Strange politics: Childless cat ladies; A terrible human being; Germaine's darts

Distractify writes about Ann Coulter at Faux News:

Ann, a childless, cruel cat lady

and a fibber

Few pundits have a more prominent platform in America than Ann Coulter, who has existed in the conservative ecosystem for decades. Part of being an edgy pundit, especially on the right, means that you've got to be willing to stir up some controversy. But Coulter really stepped in it after criticizing Minnesota Governor Tim Walz's son Gus following Walz's speech at the Democratic National Convention.

Walz's son Gus has a learning disorder, and he went viral for tearing up during his father's speech. Gus's emotional response suggests just how much he loves his father and how proud he is of him. Coulter, meanwhile, wrote "Talk about weird" in response to Gus's teary viral moment. Following that tweet, which was eventually deleted, many wanted to know whether Coulter has kids of her own.

Coulter has been engaged several times, but she has never been married and she does not have any kids. .... Ultimately, though, she does not have any children, which many who saw her comment about Gus Walz thought might explain why she didn't understand the kind of bond the governor has with his children.

"Ann Coulter obviously doesn’t have children. I’d bet she has never felt loved in her entire life as well," one fairly harsh person wrote on Threads.

"The people attacking or making fun of 17-year-old Gus Walz just don’t understand what JOY and LOVE are all about. They wish they had someone who cared as much about them as Gus does his dad," another person wrote on Twitter.

In fact, Coulter's tweet was the rare comment that was so appalling that it united basically everyone, even in this fraught political climate. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a son getting emotional because of his love for his father, and that's true whether that son is neurodivergent or not. Whether you agree with Tim Walz's politics or not, his son loves him, and that isn't a partisan issue. 

After facing backlash over her tweet about Gus, Coulter offered an explanation for why she had decided to pull down her original tweet. “I took it down as soon as someone told me he’s autistic, but it's Democrats who go around calling everyone weird thinking it's hilariously funny," she wrote.

That is pretty strange. Dems allegedly call everyone weird. Coulter is not just cruel, she is also a liar.

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In other strangeness, RFK Jr. endorsed DJT as he dropped out of the campaign. Good grief, how hypocritical, shameless and morally rotted can a person get? Pretty darned hypocritical, shameless and immoral. First, he tries to get a position of power from Harris, but she turned him down. So, he flies into a snit and endorses DJT to exact his revenge and soothe his hurt ego and fee-fees. 

How hypocritical and shameless? This much:

A mobile billboard sponsored by MoveOn.org displayed RFK Jr.'s insults of DJT before he endorsed him. The truck drove around Phoenix during Trump and RFK Jr.'s mutual lovefest at a rally Friday in nearby Glendale. Last month, RFK Jr. slammed Donald Trump as "probably a sociopath," a "terrible human being," and the "worst president ever and barely human" during the Republican National Convention in text messages obtained by The New Yorker. He has also called Trump "unhinged."

Also showing a fine example of morally rotted shameless blither, Trump previously criticized Kennedy as a "radical left lunatic" and a "plant" from the left to help then-candidate Joe Biden get reelected. At the Arizona rally, Trump welcomed RFK Jr. to the stage, heaped praise on him, and said his late dad and uncle JFK were "looking down" on him with pride. But all that went away as RFK Jr. and DJT made nice to each other in Arizona.

Bad birds of a feather flock together. Very bad birds. And very strange.

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Finally, the strangest thing of all, assuming it is real, which it may not be, probably isn't . . . . . 

In the last week or so there has been a slow, tiny trickle of journalists and opinion columnists who are starting to act like they have read and understood the darts that Germaine has sent to them (but they have not responded to). What darts? Pointy ones that criticize the MSM, journalists, columnists and editors for calling MAGA, DJT and radical right authoritarians and their radical right authoritarianism things like "conservatives", "right wing", "conservatism" and the like. 

So far, very few professionals have made the apparently huge mental leap from seeing DJT and MAGA as merely conservative to seeing them for what they clearly are, i.e. radical right authoritarians. 

As an example, I recently sent this dart about standard MSM labeling of DJT and MAGA elites generally:

A comment comes to mind. Most of the GOP elites and MAGA generally are not merely conservative or on the right. In view of all the evidence in the public record, including their support for Trump and his deeply corrupt and openly radical right authoritarian politics, why refer to those people and/or their politics as merely "conservative" or "right wing"? That normalizes something that is very abnormal.

It is both neutral and more accurate to refer to the MAGA movement as authoritarian and its elites as radical right anti-democracy authoritarians. America's radical right is clearly pursuing some form of kleptocratic radical right authoritarian government for America. MAGA clearly wants to build government and society based on some undefined but unholy trinity of kleptocratic dictatorship, kleptocratic plutocracy and kleptocratic Christian theocracy. Project 2025 is solid evidence of radical authoritarianism, and so is how Trump acted when he was in office and still acts today. Other than being older and less mentally stable, his politics and tactics have not changed much. Nearly all the old-fashioned conservatives in the GOP have been RINO hunted out of power and/or the party. The real conservatives are at places like The Bulwark.

Please stop favoring Trump, MAGA and American authoritarianism by calling it something nicer than what it factually is. Calling authoritarianism "conservative", "right wing" or the like is the epitome of false balancing. It also insults conservatives and all Americans who are still pro-democracy, pro-civil liberties, pro-rule of law and accepting of facts and truths even when they are inconvenient.

Anyway, a few bits from the MSM are indicating that at least a few in the MSM business might be starting to think roughly the same way. For example, at ~1:20 - 1:50 minutes of this 8-minute video (MSNBC interview with Katy Tur), NYT columnist David French argues that the Republican party institutionally is not recognizably conservative. French is one of the MSM people who got darted by Germaine.

French is one of the MSMsters who recently seem to be inching toward calling DJT, the GOP elites and MAGA something closer to what they really are. Later in the interview (~2:30 - 2:55), Tur herself seems to recognize that something fundamental has changed in the Republican Party, making it into something different from what many or most rank and file Republicans believe it is.

Q1: Is Germaine off his rocker for thinking that his darts are even read by the unlucky MSM recipients?

Q2: Assuming that most rank and file Republicans are unaware of the fundamental shift in the GOP from basically pro-democracy to pro-authoritarian and anti-democracy (and that is probably true), what responsibility do they bear, if any, for enabling DJT and his MAGA threat, e.g., are they deceived but complicit authoritarians?