Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

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

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

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

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

The lights are all blinking red.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

The choice is between normal and crazy.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Fani Willis claps back at Trump chihuahua, Jim Jordan.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Let’s finish the job.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

No one could have predicted…

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Trump Crime Cartel / Who Are They?

Who Are They?

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Who are the guys you saw foaming at the mouth, screaming about stolen elections and loving the constitution and calling capitol police traitors as they broke into the Capitol and defiled the place? You know them, folks. You went to school with them. While the ages range,, they mostly 30-60 years old. They’re bored. They’re unhappy with where they are in life. They were never much into book learning, but not stupid. But they feel like time has passed them by and their glory days are over. No one cares about the HS football or basketball championship, their league softball exploits bring them no glory.

They may have been in the military for a while and that gave them a sense of purpose, or maybe they were LEO’s, or firemen. Mill workers and miners. Contractors and laborers. Add in some nutjoob losers, some lawyers and brokers, etc.

And they’re angry. Life hasn’t gone the way they thought it would. Maybe they expected more out of it. Maybe they got screwed. But they are aging and feeling irrelevant, and insecure in their masculinity. It’s why they flock to shiny 80k pick-em-trucks they will never haul anything in and worship guns- it makes them feel important and in charge. They haven’t really read the constitution any more than they have read the bible, and what they have read they don’t understand or they ignore the parts they don’t like. They like the cosplay of it all, too- the tactical gear they barely fit into and in many cases don’t know how to use. It makes them look tough. It’s why the most important part of their kit is the Punisher logos and the badges letting people know what group they’re in. They think it gives them respect, and a camaraderie they are missing.

And they’re angry. For the last 40 years they’ve been lied to and they’ve been screwed in the wallet by policies of both parties. And they have also self-radicalized. They go to these online rooms, facebook groups, share bullshit memes, and refuse to actually investigate if they are true. It’s easier to just yell fake news or blame the media or people who actually know what they are talking about. And they work themselves into a froth, creating a feedback loop, where each time one of them says how they been wrong someone comes up with something worse and then all of a sudden they hate Adam Schiff or Steny Hoyer more than anything else in the world even though they couldn’t pick them out of a lineup. I mean, try to debate them. Everything they say is a soundbite and superficial, and when you definitively prove them wrong they just keep on believing what they want to believe, or engage in false equivalencies and whataboutism. “OK FINE MAYBE THAT WAS OUT OF LINE AT THE CAPITOL BUT WHATABOUT BLM PROTESTS.” Literally the ONLY information they are interested in is that which reinforces what they already believe and tells them they are right.

So you take all that, feed them toxic shit for years in the media, and then have the President urge them all on with lies, and that’s how you get the Beergut Putsch that happened the other day. And I don’t know how it stops, because for a lot of these guys it’s a game, and for the people feeding them this bullshit, it’s very profitable.

Reader Interactions

317Comments

  1. 1.

    Calouste

    While the ages range,, they mostly 30-60 years old. They’re bored. They’re unhappy with where they are in life. They were never much into book learning, but not stupid. But they feel like time has passed them by and their glory days are over. No one cares about the HS football or basketball championship, their league softball exploits bring them no glory.

    Describes Al Bundy to a T.

  3. 3.

    CaseyL

    Maybe not so profitable, if the social media companies keep them blocked, banned, and de-platformed.

    No, I take that back:  they’ll just flock in greater numbers to Fox/OANN/NewsMax. So, profitable for cable stations.

    Maybe enough will be caught, convicted, and imprisoned to convince the rest to go back to lives of QUIET desperation.

  4. 4.

    Roger Moore

    And I don’t know how it stops, because for a lot of these guys it’s a game, and for the people feeding them this bullshit, it’s very profitable.

    The only way to make it stop is to make the game less fun for the participants and less profitable for the people feeding them bullshit.  Have reality invade their game in the form of arrests and other real-world consequences.  Crack down on the businesses preying on these suckers.  Give the FDA regulatory control over dietary supplements and require advertisements to have some relationship with reality.  Require investment advisors and brokers to be fiduciaries of their clients.  And so on.

  5. 5.

    MazeDancer

    They’re also rich. Four well-to-do white society women from one of the richest communities in TN went.

    People flew private, for heaven’s sake.

    Lots of rich racists in the GOP. They do not feel life has passed them by. They want to make sure they stay rich.

  6. 6.

    Major Major Major Major

    My one high school classmate who I long thought would end up like this turned out gay and is now a nice bear. A few out Trumpers in the class, according to Facebook, but they’re all like, meek fundie housewives (all Byzantine catholic, somehow), which is weird because one of them dropped out of the Air Force academy to pursue that lifestyle.

  8. 8.

    Felanius Kootea

    We need a mass cult deprogramming/”unbrainwashing” effort, included as a complimentary part of the ACA’s mental health offerings.

  10. 10.

    realbtl

    Maybe related- I started a goog search for reverb.com, typed “rev” and the first suggestion was “reverse image search.”  First time I’ve seen that prompt.

  11. 11.

    Danielx

    Must disagree on one count – if somebody is driving around in an $80k pickup he doesn’t need, that person can either afford it or screwed himself financially to show off his dick substitute. Nobody else made him (her?) buy that symbol.

  12. 12.

    LeftCoastYankee

    For this age group it started with the 1980 election.

    If you read the text of the infamous “malaise” speech by Carter, it’s basically his plan/plea with the country about we need to get serious about energy reduction and independence.

    That election was a choice between the nation growing up (and cleaning up the messes we made for ourselves in the world) and saying “fuck it, let’s just pretend everyone can get rich.”

    The pretend part hasn’t gone away, it is our national identity.  We just pretend we’re whatever we think is good and/or virtuous.  Privilege is just having more runway to maintain the make believe for longer.

  13. 13.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Would it be possible to weaponize QAnon against Russia/China? They had to have had a hand in spreading this shit and encouraging it. Part of me wants to do it, but the other more rational part of me also doesn’t want to cause the end of civilization as we know it

  14. 14.

    Major Major Major Major

    For the last 40 years they’ve been lied to and they’ve been screwed in the wallet by policies of both parties.

    This does seem rather at odds with your point that they are all well-off, with five or six figures sunk into penis augmentation devices.

    I saw somewhere yesterday, from some reputable quant on Twitter, that Trump’s base tends to be white dudes in growing exurban areas that are seeing, not white downward mobility, but nonwhite upward mobility. There’s just no way you can make an economic distress argument, it’s all status anxiety, anger at the ‘undeserving’ browns, at the book-learned who had the common sense to move downtown.

  16. 16.

    Seanly

    Very good post, John. You hit the nail on the head with a lot of it.

    One of the things that group of men miss is that many of us also feel cheated or left behind. I know my career hasn’t gone how I thought it was when I was a wet-behind-the-ears engineer joining the workforce.

    Some of it is my own damn fault and some of it is circumstances out of my control. And I fit a lot of the demographics of this group – white, male, turning 53 tomorrow, wife & I both work and we both have a slew of preexisting conditions. I have nowhere near enough saved in my 401(k). Many of my engineer co-workers are staunch Republicans (though thankfully none have professed a love of Qanon).

    So I have some sympathy for the plight of the white males who feel left behind and are scared of change and new things or see their bank account always creeping close to the red. What I know and what I think a lot of them miss is that we’ve had it easy compared to most every other group. If things are this tough for the in-group now, that reminds me of the advantages I was given by dint of being a white male in America.

  17. 17.

    Ruckus

    @Roger Moore:

    This.

    Almost all the countries ills can be honed down to the normalization of conservative bullshit, by repetition on faux news, as well as the new kids on the block, by many changes in tax law over the last 30 yrs, by the lying of conservative pundits on mass media and by ever more radicalized local (and state and federal) politicians.

  19. 19.

    raven

    Lots of Nam vets among them. They have felt betrayed for more like 50 years and nothing anyone can say will change their minds. I know way too many of them.

  20. 20.

    Mary G

    It’s 90% race, 10% misogyny. They have money and when they were little boys their parents taught them they were better than anyone else and entitled to be the boss of the world. But the rules have changed and the blahs browns and even some of their wimmen folks aren’t playing by the old rules. It’s unfair! They are well off! They worked hard for what they have! They are supposed to be the winners! I saw somewhere that a lot of the guys the FBI wanted were turned in by ex-wives.

  23. 23.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Baud:

     Trump gets a lot of the white poor

    I thought that actually wasn’t the case, that most poor whites had voted for Clinton in 2016? Or was that just most poor voters in general?

  25. 25.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Adam Serwer’s view:

    They were business owners, CEOs, state legislators, police officers, active and retired service members, real-estate brokers, stay-at-home dads, and, I assume, some Proud Boys.
    The mob that breached the Capitol last week at President Donald Trump’s exhortation, hoping to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, was full of what you might call “respectable people.” They left dozens of Capitol Police officers injured, screamed “Hang Mike Pence!,” threatened to murder House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and set up a gallows outside the building. Some were extremists using the crowd as cover, but as federal authorities issue indictments, a striking number of those they name appear to be regular Americans.
    And there’s nothing surprising about that. Although any crowd that size is bound to include people who are struggling financially, no one should be shocked to see the middle classes so well represented among the mob.

  26. 26.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @raven:

    Lots of Nam vets among them. They have felt betrayed for more like 50 years and nothing anyone can say will change their minds. I know way too many of them.

    How do they defend their support for a draft dodger?

  27. 27.

    raven

    @Roger Moore: “Give the FDA regulatory control over dietary supplements and require advertisements to have some relationship with reality.”

     

    What’s that going to do?

  29. 29.

    VOR

    @LeftCoastYankee:  Yes, I think this is part of it. They are being fed the easy answer and pointed at scapegoats. We don’t need to sacrifice, we don’t need to make tough choices. We can blame it on group X. It’s the Muslims or the Deep State or the Libtards or whatever.

    And they are all victims. Oh my god are they victims. Trump is perfect for them because he thinks he’s the biggest victim in the world. Everyone is unfair to the supposed billionaire, married to a model, and President of the United States. How horrible his life is, how mean everyone is to him.

  30. 30.

