#anti-migrant lie

[mariacallous]

This is a gift article.

The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality. As Hurricane Milton churned across the Gulf of Mexico last night, I saw an onslaught of outright conspiracy theorizing and utter nonsense racking up millions of views across the internet. The posts would be laughable if they weren’t taken by many people as gospel. Among them: Infowars’ Alex Jones, who claimed that Hurricanes Milton and Helene were “weather weapons” unleashed on the East Coast by the U.S. government, and “truth seeker” accounts on X that posted photos of condensation trails in the sky to baselessly allege that the government was “spraying Florida ahead of Hurricane Milton” in order to ensure maximum rainfall, “just like they did over Asheville!”

As Milton made landfall, causing a series of tornados, a verified account on X reposted a TikTok video of a massive funnel cloud with the caption “WHAT IS HAPPENING TO FLORIDA?!” The clip, which was eventually removed but had been viewed 662,000 times as of yesterday evening, turned out to be from a video of a CGI tornado that was originally published months ago. Scrolling through these platforms, watching them fill with false information, harebrained theories, and doctored images—all while panicked residents boarded up their houses, struggled to evacuate, and prayed that their worldly possessions wouldn’t be obliterated overnight—offered a portrait of American discourse almost too bleak to reckon with head-on.

Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories, the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism. As two catastrophic storms upended American cities, a patchwork network of influencers and fake-news peddlers have done their best to sow distrust, stoke resentment, and interfere with relief efforts. But this is more than just a misinformation crisis. To watch as real information is overwhelmed by crank theories and public servants battle death threats is to confront two alarming facts: first, that a durable ecosystem exists to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality, and second, that the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes but willing participants.

Some of the lies and obfuscation are politically motivated, such as the claim that FEMA is offering only $750 in total to hurricane victims who have lost their home. (In reality, FEMA offers $750 as immediate “Serious Needs Assistance” to help people get basic supplies such as food and water.) Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, and Fox News have all repeated that lie. Trump also posted (and later deleted) on Truth Social that FEMA money was given to undocumented migrants, which is untrue. Elon Musk, who owns X, claimed—without evidence—that FEMA was “actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own. It’s very real and scary how much they have taken control to stop people helping.” That post has been viewed more than 40 million times. Other influencers, such as the Trump sycophant Laura Loomer, have urged their followers to disrupt the disaster agency’s efforts to help hurricane victims. “Do not comply with FEMA,” she posted on X. “This is a matter of survival.”

The result of this fearmongering is what you might expect. Angry, embittered citizens have been harassing government officials in North Carolina, as well as FEMA employees. According to an analysis by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an extremism-research group, “Falsehoods around hurricane response have spawned credible threats and incitement to violence directed at the federal government,” including “calls to send militias to face down FEMA.” The study also found that 30 percent of the X posts analyzed by ISD “contained overt antisemitic hate, including abuse directed at public officials such as the Mayor of Asheville, North Carolina; the FEMA Director of Public Affairs; and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.” The posts received a collective 17.1 million views as of October 7.

Online, first responders are pleading with residents, asking for their help to combat the flood of lies and conspiracy theories. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said that the volume of misinformation could hamper relief efforts. “If it creates so much fear that my staff doesn’t want to go out in the field, then we’re not going to be in a position where we can help people,” she said in a news conference on Tuesday. In Pensacola, North Carolina, Assistant Fire Chief Bradley Boone vented his frustrations on Facebook: “I’m trying to rescue my community,” he said in a livestream. “I ain’t got time. I ain’t got time to chase down every Facebook rumor … We’ve been through enough.”

It is difficult to capture the nihilism of the current moment. The pandemic saw Americans, distrustful of authority, trying to discredit effective vaccines, spreading conspiracy theories, and attacking public-health officials. But what feels novel in the aftermath of this month’s hurricanes is how the people doing the lying aren’t even trying to hide the provenance of their bullshit. Similarly, those sharing the lies are happy to admit that they do not care whether what they’re pushing is real or not. Such was the case last week, when Republican politicians shared an AI-generated viral image of a little girl holding a puppy while supposedly fleeing Helene. Though the image was clearly fake and quickly debunked, some politicians remained defiant. “Y’all, I don’t know where this photo came from and honestly, it doesn’t matter,” Amy Kremer, who represents Georgia on the Republican National Committee, wrote after sharing the fake image. “I’m leaving it because it is emblematic of the trauma and pain people are living through right now.”

Kremer wasn’t alone. The journalist Parker Molloy compiled screenshots of people “acknowledging that this image is AI but still insisting that it’s real on some deeper level”—proof, Molloy noted, that we’re “living in the post-reality.” The technology writer Jason Koebler argued that we’ve entered the “‘Fuck It’ Era” of AI slop and political messaging, with AI-generated images being used to convey whatever partisan message suits the moment, regardless of truth.

This has all been building for more than a decade. On The Colbert Report, back in 2005, Stephen Colbert coined the word truthiness, which he defined as “the belief in what you feel to be true rather than what the facts will support.” This reality-fracturing is the result of an information ecosystem that is dominated by platforms that offer financial and attentional incentives to lie and enrage, and to turn every tragedy and large event into a shameless content-creation opportunity. This collides with a swath of people who would rather live in an alternate reality built on distrust and grievance than change their fundamental beliefs about the world. But the misinformation crisis is not always what we think it is.

So much of the conversation around misinformation suggests that its primary job is to persuade. But as Michael Caulfield, an information researcher at the University of Washington, has argued, “The primary use of ‘misinformation’ is not to change the beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” This distinction is important, in part because it assigns agency to those who consume and share obviously fake information. What is clear from comments such as Kremer’s is that she is not a dupe; although she may come off as deeply incurious and shameless, she is publicly admitting to being an active participant in the far right’s world-building project, where feel is always greater than real.

What we’re witnessing online during and in the aftermath of these hurricanes is a group of people desperate to protect the dark, fictitious world they’ve built. Rather than deal with the realities of a warming planet hurling once-in-a-generation storms at them every few weeks, they’d rather malign and threaten meteorologists, who, in their minds, are “nothing but a trained subversive liar programmed to spew stupid shit to support the global warming bullshit,” as one X user put it. It is a strategy designed to silence voices of reason, because those voices threaten to expose the cracks in their current worldview. But their efforts are doomed, futile. As one dispirited meteorologist wrote on X this week, “Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes.” She followed with: “I can’t believe I just had to type that.”

What is clear is that a new framework is needed to describe this fracturing. Misinformation is too technical, too freighted, and, after almost a decade of Trump, too political. Nor does it explain what is really happening, which is nothing less than a cultural assault on any person or institution that operates in reality. If you are a weatherperson, you’re a target. The same goes for journalists, election workers, scientists, doctors, and first responders. These jobs are different, but the thing they share is that they all must attend to and describe the world as it is. This makes them dangerous to people who cannot abide by the agonizing constraints of reality, as well as those who have financial and political interests in keeping up the charade.

In one sense, these attacks—and their increased desperation—make sense. The world feels dark; for many people, it’s tempting to meet that with a retreat into the delusion that they’ve got everything figured out, that the powers that be have conspired against them directly. But in turning away, they exacerbate a crisis that has characterized the Trump era, one that will reverberate to Election Day and beyond. Americans are divided not just by political beliefs but by whether they believe in a shared reality—or desire one at all.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Alex Nguyen at Mother Jones:

Long gone are the innocent days when media outlets claimed the independence and nuance of the politics of Elon Musk. Now, amid myriad X posts spreading far-right propaganda on immigrants, trans people, and, well, just about any other topic, it has become obvious where one of the richest men in the world stands. This week, there was more proof that Musk has put his money where his mouth has been. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Musk poured tens of millions of dollars into Republican campaigns and conservative groups even before he publicly endorsed Donald Trump in July. Conservatives helped conceal Musk’s contributions through so-called social welfare or “dark money” groups that do not have to disclose their donors and can raise unlimited funds. (Musk did not respond to the Journal’s request for comment.) One piece of reporting stood out. The newspaper found that the tech billionaire donated more than $50 million in 2022 for campaign advertisements by Citizens for Sanity, a group connected to former Trump aide Stephen Miller and his non-profit America First Legal, which bills itself as “the long-awaited answer to the ACLU.”  Ties to Miller back in 2022 illuminate Musk’s current penchant for posting about immigrants. Musk has increasingly aligned himself with xenophobic anti-migrant plans and trans hysteria championed by Miller within the Trump administration. 

[...] In recent months, Musk’s posts have sunken to lies of mass voter fraud to help Trump win. As I reported, the billionaire recently posted a rant about how Democrats are the true threat to democracy by fast-tracking asylum seekers for citizenship so that they can vote in swing states. Simple fact-checking finds that asylum seekers are not being flown to battleground states, are not being given a facilitated citizenship process, and are not being allowed to vote—it is all false.  As we previously noted, these statements fall within the 2024 iteration of the Republicans’ “Big Lie.” If Trump loses in November, then Democrats stole the election through noncitizen voters.  Musk has also directly aligned himself with Trump, founding a super PAC called America PAC to get 800,000 people to vote for the former president in key battleground states. According to the Guardian, Trump’s ground operation in swing states are now mostly outsourced to America PAC, and Business Insider said that Musk is now shelling out millions to Republicans in 15 competitive House races. Yesterday, Politico reported that America PAC was teaming up with Turning Point Action, the political advocacy division of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, to fund hundreds of “ballot chasers” in Wisconsin. 

