Waking up?

From established Senator to local dog catcher the entire GOP is doubling down, not just on Trumpism, but in support of the man himself and his insurrectionist supporters. Sure, there is a smattering of folks willing to stand up/vote against the party direction, but they are so few and far between. They will be primaried and purged within the next 4 years.

They aren’t waking up, they’re trying to bend reality to their fever dreams.

1/28/2021 10:47:31 AM

What policies are they doubling down? The wall? Immigration? China Virus conspiracies? Ensuring people that make less than $100k and have less than $1mm net worth have a place of like minds and tastes on the internet?

1/28/2021 11:49:42 AM

Just say what you want to do say instead of parsing it in a bunch of rhetoricals.

And what they're doubling down on is that democracy should only apply win Republicans win. That any slim republican win has the mandate of the universe to proceed with shoving through everything without partisan support, then when tables are turned its all about demanding bipartisanship. Doubling down on "wow we lost bc more peoples voted let's make sure that doesn't happen again". Doubling down on "covid relief for the rich only". Doubling down on protecting inciters and conspiracy theorists within their ranks. Etc etc etc

1/28/2021 1:06:14 PM

Quote :

"Just say what you want to do say instead of parsing it in a bunch of rhetoricals. "

I moved from Raleigh in 2011 to live in San Francisco and Santa Monica to chase bougie dreams of third wave coffee and Michelin star restaurants. I've spent basically no time in the south in the last decade, so can't say it's 100% true there. But I just don't see any Republican in roads or culture in life. Everywhere I've worked, no matter the company size, has BLM support meetings, corporate safe spaces and meetings to talk about racial justice and trans issues. Most Fortune 1x companies have ad campaigns on every social media network to announce how woke they are.

Even with Trump as president they pulled down civil war era statues in such liberal havens as Pensacola and Charleston. If that doesn't signal your tribe is conquered and you have fuck all power I don't know what does. Has any thing the prole right wants been passed and propagated to real life? Abortion rules? Drug laws? You can do heroin on the street in front of a cop and not be arrested in most major American cities for ffs. Any policies Trump managed to pass are being unrolled.

Any dream the Alabama class had of the military and police taking up their cause because FREEDOM or whatever just got fucked right in the ass. Some boomercons still think Mitch McConnell and co. is on their side and it's just that meddling Pelosi. LOL. It's pretty clear based on the outcome of like every facet of life that dream is over. What ever regroups is not going to be Trump or 20th century dreams of "DEY TEWK ERR JERBS".

Quote :

"Just say what you want to do say instead of parsing it in a bunch of rhetoricals."

I'm a whore. As long I get to keep buying larger airplanes I can play struggle session. Fire up the money printers and close all the local restaurants, I need a new 911.

1/28/2021 3:21:20 PM

Quote :

"I've spent basically no time in the south in the last decade, so can't say it's 100% true there"

It's not. At all.

1/28/2021 5:11:30 PM

The Senate is the canary for the decisions the GOP is making right now. There are obvious exceptions, but usually you find Senators moderating themselves in order to pull a larger electorate that is required to win statewide contests. It’s why 2 weeks ago, GOP senators from across the conservative spectrum were either implicating Trump in the insurrection or, at a minimum, furrowing their brow. Now fast forward to this week, where all but 5 GOP senators attempted to hide behind objectively false constitutional process arguments to get Trump off the hook. That includes McConnell, who 2 weeks ago suggested they should hold an impeachment vote and see where it comes out, to this week whipping votes on this bullshit constitutional argument. They are doubling down on supporting Trump specifically.

And no, I can’t point to specific GOP policy that represents Trumpism, because one of the features of Trumpism is that it has no specific policies, or they shift to whatever is convenient in any given moment. It’s a cult of personality/mindset of cruelty more than some vision of the future. Look at the GOP platform for 2020, it was essentially “we want what trump wants.”

