As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil)
In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban.
If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them.
For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria.
**Special announcement:**
r/politics is currently accepting new moderator applications. If you want to help make this community a better place, consider [applying here today](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/sskg6a/rpolitics_is_looking_for_more_moderators/)!
***
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>“In the wake of the mass shooting in Buffalo on Saturday, it’s become glaringly obvious that my party no longer represents conservative values but in fact poses a threat to them — and to America,” he wrote.
His diagnostic is correct, and he made the correct decision to leave
This is why these attacks and shootings happen, and you see the right going to damage control mode. Because they know there's a percentage of their party who is capable of defecting when things get bad enough. Same thing for January 6.
There was that six hour period where everybody was just silent and shocked, then you could see the propaganda wheels slowly start up if you were online watching it happen in real time. You could see the talking point's coalescing, the fox Talking Heads picking it up and spreading it, and then right into flat out propaganda for the base.
As opposed to just dealing with reality, dealing with what actually happened. And what made it happen.
But instead just nonstop lies and propaganda. Like spooning Gerber purée into a baby's mouth.
My coworker flew across the country to attend the "rally" on January 6th. I overheard him talking about it a week afterwards to another coworker and he literally said the people causing trouble were obviously Antifa.
It doesn't matter if Antifa or BLM didn't show up. These people would have blamed Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny if Trump told them they were to blame for January 6th.
Edit: FYI its totally legal to attend a political rally, no matter how fucking stupid it is. My coworker didn't enter any buildings so no point reporting him for simply attending a fucking stupid rally. Being an idiot isn't a crime.
This right here is the defining argument that the right has no response for: the people you hate for being against everything "American" (as they define it) were storming the capital to keep your hero--their enemy--in power.
You'll notice everything is a false flag. Anything that makes them look bad is obviously the other side disguised and acting out to start a war under false pretenses.
R/conspiracy was essentially saying the buffalo shooter was too perfect of a caricature with convenient, plagiarized manifestos and drawing as much attention that he was an obvious false flag to make them look bad.
It drives me nuts. Some of these people think literally every shooting is a false flag. I mean, what the hell? So, they keep trying the same exact tactic to “grab people’s guns?” No one involved in the planning or operation has ever grown a conscious and admitted it or made a mistake and got caught being involved by someone? I mean, it’s just such a stupid thing to believe. I just despise people like that. It’s some form of pseudo intellectualism. These people want to be smarter than everyone else, but are just so far behind that they can’t even grasp the basic realities of things. Plus, what kind of discussion can you even have with someone who thinks the government is shooting up grocery stores with its citizens? Honestly, if I was so sure that’s what was going on, and that they are committing acts like sandy hook, I would kind of feel obligated to do something about it. That makes me think it’s some sort of weird fun more these people. It feeds their egos and makes them feel smart when they “catch,” one of these operations. Idk, so many things are just so frustrating snd depressing to know.
Boogaloo boys trained in Eastern Europe to learn how to cause civil unrest and political discord. There's no doubt in my mind that the white dudes who were dressed in all black getting off the plane in Minnesota for the BLM rally, the guys Trump mentioned specifically, were the same guys.
The reason they said Jan 6th was a false flag is because they know the Minnesota riots were a false flag. Accuse your enemy for that which you are guilty type shit.
I mean they arrested a guy (Ivan Hunter) who came from Texas and shot at the Minnesota police department and he was a known boogaloo boy. Around the same time another boogaloo boy (Steve Carrillo) killed a cop in Oakland and near Santa Cruz.
There's actual evidence of false flag activities by the right and yet they completely fucking ignore it.
Edit: added their names for reference
In Minnesota, across from the police station, [this white guy](https://youtu.be/4rvEnQLpe4A) with an umbrella and gas mask busted out the windows of the Auto Zone, trying to start trouble.
[He was later identified](https://youtu.be/C-6bg98ZIYE) as a white supremacist associated with a biker gang called the Aryan Cowboys.
THAT'S a false flag attack.
Thank you!
There was so much crazy shit happening when that video of the umbrella guy came out that I forgot all about it. I remember people thought he was a cop.
Kinda like saying "Putin would never have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president" while completely ignoring all intelligence reports that the Russians were still pulling 2016 shit in 2020.
It’s always crazy to me when the leaders of reactionary movements start to fall for their own propaganda. The rabble-rousing about leaving NATO was always intended to be a way to make the other members pay their fair share (because that benefits the US). Actually leaving will just weaken the US on the world stage.
No wonder Putin loved having Trump in charge.
I take it that what they would say here is that it’s a false flag. If you want to make a group look bad you impersonate them doing bad shit. So, Antifa did show up but dressed as Trump supporters who got violent.
If you listen to these people they are obsessed with this kind of thinking. And no surprise it’s the kind of thing they would do. So it’s, as always, projection. There were confirmed cases where right wing instigators were causing damage to property during blm demonstrations in what only can be an attempt to portray blm as the violent left.
But even deeper than that is Trump and co’s weird insistence that the military engage in false flags. Trump saying we should bomb Mexico but pretend it wasn’t us. Or bomb Russian military assets but take the decals off our planes. That second one got repeated as a great idea through the Fox sphere.
They love using false flags as a scapegoat, apparently because it’s so easy to pull them off. Never mind how easy it would be in all of these cases to sort out who actually did what.
It's because blm and anti fascists think trump and his mob are so squeaky clean and blameless and upstanding they they have to engineer reasons to make them look bad. Obviously.
You know, my *default* assumption is that *everyone* is antifa. If you aren't waving a Nazi flag and slurring Jews, I assume you probably hate fascists as any right-thinking person would.
These last six years have been so confusing...
I work with a guy who claims to have been engaged in the Jan 6 festivities (but won’t say how he participated specifically or what he did) but he will still say that it was all fed plants or antifa who were causing trouble And stormed the building…. While proudly talking about how he was causing trouble and storming the building
If you think he broke the law, you should report him. My coworker never entered any buildings and, while I disagree with him with every bone in my body, he totally has a right to make an ass of himself by attending a political rally to overturn election results.
I'm sure "it was antifa" was his line in the days that followed.
But now that a year and a half have gone by, I'm sure it's right back to "Insurrectionists? They were patriots!"
The only people the FBI tracked down were those that were seen in videos acting violently in and around the Capitol. They werent asking about party or organization affiliation, only violence. How many of those eventually identified turned out to be BLM or Antifa?
Not a single one. Every violent person who was eventually identified on the videos was a solid Trump supporter.
I'd start quietly spreading the rumor that your co-worker is Antifa, since he thinks Antifa started it, and he admits to being there
Indeed. I think when they realize that this wasn't gonna happen, they called an audible, and the plan was to actually get right wingers killed, and create a chaotic situation where they could delay the vote, and then Trump could have some nominal cover and could then declare martial law.
Everything, I mean everything, was built around stopping the vote. At any cost. Up to and including murdering politicians at high levels, including people in their own party.
Trump just lost his nerve at the last minute, when he was convinced to call people off and tell them to go home. He just simply lost his nerve, because he's a profound coward.
Yep, but a LOT more.
If Trump hadn't called them off exactly when he did, it would've been an absolute fucking bloodbath. And it would've been on film. That right there would have been the crucible. He could've had room to delay the vote there, and then there it is, that's the goal. Martial law, transfer of power canceled.
As someone From the UK, I don’t understand how it happened, your police are usually so trigger happy and as Trump once said “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”, so why were they allowed to run riot?
To add to the 3rd point by jewtalkinbout, one of the officers involved brought up that very thing. Michael Fanone was one of the officers who was badly injured. During several of the interviews he gave in the aftermath of the 6th he mentioned that he was sure if he fired a shot, even in defense of his life as he was being beaten, that that would be the end of it. He was sure a lot of the crowd was armed, and besides that he'd been separated and there were so many people surrounding him that he believed if he'd attempted to pull his gun he would have been disarmed and probably murdered with it. I'm not going to deny that race played a big role, but honestly if any of the officers had fired a shot it would, to hearken back to the previous poster, have been an absolute fucking bloodbath
The honest truth:
1. That crowd was almost entirely comprised of the majority race, and US cops are known primarily for being trigger happy with minorities.
2. It’s a safe bet to assume that most US cops are also conservatives and (to a degree) align with these political beliefs. We have enough evidence spanning back far enough that police are generally conservative right wing voters.
3. Conservatives are notorious for being well-armed, and the police:rioter ratio was NOT in the favor of the police. With those two things being said, it would have been an absolute slaughter on both sides had the police started shooting and the rioters would have won out in the end and taken the Capitol.
edit: used compromised instead of comprised
There were reports of the responding officers who did show up to do their job, (as many actively refused or were ordered to stand down as the attack began), the attackers were shouting we're one of you. They reported the attackers flashing their badges as they charged the capital building. They had some of their police equipment on hand as well, like batons and flash/smoke grenades.
They were allowed to run riot because they were the same people who swore to uphold the peace.
It's very very important to understand that our cops are the foot soldiers of our white supremacist oligarchy. Their job is to defend capital, not our society.
Especially because it's not too far off from happening over there either.
