The family reason is that his family finally sat him down and told him he no charisma https://t.co/xuqROUSpH6
— Drew Savicki ?????? (@DrewSav) November 6, 2022
Thing is… at least some portion of the Basket of Deplorables know when they’re being treated as a circus sideshow for the private delectation of ‘the elite’. Repubs like TFG — or, famously, Newt Gingrich — succeed because their target voters feel the genuine kinship: Donny or Newt may’ve developed some fancy habits while living in Tha Big City, but even the low-info voter can tell that they actually love abusing women, mocking the less fortunate, and struttin’ their colors in front of the genteelly appalled. Just like them!
They’ll vote for a stuck-up smarty-pants like Cotton if he’s the only (R) on the ballot, but given a choice, they want one of their own kind… to adore, to fear, to construct elaborate fantasies of power and retribution around.
Why are you at a Trump rally. It's been 7 years of these. What new information are you trying to learn. https://t.co/2ocwyAS8ni
— Millard Fillmore's porcelain zither (@agraybee) November 5, 2022
At a certain point an uncharitable person might conclude they just want to go to Trump rallies and need an excuse for why they're there. Just listening to Mr. Trump for the articles.
— Millard Fillmore's porcelain zither (@agraybee) November 5, 2022
Just listening to Trump / DeSantis / RonJon / Walker for the articles.
To the Trump fans who found this post: I know why you're there, that is not mysterious. He's a waste of functioning organs and so are you. I'm asking why a journalist would go there.
— Millard Fillmore's porcelain zither (@agraybee) November 5, 2022
But we don't need reporters going to concerts unless they just like the band.
— Millard Fillmore's porcelain zither (@agraybee) November 5, 2022
Our Failed Major Media — the best-compensated, most visible portion — are serenely secure that *their* lives will never be seriously impacted by what happens in the legislature. They’ll keep their jobs, their circle of well-educated clever friends, their bodily autonomy. Worse comes to worse, they (believe they) can always buy citizenship in some other prosperous English-speaking nation (Canada, or Ireland, or New Zealand — very chic, this year!). They stick their mics into the faces of the TGF-Heads, record some gems, and pass the finished clips around while quietly snickering.
Problem for us Democrats: We sincerely don’t want to live in Revanchist Land. We can mock them, we can try and be reasonable and explain that their are (wonderful!) compensations for giving up on parochialism and fear as motivating factors, but there’s a (hopefully minority) portion of The Base that will never surrender to reason. And the Meedya Eee-litists running their Cletus Safaris are helping the GOP, by convincing those (R) voters who might otherwise be susceptible to reason that every Democrat ‘just wants to make fun of us true heartland Americans’, dammit.
War for Ukraine Day 256: Just a Brief Update Tonight
NotMax
Dolt 45 et al. as Nickelback?
//
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Agraybee really did get some MAGAt responses, like this freak:
Agraybee responded, with their usual incisive snark:
And all this person had to say in reply was this:
Incredible
In another thread, same account:
I thought their response was illuminating about the kind of people they are:
They like how he bashes people they hate and he speaks for them. That’s what it’s always been about. They can talk all they want how what a “happy, loving atmosphere” these rallies are and how the “Dumbocraps hate everyone”, but it’s bullshit contradicted by their own words
Major Major Major Major
I dunno, I think it’s good that somebody has eyes on them. They’re going to decide they’re the victims of mockery whether it happens or not anyway. Poor dears are just so put upon. Will nobody consider the needs of the white exurban car dealership owners.
Alison Rose
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): “a happy loving atmosphere”
Jesus wept.
StringOnAStick
Hey, at least all the time and especially money they spend going to his rallies means money not available for some other politician in their Pretty Hate Machine. Standing in line for 24 hours early means they weren’t out doing any GOTV either. Those people are pathetic.
JanieM
“Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
We have certainly declined since Vonnegut wrote that. Things found in gift shops sound like a very sane thing to base a life on compared to chasing Clickbait around the countryside while drooling over the chance to hate on the same people he hates on.
danielx
Happy loving atmosphere, yes yes.
even the terminology is the same – “rallies”. fucking incitement to mass murder is what they are.