    Brachiator

    While the ages range,, they mostly 30-60 years old. They’re bored. They’re unhappy with where they are in life. They were never much into book learning, but not stupid. But they feel like time has passed them by and their glory days are over. No one cares about the HS football or basketball championship, their league softball exploits bring them no glory.

    There’s a passel of angry white wimmens in with this bunch as well.

  31. 31.

    SiubhanDuinne

    You know them, folks. You went to school with them. While the ages range,, they mostly 30-60 years old.

    I’m well beyond that. My generation would never…

  35. 35.

    RSA

    @Baud:

    Trump gets a lot of the white poor, but the seditionists are mostly people who can afford to play the delusional.

    I thought of this too when hearing about people being arrested from places pretty far away from DC.  Airplane tickets are not for people on the economic edge; nor is the ability to take off a few days from work to drive to a pointless rally.

  38. 38.

    khead

    @Major Major Major Major:

    This does seem rather at odds with your point that they are all well-off, with five or six figures sunk into penis augmentation devices.

    It can be both.  The people who drive the 80K pickups and attend boat rallies run the businesses in the small towns and the exurbs. Their employees are the bitter folks who have been screwed in the wallet.  They all have Fox News on at work.

  41. 41.

    Nicole

    Plenty of them are well educated, but they’re still dumb as a bucket of hair when it comes to anything outside of their narrow field of specialized knowledge.  And they don’t have any intellectual curiosity, which is why they prefer to live in a feedback loop.

  42. 42.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Baud:

    I’m not raven, but I’m sure it’s some bullshit that somebody somewhere spit on a returning vet and called them a baby killer or something. It’s America’s original stab-in-the-back myth

  43. 43.

    Mary G

    ??: Speaker Pelosi has named the Impeachment Managers. “It is their constitutional and patriotic duty to present the case for the President’s impeachment and removal.” https://t.co/zjZOa0tRdn— Democracy Docket (@DemocracyDocket) January 13, 2021

     

    Congressman Jamie Raskin, Lead Manager: Congressman Jamie Raskin is a member of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, where he serves as Chair of Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and on the Judiciary Committee, where he serves as Vice Chair of the Subcommittee on the Constitution. He also serves on the Rules Committee and the Committee on House Administration, where he is Vice Chair. Prior to his time in Congress, Raskin was a three-term State Senator in Maryland and a professor of constitutional law at American University’s Washington College of Law for more than 25 years.

    Congresswoman Diana DeGette: Congresswoman DeGette serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee as Chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. She is serving her thirteenth term in office. Before serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, DeGette was an attorney focusing on civil rights before being elected to serve two terms in the Colorado House, including one term as Assistant Minority Leader.

    Congressman David Cicilline: Congressman Cicilline is a member of the Judiciary Committee, where he serves as Chair of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law. He also serves on the Foreign Affairs Committee. He is serving his sixth term in Congress. Early in his career, Cicilline served as a public defender in the District of Columbia. Cicilline served two terms as Mayor of Providence and four terms in the Rhode Island House of Representatives.

    Congressman Joaquin Castro: Congressman Castro serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and on the Foreign Affairs Committee, where he is also Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. He is serving his fifth term in Congress. Prior to his election to Congress, he served five terms in the Texas Legislature and served as a litigator in private practice.

    Congressman Eric Swalwell: Congressman Swalwell serves on House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where he chairs the Intelligence Modernization and Readiness Subcommittee, and on the Judiciary Committee. He is a former prosecutor and is the son and brother of law enforcement officers. He is serving his fifth term in Congress.

    Congressman Ted Lieu: Congressman Lieu serves on the Judiciary Committee and the Committee on Foreign Affairs. He is a former active-duty officer in the U.S. Air Force who served as a prosecutor in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, and currently serves as a Colonel in the Reserves. He is serving his fourth term in Congress.

    Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett: Congresswoman Plaskett serves on the House Ways and Means Committee. Before she was elected to Congress, she served as an Assistant District Attorney in the Bronx District Attorney’s Office and as Senior Counsel at the Department of Justice. She is serving her fourth term in Congress.

    Congressman Joe Neguse: Congressman Neguse is a member of the Judiciary Committee, where he serves as Vice Chair of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law. Congressman Neguse also serves on the Natural Resources Committee and the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. Early in his career, Neguse was a litigator in private practice. He is serving his second term in Congress.

    Congresswoman Madeleine Dean: Congresswoman Dean is a member of the Judiciary Committee, where she serves on the Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. She is serving her second term in Congress, before which she served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for four terms and was a lawyer in private practice.

    Interesting no Schiff, he must have bigger fish to fry

    ETA: Really admire Raskin for taking this on less than two weeks after losing his son.

  44. 44.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Baud: 

    It wasn’t my war. You asked me, I didn’t ask you!
    And I did what I had to do to win,
    but someone wouldn’t let us win.
    And I come back to the world, and I see all
    those maggots at the airport, protestin’ me, spittin’.
    Callin’ me baby killer and all kinds of vile crap!
    Who are they to protest me, huh? Who are they?
    Unless they’ve been me and been there,
    and know what the hell they’re yellin’ about?

    Rambo, First Blood

  45. 45.

    Ruckus

    @Seanly:

    I’m 71 and still working in a manual labor job, catching up after the last republican financial bullshit by GWB with his recession. That is not my only setback in life. I lost almost everything, including a chance at my life from an earthquake. That was easier to come back from than being flat broke by GWB. My point is that sometimes life gives you a hand up and sometimes life fucks you badly. It’s when a political party keeps fucking you and your life so that their money grubbers can grub even more, that’s not normal – or at least it shouldn’t be but it’s because they are not here as a political party, they are here as sadistic thieves.

  49. 49.

    raven

    @Baud: Well, my personal opinion is that the right wing created the “stab in the back” narrative about the anti-war movement. The war was horrific but lots of people tried their best and had their friends killed. I’ve said it before but most people who served in Vietnam were in very little danger most of the time and a small percentage, say 20%, were really in the shit.  Their is plenty of bitterness to go around but “the left” and “the media” are easy to blame.

  50. 50.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @khead: a couple of weeks after the inauguration in 2017, I had two younger guys– neither older than thirty– at my house to fix a window pane. My home office is in a loft above my living room and I had NPR on. They were reporting some deal that Kushner had backed out of because of conflicts, ethics concerns, et cetera. It was NPR, very flat story, no judgement or real criticism of Kushner. One of the guys said to the other, “he didn’t even make the deal and they’re going after him”. They were offended on behalf of Jared Freakin’ Kushner, a trust-fund baby who makes trump look like an actual successful businessman.

  52. 52.

    Gin & Tonic

    I know a bunch of these guys, but not one of them has calluses on his hands. PhD scientists, professionals, all comfortable. Trumpiest guy in my circle is a retired dentist, drives a Porsche Cayenne, stews in the Foxosphere, curses about “those damn Democrats.” Racism, mostly.

  53. 53.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    Trump gets a lot of the white poor

    I am not sure that this is entirely true. Pew and other organizations show that well off whites form a core of Trump’s base.

  55. 55.

    Kelly

    Wanda: But you think you’re an intellectual, don’t you, ape?

    Otto: [superior smile] Apes don’t read the Constitution.

    Wanda: Yes they do, Otto, they just don’t understand it! Now let me correct you on a couple things, okay? The Second Amendment starts with “a well regulated militia”! The central message of the Second Amendment is not “Every man for himself!” Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked ’em up. Now. You have just assaulted a coequal branch of government and awakened the deep state which will throw your ass in jail and fine away all your riches. So what are you going to do about it, huh? What would… an intellectual do? What would Thomas Jefferson do?

  58. 58.

    raven

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: When the VVA asked him for a donation he sent them an autographed photo of himself. But, yea, that’s the narrative. Pat Lang comes up around here once in a while and he regularly recounts being spit on by a fat hippie lady in a mumu. Hell, I’ve had people here say they were spit on.

  59. 59.

    quakerinabasement

    The guys John describes mostly don’t worry me. Most are all talk It’s only the ones who, for real, want to salve their rage by actually hurting somebody. I think that’s quite a small slice of the total.

    The people who DO worry me are the upper-middle class white people who egg the radicals on, like the Texas real estate broker lady who flew in her private jet to take photos for her Instagram feed, or the bozo stay-at-home dad, married to a doctor, who decided to make off with Pelosi’s podium, or the former Lt. Col. seen walking around with a handful of flexicuffs. These people have money and they have connections. They ain’t going away.

  61. 61.

    Eolirin

    @raven: Those are the primary sources of advertisment revenue for far right and conspiracy theory content producers.

    Unless they could find another source of revenue, removing those products would cripple them.

  63. 63.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Similar here, the most strident GOP supporters are construction business owners, radio station owners, engineers, ranchers and loggers, the whole fucking chamber of commerce practically.

    Elsewhere:

    Tempers are high.

    This time the fury enveloping the Capitol comes not from an insurgent mob but from within.
    The anger on display is searing — Democrat against Republican; Republican against Republican; legislators of both parties against the catastrophic security failure that left top leaders of the government vulnerable to last week’s violence as well as to the coronavirus in their ranks.
    The rage is being stoked even hotter by the passions aroused by Democrats’ fresh drive to impeach President Donald Trump.
    This is a “powder keg” moment, one Democrat said. It’s certainly a historic one.

  66. 66.

    trollhattan

    I can attest any Trumper I know who isn’t on the down low ranges from quite comfortable to rich. But I don’t draw any conclusions from that because I don’t get out much. They got their fucking tax bill sacks o’ cash, to be sure. They caught the katy and left me the mule to ride.

  67. 67.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Before the 2008 election Bill Maher sent Alexandra Pelosi to interview rednecks about the election and one guy broke down and started crying like a baby, not because bin Laden had escaped justice, not because troops were getting chewed up in two mideast quagmires, not because of Katrina, not because of Terri Schiavo, not because his 401K had tanked in banking collapse, no he was crying cuz a black guy was about to become president.

  71. 71.

    sanjeevs

    Klete Keller was a gold medal Olympic swimmer.
    Couldn’t sort out a post swimming career.
    Ended up sleeping in his car.
    Became a MAGA.
    Was recognised at the Capitol because he was wearing his Olympics jacket.