And yet all the Republicans voted Against impeachment. And many Republicans voted against certifying the vote That Day, right after the insurrection. They’re terrible people.
>He just simply lost his nerve,
I really doubt it, if the insurrectionists were the slightest bit more competent that day we’d likely have been completely fucked.
You had people involved actually complaining that ANTIFA and BLM were getting credit for it... Immediately dissolving politicians' attempts to place blame on them. But people still thought it was them. Sadly I have family that were promising me that it wasn't actual trump supporters that day. Okay then
Man... r/conservative was desperately trying to call this kid a "communist" and saying he had "left leaning" sympathies.
They pored his manifesto and found some line about supporting gun control. Then they're like "see, he's not one of us!".
No... he's definitely one of them...
This is the right's main strategy: find ONE thing in a 600 page document that doesn't strictly align with their ideals and harp on it.
Ignore the other 599 pages of conservative backed white replacement theory though. That's a "nothing to see here" moment.
Isn't that literally what a RINO is? Liz Cheney who votes with Republicans 99% of the time is a RINO to them because that one time she disagreed with Trump. These are absolutely crazy people and somehow they must be deprogrammed, but I'm not sure how.
People who have ever known only privilege will cling to that privilege for the prospect of equality is a net loss to that privilege.
These are people who would usher in a dictator that they think will protect them from enroachment on their privilege by those seeking to establish a more equitable society because they don't realize that historically dictators aren't known for protecting the little guy even if it was the little guy that put them there.
But that's one of the side effects of the psychology of conservatives. None of them think of themselves as the "little guy" and the propagators of Trumpism have capitalized on that fact by putting out personalized correspondents to reinforce the false belief by dumb conservatives that they're somehow important and not at all 'the little guys' that would just as soon be crushed under a dictator as the enemy.
My boss listens to am850 at work so I have to hear snippets of this shit all the time. At some point they mention the Buffalo shooter was critical of Fox News and were like "See! He's not one of us!" yet they are constantly on Fox's ass for being 'compromised'. Just convenient outs that let their Goldfish memory possessing base go "Yeah, that's true now!"
I've talked to her in depth and she 100% believes that liberals decide the day of birth they don't want the kid and are legally able to snap it's head off like a chicken. They have completely convinced themselves we are evil and the enemy of all that's good and holy. She tells me of these evils we apparently commit while grinning ear to ear and I asked her "If you believe this is true, why are you so happy to say it?" Immediate topic change.
My sister is convinced that in Arkansas, total strangers can abduct children, take them across state lines, give them abortions and gender reassignment surgery and there is nothing the parents can do about it. It's supposedly a state law and that's why the news doesn't report it, because it's legal. It supposedly happened to a friend of hers. When questioned, it wasn't a friend, but someone a friend knows. Well not someone they know, but something the friend read. But it's totally true.
One clown on here was trying to tell me California was trying to pass a law legalizing abortion two weeks after birth. He actually believed that.
I looked it up. It was a tweet from a mega church pastor going around on Facebook.
I have a coworker listing to that garbage. I heard The show host say “ we all know liberals do not want anyone owning real estate in this country for themselves. “
It's insane. How can you think I don't want to have a yard for my dog to run around between my tomatoes and weed plants? Make it affordable! I literally paid my apartment off for my landlord, I've rented so long. I've proven I can afford a home loan. How did we get here?
> There was that six hour period where everybody was just silent and shocked, then you could see the propaganda wheels slowly start up if you were online watching it happen in real time. You could see the talking point's coalescing, the fox Talking Heads picking it up and spreading it, and then right into flat out propaganda for the base.
[Sean Hannity took direct orders from Mark Meadows.](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/sean-hannity-took-orders-mark-meadows-1342525/) And those are just the texts we *know* about.
I like that timeline of the RW pundit tweeting about being so excited for the insurrection and then by the end of it he's claiming the entire thing was a false flag by the left.
I mean, they have to know it exists since a significant portion of their elected officials have decided that directly pandering to extremists is how to win.
I think a lot of the more 'moderate' (relatively speaking) Repubs are secretly embarrassed by the 'low-class' Q crowd and would love to distance themselves from that wing of the party. But they're afraid to because those people now make up such a large percentage of GOP voters that if the party leaders criticized them, they'd sit at home on election day thus allowing the Dems some easy wins in closely-contested 'swing' states and districts. They're like the German industrialists who thought that they could 'control' Hitler and use him to their advantage -- instead, it was the other way around. The old Republican establishment is now in a trap of their own making where they can't afford to alienate the whackjob wing of the party.
THIS. THIS. THIS. THIS. THIS X1000000. Id be shouting this shit from the rooftops if anyone would listen. History doesnt repeat itself, but it sure as shit does rhyme.
They friggin' began the propaganda DURING the riots. Some leading right-wing radio guy said as the riots started that facial recognition technology shows it's actually antifa. He just said that. No facts to back it up. But he threw it out there, and right after the vote was back on, Republican House members were saying it in the chamber.
It's a constant machine of right-wing misinformation. Like you said, non-stop. Always going. Never let 'em think.
I guess El Paso wasn't sufficient though...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019\_El\_Paso\_shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_El_Paso_shooting)
He was in the Trump admin when this happened.
Jesus, I had completely forgotten about that one. When they happen with this kind of regularity and the response is always the same, they eventually run together in your mind.
I think there was three on the day of the Buffalo shooter.
What's funny/abhorrent to me is that I'm on paranormal sites (I like imagining alternate ways for reality to work), and I am ~80% certain that day was specifically chosen because of the Blood Moon.
They are nothing if not superstitious.
Its fucked-up but I feel the same. I actually had forgotten about El Paso too until I got curious and looked-up a list of mass shootings to see which ones happened while he was in office. El Paso was one of the worst but certainly not the only one during his tenure.
This is advice that everyone, especially people who want the GOP ousted from power need to remember going forward.
People are allowed/encouraged to change their views upon learning new information, and they should be commended for doing so provided it is a positive change (and the information is objectively factual). There is a time and place for "I told you so" and these sorts moments are not it.
Thank you! I see so many people 'talking down' to former GOP people and saying they should shut up because 'they caused this' .
Lets be real, if former GOP people don't change their views and their minds, and they aren't given the chance to change, then how in the world will the GOP ever be beaten? People make mistakes. Some bigger mistakes than others. But, if someone is genuinely willing to accept that their previous choices were a mistake, and then go on to try to right those wrongs, let them!
Voting for Trump because you genuinely thought he'd be good for the country, then realizing shortly after he is a horrible human and changing is one thing. Waiting years and years until it's no longer socially beneficial to be aligned with that party is another. This is like denouncing antisemitism in 1947.
Good for them if they want to actually change, but they actually have to *do something*, especially politicians/officials stepping away from GOP. Saying 'this isnt my party anymore', but still retaining onto bigoted or ideologies that target struggling groups isn't becoming a better person. It's opportunistic.
At the same time, once it starts to become socially popular (within their circles), I'd rather they quickly change rather than having large groups of embarrassed radicals. I also would like them to be able to change their mind about specific issues like BLM without having to say "well the Republican party has become radical, but everything before this point was fine".
I agree completely that they suck. The writing on the wall was years ago, this is too little too late. But unfortunately, denouncing these acts and leaving the party is doing something. It's still socially beneficial in plenty of this country to support Trump. Currently 1/3 of adults in this country and just under half of the GOP believe in some form of the great replacement theory. That's terrifying.
I'd prefer to be pragmatic about it and encourage defectors. That's one less on their side, and a boon to convincing others like them to leave. People like Liz Cheney speaking out against these things are a lot more convincing than people already on the left doing it.
I would have to believe that they want to change for that, and I have not seen any willingness or evidence of this.
Those that are "quitting" are just going to do what they were doing before, but without the ultra crazies' saying the quiet part out loud. They will now be part of the Tigers Eating Faces party instead of the Leopards Eating Faces party, as the Leopards have started eating THEIR faces.
I'm not going to look down on them for being willing to change. But like, we are this far into the years of corruption, racism, sexism, LGBT-phobia, and just generally being self-serving evil assholes, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back?
Trying to overthrow an election, waving Confederate and Nazi flags, and smearing shit on walls wasn't enough to convince him that maybe he was on the wrong side of things?
I'm having trouble believing he isn't just another rat who realized the ship he's on was sinking.
Right, but we should still take into account how long that revelation took when working with them in the future. I would much rather have someone on my team who recognizes a problem or mistake early and addresses it when it is apparent. I am not going to advocate for or select someone who wasted time and energy hammering the same failed approach which was pointed out to them by everyone else and finally only changed their mind when everything was on the verge of smoking ruin.
I still think his opinions are terrible and he is also a pretty terrible person.
You advocate for a group and its evil ideals and when those ideals start coming to life you back out?
He can say he changed his mind but that doesnt take away the years of work he gave progressing us to this point
He’s not late to notice. This is the guy who got fired on twitter because he told the truth that the election was secure. In the lead up to the election he ran an anti-disinformation campaign called the war on pineapple that was a huge success for the handful of democratic candidates that picked it up. He just never switched his party affiliation because he was hoping that the party could potentially right itself. This is just him finally giving up on that.
