I know I’ve been gone for the last several weeks. It’s just been too much of Trump doing the exact same thing: Vilifying opponents (mostly female or black or black females), blaming the Democrats for every single thing that he’s caused to go wrong, calling the press the enemy of the people because they dare to criticize him, and lying, lying, lying (over five thousand as of last month, according to the Washington Post.). It’s just…it’s so much the same that I was feeling sick of it.
And then we had a new wrinkle. We had the bombs or, as Trump put it on Twitter, “Bombs.” Right there, right in front of millions of people, he put basically air quotes around the word as if to imply that it’s all some show, some false flag thing put together by the evil Democrats. The ones who he claims will get rid of pre-existing medical coverage, which is explicitly what the Republicans want to do. The ones he falsely claims came up with laws compounding the immigrant situation. The ones he blames for everything that he and his fellow GOPers do that screws things up. And now he was implying that the entire bomb situation, where bombs were being sent to all his opponents and news organizations, wasn’t real. That it was all being arranged by Democratic operatives in order to make the GOP look bad (as if everything they say or do doesn’t accomplish that.)
Of course, the problem is that the GOP loves conspiracy theories, embraces them, broadcasts them, reports on them as news items on Fox. They claim that George Soros, a philanthropic Jew, organized the migrant march. They still claim that Barack Obama is a Muslim born outside of the USA; Trump was their standard bearer for that one. And their latest was that the left itself was behind the attempted bombings. Despite the fact that the typos in the return addresses screamed it was GOP because a startling percentage of Trump followers have trouble with spelling.
Except now an arrest has been made. In Florida; of course Florida. The lunatic drives a van that is festooned with Trump stickers and a photo of Hillary Clinton with a target on it. He has a criminal record and is a registered Republican.
Trump’s reaction before the man was arrested? He claimed that we need to come together, to become a vast United America. He did it in his trademark soft, barely awake voice that he uses when he’s saying something he really doesn’t want to say. Because the simple fact is this: there is no more divisive man with a microphone as Donald Trump. He creates splits between our allies, he cuts his friends loose the moment they run into trouble, often claiming he barely even knows them. He complains how Brett Kavanaugh was falsely and hastily judged while encouraging shouts of “Lock her up” at rallies over women (of course) who have committed no crime.
After he was arrested? Trump congratulated law enforcement. Which is fine, but is not what needs to be addressed.
The simple fact is this: Trump should shoulder some, if not all, of the blame for this.
Trump loves violence. He has since the campaign began. He has embraced it wholeheartedly. He encouraged his followers to beat up protestors at rallies, claiming that he would cover their legal fees. He urged police officers to bang around suspects who were under arrest. He embraced a politician who beat up a reporter, calling him “my kind of…my man!” He loves Putin who kills reporters, Kim Jong un who had his step brother and uncle assassinated. Trump is, and always has been, a brute. He either embraces violent answers to questions, or uses threats of violence to intimidate his idiot followers. That’s why he claims without any proof that terrorists are marching toward us in the caravan. That’s why he described Mexicans as rapists and gang members. He wants to keep his base in fear and use violence against those whom he dislikes.
Naturally it culminated in a Florida sicko who rose to his master’s words and attempted to bomb anyone who Trump disliked.
Will Trump take any responsibility? Of course not. Instead he and the right will shout “Baseball shooter” because they think that one idiot doing something on impulse is comparable to a Trump nut systematically trying to bomb everyone that Trump doesn’t like. Trump has yet to conceive of the fact that words have meaning. That when you rail against people and endorse violent means to an end, people are going to take that and run with it, believing that they are doing what you would want them to. Even more to the point, it is quite simply insane that they take wrongdoing on the part of the Left as an excuse when someone on the right does something ten times worse. The right should aspire to be better than the left, just as the left does with the right. “Whataboutism” is pretty much a right defense. I don’t use the right’s obsession with analyzing and scrutinizing everything Obama ever did in a restaurant as a reason to excuse leftists harassing GOPers who are just trying to have an evening out.
The worst is when righties try to claim that Trump has done “so much good” for the country. Typically they’re wrong, buying into actions that are misreported, false, or insanely exaggerated. But you know what? Let’s say, just for fun, that Trump has done positive things. You know what? Hitler built up a sizable infrastructure in Germany, including the Autobahn. And Mussolini made the trains run on time. Does that make them admirable leaders and good guys?
This bomber is yet another Trump production, even if he doesn’t have Trump’s name on his back in gold letters. Trump’s supporters will of course not cop to that either. This guy is the face of home grown, Trump spawned terrorism, but Trumpies will declare he’s a single lone mentally ill nut who should not be accorded any importance. An isolated incident, that’s all.
