Apart, of course, from rooting for injuries?
The Trump phenomenon, and what will happen to the GOP when he’s gone, is difficult precisely because a whole bunch of seemingly contradictory things are true at once, and he’s the glue holding them all in place. 1/10
— The Fig Economy (@figgityfigs) September 2, 2023
For instance, it’s true both that the GOP as it existed pre-Trump created the conditions for his emerging and being embraced, and also that he’s a sui generis figure in degree if not in kind. 2/10
That is, the GOP was primed for a Trump type racist/populist demagogue, but he carried a ton of advantages individual to him (fame, wealth, media-created persona as successful businessman) that others just don’t have. 3/10
Some random GOP ghoul doesn’t have his pull, nor does Vivek Ramaswamy, nor do his no-account kids. It was the happenstance of the GOP being ready for Trump, Trump existing, and Dems coming off of two terms in the White House that allowed him to win. 4/10
When he dies, it’s exceedingly unlikely that the GOP is just gonna “go back to normal” (whatever that means), because its abnormality is what led it to embrace Trump in the first place. But also, somebody else won’t be able to just slot into Trump’s place. 5/10
That’s why I think the most likely outcome is all the different factions of the GOP jockeying to be his true successor. The Haleys of the world will be like “I worked with our dear Trump up close so I know how to replicate his success and learn from his failures.” 6/10
The Mike Pences of the world will be like “I will represent the evangelicals who so trusted our dear leader and also I will not try to kill me specifically.” 7/10
The Vivek Ramaswamys of the world will be like “I ran Trump’s speeches through a language learning model.” 8/10
It’s legitimately unclear what, if any, of these the GOP will coalesce around. I think it’s more likely that they fracture than anything, but the threat of deep losses for a decade or more can do weird stuff. 9/10
Anyway, both “Trump is sui generis and everything will change when he’s gone” and “Trump is a result of structural conditions in the GOP that will outlive him” are true, but only in combination with the other. 10/10
Yup, it’s electoral college efficient and also they need Trump’s voters and are all worried that they’re specifically Trump voters, not GOP voters.
— The Fig Economy (@figgityfigs) September 2, 2023
kind of reminds you of the arguments amongst the Allies about whether to assassinate Hitler.
he was the glue that held the Reich together, yet was also a key reason it was going to lose the war
Sadly,what will happen will be the worst thing. because thats generally the pattern
— Old Bones (@Frasier67Blank) September 2, 2023
It's why they're coming up with alternative ways to holding on to power even after the oldest GOP voters die off and aren't replaced by young voters. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, the independent legislature theory, normalizing overturning elx results.
— Lindsey (D) (@oufenix) September 2, 2023
NotMax
Home again, home again, jiggedy jig.
16 hours door to door. Which is right in the neighborhood of what it should be, as opposed to the 32 and 31 hour nightmare return trips the past two excursions.
RobertDSC-iPhone 8
When 45 dies, he should get none of the ceremonies due a deceased President. His name should be legally prohibited from any use as a named facility by the military. No official portrait should hang anywhere.
sab
@NotMax: That’s impressive when you are travelling halfway across the world, albeit still in the same country.
Four hours driving diagonally across Ohio, and flying commercially wouldn’t be much faster.
JoyceH
@RobertDSC-iPhone 8: No state funeral, no “lying in state”, no casket honor guard.
Honus
that allowed him to “win“
I always feel this should be in quotes because he lost both elections by significant margins.
Msb
1. Agree.
2. thanks for giving the whole Twitter thread. As I’ve never had an account, I can’t see tweets anymore. And I’m not giving Musk another account at this point.
Betty Cracker
@RobertDSC-iPhone 8: Sometimes it feels like there’s an unspoken consensus outside the cult to strike Emperor Tang from the history books. It’s not surprising since he’s a one-man crime wave who’s been trying to overthrow the election for nearly three years now, not to mention bug-fuck nuts.