ColoradoGuy
TFG, or his minions, figured out if the Grateful Dead could attract faithful groupies who would follow them all around the country, concert after concert, why not him? It’s a tent revival, country-music concert, and a Rush Limbaugh tribute band all in one. It’s Branson on wheels.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Alison Rose:
@danielx:
The same person even contradicted themselves. Bashing people they hate is not a loving, happy thing by any rational definition
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Well let’s not pretend they have a monopoly on being self-contradictory, it’s barely a gotcha in this day and age… any of their views taken in isolation is bad enough
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
OT: I’m thinking back to 2017 or so, when Republicans we’re trying like hell to repeal the ACA and disabled protesters were being forcibly removed from the Capitol by Capitol Police. I remember how horrible the videos were. How do those Cap Police Officers justify doing that? For doing the GOP’s bidding and removing those people, who were being directly impacted by what the GOP were trying to do (removing protections for pre-existing conditions)?
What would they do if the GOP repealed Social Security/Medicare? Surely many LEOs must have family and friends who would be fucked over by such a thing
Ten Bears
Wait … Cletus Safari is not a comment troll that led to my turning off comments … ?
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): the profession attracts power-hungry assholes
West of the Rockies
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
What, it’s a happy, loving event where we bash the people we hate. Is that so difficult to understand?*
*Yes, for anyone who isn’t a manic rage pixie.
Repatriated
From linked tweet:
Because there’s a non-zero chance that eventually he’s going to have a mental breakdown or medical crisis on stage — and they don’t want to miss out on the scoop.
In the meantime, it’s just covering celebrity for celebrity’s sake. Easy source of column-inches or video feed.
Alison Rose
@ColoradoGuy: HOW DARE you mention the Dead in conjunction with these assholes.
I know you’re kidding. BUT STILL. In a way, Dead shows were the exact opposite of this shit, because they actually were “happy loving atmospheres”.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
She’ll be wearing a white…. [checks notes] … sheet.
Ryan
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: It’s getting chilly out there. Probably should err on the side of a hoodie.
JoyceH
I remember when I was a teenager and young adult, I’d sometimes see clips of Hitler giving a speech, ranting and shouting, and the crowd going wild – and it was so baffling. Sometimes I wondered if it would make more sense if I understood German. Like, maybe he had an incredible way with words, some way to make a persuasive argument that was really compelling. But now I watch Trump, and he’s speaking the same language I speak and I understand the WORDS he’s using… But it’s so damn STUPID! And repetitive and boring and simply embarrassing for a supposed world leader. I think the answer is – it’s not the speaker, it’s the listeners. And the sane among us will never understand the appeal.
Elizabelle
I hope these people all get ass cancer.
And who wants to spend another moment thinking about them? They are to be shamed, not celebrated or publicized.
HumboldtBlue
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
Nailed that!
I read a comment on Twitter earlier that said, “DeSantis won’t run against Trump because he’s charmless and awkward and Trump will do to him what he did to Marco, and Jeb, and Ted” and I wonder if that’s so. I don’t see any path, unless there is an absurd amount of corruption, that DeSantis, who wants to be President in the way a 10-year-old-boy wants the Guns of Navarone playset for Xmas, ever generates enough actual human support to be anything than what he already is: a vicious, hateful, smarmy little fuck who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else in the room.
Watching DeSantis supporters and Trump supporters joust while in their speedboats, or bare-knuckle fights on the Villages Green, would be interesting to see.
Tehanu
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
This is actually the worst thing I have ever read. I weep for my country.
Elizabelle
@JoyceH: That’s a more intelligent comment than I made, for sure.
Yes. Visiting the German museums, saw a lot of video and film of the supporting crowds. And you are not wrong.
Rupert Murdoch and Rush Limbaugh pulled these people out from under rocks, and gave them a voice and purpose. They built the audience for the ugliness that pervades our politics and society; nurtured all the grievances. (Mind you, they were always there. But they were an undercurrent.)
These people should not be so loud and proud, and have such an enormous microphone.
Chetan Murthy
@Tehanu: On the one hand, you’re right: it’s horrendous. On the other hand, I’ve read (on this website, even) about how during Jim Crow, when they’d lynch an unfortunate Black American, the “good folk” would come out in their Sunday best, picnic, and take *pictures* and *souvenirs* of the event. It was a festive occasion, watching a poor fellow American burn, or hang, or be tortured.
So …. we’ve been this awful as a country before. And for a long long time at that.
Ah, well. So it goes.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Your quote selections are on point and your conclusions are sound. Problem is, Trump supporters don’t see the contradiction.
I think that some of these people may come around to reality. But it will be a long, hard struggle.
Aussie Sheila
@Elizabelle: Yes they did pull them out. And made a lot of $s doing so.
