Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

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

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

People are complicated. Love is not.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

In my day, never was longer.

You are here: Home / Politics / Republican Venality / Open Thread: Ohio Sen Husted Is Gaslighting His Constituents

Open Thread: Ohio Sen Husted Is Gaslighting His Constituents

by | 170 Comments

This post is in: ,

@anntelnaes.bsky.social

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— paulpro (@mariopro.bsky.social) June 9, 2025 at 8:11 PM

🚨 Ear-Witness to Gaslighting
Somehow my family was on the list to join OH Senator Husted’s teletownhall last night.
I listened in for 45 minutes.
The level of disingenuous BS was truly nauseating.
1/

— David Pepper (@davidpepperoh.bsky.social) June 10, 2025 at 9:57 AM

So many of the Ohio voters asked the most basic questions about health care, food security, Medicare, deficits, and the like.

Husted left the impression that what he kept calling the “Big Beautiful Bill” would save it all.

Examples:

1) He was asked point blank about the deficit. He called it “generational theft”. Said it was a huge concern of his.

And then he said he didn’t believe CBO projections that his BBB would add to the deficit?!!

2) his spin on the Medicaid cuts was that they would help people get jobs and that they would then get private health insurance

3) he assured a Dayton VA worker that no services would be cut despite all the cuts to the VA

4) but the most cynical answer by far came on SNAP.

A woman, near tears, said she had been cut off from food assistance and had been told by someone it was because of “illegals.”

Under the law, undocumented immigrants are not eligible for food benefits. So if she was told that, it was false.

And the truth is, the BBB Husted plans to vote for will cut SNAP by between $250B to $300B.

That will be the largest cut in the history of the program.

So the biggest threat to this woman’s concern over food security comes not from people legally prohibited from accessing SNAP, but from the bill Husted spent the entire call touting.

And of course, Husted didn’t have the honesty to tell her that.

He basically played along with the “illegals” are taking SNAP from you narrative.

Which also was the tone of much of the call when it came to any benefits.

Finally, one caller asked if Medicare was being cut. Husted said no. Wouldn’t be touched.

The truth is that the bill adds so much to the deficit, automatic Medicare cuts could be triggered as high as $500 billion

Bottom line: most brought good faith concerns to their Senator.

And the very person who is cutting Medicaid, SNAP and risking other programs like Medicare slickly left them with the impression that it wasn’t happening, or that someone else was to blame

Your government at work.

END

Nearly half (45%) of people who get health coverage in the ACA Marketplaces and the individual market—about 10 million Americans—are MAGA supporters or non-MAGA Republicans. This means the policy changes and cuts being made by Republicans to the Marketplaces will directly affect their own voters

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— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) June 10, 2025 at 10:21 AM

Reader Interactions

170Comments

  1. 1.

    SpaceUnit

    Fuck both the MAGA Republicans and the “non-MAGA Republicans”.

     

    Reap the whirlwind, assholes.

  2. 2.

    Raoul Paste

    Apparently Husted has no idea how much private medical insurance costs.  Except that he does, and he could not care less

  4. 4.

    Jackie

    This is is what I could read before the paywall:

    Ousted CDC vaccine adviser says RFK Jr.’s message is clear:

    ‘Scientific expertise is no longer of use’:
    Helen Chu went through a multi-year process to finally gain a seat on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccines experts panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. There was a lengthy application process, and extensive conflict-of-interest vetting, followed by training about how the committee conducts its operations.

    Chu, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Washington, was appointed last year to a four-year term on the committee. She participated in one meeting as a voting member. And then she and the rest of her colleagues on the ACIP were summarily terminated on Monday, in a move health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — an avowed vaccine skeptic and long-time ACIP critic — insisted was necessary to restore public confidence in vaccines.

    Kennedy, who has been criticized for being a major source of vaccine misinformation, has indicated he intends to appoint new members to the committee. At present, no names have been made public, nor has he indicated anything about the selection process or vetting these new members will undergo. However it’s done, it will not be the thorough assessment Chu underwent. The as-yet-unnamed new ACIP is scheduled to hold its first meeting June 25-27.

    The ousted members of the ACIP are reeling from their unexpected dismissals, and many are laying low at the request of academic institutions that fear reprisals from the Trump administration.

    But Chu agreed to speak with STAT on Tuesday. She talked about her fears for the future of vaccine policy, the prospect of a nation with a patchwork approach to vaccination, and, in her view, the diminished reputation of a committee that has been viewed as the global standard for how to study new vaccines and recommend how they should be used.

    *The rest is paywalled.

    https://www.statnews.com/2025/06/10/cdc-vaccine-adviser-helen-chu-speaks-about-termination-of-acip-members/

  6. 6.

    Ohio farmer

    Can’t say I am surprised that Husted is a lying piece of shit….

    i buy my insurance on the Marketplace and I am damn concerned about it becoming unaffordable

  7. 7.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Ohio farmer: I buy my insurance in CA on the exchange, and I have no idea what will happen next year either.  I don’t get any subsidy, but ….. I remember the stories of how hard it was to get insurance in the individual market, and I have a bunch of chronic conditions, so …..

    It’s yet another reason to think about emigration: at least I could buy insurance in some civilized country.

  8. 8.

    eclare

    @Jackie:

    I have an appt. for the pneumonia vaccine on Monday.  After that I’ll make an appt. for TDAP, and I’ll be caught up.  I got an MMR booster and chicken pox booster around 2008.

  10. 10.

    Chetan Murthy

    @eclare: I nudged my mom over the last few weeks; she got a covid booster (6mos since the last) and MMR shot last weekend.  Such a relief!

  11. 11.

    Chetan Murthy

    @eclare: wow, that’s excellent!  My insurance premium is only a little less than my rent.  Which, sure, i don’t like it, but I presume that somebody else gets a decent subsidy, and that’s a good thing.

  12. 12.

    Jay

    @Chetan Murthy:

    You don’t have to buy Health Insurance in civilized nations. Just shit hole countries.

    T had Cancer surgery this year, from testing, biopsy, major surgery, to recovery, the medical bills were $0.

    All we had to pay for was bus fare and snacks

    Oh, and wtf is a “pre-existing condition”?

  13. 13.

    danielx

    @Jay:

    Oh, and wtf is a “pre-existing condition”?

    As far as I’ve been able to tell, being alive qualifies.