    You nailed him to a T.

  72. 72.

    mattH

    Not only did I grow up with them, I still work with them. It’s so hard sometimes hearing the things you do.

    To some extent, they have been stolen from and their wages have often stagnated, even those at the 100k-190k mark, but it’s their response to their loss that’s reprehensible. Something about sparrows and curtain rods come to mind. Combine that with their Identity overriding all those facts and we’re in this insane place that I really don’t see a way out of.

    We’ve got to change the narrative but how do you do that with Fox News going even more to the “opinion” side of things in an attempt to chase those on their right?

  73. 73.

    trollhattan

    @Eolirin:

    Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley worked together for many years protecting the supplements industry from federal oversight. It’s a ginormous industry basically unregulated, at least until people start dying from the stuff.

    A lot of the industry is is based in Utah.

  74. 74.

    raven

    National Guard troops who are flooding into Washington to secure the Capitol for Inauguration Day will be armed, the Army secretary, Ryan McCarthy, has decided, Defense Department officials said Tuesday.

  75. 75.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @raven:

    IIRC, there was a significant anti-war GI movement within the Armed Forces at the time. Again, iirc, the army was split into two orgs: the core US Army made up of professional soldiers from volunteers and the Army of the United States. The ATUS was made up of draftees and was created in the run-up to WW2 and existed pretty much up till the end of American involvement in Vietnam and the creation of the All-Volunteer Force.

    Getting to my point, were you aware of the anti-war elements within the armed forces when you served? Were the vets you’ve talked to over the years? Not that I need to tell you this, but it wasn’t just the media and anti-war student movement; I’ve read that sabotage and insubornation within the military helped hamper the war effort in Vietnam, along with attendant difficulties with jungle fighting

  76. 76.

    Miss Bianca

    @satby: Yeah, this sounds very similar to what my publisher had to say about the Trumpenproletariat out where I live. Bored, dissatisfied with their lives, etc.

    In most cases, these people have money, some of them are educated, and hell, they live in fuckin’ rural mountain CO Paradise – what the bloody HELL do they have to feel so goddamn aggrieved about?

  78. 78.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @raven:

    Stallone, who now makes millions by fighting the Vietnam War for cameras, spent the real war in college and teaching muscle-flexing at a rich girls school in Switzerland.

    Mike Royko’s famed “War Wimps” column (link)

  79. 79.

    Brachiator

    @raven:

    And someone earlier mentioned the “save the children” aspect of Q.

    I probably read this somewhere, but I think that some people deep into conspiracy theories have a kind of savior syndrome.  There is something that only they know, or only they deeply understand, and if they can get the world to pay attention to them, they will magically have done something heroic.

    But some of these goobers want deeply to re-establish a white supremacy hierarchy.

    The sad thing is that they do not understand that a lot of the plutocrats who pull the strings spit on these people, even if they are upper middle class.

    How many of these goobers could afford a membership at Mar a Lago?

  80. 80.

    Hungry Joe

    There’s also the mob mentality factor. Mostly they’re seething online, alone, Then they go to a rally, and suddenly — Look! Like-minded patriots all around me! There are millions of us! The adrenaline kicks in, the mob moves … and there’s no feeling quite like it. The camaraderie. The power. The thrill. I’m with the winners, we’ve taken control! U.S.A.!  No more being disrespected! Next thing you know, you’ve got a flagpole and you’re whaling away on a Capitol policeman.

  81. 81.

    raven

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Fuck yes. It also depended on when you were there. My cousin was a marine in the Hill Fights and he’s way right wing. I was in the VVAW and in DC and actually wrote a post about Operation Dewey Canyon III but decided not to post it.

     

    Sir No Sir! tells for the first time on film the story of the 1960s GI movement against the war in Vietnam. The film explores the profound impact that the movement had on the war, and investigates the way in which the GI Movement has been erased from public memory.

    In the 1960s an anti-war movement emerged that altered the course of history. This movement didn’t take place on college campuses, but in barracks and on aircraft carriers. It flourished in army stockades, navy brigs and in the dingy towns that surround military bases. It penetrated elite military colleges like West Point. And it spread throughout the battlefields of Vietnam. It was a movement no one expected, least of all those in it. Hundreds went to prison and thousands into exile.[3] And by 1971 it had, in the words of one colonel, infested the entire armed services. Yet today few people know about the GI Movement against the war in Vietnam.[4]

  90. 90.

    Kattails

    Saw a car with PA plates in my NH town this afternoon. It had bumper stickers that at first I thought were jokes.  Can’t remember the exact texts now, stuff like shame on you Hollywood, you taught women to smoke and swear; and Of course they don’t go to church, they’re too busy learning to be lesbians and witches.  HUH? Near the grocery store, a crappy pickup with a placard across the back window “Second Amendment Avenue”. ALL the Trump signage in the neighborhood is still up.

    Fuck these assholes.  I’m a late 60’s woman (never mind how late) who grew up with the occupational choices secretary, nurse, or teacher; with wages probably 50% below the average male wage. I’m outraged on a daily basis but haven’t seen fit to piss money away on firearms and go try to shoot up the Republican boys in the Senate who keep blocking every chance for improved wages and healthcare and education.

    WTF, why can’t these idiots go find something useful to occupy themselves? Go make something. Pick up the trash lining the roads.  There are a million things you can actually DO that have tangible rewards and can give you a sense of pride and accomplishment.

  94. 94.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mary G:

    That strikes me as a fine and effective lineup.

    Agree fully about Raskin. Saw him a couple of times on TV today and my heart just aches for him, although he was doing absolutely nothing overtly to tug at my emotions.

  96. 96.

    Mike in NC

    “Beergut Pustch” is brilliant. The next few weeks are going to be terrifying. My wife’s friends have been calling tears about this horror. Doesn’t help that their Republican neighbors have been loading up their Facebook pages with Trumpanzee bullshit.

  97. 97.

    sab

    @raven: My BIL was in Vietnam in the central highlands in 1968-69. Hard war. Won several bronze stars he never talked about. His parents walked out of Catholic Church when they felt the anti–war priest wasn’t standing up for their son. Two years later, when son was safely home, they were more anti-war than anybody. Family survival was their moral framework.

  98. 98.

    Kattails

    BTW does anyone know if that little twat Boebert is still in a standoff with Capitol police about bringing her fucking gun to the chambers?

  99. 99.

    Sebastian

    One thing that has to stop is the demonization machine. Rightwing media is nonstop demonization of Liberals and it has been going on for decades.

    They build this caricature set of traits and all they have to do is label an individual as liberal and all terrifying traits are immediately imprinted on that person.

    That whole thing needs to be smashed. We are in power now, these shitheads not only engaged in open sedition, don’t forget they also allied with our enemies. There is no need to ponder what to do. Arrests, raids with guns blazing, man hunts, trials and if guilty executions. By the hundreds or thousands if needed.

    Fuck them.

  102. 102.

    Mary G

    Well, I never imagined our national monuments would have to turn into armed camps. I do wish Biden and Kamala would do the inauguration indoors by Zoom with the bare minimum of live people (I guess CJ Roberts should be one.) The DNC convention was so well done.

  103. 103.

    There are those who call me...tim... (Still posh)

    Wow. Some of your best writing, Boss. Darn near…sympathetic. And your sinuses never entered into it! Thanks, Cole. Love yr work. Thanks for being here. Longtime lurker, only recent commenter here.

  104. 104.

    hueyplong

    Each of us operates within a small sample size, but the trumpers I know have racism in common more than any particular economic bracket.

  105. 105.

    Martin

    I think this is a little bit the wrong take.

    These are white christians mad that white christians need to make accord with some other group to maintain a viable voting bloc (they’ve been desperately trying to get jews, to little success). Trump promised them they  wouldn’t need to do that – they could wall off the border from latinos and they could keep arresting black people, promising them they are still majority of this country, but they aren’t. Next election they’ll be down to 40%.

    They’re acting like the country was just invaded by alien lizard people because to them, it was.

    Bush and Romney told them to appeal to Latinos, and they told them to fuck off, they’ll just gerrymander harder. Trump was the only one wiling to tell them to stand their ground and they threw everything they had behind him.

  106. 106.

    raven

    @sab:  A bunch of the guys in Burn’s “Vietnam” were grunts who changed their minds when the came home. I got radicalized seeing the racism in Korea and, by the time I got to the Nam, I was full fledged FTA.

  111. 111.

    Jeffro

    I don’t care who they are but trumpov just lost Geraldo Rivera and now I KNOW IT’S OVER!!! ;)

  112. 112.

    cmorenc

    @LeftCoastYankee:

    If you read the text of the infamous “malaise” speech by Carter, it’s basically his plan/plea with the country about we need to get serious about energy reduction and independence.

    That election was a choice between the nation growing up (and cleaning up the messes we made for ourselves in the world) and saying “fuck it, let’s just pretend everyone can get rich.”

    Don’t forget that a HUGE factor in the 1980 election was that Carter was handicapped going in by far bigger factors than the “responsibility” element you outline above.  First, there was the long-ongoing Iranian hostage crisis that happened while Carter was President, and the attempted hostage rescue mission that got scuttled by a helicopter-disabling sandstorm in Iranian territory but still a long way from Tehran.  Second, Carter had inherited stubbornly persistent economic stagflation crisis (economy stalled at the same time as steep currency inflation).  So Carter went into the 1980 election appearing ineffective to a lot of the public, but nevertheless kept a modest but persistent lead over Reagan for most of the campaign despite public disappointment in Carter because much of the public was nervous over whether Reagan was unsound as an alternative.  Reagan successfully projected the needed assurance in the debate a week from the election, and the election dramatically swung to Reagan.  It was only post-election that Reagan successfully sold much of the public that he and his policies had caused brighter times to come to America, although much of his perceived success with the public was lucky right timing (the economy improved substantially the last two years of his first term, and during the campaign, Reagan covertly undermined Carter’s attempts to negotiate an end to the Iran hostage crisis and secretly made a deal with Iranian leadership in late fall to resolve it by returning the hostages just as Reagan took office.

