Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

… gradually, and then suddenly.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

We will not go back.

In my day, never was longer.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Let there be snark.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Copping to the Con (Open Thread)

Copping to the Con (Open Thread)

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I believe the story of U.S. politics in the Trump era is partly a tale of marks refusing to believe they’ve been conned. An example: my sister recently had a conversation with a MAGA relative who expressed a belief so incandescently stupid that I was momentarily taken aback.

In response to my sister’s query, our relative said he trusted Trump as president to put the country’s interests above his own in a national emergency. At least more than any other option, including Biden.

I’ll understand completely if you assume the person who said this is a blithering idiot, but I know otherwise. The thing is he’s prideful, and he refuses to admit he’s been conned.

Despite copious evidence to the contrary, he chooses to believe every other politician in the country is an even more rapacious crook than Donald Trump rather than accepting what’s glaringly obvious at this point — that Trump supporters have been taken in.

It’s a goddamn irritating dynamic. But apparently sometimes even poor judges of character and insight-free propaganda consumers wake up all on their own without a liberal blood relative beating some sense into their fucking heads.

Here’s an example in the form of a newly enlightened far-right school board member who ran on an anti-woke platform and then discovered who the real manipulators are. Most of the folks commenting here understood what the oligarchs were up to way back in 1999, but better late than never? (Texas Tribune)

When Courtney Gore ran for a seat on her local school board in 2021, she warned about a movement to indoctrinate children with “leftist” ideology. After 2 1/2 years on the board, Gore said she believes a much different scheme is unfolding: an effort by wealthy conservative donors to undermine public education in Texas and install a voucher system in which public money flows to private and religious schools.

Why did Gore run to overturn an indoctrination scheme that she later discovered didn’t really exist? It sounds like she genuinely believed the bullshit about children being exposed to Marxist and anti-Christian propaganda. That’s a sharp contrast to the cynical Republican political operatives who found Moms for Liberty-type groups — they know they’re lying to gain political power.

Anyhoo, here’s to waking up, however late the hour.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

122Comments

  2. 2.

    rikyrah

    More than a few Orange Menace cultists have lost family members because of their support for him. For them to admit that they had been conned, and lost family for said con…

    they’d rather stay in the cult.

  3. 3.

    SomeRandomGuy

    Very few people who’ve been conned go to the police, both because most cons involve some sort of dishonesty (“You will return my valuable Stradivarius?”), and because of embarrassment.

    The worst con, though, is believing in a hero, because believing in a hero is taking on some of the hero’s glory for your own, or so I’ve heard, and so I do believe. This is why cults are so difficult – both the great love-in effects, and the “but he’s my hero!” effects.

  4. 4.

    bbleh

    … marks refusing to believe they’ve been conned.

    You bet!  It’s hard enough to admit to yourself, especially when you’ve invested a chunk of your own identity (“I support him because I’m really like him, or at least I wanna be”), but when you’ve gone all public — to your family, your friends, your neighbors, and anyone else within hearing whether they wanna hear it or not — it’s almost impossible.  And when you add the social / tribal pressures and the implications for status — what would the others at Our Church think?!? — it IS impossible.  You simply can’t back out of the cult, because the cult is your entire social environment; it’s the world you live in.

    See also under “Closet, Coming Out of,” etc., etc.

  5. 5.

    kindness

    People can be smart and idiots at the same time.  Those traits aren’t mutually exclusive.

  6. 6.

    twbrandt

    @bbleh: funny thing though, is that when people do drop out of a cult, they are usually vociferously anti- whatever cult they were in. I know quite a few former now anti-Trumpers who will never in a million years vote for a republican now, so angry are they at being taken in.

  8. 8.

    Betty Cracker

    @kindness: You’re right, and I see the evidence with my own eyes daily. But it’s hard to reconcile sometimes. I just want to shake them and say, “OMFG, how can you be so fucking gullible?” (It’s better if my sister handles those conversations, not that her gentle logic gets better results. It causes fewer hard feelings though.)

  9. 9.

    Soprano2

    In response to my sister’s query, our relative said he trusted Trump as president to put the country’s interests above his own in a national emergency. At least more than any other option, including Biden.

    That is so mind-numbingly stupid because we have an actual example of what happened when there was a national emergency, and it was the EXACT OPPOSITE of this. But yeah, it’s really hard to get people to admit that they were conned by someone. Saying “I’m sorry, I was wrong” is a hard lift for a lot of people. Con artists count on this aspect of human nature. I listened to a “This American Life” episode yesterday about a Russian reporter who was poisoned when she was in Germany, and it took her 4 months to admit that’s what might have happened! She thought a) I’m a nobody, even though she cancelled a trip to Ukraine because there was a credible report of an assassination attempt on her life and b) I’m in Germany so I’m safe. I was astounded she discounted the possibility because of the report that they were going to try to assassinate her. Did she think they would give up just because she stayed in Europe? Evidently that’s what she thought, and she paid a high price for it.

  10. 10.

    Kay

    Public school teachers vote 60 per cent D – one of the more reliable D voter groups, so that’s why media and Republicans want to eradicate public schools too.

  11. 11.

    Jeffro

    spot-on, Betty, spot-on

    these idiots fell for it, they were scared into it, they were brainwashed into it, whatever – they fell for it at the beginning, and have just doubled down and doubled down again on it, ever since.

    true story: in the summer of 2016, when it became horrifyingly clear that my RWNJ dad and bro were going to just sigh and jump on the “Hillary is the Devil” train and justify their vote for trump that way, I told them “to pick something – ANYthing – that will serve as a red line or wake-up call about what trump really is.  Because with trump, it will be a bottomless spiral, and every six months, you’ll be in a place that you never could have imagined…only to continue sticking with him.  draw that line now.”

    Tell me I was exaggerating!

  12. 12.

