There was a brief moment after Trump sent a mob of kill crazies to attack Congress where the depraved GOP Crime Syndicate looked like it would finally renounce him and his insane cult for the sake of their own physical safety. But then the moment passed, their customary cocoon of wealth and bodyguards resumed their places and the GOP Crime Syndicate decided it was better for them to kowtow to the MAGANON Cult than to risk losing their jobs. So they circled the wagons around the former Terrorist-in-Chief and, just as important, decided to keep humoring the mob that still believes in him. The result is that the GOP is now all-in for the nuts. They own the GOP:
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, is every bit as bigoted as King, and 10 times as unhinged. By now, you’ve surely heard her theory that California wildfires might have been caused by a space laser controlled by Jewish bankers. That wasn’t Greene’s first foray into anti-Semitism; in 2018 she shared a notorious white nationalist video in which a Holocaust denier claimed that “Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation.”
Recently, Greene met with a far-right British commentator, Katie Hopkins, who has described migrants as “cockroaches” and said she doesn’t care if they die. Greene told her, “I would love to trade you for some of our white people here that have no appreciation for our country.” She described the results of the 2018 midterms as “an Islamic invasion of our government.” Greene endorsed calls for the execution of prominent Democrats and agreed with Facebook posts claiming that the Parkland and Sandy Hook school shootings were hoaxes. She harassed one of the Parkland massacre’s young survivors.
As it happens, this week House Republicans are seeking to punish a prominent woman in their ranks — but it’s not Greene. A big chunk of the House Republican caucus is reportedly trying to oust Liz Cheney of Wyoming from leadership because she voted to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House leader, is meeting with Greene, but it’s far from clear that he’ll act against her, because she represents much of their party’s base. When The New Yorker’s Charles Bethea met a group of Greene’s local supporters last year, they were generally familiar with QAnon, and several agreed that Democrats are controlled by Satan. There’s a reason Kelly Loeffler, who needed to get out the pro-Trump vote, touted Greene’s endorsement when she was trying to hold on to her Georgia Senate seat.
Some decent Republicans imagine they’re in a battle for their party’s soul. Representative Adam Kinzinger, who like Cheney voted to impeach Trump, recently started a PAC devoted to fighting the forces that led to Greene’s rise and the Capitol rampage. “The time has come to choose what kind of party we will be,” he said in an introductory video. The thing is, Republicans already have chosen.
Just look at the party’s state affiliates. On Jan. 4, the Arizona G.O.P. retweeted a “Stop the Steal” activist who’d pronounced himself willing to “give my life” to overturn the election. Said the party’s official account: “He is. Are you?” An Arizona lawmaker has since introduced a bill that would let the Legislature, controlled by Republicans, override the presidential vote of the state’s increasingly Democratic citizenry.
The Oregon Republican Party approved a resolution suggesting that the Capitol siege was a “false flag” attack. The Texas Republican Party has adopted the QAnon slogan “We are the storm” as its motto, though it insists there’s no connection. The chairman of Wyoming’s Republican Party, who attended Trump’s rally on Jan. 6, said he might be open to secession.
Greene is not the outlier in this party. Kinzinger is.
The GOP is now fully on board with the kooks. So is the Right Wing Lie Machine. This is a united consensus.
They have created a Monster and now they are trying to ride it. The occasional denunciations you hear from a few people like McConnell are the faint attempts to maintain control of that Monster from people who were content to feed it raw meat for four years and who now are scrambling to let the Dragon live but “contain” it. If you want a historical parallel, look to the German Industrialists who helped Hitler to power, confident they could “contain” him too.
This evil Party of criminally irresponsible is cynics attempting to herd a pack of maniacs with a very long list of the rest of us they want to jail, put before firing squads, gas and cremate. If they ever seize power again, they have already made clear that January 6 was not an outrage, but a practice run from which they intend to learn all the wrong lessons and try, try again.
Such a party merits nothing but destruction down to the molecular level. It is not “where the GOP is headed”. It is where and what the GOP is–now. Keep fighting it and destroying it till it is gone. Let not one stone be left standing on another. Defeat it again and again at the state, local, and federal level in every election for the next decade at least. Teach their children to feel burning shame at them. May them a byword among the nations and a hissing and a scandal to their children’s children. They refused repentance. Now they must deal with the consequences as the rest of us move on and walk over them if they get in our way. They have refused the good of the intellect. Let them then learn that those who will not let the Lady Wisdom teach them in gentleness shall have only the relentless headmaster Pain to make them learn the hard way. They have no one but themselves to blame.
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18 Responses
There is also a big responsibility on the Democrats as well as Black community leaders to take inspiration from what people like Stacy Abrahams did in Georgia and mobilise to get the vote out in 2022 and 2024. The Democrats now control both houses for the next 18 months and should use the opportunity to outlaw as many voter suppression laws as possible. I realise that a lot of these are state laws but still…
The Democrats must shout loud and clear to the majority in America that they are in a fight for their country, end this notion of bipartisanship as the Republicans are not sincere about it anyway, & make sure that 2022 and 2024 are shutouts for Trump.
My hope would be that at 78 years of age this serial election loser will go back to playing golf & without him the lunatics have no focal point anymore.
If a focal did not exist, they would have to create it. That’s how Trump got here.
jj
https://medium.com/digital-diplomacy/umberto-ecos-14-features-of-fascism-explained-by-the-president-d35676852294
@taco
Interesting article. This is the one I related to the most : By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.
Although I recognize it in more areas than this, I heard that nonsense in the “dirty Jew” commentary I started hearing as a little boy, more than 60 years ago.
