American Politics from 2019 on

[L'Emmerdeur]

Round up the sealife and deep fry it!!

The brave feds already tried shooting pepper spray inside an inflatable costume. I suppose boiling oil might prove more effective.

Last week, a federal agent was filmed shooting pepper spray directly into the air vent of Todd’s inflatable frog costume.

“I don’t want to see anyone treated inhumanely and to see this happen to my community members, my friends, my family, my neighbors,” Todd said Thursday.

The Telegraph‘s sensationalist reporting emphasized since-deleted comments on social media, including one in which Todd self-identified as a “little gay nonbinary toad and proud Antifa terrorist.”

The president last month signed an executive order claiming he had the authority to designate antifa—which is not an organization—as a domestic terrorist group. The term is a portmanteau of anti-fascist and refers to the ideology held by individuals and groups who oppose authoritarianism.

[source]

[Tero]

L.A. County Declares State of Emergency Over Immigration Raids
The move would allow county officials to provide financial aid to those affected by Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.

[L'Emmerdeur]

How do people wind up like this?

Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.

They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n—ga” and “n—guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”

“Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don’t fit the Hitler aesthetic,” Joe Maligno, who previously identified himself as the general counsel for the New York State Young Republicans, wrote back.

“I’m ready to watch people burn now,” Annie Kaykaty, New York’s national committee member, said.

The exchange is part of a trove of Telegram chats — obtained by POLITICO and spanning more than seven months of messages among Young Republican leaders in New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont. The chat offers an unfiltered look at how a new generation of GOP activists talk when they think no one is listening.

The 2,900 pages of chats, shared among a dozen millennial and Gen Z Republicans between early January and mid-August, chronicle their campaign to seize control of the national Young Republican organization on a hardline pro-Donald Trump platform. Many of the chat members already work inside government or party politics, and one serves as a state senator.

Together, the messages reveal a culture where racist, antisemitic and violent rhetoric circulate freely…

From Facebook

Living outside the MAGA bubble, you naturally have it backwards. The real scumbags are the people who scraped this vitriolic twaddle up and reported on it. Won't somebody think of the children?

Vice President JD Vance faulted "scumbag" reporters for leaking text messages from leaders of Young Republican groups that praised Adolf Hitler, used the N-word, joked about putting political opponents in gas chambers, and praised rape.

...

"We're not going to allow the worst moment in a 21-year-old group chat to ruin a kid's life for the rest of time. That's just not okay."

Vance accused Politico's report of "canceling kids."

"We're all going to have to say, you know what? No, no, no. We're not doing this," he remarked. "And if I have to be the person who carries that message forward, I'm fine with it."

[source]

[Sean Hayden]

—meh, young men hurling obscenities at the prevailing zeitgeist is hardly new or particularly troubling. It’s troubling, yes, but not particularly so relative to being a young man in general.

JD’s mistake is not understanding his role. He should condemn the behavior and let any consequences stand, we can understand without approval.

[JimC]

—meh, young men hurling obscenities at the prevailing zeitgeist is hardly new or particularly troubling. It’s troubling, yes, but not particularly so relative to being a young man in general.

JD’s mistake is not understanding his role. He should condemn the behavior and let any consequences stand, we can understand without approval.

Condemning this behaviour would be the thin edge of the wedge for JD. He is forced to show absolutist beliefs in MAGA, and in rejection of any liberal sentiments.

[Sean Hayden]

Right, screw that guy.

[Tero]

Atlantic:
"For the United States, the question of the decade is: Why hasn’t a resistance movement materialized here? The second Trump administration has flouted court decisions in a third of all rulings against it, according to The Washington Post. It operates as a national extortion racket, using federal power to control the inner workings of universities, law firms, and corporations. It has thoroughly politicized the Justice Department, launching a series of partisan investigations against its political foes. It has turned ICE into a massive paramilitary organization with apparently unconstrained powers. It has treated the Constitution with disdain, assaulted democratic norms and diminished democratic freedoms, and put military vehicles and soldiers on the streets of the capital. It embraces the optics of fascism, and flaunts its autocratic aspirations."