    Jeffro

    @rikyrah: she is the BOMB

    slightly related: Fro-ette saw Rep Moskowitz on the Hill earlier this week and was able to (quickly) tell him that her dad is a huge fan.  I swear, if I meet Reps Crockett, Moskowitz, or Raskin in person I am going to make a huge tongue-tied fool of myself.

  13. 13.

    Papa Boyle

    Convince the conviceable. Enough people get convinced, even some of the unconviceable will consider opening their minds a little.

  14. 14.

    gene108

    I can’t believe 74 million adults were conned in 2020, when they voted for TFG.

    I think they know full damn well who they vote for and what policies those people support. It’s their idea of what’s strength  or honesty look like that’s the problem.

    Blurting out whatever brain droppings are foremost on your mind, in a loud of tone of voice, is considered being straight forward by a shockingly large group of men, for example. A politician that fits this image will be popular with them. It’s their base idea of straight forward is that’s the problem.

    Politicians can just align with their pre-existing biases on what they imagine a strength and honesty looks like regardless of what the politician does or the politician’s actual background.

    Bush, Jr. played into this with his “ranch” and clearing brush and attempts at a Texas drawl.

    It’s part of the whole “who’d you want to have a beer with” fantasy in choosing a president, which isn’t as ridiculous as it seems. People want leaders they might be comfortable with in a one on one setting. I think that’s understandable.  It’s part of a politicians job to appear relatable.

    Like people’s views on strength and honesty, relatable also gets recast as a politician not appearing smarter than they are for a lot of voters.

    It’s the predetermined idea of these things that makes voters decide on what attributes they like in a politician. The politician just plays into these ideas.

    It’d take re-evaluating ones one views on strength, honesty, relatability, etc. in changing their political views. It’s a heavy lift for most people.

  15. 15.

    Trollhattan

    Now hear me out guys, I learned that Elon Musk…is a dick. Shocking, right?

    Elon Musk fired the head of Tesla’s Supercharger department late last month, along with her entire 500-person team. It was a confusing decision that raised more questions than answers, especially considering that Musk had recently convinced every other automaker to agree to make their electric vehicles compatible with Tesla’s chargers. Assuming Reuters’ latest report is accurate, though, firing the Supercharger team wasn’t a business decision or a shift in strategy. It was simply Musk getting mad at someone for pushing back on what he was asking for and punishing the entire team as part of his tantrum.

    According to Reuters’ sources, Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla’s head of charging, had already laid off between 15 and 20 percent of the Supercharger team when Musk began pushing for more layoffs. When she pushed back, he not only fired her but also got rid of her entire team at the same time. Since then, Musk has been attempting to do damage control, tweeting about continuing to expand the charging network and reportedly attempting to rehire some of the laid-off Supercharger staffers.

    The clearout reportedly came after a change in leadership and appears to be part of a wider pattern of chaos and confusion going on inside Tesla:

    Tinucci was one of few high-ranking female Tesla executives. She recently started reporting directly to Musk, following the departure of battery-and-energy chief Drew Baglino, according to four former Supercharger-team staffers. They said Baglino had historically overseen the charging department without much involvement from Musk.

    …And yet, in addition to canceling four planned Supercharger sites in New York, Tesla’s global supply manager recently sent an email to contractors and suppliers — and seen by Reuters — telling them to “please hold on breaking ground on any newly awarded construction projects.” It also included the line, “I understand that this period of change may be challenging, and that patience is not easy when expecting to be paid!”

    With the Supercharger team gone, Tesla brought in the energy team to take over and handle winding down various charging projects. They also apparently received little retraining to ensure they could do their jobs well, with one contractor saying the Tesla employees he’s spoken with since the mass firing “don’t know a thing.”
    https://jalopnik.com/musk-reportedly-fired-supercharger-team-because-chargin-1851478586

  16. 16.

    Suzanne

    The thing is he’s prideful, and he refuses to admit he’s been conned.

    I think the issue goes beyond pride. It’s envy. It’s aspiration.
    Many of these people want to con others.

  17. 17.

    bbleh

    @twbrandt: yeah I think some people who do get up the nerve to do it can sometimes go overboard in the opposite direction.  But I also know some (eg family members) who are more measured about it, eg they now identify as “independent.”  That obviously eases the social consequences, but imo it requires a certain independent strength of character that I think a lot of MAGAts simply don’t have.

  18. 18.

    Cacti

    That’s why it takes a trained professional to deprogram someone from cult indoctrination.

    Because most people think of themselves as smart, and are reflexively resistant to the idea that someone made a sucker of them.  To the point that they’d resort to self-harm rather than admit they’d been had.

    See: Jonestown, The Branch Davidians, etc.

  19. 19.

    gene108

    @Trollhattan:

    I wonder if Tesla shareholders will push for a new board of directors to force Musk out.

    The positives from his earlier salesmanship seem to be outweighed by his current behavior and decision.

  20. 20.

    SomeRandomGuy

    @Soprano2: The one thing good about Covid-19 is, we learned that Republicans would rather see their fellow Americans die, than lose their cushy jobs and have to go into lobbying… sooner than they would have otherwise. Even people who had the freedom to speak up refused to speak up, because they don’t want to be seen as DISLOYAL for… trying to save lives of their fellow Americans.

    If you were waiting to see how low they’d go, there it is: they killed people.

    And I get “don’t criminalize policy differences,” and I’ll go for that, the moment someone is threatening criminal prosecutions for sitting on your[1] fat ass, engaging in *literal* gross negligence, not the BS negligence you accused Hilary Clinton of, and KILLING PEOPLE.

    Because “killing people” is the right term for “taking actions you know damn well will cause people to die.” And the reason “gross negligence” was invented was because, if you’d done the least little bit right, we wouldn’t think of criminal prosecution, BUT YOU DIDN’T.

