MAGA Future
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Mulberry Heel
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Yeah, nearly all of Jesse's elections were actually fairly close. He used to joke that the Democrats could nominate a guy off the street to run against him and they'd get at least 45% of the vote automatically.
KishiKaisei
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The difference between Donald Trump and Jim Jones is that Trump would charge for the kool aid.
Awinisawin
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And with the lack of a rigorous education system. Without fixing the education system everything is bandaids and hopeful prayers. And we know how those go.
I’d love for Kamala to turn part of the political eye towards our educational system with an intent to overhaul the thing, staying within the confines of public education. It must stay within the confines of public education.
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I agree with you, but with education largely being the purview of the states reeling in the legislatures in red states is probably impossible. Diverting dollars from public education is a primary focus of "conservative" legislators.
Awinisawin
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I know. But I am a pie in the sky person. I’d love to see that responsibility wrestled from the states and given to the feds. Via a non partisan forum. As we can plainly see, some states have no business trying to figure out what our schools should do. This is a huge topic and suffice it to say, there needs to be a lot of buy in which won’t happen in the foreseeable future. Unfortunately
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Racked by Pain and Enraptured by a Right-Wing Miracle Cure
With Patriot Party News, Michael Chesebro found a sense of community, and a place where conspiracy theories could become real in the form of the “medbed.”
...
On the other end of his phone were hundreds of people in a live voice chat for Patriot Party News, one of about a dozen far-right media platforms that has grown in both size and influence over the past few years, not only by creating an ecosystem of disinformation but also by providing an authentic sense of community. The company was co-founded in 2020 by Warren Armour, a conservative with no media experience who runs a flooring company in Tennessee, but Michael admired the Patriot Party News slogan when he first saw it shared on Facebook last year: “If you hate mainstream media, you are going to love us!”
Michael started watching the site’s daily videos about election fraud and vaccine pseudoscience, some of which have now been viewed more than a million times. He signed up for the company’s social media platform and paid $8.99 a month to join the audio channel, which functions like an old ham radio and promised him the chance to “meet comrades in our battle for the soul of America.”
On some days, Michael listened to the channel for as many as 12 hours, with the audio feed piped directly into his hearing aids to drown out the tedium of his pain. He narrated his daily ranching tasks for the group and sent photos of his crops. Other members responded with recipes, virtual prayers for rain and a steady drumbeat of extremist political ideology that increasingly mirrored his own. In a fracturing country, here was an echo chamber with the power to turn fringe conspiracy theories into widely accepted political dogmas — that the Covid vaccine was poison, the mainstream media was deceitful and the federal government was controlled by a “deep state cabal” that had stolen the 2020 election from former President Donald J. Trump and was now trying to orchestrate his assassination.
“I saw somewhere this morning that the vaccine’s killed more people than Hitler and Stalin combined,” said a woman who went by the name Truth and Freedom Fighter.
“It’s genocide, 100 percent,” Michael said, as he pulled himself out of bed.
“I want handcuffs and perp walks for all those criminals,” someone else said. “Who goes first? Fauci, Obama or Biden?”
“Let me think on it,” Michael said. “That’ll keep me entertained while I feed the horses. The wife says I need to quit running my mouth and get going on my honey-do list.”
Cheryl Chesebro, 61, had known her husband to be a realist for most of his life. Michael had enlisted in the Army at 17 because he couldn’t afford to pay for college and then agreed to jump out of planes for a $2,500 sign-up bonus. But after a total of 42 surgeries on his back, shoulders, ankles and knees, he’d come to distrust the government he’d served. He invested in wind and solar power so his family didn’t have to rely on the U.S. power grid. He bought gold in case the U.S. financial system collapsed and then started collecting shoe boxes full of foreign currency from the Middle East and Africa, believing that it could eventually be as valuable as the U.S. dollar.
...
“Whatever they’re telling you on that website, it’s all basically hogwash,” Cheryl told him.
“A lot of it’s wacky, but 10 percent is the real deal,” he said. “That’s better than anyplace else.”
“What kind of hocus-pocus are they going to come up with next?” Cheryl asked.
Michael walked outside to check on the horses while he listened to people on the audio feed talk about how Trump was anointed president by God, and how George Soros was building mansions in Hollywood to house undocumented immigrants. He turned up the volume and spoke back to the group over the wind as the unrealities in his ears continued to become the reality of his life.
...
