The "Dixiecrats" who Nixon empowered and pulled into the GOP. Then Reagan merged them with an unleashed Wall St.

Don’t forget the big push the GOP made to bring in the Evangelicals and Christian Nationalists in 2004 in support of G.W. Bush.

That began with Nixon's "Silent Majority" in 1968 (large overlap with the Dixiecrats), which became Reagan's "Moral Majority" in 1980. Then, Bill Clinton went along with the school voucher concept in the 1990s, which didn't help.

Ronny did the same

I was raised in MS Klan country. When JFK was killed, I was walking past a boys' gym class. They literally cheered when the announcement came over the PA system. Much of Trump's appeal is race-based, but it is also his follower's loss of societal status and the sense of being looked down upon.

And they lack the critical thinking skills to see that he’s using them and he wouldn’t stop walking if one of them were bleeding to death in front of him. It’s both saddening and enraging at the same time.

Rightwing media divided us into opposing groups. City folks versus rural folks. College educated versus non college educated. Christian versus non Christian. Dark immigrant versus white, native born citizens. Divided nations are weak. United nations are strong. United we stand, divided we fall.

Absolutely!

I lived near Philadelphia, Mississippi around the time of the 30th anniversary of the killings of the civil rights workers in 1963. It was then I learned that the locals who had been involved in those killings and in some cases IIRC were acquitted by all-white juries, were lionized as heroes.

Lionized by some, not all. But still, it was eye-opening to say the least.

Yes, he nails it. A discussion about this attraction force, and yet another is here in a small essay. Comments welcome! danielbrugedes.substack.com/p/the-two-pr...

I agree, but it is a very pessimistic understanding of our situation as a nation. We have a history of Native Amer. extermination, slavery & Jim Crow, as well as an affinity to dictators & human rights violators. But even so, it seemed we may have been on the long arc toward justice.

The rise of Trump after we elected our first black President was an indiaction to the otherwise. But certainly, our eagerness to support and enable the genocide in Gaza was strong proof that we are the degenerates that we claim others to be.

We ought to point out that personally, Kamala had hedged, on record, that the Israel defense issue depends on "how" such defense was done. Joe Biden was a great economist; but, he bombed on spiritual matters. Zionist behavior has become ungodly, for tribute.

Trump and Netanyahu both seem to me to have gotten the nod to Satan by God in order to teach both how weak they actually were in the face of evil. This is a typical pattern in bible history.

(And, to teach America and modern Israel)

Exactly this!

💪👍

Loved that book! His best yet.

So true!

Yep,yep,yep....

As I read that, I saw and heard images and the voice over from the Ten Commandments scene just before Moses came down the mountain with the tablets. 🙂

How about this: they voted for that white supremacist nazi piece of shit because they are white supremacist nazi pieces of shit

CliffNotes version.

Sums it perfectly-know quite a few of these guys-and the joy at the nihilistic destruction being wreaked is palpable.

They didn't just randomly decide this. They were convinced that Trump was the solution to their grievances by a group of billionaires who own virtually all primary US news sources.

PedoNazi felon 🍊💩 is krasnov!

They need to release the Epstein files or this could become much worse... bsky.app/profile/blab...

Pretty much parallel to religion. Billionaires are dragging the public by the nose to where they want them. FOX & other R/W media are the outlets that are watched by folks w/ no critical thinking skills. Like churches, absolving them of their inner evils. Just put $$ in the plate & your cable bill.

They bought the news sources that’s step 1 in Dictatorship

True but also by being dragged down by Reaganism and Republican policies for years. Democrats could have done more. The writing has been on the walls for years this is what we were coming to. Just like climate change always spoken of since the 80s. As usual greed always wins out.

Hitler's playbook. 😡

Bam!

📌

The most unsettling part is how this passage holds up a mirror to all political movements that trade in grievance. Makes me wonder: what's the antidote to this psychology? How do we rebuild accountability without replicating the same us-vs-them dynamics?

It takes time, but the pendulum swings.

The italicized line refers to the concept of high external locus of control, which actually has a lot of research (mostly into its correlation with success). The only way to decrease external locus of control is by getting people to see the relationship between their actions and their outcomes.

While I agree with this, I dare say some of these people have decent lives. They were told to be angry.

☝️

Wow! Powerful. Brilliant. True!

It’s not just hate. It’s the relief from responsibility. Being nice to people that are different to you? No need! Following rules to build a successful business? Whatever makes money! Being faithful to your partner? You’re off the hook! Get educated? Forget it! “Daddy” says it’s all OK! 🫠

During his first term, I recall hearing a well-known GOP senator being asked, "Do you think Trump is a racist ?", to which he replied, "It doesn't matter whether he is, or not....the racists think he's one of them, and so far, he's done nothing to contradict their beliefs..."

