If Senate Republicans fail to convict Donald Trump, it won't be because the facts were with him or his lawyers mounted a competent defense. It will be because the jury includes his co-conspirators.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 10, 2021
Watching the GOP these days, I just don’t know what they are doing or how it got here. I mean we know how it got to this point, they got increasingly reliant on crazy people and catered to them more and more until they ate the party, but it’s still hard to understand how we got to this point.
If anyone asked me at gunpoint what the Republican Party believes in, the only thing I could say is basically the Republican Party. They’re basically a virus that exist only to replicate to continue existing. I can’t think of any other reason for it to be here, and that isn’t even really one.
While the trial is going on in the Senate, the cameras are, by rule, focused only on the speaker, because that is what the Republicans insisted. That way it won’t show them with their legs up on their desks, doing crosswords, fucking around on their electronic devices, and yukking it up with their fellow co-conspirators.
It’s all so depressing. There are so many things that frustrate me, but one that really grates on me is the absolute lack of vision. They aspire to literally nothing. They live only for the day. A little while ago, GM announced they would be moving to all electric cars in 2035 or something, which is great and something to aspire to. All my right-wing friends LOST THEIR SHIT.
Why do they fucking care? Does anyone think the internal combustion engine will be swept off the earth by 2035? I don’t. That ain’t happening in my lifetime, if for not other reason that the capacity to fuel every engine on earth with renewables will not yet be available. But even the idea of change for the better scares them. It’s insane.
It’s like people do not realize that the very car they are in right now, even if it is a shitty 1983 honda civic that is half bondo, is still better than the mode of transportation that 99.99999% of all humans had over the history of earth. If we are all electric in the future, it will only be because it is better and companies can make a profit on it. And probably in another 50-100 years, something will replace electric cars. And so on.
Like I said, it’s all so god damned depressing.
bjacques
Forget it, Johnny. It’s Polynesiantown.
EDIT: Furst!
Baud
They haven’t been the same since you left them.
Arclite
WaPo covered a key aspect of this today. And they did it largely by avoiding the “both sides do it!” BS.
Most Republicans see Democrats not as political opponents but as enemies
Here’s the archive version if you don’t have a WaPo sub.
craigie
A self-replicating virus is as good a metaphor as any.
Matt McIrvin
They believe in owning the libs and making them cry. (Cleek’s Law.) That’s it.
craigie
@Arclite:
This is the fundamental problem, and its source is Fox News: they hate us. They can’t even express why, they just need an enemy.
That, and they don’t believe in government. Power, yes. Actual governing, not so much.
Ksmiami
@Arclite: we are going to have to cleave them from our society to move forward. There’s no common ground with these delusional asshats.
guachi
My aunt, in her late 60s, posted on FB wondering if we could ever heal from this. I responded “There is no healing”. Then she and another person basically replied that I was probably correct.
No attempt at pushback, just resignation and agreement.
That’s where we are.
kindness
Previously I thought the GOP had just gone fully tribal but I am wrong.
The GOP is a cult.
Citizen Alan
@Arclite: I view them as enemies. I don’t care who knows it.
guachi
To answer your question – I think the other posters have it right. Republicans don’t believe in government or governing. The believe in owning the libs.
Poverty, the debt, health care, education – none of these are the problem. Democrats are the problem. Democrats are the enemy.
cokane
What’s wild to me is that I think GOP members could survive by convicting Trump here. His social media is gone. It’s far enough away from the 2022 election, and Americans have such short attention spans. It’s quite disappointing that they can’t do the right thing here, the furthest you could possibly be from an election. And that’s with my already low expectations of them.
The irony to me, is that the long term consequences of continuing to feed Trump and Trumpism is likely electoral poison for them. It actually prolongs the internal divide in the party as being salient. Castigate Trump now and they’ll suffer an immediate backlash, but I think there’s actually plenty of time for that to be forgotten by even 2022 and certainly 2024. It really isn’t hard to whip their voters into line by demonizing whatever latest reforms the Democrats push through.
Also appreciate the lengthy post from Cole, not enough of those!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Drug addicts who built up such a toleration for their drug they can’t get high anymore is my metaphor for the Republicans now.
dmsilev
I think their belief in racism is sincere. Also, the belief that rich people should be able to do whatever they want and pay no taxes.
cokane
I mean the Republicans were able to effectively memory-hole the W Bush administration by the time the 2010 midterms happened. Doesn’t seem crazy to think they could succeed in doing the same here. And Trump-was-never-a-true-conservative is an even easier sell than doing that to W.
zhena gogolia
dr. bloor
The Gingrich Effect. Ronnie–or more precisely, his groomers and handlers–had an idea about governing, however perverse it might have been. Newtie flew his freak flag and was a big player in turning Republicans into purely aggressive Lib-Owning Bots.
The Moar You Know
John, you and I are, within a couple of years, the same age. You know damn well how it got here. This outcome was inevitable since 1979
ETA: probably a decade earlier, when Nixon went in on the Southern Strategy, but I was just a little kid back then.
Elizabelle
No way back without taking Fox News and OANN and all that shit off the (public) airwaves. Radio too. They are designed to make their viewers HATE the opposing party, and make this country ungovernable.
They are brainwashing. Obviously, we had Joseph McCarthy and the John Birchers and Strom Thurmond and all that crap in the past.
But it was not a religion, it was not 24/7, in real time, with the power (and desire and god forbid ability) to bring down a democratically-elected government.
The Republicans did not go off the map on their own. Rush and Rupert and a lot of bad actors helped bring them to this state of affairs. Saint Reagan too. “Government is the problem.” No.
Baud
Beginning with Reagan, the GOP has fostered a culture in which their voters sacrifice their financial well being, their self-respect, and their commitment to reality in order to maintain a moral and social superiority to people of color and women.
That sacrifice didn’t prevent people of color and women from continuing to make progress. The sacrifice didn’t prevent Bill Clinton or Obama, or Biden/Harris from being elected.
There’s nothing positive left for them to stand for that doesn’t make clear to them that all their prior sacrifices were for nothing. And they can’t deal with that
VeniceRiley
@cokane: They’re the scorpion in the scorpion and frog story. it’s their nature.
Kent
White minority rule. That’s what they believe in.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@craigie:
I forget who said something like, A religion can survive without a god, but not without a devil.
Race is the bedrock of all this resentment, but multiculturalism is probably the better term to describe the broad umbrella of resentments and hatreds of the trumpists. So, “caravans” and taco trucks become MS-13. Happy Holidays! becomes “You can’t even say Merry Christmas”. Marriage equality becomes some weird obsession with sex in public bathrooms.
and as we’ve discussed ad nauseam, they don’t get the respect and deference they think they deserve. “We” built this country! and it’s the greatest country on earth! Ever!
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Thank you.
Anya
@cokane: Totally agree. If they went against him in a unified way, they can defeat his ideas. A lot of people just identify with party and if they see their party leaders, people they voted for stand up to him they’ll break the hold he has on the party.
These guys are craven opportunists who only care about their short term benefits.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Reposting from below and on a related note:
Will the return of earmarks have any effect on how much Republicans vote for Democratic bills, etc?
Roger Moore
The best thing I’ve read on this is a Josh Marshall editorial in which he described the Republicans as having a “nonsense debt”. He was making an analogy to what computer programmers describe as “technical debt”, where doing a job the quick and dirty way creates long-term problems that will take more effort to fix than doing it right in the first place. If you keep it up too long, the code becomes an unmaintainable nightmare that might need to be completely thrown out and redone from scratch.
