One commentator about the joy of being MAGA; Miscellaneous

NYT columnist David French opines (not paywalled) on how he currently sees the enormous appeal of DJT to the MAGA rank and file. French lives in rural Tennessee, surrounded by MAGA people, so he has a metric buttload (50 butt-tons) of relevant personal experience. He writes:

To understand MAGA, we have to understand the joy and sense of belonging that the movement bestows upon its adherents. .... The lie that Haitian immigrants are eating pets — appeal to his followers’ “sense of gleeful transgression.”

If you’re on the outside, your experience with MAGA is all of the anger projected outward. So you see MAGA as almost entirely an angry movement.

MAGA likes inflicting pain on its political enemies. It likes and enjoys creating these ridiculous and absurd memes. It loves to provoke people who are on the outside. It’s part of the joy of this MAGA movement that can include this extreme aggression online.

The people who are in on the joke [Haitians eating dogs and cats in Springfield Ohio], the core MAGA people who are pushing the memes out, look, if it’s true, great. If it’s not true, who cares? They’re having a good time.

Clip of TikTok: I don’t know about you, but I’m Voting Donald Trump, baby.

Clip of Donald Trump Jr.: “You know, honestly, I’m waiting for Merrick Garland to indict my father for being part of an assassination. You know, that’s what’s next.”

Jesse Watters: “It’s a conspiracy.”

They’re trashing our body politic. They’re wrecking, in many ways, the G.O.P., but they are having a good time and hey, the people they’re making mad, they don’t like them anyway.

And you might think for a minute that, well, wait, this can’t go on forever. Surely, surely the majority of Republicans, when they know they’ve been had, when they know these are lies, will stop paying attention to these memes. They’ll reject this method.

And the really sad answer is that the Republican response to Jan. 6 and the Big Lie showed us the tolerance that Republicans have for dishonesty and for lying if it is directed against their hated Democratic enemies. (emphasis added)

The opinion touches on two other joyful MAGA crackpot memes, one of which is exuberant fun with non-existent election fraud now that early voting has started in some places.

So, there we have it from one commentator: MAGA folks are just having fun and don't care about truth. Since they don't like the rest of us anyway, so why should they give a fig about truth or lies? It's all just good clean fun at our expense. C'mon people, lighten up!

French: They’re wrecking, in many ways, the G.O.P. 

Response: What?? The GOP has been wrecked in many ways at least since 2016. Wrecked puts it waaay too mildly. Blown to smithereens is closer to the mark.

Once again an uncontrollable compulsion to ask about moral responsibility for adult American citizens bubbles up from the bowels of my unconsciousness.  

Q: If what French writes is mostly correct, and most of the MAGA rank and file (i) really is having joyous fun at our expense and at the expense of targeted groups, e.g., falsely accused Haitian immigrants who are allegedly illegal immigrants eating people's dogs and cats, (ii) does not like us, (ii) does not care about truth or lies, and (iv) will vote for the lying, fornicating, pussy-grabbing, kleptocratic dictator-thug and convicted felon DJT, are these MAGA folks just good, honest people and patriots who deserve our respect and good will? Or, it is time to call a spade a spade, and openly speak the actual truth that most of the MAGA rank and file is bigoted, pro-dictator and a dangerous but joyful enemy of American democracy, and people like you and me who oppose DJT and his radical kleptocratic authoritarianism? 

Q: Once again, is Germaine off his rocker, over the top, insanely deluded by identity politics, hoodwinked by pragmatic rationalist hyper-partisanship, or otherwise beguiled and missing the mark?

Darned Germaine and his double darned pragmatic rationalism . . . . grumble, grumble . . . . . darn it.

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A peanut from the gallery commenting on the faux horror of dogs and cats being eaten in Ohio: The campaign seems to have stumbled into a strange unintended message: “Let’s go to war with Taylor Swift to stop Haitians from eating dogs.” At least that's less worrisome than their other stated goals. (good point, peanut)

WaPO: Why Big Tobacco is betting on Trump -- As the industry fights a ban on menthol cigarettes, a Reynolds American subsidiary has become the largest corporate donor to the main pro-Trump super PAC  (good 'ole brass knuckles capitalism -- it supports a dictator-kleptocrat as long as its profits are protected and to hell with public health, honest government, democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, the environment, etc.)

