Gaslighting, brainwashing, or just dominating the information battle-space? Blowhards have a way of attracting attention. They thrive on it. They put on a good show. Rush Limbaugh made his fortune as one, as have a biblical flood of TV preachers. Rupert Murdoch erected a global media empire around blowhards. The decibels they generate and maintain day after day do more than entertain audiences and generate cash flow. What Bill McKibben once said of the Christian right might have presaged the rise of the flag-bedecked MAGA cultist: “They’re like the guy who gives you directions with such loud confidence that you drive on even though the road appears to be turning into a faint, rutted track.” Is it gaslighting, brainwashing, or simply dominating the information battle-space? Blowhards organize discontent to “groom” their base and work the media refs. Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, the Freedom Caucus, and fringe-right disinformers succeeded in convincing followers that the 2020 election was “stolen” from their savior-king. The blowhard right has long convinced the media that they represent majority opinion.
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How much is “engineered division”? Click-bait coverage of Trump rallies makes it easy to believe that the country is hopelessly divided. Or at least the 70% from the fringe-right 30%. If Trumpers don’t get their way, it’s civil war, etc., etc. As if these two below will lock and load and defend march to war behind some 21st-century Robert E. Lee. Capitalism and democracy being strange bedfellows, it’s those voices that get air time because they draw eyeballs and generate clicks. But is it really as bad as quickie profiles of the blowhard right make it seem? Under cover of mullet, John Russell of The Holler discovered that there is more common ground between the left and right than footage appearing on social media and in news coverage makes it seem. “Solidarity is waiting to have a moment.” “You would never know [this]” about people at a Trump rally, Russell explains, “if you just watched Fox or CNN.” “They’re trying to divide people,” one young woman says of the dominance of hot-button social issues.
If you have a chance, listen to this whole thing. It is astonishing: Now take a look at Trump hedging: Eastman says they were trying to save the Republic from “the mob” — and prepared to sic the military on anyone who protested. That’s right, they prepared for a military coup. Now Trump is hedging. I hope Eastman enjoys being underneath the bus.
“GOP’s scam referendum” defeated The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both Congresses and Courts, not to overthrow, the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. — Abraham Lincoln One might infer from recent events that the erstwhile Party of Lincoln has not only undertaken to pervert the Constitution but Lincoln himself. Actions in GOP-controlled state legislatures as well as election conspiracies that spawned state and federal investigations and indictments suggest Republicans believe what Lincoln really meant to preserve was government of CERTAIN people, by CERTAIN people, and for CERTAIN people. Ohio’s rightful masters on Tuesday demonstrated they are not content with being fleeced of their voice and their agency (Washington Post): Ohio voters rejected a measure Tuesday that would have made it more difficult to amend the state constitution ahead of a November vote to ensure access to abortion. For more than a century, Ohioans have been able to amend the state constitution with a simple majority. The failed measure would have changed that threshold to 60 percent.
It’s a doozy The December 6 “Fraudulent Elector Memo” written by attorney Kenneth Chesebro (Co-Conspirator 5) first appears in Para. 54 of the Jan. 6 indictment of Donald Trump. But the outline for the fraudulent electors scheme was not available for reading until The New York Times obtained and released it Tuesday evening. It’s a doozy, and one the Jan. 6 Committee did not uncover: “I recognize that what I suggest is a bold, controversial strategy, and that there are many reasons why it might not end up being executed on Jan. 6,” Mr. Chesebro wrote. “But as long as it is one possible option, to preserve it as a possibility it is important that the Trump-Pence electors cast their electoral votes on Dec. 14.” Three days later, Mr. Chesebro drew up specific instructions to create fraudulent electors in multiple states — in another memo whose existence, along with the one in November, was first reported by The Times last year. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot also cited them in its December report, but it apparently did not learn of the Dec. 6 memo. “I believe that what can be achieved on Jan.
…. finally Kellogg was the guy who said that he didn’t trust the Secret Service not to take Pence to Alaska that day to “keep him safe.” I guess that was misinterpreted? Whatever the case, it’s very satisfying to see them going after each other. That’s when plots really unravel…
Tim Miller hit the road in Iowa and has some interesting observations: Convention Madness As I was crisscrossing Iowa following the third indictment of Donald Trump, I caught wind of a fresh perspective regarding the right time to winnow the field. The conventional wisdom has always been that Trump’s opponents need to consolidate around the strongest challenger as quickly as possible to avoid dividing the opposition votes. Mitt Romney argued that the drop-dead date should be February 26, in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. (My view: Even that might be too late.) But now at least one of Trump’s opponents is wondering if the frontrunner’s legal troubles could change the calculus and require candidates to stay in for the long haul in order to try and amass delegates in case there is a convention battle because the former president is . . . otherwise indisposed.
Trump’s going to say whatever the hell he wants about his case(s): Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday vowed that he “will talk” about the criminal charges he faces over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and accused federal prosecutors of “taking away my First Amendment rights.” Last week, special counsel Jack Smith asked U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to impose a so-called protective order that would prevent Trump from disclosing evidence the government turns over to his lawyers as part of the discovery process. Trump’s own lawyers chose not to object to a protective order and instead requested that the judge put in place a version that is “less restrictive” than the one proposed by the government. Trump’s lawyers asked Chutkan to shield only “genuinely sensitive materials” in order to protect his rights. But Trump is fighting on multiple fronts as he tries to beat three indictments and win back the presidency. On Tuesday, when he chided prosecutors and President Joe Biden, Trump was battling in the political arena at a rally here.
Hugh Hewitt says that voters in Ohio yesterday were confused: Abortion was not on the ballot – not at all! The measure was the only thing on the ballot and the measure was about the ballot measure process. While it is true that a ballot measure concerning abortion is pending that is not what this election was about. And so, voters were (mis)lead to vote about something that has much broader implications based on something very immediate. And so, in pursuit of abortion rights in Ohio much mischief entirely unrelated to abortion will unquestionably ensue. They weren’t confused. They knew that the ballot measure was immediately about abortion but that the Republicans were trying to make it harder to amend the state constitution so they could continue their increasingly unpopular minority rule. Abortion is the issue that symbolizes what these throwbacks are trying to do generally: deprive Americans of their freedom and their rights in service of their base voters’ grievance and anger at democratic norms that force them to share power with people they don’t like.
A republic for Republicans “High-minded claims that we are not a democracy surreptitiously fuse republic with minority rule rather than popular government,” wrote George Thomas in 2020. The Wohlford Professor of American Political Institutions at Claremont McKenna College was discussing how “we’re a republic, not a democracy” has morphed from campus conservative pedantry to a Republican ruling philosophy. “Enabling sustained minority rule at the national level is not a feature of our constitutional design, but a perversion of it,” Thomas argued. “Routine minority rule is neither desirable nor sustainable, and makes it difficult to characterize the country as either a democracy or a republic.” When it comes to perverting constitutional design, Republicans in this century have demonstrated a serious knack for it. Consider Ohio’s special election today drafted to change how Ohio has amended its constitution for over a century. It’s not just sustained minority rule at the national level that should concern Americans.