No. He’s a landmark, a map, a guide for others to follow. I’d wager there are White Supremacists already putting together a GoFundMe page to pay for his defense. His kind has millions of supporters, and God only knows what they’re doing now. Now that the door has been opened to launch a terrorist attack on people Trump hates, it’s likely going to be kicked wide open and others will come marching through.
But what’s Trump worried about? He’s busy claiming Twitter is cutting back on his followers. Well, I know of one guy in Florida who may have been dropped off by now.
PAD
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If only we could find a leader, or anyone, in the Democratic Party who would call Trump, or any Republican, on his šhìŧ as directly as you do in your open paragraphs.
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Alas, they remain Democrats and true to form and thereby continue to enable.
But they are exactly right in that belief. They are doing exactly what he wants them to.
The left is powerless to stand against Trump’s bûllšhìŧ because they’re divided in two camps that each have a crippling weakness:
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Camp 1 is the old, smug left that sold their soul to globalist free market capitalism in the 1990s and in doing so helped create the conditions for the rise of Trump’s brand of neo-fascism. They are demoralized and lost.
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Camp 2 is the new, righteous left that see everything in terms of identity politics. To them, Trump isn’t an aberration, but the true face of an America that was built on white supremacism and male privilege. They do have answers, but their answers feed into the same division that Trump feeds on.
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And both Camps do have a certain upper class, college-educated elitism that stops them from connecting with as many people as they should.
Look, I’m going to sound like a broken record here, especially as I’ve said much of this here, repeatedly, for close to a decade, but, it is what it is.
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Rep. Allen West, (R-FL) – “Let me tell you what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to make the fellow scared to come out of his house. That’s the only way that you’re going to win. That’s the only way you’re going to get these people’s attention.”
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Talk radio host Joyce Kaufman talking to a crowd of Allen West supporters at a campaign event over the summer of 2010 –“I don’t care how this gets painted by the mainstream media. I don’t care if this ends up on YouTube, because I am convinced that the most important thing the Founding Fathers did to ensure me my First Amendment rights was that they gave me a Second Amendment. And if ballots don’t work, bullets will.”
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Allen West rewarded her rhetoric by tapping her to serve as his Chief of Staff.
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Catherine Crabill, GOP candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates – “We have the chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box. But that’s the beauty of our Second Amendment right.”
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Stephen Broden, Republican political candidate from the state of Texas in the 30th congressional district –
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BRODEN: “Our nation was founded on violence.”
WATSON: “In 2010 you would urge that as an option, though?”
BRODEN: “The option is on the table. I don’t think that we should ever remove anything from the table as relates to our liberties and our freedoms.”
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Sharron Angle, Nevada Republican/Tea Party candidate – “You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact Thomas Jefferson said it’s good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years.
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I hope that’s not where we’re going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.”
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Brad Goehring, candidate (R-CA) – “If I could issue hunting permits, I would officially declare today opening day for liberals. The season would extend through November 2 and have no limits on how many taken as we desperately need to “thin” the herd.”
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Rep. Gregg Harper (R-MS) – “We hunt liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition.”
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Rep. Steve King (R-IA) – ”If I could start a country with a bunch of people it would be the folks standing out here the last few days. Let’s hope we don’t have to do that. Let’s beat that other side to a pulp. Let’s take them out, let’s chase them down. There’s going to be a reckoning!”
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Michele Bachmann (R-MN) – “Right now I’m a member of Congress. And I believe that my job here is to be a foreign correspondent, reporting from enemy lines. And people need to understand, this isn’t a game. this isn’t just a political talk show that’s happening right now. This is our very freedom, and we have 230 years, a continuous link of freedom that every generation has ceded to the next generation. This may be the time when that link breaks. And I’m going to do everything I can, I know you are, to make sure that we keep that link secure. We cannot allow that link to break, because as Reagan said, America is the last great hope of mankind. Where do we go…
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I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people– we the people– are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.”
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Nigel Coleman, Virginia Tea Party leader, published for his supporters the home address Tom Perriello’s brother by mistake when trying to publish Perriello’s. The results were threats to Perriello sent to his brother’s home and ultimately someone cutting the gas lines at “his” house. After the Gabby Giffords shooting, this glorious example of the need for mental health care commented on the shooting in Tucson with the following on his Twitter account.
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“Cutting that Gas line doesn’t seem so bad now does it?…What?….. Too Soon?”
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Most of that was 2010 and 2011. That was becoming commonplace for the Tea Party.