From where I’m standing, as you move away from the Senate the situation gets worse. My congressman led the insurrectionists in a “U-S-A” chant minutes before they stormed the Capitol. Popular GOP town council members in a neighboring small town got absolutely obliterated in November after they came out against Trumpism, that doesn’t even touch on the death threats they received. In the House, GOP leadership has barely even scolded their members that have openly supported the death of other Congress people. Across the party, Qanon adherents, MAGA true believers, and white supremacists are winning office by using Trump support as a litmus test. Reasonable people are retiring to avoid the death threats or having to debase their morals for the MAGA crowd.

I’m not saying that Trumpism is going to win the day (or perhaps decade), but they have already won and control the GOP. If it isn’t clear to you now, give it another 2-4 years after they have purged the reasonable people.

1/28/2021 5:23:25 PM

Quote :

"one of the features of Trumpism is that it has no specific policies, or they shift to whatever is convenient in any given moment. It’s a cult of personality/mindset of cruelty more than some vision of the future."

aka fascism

1/28/2021 6:31:16 PM

You can say what you want about the tenets of national socialism but at least it's an ethos.

1/28/2021 6:47:01 PM

^ Usually people start with the tens of millions killed and go from there.

1/28/2021 9:27:30 PM

Quote :

"From where I’m standing, as you move away from the Senate the situation gets worse. My congressman led the insurrectionists in a “U-S-A” chant minutes before they stormed the Capitol. Popular GOP town council members in a neighboring small town got absolutely obliterated in November after they came out against Trumpism, that doesn’t even touch on the death threats they received. In the House, GOP leadership has barely even scolded their members that have openly supported the death of other Congress people. Across the party, Qanon adherents, MAGA true believers, and white supremacists are winning office by using Trump support as a litmus test. Reasonable people are retiring to avoid the death threats or having to debase their morals for the MAGA crowd."

That's all great, but those people have fuck all power. If some schizophrenic anti social meth head makes death threats ok, but that happens on RC plane forums too. Any population of people has 1% diagnosed nut bags.

They aren't organized and they don't have the capital to stage any kind of serious rebellion. It's possible someone like Musk may have his interests of building rockets misaligned with the democratic woke left. When that happens we may get actual unrest backed by powerful interests. Until then it's GI Barbie larping with a Glock and the media eating that shit up.

No real policies are being rolled out and we'll still get free weed and health care for the foreseeable future. Maybe some redneck in West, SC will call you fag for not driving a pickup, but other than that the world is global and blue.

1/28/2021 9:39:06 PM

^

https://www.wral.com/the-gop-is-in-a-doom-loop-of-bizarro/19498132/

Quote :