    [1] in this case, I use the generic “you” but only because I can’t think of an appropriate vile epithet for Republicans of this era that won’t render this family-unfriendly in the future. That’s assuming calling someone of this era a “Republican” isn’t fated to be the WORST insult EVER. “They hated democracy so much, they refused to use the proper name of the opposing political party, refusing to say ‘Democratic[2]’.”

    [2]  Seriously, you’re not ALREADY accusing them of hating “democracy” so much they refuse to say “Democratic”? WHY NOT? If they’re too rude to use the proper name, and never admit they’re that petty, then *we* get to explain things to the public, right?

  21. 21.

    Hoodie

    People want leaders they might be comfortable with in a one on one setting. I think that’s understandable.  It’s part of a politicians job to appear relatable.

    Like people’s views on strength and honesty, relatable also gets recast as a politician not appearing smarter than they are for a lot of voters.

     

    This may be a big part of Trump’s appeal.   He continually does the “I’m smarter than all those eggheads” thing, which gives comfort to his supporters, who at least subconsciously sense they’re not that well informed and feel insecure about it.  Trump makes it ok to be dumb.

  22. 22.

    S Cerevisiae

    I have friends and relatives who have also fallen into the cult. Nobody wants to admit they were conned but I still try to get through to some of them. Fortunately I also have some good liberal Democratic relatives as well, some of us keep it on the dl to try and avoid extra conflict.

  23. 23.

    dmsilev

    @gene108: The current board certainly won’t do anything to rein in Musk (or push him out); it’s stacked with relatives and cronies and so forth, and mainly exists to be a rubber-stamp for every crazy whim that he has.

  24. 24.

    Jackie

    I ♥️ Ted Lieu!

    Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) demanded that Chairman Jim Jordan’s (R-OH) House Judiciary Committee hearing be ended, calling it “beyond stupidity.”

    At Thursday’s proceeding, House Republicans sought to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt for declining to turn over audio tapes of President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur that did not result in criminal charges.

    Lieu began his time on the committee by pointing out that Jordan had defied a congressional subpoena from the Jan. 6 Committee.

    “It is a height of hypocrisy for the chairman of this committee to try to enforce a contempt subpoena against Merrick Garland when this chairman himself ignored a bipartisan congressional subpoena,” Lieu explained. “Now, I’ve been to a number of proceedings in my time in Congress and in the state legislature that have been relatively stupid. But this proceeding goes beyond stupidity. It is a waste of taxpayer resources.”

    Lieu noted that Republicans already had possession of the full transcript of Biden’s interview.

    “The notion that somehow this transcript is fake is a wild, insane conspiracy theory,” the lawmaker observed.

    Lieu speculated that Republicans wanted to use Biden’s “stuttering problem” to attack him.

    “And if Republicans are going to go low, I am going to punch back,” he said. “So let’s talk about Donald Trump.”

    “Donald Trump has fallen asleep multiple times at his own criminal trial,” he continued. “I am a former prosecutor. I can tell you that is not normal. I think there may be some physical and mental health issues that should be investigated.”

    “If a person is so weak and feeble, if Donald Trump is so weak and feeble, he cannot stay awake at his own criminal trial, he can’t be president of the United States.”

    https://www.rawstory.com/jim-jordan-trump-2668283323/

  25. 25.

    TBone

    My go to when dealing with such rubbish:

    Rump has 2 kinds of supporters.  Billionaires and idiots.  Check your bank account and see which one you are.

  26. 26.

    Baud

    There’s very little people can’t be convinced to have faith in.

    That’s why the scientific revolution was so revolutionary. It brought some discipline to the process of belief and thereby created reason.

  27. 27.

    gene108

    @dmsilev:

    Which is why I’m surprised any recent shareholder meetings aren’t calling for a change in the board to fewer Musk cronies.

  28. 28.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    It’s classic cult psychology. You may start to get uneasy with the thought that your cult leader is a crook, but in order to fully accept that, you have to accept that you have been giving your time and your energy and your money to a crook. That’s a big psychological barrier and there’s a lot of resistance to it. Some people nevertheless do make the jump, and they tend to be really pissed when they do.

  29. 29.

    Trollhattan

    @gene108: I think it’s the only thing that saves the company. If  he crashes the thing it pushes back EV adaptation by years.

    A Twitter account and a vehicle/dealership/charging station are vastly different things.

  30. 30.

    CaseyL

    I had thought about trying to engage people who’ve fallen down the rabbit hole, even thought about traveling from Red city to Red city, maybe doing some standup-with-a-hidden-agenda. (I’ve never done anything remotely like this, ever, and believe me the thought terrified me, but I did contemplate it.) What it came down to, as I parsed out my thoughts, is that even if I could get a few to open their eyes and minds, that opening would last no longer than it took for them to talk to a few friends or relatives still in the cult. The very sea they swim in is contaminated; a few drops of bleach accomplishes hardly anything at all.

    The more people have given up, the harder it is for them to admit they were wrong. These cretins gave up everything – family, friends, professional reputation, and a lot of cash – I can’t think of what it would take to get them to leave. More likely they never will.

    Trump rallies – I’d be very interested to know how many attendees are like RW Deadheads, just traveling from one rally to another, not residents of most of those states and not “new individuals” (or whatever the term is for tracking fresh members versus old groupies).

    Anyway, it comes back to not wasting effort on the Unreachables, but focusing on normies who simply aren’t paying attention yet.

  31. 31.

    Belafon

    The biggest weakness of humans is how hard it is for us to admit we are wrong. And we will destroy friendships, marriages, companies and countries to avoid admitting it.

  33. 33.

    TBone

    North Carolina now off limits to human beings.