The Republicans have done this, but with quick and dirty approaches to winning elections. They started out lying to their followers to try to get them worked up and excited about the next election. But they weren’t willing to admit they had been lying, so they had to keep up the pretense. Over time, they had to keep expanding the lies until they had created an entire parallel reality that we can barely recognize.
Frank Wilhoit
Mrs. Clinton is not quite right. The Republican Senators will let Trump off the hook for two main reasons.
First and foremost, they will do it because to do otherwise would be to give the Democrats a scalp.
Secondly, they will do it because letting Republicans (and Republican affiliates of whatever kind) off the hook is simply What Is Done. The habit is so deeply ingrained by now that it is no longer even conscious.
Mrs. Clinton’s argument from individual self-interest is intriguing, but beside the mark. In order to see that, it is only necessary to ask oneself, what would an addict do?
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Too soon to tell.
Wag
Lighten up, Francis. Could be worse. Trump could still be in the White House
Brachiator
One of the lessons the GOP took from Watergate is to protect your own people no matter what.
And so, they will rally around Trump.
And everyone takes democracy for granted. Or maybe the GOP is so used to sucking up to plutocrats and crazy evangelicals that they gave up on democracy long ago and are now just open about it.
The media has given up as well. Have any historians been interviewed about the impeachment trial? Cause every news story and every take from pundits is solely about how the Republicans are not going to acquit Trump and how this will help or hurt them in the next election. Absolutely nothing about what a failure to convict might mean for the country.
RaflW
I know the whacked out billionaires like DeVos and Koch, etc, fund the GOP. But how on earth can any corporation get away with giving one god damned dollar to either the national GOP or most state Republican Parties? They’re rabid lunatics.
And spare me the ‘taxes’! argument. At this point, the GOP is fundamentally opposed to even tilted markets. Where they’re going is North Korea la-la land. And that ultimately isn’t “good for business”. I wonder how many Trump judges are going to start doing all sorts of bonkers stuff on torts cases going forward, as just one example of these idiot companies setting up a future they cannot predict.
But to the point: WE have to continue to let any firm we plan to spend money with know that we’re watching their ‘open secrets’ filings and will scream bloody murder-accomplice if they so much as hint at a return to funding the crazies.
Mary G
Frank Wilhoit
@craigie: You give them too much credit. It is all and only about accountability. No government, no accountability. Yes, it really is that simple.
gene108
@cokane:
I disagree.
There voters have been fed a continuing stream of outrages for at least 30 years, from Whitewater, to Gingrich-ism, to the Tea party, etc.
Republicans risk depressing their turnout by convicting Trump or basically doing anything to temper their base’s rage.
Baud
OT Pet Peeve on Castro’s presentation.
The president is not the commander in chief of the country, but of the armed forces.
If you are a civilian, you don’t have a commander in chief.
Amir Khalid
@Frank Wilhoit: If it comes to that, and we all expect it will, Senate Republicans’ refusal to convict Trump needs to be hung around their collective neck. I reckon the Democratic impeachment managers are doing their best to make it as heavy a millstone as possible.
Baud
@Mary G:
That picture tho.
gene108
Too many people are wedded to the idea that things in the past were the better, and any change is bad.
They are scared of the future for some reason.
I think this view is held more by conservatives.
laura
Men hate women.
White men hate women and everyone else.
Not all men, but way too many, and enough to date, for way too long.
That’s my lived experience. Perhaps others can weigh in to offer contrary views, but my take is white men hate outweighs any other take. Please, please, prove me wrong. And why do men hate women so much?
Frank Wilhoit
@Baud: It is even simpler. When you see someone who “…sacrifice[s] their financial well being, their self-respect, and their commitment to reality…”, I see an addict. The harm to themselves and to their surroundings is independent of what they are addicted to.
cokane
@VeniceRiley:
I get this, but I don’t quite agree. What unites Republicans right now, more than Trump, is a hatred and fear of Democrats.
Even from a completely selfish standpoint, where the GOP doesn’t want to change its basic MO, the smart play is to jettison Trump right now. As I said, it’s certain to accrue short-term pain, but I’m skeptical the same voters cannot be re-won with a year and a half of demonizing everything Biden and congressional Dems do.
Also these Senators with presidential ambitions — Hawley, Cruz, Rubio and more… I mean that knocks out a prospective rival. These guys just have just lost all ability to think beyond short term wins.
Jess
In a democracy, how can a party that primarily serves the rich and powerful be anything other than dishonest, divisive, and corrupt? How else could they stay in power? Back in the 80s when I was a mere teenager I could already envision Trumpism as the logical outcome of Reagan and Ayn Rand, and I couldn’t understand why so few other people could see it. I mean, we all played Monopoly as kids, right?
Frank Wilhoit
@RaflW:
Flip side: an individual boycott is the nearest thing to accountability that any American business will ever face.
cokane
@gene108: Do they really? Trump didn’t help them with turnout in 2018. And his continued presence means Republicans in purple districts have to walk a near impossible tightrope. Red districts are red regardless of what happens to him.
Trump didn’t win a large share of the vote in 2016 or 2020. Voting shot way up in 2020 due to the ease of options mainly, imo. Trump’s percentage in 2020 and 2016 are both *lower* than Romney’s in 2012. Trump drew an impossible-to-repeat Electoral College inside straight in 2016 and it’s the only reason why people haven’t concluded the obvious — he’s actually poison at the ballot box.
UncleEbeneezer
@Arclite: The great, steaming pile of irony is that if ANYONE is truly justified in hating their opponents, it’s the actual Black/Brown/Muslim/Trans etc., people who vote predominantly for Dems. If they wanted to strip White People of the right to vote etc., I wouldn’t even blame them.
Jess
@Frank Wilhoit: Yes, exactly! There was a really good article on Trumpism as an addiction recently, I believe at Politico.
NotMax
Mr. Fusion™!
Sebastian
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Yes. Removing earmarks, a concept which was relentlessly attacked as pork and bridges to nowhere, lead directly to the dysfunction in Congress we experience.
Think of earmarks/pork as currency/money/grease. As a MoC you HAVE TO bring pork home or your opponents will not stop saying how other MoC were much better at getting funds into their districts.
This forces cooperation and horse trading. I support you on this and in return you support me on that.
The removal allowed ideological grandstanders like the Freedom Caucus. Their sudden growth and the elimination of earmarks are not just contemporary, they are connected.
Jess
@laura: Why do men hate women so much? Because they desire women, and that desire makes them feel weak and out of control. They blame women for their own shame and self-loathing.
gene108
@Frank Wilhoit:
Everything Republicans have done, since Gingrich had been to make accountability harder. They do it at every level of government.
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think the core principles are hierarchy and privilege. Republicans are people who are used to being at the top of the social hierarchy, and that hierarchy comes from a whole set of overlapping forms of privilege: race, gender, religion, and wealth to name just the most obvious ones. They resent liberals’ attempts to break down the hierarchy and force them to give up some of their privilege. Everything that reminds them of that struggle is a source of anger and resentment.
Frank Wilhoit
@gene108: This is why peasants hate education (and educated people). To them, knowledge equals susceptibility to distraction, and distraction is an existential threat.
John Cole
@cokane:
I have been focusing inward for a month or so. Not even that active on fb or twitter. I did not realize how exhausted I have been.
Also, this has been a great winter- lots of snow, lots of cold days, and I just generally get more quiet during these.
Ksmiami
@Citizen Alan: I’m done being nice with fascists
Bupalos
I think about this question a lot. These people act like they are insane, I mean, say 12 year old me (1980) would identify them as impossibly insane. Chemically altered.
