Taking neither a Trad position, nor a "liberal" one, and arguing that things are not a binary choice, they come as close as they can to basically stating that Pope Francis is a bad pope in their opinion.
This is pretty much where I'm at. I admire the traddies in a lot of ways, I hold some liberal opinions, but I feel that the Pope is allowing attacks on orthodoxy and even sometimes doing that himself. It would appear I'm not alone in this view.
Well worth listening to on how to approach this crisis.
That being the responses of university heads from Harvard, M.I.T. and the University of Pennsylvania to easy questions, or really even a question, from Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, somebody who, when she appears here, normally appears here for selling her soul for Donald Trump.
Here, Stefanik, who asked the presidents of the three major universities if calling for the genocide of Jews violated the code of conduct at their schools. All three couldn't do it without massive qualification, which basically amounted to saying that calling for mass murder is okay, as long as you don't actually attempt it.
Liz Magill of Penn State had a particularly difficult time. As the New York Times has summarized it:
Let's be clear, it's only "context-dependent" if you have allowed your status as a lawyer to completely rot your brain, but then, a lot of lawyers have done just that. The easy answer to this is this:
Well if it doesn't, it sure ought to, there's no room for that sort of thing whatsoever and anyone calling for genocide of anyone ought to be expelled from higher education and run out of town on a rail.
It's just this sort of left wing muddy mindedness that has led us to the situation where a lot of Americans now feel it'd be better to appoint a Caudillo than elect a President. If the nation's academic, and mostly left wing, elite can't figure out that murdering Jews is bad, there's an existential problem in the American intellectual left. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes some people think that Mike Johnson declaring himself to be a latter-day Moses might not be so bad.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has governed the country for twenty years, is headed into a runoff election against Kemal Kilicdaroglu, having failed to secure 50% of the vote.
May 22, 2023
Ulster
Sinn Fein made big gains in local election in Northern Ireland this past week.
May 29, 2023
Turkey
Erdoğan unfortunately won the run-off election in Turkey.
May 30, 20223
Alberta, Canada
Danielle Smith's United Conservative Party won provincial elections yesterday.
July 23, 2023
Spain exhibited cheating the prophet in that, contrary to predictions, there were no clear winners in its election.
The With center-right Christian Democratic Party, Partido Popular (PP) came in first, winning 136 seats. The far-right Vox party, which was predicted to be a kingmaker, won 33 seats and it might through in with the PP. The ruling center-left Socialist party won 122 seats, with likely coalition partner Sumar at 31 seats.
But there's no telling, really. The Socialist Party is in power. . . it might throw in with the PP.
So, it's hard to tell who won. They're working out the deals now, but chances are that whoever won will not be in power long.
October 16, 2023
Left and center left parties took 248 seats in the 460-seat lower house of the Polish parliament, compared to the 200 taken by the governing Law and Justice party and 12 by a right wing partner.
The government of Poland will accordingly change in the first European defeat of the king of right wing populism/National Conservatism that most notably emerged in Hungary and recently can be imperfectly argued to have gained ground in several other European countries. It had made statements about openly following Hungary's lead. As recently as 2019 it was gaining ground.
And it might still be. Parliamentary politics are not the same as republican politics. The Law and Justice Party still was the largest vote getter, and the number of votes for it increased. Effectively, it has 212 seats to 248 seats held by various other opposition parties that cross a political spectrum. A government still has to be assembled and it will remain a major voice in the parliament.
November 23, 2023
Argentina.
Difficult to describe, socially conservative, a member of the Austrian school of economics, and sort of a libertarian, Javier Milei won the Argentine presidential election.
This election is so sui generis that it's hard to put in an international context. The temptation is always to view these sorts of shifts as to the hard right, or hard left, and this would sort of be hard right, but it also reflects a rejection of Argentina's political history going back for 90 years or so.
The Netherlands.
The Dutch Party for Freedom made big election gains in the Dutch parliament, signaling a large leap to the far right in the country. While being expressed as a shock, this has been going on in the Netherlands for some time.
This victory makes it possible that its leader, Geert Wilders, could become prime minister of the country, but only if he is able to put together a coalition with other right wing and center right wing parties.
