- Takes on the “Biden assassination plot” fantasy, and projection;
- Why would DeSantis think the Founding Fathers would hate sociology?
- Tribal mentality from Royce White and Bryce Mitchell;
- And Christian rejection of the nature of the real world.
First for today, two takes on the Republican panic in recent days about the ludicrous, alleged assassination plot by Biden against Trump.
Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 24 May 2024: Trump’s “Biden the assassin” fantasy is pure projection, subtitled “With Trump, every accusation is a confession”:
No one thinks President Joe Biden tried to assassinate Donald Trump.
“Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE,” the former president wrote on his Truth Social platform this week. Earlier in the day, it was revealed that hidden classified documents were found in Trump’s bedroom following the FBI’s 2022 search.
Not even the people using their MAGA megaphones to say this believe their lies. Not Steve Bannon, not Trump’s lawyer Christina Bobb, not Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. Trump himself definitely doesn’t believe his own hysterics. We know he’s lying whenever he’s talking or typing. While there are always a few stray uber-morons out there who actually believe this crap, by and large, the audience for this conspiracy theory already knows it’s a lie. The audience is participating in political theater, a collective effort to wage the fascist war on reality.
I go back and forth about this. Do the Republicans really spread such nonsense as red meat for their clueless base, or do some of them (like MTG) actually believe it?
Marcotte links to this:
Washington Post, analysis by fact checker Glenn Kessler, 23 May 2024: How Trump used his own court filing to claim an ‘assassination’ attempt, subtitled “A right-wing social media frenzy resulted from misinformation planted by the former president’s lawyers.”
On the fourth page, the brief misleadingly quoted from an FBI policy statement to suggest deadly force was contemplated when FBI agents executed a search warrant to recover missing documents.
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The Atlantic, Juliette Kayyem, 23 May 2024: Trump’s Assassination Fantasy Has a Darker Purpose, subtitled “The ex-president’s stories of his own victimization make violence by his supporters far more likely.”
When Donald Trump insinuated this week that his successor and the FBI were out to kill him, he showed how central violence has become to his conception of political leadership.
…
Trump has a way of projecting his own vices onto others. His view of presidential power is absolute—to the point that his lawyer recently argued before the Supreme Court that ordering the military to assassinate a political rival “could well be an official act.” There is probably some limiting principle to this particular argument, but the fact that the issue is even under discussion is not a good sign for our democracy. Perhaps he believes that Biden was out to shoot him because he thinks that’s an order that presidents can freely give.
He might win! If I seem to spend too much time on these matters, it’s because I fear we might be living in the early days of a failed democracy and fascist dictatorship. It’s happened before.
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Second for today, shorter items, with only brief comments.
Joe.My.God, from Florida Politics, 24 May 2024: DeSantis: Founding Fathers Would Hate Sociology
What is sociology? Wikipedia: “the scientific and systematic study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life.” How does DeSantis know the Founding Fathers would have hated this? Or is this just another example of conservative ideology rejecting all knowledge that challenges their religious ideology?
(Also, sociology is a required course where? In high school? Not when I was in high school. In college? Even then, not when I went to college.)
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Another example of tribal morality.
NYT, opinion by Michelle Goldberg, 24 May 2024: Women Have Gotten ‘Too Mouthy,’ Says This Republican Senate Candidate
This is about “Royce White, a Black former pro basketball player who led protests in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd.”
Note that his attitude aligns with anti-vaxxers and “conspiracy theories about everything from 9/11 to the murder of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School.”
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Another example of Trump’s fascist tendencies.
Washington Post, Dana Milbank, 24 May 2024: Opinion
Trump’s fascist talk is what’s ‘poisoning the blood of our country’, subtitled “No, Trump isn’t Hitler. But his copycat words lead nowhere good.”
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More about the faithful, who are deeply superstitious (i.e. they do not have a realistic understanding of how the world works).
Joe.My.God, from Charisma News, 24 May 2024: Christian Site: God Crashed Iran President’s Helicopter
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And two items about this:
Joe.My.God, from NBC News, 24 May 2024: UFC Fighter Says He’ll Home-School His Infant Son So He Doesn’t Turn Out To Be A “Satanic Gay Communist”
And this.
LGBTQNation, 23 May 2024: UFC fighter Bryce Mitchell says homeschooling his son will keep him from being gay, subtitled “The flat earther also ranted about vaccines.”
He does not understand how the world works. Thus again, note the alliance with flat earthers and vaccines.
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And: NBC Los Angeles, 23 May 2024: UFC fighter says he’ll home-school son so he doesn’t ‘end up turning gay’, subtitled “Mixed martial artist Bryce Mitchell also said he fears public schools could turn his infant son into a communist or subject him to the works of Edgar Allan Poe.”
He doesn’t explain his antipathy to Edgar Allan Poe.
Too much time noting this guy? But these are the people voting Trump back into office.
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A follow up to my topic of two days ago, not to belabor it, but to note allied topics.
Joe.My.God, 22 May 2024: Christian Site: Queer Nature Series Is “Assault On God”
But his god is a fantasy of course, belied by the evidence of the real world. Allied topics, as this site does routinely:
Lasher recently appeared here when he declared that UFOs are piloted by “demonic entities” and that a measles outbreak in Florida heralds the End Times.
Before that, he appeared here when he declared that Taylor Swift is “summoning demons” at her concerts and when he claimed that Satan convinces Target to sell LGBTQ-themed merchandise such as their Pride nutcracker.
In January, Lasher warned that Fox News is “openly practicing the occult” by hosting a psychic. In March, he prophesied that the solar eclipse would trigger “massive” earthquakes.