I agree

“Honeyed Tit.” Great name for a band.

And let's not forget extremist white Christian Nationalists preachers pounding the message from the pulpit every Sunday.

Education, education, education. The US has made it a costly privilege, and created a greedy elite.

… while scorning K-12 teachers and college professors.

Even pre-school

Wow

WE LIVE IN A COUNTRY OF RACISTS. THEY STARTED BY ANNIHILATING THE NATIVE AMERICANS.

Thanks. Just ordered this book. Bet it’s going to piss me off! Hope there’s justice in the end.

Spot on.

Obviously another low IQ Radical Left Lunatic judge uniquely positioned to know exactly what she's talking about (and who cannot be threatened with impeachment). Ha ha.

"A judicial ethics probe of President Donald Trump’s older sister, Circuit Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, has ended with her retirement from the federal judiciary." Resigned 2019: www.abajournal.com/news/article...

What's your point?

100% And they aren’t amenable to being weaned from that sugar tit.

These are the people that we’re being told by liberal Dems we should join hands with. Abso-fucking-lutely not. These are the sociopaths we need to remove from society so that we can move forward toward peace. MAGA are building all these concentration camps and they should be the ones occupying them.

Well, I just had to go buy the book.And,while I was at it, I bought the first 3 in the series. See what you made me do,lol!Thriftbooks, all 4,$30.

So worth it!

Love Thriftbooks!

MAGA loves Trump because he vocalizes hate for the same people they hate and gives them license to act on it.

And Pandora closed the box in time to keep *hope* from escaping. A Western reading portrays this as a preservation of hope; the Greeks intended the metaphorical opposite. With all those ills loose in the world, there is no hope.

Incomplete. Missing: tens of thousands of Democrats’ voters that didn’t bother to show up on Election Day, due to their own stupidity.

Votes were stolen. The math nerds noticed the statistical anomalies first. See Reddit r/Verify2024. Example from NC:

you are an idiot

Sure.

Quite frankly that argument you and others are making looks exactly like the Trump Maga stop the steal crap we saw from 2020 20/20 I was a huge Joe Biden fan. I thought he was the right man for the job. His decision to run for reelection is unbelievably

I want you to understand that I am a Democrat and dearly anti-trump and have in my entire life. I think he is a authoritarian fascist that is trying to destroy America and help China and Russia intentionally. But I don't see the significance of what your graph claims to show.

Incomplete: missing a DNC candidate that was actually vetted and chosen via primary, instead of a hand-picked, establishment suit.

This is a perfect description

Yep. bsky.app/profile/osca...

Trump voters are stupid. They don’t use facts, logic and reasoning which leaves them vulnerable to propaganda. The billionaires told them greed is good. Then hate is good. And now, pedophiles are good. The problem now is that phedophiles carry a lot of negative emotion.

Yep, yep and yep. This paragraph has been repeated over and over and over again. In a nutshell, it's American history. The world outside of America is not what it once was. Our American experiment will come to an end much sooner than most of us think.

Hate is a drug & he got his supporters absolutely hooked on it.

Meh, I think this just grazes the surface. Dig deeper. The faithful didn't just think they were justified in jumping on the trump wagon to fix their problems, they saw an opportunity for benefit and advancement. Look at his cabinet. To a person, this was a career move.

I assumed the reference was to everyday magats

I'm buying this less and less by the day. They are after something. When the Third Reich really established itself in power, there were thousands of upstarts and grifters who swarmed the nazi party for membership and hopefully, a job.

You should look at more recent events. The Nazis arose almost 100 years ago in a different world. Modern autocracy is a different game. Some similarities but much different. Read Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc. Think Putin & others. Also! Christian Nationalism

Consider the role of tech bros in all this. Palantir has our SS & IRS info. Why? To do what? Plutocracy Krasnov is defunding gov depts like Ed. & NWS. These will be sold & privatized to loyalist billionaires = theocracies, oligarchies Hitler never dreamed of this reach.

It's my understanding that Palantir was proposed this deal, but they do not have possess our data.

I'm very skeptical and don't trust Palantir or the Krasnov Regime to tell us the truth of it. Here's the NYT reveal article followed by Snopes: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/t...

I'm aware of what's been put in motion, I'm just not aware that it's actually being done yet.

Is Palantir creating a national database of US citizens? | Snopes.com share.google/uOnlslzjFMRl...

