More evidence of Republican voter fraud and defensive propaganda tactics

Mark Meadows, fraudulent voter and elite 

Republican Party neo-fascist traitor

His valiant defense: No comment

The AP writes: 

Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff to President Donald Trump, has been removed from North Carolina’s list of registered voters after documents showed he lived in Virginia and voted in that state’s 2021 election, officials said Wednesday.

Questions arose about Meadows last month, when North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein’s office asked the State Bureau of Investigation to look into Meadows’ voter registration, which listed a home he never owned — and may never have visited — as his legal residence.

A representative for Meadows, a former congressman from the area, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Public records indicated Meadows had been registered to vote in Virginia and North Carolina, where he listed a mobile home he did not own as his legal residence weeks before casting a 2020 presidential election ballot in the state.

Meadows frequently raised the prospect of voter fraud before the 2020 presidential election, as polls showed Trump trailing Joe Biden, and in the months after Trump’s loss, to suggest Biden was not the legitimate winner. In his 2021 memoir, he repeated the baseless claims that the election was stolen.

Judges, election officials in both parties and Trump’s own attorney general has concluded there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

The Republican 'keep your mouth shut' propaganda tactic

It is worth noting that Meadows, like nearly all Republican elites, when faced with evidence of their own or their tribe's or cult's bad behavior, almost always respond with no comment. Failure to respond to inconvenient facts or truths or evidence of bad behavior by a partisan or his/her tribe or cult is a powerful and routine propaganda tactic. Essentially all Republican politicians, propagandists and elites are expert at keeping their mouths shut in the face of bad behavior or crimes and broken laws by themselves and/or their side. The same behaviors are ruthlessly called out and self-righteous, but hypocritical, screams of LOCK 'EM UP!! abound when the other side does it.

The keep your mouth shut tactic is surprisingly effective. There are solid biological cognitive and social behavioral reasons for the effectiveness of staying silent in the face of bad news and crimes. Those reasons are:

• The tactic of silence is 100% effective at preventing easily fact checked lies and saying stupid things that make no sense and/or are easily rebutted. Put another way, silence is an excellent breeding ground for some reasonable doubt. That is all that is needed for plausible deniability.

• The tactic of silence is very effective at leaving minds willing to give the benefit of a doubt able to do so. When so motivated, e.g., by ideology or tribe or cult loyalty, he human mind  rapidly and unconsciously rationalizes and minimizes or completely explains away home team/cult bad behavior. Bad things, even awful ones, get rationalized into insignificance or non-existence. That reduces or eliminates the discomfort of cognitive dissonance when confronted with bad news.  

• The human minds evolved to operate in a default mindset of trust, which fades if the mind gets betrayed or cheated too often or too badly. By keeping one's mouth shut in the face of bad behavior or betrayal, some, maybe most, people who are still in the mental trust mode will default to trust, and that unconsciously kicks in a normal, automatic motivation to rationalize home team and/or home player bad behavior into insignificance or non-existence. Keeping one's mouth shut makes the pro-bad behavior mental trick easier to occur.    

• Although it has become weaponized and partisan for many or most Americans, society still believes in innocence until guilt is proven. These days, innocence appears to be mostly or completely taken for granted for Republican bad behavior by most of the Republican rank and file. That also applies to Democrats, but probably at a significantly lower intensity level. By keeping one's mouth shut, one says nothing that can affirmatively damage the bad actor's position in view of his/her bad behavior. 

Unfortunately, one does need to pay attention to political propaganda tactics these days. The Republican Party has sunk into a moral rot that accepts lies and deceit in service to the party and its agenda. The GOP uses propaganda tactics routinely and ruthlessly. There are no moral qualms left in nearly all of that party's elites any more. And sometimes, the Democratic elites are not so great about their honesty. But despite flaws and bad things with both, there is not badness equivalence between the two sides.

Plausible deniability usually means keeping one's mouth shut 

about one's own lies, sleaze and crimes

An American neo-fascist propaganda fantasy: Grooming

Propaganda-stoked social ferment

A person has to admit that propaganda gushing from modern American neo-fascists is persistent, creative and without much or any concern for contrary facts, truths or reasonable reasoning. For the professionals of radical right dark free speech and for the most part (completely?), there is no such a thing as an inconvenient fact, truth or reasoning. 

As part of the creativity division of the Republican Party propaganda Leviathan, radical right professionals are road testing a new, divisive lie. So far the creativity division, also know as the DLEMCS (Deceivers, Liars, Emotional manipulators and Crackpots Squad) is working feverishly on the “grooming” fantasy. This has its origins in Pizzagate lies and crackpottery. 

FiveThirtyEight writes on this exciting new Republican lie from the DLEMCS wonks in the Republican Party skunk works (Fox News, etc.):

Why So Many Conservatives Are Talking About ‘Grooming’ All Of A Sudden

“Grooming” has become the most recent scare tactic of choice for the right. Fox News host Laura Ingraham included a segment on her show last month where she claimed public schools have become “grooming centers” where “sexual brainwashing” takes place. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene recently tweeted that the Democrats are the party of “grooming and transitioning children.” Last week, One America News host Chanel Rion even called President Joe Biden “the groomer-in-chief.”

