#trump being normalized in the mainstream media

[qqueenofhades]

I don’t have any words right now for what’s happened. Where in the fuck do we go from here?

I don't know. I really, truly don't know. We can't sugarcoat how bad things are going to get, and we can't pre-emptively give into it anyway. This is going to be an unprecedented time in American history (if, sadly, not world history) and the forces conspiring to make you obey will gain much of their power from you doing so in advance, without a struggle. It seems fair to say that America as it has always been historically constituted is over, and may not return in our lifetimes, but we also do not know that for a fact. If nothing else, the fascists will find it very hard to cancel competitive elections, and we cannot sit back, throw up our hands, conclude that voting is clearly meaningless, and let them do that. There are a lot of other things that we need to do, but that's one.

There are various postmortems to be written and nits to pick, but Harris was thrown into an impossible situation and did the best she could in 100 days. Even her critics agree she ran a pretty much flawless campaign. But this country simply decided that a well-qualified black woman could not be preferred over the most manifestly and flagrantly unfit degenerate to ever occupy the office. They decided this for many reasons, not least because large swathes of the country now live in curated misinformation bubbles that, under Government Czar Musk, will only get much, much worse. They were helped by the cowardice and complicity of the "mainstream media" that could have ended Trump's career exactly like they did to Biden after the first debate, but chose to preserve the profits of their billionaire oligarch owners and did not do so, giving Trump the benefit of the doubt and normalization at every turn. They also hounded Biden relentlessly over the four years of his presidency, never reported on the good things he did, and drove him to the historically bad approval ratings lows for a president who was by any metric, quite successful (and will quite possibly be our last ordinary American president for a very long time). Along with the searingly ingrained racism and misogyny and misinformation, Harris could not overcome that.

Democrats clearly had a messaging problem, but it's also true that the country, quite simply, does not care about "democracy" when the economy is perceived to be at stake. Not to over-egg the Hitler parallels, but yeah. This is how Hitler returned to power in 1933 -- on the backs of widespread economic collapse of the Weimar Republic; voters decided they just didn't care about the overtly fascist stuff, which he then proceeded to you know, do with genocidal vigor. Except the American economy in this case was actually doing well, which makes it even more baffling and indefensible. Enough people simply memory-holed Trump's crimes (aided at every turn by SCOTUS, Mitch McConnell not convicting him after January 6, Merrick Garland being far too slow and timid, the corporate media), liked the racist fascist behavior or felt that it wasn't a dealbreaker, and decided that in this election, he was the "change" candidate. It's insane by any metric, but that's what happened.

The country is deeply sick. We do not know what will happen. It's going to get bad. Barring a miracle, we will not have federalized abortion rights again in my lifetime, and there will be widespread attacks on public health, women's rights, immigrants, transgender people, and other vulnerable people. Even and especially the ones who voted for Trump. Never Thought Leopard Would Eat My Face, etc. Alito and Thomas will swiftly step down and allow their seats to be replaced by 40-year old wingnuts hand-selected from the worst the Federalist Society has to offer. SCOTUS is gone for the next generation at least. There is very little prospect of it being ever fixed in the foreseeable future.

Trump will never face a scintilla of consequences for his previous crimes; all the open federal cases will be closed as soon as he takes office and fires Jack Smith. The best we can hope for is that he dies in office, but then we get Vance and the cadre of alt-right techno billionaires ruled directly from the Kremlin. Putin is celebrating this morning and with good reason; he's gotten everything he wants. Trump will egg on Netanyahu in Gaza and abandon Ukraine. Democracy across the world will remain even more fragile and badly under threat. Authoritarians will be empowered and American withdrawal from international systems will percolate in very dangerous ways that cannot and will not be fixed in the short run. I really hope all the leftists who celebrate this as the "defeat of the genocide candidate" will enjoy all the genocide and suffering that's about to come. And yes, I do think the Israel-Palestine war fucked us in a large way. Jewish voters perceived the Democrats as insufficiently pro-Israel due to the presence of far-left antisemitism, even as the far left attacked the Democrats relentlessly and never targeted the Republicans. Arab voters abandoned them, possibly deservedly. What would have happened without the war? We don't know. You get the historical period that you get. Netanyahu and Trump can now do anything they want. Hope it was worth it.

As I said, I can't sugarcoat it. We are going to be paying for this in some form for the next decade, and probably longer. I'm not as absolutely shattered as I was in 2016, but I am much, much angrier. We all thought, we all hoped, America was better than this. It isn't. That, however, is something that has also happened before. What we decide to do next will shape how the next chapter unfolds.

This would be a great time to stock up on needed medicines, renew your passport online, and anything else you need to do in preparation for next year. Many of us simply do not have the wherewithal, whether financial or otherwise, to leave the country. I don't know what will happen with me. I don't know what will happen to any of us. This was utterly avoidable and yet, America didn't want to avoid it. At some point, there's nothing else you can do. You can point to media cronyism, Russian influence, etc etc., but the fact that two of the most qualified presidential candidates who happened to be women have now lost to Trump twice makes it unavoidable. The virulent rightward shift of young men (of all races) in particular paints a grim picture as to how the reactionary misogyny of the 21st century is going to essentially undo most of the progress for social and gender equality in the 20th. The patriarchy has been a problem for most of human history. Doesn't really seem like it's going to change.

