CPAC, America’s most prominent conservative gathering, convenes in Budapest, Hungary, next month with prime minister Viktor Orban as a keynote speaker. The EU has accused Orban of undermining democracy, free media and judicial independence https://t.co/v39XnsT8OD pic.twitter.com/VCANaJt9VA
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 5, 2022
… To which the obvious question follows: Can we change the locks before they come back?
America’s most prominent conservative gathering, founded on ideals of personal liberty and limited government, convenes in Budapest next month to celebrate a European leader accused of undermining democracy and individual rights.
The May meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is seen by some Republicans as a test of how closely American conservatives are willing align themselves with a global movement of far-right, Russia-friendly strongmen embraced by former U.S. President Donald Trump…
The Hungary meeting reflects a years-long push by CPAC’s organizers, the American Conservative Union (ACU), to promote Trump’s divisive brand of nationalist populism to foreign audiences. Last fall, a similar CPAC-branded meeting was held in Brazil, spotlighting Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right leader and Putin admirer.
The Hungary gathering spotlights an emerging split among Republicans. While some have grown more tolerant of Putin and other foreign leaders with authoritarian tendencies, others are alarmed at the association…
On one side of the Republican split are traditional anti-authoritarian conservatives, who value personal freedoms, limited government and free markets, says Gregg Keller, who was ACU’s executive director from 2011 to 2014, working alongside Cardenas, and now heads the Atlas Strategy Group, a political consulting firm. Keller describes this typically older group as “Reagan internationalist-type folks.”
Their ideology increasingly clashes with Trump’s strongest supporters, who Keller describes as “more populist, younger, isolationist folks,” who view Putin’s attack on Ukraine as “none of our concern.” Many Trump backers admire Orban for using his political dominance to push a conservative cultural agenda, from immigration crackdowns to restrictions on LGBTQ rights…
The kids, these days — they’re just not right!
Some U.S. conservatives are concerned about CPAC’s reliance on foreign sponsors and the exposure those groups get to influential conservative officials and leaders.
In February, a Republican strategist filed an anonymous complaint to the U.S. Justice Department, alleging that the ACU and its leaders have violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by failing to report money they accept from foreign organizations while promoting those groups’ interests to U.S. audiences. The written complaint, reviewed by Reuters, essentially serves as a formal request for a federal investigation. The Justice Department declined to confirm or deny whether it was investigating.
The complaint charges that foreign hosts of at least three overseas CPAC meetings, including CPAC Hungary, provided more than $150,000 in sponsorships for CPAC’s marquee U.S. meeting in February in Orlando, Florida. The complainant, a longtime CPAC attendee, expressed disappointment in an interview with Reuters over “how ACU has monetized CPAC to foreign actors” and given them a platform in the United States…
Launched in 1974, the annual CPAC conference has grown from a confab of conservative thinkers and politicians to a jamboree of right-wing celebrities and activists. With Trump’s rise to power, the conferences morphed from a bastion of traditional conservatism into a promotional vehicle for the populist president. The ACU has continued touting Trumpism since he lost the 2020 election and launched his campaign to overturn the results based on false voting-fraud claims.
“We’re almost seeing a political realignment in real time” on the American right, said Erick Erickson, a prominent conservative commentator, “and so much of it is in Donald Trump’s shadow.”…
It was a nice niche, an easy living, our little thing. Now the big money media’s taken it over, we can’t even get a taste!
Many U.S. conservatives have come to envy Orban’s use of government power to impose a conservative cultural agenda, said Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton University professor of sociology and international affairs who studies Hungarian politics. “Hungary has become, for the Trumpist Republicans, what Sweden used to be for the social democrats – it’s proof of concept,” Scheppele said.
Orban touts what he calls “illiberal democracy” and depicts himself as a Christian defender of European heritage. He uses anti-immigration policies to repel Muslim migrants and rejects liberal European positions on social issues, such as adoption by gay couples.