Hopefully he’ll drop dead before another Repub is elected POTUS so we won’t have to experience the trauma of his official portrait being installed in the White House. And perhaps we all agree to skip the 45th occupant in future honors as you suggest — a national embarrassment we collectively endeavor to sweep under the rug.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Congratulations! Glad you got lucky on the transit.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Betty Cracker: On the other hand, we don’t want to forget that history completely – a good model might be Germany’s method of acknowledgement that for about twelve years in the middle of the 20th century, the chancellor’s office was occupied by Adolf Hitler. They don’t honor him, nor do they pretend that he wasn’t there. (Of course, he was only dislodged by a bunch of nations he’d attacked bombing his capital city into rubble, and it took decades to rebuild. Hopefully America can avoid that endgame.)
sab
@Honus: Well he did win because he was elected president legally although many more voters did not want him.
I am old and the electoral college problem wasn’t a problem for most of my lifetime. Popular vote and electoral vote coincided from pre-civil war until 2000. Then it all blew up.
Y’all want to blame Boomers, but I blame gen-x. You kids need to fix this. It wasn’t a problem before you were voting.
sab
@Betty Cracker: We shouldn’t sweep it under the rug because it did happen. Hopefully his legal travails will prevent a presidential library from exalting his minimal accomplishments.
ETA I am very fine with no public notice or honors when he finally croaks. Just dig a hole at Bedminster and bury him. Never mow it again.
But we should never ignored that his administration happened. A national disgrace that our electoral setup allowed.
Betty Cracker
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Good point.
@sab: I blame regional factions more than demographics, though there’s interplay between the two. Like the Fig tweeter says in the OP, Trump’s coalition is “electoral college efficient.”
Tim Ellis
@sab: I think that was largely just a function of a less polarized electorate though, yes? At least in recent years the issue seems to be that everything is razor thin and that leads to very narrow races which means vote efficiency matters a lot more.
As always, I could be wrong.
VFX Lurker
@sab:
Gen-X here. Grew up in Michigan. Moved to California 20+ years ago for work. Still here.
We’re voting. We’re just not voting in the states where our vote matters to the Electoral College.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Wish the reason for it hadn’t occurred but luxuriated sitting alone in a row of three seats both on the Maui to LAX flight and the return LAX to Maui.
sab
@Betty Cracker: You are probably right about electoral college efficient. This did happen under our constitutional electoral system. Twice in my grandaughters’ brief lifetime, and not before for a century. Every time they vote they know their votes might not matter.
Something is broke in our system. I am tired of blaming Boomers because it is much broader than that and thus not just us.
Baud
@sab:
Millennials are kind the problem. They’re more liberal than Boomers and Gen X, and they’re a huge cohort and could make a big difference, but they’ve been successfully manipulated into being cynical and disaffected, which lessens their influence.
piratedan
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: agree with you, there’s a danger in attempting to blank him from history. If we ever recover this Democracy, it’s important to document what led to his rise. What unique forces brought him into being and how they manipulated him and vice versa to bring him into power.
Its part and parcel of accepting the history of racism and killing that toxic notion of “American exceptionalism”. I would much rather be willing to tell the truth regarding our nations’ history and continue to strive to be a country that works to be true to its founding ideals.
Patricia Kayden
@Honus: Agreed. I’m still not sure that he won in 2016 but I’ll let that go as my opinion is worthless on that issue.
His loss in 2020 should put the GOP on notice that he’s a loser candidate. But we have the opposite situation where idiots like Huckabee are promising violence if Trump isn’t elected in 2024.
Maxim
@piratedan: Much better to memorialize TFG by teaching the yoots what a disaster he was, and why, than to pretend he didn’t happen.
sab
@Baud: Scary but true. They are getting their news from very weird sources. I have 3 millenial stepchildren. I often think (and say) “where did you get this news nugget? Straight from Russian psyops? You live in this country. Do you really believe this [whatever]? “
NotMax
@sab
“It’s on the intertubez so it must be true.”
//
sab
@NotMax: But only the stuff that fits their fears. The rest is BS. And everyone has different BS filters. One of my stepkids
wasis sort of antifa, beating up on racist punks, because he thinks racism has no place in punkdom. Others might disagree, so in his younger years he actually fought them a lot.Liz Cheney would think he was misguided.
