"Meanwhile, statements from political figures such as former President Trump, radio talk show host Charlie Kirk, and FOX News host Tucker Carlson seeking to excuse or explain Putin’s behavior were overwhelmingly rejected based on a blind test where statements were anonymized."
The key point from this excerpt is that the statements were anonymized. Just proves something that I've observed for the last 5 years on Fox. The MAGAs are partisan first; facts last. The whole "What if Obama said/did that? (Referring to DJT's words/actions) is a real thing. It's still debatable whether the MAGAs are actually subconsciously self-aware of this character fault. I tend to think they have some self-awareness but the brainwashing prevents them from acting on these tiny impulses of honesty/objectivity.
After the famous words of Richard Nixon when referring (1950) to Helen Gahagen Douglas, Tucker's pink [i.e., Communist/Russian stooge/fellow traveler] right down to his underwear. He's as fascist as fascist can get. And for what reasons? The fame and the bucks.
Amazing podcast yesterday, Charlie! General Hertling was a riveting interview. No critiques here, I feel like the Bulwark’s Ukraine analysis has been spot on.
I'm beyond disgusted at these traitors and propaganda mouthpieces spewing out their poison on a daily basis. Lie after lie in service of tyranny and war crimes.
Per the survey info from Citizen Data, "...statements from political figures (by Trumpites) were overwhelmingly rejected based on a blind test where statements were anonymized."
I have always been a fan of asking in a survey reactions to statements without attribution. I think MAGAites would be stunned as to how many Democratic pols they would agree with on the basics of American life, without the culture-tilt.
I think Christopher meant that statements, for example, supporting higher tax rates on wealthy people or that we should have a stronger social safety net, would gather a lot of support in MAGA-land if they didn’t know who actually said it.
Said differently, I think most MAGAites would agree with a lot of the Democratic policy positions if they pushed by Democrats.
I think you meant if they WEREN’T pushed by Democrats. Let’s say you ran elections on policy positions alone, with no party affiliation attached, and then the politician that held those values stepped in to claim the “prize” wouldn’t that be interesting?
Headlines from today's (more than) Daily Trump Report:
"Russia Tells the U.S. 'We Have Found Your Biological Weapons' (WATCH)"
"Deleted Web Pages Show Obama Led Efforts to Build a Ukraine-Based Biolab"
"Tucker Confirms LIVE On FoxNews: U.S. Biolabs In Ukraine Are REAL!"
I've mentioned that DTR (which links to WeLoveTrump.com) is the one grift/lunacy I don't block, out of combined penance and morbid curiosity. Keeping a toe in the dreck helps me prebunk certain rumors for my closest loved ones, which I hope is helpful.
“Everything they wanted to perceive as decadent and weak has proven strong and brave; everything they wanted to represent as fearsome and powerful has revealed itself as brutal and stupid.”
Is he referring to Putin and the Russians or the ReTrumplican't Party?
You know, you should stop referring to D'Souza, Carlson, Ingrahm "useful idiots". They are useful but not idiots. "Useful idiot" implies some at least partly exculpatory deficiency in reasoning, understanding, and naivety of motivation.
"Thug nasty", the martial arts "regular guy" from Arkansas Tucker Carlson pretends to interview, is a useful idiot. He has no idea what he is doing or saying. His remarks don't reflect any comprehensible thought process or worked out set of values, and are substantively no different from what a random phrase generator AI would produce from a training dataset of belligerent and incoherent word associations.
Tucker and Bannon and D'Souza and all the rest are entirely different. They are rendering service for compensation. A person who takes compensation in exchange for providing service is a contractor or agent acting on behalf of, and for the benefit of, another. In their cases the beneficiary is a foreign adversary endeavoring to destroy NATO and harm the countries in that alliance. The service provided is to assist that foreign power by fomenting fifth columns in the United States sympathetic to, or even taking direction from, that entity.
Whether they do this because they are actually starry-eyed followers of a Napoleonic hero, sober idealogues acting out the dialectic by direction of the new Comintern, or nihilistic opportunists grabbing money and power for themselves by sowing confusion and discord at home, is almost beside the point.
What they are not is in any way confused about what they are doing or for whose benefit. Which makes them no different morally from the Rosenbergs or Robert Hanssen.
We need to stop calling them useful idiots. Don't even call them fellow travellers. They are willing agents of a foreign country whose dictator considers himself at war with their country and acts accordingly.
I think D’Douza may in fact be profoundly stupid. Bannon suffers from a personality disorder or more accurately we suffer from. Bannin’s disorder. Tucker and I Graham… I agree with you. Tucker’s biggest problem is he never his hands dirty doing an honest day’s work in his life.
