USA Politics (redux)

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Trump is really the only candidate for the incurably whacked-out.

I found this story/interview with a South Carolina mom leaving QAnon (and how she became interested in them to begin with) to be quite interesting:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/03/tech/qanon-mom-former-believer/index.html

[T. D.]

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-03/biden-won-t-likely-deliver-for-liberal-democrats

A series of executive actions by President Joe Biden has pulled U.S. policy to the left on a range of issues including fracking, abortion and transgender athletes. Progressives should savor the moment, because it could well represent a peak in their efforts to change the country.

Biden came into office with a very progressive platform. But it is entirely possible, even likely, that he won't deliver on much of it. His immigration proposal is for show, not an attempt to get something through Congress. Democratic Senator Joe Manchin's opposition means he may not have 51 votes for a $15 minimum wage, let alone the 60 that Senate rules probably require. Democrats don't have nearly enough votes to create new states, block voter-identification laws or increase gun regulation. Legislation on some of those issues would struggle even to pass the House.

Other items on the liberal wish list that are vanishingly unlikely to happen include passage of the Equality Act, a new public option for health care and an end to the Hyde Amendment that restricts Medicaid funding for abortion. Forget about packing the Supreme Court.

That doesn't mean Congress will leave Biden empty-handed. Covid-relief legislation is likely to pass, albeit with a lower price tag and smaller checks for households than Biden wants. Higher taxes on corporations and capital gains look doable. Biden will get judges confirmed. If Covid and the economy cooperate, Biden's polls may hold up. The tight margins in Congress may keep Democrats from being able to overreach and thus prevent a backlash.

Still, it's going to be a letdown for many on the left....(article continues)

[milk]

I found this story/interview with a South Carolina mom leaving QAnon (and how she became interested in them to begin with) to be quite interesting:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/03/tech/qanon-mom-former-believer/index.html

I might watch this sometime. My sister got pulled into the conspiracy. I actually think she was indoctrinated through new-age anti-vax which slowly turned into a kind of a cult when she sped from voting Biden in the primary to protesting masks to voting trump and believing he won to breaking with all family over their refusal to agree with her. This is a cult. I have one other family member who voted trump but disavowed him this time around.
What changes people's minds when they've been deeply embedded in a belief system that becomes part of their identity? That's a hard thing. We have to be somewhat self-conscious and also have self-critique about our personal epistemology.     

[Karl Henning]

This is a cult. I have one other family member who voted trump but disavowed him this time around.
What changes people's minds when they've been deeply embedded in a belief system that becomes part of their identity? That's a hard thing. We have to be somewhat self-conscious and also have self-critique about our personal epistemology.     

Truly a cult...The Unexamined Life....

[Karl Henning]

The ignore list is my friend.  All of those you allude to have resided there since my very first few days on the forum.

Testify!

[Daverz]

Real progress killing babies. What the ancient Spartans were good at I believe!

We've moved on to eating the babies.  Do keep up.

[Karl Henning]

We've moved on to eating the babies.  Do keep up.

Why were the Spartans so precious, I wonder?

[Herman]

Sorry mate, but you won't get any change out of those who are convinced that Trump was a dictator, even though any examination of his term of office shows how ludicrous such a charge is. The fact that he is uncouth and vulgar does not make a man a dictator, as he had the American constitution to contend with.

It amuses me as a disinterested third party from another country, the self-righteous condemnation of Trump for contesting the election and accusing him of stirring up hate.

I don't know why but it seems enlightening to repost this, from a "disinterested party".

[Karl Henning]

Michael Gerson: Trumpism is American fascism

It is revealing how a political movement that claims to be dedicated to the recovery of national greatness has so readily and completely abandoned many defining national ideals. Donald Trump's promise of American strength has involved the betrayal of American identity.

One of the most important strands of our founding ideology is civic republicanism. In this tradition, the common good is not automatically produced by a clash of competing interests. A just society must be consciously constructed by citizens possessing certain virtues. A democracy in particular depends on people who take responsibility for their communities, show an active concern for the welfare of their neighbors, demand integrity from public officials, defend the rule of law, and respect the rights and dignity of others. Without these moral commitments, a majority is merely a mob.

What type of citizen has Trump — and his supportive partisan media — produced? Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) still holds her job in Congress because she is representative of ascendant MAGA radicalism. Those who reflect her overt racism, her unhinged conspiracy thinking and her endorsement of violence against public figures are now treated as a serious political constituency within the Republican Party. Trump has come down firmly on Greene's side. One participant in the Jan. 6 attack sent a video to her children saying: "We broke into the Capitol. . . . We got inside, we did our part. We were looking for Nancy [Pelosi] to shoot her in the friggin' brain, but we didn't find her." The detail that gets to me? She sent this to her children. She was living in a mental world where vile, shameful things are a parent's boast. And she saw her actions as the expression of a public duty — an example of doing her part.