Snopes link doesn't come up

Try this Is Palantir creating a national database of US citizens? | Snopes.com share.google/uOnlslzjFMRl...

I see it as much the same playbook, just more powerful tools.

All autocracies including fascism, dictatorships, totalitarianism etc have many similarities but they differ. Not even Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco were the same. We make a grave mistake when we see Hitler's version as THE RECIPE for Project 2025 American Christian Nationalism. READ IT

No, I agree that Hitler is not “THE RECIPE.” Of course there are differences. I really don’t like labels. I think the effort is to paint a picture that people can relate to, but that can be hyperbolic. The actions need to speak for themselves.

pretty much what I wrote 2017...

That sounds like a pretty solid rationale for the Trump voter. Throw in a big serving of stupid, mix it all up, and you have a Trump voter. 😆

Smart tRump supporters is an oxymoron.

The GOP spent decades building that Pandora’s Box. Then Trump swanned in and ripped the lid off.

👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

Yep. It has always been about the bigotry and racism. Remove that, and there is no MAGA.

Nailed it!

Hey I would love it if someone rode in and made the world into a better place for me personally too. I just don't expect it to happen 🙄

wow, yeah great writing. and - that's it - that is exactly effing it. bullseye. double bull. head of nail hit squarely.

Cultivated by decades of lies and hatred by Rush and Hannity etc. By the way where is the Billion dollar lawsuit against Fox.?

When you give those that were isolated for their hate, racism, bigotry, and choice ignorance a voice and ability to find more like them, they will follow. His power has only come from the deplorable making noise because it's now accepted and the media won't silence them anymore.

Perhaps MAGAs can tell us what exactly is inspirational about Trump’s life. What’s so admirable that MAGA parents would hold him up as a role model for their kids? What business practice of his would they follow in their own work? What ethics and morals of his would they embrace?

Those under the influence of hateful propaganda were on full display today with Mehdi Hasan on YouTube. It was really hard to watch, but we learned a lot about the lies they've been fed. Mehdi was brilliant, as you'd expect, and the debate format was effective (no grandstanding).

Can you provide links next time please?

I'm not sure how to do that. It's the first time I've recommended YouTube. Will figure it out.

That's okay. Thanks. I'll find it.

Here it is. youtu.be/2S-WJN3L5eo?...

The easiest way to share on Bluesky is to tap the Youtube share arrow, copy the link, then paste.

TY! Hubz didn't know either. We watch it on tv, so I'll fire it up on my phone.🦋

There's a first for everything!!😋 youtu.be/qVEg-J51zfM?...

I LOVE his work, but the day I WILLINGLY LISTEN to 20 fucking morons spouting SHIT WILL BE the day I kill myself.

I get it. Believe me. I broke out in a sweat with shock and rage. Pls consider: Our unwillingness to look at these horrors straight on is part of what contributes to the continuance of the abuse. I've learned more about how my avoidance has led to inaction, which helps no one. I have to try.

modern man ain't so modern thinking ........

His book The Quiet Game is one of the best I’ve ever read. He’s one of my favorite authors.

The book is entertaining and frightening in equal measure. Let's hope nobody takes it as an instruction manual. Greg Iles is brilliant by the way, the Natchez burning trilogy was breathtaking but my favourite is "Dark Matter", yet another prescient warning.

🎯💯👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 ...and that's all it took to take down the so-called "greatest country in the world".💔🇺🇸💔

💯

Infants to a honeyed tit…now that’s a great line

trump has a sick broken brain that cannot be fixed! The problem is he is contagious and making many more sick like him!!

or maybe, just racism & sexism biden beat trump

WOW 😮 it's true

It's true. When you have nothing left but your hatred, you cling to it like a life raft in a great ocean.

thank you

“[H]alf of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. [T]hey're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. [T]weets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric.” HRC

And when you add in the excellent Sarah Kendzior’s take on all matters trump, you’ve pretty much got him bang to rights. And so far, it’s all going to plan:

"great"

💯🎯

Mehdi Hasan Vs 20 Conservatives Mehdi was excellent One guy who proudly claimed to be a fascist and supported the mass killings "of bad people" by Hitler and Franco, is crying today and asking for money after he was fired from his job Mehdi Hasan share.google/ffFftSLTJMuy...

Get out of here, fascist!

Incredible! This meme I made basically says the exact same thing! 👇

EXCELLENT!!!!!

MAGA:

MAGA projection is next level. It can power 37 IMAX theatres.

That’s right, and they vote based on racism and sexism not for their own financial interests!