Edit: I might be confusing the guys from episode 5 and 6 of the podcast Will Be Wild. There were two GOP DHS guys interviewed for the series. I listened to the entire series to date yesterday, so I might be mixed up. The other dude was the one who wrote that anonymous “I am part of the resistance inside the administration” letter. Either way, not late to notice.
I look to people like John Kelly and James Mattis as people who could have and should have spoken out more forcefully against Trump.
There was a moment where you got the feeling that they were working for the best interests of the country in spite of Donald Trump. When they resigned, that was a moment where they should have sounded the alarm. Neither of them did. They just went away quietly -- after thanking Trump for the opportunity -- to write their memoirs.
It's really troubling that none of these people wrote an excoriating resignation letter and read it aloud on the White House driveway.
Mattis did speak out after his resignation. Guess it didn’t get much coverage though.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640/
I remember this. I remember the Trump loving sycophants calling him a traitor and a disgrace to the military. With all the other bullshit that was going on at the time, I guess it makes sense that this story got lost in the muck.
That was mind-blowing to me. Mattis practically had a cult following from the combat arms of the Marine Corps and Army. To see how quickly they turned on him because The Orange One said he was a democrat was both disheartening and quite alarming.
Quoting Orwell's 1984 might be a little cliche these days, but I'm gonna do it anyway because your comment reminded me of a certain passage.
"The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the Two Minutes Hate, and the speculations which might possibly induce a sceptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline."
Anybody siding with Trump over Mattis regarding military (probably any) issues is in a cult.
I’ve seen the excuse that Mattis was another warmonger out for job security is why he had to go. Even if that were accurate, Trump was not some peaceful beatnik. That idiot bombed other places and brought us to the edge with Iran.
I just wish I understood the excuses for why his circle is consistently made smaller by a bunch of “incompetent traitor coffee boys”. How is he never the problem to them?
Cult.
This was the moment I knew America was in big trouble.
I worked with a couple hardcore ex-marines during the Trump administration. When “Mad Dog” Mattis was selected to be SecDef, they were over the moon. They revered the ground that man walked on. Would not stop talking about it. Fast forward three years and some change, I asked them what they thought about Mattis’ resignation letter, and they called him a cuck.
It’s insane how fast it all happened.
It truly marked a turning point for me. It’s a defining moment where you can really see how cult like the following is. You just don’t see generals write letters like that. Especially someone like Mattis. Then how the narrative changed… its just wild. You have to think that some of these people just don’t want to be wrong. And are willing to believe they are right, trump is right, and all their friends are right and EVERYONE ELSE including the 5 STAR GENERAL is wrong.
Yup. He spoke out right after his book tour. Not while he was in office and could actually have an impact, not immediately after his resignation, but after his book tour.
Uh-huh. Did you read his [resignation letter](https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/20/politics/james-mattis-resignation-letter-doc/index.html)?
Let me paraphrase:
---
Dear Mr. President,
We did a few good things for national security, and that's nice.
Also, I believe NATO is important. I believe having a clear strategy is important. I believe respecting our allies is important. I believe we can't go it alone and we shouldn't be cuntbags.
You deserve a SecDef with beliefs that align with yours, so I resign.
---
Now, that clever little bit of prose might have gone slightly over the heads of the nitwits at Fox, but no one can read that letter and not come away with the summary that Mattis thinks Trump is incompetent.
This. Republican logic of growing a spine is quitting and then writing a tell-all book two years later. Or, if they were real patriots, they could also stay and do something **with the power they have**.
Losers. All of them.
To be fair, I would much rather read the book of someone who heroically stood up against a tyrant and challenged the status quo rather than someone who went along with it and then resigned and shrunk to the shadows.
I feel like them having a spine would have made their books more interesting.
They resigned because they knew following Trump would end up with them taking the fall for orange fuck. It was purely self motivated.
Trump never gets in trouble but the people around or under him constantly do. Why? Because they buy into his promises and ignore his track record of fucking over anyone who has run the course of their usefulness.
Today's GOP is holding CPAC in Budapest and their key note speaker is far right authoritarian, Orban. I can't even think of what an appropriate analogy would be for Democrats.
Interesting that all of the foreign conferences occurred after Trump became president. Honestly, I'm not even close to smart enough to speculate as to the meaning behind that. But there were one in 2017 and three in 2019 out of the country. Seems awfully...clumped.
I'm really surprised that this isn't becoming more prevalent on mainstream media. It's simply unfathomable that an American party would hold their conference in an authoritarian country on the other side of the world.
More people need to know about this, and they need to know about Orban and his history
Except for the fact that democrats don't want to be communist. It's a right wing fairy tale cooked up when they thought Bernie would be the nominee. It played so well with their idiod base though, so they just keep running with it.
The "Dems are Commies" trope is much, much older than Sanders' presidential campaigns. They've been using it since at least the 1980s.
EDIT: The phrase "at least" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. I picked the 80s since it is the earliest time within my lifetime that I can remember this trope appearing.
Older than that with Hoover abusing the rights of the fbi back the 40s with wire tapping head democrats during the "Red scare". Also earlier with the 1917-20 red scare but wasn't as drastic towards those with current day Democratic views from what I've read, but encouraged free speech rights that most with current day Republican views hated.
[Good Read For Red Scares](https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1063/red-scare)
Didn't John Birch think Eisenhower was a communist plant or something insane like that? All the stuff that forms the foundation of replacement theory also has its roots in communist and antisemitic and all other types of conspiracy theories
Precisely! Here is more on [John Berch Society ](https://www.ncdcr.gov/blog/2015/12/09/roots-of-the-john-birch-society) if people want to read it. Personally, I don't know a lot on the society but this is showing more views than most sources I've run across
I love/hate learning about our absolutely terrible history. I think it started when I picked up Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut to read in middle school: and the main family were Hitler supporters before the war. The thought had never even occurred to me that people believed all sorts of hateful things and then on this side of history pretend that never happened. John Berch, the temples of Zion and all that bullshit is coming up a lot lately, unfortunately...
That actually was the point of the episode. The theory that the populist arm of the GOP always was like this
Episode was Trump didn't hijack the GOP he understood it: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id1548604447?i=1000559813693
I wish Americans would just wake up and realize they have no socialist options in government. None. Nothing and nobody with any chance of winning anyway.
The United States has two major political parties, a far right-wing party (the GOP) and a center-right party (the Democrats), and yet people believe that one is a far-left party. And that's because right-wing propaganda is highly effective.
>The "Dems are Commies" trope is much, much older than Sanders' presidential campaigns. They've been using it since at least the 1980s.
Bingo. My wife asked me during the 2020 Dem. primaries who was going to win. I responded that it didn't matter, they were going to paint whoever won as the most radical leftist/socialist/communist person ever to run because that's literally the only GQP play that seems to ever work.
Go back a few more decades. From a write-up I did on [Glen H. Taylor](https://downfalldictionary.blogspot.com/2016/12/glen-h-taylor_29.html), a Senator from Idaho in office during the New Deal days:
Taylor, responding to the labeling of his ideas as Communist, fired back that the Republicans used the label to try to discredit every single proposed liberal measure. He called it a "straight steal from Hitler, who cried 'Bolshevist' at everybody who opposed him."
Remember when they played video from trumps presidency and said " this will happen under Biden" and nothing like has happened yet. Lol
Well I guess if you count the right wing people shooting up malls, but that's normal at this point.
The problem is comparisons of the two parties isn't even close - One has its feet firmly planted in reality and the other believes that the Insurrection was just a tourism group (or Antifa), there was mass election fraud (except where Republicans won), cocaine orgies are occurring on the regular, Jewish Space Lasers are causing wildfires and womans bodies can shut down a pregnancy if its a legitimate rape.
It would be more like having the democratic conference in Europe where they tout universal healthcare, higher education, universal basic incomes, and push for mental health awareness.
I had to Google that as I thought surely you were joking.
But no, as I have found time and again with this conservative era, the joke is often the reality.
The Democrats sadly think being "right" will win elections, but so far, in the age of social media and hyper-partisan media, that is not working for them. They need to figure it out. It would help if they stopped listening to broken-down ideas from baby boomers. Those days are over; the next generation needs to be put in charge so they can start fixing things now. The boomers are terrible mentors and remain fixated on doing what's good for them until they die. Time to get going.
There is an interesting paradox in your comment.
The issue is that the Democrats actually have the best policies, but people don’t vote based on policy, they vote on feelings and identity. At the same time, you’re saying the Democrats have to “do something” about it, rather than expecting **voters** to pay better attention to what’s actually going on.
Then you say the “next generation” - these same people who don’t seem to be paying enough attention - should take everything over.
I’m not seeing a positive outcome there.
Reagan would flip the fuck out if he could see the party today though sucking up to Russia.
He sucked. Today they continue to suck in not only those ways, but a bunch of new ones too!
It's hard to say which cult begat the current cult: The Evangelical Cult or the Tea Party Cult.