WaPo: Hezbollah leader says device attacks are an ‘act of war,’ as Israeli warplanes fly over Beirut -- In his first remarks since thousands of electronic devices exploded across the country, Hasan Nasrallah said that Hezbollah suffered “a major blow,” but that his forces would not stop attacking Israel as long as the war in Gaza continued -- “The enemy transgressed all boundaries and redlines,” Nasrallah said in a widely anticipated speech Thursday evening local time about the attacks, which killed at least 37 people and injured nearly 3,000 when pagers, walkie-talkies and other devices exploded simultaneously on Tuesday and Wednesday across Lebanon. The attacks were “a major assault on Lebanon, its security and sovereignty, a war crime — an act of war,” he added, and they dealt an “unprecedented blow” to Hezbollah and Lebanon. (Hm, the stench of another new war is in the air . . . . Hezbollah complaining about transgressing all boundaries and redlines? Ha, that's the pot calling the kettle black -- leaders in the Middle East are all stupid, spoiled, corrupt monsters)

WaPo on demagogic dictatorship: Putin wants Russia’s youth to become ultranationalist patriots. Many are all in. -- Young Russians are embracing Kremlin propaganda, reshaping the Ukraine war narrative with ultranationalist views and seeing themselves as patriotic truth defenders.  (Hm, the stench of fascism is in the air . . . . Putin is turning Russian children into vicious monsters -- once again, witness the power of dark free speech)

Enthusiastic little Russian patriots training

to genocide (the verb) the Ukrainians to death

The Independent: Trump claims audience ‘went crazy’ for him at his debate with Harris – but there was no audience -- Donald Trump appeared on Fox News show Gutfeld! to talk about his September 10 debate with Kamala Harris -- Trump referred to the nonexistent audience. “And the audience was absolutely– they went crazy,” he said.
 (good 'ole Faux News, always a reliable source of bullshit, lies, slanders, crackpottery and more lies and slanders, just like DJT is a good source for the same)

Salon: Georgia's abortion ban killed a young mother. The Christian right now blames the victim -- Anti-choice activists argue that if Amber Nicole Thurman had submitted to forced childbirth, she'd still be alive -- Republicans and Christian right activists don't want to take responsibility for the loss of this healthy young mother of a 6-year-old boy. Instead, they're casting blame on everyone else: the doctors in the Georgia hospital, abortion providers in North Carolina, and, though they will deny doing so, they're blaming Thurman herself. Thurman chose abortion. They're blaming her choice for her death. (I bet that forced birth supporters knew this day was coming and had their response to blame the dead woman planned in advance -- they knew the day would come when they would need to try to get ahead of criticism of their brutal forced birth laws -- good  'ole Christian nationalism, its as cruel and brutal as it is kleptocratic)

LGBQT Nation writes about the authoritarian MAGA wealth and power movement going from He did not say what he said, to Us MAGA politicians did not do what we just did: GOP senator rages at CNN host because she correctly said his party blocked the IVF protection bill -- He claimed that the IVF bill would give fertility treatments to trans women in his bizarre and angry rant x (Good grief! Treating trans women? The horror, the horror . . . . .)

Memory lane: Those were simpler,

happier times

Happy days: A supreme court 

nominee hearing in the US senate

BOMBSHELL REPORT!!

 

Judy Byington: Now Is The Time. Trust The Plan. Pray. “The Enormity Of What Is Coming Will Shock The World” President Donald Trump! Restored Republic via a GCR: Update as of Tues. 17 Sept. 2024

https://amg-news.com/bombshell-report-judy-byington-now-is-the-time-trust-the-plan-pray-the-enormity-of-what-is-coming-will-shock-the-world-president-donald-trump-restored-republic-via-a-gcr-updat/

Not sure who Judy is, but damn, she has figured it all out - as per the following:

WARNING!!!

At This Very Moment in New York UN Global Elites Were Positioning Themselves To Completely Control People of the World via Passage of the Global Digital Compact, or the Illuminati’s Great Reset

Meanwhile…

On Monday Trump Announced the Launch of World Liberty Financial Crypto Exchange, the Apparent Precursor to 130 Sovereign Countries’ Gold/Asset-Backed Global Currency Reset Which Ensured The People Would Have Complete Control Over Their Own Monies & Provided Freedom From Debt For All

Checkmate!!!

Judy Note: Right now the 79th U.N. General Assembly was meeting in New York to consider putting their stamp of approval on a document called the Global Digital Compact. If passed, the Compact would give the U.N. Secretary-General totalitarian control over all people across the Globe, overriding governments and trampling individual freedoms.

I’m only an outside observer, but with Trump head of the Global Military Alliance which was arresting thousands of corrupt Deep State Globalists, it’s pretty obvious to me that the two recent Trump Assassination Attempts were Homeland Security- FBI-Biden Administration Inside Jobs.