Baud
@sab:
I fear the possibility that they will turn right when they get older.
sab
@Baud: Depends on the kid. My stepkids grew up in a multiracial environment that I missed. There were eight Black kids in my high school and I was friends with four of them. My stepchildren went to the same high school almost half Black.
My nephews and niece are all half Asian, and my grandchildren are all Black.
It’s a different world in urban America, and Rush Limbaugh types have no hold here. Other weirdos I haven’t dreamed of do. Hoping Russians lack the creativity to deal with our new environment.
Baud
@sab:
Yeah, I’m talking about the population, not individuals. Don’t mean to suggest probable, just possible. That cohort seems to have the seeds IMHO.
p.a.
There might not be another tRump to coalesce around, but that doesn’t mean conservative media and their MSM consorts won’t try to create one. tRump voters may not be GQP voters, but they’ve tasted success and if the GQP-conservaturd complex can create a reasonable facsimile tRumpists will vote GQP.
I don’t think their odds of success are great, but they’re not 0.
sab
@Baud: My oldest grand-daughter is super smart and does not want to be thought of as “smart with great potential”. She says it was just one test. But really she is working in a nursing home where she is needed and everyone loves her. Amazon spit her out. Restaurant diner exploited her. College bored her. She wants to be useful. Salary-wise she will be screwed, but I cannot argue about her usefulness. God knows young women like her are desperately needed where she is.
ETA Hopefully at some point later in her life she will come to her senses about pay, but I cannot say she is doing anything but good with her life meanwhile.
Baud
@sab:
Income is rarely correlated with worth.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@NotMax: We’re on our way out, just starting our long-delayed vacation. The 20 hours or so starting this afternoon are going to be a little complicated. I tried to plan this trip to be humane to us but some inhumaneness seems to be inevitable.
sab
@Baud: I spent a good chunk of my early working life worrying about providing for kids I never would have. Had I known I wouldn’t have been providing for kids I would have made very different choices.
Life is funny that way. “Har har! Guessed wrong on that choice!”
Baud
@sab:
More money for you. Enjoy!
Betty Cracker
Fetterman tells it like it is:
Yep, sometimes you do just gotta call their bullshit.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Definitely nominated.
Mai Naem mobile >
@Betty Cracker: when the FOX News chyron identifies TFG as (D) or ‘former Democrat President TFG’, you’ll know his power within the GOP is finally over.
@sab: i think it’s way beyond generational. It’s the media, loss of local newspapers+the rise of social media, loss of local news radio almost exclusively to RW radio,it’s Citizens United, campaign finance, consequences of the Southern strategy, Newt Gingrich allowing industry insiders to advise congress instead of congressional staff, Mitch McConnell ignoring senate norms especially to load up the Judiciary with RWingers which led to the weakening of the VRA. The Dems have been outgunned on so many levels and have been mostly playing defense in a whack-a-mole game.
Montanareddog
@Baud:
Ain’t that the truth!
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
Can I too haz NYT byline? This shit’s so easy to barf up, and I don’t even need the ‘special sauce’.
ETA – Of course it’s fake!
satby
@NotMax: Welcome back! Hope the trip and mom both were good.
Betty Cracker
@Tony Jay: Extra points for using “firebrands,” which I’ve been reading as “kook” since about 2009 or so. :-)
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
Everything Antebellum is new again. It explains the trend for huge beards, anyway.
New Deal democrat
@RobertDSC-iPhone 8: “When 45 dies …. No official portrait should hang anywhere.”
Cover his official portrait with a curtain as Venice did to the one Doge in 1000 years who tried to overthrow the Republic.
Betty
@Betty Cracker: Fetterman also trashed J. D. Vance and his fake concern for the people in that interview. A welcome voice.
eversor
@Mai Naem mobile >:
Reagan’s embrace of the religious right is the big one. Every GOP leader since Reagan has won by bible thumping. They want the heirarchy, patriarchy, and authoritarian structure their religion and savior demand. The GOP wins by racking up the Christian vote and that’s it’s base.