  14. 14.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Jay: Sure, and from what I understand, the same is pretty the case in France.

    Look: you’re very right to be proud of Canada, and the way Canada takes care of Canadians.  But ….. it gets a little old to read your repeated argument that Americans can just waltz across the border and live in Canada without any legal status, 100% totes OK.  Maybe it’s true.  Maybe it’ll stay true.  Or maybe not.  If I leave the US, I’ll be going to a place where I can -legally- reside, with a -legal- process to obtain settled status.  And right now, from what I can tell, that place ain’t Canada.  If I were still in the IT biz, I guess things might be different (though maybe not, since I’m 60).  But pretending that somehow we should all be totes OK with being undocumented immigrants in Canada …..

    It.  Gets.  Old.

  15. 15.

    prostratedragon

    More on ACIP from Dr. BK Titanji:

    RFK. Jr erodes trust in vaccines – under his leadership:
    – Largest measles outbreak in 30yrs, 3 deaths
    – Largest pertussis outbreak – 2 deaths
    – A fake study led by a discredited crank to link vaccines to autism
    – Ending covid vaccine recs for children & pregnant people
    [archived link to WSJ].

    Dismissing ACIP experts in favor of what would likely be hand picked unqualified anti-vaccine pseudo experts will not restore confidence in vaccines and will further cement the erosion of trust.He is using his position to gaslight millions and undermine vaccine confidence.

    The best thing you can do for yourself and your children (if you are a parent) is to ensure you are vaccinated and up to date for every single vaccine for which you are eligible, while you still have access. Listen to trusted voices like your primary care provider to guide your choices.

    This is very dangerous time rife with health misinformation from the leadership of public health agencies. It is important for the public to be aware of this and be discerning of health the information that you consume.

    Here again are alternative and credible sources for vaccine information and guidance until sanity returns in US Public Health :
    WHO – https://www.who.int/teams/immunization-vaccines-and-biologicals/policies/who-recommendations-for-routine-immunization—summary-tables
    Canada – https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/canadian-immunization-guide.html
    ECDC – https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/immunisation-vaccines/EU-vaccination-schedules
    U.K – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-complete-routine-immunisation-schedule/the-complete-routine-immunisation-schedule-from-february-2022

  16. 16.

    Jay

    @Chetan Murthy:

    We deported 16,000 undocumented immigrants last year. All were convicted of crimes in Canada, served their sentences, and then were deported.

    0.01% of undocumented immigrants.

    Had a tax issue last year. Somebody was using my SIN number, so my reported income did not match what Revenue Canada recorded. It was no biggie. Just pointed out that I could not be working in BC and Ontario at the same time. I asked what they would do, and they said they will just silo that account from mine based on address and employer.

    So, whom ever is/was using my SIN, is still paying taxes, but can’t claim any benefits.

    Revenue Canada doesn’t care.

  18. 18.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Jay: Jay, I have literally never been arrested.  Never even been cautioned that if I didn’t stop whatever-it-was-I-was-doing, that I’d be arrested.  I don’t think you can comprehend the idea that some people are simply not going to break laws, regardless of whether they fear getting caught.

  19. 19.

    eclare

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I really underestimated last year’s income and ended up paying around $5k in taxes for subsidies that I wasn’t entitled to.  But yes, I get subsidies, and I’m grateful.  And of course just having access, as I also have some chronic conditions.

  20. 20.

    Chetan Murthy

    @eclare: subsidies are the price we pay to live in a civilized society.  I like that california does that, and it makes me feel good to pay my CA state taxes.

  21. 21.

    eclare

    @Jay:

    True.  When I lived in London I fell getting onto a train and got a nasty wound to my leg.  There was a hospital down the street, St. Mary’s, so I walked into the ER.  They asked my name and religious affiliation, I guess if I died.  On a Thursday night, I was in and out in three hours.

  23. 23.

    prostratedragon

    Sickening read, under the circumstances:

    This is the roster of ACIP committee fired yesterday. Bios included – highly qualified and vetted scientists and physicians. Worth saving this before it gets taken down for comparison with those who will be selected to replace them. We are going backwards at speed.
    https://www.cdc.gov/acip/membership/roster.html

    Link in the comments to a web.archive version, just in case.

  24. 24.

    Chetan Murthy

    @eclare: my understanding is now that has changed.  If you’re not a UK resident who has the right to access NHS Services, then you get charged at the point of service. This has happened to tourists in the UK who fell ill, And at least in a couple of cases the bills were quite substantial.  Obviously as an American we have no leg to stand on: it Would be worse here.

  25. 25.

    Jay

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Only things I have on “my record” is speeding tickets from over 30 years ago.

    I am just saying, if push comes to shove, and there is no way through, run north.

    If you can make it through the CBP pre-inspections on all out going traffic, we, even as an undocumented immigrant, we will treat you humanely.

    We won’t throw 100 of you into a basement with no toilet, water, food, bedding, feed you a white bread sandwich with a Kraft single, once a day, keep the lights on 24/7 and play Nickleback at high volume on a loop 24/7.

  26. 26.

    prostratedragon

    @eclare:  Quite deliberately so. There is no other program. Statements to the contrary are for the rubes.

  27. 27.

    sab

    The horrifying thing is that Husted is an improvement over his predecessor, JD Vance. Ohioans sure can pick ’em.

  28. 28.

    YY_Sima Qian

    The yo-yoing continues in the trade front:

    US, China Officials Agree on Plan That Awaits Xi, Trump Sign-Off
    By Daniel Flatley and Annmarie Hordern

    June 11, 2025 at 7:25 AM GMT+8
    Updated on June 11, 2025 at 1:16 PM GMT+8

    The framework, which still needs approval from Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, includes China’s pledge to speed up shipments of rare earth metals and the US easing some of its export controls

    While the talks have made progress on some issues, details are scarce and the deal could still be rejected by top leaders, with many issues remaining unresolved, including China’s trade surplus with the US and concerns over dumping goods on US markets.