Rod Dreher, a columnist at The American Conservative, sees Orban’s Hungary as a model for post-Trump conservatism. Dreher, whose latest book, “Live Not By Lies,” was translated into Hungarian, took a selfie with Orban on a recent visit to Budapest and tweeted it with the message, “Hey haters!”…
notice me senpai https://t.co/YDDo2dgSQ6
— World Famous Art Thief (@CalmSporting) April 4, 2022
Dreher, author of the Benedict Option, seems to think he’s finally found a ‘community’ that will wall itself off from vile modernist opinions about general suffrage, female emancipation, anti-White bigotry, acceptance of non-monogamous sexual standards, and all the other terrible things that have befallen America since the 50s. The 1850s…
Viktor, just say “Jews”, this is taking forever: https://t.co/0BBuTQUxl8 pic.twitter.com/ULGb1Pheil
— Stephen Bush (@stephenkb) April 4, 2022
imagine explaining this to someone who doesn't keep up with incredibly online conservatives. yeah they're saying the Hungarian Presidency is a model for the governor of Florida because they pretend to fight pedophiles https://t.co/Dg8PIlDuEa
— self diagnosed Havana Syndrome (@MenshevikM) April 3, 2022
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) April 4, 2022
This is one of the many realities of Hungary that makes the American right-wing obsession with Orban so ludicrous. They love his grandstanding against immigrants and Muslims, but this tinpot demagogue has presided over one of the most seismic brain drains in Europe https://t.co/IZQzF3xM7W
— Ishaan Tharoor (@ishaantharoor) April 4, 2022
Daniel Moynihan’s ‘party of ideas’ line was sarcasm, Mr. Nichols. Plenty of ‘ideas’, yes — every one worse than the last. Which is how the GOP ended up where it is today…
The American right, once so confident and optimistic that Moynihan called the GOP the "party of ideas" in 1980, are now just a vessel for a grieveance-addled and resentful coalition led by clever grifters who will even support America's enemies if it harvests votes and dollars. https://t.co/0U22MyGQzc
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) April 5, 2022
NYC Meetup on April 3 : Proof of Life
tom
When this was posted downstairs I honestly thought it was a joke. But it’s impossible to separate satire from reality anymore.
Sister Golden Bear
A potential Hungarian-esque brain drain is a feature, not a bug, to them.
Meanwhile the spokeswoman for DeSantis says the quiet part out loud again: DeSantis Spox: If LGBTQs Leave The State Over Don’t Say Gay, Then “Florida Will Be Better Off Without Them”
sdhays
@Sister Golden Bear: Yep. The whole idea is get people who don’t support them to leave so they can further consolidate their power.
waspuppet
They say that like it’s some kind of contradiction.
Baud
If mainstream Democratic liberals were to suck some foreign leaders dick, who would it be? (Proverbial dick, female nominees welcome).
Spanky
My inner editor screams silently.
Miss Bianca
“We’re for limited government! Except we also want government to run everyone’s lives! We’re anti-authoritarian authoritarians! We’re isolationists! Who want a close and personal relationship with SOME foreign governments, as long as they’re run by dictators! IS IT WRONG?!! PS We R not a crackpot!”
Not sure that these sooper jeniuses would actually see the Hungarian brain drain as a *bad* thing…too many rootless cosmopolitans out there on the steppes, obviously! Just waiting to be replaced by the manly men of CPAC!
Maybe we can get them to just defect already?
TM
Reuters describes CPAC as “founded on ideals of personal liberty and limited government.” I doubt even the “founded” part but there can be no doubt that CPAC and the American right in general kicked those ideals to the curb years ago. Orban represents personal liberty limited by government; his polestar Putin, darling of many American conservatives, is all about no personal liberty under totalitarian govt. As long as we’re keeping the satanic gays (and libs–they’re all the same) down, it’s all good! The sum and totality of freedom for me is the freedom not to have to treat gay people as human beings!