Love for Russia came out of the churches over gay rights and gender role same for love of Orban and they dragged the party with them. Jan 6 was a Christian riot as was the Jericho March before. The Federalist Society was founded by Leo specifically over abortion and to make his religion law. Barr, Alito openly admit they do what they do because Christianity must be in charge.
They are going to get it to because our side will point the finger and talk about everything but Christianity.
Tony Jay
Man, the Legion of Jesuit Trolls are really going all in with this ‘Bore Them Back To Church’ double-bluff character. What will they think of next?
New Deal democrat
Remember that the one big advantage Trump personally has had electorally is the ability to bring rural white working class voters out in droves. With one exception so far – Youngkin in VA – when Trump himself isn’t on the ballot, they stay home. And in Youngkin’s case, it was probably McAuliffe’s gaffe rather than Youngkin affirmatively that drove their turnout.
Giving the devil his due, Trump is an excellent demagogue, road-testing pitches that will resonate with the people who show up at his rallies. I don’t think any other GOPer in the near future is going to be able to match that. So they will have to rely on their gerrymandered State legislatures and even more important, their SCOTUS majority.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
I don’t believe you.
Betty Cracker
@Betty: Do you know which outlet conducted and/or aired the interview? I’d like to see or read the whole thing but can’t find it.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
Well, it was fake when I wrote it. Who knows what hot, steaming garbage they’ve shovelled out the door today.
Geminid
@eversor: I think Republican reliance on the Bible thumper vote is an electoral dead end for them, at least in purple states and districts.
I cannot prove this proposition, but this fall’s Virginia General Assembly elections could provide some data points.
Maxim
@Tony Jay: Authentically fake. The best kind.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
My wife and I first visited Maui in November 2001, when people were still leery of flying after 9/11. We enjoyed similar luxury.
Geminid
Wisconsin jackals and others may find a recent, long article in the Washington Post interesting. The subject is abortion rights politics in Door County, Wisconsin and is titled, “Abortion Upends a U.S. Bellwether” September 3.
ETtheLibrarian
I don’t know what will happen specifically, but generally the GOP will simultaneously try to distance itself from tRump and embrace him. The beltway press will let them get away with it and many GOP types that aren’t trumpers will happily buy into it all.
LiminalOwl
@sab: All of this. Do we really want people growing up even more ignorant of history? We need to kearn from our shameful mistakes, not pretend they never happened.
eta: also what @piratedan said
Marmot
Yep, declining part of the electorate and all that. There will be fewer of them over time, and those ones will get crazier.
It was really a boost for awhile for the Reps to bag the evangelical vote in the 1970s-80s, but that step stool is sinking into the mud.
lowtechcyclist
@Maxim:
Tru dat. I’d say we need a Guy Fawkes Day kind of ‘homage’ to him, but it does need to be something broader that would address our legacy of racism and grievance-mongering that TFG fed off of.
Geminid
@New Deal democrat: McAuliffe’s gaffe might not have sunk him had he run a more vigorous campaign. Every Democrat I’ve talked to here thought he was overconfident and complacent. McAuliffe underestimated how attractive a candidate Youngkin could be.
But it was a dumb thing to say. Youngkin’s team knew it, and had an internet ad out thst night and TV sds out the next day.
Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, and Ralph Northam would not have made that gaffe. McAullife knew how to talk to committed Democrats but not how to talk to voters at large.
Geminid
@Marmot: The Bible thumpers also produce a reaction away from the GOP among secular Independents.
randy khan
I am very interested in what happens to the GOP when Trump is off the table, but I’m also very interested in what it would take (other than his death or disability) to get him off the table. I’m pretty sure the party professionals would have like him to be off the table for this election, but he’s not cooperating, and probably won’t cooperate as long as he’s around because the grift is too profitable and because he craves the spotlight (probably more the latter than the former, but they’re both factors). So nothing will happen unless his voters get tired of him or somehow (I don’t know how) become significantly less important as an internal voting faction.
lowtechcyclist
@randy khan:
A long prison sentence might do the trick.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@RobertDSC-iPhone 8: If Biden is president when Trump dies, he’ll be too gracious to skip all the ceremonies.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
You misspelled celebrations.
marklar
@eversor: “Reagan’s embrace of the religious right is the big one.”
