When ‘Perception’ Matters: The Supreme Court’s One‑Way Street To Corrupt Authoritarianism

The lawsuit

TPM and other sources are reporting about oral arguments where the 6 MAGA USSC (US Supreme Court) judges signal they are willing to end state grace periods for mail-in ballots received after election day. In this case, Watson v. Republican National Committee, MAGA Republicans want the USSC to declare ballots mailed in before election day but received after election day to be invalid. That will affect hundreds of thousands of ballots in the 14 states that allow a grace period for receipt of mailed ballots within state grace periods. At least ~750,000 valid ballots were received after election day in the 2024 elections.

MAGA’s USSC hypocrisy in service to authoritarianism & corruption

In this lawsuit, the USSC’s MAGA bloc hypocritically treats vague “perceptions” of vote fraud as a constitutional emergency. During oral arguments, MAGA Justice Kavanaugh claimed that late‑arriving ballots might “destabilize election results” by prompting cries of fraud. As is usual for election fraud claims from MAGA elites, there is no evidence that grace periods cause significant fraud in elections. MAGA USSC judges repeatedly invoke “public confidence” in elections only when it justifies making it harder to count valid votes, not when far‑fetched fraud narratives are manufactured by partisan elites. Link 1, link 2

By contrast, when the issue is money in politics, MAGA judges flip. In Citizens United and later corruption-related cases, the Court said the only corruption government may target is outright quid‑pro‑quo bribery. The MAGA judges had no concern about public perceptions that special interest money buys and corrupt politicians, which happens a lot. Roberts’ MAGA court repeatedly struck down federal and state limits on big money, even when states offered concrete evidence that unlimited outside spending created both real and perceived corruption. In other words, speculative “perception” of fraud justifies MAGA judges suppressing votes, but documented actual corruption and appearance of corruption is not enough to justify restraining billionaires and corporations. Link 3, link 4, link 5

The same double standard pervades MAGA’s culture‑war decisions that advance a bigoted theocratic Christian‑nationalist agenda. In the Dobbs anti-abortion decision, the MAGA majority blew off 50 years of abortion rights precedent. The MAGA judges cynically claimed humility and constitutional neutrality while effectively empowering fundamentalist Christianity’s current vision of abortion and family life. There, the MAGA judges blithely ignored the obviously inevitable massive damage to women’s health and equality they were inflicting in the name of their theocratic authoritarianism. Rulings like this elevate authoritarian Christian claims in public life, while the justices falsely claim they are just following neutral legal principles. Link 6, link 7

MAGA’s pro-corruption and pro-authoritarian agenda is clear. MAGA politics is dead-set on establishing a minority rule by suppressing votes, supercharging the power of corrupting special interest money, and enforcing a reactionary Christian fundamentalist moral order on society and its laws. MAGA weaponizes fear of perceptions of non-existent election fraud to nullify lawful ballots. On the other hand, campaign‑finance cases ignore the public’s perception that the system is corrupt, which it actually is. Hypocritical MAGA court decisions cynically invoke faux neutrality to lock in Christian theocracy and oligarchic corruption that polls show most Americans reject. These are not isolated inconsistencies; they are the signature moves of an authoritarian MAGA USSC serving corrupt authoritarian, theocratic, and oligarchic interests hiding under a cynical veneer of law. Link 8, link 9

If You're Trying to Help Someone Leave MAGA, Take Care of Yourself First

https://leavingmaga.org/

Context

A trickle of Trump supporters are waking up and starting to seeing the magnitude of their mistakes. As one can easily imagine, the awakening and transition from MAGAland can be quite unpleasant for a person. Social science indicates that the best way to help people transition away from Trump and MAGA is to not attack and go for revenge. Instead, the converts from the dark need a reasonably safe, reasonably esteem/identity-supporting off-ramp. One can respectfully point out the insults, harms and fears of threats from Trump and years of MAGA demagoguery. They caused serious hurt and anger in people who opposed Trump and MAGA authoritarianism. But the impulse to scold, "I told you so", however tempting it is, is one of the most counterproductive responses possible when someone is inching toward an exit from sticky extremism like MAGA.

Apparently, shame is the main reason that MAGA doubters stay silent and stay put. Cult-recovery experts and deradicalization researchers find that some warmth, curiosity, and good questions work much better than evidence-dumps or triumphalism. Helping someone convert is not about winning an argument. It's about keeping the exit process safe and intact for the defector long enough to be effective for when they're ready to bug out.