  On 29 Sept. 2019, Barack Obama was executed by firing squad at GITMO. Donald Trump just leaked undeniable evidence exposing Obama practicing Satanic Sacrificing Rituals alongside other powerful figures—GAY men and PEDOPHILES like Oprah, Clinton, and more! Tucker Carlson had released multiple videos that showed the Satanic blood rituals, child sacrifices and much more Devil oriented things which took place under the White House. Recorded in 2008, videos expose Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton, Prince Andres, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and many more engaging in Demonic activity and Child Sacrifice.

For more insight, click on the above link. And enjoy! 

Thinking in sadness and fear about what is being forced on us

I have a long list of posts I want to do. But this is stuck in my head, so I'll write about it. This is my personal take on the terrifying mess we are in. 

Given the vast stretches of wasteland and mindless to insulting garbage that dominates American cable TV, various drama series from Europe have a lot of appeal. They are usually very well produced, written, cast and acted. Most of the series about life and events from ~1900 to the end of WW2, have central themes of (i) war, (ii) various forms of bigotry, (iii) the corruption, brutality and evil that humans do, and (iv) the endless fight against all the myriad forms of human badness and evil. The Europeans seem to have been and probably still are significantly preoccupied with such matters. 

One can see why. That's where two huge, bloody wars were fought.

Although these series are all fiction, it is obvious that the badness portrayed is inherent in the human condition. In my opinion, these series are fiction but they portray quite plausible human reality. There aren't excursions into the supernatural. Just events that one can easily envision as coming from a core of truth.

La Otra Mirada (A Different View) was made in Spain in Spanish with English subtitles. It is a series about a girl's school in 1920s Spain in Seville. It brilliantly portrays the struggle of women to slowly, painfully break free from all the heavy constraints on their freedoms and power to control themselves and live as they wish. The brutality and intolerance of men, and some sympathetic, complicit women, in opposing that slow progress is made crystal clear. The series is heartbreaking in how it shows the wreckage and vast waste of a society dominated by men and by religious (arrogant, heavy-handed Catholicism), political ideology (insane, arrogant fascism), and deeply ingrained misogynistic social norms, all of which oppressed and denigrated women and their role in society. 

The British series Foyle's War dives into the social and political chaos that started with WW2 in Britain. All the badness that humans, mostly men, can inflict on others is laid out in great detail. Sometimes the attackers force the attacked to into untenable situations that force a sacrifice core moral principles of the defenders of what is good and decent. They are dragged down to the level of behavior of the attacking human monsters. Only good and moral intentions differentiate the defenders from the monsters. Although Foyle and and the other characters fictional, Anthony Horowitz the show's creator, said that many of the storylines are grounded in real life.

Hotel Portofino is a British series about a fictional British family who run a hotel on the Italian Riviera during the 1920s after WW1. Poison and badness of the bigotry and misogyny and the arrogant political extremism, i.e. fascist Blackshirt thugs, are clear. Some regular people are swept up in Facsist horrors as aggressors, while others are victims. Some willingly participate or are silently complicit aggressors. Many innocent oppose as best they can. As is routine in these series, some of the rich (elite) men are scoundrels who cheat on their wives and/or are thieving moral scumbags. Wealthy businessmen are commonly portrayed as cruel, greedy pigs, often thieves, and usually misogynists too. Those thugs could not care less about politics, other than trying to avoid it entirely, unless it can make them more wealthy and powerful. Not surprisingly, the fascist ideologues cannot be reasoned with. They mindlessly ruin lives and murder with no moral qualms. They see as their behaviors as a sacred, infallible service to a cause far higher than mere individual well-being. 

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What is the point of that? 

This is the point: In drama series like those three, all the poison, lies, brutality, bigotry, misogyny, hate, greed and mindless cruelty come across loud and clear. Political and religious extremism are common carriers, i.e., moral justifiers, of what an old roommate of mine liked to call awfility (awfulness). Those series show things like criminals stealing food from hungry civilians, murders, corrupt military leaders and businessmen, and ghastly betrayals of innocent wives, other people and nations, often with lethal results for some of the innocents. Heck there is even desecration of corpses and water torture scenes. What is morally and practically good or defensible is simply not a concern to the bad people. They are at war, either their own personal war (criminals and the insanely greedy) or war "for the greater good" (fascists and Nazis). Weakness in the rule of law for elites, including judges and powerful business people, but not average people, also comes across loud and clear.

A sane person just can't miss all that stuff. Just can't.

So, what is on my mind is probably obvious to readers who have made it this far. 