I think the answer is that the threat they feel from what seem to me to be pretty watered down demands for justice and equality is way more potent than we generally credit. Like, they are fucking PANICKED about the idea that the world where you can say various denigrating words – words that submerge others and subtly elevate them – is slipping away. They feel as if it’s an existential issue.
It’s hard to wrap your head around. This “anti-PC” 5hing is like the strongest emotion in the world right now.
MagdaInBlack
@laura: It has been my lived experience too, with a few fortunate exceptions. I don’t think of it as hatred of women so much as contempt for women, but I’m sure there’s hate involved too.
Baud
@Frank Wilhoit:
I don’t think we’re saying different things. Every addict starts with using occasionally and then demands more and stronger stuff to keep up the feeling.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud:
Cicilline was doing that too. Also, “he failed to protect us”– also mention he failed to protect the Constitution, in fact, he attacked it.
Martin
@cokane: Don’t think it matters.
The GOP is a full-on white christian nationalist party. The trajectory of the party has to possible paths:
So, if you are the Senator from Oklahoma, what’s best for the long term health of the party and what’s best for the short term health of Republicans are at direct odds with each other. Due to the nature of white christian nationalism, these are mutually exclusive options – you can’t split the difference, you can’t compromise between them. The only way they can kick the can any farther down the road is if Dems don’t turn out, and hand power to a minority voting bloc.
Dems have always had the size of the voting base but not the intensity. 2020 (and 2018) changed that. If Dems can hold the line and continue to vote with that intensity, it forces the GOP to make that choice and make it now.
RandomMonster
For sure nothing positive. But plenty of negative. They now live to hate us for everything we hold dear. And for all the phantasms they’ve created about liberals attacking them.
Frank Wilhoit
@Roger Moore: You’re not down to the bottom yet. The core “principle” is sadism, as revenge for the birth trauma. It absolutely does not matter at all what the target of the sadism is at any particular moment: blink and it will change; put any particular target off limits and a new target will instantly be chosen. The targets are targets of convenience. Convenience is largely a matter of appearance.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
my my, Mike Lee is having quite the hissyfit
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Claire is explaining well.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Which tells me he did say it.
dmsilev
@Baud: What’s the explanation? I’m following CSPAN’s feed, so no talking heads. Usually a good thing, but not now.
Baud
@dmsilev:
Parliamentarian ruled the objection was out of order (not permitted), not Leahy. The Senate now needs to vote on whether to overrule her.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: thanks, I’m listening on my phone and there’s a bit of a delay
But Lee did sound like the snotty little student council parliamentarian I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d been
Baud
Schumer fixed it.
Cermet
@gene108: You miss the critical point that they, and us, should be absoultely terrified of what the future is bringing. The difference of course, is what the reality of the fear (what we need to fear – run away AGW resulting in vast wars, billions displaced and many, many millions dying from many causes) and their out-of-date and pointless issue of white supremacy loss. But having a fear of the future is very, very real. Even they are starting to hear the footsteps of doom and are trying to use race to hide from it.
terraformer
They “insisted” on having the camera focus only on the speaker? Well, fuck them! Who’s in charge of the Senate right now? Why agree to that? You also said it was “by rule” – but again, the rules are what a majority of the Senate want them to be.
I don’t know, seems to me that having that camera move around would better serve the people than acquiescing to what can only be described as a CYA move. I just don’t understand why Dems cater to them, they sure as fvck don’t do it for us or anyone else.
Elizabelle
Mike Lee screaming like a stuck pig? Uh huh.
Adjournment until noon tomorrow.
Dan B
@Matt McIrvin: To put “making the libs cry” in a different way I would say that the GOP / FOX / RWNJ media and blogosphere needs its rage. It is an addiction. They have no vision and their “coalition” members have different goals so the only thing left is anger at the people they believe disdain them, “liberal elite snobs” and “poor black and brown moochers” (in their minds all people who are black and brown are poor or stole and cheated to get their money. If they encountered one of their black sports heroes in a dark alley they would be terrified.
Without any understanding of how the American Dream was hog tied by the wealthy they fear the inferiors will steal their money from them. Dems want to help the victims who have been hardest hurt so they have a chance to get ahead and get out of the poverty – dependency trap, or at least not suffer forever. This enrages the RWNJ’s who believe poverty = laziness = bad character.
Arclite
@Ksmiami: ” we are going to have to cleave them from our society to move forward”
Unfortunately it’s like 40% of the population. Remember that Trump’s approval rating always hovered around there.
Baud
@terraformer:
It’s hard to run the Senate if you’re litigating and voting on every detail.
debbie
Is there any indication that Lee objected just as boisterously back when that press account was first published?
Thought not.
dmsilev
@Baud: Looks like they decided it’s a moot point.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
something I keep meaning to ask: Why is Roberts not presiding? Did he pretty much just say, “don’t wanna”?
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yep.
Fair Economist
@Frank Wilhoit:
Indeed. Remember back after 9/11 when Republicans treated Hispanics as allies against the evul Mooslems? Now they’ve flipped that script.
trnc
@guachi:
I’m pretty cynical, but I think about some of the darker times in world history and the fact that we managed to get Biden elected and then I feel better.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
A principle of Constitutional principle they’ve cherished for almost two weeks!
The Moar You Know
@terraformer: When the rules for this trial were drawn up, the Republicans were in charge. Our two Senators from Georgia had not been sworn in yet.
Dan B
@cokane: Heather Cox Richardson* believes that Trump was the least conservative GOP candidate. He said he wanted to make the ACA better. She has a list of policies he trumpeted that Joe us currently implementing. Trump was too lazy and incompetent to achieve them but Joe is and may win over a lot of Trump voters. Joe’s popularity keeps growing and is 16 points higher than T’s high point.
* Dr. Richardson had a fascinating interview on Amanpour last night. It got my attention!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: The media has been saying that for 20 years; yes, it’s wrong.
Ksmiami
@Arclite: your offer is acceptable. Might as well replace them with hard working immigrants.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Yeah, it’s not a new wrong. Just hate to see it on such a high profile stage.
The Moar You Know
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: and it’s bullshit. It’s nowhere in the Constitution. Judges have been removed via impeachment well after their terms in office were over. Plenty of prior judicial precedent.
sdhays
@Baud: I’m pretty sick of the media pulling out the “Command in Chief” designation whenever they need thrill up their legs. It militarizes the concept of the Presidency, as well as pushes reverence for the military (when it’s blowing foreigners up). I can see how it might seep into otherwise good people’s speaking.
BC in Illinois
Okay, so I’ve finished my binge watching for today:
“Trump Impeachment” Season Two, Episode Two.
(This is probably the final season.)
//[ from the end of the preceding thread ]
Glidwrith
Because women can mostly say “NO”.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@The Moar You Know: Mike Rounds is from South Dakota. As long as he hews to farm subsidies and Jeebus, he’s Senator for life.
WaterGirl
@Mary G: That’s confusing to me because I don’t see anything about a bill being passed or anything like that. Is this being done through some regulation?
Baud
The fake clouds behind Rachel Maddow are moving.
ETA: But not behind Chris Hayes.
gene108
@cokane:
Only three Republicans in the House represent districts Biden won. I do not think many Congressional Republicans are in very competitive districts, where alienating non-MAGA voters would cost them the election.
This explanation says what I’m thinking of better than I could. Trump drives Republican turnout.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/12/21/why-did-house-democrats-underperform-compared-to-joe-biden/
Brachiator
@Dan B:
Was this person on drugs? Trump never said anything like this. He always talked about getting rid of the ACA and replacing it. Just a bunch of lies.