This is all clear enough, but Reuters appears not to have noticed. In fact, the mainstream media of the entire west continues not to notice that the GOP has ditched Milton Friedman for the mini-me Stalin, Putin. They’re still treating the GOP as good-faith partners in constitutional democracy, which allows them to behave as authoritarian thugs while being reported on as normal politicians. It has to stop.
Brachiator
Wow. I was going to suggest that the ALL Fascism World Tour visit Brazil until I read more of the post.
So they can go on to Russia, North Korea, India.
More like founded on ideals of government by cult of personality and limited personal liberty for the masses.
I can’t believe that “heartland America” is falling for this crap. I wonder how they sell it on Fox News?
Spanky
The “it” y’all so richly deserve is not the “it” you think it should be.
VOR
I always wondered where “party of ideas” came from. They’ve had one idea – cut taxes – for my entire lifetime. Although they seem to have added bigotry to the mix.
germy
Old Man Shadow
Conservatives have always wanted liberty and freedom for themselves to act as they wish without consequence while simultaneously desiring the most brutal, unforgiving police state for everyone else.
Baud
@Miss Bianca:
If we win a few more elections, maybe they will.
debbie
I too thought this was a joke when I first heard it.
I heard a BBC report about Hungary last night. Plenty of Hungarians are unhappy about the creeping authoritarianism. Viktor shouldn’t get too cocky too soon.
I guess they’re all actually flying over there? That’s the kind of expense the NRA can only dream about.
Warblewarble
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, a poem by Wallace Stevens. Six ways of looking at the J#ws, by Victor Orban.
Baud
@debbie:
Huh? He just won a big election. This is the perfect time to be cocky.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: from your mouth to God’s ear.
Frankensteinbeck
The yearly internet troll conference finds this year’s trolling gimmick.
debbie
@Miss Bianca:
Wish they would defect. We need the space they’re wasting for decent, brainy people.
cain
They continue to be a grift operation with absolutely no scruples. They stand nothing other than being angry at the world
debbie
@Baud:
And to overreach (my hope).
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Unfortunately, that’s not new. Saint Ronnie just came up with using dog whistles for plausible deniability.
Old Man Shadow
@debbie: It’s probably much easier to hide all of the foreign dark money pouring into the organization if they have a friendly regime in place.
ian
@Baud: Jacinda Ardern
Hoodie
@Baud: That’s like saying a clapped out PT Cruiser is a proof of concept for cars.
Jeffro
What kind of brainworms does one have to have in order to consider the tinpot dictator of a small eastern European country to be the “leader of the West”?
Never mind, I don’t wanna know (and no links or pics if YOU know, please)
apocalipstick
So, by Mr. “Live Not By Lies” standards, Saddam Hussein was the legitimate and popular leader of Iraq.
hotshoe
Oh fuck every single one of those depraved specimens.
Not monsters, just the worst examples of humans.
Hoodie
@Jeffro: I thought the whole point of guys like Orban is that they’re not part of the decadent “West.”
Jay C
@Brachiator:
Most likely by simply focusing on the “American” aspect of things, ignoring the neo-fascism welling up in and around the host city, and limiting their reportage to the Usual Usual, i.e. carefully-edited snippets designed to repeat the Party line, and diversionary commentary by the talking-heads.
Never underestimate the ability of RW Media to Change/Avoid/Bury any subjects they don’t feel like highlighting: after all, Fox is the network that, for most of the Ukraine War, has been focusing on the REAL issue of importance for our time: Hunter Biden’s laptop….
Jeffro
They seem to serve it up straight, no chaser. Except it’s their cult of personality and limited personal liberty for those ‘other‘ masses.
‘Those who the law binds but does not protect (them), vs those (us) who the law protects but does not bind’, or however it goes…
Jeffro
@Hoodie: yes…they are part of the idealized and mythical ‘West’ that existed at some point in time long ago, a ‘West’ that must be reclaimed by purging the country of these hideous/corrupt/tainted ‘others’
Fascism 101
RandyG
Merely a variation of Poe’s Law:
Poe’s law is an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, every parody of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied.