A Wall Street Journal reports that right-wing X owner Elon Musk has been funding anti-immigrant propaganda, including funding $50M to right-wing group linked to Stephen Miller called Citizens For Sanity (or more accurately, Citizens For Insanity).

[girlactionfigure]

Winning the World’s Hearts and Minds

Israel is losing (some even say she has already irrevocably lost) the information war that is being waged in parallel with the kinetic one that she has been engaged in since 1948, but especially since 7 October 2023. The usual suggestions are technical: spend more money, react more quickly to enemy propaganda, utilize social media more effectively, and so on. All of these are worth doing, but there is one factor that is even more important than all of them together, and it is both simpler and more difficult. There are four paradoxes that can be found in our situation that expose it.

The Paradox of 7 October

On that day, Israel was attacked in the most atavistic, brutal and vicious way that can be imagined. Civilians were murdered, raped, sadistically tortured, and carried off to indefinite captivity under subhuman conditions. Their homes were looted and burned. It was war as practiced before the advent of civilization. It was the greatest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.

And yet, although there were many expressions of sympathy, both from people in general and from governments and international organizations, there was also an explosion of hatred for Israel as a nation and for Jews as individuals. Demonstrations were held around the world expressing support for the attackers, and incidents of Jew-hatred – beatings of Jews, anti-Jewish graffiti, attacks on Jewish-owned businesses, and so on spiked. How is this to be understood?

One answer is that people were primed by a decades-long campaign by the Soviet Union, both in the West and the Third World, to use anti-Zionism as a propaganda tool. The Soviets took advantage of the sensitivity that had developed in the West after (ironically) the racist persecution of Jews by the Nazis, and of the general recognition of the evils of the Western colonial empires. At the same time in America, people began to comprehend the horrors of slavery, Jim Crow, and the genocide of Native Americans. The struggle of the Jews for self-determination in their historic homeland was perversely portrayed as racism, colonialism, and now even genocide. The Palestinian Arabs, who were in fact invaders and migrants, were portrayed as an oppressed and colonized indigenous people. This inversion of reality, this “big lie,” was fed with a constant tsunami of propaganda that overwhelmed anemic Israeli attempts to refute or counteract it. The lies have always gone halfway around the world before the truth got its pants on.

Since the fall of the USSR, the campaign has been taken up by the Arabs, Iranians, and international Left who see Israel as an outpost of the hated USA.

The anti-Israel campaign has been disingenuously claimed to be “only anti-Zionist” and not anti-Jewish. But underneath the surface the message has been transmitted clearly and distinctly, and has triggered the closeted anti-Jewish hatreds that have been around at least since the year zero. It is not possible today to go back and undo this.

The way anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda has been deployed in support of the desired genocide of the Jewish people (nothing less) is a triumph of social engineering. Its effectiveness is shown by the combination of murder and defamation that characterized 7 October.

The Paradox of Holocaust Education

In planning a response to anti-Jewish propaganda it’s necessary to consider the attempts to attack the anti-Jewish memes – the prejudices, stereotypes, conspiracy theories, and so on – that were supposed to have caused the Holocaust. One response has been to educate people by presenting the historical facts. Any normal person who knew the true dimensions of the horror perpetrated by the Nazis would reject the patterns of thought that were behind it and shun anyone trying to promulgate them, it was reasoned.

Much money and resources have gone into the building of museums, the development of curricula and materials, and the hiring of experts. And yet this enterprise has failed. It has been met with denial. It has aroused resentment, as Jews are accused of trying to “monopolize oppression,” or of using their own experience as an excuse to persecute others (sometimes at the same time as the Jewish experience is denied). Perversely, the very horror of the Holocaust is titillating to Jew-haters who often admire Hitler, collect Nazi regalia, and so on. Extreme Jew-haters see the Holocaust as something to be repeated rather than condemned.

The Paradox of Sympathy

This gives us a clue to the more general problem of defamation of Israel and Jews. As Jonathan Haidt argues persuasively, humans are primarily motivated by their emotions, even when they believe that they are making decisions on a rational basis. The “reasoning” is really after-the-fact rationalization of choices driven by their feelings. These feelings are often below the surface of consciousness, but they are dominant in a person’s decision-making.

These emotional responses have developed in humans after millennia of biological and cultural evolution. They vary to some extent between cultures (which leads to interesting questions about conflicts between Western and non-Western cultures), but there are also aspects that are universal. One of these is sympathy for an injured person. Paradoxically, there is also an opposite emotion of revulsion. The impulse to despise, to expel, or to flee from a defective or persecuted individual tends to favor survival of an individual or a culture, and so it is strengthened by evolution. We see this tendency among children where a bully that attacks a weak or “different” child is often joined by others.

Thus when a group is mass-murdered, along with sympathy for the victims there is also a tendency to side with the murderers. There is a feeling of safety in the face of horror that comes from the knowledge that one is set apart from the victims, that one is on the other side.

The Paradox of Strength

Another evolutionary trait is an attraction to the stronger side in any conflict. Everybody loves a winner, or as Osama bin Laden said, the ��strong horse.” It’s also true that people despise a loser. And before a contest is decided, people choose whom to support based on the perceived strength of each opponent.

Yet in Western cultures people think this feeling should be suppressed. There is a belief that rational considerations and morality should override brute strength in determining the outcome of a confrontation, which results in conflicting emotions (this is one of the reasons they do so poorly when negotiating with Middle Easterners, who see “rational” willingness to compromise as weakness). Strength and honor are of primary concern in the Middle East, but even toward the West, we gain allies by demonstrating strength.

How to Win the Information War

What are the practical lessons for Israel in all this? How can she use the consequences of human and societal evolution to help her overcome the massive propaganda assault, both in the West and in the Middle East? I will offer some suggestions for how she can behave for the best psychological effect. Note that I said “behave,” and not just talk. Actions speak louder than words, especially in the Middle East. And these actions will help bring success in the physical arena as well.

1. Win the War in Gaza

We were humiliated and wounded – from a psychological point of view, critically – on 7 October. We cannot allow Hamas to remain in power and its leaders to remain alive. If we do, we will be marked as victims, in other words, targets. In the Middle East, deterrence comes from honor. If we lose our honor, everything we have is open for the taking.

2. Win the War in the North

Tens of thousands of Israelis have been forced to vacate their homes in fear of bombardment and invasion by Hezbollah. In effect we have allowed our land to become occupied. Again this is a massive loss of honor and must be corrected.

3. Our Lives are More Important Than Theirs

Israel lives in fear of the US and the hostile “international community” of anti-Israel NGOs and institutions, and goes to extreme lengths to warn civilians before attacking military targets, and to allow humanitarian aid to be provided to enemy populations. These policies have made it possible for Egypt to refuse to accept refugees from Gaza, and for Hamas to prolong the conflict, arguably resulting in more civilian suffering than less. Either way, they signify weakness. Get it over with.

4. Return to an Offensive Strategy

Israeli strategy, as propounded by David Ben Gurion, was to take the war to the enemy, fight on his territory, and finish wars quickly. But since Israel has allowed the US to dominate its military policy, she has moved to adopting a defensive posture. Huge amounts of money are spent on weapons like Iron Dome to bat away enemy rockets. This is economically unsustainable, since offensive weapons are much cheaper. It invites the enemy to learn lessons and try again. And from a psychological standpoint, it normalizes shooting at Jews. How can we permit that to become acceptable?

5. Responses Should Always be Disproportionate

Israel’s response should always be several times stronger than our enemies’ provocations. The fact that we responded to an attack from Iran by hundreds of missiles and drones by bombing a radar station was embarrassing, even if it was a demonstration of our capabilities. We may wish to demonstrate capabilities, but we must also demonstrate the will to fight. Deterrence means making them afraid to attack us. Power means hitting back at bullies, not trying to push them away or running from them.

6. Treat the Conflict as Zero-Sum (it is)

Do not look for win-win situations; there aren’t any. Either the Land of Israel will be ruled and populated by Jews, or by Arabs. Americans love the idea that Hamas or the PLO can put aside their desire to destroy Israel if only given an opportunity to develop a prosperous state. Nothing could be more wrong. This is a tribal conflict over land, and tribalism is another evolutionary “built-in.” When Israel goes along with these fantasies, she broadcasts weakness.

7. Get Revenge When Appropriate

Implement the death penalty for terrorist murder. This has the practical benefit of removing a motive for hostage-taking. The modern position is that revenge is atavistic and wrong. But it satisfies a deep need as well as sending a necessary message.

Conclusion

Acting according to the post-WWII Western conception of moral national behavior exposes Israel to depredations by its enemies who do not care about Western morality. At the same time, the climate of opinion that has developed over decades is such that the mechanisms and institutions that might protect a Western state don’t apply to Israel. She has little to lose by changing her behavior to become more aggressive, and aspiring to respect and even fear. Overall this will improve her potential to gain allies and deter enemies.

[lenbryant]

(long post from The Atlantic) I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is

What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis.

Charlie Warzel is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter Galaxy Brain, about technology, media, and big ideas. He can be reached via email.

