition hosted within the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the declaration is endorsed by over 250 organizations representing 47 countries.

"The urgency of this moment is hard to overstate," said declaration lead author Sam Myers, director of the Planetary Health Alliance and research scientist at Harvard, in a statement ahead of the launch.

The document centers on what various stakeholders—from urban planners to governments to artists—must urgently do as part of the "Great Transition," what the declaration authors frame as the necessary "fundamental shift in how we live on Earth."

To the agricultural sector, the document recommends utilizing "all ways of knowing, including the latest science and millennia of traditional and Indigenous knowledges, to implement agricultural systems that meet demand and reduce pressure on natural systems."

Economists, meanwhile, are urged to reject a focus on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in favor of "metrics and investments that support preservation and regeneration of Nature, human well-being, equity, and happiness—the things we truly value."

Numerous recommendations are laid out for governments with "an urgent first step" being promoting "public access to health services as a human right." Covid-19 recovery plans must also focus on decarbonizing the energy sector and ensuring equity for the most disenfranchised and marginalized communities.

The general public is also called to action.

"We invite you to consider yourself a partner in planetary healing," states the declaration. "We all live together in an interconnected world and the actions of each of us inspire others. Therefore, together, we pledge to dedicate our lives to the service of humanity, and to the protection and restoration of the natural systems on which humans and all other species who share our home depend."

Put together, the document says its recommendations should serve as "a compass guiding us towards the most promising pathways to support a more just and resilient post-pandemic world."

Courtney Howard, an emergency physician in Canada and a contributor to the declaration, put the document in the context of global vaccine inequity.

"In the midst of Covid, disparities in vaccine accessibility must be part of the same conversation as addressing planetary emergencies," Howard said in a statement.

"On an interconnected planet, no one is safe until everyone is safe," she added. "We need vaccine equity, and in the long run, protecting nature will be the true vaccine against future pandemics and other planetary emergencies."

===

aha: when real story/reality not acceptable, does not fit Story 1, rw must manufacture alternative fact/story = conspiracy eg (many )

antifa -->

https://www.mediamatters.org/newsmax/newsmax-host-suggests-democrats-may-have-set-january-6-insurrection

===

aha stories are tribal // echo boost ampl by soc med: chicken-egg ID --> story? vv? both?

scientists are global elite, eggheads who look down on us yokels/ppl of faith?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/here-s-why-anti-vaxxers-appear-more-likely-to-embrace-unproven-drugs-report/

Anti-vaxxers, often motivated by baseless conspiracy theories, have a long history of questioning the work of the scientific community while discrediting medical breakthroughs. However, there is also a bizarre phenomenon of these same people having no qualms about embracing unproven drugs.

In fact, reports began circulating in September when anti-vax residents in Mississippi began using the anti-parasital drug Ivermectin as an alternative treatment for COVID. Since the drug is typically used to treat animals, it is strongly opposed to human consumption. So why would people who are deeply critical of medicine and the scientific community be open to trying unproven drugs?

Vox reporter Dylan Scott explores the mind-boggling hypocrisy behind it. Speaking to the publication, a number of psychological experts offered their take on the situation. Jay Van Bavel, director of New York University's Social Identity and Morality Lab, explained the psychology behind how people convince themselves to believe things that are known to be false.

"When you really want to believe something — like 'you can't trust the vaccines' — you'll come up with any number of rationalizations," Van Bavel said. "It's like whack-a-mole. You falsify one premise and they just create a new one."

Van Bavel also highlighted the irony of anti-vaxxers' stance and how it doesn't add up.

"On the face of it, it doesn't make sense that you don't trust doctors and science, but then the next moment, you're sharing news about some other medical cure and taking that and putting it in your body," said Van Bavel. "These are not trivial beliefs. These are some of the most significant decisions you can make in a once-in-a-century pandemic."

Scott also explained how difficult it is for new information to be presented in areas where people are predominantly skeptical about vaccinations.

"New information isn't necessarily treated as an opportunity to reassess their beliefs," Scott wrote. "Instead, new facts are seen either as affirmation of what this community already believes or as a distraction that should be dismissed because it doesn't neatly sort into their anti-vaccine narrative."

David Dunning, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan also offered a similar opinion. "People listen to people 'from their group' and whom they think they can trust," Dunning said. "People really don't know what science is, and so do you feel you can trust the person giving you advice, rather than appraising their expertise, becomes the thing."

===

qanon house wackos calling for biden impeach from git, but treason now so common all purpose like turrets tic?