Well, this is basically the Part Two to the first meme. Simplistic? Sure. But basically all true? Completely yes!

Unfortunately the ones at the top are NOT stupid. Some are the very elite they claim to hate, like SCOTUS chief Justice John Roberts who was in the Reagan administration and tried to gut the VRA even then. We comfort ourselves thinking they are dumb but we are the ones now fighting for our lives.

I realize not ALL of MAGA are stupid or dumb. But the majority in the trenches of voting booths? VERY DUMB!

MAGA response:

LOLZ! #ItsFunnyCuzItsTrue

“Honeyed tit” for the win!

It’s mind boggling.

You can fool some of the people, all of the time. But not all of the people. So where are they? Where are the tiki torches? Why aren’t they at the gates? Is it all hot wind? The usual America? All mouth no trousers?

White Supremacy is amerikka. DNC became the over-educated scolds who are against everything amerikkan. Militarism. Christo-Fascism. Patriarchy & predatory/post colonial capitalism. RNC = tough cool &sexy. Libtards are Nancy Pelosi & HRC. Image is everything. But Bernie beats FDJT everytime.

That is definitely on point.

God I’m just speechless. Wtf has happened to this country?

It’s a good paragraph to be sure. Compelling even! But it’s a misunderstanding of what has happened over the last 60 years. Reagan didn’t have the sordid history & ugliness for affect yet it’s his strategy to race bait the working class into tax breaks & deregulation, then baby with bathwater.

We also have writers like Aldous Huxley who explains why Western society is doomed to fail.

Extreme wealth inequality - the grotesque billionaires buying up the government and pushing those below to work more and more for less and less and selling them bullsh!t with a huge propaganda media infrastructure. … maybe?

Surely someone can rewrite this into more simple words…bellicosity ffs? Make it useful…

You have the entirety of the internet sitting right there. You can literally just look up what it means AND learn a new word (bonus!). Bellicosity is the state of being bellicose; overly aggressive, militaristic, wanting to pick fights.

True. But I was hoping to share this among those who need to hear it. IMO, that’s one problem with Dems… I think it should be told more simply… and here you are criticizing me. I read, and often have to work at decoding. Maybe I’m a little lazy or burned out. Please, help me if you can. Peace.

Let me try again…

It's a contagious sickness. Thank heaven a lot of us have immunity. We have been immunized by kindness and fortitude. Now we need to implement fortitude. NOW!

Yes- rich & powerful men who know better who exploit & manipulate the low-information people who depend totally on FoxNews for all of their ideas. It's a simple formula.

Same formula for centuries. History rhyming again.

That's true of some diehard MAGAs. Many are just low info voters. But painting all MAGAs with the same ugly brush will keep us from converting the low info voters to the Resistance. So please do not do this. This idea is aimed at our own rage at MAGAs--telling us that it's always justified. It's not

Dems haven't won a majority of white voters since the passage of the Civil Rights &Voting Rights Acts in 1967. That's not a coincidence. This book...

Whites are targeted as audience by Right Wing media. Most media are RWng. 40% of households consume Sinclair TV. Then there's Fox, Newsmax, RWng talk radio in Spanish & English, newspapers, youtubes, social media podcasts etc RWng media make POC into scapegoats so not many of them are influenced

No doubt some T supporters are racist. But many are not. They just believe the pretty lies RWng media tell them about T & the ugly lies RWng media tell them about Dems and minorities.

"Many are not." Are you sure? How do you explain the significant decline in white voters since passing the Civil Rights act?

White voters are targeted as the audience by Right Wing media. Most media are Right Wing. upine.medium.com/the-vast-rea...

Even those who have racist views are not "racist" ppl as in "That's who they are, permanently." Once they find out they were lied to about e.g. immigrants committing more crimes than others, their views will change.

In 2016 I was on my way home from work and had to take a different route due to an accident. I watched people out there waving the maga flag, completely charged and amped up. I knew Hilary was cooked. I heard 2 older men talking about how they are going to have jobs once trumps in office.

Yes. The nation being immersed in lies has consequences. upine.medium.com/the-vast-rea...

Some swore their lives were going to improve exponentially. Some were angry and violent before maga. They just found the motivational speaker that told them it was okay to be evil & hateful even though it makes them uncomfortable, so the pretend to be christian. They knew what he was...

Some did this and knew this. There are many diff types of T supporters. Some knew almost nothing, didn't even consume any news. Heard he'd lower the price of eggs. www.dataforprogress.org/insights/202...

I wonder if they are putting something in the water, food or the public education system here is a nightmare...

