I’ve said before that the Trump campaign is essentially a pigeon drop con. The amazing thing is that it’s been five years now and so many people are still falling for it.
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time. But you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” - Abraham Lincoln
“I can fool some of the people all of the time. And then Lincoln said some other things I don’t care about. Did you know he was a Republican?” - Donald Trump
And one more relevant quote –
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
I apologize for the language, but the point stands, no matter how offensively expressed. This is exactly what the Republican Party is doing.
I think it might be psychologically difficult to turn away from the Republicans or Trump when so much of your self-identity is tied up with those two. So they end up doing some serious mental gymnastics to excuse or ignore their bad behavior. “Oh, it’s Antifa who instigated the riot at the capitol.”
People who belong to doctrine-heavy groups AND have brains in their heads often have to do mental gymnastics, cut-and-paste, and other machinations to keep their heads from exploding. Especially if they fear dreadful punishment if they deviate in thought, word, or [gulp] deed.
I have witnessed this myself. And in fact, attempted to practice it in my yute. But the head held firm and instead, the beliefs exploded.
Thirded/fourthed or whatever. It’s all about “you cannot make me back down”, confident in that nobody will act to force them to back down.
It has been said that the “Traditional” South’s society is an “honor culture”. If you accuse someone of lying and are not willing to get into an actual fight over it, you will be portrayed to be the coward, and the other guy “wins” the argument even if he WAS lying.
Apparently, Rep Clyde was one of the ones that was helping barricade the door of the House Chamber. He was there with security that had their weapons drawn. Does he think that happens on a normal tourist day?
Apparently he does. Unless you’re suggesting he’s… <gulp> mistaken, or maybe ill-informed? 
Or and idiot.
I prefer the phrase a bald-faced liar.
Actually, I prefer the term traitor. He’s a traitor, just like Cheeto Jesus.
This guy is unfortunately my rep and you’re right, the people down here love it. He had giant rifle shadows on his political signs and literally owns a gun store that looks like a castle. He’s been a litigious nut for years and rural GA laps it up. It’s embarrasing. So yes, detached from reality - But he’s got the whole area with him - he won with 80% of the vote.
IOW, a cult.
Some context for that quote:
WHILE Lyndon Baines Johnson was a man of time and place, he felt the bitter paradox of both. I was a young man on his staff in 1960 when he gave me a vivid account of that southern schizophrenia he understood and feared. We were in Tennessee. During the motorcade, he spotted some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs. Late that night in the hotel, when the local dignitaries had finished the last bottles of bourbon and branch water and departed, he started talking about those signs. “I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it,” he said. “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.”
This idea that it was a normal tourist day or just a peaceful demonstration cheapens the deaths of the six who died that day, including one Police officer. The GOP has said they support the police- well, that is yet another lie.
No, they do support the police – but only certain ones. Like disgraced Officer Chauvin.
They support the police … keeping black and other undesirable people in their places and out of their neighborhoods. They view the police as a sort of border patrol keeping “their” neighborhoods safe from “those others”. When you view police as your personal protectors from all of the people you hate, then of course you support them.
Some had a brief moment of hope that reality might actually reassert itself with people such as those you describe here, in the form of the pandemic. Could living in the right-wing dream world continue in the face of an uncaring virus?
It would appear, from the fact that your neighbors have not expressed anything but enthusiasm for Rep. Clyde’s lies, that this hope was vain.
I can’t help thinking of Germany, post WW2. There was a genuine facing of reality then by the leaders who knew that Nazism was still beloved by many in the defeated nation, and that keeping it from resurging would take draconian levels of censoring pro-Nazi communication (through every means, including symbols).
I can’t help thinking that a similar level of effort might be the only way to counter the ‘reality doesn’t matter so long as I get to thumb my nose at people I resent’ mindset that fuels support for Clyde and others of his ilk.
Looks like there won’t be a bipartisan commission to look at 1/6, unlike the scores of commissions looking at Benghazi. But why can’t Pelosi say she’s forming a House committee to investigate the attempt to end democracy without Republican support?
The problem is that to do this you really need to have complete control of the population by a group that supports such efforts to start such a process. Given that we can barely get confederate soldier statues down, I don’t see deTrumpification happening in the foreseeable future
Yes, and remember- there were no Nazi judges at the Nuremberg trials.
Very true. But this part of the historical record provides an answer of sorts to those who argue that if we ‘just talked to them’ or ‘just stopped using certain words that bother them’ or ‘just treated them nicely,’ the Trumpites/Big-Lie Enthusiasts would come around to a more evidence-based way of thinking.
The post-1945 Nazis didn’t come around to the idea that democracy is swell and that killing non-Aryans was wrong. And talking to them nicely wouldn’t have helped make that happen.
(I’m not arguing in favor of ‘giving up on people.’ I’m just saying that there is no easy path to reforming the thought processes of some. Decisive, rigorous action of the post-WW2 type–some variety of enforcement of cultural prohibitions against being deplorable–would be needed. And such is unlikely to ever happen.)