Context; Where we are; Connie Willis; Christian dictatorships; More MAGA than ever; Russian delicacy; Lagniappes.
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Here it is November 2022, and sometimes when I look back at my old posts, especially those linking political items, it isn’t obvious what the context was. So let me try a very quick summary of where we are right now. In 2022, we’re two years into Joe Biden’s presidential term. Thus the “mid-term” elections, when many governors, senators, and representatives are chosen, depending on the cycle of their various terms. Inflation and gas prices are high, as they are worldwide, consequences of Putin’s war against Ukraine, and the aftereffects of pandemic shutdowns; thus Biden has an approval rating of only 40 some %. The economy, otherwise, is doing quite well, considering very low unemployment. Trump’s approval is even lower, even as he threatens, as soon as tomorrow, to announce another bid for the presidency, even as Florida governor Ron DeSantis is poised to do so as well.
Traditionally the party in power loses congressional seats in the mid-terms. It didn’t happen this time. The Democrats have held the Senate. And most of the Trump-endorsed election-deniers lost.
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Ezra Klein, NY Times, 12 Nov 2022: Three Theories That Explain This Strange Moment
The stories we tell, in politics as in life, leave us stuck in the past even as we’re forced, pitilessly, into the future. What I’m more interested in is patterns that explain more than one election, in more than one place. Three of them are on my mind right now: calcification, parity and cultural backlash.
The last item recalls Klein’s long interview with Pippa Norris, that I posted about on Nov. 6th. Klein concludes this piece:
If you were looking for a three-sentence summary of American politics in recent years, I think you could do worse than this: The parties are so different that even seismic events don’t change many Americans’ minds. The parties are so closely matched that even minuscule shifts in the electoral winds can blow the country onto a wildly different course. And even in a time of profound economic dislocation, American politics has become less about which party is good for your wallet and more about whether the cultural changes of the past 50 years delight or dismay you.
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Connie Willis, via Lou Anders, Facebook 10 Nov 2022
Long post summarizing election results. Connie (the famous multi-award-winning science fiction writer) has long been a CNN/news junkie. I was with her in a green room, way back when, when news of Princess Diana’s car crash came in. First Dodi…
If you really want to know what happened yesterday, all you need to do is listen to what the Republicans are saying about it.
Here’s what they were saying right before the election:
— Kyle Beck: “Red wave’s comin’!”
— Ted Cruz: “Not just a red wave but a red tsunami!”
— Joe Rogan: “The Red Wave that’s coming is going to be like the elevator doors opening up in The Shining.”
— Erick Erickson: “Suburban women are very much for abortion–of Democrats in the voting booth. This is going to be a brutal night for the Dems.”
— Lauren Boebert (currently losing): “The red wave has begun!”
— Dinesh D’Souza: “Red wave begins!”
–Cernovich: “Complete destruction of the Democratic communist party!”And on election night:
— Dinesh D’Souza: “Republicans are in a jam!”
–Cernovich: “Can’t even describe what’s happening.. It doesn’t seem possible. Total destruction occurring.”
— Lindsey Graham: “Definitely not a red wave, that’s for sure.”
— According to Raw Story, Republicans are despondent and catatonic. Jim Acosta says, “I haven’t seen this level of anxiety and loathing since late 2015 as Trump ascended. McConnell may not survive.”
— According to the New York Times, Trump is “livid and screaming at everyone.” He’s claiming that they were all bad candidates and is blaming Melania for getting him to endorse Dr. Oz. (When has he ever listened to her, or anyone else?
— Fox News’ Marc Thiessen: “Midterms a searing indictment of the Republican party. The Republican party needs to do a really deep introspective look in the mirror right now because this is an absolute disaster.”
— Trump says candidates lost because they didn’t support him enough and abandoned the Big Lie. He doesn’t explain why DeSantis won by such a big margin.
— Marjorie Taylor Greene called all the candidates who lost “pathetic losers” and was furious that they were trying to blame Trump.The Red Wave turned out to be the Red Tide, or as someone tweeted, “From Red Wave to Red Wedding.”
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Salon, Paul Rosenberg, 12 Nov 2022: What’s behind Elon’s Twitter disaster? A fundamental misunderstanding of “free speech”, subtitled “Social media experts saw this all coming: Engineers don’t understand freedom of speech, community or human behavior”
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Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, 10 Nov 2022: Nick Fuentes Says the Results of the 2022 Elections Prove ‘Why We Need a Dictatorship’
They really do want a white Christian dictatorship to impose their views on everyone else.
Fuentes has been very open about his desire to see a “white uprising” in the United States that will install former President Donald Trump as a dictator, cancel all future elections, and impose Christian fascism throughout the country, allowing for women to be burned at the stake.
Is this just some fringe wackjob who got himself a podcast? Well, his Wikipedia page is quite extensive. So not only is he “racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, America-hating, and a Christian fascist“, he’s an antivaxxer too. These things tends to go together, as earlier noted.
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The Atlantic, Peter Wehner, 10 Nov 2022: More MAGA Than Ever, subtitled “It’s hard to overstate how radicalized and anarchic the base of the Republican Party remains.”
The Democrats did better than expected in the mid-term elections held on the 8th, two days before this was posted. It concludes:
The Republican Party remains diseased. There are a few exceptions, such as Senator Mitt Romney, but Americans should consider the GOP a threat to liberal democracy until we see evidence of dramatic changes. The most encouraging news from the midterms was that just enough Americans understood this; an election that should have been a Republican tsunami produced barely a trickle. As Lisa Lerer of The New York Times put it, voters “showed a limited appetite for the burn-down-the-house approach that Mr. Trump has spread throughout the Republican Party.”
The past half-dozen years have not been easy ones for American democracy. The stress test is hardly over, and the struggle will intensify. But Tuesday was a good day. Voters seemed to understand the nature of the threat; they stepped up rather than succumb to apathy or despair. Americans still have a republic, and most of them still want to keep it.
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This was news a week ago, now duly noted. I never thought that Trump and his team “conspired” with the Russians to swing the election of 2016, but only because they weren’t competent to do so. That doesn’t mean the Russians didn’t try.
CNN, 7 Nov 2022: Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin appears to admit to US election interference
“I will answer you very subtly, and delicately and I apologize, I will allow a certain ambiguity. Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere,” Prigozhin said.
“Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once,” he added.
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Lagniappes
Daily Beast, via Joe.My.God, 10 Nov 2022: DePape Indictment Debunks Anti-Gay Lie By D’Souza
Why does anyone believe anything this guy says? His recent movie has been thoroughly debunked.
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Joe.My.God, 9 Nov 2022: Oklahoma Gov Claims “Every Square Inch” Of The State In Jesus’ Name To “Battle Against Principalities” [Video]
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