    “Republicans are putting cancer patients, seniors, & folks with disabilities at risk of punishment for wearing protective masks they require when they go out in public,” tweeted Democrats’ state chair Anderson Clayton.
    The bill heads to Gov. Roy Cooper’s (D) desk where he is expected to veto it. But with a GOP supermajority, Republicans will likely override it.
    Imagine what they could do with a Death Star.

    https://digbysblog.net/2024/05/16/if-they-had-a-death-star/

    My 80 y.o. Aunt just got Covid this week.  Only living member of my elders.  Thankful that she survived.

  35. 35.

    Belafon

    @gene108: The reason Anne Richards got elected and Democrats were able to get some progressive policies here in the state done before Republicans took over is the electorate here mainly went to the polls and voted for the letter after their name. It was basically from the middle 80s to the end of her term before most conservatives in Texas finally realized that the party wasn’t as backwards as they were.

    Yes, a lot of people do not pay attention.

  36. 36.

    Trollhattan

    @TBone:

    My kid will be there by the end of the month. Whee!

    IDK if she’s prepared for the culture shock.

  37. 37.

    TBone

    @Trollhattan: ugh, I’m sorry.  Hope it’s temporary.  My friends (a married couple I’ve known since high school) wanted us all to move to NC together to retire on a lakefront. Oh HELL NO Nope!

  38. 38.

    JustRuss

    From my observation, conservatives are much more resistant to admitting mistakes than liberals.  So once they buy into a con, they tend to be in for good.

  40. 40.

    Bill Hicks

    Great post Betty Cracker, you are amazingly insightful. One of the few things I figured out in life over the years that most don’t for some strange reason is the mark and the con.

    I do differ with somerandomguy on how this relates to covid19. The same can be said of driving tired or distracted, but I am damn sure just about every proud american (dems included) does it. I wish we were all perfect but alas.

  43. 43.

    A Ghost to Most

    This is what happens when you coddle people’s religious bullshit. Same as it ever was.

  44. 44.

    teezyskeezy

    @cain:

    What’s something is that Bill Burr isn’t exactly “PC” himself but at some point, as he said, it’s just a matter of decency.

  45. 45.

    StringOnAStick

    @gene108: The best thing that could happen to Tesla is getting completely rid of Musk.  On the current trajectory it is going to flame out to nothing.

  46. 46.

    Bill Arnold

    @gene108:

    I can’t believe 74 million adults were conned in 2020, when they voted for TFG.

    You underestimate the Power of [fully armed and operational] Echo Chambers.
    Some of them know/knew better. Most do not/did not.

    A couple of samples of papers. The first is very readable.
    “Echo chambers and epistemic bubbles” (C. Thi Nguyen, Episteme 17 (2):141-161 (2020)) (pdf download button at link)
    Disinformation and Echo Chambers: How Disinformation Circulates on Social Media Through Identity-Driven Controversies (Carlos Diaz Ruiz and Tomas Nilsson, 2023)

  47. 47.

    Kay

    The tradwife influencer never actually admits error – she seems to be blaming liberals for what she tells us are a whole group of conservative women who found out men on the Right are controlling douchebags. But, at least she realized this is “bad” and no longer sells it to other women.

  48. 48.

    teezyskeezy

    @SomeRandomGuy: Pettiness can be wielded for better or worse purposes. I’d say some of us aren’t above the level of pettiness to never call rethugs by their proper name (I’m just too lazy to be that *consistent* in my pettiness though).

    It isn’t the pettiness per se, it’s what they wield it for.

  49. 49.

    Citizen Alan

    @gene108:

    I can’t believe 74 million adults were conned in 2020, when they voted for TFG.

    I don’t either. At every stage, Donald Trump was obvious–glaringly obvious–about who he was and what he wanted to do. The entirety of his campaign can be summed up in a single idea: “I, Donald Trump, hate the same people you do. And if you give me the power to do so, I will hurt them in your name.” That was it, that was the pitch. And it was persuasive enough in 2016 to get him close enough to steal the election.

    Anyone who still supports Trump in 2024 was not “conned.” Rather, they’re the ones trying to “con” you by making you think they’re naive and misinformed instead of irredeemably evil. Every reason people give you for why they support Trump is a lie they tell so they don’t have to admit “I just hate blacks/gays/Muslims/slutty women and Trump is going to make the miserable, just like I would if I was powerful.”

  50. 50.

    Citizen Alan

    @Cacti:

    I hate the fact that Republicans have brought me to the point that someone can say “See: Jonestown” when referring to MAGAts, and my first thought is “if only.”

  51. 51.

    Pennsylvanian

    @Cacti: I don’t want to be nitpicky, but I know a lot about Jonestown, and there was a lot of involuntary self-harm because the people were assembled, surrounded, and either drank the flavorade or they would be shot. A few managed to hide or escape, but it was not so much suicide as choosing between death by poison or death by shooting.

    Considering the people doing the enforcing had just gunned down a US Congressional delegation on the tarmac of the airport as they were planning to depart, the threat was very real. Only a handful of people from the ~900+ who were at Jonestown lived to tell about what happened there.

    It was more of a mass murder than a mass suicide.

  53. 53.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @teezyskeezy: It also illustrates how much of his comedic chops Maher has lost. Outside of his masturbatory glory hole of a talk show, he’s not used to dealing with another comedian who isn’t afraid to push back on his bullshit.

  55. 55.

    Citizen Alan

    @Belafon:  Actually, no disrespect to Anne Richards, but the reason she won is that the GOP opponent was cartoonishly stupid and evil. If Clayton Williams had met even the minimum standards for average intelligence and basic human decency, he probably would have won. But instead, he was Donald Trump without the fame and the Apprentice and the Russian connections and the Fox Propaganda Network.

    The asshole’s campaign finally detonated after he made a rape joke in an interview.  It wouldn’t even make the news if Trump (or indeed any GOP politician in a red state) made the same joke today.

  56. 56.