"Here’s what we know about American politics: The Republican Party is stuck, probably irreversibly, in a doom loop of bizarro. If the Trump-incited Capitol insurrection didn’t snap the party back to sanity — and it didn’t — nothing will. What isn’t clear yet is who, exactly, will end up facing doom. Will it be the GOP as a significant political force? Or will it be America as we know it? Unfortunately, we don’t know the answer. It depends a lot on how successful Republicans will be in suppressing votes. About the bizarro: Even I had some lingering hope that the Republican establishment might try to end Trumpism. But such hopes died this week. On Tuesday Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, who has said that Donald Trump’s role in fomenting the insurrection was impeachable, voted for a measure that would have declared a Trump trial unconstitutional because he’s no longer in office. (Most constitutional scholars disagree.) On Thursday Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader — who still hasn’t conceded that Joe Biden legitimately won the presidency, but did declare that Trump “bears responsibility” for the attack on Congress — visited Mar-a-Lago, presumably to make amends. In other words, the GOP’s national leadership, after briefly flirting with sense, has surrendered to the fantasies of the fringe. Cowardice rules. And the fringe is consolidating its hold at the state level. The Arizona state party censured the Republican governor for the sin of belatedly trying to contain the coronavirus. The Texas GOP has adopted the slogan “We are the storm,” which is associated with QAnon, although the party denies it intended any link. Oregon Republicans have endorsed the completely baseless claim, contradicted by the rioters themselves, that the attack on the Capitol was a left-wing false flag operation. How did this happen to what was once the party of Dwight Eisenhower? Political scientists argue that traditional forces of moderation have been weakened by factors like the nationalization of politics and the rise of partisan media, notably Fox News. This opens the door to a process of self-reinforcing extremism (something, by the way, that I’ve seen happen in a minor fashion within some academic subfields). As hard-liners gain power within a group, they drive out moderates; what remains of the group is even more extreme, which drives out even more moderates; and so on. A party starts out complaining that taxes are too high; after a while it begins claiming that climate change is a giant hoax; it ends up believing that all Democrats are Satanist pedophiles. This process of radicalization began long before Donald Trump; it goes back at least to Newt Gingrich’s takeover of Congress in 1994. But Trump’s reign of corruption and lies, followed by his refusal to concede and his attempt to overturn the election results, brought it to a head. And the cowardice of the Republican establishment has sealed the deal. One of America’s two major political parties has parted ways with facts, logic and democracy, and it’s not coming back. What happens next? You might think that a party that goes off the deep end morally and intellectually would also find itself going off the deep end politically. And that has in fact happened in some states. Those fantasist Oregon Republicans, who have been shut out of power since 2013, seem to be going the way of their counterparts in California, a once-mighty party reduced to impotence in the face of a Democratic supermajority. But it’s not at all clear that this will happen at a national level. True, as Republicans have become more extreme they have lost broad support; the GOP has won the popular vote for president only once since 1988, and 2004 was an outlier influenced by the lingering rally-around-the-flag effects of 9/11. Given the unrepresentative nature of our electoral system, however, Republicans can achieve power even while losing the popular vote. A majority of voters rejected Trump in 2016, but he became president anyway, and he came fairly close to pulling it out in 2020 despite a deficit of 7 million votes. The Senate is evenly divided even though Democratic members represent 41 million more people than Republicans. And the Republican response to electoral defeat isn’t to change policies to win over voters; it is to try to rig the next election. Georgia has long been known for systematic suppression of Black voters; it took a remarkable organizing effort by Democrats, led by Stacey Abrams, to overcome that suppression and win the state’s electoral votes and Senate seats. So the Republicans who control the state are doubling down on disenfranchisement, with proposed new voter ID requirements and other measures to limit voting. The bottom line is that we don’t know whether we’ve earned more than a temporary reprieve. A president who tried to retain power despite losing an election has been foiled. But a party that buys into bizarre conspiracy theories and denies the legitimacy of its opposition isn’t getting saner, and still has a good chance of taking complete power in four years."

1/29/2021 12:27:37 PM

^^i just feel like we’ve seen this episode before. In the 2008-2009 time frame all kinds of folks were running around proclaiming the GOP dead due to demographics, how the recession was reshaping society, etc (including myself). Remember how much we laffed and laffed at the TEA party goobers? Then they won the House back in 2010 and the Senate back in 2014. It was an endless cycle of brinkmanship, bad-faith investigations, false deficit concerns, and obstructionism.

It’ll be worse this time, because they really are headed off the deep end as ^ article suggests.

1/29/2021 2:55:33 PM

^

Paul Ryan, guy who bought the keg for the party, but still can't get laid and Mitt Romney, guy who sells toddlers for profit were both popular in that era. The demographic logic was an error based on the Republican party being made up uncool white guys in the face of super cool Obama and great new blue cities. Why would you want to live somewhere with frozen sysco fries in the restaurants and exactly zero microbreweries?

The legit parts of the tea party, unfunded by Koch (or was it coke?) ended up coalescing into the Trump meme right or "New Right" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HF2JM5L/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1. These were organized through the internet and had lots of populist attitudes (NAFTA hate, immigration, they tewk er jerbs). Bannon and others were able to use the power of the internet and shit posting to attract newer younger conservatives--ones who may have ejaculated this century. Not with another human of course, just able. Milo, Tomi Lahren, and various other personalities you have never heard came out of the wood work. In addition Trump used Twitter and thumbed his nose at the establishment (ha). Moths to a flame the fringe conservatives flocked.

