Last week, we saw a fascinating display of lawless MAGA privilege and of the nihilist vengefulness they threaten if permitted to regain power. It was everywhere, but a few samples of the rhetoric is sufficient to give you the general tenor of the Right Wing Lie Machine’s response to a perfectly legitimate search, conducted with a warrant, on orders from the DOJ, with a ton of probable cause to justify it. There was this absurdity from Abby Johnson, who spoke for millions of MAGA:
And this eyeroller from Raymond Arroyo:
And this Panic du Jour from the GOP:
All of which legal reasoning some Aussie wags have delightfully skewered thusly:
By Friday, Trump had spewed out three incompatible lies in succession to try to deny his violation of the Espionage Act: The documents were all planted and plus they were all declassified and maybe Obama did it! (The Obama Lie is particularly egregious, but utterly characteristic for the cult where accusation is always confession):
And the People of the Lie parroted it all, not even caring that they made no sense in their desperation to deceive any other liar eager to tell himself that he had not been wrong about everything and the willing stooge of the most massive traitor to ever occupy the White House.
Meanwhile, Brian Kilmeade helmed Tucker Carlson’s show to sell this blatant lie about the judge who okayed the search, tinged with anti-semitism:
And within a day, Judge Reinhart’s synagogue had to cancel Shabbat services because of the threat of the MAGA terrorist cult.
Kilmeade, meanwhile, offered this disgusting excuse for his blatant slander:
…bearing out the wisdom of Proverbs 26:18-19:
Like a madman who throws firebrands,
arrows, and death,
is the man who deceives his neighbor
and says, “I am only joking!”
In short, the message of the GOP Crime Syndicate and the Right Wing Lie Machine was “What kind of country is it where police shoot black people to death in their beds and white conservatives steal nuclear secrets and have to face consequences for it? Next thing you know, we’ll have to be held accountable for our criminal actions. THIS IS LITERALLY THE THIRD REICH!!!!!!”
It really does come down to that: horror at being held accountable for their actions–and violent threats at having to do so. And it clearly extends beyond Trump being held accountable for his action to a deep and generalized anxiety that all conservatives might somehow be held accountable for what they do. This the Party of Personal Responsibility will not stand for and the result has been a huge backlash, which gives us a startling look at a pattern that is deeply embedded in the Thing that Used to Be Conservatism.
It’s like this: The mark of the conservative personality in Millennial America is a radical lack of empathy for any suffering that does not directly impact the conservative. So the sufferings of people murdered by cops (and their loved ones) registered not at all with conservatives and even were cause for sadistic amusement.
But a lawful and perfectly just investigation of a criminal with whom conservatives identify as their ideal Power Figure fills them with sudden terror of the state, even though it was authorized by an FBI director appointed by their authoritarian hero. As is ever the case with this intellectually barren cult of authoritarian personality, they reveal that they have goals, not principles. And so, after months of mocking the Defund the Police movement (which wants to divert funding from police to professionals so that cops don’t have to be social workers, counselors, mental health professionals, and a host of other things they are not trained to be, which is perfectly sensible), the reckless cry of the MAGA cult to “defund the FBI” that instantly rang out in the RightWingosphere really is a radical and stupid call to simply burn down the FBI in a fit of childish pique. Consequences are for everybody else in MAGA world, not for conservatives.
And to preserve that deeply terrified sense of privilege, the Cult does more than just burble with self-pity. It immediately moves to threats of violence:
This is of a piece with calls for stochastic terror from Dilbert creator Scott Adams:
Most of the threats are just talk, just as the coward Trump’s threats are just talk. But the talk, as with all cowardly stochastic terrorists, is designed to whip unstable killers with a sense of mission into doing the dirty work the average right wing Thought Influencer is afraid to do. And it took only three days for the MAGA rhetoric to get some deadly lunatic to try to murder FBI agents. That terrorist on a mission, like so many of the dupes of the Trump Crime Family, ended up dead and the people who urged him on his way could not care less. There will be more of this, and the next time, we may not be so lucky as to have an incompetent fail to kill a victim.
That is what is happening here as the Traitor again uses stochastic terror techniques to urge his cult to hunt down and kill FBI agents:
This should not be a surprise, given the murderous assault Trump unleashed against the US on January 6. The GOP is now the biggest domestic terror organization since the Confederacy and they want blood, not justice. That is why they say things like this:
And especially this:
News flash: Obama and AOC are not suspected of any crimes. Trump is. That’s the difference. And the fact that Meuser cannot tell the difference means he should not be allowed within a thousand miles of public office. Particularly when he makes clear that he also thinks it’s fine to arbitrarily use the state to attack brown people and only gets upset when lawless rich whites are held accountable. Quintessentially GOP.
In the cult where accusation is always confession, they now make their special brag what they used to lie to deny: that they are lawless authoritarian thugs filled with vengeance, eager to commit violence, and no longer interested in the rule of law.
It says everything about the GOP that they cannot even conceive of the idea that the state can’t just go around invading people’s homes without probable cause of crimes committed and can be freely wielded by vengeful Banana Republicans as their tool of personal vengeance against enemies, regardless of the law. The notion that they can just send the cops to harass political enemies they hate says everything about their contempt for law. It likewise says everything about their fear of justice that the MAGA cult is filled with people terrified that what happened to Trump on August 8 is going to happen to them.
I sleep like a baby at night, as do all Normals, and have no fear at all that the FBI is going to search my house with a warrant for probable cause in mishandling classified documents. My secret? I’m not a criminal or a traitor. If your conscience is not haunted, you don’t spend your life in fear of being found out.
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. (Romans 13:1-4)
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5 Responses
Bravo, Mark! The behavior and comments from people who once were honorable and definitely know better are beyond sickening. And one other personal point – I have lived 70 years now. And I can honestly say I have NEVER hated another human being. I have been angry with them, disliked them, hated what they DID. But I have never hated them. This week, I looked at the picture of a smirking, lying, evil man and, for the first time in my life, I felt actual HATRED for that man. And I still, God forgive me, I still do hate Donald J Trump for what he has done to the people of this country and its ideals. I don’t feel that hatred toward those who still defend and enable him, but, dear God, I’m getting close. And I hate it.
You are a good person for hating your hatred. Give Trump over to God and release him from your judgment in the Name and power of Jesus Christ. Forgive him and ask Jesus to forgive him. Ask the God of justice to do justice and mercy and order things to his glory and our good.
I think I’m more upset at Trump’s enablers than I am at Trump himself. Given the environment that he was born into and molded by, its really hard to say how much of an opportunity he ever had to be anything other than who he is, which in a way, is its own kind of hell. But the people around him do know better, but they continue to prop him up out of their own greed and self-interest, to the continued detriment of us all.
I agree. Trump is Trump, a deeply damaged human being deprived of many of the benefits of grace that Normals have. The real scandal is the people who enable them, many of whom have sold their souls in the pursuit of the crudest temptations to money and power.
Some days I have to wonder really, where did these people come from? Did an entire generation of Americans have their infant formula boiled in lead pots? Did they have untreated syphilis that ran riot for decades and just ate some critical part of the brain?
Sadly I think the real answers are far more prosaic and lie with massive entitlement and a general abandonment of reason and evidence.
What’s really pathetic is the growing number of people who throw their lives away on Trump’s behalf. Dying because your cult leader felt insulted? Most opioid addicts who lose their lives do so for a slightly nobler cause that that!
The GOP is first and foremost, a terrorist movement, not a political one.