"Although Trump’s actions across these various spheres may seem like separate policies, they are part of one project: creating a savage war of all against all and then using the presidency to profit and gain power from it. Trumpism can also be seen as a multipronged effort to amputate the higher elements of the human spirit—learning, compassion, science, the pursuit of justice—and supplant those virtues with greed, retribution, ego, appetite. Trumpism is an attempt to make the world a playground for the rich and ruthless, so it seeks to dissolve the sinews of moral and legal restraint that make civilization decent."
"If you think Trumpism will simply end in three years, you are naive. Left unopposed, global populism of the sort Trumpism represents could dominate for a generation. This could be the rest of our lives, and our children’s, too.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/why-civil- ... iate=12476

[Tero]

Sorry, wrong link, try this.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... nt/684336/

"Although Trump’s actions across these various spheres may seem like separate policies, they are part of one project: creating a savage war of all against all and then using the presidency to profit and gain power from it. Trumpism can also be seen as a multipronged effort to amputate the higher elements of the human spirit—learning, compassion, science, the pursuit of justice—and supplant those virtues with greed, retribution, ego, appetite. Trumpism is an attempt to make the world a playground for the rich and ruthless, so it seeks to dissolve the sinews of moral and legal restraint that make civilization decent."
"If you think Trumpism will simply end in three years, you are naive. Left unopposed, global populism of the sort Trumpism represents could dominate for a generation. This could be the rest of our lives, and our children’s, too.

"So why are we doing so little? Are we just going to stand in passive witness to the degradation of our democracy?"

"We all understand the first reason many people and institutions have remained quiet: intimidation. Leaders say, If I speak out, it will cost my organization millions. Acquiescence to the government begins to seem prudent. So instead of a mass movement, we have separate institutions each drawing up a self-preservation strategy. In the absence of a broad social movement to support and protect them, leaders all face the same collective-action problem: If I stand alone, I’ll be crushed."

"But a second reason people are quiescent is that they don’t understand the fight we are in. They’re still thinking in conventional political terms. This crisis is not about election cycles. It’s about historical tides."

"Drowning in this historic tide, conventional parties and politicians, whose time horizon doesn’t stretch past the next election, are hapless. Conventional politicians don’t have the vision or power to reverse a historical tide. Chuck Schumer is not going to save us."

"To beat a social movement, you must build a counter social movement. And to do that, you need a different narrative about where we are and where we should be heading, a different set of values dictating what is admirable and what is disgraceful. If we fail to build such a movement, authoritarian strongmen around the globe will dominate indefinitely."

"Americans will eventually reject MAGA, not only because it’s like a foreign implant in the body politic but also because over time, it will become clearer that Trump’s ethos doesn’t address the real problems plaguing his working-class supporters: poor health outcomes, poor educational outcomes, low levels of social capital, low levels of investment in their communities, and weak economic growth. The Trumpists focus on their civil war against the elites—hurting Harvard, hurting USAID, hurting the National Institutes of Health. Cutting off public broadcasting may be emotionally satisfying in an own-the-libs kind of way, but how does this help the working class? Trump’s biggest legislative achievement is a tax cut for the rich. How does that help the working class?"

"Successful movements mobilize the people who already agree with them—but they also focus on persuading those who don’t. Occasionally you’ll hear a Democratic politician say they are going to “fight” for their side. Much of the time, that just means the politician is going to say what their base already believes, only at a higher volume. That’s mostly useless. Large anti-Trump rallies attended exclusively by NPR listeners in blue cities do not impress rural voters."

"Trumpism is ascendant now, but history shows that America cycles through a process of rupture and repair, suffering and reinvention. This process has a familiar sequence. Cultural and intellectual change comes first—a new vision. Social movements come second. Political change comes last."