Mike in NC
No doubt the dregs of the Trump regime will be flocking to Budapest: Bannon, Gorka, Miller, Navarro, Kushner, and the rest of the rotten bunch.
Bupalos
@Hoodie: the “real” west to this kind of character simply means “stupid white christian from 200 years ago” west. Just like “real Americans” are the ones who go to church not college.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg, fka Le Comte, etc
Nothing says “personal liberty and limited government” like a bedroom policing autocrat.
Retooling this new name of mine…
Mallard Filmore
@Old Man Shadow:
Slavery is when you own me.
Freedom is when I own you.
Brachiator
@Jeffro:
The right wing must figure that they have the suckers thoroughly hooked. They are brazenly open about their fascism.
And the suckers think they will be exempt from bad consequences. Wow.
Hoodie
@Mallard Filmore: Conservatives believe in a scarcity of virtue. There’s only so much to go around and it all belongs to them.
debbie
Jesus, what an asshole:
(Austin’s looks are priceless.)
Baud
@debbie:
Fixed.
CaseyL
Those execrable pious frauds love Hungary so much, they can damned well stay there. A general exodus to OrbanLand would improve the US immeasurably.
Any way we can fund an ad campaign encouraging them to move to Hungary permanently?
Kropacetic
@RandyG: Reminds me of a commercial I saw for razors the other day. I thought it was a clever, if somewhat over the top, satire of right wing resentments. Then it just kept going on and on until I realized “they actually believe this.”
I was instantly far less amused.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg, fka Le Comte, etc
@debbie:
Wow.
Matt isn’t too young to sign up.
hells littlest angel
Well, that’s succinct.
Mike in NC
DeathSentence should attend CPAC and announce his candidacy in 2024. That should stir up some shit inside the GOP.
Mike S
I wasted so much time spent laughing at the tri corner hat crowd at CPAC while thinking rational republicans would be appalled by them. Every day I am happier that my wife and I decided against children.
bjacques
Hungary has become Europe’s Alabama. Orban’s rhetoric to the contrary, CPAC attendees should have no problem finding rent boys.
And now I *really* hope NATO cyber warriors are at best using Hungary as a honeypot for Russian hackers.
Medicine Man
I read this as “CPAC is going hungry” and got excited for a moment.
Baud
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg, fka Le Comte, etc:
New nym!
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I think it’s the second new one today.
zhena gogolia
Door Dash is like Achilles and the tortoise tonight. My estimated delivery time keeps getting changed.
ETA: I ordered it 30 minutes ago and it was supposed to be 24 minutes. Now the estimate is 10-15 more minutes. Almost twice what they said.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Medicine Man: They’re going Hung’ry
Dan B
@Mike in NC: I wonder what Orban will feel about Miller and Kushner. They’re “internationalist” adjacent.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dan B: I doubt Jared’s going. It’s almost Memorial Day and someone has to supervise opening up the house in the Hamptons, making sure the boats and the jet skis are being tuned up, make sure nobody stuffed raccoons down the chimneys. It’s a hard knock life.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@germy:
Driftglass coined the phrase “Republican Detachment Disorder” many years back.
“This whole “I never had anything to do with this madness during my career as a water carrier for the modern GOP” is cognitive dissonance we…see among right wingers who’ve spent their lives voting against their economic interests. To believe [them] is to believe that the whole Trump Phenomenon suddenly appeared one day like a mushroom cloud over the offices of the RNC. [They] helped create this and are now simply embarrassed that the id of the modern GOP is president with a pack of like-minded people in Congress.
[They] have been busily ejecting clouds of ink to obscure the fact that they’re stripping off and burning their lab coats, notebooks and mad scientist goggles, fervently hoping we don’t notice that their decades long careers in mainstreaming the worst impulses of the GOP base helped create this shambling monster now ravaging their castles with the pitchfork and torch-wielding villagers at the monster’s side.”
