Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Not all heroes wear capes.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

He really is that stupid.

“woke” is the new caravan.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Infrastructure week. at last.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

You are here: Home / Nature & Respite / Faunasphere / Open Thread: If Only the Butterflies Didn’t Have to Die for the GOP’s Sins…

Open Thread: If Only the Butterflies Didn’t Have to Die for the GOP’s Sins…

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… I’m a lifelong Republican who voted for Donald Trump for president in 2016. I want our immigration laws to be enforced, and I don’t want open borders. But Mission is not a dangerous place. I’ve lived here all my life. Here at the National Butterfly Center, 6,000 schoolchildren visit each year. Girl Scouts come here when they camp overnight just a mile or so from the Rio Grande. When the president says there’s a crisis at the border that requires an action as drastic as building a massive concrete wall, he either knows that it’s not true or he’s living in an alternate reality.

Before this controversy, I voted, and sometimes I expressed my political views on Facebook, but this issue got me involved in activism for the first time. I had never gone to a protest in my entire life, but last year, I helped organize one: a four-mile march to the La Lomita Chapel, a historic church on U.S. soil that the wall will block. I also joined a group that succeeded in lobbying the Mission City Council to pass an anti-wall resolution. This is a mostly Democratic area, so these experiences were a little uncomfortable for me. Most of the people I worked alongside were anti-Trump from the start. I mostly kept quiet about my party affiliation and my vote in 2016…

… As I followed the news [last week], I was amazed to find myself agreeing with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who called the project “immoral, ineffective and expensive.” Here was a Democrat telling a Republican that a policy would cost too much…

 
And yet, the pundits cry: Fewer, but purer, Republicans!… Trump is the political equivalent of Kaposi’s sarcoma. If the GOP wasn’t suffering from a fatally compromised immune system, his campaign wouldn’t have been able to get traction even *with* Russia’s assistance.

Reader Interactions

96Comments

  2. 2.

    Major Major Major Major

    Yeah, at this point in their terms much of the leadership of Bush & Obama’s election teams had plead guilty or were expecting indictment from the special prosecutor investigating their collusion w a foreign adversary, & Jenna/Barbara & Sasha/Malia were likely headed to prison

    Even so, were the primary held today, I bet he would win.

  5. 5.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Major Major Major Major:
    Probably. The real question is whether he would win the general if it were held today. Or in 2020. Could he really win the EC again? Or would he pull a Bush and win the popular vote outright? I doubt the latter.

  7. 7.

    bbleh

    Once upon a time I would have felt that it was somehow wrong to look at something evidently as heartfelt as this and think “what a fkin idiot.”

    For some reason, I no longer feel that way.

    I wonder whether I can be given a WaPo op-ed column to express my feelings! *

    * Ok, I don’t wonder

  10. 10.

    Schlemazel

    In honor of the season:
    And though its been said
    many times, many ways
    Merry I voted for Dump because he promised to fuck people over I never dreamed I would be one to be fucked”

    Merry fuck you to youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

  18. 18.

    Mnemosyne

    @lumpkin:

    White people assumed that voting for Trump would only have consequences for people they didn’t know, not for themselves or people they know personally.

    It was quite literally an identity vote, and both Trump’s campaign and the Russian propaganda that supported it was carefully crafted to convince white voters that voting for Trump wouldn’t be much more different than shopping at Wal-Mart or listening to country music — just another marker of their identity as white people.

    And now they’re shocked to discover that they were manipulated and lied into making that vote that they were told would be consequence-free. It’s all just part of the reality show, right? ?‍♀️

  20. 20.

    SiubhanDuinne

    There is nothing comical or trivial about a butterfly sanctuary being threatened. Butterflies, bees, and bats — our pollinators — are literally our food-providers, our lifegivers, and they are dying off by the millions. I am hugely upset by their loss and by this blatant abuse of eminent domain.

  21. 21.

    Miss Bianca

    @lumpkin:

    What exactly did this ditz expect when she voted for that asshole?

    from the article:

    People have asked me, “Didn’t you listen to Trump when he said that he would build a wall?” I didn’t take the idea seriously during the campaign. I knew he couldn’t get Mexico to pay it — that’d be like asking Hurricane Harvey to foot the bill for rebuilding Houston — and thought it was just talk: another candidate making big promises he couldn’t keep. I never thought it would actually happen.