    THE IRONY is that the exact same factors would have weighed down Gerald Ford, had he pulled out the 1976 election and been the incumbent going into the 1980 election.  There was a long-brewing hunger for change in 1980, and had Ford been President, it’s likely Ted Kennedy would have represented that change, and we’d have had President Ted Kennedy in 1980 instead of Reagan.  It’s ironic that the country would have been better off long-term had Ford won the 1976 election, because the GOP would have owned the economic and international failures that afflicted Carter.

    It is true that Reagan fostered the adult responsibility-dodging attitudes you refer to, but that only sunk in after the election during his first term, and wasn’t nearly as big a factor with the general public (as opposed to conservative ideologues) going into the 1980 election as appears in 40 years retrospect, where we get to see what followed over his term in office.

  113. 113.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Lindsay Wise @lindsaywise 27m
    Michigan Republican @RepFredUpton will vote to impeach President Trump, his office confirms. Statement coming.

  117. 117.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    I’m talking about the percentage of white poor who vote for Trump. Not the percentage of Trump voters who are white poor.

    I suspect that you are still wrong.

    Trump even did worse with lower income voters in 2020, according to a Guardian story on voter demographics.

    He said Trump also lost some appeal among low-income voters, who were more attracted to Biden, but the president gained among voters with family incomes over $100,000 a year.

  119. 119.

    WaterGirl

    @Kattails:

    According to Nobels, Boebert was eventually let into the chamber, though “it was unclear from my vantage point if the Capitol Police searched her bag before she went in”

    Other articles say she was let in without letting them look in her bag.

    What I hadn’t understood by now is that she DID set off the alarm as she went through the metal detector but would not let them check her back after that happened.

  125. 125.

    Martin

    The other reason I disagree a bit with Trump’s take is that there were CEOs, high school teachers, etc. Lots of college educated. Lots of business owners. Lots of people that I think either achieved their career trajectory or maybe exceeded it. People that arrived via private jet.

    The two defining factors were 1) white, and 2) lots of God-given right talk. 

    I know it seems like a cult, but it’s just normal christianity. It’s dying, and it’s desperate.

  126. 126.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    The House… plan to vote Wednesday at 9 a.m. ET on the impeachment resolution, Hoyer said.

    set the DVRs

    by the way, does anyone still have a VCR?

  127. 127.

    catclub

    can I just note the (hopefully intentional) misspelling of Keyser Soze  in the previous post, with a whiff of Hitler:

    Kaiser Soze ?

  128. 128.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @raven:

    Fuck yes. It also depended on when you were there. My cousin was a marine in the Hill Fights and he’s way right wing. I was in the VVAW and in DC and actually wrote a post about Operation Dewey Canyon III but decided not to post it.

    I didn’t know you were in VVAW. I’ve heard of Sir, No Sir! from this place. It’s a shame it’s not taught about in schools. Instead the stab-in-the-back stuff is

  130. 130.

    sab

    @raven: I didn’t know my husband’s family then. I was an anti-war activist all through high school. Mostly banging on doors for political campaigns. That was hard, because a lot of the people I talked to had sons overseas and they were scared and wanted government to protect their kids.

    But almost all the adults in thses campaigns were angry returned Vietnam vets. I never felt disloyal banging on doors for these guys.

  135. 135.

    Mary G

    Melania can’t wait for all this to be over, and because her staff all quit, she plagiarized again, this time from herself.

    New: It appears @FLOTUS has copied parts of her statement today from … herself. Significant similarities between statement today and her RNC speech from August: pic.twitter.com/S2V8YHIcuZ— Kate Bennett (@KateBennett_DC) January 11, 2021

  137. 137.

    Gvg

    @Mary G: Raskin’s story reminds me of Biden’s. Something about the way he comes across and also the way the media presents him. We may be hearing a lot about him in years to come.

  138. 138.

    Sebastian

    @catclub:

    It’s a double fictional character from the movie The Usual Suspects, played by Kevin Spacey. A gangster kingpin of Turkish origin, named Keyser Söze.

  142. 142.

    Citizen Alan

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I am still furious at some ancient fucker who complained about having the press 1 for English at a town hall meeting for Alan Nunnelee! I wanted to go up to him afterwards and ask if maybe there was something wrong with his phone because most people just press 1 and get on with their lives instead of making a literal federal case about it.

  143. 143.

    trnc

    Who are the guys you saw foaming at the mouth, screaming about stolen elections and loving the constitution

    Republican members of congress.

    and calling capitol police traitors as they broke into the Capitol and defiled the place?

    Oh, my bad. Although they do keep defiling the place.

  145. 145.

    piratedan

    well if you want to de-program these folks, the first thing you have to do is to shut down the current onslaught of constant programming that is going on right now, 24/7 every damn day.  On the TV/Cable/Internet/Radio

    am open to ideas on how to do that legally but this is where it has to start… these people are being lied to 24/7 FOR PROFIT, find a way to stop allowing evil fucking oligarchs to turn these people into fucking automatons to do their bidding to give them tax cuts and whatever racist gibberish they endorse.

  148. 148.

    Kent

    @raven:Lots of Nam vets among them. They have felt betrayed for more like 50 years and nothing anyone can say will change their minds. I know way too many of them.

    If you were 20 in 1970 then you would be 70 today.  So I don’t think a whole lot of them were crashing the gates.  Nam vets are starting to age out of the hard core truck parade MAGA cohort.

  150. 150.

    mattH

    @Brachiator: Fred Clark over at Patheos has a post on the Satanic Baby Killers of the 80s and how it ties in to pizzagate that explains a part of it.

    Because it’s not quite accurate to say that Satanic baby-killer enthusiasts really want and desire the existence of real monsters. That’s what they’re clamoring for. It’s the fantasy role-playing game they’ve all agreed to play together. But the counterfeit joy they find in that fantasy doesn’t come from the monsters, it comes from the NPCs. It comes from the sense that their knowledge of this secret conspiracy of monsters, and their fantasy of bravely opposing it, makes them special.

    The other side is that most right-wingers are authoritarians; willing to give credence to what “the right” authority figure says and more likely to be ripe for affinity fraud, which creates an evironment conspiracies thrive in.

  152. 152.

    NotMax

    Maybe it’s the lens of age but more than a sprinkling of them looked (and dressed) more wet behind the ears than age 30.

  153. 153.

    trnc

    @MazeDancer:

    They’re also rich. Four well-to-do white society women from one of the richest communities in TN went.

    People flew private, for heaven’s sake.

    Sounds like their pilots will be busy shuffling them to court appearances. IMHO, several months of being named publicly and trial coverage will be great motivators for the next generation of shitheads to get their ya yas out on xbox.

  154. 154.

    Raoul Paste

    Today in the grocery parking lot there was a jeep with a giant skull painted on the back of it .   At least 3 foot tall .   It’s an attention seeking ploy, but where is the benefit?

    At least it makes it easy for the cops to identify  (And hopefully it isn’t owned by a cop)

  155. 155.

    LeftCoastYankee

    @MomSense:

    There was a scene in the Pixar “Incredibles 2” (I think) where the erstwhile badgal says something like “relying on superheroes is ridiculous, we need to save ourselves”.

    She’s then of course beaten by the silly weird funny super-family.

    It was one of those “that was odd” things that ping-ponged around my head for awhile.  It was probably hipster self-referential irony, but it had that “stopped clock is right” quality to it.

  156. 156.

    WaterGirl

    @Sebastian: I’m not sure what you’re getting at.  That she could have brought a gun in tonight and hidden it somewhere in the House chambers

    edit: Not one of the 141 (?) Republican House members who challenged the election results is trustworthy.  Not a single one.

    I hope several someones go through both the House and Senate chambers every day now after people have left to make sure nothing has been smuggled in.

    How the hell do you work with people on legislation when they have shown themselves to be untrustworthy?

  157. 157.

    stinger

    Good post, John.

    It’s why the most important part of their kit is the Punisher logos and the badges letting people know what group they’re in. They think it gives them respect, and a camaraderie they are missing.

    I wonder if we don’t need to revive Elks and Masons and bowling leagues — and unions. People do need a sense of belonging; if they can get camaraderie and respect from being a member of Kiwanis or Shriners once they’re too old to shine at lunchtime basketball, they might be less likely to join these violent versions of the Society for Creative Anachronism.

  159. 159.

    jl

    Is it possible Congress is going to kick the bum out? News says things moving faster in House and Senate than anyone anticipated. Will McConnell play ball on some level, either having a one day trial (which is longer than it needs to be, bipartisan eye-witness testimony from members of Congress should be more than enough), or using it as a stick to keep Trump somewhat in line?

    Stick might be enough, Trump is broke and if he’s convicted he loses his bennies.

    If the impeachment starts to move in the Senate, then only explanation I can think of is that the big corporate donors and billionaire funders have told McConnell that it’s time to get rid of Trump (he’s served his purpose), and start a salvage operation on the GOP, figure out what to do with the traitorous and deranged Trumpster die-hards. But, just my guess.

  160. 160.

    SiubhanDuinne

     

    @Gvg:

    I haven’t heard one way or the other, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that Biden reached out to Raskin as soon as the tragic news was made public. They are both incredibly sympathetic characters, and were long before their family tragedies.

     

    ETA: Obviously I didn’t know Biden before his wife and daughter were killed in that auto accident. I was thinking of Beau, and Raskin’s son Tommy.

  162. 162.

    jimmiraybob

    @Felanius Kootea: “We need a mass cult deprogramming/”unbrainwashing” effort, included as a complimentary part of the ACA’s mental health offerings.”

    I’m guessing that when sports comes back full tilt and the bars open again a lot of these guy’s focus will change and they can go back to trash talkin’ teams and beating each other’s brains out at the saloon.  That and opening up the strip clubs again.  Lot’s of pent up testosterone out there.

  163. 163.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Raoul Paste:
    Today in the grocery parking lot there was a jeep with a giant skull painted on the back of it . At least 3 foot tall .

    that’s the “Punisher” logo Cole refers to, isn’t it?

  164. 164.

    brendancalling

    “While the ages range,, they mostly 30-60 years old. They’re bored. They’re unhappy with where they are in life. They were never much into book learning, but not stupid. But they feel like time has passed them by and their glory days are over. No one cares about the HS football or basketball championship, their league softball exploits bring them no glory.