The party is strongly anti immigrant and wishes to leave the European Union.
As a climate justice movement, we have to listen to the voices of those who are being oppressed and those who are fighting for freedom and for justice. Otherwise, there can be no climate justice without international solidarity.
Greta Thurnberg.
And, now Thurnberg, having sided with murder, has jumped the shark.
There's no connection whatsoever, and even less than that, with the situation in the Middle East and the climate,
But this is typical. In the 20s and 30s the American left came around to supporting Stalin in many instances. Why? Well, um, solidarity?
And this is why, in the end, that such movements lose their steam. Here a man joined the stage to protest the diversion of the protest. His actions were wrong, but his point was correct.
Of course the point will be made that being concerned for the Palestinians as a people, isn't the same as support for Hamas, and at least on an intellectual level, that's true. And as much as possible that can be done should be done to ease the humanitarian crisis that has come about.
But, by the same token, we should note, the East Prussians were not the same thing as the SS. They were displaced, permanently, in 1945 and nobody, outside the East Prussians, has shed a tear about. Hor's de combat.
Moreover, you can't really cross over from poster child for a cause, and frankly that's what she did, to left wing general agitator all at once and in this fashion. It discredits the movement you came from, particularly with the nonsensical effort to link the two.
But, never mind. The American left (and of course she's not part of that) supported every left wing cause of the 20s and 30s before burying their history of doing that in the late 40s and 50s. It didn't help them in the end, and they've never been able to really wash the blood off.
Annaba, Algeria, late 19th Century. Why? Well, read below.
We must be clear that the modernization of the Church on the great anthropological questions comes through Europe. In the West, there is greater sensitivity towards certain issues such as gender or homosexuality than in Asia or Africa. Although in Europe and the United States the Church is in decline, paradoxically the young Churches that are growing in Asia or Africa are the most conservative. Western societies are moving towards a new idea of mankind, and that game is undoubtedly being played in Europe, which is why there are so many European cardinals in this consistory
Piero Schiavazzi, professor of Vatican Geopolitics at Link University in Rome.
Wow, talk about missing the point.
I don't know why the Pope picks the Cardinals that he does, but if this is the reason, it shows a real misappreciation of the evidence.
The church is on the rise in Asia and Africa, where the parishioners are conservative.
It's in decline in Europe, although that decline tends to be misunderstood and to some degree exaggerated, where contemplating "anthropological questions" is the rage. It really isn't in decline in the US in the way that's asserted, as overall numbers remain steady, but partially due to immigration. And not noted by Signore Schiavazzi, conservatism is on the rise in younger American Catholics.
Indeed, also in the West, a recent survey showed that amongst Australian Catholic women, younger women were noticeably more conservative than older ones.
So appoint European Cardinals who are sensitive to the issues where the Church is failing?
Eh?
The old maxim is that nothing succeeds like success, to which we must presume that nothing fails like failure.
All over the globe, and not just in religion, the older generations that advanced the liberalism of the 70s, 80s, and 90s continue to remain in power in significant ways and don't seem to grasp that the failed legacy of that is not something that younger generations, heavily impacted by it, wish to advance further.
The impact of Cardinal appointments is much like that of Supreme Court Justices. It's difficult to tell what they'll really do and even more difficult to tell what a Pope will do at first. But if Signore Schiavazzi is correct, this is a bad sign. Once again, the Papacy will not make major doctrinal changes, because it cannot, but there have been historic periods of Church failure (some involving laxity) that resulted in large departures from the Church. History, we're told, doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. A sort of small Counter Reformation of sorts is going on amongst the young, while at higher levels the necessity for that seems to be not only not appreciated, but perhaps not even grasped.
Also not grasped, seemingly, anywhere in the West is that the colonial era is over. We apparently have never understood that wind the "winds of change" swept colonial powers out of Africa and Asia, it also swept the cultural balance of the world.
Europe's impact on the world was enormous culturally. Indeed, it triumphed. But that culture was a Christian one, no matter how poorly grasped that was and no matter how poorly expressed. Much of what we take for granted, indeed liberalism itself, about "modern culture" is Christian, and pretty much exclusively Christian, in origin. It's no accident that cultural decay has set in, in the West, as the Christian roots have is culture have been strained by a long competing culture, that of consumerism, of which both advanced consumer society and socialism are expressions.
