Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

When I was faster i was always behind.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

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

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

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

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

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

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

You are here: Home / Politics / GOP Death Cult / Late Night Open Thread: Aspiring GOP Edgelord Finds His MILF

Late Night Open Thread: Aspiring GOP Edgelord Finds His MILF

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It’s not every new-minted Repub Congresscritter gets a profile by journamalistic assassin Olivia Nuzzi, but at the rate he’s moving (his mouth), no telling how long young Cawthorne will be available. For NYMag, “The youngest member of Congress is invigorated by the mob he helped incite”:

… After winning a competitive primary and the November election, he avidly promoted the president’s false claims of voter fraud. In a December speech to Turning Point USA, the right-wing youth organization, he said, “Call your congressman, and feel free — you can lightly threaten them and say, ‘You know what? If you don’t start supporting election integrity, I’m coming after you, Madison Cawthorn is coming after you, everybody’s coming after you.’ ” With digital charisma and total fealty to the Trump election lie, Cawthorn snagged a prime speaking spot at the president’s January 6 “Save America” rally alongside lifers like Rudy Giuliani and Trump’s own son. Facing the MAGA masses, his leather-gloved fist raised in the air, Cawthorn said, “Wow, this crowd has some fight in it!”…

An extremely online Evangelical ex-linebacker son of a financial adviser, Cawthorn so embodied the right-wing ethos of the Trump era — “I don’t want to raise a family in a country run by left-wing socialists,” etc. — that it didn’t even matter to voters when Trump himself endorsed someone else in his primary. That was done on the advice of the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who held the seat from 2013 to 2020. Meadows knew Cawthorn personally: A few years before, he had been his intern and then a low-level staffer…

Cawthorn won his primary by 30 points. “Madison had decent name ID because he became a local hero after his accident, and people love a hero overcoming adversity,” the Meadows aide said with casual cynicism. By the time Cawthorn won the general election, he looked, to liberals, almost like a mini-Trump, adept at owning the libs and racking up liabilities that would have ended most political careers. He visited the U.S.-Mexico border and appealed to QAnon with a claim that children were being kidnapped and sold into sex slavery across the Rio Grande; he was accused of sexual misconduct (Cawthorn maintains he did nothing wrong) and of spreading a lie that, if not for his car crash, he would have attended the Naval Academy (he was rejected prior to the accident). His campaign launched a racist attack against a member of the press; he posted a photo at Hitler’s vacation home with a caption about how seeing where “the Führer” (umlaut and everything) went to decompress had been on his “bucket list.” And on and on.

Cawthorn’s ideology is an almost convincing patchwork of conservative slogans and concepts, expressed with a child actor’s poised delivery — designed to charm elders and scare off peers. But it is shallow and contradictory. In one breath, he proposes a retreat from identity politics. In the next, he cites Trump’s appointing an openly gay Cabinet official as proof that he is one of the greatest presidents ever. He describes his version of “America First” foreign policy as humanitarian dovishness: “We should be leading with wells, not warheads.” Then he says he wants to cut foreign aid, the less than one percent of the budget that theoretically goes toward well digging.

During an interview with the columnist John Solomon (famous for spreading Ukrainian-themed conspiracy theories ahead of the first Trump impeachment), Cawthorn described his new station in magical terms. “You think of a Harry Potter or a Gandalf in one of these great works of fiction,” he said. “They’re handed a wand. And you as the viewer, you don’t exactly know what they can do with that wand, but you know it holds incredible power. That’s a lot what it’s like coming into Congress, because there’s really no limitations onto what you can and cannot do in Congress. Aside from what the Supreme Court will allow you to do.”…

… Cawthorn is almost certainly in uncharted waters, which is his analogy, not mine. “I feel a lot like Magellan,” he said. “You know — the great explorer during the Age of Exploration.”

(And those of us who were not home-schooled Evangelicals remember how well things went for Magellan — and his unfortunate crew.)

Sidebar: I have been noticing a subtext among the ‘elite’ media, no doubt repeating what Jarvanka tells them, that current Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is the one responsible for all Trump’s most recent missteps. As the old Russian snark-proverb goes, If only the Tsar knew!…

Reader Interactions

114Comments

  2. 2.

