All Things Trump: Is it over yet?

[Animavore]

It looks like one of Trump's routes to full fascism has been blocked. Texas lawsuit laughed out of court.
I wonder if President Scumbag will attack the Supreme Court next.

[Brian Peacock]

What's phony about the disagreements between Republicans like Limbaugh and Democrats?

That's not quite what I was trying to say. The phony war is things like the 'culture war', or think of the way House Democrats are characterised as far-left extremists by House Republicans, or how BLM are categorised as Marxists and criminals. This kind of rhetoric doesn't articulate political disagreement but seeks to fundamentally de-legitimise differences in experience, attitude, and ideas by categorising particular people/groups as moral dangers and physical threats. For example, we can't 'peacefully coexist' with Marxist criminals can we(?) - and having established that 'fact' we can now automatically invalidate anyone who wants to talk about how a racialised criminal justice system might be having an disproportionate and adverse impact on communities of colour. It goes both ways of course - all Trump voters are fascist etc - but as a technique of political advertising, one which defines "us" by whom "we" stand against rather than what "we" stand for, and defines "them" as a danger and a threat to "our" health, wealth, and/or way of life, it's a fixture of right-wing identity politics. So it's the manufacture of these kind of conflicts, which in turn help to define the social scope of political discourse and public policy, which I think are phony, because they don't in actuality articulate or represent what they say they're articulating and representing.

[pErvinalia]

I don't think we can peacefully coexist with proto-fascists and white nationalists. The culture wars are real, just not in the way conservatives characterise it (i.e. as being waged by the left). It is being waged from both sides.

[Seabass]

It goes both ways of course - all Trump voters are fascist etc

Who, me?

For the record, I don't think all Trump voters are fascist, but I would say they all support a fascist movement. There's a difference.

Yes, many Republicans automatically vote for the Republican because they've been conditioned to be Republican or hate Democrats or liberals or what have you. But even if those people aren't fascists, they are supporting what is more or less a fascist movement. If MAGA isn't exactly fascist, it's part of the same family. Trumpism checks off most of Umberto Eco's list.

[Brian Peacock]

I don't think we can peacefully coexist with proto-fascists and white nationalists. The culture wars are real, just not in the way conservatives characterise it (i.e. as being waged by the left). It is being waged from both sides.

True. I tend to view the Left's role in that conflict as being akin to atheism, in as much as its a reaction to an ideology without which there would be little to no need to respond. I don't think we can peacefully coexist with fascists and nationalists etc either, just like I don't think we can with religious zealots or theocrats, and when someone comes at you swinging a cricket bat at your head you don't say 'let's have a chat and try and find some common ground' - you can only do that once you've disarmed them. However, I think we can influence the conversation and try and de-escalate tensions, like we learned how to take the edge off strident 'new atheism' but still made our arguments and represented our views, just in a less aggressive or threatening way.

[Brian Peacock]

It goes both ways of course - all Trump voters are fascist etc

Who, me?

No. It was just an example.

[Tero]

one term bitch.jpg (36.37 KiB) Viewed 1004 times

I was torn between the bicyclist with the finger and this "one term bitch" photo when Trump tweeted 10 minutes ago.

The tweet has the text with the photo
https://twitter.com/esa_jarvi/status/13 ... 0851374080

[Tero]

Trump will run in 2024 but...

The outgoing president courts political disaster by declaring his candidacy for 2024. Unless he can be absolutely certain that he will win the Republican nomination once more, history suggests he is likely to lose again.
CNN

What effect will he have on 2024 candidates?

[Tero]

Stop the steal...something...Jericho
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ0imduTI ... e=youtu.be
Live stream

[Tero]

[Brian Peacock]

Trump is offering to give $1million to charity if anyone can prove he didn't win the election.

[Cunt]

To the Ratz charity, I hope. You guys could use some new alcohols, and I think lak needs more ammo.

[rainbow]

Brian, in some ways you are agreeing with Rush, that between us and them there is no real compromise...

Well there are only two kinds of people, those that think we should tolerate Fascists, but re-educate them.
...and those that think they should be taken out and shot.

I'm all for compromise between these views.

Do you find China, or the US more 'fascistic'?

Yes, I do. You make a very good point.

What work has the brave and lily-white antifa done in real fascistic countries.

Exactly.

[Tero]

Trump gets no closer to fans than helicoptering over them




WASHINGTON — Thousands of supporters of President Donald Trump returned to Washington on Saturday for rallies to back his desperate efforts to subvert the election that he lost to Joe Biden. They cheered as Trump flew overhead on the Marine One helicopter on his way out of town for the Army-Navy football game in West Point, New York.

The gatherings of mostly unmasked Trump loyalists were intended as a show of force just two days before the Electoral College meets to formally elect Biden as the 46th president. Trump, whose term will end Jan. 20, refuses to concede, while clinging to baseless claims of fraud that have been rejected by state and federal courts, and Friday by the Supreme Court.

Trump tweeted his apparent surprise Saturday morning at the rallies, publicly known for weeks: “Wow! Thousands of people forming in Washington (D.C.) for Stop the Steal. Didn’t know about this, but I’ll be seeing them! #MAGA”

Trump left the White House around midday for the trip to the U.S. Military Academy, and as Marine One passed over a rally on the National Mall, cheers went up.

Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser recently pardoned by Trump, was speaking from the stage at the time.

[The latest] In rejecting election lawsuit that sought to throw out 20 million votes in 4 key states, Supreme Court justices deliver a rebuke to GOP »
“That’s pretty cool. Imagine just being able to jump in a helicopter and just go for a joy ride around Washington,” said Flynn, whose pardon wiped away his conviction for lying to the FBI during the Russia investigation.