St. Augustine. He was a Berber.
But Christianity itself, at least Apostolic Christianity in the form of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, has never been a European thing. Indeed, the fundamental event of European culture was the spread of (Apostolic/Catholic) Christianity within it, which forever changed it. But Christianity didn't come out of Europe, and indeed it took the rise of Islam to cause there to be a temporary hiatus in it having a major African expression. St. Augustine of Hippo was a Berber, not a European, and the Bishop of Hippo Regius, which is modern Annaba, Algeria.
Of course, all of the Apostles were Jews from the Middle East. The first Pope, Peter, was from modern Israel. St. Paul, who dealt with what Signore Schiavazzi calls a "new idea of mankind", as there are no new ideas really, and dismissed the conduct that we now are re contemplating as, well whatever we're re contemplating, was from Tarsus, in what is modern Turkey and which was then part of the Greco Roman world. Pope Victor I, who died in 199, was a Berber. Pope Miltiades was also a North African, as was Pope Gelasius (who was for strict Catholic orthodoxy). Pope Saint Anicetus was a Syrian as was Pope Sisinnius, Pope Constantine, and Pope Gregory III.
What ended the strong influence of North Africa, of course, was the Islamic conquest of the region, although remnant North African Catholic churches held on until the early 1400s. Even as Christianity has spread around the world, and conquered almost all of non Arab and non Berber Africa, it's been easy to forget that its not a Eurpean religion.
That mistaken impression is about to end, and it can't end soon enough. Trying to somehow assume that decaying European culture needs to be accommodated, if that's occurring, is a mistake. It needs to be reformed, and it will be, and a rising Africa and Asia will be part of that.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2.
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of
President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4.
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5.
The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
It is increasingly clear that the 14th Amendment is going to be used as a legal basis to challenge Donald Trump's ability to be a Presidential nominee this election.
And legal scholars, weighting in, have read this language to bar his ability to do so. Two non-profit legal groups have made it known that they are going to be filing suits.
I suppose we should list running, at the present time, in this sad show.
President.
Democrats:
Joe Biden; the incumbent.
While a majority of Democrats and voters in general are disenchanted with the aged President, he will take the nomination absent something unexpected occurring.
Marianne Williamson.
Gadfly. Williamson mostly serves to remind voters that there are some real wackadoodles in the Democratic Party.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
As if Williamson wasn't enough of a wackadoodle. Kennedy is receiving attention, but his candidacy isn't likely to go anywhere. Known for some unconventional views.
Republicans.
Donald Trump.
The former President, who is facing multiple felony charges, but who has a large number of fanatic followers in spite of having nearly every deficit as a candidate imaginable.
Nikki Haley
In a normal election cycle, we could expect Haley to do well.
Vivek Ramaswamy.
Youngest candidate, oddly tacking to the right of Trump on some things, and getting increasingly extreme as the election goes on.
Perry Johnson,
largely unknown businessman. Age 75. Because we need more old people to run for this office.
Larry Elder
Conservative African American radio host. 71 years of age, and first time candidate.
Asa Hutchinson.
Former Governor of Arkansas and conventional, non MAGA, Republican. Age 72.
Tim Scott.
African American Senator from South Carolina.
Ron DeSantis
Governor of Florida.
Chris Christie
Former Governor of New Jersey. Blunt anti Trump candidate.
Mike Pence.
Boring, if briefly heroic, former Vice President.
Doug Burgum
Governor of North Dakota who can't muster up enough courage to discuss Trump's coup.
Will Hurd
Congressman from Texas.
Steve Laffey
A politician you've never heard of but who is apparently on the New Hampshire ballot.
Ryan Binkley
A Texas businessman and Protestant Pastor.
Green Party
Cornel West.
West would be familiar to watchers of news shows and PBS from the late 20th Century, but his candidacy here nearly reduces him to gadfly status.
American Solidarity Party
Peter Sonski
Sonski is a businessman who is the ASP's choice for President this year. The party is a Christian Democratic Party that ought to receive more attention, and would in a fairer system.
