An exercise in psychology

I was gonna say “an exercise in futility,” and I know we’ve beaten this dead horse enough times to the point of rigor mortis, even petrification, but I gotta ask one more time…

Why do people still support Trump?

Take a walk on the wild side and put yourself in the mindset of a Trump supporter.  Explain that kind of "Trump loyalty" to me like I’m a five-year-old (a la Denzel Washington in “Philadelphia”).  Because I really don’t get it.  It’s foreign to me.

Thanks for posting and explaining it to me.

Republican climate change demagoguery

The New York Times writes:

Delay as the New Denial: The Latest Republican Tactic to Block Climate Action

But on Capitol Hill this week, Republicans were warning against rash action in response to the burning planet.

“I don’t want to be lectured about what we need to do to destroy our economy in the name of climate change,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.

One Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, last week blocked what could have been the country’s most far-reaching American response to climate change. But lost in the recriminations and finger-pointing is the other side of the aisle: All 50 Republicans in the Senate have been as opposed to decisive action to confront planetary warming.

Few Republicans in Congress now outwardly dismiss the scientific evidence that human activities — the burning of oil, gas and coal — have produced gases that are dangerously heating the Earth.

But for many, denial of the cause of global temperature rise has been replaced by an insistence that the solution — replacing fossil fuels over time with wind, solar and other nonpolluting energy sources — will hurt the economy.

On the one hand, it is encouraging that America’s fascist, staunchly pro-pollution, pro-global warming Republican Party no longer outwardly dismisses the scientific evidence that human-generated pollution is causing the planet to burn up. That's a good thing. Progress has been made! Not long ago, they all denied that climate change was real and that humans had little or nothing to do with it. Some very powerful Republicans publicly claimed it was God’s will and humans should not and/or could not interfere with his plans.

But on the other hand, the fascists are hell-bent on not doing a damn thing about it. They will continue to successfully block all efforts to try. There is just too much damn money and power in not doing anything about it.

As usual, fascist Republican demagoguery relies on the same propaganda and lies tactics that got us into this mess. They ignore the cost of not doing anything, an intentional lie of omission. They claim trying to do anything about it will destroy the economy, a lie of commission.

As a reminder this is short blast of blithering nonsense the only thing that fascist Republican elites had to say about climate in the lying crackpot Rick Scott’s 11 point plan to wreck America:

The weather is always changing.[1] We take climate change seriously, but not hysterically. We will not adopt nutty policies that harm our economy or our jobs.

That’s it. That is literally all the GOP has to say about it. That’s worse than pathetic. It’s evil.

For the pro-pollution party, there is honest seriousness about climate change. The seriousness is about blocking efforts to do anything about it. That would be hysterical. That is exactly what Scott, the rest of the GOP elites, wealthy pro-pollution Republican Party donors and their propagandists are saying to the American people. There is no subtlety about this. The GOP and big polluters are hell bent on turning Earth into literal hell as best they can because they are making a hell of a lot of money doing it. With that money comes serious power.

This is all about money and power for corrupt, callous fascist elites and nothing but money and power.

Footnote: 

1. Weather is not climate. Weather reflects climate. Fascist polluters put that statement in there to con people into a belief that even if it is real, climate change is no big deal. This is called propaganda. It is intended to deceive, distract and confuse the public.

The Republican Party’s anti-democracy cancer is spreading globally

The New York Times writes:

President Jair Bolsonaro elevated his vote-fraud claims from a matter of domestic politics to foreign policy, heightening international fears that he would dispute the coming election.

President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil called dozens of foreign diplomats to the presidential palace on Monday to tell them that he believed the country’s voting systems could be rigged, a potential preview of his strategy for an election that is 75 days away and that polls forecast he will lose in a landslide.

While Mr. Bolsonaro’s presentation was not new — he has repeated those claims for years — his audience was. He had invited officials from most of the embassies in Brazil’s capital, Brasília, elevating his claims from a matter of domestic politics to foreign policy.

