Republican cancel culture

America’s authoritarian radical right Republican Party (ARRRP) howls in self-righteous outrage about liberal cancel culture. Despite all the squealing, most cancel culture action is by the radical right blocking criticisms of Trump. I have been banned from all pro-Trump online sites, usually on my 1st comment.

Reddit pro-Trump site r/trump

Note rule #2

Now-a-days, radical right Republicans do not tolerate any criticism of Trump at most online pro-Trump sites. That started years ago. Faux News constantly bitches about how people who criticize the left or CRT or groomers in the Democratic party will be severely canceled by liberals and Democrats to silence criticisms of the left. 

Now, in an expansion of Republican cancel culture, the WaPo reports that to protect Trump from criticism, America’s ARRRP cancel culture has spread to the House of Representatives. The WaPo writes (not paywalled):

In the GOP House, details of Trump’s trials 

are an unfair personal attack

Rep. Jim McGovern’s (D-Mass.) articulation of Trump’s legal issues on Wednesday was stricken from the record

A candidate for president of the United States is on trial for allegedly helping facilitate a hush money payment to a porn star to avoid a sex scandal during his 2016 campaign, and then fraudulently disguising those payments in violation of the law. He’s also charged with conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He’s also charged with willful retention of classified information. And a jury has already found him liable for rape in a civil court.

As you probably know, those statements apply to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee on November’s presidential ballot. They are also statements that, with only a few slight changes, were deemed unfair personal attacks by House Republicans and removed from a record of debate on Wednesday afternoon.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) rose on the House floor to challenge having been admonished for saying Trump had been indicted by a grand jury and is on trial. He made a parliamentary inquiry about the admonishment; that is, he asked Speaker Pro Tempore Jerry L. Carl (R-Ala.) for clarification on the rules of debate. Specifically: “Has the chair determined that it is unparliamentary to state a fact?”

“The chair is not in a position to determine the veracity of remarks made on the floor,” he replied as the member facilitating debate at the time. “Members must avoid personalities.”

McGovern declared this to be “unbelievable.”

“Personalities” is another of those terms that has a specific meaning in the context of the House. It comes from a long-standing rule governing debate in that chamber, including the rules adopted for the 118th Congress.

“Remarks in debate (which may include references to the Senate or its Members),” Rule XVII, Section 1b states, “shall be confined to the question under debate, avoiding personality.” And “avoiding personality” means, simply, not making personal attacks on peers.

The intent is to foster collegiality, to keep members of Congress from attacking other representatives, senators or the president. In this way, decorum might be maintained and interpersonal disparagements limited.

But Trump is not a representative, senator or president. He is a private citizen, at least at the moment.

To McGovern’s point, it’s fraught to suggest that statements of fact are personal attacks. He noted that previous comments about the trial in New York, in which Republicans called it a “sham,” did not prompt any sanction. His articulation of Trump’s status, though, did.

“These are not alternative facts. These are real facts,” he began. “A candidate for the United States is on trial for sending a hush money payment to a porn star to avoid a sex scandal during his 2016 campaign, and then fraudulently disguising those payments in violation of the law.”  

“He's also charged with conspiring to overturn the election,” McGovern continued, referring to charges in Fulton County, Ga. “He's also charged with stealing classified information.”

McGovern added that “a jury has already found him liable for rape in a civil court,” which is true.

It was at about this point in McGovern’s soliloquy that Rep. Erin Houchin (R-Ind.) demanded his comments be stricken from the record. Carl stated that the words would be taken down and told McGovern to sit down.

This probably wasn’t a great idea from a political standpoint. The clip of McGovern’s objection and comments was shared on social media, where prominent Democrats quickly jumped in to defend the legislator — and ensure their followers saw what he said. This is the Streisand Effect at work: the effort to suppress awareness of information can draw even more attention to it.

But we shouldn’t lose sight of McGovern’s broader point. It is both the case that his comments were (largely) accurate and also that they were embarrassing for Trump and, by extension, members of his party who seek to downplay his legal problems. McGovern highlighted this tension, giving Republicans the opportunity to argue that true things said about a nonmember violated rules of decorum barring the disparagement of elected officials.

There it is, right out in the open. ARRRP cancel culture on display in the House of Representatives. Instead of doing real work, ARRRP pisses away precious time whining about fact-based criticisms of Trump and striking legitimate criticisms from the public record. According to scientific measurement, that is gross and disgusting hypocrisy:

Inclusivity is leftist cancel culture!

Etc.

News bits: Israeli govt. loses its mind; Etc.