    HumboldtBlue

    The rot runs deep with the White Nationalist Party, it’s gonna take a few years to excise as much of the cancer as can be excised.

  6. 6.

    VeniceRiley

    He’s also a liar. He put that he was Naval Academy or whatever on his online CV when he actually was denied admission like … the day before the spring break accident that put him in a wheelchair.

  7. 7.

    Mary G

    Open racist, next paragraph from the story:

    “You almost can’t help, with him, doing some armchair psychoanalysis,” said Tom Fiedler, the Miami Herald journalist who derailed Gary Hart’s 1988 presidential campaign and three decades later retired to Asheville and found himself covering the rise of Cawthorn for a local nonprofit. After Fiedler reported critically on aspects of Cawthorn’s biography, the campaign created a racist website to highlight that the journalist, who is white, “quit his academia job in Boston to work for non-white males, like Cory Booker.” Fiedler said, “He has a very Trump-like quality: He sees himself as charismatic and able to persuade everyone to come to his side. He feels he is the anointed one.”

    Hopefully, just like the departing anointed one, he will help the Republican party go the way of the dinosaur.

  8. 8.

    Quinerly

    Read this this AM, along with a NYT piece on the Don’t Tread on Me flag waving terrorist chick trampled for what seems to be at least an hr (NY Times with video, be prepared) Throw in the must read profile on GA dad/car wash owner with expensive cars turned domestic terrorist in the New Yorker…. I utterly loathe these people. It is a cult. How can people be this racist and weak?

    And, yes… This is mostly about racism but you already know it. Trump has come close to destroying this country with this vile crap he has unleashed.

    End of rant.

    I’m still wading my way through “Dark Shadows.” it’s been awhile… Episode 332. Grayson Hall (Dr. Julia Hoffman) rocks!

  13. 13.

    lgerard

    I have been noticing a subtext among the ‘elite’ media, no doubt repeating what Jarvanka tells them, that current Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is the one responsible for all Trump’s most recent missteps.

    This, the latest in a long series

  14. 14.

    Steeplejack

    Weird stuff going down tonight. Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, 8:41 p.m. EST: “Acting defense secretary orders NSA director to immediately install former GOP operative as the agency’s top lawyer.”

    Acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller ordered the director of the National Security Agency to install on Saturday a former GOP political operative as the NSA’s top lawyer, according to four individuals familiar with the matter.

    It is unclear what the NSA will do. The agency and the Pentagon declined to comment.

    In November, Pentagon General Counsel Paul C. Ney Jr. named Michael Ellis, then a White House official, to the position of general counsel at the NSA, a career civilian post at the government’s largest and most technologically advanced spy agency, the Post reported. He was selected after a competitive civil service competition. He has not taken up the job, however, as he needed to complete administrative procedures, including taking a polygraph test.

    [. . .]

    Ellis’s naming, made under pressure from the White House, drew criticism from national security legal experts. It “appears to be an attempt to improperly politicize an important career position,” wrote Susan Hennessey, a former lawyer in the NSA Office of General Counsel, on Lawfare, where she is the executive editor.

    [. . .]

    The concern of Nakasone and others, current and former officials said, is that the White House is seeking to “burrow” Ellis into the job in violation of a long-standing policy that prevents embedding political personnel into career civilian positions prior to a change in administration.

    [. . .]

    Ellis previously was chief counsel to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), a staunch Trump supporter and former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Ellis joined the White House in 2017, when he became a lawyer on the National Security Council and in 2019 he was elevated to senior director for intelligence.

  16. 16.

    Quinerly

    Sooo.. Back to “Dark Shadows” referenced above… Doctors made housecalls to drug children to keep them from yapping….. Ah,…. The Fabulous ’60’s…..

  17. 17.

    Mike in NC

    These MAGAts would have to go quite a ways to qualify as human scum.

    New book I want to check out: “Traitor: A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump” by Davis Rothkopf.

  22. 22.

    Jerzy Russian

    @NotMax:  via an online dictionary:

    An edgelord is someone on an internet forum who deliberately talks about controversial, offensive, taboo, or nihilistic subjects in order to shock other users in an effort to appear cool, or edgy.