October 10, 2024

Updated at 9:43 a.m. ET on October 11, 2024

The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality. As Hurricane Milton churned across the Gulf of Mexico last night, I saw an onslaught of outright conspiracy theorizing and utter nonsense racking up millions of views across the internet. The posts would be laughable if they weren’t taken by many people as gospel. Among them: Infowars’ Alex Jones, who claimed that Hurricanes Milton and Helene were “weather weapons” unleashed on the East Coast by the U.S. government, and “truth seeker” accounts on X that posted photos of condensation trails in the sky to baselessly allege that the government was “spraying Florida ahead of Hurricane Milton” in order to ensure maximum rainfall, “just like they did over Asheville!”

As Milton made landfall, causing a series of tornados, a verified account on X reposted a TikTok video of a massive funnel cloud with the caption “WHAT IS HAPPENING TO FLORIDA?!” The clip, which was eventually removed but had been viewed 662,000 times as of yesterday evening, turned out to be from a video of a CGI tornado that was originally published months ago. Scrolling through these platforms, watching them fill with false information, harebrained theories, and doctored images—all while panicked residents boarded up their houses, struggled to evacuate, and prayed that their worldly possessions wouldn’t be obliterated overnight—offered a portrait of American discourse almost too bleak to reckon with head-on.

Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories, the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism. As two catastrophic storms upended American cities, a patchwork network of influencers and fake-news peddlers have done their best to sow distrust, stoke resentment, and interfere with relief efforts. But this is more than just a misinformation crisis. To watch as real information is overwhelmed by crank theories and public servants battle death threats is to confront two alarming facts: first, that a durable ecosystem exists to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality, and second, that the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes but willing participants.

Read: November will be worse

Some of the lies and obfuscation are politically motivated, such as the claim that FEMA is offering only $750 in total to hurricane victims who have lost their home. (In reality, FEMA offers $750 as immediate “Serious Needs Assistance” to help people get basic supplies such as food and water.) Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, and Fox News have all repeated that lie. Trump also posted (and later deleted) on Truth Social that FEMA money was given to undocumented migrants, which is untrue. Elon Musk, who owns X, claimed—without evidence—that FEMA was “actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own. It’s very real and scary how much they have taken control to stop people helping.” That post has been viewed more than 40 million times. Other influencers, such as the Trump sycophant Laura Loomer, have urged their followers to disrupt the disaster agency’s efforts to help hurricane victims. “Do not comply with FEMA,” she posted on X. “This is a matter of survival.”

The result of this fearmongering is what you might expect. Angry, embittered citizens have been harassing government officials in North Carolina, as well as FEMA employees. According to an analysis by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an extremism-research group, “Falsehoods around hurricane response have spawned credible threats and incitement to violence directed at the federal government,” including “calls to send militias to face down FEMA.” The study also found that 30 percent of the X posts analyzed by ISD “contained overt antisemitic hate, including abuse directed at public officials such as the Mayor of Asheville, North Carolina; the FEMA Director of Public Affairs; and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.” The posts received a collective 17.1 million views as of October 7.

Online, first responders are pleading with residents, asking for their help to combat the flood of lies and conspiracy theories. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said that the volume of misinformation could hamper relief efforts. “If it creates so much fear that my staff doesn’t want to go out in the field, then we’re not going to be in a position where we can help people,” she said in a news conference on Tuesday. In Pensacola, North Carolina, Assistant Fire Chief Bradley Boone vented his frustrations on Facebook: “I’m trying to rescue my community,” he said in a livestream. “I ain’t got time. I ain’t got time to chase down every Facebook rumor … We’ve been through enough.”

It is difficult to capture the nihilism of the current moment. The pandemic saw Americans, distrustful of authority, trying to discredit effective vaccines, spreading conspiracy theories, and attacking public-health officials. But what feels novel in the aftermath of this month’s hurricanes is how the people doing the lying aren’t even trying to hide the provenance of their bullshit. Similarly, those sharing the lies are happy to admit that they do not care whether what they’re pushing is real or not. Such was the case last week, when Republican politicians shared an AI-generated viral image of a little girl holding a puppy while supposedly fleeing Helene. Though the image was clearly fake and quickly debunked, some politicians remained defiant. “Y’all, I don’t know where this photo came from and honestly, it doesn’t matter,” Amy Kremer, who represents Georgia on the Republican National Committee, wrote after sharing the fake image. “I’m leaving it because it is emblematic of the trauma and pain people are living through right now.”

Kremer wasn’t alone. The journalist Parker Molloy compiled screenshots of people “acknowledging that this image is AI but still insisting that it’s real on some deeper level”—proof, Molloy noted, that we’re “living in the post-reality.” The technology writer Jason Koebler argued that we’ve entered the “‘Fuck It’ Era” of AI slop and political messaging, with AI-generated images being used to convey whatever partisan message suits the moment, regardless of truth.

This has all been building for more than a decade. On The Colbert Report, back in 2005, Stephen Colbert coined the word truthiness, which he defined as “the belief in what you feel to be true rather than what the facts will support.” This reality-fracturing is the result of an information ecosystem that is dominated by platforms that offer financial and attentional incentives to lie and enrage, and to turn every tragedy and large event into a shameless content-creationopportunity. This collides with a swath of people who would rather live in an alternate reality built on distrust and grievance than change their fundamental beliefs about the world. But the misinformation crisis is not always what we think it is.

Read: Florida’s risky bet

So much of the conversation around misinformation suggests that its primary job is to persuade. But as Michael Caulfield, an information researcher at the University of Washington, has argued, “The primary use of ‘misinformation’ is not to change the beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” This distinction is important, in part because it assigns agency to those who consume and share obviously fake information. What is clear from comments such as Kremer’s is that she is not a dupe; although she may come off as deeply incurious and shameless, she is publicly admitting to being an active participant in the far right’s world-building project, where feel is always greater than real.

What we’re witnessing online during and in the aftermath of these hurricanes is a group of people desperate to protect the dark, fictitious world they’ve built. Rather than deal with the realities of a warming planet hurling once-in-a-generation storms at them every few weeks, they’d rather malign and threaten meteorologists, who, in their minds, are “nothing but a trained subversive liar programmed to spew stupid shit to support the global warming bullshit,” as one X user put it. It is a strategy designed to silence voices of reason, because those voices threaten to expose the cracks in their current worldview. But their efforts are doomed, futile. As one dispirited meteorologist wrote on X this week, “Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes.” She followed with: “I can’t believe I just had to type that.”

What is clear is that a new framework is needed to describe this fracturing. Misinformation is too technical, too freighted, and, after almost a decade of Trump, too political. Nor does it explain what is really happening, which is nothing less than a cultural assault on any person or institution that operates in reality. If you are a weatherperson, you’re a target. The same goes for journalists, election workers, scientists, doctors, and first responders. These jobs are different, but the thing they share is that they all must attend to and describe the world as it is. This makes them dangerous to people who cannot abide by the agonizing constraints of reality, as well as those who have financial and political interests in keeping up the charade.

In one sense, these attacks—and their increased desperation—make sense. The world feels dark; for many people, it’s tempting to meet that with a retreat into the delusion that they’ve got everything figured out, that the powers that be have conspired against them directly. But in turning away, they exacerbate a crisis that has characterized the Trump era, one that will reverberate to Election Day and beyond. Americans are divided not just by political beliefs but by whether they believe in a shared reality—or desire one at all.

This article previously stated that Bradley Boone is the assistant fire chief in Pensacola, Florida. In fact, he is based in Pensacola, North Carolina.

[penitentwoman]

The continued myth of the working class white farmer is both white supremacy and the billionaire land owning class doing anti estate tax propaganda. Farms are owned by massive land owners and worked by central and South American migrants. White southerners are not the farmers of this country and calling them as such is literally insane and a lie and frankly they never have been. Before it was migrants it was black people

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Quote of the Day. stevebrodner.substack.com

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 13, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 13, 2024

“He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country…a fascist to the core.” 

This is how former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer and the primary military advisor to the president, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council, described former president Donald Trump to veteran journalist Bob Woodward. Trump appointed Milley to that position. 

Since he announced his presidential candidacy in June 2015 by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, Trump has trafficked in racist anti-immigrant stories. But since the September 10 presidential debate when he drew ridicule for his outburst regurgitating the lie that legal Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their white neighbors’ pets, Trump has used increasingly fascist rhetoric. By this weekend, he had fully embraced the idea that the United States is being overrun by Black and Brown criminals and that they, along with their Democratic accomplices, must be rounded up, deported, or executed, with the help of the military. 

Myah Ward of Politico noted on October 12 that Trump’s speeches have escalated to the point that he now promises that he alone can save the country from those people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.” He falsely claims Vice President Kamala Harris “has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world…from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens.” 

Trump’s behavior is Authoritarianism 101. In a 1951 book called The True Believer, political philosopher Eric Hoffer noted that demagogues appeal to a disaffected population whose members feel they have lost the power they previously held, that they have been displaced either religiously, economically, culturally, or politically. Such people are willing to follow a leader who promises to return them to their former positions of prominence and thus to make the nation great again. 

But to cement their loyalty, the leader has to give them someone to hate. Who that is doesn't really matter: the group simply has to be blamed for all the troubles the leader’s supporters are suffering. Trump has kept his base firmly behind him by demonizing immigrants, the media, and, increasingly, Democrats, deflecting his own shortcomings by blaming these groups for undermining him. 