    (my emphasis)

    The requisite allusion to leopards, faces, and the Face-Eating Leopard Party shall be taken as read.

  22. 22.

    different-church-lady

    @Mnemosyne: And isn’t if funny that when people natter on about the failure of “identity politics” they seem to imply that “white person” isn’t an identity.

  23. 23.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    It really astounds me how numb we’ve all become to this. I try to shout about everything all day, every day, because it is not normal. How many people indicted or convicted or pled guilty so far now? There was nobody who was even indicted under Obama in eight fucking years. We’re up to, what, six or eight in less than two? And that’s leaving out all the assorted and variegated investigations of this clown and his insane posse. I think I saw yesterday that literally–and I use that word in its literal sense–everything Donald Trump has ever had anything to do with is under investigation. Every thing. His administration [sic]. His campaign. His transition. His business. His foundation. His family. His own personal self. Everything. And the people who yelled about Van Jones supposedly once doing something, and I don’t even know what the fuck it was said to have been, now just tell us that it’s no fucking big deal. Nothing at all. And so many of us have just kind of gotten used to it.

  25. 25.

    Mnemosyne

    Speaking of election manipulation, there’s been some interesting stuff on Twitter today of people really looking at the latest revelations about social media. Some of them (like the guy linked below) have taken a hard look at their own beliefs and decisions in 2016 and realized how mediated they were by the Russian propaganda:

    https://mobile.twitter.com/magi_jay/status/1074759598039552001

    And others are still closing their eyes and refusing to believe that THEY could have been fooled by propaganda and it’s all still Hillary’s fault for being a bad and weak candidate. ?

  28. 28.

    Mnemosyne

    @different-church-lady:

    Let me tell you, people who clearly have “white” as their primary identity get PISSED if you say or even imply that it’s a mere identity. It’s all that is Good and Right and anyone who doesn’t fit the same identity is inferior. It’s like trying to point out how politically correct our conversation about guns is — because their opinion is correct, everyone else has to STFU.

  29. 29.

    Platonailedit

    Unlike the other dunce cultists, this one seems to have finally seen the light. Oh, wait.

    For now, it looks like construction will plow ahead. Even before Congress appropriated funding, government contractors illegally entered our property and started cutting down trees and clearing brush without permission or notice. [Recently,] I caught land surveyors on camera who had hopped our fence to mark off property lines. A second set of surveyors arrived a few days later, accompanied by armed federal agents to guard them from visitors who might approach with questions. If Donald Trump runs for a second term, he will not get my vote.

    Until he personally got fucked, he was color blind.

  30. 30.

    dmsilev

    @Miss Bianca:

    The requisite allusion to leopards, faces, and the Face-Eating Leopard Party shall be taken as read.

    Beat me to it. The Wall(tm) is the one promise Trump made during the campaign that he’s actually putting some effort into fulfilling, and this shouldn’t have come as any surprise to anyone who bothered to look at his long long history of racism.

  32. 32.

    different-church-lady

    @Mnemosyne: The Monsters are Due on Maple Street for the digital age. “Understand the procedure now? Just manipulate their social media and devices and memes. Then all we need do is sit back . . . and watch.”

  33. 33.

    dmsilev

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    I think I saw yesterday that literally–and I use that word in its literal sense–everything Donald Trump has ever had anything to do with is under investigation. Every thing. His administration [sic]. His campaign. His transition. His business. His foundation. His family. His own personal self. Everything.

    It’ll be quite the irony if it was winning the Presidency that finally brought justice to Donald Trump.

  35. 35.

    Mnemosyne

    @Miss Bianca:

    That’s kind of a weird difference between Democratic and Republican voters right now. Democrats expect our candidates to say what they want to accomplish if elected and then take steps to get those things done.

    Many Republican voters seem to genuinely expect their elected officials to sit on their asses casting symbolic votes but not actually DO anything. I don’t understand it.

  39. 39.

    Mike in DC

    The only way a primary challenge could seriously hurt Trump is if they pulled out an early upset in some place like New Hampshire. Of course, if a viable mainstream candidate jumped in after an economic downturn and the investigation reached a fever pitch, 45 could be in real trouble.