When I look at the traits and behaviors that arrogant, aggressive ideologues, extremists, liars and grifters, especially the elites in those series, I get a feeling of empathy for what the fictional victims experienced and lost. More to the point, I also feel sadness and fear about what most Americans will experience and lose if the American 2024 elections come out the wrong way. Those series convey the same kinds of emotional poisons and bad behaviors that America's radical right authoritarian MAGA movement and its morally rotted leader DJT now attack us innocents with. Just like in the fictional series, (1) American elites know exactly what they are doing and why, (2) there is confusion and splits in rank and file society, much of which is deceived and betrayed by the knowing elites. 

Recent polling indicates that DJT has a slightly better than even chance of winning the electoral college -- he is +2% as of July 19.

A modern American version of what those fiction drama series show can happen here. We can lose our freedoms to some form of bigoted, kleptocratic authoritarian government with a brutal, wealthy White male Christian Taliban to enforce God's infallible moral requirements on us (but not themselves of course -- morality is purely optional and pick and choose for the elites). Maybe MAGA thugs won't march in the streets and seek out opponents to murder or beat senseless, but there will be brutality and corruption on a vast scale, dwarfing the shocking level of corruption that plagues our society, government and commerce today.

That we are being attacked like this and on the verge of losing our country to unspeakable, corrupt radical right authoritarian darkness makes me sad and fearful. I very much hope that my sadness and fear are misplaced. With some luck, they are.

Blog note: Links to comments broken

Yesterday Disqus comments to posts here, all of which automatically go to my gmail, got messed up somehow. When I click on the View Reply button in my Disqus emails I get this error message from clicktrackingurl.

My ability to find and respond to comments is crappy compared to normal. I may not respond to some comments I would normally respond to. Sorry. I posted my bug report to Disqus this morning. Kieran responded saying they are experiencing apparently the same issue. 

Grumble, grumble . . . . . . 

Happening today - Patriotic Fashion Show Tuesday, September 17th

https://theamericafirstwarehouse.ticketspice.com/america-first-fashion-show

https://www.theamericafirstwarehouse.com/

 

About supreme court justice lies; Little bits

 A Kansas City Star opinion comments:

There’s still one recourse for Supreme Court 

justices who lied at their confirmations

First it was overturning Roe v. Wade, ending the federal constitutional right to abortion in the United States. Then it was the recent ruling in Snyder v. United States, allowing public officials to in effect take bribes in the way of “gratuities” and “rewards.” And now it is the recent ruling in Trump v. United States, which holds that presidents should enjoy “absolute immunity” for so called “official acts,” which in essence means that a president could even commit premeditated murder, and it would not be a crime — as long as the president declared the murder an “official act.” The lunacy of this court is mind boggling. People all over the country, and even around the world, are rolling their eyes in disbelief that the Supreme Court of the United States would do such a thing — but it did. People feel that there is nothing that can be done about Supreme Court justices who obviously lied during their Senate confirmation hearings when they testified under oath that “nobody is above the law” — including the president. Chief Justice John Roberts testified at his confirmation hearing: “No one is above the law under our system and that includes the president. The president is fully bound by the law.” Justice Samuel Alito testified at his confirmation hearing that “no person in this country is above the law, and that includes the president and it includes the Supreme Court.” Justice Neil Gorsuch testified at his Senate confirmation hearing, “No man is above the law.” Justice Brett Kavanaugh testified at his confirmation hearing, “No one is above the law in our constitutional system.”

In essence, all these justices committed perjury at their Senate confirmation hearings, which is a crime under Title 18 of U.S. Code. Under the law, witnesses commit perjury “after having taken an oath” to testify under penalty of perjury if they “knowingly and willfully” make “any material false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” with respect to “any investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee, subcommittee, commission or office of the Congress.” Under the law, the perjury committed by these justices at their respective Senate confirmation hearings could subject them to fines or imprisonment of up to five years, or both.

The liars may be "subject" to prosecution. But with Merrick Garland The Traitor in charge of the DoJ, one can confidently predict there will be no prosecutions. Not even an investigation. The DoJ Manual, whatever the heck that is, comments on perjury laws, which apply to regular people, but not people like federal court nominees, DJT and other rich and/or powerful elites:

Perjury -- Overview Of 18 U.S.C. §1621 And 1623 Violations

Several Federal statutes criminalize perjury and related false statements. The two most commonly used statutes for perjury offenses are 18 U.S.C. §§ 1621 and 1623. Section 1621 is the traditional, broadly applicable perjury statute, and is used to prosecute perjuries committed before legislative, administrative or judicial bodies. Section 1623, added in 1970, eliminated some of the proof problems associated with these difficult prosecutions, but Congress limited its applicability to false statements before Federal courts and grand juries. (emphasis added)

Well rule of law fans, there you have it. Congress neutered its own useless perjury law that was intended to give the law some teeth. Instead, we got milquetoast. That tells us a lot about deep moral rot in our government.

