News bits: About RFK Jr's candidacy; Democracy's twin threats; Deranged thinking

A letter to the WaPo from a reader commented:

The Nov. 20 Style article “What does the Kennedy name mean now?” quoted Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent candidate for president in 2024, as saying at a recent campaign event, “If I get 34 percent in the battleground states, I can win those electors. … It’s winner take all. So in a three-way race, all I have to do is beat the other two by a point.”

Of the many false and misleading statements by Mr. Kennedy, none might be more dangerous than that.

Mr. Kennedy is playing on the ignorance of many Americans about how a president is elected in the United States. If he takes a handful of states in a close election, that would mean that no one will have gotten an electoral majority, and the choice will go to the House of Representatives, voting by state. Even if Democrats retake the House majority, Republicans probably will control a majority of state delegations, and thus will select former president Donald Trump, the likely 2024 Republican nominee.

This outcome would again negate the popular vote. It would differ from past instances in which the popular vote has been thwarted because of who will benefit. Mr. Kennedy’s egotism could well put the United States into the ranks of those countries where a dictatorship comes to power by constitutional means.

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The MSM does not comment much on the second major threat to democracy, years of attacks on the right to vote. That is scary. E.J. Dionne writes in a timely WaPo opinion: 

Over the next year, the survival of democracy should be the central issue in American politics. To insist on this is to be a realist, not an alarmist. But making that case requires identifying two distinct threats.

The first is Donald Trump, who is already at the center of our national conversation. The second is the ongoing assault on voting rights, which rarely commands the airwaves.

We are paying far less attention to the long-term deterioration of the right to vote, the essential building block of a democratic republic. It’s easier to overlook because chipping away at access to the ballot has been a subtle, decade-long process. It began with the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision that gutted Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, thus sharply circumscribing the Justice Department’s power to enforce the law.

In his decision in Shelby, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. claimed that even without a strong Section 4, the Voting Rights Act bans discrimination under Section 2, which “is permanent, applies nationwide, and is not at issue in this case.”

Permanent? Not if the 2-1 decision last week from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit is allowed to stand.

The court’s majority arrogantly tossed aside what Congress explicitly said it was doing when it passed the law, claiming miraculous powers to read the “text and structure” of the act as preventing private parties, including civil rights groups, from bringing cases under Section 2. As the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer noted, the ruling’s claim that only the Justice Department had this authority ignored “Congress’s intentions, Supreme Court precedent and decades of practice.”

This is no minor bit of judicial activism. Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA, wrote in the Election Law Blog that the ruling would eliminate the bulk of the cases aimed at protecting voting rights because “the vast majority of claims to enforce section 2 of the Voting Rights Act are brought by private plaintiffs, not the Department of Justice with limited resources.” Bye bye, Voting Rights Act. Indeed, there were immediate signs (in a key Louisiana case, for example) that the 8th Circuit ruling would be used to overturn earlier voting rights actions.

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We have come to expect childish, morally rotted irrationality from America's authoritarian radical right elites. Another instance of it comes from the great exemplar, George Santos:

George Santos says he'll treat expulsion as a 'badge of honor' as he claims his colleagues are drunkenly having sex with lobbyists 'every night'

In an X Space hosted by conservative media personality Monica Matthews on Friday evening, the scandal-plagued Republican said he expects to be expelled when the House votes on the matter, which is likely to happen this coming week.

"I don't care. You want to expel me? I'll wear it like a badge of honor," Santos said. "I'll be the sixth expelled member of Congress in the history of Congress. And guess what? I'll be the only one expelled without a conviction."

He calls Ethics Committee chair @RepMichaelGuest a "pussy," mocks Guest's home state (Mississippi), describes his colleagues as corrupt philanderers, and says he'll wear expulsion "like a badge of honor."

pic.twitter.com/jnjPt9jph8 — bryan metzger (@metzgov) November 25, 2023

Santos is proud that he considers himself to be above the level of moral rot that characterizes his morally rotted colleagues. His arrogance and moral bankruptcy won't let him see that he just as bad as most of the rest of them, worse in my opinion.

Looks like happy George has packed on 

more than a few pounds

Washington suits him - good cafeteria!

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From the Authoritarian Radical Right Crackpot Conspiracy Files: Salon writes about the newest crackpot conspiracy theory from radical right grifters. This one is that evil feminists are suppressing the flourishing of traditional wives, women who love to be submissive and modest with their men folk. This seems like an appeal to disgruntled Incel's egos. Salon writes:

If the average American were asked what they imagine the priorities of the feminist movement are these days, most people would likely cite concerns like "fighting abortion bans" or "getting justice for sexual violence victims" or boring mainstays like "equal pay for equal work." But if you listen in to the world of right-wing social media influencers, they have a different answer. To them, feminists are single-mindedly obsessed with destroying women who identify as "tradwives."

"Angry Feminist Compares Tradwives to Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists," screams the headline from the YouTube channel for Michael Knowles, a far-right troll with 1.75 million subscribers.

"This Video Is Triggering All The Feminists," declares the headline of a video defense of tradwives from right-wing grifter Amala Ekpunobi, who has 1.7 million subscribers.

"Tradwife" is internet slang for "traditional wife." It's largely a social media trend of conventionally attractive white women putting out TikToks and videos gushing about the joys of submissive marriage and "modesty," though notably this "modest" clothing often leaves little to the imagination.

It's a neat marketing trick from tradwives to position themselves as a dangerous threat that feminists are desperate to take out. It helps sell the central, lucrative fantasy to credulous audiences: That female submission is a woman's natural desire, one that's being stolen from them by sinister feminist forces. And that you, male viewer, would be gifted with a compliant helpmeet of your very own, if not for those dastardly feminists. But these brave women of YouTube, with their picture-perfect make-up and slender-but-curvy physiques, will stand up to those bitches and restore your birthright: A smoking hot 22-year-old housewife who never talks back, never gets tired, never says "no," and never gains weight, no matter how many children she has. 

By feeding conservative audiences a largely imaginary war with feminists, the tradwives are also pulling off another sleight of hand: distracting from how their content preys upon men, especially young men, by selling them a silly fantasy as reality. In the process, they're contributing to the male loneliness epidemic, by discouraging young men from developing the skills and mindset they need to get a real girlfriend, instead of just subsisting on a steady stream of social media delusions.

For instance, one video by popular vlogger "Mrs. Midwest" is titled "10 Ways to Bless Your MAN!" and has chapters like "Cooking!", "Compliments!" and "Anticipate needs!" The comments on the video suggest that the viewers are unaware that this is not for real, and that flesh-and-blood women are not, in fact, perfectly coiffed sex-robots here to read your mind and fluff your pillows. Young men who mistake this fantasy for reality are going to have a tough time on the dating market. Inevitably, many get angry and disillusioned upon finding out that most women aren't interested in the thankless role of an unpaid maid and sex worker. Unfortunately, when that happens, there's even more right-wing propaganda aimed at them, which blames their frustrations on feminism. An entire industry of right-wing grifters, from Ben Shapiro to Jordan Peterson to Andrew Tate, are making a mint by exploiting young men who are desperate to hear that the problem isn't that they're sexist, it's that women don't like sexism.