What I can relate to the most is the appeal to (European) tradition. (No, not Catholic exactly…) In my family, being physically beautiful wasn’t enough. Being blonde was at the top of the pyramid if you were female and a bonus if you were male. Women weren’t expected to study seriously because they would/should be an adornment for other purposes. (“why bust my a*s if my husband will be supporting me?)
My mother never had the time of day for the more extreme sect of catholics that celebrated housewives looking like drudges and slaves. Yuck.
Beauty was power.
I came home with my tall, dark and indigenous looking one for plenty of reasons. It was never to throw ’em for a loop.
I once (I was 16 or so) asked my mom whether she’d prefer me to eventually marry a white and blond atheist, or a Congolese catholic girl. She told me these were ”equally bad” options …
Artevelde,
My mother is 99% European and 1% Congolese. I. am. not. kidding.
When we got her DNA report my schadenfreude went into hyper drive. I think I fell to the floor and laughed until my lungs hurt. She refuses to acknowledge that it is possible.
I think there’s a Cardi B song out there that pretty much sums up what happened.
@ taco
When a friemd of mine told his very Jewish mother that he was gay, she said…
YOU’RE JUST DOING THIS TO HURT ME!
lol. Mothers can be awful 😉
I remember when I was a kid, I would ask my teachers and parents, “How could the Germans fall for the obvious evil and lies of the Nazis? Why did so many everyday German people go along?”
I never got a satisfactory answer. Because I don’t think anyone really knew. It’s easier to see everything in terms of “good guys” vs. “bad guys.” And we know that those who don’t learn from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.
I’m not saying the GOP have turned into a bunch of Nazis. But I’m not saying they haven’t either. 😉
Adolf Hitler didn’t kill anybody – he just gave orders. The actual killing, the “wet work”, was done by thousands and thousands of ordinary German police and soldiers. After the war the leaders were put on trial at Nuremberg, but the foot soldiers just returned to society. They got jobs, got married, raised kids, and by all accounts they mostly led totally decent lives after the war.
What does it say about human nature, that the perpetrators of the worst atrocities of the 20th century were able to just be decent again after it ended? It says this: given the right leadership, with the right message, almost anyone has it within them to do horrible, horrible things.
The Republicans are playing with very dangerous tools.
Yup. So the question is: What do we do about it?
This guy is on to something:
ah yes. Daryl Davis the man who was… booed by antifa.
https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10217755008719735&set=a.3384412321879&type=3&theater
That is breathtakingly wonderul, MarksOfMaine – thank you for it.
@ nobody
What an appropriate name. and what aquote. From your citation, more or less, because I can’t seem to select text…
A group called Antifa threatened to do violence. Well, antifa isn’t a group. It’s a movement, philosophy, a point of view. What it is not, is a group. No name for this group, but they are antifa. No names of the representatives of this group, the officers, or the location of this group, but they are antifa.
We invited the antifa members. Again, no names, no actual group cited.
Middle of the road, hardly a radical, little old me is also antifa. I am against fascists. I don’t approve of people acting like fascists. I don’t know who your “victim” is, and he didn’t know who the people he was complaining about were. He’s trying to pull The same thing that St. Abby Johnson tried to pull a few weeks ago. For what I wrote at the time, because I really don’t have time for this today.
The problem of the crimes of the Abby Johnson‘s of the world, and the “pro” “life” bowel movement have been laid bare – YET AGAIN!!! – By her one simple comment: “We now know that some of the people who led the group that stormed the Capitol were ANTIFA.”
They simply cannot help themselves, can they? There’s always a money shot, and this is it, Because somewhere in that mountain of self-serving immorality still lies just the faintest spark of a decent human being. Or maybe I’m an optimist.
First, of course, we don’t know that. We know that everybody that has been identified so far has been a right wing Trump supporter. The first woman who died, whose name was Ashli, was QAnon amd Trumpenliebling all the way. So she lied, but what else is new when it comes to right to life Qhristians and trumpenlieblings? Ashli to ashes, dirt to dust, as the good book says.
Even right wing pundit and part-time Pillsbury doughboy Erik Erikson disputes this. Senator Josh Hawley’s terrorist fist bump salute to the “protesters“— thugs, terrorists, insurrectionists, are much better words – are against it. In his inciteful speeches, before an after the attempted terrorist coup, Trumpdemort admits it.
Lest we forget, because I certainly won’t: This was the event that he planned, coordinated, and promoted for weeks. NOT ANTIFA, but Jabba the Trump. He set the itinerary, called his supporters to D.C., said it would be “wild”. He gathered the crowd, stood in front of them and gave them a conspiracy theory-laden speech to rile them up. He told them to fight and be tough. Then he sent them marching to the Capitol Building. Within two hours it was on lockdown and one of his supporters was dead. Now a cop is dead. Trump doesn’t get to pretend anymore. He incited an armed insurrection. That is sedition, perhaps even treason.. He should be immediately removed from office and charged.
Oh, yes! the money shot! I almost forgot! “Some“ of the “protesters” were antifa. SOME!!!!!!!! And what were the rest of them, the hundreds or thousands of people who actually stormed the capital, who threatened the lives of representatives and senators and staff and capitol police? Why, they were Trump supporters. I’m sure many of them would describe themselves as “Bible believing Christians” who missed the part where the Bible says “obey the civil authorities”. I’m sure Many would describe themselves as right to life Qhristians, despite the number of dead people and the potential for so many more.
So, uh…
NO.
https://thebulletin.org/2021/02/why-is-america-getting-a-new-100-billion-nuclear-weapon/
From inside the fish bowl it seems like what you’re saying makes sense, but since the end of WWII every single regime in the white house and congress is perfectly happy to hold the rest of the world hostage with the ability to destroy the planet within a couple hours. This fact means that all our happy talk on race and abortion is a psychotic lie. If only we had prophets who could free themselves from the charade and speak the gospel truth to power.