The end result of this, however grim: we're still here. We are still living within our communities. If (and this is a big if) Democrats can retake the House, they can put some checks on the process for the next two years. At this point, we are in full-out buying-time, trying-to-prevent-the worst mode. We could have continued fixing things, but we won't be doing that. We will only be trying to preserve ourselves and our friends and our smaller spheres of influence. It sounds very trite to say that we have to have courage, but we do. There's not much else.

It's going to be an awful winter. We have two and a half months to see this coming and know how bad it's going to be, and... yeah. I don't know how soon the buyer's remorse will inevitably set in, but it will. Tough luck, people. You voted for him. You get the country that you decide to have. But the rest of us are also here, and what Gandalf says is still true. We wish the Ring had never come to us, we wish none of this had happened, but we still have to decide what to do with the time that is given to us.

I don't have a lot more. I'll probably be logging off for a while. I don't need to look at the internet for.... yeah, a long time. (Will I do it anyway? Probably.) I don't know what else to leave you with, aside from again:

Do not obey in advance. Do not act as if everything is foreordained and set in stone. Fascist regimes end. They always do. We are going to have to figure out how, and it will suck shit, but the alternative is worse.

Take care of yourselves. I love you.

[tomorrowusa]

« We cannot normalize behavior that threatens democracy and the Hispanic community, or offer Trump an open microphone to broadcast his falsehoods and conspiracy theories. We must question and fact-check everything he says and does.

That’s why it is very dangerous to fail to confront Trump. And that’s why it is our moral obligation to confront him every time there’s a journalistic opportunity to do it. »

— Journalist Jorge Ramos Avalos writing at his blog Politics, U.S.A..

Too many news outlets have been normalizing Trump's lies, Nazi rantings, and general craziness. And it's not just Fox News and the far right MAGAsphere that does this.

While it was the infamous Univision interview featuring softball questions and numerous edits which sparked the article by Mr. Ramos, it's certainly not the only instance in the media of trying to normalize Trump's abhorrent behavior.

If you see mainstream news outlets treating Trump's anti-democracy rantings as just Donald being Donald, get in touch with them and call them out. It's easy for them to ignore or delete emails and online comments; so old school methods like voice phone calls or physical letters to the editor or news director may be harder for them to disregard.

[alex51324]

Useful article from CNN on election-night misinformation.

Key takeaway is that pretty much whatever happens, Trump will claim it's evidence that the election is being rigged against him.

Some additional things to keep in mind--particularly if you haven't been through many of these before:

The winner may or may not be projected on election night. How long it takes depends on a bunch of factors, having to do with the logistics of ballot-counting and how the statistical analysis comes along. Getting a projected winner by midnight and the count taking several days are both well within the range of normal, and neither one suggests that anything nefarious is happening.

Counting of votes always continues for several days after the election, until every vote has been counted. This happens regardless of whether or not the media have "called" a winner, or a candidate has conceded.

Media outlets project election winners based on the data that has come in and their statistical models--they do not "declare" or "decide" who won. The major outlets are very motivated to avoid an incorrect projection*, so if they make a call, it's because they're really sure they have enough information to accurately predict the outcome of the final count.

Usually, when this happens, all of the major media outlets are making the same projection around the same time--within the same hour, at least, and often in the same 10 minutes or so. If there's an outlier, there's a good chance they're either guessing or propagandizing.

Candidates do not get to call the race in their own favor. There's a decent chance Trump will try, but also it's also normal and expected for both campaigns to talk like they're expecting to win; e.g. introducing their candidate as "the next President of the United States" when appearing before supporters at events. (My guess is that if he does try, the mainstream media outlets will simply sanewash it as typical election-night bravado, which is actually fine.)

The only thing that means anything, coming from a candidate/campaign, is a concession. This will often happen after the media has called the race for the other candidate; it usually isn't a surprise. A normal campaign will often go quiet--stop sending people to talk on TV, etc.--when they're getting ready to concede. (Trump arguably** still hasn't conceded 2020, so no one is particularly expecting him to concede any time this coming week.)

It's normal for the numbers to change a lot. There are always some surprises, but there are also standard patterns: results from the southeast usually come in a clump, and put a lot of electoral votes into the Republican column, early in the night. Democrats usually pick up the west coast states, which of course are the last to close their polls and start reporting results***. For the swing states, where we'll probably see a lot of reporting on very incomplete vote totals, results will start coming in first from the rural areas, which lean red; cities take longer to count their votes--because there are more of them--and lean blue.

The more uncertainty there is about the outcome, the more you'll hear about the evolving numbers--news networks have airtime to fill, and there's only so many ways you can say, "Still too close to call." Try not to obsess over these numbers; the news networks have people specially trained to analyze this exact kind of data, and if they can't say how it's going to turn out, you're not going to know, either.