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Of all the wild conspiracies he’d discovered on Patriot Party News, the concept of medbeds had initially struck Michael as the most far-fetched, even if it was also among the most popular. Every few days, someone else on the platform shared an illustration of a futuristic-looking chamber, sometimes with a doctored image of Trump superimposed in the foreground. The founder of the site, Armour, sometimes mentioned videos or podcasts about medbeds that had become popular on the far-right corners of Telegram, Discord and Rumble, and Michael clicked on the links, as did millions of others.
The videos claimed with no evidence that the U.S. military was already in possession of advanced, or possibly even alien, technology that could cure all disease and extend human life. There were said to be at least three types of medbeds already in existence in secret military tunnels. One, a “holographic medbed,” scanned the body to instantly diagnose and then heal any sickness, no matter how severe. Another bed was able to regenerate personal DNA so people could regrow missing limbs in a few minutes. A third was designed for reverse aging and could rewind people’s bodies to the age and condition of their choosing.
The only holdup, according to the videos, was that a collection of liberal billionaires kept hoarding the technology for themselves. On the Patriot Party News audio feed, people speculated that medbeds wouldn’t be available to the public until Trump was back in control of the White House, at which point everyone would be invited to make appointments for free at a secret underground military base.
...
The Patriot Party News feed included regular segments on essential oils, unproven supplements and ivermectin, and one morning Armour came onto the platform and introduced another “truth-seeking health expert.” His name was John Baxter, and he had spent his career in the Florida mattress industry before founding a company called Anti-Aging Beds, which had received a warning letter from the Food and Drug Administration in 2020 for selling unproven medication. Baxter introduced himself as an inventor and the author of a self-published book: “The Med Bed Story — Restoring the Health of Humanity.”
“We are the only ones in the medbed movement that actually have a bed,” Baxter said, as Michael listened with hundreds of others. “It’s available, and it’s ready for you to try.”
...
Michael booked a medbed appointment for late June and loaded his camping trailer for the long drive. One of his friends on Patriot Party News, Andrea Stimson, had bought several pieces of Baxter’s equipment and opened a wellness spa in Sheridan, Wyo., 300 miles north. Michael had already visited once to tour and try some of the equipment, and now he was returning for treatments with Cheryl, their daughter and a granddaughter.
...
And then there was Andrea, the new owner of a medbed spa. She was a nail technician and certified wellness coach who had specialized in diet programs until she decided in January to buy Baxter’s products and rent a building across the street from a hospital in Sheridan.
Image
“We’re still hoping to get F.D.A. approved, but that whole process is so corrupt anyway,” she said on the audio channel. “You can’t totally grasp the magic of it until you try it. Honestly, it’s a God thing.”
“I’m becoming more open to this kind of stuff, but I don’t totally grasp all the technology or understand how it works,” Michael said.
“Me neither,” Andrea said. “It’s a lot, and I’m still learning. But I believe in the results.”
Michael and his family were the first customers to arrive the next morning, and Andrea greeted them at the door with cups of Baxter’s “anti-aging water.” She led them into the back of the spa and showed them the equipment while she ran through a rote disclaimer. “It’s not meant to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease,” she said. “It hasn’t been clinically proven yet, so we have to avoid saying all of that.”
But what she could say was what Michael had heard hundreds of times already on Patriot Party News: that medbeds represented “the most advanced technology in the world.” That Baxter’s model was a “first-generation, civilian medbed,” and that even if it couldn’t cure all disease and regrow limbs in 45 minutes like the military version, it was still “capable of miracles that you won’t even believe.” That she had gone to try the equipment for herself at Baxter’s warehouse in Florida and walked out a few days later feeling “so euphoric and transformed” that she had decided on the spot to open a wellness center. One of her best friends had shingles in her brain and another had cancer; they didn’t have time to wait. Andrea sold her favorite horse, refinanced her car and spent much of her savings to purchase five pieces of equipment for $140,000.
...
Several other companies had started producing their own versions of medbeds in the last few years. One company, Tesla BioHealing, had purchased a half-dozen old motels in places like Tampa, Fla., Dubuque, Iowa, and Butler, Pa., and then turned them into “medbed centers,” where each room came equipped with proprietary canisters under the bed that provided what the company called “life force energy.” Other groups were running scams on Facebook and charging $800 for “redemption cards” with a photograph of Trump’s face and a code that they said would provide secret passage into the underground military bases where medbeds were said to be ready for use.
Baxter’s company was still in its infancy, and he had sold some of his products to churches, private clubs or millionaires who he said were “invested in longevity.” The medbeds at Andrea’s spa were the first to be available by appointment to the public, and he planned to expand into spas across the United States and Mexico.
...