Damn. Must be some powerful drugs. But an interesting point in some ways. Depends on how hypocritical Trump voters are. They might come around a bit, and deny that they ever loved Trump as much as they do now.
WaterGirl
@debbie: Say what?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: I believe it’s FEMA funding so releasing it is an executive branch decision
Chief Oshkosh
@Citizen Alan: Actually, they are the self-declared enemies of the rest of mankind and of the future. They WANT to be everyone else’s enemy.
J R in WV
@Baud:
Anya
@Elizabelle: He looked scared. I wonder if the reporters who reported that scene would contradict him?
James E Powell
@Anya:
Mike Lee is scared because he remembers how he beat a Republican opponent by being a crazier and more unhinged right-winger. It’s Utah. The primary is the only election that matters.
TS (the original)
@debbie:
Indeed – the fact that he mentioned he was the only witness – confirmed your thought.
CaseyL
This is not a US-exclusive problem. The UK has its own version; Australia has a nascent form of it. The commonality between all three countries is the Vladimir Putin-Wendy Deng-Rupert Murdoch axis. (For those who don’t know, Wendy Deng was both Putin’s and Murdoch’s girlfriend at some point. Consecutively, not simultaneously, but definitely a throughway).
But those are the people selling the poison. Why so many people, in so many countries, have eagerly lapped it up is the central question.
And the only answer I can come up with is racism and misogyny.
The question then becomes, why are gender- and race-hatred such central pillars of so many peoples’ identity – and there I can’t help you. It’s a kind of psychosis, an essential something-missing in someone’s mental makeup. But I don’t know what that is, or why so many people have it.
James E Powell
@Jess:
You know, they do sell thinner brushes.
Baud
@J R in WV:
I’ve never been in the military, so I don’t have a commander in chief. I’m not sure about someone with your status.
Roger Moore
@Dan B:
No. His failure to pursue those policies wasn’t because he was too lazy but because he didn’t actually care about them. When it came to policies that actually mattered to him- tax breaks, hating on Those People, stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down- Trump was doggedly persistent. His populist promises to make a better healthcare policy, not to touch Social Security, and the like were just more lies he told to get elected and abandoned the moment they were no longer necessary.
Betsy
@Martin:
@cokane:
@Roger Moore:
i’m no longer sure who I’m replying to exactly here, but don’t forget that suffering and sadism is right at the heart of a lot of the puritanical Christianity behind the founding of certain early parts of this nation.
And if you look at what the republican party espouses as “good living”especially for its lower class supporters, a lot of it is about proudly suffering, about working three horrible jobs, about all the illnesses that seem to strike out of nowhere and for which collections have to be taken up at the local gas station cash register, and about living out in the sticks with nothing and knocking rocks together for tools. That’s real Murica!
And if something bad happens to you, well, you must have been a bad boy. Moral hazard!
A lot of Republican horseshit is all about a puritanical obsession with suffering and redemption and explaining how much you’ve suffered, proudly, — or attributing your suffering to someone taking away something from you. (Maybe your guns, or your slaves, or your money being taxed away)
The Boers had a lot in common with this suffering-is-fun worldview.
My dog my woman my gun my farm my proud suffering
Calouste
@cokane:
Another thing is that the GQP Senators don’t seem to have caught on that it’s Biden who now controls all the intelligence. More is going to come out (the CIA can and will have listened to foreigners all they want as long as they are abroad. Including certain Russians and Ukrainians), which pretty much makes it a given that the shitgibbon’s standing is only going to go down. Supporting him now is not going to look great one or two years down the line. And it’s not like the intelligence folks would need to specifically look for things related to the shitgibbon, there are just too many dodgy people in his orbit that stuff is going to show up naturally in the course of investigating other crimes.
Seanly
@Mary G:
That’s great news! My wife got me into Caitlin Doughty of Ask A Mortician. She recently did a very moving post about the state of the funeral industry in southern CA where she runs a funeral home. They’re swamped and most funerals or other means to dispose of dead loved ones are too expensive for the majority of Angelenos.
germy
Yup.
Procopius
@Elizabelle:
Maybe you’re older than me. I was in high school during The McCarthy Years and I remember it as being 24/7, and I thought at the time that they were the elected government. Later, one of the reasons LBJ reluctantly decided to increase our efforts in Vietnam was because he feared what the right wing could do if he “lost” Vietnam. Maybe somebody ten years older than me, who had wider experience of the world at the time, would have seen it differently. One reason I could not get as angry about Trump as most of the people here was because I didn’t see him as being so much different from the way the right has always been (in my lifetime). The McCarthy Years affected me profoundly.
different-church-lady
Hatred. It’s that simple.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Excellent. thank you.
Redshift
@Roger Moore:
I agree, but I think there’s also an progression of people who understood the scam moving up and out and bring replaced by true believers. In the Gingrich era, they knew what right-wing media was feeding the base was BS, but it got the job done. Then those people moved to more lucrative wingnut welfare positions, and many of those who came up to replace them actually believe the bullshit (though there are still plenty of con artists like Cruz.)
Soprano2
Part of their resentment is that they hate change that wasn’t their idea. There are people in my FB feed who are acting devastated that the Aunt Jemima brand is being phased out. They’re saying they’ll never buy the new brand that’s exactly the same thing with a different name! They aren’t offended by the old name, so they can’t see any reason to change it. I can’t imagine caring that much about something like that. They hate the idea that anything would be changed because people who aren’t white don’t like it. They are terrified of a world where white people don’t run everything.
no comment
This week has been awful. We had to put one of our pets to sleep yesterday. He was a large dog with degenerative myelopathy (DM), so we knew this was coming. He had gone from poor control over his back legs on Monday to no control of them at all on Tuesday. He used to be my husband’s service dog for PTSD until this past spring, when the DM made jumping into the car & walking medium distances too difficult for him.
Around 2 hours ago, my husband found out that his sister had died in a car crash. I was numb with shock at first. It’s just now hitting me that I’ll never see her again.
Baud
@no comment:
I’m sorry.
cokane
@Martin: I agree with all this, but a “white christian nationalist” party isn’t obligated to have Trump as its figurehead. As I said above, the GOP more or less completely jettisoned W Bush. They then moved on as more or less the same party. There’s no reason they can’t do the same again.
My arguments have nothing to do with whether or not the GOP is a “bad” party, normatively. People seem to want to argue that because the GOP is bad morally it is therefore wedded to Trump. This doesn’t have to be true! In fact, an equally immoral, but more canny party, would use the opportunity now to dump him. Having him as a highly regarded figure in the party only serves to create an issue of division in a party that could rally again around hate-the-democrats.
brantl
@The Moar You Know: I was a teenager then, and the racism was blatant enough that a 16 year old knew from his own divination, which party the racists were going to vote for.
cokane
@Calouste: This too, is an excellent point! Investigations into Trump’s awfulness are far from done. He’s only going to look more corrupt and impeachable months from now. And Trump has few means to combat this stuff in the court of public opinion — he looks/sounds awful in interviews, hence the reliance on social media.
Letting him stick around as some cause celebre for the party is a losing electoral move imo.
zhena gogolia
@no comment:
Oh, terrible. I am so sorry.
NotMax
@terraformer
Really no difference from S.O.P. as regards the cameras. During regular business they don’t want shots shown of Senator Larktongue picking his nose or Representative Shoebox perorating to an all but empty chamber.
Dan B
@Brachiator: Dr. Richardson is a noted historian. She had video and quotes of Trump saying he supported progressive policies during the 2016 campaign. We know from his history and his personality that he was conning the public but it worked for a percentage of the electorate. I had forgotten T’s talking points.