    They may have been in the military for a while and that gave them a sense of purpose, or maybe they were LEO’s, or firemen. Mill workers and miners. Contractors and laborers. Add in some nutjoob losers, some lawyers and brokers, etc.

    And they’re angry. Life hasn’t gone the way they thought it would. Maybe they expected more out of it. Maybe they got screwed. But they are aging and feeling irrelevant”

    Other than feeling secure in my aging masculinity, these douches could be me. Im not storming the fucking Capitol like an asshole.

  165. 165.

    Richard

    @satby: it’s the whole culture. I can still remember my grandparents railing about Franklin Delano Roosevelt ruining the country. They called Mexican people “beaners” or “greasers “. I will leave the rest of that language to your imagination.

    They have not changed one tiny bit in 60 years. They may have been even worse! We have moved on.

  166. 166.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @raven: For a time I was one of a small group of antiwar folks who handed out GIs United Against The War newsletters at the gates of Fort Holabird in SE Baltimore. It was written and mimeographed by local GIs but for obvious reasons they couldn’t distribute it; we could.

  167. 167.

    eponymous coward

    And I don’t know how it stops, because for a lot of these guys it’s a game, and for the people feeding them this bullshit, it’s very profitable.

    It won’t be a game for long if they turn a city into Sarajevo, which at this point isn’t as far off as it might seem.

  169. 169.

    burnspbesq

    When the National Guard sniper on top of the Capitol pops the guy next to them’s head like an overripe melon and brain matter gets all over their shoes, then they’ll realize they bit off more than they can chew.

  171. 171.

    Jeffro

    @LeftCoastYankee: “Youth” is too kind…they are babies, shitting all over the place, wailing constantly, understanding zip about being an adult.

    (but yes, I hear you and get the reference ;)

  173. 173.

    WaterGirl

    I want to know what the legislators were briefed on that is leading Republicans who have lied their assess off for months to suddenly, in the past few hours, consider voting to impeach and convict Trump.

    Surely it wasn’t just the DOJ press conference today or the statement from the Joint Chiefs.

    What don’t we know?

  174. 174.

    LeftCoastYankee

    @cmorenc:

    I agree with your assessment on the election, referencing Carter wasn’t so much the point (I think he was in over his head).

    Most of the “make believe” began after Reagan took office, and raged on long after he checked out.

    As for the economy when he was in office, it may have been “better” in the short term for the upper middle class, but it was a disaster for the working class, minorities, and fixed income folks (high interest rates are nice for them).

    The point is more we as a society drank deeply from the well of make believe once he broke the seal.

  175. 175.

    jl

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Is there a yoga pose called ‘rootless tree about to fall over’?

    Edit: checked and sure enough, rootlesstreeabouttofalloverasana

    Edit2: It’s a dynamic pose, brings invigorating burst of circulation to your face, creates a very strong peacefulness of mind for several minutes.

  176. 176.

    mattH

    @cmorenc:

    Carter had inherited stubbornly persistent economic stagflation crisis (economy stalled at the same time as steep currency inflation)

    Carter inherited an inflation issue, but Volcker’s response artificially created “stagflation”, and it scarred an entire generation. Fear of inflation has casued 40 years of the Fed overemphasizing the inflation side of it’s dual mandate and pretty much ignoring the “maximum sustainable employment” side.

    Stephanie Kelton covers alternatives in The Deficit Myth.

  177. 177.

    LeftCoastYankee

    @Jeffro:

    Also, the reference is from my actual youth.  I don’t think we thought ahead to “one of these dumbfucks is going to say ‘I like beer’ at his Supreme Court confirmation”.

  179. 179.

    Kattails

    @WaterGirl: I do not trust that little shit. At all.  Should not have been let through without a search. We cannot trust any of these idiots and she has some kind of personal mythology going on here, I can read it like a billboard.

  180. 180.

    jl

    @WaterGirl:  The traitor president will lose all his benefits, and he’s already broke; won’t be able to run for office again (well, OK, he can run a write-in campaign if he wants, I guess, but he can’t hold office). That latter bit may be it, as Trump keeps spinning out of control, need to cut him out of politics forever.

    Edit: again, my hunch is that enough of the public disapproves of the insurrection that big money has told the GOP that until Trump is banned from politics for life, no money.

  181. 181.

    Sebastian

    @WaterGirl:

    Yes, exactly that. Why would she refuse to show what is in her bag? Chances are it is a gun, she has publicly stated that she will concealed carry.

    We might have a firearm stashed away in the Capitol to who knows what purpose.

    She was also sharing info about Pelosi’s whereabouts during the attack. I don’t trust her a bit.

  182. 182.

    Kent

    at 56 I’m in this prime demographic.  I grew up in the blue collar suburbs north of Eugene OR, which is partly a liberal college town, but back then had some serious blue collar suburbs full of mill workers, loggers, and such as Eugene was also a logging town.  I had HS friends growing up in double-wide type crappy homes out in the rural areas.  Very redneck.

    I sort of keep in touch with a bunch of them via FB.  I’m only friends with one or two, but can easily follow a whole bunch of them just by following the friend of friend trails and clicking on their profiles to see what they are up to.  Up until 2015 or so, most of them were pretty damn apolitical.  Facebook feeds were mostly picks of posing with guns and cammo in front of deer or ducks that they shot.  Or the trifecta, posing with guns and camo with your deer or elk draped over the hood of your muddy Ford F250.  Lots of pics of hunting or fishing with their kids, with the kids in a nice mix of cammo and blaze orange (mixing cammo and blaze orange seems to defeat the purpose but what do I know).  Summer Facebook was fishing, fall Facebook was hunting and/or watching your kid play HS football.  Winter was the dead zone.  You’d see the random political post but it was mostly just some dumb patriotic meme.  Something about God Bless America and football usually.  They were probably Bush voters but not loyalists.  Probably McCain and Romney voters but  again, not into it.

    None of them are rich, most have had an ordinary series of jobs like office manager of a gravel pit, car sales, various small construction and contracting trades, owners of plumbing and roter-rooter businesses.  That kind of shit.  By the time they hit their 50s a bunch were divorced because they never grew out of their asshole HS football player and druggie phase and the women in their lives just got sick of the abuse and stupidity and inability to grow the fuck up.  So already not real rich, but probably paying the mortgage on a shitty 1970s suburban ranch that they are prohibited from going within 100 ft of due to a restraining order.

    Then 2015 came and just a whole shitload of them went full bore MAGA.  It was like the pied piper of middle aged white butt hurt.  Suddenly Facebook became an explosion of MAGA bullshit.  The guns and cammo and hunting stuff was still there.  But the MAGA shit was just sizzling.  And when he beat “Hitlery” in 2016 it was just triumphal.   The rest of their lives were mediocre and shitty, and retirement is looming in a decade or two and they don’t have bupkis saved for retirement.  So prospects are generally shitty.  No union pensions that their dads had from the union jobs in the mills in the 60s and 70s.  That is all gone.  But they had that one big fucking win with Trump.  Who was going to fuck all the environmentalists who cost them their good timber jobs (it was globalization and automation, not environmentalists).   Then Covid, and Biden, who is a stalking horse for the California socialist.  And once again, the Liberals were going to steal it all away like they did with their timber jobs.   You hear about “the steal” 24/7 for 60 days.  It’s not just the election, but they are stealing everything. And then BAM….storm the capitol.  And here we are.

    PS, I think there is also something to Kevin Drum’s lead poisoning thesis.  We grew up with leaded gas in older rural homes that had lead paint.  The 45+ demographic was the last to grow up being deliberately poisoned by lead.  This is the same cohort that was responsible for the crime wave in the 80s and early 90s.  And now their asshole-nature expresses in MAGA rather than stealing cars and crashing them.

  184. 184.

    LeftCoastYankee

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Ugh… some things are forgotten for mental health reasons.

    And I can confess to being a raging lefty who dabbled in skinny ties…

    FSM I hope there’s no photo evidence….

  186. 186.

    Poe Larity

    This is all akin to all those non-slaveholding southerners who eagerly joined the confederacy. They were always an underclass, but at least they were white. The papers and church pulpits told them what to believe. They’re still fighting for their status in society and still believing what they’re told.

  187. 187.

    Wapiti

    @Mike in NC:  When we lived in California, about 10 years back, we had an apartment manager who had been in the Vietnam with the Army. I once said that it was all for lies and he became unglued.

    I think that many have a huge amount of survivor guilt and they need to avoid grappling with the fact that we killed a ton of people for lies, and a lot of our people died for those same lies. Self-medication only goes so far; they are hurting and need to escape/avoid the pain.

  189. 189.

    Brachiator

    @jl:

    Is it possible Congress is going to kick the bum out? News says things moving faster in House and Senate than anyone anticipated.

    I certainly hope that they kick Trump out.  This is more than politics.

    Trump will never back down from his lie about voter fraud. And if he is healthy, he will try to run again in 2024. This cannot be allowed to happen. Imagine Trump running in 2024 and claiming voter fraud again.

    The GOP will lose brownie points with their base if they dump  him. But they, and the country, stand to lose far more if they continue to back him.

    Trump believes that he can get away with anything.  The GOP needs to prove him wrong.

  190. 190.

    HumboldtBlue

    @brendancalling:

    Exactly. Their collective driving force is racism and classism. And a lot of these assholes are going to be facing Federal juries made up of black middle and upper-middle class career civil servants.

    They hate that their whiteness is no longer given automatic deference, and they are losing their collective minds.

  191. 191.

    Jeffro

    @Kent: the social media powers-that-be figured out that one good way to dramatically increase ‘engagement’ (ie, clicks that translated into ad revenues and stickiness on their sites) is to direct people to things that get their outrage up.  The online version of Fox News, in other words.

    So…troll people constantly with a mix of racist/misogynist/LIBRUL SOSHULISTS TAKING MY PAYCHECK!/etc BS and just watch them click away…then begin to form up

    And here we are.

  193. 193.

    LeftCoastYankee

    @Kent

    If you had to guesstimate what is the percentage of those who are on board with the crazy-posting and those who seem like they’d actually show up in DC or Salem?