Lurking on the outside of all of this is No Labels, which in spite of the existence of third parties, threatens to launch a non-party third party run at the Oval Office. Joe Manchin is continually mentioned as its potential candidate, although the Democrats desperately hope he'll stay in the Senate.
In terms of more local races:
U.S. Senate
Republicans
John Barrasso, maybe?
The long serving Senator has not announced if he's running or not. Right now, because it's pretty obvious that Mitch McConnell is headed on to the next realm, he stands to potentially be Senate Majority Leader.
Reid Rasner.
Rasner has announced and is running essentially as a far right populist. If Barrasso stays in, his campaign will be forgotten within days of the primary election.
September 3, 2023
The Heritage Foundation and others have worked out a Project 2025 as a plan to radically reshape the Federal Government should Trump come to power.
As the Heritage Foundation would have it:
The fourth pillar of Project 2025 is our 180-day Transition Playbook and includes a comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency. Only through the implementation of specific action plans at each agency will the next conservative presidential Administration be successful.
Pillar IV will provides the next President a roadmap for doing just that. To learn more about Project 2025’s vision for a conservative administration, please read our recently published book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.
September 7, 2023
Six Colorado voters have filed an action seeking to bar Donald Trump from running for election under the 14th Amendment. The complaint is a phenomenal 115 pages long and is effectively a brief.
The relief sought is as follows:
This is the second such lawsuit that's been filed. The first was dismissed, although I haven't researched why. Lack of standing would be my guess.
One of these suits is going to hit home and succeed. Some might note that Trump is not likely to prevail in the general election in Colorado anyhow, but this would mean that Colorado's primary votes would go to another GOP candidate, should it succeed.
As noted, somewhere it will, and depending upon when it happens, this issue will have to go to the Supreme Court rapidly. While predicting the ultimate outcome is hazardous, my guess is that there's a fair chance that the Supreme Court will ultimately hold that Trump is not qualified to run.
cont:
So on the same day a lawsuit was filed in Colorado, Secretary of State Gray wrote to the SoS of New Hampshire, stating:
How much sway Wyoming has with New Hampshire, or for that matter any state's SoS with another's, is an open question, but the direction of this seems clear. Some state is going to find Trump can't be on the ballot and this will have to go to the Supreme Court. That will determine the issue for every state.
Gray touches upon, but doesn't really answer, an important issue here, that being, how is it to be determined that a person was in an insurrection? Being convicted of having been in one, under a statute that could give rise to that determination, is one thing, and in fact odds are good that Trump will have been by November 2024. But that clearly isn't, I think, required by the 14th Amendment for the reason that Secretary Gray notes, the Civil War example. Nobody was tried for the crime of having engaged in a treasonous rebellion against the United States following the Civil War. Clearly at the time the mere presumption of Confederate service was enough. As that's the only example, it would seem that presumption would operate here as well such that, if a SoS determines that Trump aided and abetted an insurrection, it would be up to Trump to prove that he did not.
The lawsuits will work differently, of course, as they have that as part of their allegations, and therefore That issue will be for them to prove at trial, or perhaps by motion.
September 11, 2024
Latest polls put Trump ahead of Biden in the General Election.
That presumes, of course, that they both win their nominations. Democratic spokesmen fielded to the weekend shows are trying to brush it off by noting that the economy is strong, unemployment low, and there are 14 months left to go. But it's a bad sign for Biden, no matter what.
This would suggest that both Democrats and rank and file (not populist) Republicans need to wake up. If Trump takes the Oval Office, it will complete the conversion of the GOP into a right wing populist party which will have huge impacts on the country for the foreseen future, and certainly during the next four years.
If Republicans are to take him on, what they really need to do is to meet at this time and determine that those leaning into Trump should get out. They're not going to do anything. They need to get their field down as small as possible.
For the Democrats, they need to meet with Joe and propose a moderate substitute.
September 14, 2023
Legislators have criticized a ballot initiative to limit property tax in Wyoming, noting that it would strip funding for schools.
They're correct.