    I also had no idea.

  24. 24.

    Jay

    @NotMax:

    basically a “shitposter” but in real life.

    they push the boundaries of “what is acceptable” to normalize extremism.

  26. 26.

    Quinerly

    @NotMax: kidding aside… I think I am regressing…to my childhood. When totally overwhelmed now with Trumpism, I revert to DS. Weird, yes… Started as a lark during the first impeachment when I couldn’t sleep. Now I’m up to the color episodes and the nice family doctor is drugging little David to keep him calm about the very large bat he is dreaming about?

  28. 28.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Some moron Democratic strategist, Chris Kofinis, on CNN is talking about how “the worst case scenario” would be for Dems to be talking about impeachment for 2-3 weeks from now. Oh, and how it’s not evident that Senate business will be able to be split between the trial and COVID legislation. The guy almost laughed when he said this, as if it was absurd. Also, too, nobody really knows how these arrangements will work. Poppy Harlow broke in with “McConnell would have to agree to this arrangement”.

    I have no fucking idea what these idiots are talking about. Dems will be in control of the Senate after 1/22 at the latest and it’s not absurd to be able to walk and chew bubblegum at the same time

  32. 32.

    Jay

    You see the soldiers in this picture? They are National Guardsmen from Puerto Rico, citizens, coming to Washington, DC to defend a Commander in Chief they could not vote for, a democratic federal republic in which they are denied representation in Congress or a presidential vote. pic.twitter.com/hnnpl3qSoB— Guillermo Mena still wears a mask (@GuilloMena) January 15, 2021

  33. 33.

    Quinerly

    @NotMax: Famous DS trivia. Actress who played Victoria Winters was Claus von Bulow’s mistress in later years. Testified at his trial many years later. And who was Claus von Bulow’s atty????

  34. 34.

    Jay

    Statement On President Trump’s Impeachment Defense Team:President Trump has not yet made a determination as to which lawyer or law firm will represent him for the disgraceful attack on our Constitution and democracy, known as the “impeachment hoax.” We will keep you informed.— J. Hogan Gidley (@JHoganGidley) January 17, 2021

  35. 35.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Mike in NC: These MAGAts would have to go quite a ways to qualify as human scum.

    Yes, one gets the feeling the actual Nazis would say these guys were messed up. It’s sort of like their ideas of a mash up of random crap from the internet “racist” doesn’t even begin to describe the mental depravity.

  37. 37.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Jay: President Trump has not yet made a determination as to which lawyer or law firm will represent him

    I’ll take a wild guess, the first one unlucky enough to accept a collect call from Trump.

  40. 40.

    Yutsano

    @Steeplejack: Heh. What we are seeing is a Drumpfkin running into the federal bureaucracy when said federal bureaucracy wants to slow walk something. Nakasone can easily slow walk this until Wednesday 1201. Miller could even fire him and it would only make the process slower. I really do think the federal bureaucracy kept the worst actions from this administration from being even worse.

    Having said that, the Department of Homeland Security needs to be nuked from orbit and ICE needs to be destroyed. Neither are fulfilling any purpose beyond making a dictatorial regime even more feasible. We had departments in our country that fulfilled these roles before. They can certainly do so again.

  42. 42.

    Quinerly

    @Jay: close.

    Think whining Harvard prof with a Jeffrey Epstein connection who can’t vacation comfortably since his Trump connections. ?

  46. 46.

    Yutsano

    @Quinerly: I prefer to think of it as sparing the good folks of Martha’s Vineyard the horror of seeing that disgusting pale pate and drooping moobs. Is it any wonder the only way he could get laid is because of Epstein?

    …

    Excuse me I have made myself ill and need to retreat for a spell…

  47. 47.

    Kent

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:Yes, one gets the feeling the actual Nazis would say these guys were messed up. It’s sort of like their ideas of a mash up of random crap from the internet “racist” doesn’t even begin to describe the mental depravity.

    In Nazi-world, these guys are the undisciplined brownshirts or SA that all got purged and massacred by the more “professional” SS during the Night of the Long Knives when it was time to actually get serious about consolidating power.