  40. 40.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Mnemosyne:

    That’s kind of a weird difference between Democratic and Republican voters right now. Democrats expect our candidates to say what they want to accomplish if elected and then take steps to get those things done.

    As bad as the GOP has been for awhile, they used to be like this. They could be compromised with sometimes and many were genuinely principled conservatives who cared about serving the public trust. Not anymore. Now it’s all about making that money, serving their plutocratic donors, and punishing minorities and their white “libturd” allies.

  41. 41.

    Platonailedit

    Russian disinformation teams targeted Mueller, according to the disinformation reports prepared for the Senate.

    Russian operatives unloaded on Mueller through fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and beyond, falsely claiming that Mueller was corrupt.https://t.co/N0uOpO8jA3— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 18, 2018

  43. 43.

    jl

    ” Jenna/Barbara & Sasha/Malia ”
    Would make a good new super hero team. At least compared to the current bums.

  44. 44.

    PJ

    @Mnemosyne: There is something in the right wing and evangelical mindsets that values speech/faith over actual actions, such that hypocrisy is considered better than embracing a value they are opposed to. It’s better, say, to castigate LGBTIQA (did I miss a letter?) people and at the same to personally engage in homosexual acts, than to advocate for equal rights for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation (and regardless of whether the speaker is gay or not). Likewise, colluding with a foreign power that is bent on destroying American power and influence is a-ok, so long as the traitor vows to “make America great again” by taking away rights from non-white Christians.

  45. 45.

    Amir Khalid

    @Miss Bianca:

    I knew he couldn’t get Mexico to pay it — that’d be like asking Hurricane Harvey to foot the bill for rebuilding Houston —

    I don’t like this comparison she made. Immigrants as a class do not damage America — quite the contrary.

  48. 48.

    mapaghimagsik

    Everything *Drumpf* touches dies? I’m happy to be coming home from my big corporate nightmare content in the knowledge that we managed to go one day without killing anyone.

    Probably.

    Unless you count falsifying records…*sigh*

    Oh and Drumpf being a one-term president (or less..)
    “I wish a mutherfucker *would*”

  49. 49.

    Aleta

    Knows his way around the swamp, but up to his waist in quicksand.

    Alan Dershowitz @AlanDersh
    Lying to the FBI is only a crime if the lie was “material”. If the FBI already knew the answer to the question— if they have tapes— and ask it only to elicit a lie, should that lie be deemed material?

  51. 51.

    Mnemosyne

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Let’s face it, though — the fact that something as “weak” as butterflies are going to be damaged by this action is, like, three-quarters of the appeal of it for Trumpists. They’re enjoying that they’re going to get to stomp on some butterflies and damage the environment. That’s the kind of assholes they are. ?

  52. 52.

    different-church-lady

    @Mnemosyne: Pretty amazing thread. Takeaway: the bullying worked, and far too many were willing to join in. And those who didn’t were too intimidated to punch back.

  54. 54.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    White people assumed that voting for Trump would only have consequences for people they didn’t know, not for themselves or people they know personally.

    White people assumed that voting for Trump would only have consequences for people they don’t care about.

  55. 55.

    NotMax

    Cake baking in the oven, all rooms thoroughly vacuumed, Greench dispatched in WoW.

    Small pleasures.

  57. 57.

    Schlemazel

    @debbie:
    Yeah, remember how giddy we all were when hair furor sewed on the nomination? We knew there was no way he was not going down to the greatest electoral defeat in history

  59. 59.

    NotMax

    Oh, BTW, for those with a Steam account, check out the free game Dr. Langselov, the Tiger and the Emerald. Not a game so much as a mini-walkthrough adventure, only taking about 20 minutes to play, however the narration is a real hoot. Clever enough dialogue for this codger to go play a second time to hear what else is there by way of alternate or delayed choices and actions.

  60. 60.

    Mnemosyne

    @different-church-lady:

    Yep. It’s not too bad in the replies to that thread, but if you follow to the post he’s replying to, there are a ton of people there who are still in total denial that they could possibly have been influenced by Russian propaganda because everything they believe about Hillary from 2016 is 100 percent true. Sigh.

  62. 62.

    danielx

    @bbleh:

    I wonder whether I can be given a WaPo op-ed column to express my feelings! *

    Yeah. Myself, I’m holding out for David Brooks’ real estate on the NYT op ed page. I mean, how hard can it be to churn out 800 words of overripe bullshit twice a week, not counting book writing leave and four to six weeks of vacation a year?