He was writing mainly about TFG but the same observation applies to tumbrel-deserving hacks like Cupp and Nichols.
Uncle Cosmo
Deport them? Too much trouble. Collect their passports when they go through customs after they return to the States, burn them in front of them**, and tell them they are now stateless and they can wait right there for the next flight to any nation stupid or fascist enough to let them in. (A guy can dream…)
** Provide each customs agent with gloves, a propane torch and a large ashtray.
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie:
OMG
Dangerman
…proof of
conceptcontempt (for Democracy)…Matt McIrvin
@VOR:
It never left the mix.
Uncle Cosmo
@debbie: Too bad SecDef couldn’t have shot back, You got a problem with the color of my skin, you punk-ass child-trafficking bigot??
debbie
@Uncle Cosmo:
He sure looked like he wanted to!
RaflW
Rod Dreher has always had a very unhealthy obsession with gay people.
In general, I think he’s suffering from the “someone else is enjoying sex, and I can’t manage to please my wife or, often, even myself, so I want everyone else to be miserable” issue, and he thinks that teh ghey are particularly successful at making making it fun (though I suspect that’s more “we’re fabulous” spin than fully true), hence the obsession.
RandyG
@Kropacetic: That commercial must have been for Jeremy’s Razors, which is going after Harry’s now, since Harry’s withdrew its advertising from right-wing channels. Yeah, it’s quite real.
RaflW
It’s also completely absurd to start a piece about CPAC with the phrase “founded on ideals of personal liberty” given that all persons except white men would have no liberty under CPAC rule.
NotMax
What happened to “Buy American!” and “America First!”
//
Mike in NC
Don’t recall reading anything about this Dreher guy. Seems like ‘troglodyte’ isn’t strong enough.
WaterGirl
The way this showed up in my RSS reader, all I could see was this:
I was absolutely certain they were going to Hell, so Hungary was a great disappointment.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Uncle Cosmo:
I like the idea of sweeping away Putinists, and what that concept does to his mind.
My other happy thought is that of outright Chinese administration all the way to the Urals with Vladivostok being a “Special Status” protectorate of Beijing while basically owning everything West of the Urals as far as Minsk.
Trigger ever nationalistic whimper in the culture.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@debbie:
The Paul Bunyan like General Austin of the 82nd Airborne would crush that piss-ant (photo)
kindness
I see too many people in the media giving the Trump faction of Republicans undue respectability. For example, Trump people aren’t isolationist nationalists. These people are fascists. They want authoritarian government that they think they will lead. They want to redo Hitler’s ascent thinking they can ride the tiger without seeing that those tigers eat their riders every time eventually.
Kropacetic
@RandyG: 100 percent right. Also dont forget those nancies at Gillette.
/s
If that’s not clear
Steeplejack
Further from World Famous Art Thief:
patrick II
What amazes me is how much conservatives the world over hate gay people. Don’t they have friends or cousins or children or aunts or uncles or anybody else they know who might be gay?
Ksmiami
@Baud: lol it’s also one of the porn making capitals of the world so maybe Madison Cawthorn isn’t too far off…
Ella in New Mexico
In the scheme of things, these jokers represent a relatively small fraction of America and out of that fraction, many have the means to move to any country in the world and take up residence there unfettered by the annoyances of a free and diverse democracy.
When they puke this shit out someone needs to ask them what’s keeping them from moving to Russia or Hungary where they will obviously be in a paradise.
Brachiator
@NotMax:
American Fascism First?
mrmoshpotato
@VOR:
Cut taxes for the rich, deregulate businesses, fuck the environment, and fuck social programs.