The NYT reports that in response to Spain, Norway and Ireland saying that they recognize an independent Palestinian state, Israel will withhold funds Israel sends to the Palestinian Authority, the governing Palestinian power in the West Bank. That will worsen the Palestinians’ already dire economic crisis, but what the heck. Israel has never wanted a two state solution. So this is a fine way to respond. 

For what it is worth, as of May 2024 the State of Palestine is recognized as a sovereign state by 143 of the 193 member states of the United Nations. Spain, Norway and Ireland are the first in Europe to do so. Guess that really ticked off the Israeli government. Israel simply opposes a two-state solution. It is now an impossibility.

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The New York Times identified over 300 hundred civilians that were abducted in Afghanistan in the largest campaign of forced disappearances of the war. It all led back to one man, a US backed Afghani general. The actual disappeared (dead) toll is likely far higher. The NYT refers to the murderer as America’s monster. 

Secret graves in the desert

The general, Abdul Raziq, was one of America’s most important partners in the war against the Taliban. Witnesses report that he once stood before a crowd, gesturing at two prisoners he had brought along to make his point. The prisoners knelt with their hands bound as Raziq spoke to his men. A pair of his officers raised their rifles and opened fire, sending the prisoners into spasms on the reddening earth. In the silence that followed, Raziq addressed the crowd, three witnesses said. He told them to reject the Taliban and warned them that “I will come back and do this again and again, and no one is going to stop me.”

We all know how well that fun anti-Taliban tactic worked out. 

Our government is not good at keeping us informed about inconvenient facts and truths. Actually, it is bad at it and the badness is bipartisan.

Raziq at his home in Kandahar City, 2015 

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The WaPo reports that Fani Willis won her Georgia state primary election bid for re-election to stay on as Fulton County’s District Attorney. Also, the judge on the Trump election interference lawsuit won was elected to a full term in on the bench. In the November general election, Willis will face Courtney Kramer, an inexperienced radical right authoritarian Republican lawyer who interned in the Trump White House. Kramer has never prosecuted a criminal case. No doubt the Republicans will go all out to get Kramer elected so that she can stop the criminal lawsuit against Trump. Kramer, was involved in Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 loss in Georgia, so we all know exactly what she will do for Trump if she gets elected in November. WaPo comments that Fulton County (Atlanta) is heavily Democratic, so Willis is probably to be re-elected. Nonetheless, there has been an influx of national Republican donations for Kramer. That election will be nasty. It will be loaded with outrageous radical authoritarian Republican lies and slanders against Willis.

Willis already has attacked Kramer for not having any experience and for having no allegiance to the people of Fulton county. Willis correctly says Kramer is loyal to partisan politics and powerful Republican interests. Trump’s successful delay tactics have already pushed the likely date of the trial past the Nov. elections, so that alone constitutes a massive win for Trump. 

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The WaPo reports that the Louisiana legislature has passed a law that makes the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol controlled substances, the legislature calls “controlled dangerous substances.” Once the governor signs the bill into law, that will effectively make all abortions in the state illegal. The law includes incarceration and fines for an individual having the pills without a valid prescription or outside of professional practice. It exempts pregnant women from prosecution.

So, there will probably be an underground railroad to smuggle the drugs into the state. Once again, radical right authoritarian republican elites show their disregard for civil liberties. According to those self-righteous elites, God decides what a liberty is, not humans or a mere Constitution.

As dangerous as fentanyl

(according to Christian nationalist zealots 

in the Louisiana legislature)

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WaPo reports that Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, is barging back into news content after backing off of it for a while. This time things are going to get real ugly. The WaPo reports:

After years of Meta steadily walking away from news on its platforms, the company’s new AI tool is now using the work of those outlets for content.

Meta’s new chatbot, Meta AI, is happy to scan news outlets and summarize their latest stories and headlines for anyone who asks. It’s even doing it in Canada, where the company banned links to news sources on Facebook and Instagram in August to get around a law that could require it to pay publishers.

It’s CliffsNotes for the news. Meta AI draws on news outlets to give its users the day’s top headlines, summaries of specific stories or deeper dives on current events without them having to leave its apps.

In our tests of the chatbot, we asked about top headlines and recent news, then compared its answers to the sources Meta listed. We found the chatbot regularly responded with slightly rephrased versions of sentences that appeared in the original articles. In multiple cases, the chatbot reproduced sentences from the news sources verbatim.

There are no links to the stories or names of sources in the answers themselves. Instead, you need to click another button or link at the bottom of Meta AI’s answers to see external links and sources, such as CNN, the Associated Press or NBC.  

