A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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PAGE 186 of 725
Why do all these racists keep joining the GOP?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/09/20/why-do-al
l-these-racists-keep-joining-the-gop/?noredirect=on&utm_source=reddit.com&utm_term=.4216884e3185
DeSantis may have been embroiled in an unusual number of these controversies, but it’s what every Republican candidate worries about these days. What if some supporter of mine says something shockingly racist? What if that guy who introduced me at that rally turns out to be a klansman? What if I get endorsed by some neo-Nazi group?
But you know who doesn’t have to worry about getting endorsed by neo-Nazis, white nationalists and racists? People who don’t give neo-Nazis, white nationalists and racists any reason to believe that they share their views.
It ain't rocket science...
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How fascism works
A Yale philosopher on fascism, truth, and Donald Trump.
Part of what fascist politics does is get people to disassociate from reality. You get them to sign on to this fantasy version of reality, usually a nationalist narrative about the decline of the country and the need for a strong leader to return it to greatness, and from then on their anchor isn’t the world around them — it’s the leader.
Sean Illing's question:
This is probably a good time to pivot to the glittering elephant in the room: Donald Trump. Is he a fascist?
Jason Stanley's answer:
I make the case in my book that he practices fascist politics. Now, that doesn’t mean his government is a fascist government. For one thing, I think it’s very difficult to say what a fascist government is.
For another thing, I think the current movement of leaders who use these techniques (Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, to name a few) all seek to keep the trappings of democratic institutions, but their goal is to reorient them around their own cult of personality.
Again, I wouldn’t claim — not yet, at least — that Trump is presiding over a fascist government, but he is very clearly using fascist techniques to excite his base and erode liberal democratic institutions, and that’s very troubling.
But the blame there is as much on the Republican Party as it is on Trump, because none of this would matter if they were willing to check Trump. So far, they’ve chosen loyalty to Trump over loyalty to rule of law.
Sean Illing
In the book, you imply that there’s something inherently fascist about American politics, or at the very least that fascism has always been a latent force in America. Can you elaborate on that?
Jason Stanley
Well, the Ku Klux Klan deeply affected Adolf Hitler. He explicitly praised the 1924 Immigration Act, which severely limited the number of immigrants allowed to enter the US, as a useful model.
The 1920s and the 1930s was a very fascist time in the United States. You’ve got very patriarchal family values and a politics of resentment aimed at black Americans and other groups as internal threats, and this gets exported to Europe.
So we have a long history of genocide against native peoples and anti-black racism and anti-immigration hysteria, and at the same time there’s a strain of American exceptionalism, which manifests as a kind of mythological history and encourages Americans to think of their own country as a unique force for good.
This doesn’t make America a fascist country, but all of these ingredients are easily channeled into a fascist politics.
More at www.vox.com/2018/9/19/17847110/how-fascism-works-donald-trump-jason-st
anley
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump is retweeting the persistent falsehood that the economy turned on a dime when he won the election and that all of the so-called experts who said it was impossible for the economy to grow this fast were wrong.
“We have the greatest economy ever in the history of our country. So we’re very happy with the way things are running, generally speaking. I don’t think we’ve ever had an economy like this.”
— President Trump, Sept. 19, 2018
Finally. Something we can agree on.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Cruz is the Republican running for Texas Senator. O’Rourke is Democrat. Their records on Trump's tax cut:
www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/texas/article/Cruz-v-O-Rourke-F
orget-the-hype-here-s-13244825.php
Cruz was a leading supporter of the Republican tax cut plan that passed the Senate last December on a 51-48 party-line vote. He also has rolled out legislation to make permanent the law’s cuts to individual income tax rates, which, unlike the corporate tax cuts, are set to expire in 2025.
“We’re seeing enormous benefits as a result of the historic tax cuts passed last year,” Cruz said in April. “Texans are investing capital, expanding businesses, hiring new workers, and raising wages, and that economic growth is benefiting middle class families across the Lone Star State.”
O’Rourke, on the other hand, has criticized the $1.5 trillion tax package, saying it will deepen deficits, provides large cuts for corporations and the wealthiest of Americans, and gives only small breaks to middle- and low-income families.
In a tweet on the eve of the final Senate vote, O’Rourke warned that it would become a 2018 campaign issue: “If Republicans pass this tax bill, there will be consequences & an election where the voters of Texas hold them accountable,” he wrote.
But ahead of the November midterm elections, Cruz and his Republican allies in Washington have celebrated the economy’s continued strength, which they attribute in large part to the tax cuts - the signature victory of Trump’s first year in office.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Getting voters to the polls was the unspoken theme of Cruz-O’Rourke debate
Cruz painted an image of Texas values being under assault from a socialist wave, with O'Rourke in the mold of Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, billionaire socialist financier George Soros and former first lady Hillary Clinton.