    Trollhattan

    @TBone: Life’s great adventure. She’s in a grad certificate program for a year, plus continuing her running (“daddy, what’s ‘humidity’?”), has an apartment lined up with some of her new teammates. I’m sure she’ll be fine but may have more of that change she wants than she knows. College town should provide some level of cocoon, who can guess how much.

  58. 58.

    Citizen Alan

    @Trollhattan:  Well, I meant “cartoonishly stupid and evil” but also without an infrastructure (Fox, the Russians, the Federalist Society) capable of papering over “cartoonishly stupid and evil” for electoral purposes.

  59. 59.

    TBone

    @Trollhattan: I live in such a college town (rural small town PA) and the buffering effect is real but not always effective against locals.  In fact, it creates an even bigger resentment against us libs a lot of the time.  I wish your daughter well and hope you talk to her about necessities like camouflage, knowing when to speak up, and when to STFU.

    Not camo like hunters, camo like not opening your mouth when a Southern accent would be necessary for self preservation.

  60. 60.

    Eyeroller

    @Kay:That was an interesting article, but the constant bothsidesing by the author got really annoying.

  61. 61.

    SomeRandomGuy

    @gene108: When everyone you know and trust tells you TFG is a wonderful President who was cheated out of a coast-to-reelection by the China Virus, you are being conned, and the only reason I call it a “con” is because everyone freaks the fuck out when you say it’s “start-up fascism.”

    Fascism starts with popularity, and the next step is forcing people to defend the worst of its lies, because the more people who are forced to do something cringe, the tighter they’re bound together by the mutual cringe… and the more demanding they are of further cringe. So people say that TFG was a wonderful idea man for thinking hydroxychloroquine was his “get out of pandemic response, FREE” and anyone who knows, you know, the basics of science, knows they’ve sinned, and their sin will kill people.

    But no worries – fascism is a mutual defense cult, until you commit an indefensible crime, at which point, hey, it *is* a slippery slope, so throw someone under the bus, for traction. At once, they become a FINO, I’m sorry, a RINO, and no longer a “True, Patriotic, Conservative”.

  62. 62.

    Cacti

    @Pennsylvanian:  The same is true for the Branch Davidians, as 9 of them escaped the flames rather than die with their messiah, and 20 others, unable to escape, were put down by their fellow Davidians.  The fact is, there were people in both places that preferred death to being wrong, and didn’t mind taking the unwilling with them.

  64. 64.

    Betty Cracker

    @Citizen Alan: Every single person who voted (or will vote) for Trump isn’t irredeemably evil. Some are for sure! But others are deluded and/or too stubborn to admit they were conned, etc. I don’t believe they are all primarily motivated by racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc., either, although I think it’s fair to say that ignoring the effect of their vote in those areas constitutes depraved indifference.

  65. 65.

    Kay

    @Eyeroller:

    Agree. Interjecting to add her boring “both sides!” commentary, constantly.

    I do wonder if there really is an “Underground Railroad” of dissenting Right wing women and when they might speak up.
    She should thank feminists, too. Without feminists the child she had would still be stuck in Australia in the care of her abusive partner. Women had no legal rights to children in the olden days – children belonged to the father.

  67. 67.

    Brachiator

    In response to my sister’s query, our relative said he trusted Trump as president to put the country’s interests above his own in a national emergency. At least more than any other option, including Biden.

    I don’t get it. People saw Trump bumble and stumble through the pandemic.

    The MAGA crowd are not just refusing to admit that they have been conned. They actively believe the lies and do everything they can to reinforce them.

    It doesn’t help that the GOP leadership has double down on their complicity in supporting the Orange Beast.

  68. 68.

    Baud

    If we’re talking about people being conned, it’s worth mentioning every liberal and lefty who bought into the “both sides are the same” lie.  At least the MAGA got to experience the joy of hurting people.

  69. 69.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Brachiator: It’s worse than him just bumbling through..it sure seemed like Kushner was trying to find various ways for the family to profit off the crisis. Like getting in on the action of selling scarce medical supplies to the highest bidder. Something that maybe someone could look into in between ogling Hunter Biden dick pics.

    Then the supporters…look at them running out to find raw milk all of a sudden. Just because public health experts are telling them not to… maybe Anthony Fauci should go on national TV and tell everyone absolutely positively they should definitely NOT eat cyanide tablets. Could solve our problem.

  70. 70.

    rikyrah

    She will be 90 years old and remember this like it was yesterday.
    This will be played at her wedding reception.

    https://www.tiktok.com/@jordashtrucking/video/7340700799669947653?_r=1&u_code=e82b9bh2c5m637&preview_pb=0&sharer_language=en&_d=e82b7kdec7hfjk&share_item_id=7340700799669947653&source=h5_m&timestamp=1715882482&user_id=7234204503757685803&sec_user_id=MS4wLjABAAAA_rvLf2WkDbKxufBL_grIQJLu80317v-US3JGoy_PyCxnSvHyARgjHa-FqpEGdbZK&social_share_type=0&utm_source=copy&utm_campaign=client_share&utm_medium=android&share_iid=7363539690010478382&share_link_id=975883a4-7a10-4a10-bf86-59798017430e&share_app_id=1233&ugbiz_name=MAIN&ug_btm=b2001&enable_checksum=1

  71. 71.

    Trollhattan

    @TBone:

    Appreciate the insights. Already prepping her for the extra “attention” her little car with California plates is going to attract, and DO NOT give any cop who pulls you over even a little ‘tude.

  72. 72.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    Good on the Gore woman in TX for seeing what the strategic aim of the GQP has been for decades regarding public education and the total bullshit that are vouchers.

  73. 73.

    cain

    @Trollhattan: Stock prices should be dropping  – just inconceivable that you would do something that isn’t numbers driven. Wiping out the part of your company that actually drives why people pick Tesla – the charge distribution is Tesla’s biggest accomplishment.

