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The GQP: Trumpist Death Cult


Hugo Stiglitz

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I started reading this book, and its fucking great for more understanding about why all this Q and Trump bullshit appeals to its largest mass of consumers -- poor, uneducated white people.

"Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row—a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in modern times. In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year—and they’re still rising. Anne Case and Angus Deaton, known for first sounding the alarm about deaths of despair, explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class. They demonstrate why, for those who used to prosper in America, capitalism is no longer delivering.

Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline. For the white working class, today’s America has become a land of broken families and few prospects. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. In this critically important book, Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and, above all, to a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. Capitalism, which over two centuries lifted countless people out of poverty, is now destroying the lives of blue-collar America.

This book charts a way forward, providing solutions that can rein in capitalism’s excesses and make it work for everyone."


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17 minutes ago, Goredho said:

I started reading this book, and its fucking great for more understanding about why all this Q and Trump bullshit appeals to its largest mass of consumers -- poor, uneducated white people.

"Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row—a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in modern times. In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year—and they’re still rising. Anne Case and Angus Deaton, known for first sounding the alarm about deaths of despair, explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class. They demonstrate why, for those who used to prosper in America, capitalism is no longer delivering.

Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline. For the white working class, today’s America has become a land of broken families and few prospects. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. In this critically important book, Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and, above all, to a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. Capitalism, which over two centuries lifted countless people out of poverty, is now destroying the lives of blue-collar America.

This book charts a way forward, providing solutions that can rein in capitalism’s excesses and make it work for everyone."


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The issues the book analyzes are serious, but the Q crowd largely isn't from the poor white working class. They're solidly middle and upper middle class. 

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32 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

The issues the book analyzes are serious, but the Q crowd largely isn't from the poor white working class. They're solidly middle and upper middle class. 

Maybe overall, I don't know.  But where I am located, there is a large pro-Trump crowd with a strong overlap of Q belief and they are all poor, rural, white people with at most a HS education working blue collar jobs.  I am in Lauren Boebert's district, and she was not elected by solidly middle and upper middle class educated voters.  This book is largely talking about these people's plight.

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12 hours ago, Goredho said:

I started reading this book, and its fucking great for more understanding about why all this Q and Trump bullshit appeals to its largest mass of consumers -- poor, uneducated white people.

"Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row—a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in modern times. In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year—and they’re still rising. Anne Case and Angus Deaton, known for first sounding the alarm about deaths of despair, explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class. They demonstrate why, for those who used to prosper in America, capitalism is no longer delivering.

Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline. For the white working class, today’s America has become a land of broken families and few prospects. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. In this critically important book, Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and, above all, to a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. Capitalism, which over two centuries lifted countless people out of poverty, is now destroying the lives of blue-collar America.

This book charts a way forward, providing solutions that can rein in capitalism’s excesses and make it work for everyone."


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Dying of Whiteness by Metzl is a similar good read.

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12 hours ago, Goredho said:

I started reading this book, and its fucking great for more understanding about why all this Q and Trump bullshit appeals to its largest mass of consumers -- poor, uneducated white people.

"Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row—a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in modern times. In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year—and they’re still rising. Anne Case and Angus Deaton, known for first sounding the alarm about deaths of despair, explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class. They demonstrate why, for those who used to prosper in America, capitalism is no longer delivering.

Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline. For the white working class, today’s America has become a land of broken families and few prospects. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. In this critically important book, Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and, above all, to a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. Capitalism, which over two centuries lifted countless people out of poverty, is now destroying the lives of blue-collar America.

This book charts a way forward, providing solutions that can rein in capitalism’s excesses and make it work for everyone."


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Not to be uncaring, but most of the educated people understand this already. How does that help to convince the uneducated not to vote against their own interests?  
 

I guess the last sentence provides the teaser answer, so how about you tell us when you get to the end?