I’m mostly in agreement. I’d posit that it’s not just Christianity. Just look at how popular Vivek Ramasmarmy is with the base…it’s fundamentalism– not any one religion– that is at the heart of it. In countries where Christianity is the dominant religion, it ends up being fundamentalist Christianity, but that doesn’t hold up in The Taliban’s Afghanistan (Islam), Netanyahu’s Israel (Judaism), Mohdi’s India (Hinduism), etc. etc. etc.
When I read your posts, I often mentally replace the word “Christianity” with “fundamentalism” and find myself nodding in agreement. A little unsolicited suggestion: You might find that other readers of this blog will do the same if you broaden your target to all fundamentalist worldviews.
Betty
@Betty Cracker: I saw the story on Threads. The headline described Fetterman and Vance as two populists as if they were the same. Fetterman described Vance as a performance artist. I can’t find the post. I see on Huffpost that it was an interview with a group of reporters so each may have reported different parts of the interview.
Fled the US
@VFX Lurker: It’s also not like Gen-X is a big generation. We’re a very small generation that is swamped by those before (boomers) and after (Millennials).
Brit in Chicago
@sab: Weren’t we promised high-speed trains? Not yet reached Ohio?
catclub
Trump was a disaster because there were all kinds of ‘norms’ that he just walked right through. They were all gentlemen’s agreements, kind of like the Constitution in Great Britain.
Dorothy A. Winsor
It’s hard to say what effect would result from Trump’s death. He didn’t create the MAGA base. It was there waiting for him to draw it out and give it life and form.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty Cracker: I think this is it on HuffPo.
Betty Cracker
@Betty: Thanks for looking. I’ll keep digging
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Thanks! That has the part about impeachment, but there was also something about Vance I wanted to read that’s not in the HuffPo piece.
Marmot
@Geminid: They sure do repel level-headed people toward secularism. And that’ll (hopefully) increase as their dwindling numbers leave the crazier core.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty Cracker: Fetterman makes me laugh. Not every politician has the guts to say “circle jerk” in an interview.
bbleh
… he carried a ton of advantages individual to him (fame, wealth, media-created persona as successful businessman) that others just don’t have.
AND, let’s not (ever) forget, a truly significant major psychological disorder. There’s an element of narcissism in almost every politician imo, but I can’t recall anyone as malignantly so as he. And there are sociopaths aplenty in the Republican Party, but they all seem to have that characteristic coldness, whereas Trump really puts his heart into it.
I agree that it was The Apprentice — along with The New York Times, the FBI, the Russians, et al. — that put him over the top, but I think his peculiar attraction, his cult status, is due mostly to his psychopathology.
Betty
@Betty Cracker: Business Insider has the story I saw. Found it via good old Google.
bbleh
@Baud: seconded (or thirded or wherever we are now), especially given the source.
Betty Cracker
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It would be funny if he sent Hunter to represent the family.
Betty Cracker
@Betty: Found it — thanks! Here’s a link for anyone else who’s interested.
Brit in Chicago
@sab: Yes: it happened once, and we need to be aware of that and ensure that it does not happen again.
Kay
Fetterman’s sharp edge is good to have in the Senate, but his campaign was interesting not for a sharp edge but because it was playful. It was fun. I hope Democrats hang onto whoever created that theme and stuck with it – it won’t work for every pol but politics is so grim now it will come in handy. Oz was also the perfect opponent because he couldn’t stick to his own bit- he was clearly play acting at being a vicious Right wing nut. His heart wasn’t in it.
Doug R
@Betty Cracker: His mugshot in a closet would be fine.
Kay
I feel like Biden has the potential of being good w/a playful campaign. They touch on it w/ Dark Brandon and I think it works for them.
It’s a good fit. Normies, unlike base Democrats, don’t like being worried all the time :)
Our delicate, skittish, fickle normies like to be entertained. I swear to god it’s like handing a grenade to a squirrel letting these people determine things.
