American Politics from 2019 on

[pErvinalia]

'Alternative facts,' all growed up now. A comprehensive denial of reality. Absence of evidence only demonstrates the depth that the demonic opposition will stoop to.

'Why MAGA can’t hear the Trump boos'

The most revealing moment of Donald Trump’s week was not the boos that rained down on him at Madison Square Garden on Monday night. It was the almost instantaneous insistence, by him and his media ecosystem, that the boos never happened. What we witnessed this week — the feverish, almost liturgical insistence that a crowd loudly booing the president of the United States was actually chanting “USA!” — is something more disturbing and dangerous than ordinary propaganda. It’s now clear that the crisis we face is not a lack of information; it is a profound detachment from reality, cultivated by right-wing media and anchored by a president who demands that his followers reject the evidence of their eyes and ears.

...

The moment the boos rang out, MAGA influencers and accounts on social media spun the boos into cheers with a speed that should terrify anyone who still believes in the existence of a shared factual reality. White House communications aide Margo Martin posted a clip on X claiming, “Chants of ‘USA’ in Madison Square Garden!” The official White House account posted a photo of Trump saluting, captioned, with absolute, unironic authoritarian flair, “King of New York.” Fox News’ official social media account blasted: “‘USA! USA! USA!’ Chants erupted throughout Madison Square Garden during Game 3 of the NBA Finals with President Trump in attendance.”

...

This is not spin in the traditional sense. Spin acknowledges reality and tries to tilt it. This is something more extreme: the construction of an entirely separate reality in real time, one that rejects the evidence of the senses. This is what the great media critic and cultural analyst Jay Rosen has long called “the post-truth” condition. For MAGA, contrary evidence is not something that prompts reconsideration. It is something that triggers the construction of an alternative explanation.

Selective hearing on this scale is wild, but it is also terrifyingly deliberate. It renders conversation entirely pointless. When confronted with an undeniable fact — in this case, thousands of people booing a sitting president — the healthy human mind adjusts its understanding of reality. The conspiracy brain, however, views the correction itself as evidence of a conspiracy. That reflexive rejection of observable reality is what now defines Trumpism.

...

Look at the recent fallout from the Los Angeles mayoral race. Right-wing media has spent the last week promoting baseless narratives that the election is being “stolen” by progressives. People who absolutely should know better are allowing their motivated reasoning to override basic math, stoking a dangerous fire.

...

It is a profound display of performative stupidity. In California, mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day are legally counted as they arrive in the days following. Progressive voters, younger voters and working-class voters historically vote later or via mail. It is not a conspiracy; it is basic civics. Yet, because the initial election night tallies shifted against the conservative candidate, it is automatically branded as “rigged.”

When House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked by CNN’s Manu Raju to provide a shred of proof for these explosive claims of election fraud, his response exposed the entire intellectual rot of the conservative movement: “Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it is impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here.”

There it is. Instinctively. This is the core of the MAGA epistemic crisis. Evidence either no longer matters or the lack of evidence becomes proof of how sophisticated the conspiracy must be. The feeling of illegitimacy is enough. And because that feeling is rooted in identity and grievance rather than facts, it cannot be disproven.

...

Fact-checking assumes that people care about accuracy. Debunking assumes that false beliefs are held in good faith. But conspiracy thinking is not a knowledge problem; it is an identity defense mechanism.

Maybe it's like one of those optical illusions. Is the dress blue and white or blue and black?

[Tero]

"The solution can start with Congress establishing a national deadline of Election Day for the arrival of mail-in ballots, as 35 states already require. If that sounds strict, remember that a deadline is unavoidable. The only question is when it should be — Election Day or days later. The variety of state approaches over the past decade makes clear that a later deadline does not increase turnout or eliminate late ballots. Regardless of when the deadline is, a small fraction of people will miss it."

"The Supreme Court may act on this issue before Congress has a chance. In March, the justices heard arguments in a case challenging a Mississippi law that allows ballots to arrive five business days after Election Day. The plaintiffs challenging the law argue that old federal statutes require Election Day to be the deadline."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/08/us/c ... w-why.html

[pErvinalia]

All of a sudden states rights advocates advocate for federal rights.

[Tero]

Gay man that S Carolina will once more vote for senator
https://www.threads.com/@the_el_scott/p ... -F24ID6WMw

[Tero]

we don't want your woke democracy, we have our own:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/ ... ga/687535/

“Given President Trump’s disregard for long-standing political norms and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, many Americans fear that he is hostile to democracy. According to this view, the 49.8 percent of voters who supported him in 2024 must simply be unaware of the existential threat he poses to our republic. The logic, to Trump’s critics, is therefore simple: Once voters fully grasp that democracy is under threat from creeping authoritarianism, then surely they will turn against Trump.

"Yet this strategy has largely fallen flat. Why? The consulting and pro-democracy organizations where we work have spent the past few months with conservative Trump voters across three counties in Wyoming, Michigan, and South Carolina. We learned that many do indeed revere America’s founding design, including the Constitution, free and fair elections, the Electoral College, and the rule of law. But these voters feel that government institutions have drifted from their founding values and priorities, which they classify as faith, or the belief that moral authority precedes political authority; family, the primary unit of social life and obligation; freedom, mainly from government overreach; and place, or the importance of local community over national abstraction."

“We learned that the central question for the conservatives we met is not “Should America be a democracy?” Instead it is: “Has American democracy remained faithful to what makes it legitimate?” Democratic institutions are legitimate, in the view of conservatives, when they honor and protect the faith, freedom, families, and communities of their constituents. When institutions and the politicians who inhabit them fail to appreciate the centrality of these core values, they become illegitimate.”

“Which brings us to Trump. How can people with such a strong attachment to faith and family vote for someone who criticizes religious leaders and defies so many ethical standards? We learned that these voters evaluate Trump not as a model of their values, but as a defender of them. “I don’t like him as a person,” Cindy, a 50-something nurse in South Carolina, told us. “But I like him as a president.”

“This view of Trump as a protector of the country’s core values and interests also helps explain how participants reconcile the president’s interventionist policies and growing executive power with their stated preferences for small, local governance. Many of the people with whom we spoke justified Trump’s aggressive use of federal power as a necessary response to hostile institutions that have violated their constitutional mandate. When the FBI investigates Trump, when government agencies mandate vaccines, and when the Department of Education influences local curricula, voters say these institutions have exceeded their legitimate authority. In cracking down on these institutional breaches, Trump is not breaking the rules but defending the foundation the rules were meant to protect. “Do I think Trump’s all the time, great? No. But I do think he’s fighting for everyone right now,” Kyle, a 20-something delivery driver in rural Wyoming, told us."

“Our research suggests that activists seeking to protect American democracy from authoritarian influences are pursuing a failing strategy. They are defending largely abstract democratic processes, such as norms and rules, on the assumption that everyone agrees that they are legitimate and worth saving. But such arguments are unlikely to resonate with voters who have come to believe that many of these norms and processes have abandoned the country’s bedrock values. Calls to defend democracy promise to alienate anyone who feels that democratic institutions have somehow failed them. Few care to preserve a system they feel stopped serving its purpose long ago.”

[L'Emmerdeur]

Lip service: 'Yeah, the Constitution an' stuff.' Actual belief: 'CHRISTIAN NATION!! To hell with them trans commie atheists. Deport 'em all.'