The former Occupy Wall Street that transformed into Bernie Bros also had populists attitude. Instead of focusing on immigration, this crop was more concerned with rising health care and university costs. Both of these movements had some overlap (declining standard of living, wealth inequality). So how do you deal with not one but two populist movements from both sides of the political spectrum? If you want to keep your yacht and mistress in Mykonos? Look, a racist! Sorry, can't actually help with jobs or any real progress, I have reservations at Per Se.

I agree shit will get bad because the underlying income inequality issues have not been solved--just not now and not with the qanon crowd. It will require someone with actual power who can get shit done (Musk). And no one is going to give up their rockets and yachts to help GI Barbie or metabolic syndrome Larry. The new GOP, if it's called that, will not be in this form.

I empathize with seeing my home town textile mills crushed. It's sad seeing the nice restaurants I remember being overrun by opioid addicted waitresses. Being powerless and completely unable to up your station sucks horribad. Anyone making higher than an 1100 on the SAT got the fuck out of there. Maybe one of the real nut jobs from Golo WRAL will take an AK to a $20 hamburger joint next to a Whole Foods. That's about as far as they will get. Anyone approaching DC with a confederate hat will be nuked from orbit.

In the current climate, if you ever went to Kenny Chesney concert, even if the girl was really cute, you're fucked. The GOP may get congress in two years, but the left has all of corporate america, the universities, professional class, the press, finance industry, any government institution that isn't the military, the executive branch, and the grand wizards of tech. The best a GOP Congress will get: a law permitting Andy Griffith show to be on aired on public access. I can live with that.

What you're seeing in the post above is the left coming to terms with their new power. They can't pretend they are still the underdog. They are trying to reify enemies out of phantoms.

[Edited on January 29, 2021 at 5:23 PM. Reason : a]

1/29/2021 5:18:37 PM

Quote :

" Anyone approaching DC with a confederate hat will be nuked from orbit."

Patriot Front (literally nazis) marched down the National mall “in uniform” TODAY!


https://dcist.com/story/21/01/29/white-supremacist-group-patriot-front-seen-marching-through-d-c-friday-morning/

Quote :

"The GOP may get congress in two years, but the left has all of corporate america, the universities, professional class, the press, finance industry, any government institution that isn't the military, the executive branch, and the grand wizards of tech. The best a GOP Congress will get: a law permitting Andy Griffith show to be on aired on public access. I can live with that"

You underestimate the opportunity costs of a do nothing GOP Congress. This country is being slowly crushed by healthcare costs and the vast inequalities in our justice systems and economic systems. The potential costs of Climate change loom in the medium-term future. We can’t afford to be arguing over if Hillary Clinton should be prosecuted.

[Edited on January 29, 2021 at 8:21 PM. Reason : I did laff at the humor in your post tho!]

1/29/2021 8:05:47 PM

[quote] but the left has all of corporate america, the universities, professional class, the press, finance industry, any government institution that isn't the military, the executive branch, and the grand wizards of tech.

the hardest nah on that one

tech is filled with hardcore libertarians who don’t give a fuck about any issue other than making as much money as possible. everything else is just window dressing.

1/29/2021 11:25:14 PM

While true there are some libertarian types like Peter Thiel compared to the rank and file they are in the minority.

From memory Apple and Google had something like 97% of political donations go to democrats. As the below post shows tech in general. Among survey of coworkers formerly at Google they support such views as: keeping a list of Trump voters is important to stop white supremacists.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-companies-ranked-by-employee-donations.html

Quote :

"Netflix employees have sent 98% of their political contributions to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets website. While tech workers strongly favor Democrats, they've sent more money to Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who are no longer running for president, than to Joe Biden, the presumptive nominee. At Qualcomm, the employee donation split is about even between parties, while at the 15 other tech companies worth $100 billion or more, the spending strongly favors Democrats."