Tony Jay
@randy khan:
We’ve seen how quickly GOP voters can move on from their ‘deeply held beliefs and certainties’ with Bush Minor, who went from God’s Own Stetson-Strutting Commander in Chief to ‘that wetback-loving RINO from New England’ within an atomic clock-tick of him failing to feed the Base’s endless appetite for fake victories.
If he’s got a talent, that’s Trump’s. He understands that to stay relevant and adored by the MAGAP you’ve got to make your fights vicariously their fights. Every defeat a conspiracy, every success a punch thrown on their behalf. He did that during his campaign, during his Presidency, and even more successfully during his post-Presidency decline into indicted doomsville. He’s brought them along with him every step of the way, and he was able to do that after 2020 because no one on the Right was willing or able to do the hard work of tying the many, many failures of his Presidency to him, making the case that he let his Base down, because he was greedy and lazy and too cowardly to use whatever means necessary to keep the Democrats from taking back power.
If there’d been someone with the cynicism and charisma to make THAT the basis of their appeal to the MAGAP then they could have given the Base the vicarious thrill of victory and allows them to move on from having to defend Trump, but no one did (or could), so he stayed on top by default.
rikyrah
@Tony Jay:
Their only truly deeply held belief is White Supremacy
Tony Jay
@rikyrah:
Yup. Wrap that up in a suit and tie and feed it to them ten times a day between now and the Election and the MAGAP will follow you into hell (or however far a Rascal’s battery charge allows).
Ben Cisco
@rikyrah: And it’s a belief that they will NEVER give up.
Glidwrith
@sab:
@Betty Cracker:
@Baud: Sorry, but the problem doesn’t lie with different generations but with the gutting of voting rights as Lindsay(D) says above. Ever since Bush the Lesser, Thugs have been working hard to gerrymander, make it impossible to get ID for voting, eliminate people from the rolls, gutted the VRA.
They win before voting even starts because they narrow the electorate to folks that have time to deal with the system.
And better off folks tend to vote Thug.
Glidwrith
@randy khan: The party professionals are already moving to eliminate him: challenges under the 14th Amendment in multiple states to keep him off the ballot. As razor thin as the Electoral College has become, it would take only one state like Florida to destroy his viability as a candidate.
Barry
@p.a.: ”
There might not be another tRump to coalesce around, but that doesn’t mean conservative media and their MSM consorts won’t try to create one. tRump voters may not be GQP voters, but they’ve tasted success and if the GQP-conservaturd complex can create a reasonable facsimile tRumpists will vote GQP.
I don’t think their odds of success are great, but they’re not 0.”
Remember 2008? The GOP clearly screwed things up horribly, enough to elect a black president.
Two years later, they had the House; four years later, they had the Senate. Eight years later they had the trifecta.
Jackie
@Betty Cracker: Pretty sure this is it:
https://news.yahoo.com/john-fetterman-says-jd-vance-230609331.html
Bill Arnold
@sab:
Russian propagandists generally exploit existing, already-identified fault lines in a society. They often identify and amplify existing divisive narratives/memes that are struggling to pick up and go viral; that’s much easier than crafting them, and requires much less native-level cultural awareness.
I agree that Russia is a relative monoculture when compared with the US.
stinger
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Yes — before they were MAGAts, they were Tea Partiers.
Bill Arnold
@Betty Cracker:
LOL. I have never, ever, described something as a circle jerk, but an impeachment of Biden on no real evidence would qualify. And it might even sting some GOPers a bit.
Miss Bianca
@Geminid: I read that article – interesting stuff!
Betsy
Ah! Those delightful words, especially the first one
wjca
You really, really don’t want that to happen. Because remembering the disasters is how you avoid making the same mistake going forward.
Definitely don’t canonize him. But don’t forget either.
Wapiti
@RobertDSC-iPhone 8: Congress should pass a law, as soon as the Dems hold both houses, to make a more broad, “no insurrectionist should receive these honors…”
...now I try to be amused
@RobertDSC-iPhone 8: The Romans had a custom called damnatio memoriae (damnation of memory) for people like Trump. The Venetians used it on a Doge who attempted a coup:
Citizen Alan
@VFX Lurker: Indeed. The problem has less to do with Gen x not voting, and more to do with Gen. X getting the hell out of their shithole red states for bluer pastures.