The goal was to cast Beto O'Rourke as a threat to the Texas way of life, said Rice University political science professor Mark P. Jones.
Cruz drove home the point when he told O'Rourke during one exchange that being there for Texans means fighting for them, and "not George Soros, not big liberal interests, but fighting for the values of Texas."
Later Cruz was asked to say something positive about O'Rourke. He responded in terms calculated to fire up his own base.
"Bernie Sanders believes in what he's fighting for, he believes in socialism," Cruz said from the stage at McFarlin Auditorium at Southern Methodist University. "Now I think what he's fighting for doesn't work, but I think you are absolutely sincere, like Bernie, that you believe in expanding government and higher taxes — and I commend you for fighting for what you believe in."
(O'Rourke calls for banning some types of guns, legalizing marijuana, preserving Obamacare and defending athletes who kneel during the national anthem. Polls show a majority of Texans disagree with him on those issues.)
Professor Jones said for O'Rourke it was about presenting himself to black voters as a credible champion on those issues and enough of an ally that it's worth showing up in big — even historic — numbers to vote for him on election day.
Turnout in Texas mid-term elections has generally been among the worst in the nation. In 2014, just 4.6 million of Texas's then 14 million voters cast ballots in the midterm elections. That's just 34 percent of the state's registered voters and 25 percent of the voting age population in Texas. No midterm race has had more than 40 percent turnout since 1998.
More at www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/texas/article/Getting-voters-to
-the-polls-was-the-unspoken-13249929.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Americans have a longstanding love of magical thinking.
“The country got its start with people believing that they could create their own world, their own truth.”
That’s what Kurt Andersen, author of Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, told me during our conversation about America’s descent into what he calls “anything-goes relativism” — a willingness to buy into delusion and falsehood.
His book argues that Americans have always been devoted to the fantastical — from early settlers searching for gold to conspiracy theories about the Freemasons to hustlers like P.T. Barnum and Buffalo Bill.
The 1960s, for Andersen, were a particularly pivotal moment because people began to experiment with different ways of understanding the world, which was initially liberating. But “we became too loose with the truth,” he argues, and “that came back to bite us.”
The question is, why? What is it about the American experience, the American character, that cultivated this love of magical thinking? Why are so many of us committed to our own tailored versions of reality?
In the 1830s, for example, we had newspapers publishing hoaxes as though they were news and religious evangelists going around the country advertising themselves in newspapers and performing as though it was a night at the theater. This accelerated in the 19th and especially the 20th century with Hollywood and television. America has collapsed the space between entertainment and news, reality and unreality, serious and unserious. This “fantasy-industrial complex” is more than Hollywood and TV. The 2008 financial collapse is an example.
The financial industry became part of the fantasy-industrial complex because they were selling a fantasy of real estate, a belief that people with lousy credit should be given giant loans, that home values would just keep going up without fail. That was pure fantasy, propped up by a country conditioned to believe anything.
Real estate, finance, the gaming industry, religion, and so many other things are part of the fantasy world we’ve created and live in. Have we lost the ability to distinguish reality from fiction or do we not give a damn? I’m actually not sure we can separate those two things. People don’t care if it’s real or fake; they just want to be entertained. I think that’s the attitude people have about damn near everything now — politics, theater, professional wrestling, sports, you name it.
More at www.vox.com/2017/9/29/16349982/trump-americans-fantasyland-kurt-anders
en
Quote:
I’ve been familiar with Trump for a long time, and I was one of the first people to write about him back in the ‘80s. I started paying attention to him before a lot of other people did. There’s nothing there. He’s a showman, a performance artist. But he’s a hustler like P.T. Barnum.
As I was writing this book in 2014 and 2015, I saw that Trump was running for president and I realized, about halfway through the book, that I had to reckon with this stupid — but deadly serious — candidacy.
Watching it was strange, though. I was finishing the book and getting to the part about modern politics, and here’s Trump about to win the nomination. It was as though I had summoned some golem into existence by writing this history, of which he is the apotheosis. Donald Trump came along and now this conversation is much easier to have because we’ve got this guy as president, who is the perfect expression of our disconnectedness from reality.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:Advertising and Hollywood.
The question is, why? What is it about the American experience, the American character, that cultivated this love of magical thinking? Why are so many of us committed to our own tailored versions of reality?
Like so many other aspects of our culture ("greed is good"), this aspect would not be fostered and would not continue to exist if it didn't ADVANTAGE THE WEALTHY. There is a driving elitist reason behind this culture; it didn't "just happen".