[Tero]

The target of the administration’s campaign is a stratum of society that’s sometimes called the professional managerial class, or the PMC, although there’s not one universal moniker that MAGA applies to the group it is now crushing. That group includes society’s knowledge workers, its cognitive elite, the winners of the tournament that is the American meritocracy. It covers not only lawyers, university administrators, and professors, but also consultants, investment bankers, scientists, journalists, and other white-collar workers who have prospered in the information age. Back in the 1990s, as the group began to emerge in its current form, the liberal economics commentator Robert Reich hailed its members as “symbolic analysts”—people who identify and solve problems by thinking through ideas rather than via physical labor. A decade later, the urbanist Richard Florida put forth an even more triumphalist term: the “creative class.” That is, its members had the academic training to master the complexities of a globalized economy, the intellectual skills to conquer the digital world.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ss/682409/

[L'Emmerdeur]

—meh, young men hurling obscenities at the prevailing zeitgeist is hardly new or particularly troubling. It’s troubling, yes, but not particularly so relative to being a young man in general.

JD’s mistake is not understanding his role. He should condemn the behavior and let any consequences stand, we can understand without approval.

I don't think he's misunderstanding his role, unless you meant that in the context of previously accepted norms of American society. The Trumpist ethos doesn't accept those norms and in fact finds them faulty. Previous norms would have people in authority (and one hopes at least most people in general) condemning even supposedly 'innocent' tropes of dehumanization, while Trumpism revels in dehumanization.

I think there is no innocence in those Young Republicans, though. They're aware of what they're saying, and while some of them are being 'edgy' because that's the tone of their peers, plenty of them are serious under the edginess. Those who're playing along are playing a role that can harden into genuine Stephen Miller shit. They're playing that role willingly. As long as they do, they're complicit in advancing the agenda.

[Sean Hayden]

I’m sure you’re right. They really aren’t even that young.

I wonder what they’ll be thinking about at church this Sunday. They’ll probably pray for strength during their persecution. In a better timeline their pastors would read the texts as evidence of a fallen world…

[Tero]

tomorrow
https://www.threads.com/@mikeluckovich/ ... yI0c9lPfaQ

[Tero]

"Images will appear of millions of ordinary Americans waving American flags, peacefully reminding Trump that we are not a monarchy and demanding that the regime abide by the Constitution. When they surface, the MAGA propaganda machine sputters. Like the inflatable menagerie of characters now appearing in Portland, the appearance of No Kings protestors (e.g., a 70 yr. old holding a flag, or parents with kids carrying clever signs) undermines the MAGA lie. The true nature of the opposition (i.e. patriotic, diverse Americans) becomes harder to conceal."

Rubin ends her column with this slap at Johnson and his fellow Republician majority in Congress.
"If nothing else, turning out to protest the do-nothing GOP House and Senate majorities that have abandoned their jobs, ceded the power of the purse to Trump, and resorted to demeaning and vilifying the majority of Americans who oppose Trump and virtually all his policies should be more than enough justification to link arms with fellow Americans in defense of democracy, the rule of law, and decency."

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/mike- ... protestors

[Tero]

Hope so. The constitution is not working out well at this point. Founding fathers..

tina.etcheverry
6h
Trump is on his last legs. Not health wise but his whole administration is going to collapse. He tried to build an empire on myth and lies, but the truth is coming out, cracks are forming and everything is going to shit for Trump. (And Mike Johnson, and Pam Bondi and Kash Patel and Stephan Miller.). They are all going down.

[Sean Hayden]

Me too but I’m not hopeful. What I see in the media is an insistence on interpreting what is happening rather than reporting it: he’s been destroyed, Trump just got ruined, everyone sees he’s a fool now, watch so and so destroy miller etc etc. Then you watch it and you’re like, no, that’s not how a lot of people are going to see this.

So when they keep talking about the end being near, I can’t help thinking they’re just doing the same thing, telling you what they think you should see whether it’s happening or not.