If it ends up being too close to call for several days, there will probably be reporting on small, county-by-county vote dumps. It's important to realize that this is all still the original count of the votes, not a recount or "finding new votes." We only hear about it when the election is so close that these relatively small numbers of ballots are likely to affect the outcome, but it happens every single election. In 2020, Trump repeatedly claimed that ongoing counts were some how irregular, and sometimes demanded that counts be stopped when the current total showed him in the lead. This is, to be clear, nuts; the full & complete count of the votes always takes more than just the one day, and it's a bedrock principle of democracy that every valid ballot is counted.

(* Back in 2000, the Bush-Gore election with the whole Florida debacle, several major news outlets did project winners too soon, and then had to walk back their projections.

This definitely contributed to the chaos that night, and may have also contributed to the widespread perception that Bush was the "real" winner and Gore was dragging the country through multiple recounts, in those first few days when the initial count of wasn't even complete in some states.

As a result, responsible media outlets are much more cautious these days about election-night projections.)

(**On January 7, 2021 he made a statement that was taken as indicating his understanding that Biden had won, or at least that he knew he wouldn't be staying in office, but he never stopped saying he won.)

(***This often looks like the Republican being miles ahead, and then suddenly California reports in and they aren't anymore. Expect Trump to pretend that this is somehow shocking, even though the last time a Republican won California was 1988.

Similarly, he will also pretend to be surprised when, for instance, Philadelphia turns in their first big batch of results, and Harris's numbers jump up.)

[darkmaga-returns]

This could be the final straw for Free Speech when the history of the Internet is scrubbed to make changes to websites disappear. It remains to be seen if Archive.org, the Internet archive, will stay dark going forward. This is tantamount to a sudden onset of digital Alzheimer’s: it spells the end of memory. This serves Technocracy’s agenda perfectly. ⁃ Patrick Wood, TN Editor.

Instances of censorship are growing to the point of normalization. Despite ongoing litigation and more public attention, mainstream social media has been more ferocious in recent months than ever before. Podcasters know for sure what will be instantly deleted and debate among themselves over content in gray areas. Some like Brownstone have given up on YouTube in favor of Rumble, sacrificing vast audiences if only to see their content survive to see the light of day.

It’s not always about being censored or not. Today’s algorithms include a range of tools that affect searchability and findability. For example, the Joe Rogan interview with Donald Trump racked up an astonishing 34 million views before YouTube and Google tweaked their search engines to make it hard to discover, while even presiding over a technical malfunction that disabled viewing for many people. Faced with this, Rogan went to the platform X to post all three hours.

Navigating this thicket of censorship and quasi-censorship has become part of the business model of alternative media.

Those are just the headline cases. Beneath the headlines, there are technical events taking place that are fundamentally affecting the ability of any historian even to look back and tell what is happening. Incredibly, the service Archive.org which has been around since 1994 has stopped taking images of content on all platforms. For the first time in 30 years, we have gone a long swath of time – since October 8-10 – since this service has chronicled the life of the Internet in real time.

As of this writing, we have no way to verify content that has been posted for three weeks of October leading to the days of the most contentious and consequential election of our lifetimes. Crucially, this is not about partisanship or ideological discrimination. No websites on the Internet are being archived in ways that are available to users. In effect, the whole memory of our main information system is just a big black hole right now.

The trouble on Archive.org began on October 8, 2024, when the service was suddenly hit with a massive Denial of Service attack (DDOS) that not only took down the service but introduced a level of failure that nearly took it out completely. Working around the clock, Archive.org came back as a read-only service where it stands today. However, you can only read content that was posted before the attack. The service has yet to resume any public display of mirroring of any sites on the Internet.

In other words, the only source on the entire World Wide Web that mirrors content in real time has been disabled. For the first time since the invention of the web browser itself, researchers have been robbed of the ability to compare past with future content, an action that is a staple of researchers looking into government and corporate actions.

[awesomecooperlove]

The Storm Is Here: Hidden Bunkers Raided, Children Rescued, and the Deep State Exposed

The deep state’s grip on our nation is weakening as their secrets come to light. The truth, long concealed, is now emerging, and the powerful are scrambling to maintain control. Brave actions are peeling back the layers of deception, revealing the sinister operations that have kept the American people in the dark for too long.

February 18, 2024: The Georgetown Raid

Tension filled the air in Georgetown, Washington, DC, as Unit X, a group of elite military personnel with trained Belgian Malinois, stormed a hidden bunker beneath the city’s streets. Inside, they uncovered horrors orchestrated by the deep state—47 children were rescued, and high-profile arrests followed, including a sitting congressman. The mainstream media remained silent, complicit in covering up this monumental event.

Operation Eclipse Exposed

March 15, 2024, marked another victory against the deep state. Leaked documents from a private intelligence firm in Langley, Virginia, exposed “Operation Eclipse,” a plan to fracture the nation through media manipulation and engineered social unrest. The deep state aimed to bring America to its knees, paving the way for martial law. However, Trump’s executive orders from 2020 thwarted this sinister plot just in time.