Quote :

" You underestimate the opportunity costs of a do nothing GOP Congress. This country is being slowly crushed by healthcare costs and the vast inequalities in our justice systems and economic systems"

It's by design. Look at the healthcare stocks and compare general market. The republicans are just the outer party. They exist only to point at and say, "those guys are obstructing. Otherwise I'd sell my yacht and pass laws to help."



[Edited on January 30, 2021 at 8:30 AM. Reason : A]

1/30/2021 8:22:42 AM

https://www.thedailybeast.com/anti-vaxxers-wont-stop-harassing-tiffany-dover-nurse-theyre-convinced-is-dead-after-covid-shot

this is fucked up

[quote] More than 8,000 miles away from Reiss, Australian Michelle Millmann also spends much of her free time on Facebook. In and out of lockdown, with no job and no one to see besides her family, she spends up to 10 hours a day managing a Facebook group titled “Where is Tiffany Dover?”

2/1/2021 12:32:30 PM

^ There is a huge number of Qultists in UK, Canada, and Australia, and even many in mainland Europe.

2/1/2021 1:36:03 PM

2/26/2021 4:43:38 PM

I think it is abundantly clear why.

2/27/2021 9:49:13 AM

Just had a crazy thought... what happens if police start being held accountable for excessive force, and start getting charged with murder. What kind of backlash will this cause? The nypd police union already comes off as a terrorist org when they talk to the media, is there a chance of them “formally” joining the proud boys??

3/1/2021 12:42:54 AM

the FBI will gut them

3/2/2021 12:17:11 PM

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/18/978463364/u-s-intelligence-agencies-warn-of-heightened-domestic-extremism-threat

3/18/2021 9:04:38 PM

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/college-students-are-falling-love-white-supremacy-rep-paul-gosar-n1261270?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma

College Republicans are getting cozier and cozier with white nationalists

also, the writer of the piece, Talia Lavin, has an excellent book about the rise of white radicalization online called “Culture Warlords”. I highly recommend it.

[Edited on March 22, 2021 at 10:43 AM. Reason : .]

3/22/2021 10:39:58 AM

QAnon and Proud Boys gathered in downtown Raleigh over the weekend. The police, as usual, seemed complicit in whatever it was they were doing.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/acrider/albums/72157718727904307/


[Edited on March 22, 2021 at 1:18 PM. Reason : -]

3/22/2021 1:17:45 PM

^ that's like the best anti-recruitment campaign ever.

3/22/2021 1:27:08 PM

The skull mask that one woman is wearing is neo-Nazi paraphernalia.

3/22/2021 4:12:50 PM

bump

8/19/2021 1:16:54 PM

"What in the world can we do to redirect the negative press away from Biden?"
"Hey, let's get a redneck to bring a bomb into DC!!!"

8/19/2021 1:23:57 PM

are you alleging that this is some sort of an inside job?

8/19/2021 1:43:17 PM

I'm not alleging anything. Just noting the convenience/coincidence here.

Why would some right wing radical Trumpster do this and take away the spotlight from Biden?

8/19/2021 1:46:45 PM

Because they didn't think about the strategic impact of their actions and instead went with the first impulse they had.

8/19/2021 2:48:10 PM

why do radicalized people do radical things?????

8/19/2021 2:49:56 PM

Dude is from Cleveland County, damn that's like the backdoor to my hometown.

Probably a cousin.

8/19/2021 2:59:03 PM

Quote :

""What in the world can we do to redirect the negative press away from Biden?" "Hey, let's get a redneck to bring a bomb into DC!!!""

Quote :

"I'm not alleging anything."

Ummmmm, that's exactly what you did.

And do you really think this will draw attention away from Afghanistan?

[Edited on August 19, 2021 at 3:48 PM. Reason : ]

8/19/2021 3:36:55 PM

There's a video of the domestic terrorist's "manifesto", or whatever (sounds like he was upset about Afghanistan)

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvzaa4/mo-brooks-socialism-is-why-a-guy-threatened-to-blow-up-the-capitol

8/20/2021 11:11:27 AM

I'd love to hear the bomber's thoughts on healthcare.

Fucking Mo Brooks trying to find that line between stochastic and deterministic terrorism.