However imho, it’s not just a one way ratchet. A whole layer of working class and lower middle class people has been ‘created’ by the economic and social trends of the last 30 years, which is available for this type of ‘Tory mob’ politics.
A layer of people whose economic and social status has been battered by the particular economy we now have.
Is racism an accelerant?
Yes, absolutely.
Is it the whole answer? I think not.
The people who seek community in this garbage are people who have no community, imagined or otherwise, to which they can refer.
The terrible truth is that the Murdoch’s and their imitators spent 40 years creating a particular kind of political economy that left a generation and a half adrift, and then circled back to amplify and reflect back the resentments that it created.
I am not excusing the cruelty and stupidity of these people.
I just think, looking back, that this has been a loaf a long time in the proving.
Elizabelle
@Aussie Sheila: Very good comment
It’s the years and years of undertaxing the wealthy; allowing income inequality to reach such a tipping point.
Kay in Ohio talks about how there won’t be anything for the next generation; the wealth transfers via inheritance are happening now.
ColoradoGuy
The GOP has been doing show biz for a long time. I was a college student in California when Reagan had just been re-elected Governor … for cracking the skulls of college students. He was a really vicious shit, but the olds really loved his grandpa act, and the way he sneered at college people.
It’s show biz. The USA was the first country to experience media saturation, first with radio, then TV, and now social media. In the rest of the world, the menace of radio was accurately seen for what it is, and it was very tightly regulated, instead of handed over to Madison Avenue and big business.
T**** is a creature of show biz, just like Reagan, and knows how to work “his people”. And he’s sucked in the crackpot evangelicals, more so than Reagan, because he is more openly depraved and is authentically racist. Reality TV has trained millions of viewers to celebrate viciousness and predatory behavior, and T**** doesn’t need to fake that, it’s who he is.
piratedan
and I have to admit as much as I loathe these folks for being sucked in by the likes of Murdoch, Limbaugh and Trump, I do sit back and try to reflect on how we got here…
big Ag expands and the family farm has to become more efficient to keep up and when they can’t, they get bought out and the kids move to the big city… and Walmart comes in and replaces all of the small independent businesses that used to keep small town america vibrant, and so when the kids leave and the town you live in dies and society moves on into places where you’re not comfortable, with women having agency, gays being people and not everyone puts their trust in God and next thing you know we have a Black President.
and I don’t want to pretend that these aren’t real issues, the problem appears to be that the GOP simply stopped giving a shit about trying to solve them and told all of these folks that Dems, and blacks and gays and atheists were all to blame for these feelings of disconnection and the majority of these folks liked hearing their own biases confirmed and latched on. I don’t have answers to how to repair the rift our societal changes have caused, but it is more then damn apparent that the GOP has no intention of doing so as long as they can leverage it into votes.
Elizabelle
@ColoradoGuy: Canada does not allow the Murdochs of the world to pollute their airwaves.
Here, we let his poison hide behind the First Amendment, and the FTF NY Times writes paeans to Fox’s financial acumen, and, dare we say, audacity.
Aussie Sheila
@piratedan:
Yes all of that. Similar things, although not quite as dire happened in Australia. There has been a palpable shift in class politics in Oz noticeable by the late 1990s. The left/centre left here appears to have finally noticed the importance of politically organising the vast swaths of the new working class that has been difficult to organise.
Legislation that can meet to some extent, the income needs of women working in the care sector, and investment in new ‘green industries’ that can attract young and not so young, males with trade/technical qualifications.
It will be hard graft for the left for a number of years and there are no easy fixes. But I am confident that the new working class that has emerged from the destruction of the old, will find a way to confront these conditions.
I hate political and social nostalgia, and a lot of what I see from people who couldn’t organise a piss up in a pub is not much more than ignorance of the past 40 years.
However, reliance on simple ‘generational’ theories of politics is also very dangerous. How is the economy organising working people? Start from there, and meet people where they are, not where you prefer them to be.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Did he have to sell his business? I had not heard about this. /s
JaySinWA
@Chetan Murthy: I was thinking of the same history. Lynching parties with pictures and postcards to commemorate the events.
Making victims of a handy scapegoat as vengeance for crimes real or imagined is a powerful drug.
Humans seem to lack humanity all too often.
Chetan Murthy
@JaySinWA:
These last six years, I can attest to that. Bit-by-bit, I have learned to hate, to really hate some of my fellow Americans. To wish only the worst outcomes upon them.
mrmoshpotato
@Elizabelle: Nominated.