    In the absence of details from either side, this is probably the most accurate take:

    Justin Wolfers @JustinWolfers

    The US & Chinese trade negotiators have negotiated a handshake agreement to seek signoff to agree that a previously-agreed agreement is still their agreed upon agreement. (That agreement is not an agreement but a framework for seeking future agreements.) https://wsj.com/economy/trade/u-s-and-china-agree-to-get-geneva-pact-back-on-track-695eb5f5?mod=hp_lead_post

    US-China tariff timeline
    Jan 20: US wants a better deal
    Feb: Fentanyl tariffs, retaliation, escalation, etc
    Apr 2: “Reciprocal tariffs” Retaliation, escalation, etc
    Apr 9: Pause (except China)
    May 12 talks: De-escalate to April 1
    June: You cheated! No you did!
    June 10 talks: Let’s get back to May 12

    Notice that not only are we not getting a better deal, we’re not even getting back to where we were at the start of the Administration.

    How this game is actually played:

    Justin Wolfers @JustinWolfers
    If you want to see a case study of the strategic use of trade policy to maximize leverage while minimizing the pain on your own people, you’ll have to look abroad… to China’s export controls on rare earth minerals.

  30. 30.

    Chetan Murthy

    @eclare: The, uh, “hostile environment” policy in the UK is just one of the reasons it’s not on my list of places for emigration.  It seems pretty clear that they’ve erected a labyrinth with the express goal of tripping up people in it, and summarily expelling them.  For the flimsiest of reasons, too.  The UK is becoming like the USA.  It’s sad to see.

  31. 31.

    eclare

    @Chetan Murthy:

    When the UK voted Leave in July 2016, I had a bad feeling about the US election that year.  The UK was ahead of the US in that regard, and in voting on the demonization of immigrants.  Unfortunately I’m stuck here, if I wanted I could join Daughters of the American Revolution (I don’t want).  So I have to make the best of it.

  33. 33.

    Debbie(Aussie)

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I don’t think it’s hanged bit Aussies get free care via NHS. Our two governments have a reciprocal agreement. Our Medicare reimburses the NHS.

  35. 35.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    Side note: apparently the GoComics site is re-running a storyline in Bloom County that I think of as “the beginning of the end”. The teaser is on June 9 – https://www.gocomics.com/bloomcounty/2025/06/09 – and if you page over to today’s, you’ll begin to understand why the final trade-paperback Bloom County collection included among its cover blurbs a petty insult from Donald Trump.

  37. 37.

    different-church-lady

    It was inevitable that Dumbfuck Hitler would get to the point where if he had any fucks to give about his own voters he still wouldn’t. Fascists care about power, not people.

  39. 39.

    Baud

    And the very person who is cutting Medicaid, SNAP and risking other programs like Medicare slickly left them with the impression that it wasn’t happening, or that someone else was to blame

     

    Your government at work.

    Not my government. I voted for a different government.

    Husted’s lies work because the alternative for these voters is believing us. And that is a bridge too far.

  40. 40.

    NotMax

    @eclare

    So old can remember when the train cars on the LIRR did not have a gap.

    Today, however, you could fit a sumo wrestler’s leg in the empty space.

  42. 42.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @prostratedragon: remember that song, paved paradise, put up a parking lot…

    i hope they let some rose aficionados and gardeners dig up the roses to take home and care for..

    i don’t see how they can afford this. I need my Snap and Liheap, for those of us who rely on it, it’s a big deal to cut into that.

  43. 43.

    sab

    @NotMax: I agree. Gaslighting suggests that the lying is successful. I think these people on the verge of losing their benefits know what is happening and who is doing it.

  44. 44.

    Jay

    @sab:

    Lying involves telling an untruth, while gaslighting is a form of manipulation that aims to make someone doubt their own sanity or reality. Gaslighting is a more insidious form of deception, with the intent of eroding a person’s trust in themselves and their perceptions, often to gain control. 

  46. 46.

    Gloria DryGarden

    OT, I just saw an ad full of lies about planned parenthood, who the spokeswoman said pushes people into abortion, traffics in body parts, and, gasp, promotes transgender care. She made it sound heinous, that pp is cold, and that this is all they do, and she went over some data points.
    i watched to the end. There must be a way to prank them. The group is called Defundpp.com. Or .org. Oops.
    it was heinous and upsetting to me. So I’m just venting. I really hate when people use these weird emotional talking points to make abortion inaccessible.

  47. 47.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Jay: nice clarification. I think I grew up with a certain amount of gaslighting in my family, coming toward me.

  48. 48.

    Gloria DryGarden

    Do y’all remember that video from the weekend, where a guy was calling out the guardsmen, making really good points? I just saw a YouTube about that. Maybe i missed this before, but that was Wyatt Russell, Goldie hawn and Kurt Russell’s son.

  49. 49.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Gloria DryGarden: The “New York Post”, of all sources (!) has Wyatt saying “nope not me.”

    From the article:

    “The protester in the viral clip was actually Aaron Fisher, a former Ohio House Democratic Caucus staffer and now a partner at Statecraft Media — who said he got a kick out of being mistaken for his Hollywood doppelganger”

  50. 50.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    One of the most frustrating things about this timeline is that everything Democrats say gets parsed for absolute truth AND for whether it could be spun in some way to offend someone (e.g. right now not condemning the “violence” from the protestors when complaining about the military being mobilized against Americans).

    But Republicans can just flat out lie. We’re not cutting SNAP, Medicare, etc. We’re not making the deficit worse. Look at that new bridge we’re taking credit for but voted against!

  52. 52.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @eclare: I will assert to the end of my days that Berke Breathed was the Cassandra of the comics pages. He had Donald Trump’s number almost forty years ago; the end of Bloom County, the setting, was Donald Trump taking everything over, remaking the comic in his image to feed his ego, and paving over the Dandelion Patch (look at what he’s doing to the Rose Garden, for crissakes!) … and ultimately destroying Bloom County.

    A perfect vision and warning of the future we’re living in, that nobody believed. Like I said, Cassandra.

  53. 53.

    ColoradoGuy

    The MAGA folks live in an information bubble as tight as North Korea. Unlike North Koreans, they choose to live there. They can turn off Fox or OANN any time they want. But they don’t, which makes it a fascist religious cult.

    What’s sobering is this cult grew out of Reality TV, with its scripted ritual humiliation of the contestants. Reality TV has re-shaped our entire society to be harsher, crueler and more narcissistic.

  54. 54.

    Geminid

    Rep. Mikie Sherrill won a crowded New Jersey Governor primary with 34% of the vote. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka came in 2nd with 20.4%; Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop was 3rd with 16% and Rep. Josh Gottheimer was 4th with 11.8%.

