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Ongoing US GOP Debacle Thread: Seditious Republicans march toward authoritarianism

The poor can’t win, live far from away from the city center for economic reasons, stuck in hour long traffic trying to get home as someone in their $65,000 car speeds past them in the $25 toll lane on their way back to their rich suburban enclave.
 
Paying (in addition to gas and other taxes) for the use of basic infrastructure is a shitty government model, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that the ~$7.50 I paid to not sit in an hour and a half's worth of complete standstill traffic on 85-N heading up to the mountains for Thanksgiving wasn't the best 7.50 I spent in the month of November.
 
WFFaithful said:
You're lucky it was only 7.50. it's frequently over $25
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It wasn't the whole length of the Peach Pass lane; only one exit, probably less than a mile (happened to be near the front of a backup that started from an accident that blocked all lanes, other than the toll lane).
 
Another win for trump's streak of ruining things and running them into the ground!
 
Louis Gossett Jr said:
The poor can’t win, live far from away from the city center for economic reasons, stuck in hour long traffic trying to get home as someone in their $65,000 car speeds past them in the $25 toll lane on their way back to their rich suburban enclave.
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It's about expectations. I'm happy if my commute it only an hour.
 
Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) is resigning this month. There will be a special election in June.
thehill.com

House GOP majority to shrink to 2 with Ohio lawmaker’s early resignation

House Republicans’ already-slim majority will dwindle even further later this month when Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) resigns earlier than expected. Johnson’s office on Tuesday confirmed the con…
thehill.com thehill.com
 
Don't know if it's really her or not, but if it is I had no idea that Nancy and Moms for Liberty were so tight with each other.

 
Should of apprenticed under (tee hee) mako's mom. World would be much better off.
 

MAGA Is Based on Fear, Not Grounded in Reality​


Pretty much…

(best read online for embedded links)

A few days ago, Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota — a MAGA hard-liner sometimes mentioned as a potential running mate for Donald Trump — warned that President Biden is “remaking” America, turning us into Europe. My first thought was: So he’s going to raise our life expectancy by five or six years? In context, however, it was clear that Noem believes, or expects her audience to believe, that Europe is a scene of havoc wrought by hordes of immigrants.
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As it happens, I spent a fair bit of time walking around various European cities last year, and none of them were hellscapes. Yes, broadly speaking, Europe has been having problems dealing with migrants, and immigration has become a hot political issue. And yes, Europe’s economic recovery has lagged that of the United States. But visions of a continent devastated by immigration are fantasies.
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Yet such fantasies are now the common currency of politics on the American right. Remember the days when pundits solemnly declared that Trumpism was caused by economic anxiety? Well, despite a booming economy, there’s still plenty of justified anxiety out there, reflecting many people’s real struggles: America is still a nation riddled with inequality, insecurity and injustice. But the anxiety driving MAGA isn’t driven by reality. It is, instead, driven by dystopian visions unrelated to real experience.
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That is, at this point, Republican political strategy depends largely on frightening voters who are personally doing relatively well not just according to official statistics but also by their own accounts, by telling them that terrible things are happening to other people.

This is most obvious when it comes to the U.S. economy, which had a very good — indeed, almost miraculously good — 2023. Economic growth not only defied widespread predictions of an imminent recession but also hugely exceeded expectations; inflation has plunged and is more or less where the Federal Reserve wants it to be. And people are feeling it in their lives: 63 percent of surveyed Americans said that their financial situation is good or very good.

Yet out on the stump a few days ago, Nikki Haley declared that “we’ve got an economy in shambles and inflation that’s out of control.” And it’s likely that the Republicans who heard her believed her. According to a YouGov poll, almost 72 percent of Republicans said that our 3-2 economy — roughly 3 percent growth and 2 percent inflation — is getting worse, while only a little over 6 percent said that it’s getting better.

Again, this negative verdict doesn’t reflect personal experience. In December, YouGov asked Americans to evaluate 2023 in general. Republicans said it was awful for the nation, with 76 percent saying the year was bad or terrible. Strange to say, however, 69 percent of Republicans — close to the same number — said that the year was OK, good or great for them personally.

Now, that last survey wasn’t specifically limited to the state of the economy and presumably also reflected things like perceptions about crime. But crime declined significantly in 2023, which in a rational world would have added to the good economy by fostering a sense that things are improving.

But the world — especially MAGAworld — isn’t rational. And it’s a longstanding observation that Americans tend to say that national crime is rising even when it’s falling and even when they concede that it’s falling where they live.
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Again, these misperceptions are strongly associated with partisanship, with a startling willingness of Republicans to believe things that aren’t true.

Falsely believing that Europe is a continent on the brink of ruin is one thing (although millions of Americans visit Europe and so get the chance to see for themselves each year). It’s much harder to excuse the belief that New York — one of the safest big cities in America — is some kind of urban wasteland. After all, estimates say that more than 50 million Americans visited the Big Apple last year, and a lot of people who haven’t visited New York know someone who has visited or who, like yours truly, lives there. Yet only 22 percent of Republicans say that the city is safe to visit or live in.

The trashing of New York raises the question of the extent to which MAGA supporters are willing to disregard the evidence of their own eyes. People buy gas all the time; when Trump says “gasoline prices are now $5, $6, $7 and even $8 a gallon,” around twice the price plainly displayed on big signs all around the country, do his followers believe him?

And then, of course, there’s the Covid pandemic, wherein the MAGA politicization of vaccines appears to have contributed to higher death rates among Republicans.

What does this say about the future of America? It can’t be good. A large segment of our body politic has, in effect, joined a cult of personality whose beliefs are nearly impervious to reality.
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So how did this happen to us? The truth is that I don’t know. But you can’t talk seriously about the state of America without acknowledging the pervasiveness of the fear-based MAGA worldview.
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MAGA types are really gullible. They claim to hate government but believe whatever their politicians tell them.
 
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