FEMA Camps Revealed

On June 22, 2024, a whistleblower from the Department of Homeland Security risked everything to reveal that FEMA camps, supposedly for natural disasters, were being used as holding facilities for political dissidents and trafficked children. Satellite imagery and intercepted communications confirmed these camps’ existence in remote areas of Nevada and Montana, exposing the deep state’s depravity.

The Silicon Valley “Suicide”

August 8, 2024, saw the mysterious death of a tech billionaire in his Silicon Valley mansion. The official story—suicide—was a lie. This billionaire, a key financial architect of the deep state, had been funding operations to undermine Trump’s efforts to drain the swamp. Unit X had been monitoring him, and when they struck, they ensured he could no longer threaten the nation. This was not a suicide but an execution in the war against those who seek to destroy America.

The Deep State’s Final Struggle

The deep state is in full retreat, but the battle is far from over. Every day, new revelations expose the extent of their crimes and influence. The fight for the soul of America is entering its most critical phase. The deep state’s reach extends into every facet of society—government, media, corporations, and institutions once trusted to protect us. They have manipulated and controlled us through fear and division for years, but 2024 marks the turning point.

The Mainstream Media’s Role

The mainstream media continues to distract and deceive, burying stories that matter and pushing narratives designed to keep the public docile and divided. They want us to believe everything is normal, but we know better. We see through their lies and understand their complicity in the deep state’s crimes.

The Tide Is Turning

The storm is here, and the deep state is running scared. They are not invincible, and the tide is turning. The hunters have become the hunted. Every action they take is monitored, every plot countered, and every secret exposed. The deep state’s time is running out, and the final, decisive blow is coming.

Conclusion: The Dawn of a New America

The American people are waking up, and the deep state’s days are numbered. The storm is here, bringing with it the dawn of a new America. Stay vigilant, stay informed, and together, we will reclaim our country from those who would see it destroyed. The light of truth is breaking through, and with it comes the end of the deep state’s reign. Their time is almost up, and a new era is on the horizon.

Join now, while it's not too late:

⏩️⏩️https://t.me/JFK_Q17⏪️⏪️⏪️⏪️⏪️

[kickerofelves]

If there’s any fault to be assigned here, it’s absolutely the fault of the mass media for pretending like Trump is a normal person, let alone a competent politician with anything substantive to say. In working with The Public, I saw a large number of people who don’t pay attention to politics, or pretend like they do by watching the evening news, shifting to Trump solely based on the economy being noticeably worse for their pocketbooks than it was under Trump because these are people who do not understand the difference between correlation and causation. These are the people who go along with whatever narrative they’re passively fed, and the mainstream media has done nothing but pretend like unprecedented times are just business as usual, so why would they vote for the lady who has made zero promises, vs the guy who at least makes non-stop promises even though there’s no follow through and he’s totally divorced from reality?

[misfitwashere]

Fascism and Fear

The Moment, The Media, The Election

Timothy Snyder

Jul 07, 2024

Mainstream media have treated President Biden with prejudice and arrogance. Quite a few Democrats, reacting to this, treat any mention of President Biden’s fitness as disloyalty. This is mistaken, if understandable.

One source of the negative energy is Trump’s fascism. Focusing on it will not answer the question of what Democrats do, but will help us to understand the context in which the discussion is taking place. By fascism I just have in mind (1) the cult of personality of a Leader: (2) the party that becomes a single party; (3) the threat and use of violence; and (4) the big lie that must be accepted and used to reshape reality: in this case, that Trump can never lose an election.

Much more could be said (as I have done elsewhere), but it is the official big lie and the threats of violence that are dangerous to those whose job is to report truth. Trump is on the record as regarding reports as enemies of the people. What should I make — a journalist might ask — of Trump’s talk of arresting journalists? When not confronted, such questions become self-realizing fears.

That’s the subtle version. Meanwhile, those higher up in corporations might like the ratings Trump brings, or like Trump himself. And so it is easiest to keep things personal — give Trump time, on the self-deluding logic that he will discredit himself, and focus on Biden’s age rather than his achievements. For reporters it can feel like the work is being done when only Biden is at the receiving end of criticism — whereas, in fact, the ground has been shifted by fascism, or by the inability to confront it.

And so fascism spreads and settles in our minds during this, the crucial period between Trump’s first coup attempt and his second. The Biden administration is being held to standards, while the previous Trump administration is not; and Biden personally is being held to standards, while Trump as a person is not. This helps to generate a fascist aura. There must be something special about Trump such that he is different from others: a Leader beyond criticism rather than just an indebted hack or a felon from Queens or a client of a Russian dictator.

It should seem odd that media calls to step down were not first directed to Trump. If we are calling for Biden to step aside because someone must stop Trump from bringing down the republic, then surely it would have made more sense to first call for Trump to step aside? (The Philadelphia Inquirer did). I know the counter-arguments: his people wouldn’t have cared, and he wouldn’t have listened. The first misses an important point. There are quite a few Americans who have not made up their minds. The second amounts to obeying in advance. If you accept that a fascist is beyond your reach, you have normalized your submission.