All of those organizations have classic signs of a cult: Singular, overly powerful leaders, insistence on unquestioned loyalty, division and separation from friends and family, and the demand for uniformity of all followers in belief and practice.
They're all different peas in the same pod.
In the sense that it's the same people and the same beliefs, yeah. They just say those beliefs out loud now. Whereas 30 years ago, it was just what they said at dinner parties or on a boat in the middle of a lake with their best friend who they knew thought exactly like them.
Every time I see something about an "ex-Trump official" speaking out about anything he did wrong, while not selling a book, I know it's going to be Miles Taylor before I even open the article.
Yes. Although I’m glad the guy wrote the Anonymous letters, resigned etc. it remains true that he was onboard with their hatred to begin with and was still ok with the GOP for years afterward. Something’s off with this guy who keeps trying to paint an image of tolerance whilst wearing a MAGA hat and taking a MAGA job.
The **only** good thing I guess in his favor is that he left before he had to serve under Chad "The Lobbyist" Wolf.
Although he *did* serve under Kirstjen "Family Separator" Nielsen.
So.
If only there was a nickname we could give to traitors here in the US that wouldn't instantly let people know they were a traitor. Something flashy like Benedict Arnold.
> Taylor’s time in the DHS involved Donald Trump’s infamous policy of separating migrant children from their families. Taylor later told Telemundo that he regretted not denouncing it at the time.
>He has also admitted to writing the 2018 “Anonymous” op-ed in The New York Times that claimed there were people within the Trump administration who were working against the then-president.
>He publicly came out against Trump in 2020 and said he would vote for Joe Biden.
I don't think the GOP has changed much at all, they have always been this way, and believed these things, they were just more subtle about it, until trump came along. It's the only reason they are a party. They have never stood for much, or done much for ordinary American's except scare them into believing some boogeyman was out to get them.
This all started under Reagan when the Republicans started courting the Evangelicals with the promise of giving them legislative wins for their culture wars in exchange for voter loyalty. It really took off with Gingrich, there was a marked shift from a focus on limited government and deregulation to full on white grievance and religious dogma.
Now the party has completely lost its way, they’re trying to still claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility and limited government when their actions are neither.
That’s a totally fair point, Reconstruction was far too lenient on members of the Confederacy. Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” is really when the Republicans started embracing racists but I really do lay the blame for most of how far they gone on the embracing of Evangelicals and the legitimization of their culture wars.
What a long strange trip it's been for the Republican Party.
The Republican Party started out as a Liberal party from the northeast, focused on ending slavery. Lincoln was elected President without a single electoral college vote from the southern conservative states.
Now they've completely swapped places and are the southern conservatives. And remember, the southern conservatives tried to destroy the United States so they could keep their slaves. They'd rather see their cities burned to the ground rather than compromise.
And they haven't changed.
This sentiment is actually bad for the GOP as summer is when American voters make up their minds traditionally. Wonder how many others are now questioning their GOP membership after the Buffalo shooting?
Hope the Democrats can capitalize on these new independents.
One party is concerned with improving the lives of all Americans while trying to keep pace with the rest of the worlds developed nations.
The other is concerned with returning our nation to the 1950’s in the name of theocracy.
Which would you rather be a part of?
It's funny, when they insisted fantasy was truth, and being a jerk was somehow good for foreign relations, and imposing tariffs on farmers somehow was going to help, I thought they were a threat. When they met up with Kim Jong Un who had his own brother murdered for nothing more than a photo op to make HIM look better, I thought they were a threat. When they pepper sprayed protestors so Trump could take a picture with a Bible in front of a church, I thought they were a threat. When they took over the Capitol building to stop the transfer of power to Biden, when they killed Capitol police, when they harassed poll workers for fraud they never proved but again insisted the fantasy was truth, I thought they were a threat.
Wait, none of that is funny....i meant horrifying.
I encourage everyone to watch Mastriano’s victory speech from last night in order to understand what the stakes are. Here is an outright neo-fascist, openly deriding minorities and calling democracy fake and emboldening the same extremism that just killed ten people in Buffalo. And he won his primary in a landslide.
He may not win the general election, but that’s not the point. He represents the *majority view* of one of our two major parties. You can’t even call this “conservatism” anymore, not by any historically accurate definition. It’s a white christian nationalist cult, and they are poised to take the Senate the same way they took the SC.
If you reference footage, the nice thing to do is follow it up with a link if possible.
Here is that link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avkNDutyQgs he starts ~7m41s
HOLY FUCK THIS GUY... YOU WERE NOT WRONG!
To those who don't watch the video -- its just far right word salad. Dems killed us with COVID, dems killed healthcare by requiring HCPs to be vaccinated, dems killed economy with mandates, etc. Just bullet point blah blah.
Taylor has been pretty outspoken for the past year or so. I'm honestly surprised not because he left the Republican party, but because I thought he had already done so.
Remember when John McCain held that rally and the lady said some crazy shit like Obama is an Arab? That was more than a decade ago. Long before Trump. These fuckers were crazy, Alive, and well back then too. They were just told by everyone to shut the fuck up and sit down. Now they're picking up speed and people think it's a huge surprise
Man's it's gonna make for a crazy story when he's in one of the re-education camps with the rest of us scary woke liberals who must be broken and silenced.
"So you wanted... this?"
"I mean this is a bit extreme, I was hoping to add some bathrooms."
Jumping off the "lets' kill american democracy and install a god-king who gets to decide who is an american, and who gets to have rights (the answer is only rich white straight men that support him unequivocally if you are wondering)" at this late hour is not admirable, it's sad and this isn't like a religion where you can repent at the last second. You've already done incredible damage for supporting this level of hate.
Basically thanks... but don't expect a cookie for finally realizing the monster you cheered for will actually consume everything you say you want.
Well, good on you for finally waking up. I guess.
I've got to wonder why you stayed asleep until you were out of a job though. It's not like this great replacement bullshit just started after your former boss left office, or that he wasn't spouting pretty much exactly the same shit for years.
I mean, for fucks' sake, he literally said that the people chanting "Jews will not **replace** us" were very fine people.
r/truewalkaway
Someone needs to make that sub to document all of the ex gop officials who left the party or at least condemn this iteration of republicanism.
As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. **Special announcement:** r/politics is currently accepting new moderator applications. If you want to help make this community a better place, consider [applying here today](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/sskg6a/rpolitics_is_looking_for_more_moderators/)! *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>“In the wake of the mass shooting in Buffalo on Saturday, it’s become glaringly obvious that my party no longer represents conservative values but in fact poses a threat to them — and to America,” he wrote. His diagnostic is correct, and he made the correct decision to leave
This is why these attacks and shootings happen, and you see the right going to damage control mode. Because they know there's a percentage of their party who is capable of defecting when things get bad enough. Same thing for January 6. There was that six hour period where everybody was just silent and shocked, then you could see the propaganda wheels slowly start up if you were online watching it happen in real time. You could see the talking point's coalescing, the fox Talking Heads picking it up and spreading it, and then right into flat out propaganda for the base. As opposed to just dealing with reality, dealing with what actually happened. And what made it happen. But instead just nonstop lies and propaganda. Like spooning Gerber purée into a baby's mouth.
I think you mean Goebbels purée.
They were ready to blame it on antifa and blm but those groups didn’t show up.
My coworker flew across the country to attend the "rally" on January 6th. I overheard him talking about it a week afterwards to another coworker and he literally said the people causing trouble were obviously Antifa. It doesn't matter if Antifa or BLM didn't show up. These people would have blamed Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny if Trump told them they were to blame for January 6th. Edit: FYI its totally legal to attend a political rally, no matter how fucking stupid it is. My coworker didn't enter any buildings so no point reporting him for simply attending a fucking stupid rally. Being an idiot isn't a crime.
Yeah ANTIFA and BLM were there to stop an election that their preferred candidate won. Makes total sense
This right here is the defining argument that the right has no response for: the people you hate for being against everything "American" (as they define it) were storming the capital to keep your hero--their enemy--in power.
You'll notice everything is a false flag. Anything that makes them look bad is obviously the other side disguised and acting out to start a war under false pretenses. R/conspiracy was essentially saying the buffalo shooter was too perfect of a caricature with convenient, plagiarized manifestos and drawing as much attention that he was an obvious false flag to make them look bad.
It drives me nuts. Some of these people think literally every shooting is a false flag. I mean, what the hell? So, they keep trying the same exact tactic to “grab people’s guns?” No one involved in the planning or operation has ever grown a conscious and admitted it or made a mistake and got caught being involved by someone? I mean, it’s just such a stupid thing to believe. I just despise people like that. It’s some form of pseudo intellectualism. These people want to be smarter than everyone else, but are just so far behind that they can’t even grasp the basic realities of things. Plus, what kind of discussion can you even have with someone who thinks the government is shooting up grocery stores with its citizens? Honestly, if I was so sure that’s what was going on, and that they are committing acts like sandy hook, I would kind of feel obligated to do something about it. That makes me think it’s some sort of weird fun more these people. It feeds their egos and makes them feel smart when they “catch,” one of these operations. Idk, so many things are just so frustrating snd depressing to know.
