In these times in contrast with Trump's hateful intolerance even Liz Cheney is for the people, for crying out loud.
They're rolling out a Trump ad in Seattle and, reportedly, around the swing states:
Harris as "Border Czar" is letting in drug dealers, rapists, and murderous foreign born scary looking gangbangers, enabling "illegals" (to GOP all POC are "illegals," see Springfield, OH) immigrants to escape justice. And then adding insult to injury, when these violent criminals are finally captured by our men in blue and put in jail Harris is helping them get sex change operations. Crazy liberals! Harris-- says the violent fascists targeting and smearing immigrants and Trans people in the scary alarmist video-- is for "They/Them" and "Grump is for you."
True Trumpers, "you," screams the ad like Howard Beale in Network (1976), would rather watch Trump round up all of the immigrants, POC, Trans, LGBTQ+, and crazy liberals and force them into concentration camps and deport them, if not shoot them for target practice. Even if he probably can't totally get away with any or all of this, this is his basic campaign plea. And it's a message, apparently, popular with a sizable segment of the macho bigot population.
(And in "a lie travels around the world before the truth can put her boots on" sweepstakes the NY Times now reports Under Trump, US Prisons Offered Gender-Affirming Care, most notably couching the hateful slander as the GOP's own humane gesture.)
Trump, of course, didn't invent fake news, what the Russians call "political technology," but he is the first in US to take over a political party with it, weaponized against women, immigrants, sexual minorities, whatever is agitating and galvanizing the hateful bigots most on social media.
The punching down cruelty in MAGA isn't entirely new in American history, either. Historian Richard Hofstadter chronicles the paranoid style, racist anti-communist wacko conservatism in American politics, all the way back to the Civil War. But it'd be curious what he'd make of MAGA? In the early 1960s, in his essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Hofstadter argued a solid middle of the American democratic electorate, established, security conscious, resistant willy-nilly change, a centrist majority, always rejects the violent bigot extremes in American politics, like Goldwater in 1964 (who thought Eisenhower was a communist and wanted to Nuke the Chinese in Korea). And like MAGA's violent fascism, presumably.
But over sixty years later violent bigot extremes have taken over the Republican party and have already attempted one failed coup attempt to overthrow democracy and the rule of law. And propose in Project 2025 a second admin committed to purging immigrants and civil servants and anyone that opposes them. But Trumpers are sure, they do their research (Fox or worse), that it's poor TDS maligned Trump who gets the raw deal. Stop the Steal! When the most salient feature of the Trump era is nearly all the 'stealing' and fake news emanates from Trump and his MAGA movement. Presented as a dramatic TV series prior to 2016 this stuff would be dismissed by critics as hysterical and over the top. Unbelievable.
But, in fact, MAGA regularly threatens violence against immigrants and the police and judges and public health officials and election workers or liberals or anybody who opposes them. They attacked congress, violently, on the day the legislative body of of the government was formally recognizing the peaceful transfer of power as a fundamental traditional hallmark of democracy and the rule of law. Trump skipped the inauguration, denies Biden won the election, and MAGA republicans in power, SCOTUS, radical anti-democratic federal and state legislators insist on giving the felon reprobate another chance to steal an election and American democracy. Violent threats are the crypto currency of MAGA.
As I've argued before Trump is a real-life Frankenstein caricature of the 1980s neoliberal economic model, as if scripted for an over-the-top apocalyptic remake of Robo Cop. His ridiculously self-dealing monopoly capitalism, his cultish branding and celebrity popularity economics, and his big-government-is-the-problem austerity economics are like a cartoon caricature drawn by Grover Norquist. And, ultimately, it's a loser project, kicked to the curb statistically over and over by mainstream economic measures, pushing the environment to brink, but thrives as zombie economics boosted by "greed is good" free marketeers right and left. Their prescription is tired and doomy: More tax cuts for the rich (which they turn into stock buy backs and stiff workers), burn baby burn, and trash Big Government, public infrastructure, public goods as wasteful deficit spending, and then proving disastrously the ineffectiveness of government whenever in office.
(Mainstream economists scoff at Stephanie Kelton, the economics professor who wrote The Deficit Myth, but there is a simple observation in her work that is undeniable: why do both parties compete to outspend each other on the military, never calling such spending deficit spending, even though it is quite obviously every bit as much deficit spending as any social spending on health care, public education, environmental protections, etc? So that even Dems fret about how we can pay for essential public infrastructure and Repugs relentlessly condemn it as reckless, wasteful deficit spending? This is the austerity economics of neolib corporate rule. The rich and corporations will not pay taxes sufficient to support basic public infrastructure (housing, health care, public education, public safety, food safety, environmental protections, roads and bridges, etc) that makes possible their wealth accumulation, so public infrastructure crumbles and they blame government waste. Sure, the caring economy, the public goods that support community welfare, and sustainable energy production are a lot but probably some very manageable progressive tax margins would cover it but the rich have resisted these kinds of democratic reform, relentlessly, and frequently manipulatively and violently since the Roman Republic. It's fundamental orientation of political economy in my readings of world history, the rich insisting on profit margins that enrich them and squeeze and impoverish labor.)
Trump's candidacy, as the first felon, the most litigated in American history, is a disgraceful travesty and miscarriage of justice that has played out in plain sight on TV and in the mainstream media. And his craven effort to buy the election in the name of his violent bigot fascism and crypto market capitalism is a terrifying prospect but Elon Musk and his Billionaire friends, with their stranglehold on the biggest media platforms, are on the case. It's so preposterously bad it's impossible to describe without sounding hysterical. But they do a slightly more benign version of something like this in Seattle all the time; i.e., local corporate interests buying elections. So, I dunno. It could happen here! It did happen here in 2016. They're trying to do it again and of course it'll only be worse.