"logic": i am a patriot, i love and know what is best for US, if anyone does anything i like THEY/THEM OTHER ENEMY are traitors and should be righteously executed[plus re blinken/biden, US superpower cannot be defeated by primitive muslim towelheads unless betrayal //VN? nazi WWI jews versailles treaty?

right-wing commissioner snaps after reporter points out her anti-vaccine resolution is toothless: 'That is treasonous'

Matthew Chapman Raw Story

This week, an anti-mask county commissioner in western Michigan suggested President Joe Biden would be committing treason if he implemented vaccine mandates, when...

---

aha-ish biden basically runs/appeal based on competent mgmt/govt so gop must degrade image, plus war is their turf?

A far right wing U.S. Congressman hijacked the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Afghanistan on live TV Monday, accusing the President of the United States of treason then trying to block the Secretary of State from responding to his attacks.

After accusing President Joe Biden of manipulating intelligence coming out of Afghanistan, U.S. Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) declared, "in my opinion that's absolutely aid and comfort to the enemy," which is the definition of treason.

"I absolutely wonder if you were complicit in this as well. I find it hard to believe that President Biden would do that without you being aware of this and these are things that we deserve to know, better answers, have better hearings on this, I do not believe a word that you're saying on this. Simply put, I do not wish to hear from you," Congressman Mast told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

As Blinken tried to respond, Mast took over the hearing, talking over Blinken and repeatedly telling him he did not want to hear him, calling him a liar, and announcing he would not listen to him.

"I do not believe a word that you're saying on this," he interjected. "I do not wish to hear from you. I'm not yielding you a moment of time. I don't wish to hear your lies."

Mast's time had already expired, and Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks (D-NY) tried to get it back under control.

"What the Congressman said is simply wrong," Blinken replied. "Period."

"I think every member of this committee has been apprised of or had access to the intelligence assessments throughout the year – and you know what they were, and you know what they are," Blinken charged.

The Florida congressman did manage to introduce lies into the record, including the common GOP-told falsehood that the U.S. forfeited tens of billions of dollars of military equipment to the Taliban.

===

systemic: privatization, financialization, militarization, and criminalization, which together are producing a steadily creeping authoritarianism [max boot says anarchy to law/inst rt does not control [masks?] , then total obed/force when they do = authorit. eg abortion TX

aha // above: financialization leads to loss of mfg jobs, workers force into gig ecnomoy fast food, meat cutter etc; also prison guards (cops?); some desprate poor ppl turn to crime (and payday loans); join the military b/c only secre job w/o college or a way to pay for college;

921

aha PIC MIC

Labor Day, we speak with journalist and sociologist Eyal Press about his new book, "Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America." Press profiles workers like prison guards and oil workers — people who make their livelihoods by doing "unethical activity that society depends on and tacitly condones but doesn't want to hear too much" about, he says. "This work is largely hidden, and we rarely hear from the people on the frontlines who are delegated to do it," Press tells Democracy Now! "The powerful and the privileged really don't do the dirty work in America — they not only don't do it, they don't see it"

===

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 1percent 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 sysyem and prove yet again it does not work, then dems have to clean us mess/crisis [2 santas?]

---

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.

===

note raffensberger caved 180:

AHA ? : did talk radio supplant local news? radio and podcast blend, and often has video now; snn radio amplifies fake paper website [trump picks up boost/escalate, feedback back into eyeballs/ratings [then RNC/GOP $]

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/trump-election-claims/

Since the 2020 presidential election, conservative news outlets have been popping up in droves to continue circulating former President Donald Trump's big lie about the election.

So how are outlets continuing to do this? According to NPR, it is more of a trick of the eye. The publication https://www.npr.org/2021/07/02/1011916687/how-pro-trump-local-news-sites-keep-pushing-2020-election-misinformation.**

While the publication appears to be just a local news outlet, NPR reports that it is actually flagship of a news syndicate, known as The Star News Network, which consists of several pro-Trump sites. Like The Georgia Star News, the network has created similar sites for states like Arizona, Ohio, and Florida.

Per NPR:

"Its part of the Star News Network - an expanding network of pro-Trump sites seeking to influence local politics with conservative opinion by mimicking the look and feel of local newspaper sites. The group operates eight state-focused news sites, including in key Electoral College states such as Michigan, Arizona, Ohio and Florida."

By focusing on states where Trump is still heavily favored among voters, the network can continue to circulate misinformation since the audience is still focused on what transpired during and after the election.