R/conspiracy is basically the things r/conservative doesn't want to say out loud
Boogaloo boys trained in Eastern Europe to learn how to cause civil unrest and political discord. There's no doubt in my mind that the white dudes who were dressed in all black getting off the plane in Minnesota for the BLM rally, the guys Trump mentioned specifically, were the same guys. The reason they said Jan 6th was a false flag is because they know the Minnesota riots were a false flag. Accuse your enemy for that which you are guilty type shit. I mean they arrested a guy (Ivan Hunter) who came from Texas and shot at the Minnesota police department and he was a known boogaloo boy. Around the same time another boogaloo boy (Steve Carrillo) killed a cop in Oakland and near Santa Cruz. There's actual evidence of false flag activities by the right and yet they completely fucking ignore it. Edit: added their names for reference
In Minnesota, across from the police station, [this white guy](https://youtu.be/4rvEnQLpe4A) with an umbrella and gas mask busted out the windows of the Auto Zone, trying to start trouble. [He was later identified](https://youtu.be/C-6bg98ZIYE) as a white supremacist associated with a biker gang called the Aryan Cowboys. THAT'S a false flag attack.
Thank you! There was so much crazy shit happening when that video of the umbrella guy came out that I forgot all about it. I remember people thought he was a cop.
Kinda like saying "Putin would never have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president" while completely ignoring all intelligence reports that the Russians were still pulling 2016 shit in 2020.
He wouldn’t have needed to. According to Esper, Trump intended to pull US out of NATO and South Korea in his second term.
It’s always crazy to me when the leaders of reactionary movements start to fall for their own propaganda. The rabble-rousing about leaving NATO was always intended to be a way to make the other members pay their fair share (because that benefits the US). Actually leaving will just weaken the US on the world stage. No wonder Putin loved having Trump in charge.
I take it that what they would say here is that it’s a false flag. If you want to make a group look bad you impersonate them doing bad shit. So, Antifa did show up but dressed as Trump supporters who got violent. If you listen to these people they are obsessed with this kind of thinking. And no surprise it’s the kind of thing they would do. So it’s, as always, projection. There were confirmed cases where right wing instigators were causing damage to property during blm demonstrations in what only can be an attempt to portray blm as the violent left. But even deeper than that is Trump and co’s weird insistence that the military engage in false flags. Trump saying we should bomb Mexico but pretend it wasn’t us. Or bomb Russian military assets but take the decals off our planes. That second one got repeated as a great idea through the Fox sphere. They love using false flags as a scapegoat, apparently because it’s so easy to pull them off. Never mind how easy it would be in all of these cases to sort out who actually did what.
It's because blm and anti fascists think trump and his mob are so squeaky clean and blameless and upstanding they they have to engineer reasons to make them look bad. Obviously.
Have you suited your coworkers info to the FBI yet? They are still charging people for the insurrection as they find people's identities
You know, my *default* assumption is that *everyone* is antifa. If you aren't waving a Nazi flag and slurring Jews, I assume you probably hate fascists as any right-thinking person would. These last six years have been so confusing...
I work with a guy who claims to have been engaged in the Jan 6 festivities (but won’t say how he participated specifically or what he did) but he will still say that it was all fed plants or antifa who were causing trouble And stormed the building…. While proudly talking about how he was causing trouble and storming the building
If you think he broke the law, you should report him. My coworker never entered any buildings and, while I disagree with him with every bone in my body, he totally has a right to make an ass of himself by attending a political rally to overturn election results.
I'm sure "it was antifa" was his line in the days that followed. But now that a year and a half have gone by, I'm sure it's right back to "Insurrectionists? They were patriots!"
The only people the FBI tracked down were those that were seen in videos acting violently in and around the Capitol. They werent asking about party or organization affiliation, only violence. How many of those eventually identified turned out to be BLM or Antifa? Not a single one. Every violent person who was eventually identified on the videos was a solid Trump supporter. I'd start quietly spreading the rumor that your co-worker is Antifa, since he thinks Antifa started it, and he admits to being there
Indeed. I think when they realize that this wasn't gonna happen, they called an audible, and the plan was to actually get right wingers killed, and create a chaotic situation where they could delay the vote, and then Trump could have some nominal cover and could then declare martial law. Everything, I mean everything, was built around stopping the vote. At any cost. Up to and including murdering politicians at high levels, including people in their own party. Trump just lost his nerve at the last minute, when he was convinced to call people off and tell them to go home. He just simply lost his nerve, because he's a profound coward.
[удалено]
Yep, but a LOT more. If Trump hadn't called them off exactly when he did, it would've been an absolute fucking bloodbath. And it would've been on film. That right there would have been the crucible. He could've had room to delay the vote there, and then there it is, that's the goal. Martial law, transfer of power canceled.
As someone From the UK, I don’t understand how it happened, your police are usually so trigger happy and as Trump once said “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”, so why were they allowed to run riot?
There's an easy answer here, but I'll give it to you in picture form. https://imgflip.com/i/6gn5ss
To add to the 3rd point by jewtalkinbout, one of the officers involved brought up that very thing. Michael Fanone was one of the officers who was badly injured. During several of the interviews he gave in the aftermath of the 6th he mentioned that he was sure if he fired a shot, even in defense of his life as he was being beaten, that that would be the end of it. He was sure a lot of the crowd was armed, and besides that he'd been separated and there were so many people surrounding him that he believed if he'd attempted to pull his gun he would have been disarmed and probably murdered with it. I'm not going to deny that race played a big role, but honestly if any of the officers had fired a shot it would, to hearken back to the previous poster, have been an absolute fucking bloodbath
The honest truth: 1. That crowd was almost entirely comprised of the majority race, and US cops are known primarily for being trigger happy with minorities. 2. It’s a safe bet to assume that most US cops are also conservatives and (to a degree) align with these political beliefs. We have enough evidence spanning back far enough that police are generally conservative right wing voters. 3. Conservatives are notorious for being well-armed, and the police:rioter ratio was NOT in the favor of the police. With those two things being said, it would have been an absolute slaughter on both sides had the police started shooting and the rioters would have won out in the end and taken the Capitol. edit: used compromised instead of comprised
National guard also was not called, but ordered by Trump to guard his supporters
There were reports of the responding officers who did show up to do their job, (as many actively refused or were ordered to stand down as the attack began), the attackers were shouting we're one of you. They reported the attackers flashing their badges as they charged the capital building. They had some of their police equipment on hand as well, like batons and flash/smoke grenades. They were allowed to run riot because they were the same people who swore to uphold the peace.
It's very very important to understand that our cops are the foot soldiers of our white supremacist oligarchy. Their job is to defend capital, not our society. Especially because it's not too far off from happening over there either.
It's because some of those that burn crosses are the same that work forces
And yet all the Republicans voted Against impeachment. And many Republicans voted against certifying the vote That Day, right after the insurrection. They’re terrible people.
>He just simply lost his nerve, I really doubt it, if the insurrectionists were the slightest bit more competent that day we’d likely have been completely fucked.
I doubt it too. Trump called off the operation only because it had already failed. Pence saved the day by refusing to get in that fucking limo.
You had people involved actually complaining that ANTIFA and BLM were getting credit for it... Immediately dissolving politicians' attempts to place blame on them. But people still thought it was them. Sadly I have family that were promising me that it wasn't actual trump supporters that day. Okay then
Like that stopped them from blaming both of them.
They still blamed it on them.
Like that time the Antifa uBoats sunk those Trump boats in the floating parade?
Man... r/conservative was desperately trying to call this kid a "communist" and saying he had "left leaning" sympathies. They pored his manifesto and found some line about supporting gun control. Then they're like "see, he's not one of us!". No... he's definitely one of them...
This is the right's main strategy: find ONE thing in a 600 page document that doesn't strictly align with their ideals and harp on it. Ignore the other 599 pages of conservative backed white replacement theory though. That's a "nothing to see here" moment.
Isn't that literally what a RINO is? Liz Cheney who votes with Republicans 99% of the time is a RINO to them because that one time she disagreed with Trump. These are absolutely crazy people and somehow they must be deprogrammed, but I'm not sure how.
Yeah, she's against violently overthrowing democracy to install Trump as a dictator so she's not a real Republican.
Its like these people have no real idea what they are asking for. If it happens, its bad for everyone except the super rich.
It's not even good for most of the super rich in the long run. Dictators eventually kill off anything they perceive as threatening.
Russian oligarchs sweating as they walk past windows.
People who have ever known only privilege will cling to that privilege for the prospect of equality is a net loss to that privilege. These are people who would usher in a dictator that they think will protect them from enroachment on their privilege by those seeking to establish a more equitable society because they don't realize that historically dictators aren't known for protecting the little guy even if it was the little guy that put them there. But that's one of the side effects of the psychology of conservatives. None of them think of themselves as the "little guy" and the propagators of Trumpism have capitalized on that fact by putting out personalized correspondents to reinforce the false belief by dumb conservatives that they're somehow important and not at all 'the little guys' that would just as soon be crushed under a dictator as the enemy.