I mainly agree with this point, but my issue is framing Bannon, Carlson, Ingraham and all the rest in the same category at all. I would argue Carlson and Ingraham both fall in the Nihilist "whatever makes us the most money we'll talk about", and Bannon falls in the "white nationalism needs to make a comeback and I can escape to Russia if I need to. I don't think Carlson and Ingraham are explicitly pro-Russia, they are pro-rile up the viewer base so we make more money off of advertiser's.
D'Souza and Kirk I would argue are much stupider than the others listed above.
Can't disagree, only note that the category to apply depends on what we're worried about. If the category is intellectual brilliance, then definitely we have players on the varsity and players in high school and players in church leagues. A person betraying his country for money and a person betraying his country because he is working for the enemy is in both cases person betraying his country. And a dumb guy can wreak as much havoc, given the chance, as a genius. Gavrilo Princip was by no means a rocket scientist.
I've been reading Anne Applebaum's "Twilight of Democracy," which I think is excellent.
There is a case to be made that authoritarianism is really the state of nature, the return to the mean without intervention, and that democracy is something that requires active defense and maintenance. It seems that the far Right is in the driver's seat on the Right, and that this perspective frames the world in a stark way of those who are patriots, and those who are degenerate traitors. Hence the affection for Putin and Orban. They perceive them as defending conservatism against the hoards. It doesn't matter if rights are being trampled, essentially martial law needs to be called to address the imminent threat of the Left. This is war, and they will do whatever needs to be done to achieve their aims. To stand on principle in this extremist environment is to make yourself irrelevant and an enemy of the Right. Being irrelevant or ejected from the tribe is the worst fate that many can imagine. To embrace extremism is to inject yourself into influence, power, and money.
Exactly. They are the mouthpieces of tyranny. They believe that the nation is in a state of emergency because of the threat of the libs, so all bets are off.
The attempts to show that Ukraine is really the malignant force and the cause of its own devastation at Putin's hands is comparable to the desperate efforts to prove that 1/6 was a false flag engineered to hurt Trumpers.
In both cases we see an unwillingness to believe overwhelming evidence in front of one's own eyes, an eagerness to ascribe deep corruption to American institutions, and a failure of moral discernment.
Yes. We are being bombarded with nonstop information warfare. This is the great 21st century challenge - to maintain freedom, democracy, and an informed public in the face of disinformation, conspiracy, and propaganda.
One problem is that the conspiracy theorists like to believe that the "establishment" is lying to them, and that they are the ones penetrating the fog of disinformation. Sometimes it does turn out that the dominant take on an event was not accurate, and a little digging can expose some hidden facts. But sometimes, reason is overtaken by the zeal to disbelieve a wealth of evidence and keep digging for something to prove that evil is being done by ideological opponents (who are not actually evil). It's partly the thrill of being contrarian, under the guise of fighting back against an attack by some massive force of malignant intent.
I know this much: no matter what Putin does, Trump will never say anything critical of him. We can wonder why this is the case. Maybe Putin really does have pee tapes. Maybe Trump owes him money. Maybe they really did collude to a greater extent than is already on the public record. But Putin has brutally invaded a sovereign democracy with absolutely no justifiable pretext, not to mention innumerable crimes that preceded that, and the worst thing Trump can think to say about the man is that he's "smart." I don't know what's going on between those two, but there's definitely something going on.
As for Republican office holders joining the fight for democracy abroad with false bravado, I think that will last for about two seconds. You can't champion democracy abroad while your agenda at home is dismantling democracy. Though I'll admit, hypocrisy is kind of their brand.
I have to give Hannity a little credit for having Jennifer Griffin on right after Tucker's show, where she inevitably called him out on his entire 8 minutes of bullshit and meticulously demolished it. Alas, this is probably why Tucker beats Hannity in the ratings.
There is so much smoke here if there is no flame it's only because there is a smoke generator; in either case there is actual combustion going on. These people are actively working on behalf of Putin and a world ruled by kleptocratic megalomaniacs.
The American figure that comes to mind for me when looking at Bannon is Lincoln Rockwell. Is Bannon receiving money from Putin via his Chinese billionaire Daddy Warbucks? Does he see himself as the Shogun behind a puppet American dictator?
If there weren't so much evidence of Trump actually being an ignoramus as well as an idiot, from his actions and those of his friends and associates -- including especially his foreign associates and "friends" -- a juror would almost have to find beyond a reasonable doubt that he is a paid agent in the service of the FSB.
Carlson is clearly a nihilist and a Carlsonist, but certainly neither an ignoramus or fool. Which makes it truly perplexing why he has been so seemingly and persistently maladroit in overtly carrying water for Putin. Why would he be so blatant if he is not himself entagled with the FSB at some remove?