When media folks describe discussions among Democrats as chaos and disarray, they are implicitly suggesting that it is better for a leader of a party to never be questioned. (Why, after all, is being part of an array a good thing?) An obvious point goes missed: Democrats can say what they want, because none of them is afraid. And that is good! Governor Maura Healey can express her dissent and Joe Biden can express his frustration with her — but no one is worried about her physical safety.

Trump, by contrast, controls his party through stochastic terror, threats issued through social media that his cult followers can be expected to realize. Republicans leave politics because they fear for themselves and their families. Those who remain all obey in advance. That is new, and it should not be normal, and it should not spread any further. But it becomes normal when we treat discussions, and not coercion, as abnormal.

If I am right that much of the energy behind the Biden pile-on is displaced fear of a regime change, much of the media will continue to generate fascist froth for Trump, whether or not Biden is the Democratic nominee — unless, of course, journalists confront their fears, and keep the issue of regime change inside the story, and provide a constructive alternative alongside personal criticism.

There are three tests of good faith for those who are proposing that President Biden step down. The first is recognition that Biden’s first term has been one of extraordinary achievement. The second is a plan for what the Democrats would do, should Biden withdraw, to select a nominee and win the election. The third is recognition that the threat of regime change is what might justify changing the nominee.

I don’t want to dodge the issue of President Biden’s candidacy — I will have something to say about that. But I found I could only enter the discussion after saying a word about how it has been warped — by fascism and fear.

[azspot]

One of the more frustrating aspects of studying and talking about American politics is that if you simply trace the radicalization of the Right and the Republican Party, there is a good chance a mainstream audience will dismiss you as a leftwing conspiracy theorist or an unhinged “activist.” Donald Trump’s outrageousness notwithstanding, it is difficult to convey to people who don’t pay much attention to politics how much the power centers of conservative politics have been taken over by anti-democratic extremism. One way to deal with this problem is to get people to actually read and listen to what emanates from the Right. If you don’t believe and can’t trust my (lefty / liberal) assessment, maybe you can believe them? In that spirit, I think it’s worth spending time diving deep into Kevin Roberts’ “Promise to America” – with lots of extensive quotes, as it is important to get a sense of what these people sound like when they are not being sanitized and normalized by mainstream media coverage. This will serve as Part I of my dissection of “Project 2025,” focusing on the worldview and ideas that are guiding the plans on the Right; there will also be a Part II in which I will look more closely at what those plans entail, and the strategies for how to realize them and turn America into the kind of society the reactionary Right desires.

Democracy Americana

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Amanda Marcotte at Salon:

It was inevitable that Republicans would go after Dolly Parton. Under the leadership of Donald "Make America Great Again" Trump, Republicans have grown to loathe most everything they used to hold in high regard. Forget patriotism — nowadays, Trump rallies are replete with claims that the United States is a "s__thole." The Super Bowl is now derided as an "election interference psyop." Once-beloved Budweiser beer has become a hate object. The same conservative forces who used to pretend they were defending American icons like Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head from imaginary "cancelation" are now mostly in the business of canceling anything and everything that Americans might enjoy. 

"There’s Nothing Loving About Dolly Parton’s False Gospel," the wet blankets at The Federalist recently declared. The much-derided essay from Ericka Andersen castigates the beloved singer-songwriter for "condoning immoral sexual behavior," by which Andersen means being gay or queer. Andersen doesn't directly come out and claim Parton is lying about being a Christian, but gets close with terms like "secularized spiritual leader" and "false gospel."  The faux-theology is a paper-thin cover for what is really a political attack. It's not just that Andersen resents that Parton offers innocuous statements of love and acceptance of LGBTQ people, sentiments shared by most Americans. As with the attacks on the NFL, Taylor Swift, and the "Barbie" movie, it's about encouraging paranoia in the Republican base. The message, from Trump down through the right-wing media, is that white conservative Christians are under attack from every corner of society. As New York Times writer Jamelle Bouie explained on Bluesky, this allows conservatives to "see themselves as involved in revolutionary action that justifies anything under the sun." Including lying, committing crimes, and, as we saw on Jan. 6, violence. 

The invocation of religious language isn't surprising. This tactic is borrowed directly from the world of fundamentalist Christianity. For decades, far-right Christian pastors have used a similar strategy to alienate their congregations from the outside world, leaving pastors with total control of their flock's lives. Believers are routinely threatened with hell for even thinking about whatever pop culture is trendy.  In the 80s, of course, this was the notorious "Satanic panic," where everything from daycare centers to popular rock albums to Dungeons & Dragons role-playing games was said to be a gateway directly to demonic possession. In the 90s, fundamentalists declared that Pokémon "teaches children how to enter into the world of witchcraft." For the past couple of decades, Christian fundamentalists have been freaking out over the "Harry Potter" series, which only seems to have quieted a bit as the author JK Rowling has so loudly championed the far-right opposition to trans rights. Lately, the biggest target for hyperventilating accusations of demonic possession is, of course, Taylor Swift, as well as most other big pop stars. If it might create a chance for young people to bond with those outside of the church, it gets demonized.  Separating people from any connection to the outside world is an effective tool for control, which is why everyone from abusive husbands to cult leaders uses it. As the GOP morphs into the cult of Donald Trump, then, it's not surprising that they've also grown fond of telling their followers to shun any interests outside of Trump rallies and MAGA media. After all, even a casual conversation about football with a dreaded liberal might be a reminder that Democrats are normal people and not the "evil" and "sick" people who need eradication, as Trump regularly claims. 