Note that the fascist Republican Party’s democracy killing cancer seems to be of a single kind. Unlike over 100 different human cancers, the GOP’s cancer and close variants all have common pathologies. Prominent pathologies of radical right democracy killing cancer include:

• Attacks on, and subversion of, elections based on fabricated claims of voter and/or vote fraud
• Relentless demagoguery, including outrageous lies and slanders about political opposition 
• Tolerance of corruption
• Contempt and disregard for inconvenient facts, truths and sound reasoning
• Open attacks on the LGBQT community, immigrants, civil liberties and/or democracy, with praise for authoritarian leadership accompanying attacks on democracy 
• Alignment of politicians with wealthy and power elites in business and sometimes religion too

At least the Christian fundamentalists can claim authority from God to destroy democracy and impose his righteous tyranny. What’s the authority the laissez-faire capitalists reply on? Originalism, strict constructionism, deceit, division and opacity are the kinds of things they use to do their dirty work.

Textgate?

As those of us know, who follow politics, the Secret Service did a “phone migration” (update) of all its agents' phones, wiping them clear of data and text messages, after the Inspector General requested that their data from the 1/6 event be turned over to him.  Uhh, say again??

What do you think?  Accident?  Purposeful?  Cover up?  Incompetence?  Oopsi-Daisy?  Nothing to see here, move along?  Other?

Link here

What’s your opinion regarding this "phone migration" event?  

And thanks for posting.

An observer’s comments on ineffective Democratic messaging

“. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.” -- social scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, 2016

Demagoguery (official definition): political activity or practices that seek support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument

Demagoguery (Germaine definition): any political, religious, commercial or other activity or practices that seek support by playing on and/or appealing to the ignorance, desires and/or prejudices of people rather than by using rational argument; demagoguery usually relies significantly or mostly on lies, slanders, irrational emotional manipulation, flawed motivated reasoning, logic fallacies, etc.; relevant inconvenient facts, truths and sound reasoning are usually ignored, denied or distorted into an appearance of false insignificance or false irrelevance

A Washington Post opinion piece by Paul Waldman says it better than I can:

Faced with demands to do something about the right-wing revolution the Supreme Court is inflicting on the country, congressional Democrats will hold votes on bills guaranteeing marriage equality and the right to contraception. These are protected at the moment, but many fear the court and Republicans will move to attack them sometime in the near future.

Since these bills will fall to Republican filibusters in the Senate, they are demonstration votes, meant not to become law (at least not yet), but in large part to force Republicans to vote against them and thereby reveal themselves to be out of step with public opinion. As many a Democrat has said, “Let’s get them on the record.” But “getting them on the record” doesn’t accomplish much if you don’t have a strategy to turn that unpopular vote into a weapon that can be used to actually punish those Republicans. And there’s little evidence Democrats have such a strategy.

Sure, they’ll issue some news releases and talk about it on cable news. And here or there the vote might find its way into a campaign mailer (“Congressman Klunk voted against contraception! Can the women of the Fifth District really trust Congressman Klunk?”). But I fear that too many Democrats think getting them on the record is enough by itself.

The reason is that unlike their Republican counterparts, Democrats tend to have far too much faith in the American voter.

People in Washington, especially Democrats, suffer from an ailment that is not confined to the nation’s capital. It plays out in all kinds of places and in politics at all levels. It’s the inability to see politics from the perspective of ordinary people.

This blindness isn’t a matter of elitism. The problem is that it’s hard to put yourself in the mind of someone whose worldview is profoundly different from your own. If you care about politics, it’s almost impossible to understand how the average person — even the average voter — thinks about the work you do and the world you inhabit.

Here’s the problem: Most Americans have only a fraction of the understanding you do about these things — not because they’re dumb or ignorant but mainly because they just don’t care. They worry about other things, especially their jobs and their families. When they have free time they’d rather watch a ballgame or gossip with a friend than read about whether certain provisions of Build Back Better might survive in some process called “reconciliation.”

In fact, the very idea of “issues” — where a thing happening in the world is translated into something the government might implement policies to address — was somewhat foreign to them. Because I was young and enthusiastic but not schooled in subtle communication strategies, I couldn’t get beyond my own perspective and persuade them of anything.