During a rally in Ohio Las weekend, Trump also added more fuel to the fire with more dangerous claims of voter fraud.

"The biggest tragedy of all is millions of Americans have lost confidence in their vote," Trump said." We can't let that happen. And that's why I say you have to know what took place in 2020 before you can vote in 2022 or 2024."

To name mafter worse, conservative publisher John Fredericks defended defended sites and the information they share.

"We work very hard to fund our operation through legitimate advertising of all kinds, people that want to reach our expanding audience," he said. "And if somebody needs to reach informed, motivated readers that want the truth, advertising is a great opportunity for them, is a great [return on investment] potential."

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AHA: correction is a journalistic norm, not a law thus no real penalty for lying or just sloppiness (recall jrnl biz values the scoop 1st, thus speed vs accuracy, and clickbait values hype/eyeballs/ fear hate algo boost]

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/02/1011916687/how-pro-trump-local-news-sites-keep-pushing-2020-election-misinformation.

no lnx

How Pro-Trump Local News Sites Keep Pushing 2020 Election Misinformation

July 2, 20215:00 AM ET

STEPHEN FOWLER

FROM

Georgia Public Broadcasting

Georgia election workers begin their recount of ballots after the November election. Despite three recounts of the tally, former President Donald Trump and his allies falsely claim electoral fraud cost him the state.

If you don't follow politics in Georgia closely — or even if you do — you might be forgiven for not knowing much about The Georgia Star News.

Founded just after the November election when President Biden narrowly flipped the state by about 12,000 votes, it looks like a regular news website with a lifestyle section, a widget for the weather and stories about local and national goings-on.

But the site is more than just a local news outlet. It's part of the Star News Network — an expanding network of pro-Trump sites seeking to influence local politics with conservative opinion by mimicking the look and feel of local newspaper sites. The group operates eight state-focused news sites, including in key Electoral College states such as Michigan, Arizona, Ohio and Florida.

Steve Bannon, a former strategist for former President Donald Trump, described The Georgia Star News in a radio interview as content "you can't get anywhere else."

"We're not Conservative Inc.," he said. "It's very populist, it's very nationalist, it's very MAGA, it's very American First."

Pro-Trump media ecosystem

The Star News sites are part of a larger pro-Trump media ecosystem that emerged over the course of his four years in office. Since last year's election, some of those sites have spent months churning out false content suggesting Trump won the election and claiming that massive electoral fraud will be uncovered.

Many of the Star News sites have been around for a while, but the 2020 election — and an intense focus on swing states like Georgia — has helped the sites' stories reach a much a larger audience.

Georgia's fledgling website gets a boost from publisher John Fredericks' talk radio show that has featured numerous figures from Trump's orbit, including Bannon and former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. His show also regularly features Georgia Republican politicians who have pushed false claims of election fraud or are challenging those who did not work to overturn the election.

Fredericks, who most recently hosted his talk show from Virginia, came to Georgia ahead of last January's dual Senate runoffs as part of an effort by conservatives (and conservative media) to support then-Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue's reelection campaign. He also hosts a TV show on the Real America's Voice network that also features Bannon's "War Room: Pandemic" podcast popular with many election skeptics.

So there was a ready-made audience when the Georgia Star published a misleading story mid-June questioning the legitimacy of nearly 20,000 absentee ballots placed in Georgia drop boxes — slightly more than the margin of Biden's victory there.

The story said that Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, could not produce crucial chain of custody documentation for ballots returned in drop boxes, suggesting that the ballots may not have been legitimate.

Days later, county officials were able to find all but eight of those forms, said all the ballots were accounted for — and noted that Georgia's votes were counted three different times in November.

"The most explosive thing" ESCA ECHO

But in the conservative alternate media sphere, the story began to pick up steam. On Fredericks' radio show, Bannon called it "the most explosive thing that I think has happened in the entire process."

From there it ricocheted across the pro-Trump mediasphere to TV networks like One America News and conspiracy sites such as The Gateway Pundit.

But the story was not limited to the fringe of Republican politics: several pro-Trump lawmakers and primary challengers in Georgia demanded an investigation. Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — himself a frequent target of misinformation, attacks and death threats because of these sites — did too. That led mainstream outlets to run with Raffensperger's response, pushing the story further into the spotlight.

Just a few days after the original Georgia Star story, Trump issued several statements linking to a One America News segment about the misleading story and praising the Georgia Star writer by name for "the incredible reporting you have done."

The Georgia Star hasn't updated its original story, or several follow-up pieces, with Fulton County's release of the data.