[...] Parton's "love they neighbor" view is downright banal to most people, but it does run directly against the "hate and fear your neighbor" message of MAGA. It's especially unsettling to Republicans, as Andersen explicitly writes, because it's a direct allusion to what was recently a common Christian message: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." As New York Times writer Elizabeth Spiers argued on Bluesky, the Trump base now openly embraces "a bastardized version of Christianity that’s reverse engineered from their biases," rejecting compassion in favor of "permission to judge people they don’t like and punish them for deviations from conservative norms." Russell Moore, who was once a leader in the Southern Baptist Convention but got pushed out for, among other things, being anti-racist, agrees. He has spoken publicly about how Christian ministers can no longer preach about the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus famously blessed the meek, the peacemakers, and the merciful. If ministers try to teach this scripture, Moore said congregants will revolt, calling it "weak." The relentless cruelty of Trumpism is their true faith. 

Andersen's attack on Parton is part of a larger trend where the GOP is becoming an arm of the once-fringe Christian nationalist movement. As Paul Rosenberg has explained at Salon, these are folks who believe their rigid version of Christianity must "exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions." To justify stripping freedom of religion away and imposing theocracy on Americans, Christian nationalists, including Trump, claim to be acting in self-defense. They make false accusations that they are somehow "canceled" by the "woke mob," and thus the only way to restore their "rights" is to take rights away from everyone else.

Andersen employs this dishonest tactic by claiming "the culture is on a constant witch hunt for those who would call homosexuality sinful." Never mind that LGBTQ people have suffered imprisonment, violence, and discrimination. Ignore the fact that, if conservatives had their way, queer people would lose their right to marry, would be denied health care, be fired from their jobs, and be put in jail for having consensual sex. She wants readers to believe the real victims are homophobes, because people accurately call them bigots. And that all those terrible things they want to do to LGBTQ are justified, because they feel "witch hunted" by having people disagree with them.

Amanda Marcotte wrote a good Salon piece nailing the hypocrisy of the Christian Right's attacks on pop culture icons such as Taylor Swift and Dolly Parton while simultaneously whining about being "victims" of "cancel culture."

[partisan-by-default]

Nothing that happens to Trump can be anything but great for Trump. Whenever he manages to say something vaguely decent, it’s a stirring presidential moment, even if he goes back to rage-tweeting about electricity and sharks afterward. If he delivers a speech without digressing into open racism, he’s adopting a “new tone,” no matter how short-lived that tone is. 

He’s always made to be close enough to statesmanship that his nonstop falsehoods, violent fantasies and rampant corruption can be swept aside. 

The assassination attempt was immediately spun as good news for Trump. Axios hacks Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, whose newsletter is used as an assignment sheet by half the East Coast corporate media, began waxing repulsively rhapsodic about how this moment could turn Trump into the man of their dreams: 

Contrast that tongue-bath treatment with the mainstream coverage of President Joe Biden recently. After a June debate in which Biden stumbled against a relentlessly dishonest Trump, it was Biden’s age and apparent unfitness—and not Trump’s promise to suspend the Constitution and subvert American democracy—that became the focus of the media.

The president had a stroke! He can barely walk! He almost fell asleep at the podium! He mixes up names and forgets where he is! He’s being protected by his vice-president, by his aides, by his wife, all of whom are conspiring to govern the country without him. 

There was no theory too outlandish to be given oxygen. 

[meret118]

During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, conservative political commentator Charlie Sykes warned:

This is pre-election denialism by Donald Trump….It's no mystery, Donald Trump is never going to graciously concede defeat in this election. He's already laying the groundwork for what's going to happen after November. I think this is going to be an extraordinarily dangerous period. He has election deniers in key states, his base is psychologically not prepared for him to lose. This is a desperate man. Donald Trump will not simply lose the election. Donald Trump knows if he is not elected president, he may be going to jail. He will do and say anything. You see in that tweet, not merely the fact that he is rattled and losing it, but that he is already coming up with his lines for why he can deny the results of the election, how Kamala Harris' nomination is unconstitutional, how this is being stolen – all of that in advance. No one should be surprised or think that this fever is going to break on Nov. 5. Whatever happens, we are about to head into a very dangerous period in American politics, led by Donald Trump, obviously assisted by Republicans who simply have decided that they're not going to draw the line.

. .