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The 2014 Bundy Ranch standoff was an armed confrontation between militia supporters of cattle rancher Cliven Bundy and law enforcement officials. They decided, basically just because a black man was President, that Cliven Bundy was above the law. They pointed guns at law enforcement officers. They set up women and children to be human shields for propaganda purposes in case there was a firefight and retaliation by law enforcement.
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Conservative talk radio, Fox News, and Tea Party social media pages labeled them patriots and heroes. They were praised for their bravery and given interview time to spout off and preach violent rhetoric. The Tea Party expressed solidarity with the Bundys, including three Southern Nevada Tea Party groups that organized a protest against law enforcement outside Las Vegas police headquarters.
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When Ammon Bundy led an armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and his fellows actually stated that they would fight and kill and die before they surrendered or were arrested.
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Again, the conservative media and the Tea Party hailed them as heroes. Elected Republicans like Tea Party Republican Michele Fiore praised and supported them in an armed takeover of a building where they declared they would kill and/or die before being arrested.
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Conservatives bomb abortion clinic or walk into Plan Parenthood and start shooting, and most of the Tea Party people and now Trump supporters blow it off. They can’t bring themselves to truly condemn it, and, if they do, they still rationalize it as the people in the clinics or the Planned Parenthood offices deserved it.
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When the 2016 election season was in its closing weeks, a frighteningly large number of conservatives were openly declaring on social media that if Hillary won in November it was time to take to the streets with guns and let the bloodshed begin.
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Charlottesville was a “Unite the Right” rally and some of groups involved in the event and the violence were, right up until some conservatives needed to distance themselves because of the death of a young woman, discussed as mainstream American conservatives. they still discuss them as such. in my state, we have a man who has been closely tied with some of these groups and people involved in that event running against Tim Kaine. The Virginia Tea Party and many Trump supporters referred to this freak when he tried to win the primary to run for Governor here and again now refer to him as one of the few true conservatives running for office these days.
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He’s rationalized violence by the right, and he buddies up to white nationalists. Yet, as they themselves say, he’s one of the few true conservatives running for office these days.
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A conservative running for office punches, pounds, body-slams, and kicks a reporter. Gianforte was charged with assault. He pleaded guilty in June 2017, paid a $385 fine, completed 40 hours of community service, 20 hours of anger management training. In the meantime, after the assault, he was still elected. It may even have helped him with the Republican base that elected him.
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Conservatives, elected or otherwise, condemn Antifa for violence while turning turn a blind eye to violence by the Proud Boys or other conservative groups.
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Just this month, Trump introduced him by praising and joking about Gianforte attacking a reporter without any cause. The assembled Trump supporting audience cheered the recounting of an unprovoked assault.
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Trump regularly talks to crowds of supporters or tweets to them. He calls Democrats treasonous for not cheering him and/or supporting his every policy idea. He calls the press and others the enemies of the country and the enemy of the people. He’s taken to recently campaigning by declaring any and all people and groups he views as opposition to be evil.
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“The simple fact is this: Trump should shoulder some, if not all, of the blame for this.
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“Trump loves violence. He has since the campaign began. He has embraced it wholeheartedly. He encouraged his followers to beat up protestors at rallies, claiming that he would cover their legal fees. He urged police officers to bang around suspects who were under arrest. He embraced a politician who beat up a reporter, calling him “my kind of…my man!” He loves Putin who kills reporters, Kim Jong un who had his step brother and uncle assassinated. Trump is, and always has been, a brute. He either embraces violent answers to questions, or uses threats of violence to intimidate his idiot followers. That’s why he claims without any proof that terrorists are marching toward us in the caravan. That’s why he described Mexicans as rapists and gang members. He wants to keep his base in fear and use violence against those whom he dislikes.
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“Naturally it culminated in a Florida sicko who rose to his master’s words and attempted to bomb anyone who Trump disliked.
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“Will Trump take any responsibility? Of course not.”
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You’re wrong about something, Peter. Trump very likely doesn’t shoulder the blame for much of this. All he is, everything he says, is nothing more than what we’ve been watching a large part of the conservative movement become over the last two decades. He’s not responsible for it, he’s just the most recent evolution of it.
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Taking something I said from another post thread, he’s a symptom, not the disease.
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I have a friend who I love dearly, but, as smart as he is, there is one point he seems to miss every time I make it and no matter how many times I explain it. That point is this.
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Allen West made his “got to make the fellow scared to come out of his house” and his sidekick/future Chief of Staff made her “if ballots don’t work, bullets will” comment. Okay, yeah, they’re idiots.