Earlier in the day, a group of about 50 men in the Proud Boy’s black and yellow circled the perimeter of Black Lives Matter Plaza, where about 200 anti-Trump were rallying.

[The latest] ‘Fail as a matter of law and fact’: Trump loses federal Wisconsin case while arguing another before state Supreme Court in rare Saturday session »
They chanted vulgar slogans and at one point started singing “Jingle Bells.” They were apparently under orders not to engage with hecklers. One man who was talking back to people was yelled at and told “Don’t interact!”

The assembly on the National Mall, called the “Jericho March,” was described on its website as a “prayer rally” with speakers “praying for the walls of corruption and election fraud to fall down.”

https://www.chicagotribune.com/election ... story.html

[Hermit]

Hitler Was Incompetent and Lazy—and His Nazi Government Was an Absolute Clown Show
Tom Phillips
On 4/30/19 at 5:22 AM EDT
Tom Phillips

The below is an excerpt from HUMANS: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up by Tom Phillips.

Look, I know what you're thinking. Putting Hitler in a book about the terrible mistakes we've made as a species isn't exactly the boldest move ever. "Oh wow, never heard of him, what a fascinating historical nugget" is something you're probably not saying right now.

But beyond him being (obviously) a genocidal maniac, there's an aspect to Hitler's rule that kind of gets missed in our standard view of him. Even if popular culture has long enjoyed turning him into an object of mockery, we still tend to believe that the Nazi machine was ruthlessly efficient, and that the great dictator spent most of his time…well, dictating things.

So it's worth remembering that Hitler was actually an incompetent, lazy egomaniac and his government was an absolute clown show.
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In fact, this may even have helped his rise to power, as he was consistently underestimated by the German elite. Before he became chancellor, many of his opponents had dismissed him as a joke for his crude speeches and tacky rallies. Even after elections had made the Nazis the largest party in the Reichstag, people still kept thinking that Hitler was an easy mark, a blustering idiot who could easily be controlled by smart people.

Why did the elites of Germany so consistently underestimate Hitler? Possibly because they weren't actually wrong in their assessment of his competency—they just failed to realise that this wasn't enough to stand in the way of his ambition. As it would turn out, Hitler was really bad at running a government. As his own press chief Otto Dietrich later wrote in his memoir The Hitler I Knew, "In the twelve years of his rule in Germany Hitler produced the biggest confusion in government that has ever existed in a civilized state."

His government was constantly in chaos, with officials having no idea what he wanted them to do, and nobody was entirely clear who was actually in charge of what. He procrastinated wildly when asked to make difficult decisions, and would often end up relying on gut feeling, leaving even close allies in the dark about his plans. His "unreliability had those who worked with him pulling out their hair," as his confidant Ernst Hanfstaengl later wrote in his memoir Zwischen Weißem und Braunem Haus. This meant that rather than carrying out the duties of state, they spent most of their time in-fighting and back-stabbing each other in an attempt to either win his approval or avoid his attention altogether, depending on what mood he was in that day.

There's a bit of an argument among historians about whether this was a deliberate ploy on Hitler's part to get his own way, or whether he was just really, really bad at being in charge of stuff. Dietrich himself came down on the side of it being a cunning tactic to sow division and chaos—and it's undeniable that he was very effective at that. But when you look at Hitler's personal habits, it's hard to shake the feeling that it was just a natural result of putting a workshy narcissist in charge of a country.

Hitler was incredibly lazy. According to his aide Fritz Wiedemann, even when he was in Berlin he wouldn't get out of bed until after 11 a.m., and wouldn't do much before lunch other than read what the newspapers had to say about him, the press cuttings being dutifully delivered to him by Dietrich.

He was obsessed with the media and celebrity, and often seems to have viewed himself through that lens. He once described himself as "the greatest actor in Europe," and wrote to a friend, "I believe my life is the greatest novel in world history." In many of his personal habits he came across as strange or even childish—he would have regular naps during the day, he would bite his fingernails at the dinner table, and he had a remarkably sweet tooth that led him to eat "prodigious amounts of cake" and "put so many lumps of sugar in his cup that there was hardly any room for the tea."

He was deeply insecure about his own lack of knowledge, preferring to either ignore information that contradicted his preconceptions, or to lash out at the expertise of others. He hated being laughed at, but enjoyed it when other people were the butt of the joke (he would perform mocking impressions of people he disliked). But he also craved the approval of those he disdained, and his mood would quickly improve if a newspaper wrote something complimentary about him.

Little of this was especially secret or unknown at the time. It's why so many people failed to take Hitler seriously until it was too late, dismissing him as merely a "half-mad rascal" or a "man with a beery vocal organ." In a sense, they weren't wrong. In another, much more important sense, they were as wrong as it's possible to get.

Hitler's personal failings didn't stop him having an uncanny instinct for political rhetoric that would gain mass appeal, and it turns out you don't actually need to have a particularly competent or functional government to do terrible things.

We tend to assume that when something awful happens there must have been some great controlling intelligence behind it. It's understandable: how could things have gone so wrong, we think, if there wasn't an evil genius pulling the strings? The downside of this is that we tend to assume that if we can't immediately spot an evil genius, then we can all chill out a bit because everything will be fine.

But history suggests that's a mistake, and it's one that we make over and over again. Many of the worst man-made events that ever occurred were not the product of evil geniuses. Instead they were the product of a parade of idiots and lunatics, incoherently flailing their way through events, helped along the way by overconfident people who thought they could control them.

Adapted from HUMANS: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up by Tom Phillips © by Tom Phillips 2019, used with permission from Hanover Square Press/HarperCollins.

Tom Phillips is a journalist and writer based in London. He was the editorial director of BuzzFeed U.K. and is now editor at FullFact, the UK's independent factchecking charity.​

https://www.newsweek.com/hitler-incompe ... on-1408136