Miss Bianca
O/T – OMG, I’m at the CD7 caucus meeting (via Zoom) and we’ve got a gold bug as a Democratic candidate – China! They’re eating out lunch! No troops in Europe! Let’s not provoke Russia! Nixon took us off the gold standard! Oh, Jesus, SHOOT ME NOW
ETA: Oh, for fuck’s sake, SHUT UP YOU IDIOT. Another “Democrat” who just seems to hate Democrats
ETA2: Oh, all politicians only care about re-election and should be taken out to be shot? SHUT UP, ASSHOLE!
WaterGirl
Why don’t Republicans care about the actual pedophiles in their midst, like Matt G, rather than the imaginary pedophiles that they make up?
Is it wrong to hope that there is a military base in the state Matt G represents, which General Austin could potentially
close downmove somewhere else?debbie
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
I had no idea he’s so tall!
Ksmiami
@patrick II: I think the loudest anti-gay ppl are closeted and self-hating for it. Everyone else just goes on their way…
debbie
@Miss Bianca:
Why don’t you run?
Miss Bianca
@debbie: To take over Ed Perlmutter’s seat? I’m flattered, but I’m already listening to one underqualified idiot, I don’t care to expose myself as another.
WaterGirl
@debbie: Google says he’s only 6’1″ or 6’2″. but he sure looks like a giant in that photo. Is Matt G shorter than Pete Buttigieg?
jnfr
I very much like your obvious question.
Baud
@Miss Bianca:
We can whisper smart things in your ear like Cyrano.
Brachiator
@patrick II:
A number of conservatives who hate gay people are themselves gay.
Roger Moore
@Hoodie:
They also believe in a Calvinist idea of virtue. Virtue is about who you are and whether God likes you, not about what you do. They are virtuous because they’re the right kind of people. It doesn’t matter how much and how horribly they sin, because everyone is a sinner. The difference is God has forgiven them of their sins.
Miss Bianca
OK, now Brittany Pettersen is up – I think she’s going to be a contender!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
sounds like a groomer
Starfish
@patrick II: The only thing keeping the conservative movement together at this moment is hatred and fear of the other.
It doesn’t matter if they have gay friends. They will make mental exceptions for the people they know. They won’t think through the consequences of their actions until it impacts someone they know and like.
Starfish
@Miss Bianca: Are there other candidates? That sounds terrible.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
They would have to show me the receipt from God. And God would have to show his or her ID.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: Don’t laugh, but I do have a “Balloon Juice Wit and Wisdom” file on my computer. I have you smart commenters whispering in my ear all the time!
Kropacetic
@Miss Bianca: I can’t speak to your qualifications personally, but I see all these yahoos who pass muster on the right and wonder sometimes if our standards might be a little too high.
Baud
@Kropacetic:
And that’s how Baud! 20XX! was born!
Miss Bianca
@Starfish: Brittany Pettersen. Ed Perlmutter is nominating her. She is a state Senator and former state Rep from Jeffco. I think she’s going to be just fine (she’s also blonde and telegenic, fwiw, not that that should matter but she’s going to go up against some Mr or Ms Goodhair or other on the GOP side, so it can’t hurt.)
Kropacetic
@Kropacetic: That is to say we probably lose out on some people who may actually be good candidates with worthy ideas because they think they can’t run if they aren’t a lawyer or at the top of a specialized profession or didn’t hit enough lower electoral benchmarks.
ETA:
You joke but there are a lot of offices where we may have some people reluctant to run but who may, nevertheless, perform well.
Also, no way you could be worse than say, Trump.
Miss Bianca
@Kropacetic: lol – thanks, I think? : )
Kropacetic
Of course.
Engaged and politically literate puts you above X percent of candidates and X is certainly in the double digits.
Starfish
@Miss Bianca: I think I remember her name from when she was on the education committee.
Urza
Not just the peons, need to convince their funders to move their operations and money over to a grifting autocracy. They’d be fleeced quickly. Let them buy a whole city for their conservative followers thats all in English or something.
Sister Golden Bear
@sdhays: More than that, as I’ve said all too many times before, their goal is to eradicate — a word I don’t use lightly — LBGTQ+ from public life. Although some of them are already talking about eradicating us period.
