Context
For decades, radical right propaganda vilified the federal government, politicians and (“deep state”) bureaucrats. In recent decades experts and science in a few politicized matters, e.g., global warming and vaccines, were added to the radical-crackpot’s list of what is untrustworthy. We have been told thousands of times in hundreds of ways they were not trustworthy because they were crooks and liars.
For better or worse, humans will be human. There always was some degree of validity to the complaints. Politicians really did lie and self-deal to some variable extent. Some of the lies were catastrophically bad whoppers. High on the list of colossal whoppers was LBJ’s lie to the American people that he would be a peace president. In significant part that promise got him elected in 1964. History has show that LBJ never had any intention of being a peace president regarding Vietnam.
Simply put, LBJ’s lie took from the American people of their power to choose what most of them wanted, i.e., no war in Vietnam. LBJ’s lie deceived and betrayed the American people. That cost us dearly. We all know how the Vietnam disaster turned out. The “peace president” lie arguably led to over 55,000 Americans and about 3 million Vietnamese military and civilians getting killed in America’s costly failed war.
In the times of Nixon and G.W. Bush, a lot of distrust crooks & liars talk came from the left. In recent times, especially since ~2000, most of the distrust has come from America’s increasingly radical and authoritarian political right, primarily concentrated in the GOP and its recent Tea Party and MAGA wealth and power movements. The old pro-democracy, pro-rule of law, pro-civil liberties conservatives of the 1950s through the 1980s that used to dominate the GOP have been RINO hunted completely out of power by America’s authoritarian elite radical right wealth and power movement. True conservatives in the GOP are more or less extinct.
An example of the modern MAGA politician: Untrustworthy, mendacious, hypocritical, law-breaker
A NYT article, As He Backs ICE Crackdown, Nebraska Governor Employs Undocumented Workers, focuses on a prominent GOP politician of 2026 in a very deep red state. Like Trump himself, Trump-endorsed NE governor Gov. Jim Pillen embraced Donald Trump’s aggressive anti-immigration politics. At the same time his family’s hog-farming empire has relied for years on undocumented workers. Pillen even mimics Trump’s bigot rhetoric about “criminal illegal aliens” who have “invaded our country”. Pillen calls illegal workers “the worst of the worst” claiming that the vicious criminals are hiding out in Nebraska.
To help cleanse the alleged illegal immigrant horror in Nebraska, Pillen ordered the Nebraska State Patrol to cooperate with ICE, let ICE use a former state prison called the “Cornhusker Clink” to hold people swept up in deportation operations. The NYT reporting indicates that Pillen Family Farms, with about 1,200 workers, has employed both authorized immigrants and undocumented workers for years.
Under 8 U.S.C. § 1324a, it is unlawful for an employer to knowingly hire an unauthorized worker or to continue employing someone once the employer knows the person lacks work authorization. Pillen easily deals with that inconvenience by saying he knows nothing about it.
Yeah right, and his pigs can fly too! They call ’em Pillen Pigs. People are unhappy when, while flying over, the pigs make a deposit on their cars.
Jim Pillen’s MAGA politician defense is convincing to us all, right? /s
For context, the NYT reports that current and former workers say that at least 20 Pillen hog farms employed undocumented immigrants. There’s a lot to not know about!
“If you’re going to come and pound on farmers in Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, whatever, and daily raid their farms or their processing plants, you’re going to have some problems politically. The farms are right smack dab in the middle of red areas.” — Al Juhnke, former executive director of the Nebraska Pork Producers Association
So it's OK to raid farms and processing plants in blue areas? -- Germaine
Regarding the radical right’s criminal illegal immigrant myth
Of course by now those of us who can handle facts and truths like real adults all know that MAGA’s illegal immigrants lies are mostly criminals is false. That racist lie has been debunked multiple times. However it sure does whip up a whole lot of support, a buttload at least, including among some white folks who are bigots, racists or non-bigoted and non-racist, but just plain scared to death of non-white folks. We can expect to hear this racist lie repeated hundreds times by untrustworthy, lying MAGA demagogues and politicians between now and the upcoming 2026 elections.
Q1: With our two-party system as it was in 1964, did American voters have an actual choice to stay out of war with Vietnam given that (1) Barry Goldwater was publicly pro-aggressive war, while (2) LBJ was publicly anti-war, but privately pro-less aggressive war, i.e., both were pro-war?
Q2: Is Jim Pillen a reasonable example of the modern MAGA politician’s mendacity, hypocrisy, or contempt for the rule of law? If not, why not?
Q3: Who or what if anything political is worthy of trust, or are we in an era of distrust but verify, or have we always have been in that era? What if we distrust who or what should be trusted isn’t, i.e., is politics hopelessly poisoned by lies, self-dealing, hypocrisy, bigotry, and/or lust for power or wealth?
Some info sources:
Court documents reveal Trump paid $1.375M in labor lawsuit — ….. more than 200 Polish immigrants in the U.S. illegally worked 12-hour shifts starting in January 1980 for less than half of union wages and sometimes weren’t paid.
2 More Immigrants Say They Worked for Trump Despite Lacking Legal Status
Trump National Golf Club in N.Y. Fires Undocumented Workers, Lawyer Says
Comparing crime rates between undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and native-born US citizens in Texas — Contrary to public perception, we observe considerably lower felony arrest rates among undocumented immigrants compared to legal immigrants and native-born US citizens and find no evidence that undocumented criminality has increased in recent years.
Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans, studies find
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