In an interview, the story's author, Laura Baigert, blamed the county for providing incomplete documents and information.

"Not our problem to solve" ~ CORRECTION

"If they can't tell us how many forms they have and how many ballots they have, that's an issue for people who are administering an election," she said. "That's not our problem to solve that for them."

At the time, a Fulton County spokeswoman said that the county followed proper procedures in collecting the drop box ballots and the county was continuing to research the few remaining missing chain of custody forms. The county elections director said that staff spent more than 200 hours that week locating the "missing" forms before they were provided to Georgia Public Broadcasting.

But the story breathed new life into Trump's false claims, which he repeated at length during a rally last Saturday in Ohio.

"The biggest tragedy of all is millions of Americans have lost confidence in their vote," he said. "We can't let that happen. And that's why I say you have to know what took place in 2020 before you can vote in 2022 or 2024."

After the rally, Baigert snagged an exclusive half-hour interview with the former president as he rode back to the airport. The next day, an all-caps headline appeared on The Ohio Star, Georgia Star and sister sites in battlegrounds like Michigan and Arizona, touting the conversation and its key takeaway.

"There's no more important issue than the 2020 election," Trump said.

Fredericks defended the outlet's coverage in an interview and said that the Georgia Star is a credible news service for Georgians that acts as an alternative to "fake news" mainstream media. "Our goal is to speak truth to power in the world of fake news, and that's really what we're dealing with, that's why we're here," he said. "That's why we have an audience."

Less than seven months into existence, Fredericks said that the website was profitable, thanks to a crush of advertising from local Republican candidates and conservative groups.

===

trad DTricks is used in election to get pwr, now used to hold onto power, using tools of state = fascism [tho nixon]

aha: // mlk on switch out modifier: good trouble, gang of 5 we are the new/true radicals; appropriation/inversion/perversion of lefty god term [at the same time attacking woke, new PC]; for left/reality racial diversity does being intellecti\ial diversity dofferent POV; builds on Lichter? Horo BS of how lefty commie profs discriminate ~ conservatives; gop is in death spiral, at least demographically so must cheat to preserve minority power[states rights BS ~ HR1 ~ voter suppress, gerry, dark corp $); GOP can't win in mktplace of ideas[libtard bankrunpted by covid fail; must explain away fail by saying media, soc media and univ ~ them

msnbc moral panic: you raise kids w/ right values/american and univ makes them into liberals[and/or gay?]

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/ron-desantis-2653505905/

Florida goes full fascist': Ron DeSantis sparks furious backlash with ‘authoritarian’ campus political surveys

Raw Story June 23, 2021

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation requiring Florida students, faculty, and staff to register their political views in surveys in an effort to promote "intellectual diversity" at colleges and universities, and the measure set off backlash across social media.

Critics decried the law, which DeSantis claims will promote freedom of speech, as a "thoroughly Orwellian" attempt to gain control over academic debate at institutions of higher learning.

Well, this is thoroughly Orwellian. ?? Faculty and students of Florida, you know what to do! Freep Mini-Trump's stup… https://t.co/N2nEE5UzuM**

— Betty Cracker ?? (@Betty Cracker ??)1624454881.0

Well that's got to be unconstitutional: Florida students required to register political views with the state to pro… https://t.co/b1Bh8p98uN**

— David Rothkopf (@David Rothkopf)1624455537.0

DeSantis wants to survey university students and staff, with the threat of budget cuts if he doesn't get his way???… https://t.co/IWfcM8nGhI**

— Witty Librarian In a Mask (@Witty Librarian In a Mask)1624455089.0

===

aha // qanon storm that will kill/sweep away satanic pedo ring;

an 621 mirroring? justifies violence by ppl in the name of/lieu of gov't? 1/6 called cops traitors and attacked/killed them. trumpistas think lib/gubmint has taken away their country (status) and they want revenge/to regain pwer/status.

Believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory are enthusiastically circulating a video of a contributor at the Trump-loving One America News calling for the mass execution of the former president's enemies.

Via The Daily Beast's Will Sommer, an OAN contributor this week went off on a rant in which he falsely claimed that "voter fraud" cost former President Donald Trump the 2020 election, and said it was time to think about how to deal with the purported perpetrators.

"Exactly how many people were involved in these efforts to undermine the election?" he asked. "Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? How many people does it take to carry out a coup against the presidency?"

He then pivoted to the consequences that the purported coup plotters will face once their treachery is exposed.