Michael’s daughter climbed into the Tesla medbed, a cylindrical hyperbaric chamber that sold for $90,000, and that Baxter said combined light frequency, sound frequency and intermittent electrical stimulation into “the future of health.” Michael went into the room next door and lay down in a frequency medbed, where he could punch in different codes to receive vibrations and stimulation allegedly tailored to specific medical issues.
He picked up the menu of options and looked at the alphabetized first page, which had more than 50 choices beginning with the letter A: “Acid Reflux,” “Acne,” “Alzheimer’s,” “Alcoholism,” “Aneurysm,” “Anthrax,” “Anxiety Relief,” “Arthritis,” “Asperger’s,” “Autism.”
“Wow, it can really correct all this?” Michael asked.
“Over time, it’s possible,” Andrea said. “As long as you believe, and your mind and body are in alignment with the right frequencies.”
He flipped through the book and landed on a page for the letter H. “Heel Spurs,” “Herniated Disc,” “Hepatitis,” “High Blood Pressure,” “Hissing in Ear,” “H.I.V.”
The videos claimed with no evidence that the U.S. military was already in possession of advanced, or possibly even alien, technology that could cure all disease and extend human life. There were said to be at least three types of medbeds already in existence in secret military tunnels. One, a “holographic medbed,” scanned the body to instantly diagnose and then heal any sickness, no matter how severe. Another bed was able to regenerate personal DNA so people could regrow missing limbs in a few minutes. A third was designed for reverse aging and could rewind people’s bodies to the age and condition of their choosing.
The only holdup, according to the videos, was that a collection of liberal billionaires kept hoarding the technology for themselves. On the Patriot Party News audio feed, people speculated that medbeds wouldn’t be available to the public until Trump was back in control of the White House, at which point everyone would be invited to make appointments for free at a secret underground military base.
...
The Patriot Party News feed included regular segments on essential oils, unproven supplements and ivermectin, and one morning Armour came onto the platform and introduced another “truth-seeking health expert.” His name was John Baxter, and he had spent his career in the Florida mattress industry before founding a company called Anti-Aging Beds, which had received a warning letter from the Food and Drug Administration in 2020 for selling unproven medication. Baxter introduced himself as an inventor and the author of a self-published book: “The Med Bed Story — Restoring the Health of Humanity.”
“We are the only ones in the medbed movement that actually have a bed,” Baxter said, as Michael listened with hundreds of others. “It’s available, and it’s ready for you to try.”
...
Michael booked a medbed appointment for late June and loaded his camping trailer for the long drive. One of his friends on Patriot Party News, Andrea Stimson, had bought several pieces of Baxter’s equipment and opened a wellness spa in Sheridan, Wyo., 300 miles north. Michael had already visited once to tour and try some of the equipment, and now he was returning for treatments with Cheryl, their daughter and a granddaughter.
...
And then there was Andrea, the new owner of a medbed spa. She was a nail technician and certified wellness coach who had specialized in diet programs until she decided in January to buy Baxter’s products and rent a building across the street from a hospital in Sheridan.
Image
“We’re still hoping to get F.D.A. approved, but that whole process is so corrupt anyway,” she said on the audio channel. “You can’t totally grasp the magic of it until you try it. Honestly, it’s a God thing.”
“I’m becoming more open to this kind of stuff, but I don’t totally grasp all the technology or understand how it works,” Michael said.
“Me neither,” Andrea said. “It’s a lot, and I’m still learning. But I believe in the results.”
Michael and his family were the first customers to arrive the next morning, and Andrea greeted them at the door with cups of Baxter’s “anti-aging water.” She led them into the back of the spa and showed them the equipment while she ran through a rote disclaimer. “It’s not meant to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease,” she said. “It hasn’t been clinically proven yet, so we have to avoid saying all of that.”
But what she could say was what Michael had heard hundreds of times already on Patriot Party News: that medbeds represented “the most advanced technology in the world.” That Baxter’s model was a “first-generation, civilian medbed,” and that even if it couldn’t cure all disease and regrow limbs in 45 minutes like the military version, it was still “capable of miracles that you won’t even believe.” That she had gone to try the equipment for herself at Baxter’s warehouse in Florida and walked out a few days later feeling “so euphoric and transformed” that she had decided on the spot to open a wellness center. One of her best friends had shingles in her brain and another had cancer; they didn’t have time to wait. Andrea sold her favorite horse, refinanced her car and spent much of her savings to purchase five pieces of equipment for $140,000.
...