A lot of the local anger over property taxes is frankly ironic. For decades, Wyoming communities have encouraged relocation into the state, which ipso facto brings in wealth and raises property values overall. Indeed, many relocatees upgrade their dwellings by doing so. Meanwhile, local government and infrastructure needs remain, if not in fact grow.
The solution is more distributist, localist and involving subsidiarity and solidarity, which was the case all along.
Vivek Ramaswamy vowed to cut the federal workforce by 75% by the end of his term if elected, which is frankly absurd.\
Mitt Romney has announced that he will not be running for reelection. This brought out the predictable assortment of Trump trolls condemning Romney for not being a Trump troll. It also brougth the following comment from the former President:
There is something deeply weird about comments like this coming from Trump. With all the attention to Biden's mental status, there's little with Trump, but something is off with him.
September 19, 2023
President Trump was interviewed by the new host of Meet The Press.
The interview is revealing for the way in which Trump has become so proficient at lying, he sounds credible while doing so, helping to provide some insight to why his followers believe him. He spouts lies with such routine blandness that they sound like somebody repeating what he believes to be the truth. If people only listened to Trump, you may well be convinced that the falsehoods reflect reality.
September 21, 2023
The Natrona County GOP invited WyoRino to a meeting they held to debate him/her/they. Some members of the county's Republican Party have been in the crosshairs of the anonymous blogger. Predictably, he didn't show up to the event, and so conservative Cowboy State Daily's not so conservative Op Ed columnist Rod Miller had nobody to debate. From reading about it, some other populists did show up, however.
Now, one of the non Natrona County GOP legislators, Larry Craigo of Johnson County, is the subject of an anonymous mailer. He's called that person/persons cowardly.
There's something interesting going on here.
Whoever is behind these efforts, and it of course may be a collection of people has spare money to devote to this effort. I've seen a large vinyl WyoRINO banner locally, and WyoRINO bought a billboard here as well.
Spare cash, far right wing, those are the clues really.
Trump has announced that he's going to Michigan rather than the next debate. This will likely be pretty scripted, as the UAW isn't exactly pro Trump, even if many of its rust belt employees share many of his non labor views.
Robert Reich is here to tell you, along with every other Democratic pundit, that if you aren't voting for Joe Biden, you are a traitor to democracy. Indeed, he states:
Let me be absolutely clear. Third-party groups such as No Labels and the Green Party are in effect front groups for Trump in 2024, and should be treated as such.
That's BS.
Let's be frank, the Democratic Party's love of democracy was rediscovered during the insurrection. At that point, it suddenly realized that anti-democratic forces are bad. Prior to that, and even now, what it really is for is rule by Liberal Ivy League Educated Judges.
The Democrats regard voters as besotted fools. They have for years, with it really becoming apparent following 1973's Roe v. Wade decision. They still feel that way. They hate the thought that courts can't descend from wooden walls and tell the peasantry what to think.
One of the things that they hate the most about recent years is that the Supreme Court has torn down some totally defective prior decision and told the people that they'll just have to figure things out for themselves. The Court, for example, hasn't "taken away" a non-existent "right to abortion". There was never one. The Court could have decided, on natural law principles, that abortion is contrary to the laws of nature on an existential basis and declared a right to life, but it didn't do that, in spite of all the howling. It just said that people, through their state legislatures, have to figure this out for themselves.
The Democrats hate that thought, and for good reason. It means that in many places, if left to their own devices, people would decide all sorts of things that Democrats regard as individualistic rights aren't. And the reason is plain. The driving force of the Democratic Party essentially believes that if you regard yourself as a feline asexual Bhutanese princess, you should be able to force everyone else to agree with you. Most people just don't think that way, however.
That doesn't mean that Trump should be elected, either. The GOP has abandoned democracy in favor of authoritarianism, and that always leads to disaster. The dirty little secret as to why Trump has so much support in the rank and file of the GOP isn't because most Republicans believe the election was stolen, no matter what they say, but rather than they've grown so disgusted with the Democratic Party and establishment Republicans that they no longer regard Democrats or establishment Republicans as legitimate, and therefore don't think they should count. Indeed, we have gotten to where we are at as the Democrats regard voters as unwashed vulgarians who should merely be entertained with the thought their votes mean something, the country club Republicans regard the electorate as mindless consumers whose opinions don't count, and a certain section of that electorate just has had enough of it.