    If there ever was a serious NAZI-style coup here, all these idiots who stormed the capitol would be road kill when the serious folks took power.

  48. 48.

    Mike Dixon

    “You think of a Harry Potter or a Gandalf in one of these great works of fiction,” he said. “They’re handed a wand. And you as the viewer, you don’t exactly know what they can do with that wand”

    Interesting that he refers to the movie adaptations of these novels.

  49. 49.

    Viva BrisVegas

    Just curious, is there anything at the moment that stands in the way of Puerto Rico statehood and two new (hopefully) Democratic Senators.

  50. 50.

    Mike Dixon

    “You think of a Harry Potter or a Gandalf in one of these great works of fiction,” he said. “They’re handed a wand. And you as the viewer, you don’t exactly know what they can do with that wand”

    Interesting that he refers to the movie adaptations of these novels.

  51. 51.

    Jay

    Keep thinking back to aftermath of 9/11: Demands to ordinary Muslim-Americans that it was *their* responsibility to quell fundamentalism; South Asians, including Hindus and Sikhs, being attacked and murdered by fellow Americans.Meanwhile, MAGAs indignant and asking for pardons.— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) January 16, 2021

  53. 53.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Oh, also on CNN. I learned that the spokesperson for Angela Merkel called Trump’s social media bans “problematic”. The Mexican president called it “contrary to freedom”.

    And here’s Alexey Navalny, the guy Putin poisoned recently and Trump is a flunky of:

    Alexey Navalny
    @navalny
    ·
    Jan 9
    1. I think that the ban of Donald Trump on Twitter is an unacceptable act of censorship (THREAD)

    2. Of course, during his time in the office, Trump has been writing and saying very irresponsible things. And paid for it by not getting re-elected for a second term.

    3. The election is a straightforward and competitive process. You can participate in it, you can appeal against the results, they’re being monitored by millions of people. The ban on Twitter is a decision of people we don’t know in accordance with a procedure we don’t know.

    4. In my opinion, the decision to ban Trump was based on emotions and personal political preferences.

    5. Don’t tell me he was banned for violating Twitter rules. I get death threats here every day for many years, and Twitter doesn’t ban anyone (not that I ask for it).

    6. Among the people who have Twitter accounts are cold-blooded murderers (Putin or Maduro) and liars and thieves (Medvedev). For many years, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have been used as a base for Putin’s “troll factory” and similar groups from other authoritarian countries

    7. Those who denied COVID-19 exist freely and communicate on Twitter. Their words have cost thousands of lives. And yet, it was Trump who got banned publicly and ostentatiously. Such selectivity indicates that this was an act of censorship.

    8. Of course, Twitter is a private company, but we have seen many examples in Russian and China of such private companies becoming the state’s best friends and the enablers when it comes to censorship.

    9. If you replace “Trump” with “Navalny” in today’s discussion, you will get an 80% accurate Kremlin’s answer as to why my name can’t be mentioned on Russian TV and I shouldn’t be allowed to participate in any elections.

    10. This precedent will be exploited by the enemies of freedom of speech around the world. In Russia as well. Every time when they need to silence someone, they will say: ‘this is just common practice, even Trump got blocked on Twitter’.

    11. If @twitterand@jack

    want to do things right, they need to create some sort of a committee that can make such decisions. We need to know the names of the members of this committee, understand how it works, how its members vote and how we can appeal against their decisions.

    Well then. I don’t understand these people. Trump incited a fucking riot; an insurrection! He’s a fucking criminal. That was evident on the 9th when Navalny posted this to Twitter. Fuck off with this censorship, oh noez slippery slope bullshit

  54. 54.

    Quinerly

    @Yutsano: I have to leave you now… “to follow the shadows on the hill.” looks like we are all going to Eagle Hill Cemetery to look for a secret room. (Episode 334).

  55. 55.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I read an interesting piece (at NYRB, I think) about the asymmetric effectiveness of propaganda targeted at states.  The point was made that propaganda targeted at a democracy works, because teh press is somewhat open.  Propaganda targeted at a dictatorship doesn’t work, b/c the press isn’t free, and the dictator controls discourse and the machinery of power.