Aussie Sheila
@Chetan Murthy: Imagine how it felt to be a freedman during Reconstruction. Imagine how it felt trying to build cross racial Labor solidarities in the late 19th early 20th century.
I get the fury and the hate, but the only antidote is to get out and do the work with actual people. People do change, and they will fight for emancipation, but not because someone else says so.
NotMax
@Elizabelle
Canada is not spotless. See: Conrad Black.
Elizabelle
@NotMax: No country is.
He never had the reach of a Murdoch. Or a Limbaugh.
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Oh, a vengeful god is something they very much believe and find comfort in.
Martin
I lived in NY when Trump was building his persona. Nobody was allowed to avoid his private life – he shoved it in your face every chance he had.
yellowdog
@HumboldtBlue: Reportedly, he (DeathSantis) is getting a shit-ton of money from the billionaire fascist brigade.
lowtechcyclist
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
They’re the RWNJ answer to Deadheads. They should have one big three-day TFG festival, and call it CoupStock.
Coupstock Nation, yeah!
Princess
@Aussie Sheila: Yup. I mean, we’re all here on a blog whose owner was once a vehement Republican.
pat
Vehement?? Our bloghost used to be vehement???
Expatchad
Some of us fled the country to escape Republican extremism. I left after they stole the election for the Lesser Bush and Limbaugh ruled the air..waves. I am in the Philippines, as are over 350,000 other expats.
That’s no help to you who remain, but it does stress the the severity of the problem. There are probably huge numbers in Canada and Mexico.
I see no possibility of return, I do wish you the best, and spend most of my time watching the news.
Shalimar
@HumboldtBlue: A large percentage of the billionaires who really control the party have decided DeSantis is next in line after Trump. The logical thing to do would be to make him the VP candidate to Trump in 2024 and the successor in 2028, but that isn’t a possibility because Trump is too jealous of DeSantis’s popularity to pick him.
Shalimar
@pat: Cole was a curmudgeonly asshole. But an asshole with empathy for other humans, which is incompatible with being a Republican. It didn’t take too long into Bush’s 2nd term for the empathy to win out.
geg6
@Alison Rose:
Can’t say that was my experience at the one Dead show I was dragged to. Lots of groping, drug induced mania and asshole behavior everywhere. It was not a pleasant experience.
Frankensteinbeck
@Shalimar:
on Jeb Bush as the 2016 candidate.
lowtechcyclist
Off topic, Elon’s now calling his $8 special “Twitter Blue.”
Which rhymes with “Bitterblue” which is a pretty good Cat Stevens song from back in the day.
So now I’ve got “I gave my last chance to you, don’t hand it back to me, Twitter Blue” going through my head.
Displacing “make a little birdsite in your soul” which is all Mastodon’s fault.
You’re welcome. ;-)
lowtechcyclist
@Frankensteinbeck:
This. The billionaires may still be able to pull the strings of many of the Rethugs in elected office, but they don’t have that much influence, let alone control, over the Rethug voters anymore.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@lowtechcyclist: More like “Twitter Blows”
Eolirin
@lowtechcyclist: I’m not sure they ever had all that much control to begin with, there just hasn’t been a clear divergence in their interests until recently. Their only effective influence was in increasing hate and pushing anti-Democratic/Liberal messaging. They’ve otherwise been followers not leaders.
At least on the national scale. Locally it’s been different. Kochs have done a lot of damage to Wisconsin, etc.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Frankensteinbeck: There’s two leading cases supporting the fact that you can’t make dogs eat the dogfood: in 2008 the gopper who raised the most money was Ghouliani and he didn’t win a single delegate; in 1980 it was John Connally and he won a grand total of one delegate. And of course there was Nelson Rockefeller who ran three times in 60, 64, 68 to no interest outside of New York.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It does seem like the MAGA hats are the kind of folks that Married with Children was mocking; they were the cool kids for a moment back in High school, it’s been downhill ever sense and they are upset other people are getting the attention they deserve (like that bitch of their sister, everyone at the family dinners laughs at her jokes, just because her jokes are funny) And the point the MSM is enabling this crap by constantly interviewing them and reporting on Trump meth-a-poliza tour is correct.
Also, going by those quotes from that MAGA skank, their world view is so fucked up I wouldn’t be surprised to learn there is a lot of long term drug abuse in that crowd.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, but they do control the TV and radios shows that these dimwits listen too.