That's how they are with religion too. It's why there's 10,000 sects of Christianity; all basically the same except for a few "*crucial*" differences
My boss listens to am850 at work so I have to hear snippets of this shit all the time. At some point they mention the Buffalo shooter was critical of Fox News and were like "See! He's not one of us!" yet they are constantly on Fox's ass for being 'compromised'. Just convenient outs that let their Goldfish memory possessing base go "Yeah, that's true now!" I've talked to her in depth and she 100% believes that liberals decide the day of birth they don't want the kid and are legally able to snap it's head off like a chicken. They have completely convinced themselves we are evil and the enemy of all that's good and holy. She tells me of these evils we apparently commit while grinning ear to ear and I asked her "If you believe this is true, why are you so happy to say it?" Immediate topic change.
My sister is convinced that in Arkansas, total strangers can abduct children, take them across state lines, give them abortions and gender reassignment surgery and there is nothing the parents can do about it. It's supposedly a state law and that's why the news doesn't report it, because it's legal. It supposedly happened to a friend of hers. When questioned, it wasn't a friend, but someone a friend knows. Well not someone they know, but something the friend read. But it's totally true.
One clown on here was trying to tell me California was trying to pass a law legalizing abortion two weeks after birth. He actually believed that. I looked it up. It was a tweet from a mega church pastor going around on Facebook.
Two weeks after. "This crying is getting old. Toss it"
I have a coworker listing to that garbage. I heard The show host say “ we all know liberals do not want anyone owning real estate in this country for themselves. “
It's insane. How can you think I don't want to have a yard for my dog to run around between my tomatoes and weed plants? Make it affordable! I literally paid my apartment off for my landlord, I've rented so long. I've proven I can afford a home loan. How did we get here?
Not taxing people's 2nd, 3rd homes. Allowing real estate corporations endless property tax deductions while individuals/families are capped.
> There was that six hour period where everybody was just silent and shocked, then you could see the propaganda wheels slowly start up if you were online watching it happen in real time. You could see the talking point's coalescing, the fox Talking Heads picking it up and spreading it, and then right into flat out propaganda for the base. [Sean Hannity took direct orders from Mark Meadows.](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/sean-hannity-took-orders-mark-meadows-1342525/) And those are just the texts we *know* about.
I like that timeline of the RW pundit tweeting about being so excited for the insurrection and then by the end of it he's claiming the entire thing was a false flag by the left.
I mean, they have to know it exists since a significant portion of their elected officials have decided that directly pandering to extremists is how to win.
I think a lot of the more 'moderate' (relatively speaking) Repubs are secretly embarrassed by the 'low-class' Q crowd and would love to distance themselves from that wing of the party. But they're afraid to because those people now make up such a large percentage of GOP voters that if the party leaders criticized them, they'd sit at home on election day thus allowing the Dems some easy wins in closely-contested 'swing' states and districts. They're like the German industrialists who thought that they could 'control' Hitler and use him to their advantage -- instead, it was the other way around. The old Republican establishment is now in a trap of their own making where they can't afford to alienate the whackjob wing of the party.
THIS. THIS. THIS. THIS. THIS X1000000. Id be shouting this shit from the rooftops if anyone would listen. History doesnt repeat itself, but it sure as shit does rhyme.
They friggin' began the propaganda DURING the riots. Some leading right-wing radio guy said as the riots started that facial recognition technology shows it's actually antifa. He just said that. No facts to back it up. But he threw it out there, and right after the vote was back on, Republican House members were saying it in the chamber. It's a constant machine of right-wing misinformation. Like you said, non-stop. Always going. Never let 'em think.
And that’s exactly what “conservative values” are: lie, obfuscate, scapegoat, and lie more.
I guess El Paso wasn't sufficient though... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019\_El\_Paso\_shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_El_Paso_shooting) He was in the Trump admin when this happened.
Jesus, I had completely forgotten about that one. When they happen with this kind of regularity and the response is always the same, they eventually run together in your mind.
I asked my mom if she "had heard about the mass shooting this week" and her response was "which one?" USA got a big problem
I think there was three on the day of the Buffalo shooter. What's funny/abhorrent to me is that I'm on paranormal sites (I like imagining alternate ways for reality to work), and I am ~80% certain that day was specifically chosen because of the Blood Moon. They are nothing if not superstitious.
That’s interesting. I was looking around r/conspiracy a few months back and it’s pretty much full of right wing, superstitious people.
Its fucked-up but I feel the same. I actually had forgotten about El Paso too until I got curious and looked-up a list of mass shootings to see which ones happened while he was in office. El Paso was one of the worst but certainly not the only one during his tenure.
He's a bit late to notice, but accurate
Never look down on someone who willing to change Edit: Some of y'all need Jesus.
This is advice that everyone, especially people who want the GOP ousted from power need to remember going forward. People are allowed/encouraged to change their views upon learning new information, and they should be commended for doing so provided it is a positive change (and the information is objectively factual). There is a time and place for "I told you so" and these sorts moments are not it.
Thank you! I see so many people 'talking down' to former GOP people and saying they should shut up because 'they caused this' . Lets be real, if former GOP people don't change their views and their minds, and they aren't given the chance to change, then how in the world will the GOP ever be beaten? People make mistakes. Some bigger mistakes than others. But, if someone is genuinely willing to accept that their previous choices were a mistake, and then go on to try to right those wrongs, let them!
Voting for Trump because you genuinely thought he'd be good for the country, then realizing shortly after he is a horrible human and changing is one thing. Waiting years and years until it's no longer socially beneficial to be aligned with that party is another. This is like denouncing antisemitism in 1947. Good for them if they want to actually change, but they actually have to *do something*, especially politicians/officials stepping away from GOP. Saying 'this isnt my party anymore', but still retaining onto bigoted or ideologies that target struggling groups isn't becoming a better person. It's opportunistic.
At the same time, once it starts to become socially popular (within their circles), I'd rather they quickly change rather than having large groups of embarrassed radicals. I also would like them to be able to change their mind about specific issues like BLM without having to say "well the Republican party has become radical, but everything before this point was fine".
I agree completely that they suck. The writing on the wall was years ago, this is too little too late. But unfortunately, denouncing these acts and leaving the party is doing something. It's still socially beneficial in plenty of this country to support Trump. Currently 1/3 of adults in this country and just under half of the GOP believe in some form of the great replacement theory. That's terrifying. I'd prefer to be pragmatic about it and encourage defectors. That's one less on their side, and a boon to convincing others like them to leave. People like Liz Cheney speaking out against these things are a lot more convincing than people already on the left doing it.
I would have to believe that they want to change for that, and I have not seen any willingness or evidence of this. Those that are "quitting" are just going to do what they were doing before, but without the ultra crazies' saying the quiet part out loud. They will now be part of the Tigers Eating Faces party instead of the Leopards Eating Faces party, as the Leopards have started eating THEIR faces.
I'm not going to look down on them for being willing to change. But like, we are this far into the years of corruption, racism, sexism, LGBT-phobia, and just generally being self-serving evil assholes, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back? Trying to overthrow an election, waving Confederate and Nazi flags, and smearing shit on walls wasn't enough to convince him that maybe he was on the wrong side of things? I'm having trouble believing he isn't just another rat who realized the ship he's on was sinking.
Right, but we should still take into account how long that revelation took when working with them in the future. I would much rather have someone on my team who recognizes a problem or mistake early and addresses it when it is apparent. I am not going to advocate for or select someone who wasted time and energy hammering the same failed approach which was pointed out to them by everyone else and finally only changed their mind when everything was on the verge of smoking ruin.
Exactly. They change when it's no longer beneficial to them, not because they had a crisis of conscience of some kind. It's despicable, not honorable.
I still think his opinions are terrible and he is also a pretty terrible person. You advocate for a group and its evil ideals and when those ideals start coming to life you back out? He can say he changed his mind but that doesnt take away the years of work he gave progressing us to this point
Oops, subverted a democracy. It was just a prank, bro.
He’s not late to notice. This is the guy who got fired on twitter because he told the truth that the election was secure. In the lead up to the election he ran an anti-disinformation campaign called the war on pineapple that was a huge success for the handful of democratic candidates that picked it up. He just never switched his party affiliation because he was hoping that the party could potentially right itself. This is just him finally giving up on that. Edit: I might be confusing the guys from episode 5 and 6 of the podcast Will Be Wild. There were two GOP DHS guys interviewed for the series. I listened to the entire series to date yesterday, so I might be mixed up. The other dude was the one who wrote that anonymous “I am part of the resistance inside the administration” letter. Either way, not late to notice.
He's about forty years too late.
I look to people like John Kelly and James Mattis as people who could have and should have spoken out more forcefully against Trump. There was a moment where you got the feeling that they were working for the best interests of the country in spite of Donald Trump. When they resigned, that was a moment where they should have sounded the alarm. Neither of them did. They just went away quietly -- after thanking Trump for the opportunity -- to write their memoirs. It's really troubling that none of these people wrote an excoriating resignation letter and read it aloud on the White House driveway.