Putin is setting the stage for using chemical weapons like he did in Syria. This is the "information preparation of the battlespace" phase, where you release supporting propaganda ahead of the false-flag attack. Anyone who paid attention to Syria will recall how Russia & Assad tried to blame Syrian rebels for stashing chlorine bombs inside of rebel bunkers when chemical weapons went off inside of densely-populated urban districts. In reality, he was dropping chlorine bombs from helicopters onto high-rises after they had been leveled by traditional high-explosive ordnance. This is a sickening version of the "shake'n'bake" airstrike tactics we used against the Taliban in Afghanistan where we'd hit a compound with a 500-lb JDAM, then the second bomber 20-seconds behind the first one drops an air-detonated 500-lb JDAM over the target site to cut down anyone who survives and runs out of the leveled structure with air-detonated shrapnel. Instead, what the Russians like to do is level a building, then drop a chlorine bomb on top to kill anyone who made it out of the initial blast via oxygen deprivation. This is done intentionally to terrify the civilian populace in the hopes of forcing capitulation. Brace yourselves, chemical weapons are coming.
Two things. One, it's amazing how quickly Qanon talking points end up going from the fringe to Carlson's mouth. The talk of biolabs is a direct qanon talking point. And while you didn't mention it, last nights pivot to 'democrats and all lgbtq people are groomers' is also straight qanon.
But let's talk about something I mentioned before when we debated finding common ground on here some time ago: there is a lot of overlap between left and right on various issues, but the reasons for it are often in conflict. For example, the left and right mostly agree on Ukraine being good, and Russia being bad. For the right it's mostly because of xenophobia mixed with old school anti-russia sentiment left over from the cold war, mixed with a heavy dash of pro-america militarism. For the left, it's mostly about how Russia is a right wing autocracy and Ukraine is a democracy, and war is almost always a thing to oppose. These are major generalizations, obviously. But the point I'm trying to make is that while the reasoning differs, they end up at the same place: Russia bad, Ukraine good. Perhaps this is why supporting Ukraine monetarily has been bipartisan.
I think this can be applied to a lot of foreign policy. Despite Trump and his sycophants talking of 'America First' isolationism, it doesn't appear most of the party is actually that far along. What most seem to be for is fewer one-sided commitments, a sentiment that the left shares even though it's often for different people. And yet, there is still some agreement there. For example, both left and right particularly dislike nations like Saudi Arabia, again for different reasons. But focusing on the actual policy, there's a lot of overlap.
I sense that, if Biden is savvy enough, and I do not doubt that he is, that he'll be able to cut through this. We should, I think, focus less on reasons and more on results; there's a decidedly healthy amount of bipartisanship between us. To use another example: the left views Europe as mostly cultural kin, whereas the right likes to have America at the head of the table, and both views require healthy American commitments. 'America First' in actual reality, would basically be a return to healthy international commitments like we've seen from Biden. America is first, but we're not alone.
Anyway, I fully expect in the coming days that this position around Biden as a leader of foreign policy will harden, if only because Americans love having an external enemy. It's been argued that things like the cold war spurred on the civil rights movement, because we disliked having the Soviets lord things over us. Americans will do lots of things for selfish reasons; American pride is a hell of a beast. Politicians really should just make the arguement of 'we're better than this' on a whole host of issues, because while shamelessness is a super power, shame is abhorrent to most Americans.
Shawn mentioned voting rights: Pretty much every voter on the right wants fair elections. Many think this means stopping nonexistent mass fraud, but not all.
Among those who think mass fraud exists, some doubtless find the belief convenient for identitarian reasons (their gut feeling really is that too many of the "wrong kind" of citizens voting couldn't possibly be fair, even if it's legal). Others may just trust the wrong sources. Beliefs can range from something even many Democratic voters could agree to, if it were done right, like making voter ID easily accessible and using it (Democratic activists worry this will disenfranchise the marginalized more than Democratic voters do), to full-on whackadoo.
Those on the right who don't believe mass voter fraud exist may believe this as strongly as Democrats do, but because it's not a characteristically "right wing" belief these days, they don't seem like "sincere right-wingers" on this.
Regarding LGBTQ matters, authoritarian moralizing makes non-reactionary libertarians, whether they are personally religious or not, nervous. Cathy Young is an example.
If you're asking me a rhetorical question, you're asking the wrong person: I don't object to mail-in voting.
But, since you're asking someone who's also been a pollworker, and seen how my state and county run things, there is a *lot* of hysteresis (lag and path-dependence) in our voting systems: a fair amount of "foot dragging" may be due to the malice of Republican state legislators, but by no means all of it.