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Republicans gonna leave the party now?  Donnie is going to be angry.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/18/politics/ronna-mcdaniel-joe-biden/index.html

Quote

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said Thursday she recognizes President Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States, even as she claimed there were "lots of problems" with the 2020 election that Republican candidates should address. 

"Painfully, Joe Biden won the election and it's very painful to watch. He's the President. We know that," McDaniel said at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor in Washington, DC.

Quote

While the RNC has for months criticized Biden in press releases and rapid response materials, McDaniel's comments Thursday marked the first time the party chairwoman has clearly stated that Biden "won" the 2020 election.

 

 

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22 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

  After shamelessly supporting a violent insurrection to overthrow our country, and doing so for 10 months. She can suck a shit-covered AIDS infected dick while snorting COVID-laced snot and jamming a broken wine bottle up her ass. To hell with her. Fuck her courageous acknowledgment that the sky is blue. She can burn in hell.

She'll be replaced by Eric or Don Jr. soon enough.

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Totally normal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/19/us/politics/wisconsin-republicans-decertify-election.html

 

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Republicans in Wisconsin are engaged in an all-out assault on the state’s election system, building off their attempts to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential race by pressing to give themselves full control over voting in the state.

The Republican effort — broader and more forceful than that in any other state where allies of former President Donald J. Trump are trying to overhaul elections — takes direct aim at the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, an agency Republicans created half a decade ago that has been under attack since the chaotic aftermath of last year’s election.

 

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The firestorm picked up late last month after a long-awaited reporton the 2020 results that was ordered by Republican state legislators found no evidence of fraud but made dozens of suggestions for the election commission and the G.O.P.-led Legislature, turbocharging Republican demands for more control of elections.

Then the Trump-aligned sheriff of Racine County, the state’s fifth most populous county, recommended felony charges against five of the six members of the election commission for guidance they had given to municipal clerks early in the pandemic. The Republican majority leader of the State Senate later seemed to give a green light to that proposal, saying that “prosecutors around the state”should determine whether to bring charges.

 

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And last week, Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican, said that G.O.P. state lawmakers should unilaterally assert control of federal elections, claiming that they had the authority to do so even if Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, stood in their way — an extraordinary legal argument debunked by a 1932 Supreme Court decision and a 1964 ruling from the Wisconsin Supreme Court. His suggestion was nonetheless echoed by Michael Gableman, a conservative former State Supreme Court justice who is conducting the Legislature’s election inquiry.

Republican control of Wisconsin elections is necessary, Mr. Johnson said in an interview on Wednesday, because he believes Democrats cheat.

 

 

Spoiler

“Do I expect Democrats to follow the rules?” said the senator, who over the past year has promoted fringe theories on topics like the Capitol riot and Covid vaccines. “Unfortunately, I probably don’t expect them to follow the rules. And other people don’t either, and that’s the problem.”

The uproar over election administration in Wisconsin — where the last two presidential contests have been decided by fewer than 23,000 votes each — is heightened by the state’s deep divisions and its pivotal place in American politics.

Some top Republican officials in Wisconsin privately acknowledge that their colleagues are playing to the party’s base by calling for state election officials to be charged with felonies or for their authority to be usurped by lawmakers.

Adding to the uncertainty, Mr. Johnson’s proposal has not yet been written into legislation in Madison. Mr. Evers has vowed to stop it.

“The outrageous statements and ideas Wisconsin Republicans have embraced aren’t about making our elections stronger, they’re about making it more difficult for people to participate in the democratic process,” Mr. Evers said Thursday. The G.O.P.’s election proposals, he added, “are nothing more than a partisan power grab.”

Yet there is no guarantee that the Republican push will fall short legally or politically. The party’s lawmakers in other states have made similar moves to gain more control over election apparatus. And since the G.O.P. won control of the Wisconsin Legislature in 2010, the state has served as an incubator for conservative ideas exported to other places.

