- A Republican critic of journalist Robert Kagan, who wrote about how a Trump dictatorship (see previous posts) would harass journalists, make Kagan’s point by threatening to harass Kagan;
- Maybe Trump and his followers *are* what America is;
- More about Mike Johnson’s and Donald Trump’s visions from God;
- And three items — about migrant debit cards and the actual strength of the economy — about which conservatives believe things that are not true.
Washington Post, Philip Bump, 8 Dec 2023: J.D. Vance tried to troll Trump critics. He helped make their point.
Senator J.D. Vance also read the piece recently by Washington Post editor at large Robert Kagan, and proved his point by threatening to have Kagan investigated.
In service to that school of thought, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) wrote a letter to the Departments of Justice and State to raise questions — pretty obviously in an ironic way — about Kagan’s purported efforts to stoke insurrection against the government. The letter was quickly derided by Trump’s (and Vance’s) critics: You’re going to defend Trump against charges of embracing dictatorship by demanding the government crack down on a journalist?
Or was he being subtler than that? Bump walks around possible interpretations. Yet concludes:
The real revelation is that a senator who once disparaged Trump in unsparing terms now sees political value in trying to diminish Trump’s past efforts to subvert democracy. It’s that element of the letter that reinforces Kagan’s point.
Others take Vance’s letter at face value.
Washington Post, Ruth Marcus, 7 Dec 2023: Opinion | How an Ohio senator’s stunt proves the Trump dictatorship theory
BoingBoing, Mark Frauenfelder, 7 Dec 2023: GOP Senator calls for criminal action against journalist over MAGA dictatorship article
If you want a taste of what freedom of the press will look like under a MAGA dictatorship, look no further than GOP Sen. Jack Vance’s demand that the Justice Department launch a criminal investigation against a Washington Post columnist who wrote a piece warning of a MAGA dictatorship.
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Maybe the sages who react to Trump and his ilk by saying “This is not who America is” are wrong.
The Atlantic, Mark Leibovich, 8 Dec 2023: Trump Voters Are America Too, subtitled “If he wins a second term, perhaps we’ll finally dispense with the myth that ‘this is not who we are.'”
(But Europe already knows that; Trump supporters are the quintessential “ugly Americans”.)
When political elites insisted “We’re better than this!”—a close cousin of “This is not who we are”—many Trump disciples heard “We’re better than them.” Hillary Clinton ably confirmed this when she dismissed half of the Republican nominee’s supporters—at an LGBTQ fundraiser in New York—as people who held views that were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.” Whether or not she was correct, the targets of her judgment did not appreciate it. And the disdain was mutual. “He’s our murder weapon,” said the conservative political scientist Charles Murray, summarizing the appeal that Trump held for many of his loyalists.
(Country folk have *always* thought that about city folk.)
Concluding:
You can dismiss Trump voters all you want, but give them this: They’re every bit as American as any idealized vision of the place. If Trump wins in 2024, his detractors will have to reckon once again with the voters who got us here—to reconcile what it means to share a country with so many citizens who keep watching Trump spiral deeper into his moral void and still conclude, “Yes, that’s our guy.”
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Returning to one of yesterday’s themes, Hemant Mehta is not afraid to spell things out.
Hemant Mehta, Friendly Atheist, 8 Dec 2023: Speaker Mike Johnson says God told him, in late-night hallucinations, that he was Moses, subtitled “Mike Johnson is, somehow, two heartbeats away from the presidency”
We already know Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is a Christian Nationalist who believes he’s on a theological mission to merge God and government. In case there was any doubt, though, he cleared it up on Tuesday during an event for the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, the Jason Rapert-founded group that pretends Christians are persecuted across the country.
During the event, held at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., Johnson said that God spoke to him in the weeks before he became Speaker. Johnson believed he would be a supporting player in the Republican Party, acting like the character of Aaron in the Bible when it comes to supporting Moses. But later, he explained, God urged him to be Moses and take charge and lead the country through “a Red Sea moment.”
Mehta goes on to point out numerous ironies and implications.
God apparently chose Mike Johnson to lead the charge against refugees and LGBTQ people.
We’ve seen this sort of rhetoric before, though, with white evangelical zealots comparing themselves or their leaders to biblical characters. Long before Johnson saw himself as Moses, conservative Christian leaders claimed Donald Trump was a lot like the biblical king Cyrus, a non-Christian whom God put in place to help the faithful. Or King David, a sinner who was nevertheless anointed. Or Queen Esther, who saved the Jews. (GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has also leaned into the King David comparisons.)
We know why they do this, too. If they can position themselves as modern versions of God’s favorite people, that makes it much harder for Christian voters to criticize their actions and policies. It’s easy to ignore Trump’s crimes and ignorance and cruelty if you believe God simply appointed an imperfect person to fulfill His goals. And if Mike Johnson says God told him to be like Moses, then his rash and irresponsible decisions can be overlooked by the GOP base because God works in mysterious ways.
Anything to stop Republican voters from taking a critical look at what Johnson is actually doing.
It worked, too. As soon as Johnson finished his remarks, Rapert responded, “It’s very obvious to see, you’re one of us.”
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Which segues neatly to this piece…
Salon, Chauncey DeVega, 8 Dec 2023: “Trump’s fantasy of infallibility” has been destroyed: “Narcissistic injury” made him more dangerous, subtitled “Dr. Justin Frank: ‘Trump does believe that God is on his side and that he is the Chosen One or some such figure'”
Last weekend, at a campaign rally in Iowa, Trump declared that he is essentially the Chosen One, protected by “god” and “Jesus”, two supernatural entities that will supposedly help make him the next president of the United States by intervening in the 2024 election on his behalf.
What type of God King Dictator will Donald Trump be? Based on his statements, threats, and other behavior, Trump will be vindictive, cruel, and evil as he embarks on a campaign of retribution, revenge, and destruction against his “enemies” (meaning anyone who dares to oppose him and the MAGA movement’s plan to end multiracial pluralistic democracy).
(And isn’t that the God of the Old Testament?)
What is it about these people? Are they touched by God, or merely “touched,” as they say? Or are they so cynical as to play to their crowds, as Hemant Mehta suggests.
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A couple more items about how conservatives believe things that are not true.
Media Matters, 8 Dec 2023: Right-wing media outlets resurface long-debunked myth that all migrants get $5,000 debit cards from the government, subtitled “Sheriff Mark Lamb’s exaggerated claim echoes earlier versions of this misinformation”
Think about this: if this were true, it should be easy enough to confirm through physical evidence and/or interviews with migrants. After all, there are *so many* migrants, right? Yet this article describes how this claim has spread through right-wing media, by hearsay, without a particle of actual evidence. Well, actually, there’s this particle:
He [Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb] again refused to provide specifics on his sources, saying only that he’d spoken with “guys that work with Border Patrol.”
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AlterNet, David Badash, 8 Dec 2023: Jobs report forces Fox News to admit Biden economy ‘a lot stronger than anybody understands’
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And one more volley from Paul Krugman about the economy.
NY Times, Paul Krugman, 7 Dec 2023: The Progressive Case for Bidenomics
Key point:
I have no illusions about persuading conservatives that the economy is in good shape; their minds are made up, and pointing out facts at odds with their views just makes them angry.
True of conservatives in general, about most things, it seems to me.