Not every issue. But I also believe that most people only have one or two 'major' issues that stick out to them. The rest gets absorbed in rhetoric.
For example, on voting rights, lots genuinely want 'fair' elections. Well, so do Democrats. Now obviously, bad people are trying to steal that and manipulate it for their own gain. But lots of the voters would go along with being told there's an 'election security' package that just included a lot of the things Democrats want.
On lgbtq rights, in general the more libertarian set of the GOP follows a similar tact to liberals on religion: they don't care what you do personally as long as it doesn't effect them. And they're not hugely happy with the idea of having religion imposed upon them. The same people who hate dry laws hate religious mandates.
Shawn, I completely agree with your nuance and logical reasoning. I also firmly believe it will never work on a group of people that can't let go of MTG,Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Paul Gosar, Jan 6, Q-Anon, and a million more insane people and conspiracy claims.
For far too long the sane Republicans used the crazy part of the party to their advantage, ie: winning elections. Now the party is run by the crazy part and turning that ship around is, imho, impossible. I used to think an external enemy would work, I no longer do.
I hope you are right and that I am wrong, I am just not feeling it right now.
I agree! In fact, I fully agree that those people will not agree with what I've stated. But this is also because I am not using 'America First' in the manner that they are using it. This is because their idea of what that means looks entirely opposite to what I've described. They'd rather be more like Russia, North Korea, or Iran; a closed off society to the rest of the world. Those people are not going to come around to this way of thinking.
And it is true that much of the party is run by people who are out of their mind, and this is because they suck up a lot of oxygen. More than that, the social issues part of the party has become very extreme. But if I may make an observation: most people are only extreme on their personal issue.
I've met a lot of people who consider lgbtq or abortion or race as their 'major' issue. It's the one that absorbs their attention and focus. That's normal. But what it means is that very rarely are they as extreme on lots of other issues. The MTG group are never going to come around.
But there are a lot of other GOP individuals who we might disagree on when it comes to other issues, but which we can swing around on this one. Worth noting that about 80% of the GOP currently supports an anti-Russia stance, despite years of attempts to get them to come around under Trump.
What this tells me is that for most GOP members, foreign policy is not a huge issue in their minds, and thus they fall back on what confirms a lot of their other priors: America good, America strong, ect.
Which is what I mean when I say 'different reasons, same outcome.'
My only quibble is, if the people who are single issue, and I agree there are many, don’t have the intelligence to see that they must vote D in the next election (and I don’t believe many think that way) we are done. We all have our pet issues, I agree, but my gut on this one says too many voters are simply not informed enough, willing to become informed, or care enough to understand what is really at stake.
Again, I pray you are right and I am wrong. (I am a non believer, so take that with a grain of salt :) or two!)
Oh, no, please! Anyone familiar with Cervantes' great novel would object to even a hint at such a comparison. Don Quixote is one of the purest souls in literature. For all his insane "tilting at windmills," he is always on the side of helping the poor and the oppressed. He bravely takes the hardest punishment for his insane mistakes as well, as the windmill episode clearly illustrates. When has Trump ever made an effort to act in service of justice for the oppressed, or suffered the consequences for his actions?
In fairness, I saw this comparison made as a reverse Don Quixote, where every enemy turns into a windmill, so it still holds. Trump is the opposite, or reverse of Don Quixote.
D'Souza comparing Putin to Biden reminds me of when Bin Laden once referred to the West as "the far enemy" and the Saudi Royal Family as the "near enemy." Bin Laden spent most of his time attacking "the near enemy" before moving on to "the far enemy." It's also a lot like the pro-Nazi "America First" isolationist movement in the run up to WWII, declaring that FDR was a greater threat to American freedoms than Hitler. There it goes again, history rhyming.
"Meanwhile, statements from political figures such as former President Trump, radio talk show host Charlie Kirk, and FOX News host Tucker Carlson seeking to excuse or explain Putin’s behavior were overwhelmingly rejected based on a blind test where statements were anonymized."
The key point from this excerpt is that the statements were anonymized. Just proves something that I've observed for the last 5 years on Fox. The MAGAs are partisan first; facts last. The whole "What if Obama said/did that? (Referring to DJT's words/actions) is a real thing. It's still debatable whether the MAGAs are actually subconsciously self-aware of this character fault. I tend to think they have some self-awareness but the brainwashing prevents them from acting on these tiny impulses of honesty/objectivity.
After the famous words of Richard Nixon when referring (1950) to Helen Gahagen Douglas, Tucker's pink [i.e., Communist/Russian stooge/fellow traveler] right down to his underwear. He's as fascist as fascist can get. And for what reasons? The fame and the bucks.