According to Hoffer, there’s a psychological trick to the way this rhetoric works that makes loyalty to such a leader get stronger as that leader's behavior deteriorates. People who sign on to the idea that they are standing with their leader against an enemy begin to attack their opponents, and in order to justify their attacks, they have to convince themselves that that enemy is not good-intentioned, as they are, but evil. And the worse they behave, the more they have to believe their enemies deserve to be treated badly.

According to Hoffer, so long as they are unified against an enemy, true believers will support their leader no matter how outrageous his behavior gets. Indeed, their loyalty will only grow stronger as his behavior becomes more and more extreme. Turning against him would force them to own their own part in his attacks on those former enemies they would now have to recognize as ordinary human beings like themselves.

At a MAGA rally in Aurora, Colorado, on October 11, Trump added to this formula his determination to use the federal government to attack those he calls enemies. Standing on a stage with a backdrop that read, “DEPORT ILLEGALS NOW” and “END MIGRANT CRIME,” he insisted that the city had been taken over by Venezuelan gangs and proposed a federal program he called “Operation Aurora” to remove those immigrants he insists are members of “savage gangs.” When Trump said, “We have to live with these animals, but we won’t live with them for long,” a person in the crowd shouted: “Kill them!”

Officials in Aurora emphatically deny Trump’s claim that the city is a “war zone.” Republican mayor Mike Coffman said that Aurora is “not a city overrun by Venezuelan gangs” and that such statements are “grossly exaggerated.” While there have been incidents, they “were limited to several apartment complexes in this city of more than 400,000 residents.” The chief of the Aurora police agreed that the city is “not by any means overtaken by Venezuelan gangs.”

In Aurora, Trump also promised to “invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.” As legal analyst Asha Rangappa explains, the Alien Enemies Act authorizes the government to round up, detain, and deport foreign nationals of a country with which the U.S. is at war. But it is virtually certain Trump didn’t come up with the idea to use that law on his own, raising the question of who really will be in charge of policy in a second Trump administration.

Trump aide Stephen Miller seems the likely candidate to run immigration policy. He has promised to begin a project of “denaturalization,” that is, stripping naturalized citizens of their citizenship. He, too, spoke at Aurora, leading the audience in booing photos that were allegedly of migrant criminals. 

Before Miller spoke, a host from Right Side Broadcasting used the dehumanizing language associated with genocide, saying of migrants: “These people, they are so evil. They are not your run-of-the-mill criminal. They are people that are Satanic. They are involved in human sacrifice. They are raping men, women, and children—especially underaged children." Trump added the old trope of a population carrying disease, saying that immigrants are “very very very sick with highly contagious disease, and they’re let into our country to infect our country.” 

Trump promised the audience in Aurora that he would “liberate Colorado. I will give you back your freedom and your life.”

On Saturday, October 12, Trump held a rally in Coachella, California, where temperatures near 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) sparked heat-related illnesses in his audience as he spoke for about 80 minutes in the apocalyptic vein he has adopted lately. After the rally, shuttle buses failed to arrive to take attendees back to their cars, leaving them stranded.  

And on Sunday, October 13, Trump made the full leap to authoritarianism, calling for using the federal government not only against immigrants, but also against his political opponents. After weeks of complaining about the “enemy within,” Trump suggested that those who oppose him in the 2024 election are the nation’s most serious problem. 

He told Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo that even more troubling for the forthcoming election than immigrants "is the enemy from within…we have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics…. And it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military."

Trump’s campaign seems to be deliberately pushing the comparisons to historic American fascism by announcing that Trump will hold a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on October 27, an echo of a February 1939 rally held there by American Nazis in honor of President George Washington’s birthday. More than 20,000 people showed up for the “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas.

Trump’s full-throated embrace of Nazi “race science” and fascism is deadly dangerous, but there is something notable about Trump’s recent rallies that undermines his claims that he is winning the 2024 election. Trump is not holding these rallies in the swing states he needs to win but rather is holding them in states—Colorado, California, New York—that he is almost certain to lose by a lot.

Longtime Republican operative Matthew Bartlett told Matt Dixon and Allan Smith of NBC News: “This does not seem like a campaign putting their candidate in critical vote-rich or swing vote locations—it seems more like a candidate who wants his campaign to put on rallies for optics and vibes.” 

Trump seems eager to demonstrate that he is a strongman, a dominant candidate, when in fact he has refused another debate with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and backed out of an interview with 60 Minutes. He has refused to release a medical report although his mental acuity is a topic of concern as he rambles through speeches and seems entirely untethered from reality. And as Harris turns out larger numbers for her rallies in swing states than he does, he appears to be turning bloodthirsty in Democratic areas. 

Today, Harris told a rally of her own in North Carolina: “[Trump] is not being transparent…. He refuses to release his medical records. I've done it. Every other presidential candidate in the modern era has done it. He is unwilling to do a 60 Minutes interview like every other major party candidate has done for more than half a century. He is unwilling to meet for a second debate…. It makes you wonder, why does his staff want him to hide away?... Are they afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable to lead America? Is that what’s going on?” 

“For these reasons and so many more,” she said, “it is time to turn the page.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[womenfrommars]

Hi I'm from France and I stumbled upon one of your posts about Islam. I'm genuinely sort of terrified of the future here. We finally achieved an atheist majority and fully separated religion from the state but Islam is quickly growing unquestioned. Somehow being antireligion in progressive circles has been fully turned into something bad.

And I don't think I can lie to myself anymore - muslim men are raised into an incredibly misogynistic environment and are strongly encouraged to never question it and benefit from it. I have had first hand interaction with those muslim men who sexually harassed me and pejoratively talked about my rights as a woman. On the French internet there is a massive mob of those same men being incredibly misogynistic everyday on how women dress and act.

And what is truly terrifying is that I'm told to endure it all. That it is just bad apples. Our leftists parties are in full support of it and gain voters from the muslim community, online and irl leftists constantly repeat "islamophobia" to every criticism brandished at Islam. Our discussions are getting americanized when their muslim minority is like 10 times smaller than ours and actually progressive over there. I'm so tired. There is no analysis of religion anymore. There is just choice feminism - choice to hide your body and be a property for men. And questioning the ever growing presence of men who desire to own us is somehow "white feminism". I'm lost and scared that eventually they'll become a big enough population that our laws will change to accommodate their regressive religion and take away my rights as a woman.

Somehow being antireligion in progressive circles has been fully turned into something bad.

Oh no you got that totally wrong. You can shit on Christianity all day long because it's seen as ''the white man's religion'', irrespective of all the non-white Christians who face persecution and subjugation in various parts of the world. And since October 7 it has become extremely normalised in progressive circles to demonise Zionism and by extension the Jewish religion, with false quotes from the Torah going around that all of us non-Jews are subhumans. It's only Islam that is being protected by the progressive left. They harp on about Islamophobia but Christophobia and anti-Semitism are not part of their vocabulary at all

On the French internet there is a massive mob of those same men being incredibly misogynistic everyday on how women dress and act.

Welcome in Europe in 2024! Muslims are not asking to be included, they are asking to be centered and catered to. They're not just asking for halal meat in supermarkets, they want to change European culture significantly. They want to get rid of secularism, sexual liberty, and the improved position of women in European societies. In the UK they're even handing out flyers asking people not to walk their dogs in muslim neighbourhoods because they consider dogs to be spiritually unclean animals. Muslim apologists are openly discussing child marriage online and the right for a muslim man to beat his wife. But leftists would rather talk about Christian misogyny (read: Christian women online sharing tips on how to dress modestly).

Our discussions are getting americanized when their muslim minority is like 10 times smaller than ours and actually progressive over there.

The USA has different immigration laws and mostly accept highly educated, liberalised muslims from Asia and the Middle-East. Almost all of their illegal migrants are from South America where Islam barely exists. The American muslim population is quite wealthy and highly educated as a result of the immigration laws whereas the European muslim population is lower educated and more dependent on social security, overrepresented in crime statistics, and not fully integrated into the culture as a result of the immigration policies from the 70s and the refugee crisis from 2015 and onwards. So to an American if you voice concerns about Islam specifically they see no reason to do so other than racism. I would like to see their reaction if their Christmas markets, concerts, and synagogues are blown up by Islamic terrorists. You'd think 9/11 would have been a wake-up call

And questioning the ever growing presence of men who desire to own us is somehow "white feminism".

Even when ex-muslims come out in favour of Western culture and against Islamic culture the left sees them as puppets because they think minorities cannot think for themselves. Unironically racist. Not to mention ex-muslims face extremely violent threats and social rejection from the Islamic community

I'm lost and scared that eventually they'll become a big enough population that our laws will change to accommodate their regressive religion and take away my rights as a woman.

Honestly I have had such thoughts myself, especially with mass migration coupled with the extremely high birth rate of muslim women. I think the best course of action is restricted immigration combined with intense integration efforts. And we must be willing to defend our Western values publicly even if it means we will be accused of right-wing nationalism or racism. Islam is fundamentally incompatible with secularism and equality between men and women

[evilsoup]

my grandma had a fall last night and another this morning. Eventually an ambulance got to her at about 4.30pm today. She's going to be staying overnight in the ambulance, which is in a queue of ambulances outside the local hospital; this hospital has actually just stepped down from "critical incident" status, the fourth such they have declared since the start of 2024 (it's March 2024 as I write this) -- so this state of affairs is actually below the emergency threshold, this is a "normal" state of operation for a hospital in the UK in 2024.