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Wayne LaPierre makes a statement at a conservative gathering that’s unquestionably racist and somewhat sexist. Okay, yeah, he’s an idiot.
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When I point these out, my friend will occasionally comment that, well, we’ve reached the point in the conversation where Jerry quotes Allen West/Wayne LaPierre/Tomi/Coulture/Savage/Limbaugh/etc said something stupid as if someone saying something stupid means anything.
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But the point is never about them saying it.
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Never.
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The point is always- ALWAYS -about the reactions of the crowds or the listening audiences.
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They cheer it. They embrace it. They quote it. They beg for more of it and more extreme versions of it.
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If you or I or most of the people who have frequented this blog who are centrists or left of center in their views were standing in a crowd watching a center/left of center politician or pundit speaking and they said essentially- even if couched in the indirect “ballot box/bullet box” language -if we didn’t get our way in an election we needed to take to the street with weapons and kill people who disagreed with us… I’m not cheering, you’re not cheering, and most of the people who have been regulars here over the years are very likely not cheering.
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That’s not who I am. That’s not who you are. That’s not who most of the center to left of center posters here over the years are.
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We’d probably stare at them in shocked silence for a moment, but then we’d be condemning them. We’d condemn them on the spot and for days afterwards.
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The audiences cheered West and Kaufman and LaPierre and Angle and Goehring and Gianforte and King and Savage and etc, etc, etc…
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And that’s always been my point.
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And I blame them far, far more than I blame trump right now.
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I blame the idiotic, áššhølë Trump Cult supporters who cheer his violent rhetoric and his calls to violence. I blame the idiotic, áššhølë Trump Cult supporters who have spent two years denying that conservatives engage in violence or violent rhetoric “like the left does” while ignoring or rationalizing or whataboutisming violence and death threats by the right when shown to them. I blame the idiotic, áššhølë Trump Cult supporters who declared as soon as these bombs became news that the right could/would NEVER do something like this and began acting like demented Alex Jones wannabees and declaring this a Democrat planned, October surprise false flag event meant to frame Republicans and make the peaceful, loving conservatives who support Trump look bad and/or have something to silence critics with.
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I blame Trump for being stupid enough to give conservatives the rhetoric they want to hear and crave. I blame Trump for being stupid enough to feed into the now long on display desire for violent rhetoric and actual violence of the Tea Party and many in the modern American right.
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But I put the lion’s share of the blame not on Trump or West or Gianforte or Savage, but rather on the millions of people who cheer them and praise them for talking like that.
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It’s not the village idiot’s fault if when he climbs up on the lamppost on the street corner and starts screaming things that deserve laughter or ridicule or full on condemnation it turns out that just under half of the village is dumber and more vile and more reprehensible than the village idiot is.
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Trump is the village idiot. He deserves to be condemned when he acts and speaks like one.
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But I put the lion’s share of the blame for this on the people who cheer him and other conservative village idiots like him.
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Without so much of the modern conservative movement being what they have become, being the reprehensible people they have become, Trump is a ranting, toothless dog with no power.
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But we have watched for over a decade as the mainstream of conservatism has fast-tracked it devolution to become indistinguishable from what was its fringe 40 years ago. We have watched for over a decade as the mainstream of conservatism has devolved into hypocritical, holier than thou practitioners of racism, fear mongering, and violent rhetoric while becoming the masters of playing the victim card.
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Trump is barely a blip. Trump is not the problem, and the problem will exist long after Trump is gone.
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The real problem is standing in line at events to cheer trump when he talks like that. The real problem is tuning into Michael Savage every evening after tuning into Limbaugh every day. The real problem and the real focus of where the blame should be shouldered is walking around with red MAGA hats on while their Tea Party t-shirts hang in their closets.
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Cesar Sayoc isn’t, as you put it, “a Florida sicko who rose to his master’s words and attempted to bomb anyone who Trump disliked.” Cesar Sayoc is simply the ultimate devolution of the Tea Party that became the Party of Trump and that will become whatever more extreme version comes along after Trump exits the White House. Cesar Sayoc is, sadly, what far too many of them likely wish they could be.
Jerry –
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You only forgot to mention one thing that makes your summation even more scary.
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This radicalization of the right-wing has gone global. Most countries now have their own version of the Tea Party/Fox News/Talk Radio/Neo-Fascists çlûšŧërfûçk.
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There are regional differences, sure. In my country they’re less racist and more sexist/homophobic, have less access to tv stations or radio and have to make do with the Internet, but they do have lots more sympathy from the military (that ran the country in a right-wing dictatorship until the early 1980s).
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The crazy nationalistic right-wing is a global movement.