In April, Meta began removing the News tab from Facebook in the United States and Australia, saying in a blog post that “people don’t come to Facebook for news and political content.”  

Publications have already seen large drops in traffic from Meta’s shifts. AI summaries could herald another massive change in how people find and consume news, and further affect news outlets’ traffic. According to a poll last year by Pew Research Center, vastly more people got news on their digital devices than from television, radio or print publications. 

Well ladies and germs, we all know how this is going to play out. Already weak news reporting is going to get summarized and distorted. Profits to news sources will further decrease. News organizations will sue in court to get payment from Meta for using their content for profit. God only knows what the courts will decide. Maybe that will depend on how Trump feels* about it, assuming he chooses to pay any attention to it whatsoever. 

* Feels, not knows. He doesn't know anything, he just feels and shoots from the hip.

Powerful politicians subverting the rule of law and democracy

Yesterday's Rachael Maddow news show highlighted a serious weakness in the American system of justice. That weakness is the possibility of powerful politicians attacking and subverting the federal Department of Justice when it investigates serious crimes against those politicians. In the process of subverting the rule of law, criminal politicians attack and utterly destroy the careers and reputations of the investigators who try to defend the rule of law by prosecuting the powerful criminals.

In the past powerful politicians in the federal government have successfully blocked investigation and prosecution of crimes by powerful politicians who have committed serious crimes. The example Maddow explained at the beginning of the 34 minute video below described powerful Nazi collaborators in the American congress who successfully blocked prosecution of their treason and other treason and crimes. As part of their self-defense, those traitors viciously destroyed the careers and reputations of DoJ prosecutors who investigated the treason and moved to indict the guilty politicians. The traitors were never prosecuted.

The same is happening today. The Republican Party in congress and the state of Georgia are doing their very best to slander, neuter and destroy the prosecution of Trump for election interference by Fulton County District Attorney Fanni Willis. What the modern Republican traitors, e.g., Jim Jordan, are doing is no different from what the Nazi traitors in congress got away with in the 1940s.

At ~21:20 of the video, Maddow interviews Willis and gets her take of what radical authoritarian Republicans in congress and the Georgia state legislature are doing to block her prosecution of Trump for criminal interference with the 2020 election. She refers to the Jim Jordan as a clown. Jordan is no clown. He is a dangerous traitor and a vicious, lying authoritarian thug. He is trying to do to Willis what treasonous Nazi collaborators in congress successfully did to DoJ prosecutors in the 1940s. He wants to protect Trump from prosecution for his crimes by destroying and blocking Willis’ lawsuit, and her career and reputation. Jordan is, more or less, a modern day Nazi collaborator right out of the 1940s.

Maddow points out that few people have stood in defense of what Willis is doing. Willis is remarkably unfazed by all the threats, or which there are plenty, attacks on her reputation and constant harassment by radical Republican politicians and rank and file Trump supporters. She says nothing is going to stop her from prosecuting crimes that evidence shows have been committed.

I post this as an urgent warning about the shocking ill-will and vicious intent that the poisoned, radicalized authoritarian Republican Party stands for. The GOP does not care about democracy, public opinion or the rule of law if it is works against themselves or their supporters. They care only about unfettered access to more wealth and power. GOP elites and rank and file (whether they know it or believe it or not), are pro-dictatorship and pro-kleptocracy.

American democracy, rule of law and civil liberties are all under a ferocious attack by well-organized, well-funded and deeply corrupt, morally rotted authoritarian forces that are concentrated mostly (~80% ?) in the Republican Party and its supporters, e.g., corrupt Christian nationalist theocrats, and corrupt plutocrats, with the rest residing mostly with elements within the Democratic Party. 

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For the wonks - Perplexity gets perplexed

A search of Perplexity (an artificial intelligence search engine) for information about the Nazi collaborators came up with an answer that there were no Nazi collaborators in congress in the 1940s. When I asked a follow-up question about why Perplexity was unaware of Rachael Maddow's book Prequel which focused on Nazi collaborators in congress in the 1930s, it responded:

Based on the excerpts and summaries provided from Rachel Maddow's book "Prequel", it is now clear that there were indeed members of Congress in the 1930s and 1940s who collaborated with and took money from Nazi agents like George Sylvester Viereck, spreading Nazi propaganda and potentially obstructing investigations into their activities.

The chain of my questions and Perplexity’s answers is at this link. It took me a while to ask the right question. If you ask artificial intelligence the wrong question, you will get a wrong answer. And sometimes, if you ask artificial intelligence the right question, you can get a wrong answer. For example this chain of Qs & As. One needs to be very careful with artificial intelligence.

Politics lite: Some cartoons