So basically, refusing to concede is going to become a thing:
Figured it was just a matter of time.
Don, Jr.: “Hey; look at me! I’m using words over here!”
He used words but there’s nothing meaningful in them at all. I wouldn’t think “my dad showed that you can lose like a whiny, destructive lying jackass” would be a selling point, but that’s conservatives for ya.
It’s a potentially significant watershed, though. He’s telling the party "Go ahead, refuse to concede. Claim fraud. Never admit defeat again - oh yeah, rig the system and suppress votes while you’re at it."
The radicalization of the party is far from done, and I fear there’s a lot more where that came from
The thing is, he’s an idiot. An as an idiot, he thinks he knows where this game he’s playing is going to go and how it will end. He’s wrong. He’s very wrong.
At this point, I’m trying to prepare myself mentally for the eventuality I see coming and as such, I’m kind of looking forward to some parts of it. I’ve said for years now that America’s Ceaușescu moment is coming; even the lessers may prove some brief relief from our chaotic universe.
Somebody ought to let those dopes know that they can’t be radicalized and conservative at the same time. Maybe their heads will explode.
And another child of Republicans is thrown under the bus. Use your kids as scapegoats, Republicans! Demonstrate to the world how seriously you take the idea of personal responsibility! Douchebags!
( Married couple- one State Rep., and one US Rep.)
“SPRINGFIELD — The decal shows a simple Roman numeral three surrounded by stars, but it’s tied to a far-right militia group — and a downstate Republican state legislator is being asked to explain what it was doing in the window of his pick-up truck near the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection”
"State Rep. Chris Miller denied any involvement with the extremist organization called the Three Percenters after his truck was photographed with the sticker in its back window that day in the Washington, D.C.
“I have never been a member of the 3 percenters. My son received the sticker that was on my truck from a family friend who said that it represented patriotism and love of country,” Miller said in a statement. “I have since removed the sticker.”
Miller, 67, a cattle farmer from Oakland in southern Illinois, is married to U.S. Rep. Mary Miller, a freshman Republican who was quoted last month saying that “Hitler was right on one thing” at a pro-Donald Trump rally. …
The rear window of the pick-up truck was not the only place the Three Percenters logo showed up behind the state representative.
Speaking at a Reopen Illinois rally outside the Illinois State Capitol last May, state Rep. Chris Miller dubbed Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker a “domestic enemy.”
Behind the state legislator was a sign declaring the need for “dangerous freedom” and not “peaceful tyranny”. On it was the same roman numeral insignia of the Three Percenters without the surrounding stars.
The Millers’ legislative and congressional districts in central and southern Illinois have been a hotbed of extremist violence – having 54 “incidents of hate, extremism, antisemitism, and terrorism in and just outside [Rep. Mary Miller’s district] from 2019-20”, according to the ADL.
…
In 2018 several members of the “White Rabbit Three Percent Illinois Patriot Freedom Fighters Militia” were arrested in a plot to bomb a women’s clinic performing abortions in downtown Champaign, an area just outside Rep. Mary Miller’s congressional district. "
Have to investigate; can’t trust liars to tell the truth.
It’s not exactly clear what moment is coming; it could be a Robespierre/Ceausescu moment, or it could be a Hitler/Mussolini/Franco moment. Or some offshoot of both or something in between.
What’s striking in terms of historical similarities, however, is that like the early 20th Century, we seem to be transitioning from a period of liberalism to one in which neo-conservative forces are mounting a counter-revolution - or if nothing else, a fierce resistance in the face of social change.
By some degrees of contrast with the UK, in early 20th Century France and Germany, there was class identity and separation, which is probably what led to intense polarization that gripped both societies. Toward the end of the 19th and in the beginning of the 20th Century, trends of economic liberalization and political and legal movements for more inclusion (we can debate the extent to which they were realized) began to backslide into outright xenophobia on the right. Domestically, polarization festered and intensified and began to radicalize the right wing in particular, which formed alliances consisting of the wealthy, military (active duty and veterans), and religious groups. This right wing consolidation was happening despite periods in which public leaders were pushing forward with political and economic liberalism.
Here’s where I’m going with this: in both France and Germany, the right wing was noisy but ran into some walls initially. In France there were multiple attempts to overthrow the French Third Republic. In post-WWI Germany, there were violent clashes, and of course, the Putsch. Initially, they were chaotic, and they were disorganized, and most violent extremists ended up either dead or in jail. But the political extremists pushed forward, and with ever-more determination to make sure that the democratic government simply ceased to function. They broke norms. They broke rules. They were relentless. Hitler gained power by eventually making governing alliances impossible, and making it such that Germany could not govern itself democratically without him as its leader.
This is where the Republicans are going now, and this is why it sends a chill up my spine when I hear Don Jr., as goofy and idiotic as he might sound, plant the seed in the heads of thousands of the most influential conservatives that it’s okay to reject elections. There’s a historical precedent for this kind of behavior, and it leads to a very, very dark place.
Still funny after all of these years:
What’s not funny is that, after 40 years, most Republicans would side with the Nazis in that clip.
The golden Individual 1 statue that everybody at CPAQ is bowing down to was made in Mexico.
But who paid for it?
The losers and suckers who contributed to “Stop the Steal”
What I find more surprising is that the thing wasn’t some sort of prank, but legitimately intended to honor him.
Yes, but this is so ridiculous and so reminiscent of the Old Testament golden calf idol, I was sure it was a prank.
Without openly saying “might makes right,” they are dancing around adopting this as their political philosophy.
If it’s ‘okay’ to reject election results just because you don’t like them–and to enforce that rejection with either open violence or the threat of violence–then, of course, you have a fascist dictatorship. The fact that millions of stupid people think they will do better under fascist dictatorship than under representative democracy is a tribute to the powers of propaganda.
And of course, those paying for that propaganda are doing so because they, personally, will do better under fascist dictatorship than under representative democracy. (At least in the short term, which may be all they’re capable of considering.) If only exposing this fact to the dimwitted masses would cause those masses to turn on the propagandists…but so far, that hasn’t been the way it’s worked.
Christ! How many faces have they had to erase from that one since it was painted?
Yeah, it was made in the studio of the sculptor who made the original stainless steel version in 2019, who lives as a US expat in Mexico. As far as I can tell, neither statue has yet found a purchaser.
That’s exactly the point my cousin (who makes religious posts on Facebook) is making. He’s pointing out that, even if you admired the former president, this sort of idolatry goes against our Christian beliefs and to stay away.
Even before this he’d been talking about how people were putting too much trust in a president rather than God.
It’s nice to know this Trumpian idiocy isn’t infecting my family.