Oh....also because he's an abjectly racist POS.
Amazing podcast yesterday, Charlie! General Hertling was a riveting interview. No critiques here, I feel like the Bulwark’s Ukraine analysis has been spot on.
I'm beyond disgusted at these traitors and propaganda mouthpieces spewing out their poison on a daily basis. Lie after lie in service of tyranny and war crimes.
Per the survey info from Citizen Data, "...statements from political figures (by Trumpites) were overwhelmingly rejected based on a blind test where statements were anonymized."
I have always been a fan of asking in a survey reactions to statements without attribution. I think MAGAites would be stunned as to how many Democratic pols they would agree with on the basics of American life, without the culture-tilt.
You think Dems agree that America was better in The 1950s or that non-white people our destroying "my country?"
No...see what Charles wrote below.
I think Christopher meant that statements, for example, supporting higher tax rates on wealthy people or that we should have a stronger social safety net, would gather a lot of support in MAGA-land if they didn’t know who actually said it.
Said differently, I think most MAGAites would agree with a lot of the Democratic policy positions if they pushed by Democrats.
Thanks for helping to clarify my point, Charles!
My pleasure. :-)
I think you meant if they WEREN’T pushed by Democrats. Let’s say you ran elections on policy positions alone, with no party affiliation attached, and then the politician that held those values stepped in to claim the “prize” wouldn’t that be interesting?
Thanks Kathy. You are correct! I meant to say "weren't". (In my mind I had said it.) :-)
Headlines from today's (more than) Daily Trump Report:
"Russia Tells the U.S. 'We Have Found Your Biological Weapons' (WATCH)"
"Deleted Web Pages Show Obama Led Efforts to Build a Ukraine-Based Biolab"
"Tucker Confirms LIVE On FoxNews: U.S. Biolabs In Ukraine Are REAL!"
I've mentioned that DTR (which links to WeLoveTrump.com) is the one grift/lunacy I don't block, out of combined penance and morbid curiosity. Keeping a toe in the dreck helps me prebunk certain rumors for my closest loved ones, which I hope is helpful.
But, sigh...
Charlie,
In your intro quote from David Frum...
“Everything they wanted to perceive as decadent and weak has proven strong and brave; everything they wanted to represent as fearsome and powerful has revealed itself as brutal and stupid.”
Is he referring to Putin and the Russians or the ReTrumplican't Party?
You know, you should stop referring to D'Souza, Carlson, Ingrahm "useful idiots". They are useful but not idiots. "Useful idiot" implies some at least partly exculpatory deficiency in reasoning, understanding, and naivety of motivation.
"Thug nasty", the martial arts "regular guy" from Arkansas Tucker Carlson pretends to interview, is a useful idiot. He has no idea what he is doing or saying. His remarks don't reflect any comprehensible thought process or worked out set of values, and are substantively no different from what a random phrase generator AI would produce from a training dataset of belligerent and incoherent word associations.
Tucker and Bannon and D'Souza and all the rest are entirely different. They are rendering service for compensation. A person who takes compensation in exchange for providing service is a contractor or agent acting on behalf of, and for the benefit of, another. In their cases the beneficiary is a foreign adversary endeavoring to destroy NATO and harm the countries in that alliance. The service provided is to assist that foreign power by fomenting fifth columns in the United States sympathetic to, or even taking direction from, that entity.
Whether they do this because they are actually starry-eyed followers of a Napoleonic hero, sober idealogues acting out the dialectic by direction of the new Comintern, or nihilistic opportunists grabbing money and power for themselves by sowing confusion and discord at home, is almost beside the point.
What they are not is in any way confused about what they are doing or for whose benefit. Which makes them no different morally from the Rosenbergs or Robert Hanssen.
We need to stop calling them useful idiots. Don't even call them fellow travellers. They are willing agents of a foreign country whose dictator considers himself at war with their country and acts accordingly.
I think D’Douza may in fact be profoundly stupid. Bannon suffers from a personality disorder or more accurately we suffer from. Bannin’s disorder. Tucker and I Graham… I agree with you. Tucker’s biggest problem is he never his hands dirty doing an honest day’s work in his life.
I mainly agree with this point, but my issue is framing Bannon, Carlson, Ingraham and all the rest in the same category at all. I would argue Carlson and Ingraham both fall in the Nihilist "whatever makes us the most money we'll talk about", and Bannon falls in the "white nationalism needs to make a comeback and I can escape to Russia if I need to. I don't think Carlson and Ingraham are explicitly pro-Russia, they are pro-rile up the viewer base so we make more money off of advertiser's.
D'Souza and Kirk I would argue are much stupider than the others listed above.