Watch her interview on Amanpour, only 15 minutes.
Redshift
@Roger Moore:
I doubt he ever even thought of them as promises, they were just applause lines that brought him adulation.
brantl
@laura: Nope, conservative white men hate women, because if they couldn’t keep them subservient, then they would easily find better men, or women (QED).
RaflW
@Bupalos: Yes, this is one of the keys. And I think part of their panic is that they do not believe that a black, brown, queer + women majority won’t make them suffer the way they subjugated and marginalized for 400 years.
Now, if the white hetero-patriarchy push too much further, their fear may come true. Patience is limited, I think. But if we can turn the corner (with a lot of work!) before the point of no return, a new pluralist culture can emerge that right-sizes white people and especially white men, without marginalizing them.
But it won’t be easy, and they’re f–ing the chances even now.
*edited lightly after a re-read.
CarolPW
@no comment: Does your husband have another service dog now? I hope so, because with the loss of his sister and his previous service dog life might be looking pretty bleak. I am so sorry that these very difficult events have piled up. It seems terribly unfair.
Fair Economist
@Soprano2: I certainly can’t see boycotting ex-Aunt Jemima over the name change, but I think this was the wrong approach. Aunt Jemima started with a now-offensive stereotype, but Quaker Oats changed her to a professional looking lady 30 years ago. The problem remained that it *started* with an offensive image but – it still has that problem! I think a better approach would have been to re-establish Aunt Jemima as a modern professional woman with an ad campaign based on a new, modern backstory, ideally with nods to antiracism and antistereotyping. Get a controversy going over the new Aunt Jemima sticking up for BLM principles and the old racist version will head down the memory hole.
SiubhanDuinne
@no comment:
How terrible. I am so very sorry for both of your devastating losses.
gene108
@Cermet:
I take this to be a long term trend, which bodes well for the future that things are going to be okay in the long run:
https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2020/Oct/undesa_pd_wfp2019_10_key_messages_10jan2020.pdf
Also,
The big issue is getting the rapidly growing economies in Asia to make the transitions advanced economies are making.
https://www.iea.org/articles/global-co2-emissions-in-2019
Brachiator
@Dan B:
Trump must have been talking out of both sides of his mouth as well as his ass.
It’s easy to find quotes of Trump trashing the ACA. And after a time the crap he spewed was faux populist, but not progressive in any sense.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Martin:
Absolutely. THIS is what they stand for. They believe they are the last defenders of 1950s American culture. They want:
They see anything else as a perversion of how God ordered the world. That is why their increasing cultural irrelevance is radicalizing them. Trump capitalized on it, but it definitely preceded him.
Ruckus
It got broken because they live in a box called Denial and in that box they have their heads up their asses. It makes anything in the future scare the hell out of them because with their heads located where they are, there is no oxygen, just exhaust gas and they are looking for something which they had before they rammed their heads in a location that gives them absolutely no vision of the future, only of the past, which because their brains are oxygen deprived and there is no future, their politics are always going to be whatever was infesting their brains before they rammed their heads there. And whatever is shouted to them by assholes like rush or alex. And of course because of their surroundings, everything they do hear is based upon shit. And the reason they are convinced that their way is the only way is that they’ve lived with their heads up their asses for so long that it now seems normal to live in a world of shit. So they ask for more shit and as their political class also have their heads located where the sun don’t shine, they have the same issues. It’s a circle of stupidity, blindness and shit.
CaseyL
The emphasis on T**** leads me to wonder what will happen if he forms a third party.
That could be the best outcome from a political perspective: a third party will drain the GQP of money and voters. In fact, that would be the best thing for the country, too.
But if he doesn’t, if he just fades away, it will be… instructive… to see who inherits his followers.
Fair Economist
@no comment: Oh, I’m so sorry. I hope you can find some comfort; that’s just too much to happen at once.
Other MJS
The now-cancelled Keystone pipeline wouldn’t make a dent in employment stats, but to invest in renewables? OMFG, socializm!
TS (the original)
@no comment:
oh my gosh – sending much sympathy
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @debbie:
Perfect example of “a hit dog will holler”.
WaterGirl
@Baud: What did Claire have to say?
Fair Economist
@RaflW:
Our coalition will never do to them what they did to us. We’ll never massacre towns and have lynch parties. We’re just not evil like that.
I agree they don’t understand this, because they *still* want to have lynch parties and massacres, as demonstrated Jan 6.
Old School
@no comment:
That’s a rough one-two punch. I’m sorry you have to go through this.
FelonyGovt
I just don’t understand their clinging to Trump who is, after all, a LOSER. He lost the Presidency, lost them the Senate. Usually a losing candidate becomes a non-person to their party. This really is a sick cult, and I have to believe that he really does have something on many of these R Senators.
Haroldo
@no comment:
I’m very sorry.
Lapassionara
@no comment: oh, how terrible. My condolences.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@no comment: How awful, I am so sorry.
Dan B
@Roger Moore: Dr. Richardson claimed that T mentioned several of his progressive policies after he was in the White House on several occasions. I vaguely remembered something like her narrative. I realize that “con artist” is the simplest explanation but it seems equally possible that the staffers he surrounded himself with shaped the focus on xenophobia and racism as much as T’s penchant for domination and sadism.
It was interesting for her to connect T’s promises, fake or moderately serious, with what Joe is doing and what many T voters actually believed T was promising.
Her hypothesis that Trump ran on a hybrid of progressivism and nativity, and won, is interesting. How many citizens see gullible is a job for the bean counters when the 2016 election was decided on the thinnest percentage.
The thought that these gullible voters might notice a Dem administration providing real assistance is very encouraging. We could stop noticing or trying to appeal to the bigots and haters if a few percetage of the gullible go our way.
WaterGirl
@no comment: So very sorry.
Brachiator
@Fair Economist:
No. No. No.
You can’t clean it up. How do you make Aunt Jemima modern and professional? The name, the name, the goddam name is still racist.
Same with Uncle Ben.
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
I’m not sure how much of the party are BS artists and how many are true believers. But part of Josh’s point is that even the BS artists were powerless to contradict Trump because he was just using their own lies against them. They couldn’t contradict him without admitting they had been lying. This is the core of their dilemma.
And I think Trump points to a third stage in the process. At the beginning, there were BS artists like Reagan, who told lies to the base in order to whip them up and get them out to vote. Stage two was the BS artists being at least partially replaced by true believers, who had bought the BS from the time they started and didn’t realize it was just a bunch of lies to trick the rubes. But Trump represents the infection of the party by grifters, who recognize that the base is a rich source of marks who have been trained to accept any kind of bullshit as long as it comes from people they trust. He’s obviously not the first grifter to come into the party, but before him the grifters were peripheral figures who were just trying to fleece the rubes. Trump recognized that it was possible to take over the whole enterprise and grift on a vastly greater scale than anyone had previously dreamed of.
brantl
The Republican party is now full of whiners that are trying to live out the words to Archie Bunker’s theme song for All In the Family. They have whitewashed yesteryear, and want to go back, just don’t ask them which year, they won’t agree. If conservatives had had their way throughout history, we wouldn’t have swung down from the trees, developed fire, or light bulbs, or woven clothes, or much of anything, really.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@RaflW: I’ve had conservatives tell me flat out I’m afraid they’ll treat me like we treat them. They know full well that they’re doing wrong. They can’t admit it because that way lies the deeper terror of not only being treated badly but also knowing they deserved it. And don’t even get me started on what I’ve learned in the last 15 years about the role deserving plays in conservative psychology.
