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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
"Normalizing Trump is a mistake."
Portraying Trump as an aberration is an even bigger one. There's zero difference between the mainline Republican and Trump, apart from perhaps a greater outward respect for institutions.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."Apparently she was the one said they were going to "biblical" on Georgia and spun a ridiculously elaborate conspiracy theory about voting machines rigging the election, and somehow Venezuela was involved or something? That might not be exactly correct, there's so much of this crap it's hard to keep track of which version of the conspiracy theory is being propagated by whom.
Yeah, and something stupid about krakens, which reminds me of that old political cartoon about Standard Oil being a big squid but nothing else.
So, let's hang an anchor from the sun... also my TumblrYes, the thing about R/Conservative is they universally sided against Tucker Carlson and with her because, OF COURSE Fox News were reporting fake news and helping with the election steal. He even got hate mail that she was clearly saving her evidence for the trial and had to walk it back.
Except now she's fired.
You see, you can hold two contradictory thoughts at a time but you can't have THREE. The fact Trump dumped her is forcing them to figure out how this all fits together and if Tucker was right then there wasn't a steal then X, Y, and Z. Seriously, hundreds of posts have been deleted and people are openly admitting Trump has probably lost.
It's Amazing (Spider-Man) to read to see the Villainous Breakdown. R/Conservative collapsing is something I never thought I'd see and over this of all things.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Saying Trump has all the hallmarks of a fascist (which he does) isn't setting him apart from mainline Republicans.
That's the point.
Angry gets shit done.Scrolling though Twitter to see the reaction to Blinken being picked for Secretary of State. Overall pretty positive from the other bureaucrats at least.
Fiaz Shakir, former campaign manager for Bernie Sanders: "Solid choice. Leaders around the world will assume that when Blinken speaks, he speaks for Biden."
Ben Rhodes, former Deputy National Security Advisor and host of Pod Save the World podcast: "I will say: if your family was ever really in trouble, Tony Blinken is the guy you'd call bc of his judgment, smarts and decency. That's where our country is now and I'm glad we can call on Tony."
Samantha Power, former Ambassador to the UN: "Even as Blinken held some of the most powerful national security jobs in Washington, he always looked out for lower level staff and he always remained open to challenging old foreign policy assumptions. He's a great leader and an inspired choice for Secretary of State."
Regarding Blinken, the Washington Post has some info on his background and experience
.
Rice would have faced significant GOP opposition and likely rejection in the Senate. She has long been a target of Republicans, including for statements she made after the deadly 2012 attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya.
Coons’ departure from the Senate would have come as other Democratic senators are being considered for administrative posts and the party is hoping to win back the Senate. Control hangs on the result of two runoff elections in Georgia in January.
One thing I noticed about the whole "Is Trump a fascist" discussion (first of all, the answer is yes) is there still seems to be some conflation betweeen fascism as a whole and Nazism in particular.
I wouldn't call Trump a Nazi because doesn't subscribe to that particular brand of fascism - that doesn't mean he isn't a fascist, just that he isn't a Nazi. All Nazis are fascists, but not every fascist is a Nazi.
The whole thing strikes me as particulary odd, as pretty much every country in Eruope (and some outside of it) had their own brand of fascism: You had Mussolini's Fascists, the Nazis, the Iron Guard, the Ustaše, the BUF, the Falange in Spain, the Integralists in Portugal and Brazil... the list goes on and on.
And considering people who survived fascism haven't been shy about makng the connection, I don't see why we should be either.
We learn from history that we do not learn from historyFrom a page ago, Iirc, abortion became a hot topic as a response to the second wave feminist movement in the 60s and 70s. Legalized abortion was seen as something that enabled women to break traditional gender norms of mother, wife, and housekeeper, which many white evangelicals saw as a bad thing. The GOP, Reagan in particular, decided they could bolster their voter base wirh polivies tjay appealed to rhe evangelical crowd. The rhetoric about abortion being murder didn't come until later, mostly as an attempt to gloss over the sexism once it became less palatable
All this talk about whether Trump is a fascist or not seems like splitting hairs to me. Fascism is itself a fairly loosely defined ideology, mostly because there's little actual ideology to it. It's mostly a series of practices and policies used to justify and enforce the power of populist regimes, typically by turning the people against a scapegoat. This naturally lends itself to an aggressive foreign policy, but fascist regimes typically don't last very long once they run out of enemies to blame their problems on. It's a false strength they project. In that sense Trump can certainly be called a fascist. Maybe not a smart one but Hitler was pretty nuts too
Edited by Xopher001 on Nov 23rd 2020 at 11:07:27 AM
>One thing I noticed about the whole "Is Trump a fascist" discussion (first of all, the answer is yes) is there still seems to be some conflation betweeen fascism as a whole and Nazism in particular
Blame media for only focusing on the murder and aesthetics. It also came with a weird fusion of paganism and Christianity, various myths of German (as in the people, not the nation per se) exceptionalism, antisemitism and a whole other slew of things that would make have a writer go "no way anyone would believe this shit". Other european nations had some of their own ideas, but like how nazis glorified past german reichs, the italians worshipped the Romans. But Trump isn't about worshiping some past form 500 or 2000 years ago but a fairly recent and much more fantastical past. And in many ways, also a much more mythical present and future.
Trumpism is appropriate because it has many similarities but both in a deeply american way and steeped in american ideas and culture. Nazis had nothing particular to say about wealth, other than that jews had too much of it. But trumpists practically worship Trump's wealth and success as if that somehow makes him more qualified. It's not pagan but deeply conservative christian in nature. It's not against jews per se but mostly against anyone vaguely not republican, who they'll call all sorts of things (socialist or nazi or whatever).
Two US Representatives just announced they tested positive for COVID-19:
Edited by tclittle on Nov 23rd 2020 at 3:31:15 AM
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."![]()
As Robert Paxton once put it, American fascism wouldn't come wrapped in foreign symbols like the swastika or the fasces - it would instrumentalise familiar symbols, i.e. the American flag and the Christian cross.
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Nov 23rd 2020 at 10:34:33 AM
We learn from history that we do not learn from history

Oddly, there's laws for abortion in the Bible.
The entirety of it was created whole cloth as an issue by GOP-aligned ministers looking for a political issue to replace racism.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.