Can't disagree, only note that the category to apply depends on what we're worried about. If the category is intellectual brilliance, then definitely we have players on the varsity and players in high school and players in church leagues. A person betraying his country for money and a person betraying his country because he is working for the enemy is in both cases person betraying his country. And a dumb guy can wreak as much havoc, given the chance, as a genius. Gavrilo Princip was by no means a rocket scientist.
Fair point
I've been reading Anne Applebaum's "Twilight of Democracy," which I think is excellent.
There is a case to be made that authoritarianism is really the state of nature, the return to the mean without intervention, and that democracy is something that requires active defense and maintenance. It seems that the far Right is in the driver's seat on the Right, and that this perspective frames the world in a stark way of those who are patriots, and those who are degenerate traitors. Hence the affection for Putin and Orban. They perceive them as defending conservatism against the hoards. It doesn't matter if rights are being trampled, essentially martial law needs to be called to address the imminent threat of the Left. This is war, and they will do whatever needs to be done to achieve their aims. To stand on principle in this extremist environment is to make yourself irrelevant and an enemy of the Right. Being irrelevant or ejected from the tribe is the worst fate that many can imagine. To embrace extremism is to inject yourself into influence, power, and money.
Exactly. They are the mouthpieces of tyranny. They believe that the nation is in a state of emergency because of the threat of the libs, so all bets are off.
a. What kind of pompous azz has a their own quote in the background of their videofeed?
b. You know who asks lots of questions? Toddlers. That doesn't make them smart or clever or informed.
c. If you take Carlson seriously, you might be a mouth reader.
(a) -- answer: a Catholic Nationalist whose theological model is Pope Clement VII and whose sartorial ideal is Grigori Rasputin.
The attempts to show that Ukraine is really the malignant force and the cause of its own devastation at Putin's hands is comparable to the desperate efforts to prove that 1/6 was a false flag engineered to hurt Trumpers.
In both cases we see an unwillingness to believe overwhelming evidence in front of one's own eyes, an eagerness to ascribe deep corruption to American institutions, and a failure of moral discernment.
Yes. We are being bombarded with nonstop information warfare. This is the great 21st century challenge - to maintain freedom, democracy, and an informed public in the face of disinformation, conspiracy, and propaganda.
One problem is that the conspiracy theorists like to believe that the "establishment" is lying to them, and that they are the ones penetrating the fog of disinformation. Sometimes it does turn out that the dominant take on an event was not accurate, and a little digging can expose some hidden facts. But sometimes, reason is overtaken by the zeal to disbelieve a wealth of evidence and keep digging for something to prove that evil is being done by ideological opponents (who are not actually evil). It's partly the thrill of being contrarian, under the guise of fighting back against an attack by some massive force of malignant intent.
I know this much: no matter what Putin does, Trump will never say anything critical of him. We can wonder why this is the case. Maybe Putin really does have pee tapes. Maybe Trump owes him money. Maybe they really did collude to a greater extent than is already on the public record. But Putin has brutally invaded a sovereign democracy with absolutely no justifiable pretext, not to mention innumerable crimes that preceded that, and the worst thing Trump can think to say about the man is that he's "smart." I don't know what's going on between those two, but there's definitely something going on.
As for Republican office holders joining the fight for democracy abroad with false bravado, I think that will last for about two seconds. You can't champion democracy abroad while your agenda at home is dismantling democracy. Though I'll admit, hypocrisy is kind of their brand.
I have to give Hannity a little credit for having Jennifer Griffin on right after Tucker's show, where she inevitably called him out on his entire 8 minutes of bullshit and meticulously demolished it. Alas, this is probably why Tucker beats Hannity in the ratings.
There is so much smoke here if there is no flame it's only because there is a smoke generator; in either case there is actual combustion going on. These people are actively working on behalf of Putin and a world ruled by kleptocratic megalomaniacs.
The American figure that comes to mind for me when looking at Bannon is Lincoln Rockwell. Is Bannon receiving money from Putin via his Chinese billionaire Daddy Warbucks? Does he see himself as the Shogun behind a puppet American dictator?
If there weren't so much evidence of Trump actually being an ignoramus as well as an idiot, from his actions and those of his friends and associates -- including especially his foreign associates and "friends" -- a juror would almost have to find beyond a reasonable doubt that he is a paid agent in the service of the FSB.
Carlson is clearly a nihilist and a Carlsonist, but certainly neither an ignoramus or fool. Which makes it truly perplexing why he has been so seemingly and persistently maladroit in overtly carrying water for Putin. Why would he be so blatant if he is not himself entagled with the FSB at some remove?
The FBI has certainly investigated people who were less dangerous than these traitors.