  63. 63.

    Mary G

    WaPo says one of the mighty has fallen: Former CBS chairman Les Moonves fired for cause, will not receive severance in wake of sexual misconduct allegations:

    The network made the announcement after the completion of a company investigation that found Moonves guilty of “willful and material malfeasance” and a failure to comply with the investigation. He was set to receive as much as $120 million as part of his severance package, depending on the results of the inquiry.

    The times, they are a-changing. Of course his attorney is claiming he’s been unfairly portrayed and will sue, and the board found that sexual harrassment was not a part of the CBS culture, which is laughable on its face, and will probably settle for some number of dollars less than $120 million but more than any of us will make in our lifetimes. I can’t help but hope this makes Brett Kavanaugh squirm a little bit. I find it hard to believe that more information is not still to come about him.

  65. 65.

    different-church-lady

    @Schlemazel: Not me. My thought was, “If you make it to the Super Bowl, you have a chance to win the Super Bowl.” I never felt comfortable.

  66. 66.

    Yarrow

    Back after a long day. I saw an Infowars bumper sticker on a pickup truck today. An expensive truck–extended cab. It was the only sticker on the truck. One middle aged or possibly older man driving it. Tinted windows so I couldn’t really be sure of his age or race. Probably white but possibly Latino.

    I wanted to hate him but then he let me merge into his lane in front of him on a crowded freeway so that made that a little more difficult. I’ve never seen an Infowars bumper sticker before in real life. Weirdly fascinating that it was the only sticker on the truck.

  67. 67.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    Ironically If you read the original article, this person is most likely Hispanic (I am basing my assumptions on the name and picture from the article in the link)
    his name is Luciano Guerra.

  68. 68.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Yarrow:
    I’ve seen plenty of Trump stickers as well as “Thin Blue Line” American flags on the rear windows of Trucks and SUVs. It’s almost always trucks and SUVs too. I usually tailgate them.

  71. 71.

    germy

    New York Times:

    New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that he would push to legalize recreational marijuana next year, a move that could generate more than $1.7 billion in sales annually and put New York in line with several neighboring states.

    The highly anticipated proposal came in a speech in Manhattan on Monday, in which the governor outlined his agenda for the first 100 days of his third term. Cuomo framed the speech as a reflection on what Franklin D. Roosevelt — the former president who was once a New York governor himself — would do today, mixing sweeping rhetoric about American ideals with ominous warnings about the failings of the Trump administration.

    The speech, which seemed delivered with a national audience in mind, could prolong slow-burning speculation about Cuomo’s presidential ambitions. It also showed, in striking detail, the governor’s leftward evolution in his eight years in office, from a business-friendly centrist who considered marijuana a “gateway drug,” to a self-described progressive calling for recreational marijuana, taxes on the rich and a ban on corporate political donations.

    “The fact is we have had two criminal justice systems: one for the wealthy and the well-off, and one for everyone else,” Cuomo said before introducing the cannabis proposal, describing the injustice that he said had “for too long targeted the African-American and minority communities.”

    “Let’s legalize the adult use of recreational marijuana once and for all,” he added.

  73. 73.

    sdhays

    @Amir Khalid: Yeah, that made me stop too. It’s even more stupid – Mexico isn’t the source of all or even most immigrants, so that side of the analogy fails, and is offensive, too.

    But I guess we can’t expect too much in the form of well-defined logic from a person who works for an environmental refuge who votes for the party that literally runs on how stupid (and amoral!) the concept of environmental protection is.

    “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest…” indeed!

  74. 74.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @lumpkin – why assume the writer is female? If you follow the link to the article: “Luciano Guerra is a nature photographer and outreach coordinator and educator for the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas.”

  75. 75.

    stinger

    @Mnemosyne: Republican voters WANT their candidates/representatives to be liars. All the voters I know, who claim that all politicians are liars, are conservanuts. And they intentionally vote for politicians whose campaign promises those voters believe to be lies. What Democrats “promise” isn’t sufficiently outrageous or so obviously a lie, apparently.

  76. 76.

    J R in WV

    @Mike in DC:

    I still like to sit and imagine the next inauguration.