This is ten years of the tories in power, slicing up the NHS so that what was once genuinely one of the best health services in the world is nowinto a bad joke. Maybe once there was fat to be cut, but they've gone through the muscle and half the bone; the structure is starting to collapse. And this is also the case for all social services. There are homeless people camping in tents around my city, something that hasn't happened since the 1980s but has been picking up in the last few years. There's plenty of money for persecuting asylum seekers or aiding the Israeli genocide in Gaza (where the RAF flies scouting missions for the IDF and the Royal Navy sorties alongside the US Navy to break the Houthi anti-genocide blockade) or contracting big tory donors to carry out work for the public sector at inflated margins or giving unlimited financial support to private train companies to break a strike; and because of this -- in order to facilitate this looting of the state sector, my grandma is staying overnight in a fucking ambulance.

The labour party is no better. They have essentially taken on a tory policy-set and right-wing nationalist ideology. The previous labour leadership were different -- and so were smeared in the press as friends of terrorists and as antisemites. Absurd lies to anyone who was paying attention, but an absurd lie repeated enough can trump the truth; "there's no smoke without fire" say the guys with the smoke machine. And so now we get migrant-bashing genocide-enabling austerity-mongering patriot scum leading the labour party. At least tony blair brought in surestart centres and raised a million children out of poverty.

It used to be the case that we had to argue that socialism was not possible by a reformist path, citing examples like Chile. Now it seems that basic social-democratic reforms are not even possible by a reformist path; "fund the NHS" becomes something approaching a transitional demand, and to most people who don't believe that political change is possible even this sounds like an absurd ultraleft slogan.

[eaglesnick]

“The True measure of our wealth is how much we’d be worth if we lost all our money.” – J.H.Jowett

The Byline Times carried this headline on 18th January 2024

“Reform UK Limited: The Political Business Brought to You by Billionaires.”

I have always been somewhat surprised why so many of the British electorate vote for Nigel Farage. He is not a “man of the people”, he rarely speaks “common sense" and he breaks his political promises as often as Sir Keir Starmer. (We all remember the slogan, “We send the EU £350 million a week. Lets fund our NHS” that turned out to be either a "mistake" as Farage later described it, or a deliberate lie, depending on your point of view.)

There are two themes that run throughout Forages political career – accusations of racism and his love of money.

Lets take racism:

Farage’s infamous anti-immigration poster of 2016 was described by George Osbourne as both “vile" and reminiscent of “nazi propaganda”. Farage is a master at promoting feelings of “us” and “them”, the polarizing political rhetoric that pits one group of people against another.

Despite claiming to “hate” the EU, its institutions, its personnel and its policies, Nigel Farage was a member of the European Parliament for 21 years, raking in a small fortune while doing so. (More of this later) He very successfully used the language  of  “hatred” to persuade the British people to leave the EU but at the same time created a problem for himself as he also scuppered his earning potential. Having defeated the bullying EU he needed to create a new enemy to rail against – Muslims.

Sky News (27/05/24:

“Nigel Farage called out for 'blanket accusation' as he says 'growing number' of Muslims 'loathe' British values.

And LBC said:

“Farage defends Reform UK candidates after anti-Islam and far-right comments exposed." (13/06/24)

Farage’s anti-Muslim position had been known for many years. In 2013 Farage claimed Muslim migrants were  “coming here to take us over". But since leaving the EU it has taken on new significance, Muslims being  an easily identifiable group for the particular brand of "hatred" politics that Farage peddles in order to make money.

Let us suppose for arguments sake Farage actually believes what he says about Muslims trying to “take over Britain” and “loathing British values”. The question then arises as to why he has handed the Chairmanship of the Reform UK party to a Muslim millionaire.

Before the last election Reform UK accepted hundreds of thousands of pounds from very wealthy individuals, the largest donor being Muslim.

“The precise amount Zia Yusuf has given to the party has not been disclosed but Reform UK claims it is the biggest donation of their general election campaign so far." (BBC News: 19/06/24)

Two months later and Zia Yusaf has been made chairman of Reform UK. If Muslims are intent on “taking over" Britain what better way than becoming Chairman of Britons fastest growing political party? But why would Farage open the door to a “takeover” by the very people he claims loath British values?

The answer is of course money. When you “donate” millions to a political party you expect something in return. And for Farage money has always been of primary concern regardless of ethics.

Reform UK is backed by billionaires and millionaires because they feel it will protect their interests. Nigel Farage does not really care about the so-called “Muslim threat” anymore than he hated the EU.  Farage’s primary concern is funding his ever-growing bank account that being a controversial figure in the political limelight allows him to do.

The 21 years that Farage was a member of the despicable European Parliament he was paid approximately £2.2 million before tax (£1.7 million after tax). In 2018, Esquire magazine (21/08/18) revealed that Farage was living in a £4 million Chelsea town house, and was paid nearly £1million pounds for his broadcasting contracts on top of his job as an MEP. That isn’t all. As a retiring MEP Mr Farage was entitled to an extra payment of £152,000 before tax, and a massive pension of £73,000 per year. Strange that Mr  Farage had told the Daily Mail only months earlier that he was “skint” and that there was “no money in politics”.

It is money that drives Farage not political conviction. It is no wonder that the Financial Times (17/08/24) reported that:

“Nigel Farage is Britain’s highest earning MP, Common records reveal."

Farage has been absent from his Clacton constituency and not holding constituency surgeries on the pretext "the public will flow through the doors with knives in their pockets”. A more plausible explanation might be he has been too busy in America supporting Donald Trump and raking in huge sums of money for his speaking events.

The Independent (17/08/24) revealed Farage is pocketing £98,000 a month from his various political activities this year. Stoking political and social division pays very nicely it seems. His anti-EU, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, credentials have kept him firmly in the media spotlight, and this has provided him the opportunity to feather his own nest regardless of the economic cost to the nation regards Brexit, or the social cost regards his anti-immigration, anti-Muslim stance.  Where making money takes precedence over all things is it any wonder that Reform UK is the party of billionaires.

[vhstown]

alsooooo i told phoe and chewy about this but i had a hobie series in mind like it's very vague but idk whenever i do come around to do it i hope people will like it?? i was thinking something like trying to live a normal life in that fascist dictatorship i wanted to explore his world a bit more in my own way

like i literally sat my ass down and went through videos and documentaries from 1970s england and the history of facism in europe and blah blah blah not for the series necessarily but also out of my own interest and i actually learnt a lot about... my own communities isn't that crazy

and facism as a political thing wasn't actually as big as i thought in england? like there was sort of a thing going on in the 1930s with oswald mosley but he was a bit of a bum i can't lie i think something like mussolini's fascist regime would fit hobie's universe much better i found especially considering how extreme it seems w the 1984 esque imagery lol

i dunno a lot to think about i think it's cool to study a fictional universe in such a way

and you've obviously got like anti racism movements developing in the 1970s like rock against racism and the anti nazi league cause a lot of earlier migrant communities have integrated with society and you're getting second and third waves of migration especially from south asia and as british colonies are gaining independence . maybe fisk's ideals could be aligned with that of the national front (which is a far right political party that stil exists today)

[tomorrowusa]

Too many liberals in bubbles have this peculiar view of US politics that it's supposed to be like the Oxford Debating Society where the person with the soundest argument wins.

Such people need to quit watching reruns of "The West Wing" on auto-repeat. 😆🤣😃

Whether you like it or not, if you are personally attacked by your opponent then the most effective thing is to hit back in kind twice as hard. That's what needs to happen to Trump.

And nobody is as vulnerable to personal attacks as Donald Trump. Late night comics and political cartoonists did more to defeat Donald Trump's re-election bid than all the terabytes of position papers and political analyses combined.

As I argued last time around, the best hope may lie in messages that Win It Back hasn't been as eager to test. They must strip him of the strongman persona he tries so hard to create: Use ads that portray him as a laughingstock and paint his supporters as chumps. Make it embarrassing to support Trump—so that wearing a MAGA hat in public feels like wearing an advertisement for your favorite hemorrhoid cream. Trump's been walking right into that potential trap in recent weeks by delivering rally speeches that sound like complete gibberish, peppered with verbal flubs that Fox News would base entire news cycles around if it were a Democrat making the gaffe. Any ad campaign looking to prove Trump to be a bumbling clown clinging only tenuously to his own persona would have ample material to work with. Republican primary voters don't mind that Trump tried to overthrow the government, because Republican primary voters think that, well, maybe they ought to be able to do that if Black Americans keep insisting on their rights or if Fox News throws up another B-reel of migrants wading across the southern border to ask for asylum. But Republican primary voters do care—a lot—that so much of the rest of the country considers them to be muleheaded saps.

You might think that all the voters have seen all the derisive stuff about Trump. But not everybody has the same media menu that we do.

Of course the hardcore MAGA cultists will stick with Trump even if he personally poops the digested remnants of well-done steak with ketchup on them. But there are some squishy backers who are just going along for the ride. And there are also low information voters who don't pay a lot of attention to politics who need to know that Trump is an unstable crackpot who kept classified nuclear secrets in boxes next to his toilet.

The more personal, the better – though such interjections probably need to have at least a small grain of truth in them so they can't be completely refuted.

With numerous elections in states that are decided by less than two percent of the vote, every little bit helps. Just referring to Trump as a "nut" may go a lot further with some people than a long-winded explanation of how his poor response to the COVID-19 emergency led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and a terrible hit on the US economy.