"In the past, America had a very good solution for dealing with such traitors: Execution," he said.

According to Sommer, the clip has gone viral in QAnon chat rooms.

"I came across the clip because QAnon people are see it as proof that the mass executions are right around the corner," Sommer explains. "Lots of glee in the Q chat rooms, demands for how exactly their imagined executions will be carried out and complaints they had to wait too long."

===

aha strict fr; conspir is simple story to explain away complexity with a simple single cause; cast self as hero/victims see de-industrialize/ globalize outsource --> trump pseudo-populist

angry white man w/ rush; al franken sez expert on rightwing megalomaniacs; trump, bill and rush?

===

aha: DEMOGRAPHIC SHIFT PLUS GLOBALIZATION (RELATED) CORP MFG OUTSOURCING --> EXISTENTIAL epistemic crisis THREAT/CRISIS [--> conspiracy, story 1 cling

also surprise $ donor for his BD?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/peter-popoff/

Conning' their 'vulnerable' followers: Here's what Trump and a discredited televangelist have in common

When the Christian right invaded the Republican Party during the 1980s, Peter Popoff was among the televangelists who made millions of dollars. Popoff, a faith healer, was exposed as a major fraud — he wasn't really curing cancer patients as he claimed. Journalist Michael Siegel, in a lengthy article published by Ordinary Times on June 8, lays out the things that Popoff has in common with another con man: former President Donald Trump, explaining why their deluded followers have such a hard time accepting the truth.

Popoff and Trump are the same age: 74. Popoff was born on July 2, 1946, and Trump was born the previous month on June 14, 1946. Siegel's article is really about Trump more than Popoff, although he offers plenty of details about Popoff's embarrassing history — and Siegel stresses that when people have been conned, they are often in denial about it. Popoff still had his unwavering followers even after he was exposed as a fraud during the 1980s.

As anti-Trump and anti-Popoff as Siegel's piece is, he does more than slam them and makes a point of explaining their appeal.

Siegel observes, "One of the things that con men rely upon is a certain vulnerability…. Many are afraid of their nest eggs disappearing, which ironically, makes them vulnerable to the very people who want to rob their nests."

//CRISIS/ GHOST DANCE : According to Siegel, "Con men — whether they prey on the rich or the poor, the powerful or the powerless — look for those who are at a crossroads. Those who want a chance to get ahead. Those who fear falling further behind. Those who have lost their status and want it back. A person comfortable in their life and their finances will realize the Nigerian Prince is too good to be true. A person nervous about their finances or desperate to move up in life may think this is the chance they've been waiting for." [vid] Popoff exposed - Part 1 www.youtube.com

Trump is much more dangerous than Popoff ever was, as Popoff never became president of the United States — although the Christian right movement that Popoff helped bring to the forefront of the GOP during the 1980s (along with the Moral Majority's Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr., Jimmy Swaggart, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and others) has been very damaging to the country. And Trump still has millions of devotees seven months after being voted out of office and four months into Joe Biden's presidency.

Many Trump devotees, according to polls, still believe the Big Lie: Trump's false claim that he was a victim of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. And Siegel explains why they are so "vulnerable," not unlike Popoff's followers.

"The Trump election fraud claim is something far more insidious than the standard-issue 'they stole our votes' cry of the defeated," Siegel warns. "It did, after all, culminate in an open attack on the Capitol to try to overturn the election. It is a claim that is not fading but being amplified by an increasing number of Republicans, becoming a litmus test in primaries. The Republicans just ousted their third most powerful Congress-critter because she had the temerity to say that Donald Trump was full of it."

Siegel continues, "I can certainly see why grifters like Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell are making this claim. There's money to be made by promoting these claims — the Trump campaign itself pulled in a quarter of a billion dollars with this scam. But why do rank-and-file Republicans believe this. Is it because they're stupid? They're no more stupid than anyone else. Is it because they're deluded by Fox News? Most of them don't watch it. No, I think it's something more basic, something that goes back to Peter Popoff and every other con artist that slithered down the pike. It's because they don't want to believe they were fooled."

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aha/hmnn/yikes slide to fascism means kicking out props/norms, but it gets easier b/c fewer ctr-forces?!

comm dr

Liz Cheney's removal from House GOP leadership over her rejection of Trump's election lies and Republican senators' blocking of a bipartisan proposal to create an independent panel that would investigate the Capitol siege reveal in stark terms at least two things: (a) that Republicans have built a cult of personality around Trump, and (b) that they are now at the mercy of the proto-fascist mob that their Dear Leader energized and nurtured during his four-year tenure in the White House.