Oh, they’re plenty homophobic, transphobic, and sexist as well. But we’re talk to not violence in pure form against all here, so it wasn’t relevant to what I was addressing.
Fascists, paragraphing The Eagles: “We never went away, we just took a 70 year vacation”.
Jerry –
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Yeah, there is also plenty of racism in the Brazilian far-right, particularly in the Southern region of the country, that has a whiter population.
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I was just saying that different countries have different amounts of noxious ingredients in the composition of their own version of the far-right.
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Brazil has a lot of race mixing and very few Jews, so appeals to “white purity” don’t have quite the same weight here (though they do happen).
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Conversely, we do have a pretty strong “macho” culture, so extreme right-wingers double down on “leftism wants to make your kids gay” rhetoric.
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But with our wonderfully interconnected world, each foreign brand of the Neo-Fascist franchise influences each other. Our Neo-Fascist-soon-to-be-President has promised to make gun laws in Brazil (they’re currently somewhat restrictive, thank God) become more like those in the USA.
A mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh this morning.
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Let another round of ‘thoughts and prayers’ begin!
Yeah, I bet we will have lots and lots of articles about what made the MAGAbomber tick, and how he was one lonely, sick individual traumatized by being abandoned by his father* at an earlier age. The word “terrorist” will not be used, instead, a too large portion of the press will try to see him as an unbalanced individual, something they’d never do if a Muslim or black or Mexican guy sent bombs to anyone.
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And the mass shooter at the synagogue? “All Jews must die” were his words. Just imagine if he were a Muslim shouting exactly that. Everybody would be talking about cracking down on his country of origin and looking to blame his ideology and religion, and urging Muslims to clean their act and denounce the radicals among them.
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I used to believe that there would come a point of critical mass that the Neo-Fascist Right would cease to be given special treatment and finally be recognized as the civilization-level threat that they are, but I no longer believe that. Because right-wingers now always double down. They used to do that with economics, as any problems caused by austerity and small government and income inequality, they said would be somehow magically cured by implementing even MORE tricke-down bûllšhìŧ, in a similar way as “smoke more cigarettes to cure your lung cancer” logic.
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Now we will see that with the violence committed by their followers. Their “solution” will be to relax gun control even more, to urge even more partisanship, to claim even louder that left-wingers want to destroy traditional manhood, etc.
*Though I have to admit that it is noteworthy how a lot of the more extreme right-wingers I know seem to feel an absence of father figures in their lives.
Restaurant Owner: We can’t continue to serve you here. What you’ve eaten is free of charge, but please leave now.
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Trump Supporter: “Oh my GOD!!! The harassment poor Sarah Huckabee Sanders suffered! The evil, hateful left and their intolerance! Screaming profanities at her and driving her from a restaurant! This will lead to violence! The blood will be on the hands of every liberal that doesn’t condemn this! They won’t be happy until conservative blood is spilled!”
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Maxine Waters: “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere. We’ve got to get the children connected to their parents. We don’t know what damage has been done to these children. All that we know is they’re in cages. They’re in prisons. They’re in jails. I don’t care what they call it, that’s where they are and Mr. President, we will see you every day, every hour of the day, everywhere that we are to let you know you cannot get away with this.”
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*No calls for violence, limited to a specific event*
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Trump Supporter: “Oh my GOD!!! Maxine Waters is calling for violence against conservatives! If the left doesn’t condemn this woman, the blood for anything that happened from this point forward is on their hands and she’s directly responsible!”
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Eric Holder: “Michelle always says, ‘When they go low, we go high.’ No. No. When they go low, we kick them. That’s what this new Democratic Party is about. We’re proud as hëll to be Democrats, we’re going to fight for the ideals of the Democratic party.
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“When I say we, you know, ‘We kick ‘em,’ I don’t mean we do anything inappropriate. We don’t do anything illegal. But we got to be tough, and we have to fight for the very things that John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Whitney Young – you know, all those folks gave to us.”
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*No actual calls for violence, follows statement by saying do not do anything illegal or inappropriate*
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Trump Supporter: “Oh my GOD!!! Holder is calling for violence against conservatives! If the left doesn’t condemn this man, the blood for anything that happened from this point forward is on their hands and he’s directly responsible!”
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Donald Trump: -Repeatedly mock up retweets GIFs of him physically attacking and beating on media outlets and political opponents-
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“Knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, OK? Just knock the hëll … I promise you I will pay for the legal fees. I promise, I promise.”
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“He’s walking out with big high-fives, smiling, laughing. I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell you.”