“In Wisconsin we’re heading toward a showdown over the meaning of the clause that says state legislatures should set the time, manner and place of elections,” said Kevin J. Kennedy, who spent 34 years as Wisconsin’s chief election officer before Republicans eliminated his agency and replaced it with the elections commission in 2016. “If not in Wisconsin, in some other state they’re going to push this and try to get a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on this.”

Next year, Wisconsin will host critical elections for Mr. Johnson’s Senate seat and for statewide offices, including the governor. Rebecca Kleefisch, the leading Republican in the race to challenge Mr. Evers, is running on a platform of eliminating the state election commission. (On Monday, she filed a lawsuit against the agencyasking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to declare that the commission’s guidance violates state law.)

The Republican anger at the Wisconsin Elections Commission, a body of three Democrats and three Republicans that G.O.P. lawmakers created in part to eliminate the investigatory powers of its predecessor agency, comes nearly 20 months after commissioners issued guidance to local election clerks on how to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

Republicans have seized in particular on a March 2020 commission vote lifting a rule that required special voting deputies — trained and dispatched by municipal clerks’ offices — to visit nursing homes twice before issuing absentee ballots to residents. The special voting deputies, like most other visitors, were barred from entering nursing homes early in the pandemic, and the commission reasoned that there was not enough time before the April primary election to require them to be turned away before mailing absentee ballots.

The vote was relatively uncontroversial at the time: No lawsuits from Republicans or anyone else challenged the guidance. The procedure remained in place for the general election in November.

But after Joseph R. Biden Jr. won Wisconsin by 20,682 votes out of 3.3 million cast, Republicans began making evidence-free claims of fraudulent votes cast from nursing homes across the state. Sheriff Christopher Schmaling of Racine County said the five state election commissioners who had voted to allow clerks to mail absentee ballots to nursing homes without the visit by special voting deputies — as is prescribed by state law — should face felony charges for election fraud and misconduct in office.

Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the State Assembly, who represents Racine County, quickly concurred, saying that the five commissioners — including his own appointee to the panel — should “probably” face felony charges.

The commissioners have insisted they broke no laws.

Ann Jacobs, a Democrat who is the commission’s chairwoman, said she had no regrets about making voting easier during the pandemic and added that “even my Republican colleagues” were afraid about the future of fair elections in the state.

“We did everything we could during the pandemic to help people vote,” she said. 

Mr. Johnson — a two-term senator who said he would announce a decision on whether to seek re-election “in the next few weeks” — is lobbying Republican state legislators, with whom he met last week at the State Capitol, to take over federal elections.

“The State Legislature has to reassert its constitutional role, assert its constitutional responsibility, to set the times, place and manner of the election, not continue to outsource it through the Wisconsin Elections Commission,” Mr. Johnson said. “The Constitution never mentions a governor.”

Mr. Johnson acknowledged that his proposal could leave the state with dueling sets of election regulations, one from the Wisconsin Elections Commission and another from the Legislature.

“I suppose some counties will handle it one way and other counties will handle it another,” he said.

Even if Republican lawmakers adopted Mr. Johnson’s proposal, it would apply only to federal elections, not those for state office.

Mr. Vos told reporters in Madison he had not studied whether Wisconsin legislators could take control of federal elections without the governor’s input. Devin LeMahieu, a Republican who is the State Senate majority leader, has expressed doubts about Mr. Johnson’s legal theory.

The state’s grass-roots conservatives remain angry about Mr. Biden’s victory and the failure of Republicans to undertake an Arizona-style review of ballots cast in Wisconsin last year. At least 10 Republican state lawmakers have called for the resignation of Meagan Wolfe, the commission’s nonpartisan administrator, or of the election commissioners, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

If Ms. Wolfe were to resign, her replacement would require a majority vote of the evenly split commission. If it could not reach agreement in 45 days, the State Senate, controlled by Republicans, would choose.