  75. 75.

    cain

    @gene108: The man takes copious amount of drugs – his ex-wife leaving him was the turning point. He’s still in the blackest mood.

  76. 76.

    Trollhattan

    @What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?:
    Oh, you mean this Kushner?

    WASHINGTON — The Serbian government has approved a contract with Jared Kushner on plans to build a luxury hotel on the site of the former Defense Ministry in Belgrade, putting him directly into business with a European state as his father-in-law, Donald Trump, vies to return to the White House.

    Kushner is pursuing the $500 million hotel project in partnership with Richard Grenell. A former Trump administration aide, Grenell first proposed that U.S. investors attempt to redevelop the long-vacant bombed-out site of the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defense while Grenell was still a diplomat, serving as a special envoy to the Balkans.

    Kushner is pursuing the $500 million hotel project in partnership with Richard Grenell. A former Trump administration aide, Grenell first proposed that U.S. investors attempt to redevelop the long-vacant bombed-out site of the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defense while Grenell was still a diplomat, serving as a special envoy to the Balkans.

    The deal, which provoked protests in Belgrade on Thursday, is with an affiliate of Kushner’s Affinity Partners, the 3-year-old, $3 billion investment fund backed by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.

    “The government of Serbia has chosen a reputable American company as a partner in this venture, which will invest in the revitalization of the former Federal Secretariat for National Defense complex,” a Serbian government official said in a statement released Wednesday.

    The complex was bombed in 1999 by NATO forces with the backing of the United States during the war Serbia was then waging with Kosovo. It is now considered a prime undeveloped real estate site in the middle of a much-changed city, and Trump himself considered building a hotel on it in 2013.

    For Kushner, who is also planning two luxury hotel projects in neighboring Albania, these deals in the Balkans are among the largest he has made since starting his investment firm.

    Nothing skeevy going on here, folks.

  77. 77.

    Splitting Image

    @Eyeroller:

    That was an interesting article, but the constant bothsidesing by the author got really annoying.

    I thought the same. The author keeps underplaying the seriousness – and the characteristically right-wingedness – of Southern’s situation by relating it to unspecified Leftist behaviours.

  79. 79.

    cain

    @Jackie:

    “If a person is so weak and feeble, if Donald Trump is so weak and feeble, he cannot stay awake at his own criminal trial, he can’t be president of the United States.”

    This should be an attack ad – and completely be driven into people’s minds. Seriously, who the fuck sleeps through their own criminal trial? Resting his eyes? Bullshit.

  83. 83.

    Bobby Thomson

    I always reevaluate my priors as to anyone dumb enough to believe Donald Trump and cruel enough to like him.

  84. 84.

    ewrunning

    “How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!” – Mark Twain, Autobiographical Dictation, December 2, 1906

  86. 86.

    ETtheLibrarian

    People don’t like to admit they are wrong.

    People don’t like to admit they were conned.

    Then there are people like Barr who knows what tRump is and doesn’t think he should be president (again), but will still vote for him in any case.

    This accounts for a lot of what is going on on the right. This accounts for a not insignificant percent of people who will vote for TFG. Add in to that racism, and low information/interest habituated voters who just vote GOP because ABORTION and/or GAYS and/or CRIME and you get what is going on today politically.

  88. 88.

    frosty

    @Trollhattan: ​If she’s going to be in the People’s Republic of Chapel Hill with her California plates she should be OK. The rest of NC? Well, the Triangle might be OK too. Otherwise your advice is good.

  89. 89.

    Geminid

    @ETtheLibrarian: The two Republican voters I know best don’t even like Trump and would much rather have a Youngkin or a Haley. They’ve been convinced by the right-wing noise machine that the Democratic party has been taken over by woke socialists who will drag the country into ruin if they’re not stopped.

  90. 90.

    cain

    @ETtheLibrarian:

    I’m happy to tell folks if I’ve been conned so that nobody else gets conned.

    The thing is, if you’re in a community that you’ve self selected and you break out – you break out of all the relationships you built – ones that you’ve replaced because you broke other prior relationships (eg your family) and now you have to spend the task of repairing all of that. That’s hard.

  91. 91.

    cain

    @Geminid:

    What’s weird is much more socialist we were before Reagan. We’ve just becoming more and more extreme where now we just use ‘socialist’ to mean whatever it is we want it to mean.

  92. 92.

    Geminid

    @cain: Oh yeah, it’s a caricature of the Democratic Party that has been reinforced by incessant repetition.

  94. 94.

    Captain C

    @Trollhattan:

    “The government of Serbia has chosen a reputable [the official breaks down laughing for five full minutes before he pulls himself together] ok, let’s try this again–American company as a partner in this venture, which will invest in the revitalization of the former Federal Secretariat for National Defense complex,” a Serbian government official said in a statement released Wednesday.

    Fixed.

  96. 96.

    SomeRandomGuy

    @Bill Hicks: As someone with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I personally have a lot of experience driving exhausted and distracted, and the only at-fault collisions I caused were sub-5mph bumper taps, caused by the equivalent of bad sneeze timing – i.e., it could have happened to anyone.

    So your example really isn’t a good one. Oh, you could say I have an advantage – I know I’m fatigued, and I’m fatigued so often that, unlike others, I know damn well that I have to put it front and center sometimes. You’d be right to raise that – it’s true.

    But that just means I have the exact same advantage a Republican officeholder during Covid-19 had. They also knew certain “do nothing” policies were bound to cause extra deaths, and many of them not only did nothing, many of them forbade their underlings from doing things, too. That’s not just “gross negligence” – it’s gross negligence, sure, but it’s more than that. We’d call it “aiding and abetting” if they gave those orders to allow a criminal to commit murder.