Science says: Help yourself first, MAGA converts second

But what about targeted groups and us in the opposition? What about our feelings and needs? Trump, MAGA demagoguery and more than a few of the rank & file routinely call political opponents a slew of nasty false things. There are many MAGA insults hurled at opposition to Trump and corrupt MAGA authoritarianism.

People opposed to Trump and MAGA corruption, moral rot and authoritarianism have been insulted, threatened, and treated like subhuman crap. That treatment comes from vulgar, arrogant MAGA liars, slanderers, creeps, crooks, and crackpots. People in opposition to Trump and MAGA politics are completely justified to feel rage, anger, fear, hurt, resentment, exhaustion, insult, disgust and moral outrage. 

Accumulating peer-reviewed research confirms that many Trump opponents carry a documented and measurable mental health burden from living under democratic backsliding. Depression, anxiety, and what researchers call "political grief" are part of the burden forced on us by what Trump and MAGA politics have done to us. Research indicates that before someone tries to help anyone else, dealing with your own psychological health is a precondition for effectiveness, not a distraction.

Also, protect yourself. Sustained engagement with someone in a contentious political environment carries the same secondary trauma risks documented in social workers and first responders. Research-backed strategies include self-compassion practices. It helps to (1) distribute personal efforts burden across community rather than carrying it alone, and (2) process your own bad feelings like grief and anger away from the person you're trying to reach. 

Moral framing & incremental progress

The conservative moral frame: A tricky part of helping deradicalization is using the right moral framing. Conservatives tend to react badly to arguments grounded in fairness or harm. Those arguments appeal much more to moderates and liberals than to conservatives. Unfairness and harm to us or other groups that MAGA demagoguery targeted usually do not resonate much or at all with conservatives. In general, arguments that appeal most to MAGA defectors are grounded in loyalty and betrayal, e.g., "Trump used you", "Trump deceived and betrayed you", "MAGA lied to you", "MAGA is using you", etc. 

Incrementalism: A meta-analysis of 77 interventions found that no single conversation reliably produces lasting change. One measures success by planting seeds, staying present and staying calm and respectful. Success in deradicalization rarely happens as a dramatic turning point. Incremental progress is usually invisible. Invisible change is not defeat. It's how change usually works for radicals seeking recovery to normalcy. 

Q: Can you begin to see why it is generally helpful, even if incrementally so, to stay calm, respectful, non-threatening and speaking in the moral frames that most likely appeal to most Trump/MAGA supporters who might at least consider defecting from Trump and MAGA authoritarianism?

Christian nationalist theocracy rising

“The appointment of Erika Kirk goes hand in hand with 

Christian nationalist incursions into our armed forces. More than 

anything, the appointment of Kirk to the board demonstrates the 

ongoing politicization of the service academies.”

Elite white Christian nationalist (CN) theocrats are now out in the open about their theocratic intent and goals for American government, society and law. White Christian nationalism no longer hints at theocracy. CN elites leaders now say out loud that their key goals are (1) to seize the machinery of the state and impose their version of Christianity on everyone else, and (2) write the laws and rulebooks that would empower them do it. Former Trump official William Wolfe is arrogant and in-your-face about it. He blithely threatens (promises?) this: 

“This is how we should order our lives together. And frankly, yes, we are going to impose it upon you. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry, but this is good and right and just if it lines up with God’s standards, and I am going to enforce my morality on you in as much as our morality is God’s morality. You should always check yourselves. Do I believe what God believes? Am I defending what God says is good?  And if it is, then you should have the courage to say, ‘This is how we’re going to run our town, this is how we’re going to run our county, this is how we’re going to run our state, and this is how we should run the United States of America by legislating the morality that we can find in the Bible.’” 