    I know it’s anecdotal….

  198. 198.

    Martin

    Rep Mikie Sherrill is claiming that some members of Congress gave recon tours of the building on Jan 5.

    She’s ex-Navy. She didn’t name the members.

  200. 200.

    Kent

    @LeftCoastYankee:

    @Kent

    If you had to guesstimate what is the percentage of those who are on board with the crazy-posting and those who seem like they’d actually show up in DC or Salem?

    I know it’s anecdotal….

    I doubt any of them were there.  But a couple might be amongst the crazies threatening the state Capitol in Salem.   There is a mob psychology involved.  I don’t think any of them would do it on their own. But they would get swept up into the rush of it all.  Most of them probably supported the crazy.  Basically like drunk assholes talking shit in the local tavern.   But I doubt their involvement meant going cross country to rush the capitol.  More likely it was mostly just truck parades and lots of MAGA flags on your lawn.

    Oh yeah, the most MAGA of all is an aging bail bondsman from Redmond OR.  When we played football he was a tight end.  For the past 20 years he’s been tracking down meth heads and other bail skippers.  Probably pistol whipped a bunch of them before dragging their asses in.  Basically a big white cop with less training and zero supervision and a LOT more guns.

  201. 201.

    Brachiator

    @jl:

    You think Trump can get healthy by 2024? You have more faith than I do.

    I don’t mean healthy healthy. I mean healthy enough to drag his medicated and juiced up ass around.

    You kick him out and you also make it more unlikely that his loser kids will try for public office in their own right.

    But more than anything I want him to have to  wear the badge of Loser and Reject, without any way to deny it.

  202. 202.

    Citizen Alan

    @Kent:
    The 45+ demographic was the last to grow up being deliberately poisoned by lead.

    For the first time, I am happy to have grown up in a house with hideous fake-wood paneling.

  203. 203.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Martin: This is one of those “if true” things.

    If true that means two things: there was a planned crime, not just something that got out of hand. And that MoC directly supported that coup attempt.

     

    So if it can be verified, that’s a huge deal.

  205. 205.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jeffro: I don’t care who they are but trumpov just lost Geraldo Rivera and now I KNOW IT’S OVER!!! ;)

    Wait!  Geraldo died today too?

    I know.  I know.  I couldn’t pass it up.

  208. 208.

    Kent

    @Brachiator: I know it’s playing with fire and be careful what you wish for.  But I have want to see him completely blow up the 2024 GOP Primaries and turn it into an epic dumpster fire.  I’m more fearful of a sensible conservative like Kasich.  I think Trump will have jumped the shark by 2024.  But he can still set the entire place on fire and piss all over it as his final encore.

  211. 211.

    mattH

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    The people that really lucked out with “stagflation” were people like my grandfather. He owned a house in CA he’d bought in the early 70s, so when inflation hit 14% for 18 years, it essentially inflated away 50% of his debt. Couple that with the price increases and he could buy a house outright in another state when he sold in the 90s.

  212. 212.

    MisterForkbeard

    @WaterGirl: Members of Congress.

    On my phone, too lazy to type the whole thing out if I dont have to. :

    ETA: I see two others beat me to it. *shakes first lazily

  213. 213.

    LeftCoastYankee

    @Kent:

    There is a mob psychology involved

    I’m curious to how much of this is involved in the current state.  There did seem to be a good number of doofuses in the Capital who were literally just following the person in front of them (and some staying between the velvet rope-lines).

    I think some of these folks will slowly “back away” (or maybe just go dormant) with stabilizing inputs or the removal of the crazy ones.

    Bondsman guy is probably not one of them.

  217. 217.

    Kent

    @LeftCoastYankee: I think a lot of them are puckered up pretty tight right now.  Thinking this was just sort of a bar fight or party that got out of control which is the sort of shit that they’ve been getting away with all their lives.  You get drunk and run over your neighbor’s mailbox.  Or you lose it and swing at your girlfriend who has been nagging the hell out of you.  Cops get involved, but shrug.  They are used to getting into a little trouble but getting away with it.

    Suddenly that broken window on the the capitol door isn’t a drunk-ass mistake.  But something they are calling SEDITION and shit suddenly got serious.  It’s going to be a clarifying moment for some.

  219. 219.

    PJ

    @LeftCoastYankee: Brad Bird, who wrote and directed the two Incredibles movies, is a devotee of Ayn Rand.  One of the points of those movies is that egalitarianism, and, more generally, freedom and rights for everyone, impinge on the ability of the great to exercise their talents.  The “little people” need the “Incredible people” to save them, but the “Incredible people” have no need for the “little people.”

  220. 220.

    quakerinabasement

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    Haw! I bet I do. I have one of just about anything made since 1980 somewhere in my basement. A while back, I stumbled across a copy of Microsoft Windows (no, no version number, just ‘Windows’) on 5 1/4 inch floppies.

  223. 223.

    trnc

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    Stallone, who now makes millions by fighting the Vietnam War for cameras, spent the real war in college and teaching muscle-flexing at a rich girls school in Switzerland.

    I guess this is meant to imply Stallone dodged the draft. The war lasted for about 7 years after Stallone became eligible for the draft. He spent almost 2 in Switzerland, then moved back to the US. Maybe he was called up – I’ve read he flunked a draft physical, so he obviously didn’t dodge. Wouldn’t surprise me if it’s true that he failed – he had nerve damage to his face from some sort of problem with his birth. There were a shitload of draft registrants who didn’t have nerve damage, flat feet, etc, so it’s not like there was any shortage of guys to drop napalm on villages.

    Maybe the Switzerland gig was on deferment. I don’t really care, since he didn’t come back and glorify war. The only people that think Rambo was pro-war are people who haven’t seen it.

  229. 229.

    LeftCoastYankee

    @PJ:

    Not too surprising.  I think there’s more of that than people realize.

    I streamed the Mandalorian over the holidays, and it was a dumpster-fire of libertarian cowboy fantasies… and a really cute baby Yoda.

    Basically, a generation in, it’s now a cliche’ part of our myth-making.

  230. 230.

    Poe Larity

    @trnc:

    I don’t really care, since he didn’t come back and glorify war. The only people that think Rambo was pro-war are people who haven’t seen it.

    Rambo didn’t glorify the war, but IMO it kickstarted the Hollywood era that led to widespread gun fetishization for the masses.

  231. 231.

    Mo Salad

    @Mary G: Did you watch the video? The Black Capitol Police officer wearing the MAGA hat went up and started a conversation with some of the rioters/protesters that were not trying to barge the doors down and asked them for help in getting the crowd to relax a bit so that the trapped officers can get outside. At that point, he gives the protestor the megaphone which the protestor uses to try and calm the crowd as he escorts the Black cop up to the door. The protester even has to do one of those “It’s okay, he’s cool” as someone was getting angry and pushy with the cop as they approached the door. The two of them then escorted the trapped cops out.

    The Black cop wasn’t MAGA. He was brilliant. Probably decided to put on the hat to establish rapport and also for protection. It worked. He spoke with these guys, established a connection, and got their help. The Black cop never would have made up those stairs solo. All cops should have those kind of people /de-escalation skills.

  232. 232.

    Brachiator

    @Kent:

    But I have want to see him completely blow up the 2024 GOP Primaries and turn it into an epic dumpster fire. I’m more fearful of a sensible conservative like Kasich. I think Trump will have jumped the shark by 2024.

    I have no idea what will happen in 2024 and don’t want to speculate too much.

    But I know that today, Trump has a stubborn idea about the election and voter fraud.  And Trump almost never abandons an idea once it is stuck in his noggin.

    This is one of the reasons why I want him to be denounced, trounced and tossed.

    He has already been raising money that he claims will be used for 2024. I want this rug pulled out from under him.

    I don’t want Trump to be an honored former president, with the privileges that attends that role.

    I want Trump to have to deal with being a branded loser.

    People have underestimated Trump since he announced he was running. Everyone was sure that he would flame out, be bounced or go back to being a TV celebrity.

    Trump is entirely dependent on playing enough people for suckers to get what he wants.

    He wanted to be president and fucked that up.  I want the title stripped from him and for him to be tossed into the pile of worst and disgraced presidents.

    I will worry later about who else might run in 2024.

    It is a mistake to let Trump hang onto the presidency.  He will only cause mischief.

  234. 234.

    Suzanne

    @Mary G:

    It’s 90% race, 10% misogyny. 

    I think it’s much closer to 50/50. Lots and lots of these dudes are divorced or never-married, and they resent women’s liberation, because now women have degrees and credit cards and that enables women to leave bad marriages or never enter them in the first place. And looking in the mirror and doing the work to become a better partner is difficult and scary. It doesn’t manifest the same way as racism, but one of the biggest factors in these dudes’ unhappiness is the fact that many of them are getting old and they are lonely.

  236. 236.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    um….

    YouTube said Tuesday that it has taken down newly posted video content from President Trump for violating its policies against inciting violence. In addition, it has assessed a “strike” against the account, which means the president can’t upload new videos or livestream to the account for a minimum of 7 days.

    YouTube is also suspending comments throughout Trump’s channel, citing the risk of violence. It has limited comments on other accounts in the past, but typically for child safety issues.

    Tie Crimes @TieCrimes
    People are reading these actions as coordinated oppression and I get why, but let me suggest that something unspeakably awful is being planned, it is not over, and these platforms are being asked to disrupt it.

  238. 238.

    Brachiator

    @Poe Larity:

    Rambo didn’t glorify the war, but IMO it kickstarted the Hollywood era that led to widespread gun fetishization for the masses.

    Or it was Dirty Harry (1971) or Death Wish (1974) or Falling Down (1993) or any other movie that made some people run for the fainting couch.

    Also, too, records with dirty lyrics and even violent video games.

    Normal people can have all kinds of rude fun and still be good people.

    I blame Disco.

  239. 239.

    dmsilev

    @Brachiator: I imagine you’ll enjoy this article:

    Backlash to riot at Capitol hobbles Trump’s business as banks, partners flee the brand

    Now, the Trump Organization is facing the consequences: In the past week, it has lost a bank, an e-commerce platform and the privilege of hosting a world-famous golf tournament, and its hopes of hosting another have been dashed. In the future, the Trump Organization also could lose its D.C. hotel and even its children’s carousel in Central Park, if government landlords in Washington and New York reevaluate their contracts with Trump.