Trump should have been disqualified from ever holding any kind of elective office, along with all his co-conspirators, for Jan 6 alone and many times over for a variety of other high crimes and misdemeanors; treason, election interference, financial fraud, promoting violence, sexually harassing women, etc. The MAGA movement is an ongoing crime spree. And yet the polling experts tell us the election is tossup and NY Times/WaPo scratch their chins over whether Harris or Trump would be better for the economy.
We know Trump is a terrible business man, just a puffed up celebrity hustler and financial fraudster. We know his incompetent self-dealing leadership endangered public health during a global pandemic. We know his packed court ended women's basic individual rights, basic reproductive rights, and we know his election would only expand those restrictions on women's rights. We know SCOTUS aided and abetted his failed coup attempt on Jan 6 and we know his election would exonerate the violent insurrectionists who stormed the capitol that day to try to overthrow the election. We know he stole top secret national security documents, that scores of national security professionals tell us endangers America and Americans. And we know he promotes violence against anybody or anything that gets in his way.
Make no mistake, ratification of or a slam-dunk rejection of all this violent fake news fascism is on the ballot. Whatever shortcomings of the Dems, that we will continue to peacefully protest after the election, a vote for the Dems is a vote for democracy, civil rights, workers, and a sustainable and democratic future, and a vote for Trump, or any repug on the ballot, is a vote for dictatorship, corruption, violence, environmental destruction, and stupid bigotry.
And, shamefully, Big Tech Bros and their Billionaire friends, are sponsoring his candidacy and fake news about pet-eating immigrants and other anti-immigrant/LGBTQ rage porn on social media and the internet and now in commercials on local TV broadcasts around Seattle. Remember this.
And this. “Trump has a habit of assuming other politicians act in the same way as he would,” Glenn Kessler wrote in WaPo. So he looked into why Trump would have accused Biden “of raiding the FEMA disaster fund to handle undocumented migrants. It turns out that’s because he did this.”
In the middle of hurricane season in 2019, Kessler explains, Trump took $155 million from the FEMA disaster fund and redirected it to pay for detention space and temporary hearing locations for immigrants seeking asylum. “No, Biden didn’t take FEMA relief money to use on migrants,” the article title reads, “but Trump did.”
Remember, they withheld PPE funding in the pandemic because they thought it would mostly be going to blue cities. I mean, really, you can't make up how bad this sick fuck was. His admin was pure kleptocracy and some people go for it because they like the Trump scenery-chewing spectacle of violence and abuse against their perceived enemies.
Letters from an American Historian
"Rather than standing against slavery alone, those organizing in 1854 stood against an entire political system, opposing the small group of elite enslavers who had taken over the U.S. government in order to establish an oligarchy and were quite clear they rejected the self-evident truth in the Declaration of Independence that all men were created equal. Instead, they intended to rule over the nation’s majority, whose labor produced the capital that southern leaders believed only elites should control."
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Not equal in height or strength or wealth and intelligence but equal in "certain unalienable rights," individual rights, the essence of our personal freedoms, including "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
"Republican Abraham Lincoln articulated this worldview for his fledgling party in 1859 as it took a stand against oligarchs. Believing these principles accurately represented the aspirations of the nation’s founders, Lincoln called them “conservative.” People from all parties rallied to the party that promised to defend those principles."
Kamala Harris in Wisconsin: “The president of the United States must not look at our country through the narrow lens of ideology or petty partisanship or self-interest,” Harris said today. “The president of the United States must not look at our country as an instrument for their own ambitions. Our nation is not some spoil to be won. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised: the nation that inspired the world to believe in the possibility of a representative government. And so in the face of those who would endanger our magnificent experiment, people of every party must stand together.”
"In this election, putting patriotism ahead of partisanship is not an aspiration. It is our duty,” Cheney said. “I ask all of you here and everyone listening across this great country to join us. I ask you to meet this moment. I ask you to stand in truth, to reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump."
Letters from an American Historian
Yeah, but, as the saying goes, what if the "depraved cruelty" is the point? Along with owning the libs, ritual acts of violence, mass deportations, and state violence against targeted groups are more or less precisely what people who got off on Trump's first term and his immigrant family separation policy really want most, right? The Purge. Like some guy at a town meeting asking when he gets to start shooting liberals.
And we, the people, the others, workers, labor, families, liberals, the 99%, we're hoping, wishing, preying, by contrast, an overwhelming majority of Americans, Us, will say No to more Trump lies and treason, No to more MAGA bigot hate and misogyny and gun violence, and Hell No to Billionaire crony capitalist rich-get-richer-poor-get-poorer economics.
We're not communists. We're for free enterprise and opposed to wealth hoarding corporate rule and violent bigotry. It's not that difficult to figure out, and it's not pie in the sky.
"Today the International Longshoremen’s Association suspended the strike after USMX agreed to wage increases of 62% over six years. The two sides agreed to extend the current contract until January 15 to address the issues of benefits and automation. Administration officials White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, top White House economic advisor Lael Brainard, Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg helped broker the temporary agreement."
Trump won't grow the economy. And he won't help make life more affordable for workers and regular families. And, most preposterously, he won't make America stronger in the world or safer at home. Trump will grow violence and corruption and insecurity at home and around the world. We know this. Unless you only watch Fox News, we all saw it on TV 2017 to 2020. And we don't want to watch the rerun. It'll only be worse.
No comments:
Post a Comment