    So Navalny is looking at this from the position of “a freer press is better for my country” where we are in a different place: one where arbitrary freedom of expression can be used to destroy our democracy.

  56. 56.

    NotMax

    @Viva BrisVegas

    A clear, unencumbered plebiscite definitively requesting statehood, first.

    The political parties extant in Puerto Rico are their own landscape and … funky. With whom anyone would caucus, and how reliably, not a given.

  57. 57.

    Darkrose

    @Jay: Edgelords are doing it mainly for the attention, like the person on Twitter today who got clicks for saying that the worst thing an aspiring writer can do is write fanfiction, and that women writing fanfic is why Amazon treats its workers like shit. Also, queer fic writers should honor our ancestors and do research on real literature, because obviously we haven’t.

    John Scalzi noted that N.K. Jemisin, who started out as a fanfic writer, recently got a MacArthur genius grant.

  58. 58.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I agree. I simply think he doesn’t know what he’s talking about here in relation to the United States. He made no mention of white supremacists or Nazis or militias or anything like that. This stuff was known on the 9th. I don’t even know where to start with Merkel’s spokesman saying it’s “problematic”. The guy incited a violent insurrection. What doesn’t Nulvany understand about that?

    Propaganda targeted at a dictatorship doesn’t work, b/c the press isn’t free, and the dictator controls discourse and the machinery of power

    So you’re saying something like QAnon couldn’t spread in a place like Russia or China? I have to admit, the idea of chants of “Xi/Putin is a satanic pedophile!” at massive protests is deliciously ironic

  60. 60.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @NotMax: 

    What the bloody hell is an edgelord?

    A useful term for far-right fuckknuckles who want to puke up their drunken grand-dad’s racist brainfarts, while pretending that this makes them edgy, risky, challenging, non-conformist, willing to try new ideas however politically-unsound they might be. Rather than safe, predictable, telling their audience exactly what they want to hear.

  61. 61.

    mismatch

    @Viva BrisVegas: It needs to be passed by Congress and signed by the President. Fortunately that does seem to be much more likely now. Unfortunately there is no guarantee that it won’t get hung up in the Senate. But we’ll see.

    There is also no guarantee that the Senators that come from Puerto Rico will be Democrats. The island has its own politics, and Republicans have won there in the past. But after the two hurricanes and Dolt45 completely mismanagement of the relief efforts there one would think being Republican be in the hinterlands for quite some time. But you and I both know people are more…complicated than that.

  62. 62.

    Jay

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Twitter ain’t a “free press” or even a “press”.

    Jack shut down Dumph because of liability issues.

    The Royhinga as yet, can’t sue Facebook and Zuck for enabling a genocide and ethic cleansing.

    Emily of the State can’t afford to sue a host of platforms for death threats.

    The US can, over a violent coup.

  67. 67.

    Jay

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    China, no, because of the Great Digital Wall,

    Russia, yes, but, are their shit loads of mediocre uneducated white males and females earning way more than they should, embracing CT to explain why they arn’t just yet billionaires because of a thinly veiled blood libel, which they use as a comfort blanket to cover up their idiocy and low IQ?

    Russia has vodka with which to self medicate and explain away all their failures.

  68. 68.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Goku, QAnon is more than a cult about Trump: it’s a cult that claims that a significant part of the power structure of the US is pedophiles.  Now imagine that in Russia.  No: there’s no way Putin would allow that.  [Obviously, a cult that claiming that Putin is a superhero about to expose pedophiles who run the EU …. might fare differently.]

    You mention Germany: Germany has much stricter laws and hate speech, because they’ve seen how it can destroy a democracy.  So for instance, the Nazi swastika isn’t allowed, and hence neo-Nazis (IIUC) use the Dixie Swastika instead.  I’d interpret Merkel’s spokesman in a little more nuanced way: “America, why don’t you get off your ass and start actually regulating these press outlets, so that they don’t destabilize your fucking democracy … and OURS too!”

