GOP slouches into the Crazy -IMMIGRATION | Trump Firehose of anti-immigrant posts and rhetoric

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The problem the Trump campaign and the Republican Party is facing is that they've effectively removed all of the real adults from the campaign/party. In 2016, Trump and his brand of bat-shit crazy folks were new enough that the party apparatus was full of folks who could at least provide some protection from his crazy. His administration, while led by the BSC brigade, was largely staffed by rank-and-file Pubs who weren't onboard with all of his crazy and so they either prevented the crazy from leaking out or, at a minimum, shaped it to be a bit less crazy. In 2020, Trump wasn't able to completely revamp everything, especially in the middle of the pandemic, so while the BSC brigade had taken on more authority and had been able to fill out more of the campaign staff with like-minded folks, there was still enough rank-and-file Pubs (especially from Pence's side) to hold things together.

However, four additional years plus being able to focus on political stuff rather than governing has allowed Trump and his BSC brigade to essentially infiltrate every part of the Republican Party. Almost anyone willing to stand up to Trump and his folks have either voluntarily left or been kicked out of their roles with the party and Trump's entire campaign has been rebuilt in his BSC image. IMHO, that's a big part of why Trump went with Vance as his VP choice rather than a candidate more established on the national political scene, no worries that Vance would have his own staff of any size he'd want to bring on and try to integrate into the campaign/party staff. At this point, everything in the Republican Party and, especially in Trump's campaign, are fully aligned with the absolute insanity that is Trump and his BSC inner circle and there is nothting left to stop that insanity from being on full display.

The really scary part is that, despite all of this, the election will be close and there's a far greater chance than there should be that Trump may be elected.
 
Good commentary on the whole migrant pet-eating farce from Defector's David Roth, who in my opinion has always been dead on when it comes to Trump and related subjects:

defector.com

What A Lie Is For | Defector

At the most basic level, there is just no percentage in trying to parse a political campaign’s decision to try to incite a pogrom. It does a favor to the people doing it, for one thing, because even assessing it along the lines of any other campaign decision provides a cosmetic coat of reason to […]
defector.com defector.com

Which leaves us with this: One of the two biggest political parties in the country, the one that controls the highest courts, and has as a decent-sized and growing segment of its base people who like to make bomb threats and live in a prolonged and deranging fantasy of political violence. That party offers its base nothing but the license to further lavish over those fantasies, as well as the teasing possibility that they will someday be permitted to make them real. Last Friday, at a rally, Trump said that he would deport Springfield's Haitian community, which is living and working in this country legally, en masse, to Venezuela. All of these people are unserious and behave unseriously, but it would be foolish to assume they don't mean it.

That is it. The tide rushes out on everything else, every other idea that the conservative movement (never very convincingly) pretended to have, and leaves this behind. The actual beliefs are self-evident: that the suffering of others is a tool, or a toy; that everyone else in the world is a threat or an obstacle or something to wad up and throw away; that even the most abstracted inconveniencing of their own sainted comfort is tantamount to the end of the world. A cohort of the most fearful and most credulous and most idly vicious people this country has ever produced, who have lately awakened to some strange and terrible appetites and whose only real faith is in their own unshameable blamelessness, watches to see what will happen next. This is what the lie is for—to freeze this uneasy moment in place and hold it there forever, a threat unspooling endlessly over the horizon, not so much into the future as instead of it.
 
rodoheel said:
Good commentary on the whole migrant pet-eating farce from Defector's David Roth, who in my opinion has always been dead on when it comes to Trump and related subjects:

defector.com

What A Lie Is For | Defector

At the most basic level, there is just no percentage in trying to parse a political campaign’s decision to try to incite a pogrom. It does a favor to the people doing it, for one thing, because even assessing it along the lines of any other campaign decision provides a cosmetic coat of reason to […]
defector.com defector.com

Which leaves us with this: One of the two biggest political parties in the country, the one that controls the highest courts, and has as a decent-sized and growing segment of its base people who like to make bomb threats and live in a prolonged and deranging fantasy of political violence. That party offers its base nothing but the license to further lavish over those fantasies, as well as the teasing possibility that they will someday be permitted to make them real. Last Friday, at a rally, Trump said that he would deport Springfield's Haitian community, which is living and working in this country legally, en masse, to Venezuela. All of these people are unserious and behave unseriously, but it would be foolish to assume they don't mean it.