Call this civic barbarism. Instead of promoting the values of responsible citizenship, Trump and his media enablers are elevating and blessing the very worst among us. They are making many Americans less suited for self-government and more dangerous to their neighbors. And they are doing so for the reason some of the Founders most feared: To lead the mob against true democracy.

How can anyone view the trashing of our founding tradition as evidence of patriotism? Because some have adopted a very different political philosophy than the Founders held. This approach to government promises the recovery of a mythical past. It feeds a sense of White victimhood. It emphasizes emotion over reason. It denigrates experts and expertise. It slanders outsiders and blames them for social and economic ills. It warns of global plots by Jews and shadowy elites. It accepts the lies of a leader as a deeper form of political truth. It revels in anger and dehumanization. It praises law and order while reserving the right to disobey the law and overturn the political order through violence.

This is a reality that I have resisted naming. The 45th president and a significant portion of his supporters have embraced American fascism. And Trump's buffoonery does not disprove the point. Though he probably cannot name the political theory he has embraced, his own recklessness, vanity and authoritarian instincts have led him down fascist grooves. He displays an intuitive affinity for leaders such as Russia's Vladimir Putin, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hungary's Viktor Orban. And Trump would have subverted the legitimate result of the 2020 presidential election if he could have, which would have broken a constitutional continuity that has endured over two centuries.

I don't think Trump came particularly close to success. This time. But the influence of his treacherous ideology is still being spread by unprincipled people seeking influence and profit. American fascism needs to be aggressively marginalized.

This won't happen if responsible Republicans decline to engage the debate or leave the field entirely. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) need reinforcements. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) needs relentless ridicule for his weakness.

The task of marginalization will also be more difficult if those on the left try to lump all conservatives into Trump's camp — arguing that fascism is somehow the natural destination of Barry Goldwater's nomination or Ronald Reagan's presidency. This is utter rubbish. I was involved, for example, in the running ideological conflict between Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), whom I worked for, and Pat Buchanan, who previewed Trumpism. Kemp was the more authentically conservative voice. And there is a massive moral gap between the politics of George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney on one side, and Trump's civic barbarism.

Much about the United States' political future will depend on shaping a compelling, responsible American conservatism as an alternative to the Trump temptation. This may or may not happen within the GOP. But for American democracy to fully function, civic republicanism will eventually need a home on the political right.

[Karl Henning]

I don't know why but it seems enlightening to repost this, from a "disinterested party".

"disinterested" doesn't make him informed. As if someone who has prejudged Biden to be a "con man" is "disinterested."

[Daverz]

A very good deflect from the truth

The truth is that it's the same kind of rhetoric.  The same kind of rhetoric that led to doctors being assassinated and now mobs sacking the capitol and murdering police.

[Karl Henning]

Jennifer Rubin: Rs look at these people as their "base," the rest of us should recognize this is a social pathology. We have significant mass of extremists who embrace violence. We can vote out extremists and their weak-kneed enablers, but the problem is outside DC

House Republicans are a lost cause. But what about their followers?

[BasilValentine]

Out of the 74 million who voted for Trump, how many were at the capitol on January 6th? Of those, how many tried to take over Congress that day? Does that even matter to you?

Enough to threaten the lives of elected officials. To get a few thousand to attack the capitol required an enormous pool of deluded people from which to draw because only a small percentage of the deluded are willing to resort to violence. Last I heard, more than 50% of Trump supporters believe(d) the election was stolen. That's an enormous pool and the pool is the problem.

[Herman]

My dear boy they were mobs burning whole cities and killing people to the applause of the liberals

On Fox.

In reality those burned cities are still buzzing along.

You mean those killed by the Kyle kid? The GMG right wingers were idolizing him.

[Herman]

I bet you're reading some news, yeah.

The reality is those Portland riots and elsewhere were confined to a couple of city blocks (it's the way it always happens, same with Ferguson; riots are lazy things). Your news sources take camera angles that make it look as big as possible, because white people want to be scared of black people. So, most people went about their business as folks were rioting downtown. The diner cop, who's from Portland, was writing a million posts a day while his neigbourhood was supposedly destroyed by evil black / radical leftwingers.

The other thing is, a substantial portion of the destruction and violence was done by the same kind of people who came to the DC Capitol. They came supposedly to protect business, but you can't bake an omelet without breaking some eggs. There's the famous footage of the Minneapolis Umbrella Guy who was smashing windows. White rightwing guy. There's this Ritterhouse kid, just a suburban white kid who watched fox all day, driving all day to shoot some bad people. And there was always a Proud Boy contingent stirring up the pot.