    And they’re right.  People have pointed out that we have plenty of laws that could be used to pursue these fuckers, but because they’re white nobody bothers to even try.  Even still, we probably need more.  “More speech” is not a remedy for The Big Lie when used to hoodwink the easily-fooled.

  70. 70.

    Yutsano

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): China controls every effective method of communication in the country. Any conspiracy theory like QAnon would almost immediately get quashed beforeit got too far. The leaders would be found and arrested as enemies of the state. QAnon would be stopped before it had a chance to spread very far. It could work better in Russia but I defer to our Russian contingent on that.

  73. 73.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Jay:

    It’s spread in places like France and Poland. Poland is more similar to Russia, being Eastern European. Fair enough about China. They do have the “Great Fire Wall”

    @Chetan Murthy:

    How much control over the internet does Russia have within it’s borders? I’d guess no where near as strict as China. I don’t think they’d be able to stop all of it from spreading. I admit I could be wrong

    As for Germany, CNN made it sound like he was saying either Trump’s social media bans were “problematic” or the inconsistent enforcement of the TOS are “problematic”

  75. 75.

    Chetan Murthy

    @gwangung:  @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):  I thought I should clarify: what I mean is, I think what Germany is really trying to tell us, is that we need to get the -government- to regulate these platforms, and not leave it to the platforms themselves.  This is consistent with the EU’s approach generally, I think.

    ETA: Jay got there first.

  76. 76.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    How much control over the internet does Russia have within it’s borders?

    Let me put that back to you differently: how long do you think a violent anti-government conspiracy cult would be allowed to proliferate in Russia?  Two days, or *three* ?  *grin

  78. 78.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Jay:

    That’s more reasonable. Too bad that approach hasn’t stopped Qanon’s spread there:

    While much of the Continent dislikes Trump, QAnon followers have latched onto the president as a potential savior for their own countries’ ills, including demands that he come to Germany to rid them of Chancellor Angela Merkel — whom these fringe groups accuse of being part of the so-called deep state.

  80. 80.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Jay: I thought that Poland has a big problem with xenophobic nationalism too?  Ditto Hungary?  It’s almost like a version of that old joke:

    The Hungarians hate the Romanians, the Romanians hate the Hungarians, and everyone hates the Jews Roma!

    But seriously, I’d read of a lot of little nationalisms like this being stirred-up by Putin’s secret services.

  81. 81.

    Martin

    @Chetan Murthy: I mean, a decent starting point would be to actually prosecute hate speech. We have laws against it, it’s not protected. But hate speech used to be a local crime, but hate speech on Twitter? FBI?

  82. 82.

    Jay

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and some other countries, have a crapload of people who match the QAnon demographic.

    Morons coasting on privilege and inheritance, or people who have fucked up everything in their lives, who want to feel “smarter than the average bear”, when they are morons, or want to blame somebody else for everything they fucked up in their lives.

  83. 83.

    Jay

    @Martin:

    “Hate Speech” is barely regulated in the US.

    The United States does not have hate speech laws, since the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that laws criminalizing hate speech violate the guarantee to freedom of speech contained in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[9]

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech

    In the US, it pretty much only relates tangentally to a hate crime.

  86. 86.

    Chetan Murthy

    @gwangung:
    Vergangenheitsbewältigung [struggling to overcome the bad things about one’s past] has taught the Germans many salutary lessons.  I only wish Mutti Merkel could teach them to Americans, sigh.

  87. 87.

    Jay

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Poland has an issue with virulent Nationalism and Holocaust Denial,

    their CT is different than QAnon, and it is mostly fringers,

    Different demographics.

  88. 88.

    Peale

    @Yutsano:  the premise behind Q is that a fake government insider is leaking insider information. In China, it wouldn’t matter what that information was. If it becomes popular but isn’t authorized, they’ll find out who is doing it. They aren’t going to let just anyone spread rumors by pretending to be in the government. They wouldn’t be made fools of that way. A Chinese Q would need a different back story.

  89. 89.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Jay: Right, I didn’t mean to imply that it was QAnon everywhere.  Rather, that there are xenophobic nationalist movements popping up all over, and there seems to be a common thread that they’re friendly with Putin’s secret services.  And they find some “outsider” to hate.