    From NBC News:

       Sherrill beat out five other Democrats for her party’s nod, pitching herself as the most electable candidate– after her party struggled in the state last year compared to recent presidential elections…

    Joe Biden won New Jersey by 16 points in 2020, while Kamala Harris won by 6 last year. Governor Phil Murphy beat Republican Jack Ciattarelli by only 3.2% in 2021 after winning election by 15% in 2017. Ciattarelli is running again this year and Republicans believe this is a winnable race.

    Sherrill says, not so fast, whiney MAGA Republicans:

       “It’s going to take a strong voice to cut through the noise from Washington. And you guys know that as a mother of four teenagers I’m not going to put up with incompetent, whiney nonsense coming from aggrieved MAGA Republicans,” Sherrill told her supporters Tuesday at a victory rally.

    Then Sherrill pivoted from Tough Mom to Warrior:

       “You probably can’t do better than to quote George Washington at this moment. Fix bayonets, I’m resolved to take Trenton,” Sherrill added.

    Age 53, Rep. Sherrill is another talented member of the House Class of 2018. She was one of the forty who flipped Republican seats that year. Sherrill was an Assistant U.S. Attorney before that, and served as an officer in the U.S. Navy from 1994 to 2003.

  55. 55.

    Baud

    @Geminid:

    Congrats to her, but this is why we need run offs or ranked choice. No one should win with a low plurality.

    Would she be the first woman governor of NJ?

  56. 56.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: Josh Gottheimer is a member of the Blue Dog Caucus and Mikie Sherrill use to be a Blue Dog. It’s a dog-eat-dog world up there in the Garden State.

    Another former Blue Dog, Abigail Spanberger, is the Democratic nominee for Virginia Governor. Spanberger, a former CIA agent, and Sherrill were close associates during their years in Congress. As freshmen, they made up an informal national security caucus along with military veterans Chrissy Houlihan (Air Force), Jason Crow (Army), Jared Golden (Marine Corp) and former CIA analyst Elissa Slotkin. All six flipped Republican districts that year.

    Ironically, Sherrill was born in Alexandria, Virginia while Spanberger was born in Red Bank, New Jersey..

  59. 59.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Jackie: ​
     

    It may seem like a small thing given everything that RFK Jr is doing, but it pisses me off that the media keep referring to him as a “vaccine skeptic.”

    As someone who counts skepticism as a high virtue, I can’t help but say one more time that there is nothing ‘skeptical’ about him. He’s an anti-vax True Believer.

    A skeptical person is one who isn’t going to believe the first thing they hear, but wants to see the supporting argument and evidence to see if it passes muster. I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but given the decades and mountains of evidence that vaccines motherfucking work, it’s clear that no amount of pro-vaccine evidence will satisfy RFK Jr. He is not a ‘skeptic.’ He’s an anti-vax True Believer, end of story.

  62. 62.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Baud: I’ve been wondering (and this isn’t directed at just you, Your Baudiness ;) what’s the difference between “right wingers” and “white supremacists” in this country?

    What’s the difference between these “right wingers” now in power and Klansmen, White Citizens Council members and the like?

  63. 63.

    SFAW

    This means the policy changes and cuts being made by Republicans to the Marketplaces will directly affect their own voters

    And most of them will still vote for Rethugs, because Dems are Teh Evul.

    Fuck them all, and it sucks that good/innocent people will suffer/die because these mofos are so fucking stupid/evil.

  64. 64.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @SFAW: The “Dimmycrats” are evul because they are the party of human rights.

    These people will vote for Republicans because they perceive the Democratic Party as “the party of Jews, women, and worst of all, Negroes.”

    These people are the people whose rights have never been questioned in this country; and are determined to maintain that privilege.

  66. 66.

    SFAW

    Re: CDC Vaccine Panel firings:

    A friend (although I’m rethinking that) posted (on NextDoor) a WSJ article re: the firings. He said it’s “concerning,” but then goes on to note that the article says that they were all appointed by Biden, and he appeared to hint that maybe because of that, the firings were OK.

    These fucking Terminal Centrists need to get their heads out of their asses.

  67. 67.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    What’s the difference between these “right wingers” now in power and Klansmen, White Citizens Council members and the like?

    Let me take a stab at that…

    …nothing?

  69. 69.

    Baud

    @SFAW:

    I doubt your friend would be as deferential if a Dem fired all Republican appointees. Probably would decry the lack of civility and bipartisanship.

  70. 70.

    SFAW

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    These people will vote for Republicans because they perceive the Democratic Party as “the party of Jews, women, and worst of all, Negroes.”

    That’s certainly a big part of it — perhaps the biggest — there’s also stupidity (re: the inability to disbelieve the Fox/Newsmax lies, for example).

  71. 71.

    Baud

    @SFAW:

    It’s connected. Fox News is credible to them because it tells the “truth” about all those undesirable groups, which other info sources conceal.

  74. 74.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @SFAW: The stupidest white men tend to become white supremacists, to be sure.

    (the stupidest Black men tend to become Hoteps or “Black Israelites.” ;)

  75. 75.

    Spanky

    @Baud: I was going to say they’re like cars: pretty much the same on the outside but you have to look under the hood to see any difference.

  76. 76.

    Ohio Mom

    @eclare: I’m not goggling this, doing this from foggy memory. Materials from aborted fetuses were used in the early development of one or two vaccines for childhood diseases. That’s it, haven’t been used in vaccine development or production since. My other foggy memory is that the then Pope signed off on it.

    ETA: before repeating this, you should google this for yourself. Because foggy memory.

  77. 77.

    Baud

    AOC must be running in 2028 because she’s sounding increasingly like me.

     

    It is 100% carrying water for the opposition to participate in this collective delusion that Dems for some reason need to answer for every teen who throws a rock rather than hold the Trump admin accountable for intentionally creating chaos and breaking the law to stoke violence.
    They are in charge.

    — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@aoc.bsky.social) Jun 10, 2025 at 8:44 PM

  78. 78.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    @Baud:

    @Spanky:

    INDEED.

    Gentlebeings, my point here is that the American “right wing” is DEFINED by white supremacy.

    And that “conservatism,” being a “right wing” ideology, is likewise focused on white supremacy.

    We MUST address the role of white male supremacy in the appeal of these people to the greater electorate.

  80. 80.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    What’s the difference between these “right wingers” now in power and Klansmen, White Citizens Council members and the like?