@Miss Bianca: Brain drain is a feature for them, not a bug. Both in Hungary and at home.
JoyceH
@Sister Golden Bear:
Huh. If you subtract out the LGBTQ community and Disney, does Florida even HAVE an economy?
Miss Bianca
@Starfish: And, just to give you an idea of how bad it’s going to get out there for CD7…behold, here’s one of Brittany Pettersen’s GOP rivals, who claims abortion is a sacrifice to the demon Baal.
Oh, man…now I feel bad for ridiculing the Gold Bug guy. Because it can always, always, be so much worse.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Sister Golden Bear:
Holy god. I’m sure the various tourist boards from Miami to Key West are thrilled
Sister Golden Bear
@JoyceH: White dinosaur-riding Jeebus will provide manna for the fewer but better Floridians. //
Plus there’s still snowbirds to milk dry.
Citizen Alan
@Sister Golden Bear: I wonder if Florida or Texas will be the 1st state to try and criminalize homosexuality as a test case to go up to the Supreme Court and try and get Lawrence V Texas overturned. They both have to be incredibly jealous of the fact that it’s going to be fucking Mississippi that takes down abortion rights
opiejeanne
@Miss Bianca: That sounds really annoying. Why aren’t people booing him (I assume it’s a him) off the stage?
debbie
Urza
@Roger Moore: OOH I know this one. Calvinists believe in the elect, predestined for Heaven from birth no matter what they do. And everyone who isn’t predestined, obviously anyone not part of their social club, is going to Hell, no matter how good they are. Seems like a perfect choice of religion for conservatives the world over.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@JoyceH:
To quote Buffett from the closing line in “Changes in Latitudes”:
He recorded that in 1976, referencing Bryant’s gay panic of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.
Citizen Alan
@patrick II: I remember Molly ivins back in 1992 being absolutely aghast at Pat Buchanan’s speech and the number of republicans who applauded loudly despite having gay family members.
Miss Bianca
@opiejeanne: We’re Democrats. *Some* of us believe in being polite and respectful and inclusive. (Not me, obvs – I’m more of the efgoldman “fuck ’em” school.)
Besides, the delegate vote was 237-4 in favor of Brittany Pettersen. I think that sent a pretty clear message.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Miss Bianca:
Thats what toolbag Seth Gruber is preaching in his eliminationist anti-medical privacy speeches from sea to polluted sea.
He flat berated a room that was half full of Catholic Right-to-Lifers that they’re failing by behaving civilly to people who approve of medical privacy unencumbered by religious dogma.
These guys want a war. Dehumanization of opponents is part of the rhetorical underpinning of that.
Peale
@Sister Golden Bear: I guess I can take some pleasure in the fact that Andy Sullivan realized yesterday that these anti-trans laws are actually going to consume gays and lesbians, too. “But I thought it was all about preventing teachers from coaxing children into sex reassignment surgery.” Yeah. Umm. No.
Pedophilia panics are never good for the LGBTQ community. So the question is how long it will last, how many people will be ruined, and how much progress is going to be lost over the next few years.
Oh, and one of Desantis faith advisors just got canned for sexual activity with a student when he was a teacher. Just icing on the cake. The fundamentalists for years have had a problem similar to the catholic scandal with their own ministers. I’m thinking that’s why they are taking it out on secular public schools.
RaflW
@Mike in NC: I go back and forth about giving him any attention. He writes for AmCon, which is pretty low impact, but he is considered to be an ‘intellectual’ for the hard right (so, yeah, take intellectual that bar as low).
StringOnAStick
@Starfish: The evangelicals are all in on the gay hate. My oldest sister the Southern Baptist stated many years ago that “all gays should be shot” . Her surviving son came out 5 years ago and there’s been some modifications in her hate list; she’s always used her religion for who it lets her hate and I’ve never heard a peep about God’s love, forgiveness or helping the poor from her. She and her husband lost the older son to brain cancer that is very likely due to exposures while in the initial Iraq invasion.
opiejeanne
@Miss Bianca: oh good. I haven’t had as many years of being a democrat as most of the people here, so I’m not nearly as patient and polite as they.
