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The GQP: Trumpist Death Cult


Hugo Stiglitz

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-gops-just-a-racket-now-and-trump-is-its-godfather-barr-its-wartime-consigliere?ref=home

 

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It’s May Day, and this was a Mayday all right. May 1, 2019 will go down as one of the dark days in the history of this republic. 

You think that’s overstated? Then tell me another time when an attorney general went before a committee of the United States Senate and lied like that to protect a lying president. The day after being caught in another whopping lie as we learned about the existence of Robert Mueller’s letter taking issue with the way Bill Barr had characterized the Mueller Report, which Barr had lied about to Congress previously.

 

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And—tell me another time when the members of one political party participated in the protection racket quite like that. Why did Lindsey Graham think it was cute or cheeky to utter the word “fucking” at the beginning of this hearing? Fine, he had the excuse that he was quoting something. But that isn’t why he did it. He did it to de-dignify these proceedings. To signal to viewers that they didn’t need to take this hearing seriously. And, he did it for an audience of one. You think Orange Julius didn’t chuckle when he heard Graham go down in the gutter?

 

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I could go on in this vein. Barr was wall-to-wall dishonest and appalling, the way he tried to deflect questions by niggling over a small matter, picking a tiny nit, running out the clock, wearing that “but I’m the Attorney General” cloak of slightly bored superiority. 

But instead, let’s step back and look at it like this:

 

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The Republican Party started life as a grand and admirable thing. Our anti-slavery party; our conscience. Its leader was assassinated, and in short order it became the party of Wall Street, and it remained that for a century, though it always contained within it conservatives, moderates, and even some liberals.

Spoiler

Then, starting in the 1980s, it lost the liberals. Then, in the 1990s, it started to lose most of the moderates, as right-wing issue and interest groups and Koch money began to define what constituted “conservatism,” pushing it ever-further rightward so that today it really isn’t even conservatism, but just a collection of grievances that they can use to piss off enough white people to stay in power. 

Bill Barr came of political age in this period. He was a young, right-wing legal hotshot at the time of originalism, the Federalist Society, the rise of the right-wing arguments about a strong executive. 

Lindsey Graham came of political age in this period. He was first elected to the South Carolina state legislature in the 1990s defeating a Democrat, and then just two years later made it to Congress, beating one of those post-civil rights-era Dixie Democrats who, throughout the 80s and 90s, were turned out of office by Republicans who were pushing their party, and their region, much farther to the right than it had been.

Their apologetics today are the natural consequences of their having marinated in these juices of resentment and rage for all the years they have. It’s what the party has become. And of course it’s the party that produced and elevated a gangster like Trump. It’s all of a piece.

It’s one of the greatest political quotes of all time, from philosopher Eric Hoffer; I’ve used it before and I’ll use it again: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” Barr and Graham were around I suppose to just catch the tail end of the movement phase. But mostly, they matured in Washington during the business era.

But then, in late 2015, when it became apparent the party was actually probably going to nominate Trump, came the racket phase. And Barr and Graham have adapted to it with, we must confess, a kind of evolutionary impressiveness, like bedbugs that have developed an ability to repel pesticides. And not just them, of course—every single one of them.

And all of it along the way—every racist dog whistle, every Rush Limbaugh rant, every false, out-of-thin-air accusation against Bill and Hillary Clinton, every lie about easily liberating the people of Iraq, every accusation that the rest of us hated freedom, every “joke” about Obama serving fried chicken, every disgusting attack on immigrants and gay people and you name it—has brought us to this point. Brought us to today, when a sitting attorney general said in effect to the American people whose interests he is supposed to be defending, “No, I truly do not give a fuck. I’m up here for the president, and that’s that.” And naturally, we learned three hours after he left the Senate chamber that he will not deign to appear at the House, where the questioning would likely be tougher.

Trump is a uniquely diseased man, it’s true. But what kind of political party nominates, celebrates, venerates, and takes political bullets for a uniquely diseased man?

So after today, if we didn’t before, we see now with a new and oddly liberating clarity where this is headed. It’s 18 months until Election Day. They may well be the most consequential and frightening stretch in the history of the country, or at least since Reconstruction.

This racket known as a political party will try to pervert the law in ways we’ve never seen. Reverse the meaning of every word we know. Trump is screaming that he’s the victim of a “coup.” What he is doing, of course, is perpetrating a coup, against the Constitution, with the eager help of Barr and Graham and all the rest of them. Trump is an idiot, but on some intuitive level, he’s a smart man, smart enough to know that to get away with staging a coup, the very first thing you have to do is to accuse your opponents of trying to stage one.

Barr and Graham and Mitch McConnell and everyone else around knows that they’ve thrown in, and having thrown in, they can’t throw out. Survival will require every kind of lie you can imagine, especially and exactly the lie of accusing their foes of that which they are doing themselves. And before this is over, they’re all going to be in on it.

 

 

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Everyone shocked by this.....yeah....nobody's shocked by this.
 

Well we need to be. Taking away freedoms from individuals based on lies is hell worthy and I don’t think many people belong in hell. Enraging. So. Fucking. Mad.
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Meanwhile, closer to home, there's an incredibly important case being decided whether our conservative state legislators can be trusted to draw new congressional districts because they've been proven again and again to intentionally discriminate against minorities.

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/05/02/texas-redistricting-federal-lawsuit-hearing-preclearance/

 

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10 hours ago, bolverk said:

Meanwhile, closer to home, there's an incredibly important case being decided whether our conservative state legislators can be trusted to draw new congressional districts because they've been proven again and again to intentionally discriminate against minorities.