    Look: you want to say I’m the wild radical, saying they “killed people” and you’re the voice of reason, saying they made “unfortunate policy decisions” that’s cool. But if you think I have a point, I’ll ask you to remember some quote I keep forgetting (both source and, you know, the actual QUOTE), to the effect of “remember, during the Inquisition, the voice of calm reason was that one oughtn’t burn too many heretics, and it was only the wild radicals who said one shouldn’t burn *any*.”

    Sometimes, you need a drink from the radical voice, to whet your proverbial whistle.

  97. 97.

    brantl

    @Betty Cracker:  Sometimes the hard feelings is the only way to get through. I have two reactionary Republican brothers-in-law, that one of these days, I am going to abuse them verbally  like a couple of rented mules.

  98. 98.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Brachiator:

    I don’t get it. People saw Trump bumble and stumble through the pandemic.

    Can’t speak for situations other than my own, but I work in a school and I am surrounded by people who say, “Well, you have to admit Trump was better at running things.” While I cannot believe anyone other than a cult member would say that, these are what we call low information voters or normies.

    It’s like Trump’s COVID nightmare has been erased and a “Democrats closed the schools and made us wear masks!” outrage narrative put in its place.

  99. 99.

    West of the Rockies

    @Brachiator:

    I always draw on sports fans who root for dirty teams/players when trying to explain Trump zealots.

    The Astros and Patriots have long histories of cheating.  They do.  (They were also great.  Fine.)  But fans don’t care.  Go ahead,  clear snow for the kicker with a plow for the first time in NFL history, steal signs, film your opponents secret practice, etc.  Claim every team does it.

    Root for a dirty player (Bill Romanowski, Andre Dirty Waters, Draymond Green. Conrad Dobler).  As long as the team wins and you can thus call yourself a winner,  who cares?

  100. 100.

    Trollhattan

    @West of the Rockies:
    Worked with a guy who’s such a Raiders fan he has an official Jack Tatum jersey.

    Enough said, but will add this anyway “Tatum never made any effort to apologize or to see him after the incident.”

  101. 101.

    Anonymous At Work

    Sounds more like your relative didn’t LIKE the decisions being made that put the country’s interests first, found a candidate who would do so, and then back-justified everything from there.

    Motivation reasoning is a hell of a drug.

  102. 102.

    Danielx

    Compulsive Narrative Syndrome is a thing I’ve read about recently.  it’s from sci-fi but has implications, shall we say. Basic thought is that humans look for patterns, it’s part of higher intellectual function. Part of learning what’s relevant in learning a skill – recognizing what is and isn’t relevant, but translates also to other areas. Politics, religion, you name it, the idea is that we recognize what is “relevant” and discard what isn’t. Thinking of Trump supporters and why they don’t seem to recognize that he’s an ambulatory stack of shit…

    Eta: Trump putting anything whatsoever above his personal interests? That’s rich.

  104. 104.

    JML

    @Trollhattan: interesting. In Madden’s book (first one?), he said Tatum went to the hospital but was turned away. Now, maybe someone fibbed to their old coach, and arguably when something like that happens maybe you don’t give up after one try too…

  106. 106.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    Its about how a tradwife relationship became toxic – from a former tradwife influencer

    I shake my head when watching the former tradwife’s on TikTok.

    The ones 40-50 years old who were thrown away for new, younger  models.

     

    I just….no….I could never do it.

    My Great Grandfather, a former slave, had three daughters.

    He was determined that

    ” the only children his daughters would take care of were THEIR OWN.”

    i.e., he was determined that they weren’t going to be Mammies for some White woman.

    My grandmother, when she married in 1905, was a Black woman with a Masters Degree – in Mississippi.

    She was determined the same for her daughters.

    All 4 were college educated, 2 with Masters Degrees – before Brown v. Board.

    3 of the 4 of her daughters had more than one marriage. The 4th never remarried after her divorce. When they didn’t feel as if they were not receiving proper treatment, they up and went to divorce court. They could do so because they had their own means for supporting and feeding themselves.

     

    My mother loved my father (husband #3)

    My father adored my mother.

    It was my father (who watched his own father abuse and disrespect his mother), that made it very clear to me that I was to get my education above all else. And NEVER depend on man for your life’s sustenance.

    And, yeah, I send all those videos to Peanut…reinforcing why she needs to get her own.

  107. 107.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    Its about how a tradwife relationship became toxic – from a former tradwife influencer

     

    One of my favorite TikTok trends is one of those obnoxious tradwife types going,

    ” I’m not a feminist…I can actually cook”

    The response videos…from all these accomplished women going

     

    ” I am a feminist…watch me cook”

    Love it.

  108. 108.

    Jackie

    @ETtheLibrarian:

    Then there are people like Barr who knows what tRump is and doesn’t think he should be president (again), but will still vote for him in any case.

    I have an unproven theory that Barr and others are saying they’re voting for TIFG, really aren’t. They’re covering their asses should TIFG win, so they’re not executed or imprisoned for being “an enemy of the president.”

  109. 109.

    catclub

    @dmsilev: It would not be surprising to me if Tesla market value reached its peak sometime in the recent past. … and will either tread water or fall.

  110. 110.

    Jay

    Lauren Southern

    As far as I’m concerned, Hitler was just a SJW who happened to get freaky amounts of power and actually implement his #KillAllJews (the predecessor to #KillAllMen) worldview.
    —Lauren Southern, history understander[1]

    Lauren Southern (1995–) is a Canadian (possibly former) white nationalist and far-right[2] activist[3][4] from British Columbia who, in March 2018, was banned from entering the UK for distributing leaflets saying “Allah is a gay god”, which under British law may be considered incitement to religious hatred against Muslims.[5][6] The political views she espoused were in staunch opposition to Islam, liberalism, multiculturalism, and feminism, while being in favor of paleoconservatism, cultural nationalism, and the right to keep and bear arms. She has immigrated to Australia, despite being a fervent anti-immigrant advocate during her career. Since her return to public life, Southern has returned to film-making, while being an anti-masker on SkyNews.[citation needed] Despite claiming in her famed “Why I Left, Why I’m Back” video that she has “changed”, Southern has unsurprisingly shown to be the exact same person she was when she left the internet. This became evident in November of 2020 when she threw a tantrum on her Wikipedia page that refers to her as a white nationalist — despite the fact that this labeling is just one of the many consequences of her actions. So much for personal responsibility.