Several other companies had started producing their own versions of medbeds in the last few years. One company, Tesla BioHealing, had purchased a half-dozen old motels in places like Tampa, Fla., Dubuque, Iowa, and Butler, Pa., and then turned them into “medbed centers,” where each room came equipped with proprietary canisters under the bed that provided what the company called “life force energy.” Other groups were running scams on Facebook and charging $800 for “redemption cards” with a photograph of Trump’s face and a code that they said would provide secret passage into the underground military bases where medbeds were said to be ready for use.
Baxter’s company was still in its infancy, and he had sold some of his products to churches, private clubs or millionaires who he said were “invested in longevity.” The medbeds at Andrea’s spa were the first to be available by appointment to the public, and he planned to expand into spas across the United States and Mexico.
...
Michael’s daughter climbed into the Tesla medbed, a cylindrical hyperbaric chamber that sold for $90,000, and that Baxter said combined light frequency, sound frequency and intermittent electrical stimulation into “the future of health.” Michael went into the room next door and lay down in a frequency medbed, where he could punch in different codes to receive vibrations and stimulation allegedly tailored to specific medical issues.
He picked up the menu of options and looked at the alphabetized first page, which had more than 50 choices beginning with the letter A: “Acid Reflux,” “Acne,” “Alzheimer’s,” “Alcoholism,” “Aneurysm,” “Anthrax,” “Anxiety Relief,” “Arthritis,” “Asperger’s,” “Autism.”
“Wow, it can really correct all this?” Michael asked.
“Over time, it’s possible,” Andrea said. “As long as you believe, and your mind and body are in alignment with the right frequencies.”
He flipped through the book and landed on a page for the letter H. “Heel Spurs,” “Herniated Disc,” “Hepatitis,” “High Blood Pressure,” “Hissing in Ear,” “H.I.V.”
I think Maga will have a problem with the next generation. The ones that are popular with the maga base don’t do so well beyond that. Vance, or the one from Florida should be next up, but they can’t win a national election. Rubio is Maga for now, but he’d bend back to the middle without Trump leaning on him. He’s not firing up the poor whites anyway.
Plus, if Trump loses again, the mainstream Rs will re-assert themselves. This would be a long losing streak in national elections.
If Trump wins, the dems will go on another streak once people realize again Trump is an idiot. Thus leaving the Rs with their next generation problem.
Plus, if Trump loses again, the mainstream Rs will re-assert themselves. This would be a long losing streak in national elections.
If Trump wins, the dems will go on another streak once people realize again Trump is an idiot. Thus leaving the Rs with their next generation problem.
gtyellowjacket
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People are terrible.
Mulberry Heel
Distinguished Member
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I used to fear that once Trump was gone that MAGA Nation would just find someone to replace him and they would continue undiminished. After eight years into his reign over the GOP I'm not so sure of that anymore. There have been plenty of contenders to replace him - DeSantis, Hawley, Cruz, Cotton, and now Vance - but none of them have shown his ability as a rabble rouser and to generate the kind of fanatical devotion that he gets. I'm beginning to believe that Trump is sui generis in his ability to create a cult of personality around himself, and I have yet to see another GOP politician with anything close to that ability. Of course it could happen and a newcomer rise up to claim the throne, but it hasn't happened yet. I don't think they'll fade away, but without Trump I'm not so sure that the GOP will get the voter turnout like they did in 2020. Trump got 11 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016, I don't see any other Republican right now getting that kind of massive vote increase.
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This and I think they have invested so much in him that psychologiclly they can't go whole hog with anyone else. Doubt they would buy Hawley trading cards...
HeelInTheOzarks
Esteemed Member
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LOL can you imagine people driving around with giant flags of Marco Rubio as a Rambo cartoon shooting a machine gun on their trucks?
Bigs23
Distinguished Member
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Not sure the schools are where this can be fixed.
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superrific
Iconic Member
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Agreed. Or maybe to put it differently, there are different types of populism. The New Deal was "populist" in that it promised to do good things "for the people." But FDR was not a demagogue. He was a serious candidate who was responding to very real challenges.
Populism in the negative sense, I think, always carries an element of demagoguery, of unrealism. This is one reason why we don't hear Hitler or Mussolini described as populists. They, like FDR, were responding to very real problems in their societies; their ideas for fixing those problems were very, very much worse. Nazism also wasn't populism because it didn't promise anything to actual people. MGGA wasn't about restoring material wealth or now-infringed-upon freedoms. It was about restoring the greatness of empire. There's no real equivalent in our politics of the notion of a THIRD Reich or a "thousand year Reich" or anything of the sort. The closest we get is "real Americans" are like Volk.