CaseyL
@no comment: Oh, gods; I am so sorry.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist:
They already tried that. The logo got a redesign years ago. Didn’t really redeem it.
Dan B
@Procopius: I was in grade school, early grade school, and despite knowing only details of what was happening, had nightmares of being chased by dark figures who would lock me up for no reason except I was not the right kind of patriot. It was a lot for a third grader to process. There were many institutions that were equally unjust and corrupt led by horrible examples of human depravity.
Is there some need to demonstrate our dominance and control through cruelty? Did we mess up by following closer to the Chimpanzee lineage than the Bonobo?
raven
@Procopius: Fuck LBJ
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Arclite:
I’ve been saying this forever, Republicans have taught their base that Democrats are an enemy to be defeated and vanquished. Republicans have turned their membership against their fellow citizens to the point that they root for the violent deaths of anyone who leans left. That insurrection ain’t shit compared to what conservatives want to unleash on their enemy, the Democrats and their supporters. They hate the left with an unbridled passion.
Democrats in Congress are lucky that they were not caught by the insurrectionists because their counterparts on the other side of the aisle seem to not give a shit about the insurrection now that they’ve figured out that their lives are not on the line.
schrodingers_cat
Is it just me or was it traumatic for people to see the footage House managers presented?
Brachiator
@no comment:
I’m sorry.
Martin
California is happy to be of assistance.
cain
@gene108:
Good luck with that. Colonial powers telling countries to slow down.
However Asian markets are dependent on mature economic markets like the U.S. So we do have an ace in the hole that way.
Looking forward to seeing the U.S. leverage their own supply chain to help themselves instead of making China the single point of failure. Too bad about the soybean market though.
Speaking of all that my company is part of the circular economy – working on datacenter technologies. So I think we are in a great position to succeed given Biden’s focus on green jobs and American centric supply chain.
Dan B
@no comment: So sorrowful to hear your news. You are not alone with your feelings. May your loss be filled with many moments of sweet memories.
Gvg
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I read that the rules are different when it’s not a sitting President. Either he isn’t supposed to or it’s up to the Senate.
Roger Moore
@Dan B:
Trump said lots of stuff while he was in office, including plenty of stuff that was completely contradictory. He said whatever he thought would get him attention and adulation. That doesn’t mean he was ever serious about those policies, as can be seen by his failure to act on them in any meaningful way. Even if you want to say he was guided to act on his racist program by his appointees, he was the one who appointed them. If he had been serious about his “populist” promises, he would have appointed some populists who were interested in following through on them. That he didn’t is evidence he was never really interested in the first place; he just said what he thought people wanted to hear.
I think this is a really important point to understand with any politician. Politicians are always prone to play to the crowd, and ever so much more so with a pathological liar like Trump. You can’t just look at what they say and promise; you have to see what they do, or at least try to do. If Trump kept promising wonderful plans that would come out any day now but never came out, that doesn’t mean he was too lazy to act. It means he never had a serious intention of acting but just wanted to keep up the pretense that he cared.
schrodingers_cat
@no comment: That must have been difficult. I am so sorry.
Martin
Oh, apparently there will be a new debate on witnesses for the impeachment hearing after the opening arguments. So maybe Monday? Somewhere around then. That will be interesting. I’d expect that Dems have at least 52 votes for that, provided they want to bring witnesses which they seem to be leaning toward maybe not having a need to do?
Personally I’m in favor even if it wouldn’t otherwise change the outcome because I think we need as much of this on the official record as possible.
Tenar Arha
my deepest condolences @no comment
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dan B: I can easily imagine trump vowing to improve the ACA, just as I can imagine him pleading to make the Rumplestiltskin Act of 1918 bigger, stronger and better than anyone has ever seen. Because I am confident that if you asked him, then or today, trump would not know the relationship between the “ACA” and “Obamacare”. He repeatedly pledged to get rid of Obamacare and improve healthcare with “something terrific, we’re gonna take care of everybody, believe me.” He vowed to raise taxes on the rich, “My wealthy friends are very mad at me, I told them, no, no, this is what we gotta do. It’s gonna cost me a lot of money!”. At one point he pledged to be better on Hillary and Obama on gay rights, something about Iran-lovers, where “they throw them off of buildings”. He didn’t hump the rainbow flag the way he does Old Glory, but he did pose with it with a big, shit-eating grin. I don’t think he would have won the R primary without pledging to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (again, especially with the last two, he had and has no idea of the difference). trump said whatever he had to say to get applause.
Gvg
@no comment: oh my good. That is a lot worse than a bad week. I am sorry.
NotMax
@schrodingers_cat
Traumatic? No. Shocking? Perhaps. Enlightening? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely.
Not showing it would have been an egregious lapse of judgment and a dereliction of duty; maybe worse yet if it had been shown in some kind of bowdlerized or pixelated version
Mary G
@no comment: Oh, what a horrific double blow. May both their memories be a blessing.
Dan B
@Brachiator: I’m on mobile so can’t copy a link but please look up Dr. Heather Cox Richardson’s interview on Amanpour. She is brilliant. I found her observations to be intriguing. I don’t believe she cares if Trump was a con man or a braying ass. Her focus was on where the American public’s views are trending.
Have you seen her daily letters? I believe she has hundreds of thousands, or millions, on her list.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
huh, Larry Flynt died. He was 78.
I thought he died years ago, and I would’ve thought he was a lot older than 78 back then.
But now that I think on it, didn’t he do one of his million-dollar, crowd-sourced, scandal/scavenger hunts on the R’s a few years ago? On trump, or Rs in general? “I’ll pay up to a million dollars for hard evidence of… X”?
Immanentize
@no comment: Fuck. I am feeling how hard this is. Survive.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bannon’s rhetoric was very populist. That’s one of the reasons, I think, Rs were hesitant to embrace trump after his election*. They thought he might follow through on some of it. And trump never even pretended to care about debtanddeficit, which pretending was the Republicans’ 12th commandment, maybe the most important one, for almost forty years
*the other being, they knew he was in some kind of tangle with Russia and they thought the public would care. So did I.
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
He gave notice that he would not be a participant. In that case the position of presiding officer falls on the president pro tem. In any case the role of the presiding officer of an impeachment trial proceeding is extremely limited by the prevailing rules, more that of a traffic cop than a judge.
jlowe
Something that’s recently been marinating in my mind is how social media functions as a toxicity pathway for psychological and perhaps neurological harm. Recently, I encountered a paper on PubMed (a true marvel of government, PubMed), titled “brain health consequences of digital technology use”, published summer 2020. Others in a similar vein can be found with a bit of searching. Before too long, I wonder if modern societies will come to the conclusion that we need to develop exposure limits for social media, just like ionizing radiation or hazardous chemicals.
WaterGirl
@Martin: I have no idea where they will come down on witnesses. Not sure how they balance witnesses which would surely be more powerful vs. finishing up quickly so Biden can get his AG and other cabinet members, etc.
Either side can ask for them at the agreed upon point. Someone – Lindsay? – has
threaded toothreatened to call Kamala and a bunch of other high profile witnesses and ask them about the times they have made incendiary remarks. I think we should call their bluff.Surprisingly, no one in the administration ever contacts me to ask my opinion.
Dan B
@Other MJS: Sandy Munro is a gearhead’s gearhead. He’s driven race cars and fighter jets. His company evaluates high performance vehicles by buying them and tearing them apart to analyze them in great detail. He consults CEO’s, etc.