Tucker vs. Hannity--- this is what FOXNews means by fair and balanced! ; )
Putin is setting the stage for using chemical weapons like he did in Syria. This is the "information preparation of the battlespace" phase, where you release supporting propaganda ahead of the false-flag attack. Anyone who paid attention to Syria will recall how Russia & Assad tried to blame Syrian rebels for stashing chlorine bombs inside of rebel bunkers when chemical weapons went off inside of densely-populated urban districts. In reality, he was dropping chlorine bombs from helicopters onto high-rises after they had been leveled by traditional high-explosive ordnance. This is a sickening version of the "shake'n'bake" airstrike tactics we used against the Taliban in Afghanistan where we'd hit a compound with a 500-lb JDAM, then the second bomber 20-seconds behind the first one drops an air-detonated 500-lb JDAM over the target site to cut down anyone who survives and runs out of the leveled structure with air-detonated shrapnel. Instead, what the Russians like to do is level a building, then drop a chlorine bomb on top to kill anyone who made it out of the initial blast via oxygen deprivation. This is done intentionally to terrify the civilian populace in the hopes of forcing capitulation. Brace yourselves, chemical weapons are coming.
Two things. One, it's amazing how quickly Qanon talking points end up going from the fringe to Carlson's mouth. The talk of biolabs is a direct qanon talking point. And while you didn't mention it, last nights pivot to 'democrats and all lgbtq people are groomers' is also straight qanon.
But let's talk about something I mentioned before when we debated finding common ground on here some time ago: there is a lot of overlap between left and right on various issues, but the reasons for it are often in conflict. For example, the left and right mostly agree on Ukraine being good, and Russia being bad. For the right it's mostly because of xenophobia mixed with old school anti-russia sentiment left over from the cold war, mixed with a heavy dash of pro-america militarism. For the left, it's mostly about how Russia is a right wing autocracy and Ukraine is a democracy, and war is almost always a thing to oppose. These are major generalizations, obviously. But the point I'm trying to make is that while the reasoning differs, they end up at the same place: Russia bad, Ukraine good. Perhaps this is why supporting Ukraine monetarily has been bipartisan.
I think this can be applied to a lot of foreign policy. Despite Trump and his sycophants talking of 'America First' isolationism, it doesn't appear most of the party is actually that far along. What most seem to be for is fewer one-sided commitments, a sentiment that the left shares even though it's often for different people. And yet, there is still some agreement there. For example, both left and right particularly dislike nations like Saudi Arabia, again for different reasons. But focusing on the actual policy, there's a lot of overlap.
I sense that, if Biden is savvy enough, and I do not doubt that he is, that he'll be able to cut through this. We should, I think, focus less on reasons and more on results; there's a decidedly healthy amount of bipartisanship between us. To use another example: the left views Europe as mostly cultural kin, whereas the right likes to have America at the head of the table, and both views require healthy American commitments. 'America First' in actual reality, would basically be a return to healthy international commitments like we've seen from Biden. America is first, but we're not alone.
Anyway, I fully expect in the coming days that this position around Biden as a leader of foreign policy will harden, if only because Americans love having an external enemy. It's been argued that things like the cold war spurred on the civil rights movement, because we disliked having the Soviets lord things over us. Americans will do lots of things for selfish reasons; American pride is a hell of a beast. Politicians really should just make the arguement of 'we're better than this' on a whole host of issues, because while shamelessness is a super power, shame is abhorrent to most Americans.
There's overlap on voting rights or on gay right?
As Shawn says, it depends.
Shawn mentioned voting rights: Pretty much every voter on the right wants fair elections. Many think this means stopping nonexistent mass fraud, but not all.
Among those who think mass fraud exists, some doubtless find the belief convenient for identitarian reasons (their gut feeling really is that too many of the "wrong kind" of citizens voting couldn't possibly be fair, even if it's legal). Others may just trust the wrong sources. Beliefs can range from something even many Democratic voters could agree to, if it were done right, like making voter ID easily accessible and using it (Democratic activists worry this will disenfranchise the marginalized more than Democratic voters do), to full-on whackadoo.
Those on the right who don't believe mass voter fraud exist may believe this as strongly as Democrats do, but because it's not a characteristically "right wing" belief these days, they don't seem like "sincere right-wingers" on this.
Regarding LGBTQ matters, authoritarian moralizing makes non-reactionary libertarians, whether they are personally religious or not, nervous. Cathy Young is an example.
Both UT and WA have universal mail-in and no fraud. Why isn't that the new standard for states?
If you're asking me a rhetorical question, you're asking the wrong person: I don't object to mail-in voting.