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“Try not to hurt him. If you do, I’ll defend you in court. Don’t worry about it.”
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“Wasn’t it great? Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my type!”
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“Part of the reason it takes so long is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore, and they’re being politically correct the way they took them out. So it takes a little bit longer. And honestly, the protesters realize it, they realize there are no consequences to protesting anymore.”
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“[hinting that gun-owners could take matters into their own hands if his rival Hillary Clinton were elected president] If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people— maybe there is, I don’t know.”
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“You’re up there, you’ve got half the room going totally crazy — wild, they loved everything, they want to do something great for our country. And you have the other side — even on positive news, really positive news like that — they were like death. And un-American. Un-American. Somebody said, ‘treasonous.’ I mean, yeah, I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not! I mean they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”
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[About the news media] “The enemy of the people.”
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About Democrat politicians and voters, says people who opposed ‘great person’ Brett Kavanaugh were ‘evil.’
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About multiple political opponents who have committed no crime other than being Trump’s political opponent- “Lock her up/lock him up”
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*Repeated, constant calls for more violence and violent rhetoric over two years’ time culminates in pipe bombs being sent to Democrats that have been regularly targeted by Trump by name again and again at rallies, in speeches, and in tweets*
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Same Trump Supporter: “Hey, whoa… Hang on now. You can’t hold anyone else responsible for the actions of the bomber except the bomber. That’s sick and shameful that you would even suggest that Donald Trump has any responsibility or blame for this. This has nothing to do with conservatives or Trump! You can’t paint millions of people who didn’t do anything like this with the same brush of a mentally ill, evil person. The fact that the left would even suggest that anyone else is responsible for the actions of that man just shows how sick and twisted the left has become and how repugnant they’ll act when trying to silence critics.”
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You think the ones who are saying the “broad brush” kind of comments would have their brains explode if the pipe bomber had been a Trump loving Muslim? Their brains working on rationalizations would probably be like trying to put a car into reverse and drive at the same time.
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I’d love to say this is complete parody, but I can point to multiple Trump supporters that said essentially exactly this over the last few months of events; including at least two holier than thou conservative hypocrites who used to post here.
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I’ve watched the first few responses given over the last few months; some long after they happened. Over the last 24 hours, I’ve watched the same people blowing off everything Trump has said and done to incite hatred and violence like their lives depended on it.
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Honest to God, I don’t think the average Trump supporter has the level of self-awareness that God gave a pile of compost.
I was going to point out this very thing after your comment that your Conservative friend didn’t understand *why* you were concerned over incendiary rhetoric.
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And their lives do depend on it. To change now would be to say that they were wrong, and the life that they lived to get where they are now was wasted. That might be even worse than death.
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(This is a common human trait, to be sure. But it seems worse in a certain sub-set. And those Conservatives who are capable of self-assessment seem to want to hide this fact in public. And so the worst of us defines the rest of us.)
It’s a common human trait, but it’s much stronger on people that wrap their politics and opinions so close to their intimate beings that they’re a part of their very identity. In other words, they have no critical distance between themselves and those positions.
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To be honest, there are people in the left that are like that too. But I see far more people on the left that are able to say stuff like “I believed this and this in years past, but it was wrong.” People on the right, conversely, are more likely to be 100% attached to their position, except when they reverse them overnight, and them they do take an Orwellian approach and pretend that they never believed in things that today would contradict their current opinions.
David –
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Another interesting thing I just thought about. I’m watching the Ken Burns mini-series about the Vietnam War, and it has a lot of folks giving interviews, and many of those folks had what we’d consider right-wing opinions in certain matters in the 1960s and 1970s, and they’ve changed their mind later, and they’re fully able not only to admit it, to tell that they were wrong, they’re also able to disect their former views.
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Clearly, the American right-wing had not always been as fanatical and tribalist as it is today. IMO, this coincides with the rise of the self-conscious conservative, the one that defines themselves as conservatives as members of a tribe that is in direct opposition to lefties.
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Back in the 1960s and 1970s, someone who might have had fierce anti-communist views or racist views had them in a less self-conscious manner. It was not quite as much an identity trait. So they were still able to reject those views and dissect them as they outgrew them.
Thank you and well done to the U.S. Post Office for detecting the bombs, the Police for handing them and the FBI for catching the suspect. Good work!
One minor – completely irrelevant, really – point.
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I believe “Mussolini made the trains run on time” is an urban legend.
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OTOH, perhaps, on the mainland, he did.
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But i promise you, having spent a year there, that NOTHING short of an Act Of God, with followup enforcement by sword-wielding seraphim, could make the trains in Sicily run on time…
Yes. It’s a myth.