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:Humans are very hackable creatures. But the trick to keep the hackers out of your head (be they politicians, preachers, or businesses doing the hacking) is to recognize when you are being hacked. If you are too lazy or indifferent to understand what the hackers are doing to you, then the safest thing is to disconnect from the network. I am familiar with that disconnecting from my time with the Jehovah's Witnesses, who are told to not vote and not to join the military. I am also familiar with being mentally hacked by Nixon, who convincing me, without ever knowing me, to volunteer for Vietnam. I am reminded daily what will happen to me if I allow myself to be hacked or if I disconnect from the network: either painful injury or loss of money or isolation. A guy like Trump couldn't hack I guy like me because I have known Trump-like characters. The real Trump @realDonaldTrump has a long history of saying whatever is necessary to close a deal. Once you have signed the contract, or voted for him, or joined his army, then you find out that you are trapped inside another of his swindles, which go back 40 years.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Advertising and Hollywood.
The question is, why? What is it about the American experience, the American character, that cultivated this love of magical thinking? Why are so many of us committed to our own tailored versions of reality?
Like so many other aspects of our culture ("greed is good"), this aspect would not be fostered and would not continue to exist if it didn't ADVANTAGE THE WEALTHY. There is a driving elitist reason behind this culture; it didn't "just happen".
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
In a related subject: "Our Brains Are Wired to Make Us Broke"
https://grow.acorns.com/how-to-fight-harmful-money-mindsets/#gs.z1a56F
M
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:Quote:Humans are very hackable creatures. But the trick to keep the hackers out of your head (be they politicians, preachers, or businesses doing the hacking) is to recognize when you are being hacked. If you are too lazy or indifferent to understand what the hackers are doing to you, then the safest thing is to disconnect from the network. I am familiar with that disconnecting from my time with the Jehovah's Witnesses, who are told to not vote and not to join the military. I am also familiar with being mentally hacked by Nixon, who convincing me, without ever knowing me, to volunteer for Vietnam. I am reminded daily what will happen to me if I allow myself to be hacked or if I disconnect from the network: either painful injury or loss of money or isolation. A guy like Trump couldn't hack I guy like me because I have known Trump-like characters. The real Trump @realDonaldTrump has a long history of saying whatever is necessary to close a deal. Once you have signed the contract, or voted for him, or joined his army, then you find out that you are trapped inside another of his swindles, which go back 40 years.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Advertising and Hollywood.
The question is, why? What is it about the American experience, the American character, that cultivated this love of magical thinking? Why are so many of us committed to our own tailored versions of reality?
Like so many other aspects of our culture ("greed is good"), this aspect would not be fostered and would not continue to exist if it didn't ADVANTAGE THE WEALTHY. There is a driving elitist reason behind this culture; it didn't "just happen".
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
In a related subject: "Our Brains Are Wired to Make Us Broke"
https://grow.acorns.com/how-to-fight-harmful-money-mindsets/#gs.z1a56F
M
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
LOL
Posted by a mindless, reprogrammed LeftistBot.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Okay, SECOND, here's a tip: You're ALWAYS being hacked. ALWAYS. The fact that you believe that there are times when you AREN'T being "hacked" indicates that you still don't understand it.
Humans are very hackable creatures. But the trick to keep the hackers out of your head (be they politicians, preachers, or businesses doing the hacking) is to recognize when you are being hacked.
Quote:But a guy like you can be, and quite obviously has been, hacked by anti-Trump/anti-GOP characters.
A guy like Trump couldn't hack I guy like me because I have known Trump-like characters.
So, what is the answer to being "hacked"? Is it running to the "anti" side and sticking to it like glue? If you (the generic "you") were religious, does it mean becoming vehemently anti-religion? If you were fat, does it mean becoming anorexic? If you were socialist does it mean becoming vehemently anti-socialist?
Isn't clinging to the extreme opposite being just as "hacked" as before?
I'm not one to say that the truth is always in the middle. If some people say that 2+2=6 and some people say that 2+2=8, the truth isn't that 2+2=7. But there ARE ways to figure out "the truth", and in the case of politics and economics (where society-wide experiments aren't possible) you can always test a theory by how much it explains (is it able to explain contradictory information?) and - even better- by how much it PREDICTS.
You have obviously figured out an algorithm for accumulating money. Now let's see if you can figure out an algorithm for predicting events. (And no, I don't mean events that everyone can see coming, like "Republicans are going to reduce taxes on the wealthy", I mean predict things that most other people haven't predicted yet.)
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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