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Ongoing US GOP Debacle Thread: Seditious Republicans march toward authoritarianism

So the Washington Post has only now discovered this? Most observers noticed that Trumpites were snowflakes who were easily outraged (triggered) as far back as 2016.

 
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Rand Paul holds online town meeting for his KY constituents and gets a big surprise from a caller. The "Oh, Shit" facial expression of the woman hosting the meeting is priceless.

 
Good read. Here is the full transcript:

https://terikanefield.com/republican-lawbreaking/

This speaks to the massive cultural gap between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans are actively fighting against the multiracial democracy they claim is in the current Constitution.

“What’s more interesting than a catalog of crimes and lawbreakers is the length to which the Republican Party goes to shield and downplay those crimes. No matter what comes about Trump, they defend him.

Think of how they defended him through both impeachments. A Pew Research poll from January 2020 found that two-thirds of Republicans said Trump definitely or probably did things that were illegal. Of those, 97% said that he should remain in office.

They know he commits crimes and they don’t care.

After the insurrection, Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia actually compared the mob’s breaching of the Capitol to a “normal tourist visit.”

When the right wing insists that the Black Lives Matters protests were as bad as (or worse) than the January 6th insurrection, it’s because to them, they are worse. Black Lives Matters is a direct threat to the kind of America they want, just as the Capitol insurrection was a direct threat to the kind of America progressives want.”

The Motives section is excellent:

“Part III: Motives

Why Trump and his Republican pals commit crimes.

Motive #1: They have no other means for achieving wealth.

If they play by the rules, they’ll lose. They’ll be poor. They’ll have no power. The Trumps never added value. They took advantage of situations—and they did so boldly. If any of the Trumps tried to earn money by adding value, they wouldn’t be able to do it. I doubt any of them could hold real jobs. Try to imagine Ivanka living in a tract house somewhere clipping coupons because her job doesn’t cover the expenses of raising children. I believe, for Donald Trump that would be a fate worse than death. It would undermine everything he thinks he is.

Cheating and scamming people is hardwired into Trump. That’s what he does. His supporters are cool with it. They even admire him.”

The comparison between Rosa Parks to the left and Trump on the right is on point.

“When leaders break laws, how the people feel about that depends on how they feel about the laws. We cheer Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a White man because the law she was breaking was standing in the way of America becoming the country we want to see.

Republicans are totally cool with Trump getting indicted for tax fraud because they don’t think rich people should pay taxes.”

She rightly concludes that punishment won’t change things, which should be part of a broader point about our criminal justice system. She offers no solutions except for constantly pushing for democracy.
 
It's also worth noting that this attitude comes from the party that claims to advocate "law and order" and to support law enforcement. Apparently those things don't really apply to them.
 
Highland Deac said:
It's also worth noting that this attitude comes from the party that claims to advocate "law and order" and to support law enforcement. Apparently those things don't really apply to them.
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As stated in the article:

“The Republican Party was the party of law-and-order when law-and-order meant putting Black men in jail. But as soon as the laws started limiting the power of White men and empowering others, watch out. That’s when Republicans began tolerating lawbreaking.”
 
WakeForestRanger said:
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J.D. Vance has made some "interesting" tweets over the past year or so. I got a laugh out of a reply to one of his tweets that said the name of his book should have been Mein Elegy.

Regarding Hillbilly Elegy, "Jared Yates Sexton, an author and political journalist who grew up in Indiana, has criticized Vance's book as "traditional right-wing propaganda" that traffics in white supremacist undertones. He told Salon that Vance's comments (see tweet below) revealed what many people had long suspected. "J.D. Vance has spent the past few years sanitizing right-wing appeals and camouflaging white supremacist-pandering," Sexton said. "I'm surprised it took him this long to let his mask slip."

 
Vance published a well-known book that got made into a movie and he believes his future is pandering to the same rubes he gladly left behind.
 
British writer pens no-holds-barred summary of why Trump is so hated in much of the UK. A sample of the article is below.

"A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a sniveling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down."

 
That’s pretty well said…

…So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.

• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.
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"Keep Your Socialist Guvmint Hands off my Medicare and Obamacare!" And some political pundits thought that Elise Stefanik might not become a full-blown Trumpite. LOL.

 
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