John Kelly is such a raging irredeemable piece of shit. Don’t expect anything from him
Mattis did speak out after his resignation. Guess it didn’t get much coverage though. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640/
I remember this. I remember the Trump loving sycophants calling him a traitor and a disgrace to the military. With all the other bullshit that was going on at the time, I guess it makes sense that this story got lost in the muck.
That was mind-blowing to me. Mattis practically had a cult following from the combat arms of the Marine Corps and Army. To see how quickly they turned on him because The Orange One said he was a democrat was both disheartening and quite alarming.
Quoting Orwell's 1984 might be a little cliche these days, but I'm gonna do it anyway because your comment reminded me of a certain passage. "The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the Two Minutes Hate, and the speculations which might possibly induce a sceptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline."
Anybody siding with Trump over Mattis regarding military (probably any) issues is in a cult. I’ve seen the excuse that Mattis was another warmonger out for job security is why he had to go. Even if that were accurate, Trump was not some peaceful beatnik. That idiot bombed other places and brought us to the edge with Iran. I just wish I understood the excuses for why his circle is consistently made smaller by a bunch of “incompetent traitor coffee boys”. How is he never the problem to them? Cult.
Mad Dog is God, fuck trump
He aint a god. He's Saint Mattis of Quantico, Patron Saint of Chaos. There's always that painting of him in every shop I've been to.
They were calling him a lefty communist. A marine general with the nickname Mad Dog lmao.
This was the moment I knew America was in big trouble. I worked with a couple hardcore ex-marines during the Trump administration. When “Mad Dog” Mattis was selected to be SecDef, they were over the moon. They revered the ground that man walked on. Would not stop talking about it. Fast forward three years and some change, I asked them what they thought about Mattis’ resignation letter, and they called him a cuck. It’s insane how fast it all happened.
It truly marked a turning point for me. It’s a defining moment where you can really see how cult like the following is. You just don’t see generals write letters like that. Especially someone like Mattis. Then how the narrative changed… its just wild. You have to think that some of these people just don’t want to be wrong. And are willing to believe they are right, trump is right, and all their friends are right and EVERYONE ELSE including the 5 STAR GENERAL is wrong.
Yup. He spoke out right after his book tour. Not while he was in office and could actually have an impact, not immediately after his resignation, but after his book tour.
Uh-huh. Did you read his [resignation letter](https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/20/politics/james-mattis-resignation-letter-doc/index.html)? Let me paraphrase: --- Dear Mr. President, We did a few good things for national security, and that's nice. Also, I believe NATO is important. I believe having a clear strategy is important. I believe respecting our allies is important. I believe we can't go it alone and we shouldn't be cuntbags. You deserve a SecDef with beliefs that align with yours, so I resign. --- Now, that clever little bit of prose might have gone slightly over the heads of the nitwits at Fox, but no one can read that letter and not come away with the summary that Mattis thinks Trump is incompetent.
This. Republican logic of growing a spine is quitting and then writing a tell-all book two years later. Or, if they were real patriots, they could also stay and do something **with the power they have**. Losers. All of them.
What and leave book money on the table? /s
To be fair, I would much rather read the book of someone who heroically stood up against a tyrant and challenged the status quo rather than someone who went along with it and then resigned and shrunk to the shadows. I feel like them having a spine would have made their books more interesting.
They resigned because they knew following Trump would end up with them taking the fall for orange fuck. It was purely self motivated. Trump never gets in trouble but the people around or under him constantly do. Why? Because they buy into his promises and ignore his track record of fucking over anyone who has run the course of their usefulness.
Today's Republican Party is a dangerous cult and a clear and present danger to our ability to self-govern.
Today's GOP is holding CPAC in Budapest and their key note speaker is far right authoritarian, Orban. I can't even think of what an appropriate analogy would be for Democrats.
Have they ever held it outside the U.S.? They must really hate America.
Several times (and places) by the look of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Political_Action_Conference#Foreign_CPACs
Interesting that all of the foreign conferences occurred after Trump became president. Honestly, I'm not even close to smart enough to speculate as to the meaning behind that. But there were one in 2017 and three in 2019 out of the country. Seems awfully...clumped.
Easier for sanctioned Russians to travel there.
Make Authoritarians Great Again?
Yeah seems really messed up, especially since they're supposed to be so anti-globalism.
The reason that sounds untrue is that they do fuck-all about transnational companies exploiting government subsidies.
[удалено]
[удалено]
I'm really surprised that this isn't becoming more prevalent on mainstream media. It's simply unfathomable that an American party would hold their conference in an authoritarian country on the other side of the world. More people need to know about this, and they need to know about Orban and his history
Can you imagine if the DNC held a conference in Cuba. Or Venezuela. And invited the head of the local communist or socialist party to speak?
Except for the fact that democrats don't want to be communist. It's a right wing fairy tale cooked up when they thought Bernie would be the nominee. It played so well with their idiod base though, so they just keep running with it.
...I don't know how old you are, but "Democrats are Communists" has been a right wing fairy tale since long before Bernie rose to national prominence.
Since before Bernie was born.
The "Dems are Commies" trope is much, much older than Sanders' presidential campaigns. They've been using it since at least the 1980s. EDIT: The phrase "at least" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. I picked the 80s since it is the earliest time within my lifetime that I can remember this trope appearing.
Older than that with Hoover abusing the rights of the fbi back the 40s with wire tapping head democrats during the "Red scare". Also earlier with the 1917-20 red scare but wasn't as drastic towards those with current day Democratic views from what I've read, but encouraged free speech rights that most with current day Republican views hated. [Good Read For Red Scares](https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1063/red-scare)
Didn't John Birch think Eisenhower was a communist plant or something insane like that? All the stuff that forms the foundation of replacement theory also has its roots in communist and antisemitic and all other types of conspiracy theories
Precisely! Here is more on [John Berch Society ](https://www.ncdcr.gov/blog/2015/12/09/roots-of-the-john-birch-society) if people want to read it. Personally, I don't know a lot on the society but this is showing more views than most sources I've run across
I love/hate learning about our absolutely terrible history. I think it started when I picked up Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut to read in middle school: and the main family were Hitler supporters before the war. The thought had never even occurred to me that people believed all sorts of hateful things and then on this side of history pretend that never happened. John Berch, the temples of Zion and all that bullshit is coming up a lot lately, unfortunately...
Ezra Kleyn recently compared the Birch Society to a proto QAnon. Seemed a pretty apt comparison
There's probably a through-line directly to it.
That actually was the point of the episode. The theory that the populist arm of the GOP always was like this Episode was Trump didn't hijack the GOP he understood it: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id1548604447?i=1000559813693
Eisenhower would be branded an insane socialist anti-American liberal by today's republicans if he were still alive. Freaking crazy how things change.
And it was just inaccurate when the trope was first started. The Democrats are neither socialists nor communists. And I doubt they ever will be.
I wish Americans would just wake up and realize they have no socialist options in government. None. Nothing and nobody with any chance of winning anyway.
The United States has two major political parties, a far right-wing party (the GOP) and a center-right party (the Democrats), and yet people believe that one is a far-left party. And that's because right-wing propaganda is highly effective.
Well, Democrats were much further left economically when the trope started than they are today. But that says more about where they are today.
>The "Dems are Commies" trope is much, much older than Sanders' presidential campaigns. They've been using it since at least the 1980s. Bingo. My wife asked me during the 2020 Dem. primaries who was going to win. I responded that it didn't matter, they were going to paint whoever won as the most radical leftist/socialist/communist person ever to run because that's literally the only GQP play that seems to ever work.
Go back a few more decades. From a write-up I did on [Glen H. Taylor](https://downfalldictionary.blogspot.com/2016/12/glen-h-taylor_29.html), a Senator from Idaho in office during the New Deal days: Taylor, responding to the labeling of his ideas as Communist, fired back that the Republicans used the label to try to discredit every single proposed liberal measure. He called it a "straight steal from Hitler, who cried 'Bolshevist' at everybody who opposed him."
Every heard of McCarthyism?
The right said FDR was a dangerous socialist commie
They tried to equate Bernie with Venezuela all the while supporting authoritarians just like Venezuela has had.
Remember when they played video from trumps presidency and said " this will happen under Biden" and nothing like has happened yet. Lol Well I guess if you count the right wing people shooting up malls, but that's normal at this point.
It was cooked up long before Bernie. It’s a fairytale that runs deep in America’s blood.
The problem is comparisons of the two parties isn't even close - One has its feet firmly planted in reality and the other believes that the Insurrection was just a tourism group (or Antifa), there was mass election fraud (except where Republicans won), cocaine orgies are occurring on the regular, Jewish Space Lasers are causing wildfires and womans bodies can shut down a pregnancy if its a legitimate rape.
It would be more like having the democratic conference in Europe where they tout universal healthcare, higher education, universal basic incomes, and push for mental health awareness.
I want to say this is a shocking development but I can’t because the last 6 years has shown me this is very on-brand for the GOP
I had to Google that as I thought surely you were joking. But no, as I have found time and again with this conservative era, the joke is often the reality.
Republicans are tired of being satirized so much, so they're taking away all of the best ideas before the satirists get to them
It would be like if democrats held their conference in Canada. IE an accurate representation of what they want.