    Choice of immediate target (brown rather than Black people) but that’s just what, or rather who, they can rile people up about right now.  So no inherent difference.

  83. 83.

    eclare

    @Ohio Mom:

    I think I read that too, about the development of the initial vaccine.  Like with so many things, there is a tiny nugget of truth in the story, but then RWNJ’s exaggerate and obfuscate and lie to make the nugget the entire story.

  84. 84.

    Matt McIrvin

    Hank Green just posted a video expressing the same kinds of frustrations I was posting earlier: that the tactic of going into a blue city neighborhood and kidnapping a bunch of people in a splashy ICE raid to provoke a violent response that will then be the big news story *is going to work*, so they’re going to do it everywhere and it will help them, because there’s no good way to counter it. Organized protests are one thing, but can you tell the locals to be peaceful on the day the Gestapo comes in and carries away their neighbors, friends and family, who were bothering nobody, possibly to be tortured or killed? That’s what this is. And then you get video of people throwing rocks and burning cars, and you have your lead story: lawless Democrats rioting!

    Toward the end of the video he adds more of a hopeful note. I think if there’s a weak point it’s that Trump and his goons never think through the practical aspects of… anything. They know how to divide and destroy, but not how to run any kind of operation, and that will hamper the escalation. Also, now we know the tactic, which probably helps in formulating a response.

    Unfortunately, if I linked the video here, the response would probably all be about an irrelevant aside about Joe Biden that would rile all of you up and has nothing to do with the main point. But you can go look for it on YouTube.

  86. 86.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Unfortunately, if I linked the video here, the response would probably all be about an irrelevant aside about Joe Biden that would rile all of you up and has nothing to do with the main point

     
    Thank you for not posting. The fact that people are incapable of leaving irrelevant asides like that out of their otherwise strong messages is what convinces me that Republicanscan’t be defeated until we have a new population of fighters who don’t carry the baggage of Republican brainwashing.

  87. 87.

    Ohio Mom

    @eclare: Wait until they find out what happens to bodies of people who willed the bodies to science.

    Lots of people have the idea the bodies are used in anatomy class labs by med students reverently and carefully dissecting them, or maybe a few spare pieces like corneas are delicately removed to be transplanted, but the truth is, human body parts are most usually treated like commodities.

    There wasn’t any sentiment involved when someone ground and processed the cadaver bones into whatever form it was when the periodontist put it in my gums after extracting that back molar.

  88. 88.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Baud: Van Jackson thinking alone similar lines:

    The Riot, Strategy Brain, and Counter-Insurrrectionary Deterrence
    Applying my strategic-theory ninja skills to MAGA’s war on America itself.
    UN-DIPLOMATIC
    JUN 11, 2025

    Since most of the substack is behind a paywall, below is DeepSeek’s summary:

    Here’s a concise summary of the UN-DIPLOMATIC article “The Riot Strategy, Brain, and Counter-Insurrectionary Deterrence” (June 11, 2025):

    **Core Argument:** The Trump administration is deliberately escalating tensions in Los Angeles through rapid military deployments (Marines + National Guard) to fabricate an “insurrection” narrative and establish a model for nationwide suppression of dissent.

    **Key Points:**

    1. **Fabricated Crisis:** The administration falsely labels LA protests (sparked by ICE raids) as an “insurrection” or “rebellion” despite no actual violent uprising. This creates a pretext for militarized crackdowns.
    2. **Show-of-Force Strategy:** Deploying troops serves two coercive purposes:
    * **Compellence:** Force LA communities to submit to ICE raids.
    * **Deterrence:** Warn other US cities against resisting federal overreach (“flood-the-zone” logic).
    3. **MAGA’s Theory of Victory:** MAGA lacks the manpower for nationwide occupation (LA alone would require hundreds of thousands of troops). Their only viable path is **counter-insurrectionary deterrence** – using fear of overwhelming state violence to crush resistance before it spreads.
    4. **Strategic Miscalculation:** The author argues this escalation is backfiring:
    * Declaring insurrection where none existed exposes MAGA’s aggression.
    * The unpopularity of ICE raids and crackdowns galvanizes more resistance.
    * It plays into the hands of MAGA factions actively *wanting* civil war to dismantle democracy.
    5. **Force-to-Space Problem:** The current troop levels (thousands) are militarily insufficient to actually control LA County (requiring hundreds of thousands), revealing the deployment as primarily symbolic/intimidating.
    6. **Call for Unity (“Do Not Split”):**
    * While non-violence is strategically preferable, **community self-defense** against state violence is a fundamental right.
    * Criticizing protesters’ tactics (even if violent in self-defense) fractures opposition. Anti-fascists must prioritize **mass unity** over tactical purity.
    * “Do not split”: Don’t condemn community self-defense; focus opposition on the state’s violence and fascism.

    **Conclusion:** The administration’s escalation in LA is a dangerous gamble to establish a template for nationwide suppression through fear. However, its heavy-handedness, illegitimacy, and strategic overreach risk sparking the very widespread revolt it seeks to prevent. Maintaining anti-fascist unity is crucial.

  89. 89.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Professor Bigfoot:Gentlebeings, my point here is that the American “right wing” is DEFINED by white supremacy.

    Absolutely.  And I’ll go one step further and say that to them (and probably a slight majority of people in this country, the media etc.) “American” is effectively DEFINED by white supremacy.

  90. 90.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud: I’ve been reading the latest issue of Vanity Fair out loud to my husband while he cooks. Light entertainment, right? But every single goddamned article — an article on Twin Peaks, for Christ’s sake — has an “irrelevant Joe Biden aside.”

    GODDAMMIT TO HELL

  91. 91.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: That’s a thousand years in the future. We have to work with what we can get. Hank is popular with the youths.

  92. 92.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Another angle, from a Dilon Esper:

    This L.A. Times story gets at a major issue: the reality is that there are professional anarcho-leftist douchebags who show up at every protest with their faces concealed and try to make it as violent and offensive to ordinary Americans as possible.

    Esper referred to detailed reporting in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times article titled, “Protesters or agitators: who is driving chaos at L.A.immigration protests?”

  93. 93.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I can’t control people. But I don’t have to endorse them. If Hank gets the youth to help us win elections, great. But we won’t know until next year and 2028.

  94. 94.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    From Political Wire

    Immigration Raid Leaves Company Officials Puzzled
    June 11, 2025 at 6:15 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 39 Comments

    “Immigration authorities raided an Omaha meat production plant Tuesday morning and took dozens of workers away in buses, leaving company officials bewildered because they said they had followed the law,” Politico reports.