No need to put anything in the food/water 4 ppl to believe what's repeated constantly by their "news" source. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusor... 4 those who do consume news, most media are RWng. 40% of households consume Sinclair TV. Then there's Fox, Newsmax, RWng radio in Spanish & English etc.

yea, it must be a cultural thing. I grew up watching the highly edited version of current events, which made me very skeptical.

Yes. In this case, the media are creating a culture that is not consistent with reality.

Reviews on this are all over the place. Plan to check this out

Spot on.

Yes and even folks on my “side of the aisle” did and still enable it by punching down on those of us who celebrate our deeply held support for diversity, equity and inclusion. They sneer and demand we abandon our principles #stillwokeandproudofit

Wow.

I just wanted to be the first to hashtag the glorious phrase #honeyedtit

Excellent read!...I def agree that many circumstances have culminated into the election of one who allows no circumstances for those who are "other"...

Yes- perfect description of MAGAs .

Religion and dictators remove the need for personal responsibility.

Higher order primates that deny their own evolution living by their lizard brain impulses and reactions.

🎯🎯🎯🎯 and when this trump thing falls! There will be another great white hope riding in on his horse using the same rhetoric!! And the same folks will fall for it all over again! As the saying goes you can’t fix stupid!!

Hello! We are The Unity Center Cincinnati, supporting families through peer support, education, and creating a friendly environment. Please help us spread positive energy by liking and following our account! 💙✨ #SupportFamilies #CommunityCare

Sounds like a few Ohio republicans

Go to my pinned post and watch the movie American Mindf*ck to see how tech indoctrinated the base.

Greg iles, if you haven't read him, you know nothing about the US south. He's a native and his books are not only mind consuming but brilliant!

Yep. They love blaming others for their failures.

It is indeed.

This really does perfectly capture the rise of the 🍊💩, and the vileness of too many AmeriKKKans.

Wow. Just wow. Oh, and YES.

If I could write, this is what I'd have loved to have written.

Holy shit, exactly.

That is so absolutely sad. What happened to these people in their youth?

💯

Jon: I agree with regards to the information in this article 👽

AntiChrist

This rings true for my inlaws here in Michigan.

📌

Now if only the ones who voted for this madness, or who didn't vote, could read that and understand it for the simple truth it is.

📌

They do NOT believe he wasn't successful They do not believe he stiffed workers. They do not believe he assaulted girls, women They are in denial They love him He represents everything they admire in a man they perceive as perfect. I'm surrounded by them

I'm reading Steven Hassan's The Cult of Trump which is not so much about why as how. Excellent read and it makes sense of so much

bsky.app/profile/alex...

This is true. Also they believe he is unfairly persecuted because other presidents weren’t (justifiably) impeached and (justifiably) accused of felonies and (justifiably) mocked and hated so much. All my maga friends of friends and relatives bring up that talking point. Minus the “justifiably”s.

It's true.

📌

Is everyone waking up to understand who PedoNazi felon 🍊💩 really is? Shocking! Guessing the FAFO stage is slowly coming to the surface, just like cicadas?

That sums it up pretty well

Oh, He gives them absolution... Explains a lot.

So yes … we are a society of sociopaths! Perhaps that’s what capitalism’s ultimate payoff is… Mass mental illness

I'm still trying to figure out why some of my Black friends voted for him. My childhood friend said he voted for his policies. What policies? Which ones?

Immigration tied to employment issues among working class Black people who voted for him, transgender panic among socially conservative voters. But those were broad trends, and obviously everyone had their own unique reasons for being wrong.

Male supremacy. It's like white women voting for Trump knowing he's a misogynist: they'll accept the degradation of women bc Trump promised them he'd put them above any person of color. But Trump ALSO promises men, of all races, that they're better than any woman. He's lying ofc, but it sounds good.

But don't you also think that some white women really love the "back to the 50s" trad wife myth of having a husband that brings home the bacon while they sashay about their smart house in stylish pumps and pearls baking cookies and making greatly appreciated meals for their family?

Some women may want to, and always could, do that if it’s what floats their boat. What the vast majority of women don’t want is being told they have to be chained to the kitchen sink producing children while men tell them what they can and can’t do.

No one under any previous administration was stopping white women from sashaying and being tradwives. Enjoying that is uncorrelated with a vote for Trump. A vote for Trump is a vote to put others beneath you in a hierarchy. Trump just lies about how he's going to do that & some people buy it.

I don't think it's an either-or, there are plenty of evangellical women who believe they are under men in a hierarchy ordained by God.

You may have misread my post.