Nobody wants to be associated with a loser. Making personal fun of Trump in various ways will go far if done propitiously.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Jan 8, 2023

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A man’s wife divorces him and shacks up with his boss. Soon after, a friend suggests that he should remarry. “What for?” he asks. “Are you looking for a wife as well?”

It may not be the funniest joke, but that’s because it’s an anecdote from The Lives of the Caesars by the Ancient Roman historian Suetonius. The comedian in this case was a senator called Aelius Lamia whose wife had left him for the Emperor Domitian. For making this casual quip, Domitian had Lamia put to death. Now that’s a bad review.

It might be worth keeping this anecdote in mind when the usual debates flare up about whether comedy “goes too far”. The notion of people being offended by jokes is as old as comedy itself, and often people react angrily if humour isn’t to their taste. The current manifestation of this age-old debate takes the form of a simple dichotomy: “woke comedy” versus “anti-woke comedy”.

Already we are in treacherous waters. It is very unwise to define whole genres by terms that have no settled definitions. The actor Kathy Burke believes that “woke” simply refers to people who are neither racist nor homophobic, which would surely mean that the overwhelming majority of us would happily embrace the term. But for those who have been on the receiving end of the bullying, harassment and intimidation by activists who self-define as “woke”, it is clear this issue is not so straightforward.

Over the past few years, we have seen the emergence of a new comedy movement, one branded by commentators as “anti-woke”, that seeks to push back against the orthodoxies of our time. Its closest historical precedent is the “alternative” comedians of the Eighties, who also took aim at establishment norms and were often similarly blunt in their approach. The key difference today is that there is no broad agreement about where the power in society lies, and so while “anti-woke” comedians see themselves as anti-establishment, their critics insist that the opposite is true.

Consider the example of Ricky Gervais, whose new Netflix stand-up special Armageddon has sparked this most recent round of discussions about the supposed red lines in comedy. Some have accused Gervais of taking a reactionary stance, most notably because of jokes relating to migrants and disabled children. Gervais has been branded an “anti-woke” comedian, but I doubt very much that he would see it in such reductive terms. Anyone familiar with his work will know that he has always lampooned closed systems of thought, and it just so happens that “wokeness” currently represents the dominant incarnation. There was a time when many of Gervais’s critics were perfectly happy to see him take a wrecking ball to the certainties of religious faith. It would appear they take a different view when it’s their own belief system taking a battering.

A simplistic reading of “woke” versus “anti-woke” comedy is that the former “punches up” while the latter “punches down”, but such rules are incoherent when applied to an inherently anarchic medium. Besides, it simply is not true that there exists a growing number of comedians who are seeking fame and easy laughs by taking aim at the most marginalised in society.

As I have said, it comes down to a question of how one perceives power. Too often the culture war is misconceived as a conflict between Left and Right, with “woke” aligned with the former and “anti-woke” with the latter, but “wokeness” carries with it the kind of clout that transcends the political binary. In their 13 years of government, the Conservatives have presided over the worst excesses of this identity-obsessed ideology and the havoc it has wrought on society. Far from fighting a “war on woke”, they have been actively enabling it.

So where does the real power lie? Is it with governments that can be voted out if the public tires of them? Or is it with activists who now have significant influence in all cultural, educational, political and corporate institutions, and who cannot be dislodged by means of any democratic process? These are the same zealots who have fostered racial division in the name of “anti-racism”, jeopardised the rights of women and gay people through the promotion of gender identity ideology, destabilised the very notion of empirical truth, attempted to rewrite our history and reconstruct our culture, and launched a relentless assault on free speech and the achievements of social liberalism. Just because they describe themselves as being “on the right side of history” doesn’t make it true.

And so, when we read an article in the New Statesman lamenting the “tedious world of anti-woke comedy”, we can be fairly sure that the criticism is political. Does the writer sincerely believe that these performers are simply trying to attack minorities and cause as much offence as possible? This is the least generous of all suppositions, one born out of a fundamental misunderstanding of the art of comedy. It strikes me that many of those who dismiss stand-ups as “anti-woke” are simply berating them for taking an anti-establishment stance and for believing that those in power ought to be ridiculed rather than eulogised. But what is the point of a court jester who acts as a propagandist for the king?

Another common reaction from critics has been to imply that certain topics ought to be ring-fenced, and that joking about them is tantamount to a form of violence. The charity Scope has lambasted Gervais’s new show for containing “ableist slurs” and claimed that “language like this has very real consequences”. But those of us who have seen Armageddon would have to concede that the most obvious consequence appears to be the laughter of audience members who are clearly enjoying themselves. What Gervais’s critics mean is that jokes are like toxins, and that popular culture — if not carefully regulated — has the power to corrupt the Great Unwashed. Mary Whitehouse made the identical argument many decades ago.

Fortunately, her fears were unfounded. Over half a century of research into “media effects” theory — the hypothesis that the public will modify its behaviour according to the mass media it consumes — has seen it roundly discredited. Jokes do not cause violence, unless you are talking about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars, or the Emperor Domitian lopping off the occasional head.

The history of comedy shows us that its practitioners will always cause offence, so why do we continue to squabble over where the red lines ought to be drawn? No matter how many times you shift the boundary, it will still end up being crossed. I am not implying here that there is anything wrong with criticism, however puritanical it might be. Comedians who violate popular sensibilities have always faced pushback and resentment. The problem arises when the offended parties seek to impose their tastes on everyone else. So while I support anyone’s right to criticise Gervais’s show, I am disturbed by those who have called on Netflix to censor the offending material.

Personally, I have always relished those comedians who have no clear affiliations, who take aim in all directions and unsettle as much as they entertain. But today’s comedy industry is not a hospitable environment for these sorts of freethinkers. For some years now, there has been an undeniable strain of groupthink among those in positions of power: promoters, commissioners, critics and even some performers. Acts who conform have been rewarded, while those who refuse to do so have been shunned. It hasn’t taken much for up-and-coming comics to realise that it is more profitable to be seen to convey the “correct” message rather than to develop their craft in innovative and individual ways. The impulse to serve Mammon rather than the Muses has enervated the comedy scene, and self-censorship is now the norm.

The writer Graham Linehan is living proof of how heretics are treated in the current climate. For blaspheming against the holy creed of gender identity ideology — one embraced wholesale by the gatekeepers of the comedy industry — he has been unable to work for six years. In his new memoir, Tough Crowd, he discusses how his musical adaptation of Father Ted has been scotched, either because the bosses at Hat Trick Productions (which owns the rights) are too cowardly to be seen promoting his work, or because activist elements within the company disapprove of his views.

Only a couple of decades ago, it was virtually unheard of for comedy promoters to take seriously complaints from audience members claiming to be “offended”. Now, it takes little more than a few disgruntled tweets for venues to panic and cancel bookings. But the backlash is palpable. Many of us have grown weary of comedians toeing the establishment line and substituting agitprop for jokes. Some “anti-woke” comedy may lack sophistication and subtlety, but maybe that’s a small price to pay to redress the balance and reenergise the art form. If you want to smash taboos, sometimes you need a sledgehammer.

==

Social constructivists believe that language doesn't describe reality, it creates reality. That's why they get so angry when anyone blasphemes against their authoritarian ideology. It's like casting a counter-spell which undermines the parallel universe they've conjured.

The people complaining about Ricky Gervais' comedy have nothing to say about the other 95% of his performance.

We have to ignore them.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Maria Ramirez Uribe and Amy Sherman at PolitiFact:

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Underlying 2024’s most outrageous political lie was a truth — some might even argue a confession — voiced by an accomplice: To get media attention, then-vice presidential candidate JD Vance acknowledged, sometimes "I have to create stories." And so, with a brazen disregard for facts, Donald Trump and his running mate repeatedly peddled a created story that in Springfield, Ohio, Haitian immigrants were eating pet dogs and cats. With this claim, amplified before 67 million television viewers in his debate against Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump took his anti-migrant, the U.S. border-is-out-of-control campaign agenda to a new level.

"In Springfield, they're eating the dogs," Trump said Sept. 10. "The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating, they're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame." City and county officials said repeatedly that it was not happening.  Rebuttals did not diminish the consequences: Dozens of bomb threats at schools, grocery stores and government buildings. Pleas from locals to leave them alone. A continued lack of constructive debate on immigration and border control issues. After the threats subsided, some Haitians didn’t want to go in public or send their children to school. The police department sent an officer to protect churchgoers at a Haitian Creole Sunday afternoon mass. Haitian restaurant owners and schoolchildren heard taunts from people using Trump’s words. 

"‘Dad, do we eat dogs at the house?’" Jacob Payen, a Haitian Community Alliance spokesperson and business owner, recalled his 7-year-old son asking. The Haitian population in Springfield had swelled since 2021 as people fled Haiti’s violence and instability. City officials estimated 12,000 to 20,000 Haitians had come to this city of about 58,000 residents in 2020, after hearing about jobs and low living costs. Most Haitians live in the U.S. legally under a temporary federal protection President Joe Biden extended. The sudden population surge came with growing pains on housing, health services, road safety and schools. When the local conversation turned to unfounded rumors and fearmongering, Trump and Vance seized an opportunity.

[...]

In choosing the 2024 Lie of the Year, the claims by Vance and Trump about Haitians eating pets stood out. 

It was an absurd statement that Trump raised unprompted on the debate stage. 