 

Wolfe tells dissenters to get out of America if they don’t like his vision of America. Wolfe isn’t just freelancing on his own. He’s summarizing the explicit intolerant, cruel CN spirit behind Project 2025, the Center for Renewing America, and CN’s broader push to concentrate power in a white, reactionary, Christian minority that treats equality and pluralism as existential threats. Link 1

Wolfe: Arrogant, cruel, corrupt, authoritarian

Look at what this movement says and does about race and identity. Research documents CN “Adherents” and “Sympathizers” as far more likely than other Americans to endorse authoritarian ideas, view Donald Trump as a “strong leader” rather than a dangerous dictator, and support political violence as a tool to “save” the nation. About 79% of CN Adherents score high on right‑wing authoritarianism. Americans United has spelled out the tight nexus between Christian nationalism and racism, from “replacement” rhetoric to a wave of attacks on communities of color and religious minorities committed in the name of defending a supposedly white Christian America. Black ministers have explicitly denounced Project 2025 as rooted in white Christian nationalism and warned that large segments of the white evangelical church are “drunk on the religion of White Christian Nationalism,” trading the gospel for a political project that tolerates poverty, voter suppression, and state violence so long as it preserves white, conservative dominance. And as researchers have noted, constant claims of “anti‑Christian bias” and “persecution” function as racialized dog whistles, signaling to white conservative voters that they, not Black, brown, or non‑Christian communities, are the “real” victims whose power must be restored. Link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5

White Christians are the real victims?? Not by a long shot. CN elites are empowered, cruel aggressors.

The cruelty and bigotry at the heart of the project are clearest where CN ideology meets policy. Project 2025 is an explicit blueprint to crush LGBTQ equality, reproductive freedom, racial equity, and church–state separation. CN elites cynically justify their bigotry and intolerance as constitutionally protected “religious liberty”. Importantly, the six MAGA judges on the USSC clearly agree. CN's bigoted theocracy invites government workers and taxpayer‑funded entities to refuse services to women, non-heterosexuals, religious minorities, and anyone else who doesn’t fit the approved Biblical mold. The same network behind Project 2025 includes outfits like Alliance Defending Freedom, which has already helped overturn Roe v. Wade and carve out broad rights to discriminate in employment, health care, and even adoption—one of their clients refused to place a child with a Jewish couple purely on religious grounds. At the same time, global and domestic watchdogs stress that this agenda is pro‑corruption by design: it calls for firing inspectors general, gutting voting‑rights enforcement, weakening campaign‑finance rules, and empowering the president to shut down public‑corruption probes into allies while weaponizing the FBI and DOJ against opponents, an anti‑democratic kleptocratic wish list dressed up as “efficiency” and “draining the swamp”. Link 6, link 7, link 8

Put together, the picture is not of pious reformers but of an arrogant, bigoted, racist, kleptocratic political project that uses Christian language as a shield for authoritarian power, corruption, and social hierarchy. PRRI’s state‑by‑state mapping shows that roughly a third of Americans lean toward Christian nationalist ideas, and where those views are strongest, you find the harshest hostility to LGBTQ people, immigrants, racial justice, and democracy itself. Groups tracking extremism warn that Christian nationalist organizations that range from dominionist churches to legal outfits and think tanks are explicitly working to overthrow our democratic republic and replace it a strict theocracy. Project 2025 is their closest thing to a published coup plan. CN aggression is out in the open. The question now is whether the rest of us treat their own words and documents as the huge flashing red light warnings they are and act to oppose it. Link 9, link 10, link 11

Source: Global Project Against Hate And Extremism

Project 2025 March 18th Update

I am sick to my stomach and royally fed up with liberals and Democrats.

 Sorry for venting.

BUT........

I was reading comments on another forum this morning about who liberals and Democrats should promote for the 2028 elections with a chance to win.

A LOT OF VOTES came in for Kamala Harris. WTF?

Here are some of the OTHER arguments I saw, made by mostly liberals:

Buttigieg can't win because he is gay.

Shapiro is too pro-Israel.

Newsom is too smooth and polished and just talks like another politician.

AOC is too radical.

Hell, I saw recommendations for.......................... get this....................... BERNIE SANDERS!!

WTF indeed.

Thankfully there was SOME sanity among the comments I read because Andy Beshear seemed to be the favorite among those commenting.

I would take Beshear, Buttigieg, Shapiro, Newsom, or AOC over anyone running for the Republicans.

BUT..........

In typical liberal thinking, everyone suggested is flawed, but Kamala Harris is acceptable?

And the put down of anyone not viewed as LEFT ENOUGH, like Shapiro or Newsom, really irked me. 

AOC is too radical, and Buttigieg too gay? So, the badmouthing of possible candidates has already begun, for the left a candidate needs to pass the leftist smell test and if someone is too far left they are too radical for the middle? 

Yup, liberals and Democrats, keep eating your own going into 2028.

Can I be blunt here and just say...............

FUCK!!

My ideal ticket would be Beshear and ................ AOC. A centralist and a leftist. Nice balance.