For example, during a rally in Montana on Friday, Trump appears to “glitch” and pause as he searches for words and then makes unintelligible noises and strange utterances. This is not a creative use of language as some have suggested. Something is clearly amiss.

Last Thursday, in an attempt to recapture some momentum following a several-day absence from the campaign trail, Trump hosted a press conference/speechifying event at his Mar-A-Lago headquarters in Florida. This did not help Trump’s cause. He was detached from reality—in a manner that was even more extreme than his normally aberrant standards. By NPR’s very conservative count, Trump lied more than 200 times

. . .

Given that Trump is the presidential nominee of one of the country’s two main political parties, this should be a cause of great national alarm and concern among the mainstream news media.

By comparison, the mainstream news media savaged President Biden, a man who is experiencing normal challenges of aging but whose mind remains sharp and his personality normal and healthy, and drove him to step aside as the Democratic Party’s nominee.

In a series of posts on X/Twitter, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin called out this negligence:

Press should report this as incoherent, displaying mental deterioration. He is unwell. The refusal to explain how unhinged he is and instead to normalize is reprehensible. The press was able to describe Biden’s affect, energy, syntax. Why don’t they do it for Trump? It is nothing short of shameful To make this rather than his mental breakdown is everything wrong with MSM. They are blatantly covering for him. The same paper that had blanket cover of Biden Here is how to write it: “Donald Trump, in a shocking display of incoherence and break with reality, held a press conference that will reraise fears of his mental competency. Among the blatant lies: His rallies were bigger than MLK, Gov. Walz wants to kill babies and he is ahead.” No candidate has ever lied this much, this bizarrely, no candidate has had such a tenuous grip on reality. Why haven't RS yanked a clearly disturbed person? Will you hound them to comment on this meltdown? Bring in the shrinks and the historians to explain what he is doing. Do. Your. Damn. Job.

[anamericangirl]

Ashlii Babbit wasn’t unarmed dude. She had a backpack full of tools you would normally associate with torture like pliers, knives, a blowtorch, gags, and zip ties.

Oh is that right? You know what was in her backpack? Show me where you got that information.

But even if you were right, even if her backpack was full of guns, it was zipped and on her back. She didn’t have them out. She wasn’t threatening anyone. And you can’t shoot someone for having zip ties and a blowtorch in their backpack.

Ashli Babbitt was not doing anything that justified being shot. At the time she was shot no one was even being violent. The worst that happened was some people were breaking glass on doors trying to get passed a barricade and there are Capitol officers standing there right at the door letting them.

There is no justification whatsoever for shooting her. Anyone who tries to justify the murder of a woman because they don’t like Trump is an asshole and a disingenuous prick whose opinions should be treated like they garbage they are.

Stop letting mainstream media do your thinking for you.

[dicapiito]

How do you keep your optimism during these difficult times specially on the elections?

Since im pretty sure all americans rather choose the third party rather the only politic party how has good intentions.

Sadly people can't change specialist leftists

Great question!

It’s because how many votes Joe Biden got in 2020. 81 million votes.

Social media and mainstream media makes it seem like a close race but people forget that Trump did cause alot of people to die from Covid. The fact I’m the only person I know that can say that I never experienced losing someone from Covid …is…not good. That’s a LOT of damage that man has done to families and some of these families will bite the bullet and vote Harris to help repair those relationships they lost due to being MAGA

It is a shame about the idiot leftists because they helped fuck 2000 and 2016 but they have become the jokes they were always striving to be. Their nonsense is as annoying as the right and Harris has paid them dust like they always should’ve been treated. More celebs are speaking out against them which is also helpful. They’re so far gone and I think so many more people see that versus 2000 and 2016.

Do I think Harris would get as many as Joe Biden? A possibility since all Trump does is play games with his followers and the non MAGA Republicans are showing up to vote so I’m confident that Harris will win and while panic can happen here and there; Trump is that ex that we all know people need to break up with and 2024 will be just like 2020 and America is over Trump, Vance and the MAGAs.

Oh and I ignore polls and MSM because they clearly want the Trump tax cuts so I’m not going to participate in watching their shit. They normalize Trump way too much so nope. 💙💙

[darkmaga-returns]

Instances of censorship are growing to the point of normalization. Despite ongoing litigation and more public attention, mainstream social media has been more ferocious in recent months than ever before. Podcasters know for sure what will be instantly deleted and debate among themselves over content in gray areas. Some like Brownstone have given up on YouTube in favor of Rumble, sacrificing vast audiences if only to see their content survive to see the light of day. 

It’s not always about being censored or not. Today’s algorithms include a range of tools that affect searchability and findability. For example, the Joe Rogan interview with Donald Trump racked up an astonishing 34 million views before YouTube and Google tweaked their search engines to make it hard to discover, while even presiding over a technical malfunction that disabled viewing for many people. Faced with this, Rogan went to the platform X to post all three hours. 

Navigating this thicket of censorship and quasi-censorship has become part of the business model of alternative media. 