And neither Trump nor Vance stopped there. They stuck with the narrative for the rest of the campaign, over the objections of allies who debunked it and pleaded with them to let it go. When challenged by voters and interviewers, Trump said he heard it on TV; Vance said constituents had called his office with the claim.

[...]

Emboldened by Vance’s embrace of the rumor, Trump’s debate outburst cemented lasting consequences, stigmatizing a town and its residents in the name of campaign rage. For those reasons, Trump and Vance own the 2024 Lie of the Year.

[...]

Anatomy of a lie: How real strains primed voters for a baseless rumor

Haitians in Springfield fled their home country after their family members were killed, their businesses were burned down and their lives were endangered. The country was thrown into chaos, its capital city controlled by gangs, after the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, an earthquake and a tropical storm.  As their population grew in Springfield, the Haitian immigrants filled jobs and opened restaurants and stores.  Some longtime residents grew irritated by the strain on city services, such as wait times for public health services, a housing shortage and rising rents. 

In August 2023, a tragedy deepened the resentment: Hermanio Joseph, a Haitian who is in the U.S. legally and lacked a valid driver’s license, drove a minivan into a school bus, injuring about 20 children and killing Aiden Clark, 11. It was the first day of school. Joseph was found guilty of vehicular homicide and involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to prison. Angry residents attended city commission meetings over the next year to ask questions about how so many Haitians ended up in Springfield. They said the Haitians didn’t know driving laws or cultural norms and didn’t speak English.  Local leaders acknowledged the road dangers and overburdened public services. They described steps they and the state had taken to mitigate the strains, such as hiring interpreters and launching drivers’ education classes. City Manager Bryan Heck said Springfield had struggled with housing scarcity for years before the Haitians arrived. 

On July 8, Heck sent a letter to the leadership of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, copying Vance, requesting federal help. The next day, at a banking committee meeting, Vance highlighted Springfield’s housing shortage and demands on hospital and school services among the "very real human consequences" of immigration. Trump announced Vance as his running mate about a week later. 

Discussion of real tension quickly turned to hearsay molded by racist tropes. The earliest rumors PolitiFact found of Haitians stealing and eating pets and geese came in August amid a neo-Nazi group’s protest. On Aug. 10, a dozen people carrying swastika flags marched downtown, protesting the city’s Haitian immigrants. The national white supremacist group Blood Tribe, which has opposed immigration around the country, posted on Gab, a social networking platform used by far-right groups, to take credit for the march. "Once haitians swarm into a town animals start to disappear," an anonymous user commented.  That post garnered only a few likes and comments.  On Aug. 26, the Clark County Sheriff’s Office received a call from someone who said he saw four Haitians carrying geese. Wildlife officials found no evidence to corroborate the claim.

On social media the same day, users amplified similar claims with thirdhand accounts. In an Aug. 26 Facebook post, a woman said her work partner’s brother-in-law saw a Haitian man cut the heads off geese in front of children. She tagged Springfield resident Anthony Harris, who told the story at a city commission meeting the next day, adding that the man ate the beheaded geese. On a private Facebook group about crime in Springfield, a resident said Haitians stole and ate a neighbor’s daughter’s friend’s cat. (The woman later took down the post and said she regretted it.) In the first week of September, verified accounts on X, sent the claim viral when they posted a screenshot of the Facebook post.  "Springfield is a small town in Ohio. 4 years ago, they had 60k residents. Under Harris and Biden, 20,000 Haitian immigrants were shipped to the town," End Wokeness, a pro-Trump X account with more than 3 million followers, posted Sept. 6. "Now ducks and pets are disappearing." End Wokeness’ X post, which has 5 million views, included a photo of a Black man holding what appears to be a dead goose. The photo was taken in Columbus, Ohio, about 48 miles east of Springfield, according to a July Reddit post. 

PolitiFact names the “they’re eating the pets” lie in Springfield, Ohio amplified by then-Senator and VP-elect JD Vance and “President”-elect Donald Trump as its 2024 Lie Of The Year. The pet-eating hoax served to fuel anti-Haitian prejudice.

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, April 19, 2023

U.S. eavesdropped on U.N. secretary general, leaks reveal (Washington Post) The United States has eavesdropped on United Nations Secretary General António Guterres’s conversations, according to four more leaked documents. One intercepted conversation details Guterres’s “outrage” over being denied a visit to a war-torn region in Ethiopia. Another said that Guterres’ reported that he was “really pissed off” about a surprise public ceremony in honor of International Women’s Day during his March visit to Ukraine. Aides later said Zelensky had sprung the event—which included the presentation of medals to uniformed soldiers—on him without warning and posted photographs and videos of the event that implied the secretary general was congratulating military personnel on one side of the Russia-Ukraine war.

While some students skip college, trade programs are booming (AP) It’s almost 4 p.m. at the Nashville branch of the Tennessee College of Applied Technology, and the students in the auto collision repair night class are just starting their school day. One is sanding the seal off the bed of his 1989 Ford F-350. Another is patiently hammering out a banged-up fender. A third, Cheven Jones, is taking a break from working on his 2003 Lexus IS 300 to chat with some classmates. While almost every sector of higher education has fewer students registering for classes, many trade programs are thriving. Jones and his classmates, seeking certificates and other short-term credentials—not associate degrees—are part of that upswing. Trade programs are often more affordable than a traditional four-year degree, students note, and, for many, skilled trades offer a more obvious path to a job.

Many Older Americans Haven’t Saved Anything for Retirement (Bloomberg) More than a quarter of Americans have no money saved for retirement. That’s according to a new survey from personal finance site Credit Karma, which found older respondents are even less prepared by some measures than their younger counterparts. Nearly one in five people aged 59 and older said they didn’t have a retirement account and 27% of respondents said they haven’t set anything aside for their later years. That compared to a quarter of Gen X respondents.

Antisemitism festers in current US political and social climate, report says (Reuters) The social and political climate in the United States has become fertile ground for antisemitism in recent years, according to a report released on Monday by advocacy group Anti-Defamation League and the Tel Aviv University. Expressions of hatred against Jews have become “mainstreamed and normalized,” and incidents of violence, vandalism, and harassment of Jews have increased, the report said. The report linked the rise of antisemitism to trends such as growing populism, political polarization and an increase in hate crimes nationwide.

Mexico feels the strain as Haitian migrants, caught in limbo, mark time (Reuters) Asylum claims by Haitians in Mexico are on track to hit a record above 50,000 this year, a top official said, further pressuring the country’s already strained migrant services as many begin to contemplate a future there rather than in the United States. In the year’s first three months, 13,631 applied for refugee status, dwarfing claims from other countries and compared to 17,153 in all of 2022, according to data from the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR). Part of the explanation for the increase may lie in a toughening of U.S. border controls in January that has made it harder for many migrants to cross by land into the United States, together with a parallel U.S. program allowing a monthly quota of Haitians to cross by air. Haitians without sponsors or who have irregularly crossed into Mexico or the United States would not qualify for the latter program, leaving many effectively stranded in Mexico.

Brazil’s welcome of Russian minister prompts US blowback (AP) Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday expressed gratitude to Brazil for its approach in pushing for an end to hostilities in Ukraine—an effort that has irked both Kyiv and the West, and by afternoon prompted an unusually sharp rebuke from the White House. Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has refused to provide weapons to Ukraine while proposing a club of nations including Brazil and China to mediate peace. On Sunday, Lula told reporters in Abu Dhabi that two nations—both Russia and Ukraine—had decided to go to war, and a day earlier in Beijing said the U.S. must stop “stimulating” the continued fighting and start discussing peace. Earlier this month, he suggested Ukraine could cede Crimea to end the war, which the spokesperson for Ukraine’s foreign ministry, Oleg Nikolenko, and others rejected.

Flower power draws crowds to Low Countries (AP) Rain or shine, there is no way to keep budding flowers down. From the world-famous Keukenhof garden in the Netherlands to the magical bluebell Hallerbos forest in Belgium, they are out there again, almost on cue to enthrall, enthuse and soothe the mind. All despite the cold and miserable early spring in this part of Western Europe. The beauty is not lost on tens of thousands of visitors thronging the pathways through the riot of color and fragrances. And if the COVID-19 pandemic left the sights eerily deserted for a few years, the challenge now has become how to manage the masses. Gardeners plant and nurture the staggering 7 million bulbs to ensure visitors who flock to The Keukenhof from around the world all get to see a vibrant spectacle whenever they come during the opening season from March 23-May 14.

Putin rallies his troops with 2nd Ukraine visit in 2 months (AP) Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday visited command posts of the Kremlin’s forces fighting in Ukraine in an apparent effort to rally his troops as the war approaches its 14th month and Kyiv readies a possible counteroffensive with Western-supplied weapons. A video released by the Kremlin and broadcast by Russian state television showed Putin arriving by helicopter at the command post for Russian forces in the southern Kherson region and afterward flying to the headquarters of the Russian National Guard of the eastern Luhansk region.