“The current director of W.E.C. needs to step down,” State Senator Duey Stroebel, a Republican who sits on his chamber’s elections committee, said in an interview. “Maybe we give it another try with the W.E.C., but this administrator has proved to be incompetent and not always willing to follow the law.”

Ms. Wolfe said on Thursday that Republicans’ goal was “to pressure nonpartisan election administrators like me into resigning or vacating the election space so we can be replaced by political actors who can be convinced to carry out a partisan mission.”

At the same time, some Wisconsin Republicans continue to challenge the 2020 outcome.

On Wednesday, Timothy S. Ramthun, a Republican member of the State Assembly, formally proposed decertifying Wisconsin’s election results, reclaiming the state’s “10 fraudulent electoral ballots” cast for Mr. Biden and conducting “a full forensic physical and cyber audit” of the election.

Anticipating Mr. Ramthun’s proposal, the Legislature’s lawyers issued a report on Nov. 1 stating that there was “no mechanism” under the law to reverse a certified election.

“I invite you to see it from the eyes of the people,” Mr. Ramthun wrote to fellow legislators, urging them to correct “the most egregious injustice we have seen in our time.”

The next day, Mr. Trump publicly congratulated Mr. Ramthun.

Wisconsin Democrats, exasperated and locked out of power in the Legislature, have been left to issue increasingly dire warnings.

“If this was some kind of Hollywood farce or a madcap political comedy, you would say that’s not credible even for a fake show,” said Kelda Roys, a Democratic state senator. “There’s real consequences to this. It’s designed to take away the guardrails to our democracy that keep us fair and free.”

 

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11 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Took my kids to the Crayola Experience in Plano and saw this scholarly and courageous gentleman. 
 

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So he has "FJB" and "Let's Go Brandon"

But he's too much of a cowardly pussy to just have "FUCK JOE BIDEN" on his shirt.

This newer crop of Republicans really do suck.

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7 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Seems an odd environment for a guy like that. Small kids. Crayons. Just missing the clown make up. 

Crayon person: “Sir do you need helping picking out a toy for your son?”

GOPedo: “oh no I don’t have kids. Just here for the scene, ya know?”

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7 minutes ago, mantis toboggan said:

Highly likely that in a generation or two people will look back and say what the fuck where those people thinking having hair on only your lip and chin. It really is an embarrassing look. Trumpkins are probably the nail in the coffin for that look

I usually don't make fun of lesser men who can't grow a decent beard, but yeah.

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9 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

Under her watch, R’s lost the White House, senate, house, GA and AZ 

Toss this in - Over half-a-dozen Republican governors have challengers supported by, or at least inspired by, Trump, and not just our own Texas.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/republican-governors-distance-themselves-from-trump-drawing-his-ire-11637357756

Quote

As Republicans in the nation’s capital mostly fall in line behind former President Donald Trump’s bid to maintain control of the party, in state capitals, they are distancing themselves from the memes and demands that have emanated from Mar-a-Lago.

 

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4 hours ago, Gatorubet said:


The goatee is some sort of club sign, isn’t it? The first piece of a MAGA Starter Pack.


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I teach 4th graders that are more emotionally mature than this guy. Putting that shirt on and going out in public is a sure way to let everyone know you are not all there. This entire lie built upon lie phenomenon that is now the majority of that voting base is so abjectly ridiculous as to not even seem real at times.

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5 hours ago, mantis toboggan said:

Highly likely that in a generation or two people will look back and say what the fuck where those people thinking having hair on only your lip and chin. It really is an embarrassing look. Trumpkins are probably the nail in the coffin for that look

NationStates • View topic - The Invasion (WW2 RP/OOC)

It's not like they didn't have precedent for it.

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5 hours ago, TheStoicPaisano said:

Prrrrrma was made fun of even by Clevelanders. Didn’t know it rated a municipality designation.

Proud that I don’t know where in the blue fuck Decatur, IL is located.

Decatur is best known as home of everyone’s favorite Agribusiness multinationals Archer Daniels Midland 

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