Those are just the headline cases. Beneath the headlines, there are technical events taking place that are fundamentally affecting the ability of any historian even to look back and tell what is happening. Incredibly, the service Archive.org which has been around since 1994 has stopped taking images of content on all platforms. For the first time in 30 years, we have gone a long swath of time – since October 8-10 – since this service has chronicled the life of the Internet in real time. 

As of this writing, we have no way to verify content that has been posted for three weeks of October leading to the days of the most contentious and consequential election of our lifetimes. Crucially, this is not about partisanship or ideological discrimination. No websites on the Internet are being archived in ways that are available to users. In effect, the whole memory of our main information system is just a big black hole right now. 

[greenhappyseed]

Hi, okay, I have to weigh in on this vote to ban TikTok happening in the U.S., because I’m seeing misinformation on Twitter. Here’s the deal: TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, and TikTok sends your personal data to China. Why is that a problem? Well, private companies in China aren’t exactly “private” in the way Americans think of them. It’s very easy for the Chinese government to influence Chinese companies…including ordering the company to change its algorithms (…and yes, access any personal data). If, say, China wanted to spread misinformation, sow chaos in the U.S., and disrupt the 2024 U.S. presidential election the way Russia did via Facebook in 2016, the Chinese government has the personal data AND control of the platform to do it. The PLATFORM is actually more important than the personal data. China doesn’t need to exploit Facebook when they’ve got TikTok. The only way to reduce the risk to zero is to ban TikTok in the U.S. https://www.wsj.com/tech/tiktok-pledged-to-protect-u-s-data-1-5-billion-later-its-still-struggling-cbccf203 (WSJ has its paywall BS, but the same point is made elsewhere across the internet). This idea has been kicking about in the U.S. for several years, and I can find articles going back to 2021-22 expressing the same concern. But of course, it’s coming to a head now that it’s actually 2024 and we’ve got another fucking election involving Trump.

Do not be deceived: The TikTok ban has little to do with personal data and absolutely NOTHING to do with Palestine. It is NOT a move to “hide the truth” about Palestine from you, as the ban idea predates October 2023. You can still use Twitter, Discord, Instagram, YouTube, BlueSky, etc. (or just look up your preferred news sources online). Also, any law designed for the purpose of stopping information on a particular topic would violate the First Amendment and the law would be overturned by a court.

Is this ban hypocritical of the U.S.? Yes, a bit. This is similar to what the EU says about personal data transfers from the EU to the U.S. To oversimplify, the EU alleges that EU citizen personal data isn’t safe in the U.S. not just because of corporate greed, but also because the U.S. government can subpoena that data under normal U.S. legal processes. It’s fair to criticize the U.S. for this. Then again, I don’t think there have ever been allegations that the U.S. government has tried to disrupt a European government or election the way Russia did in the U.S. in 2016. Also, to be snarky, the governmental bodies in the EU haven’t figured out how to use Microsoft Office without violating their own privacy laws. Like they can’t successfully apply their own laws to themselves. Last week this case was, I think, the third or fourth case the EU has brought against itself for GDPR violations. https://www.edps.europa.eu/system/files/2024-03/EDPS-2024-05-European-Commission_s-use-of-M365-infringes-data-protection-rules-for-EU-institutions-and-bodies_EN.pdf As a result, the EU comparison sounds similar at first, but doesn’t really materialize into a strong parallel to the national security concerns that U.S. legislators have about TikTok.

Look, the ban is clearly a protectionist move, and yeah we can debate it for all kinds of reasons, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking the ban is meant to stop TikTok from having “the truth” that the government or “mainstream media” is “hiding” from you. That’s some paranoid Fox News bullshit logic, and being young and leftist doesn’t make you immune to it. PLEASE read about what happened with Russia and Facebook in 2016 so you’re not repeating the same mistakes.

[sethshead]

Republican election denial and LGBTQ-phobia have made them natural bedfellows with some very abnormal figures. The GOP has long cultivated connections with reactionary extremists - see Goldwater and the John Birch Society - and fundamentalist religious bigots. It had the sense, however, to avoid being seen in the same room with such fringe groups. Even the Religious Right of Ralph Reed studiously avoided highlighting the speaking-in-tongues, snake-charming charismatics.

With Trump, however, the Paula Whites have taken center stage. When they treat Trump like a prophet or apostle, they truly believe that God has revealed to them truth of Trump’s divine purpose. They believe away his countless transgressions and refusal to admit fault and repent. They call his lack of humility a strength. I can think of few things that would more enrage the Jesus of the Gospels.

What ordinary, conservative-leaning Americans have to realize is that Trump is not going to promote the agenda of any mainstream denomination. He thinks transactionally, and his debt is to the freak show. These are his allies, these are his associates. This is not a normal campaign. This is not a campaign aimed at normal Americans. This is a campaign that has recruited as foot soldiers white nationalists, militias, dominionists and millenarians, not to mention the media manipulation of the dictatorial leaders of our most major geopolitical rivals.

Trump’s movement is unpatriotic and un-Christian. I beseech those who embrace traditional values to understand that Trump is not a traditionalist, but a very weird reactionary.