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/05/02/texas-redistricting-federal-lawsuit-hearing-preclearance/

 

Sounds like a preclearance sort of thing again, which Roberts canned about 5 years ago. 

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17 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Everyone shocked by this.....yeah....nobody's shocked by this.

I’m shocked at how stupid that idiot is for fucking with emails. 

Thats a special kind of stupid.   The kind that results from a family tree that doesn’t branch much.  

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11 hours ago, bolverk said:

Meanwhile, closer to home, there's an incredibly important case being decided whether our conservative state legislators can be trusted to draw new congressional districts because they've been proven again and again to intentionally discriminate against minorities.

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/05/02/texas-redistricting-federal-lawsuit-hearing-preclearance/

 

 

I've seen this movie before, wanna know how it ends? 

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The real test being run during this period of time by the Republicans is a determination between how stupid they think we are and how stupid we actually are.  

Trump has been a real trailblazer at proving we are not a smart or educated population.  The Republicans are probably kicking themselves for not capitalizing more on the weak and ignorant among us.  

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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1 minute ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The real test being run during this period of time by the Republicans is a determination between how stupid they think we are and how stupid we actually are.  

Trump has been a real trailblazer at proving we are not a smart or educated population.  The Republicans are probably kicking themselves for not capitalizing more on the weak and ignorant among us.  

Poor and middle class Republicans maybe. The rich in this country are shitting themselves with glee. 

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1 hour ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

Nothing to see here, just a mercenary group trying to help run an intelligence operation targeting an American political party here on our own soil.  Nothing to see, move along, if the Dems did this it would be totally legal, totally cool.

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17 hours ago, HenryJames said:

 

Ugh, Florida probably has a very conservative friendly SC too so you know this shit won't get overturned unless it's a federal issue and then I bet our current SC would totally find this poll tax legal. I'm just so sick of this fucking country.

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15 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Nothing to see here, just a mercenary group trying to help run an intelligence operation targeting an American political party here on our own soil.  Nothing to see, move along, if the Dems did this it would be totally legal, totally cool.

But they did, the mercenaries were just the FBI /trumpers

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1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

Nothing to see here, just a mercenary group trying to help run an intelligence operation targeting an American political party here on our own soil.  Nothing to see, move along, if the Dems did this it would be totally legal, totally cool.

You forgot to add that the head of said mercenary group is also the brother of the woman in charge of "education" and is therefore likely closely linked to the White House.

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1 hour ago, bolverk said:

You forgot to add that the head of said mercenary group is also the brother of the woman in charge of "education" and is therefore likely closely linked to the White House.

Well, that's just preposterous.  That sort of thing only happens in banana republics.

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5 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Well, that's just preposterous.  That sort of thing only happens in banana republics.

wait until you hear how involved his kids are in his administration! AND they are still running the family business. 

totally not a banana republic. very normal.

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1 hour ago, EMAWesome said:

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Chortles.

Today's "Conservatives" are that in name only.  They deficit spend like there's no tomorrow, and wish to impose policies that would make Hitler proud.  Neither of these are remotely conservative.  Plus, they like to impose that evil socialism under the guise of "bail outs"..  Bailing out farmers last year with a bribe of $12 billion or so sound conservative to you?

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1 hour ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

They deficit spend like there's no tomorrow,

they've been doing that for 40 years.  at some point that's just conservatism, not something else. 

 

edit: even nixon's deficits were nearly triple of johnson's. 

Edited by elfenix
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Georgia telling the rest of the south to hold my beer. There is a huge petition of actors, directors, etc. who have signed on to boycott the state and refuse to work here if this was signed. I don't see the film studios immediately moving out, but this going to have some sort of effect. Go drive off a cliff you evil, racist piece of shit Kemp.

 

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15 hours ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

 

Does not bode well for conservatives, especially long term.  Here in Europe, there's been a huge rise in eco-consciousness, especially among the young. It's taking hold in the U.S., too. 

 

The great irony in all of this was that the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the Occupational Safety and Health Act were all Republican creations. 

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1 hour ago, Bama Chick said:

Goddamn, Georgia.

Y’all trying to go full Alabama?
 

Georgia is Alabama + Atlanta. You don't have to go too far out of the metro here to see shit like this, fucking awful old white people suck so much.

Edited by GSU&UT
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42 minutes ago, Patrick Bateman said:

Yep.... Athens/Clarke skews D, but most of Georgia wants the South to rise again....

 

Outside of Atlanta, basically every 100,000+ metro sized city has a county that is solidly Blue. Augusta (Richmond), Savannah (Chatam), Athens (Clarke), Macon (Bibb), Columbus (Muscogee), and there's the Black belt here that is blue just like most of the other southern states. The problem is all those places are so concentrated in a mostly rural state still and are outnumbered by rural whites and white-flight suburban/exurb whites.

 

Georgia is going to flip, it's inevitable unless there is a huge change in the demographic swing we're setting, just like Texas. It's so completely transparent that the GOP is going to intentionally try to inflict as much harm as they can and circumvent if not outright change laws to favor themselves even when they're a minority party here.

Edited by GSU&UT
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3 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

That's a messed up district.  Taylor, the GOP incumbent, is a cheat.  Brown, the Dem who ran in 2016, is a cheat and a criminal.  Meanwhile, a new candidate, Luria, won the seat.  There's all sorts of small time corruption down there.

 

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Texas GOP is the worst kind of GOP....
 

I hope it passes. I will volunteer and drive as many people as I can to the polls. And I will ensure that I am reported to the authorities.

Prosecute me. Do it, you gutless cowards. In the history of this country, there has never been a bigger group of treasonous gutless cowards than today’s GOP.
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  • Hugo Stiglitz changed the title to The GQP: Trumpist Death Cult


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