That is it. The tide rushes out on everything else, every other idea that the conservative movement (never very convincingly) pretended to have, and leaves this behind. The actual beliefs are self-evident: that the suffering of others is a tool, or a toy; that everyone else in the world is a threat or an obstacle or something to wad up and throw away; that even the most abstracted inconveniencing of their own sainted comfort is tantamount to the end of the world. A cohort of the most fearful and most credulous and most idly vicious people this country has ever produced, who have lately awakened to some strange and terrible appetites and whose only real faith is in their own unshameable blamelessness, watches to see what will happen next. This is what the lie is for—to freeze this uneasy moment in place and hold it there forever, a threat unspooling endlessly over the horizon, not so much into the future as instead of it.
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I know the author hasn't met HY, but damn if he didn't just read him to filth.
 
lightbluenc said:
Never seen it articulated so perfectly his way before.

"The actual beliefs are self-evident: that the suffering of others is a tool, or a toy; that everyone else in the world is a threat or an obstacle or something to wad up and throw away; that even the most abstracted inconveniencing of their own sainted comfort is tantamount to the end of the world."
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I really liked the article and even more so liked that very line you quoted.

It makes me wonder if the unifying principle of the MAGA movement is a sense of collective narcissism.
 
SnoopRob said:
I really liked the article and even more so liked that very line you quoted.

It makes me wonder if the unifying principle of the MAGA movement is a sense of collective narcissism.
Click to expand...
I don’t think it’s narcissism in the clinical sense, although the most prominent MAGAs are almost universally narcissists. I think it’s the intersection of fear and social isolation. Robert Putnam has been all over this for decades now.

thehill.com

Social media, isolation and Trump-style politics are tearing our nation apart

Political polarization in the U.S. has reached a dangerous level, with social media platforms promoting misinformation and distrust, leading to extremism and alienation, and a lack of shared experi…
thehill.com

Harvard Professor Robert Putnam pointed to early warning signs of grudges and grievances silencing talk among Americans in his 2000 book, “Bowling Alone.” He noted declining participation in group activities such as going to church, bowling leagues and scouting. Not every American man has to serve in the military.

As a result, Americans today have fewer shared experiences — across generations, races and social classes. The lack of people getting together is the main driver of our political dysfunction.
 
lawtig02 said:
Harvard Professor Robert Putnam pointed to early warning signs of grudges and grievances silencing talk among Americans in his 2000 book, “Bowling Alone.” He noted declining participation in group activities such as going to church, bowling leagues and scouting. Not every American man has to serve in the military.

As a result, Americans today have fewer shared experiences — across generations, races and social classes. The lack of people getting together is the main driver of our political dysfunction.
Click to expand...
I'll give Putnam some due, but it's also true that in the 1970s, disco, grapefruit and bowling leagues were popular. None are now. Was the bowling league that important?

Hasn't the "guys get together, drink beer and bowl" just been replaced by "guys get together at BW3, drink beer, eat some wings, and watch sports on big screen TVs"? Is the former really more pro-community than the latter? And churches -- they are part of the problem, not part of the solution!
 
Yes when I think of church and scouting, I always think "well those are the places that historically have been super duper diverse and integrated!"
 
aGDevil2k said:
Yes when I think of church and scouting, I always think "well those are the places that historically have been super duper diverse and integrated!"
Click to expand...
yeah, exactly. those "shared experiences" he refers to were not crossing race and social class very much if at all.
 
superrific said:
I'll give Putnam some due, but it's also true that in the 1970s, disco, grapefruit and bowling leagues were popular. None are now. Was the bowling league that important?

Hasn't the "guys get together, drink beer and bowl" just been replaced by "guys get together at BW3, drink beer, eat some wings, and watch sports on big screen TVs"? Is the former really more pro-community than the latter? And churches -- they are part of the problem, not part of the solution!
Click to expand...
1. Bowling leagues are a proxy. I don’t think they’ve been replaced by guys drinking beer together at BW3. They’ve been replaced by dads sitting in their home “offices” scratching their balls and playing Grand Theft Auto while casually scrolling porn on the second monitor and ignoring their wife and kids. An exaggeration, but not that much of one.

2. As one who grew up in an extremely church-oriented environment, I’ve come to view the typical church of 40 years ago as far more of a community hub than a theological/political indoctrination center. The loss of that community hub is, in fact, a loss. It became inevitable when the church was co-opted by the Religious Right into an indoctrination center, but that doesn’t diminish the loss of the community hub.
 
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