In other words, the Democrats viewed the electorate as too stupid to influence anything, and the Republicans viewed them as Walmart customers only.
That this may mean the end of American democracy is both parties' fault.
That either of those parties would now have the gall to suggest that parties that actually reflect people's views shouldn't be voted for is maddening. If we'd had parties that actually reflected people's views all along, we wouldn't be here now. And the thought that the diversity of political opinion can be summed up with two choices is flatly bizarre.
The argument, by either party, that "you must vote for us or else it's Trump" is an argument of last resort. The challenge for the Democrats isn't to present Biden as the only choice to Trump, but to give the voters somebody they feel comfortable with. Somebody who isn't 80 years old and hasn't gone so far to the left. The challenge for Republicans, which may be a party that is now too far gone, is to give us somebody who will really do conservative, but not fascist, things rather than just say they will.
And frankly, the challenge for American democracy is to make a choice between Republicans and Democrats much, much less important. Why aren't there members of the Green Party and the American Solidarity Party in Congress? Why do the Paul's run as Republicans when they're really Libertarians? Why does Bernie Sanders "caucus" with the Democrats when he should be looking for a Socialist to join him? These are questions that shouldn't have to be asked.
This, and it's not a new theme here, took a look at how we got to where we are, where populism has taken over the Republican Party. How, the question ultimately is, can people who see the plaint truth about Donald Trump and his attempt to subvert American democracy continue to support him?
Most of the comments along these lines never really are able to answer the question. Indeed, we haven't here. That's because they all assume that most people are rational, and this is at least somewhat true, and that most people will yield to truth in the end, which is also somewhat true. Indeed, droves of people have left the Republican Party and become independents. However, and this is important, more than 1 million voters across 43 states switched to the Republican Party from 2021 to 2022, and that trend hasn't stopped.
That is, while a lot of educated "country club" or middle class conservatives have abandoned the GOP, a lot of people are coming in. And they're coming in during the current political atmosphere.
Which leads us to this.
What if it isn't the case, deep down, that populist Republicans, who now control the GOP, aren't aware that Donald Trump is lying about losing the election. What if, at least deep down, and on some level, they know that he's lying.
What would that mean?
Well, what it would mean is that the disaffected class that intends to vote for a Rich Man north of Richmond while complaining about Rich Men North of Richmond have reached to the point where they no longer regard their class as legitimate, and therefore what they are doing and supporting as completely legitimate, because the other view doesn't count.
Consider this Facebook exchange I saw the other day:
"I almost lost my Corvette and my cat!"
All reactions:
2222
27 comments
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Their bullshit needs to end through constitional revolt.
Maybe Republican voters aren't really willing to believe every sort of lie, or at least not in the way baffled pundits of all types are baffled by, myself included.
Maybe they know they're lies, but lies that seem, to them, to serve a greater truth, in their view.
And that's what is really scary.
The first comment, boxed in the way some people like to do with Facebook comments, refers to one of Joe Biden's endless blundering statements, which in this case related his bad experience with a house fire to what occured on Maui. It was a really goofball thing to say. But the fact of the matter is that there isn't anything Joe Biden says that populists don't hate, even things they would have fully supported if he hadn't said them. And that's because Biden, who started off a centrist, went to the center left, and then went fully to the left, is a representative of Democrats, whom the populists essentially see asn objectively evil.
This is almost impossible for main stream and conventional Americans to grasp, and even though in the populist movement who fairly clearly hold these views would be unwilling to usually admit them in this fashion, but all the signs are there.
Class reduction through objectification is an old and very established thing.
The Communist Parties of the world practiced this extensively. They represented "the workers" or "the people". Their opponents were exploiters of the people, in their propaganda. Ultimately, that meant that they could be killed in the millions, as they weren't really people.
The Nazis did this with the Jews, as well as with the Slavs. Jews and Slavs were lessor, in their propaganda, although bizarrely they were also supposed to be a super crafty opponent. Never mind that none of that was true or that any rational thinking would dispel such an absurdity, that's what they promoted and that's what the German people adopted, resulting in the death of millions.