Another Scott
ICYMI, another good thread by Popehat, this time about glem’s thin skin and performance outrage of the day…
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott: Popehat also found time today to take a two-by-four to Tom Cotton
as a dumb guy, all I could come with was “John Adams pisses on you from beyond the grave”
Jay
@Baud:
his LBGTQ referendum went down in flames of spoiled ballots.
apparently most Hungarians don’t hate as well as Orban and his Party.
Peale
@Jay: I’m sure they’ll change the rules to stop it next time. But it’s good that enough voters realized that using children to silence the gays is wrong. But those would pass in about 30 states. Yeah, I’m opposed to showing kids porn in school or anywhere. But knowing that Orban thinks two men saying that they are in a relationship in public is pornographic is hard to make voters believe.
Sister Golden Bear
@Citizen Alan: unfortunately it’s probably only a matter of time. Though they may try to overturn the SCOTUS’ trans rights decision first, as a warm up.
OTOH, with the current court they might try for a package deal of Griswold and Loving too.
SFAW
@Baud:
Except Miss Bianca isn’t Christian.
[Miss B: sorry, couldn’t resist a bad (attempted) joke.]
SFAW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It would be a good day for America if Tom Cotton were to piss off someone who punched him in his throat. Repeatedly. Fucking asshole.
RaflW
@patrick II: Many conservatives are stunningly awful to their gay relatives. I had dinner the other night with a guy who’s brother called him recently to tell him that he’s “worried for his immortal soul because he’s going to hell” on the path he’s on (he’s partnered to a man and living an out life). He’s basically estranged from his whole family.
These stories are nauseatingly common.
Villago Delenda Est
These vile people are all enemies of the Constitution of the United States. Revoke their passports, their citizenship, and deport the lot of them to Russia, where they can join the genocidal legions of Putin.
Baud
@Jay:
I didn’t know that. That is good news.
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
Far be it from me to disagree with you, but can I suggest giving them a choice? Either Russia, or the devout glibertarians can choose Somalia (but don’t get to keep their guns)?
[NB: This suggestion is based on the perhaps-outdated idea that Somalia was/is a glibertarian paradise. If that is no longer the case, then I’m certainly OK with any/all them being shipped to Russia, North Korea, Syria, Eritrea, or Turkmenistan.]
Uncle Cosmo
Generally you could’ve stopped after “I think” because we all know how poorly you rub two synapses together –
But IMHO you’re pretty close to Da Troof here. (Stopped clock, twice a day?)
Human sexuality (like that of arguably every other multicellular organism) runs along a spectrum (likely more than one). Precious few people are 100% hetero- or 100% homo- for that matter, but these folks’ Big-Bad-Daddy-In-The-Sky demands they peg that meter in the right (far, Far Right) direction…and when they feel the stirrings, however faint, of …something else… it scares the living bejeezus out of them, and they hold on as hard as they can (what recovering alcoholics call “white-knuckling”). Because if this often-abusive-and-miserable life is how B.B.D.I.T.S. rewards them for being good, how bad do you think it’s gonna get when He finds out they ain’t??
(Classic example of the closeted Far Righty was Bob Bauman, MD GOP Congressman from the Eastern Shore. No one could have been nastier or more abusive toward “teh ghey” – til in 1980 police arrested him for soliciting sex from a 16-year old gay prostitute. He appears to have come to terms with his sexual orientation but never abandoned his “conservatism.”)
SFAW
@Uncle Cosmo:
I’m sure that the “woke” (four decades before “woke” became a common term) libtards made him do it, or set him up, or some such.
catclub
@TM:
This. Black people, female people, liberal people, handicapped people, those baptists,….
Ramalama
@Medicine Man: me too