    Trump lost a much bigger broker relationship Tuesday night when real estate giant Cushman & Wakefield told The Washington Post it would no longer work with him. The company has handled an array of business for Trump for many years, including office leasing at Trump Tower and 40 Wall Street, and retail leasing in Chicago. It means that Trump’s company will quickly have to find someone else to handle lease negotiations at some of his most prominent properties.“Cushman & Wakefield has made the decision to no longer do business with The Trump Organization,” the company said in a statement.

    By refusing to acknowledge that he would be returning to private life, Trump appears to have sabotaged what could have been his best chance at success in that realm — a rebound of the battered Trump brand.

  242. 242.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Melanie Zanona @MZanona
    NEWS: GOP Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler is a YES on impeaching Trump, becoming the fifth House Republican to back impeachment.

    never heard of her, but good on her, WA-3

  245. 245.

    Danielx

    @Kent:

    Speaking of which…wherever they end up planting his corpus when he goes to his reward, it had better have 24/7 guards. All the people wanting to piss on his grave will otherwise make it somewhat less than a restful place.

    And I don’t think they’ll have him at Arlington.

  247. 247.

    LeftCoastYankee

    @counterfactual:

    A nuanced debate about a “director’s” interpretation of a “philosophy” learned from terrible one-dimensional novels, as it is applied to fantastic “super-heroes” in an animated cartoon for children, is in no way a rabbit-hole make-believe.

  249. 249.

    WaterGirl

    @Leslie: I’m sure Andy Rooney did that, too, but it was definitely a talking head news person.  There was one election where people were outright mocking him for all his phrases like that one.  i’m pretty sure it was him, but i don’t know what exactly to enter into google to verify it.

  252. 252.

    Brachiator

    @dmsilev:

    I imagine you’ll enjoy this article

    Oh, I did. Thank you.

    Trump thought he could ruin America for shits and giggles.

    It is only fair that the thing he cared most about, his brand, gets shit all over it.

  253. 253.

    WaterGirl

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    People are reading these actions as coordinated oppression and I get why, but let me suggest that something unspeakably awful is being planned, it is not over, and these platforms are being asked to disrupt it.

    Chilling.  And probably correct.

  255. 255.

    Kent

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Melanie Zanona @MZanonaNEWS: GOP Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler is a YES on impeaching Trump, becoming the fifth House Republican to back impeachment.

    never heard of her, but good on her, WA-3

    She is my congresswoman.  WA 3rd is Southwest Washington starting from the Portland suburb of Vancouver which is blue, but expanding out to a LOT of rural red territory and MAGA mill towns like Longview full of the famous “white working class”.  It is still red-leaning but the blue suburban areas are growing faster than the red rural areas.  The next redistricting will probably shrink the district down to the bluer suburban parts and toss the rest into a larger rural red district. I suspect Herera-Beutler knows this.

    She is useless, but inoffensive compared to the current MAGA bunch.  A career back-bencher not a leader.  Voted for all the bullshit when the GOP was in the majority. But hedging her bets now.  She was an evangelical homeschooler so comes from that crowd and gets their support.  She likes to sign onto inoffensive legislation like education initiatives and then tout her participation in ads.

  256. 256.

    The Pale Scot

    BRAVO! BRAVO!

    M.Cole

    They haven’t really read the constitution any more than they have read the bible, and what they have read they don’t understand

    “Apes do not read Nietzsche”

    “Yes they do Otto, they just don’t understand it”

    A Fish Called Wanda 1988

  257. 257.

    Ivan X

    @The Moar You Know: Omg please tell me that we are not turning into the culture police here.

    ETA: Not intentional, but I guess that was some against-my-position choice of words I used, given the movie being discussed.

  258. 258.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @WaterGirl: Dan Rather became increasingly known for his folksy phrases as he got older. There was something in 2000 about the race being tighter than a tick in a [something I can’t remember]. I remember in 2016 he said Kellyanne Conway could talk the legs off a table.

  259. 259.

    Another Scott

    @Kent: + eleventy billion.  This is the best summary I’ve seen.

    My best friend from high school was smarter and a better student than me, but had to drop out of college because his parents couldn’t afford it.  He married his high school sweetheart for the wrong reasons.  He was unhappy, got an associates degree in auto tech, had a good job at a car dealer fixing cars, drank too much at times, bought too many motorcycles to have a hobby.  Only hung out with more guys who had huge chips on their shoulders.

    And then Donnie appeared, and MAGA here we come!!

    :-(

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  260. 260.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @dmsilev: and even its children’s carousel in Central Park,

    Wait, what? He’s branded a piece of playground equipment in Central Park? Has it been painted in cheap gold paint?

  262. 262.

    lamh36

    @WaterGirl: also…

     

    Have you seen the clip from AOCs IG Live. This added to that makes for a schilling tale. Also think it’s interesting that they both chose to speak out after the Pence no to the 25thA letter to Pelosi and I believe, after the 25th resolution passed the House anyway

    Here’s a thread with clips from AOCs IG Live: https://twitter.com/emmaladyrose/status/1349202637493833732?s=21

     

    and an article in Buzzfeed about it:

    https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1349217142407745538?s=21

  264. 264.

    Ruckus

    @jl:

    If I was a betting man, I lay some odds that shitforbrains will not make it to 2024 mentally capable enough to be out in public unrestrained. Or possibly doing the horizontal mamba.

  265. 265.

    JanieM

    @Ruckus:

    If I was a betting man, I lay some odds that shitforbrains will not make it to 2024 mentally capable enough to be out in public unrestrained.

    Agreed. But we have to survive the next 8 days first.

  266. 266.

    mrmoshpotato

    Yup. Shove it!

    NEW VIDEO: Donald Trump needs to take his phony words today that “Now is the time for our nation to heal” and shove them up his ass.And if his fellow Republican traitors really want “healing and unity” THEY must remove from office the greatest threat to it in history: Trump pic.twitter.com/mfTGhrHy35— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) January 13, 2021

  268. 268.

    MoCA Ace

    @Ruckus:

     I lay some odds that shitforbrains will not make it to 2024 mentally capable enough to be out in public unrestrained.

    Way to climb out on that limb… I lay some odds he won’t make it to last Wednesday :)

  269. 269.

    WaterGirl

    @lamh36: Had not seen either of those.  But I surely wouldn’t put it past the gun-toting new member of congress to have texted a location of AOC if she had known it.

    The gun-toting female who has set out to make a name for herself  – I imagine she is trying to be the AOC of the right … she doesn’t have the crazy eyes, but she has a totally crazy feel about her that tells me she is dangerous.

  270. 270.

    MoCA Ace

    And that tall drink-O-fuckstick Comey is on Colbert tonight bleating about how Joe needs to focus on the future and not give Mango Mussolini the spotlight by pursuing impeachment.

    If he had a fucking picogram of self awareness we would be discussing the note he left begging the American people for forgiveness.  Instead he’s out shilling for his new book.

  271. 271.

    Ruckus

    @Wapiti:

    I didn’t serve in Vietnam, didn’t get shot at or shoot at any body. So I can’t speak personally about any of that, but I can relate to the hate the concept of war and that if you listened to most of the lifers they were seemingly more than willing to go to war, not that any of them ever actually volunteered to go. Most of the non lifers were in the navy precisely to avoid the draft and Vietnam, having to shoot anyone, having anyone shoot them. I know of guys who had judicial enlistments, most in the Marines, and gladly signed for extra years so they could get training that would eliminate them marching through the jungle.

  273. 273.

    Kent

    @Another Scott: Yep.  My experience here in the Pacific Northwest is that is more the working to lower middle class folks with shitty lives who go full MAGA.  I know others who grew up in the same school and environment as us but when on to college like me and mad it to the next step or two up life.   Middle managers at banks or project managers for tech firms.  A few lawyers and such.  They might be Trump voters too.  I don’t even know because it doesn’t get mentioned.  But they definitely aren’t MAGA.  It’s all the typical suburban stuff, watching your kids in HS and college and bragging on them, shared condos in Cabo or Maui, weekend trips with the boys to Vegas, ski trips to Utah, pics and reviews from the latest local brew pub or winery, Ducks, Blazers, and Timbers games, That sort of thing.

  274. 274.

    Mary G

    Up to 5!

    NEWS: GOP Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler is a YES on impeaching Trump, becoming the fifth House Republican to back impeachment.— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) January 13, 2021

  275. 275.

    The Pale Scot

    @MazeDancer:

    They do not feel life has passed them by. They want to make sure they stay rich.

    I don’t think that’s it, they are just driven to hold on to their bigotries and be assured they have someone they can demean and ridicule without blowback. Now that changing, you can lose your job or customers for being an asshole. If they can’t be an asshole what the point of living?

     

    Someone commented here earlier that’s a lot more work to be an asshole than to be kind. If there is no return on being an asshole, what can they do except double down?

    Ex. the DUP cadre in NI. They want the Good Friday Agreement to be discarded. They do not want to live in peace and equality with their Catholic neighbors. There was a Presbyterian minister who said that they were willing to stay at war, because that war gave them meaning and purpose. Four hundred years after England conquered Ireland, and they still insist on celebrating the victory. It’s like if Japanese nationalists went marching in Okinawa to advocate the return of the Samurai model of government.

  278. 278.

    WaterGirl

    @Mary G: Could we impeach just on Democratic votes alone?  We probably need some level of republicans.  I assume we are at that number already or Nancy wouldn’t be bringing it up for a vote.

    I guess we’ll know tomorrow.

  280. 280.

    Kent

    @The Pale Scot: It’s race.  The neighborhood I grew up in during the 1970s in suburban Eugene OR was 100% white.  In my high school of maybe 1600 we literally had one black kid who was a football star (who was a UO commit until he flunked out of HS).  We had one Hispanic kid who’s parents moved up from CA.  And we had one Chinese girl who’s parents owned the local strip mall Chinese Restaurant.