But, since you're asking someone who's also been a pollworker, and seen how my state and county run things, there is a *lot* of hysteresis (lag and path-dependence) in our voting systems: a fair amount of "foot dragging" may be due to the malice of Republican state legislators, but by no means all of it.
Not every issue. But I also believe that most people only have one or two 'major' issues that stick out to them. The rest gets absorbed in rhetoric.
For example, on voting rights, lots genuinely want 'fair' elections. Well, so do Democrats. Now obviously, bad people are trying to steal that and manipulate it for their own gain. But lots of the voters would go along with being told there's an 'election security' package that just included a lot of the things Democrats want.
On lgbtq rights, in general the more libertarian set of the GOP follows a similar tact to liberals on religion: they don't care what you do personally as long as it doesn't effect them. And they're not hugely happy with the idea of having religion imposed upon them. The same people who hate dry laws hate religious mandates.
Utah and WA both have universal mail-in and no corruption, so why do The GOP and the right wing oppose it on a national level?
If they believe that way on social issues, how do they stay in a party advocating for a white Christian ethnostate?
Shawn, I completely agree with your nuance and logical reasoning. I also firmly believe it will never work on a group of people that can't let go of MTG,Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Paul Gosar, Jan 6, Q-Anon, and a million more insane people and conspiracy claims.
For far too long the sane Republicans used the crazy part of the party to their advantage, ie: winning elections. Now the party is run by the crazy part and turning that ship around is, imho, impossible. I used to think an external enemy would work, I no longer do.
I hope you are right and that I am wrong, I am just not feeling it right now.
I agree! In fact, I fully agree that those people will not agree with what I've stated. But this is also because I am not using 'America First' in the manner that they are using it. This is because their idea of what that means looks entirely opposite to what I've described. They'd rather be more like Russia, North Korea, or Iran; a closed off society to the rest of the world. Those people are not going to come around to this way of thinking.
And it is true that much of the party is run by people who are out of their mind, and this is because they suck up a lot of oxygen. More than that, the social issues part of the party has become very extreme. But if I may make an observation: most people are only extreme on their personal issue.
I've met a lot of people who consider lgbtq or abortion or race as their 'major' issue. It's the one that absorbs their attention and focus. That's normal. But what it means is that very rarely are they as extreme on lots of other issues. The MTG group are never going to come around.
But there are a lot of other GOP individuals who we might disagree on when it comes to other issues, but which we can swing around on this one. Worth noting that about 80% of the GOP currently supports an anti-Russia stance, despite years of attempts to get them to come around under Trump.
What this tells me is that for most GOP members, foreign policy is not a huge issue in their minds, and thus they fall back on what confirms a lot of their other priors: America good, America strong, ect.
Which is what I mean when I say 'different reasons, same outcome.'
My only quibble is, if the people who are single issue, and I agree there are many, don’t have the intelligence to see that they must vote D in the next election (and I don’t believe many think that way) we are done. We all have our pet issues, I agree, but my gut on this one says too many voters are simply not informed enough, willing to become informed, or care enough to understand what is really at stake.
Again, I pray you are right and I am wrong. (I am a non believer, so take that with a grain of salt :) or two!)
New nickname for the Great Orange One (aka GOO): Don Quixote - the guy just can't stop tilting at windmills............
Oh, no, please! Anyone familiar with Cervantes' great novel would object to even a hint at such a comparison. Don Quixote is one of the purest souls in literature. For all his insane "tilting at windmills," he is always on the side of helping the poor and the oppressed. He bravely takes the hardest punishment for his insane mistakes as well, as the windmill episode clearly illustrates. When has Trump ever made an effort to act in service of justice for the oppressed, or suffered the consequences for his actions?
In fairness, I saw this comparison made as a reverse Don Quixote, where every enemy turns into a windmill, so it still holds. Trump is the opposite, or reverse of Don Quixote.
You're right, Doug - I've done a grave injustice to the dear Don Q by comparing him to the drudge Don T. Mea culpa.......
You need to spell it as Keyhottay because that's how the dullard would spell it
Pretty sure he'd spell it "cat".
lmao...........
hahaha - I'm not sure he'd get that close! What's with that "X"??? One dumbfounded dullard, I'd guess.
D'Souza comparing Putin to Biden reminds me of when Bin Laden once referred to the West as "the far enemy" and the Saudi Royal Family as the "near enemy." Bin Laden spent most of his time attacking "the near enemy" before moving on to "the far enemy." It's also a lot like the pro-Nazi "America First" isolationist movement in the run up to WWII, declaring that FDR was a greater threat to American freedoms than Hitler. There it goes again, history rhyming.
Thank you for that last nugget of hilarity; just when I’m at near total bleak outlook, TFG never fails to give me my morning coffee spit take.