Either way, the fact of the matter is that, for purposes of political expediency, the GOP has opted to become a dark political force, relying almost entirely on lies and deception—while at the same time waging a coordinated onslaught on voting rights—as its governing techniques. As such, it represents a real threat to the stability of the republic.

Following Trump's defeat, the strategic objective of the Republican Party is not simply to engage in obstructionism, but to continue dividing the nation and radicalizing the American public against the democratic system. This is the only way that the Republican Party can hope to stay in the game in the political, economic, social, and cultural landscape that defines 21st century America.

Always the party of Big Business and the rich, the Republican Party has oscillated from conservatism to reactionism pretty much throughout the twentieth century and the early part of the twenty-first centuries, but today's GOP has gone so far toward abandoning basic democratic norms that it now belongs firmly in the political universe of parties and movements that make up the far-right. In fact, it is considered to be more extreme that Le Pen's National Rally, according to findings based on data collected from the Manifesto Project.

The political identity of today's GOP reflects a decades-long transformation. It begins to take form sometimes during the early 2010s, a decade that historian Andrew Bacevich characterized as an era of "venomous division." Driven primarily by fear of losing power in an increasingly diverse United States, the GOP made a dramatic shift towards extremism as a way of mobilizing white working-class voters, who experienced income stagnation and felt deep economic insecurity thanks to 40 years of brutal neoliberal capitalist policies, and scaring the hell out of the petty bourgeoisie with visions of chaos and disorder brought about by radical forces bent on destroying America and its traditional values and way of life.

Indeed, well before Trump threw his hat in the ring for Presidency, a 2013 survey of local party leaders found that, in contrast to Democrats who preferred more extreme candidates to more moderate candidates by a 2-to-1 margin, Republicans did so by 10-to-1.

Of course, it is Trump himself who solidifies the shift towards extremism. Fully cognizant of the mood both inside the Republican Party and the country as a whole, especially with a large segment of disenchanted and angry white voters seeing equal opportunity as a zero-sum game for them, Trump embarks on the complete transformation of the GOP into an extremist political party by lurching towards reactionary nationalism and diving deeply into nativism with his MAGA campaign slogan and inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants, Muslims, and African-Americans, respectively.

Trump also breaks with elite bipartisan consensus on a broad range of other issues, including trade and foreign policy, in order to secure his image as a unique figure in American politics, while falsehoods and outright lies become indispensable weapons on his performative proto-fascist march towards power.

To be sure, this was a bid for power with a strong resemblance to the political strategy that authoritarian parties have long adopted in many parts of the world, including that of the Nazi Party between 1919-1933. An unmistakable sign of Trump's "performative proto-fascism" was also his dalliance with armed militias—undoubtedly as grave a threat to democracy as were Hitler's brown shirts.

Trump's tenure in office ended on the same note as his rise to power—namely, with another act of "performative proto-fascism." His rejection of the 2020 election as "the big lie" was intended to cement in the minds of his fanatical base the idea of a "deep state" conspiracy and, subsequently, undermine democratic procedures. A movement built on lies, deception, and sheer propaganda can only be maintained by the very same tactics that energized it. There is no other way around it.

The reason that Republicans have opted to continue down the path charted by Trump is because this is now the only way to maintain the support of the proto-fascist base. Without that support, the GOP will have to reinvent its political identity—no small task for a party that has made a remarkable transition from conservatism to reactionism and finally to neoliberal proto-fascism—or cease to exist.

However, the paradox that Republicans face in the post-Trump era is that they cannot sustain a movement built around the cult of personality without the presence of a charismatic leader in its midst. In this sense, the Republicans can continue with Trumpist shenanigans as long as Trump is still around and politically active, but sooner or later they would have to look for an appropriate replacement—and perhaps an authentic fascist—otherwise the proto-fascist base may gradually begin to wither away.

What the future holds for the American republic is impossible to predict. However, what is abundantly clear right now is that with its delusional attachment to Trump, the GOP is methodically dragging the country into the abyss of instability, chaos, and proto-fascism.

C.J. Polychroniou is a political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. He has published scores of books and his articles have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers, and popular news websites. His latest books are Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change, an anthology of interviews with Chomsky originally published at Truthout and collected by Haymarket Books; Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors); and The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change, an anthology of interviews with Chomsky originally published at Truthout and collected by Haymarket Books (scheduled for publication in June 2021).

Aha4bak

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