Lesser fascist movements and near fascist movements held the same view of Communists, and to some extent Socialist, that the Nazi Party did, which hated Communists along with the Jews (and indeed generally assumed that all Communists were Jewish), and therefore felt perfectly justified in suppressing them to the point of death if necessary. Of course, in many places, the Communists (who weren't majority Jewish by any means) felt the same way about right wing movements. At any rate, therefore, this produced severely repressing governments like that of the Italian fascists or Spanish Francoist, who nonetheless quite frankly enjoyed widespread popularity with large segments of their people.
And notable with all of these movements, they reduced their ideology, at the street level, to a single man.
The Nazis of course reduced it to Hitler. Indeed, the Führerprinzip held that everything should "work towards the Führer. People didn't really know what Hitler might want to do on any day to day level, but they generally could grasp it, and that was the thing to do.
Hitler in armor as "The Standard Bearer". I doubt Hiter ever rode a horse, and certainly not one like this, but goofball uberheroic portraits of autocrats is an autocratic thing. Witness all the portraits of Trump as a Revolutionary War patriot when he was never in the service.
And the Italians did that with Mussolini,
Typical portrait of Mussolini, focusing on his face with his jaw jutting out defiantly. To most people, he looks like a jackass, but to true believers, this was his admired visage.
And the Reds in Russia did it twice, first with Lenin, and then with Stalin, before becoming sufficiently entrenched that later leaders didn't need a personality cult.
The PRC did it with Mao, and North Korea has done it with every single one of their leaders.
And all of this is highly instructive.
Reduced to a man, thinking over the complicated failed thesis that these movements put forth was unnecessary. People didn't read Mein Kampf. Most Russians at the time of the Revolution could barely read, and they weren't going to sit down a read a pamphlet by a British Library Butt Sitter. Most Chinese weren't going to bother with Mao's Little Red Book. People just figured that they weren't doing well, and it was somebody else's fault, and it seemed that the Communist, the Fascists, etc. ,had their back and grasped it, at least right up until the state came for them, or conscripted them, or confiscated everything they had.
Or, by way of another example, it may very well be the case that Southern secessionist grasped that blacks were in fact people and equal people at that. Their actions clearly demonstrated, that, from entrusting their children to slaves for care to the Jeffersonian expedient to wifely succession.
In each of these instances, it should be noted, the supposed "difference" was emphasized as an excuse for acting with extreme bias towards the other group. Nazis called their opponents Untermenschen, "below people". American Southerners certainly portrayed blacks that way.
German propaganda poster, which appears to portray Soviet paratroopers as Untermensch.
Have you listed to the comments of populists?
Hearing random Republicans accuse Democrats of being Marxists and Socialists is common. Republicans that don't toe the extreme right wing line are "RINOS" or Democrats, with that being said as if being a Democrat meant you were an Untermensch, which pretty much what is meant. Even run of hte mill Republican conservatives in Congress, who at one time would have "disagreed with my distinguished colleagues" now hurl the invective "Democrat" or accuse somebody of "supporting Biden's radical. . . " as if there's any truth to the accusation. It's pretty much the same thing as a Communist in Stalin's ear accusing somebody of harboring incorrect views, of a Nazi accusing somebody of being Jewish, or of a pre-1970 Southerner claiming that "somebody has a 'nigga' in the wood pile", without any credit being given, respectively, to 1) harboring different views isn't a criminal act, 2) being Jewish isn't either, and 3) having African American ancestry (which a huge number of Southerners do) isn't shameful, except for the compulsion that ancestry may indicate.
I fear we're here:
And if we are, that answer the question of why criminal activity doesn't phase some Trump supporters.
Now, this doesn't explain it all. Some of it is the phenomenon of extreme frustration with having been long ignored. Some of it is a long-running American belief in conspiracy theories. Some of it is the disbelief that thing could have really gotten so astray, which would mean, in part, that we let them go so badly. But not all of it, and not all populists.
The question is, therefore, how large is this group, and what does that mean? If Trump takes the Oval Office a second time, it will be disastrous, although to what extent, cannot yet be told.
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