    Said company president Chad Hartmann: “My biggest issue is: Why us? We do everything by the book.”

    “The plant uses E-Verify, the federal database used to check the immigration status of employees. When he said as much to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who carried out the raid, they told him the E-Verify system ‘is broken.’”

  95. 95.

    Baud

    @zhena gogolia:

    I know. It’s a large part of why I don’t partake of political news and commentary anymore. Everyone is a sheep, especially if their white male.

  96. 96.

    Ohio Mom

    @Geminid: Most likely some of them are undercover law enforcement. That’s long been true and no reason to think this technique has been abandoned.

  97. 97.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Matt McIrvin:Unfortunately, if I linked the video here, the response would probably all be about an irrelevant aside about Joe Biden that would rile all of you up and has nothing to do with the main point

    Now, now…when have Balloon Juice commenters/posters ever let this sort of anti-Biden distraction cause them to completely lose their minds…

  98. 98.

    They Call Me Noni

    @Matt McIrvin: On the flip side Rachel Maddow showcases these very same occurrences on her show followed by them resulting in the disappeared person being returned home.  She drives home the point that resistance does have a positive outcome.

  100. 100.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Geminid: I saw these fuckers at an Abolish ICE protest in downtown LA that I went to back in 2018.  Fortunately the organizers basically shunned them and made them unwelcome, but there’s only so much you can do to keep them out of your events.  They are a very real problem.

  102. 102.

    Baud

    @They Call Me Noni:

    I don’t think people should make Trump’s actions costless. But that doesn’t answer the question of how to do it in a way that’s not undermining our goals.

  104. 104.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Playing my first gig(s) this Saturday with my new country/surf/rockabilly band.  One set in the afternoon down in Dixon and then a three-set night here at a place in Taos.  Should be fun.  I’m a little nervous as there’s a lot of material and I haven’t really had enough time to memorize it all, but the other band-members are pretty chill about it and basically consider the three-set gig as one long rehearsal where I’ll mostly follow along and we will play the more simple tunes so it should be fine.  My Sister and Dad will also be in town visiting so I’ll be trying to show them around as much as possible when I’m not gigging.  Yeehaw.

  105. 105.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Geminid: I think those people are much more prominent on the West Coast than they are here.

    Several years ago I got into an argument on Slacktivist where there was an energetic commenter insisting that black-bloc tactics involving property destruction were good and necessary, and particularly getting upset whenever anyone conflated property destruction with violence.

    During the first Trump administration they identified themselves as “antifa,” which confused them probably deliberately with the “antifa” groups who were intent on counter-demonstrating and protecting the populace when white supremacists were on the loose.

  111. 111.

    prostratedragon

    @YY_Sima Qian:  Now, this part gets more to what the villain in Gaslight was up to. It’s not merely that he lied flagrantly and incessantly; to sell the simple lie that Paula was imagining peculiar noises and such, he staged nasty tricks in unrelated matters to make it appear both to others and to herself that she had either lost her faculties, or was the one engaged in pointless mischief. He also cut her off from exposure to others which would have helped to anchor her.

  119. 119.

    Geminid

    @Ohio Mom: This is not a law enforcement op; these rock throwers and arsonists are being busted when possible by local law enforcement. There will be plenty of trials in coming months, so we’ll get to see who these folks are.

    The West Coast in particular has a lot of “Black Bloc” -type anarchists who try to exploit protests for their own purposes whenever possible. They did this five years ago during the George Floyd protests, and they’re doing it now.

  120. 120.

    chemiclord

    @Chetan Murthy: It’s not true in the slightest.  You know that “Point System” that progressives and leftists say is a bridge too far in any immigration system?

    Yeah.  Canada uses a point system, and I can promise you most Americans would score disastrously low.

    When I would say things like the United States has one of the, if not most, liberal immigration policies in the developed world… I never meant it as a compliment to the United States, but an observation of how venomously shitty the first world is in regards to immigrants.  It’s one topic where the general population of the world leans very hard to the right, and why it’s notoriously fertile fields for right-wing and fascist tactics.

  123. 123.

    eclare

    @chemiclord:

    A good friend and her husband moved to Nova Scotia from North Carolina last month.  They bought a gorgeous house on the coast.  I think she inherited a lot of money, I assume that’s how she got in.

  126. 126.

    chemiclord

    @eclare: Oh, yeah.  Almost forgot about that part.

    Ya know that entire thing about how Trump wants to sell golden tickets?  Ya know how much we despise that idea?

    Canada does that.  As does a lot of first world countries.  Come on, you know Trump didn’t that idea on his own.  He got it from somewhere.  Well, that’s where he got it from.

  127. 127.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: Yes.  It was in the first batch of music gear that I replaced.  Unfortunately the room where it’s set up is also the safe space for two of our cats (who were indoor/outdoor but are now only indoor) so I don’t play the kit nearly as much as I should.  I need to get a simple practice pad just for working on my rudiments but DAMN those things are pricey nowadays.  Hard to find anything decent for under $50, which is kinda crazy, imo.

  131. 131.

    Matt McIrvin

    @chemiclord: Australia was and, I think, still is doing the “extraterritorial detention camp for asylum seekers” thing on Nauru, and the UK had a plan to ship them off to Rwanda though I don’t know if anything came of it.

    But it feels like the US has suddenly leapfrogged a lot of them.

    Jay likes to emphasize that EU countries with allegedly shitty attitudes toward immigrants took far more Syrian refugees than the US did.

  132. 132.

    Matt McIrvin

    @chemiclord: …and, of course, the norm in Europe (but not in Canada) is that just being born in a country doesn’t get you citizenship–the situation that Trump is trying to introduce here, 14th Amendment be damned.

    Our right regards this as “rational immigration policy” to prevent birth tourism and such, but what it really does is to produce a multigenerational underclass of native-born “immigrant” non-citizens, who do the dirty work of society but don’t get social-democratic benefits. Yeah, just like our undocumented immigrants, only they have that status from birth. We cut it off at one generation, but we’re energetically trying to get rid of that mercy.

  134. 134.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Geminid: And don’t be fooled, while they love to make a big show about how they’d totally punch Nazis, when the actual Nazis are out in force the Antifa cosplay revolutionaries are nowhere to be found.  Hell, they won’t even condemn violent antisemitism without some sort of “yeah but…” bullshit (a problem that is strikingly widespread throughout the Left).