From what I remember, it isn’t necessarily that Mussolini “made the trains run on time,” or even that he didn’t, so much as one old guy, in an interview, SAID that he did. The way the quote was used originally made exactly the same point that we make today when we call out people for excusing all of Trump’s horribleness by saying that he’s improved the economy.
Furthermore it’s my understanding that the first two years of an economy in a president’s term are generally results of leftovers from his predecessor. So the two years of success we have, under that rule, would still be from Obama. The recent downward spiral of the stock market, nearly two years into Trump’s term, would seem to support that theory. Of course the further downside is that if a Democrat gets in in 2020 and the economy is stale or falling, the GOP will immediately blame the New Democratic president for that.
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2020? They won’t wait that long. Try 2019. We’re seeing the early stages of a slow downs in the economy and signs of a recession coming; possibly as early as early to mid-2019.
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There are probably conservatives in power who are praying that the Democrats take at least one house of the Congress this November, because that gives them an out with their base. If the Democrats took just one house in Congress, the new members wouldn’t be sworn in and starting to work until January. The likelihood of them passing any legislation- let alone getting it through both houses and then signed by Trump -immediately after that is laughably small.
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Yet, and I guarantee this, it, whatever it is, will be all their fault.
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And the same conservative voters and pundits who started blaming Obama for the economic crash of 2008 on Obama on November 5, 2008- the same people who declared the economy a disaster and the worst economy ever on November 7, 2016 and then declared it the magnificent miracle economy of Trump starting on November 9, 2016 -will ignore the news stories in 2018 of multiple drops in the stock market, the slowing job growth, manufacturers closing factories because of Trump’s tariffs, coal mines closing, retailers laying off thousands of employees, and more to go on to declare that everything was growing like never before and everything was milk and honey and the Age of Camelot (not understanding what that actually meant way back when) until the Democrats derailed the Trump Train and destroyed the economy.
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2019 will be their whine fest to try to get votes in 2020.
Sadly, we Brazilians really are in the same boat as you Americans, as of today. A narrow majority of Brazilians just elected as President one Jair Bolsonaro, a guy that is very, very, very Trump-like, and his more fanatical followers are all fans of Donald Trump too.
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Yes, one more country fallen to the siren-song of 21th century Neo-Fascism.
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My hopes are that, unlike Trump, Bolsonaro didn’t take over a major political party, and he lacks the support of a major TV station like Fox News, and we Brazilians are notoriously lacking in ideology, as compared to Americans. At least half the people who voted for Bolsonaro aren’t committed followers. Just idiots that decided to gamble. I hope that, when he starts fûçkìņg up (and he inevitably will), he won’t have the ironclad support of half of the population.
Yeah… Been following the news today.
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My condolences. One of those times you really don’t want to have someone welcome you to the club.
Do you know what one of the sadder things about the last 72 hours has been?
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I have watched Trump supporters talk about a deranged Trump fanatic mailing bombs to Trump’s frequent targets for his vile rhetoric, a white supremacist killing black people in a Kroger, and a rightwing anti-Semite shooting up a synagogue with less outrage, less anger, and less condemning and insulting language directed at the individuals than they displayed over a black man quietly kneeling in silent protest of racial inequities and abuses by the justice system.
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And they don’t even realize it themselves.
Why should they be angry? They aren’t being attacked. Blacks, Jews, Democrats? Not members of their tribe.
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But the idea that State Power could ever be abused? (Well, as long as you are not the ATF, IRS, or a candidate from the other side of the aisle. Really, anyone other than the Army or local Police.) That is a threat to the very fabric of reality, and cannot be allowed to spread! And you would be crazy to even think otherwise!!!
Yeah, it’s fûçkìņg sad.
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The last 4 years or so, both locally and worldwide, have been a political wake-up call for me. I’ve lost all faith I once had in the basic decency of right-wingers (as well as losing a lot of faith in left-wingers too, but that is not completely gone yet).
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For most of my adult life, the right claimed to stand for small government, free trade, liberty, family values, etc. All lies. Self-aggrandizing lies. What they really care about is hierarchy. The hierarchy of white above black, of male above female, of straight above gay, of rich above poor, of “Aryan” above Jew, of Christian above non-Christian, of Evangelical above other Christians, of American above foreign.
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Whatever upsets this hierarchy is bad. Whatever defends this hierarchy is ultimately good, even if the means to do so are horrible. That’s why they gripe about the black athlete but feel uncertain about condemning the killers of black or Jewish people.