    Right after the oath is taken by the next president, the former president is handcuffed and gently pushed into a police car, never to be free again!! I’ll watch that TV !!!

  77. 77.

    Frankensteinbeck

    What Democrats “promise” isn’t sufficiently outrageous or so obviously a lie, apparently.

    It’s not the lie they want to hear. Conservative lies deliver a message, that the leopard will eat Those People’s faces, and that white Christians don’t have to care about facts because they’re naturally right about everything. As long as the dogma of cruelty is followed, everything will magically turn out right for the deserving.

  78. 78.

    Jeffro

    @Mnemosyne:

    there are a ton of people there who are still in total denial that they could possibly have been influenced by Russian propaganda because everything they believe about Hillary from 2016 is 100 percent true.

    And unless someone walks them by the hand up to it, they’ll never each the following conclusion: the REASON you were even able. to. be. influenced. by Russian propaganda is because you were already CONDITIONED to believe the worst about Hillz for 30+ years by the Republican Noise Machine. If you had just followed the facts…followed the actual evidence of your own fine brain, instead of Fox propaganda…you might have been ‘inoculated’ against the Russians. But they – guided by certain folks on the Right – knew just what would work.

    Fucking idiots! No Russian influenced me ’cause I knew Hillary was already corrupt, ’cause…’cause!

  79. 79.

    Sebastian

    @Quinerly:

    You know, the same thing happened to a lot of young men who got pulled into ISIS. We are withessing global radicalization of young men through YouTube and Facebook. At some point there needs to be accountability.

  81. 81.

    Gravenstone

    @Yarrow: Last one I saw, also on a high end pickup, was accompanied by a bumper sticker for my local fire department. That was a ‘comforting’ thought – not.

  83. 83.

    sm*t cl*de

    @Miss Bianca:

    People have asked me, “Didn’t you listen to Trump when he said that he would build a wall?” I didn’t take the idea seriously during the campaign. I knew he couldn’t get Mexico to pay it — that’d be like asking Hurricane Harvey to foot the bill for rebuilding Houston — and thought it was just talk: another candidate making big promises he couldn’t keep. I never thought it would actually happen.

    “I knew Trump was a lying fraudster with no honour or principles other than self-enrichment, whose every solemn promise is worthless, and that was what convinced me it was OK to vote for him.”

  84. 84.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Mnemosyne: Thanks for linking this. Some of the replies to the thread’s initial post reflect how the toxic anti-Hillary propaganda is STILL affecting some who call themselves progressive.

  86. 86.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @PJ: In charismatic circles like those around Oral Robert’s and those influenced by him(Kenneth Copeland, etc) there’s the belief that if you pray hard enuff and explicitly state what you want/need you will get it. The ‘name it and claim it’s theology, sometimes dubbed the ‘blab and grab’ theology.

    Some who grew up in those circles state that they are taught that if they–esp with a group–state something it becomes real. They say it’s like taking bible passages about God speaking and by doing so bringing things into being and then claiming that believers can (maybe, sorta, hopefully) do the same thing.

  89. 89.

    randy khan

    @Aleta:

    Dersh knows that not the standard. As a really good article on Lawfare says about it: “materiality means only that the statement is ‘predictably capable of affecting . . . [an] official decision.’” (And “predictably,” here means the person committing perjury would have predicted it was capable of affecting the decision.”)

  90. 90.

    Bobby Thomson

    That butterfly dude is one serious dumbass.

    “Despite my personal experience disproving all the Republican propaganda I have unquestionably swallowed, I am a lifelong Republican.”

  91. 91.

    Bobby Thomson

    @sdhays:

    But I guess we can’t expect too much in the form of well-defined logic from a person who works for an environmental refuge who votes for the party that literally runs on how stupid (and amoral!) the concept of environmental protection is.

    Yeah, this. And it was so stupid I assumed she was a man.

  94. 94.

    JanieM

    @Bobby Thomson: @Amir Khalid: @lumpkin:

    What am I missing with these references to “she”? The linked article has a picture of a man with a beard named Luciano Guerra. At the bottom it says “As told to Washington Post editor Sophia Nguyen.” But the nature preserve person is clearly a guy.

  96. 96.

    Bonnie

    Every Republican and supporter of Trump are all pawns of Putin. They allow Putin to tell them what to say and how to interact with us real Americans who only want the best for our country.

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