I don't really know why I'm even talking about this. Guys like you and Dowder are on a perpetual repeat loop. Dead enders.

Biden was duly elected in what Republican and Democratic officials called one of the cleanest and most orderly * elections ever, and that's why he's president now, got it?

* Republican observers abusing, threatening and yelling at recount officials is perhaps not quite clean or orderly, but a lot of Republicans can't help themselves. They're sore losers.

[BasilValentine]

The fact that innocent were killed in the riots that took place last year doesn't matter?

The purpose of the protests was to protect life. The purpose of the insurrection was violence and, if one listens to the massed voices of hundreds of people, to kill. Those two goals are exact opposites. You are making a despicable false equivalence. And, by the way, Donald Trump was by far the greatest source of violence during the BLM protests, responsible for more than the next hundred people involved. He used paramilitary troops to assault hundreds of peaceful protestors for the sake of a photo op; he ordered the illegal kidnapping and jailing of US citizens.

The fact that Democrats demonstrated four months outside in 2016 and for years tried to impeach Trump with a bogus accusations of Russian interference is nothing new?

So you are another person who hasn't read the Mueller Report and has no idea what it concluded. In Part 1 it detailed multiple instances of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. Part 2 laid out ten clear and prosecutable instances of obstruction of justice. 

Come on, just typical that it once I do it it's okay and if another side do it it's wrong. The Democrats contested the 2016 election just as hotly. The hypocrisy they are showing is quite astounding

Those protesting Trump's election had a plausible case — oh, and they didn't storm the capitol and they didn't murder police officers. Another lazy false equivalence.

[Fëanor]

The fact that innocent were killed in the riots that took place last year doesn't matter? That is swept under the carpet by Biden and Harris. The fact that Democrats demonstrated four months outside in 2016 and for years tried to impeach Trump with a bogus accusations of Russian interference is nothing new? Come on, just typical that it once I do it it's okay and if another side do it it's wrong. The Democrats contested the 2016 election just as hotly. The hypocrisy they are showing is quite astounding

It is fatuous and/or insincere to compare the BLM protests, such as Minneapolis or Portland, with what happened at the Capital on January.  One a bunch of people complaining about systematic racism or other ills of society;  the other a direct assault on the democratic process with duly elected officials physically threatened.

"Danger" to the nation or democracy from BLM or ANTIFA is an entirely invalid notion fabricated by the Alt-right media and social network groups.  I can't go so far as to say these happenings were "false flag" events, but it is clear that Alt-right provocateurs were present fewer or greater numbers.

These protests, (or riots if you insist), in so far as violence and vandalism were concerned, were a local nuisance at worst.  Authorities in various instances grossly over reacted with police presence and force.
By contrast authorities were grossly unprepared for the January 6th assault -- one wonders why that was the case?  Inquiries may yet reveal that certain authorities were sympathetic with the mob's intent to threaten elected government.

[DavidW]

BLM was 99.9% peaceful protests.  They were not riots.

[Karl Henning]

Those protesting Trump's election had a plausible case — oh, and they didn't storm the capitol and they didn't murder police officers. Another lazy false equivalence.

Also, Clinton didn't file 51 spurious lawsuits.  Someone is not particularly well informed.

[Mirror Image]

Oh boy have they got your number. Even with the biased media over here it was obvious the attacks on police and desire for anarchy. 30 police injured. Of course because it's done by the left-wing then it's alright and even the most violent burning of houses and rampaging by a mob is 'peaceful'. The fact is we live in a post truth society where burning buildings and looting is dressed up as peaceful protest including by the VP. My dear old pal you may be taken in by it but some of us are not

I'm not condoning the Black Lives Matter movement's vandalism and destruction, but I can almost guarantee you that if it were Black Lives Matter protesters that stormed the Capitol they would've been shot or gassed immediately with no questions asked yet when an all-white group raids the Capitol with the intent to harm, or kill, elected officials, not one of them was shot on site until they got well inside of the Capitol building. This isn't a media slant these are the facts and the fact of the matter is the Black Lives Matter protesters had a good reason to be upset: they're tired of the way they've been profiled by the police. The Trump supporters, on the other hand, have no reason to be upset. He lost in an election, but yet pouted like an oversized, orange-glazed baby, so what was his last resort? Inciting a coup that not only disgraced his already failed presidency, but it only reinforced a well-known fact: he wasn't fit to be president. If he had accepted defeat like a man and wished Biden well then his reputation may have not been as tarnished as it now.