    Southern was described as alt-right by the Southern Poverty Law Center.[7]

    Southern contributed to The Rebel Media, a hard-right wing Canadian online political and social commentary media platform owned by conservative political activist Ezra Levant, where she hosted the talk show Stand Off with Lauren Southern.[8][9]

    Southern, a former member of the Libertarian Party of Canada,[10] considers herself a cultural libertarian.[11][12][13] However she holds many reactionary and nationalist views that seemingly oppose libertarianism. She has expressed support for Donald Trump[14] and for Nigel Farage

    https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lauren_Southern

    She is the same racist, Nazi, dirtbag, attention whore she has always been.

    All she has done is get kicked out of an abusive relationship that she willingly entered into, that is the natural result of the NeoNazi Tradwife lifestyle she actively fostered and promoted.

  111. 111.

    StringOnAStick

    @catclub: I have heard that Tesla is a “crowded short”, meaning so many traders are shorting the stock that it is actually in effect holding the price up.

    Our friends next door own a Tesla and are about as disgusted as they can be over Musk.  What Musk decrees is what must happen, and Musk decreed that they had to use a certain type (can’t remember, Lidar maybe?) of sensor, which requires that all models use the same.  In order to cut costs, the newest sensors are less accurate, and the software updates (that you can’t avoid) took their car’s perfectly accurate for parking perfectly in the garage sensors into pretty useless for that purpose.   Previously it told them within a few inches exactly where to stop, and now its a couple of feet. They also complain that the build quality and fit of the body parts is crap, but there is some cool technology in it too.  They had planned on selling it this spring and getting a Japanese EV, but all of the antics have dropped the resale value significantly so I’m not sure when they plan to get out.  Being a gay couple with a Tesla is irritating them to no end.

  113. 113.

    Jeffro

    @Steeplejack: nope.  Not one.

    And I kept pounding on them every six months to ask if they’d seen enough yet.  “Nope” was the answer.

  114. 114.

    Jay

    @StringOnAStick:

    Friends have a small double car garage, a Grand Cherokee, a ton of storage on the surrounding walls, a golf cart, need access for a wheel chair, and a pottery set up, so it’s a tight space.

    They wired in a small red laser pointer to the light on the garage door opener light. When the red dot is centered on the hood, in line with the base of both wipers, you are parked perfectly.

  115. 115.

    Jeffro

    @Betty Cracker: true

    This is part of what I mentioned…oh, I dunno, a couple days ago, on some thread =)…the GOP is really good at grabbing folks who are aligned on just one issue, and then co-opting them into adopting the whole of their slimy agenda.

    It’s why they want people stupid, afraid, wound up, and anxious all the time.  Folks like that are PLIABLE.

    Dems, on the other hand?  One disagreement and they’re out.  (Or at least, they sit out, they dial back their support, etc etc)

  116. 116.

    frosty

    @Trollhattan: ​Raleigh-Durham is the Triangle. No banjos required until you get west in the mountains and start running the whitewater.​

  117. 117.

    frosty

    @rikyrah: ​
     What a great family story! Your grandma and great-grandpa were amazing.

    I have a similar story but not quite as impressive. My Mississippi grandma left high school early, got her degree at Mississippi Normal School and eventually got a doctorate in 1948, when very few women went to college. My great-grandma was the one to push education in the family. My grandpa worked so grandma and his two daughters got degrees within a couple of years of each other.

  119. 119.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Kay: She got me to close the tab at “radical Left-wing Southern Poverty Law Centre” (with Can-eh-jen spelling no less). Worthless Far Wrong nutcase.​

  120. 120.

    Brachiator

    @Melancholy Jaques:

    Can’t speak for situations other than my own, but I work in a school and I am surrounded by people who say, “Well, you have to admit Trump was better at running things.” While I cannot believe anyone other than a cult member would say that, these are what we call low information voters or normies.

    Trump himself is a shameless master of self-promotion. To hear him tell it, he has never failed in his life, and is incapable of failure. He also regularly takes credit for what other presidents have done.

    It is almost impossible to keep track of Trump’s lies unless you constantly consult a fact checker.

    On top of this, Fox News, other right wing news organizations and numerous Web sites helpfully lie about Trump or distort his record. And of course they lie about Republicans.

    I used to follow one site just to see what some conservatives believe. And keep in mind that these are not necessarily MAGA cult members, just people who do not “trust” supposedly liberal news sources.

    And so, they honestly believe that Obama never graduated from college and that he and Biden took thousands of pages of documents and were never challenged, and never accomplished anything during their presidencies. But Trump not only rescued America, every foreign leader either respects or fears him.

    Some of these people can be shown the facts and are shocked to find that they believed so much bullshit. Others cannot be moved.

  121. 121.

    George

    At some point, we need to address the fact that there is a rampant mass hysteria going on with Trump supporters.  Call it a cult, call all MAGAts idiots, etc., and you’d be right.  But what is the root cause of basic common sense and observation being broken down in so many people who can otherwise function well enough to put on their clothes and tie their shoes every morning?

    The American economy now is damned good–among the best in the world.  And yet a MAGAt will claim it is bad.  Why is that?

  122. 122.

    Miss Bianca

    @Pennsylvanian: True dat. I am making my way through a novel a friend of mine wrote about Jonestown called Paradise Undone, and she makes that same point repeatedly.

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