Killing of jailed lawmaker on live TV puts spotlight on India’s extrajudicial violence (Washington Post) The slaying of a former lawmaker and his brother in police custody in India’s Uttar Pradesh state over the weekend has placed a spotlight on extrajudicial attacks and killings, driven in part by ethnoreligious divisions fomented at the highest levels of government. Assassins posing as journalists shot and killed at point-blank range Atiq Ahmed, 60, a mobster-turned-lawmaker, and his brother Ashraf Ahmed, a former state lawmaker, as they answered questions on live TV Saturday. In the footage, gunmen continue to shoot the men as they slump to the ground. The Ahmeds, members of India’s Muslim minority, were killed amid a huddle of reporters asking questions. Police moved swiftly to restrain the apparent assailants, including at least one who was chanting “Jai Shri Ram,” or “Hail Lord Ram”—a religious phrase that has become a Hindu nationalist slogan, sometimes heard in crowds carrying out attacks on Muslims. Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, has developed a notorious reputation for gangland violence as well as a long history of extrajudicial vigilante violence carried out by local authorities. Under the rule of Yogi Adityanath, the state’s right-wing Hindu nationalist chief minister, Uttar Pradesh has seen a surge in such encounters with police.

21 die in Beijing hospital fire (ABC News) A fire killed at least 21 people at a hospital in Beijing on Tuesday and forced dozens of people to evacuate, Chinese state media reported. As clouds of black smoke billowed into the sky, people trapped in the multistory building apparently tied bedsheets into makeshift ropes and escaped by climbing out windows. Others took refuge by perching on air conditioning units just outside. Emergency crews extinguished the fire, which broke out in the Beijing Changfeng Hospital, and at least 71 patients were rescued.

Bangladesh to pay off Russian nuclear plant loan in Chinese currency (Washington Post) Bangladesh has approved a payment of $318 million to a Russian nuclear power developer using the Chinese yuan, according to a Bangladeshi official. The decision offers the latest instance of countries bypassing the U.S. dollar and using the Chinese currency to conduct international payments.

For Palestinians, holiest Ramadan night starts at checkpoint (AP) For many Palestinians, the journey to one of Islam’s most sacred sites on the holiest night of Ramadan begins in a dust-choked, garbage-strewn maelstrom. Tens of thousands of Palestinian worshippers from across the occupied West Bank on Monday crammed through a military checkpoint leading to Jerusalem to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque for Laylat al-Qadr, or the “Night of Destiny,” when Muslims believe that the Quran was revealed to the Prophet Mohammad centuries ago. The noisy, sweaty crowds at Qalandiya checkpoint seem chaotic—but there was a system: women to the right; men to the left. Jerusalem residents here, disabled people there. And the grim-looking men stranded at the corner had endured the long wait only to be turned back altogether. For Palestinian worshippers, praying at the third-holiest site in Islam is a centerpiece of Ramadan. But hundreds of thousands are barred from legally crossing into Jerusalem, with most men under 55 turned away at checkpoints due to Israeli security restrictions.

Religious Pop Star Singing of ‘God and Faith’ Wins Over Secular Israel (NYT) The singer and his songs were highly religious. His concert venue, on a kibbutz developed by secular leftists, was definitely not. His audience of many hundreds? It was somewhere in between: some secular, some devout, an unusual blending of two sections of a divided Israeli society that rarely otherwise mix. Ishay Ribo, 34, is among a crop of young Israeli pop stars from religious backgrounds, some from Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, whose music is attracting more diverse listeners, and featuring prominently in the soundscape of contemporary Israeli life. In less than two decades, religious singers have moved from the cultural fringe to widespread acclaim, “not only among their people, but in all Israel,” said Yoav Kutner, a leading Israeli music critic and radio presenter. Mr. Ribo is perhaps the clearest example of this shift. Forgoing the erotic and the profane, his wholesome songs are often prayers to God—but sung to pop and rock music played by his band of guitarists. “Cause of causes,” he addresses God in one of his biggest hits. “Only you should be thanked for all the days and nights.”

Hospitals and Aid Groups Become Targets as Sudan Fighting Intensifies (NYT) As two rival generals, each with his own army, grappled for power in Sudan on Monday, even hospitals trying to tend to the swelling numbers of wounded were no longer havens. At one overwhelmed medical center, the morning began with shelling. Then, members of a paramilitary force barged inside, ordered newborns and other patients to be evacuated, and began taking up positions, one doctor said. “The hospital turned into a battlefield,” said the doctor, Musab Khojali, an emergency room physician at the Police Hospital in Burri, northeast of the capital, Khartoum. Many other hospitals were also reported to have come under attack on Monday, the third day of fighting in Sudan. The death toll has risen to at least 180, with about 1,800 others injured. Amid growing reports of random violence and looting, concerns grew that the fighting might embroil other nations in the region, including Egypt, which has troops in the country, as well as Chad, Ethiopia and Libya. Russia has also been trying to make inroads in Sudan, and members of the Kremlin-affiliated Wagner private military company are posted there.

[z3ncat]

Try reading what I actually wrote. I very specifically said your first reply to me. In which you responded only to what I said about Trump being a rapist and being on tape bragging about being a sexual predator. The fact that you're talking about others' perspectives does not change the fact that you only responded to that part of my comment and not the rest.

I've never called anyone subhuman or said anyone should kill themselves. Again: reply to the words I wrote, not to whatever fantasy comments you've made up in your head because they're easier to reply to.

And if you think there's no evidence that Trump and the Republicans campaigned on stripping multiple marginalized groups of their rights, then you're either lying or willfully ignorant.

Republicans spent over $200 million on anti-trans TV ads, and Trump's Agenda 47 will be DEVESTATING to trans people. People won't just lose their rights, they'll lose their lives.

Trump repeatedly bragged about "killing" Roe v Wade, and said he'd "protect" women "whether they like it or not".

The cornerstone of his campaign was anti-immigrant:

the planned mass deportations - including of documented "legal" immigrants

Vance's declaration that documented immigrants were actually "illegal" simply because he didn't approve of the LEGAL procedure that granted them their status

the lies about Springfield, OH and Aurora, CO

the literal Nazi race science he was espousing

the constant dehumanizing language about immigrants

the other constant lies about immigrants

revoking birthright citizenship

do I really need to go on?

He openly stated that his political opponents are "enemies from within" and that he'd be comfortable using the National Guard or military against them.

He wants to expand qualified immunity for police - something incredibly dangerous for BIPOC, given how little consequence police already face for extrajudicial killings.

His Agenda 47 not only calls for ending all DEI/equity initiatives, it considers them discrimination. And his allies, including people who worked closely with him, want to reinterpret civil rights laws - the ones that Black people bled and died for - to be about "anti-white discrimination".

Trump stated he was looking into restricting contraception before claiming that the words he's on record saying were a Democrat lie

These are all easily-verifiable facts. That you claim otherwise is ridiculous.

In order:

https://truthout.org/articles/republicans-spent-nearly-215m-on-tv-ads-attacking-trans-rights-this-election/

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47/president-trumps-plan-to-protect-children-from-left-wing-gender-insanity

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fact-check-trump-took-credit-for-overturning-roe-v-wade-here-s-the-context/ar-BB1llwho

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/31/us/politics/trump-women-like-it-or-not.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/us/politics/trump-2025-immigration-agenda.html

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/oct/03/jd-vance/immigration-experts-say-jd-vance-is-wrong-haitians/

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/jd-vance-make-up-pet-eating-story-haitian-rcna171326

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/11/trump-aurora-colorado-immigration-gangs-00183533

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/10/donald-trump-migrants-race-science/680187/

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/us/politics/trump-immigration-rhetoric.html

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-already-harsh-rhetoric-migrants-is-turning-darker-election-day-nears-2024-10-04/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-under-fire-again-for-violent-language-and-dehumanizing-anti-immigrant-rhetoric

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/29/politics/fact-check-donald-trump-mar-a-lago/index.html

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/10/21/fact-check-12000-trump-statements-immigrants

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47/agenda47-day-one-executive-order-ending-citizenship-for-children-of-illegals-and-outlawing-birth-tourism

https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/10/21/trump-use-military-opponents/

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47/agenda47-president-trump-announces-plan-to-end-crime-and-restore-law-and-order

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47/agenda47-reversing-bidens-eo-embedding-marxism-in-the-federal-government

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/01/trump-reverse-racism-civil-rights

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-contraception-access-restriction-b2548965.html

Oh, and he absolutely praised and endorsed Project 2025 (https://x.com/VaughnHillyard/status/1811402883604050216) which openly calls for a national abortion ban and an end to no-fault divorce - and the Heritage Foundation is on record as wanting to end contraception access and recreational sex at all (https://x.com/Heritage/status/1662534135762624520).

Now that you've been updated on reality and it's no longer up for debate that Trump and the Republicans campaigned on stripping various groups of their rights...

If you vote for someone who campaigned on stripping multiple groups of their rights, you don't get to complain that you're treated like someone who voted for stripping multiple groups of their rights.

I'll just repeat this part, since you ignored it in favor of making up things to reply to:

As for people "getting along" despite their different political choices? That doesn't work when the choice of one person is actively harming the other person by, again, *stripping them of their rights*.

If your political choices include voting for someone who campaigned on punching me in the face, you don't get to insist that I'm being unfair or unreasonable when I, the person who's going to get punched in the face because of your choices, say we can't get along.

And you don't get to complain that I've put you in the same group as people who actively want me punched in the face, because even if that wasn't the reason you chose to support the person who wants to punch me in the face, you are still obviously fine with me getting punched in the face. It wasn't a deal-breaker for you.

Women are getting rid of their Trump supporting partners while they still legally can since they clearly don't give a shit about them or any other woman.

If you're thinking about getting a divorce, you should do it while you still can.

Edit: Family members and friends are cutting their MAGA friends and family off all over, and for good reason!