Probably, my bad.

Many white women blame feminists, blacks, immigrants for the inability of their men to provide those nice pearls and pumps of the 50s believing these folks took their husbands' good jobs away and deprived them of a prosperous household. Trump promised a return to better days for trad white families.

Coming from a white MAGA family (whose views I do not share, but observe as a matter of self-preservation) I have a very different perspective.

My takes, 1: gykendall1.medium.com/c37019599d65

My takes, 2: gykendall1.medium.com/fde1287819c4

"Honeyed tit"!?

Look at a bottle of honey. It warns against feeding it to infants.

Yeah, that's good.

📌

Agreed. When I question, I will forever refer to this.

✅☑️✔️

We see & hear his minions spreading their angry hatred on a daly basis. I'm half tempted to start carrying my gun. I'll just wear my TACO hat so I won't frighten the liveral minded folk.

It’s why I’d vacation in syria before ever setting foot in florida or texass! I used to vacation down there often but, over the years, they just became insufferable wannabe losers to me. Everything is a grudge with them. Confederates are exhausting!

Right out of the authoritarian playbook.

Pass this on far and wide.

100%. $billionaire propagandists have triggered American's racist, misogynist underbelly to divide the working class ... so they can weaken and destroy our Republic, and undermine working class wealth, health, safety, and political influence. make no mistake we are under attack ...

Yep, a MAGA net of evil, hatred for hates sake..

Fucking Perfection.

Those damn Rebels always said, "The South Will Rise Again." The biggest mistake Lincoln ever made was not holding Jefferson Davis and his Condederacy Administration accountable. Had they been charged, convicted, and punished, this mess most likely would not have happened.

Lincoln was already dead. His treasonous VP Andrew Johnson pushed for no prosecution as well as canceled the reconstruction plan.

The short version: because a large portion of people are horrible, egotistical and devoid of empathy. And that orange demagogue gave them permission to stop holding back on their hatred, racism and bloodlust.

This was out-rednecking actual legacy rednecks.

I really miss the days when I didn't know this. It's been so demoralizing.

Facts

The "honeyed tit" line is brilliant. Honey is not good for babies.

That’s it, in a nutshell…

I picked up on Republicons doing this very same thing during the Regan years..I just can’t be a part of people like that😒

I feel that way too, but what makes it hard for many of us is most of the people we know and are related to are like this.

I feel your pain when you have relatives and people you’ve known for years and they drank the orange koolaid…I hate to say it but I’ve distanced myself from them they know it.

Exactly. What's the point of living without the social contract which is nothing more than the Golden Rule writ large?

Sums it up Y

This is the worst America. We are just as bad as during the slavery period and the entire world can see it.

There are going to be many books written about the fail of the American empire. Many.

Yea, cryers remorse. In the meantime, mute the wailing as you listen to the sounds of good trouble. bsky.app/profile/caju...

She is spot on about school boards directing principals to not allow ICE onto school property.

For one thing it’s upsetting to the children. The kids already have ti worry about somebody shooting up the school. Now they have to watch their schoolmates being dragged out by armed masked men….This is America now. 😢🇺🇸💀

Thank you for sharing this.

Poignant and greatly needed message.

"...like infants to a honeyed tit." - Sheer poetry!

Yep, that's about the size of it.

This. MAGA never take responsibility for their own actions. You’ll see this first hand from MAGA that you encounter in your daily lives. Friends and family, sadly.

I liked the bit that said anyone who needs to ban books and rewrite history is too chickenshit to govern anything. Also I hope sincerely that Mr. Iles is doing well.

This is one of my favorite Illes novels in the Penn Cage series. How about that planned assassination staging at the rally? Remind you of anything?

Just remember, at the bottom of Pandora's box remained hope

ALL YOU CAN SAY IS "WOW". This needs to go viral send to anyone you know in gov't. This needs to be on his grave stone.

Nailed it. But now, even with this great insight, how do we get rid of him? And repair his damage?

Just like Christianity.

Just downloaded for my walks. Thank you.

💯

Trump is the biggest loser we have ever seen. He never made a penny and only inherited the equivalent of a $1bn and has blown it numerous times. He can’t be trusted on anything.

Yep. Sadly, true.

Agree. This is the absolute truth. These people voted for him simply because he was and allowed them to be the worst of themselves. The hatred, racism, greed and selfishness.

But it was also Trump telling his followers that they were the victims. They loved hearing that whatever was wrong in their lives wasn't their fault, they could blame those others, and that Trump alone could fix it.