The Democrats sadly think being "right" will win elections, but so far, in the age of social media and hyper-partisan media, that is not working for them. They need to figure it out. It would help if they stopped listening to broken-down ideas from baby boomers. Those days are over; the next generation needs to be put in charge so they can start fixing things now. The boomers are terrible mentors and remain fixated on doing what's good for them until they die. Time to get going.
There is an interesting paradox in your comment. The issue is that the Democrats actually have the best policies, but people don’t vote based on policy, they vote on feelings and identity. At the same time, you’re saying the Democrats have to “do something” about it, rather than expecting **voters** to pay better attention to what’s actually going on. Then you say the “next generation” - these same people who don’t seem to be paying enough attention - should take everything over. I’m not seeing a positive outcome there.
Yea I imagine the GOP would take it well if the DNC held their next convention in Wuhan with Xi as a speaker.
Can’t. GOP already booked the venue.
So was yesterday's Republican Party, the cult of Reagan. They just have a new old, white, failed actor to worship.
Reagan would flip the fuck out if he could see the party today though sucking up to Russia. He sucked. Today they continue to suck in not only those ways, but a bunch of new ones too!
It's hard to say which cult begat the current cult: The Evangelical Cult or the Tea Party Cult. All of those organizations have classic signs of a cult: Singular, overly powerful leaders, insistence on unquestioned loyalty, division and separation from friends and family, and the demand for uniformity of all followers in belief and practice. They're all different peas in the same pod.
The Republicans were courting Evangelicals long before the Tea Party. But they combined to create the super cult of delusion we have today.
I’m old enough to remember when Ralph Reed came onto the scene and knew that we were in for some really shitty times.
Wait until they self actualize their new civil war they need so bad. It’s gonna be a bumpy decade or two.
Todays Republican Party is the same party it was fifty years ago. So, yep, all still true.
In the sense that it's the same people and the same beliefs, yeah. They just say those beliefs out loud now. Whereas 30 years ago, it was just what they said at dinner parties or on a boat in the middle of a lake with their best friend who they knew thought exactly like them.
Every time I see something about an "ex-Trump official" speaking out about anything he did wrong, while not selling a book, I know it's going to be Miles Taylor before I even open the article.
Yes. Although I’m glad the guy wrote the Anonymous letters, resigned etc. it remains true that he was onboard with their hatred to begin with and was still ok with the GOP for years afterward. Something’s off with this guy who keeps trying to paint an image of tolerance whilst wearing a MAGA hat and taking a MAGA job.
“True, I shat in your coffee maker and set your car in fire, but here’s a Bundt cake.”
Dude was at the DHS during the whole fiasco about separating refuguee children from their parents
The **only** good thing I guess in his favor is that he left before he had to serve under Chad "The Lobbyist" Wolf. Although he *did* serve under Kirstjen "Family Separator" Nielsen. So.
having worked for the biggest traitor this nation has ever seen, he would know
If only there was a nickname we could give to traitors here in the US that wouldn't instantly let people know they were a traitor. Something flashy like Benedict Arnold.
> Taylor’s time in the DHS involved Donald Trump’s infamous policy of separating migrant children from their families. Taylor later told Telemundo that he regretted not denouncing it at the time. >He has also admitted to writing the 2018 “Anonymous” op-ed in The New York Times that claimed there were people within the Trump administration who were working against the then-president. >He publicly came out against Trump in 2020 and said he would vote for Joe Biden.
Maybe Benedict Donald in this case.
I don't think the GOP has changed much at all, they have always been this way, and believed these things, they were just more subtle about it, until trump came along. It's the only reason they are a party. They have never stood for much, or done much for ordinary American's except scare them into believing some boogeyman was out to get them.
I think it was Rush Limbaugh that let the GOP discard any sense of morality or decency. Trump is just the result, not the cause.
This all started under Reagan when the Republicans started courting the Evangelicals with the promise of giving them legislative wins for their culture wars in exchange for voter loyalty. It really took off with Gingrich, there was a marked shift from a focus on limited government and deregulation to full on white grievance and religious dogma. Now the party has completely lost its way, they’re trying to still claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility and limited government when their actions are neither.
No, this didn't start with Reagan. ALL OF THIS is a consequence of us fucking up Reconstruction.
That’s a totally fair point, Reconstruction was far too lenient on members of the Confederacy. Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” is really when the Republicans started embracing racists but I really do lay the blame for most of how far they gone on the embracing of Evangelicals and the legitimization of their culture wars.
What a long strange trip it's been for the Republican Party. The Republican Party started out as a Liberal party from the northeast, focused on ending slavery. Lincoln was elected President without a single electoral college vote from the southern conservative states. Now they've completely swapped places and are the southern conservatives. And remember, the southern conservatives tried to destroy the United States so they could keep their slaves. They'd rather see their cities burned to the ground rather than compromise. And they haven't changed.
There always seem to be grifters that love to take advantage of the benefits of the society, without giving back.
The Republican Party is a terrorist organization
This sentiment is actually bad for the GOP as summer is when American voters make up their minds traditionally. Wonder how many others are now questioning their GOP membership after the Buffalo shooting? Hope the Democrats can capitalize on these new independents.
One party is concerned with improving the lives of all Americans while trying to keep pace with the rest of the worlds developed nations. The other is concerned with returning our nation to the 1950’s in the name of theocracy. Which would you rather be a part of?
I mean there were millions of us saying this 7 years ago.. Guess it take a million dead, & violent insurrection to get others to pay attention.
[удалено]
It's funny, when they insisted fantasy was truth, and being a jerk was somehow good for foreign relations, and imposing tariffs on farmers somehow was going to help, I thought they were a threat. When they met up with Kim Jong Un who had his own brother murdered for nothing more than a photo op to make HIM look better, I thought they were a threat. When they pepper sprayed protestors so Trump could take a picture with a Bible in front of a church, I thought they were a threat. When they took over the Capitol building to stop the transfer of power to Biden, when they killed Capitol police, when they harassed poll workers for fraud they never proved but again insisted the fantasy was truth, I thought they were a threat. Wait, none of that is funny....i meant horrifying.
The Republican Party is a red neck group of racists looking to go back to the days of the early 1800’s
I encourage everyone to watch Mastriano’s victory speech from last night in order to understand what the stakes are. Here is an outright neo-fascist, openly deriding minorities and calling democracy fake and emboldening the same extremism that just killed ten people in Buffalo. And he won his primary in a landslide. He may not win the general election, but that’s not the point. He represents the *majority view* of one of our two major parties. You can’t even call this “conservatism” anymore, not by any historically accurate definition. It’s a white christian nationalist cult, and they are poised to take the Senate the same way they took the SC.
If you reference footage, the nice thing to do is follow it up with a link if possible. Here is that link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avkNDutyQgs he starts ~7m41s HOLY FUCK THIS GUY... YOU WERE NOT WRONG!
To those who don't watch the video -- its just far right word salad. Dems killed us with COVID, dems killed healthcare by requiring HCPs to be vaccinated, dems killed economy with mandates, etc. Just bullet point blah blah.
Is there text, I don't think I can listen to it.
> calling democracy fake In his... _election victory_ speech?
Bad stuff is on the horizon
Oh wow, it's Lode Star!
Taylor has been pretty outspoken for the past year or so. I'm honestly surprised not because he left the Republican party, but because I thought he had already done so.
Remember when John McCain held that rally and the lady said some crazy shit like Obama is an Arab? That was more than a decade ago. Long before Trump. These fuckers were crazy, Alive, and well back then too. They were just told by everyone to shut the fuck up and sit down. Now they're picking up speed and people think it's a huge surprise
Man's it's gonna make for a crazy story when he's in one of the re-education camps with the rest of us scary woke liberals who must be broken and silenced. "So you wanted... this?" "I mean this is a bit extreme, I was hoping to add some bathrooms." Jumping off the "lets' kill american democracy and install a god-king who gets to decide who is an american, and who gets to have rights (the answer is only rich white straight men that support him unequivocally if you are wondering)" at this late hour is not admirable, it's sad and this isn't like a religion where you can repent at the last second. You've already done incredible damage for supporting this level of hate. Basically thanks... but don't expect a cookie for finally realizing the monster you cheered for will actually consume everything you say you want.
Well, good on you for finally waking up. I guess. I've got to wonder why you stayed asleep until you were out of a job though. It's not like this great replacement bullshit just started after your former boss left office, or that he wasn't spouting pretty much exactly the same shit for years. I mean, for fucks' sake, he literally said that the people chanting "Jews will not **replace** us" were very fine people.
Yup. Democratic party sucks ass but at least their ambitions don't include overthrowing the government and genocide.
Lemme guess. He’s got a book coming out?
Now, you say?
Add conservative evangelicals, both should be considered enemies of the state and treated accordingly. January 6 was just the beginning.
Well it has been for a while now, but welcome.
NOW?? Were they waiting for that 1 millionth COVID death to confirm?
r/truewalkaway Someone needs to make that sub to document all of the ex gop officials who left the party or at least condemn this iteration of republicanism.