Baud
I assume several journalists are attending in case Trump makes news, but is anyone besides RF actually reporting on these events?
Baud
@Eolirin:
The billionaire influence theory is an offshoot of the liberal fantasy that GOP working class voters were just like us and would support us if they weren’t being manipulated by billionaires.
Geminid
Twitter polemicists AGrayBee and Ron Filipowski are both good follows. I’ll admit that I check out Filipkowski’s pre-rally coverage even though it’s pretty repetitive now. I don’t spend much time on it but neither does Filipkowski. He does not attend but rather monitors a right wing internet news site whose “reporters” interview ralliers.
I took an interest when Trump resumed his rallies early this year. I mainly wanted a sense of what direction he and his most zealous supporters were headed. I saw enpugh by this summer to conclude that both are in stasis or, more likely, entropy.
That’s not to say that Trumpism is not a dynamic force. But I think more dynamic politicians who find way to appropriate that movement are greater threats, because Trump himself is a weak candidate with fierce but narrow support.
His rallies are freak shows for sure, and it’s tempting to see these ralliers as representative of the universe of Republican voters. I don’t think they really are, and while I point and laugh at the ralliers I also remind myself not to underestimate our opposition.
brantl
I never would have thought that Tom (Sucks-balls-o) Cotton could make a decision I agree with, but he has, now.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Alison Rose: One of my nephews was a Deadhead. He traveled around following them and selling homemade candles out of the trunk of his car.
He turned out just fine.
trnc
He is currently governor of a large state and is almost certain to be reelected. Sucks, but the glass ceiling of human decency has been shattered quite a bit recently and I am sure as hell not going to predict that any republican minimizes their chances in 2024 by being the worst person they can be
trnc
@Baud: If republican workers (and, sadly, some lefty ones) weren’t influenced by billionaires, they wouldn’t be just like us but they also wouldn’t be who they have become.
Tony G
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Two of my former co-workers who I still casually keep in touch with — people intelligent enough to be mainframe systems programmers and who I recall as nice enough people in routine interactions — were (and I assume still are) big time Trump supporters (although — I think — they don’t attend those rallies). I guess they like the fact that Trump (and the newer leader “appointed by God”, Ron DeSantis) say and do the hateful things that they themselves are too constrained to say and do themselves. There are tens of millions of people like that out there.
Aziz, light!
@Martin: I was there as well, when the eructations of the short-fingered vulgarian were featured in every issue of Spy magazine.
Alison Rose
@geg6: Not sure where that was, but I went to dozens of shows and never experienced anything like that.
TheTruffle
@NotMax: Aw, don’t compare Nickelback to Dolt 45.
TheTruffle
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Shades of the woman in Florida who voted for Trump and then found herself not getting paid because of the government shutdown. She whined, “He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
Boo. Freaking. Hoo. Don’t make a deal with the devil and then cry when he comes to collect.
Paul in KY
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: His private life was scheming to be on TV all the time…
Paul in KY
@lowtechcyclist: Headliners: Kid Rock, Ted Nugent, The Horst Wessel Choir…
Paul in KY
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Alcohol for sure.
Paul in KY
@Baud: They’re just like us, except they are crazy & stupid & mean! See!
Paul in KY
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Have a cousin that followed them for a season selling pinwheels. He’s done fine too.
Paul in KY
@TheTruffle: Agree. Nickleback is a fine band, with several kickass songs. Try ‘Animals’ for a badass rock song.
Emily B.
Yep, I keep thinking about Spy’s Trump (and Giuliani) coverage, too, and how Spy’s trademark irony totally failed us. It was no defense at all against the hate and greed now fueling the rise of fascism. We all laughed at Trump and thought no one could ever take him seriously. We were wrong.
This is tough for a Gen Xer to admit, but…irony sucks.
BigJimSlade
@JanieM: God, he could really be pithy. (that’s an appreciation)
evodevo
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
All you have to do is look again at those historic photos of lynch mobs to see what the MAGAt means…the attendees are grinning from ear to ear, while happily murdering someone…it’s never far beneath the surface in these people, and Trumpy gave them permission to let it out from under the rock where it has been confined for 50 yrs or so…
Captain C
@Alison Rose:
And I still don’t understand how Ann Coulter was a fan. Even if her entire professional oeuvre is just a schtick, she still spread a ton of hate purely for bucks, which would seem to be contrary to the spirit of the whole Dead enterprise and community.