8/20/2021 2:02:56 PM

Aren't boomers eligible for medicare now? Their position is probably the American position. Screw you, I got mine.

8/20/2021 9:19:17 PM

Quote :

"Why would some right wing radical Trumpster do this and take away the spotlight from Biden?"

You assume these people are capable of coherent, rational, and logical thinking, while their actions continually prove otherwise...

8/26/2021 10:42:38 AM

I was gonna bump the deplatforming shitty communities thread b/c of the Buffalo terrorists’ 4chan use, but the reality is a majority of the conservative movement in this country is motivated by/buys into some form of replacement theory. Whether it’s Tucker bringing it up relentlessly on his show or Republican Congress people using it in campaign commercials, it’s now a major tenet of the current American conservative movement. Will be interesting to see how the replacement theory pundits walk the line between sympathy for the theory while condemning the violence.

Considering this ideas’ link to multiple terrorist attacks in this country and abroad, it’s time to start treating the people that push replacement theory like extremist imams trying to motivate jihadis. Prosecute them if they are in the States or drone strike their ass if foreign.

5/15/2022 7:14:07 AM

I must not know anyone who is a part of this "majority" of conservatives, because I've not once heard anyone talk about the ideas of replacement theory. I will get a "they's takin our jobs" from some of the more ignorant ones, and if that's a tenet of replacement theory then so be it, but that's pretty much all I've heard mention. I mostly get some form of "Democrats want to butter-up immigrants so they'll vote for more Democrats."

5/15/2022 11:04:41 PM

there’s always a gateway into radicalization

5/15/2022 11:56:50 PM

Quote :

"Democrats want to butter-up immigrants so they'll vote for more Democrats."

That is the exact lead to one form of the theory.

“Democrats are importing obedient voters from third world countries to replace white voters economic and cultural hegemony.”

That’s me basically quoting the most watched cable news commentary show on TV. There is literally no way on earth your friends/family haven’t been introduced to this idea if they consume conservative media, more likely they are inundated in the idea on a weekly basis.

If your friends/family are leaving out the second part in conversations, it’s because they sense they can’t fully lower the mask in front of you.

5/16/2022 6:53:40 AM

^^^

Quote :

".@KeeangaYamahtta on the right’s efforts to erase America’s racist history, and the dangerous ideologies that fuelled Saturday’s mass shooting in Buffalo, New York. https://t.co/praukPN3ii"

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/american-racism-and-the-buffalo-massacre

5/16/2022 9:53:00 AM

I was at a business lunch in Houston, Texas a couple of years ago, and one of the people at the table was raging about how the Democrats were shipping in illegals to take over our country.

I got the impression that he was talking about it in a political sense, but that line was definitely blurred.

He literally had veins bulging within his forehead, he was so incensed about the topic.

5/16/2022 10:59:15 AM

can’t forget their obsession over CRT, either

they just really, really love racism and are getting more and more vocal about it

5/16/2022 11:33:44 AM

http://twitter.com/robertpjones/status/1526264043165597697

Quote :

" Fears abt replacement theory are NOT fringe on right. Agree "Immigrants are invading our country & replacing our cultural and ethnic background.” All: 29% Rep: 60% vs. Dem: 11% QAnon believers: 65% Wh evangelical: 50% Wh non-coll: 43% Via @PRRIpoll 2021."

5/16/2022 2:24:41 PM

Quote :

"I must not know anyone who is a part of this "majority" of conservatives, because I've not once heard anyone talk about the ideas of replacement theory."

I'm assuming you're just not recognizing it, because Tucker Carlson (and many like him) talks about it in one way or another pretty consistently. As do more and more politicians. It's getting to be a pretty common (and talked about) ideology of the right.

[Edited on May 16, 2022 at 2:26 PM. Reason : ]

5/16/2022 2:25:02 PM

I'm sure there's some better journalism on this out threre, but this was published last week:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7nxmk/gop-great-replacement-theory

5/16/2022 4:47:56 PM

5/16/2022 8:33:56 PM