.... most Democrats I know are still captive to the hope that politics can be rational and deliberative, ultimately producing reasonable outcomes.

Republicans have no such illusions. They usually start from the assumption that voters don’t pay attention and should be reached by the simplest, most emotionally laden appeals they can devise. So Republicans don’t bother with 10-point policy plans; they just hit voters with, “Democrats want illegals to take your job, kill your wife, and pervert your kids,” and watch the votes pour in.

If Waldman is right, how can one craft messages with the emotional impact of Republican messaging without demagoguing it or lying?

I think it is now possible for Dems to do gut-wrenching messaging without much or any demagoguery or lies. Just be blunt and relentless about reality. Be candid about the thoroughly morally rotted, fascist Republican Party, its cruel Christian nationalist dogma, its rapacious laissez-faire capitalist dogma and the radical right propaganda Leviathan, e.g., Faux News, that the stinking anti-democratic threat significantly or mostly rests on. Just say it straight without lies or slanders. There is plenty of evidence in the public record to support harsh, emotional but truthful messaging.

Qs: 

1. Is Waldman right? 

2. Is there such a thing as gut-wrenching messaging without much or any demagoguery or lies, or does wrenching guts always require demagoguery and/or lies?

3. Is demagoguery still demagoguery even if it is based on truth and sound reasoning? (I think not)

What childbirth can do to young women and girls

The New York Times writes about some of what the fascist Republican Party and its heartless Christian nationalist wing will be forcing on some young pregnant females:

After the account of a 10-year-old Ohio girl crossing state lines to get an abortion drew national attention last week, some prominent abortion opponents suggested the child should have carried her pregnancy to term. 

But midwives and doctors who work in countries where pregnancy is common in young adolescent girls say those pushing for very young girls to carry pregnancies to term may not understand the brutal toll of pregnancy and delivery on the body of a child.

“Their bodies are not ready for childbirth and it’s very traumatic,” said Marie Bass Gomez, a midwife and the senior nursing officer at the reproductive and child health clinic at Bundung Maternal and Child Health Hospital in Gambia. 

The critical issue is that the pelvis of a child is too small to allow passage of even a small fetus, said Dr. Ashok Dyalchand, who has worked with pregnant adolescent girls in low-income communities in India for more than 40 years.

“They have long labor, obstructed labor, the fetus bears down on the bladder and on the urethra,” sometimes causing pelvic inflammatory disease and the rupture of tissue between the vagina and the bladder and rectum, said Dr. Dyalchand, who heads an organization called the Institute of Health Management Pachod, a public health organization serving marginalized communities in central India.

“It is a pathetic state particularly for girls who are less than 15 years of age,” he added. “The complications, the morbidity and the mortality are much higher in girls under 15 than girls 16 to 19 although 16 to 19 has a mortality twice as high as women 20 and above.”

Young maternal age is associated with an increased risk of maternal anemia, infections, eclampsia and pre-eclampsia, emergency cesarean delivery and postpartum depression, according to a 2014 evaluation published in the Journal of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine.

“They go to labor for three days, four days, five days, and after that labor, usually the baby is dead. And then when the head is collapsed, then the baby is delivered,” said Dr. Syed, who is one of South Asia’s pre-eminent experts on the repair of obstetric fistula, a common outcome of obstructed labor in pregnant girls.

In nearly all these cases, the girl has developed vesicovaginal fistula, a hole between the wall of the bladder and the vagina. In a quarter of cases, the prolonged labor will also cause fistula of the rectum, so that the girl constantly leaks both urine and feces.

The evil that the GOP, radical Christian fundamentalism and their raging leader the ex-president has unleashed is spreading and sinking deep into our society. The callous Republican Party and its Christian supporters should be paying for 100% of the medical and mental health costs and child rearing costs that their morally rotted Christian fundamentalist agenda (😈) has forced on Americans who do not want to have a birth or baby. Or is that assessment too harsh or unreasonable?

Dropping out of school and raising the baby

in poverty will be loads of fun, or maybe not 

Send the bills to the Christian Church and the 

Republican National Committee