And they clearly still believe it. I can't wait until the fallout from the new cuts take place. They are going to be hit the hardest and they refuse to see it coming.

The problem is, we've seen this movie before, and there was even a poem about it. Get rid of trans kids, MAGA lives are not, better, get rid of immigrants, still not better, gay people, protesters, Jews, Unitarians... somehow too much of the population still thinks the answer is a new scapegoat.

100% correct.

Whoa. 😳 🤯 I had to pause, read it two more times and now I feel like I need to write a doctoral thesis based on one paragraph on a social media platform.

Reagan was the first to tell voters that as Americans, they were better than everyone else already. They didn't need self-improvement. Trump took it to the next level, giving himself and his base permission to burn down social norms with no accountability.

"like infants to a honeyed tit" Gotta save that one.

The irony is, honey is very bad for infants... The MAGAts suckled at the poisoned teat, and are now reaping what they sowed. And the sane world is collateral damage.

Yes! I love that little tidbit. Not even knowing it's potentially poisoning them. The infant at least has an excuse.

Willful ignorance & cultist moral cowardice is incurable & viral.

Bigotry period.

📌

So true

They'll give him everything so they can stay on top!

Power corrupts absolutely! They finally found someone (taco) who had the gumption to wreck havoc on American institutions and to keep their power (attempting to keep it anyways) so they ride his coattails hoping to remain in power forever! Gerrymandering, getting rid of elections. They are hoping.

Also this thread is relevant for reactions here: bsky.app/profile/asha...

No, it’s too simple. When you talk to people, they talk about loss, feeling suffocated, about not being heard and being fed up. I talked to an illiberal about a week ago and he felt family life didn’t get space anymore. I wrote about it here: europetomorrow.substack.com/p/in-convers...

agreed

A perfectly framed piece.

Bingo

LBJ said that years ago.

All due respect, I’ve already read similar things about why he rose to power. This isn’t a new thing. It’s his all populists rise to power. Look at Mussolini and Hitler.

Pretty good. Where Fear & Hate reside, so does the Absence of Reason ❗️

WOW - Spot On

I think this is accurate and that makes me very sad. All that we have been taught to believe about are country is just a shiny, gold gilt (like Trump is adding to the White House). The reality is that, at heart, we are a deeply prejudiced country.

100% truth to all of it, the quote, the post, the quote post. Perfect, succinct & accurate.

Btw, Vance is joining the oligarchs on Nantucket on Tuesday for a fundraiser. It's only $250,000 per couple and $100,000 if you only want dinner.

Protest details at mailchi.mp/6be072f8184e...

Walmart steaks

Probably

Hamberders!

Ha! Probably no covfefe because of the 50% tariffs.

Ouch! Talk about accurate. What makes bad people stop hiding and revel in their badness? A worse man telling them it's not only okay, but justified.

How does this end? My continuing prediction, Trump will never give up power. At some point millions across the Country who oppose him will demonstrate en masse. This will enrage him and he'll order our Military to shoot and kill us. The only question is, which direction will they point their guns?

I think this is correct

I JUST used that analogy in a post about Elstein!

💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯

I also think his constant presence everywhere feeds the idea he is their savior and protector. That he is out for them and being victimized for it.

Maga loves fascism

If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." -Lyndon B. Johnson

Came here to say this exactly. So glad your comment was the first one in my feed.

Did anyone ever figure out exactly how many voters voted by this logic, though? It seems that would be the first thing an opposition party would do. Not just roll out the same quote for 60 years. Why do the Democrats actually fail? Not this.

Party of pussies.

Did anyone ever figure out that thing everyone already figured out about US politics since the civil war ended? Yes. How many voters? Enough that Trump doesn't win without them. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... So yes "this". It's obvious if you're an American citizen or spent any time in the States

Here: The Mini-Recession of 2016. Some homework for you. Paywall unlocked. www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/u...

Maybe your confusion stems from you thinking something that American citizens figured out during the civil war only became widely known by researchers in 2016? Here's 2008: projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/cces/f...

I get where you're coming from. There are people in academia who want to "prove" this, but they're really just showing correlation. This '08 is not causation. It's just saying that the researcher thinks Obama's blackness "cost" him 3% of white people's votes--where he won more whites than since '76.

These researchers are not just demonstrating correlation. This isn't high school statistics. The papers go out of their way to demonstrate statistically significant results above and beyond low p-value. Is that the problem you've had with these peer reviewed papers? Your idea of "correlation"?