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Elon Musk Writes, Then Deletes, a Post Musing About Threats to Biden and Harris -- Hours after what the F.B.I. called a second attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump, Elon Musk wrote on his social media site — and then deleted — a post suggesting it was odd that nobody had tried to kill President Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Musk said the post on X had been intended as a joke.

Ah good, it was just a joke.  /s

Leon, as the demented DJT called him, Musk is a shameless liar.

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Russia Ramps Up Air Assault on Ukrainian Cities -- The Ukrainian authorities on Monday said that they had repelled a “massive” Russian attack on Kyiv in the early morning hours. They said it was the eighth attack on the Ukrainian capital in just over two weeks, in what appears to be an escalation by Russia of its long-running air campaign against the city.

This is just a reminder, that if the war does not end in a peace settlement, the Ukraine will be pulverized into the stone ages, even if the Russian military is corrupt and inept. Sooner or later the Ukraine will no longer be able to defend itself. Then the Putin genocide will commence.

Too bad the US and the West torpedoed a peace agreement when one was possible. Now it is very likely too late, just like it is very likely too late for a "two-state solution" for Palestine. Just my hopefully wrong opinion.

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Portage County Ohio sheriff: 'Write down the addresses' of Kamala Harris supporters who display yard signs -- Sheriff Bruce D. Zuchowski, who took office in 2021, made the remarks in Facebook posts shared to two separate accounts on the night of Sept. 13. "When people ask me...What's gonna happen if the Flip - Flopping, Laughing Hyena Wins?? I say...write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards! Sooo...when the Illegal human "Locust" (which she supports!) Need places to live...We'll already have the addresses of the their New families...who supported their arrival!" Zuchowski wrote.

Hm, that's a sheriff talking. Sheriffs have a lot of power. Too bad he is a foaming at the mouth radical right authoritarian thug. The rule of law is rotting away before our eyes in real time.

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Calls for J.D. Vance to resign after he admits that he created pet-eating story about immigrants -- Fact check: J.D. Vance did not create the pet-eating story about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, but he has admitted to amplifying and spreading these unsubstantiated claims. Origin of the claims: The rumors about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio appear to have originated from far-right activists, local Republicans, and neo-Nazi groups before Vance echoed them.

Well, aren't far-right activists, local Republicans, and neo-Nazi groups a reliable source of accurate, nuanced, properly contextualized and empathetic information and news? Not? Oh, never mind. It's election season.

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Salon writes:

Donald Trump is openly running a 

Great Replacement Theory campaign 

Donald Trump made clear on the Philadelphia debate stage this week, as he has throughout his three presidential campaigns, a basis of his run for office. Trump is running on the platform that non-white immigration is an existential threat to the nation. This time around, Trump has made his primary message, the so-called Great Replacement Theory (GRT), more vivid than ever. It is therefore of existential importance in understanding the stakes of this election to have clearly in mind what has happened in the past when GRT has been the central driving narrative both of individuals and of states.

According to the Great Replacement Theory, the nation’s greatness, its traditions and its practitioners, are existentially imperiled by an influx of foreign races, ethnicities or religions. The foreign elements are sometimes described in the narrative of GRT, as vermin or diseases.

GRT was central to the official Nazi motivation for the genocide of the Jews of Europe. Hitler blamed the loss of World War I on Jewish betrayal of Germany. But this betrayal, for Hitler, was intimately connected to the Great Replacement Theory, via the introduction of Black soldiers in the French army subsequently occupying the Rhineland, the so-called “Black Horror on the Rhine.” In Mein Kampf, Hitler writes:

It was and is the Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily resulting bastardization, throwing it down from its cultural and political height, and himself rising to be its master.

Aw geez, now we're reduced to quoting Hitler. But if the shoe fits, hit someone with it. Hm, wrong quote. I wonder, did Hitler equate being Jewish with being non-White? Seems so. Is there a historian in the house? Anyone? Ah, Perplexity raised its hand. So, what do you have to say about that? Perplexity says:

It's kind of you to ask. Let me say this about that: Hitler and the Nazis did view Jews as a distinct "race" that was separate from and inferior to the "Aryan race" they considered to be superior. Nazi ideology was based on racist theories that divided humanity into different races, with the "Aryan race" considered superior. The Nazis classified Jews as a separate, inferior race, not just a religious group

 

Well history fans, there you have it. The origin of the GRT, at least according to one historian.