  135. 135.

    Belafon

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    “American” is effectively DEFINED by white supremacy.

     
    And they hate it when you point that out. They want all the white supremacy but want to be able to deny it to Saint Peter.

  136. 136.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR: ​
     

    I will assert to the end of my days that Berke Breathed was the Cassandra of the comics pages. He had Donald Trump’s number almost forty years ago; the end of Bloom County, the setting, was Donald Trump taking everything over, remaking the comic in his image to feed his ego, and paving over the Dandelion Patch (look at what he’s doing to the Rose Garden, for crissakes!) … and ultimately destroying Bloom County.

    A perfect vision and warning of the future we’re living in, that nobody believed. Like I said, Cassandra.

    The thing is, if you didn’t live in the NYC area, Donald Trump was basically a D-list celebrity, just one more obnoxious jerk with money. And if not for The Apprentice, I have little doubt that that’s what he’d still be.

  137. 137.

    chemiclord

    @Matt McIrvin: Again, the thing isn’t that the USA is good to immigrants or has a particularly humane immigration policy.  We don’t.  We never really have.

    The thing is that even a lot of these “progressive” countries that we look to are often far worse, with policies that we would consider outright deal breakers if they were proposed by anyone here.

    The world as a whole (and especially the developed world) are simply really really shitty towards immigrants of damn near any type.  It’s not a battle the left is losing… it’s a battle line that the left has never even been able to get a solid foothold on literally since the beginning of the human record.

  139. 139.

    Matt McIrvin

    …As I said recently, I thought that birthright citizenship for people born on a country’s soil was nearly unique to the US until I actually looked it up and realized it’s really a New World/Old World thing: birthright citizenship is more the norm than the exception in the Americas, but rare in the Old World. Which makes some sense.

    It’s a case where using Western Europe as your standard for “the world” is misleading.

  140. 140.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Professor Bigfoot: We MUST address the role of white male supremacy in the appeal of these people to the greater electorate.

    Well take the Latinos; they are doing all the shit jobs no white person wants, yet the MAGA clowns can’t help themselves and just have to fucking with them. This seems to be a bit more than garden variety American racism, after all in the South, the idea was to keep The Other doing the bad work, not drive them out of the community and then just starve.

  141. 141.

    Belafon

    @chemiclord: Related, our bigotry here is bad, and then you look at other countries, and somehow ours is at the bottom of the bad scale.

  142. 142.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Belafon: I think the willingness to just outright embrace white supremacy is increasing. The elected politicians mostly use euphemisms but their fans don’t. Of course that’s largely how it was when I was a little kid too.

  143. 143.

    A Aboto

    @sab: A columbus-based independent political reporter once said ohio’s new junior is astoundingly stupid.  Sounds like he’ll give tuberville & johnson some competition for “dumbest senator.”

  144. 144.

    Matt McIrvin

    @UncleEbeneezer: A lot of radical groups using the “antifa” name were out there mixing it up with the Nazis and providing first aid and such at demonstrations during Trump I. They weren’t black-bloc vandals though.

  146. 146.

    terraformer

    so much of not only our current moment, but for the past several election cycles, has been trying, without luck, to convince people that they’re voting against their own self-interests

    but few things are harder than getting someone to change their mind about something they have supported; they tend to believe *anything* that helps ensure they can keep on supporting it – no matter how demonstrably false

    and I just don’t know what we can do about that

  147. 147.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Baud: Van Jackson referenced Hong Kong 2019 at the end of his article. However, I think the protest movement (that became increasingly radicalized, more violent & smaller toward the end of the year) offers plenty of cautionary tales, too.

    Aside from the overwhelming disparity in power & resources between the protesters & the Hong Kong government (backstopped by the CPC regime), it was precisely because the movement failed to cast out the anarchists, the nihilists & the nativists from its ranks early on that it eventually petered out. The movement was very loosely organized (part of the “be water” aesthetic masquerading as strategy), w/o a coherent theory of victory, coherent strategy, or even coherent set of demands.

    The most prominent members of the movement were both unwilling, & realistically unable, to constrain & sideline the violent, the anarchist, the nihilist or the nativist, so in the end the movement was usurped by such radicals. By Nov. 2019, it was mostly foolish high school students occupying the Hong Kong university campuses, making petrol bombs to battle out w/ the Hong Kong police. While the causes they espoused (democratic elections) still garnered widespread sympathy among the Hong Kong population, their radicalism & violence deterred most from joining in or giving active support.

    The assault & harassment of anyone who disagreed w/ the radicals’ views &/or tactics, be they local Hong Kongers, Mainlanders living/working in Hong Kong, or even White foreigners, helped to undermine their legitimacy & influence. The more extremist & nihilist among the radicals at the end were clearly hoping to precipitate a direct intervention by the CPC regime, resulting in a bloody crackdown, which Beijing steadfastly refused to oblige. Instead, it preferred to wait out the movement & then exact punishment (mass arrests of prominent figures, ostracizing the participants (at least of those who engaged physically w/ the police, passing a hardline National Security Law, & incentivizing dissenters to go into self-imposed exile).

    Anti-Fascist protest movements in the US absolutely need to take heed of these lessons. In the current context, I agree w/ Van Jackson that it is a distraction to expend energy and consume bandwidth to allow the spotlight to focus on the fringe anarchist/violent elements, & certainly should not risk fracturing the opposition by criticizing/disavowing violent self-defense of communities in face of state violences. However, a clear distinction still needs to be made between violent self-defense & anarchist/nihilist opportunism. The Anti-Fascist protest movement has to be organized, have coherent goals (the commonest cause w/ the wides appeal) & execute coherent strategies, lest the movement become usurped & defined by the anarchists/nihilists, or indeed agents provocateur playacting as such. Failure to achieve organization & coherence risk repeating the failures of OWS & Hong Kong 2019. As stylistically appealing as “be water” may be, it will be outlasted & defeated in detail by the more organized & powerful party.

  148. 148.

    Matt McIrvin

    @terraformer: Disastrous leadership from right-wingers actually does move the needle: that’s why Democrats won in 2018 and 2020 and in a lot of special elections. But that’s what it takes, and memories are short– as soon as Trump was out most people reverted to type except in some local elections.