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To be honest, there are many leftists that are the mirror image of this, defending any and all things that upend the hierarchies, even the vile things, defending “punching up” and “it’s good that the males are the ones that are afraid now” and “but America is the reason these guys took to terrorism” and you know…
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But in the last four years the right-wingers have really gone into warp speed about defending, making excuses, or normalizing vile things.
Our government under Trump and extremist Republican control.
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Our government made a video earlier this year describing George Soros as a “multimillionaire Jew” and espousing conspiracy theories about him that come straight out of nutjob conservative conspiracy sites and vile garbage like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
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The video called Soros a “nonpracticing Jew of flexible morals,” claimed that he was involved in “clandestine operations” and describes him as “the architect of the financial collapse of 2008.”
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The video promotes the sliding into anti-Semitism conservative nutjob group Judicial Watch during a time when they push their “Expose Soros” fundraising campaign and whose director of investigations and research recently claimed without evidence that the “Soros-occupied State Department” is funding the migrant caravan making its way to the United States.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/us-agency-vows-to-investigate-radio-report-that-called-george-soros-a-multimillionaire-jew/2018/10/29/d1173e2e-dbbc-11e8-b732-3c72cbf131f2_story.html?utm_term=.c5022d18436d
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And this comes on the same day Trump declares that his will supersedes the Constitution and that he can simply change, void, or remove a Constitutional Amendment with an executive order.
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And the response of most of the conservatives who have bothered to comment on it at all? They’re cool with it all.
Steve King said the following about Austria’s Freedom Party.
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“If they were in America pushing the platform that they push, they would be Republicans.”
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He’s talking about Nazis. Seriously, he’s literally talking about Nazis.
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Austria’s Freedom Party is a group founded by a former Nazi SS officer and whose current leader has a long history of being active in neo-Nazi circles.
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Steve King, the longtime Republican representative from Iowa, just said that if actual Nazis and neo-Nazis in Austria came to America and pushed the ideas and ideals they push there, those Nazis and neo-Nazis would be Republicans.
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Well… Who are we to argue with him?
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https://thehill.com/homenews/house/413601-steve-king-members-of-nazi-linked-party-in-austria-would-be-republicans-if
This is another thing that gets to me. Not only that supposedly “normal” Conservatives are being cozy with Neo-Nazis, but the whole hypocrisy of the Conservative movement.
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Another thing that I kept hearing all my adult life? Conservatives telling me that the Nazis were left-wing. And they always had that smirk in their faces when they said it, like they didn’t really believe it, thet just wanted to pìšš øff the Liberals.
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It was no good telling them that ACTUAL Neo-Nazis consistently voted Republican or Libertarian in the US. And that Republican administrations from Nixon to the first Bush had always supported the Fascist sympathisers lurking inside the GOP.
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Of course, the lattest stages of Conservative radicalization have made them ready to admit what we Liberals always knew in our hearts. That Nazis very much belong in their big tent. They’re one big happy family.
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How odd that they remind me very, very much of the dark wizards in Harry Potter. They always kept hinting that it’s Harry and his allies that are dark wizards in league with Voldemort, while THEY’re the ones that are actually covert Voldemort supporters. And they feel ready to advertise the fact when Voldemort becomes strong enough to return.
Wow…
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In a development that would once be seen as totally insane but these days seems totally at home in Trump’s America, Matt Shea released a four-page Christian manifesto titled “Biblical Basis for War.” This document calls for “Biblical law” to be acted upon and suggests that men who support gay marriage and abortion rights should be executed.
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Let me point something out that could be easily missed by people who just read headlines and/or just skim posts and articles. This is not a nutjob who snuck in and got a nomination to run for office for the first time. This is an elected representative who is right now up for reelection.
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“The four-page document, titled “Biblical Basis for War” was originally reported by the Spokesman-Review. It’s a radical Christian call to arms, outlining 14 steps for seizing power and what to do afterward in explicit detail. It calls for an end to abortions, an end to same-sex marriage, and if enemies do not yield and everyone obey biblical law, all males will be killed.”
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http://www.khq.com/story/39387853/spokane-valley-representative-under-scrutiny-for-leaked-manifesto
Read the guy’s Wikipedia page, and wow.
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I’m so dámņ tired of living in a world where Conservative politicians really look like caricatures created by a Liberal hack writer intending to make Conservatives look as bad as possible.
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Honestly, it sounds like the prime requisite for a Conservative running for office these days (in ANY country) is “can we find someone who sounds like he was pulled from a nightmare some Liberal had after eating too much spoiled cheese”?
We’ve always known that Evangelicals want this country under their own version of Sharia Law. But now, just like with their fascism, they can be open about it.