He says that sometime between 2025 and 2030 car companies will abandon ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) cars. He believes it’s inevitable. It also helps that 91% of people who drive an EV (moi) never want another ICE. Acceleration like a V8 – check! Maintenance nearly zero – check! Fuel costs 1/4 of gas – check! Quiet – you bet! Owned three heavy duty (one ton flatbed) trucks – yes, I’ze Macho dude!! But gimme a big beautiful EV truck if I gotta do trucks!
Miss Bianca
@no comment: So sorry to hear this. That is devastating. My condolences.
TS (the original)
@WaterGirl:
As per trump and his lackeys – does anything stop her from saying no?
Jager
@gene108: I see this all the time, I’m a car guy, and when you tell the “old school” car guys a simple fact like, a V6 Camry is faster 0-60 and in the 1/4 mile than any of the 60s muscle cars, their jaws drop then they get pissed off. My first new car was a 69 Z28 Camaro, my Jeep Grand Cherokee is 3 10s of a second faster to 60, my wife’s Volt is 1 10th slower than the Z28. Like the MAGAts they just won’t believe it. Fucking idiots.
schrodingers_cat
@NotMax: Did I say it was unnecessary? It was essential to show it. But it was also traumatic to relive those moments again. To hear the insurrectionist President’s voice brought back the horror of the last 4 years.
Dan B
@Roger Moore: I agree that T probably didn’t believe what he claimed. It’s quite obvious. It was obvious to me at the time and it’s obvious in hindsight. The monsters he hired, or his top lieutenants hired, were “the policy”.
Dr. Richardson is interested in the people who believed his propaganda and what that means for the future of the US.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Trump is a racist. His father was a racist. I find it odd that there are people who insist on trying to soften this or deny it or blame his staff.
And as you note, Trump hired racists as part of his team.
Dan B
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I agree with what you say about T. I’ve always been aware he’s a con man.
That is not what Dr. Heather Cox Richardson is talking about. Her observations are on how a cohort of voters believed that Trump would cut through ” the corruption ” and get progressive legislation that would help them. Now that Biden is doing the things that T promised these voters will likely notice and swing towards the Dems.
That’s her point, not that T was actually speaking the truth.
Get it now?
Leto
@no comment: I’m so sorry.
TomatoQueen
@no comment: This is dreadful. I hope there will be comfort and strength for you and your husband, and I send you an electronic hug {}.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dan B: I got what you were saying, just confirming from my own memory. No doubt in my mind trump ran on what folks call Herrenvolk socialism. I’m so damn naive, I thought it would blow back harder on him. I had forgotten how he ran on anti-corruption, maybe because it was the most transparent of his lives.
I’ve heard of HCR’s later. That’s a sub stack, right? the hot new medium. I think half the Vox staff ditched their masthead for substack. I just can’t do any more subscriptions.
Mary G
@WaterGirl: He ran off a bunch of names of Jewish and minority congress people. Just a coincidence, I’m sure. I think the Democrats should call his bluff. Have injured officers testify, especially about the insurrectionists saying HWSNBN sent them, and they can call the people they named, who will perform like Hillary did in her 11-hour testimony about Benghazi. The questioners will look like idiots.
Matt
“Got here”? The Republican Party has BEEN there, since Reagan – they’ve just gotten less and less concerned about keeping it a secret.
The lesson they took away from Watergate was that there wasn’t any crime they couldn’t pardon themselves and their buddies for, and from Reagan on the sole mission of the Republican Party has been enabling Republicans to do all the crimes they ever wanted.
They used to keep the Birchers in the back; now they let them out in public – but they’ve been implementing their policies the whole time.
Dan B
@jlowe: Behavioral Psychology is making big strides in understanding brain plasticity, the power of propagannda, and the weak influence of logic and reason. Until the Western concept of “rational man” is long gone and buried we remain vulnerable to the dangers of malevolent ideas in the hands of wealthy and stealthy people and organizations.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The highest-ranking Rpeublican in Michigan says the Capitol assault was a hoax staged by leftists. The Republicans in the AZ state senate are trying to take legal action against the Republican election officials in Maricopa county. And now: Ohio
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Anybody saying this must be high.
And pretty rank.
Dan B
@Mary G: I was shouting at my partner who has been watching the trial when he reported that the Drm’s are showing all the people who got hurt. I shouted, “They should pick two or three cops who were badly hurt: The guy whose eye was gouged. The cop who lost three fingers. The cop who was stabbed with a flag. And repeat these short stories four times every day until it’s all the media picks up. 130 people injured is a number, a statistic. It gets zero traction. Fingers ripped off or eye gouged out gets our primitive brain stem totally focused. Use this behavioral psychology knowkedge!
Ksmiami
@Fair Economist: pushed far enough, we will fight back and vanquish them. Don’t include me in your pacifistic take. Just because we aren’t evil doesn’t mean we don’t know how to launch a drone strike
Another Scott
ObOpenThread – Krebs on Oldsmar water system hack:
More at the link.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ohio Mom
no comment:
I have also lost a loved one suddenly, without warning, and wow, that suckerpunch! It was unreal and confusing, until it grew into the usual sorrow. I hope you and your hiusband are able to find a satisfying way to commemorate your sister-in-law’s life despite the limitations imposed by Covid.
And for your dear dog, you already know you did the most loving thing you could: gave him a good and happy life until the bad days outnumbered the good and then you saw him off to a peaceful transition. I hope there is comfort in knowing you did exactly what needed doing.
Be kind to yourselves as you learn to live in your new, sadly diminished world. May you find solace in your memories.
Brachiator
@Dan B:
This is just wrong and historically inaccurate.
When did he promise this? Maybe hints very early during the primaries.
But I can’t think of much in the way of any legislation, apart from the tax cuts, that Trump outlined, proposed, pushed or talked about during his term in office.
Zelma
@no comment:
So sorry. Just so sorry.
gwangung
@Brachiator: I’m a little puzzled about why you’re objecting to a certain population’s PERCEPTION about Trump by referring to what he did. The two aren’t the same and it’s quite clear that his power came from successfully keeping the two separate.
I have no problems believing a fair number of people thought Trump wasn’t a normal politician and he was fighting against corruption and for progressive ideas.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I cannot convey the depth of horribleness that is Josh Mandel. He makes Hawley seem a smidgen less batshit crazy.
Brachiator
@gwangung:
I don’t think the analysis is accurate.
The Richardson interview is supposedly short. I will take a look at it a little later.
But I am skeptical. Also skeptical of some of Richardson’s other ideas about American history.
Benno
@craigie: self-replication virus…as an academic, I often feel my profession isn’t much better.
Patricia Kayden
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Patricia Kayden: I only saw Tanden’s tweets when someone else retweeted them, but from what I’ve seen of that hearing, she pissed off all the right people
westyny
@Baud: I noticed that, too!
Mary G
@Dan B: Exactly. One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic. Get the Metro DC guy who was yanked away from the defensive line, pulled down the stairs and beaten, tased, had a minor heart attack, and was then picked up by some of the rioters to whom he said something like “Thanks for saving me, I guess, but fuck you for being there.”
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: My financial software suggested I have too many subscriptions! Luckily I read fast, but I am going to have to see a really great product out of someone’s substack before I’ll get another one.
Suzanne
@dmsilev:
The rich-businessman part of the GOP believes this. But the Trump diehards don’t believe in anything except for elevating that which makes them feel superior to people who actually are their superiors.
Ohio Mom
Josh Mandel once ran against — and fortunately lost to — Sherrod Brown. A number of members of Mandel’s extended family made their support for Brown loudly known.