    Today when I go back it is generally much seedier and not so well scrubbed as it was by the WW2 and Korean War generation who built and first populated the area, when all the lawns were cut and there was little crime.  It is also about 35% Hispanic, and they are mostly the ones with kids as the white population has aged out of the child-rearing years.  So the schools are over 50% Hispanic.  And you see the typical wannabe gang banger HS kids messing around, mostly harmlessly with their hip hop and stuff, but scaring the olds.  What scares them more is that some of the white kids join in and say FU to their Hank Williams Jr. and 1970s classic rock.

    Most everyone I know who went to college is LONG gone and scattered to the winds and larger cities.  It’s the ones who stuck around doing non-college jobs and just getting by that have gone full MAGA.   They used to spend all their free time hunting and fishing and trying to keep up the payments on their aluminum salmon fishing boats, and griping about shit at the local tavern down the street in the evenings where no one ever listened.  Then suddenly 2015 and Trump started whispering in their ears and they all went full MAGA.  It isn’t even so much about Trump.  He basically showed them that they had a tribe that they didn’t know they had.

  281. 281.

    Keith P.

    @JanieM: The guy is 75 years old and fat. Plus his next few years face legal and financial ruin.  He’s gonna stroke out by 2024.

  283. 283.

    NotMax

    @WaterGirl

    Could we impeach just on Democratic votes alone?

    Yes.

    However embroidering what is now defined as bipartisanship into the fabric logarithmically increases the value of the finished garment.

  284. 284.

    Mary G

    @WaterGirl: Diminishes the “purely political partisan witch hunt” argument. Doubt any voters care, but the media loves bipartisan and it will help shape the coverage.

  286. 286.

    Kent

    @NotMax: The MAGA cracks are starting to show.  Once they lose fear of him it is going to be like a pack of rabid piranhas until the next big GOP daddy shows up to put them all back in line.

  287. 287.

    Mary G

    Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon reveals:- Rioters tased officers and beat them with pipes- One tried to shoot an officer with his own gun- One will “likely lose an eye” and others have head injuries pic.twitter.com/VwWwBZZYAn— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) January 13, 2021

    police unions’ quietude on this attack on law enforcement would be baffling if many of their own officers hadn’t been among the crowd https://t.co/EDK9tqgDaY— Matt Pearce ? (@mattdpearce) January 13, 2021

  288. 288.

    Ruckus

    @JanieM:

    For sure. I like our odds better by the day though. I think the morons shot their wad on the 6th and so many of them are probably astounded of the response to their irresponsible and stupid assault on congress. A few of them have landed in jail and I’d bet a number more of them will be before long.  That will remove the resolve of most of them to try again because every day we see evidence of the cost to them personally, that I’d bet most of them had no idea or concept of. As shitty as they may have thought their lives were, I’d bet none of them thought they’d end up where they are, holding the shitty end of the stick, while the planners of this bullshit so far have risked not all that much. When that starts becoming obvious and known, and costly, the vast majority of these clowns will very likely want to be involved far, far less.

  290. 290.

    JanieM

    @Ruckus: I hope you’re right. I’ve been going back and forth, e.g. in light of reports like this one (the core of which I’ve seen in a link or two from BJ) — which make me afraid 1/6 was just a trial run. I hope to hell not. But the shit like tonight with the bypassing of the metal detector? I don’t know if Liz Cheney balances that out in my hopefulness calculations.

  291. 291.

    Kelly

    @Ruckus:I think the morons shot their wad on the 6th and so many of them are probably astounded of the response to their irresponsible and stupid assault on congress.

    That’s my hope. Some of them must be wishing they’d wore granddad’s hood.

  294. 294.

    The Pale Scot

    @Kent:

    I appreciate your point about resentment. The boat parades don’t include those guys. There’s saying in Eastern Europe that “a Russian doesn’t feel really Russian unless he has his foot on somebody’s neck” that puts it in a nutshell. That’s the current GOP cadre, that’s UK Brexit, that’s the L&O party in Poland. “The blacks, the gays, woman in general”.

    Some people need someone to feel innately superior to and be able to legally rub their faces in it. It’s part of being an animal, easily seen in chimp and monkey societies, there’s alway’s some individuals that are insensately picked on, just to prove dominance. (except for the Bonobos, maybe).

    Putin may be right that the fall of the USSR was tragedy, human society needs an enemy or a natural threat to organize against. Or we’d still be wandering the savannah fighting the vultures for lion scrapes. The BB5 episode where an alien race periodically organizes into two groups based on what sash they pull out of a barrel and then goes about beating the shit out of each other makes the point

  296. 296.

    HumboldtBlue

    @The Pale Scot: 

    The BB5 episode where an alien race periodically organizes into two groups based on what sash they pull out of a barrel and then goes about beating the shit out of each other makes the point

    Yeah, they call that football.

  297. 297.

    mrmoshpotato

    @BR:

    I’ve seen the future — 3 years from now, we’re going to see Rick Wilson ads for Cheney pounding Harris or whomever is running in 2024:

    Exactly. And remember that Dump appeared from out of nowhere in 2015 and destroyed a completely upstanding political party.

    Actually, the history of the Republican party started in 2015! It hasn’t been a “shitpile of bigots and imbeciles” (h/t driftglass) for decades. No.

  298. 298.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @The Pale Scot:

    Putin may be right that the fall of the USSR was tragedy, human society needs an enemy or a natural threat to organize against.

    I’ve said before the Cold War-era/early 21st century is the closest humanity as a whole has come to utopia, nuclear weapons and all. Reminds me of Watchmen where Ozymandias fooled the world into peaceful unity by fabricating an alien threat

  300. 300.

    Grover Gardner

    Yup.  I was quite taken aback to learn that a long-time colleague of mine in our freelance profession was on the Capitol steps.  His Facebook feed was full of BLM, antifa and anti-masker crap.  I knew he was a bit of a gun/military nut, but what the hey.  He’s busier than I am and has no cause to complain about his economic or social status, that I’m aware of.  Just plain nuts.

  301. 301.

    The Pale Scot

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Football has a draft, or at least a recruitment process, these guys just reached into a barrel, which speaks to the consequences of random birth

  302. 302.

    The Pale Scot

    @Kelly:

    But you think you’re an intellectual, don’t you, ape?

    Hat tip (followed by some emoji thingy if I was one of the cool kids)

  303. 303.

    Kent

    @The Pale Scot: It works either way.  Resentment and race go hand in hand and it is often the same thing.  That is why “economic insecurity” is such bullshit.  They may be poor, but that’s not what they are ‘insecure’ about.

  305. 305.

    Kent

    @Brachiator:

    Trump gets a lot of the white poor

    I am not sure that this is entirely true. Pew and other organizations show that well off whites form a core of Trump’s base.

    Fixed that for you.  Without digging through a lot of stats, I’m pretty sure that Trump won whites at every income level.  He just won a higher percentage of the wealthy than the poor, because the wealthy are a LOT LOT more white.

    EDIT:  According to this Brookings Exit Poll , Trump won non-college educated white men by 42% but he won college educated white men by 3

    You have to dig deep into the cross tabs to figure this stuff out.  But I think the main reason why Trump won the over $50,000 vote and Biden won the under $50,000 vote is because the over $50,000 vote is immensely more white.

  306. 306.

    marcopolo

    @WaterGirl:  Yes.  D’s just need a simple majority in the House to impeach (which they already have or Pelosi would not be the Speaker), but a bipartisan impeachment will carry more weight.  To convict in the Senate requires a 2/3 vote of the members present for the vote.  What that means is if there are R senators who don’t want to be on the record voting against Trump they can still help the process along by not showing up which reduces the number of votes to convict.  For example, with 100 senators present that means 67 votes, but 80 senators present requires only 53.  If Trump actually gets convicted I’m pretty sure that something like this will happen.

  307. 307.

    The Pale Scot

    @Brachiator:

    and if they can get the world to pay attention to them, they will magically have done something heroic.

    That’s big part of it, IMHO that is a consequence of fundie Calvinism. Their canon presents life as an eternal battle between Yahweh and Satan. If you’re not guarding the Ramparts you are an Agent of Satan or an unknowing dupe. This outlook has bled all over red state society. Thinking that our lives matter, that what they do will have an effect on the future, beyond what your children become, is a powerful thing for some people.

    If you’re not an artist, writer, or musician and you’re not filthy rich and you’re offspring aren’t in an Ivy League college what other paths are there to immortality?

  308. 308.

    Ruckus

    @Grover Gardner:

    I’ve said it here before and I’ll say it as often as necessary.

    It is racism. Money may be used as an excuse but the base premise here is racism. Conservatism is about the in group, conservatives having the top position, in society, in jobs, in money, in everything. It’s not that money is not important, it is. It’s that status, position, and even respect is reserved for the conservative status class and that is white, men in particular in this country. And any perceived threat to that status as white men or partners of white men is suspect. And that is racism. Notice if you will there are token people of color who are allowed in if they follow the rules, they are always second class.

    But racism is the primary curse of humanity.

  309. 309.

    Ruckus

    @Amir Khalid:

    Don’t tease……

    Yeah I’m not sure I see him behind bars, or even a chain link fence. Hell a picket fence would hold him, unless he fell on it. But this country has a thing about past presidents. Of course  I don’t believe any of the other 44 have sunk to his depths of  bullshit and illegality so we may find out how serious we might be about complete and utter depravity, lawlessness, uselessness and just plain horrible human. Maybe it will happen as a warning to other complete and utter assholes about running in the first place.

  311. 311.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @trnc: you’ve never seen Rambo II and Rambo III?   How does that not a hyper glorification of war.

  314. 314.

    Lofgren

    Do they really believe that BLM burned several cities this summer? I’ve seen that claim a few times over the last couple of days. Like wouldn’t it be a big deal if several US cities got torched? There’d be refugees and investigations. The footage would have played over and over again on the news and Twitter like, well, like footage of these riots has.

    Given the participation of several Republican elected officials, is it now fair to say the Republican party has a literal militant wing?

  317. 317.

    Florida Frog

    Fred Clark’s whole article is worth reading. It is one of the most lucid explanations of the pedophile paranoia I’ve come across. He traces it back to the 2nd century when the fantasy was used against the new Christian religion! The things I learn on this blog.@mattH:

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