Citizen Alan
@Tony Jay:
Thank you for the disclaimer. I honestly wasn’t sure for a second. There needs to be a variation on Poe’s Law that applies to the media instead of right-wing internet committers. DougJ’s Law, perhaps?
Citizen Alan
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I know I’m a very bad person for saying this, but I honestly hope Shitgibbon’s eventual death is followed by a wave of mass suicides by his followers hoping to follow him into heaven. Like the heaven’s gate weirdos.
Betsy
@Mai Naem mobile >: I agree, and a thread that advances pretty much all of these is the orginal rural bias of the electoral college and congressional representation,
which started out as a mere horrible rural bias two centuries ago,
but as more and more of the population resides in urban areas (that have no equivalent representation in the constitution as states have), the set of fewer and fewer rural voters have gained an outsize ability to influence national politics.
The urban areas (and their suburban communities around them) are now where nearly all the people live and where nearly all of the nation’s wealth is produced and nearly all human activities occur,
but inactive, idle (or resource-extraction-focused) states like Idaho have a more and more outsized say.
It used to be (100-200 years ago) that normal/representative people lived in most all the states (as most of the population was in fact rural)
but as the population has shifted ever more into cities, the imbalance between electoral power and actual population has grown geometrically if not exponentially,
so the weird ability of corn-husking gynophobes to control the national body politic has metastasized.
And now we are where we are.
Tony Jay
@Citizen Alan:
Verisimilitude is my middle name*. And it’s rather easy imitating one of the Infotainers. Just pick a conclusion 180 degrees away from the truth, stuff in as many slimy, lib-baiting digs as you can fit into 30 or so words and you’ve got a payday!
*Well, one of them. The others including Bohemund and Cecily, of course.
Paul in KY
@Dorothy A. Winsor: He’ll want to show up to grin.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: That would be so badass (provided Hunter is OK with that).
Paul in KY
@Doug R: That should be his ‘presidential’ portrait. Maybe done as a paint by numbers work.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: The problem with that, Tony, is that requires the MAGAgots to admit that they got played by the buffoon and they ain’t gonna do that (it appears).
Paul in KY
@stinger: Before they were ‘tea partiers’ they were just asshole racist republican choads.
Tony Jay
@Paul in KY:
Now, y’see, the beauty of it is, it didn’t. They didn’t have to accept that they were played at all. They could pay themselves on the back for being loyal, trustworthy patriots who sacrificed everything to take their country back, it’s just that the man who forced himself to the front of their movement (‘cos of his charm) turned out to be a cowardly fraud when the hammer came down.
It’s too late now, of course. The time for this was last year before Trump was able to parlay his theft of documents and various indictments into yet another conspiracy theory. Now they’re too invested in this stage of the con.
unctuous
@sab:
I’m not.
; )
Pittsburgh Mike
@Baud: Of course the young will get more conservative as they age. We *boomers* were supposed to be the revolutionary generation, after all, and you can see how that turned out.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: I see your point.
unctuous
@Pittsburgh Mike: The majority of boomers were never really revolutionary. The radical stuff was a means to an end, that being the wresting of power from the established groups in power. It was a stalking horse. The actual cause didn’t really matter.
This was apparent when boomers became the status quo. It wasn’t a mere sidestep to being more conservative as they aged, it was wholesale dismantling of the rights and institutions they had once fought to put into place, a jettisoning of the supposed values they purportedly held dear.
Boomer women are past childbearing age, so they don’t need Roe any more. Boomers are now The Man, so civil rights only limits their power. Boomers will not have to deal with the long-term effects of pollution. Apres moi, le deluge.
They were able to ditch their erstwhile revolutionary values because they never really held those values. It was all about getting power, baby.
And the dismantling of things like abortion and civil rights and the earth movement is in itself a flex. As if to say, “we made it, we can unmake it”.
They were the power behind making Trump (a boomer) president, a power move fuck-you to everyone else, just like Caligula elevating his horse to the senate.
It’s never been about revolution or justice or about any particular cause. It was always about power.