The problem is "p-hacking." For example, today in Japan, people are surprised/not surprised that an anti-immigrant party got 14% of the vote (it looks like). Now, does that mean 14% of the voters are anti-immigrant. Or does it mean 14% of the voters are hard up & the party hits their yen worries?

Yes, but we're not talking about Japan and we're not taking about p-hacking. Or are you? Would you like to make that argument? Please proceed. The papers are right there. I can pull the full copies if you'd like. How long will you keep this charade going? How much effort are you willing to put in?

To me, if you are the black candidate, and you do better than all the whites you ran at the top of your party since Jimmy Carter in 1976 (the first post-McGovern success), then the problem is not white racism. It's that your party fails to deliver on economic issues.

You know, the nice thing about these papers is, they cite their sources. We can trace this common wisdom, this understanding of white fragility, back to 2004, and then the 90s. This is old wisdom.

Again, if there were the possibility of data drill-down (not source citing), what people are going to find is that a core group of Deep South voters, the former "Dixiecrat" culture, weigh race as an issue. Not "the white people".

Even Barack Obama, who is more-and-more seen as both disappointment and hero, really didn't deliver broad-based prosperity, but got re-elected. Trump got re-elected after being booted out, because again, the Dems didn't deliver broad-based prosperity. It's the economics, not Identity.

They didn't? www.americanprogress.org/article/amer...

Dems haven't won a majority of white voters since the passage of the Civil Rights &Voting Rights Acts in 1967. That's not a coincidence. Read this book...

Sorry, class reductionism is a bunk ideology. That's why you won't find any researcher who isn't some Cato institute quack peddling that nonsense.

Yes, Obama got re-elected... without the white vote. Twice. That's kinda the point...

Cliffs notes? Summary? Please?

Of the paper? Its abstract summarizes it better than I could :)

So, just incase you're furiously googling or asking chatgpt, let me help you: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Thanks for posting link to study! It occurred to me that this (white fear/loss of majority) was the hidden calculus, and now have technical backup.

This theory is why the Democrats have consistently been losers over the last half century.

Definitely. I also happen to think when Eisenhower gave his farewell speech hinting at a shadowy government, and Hawaii’s Sen Daniel Inouye stating the same…we should believe them. We citizens are meant to interact only with a prop government that we think we are voting for. All a shell game.

You are right, though, in that the facts presented do explain why poor whites have consistently voted against their own interests over the past 400-some years. That includes when dems win (google the definition of the word "consistently") and when repubs win.

You have to actually engage with the content to comprehend a so-called "theory" lol. This paper presents evidence for how your brand of pseudo-intellectual white fragility affects both dems and republicans *equally*. You'd know that if you read just the opening paragraphs.

NO offense to the body of research you offered, I did spend a moment that I'll never get back to read the intro. It's the research equivalent of a "push poll". Someone suggests, "white people are disappearing" (which is true), and then they measure, "oh, now these people don't want to disappear."

NYT is certainly a choice, I'm sure their journalists are saying things, but do you have any actual peer reviewed scientific research to present that refutes the common wisdom? NYT gets an failing grade from me. Gonna need more than the first bias-confirming result from google. See me after class.

The other missing piece is what is either called the "mini-recession" or the "rolling recession" of 2015/16. Even though the overall economy was recovering from the so-called "Great Recession" of 2008 (12/2007-6/2009), there was a long lag and then a dip in more heartland areas. Dems ignore this.

I'm sure you believe this, I do not doubt. Did you have any interesting peer reviewed research to back up your assertions? Or are these just vibes? Here's a more friendly summation: penntoday.upenn.edu/news/fear-lo...

Right. I get that Penn did the research. I went to Penn.

Congrats?

I scanned the whole article to see the West Virginia breakout, but I didn't see it. That's the touchstone for me. WV was a Dukakis state in 1988, and it's been one of the most Trump states nowadays. This research piece looks like it set out to "prove" what was already assumed by the researcher.

Did you actually have a problem with the peer reviewed research paper (not just a mere article), or are we just talking about vibes? Would you like to see a different paper on the matter? There are many.

Carlin warned us about 20 years ago.

Seems to be a world wide phenomenon, it's happening everywhere. Trouble is governments never look after the people who can't,then they went to the next group the middleclass. They just keep the wealthy ,paying no taxes. Democrats all over the world need to wake up,do your job the rest will follow.

The Libs need to stand outside of themselves and look in if they don’t wish to be archaic.

The word you're looking for is "copium" 👍

Course it’s not their fault🙄

"None of this is your fault," might be true, but they always blame the exact wrong people. It's "immigrants are stealing your jobs," rather than, your employer is exploiting you for cheap labor.