  94. 94.

    Berliner2

    Magellan ended up dead on the shors of what later became known as the Philippines, killed by natives who were not much into the whole “being discovered” thing.

  98. 98.

    Jay

    @Chetan Murthy:

    yurp, Russian State Assets are targeting every niche, even QAnon.

    What makes QAnon scary in the West, and why it won’t have the same impact in Russia or Eastern Europe is the demographic.

    Story.

    I’ve know Bob since I was 14.

    Best friend for a fairly long while.

    Shit happened. Had a road rage incident as a Postie. ( Canada Post). Leave, then fired for not attending Anger Management.

    Shortly after, domestic dispute, ( not the first), then Cops.

    Problem, Bob was letting his adopted son, grow pot, in the basement, before it was legal to have 4 plants. Bob’s son had 1500. So they searched harder.

    BTW, Bob was by then, an ammosexual and “amateur gunsmith” .

    So, they loaded up all the charges, Bob copped to a plea.

    Did his time, was divorced. Living in his car.

    Got in contact. We met up. Had a room available.

    By that time, and over the course of a short conversation, realized he was too far gone into CT. Had to get a restraining order.

  102. 102.

    Jay

    Robert Packer—who celebrated the mass murder of 1m people at Auschwitz—was released with no bond after violently storming the Capitol.I've been under pre-trial house arrest for 17 months after winning a pollution case against Chevron.Again: What are U.S. courts protecting? pic.twitter.com/RJNrPsqCwh— Steven Donziger (@SDonziger) January 15, 2021

  104. 104.

    lowtechcyclist

    @NotMax:

    “I’ve heard good things about some guy named Flywheel.”

    Would be appropriate!

    I’ve been thinking for four years that, at his inauguration, Trump should have sang “if you think this country’s bad off now, just wait ’til I get through with it,” only seriously, unlike Groucho.

  105. 105.

    Ian

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): 

    So you’re saying something like QAnon couldn’t spread in a place like Russia or China? I have to admit, the idea of chants of “Xi/Putin is a satanic pedophile!” at massive protests is deliciously ironic

    I think it is that if people in these countries show up to a protest and say that, the authorities will lock them the F* up and throw away the key.

    Maybe that is why Nalvany and others are worried about it from a free speech angle, whereas here in the United States we are much more concerned with it being our democracy that is being trashed.

  106. 106.

    Starfish

    @NotMax: An edgelord is a terrible friend with the bad ideas who says he is only exploring those ideas to be funny, to play devil’s advocate, etc. He may “Nazis were not so bad.”

  107. 107.

    Chris Johnson

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): QAnon is spread BY Russia, at the behest of Putin. I’m gonna say if there’s QAnon calling Putin a pedophile it’s because Putin threw a bit of that in there just to be random, which is actually consistent with the guy’s practices.

  108. 108.

    Chris Johnson

    @Chetan Murthy: It literally is QAnon everywhere, which is VERY weird. Lots of demonstrations worldwide, recognizably QAnon, with signs in English. To me that screams ‘propaganda operation run out of somewhere’, namely Russia, and targeted at destabilizing specifically us by making a relatively small contingent in the US think (somewhat plausibly) that they are an overwhelming worldwide movement.

    In a sense it is true. It’s just not in the way they think. It’s a worldwide puppet show.

  109. 109.

    Fancycwabs

    If we take a couple of things in Cawthorn’s “biography” at face value, sexually assaulting that many midshipmen would certainly disqualify him from public office.

  110. 110.

    Chris Johnson

    @Jay: I’ve worked out that when you say CT you mean counterterrorism. Thing is, how is this COUNTER to you? From where I’m standing, the white nationalists are straight up terrorists, and I don’t see what’s ‘counter terrorist’ about it. They are just terrorists, full stop.

  113. 113.

    JDM

    I’m sure young Mr. Cawthorn does not realize what he’s saying, but his claim now is that he and Boebert could’ve stopped the traitors they were egging no on but they chose not to.

     

    Glad you cleared that up, Cawthorn.  Perhaps you could repeat that under oath, before the like of Katie Porter.

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