Is anyone keeping a list of Republican politicians so odious even their own families won’t vote for them?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@gwangung:
Nor do I, I’ve heard Trump supporters say exactly that.
Cathie from Canada
I haven’t read the earlier comments, so maybe this is covered upstream, but here in Canada, the Conservative Party is getting to be just as bad as the Republican party.
They’re playing footsie with groups like the Proud Boys, they adopt knee-jerk anti-climate change policies, and they just go along with anything Trump says even though Trump himself is profoundly unpopular here. The Conservative leader Erin O’Toole even has adopted the slogan “take Canada back” though he won’t say who from — presumably from immigrants, lefties, etc.
Another Scott
That’s how it’s done.
Cheers,
Scott.
LosGatosCA
The purpose of the Republican Party is to fulfill Jay Gould’s vision.
The base are the volunteers in Jay Gould’s Army to kill one-half of the working class, even if they themselves are collateral damage.
The exploiters of the base simply want economic darwinism – survival of the richest – thru predatory tax cuts and deregulation.
John Revolta
@Dan B: @?BillinGlendaleCA: @gwangung:
Whatever happened in 2016, there’s no getting around the fact that in 2020 10 million MORE idiots voted for Trumpf than voted in ’16. And there’s NO excuse for that.
StringOnAStick
@?BillinGlendaleCA: During the 2016 campaign tRump promised a replacement for the ACA that was cheaper, better in every way; that’s the herrenvolk populism. I also remember him promising to “save” Social Security and Medicare and “make it better”, that’s when I knew he could win because those positions are popular. Obviously he never had any intention of doing any of these things, they were just sales pitches.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this is apparently the building meme among the right, that it’s Democrats’ fault the Republicans will acquit trump, because the articles weren’t drafted correctly, or some such shit. AB Stoddard just tried out a version of it on the Brian Williams program
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: and the Doughy Pantload weighs in
Annie
@Brachiator:
Don’t you remember “drain the swamp”? IIRC. Tr*** also promised during the campaign to replace the ACA with something better.
stinger
Of all the weeks to run out of OTR After Dark pics. They’d have been a great respite after the horrors we saw and heard today. Think I will go look at some of the previous entries.
catclub
@Cathie from Canada:
I think Israel, Poland, Austria and Hungary, Phillipines and Brazilhave a lot in common tilting right-fascist. I am surprised that the Tories seem sane by comparison.
Martin
@cokane
Yes there is. white christians crossed below the 50% line in US demographics some time during the Obama administration for the first time in 400 years. In the 50s they could dominate two political parties. Starting in the late 60s they consolidated down to one, with the Dems holding onto some groups (labor). Obama showed that the GOP needs all of them to even have a shot at winning nationally, and now having all of them, and having them all hopped up on sugar pops isn’t enough to carry an election.
That’s the real disbelief over the 2020 election. A sufficiently energized white christian electorate should surely be able to win national office for the GOP. But it’s not. It’s not even particularly close.
Bush told the party they needed Latinos, and the party told him to fuck off. McCain told the party they needed Latinos when he lost, and the party told him to fuck off. Romney told the party they needed Latinos when he lost, and the part told him to fuck off. Trump told the party Latinos were rapists and that Obama was a Muslim Kenyan, and he won. They are all-in now. I agree with Adam, if Trump doesn’t run in 2024, the frontrunner is Marjorie Greene.
catclub
@Brachiator:
Somewhat old news since he has also apologized for saying so.
westyny
@no comment: Sincere condolences.
Brachiator
@Annie:
None of this is particularly progressive. It is vague. And Trump glommed onto the general Republican bullshit about the ACA.
It was great con man vague. Grifter vague.
But I suppose that it allowed him to shift his faux populist bullshit in any direction, left or right. He chose right.
When he talked about draining the swamp, conservative supporters took this to mean that Trump was going to remove the people in Washington, Democrats and Republicans, who were not listening and not giving people what they wanted. And these conservatives wanted, for example, for all undocumented people to be scooped up and deported, not allowed to drag out proceedings that kept them in the US.
The only other person I’ve heard trying to connect Trump supporters with a yearning for progressive policy has been Uncle Bernie.
Another Scott
(Sorry – on.my phone.)
https://reut.rs/3rH4m09
Is a Reuters story about a Zoom call of 130 GOP operatives talking about “forming an anti-Trump 3rd party” according to the headline. Near the end, it says only 40% of them voted to do so.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
@Annie: That was dogwhistling. He didn’t mean corruption as you and I think of it. He meant those corrupting our culture – you know, liberals and brown people.
Martin
@catclub: And then the next day he was caught on a hot mic saying that he stood by his original assertion.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@John Revolta: They got a check with Trump’s signature on it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: Nope, Fucker Carlson.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator:
And the Republican faithful believed him.
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin:
They changed the logo, but they didn’t *establish* it. They created the Aunt Jemima image by having several different women travel around the country playing “Aunt Jemima” at fairs and such, for *decades*. There were Aunt Jemima cookbooks, Aunt Jemima restaurants, and of course bazillions of commercials. Sticking a (small) drawing of a modern woman on the box doesn’t change that. *But*, a new story, with some controversy to get it noticed, will. It’s just a retcon, and that’s done All The Time in serial fiction of all sorts. The Dark Knight Batman movies make hundreds of millions and they’re not weighed down at all by the silly midcentury Batman, even though (unlike the century-old Aunt Jemima touring show) you can still see them every day on streaming media.
As an extreme example, imagine Quaker Oats put out a series of commercials with a woman looking like the current packaging cooking her pancakes for BLM protesters. There’d be a hue and a cry, but the old Aunt Jemima image would just be gone. As it is, the old stereotype and image will remain, and unless Quaker creates some kind of strong image for Pearl Milling Company it’s still going to be associated with the brand.
Sloane Ranger
@catclub:
Probably a dead thread but I’ll comment anyway. The Tories have a lot of support among immigrants from India and Pakistan and their descendents. Many of whom are small business owners to whom a low tax, low regulation economy appeals. Afro -Caribbeans who have done well for themselves are also attracted to the Tories for much the same reasons. Have a look at the Tory benches during PMQ’s and you’ll see a lot more non whites than you’ll see if you added up all non white Republican Reps and Senators. The backbone of my local Tory party consists of these people.
That’s what’s keeping the Tories from going full on fascist.
gogiggs
There’s that moment in The Big Lebowski where (national treasure) John Goodman angrily demands “Am I wrong?” and The Dude responds “you’re not wrong Walter, you’re just an asshole”
That’s you Hilary.
Nobody ever liked you.
I never fully understood what made you a viable presidential candidate other than your penis-adjacency to an ex-president I never liked to start.
Just GO AWAY. Your unlikeability is how we ended up with a Trump presidency.
You cannot help. You can only harm. Please, please, please, just GO AWAY.
You’re not wrong Hilary, you’re just an asshole!
(and to be fair, you’re probably not really an asshole and more a victim of a 30 year smear campaign. Which… sucks, but worked. You aren’t helping. YOU AREN’T HELPING)
TerryC
@gogiggs: I liked her and still do.
Miss Bianca
@gogiggs: Oh, hello, newnym asshole. Tell you what: why don’t YOU go away. And DIAF while you’re at it. “Unlikeability”, my ass. What are you, three years old? “I HATE YOU MOMMY, WHY DON’T YOU RUN AWAY!!”
gbbalto
@no comment: My condolences to you and your husband.
No One You Know
@laura: My personal take on why men hate women so much is that we’re the only thing on earth they can’t control.
The human female has only one predator on the planet. It’s the human male.