For the unfamiliar, “grooming” is a term typically reserved to describe the type of behavior that child sexual abusers use to coerce potential victims without being caught. But now some Republicans are using it against any Democrat (or company)1 who disagrees with them on certain policy issues. This is a deliberate tactic that was promoted as early as last summer by Christopher Rufo, the same conservative activist who helped muddle the language around critical race theory. “Grooming” is a term that neatly draws together both modern conspiracy theories and old homophobic stereotypes, while comfortably shielding itself under the guise of protecting children. Who, after all, can argue against the safety of kids? But by adopting this language to bolster their latest political pursuits, the right is both giving a nod to fringe conspiracy theorists and using an age-old tactic to dismantle LGBTQ rights.

“There is no better moral panic than a moral panic centered on potential harm to children,” said Emily Johnson, a history professor at Ball State University who specializes in U.S. histories of gender and sexuality.

This most recent round of high-profile “grooming” warnings seems to have started in early March, as Democrats attacked Florida’s law limiting what can be taught in schools. Republican defenders turned to “grooming” as a way to push back.

“The bill that liberals inaccurately call ‘Don’t Say Gay’ would be more accurately described as an Anti-Grooming Bill,” Christina Pushaw, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s press secretary, tweeted on March 4. “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.”

Except there’s no mention of grooming in the law. Instead, it prohibits “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade, “or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”  

So if casting those who oppose this law as “pro-grooming” is not rooted in evidence, what is it rooted in? In part, it’s a dog whistle to the party’s most extreme, conspiracy-minded base. The foundation of the QAnon conspiracy theory is that there is a mass, secret, underground ring of Satanic pedophiles whose members consist of Democratic leaders and Hollywood elites. Painting anyone who opposes Florida’s law (i.e., mainly Democrats) as being pro-grooming fits neatly into that narrative and winks at QAnon adherents without requiring politicians on the right to actually endorse the outlandish theory.  

But what’s being normalized here isn’t grooming; it’s the use of homophobic rhetoric and conspiracy theory language. And it’s intended not to protect children but to advance political causes and slander political enemies.

There it is. The newest creation from the DLEMCS. American society is in for a major bout of moral panic with much wailing, gnashing of teeth, hair on fire, and panties twisted in an unpleasant bunch. One can look on with wonder at the endless fascination that Republicans and Christian nationalist authoritarians have with the sex lives of other people. They must be horribly repressed.

This promises to be a wild ride into the Republican Party’s toxic neo-fascist la-la land. It is time to get out the tinfoil hats, gird the loins and install the cod piece. 

Codpiece being modeled by

a sharp-looking metrosexual model

What does this tell us?

 

Fractured faierie tales from Faux Newslandia

These faierie tales are about the Great Faierie, Tucker Carlson, the most popular faux news personality on the flat screen. Just so we don't forget.

NPR:

Now comes the claim that you can't expect to literally believe the words that come out of Carlson's mouth. And that assertion is not coming from Carlson's critics. It's being made by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York and by Fox News's own lawyers in defending Carlson against accusations of slander. It worked, by the way.

Just read U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil's opinion, leaning heavily on the arguments of Fox's lawyers: The "'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not 'stating actual facts' about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.' "

She wrote: "Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes."

Vyskocil, an appointee of President Trump's, added, "Whether the Court frames Mr. Carlson's statements as 'exaggeration,' 'non-literal commentary,' or simply bloviating for his audience, the conclusion remains the same — the statements are not actionable."

Vyskocil's ruling last week, dismissing a slander lawsuit filed against Carlson, was a win for Fox, First Amendment principles and the media more generally, as Fox News itself maintains. As a legal matter, the judge ruled that Karen McDougal, the woman suing Carlson, failed to surmount the challenge.

 

I'm not fibbing, honest!

Washington Post:

Fox News host Tucker Carlson is fashioning something of a professional defense: Sure, he lies, but not the way those guys at CNN lie.

In a 2018 podcast appearance, he ripped into CNN “Reliable Sources" host Brian Stelter. “He’s just such a pompous little guy. … I mean, he’s one of the falsest people I’ve ever seen on television. … He’s just so, like, self-righteous … but also lying at the same time. Like, I lie ’cause everyone does. But one thing I would never do, have never done in my whole life, is lie self-righteously,” said Carlson in a chat with Jamie Weinstein. Moments later, he reversed: “I don’t lie.”

He lies because everyone does. Excellent reasoning.

WaPo again:

Fox News host Tucker Carlson made news in a speaking engagement in San Marcos, Calif., where he suggested that he hadn’t been vaccinated. On the topic of the second booster shot, Carlson quipped to the crowd at Awaken Church, “I skipped the first three, I’m not getting that one either.

Perhaps Carlson was just waiting for the right audience to talk about his vaccination habits. Last year, then-New York Times media columnist Ben Smith asked Carlson whether he’d gotten the shot. “When was the last time you had sex with your wife and in what position? We can trade intimate details,” Carlson replied.

Consider the turnabout here: Carlson insisted on more than one occasion that disclosing vaccination status was tantamount to disclosing details about your sex life — and yet there he was, committing that very offense at an evangelical church. 

Remember — there’s no worldview guiding Carlson’s rantings on any subject, be it covid or racism or testosterone. Carlson himself confessed as much at a 2019 conference: “The temptation in my politics — and my politics are evolving, although I don’t even have politics, I just have reactions to things, as you can tell.” 

Correct. He reacted to conservative distrust of the vaccines by hyping and deepening that distrust. He reacted to questions from mainstream media reps — those soulless elites! — by stiffing them with preposterous attitude. And he responded to the crowd at Awaken by giving them a helping of anti-establishment covid ideology.