  150. 150.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: I’ve always been struck by the fact that they still believe the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, that Democrats are trying to “rig” elections by bringing in immigrants who will robotically vote Democratic, even while Republicans gain votes *from those same immigrants*. They could be a permanent Republican bloc if the Republicans were slightly less racist toward them.

  151. 151.

    chemiclord

    @Matt McIrvin: Because it’s not really “increasing” in the sense of total number of white supremacists.  In fact, they are losing numbers… slowly, but they are.

    What is increasing is the shamelessness of it.  They are much more willing to say with a full throat what they only said to their buddies quietly in their favorite bar.

  152. 152.

    sherparick

    @Raoul Paste: He also wants to bust unions and the health insurance benefits that come with union jobs, so really the Republican plan for health insurance and health policy is 1) one should either be born or make themselves rich to buy good health insurance; 2) if you don’t get rich, then don’t get sick or injured; and 3) but if you do get sick or injured, then die quickly.

  154. 154.

    sherparick

    @Matt McIrvin: For about 40 years, Democratic politicians and the consulting class keep misapprehending MSM and its obsession with balance. They expect MSM to be a referee and state that Republicans are playing unfair and call foul. MSM is only interested in a narrative of conflict & will avoid the merits of policy because such evaluations conflict with “balance & neutrality.”  So Democrats and non-Democrats progressives need to develop their own media ecosystem to propagandize the populace & penetrate the legacy media from below, as RW media has done for 40 years.

  156. 156.

    Matt McIrvin

    @chemiclord: Well… maybe not, because they’d lose a lot of their white base too. White supremacy was how they broke the FDR coalition. It’d just be a different balance. Probably a better world on the whole, because we’d still have to deal with the right but on less bigoted territory.

  157. 157.

    Matt McIrvin

    …It seems like what they did successfully in 2024 was to play all sides of the fence in a divide-and-conquer strategy. They successfully courted some votes from the same immigrant groups who they were demonizing to other people at the same time. They didn’t need a majority of these minorities, they just needed to shave off enough.

    Right now we’ve got a mask-off situation where they’ll probably lose some of those votes. But at the same time, the elections will generally be less free and fair so it’s an open question whether it even matters.

  158. 158.

    chemiclord

    @sherparick: Okay… the number of problems with a “Fox News but From the Left” are myriad, and basically make the media environment you dream of impossible.  It’s never going to happen the way you want it to.

    The biggest fundamental problem: the left leaning brain simply doesn’t work the way that the right leaning brain does.  We are quite literally hard wired differently.  There’s no one outlet that can cater to even a simple majority of the left and we will outright reject any attempt to do so (and believe me, many attempts have been made over the last 40 years).

    What winds up happening is that these attempts either wither away, or wind up catering to very specific niches that start taking swings at other left-leaning niches.  Youtube and Spotify and Apple Podcasts are in fact littered with left-leaning sources… they just never get to Joe Rogan sizes because we will simply refuse to listen to anything that doesn’t hit every talking point we want.

    “Why would I listen to Lean to the Left podcasts when Rev Left Radio exists?” Mr. Generic Prog says, as Mr. Average Prog says the exact same thing but with the outlets flipped.

    (And yes, those are both very real podcasts.)

    And the core of this is that the liberal and leftist brain doesn’t respond to fear that the reactionary, right-wing brain does.   That’s Fox News’ trick; overwhelm the fear response by telling them what they want to hear about [x], and then they aren’t going to give a shit as you rob them blind.  Hell, as Lyndon Johnson beautifully put it, they open their wallets for you.

    That strategy doesn’t work on liberal brains; we scoff and simply turn the channel.  There simply isn’t any rational motivator that is fear’s equal, and trying is a fool’s errand that will only end in failure.

  160. 160.

    Ohio farmer

    @eclare: I have a high deductible bronze level plan that is all subsidized… yeah I pay 0, but I have an HSA with a huge balance from never going to Dr in my late 30s and 40s…..needless to say… it’s getting used in my 50s

  161. 161.

    chemiclord

    @Matt McIrvin: I am reminded of a coworker I had from Guatemala who made this depressingly accurate observation of this phenomenon.

    “The one group that hates me almost as much as white people are Mexicans.”

  162. 162.

    davek319

    @Geminid: we need 20–no, make that 40–just like Mikie to thrash the fuck outta the White Christian Fascist party. Huge thumbs up!

    And that fuckstain Gottheimer came in 4th. Hahahahaha, now buzz RTFO into obscurity,

  163. 163.

    Belafon

    @sherparick: The fun part of that is we have no billionaires willing to buy them/us a platform, so we’re going to have to do it ourselves.

  164. 164.

    Glidwrith

    @Gloria DryGarden: I got a commercial from the puppy killer Noem and complained mightily to Tubi seeing her shit on TV. They pretty much told me to fuck off, but haven’t seen the commercial since. Maybe yell at the station that aired the PP lies?

  165. 165.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @chemiclord: I dunno— I think today, at least, white supremacy has become their core appeal.

    If they gave up white supremacy, what do they have? A bunch of policies meant to make people sicker and poorer.

    White supremacy gives white people a reason to vote for being sicker and poorer… as long as they can watch the Black, Jewish, LGBTQIA, whatever in the next box with no sparrows and no curtain rods.

    Sure, they’d gain some Black folks (who are often “church-going, God-fearing folks living actually conservative lives) but they would lose enormous swathes of white people.

  167. 167.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @MagdaInBlack: thx. There’s even some more YouTube’s saying it’s Wyatt Russell. Good to know who it was. Besides, he was spectacular, really great, a treasure

  169. 169.

    chemiclord

    @Professor Bigfoot: ​
      That is likely true, but I would argue that if you were to compile a list of conservative platforms and progressive ones, and stripped ALL race out of it, the overwhelming majority of Americans would choose the conservative platform. I think you see it all the time in how even Democrats frequently elect people who would probably be Republicans, except that the GOP is just too loud about their bigotry.

    Of course, white people make it impossible to detach race from the discussion, so it’s a moot point, I guess. I just do not hold much faith that any particularly strong progressive sentiment exists in Americaland.

  170. 170.

    sab

    @Ohio Mom: That’s what I think too. Sucks up to the right overlords for mentorship instead of doing his job. Coasted his whole career, and now he is way over his head. We will see if that hurts him in 2026.

Comments are closed.