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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1416854
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1416854
Now do the part where the Zombie Fourth Estate fails utterly from the 1970s onward, not only allowing, but actively facilitating, the GOP’s Southern Strategy/Great Replacement/white supremacist Christian dominionist project of establishing permanent minority-rules hegemony to prevent realization of their wild-eyed existential fears of Mocha Dystopia, including their LITERAL planning for culmination in an End Game whereby victory would be won, come hell or high water, by either rigging the entire system or widespread violence.
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Do not forget Murdoch and FOX.
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True, but Rusher preceded them and arguably laid the groundwork. Rusher published op-eds (I remember reading him in the Seventies), where he revealed himself to be a complete POS.
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While this article does a great job showing is that Donald Trump did not create his base but rather the base of today’s Republican Party created Donald Trump.
However, this article for whatever reasons fails to mention the links between racists and religion, in particular the “Moral” Majority whose founder, Jerry Falwell first rose to prominence in the 1950s for being a staunch segregationist claiming that Black people had “the Mark of Kane” and therefore where by Gods design were inferior to Whites.
The Fucking “MARK OF KANE”.
Falwell continued his screed into the 1960s opposing Civil Rights and school integration, disappeared for a time only to reappear at the 1980 Republican convention where the Party of Lincoln changed its stance on the very issue it was created and changed from being the Party of Lincoln into the Party of Jerry Falwell. That is what caused Falwell to come out of hiding was his anger over Jimmy Carter ending all federal funding for schools that practiced segregation.
Or as has been said many times, the overwhelming support for Donald “grab her by the …” Trump proves that words like “morals” and “values” in front of the word voter is and has always been code for race.
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Wait, National Review was a white supremacist publication? My mind is blown.
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We’re getting closer to the “heads” of the snake. Time to sharpen the axe.
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Blockquote Donald Trump did not create his base but rather the base of today’s Republican Party created Donald Trump
I said and wrote numerous times in that period that Trump was simply expressing the ID of the Republican Base, and riding that anger to obtain the nomination (and later) the Office of President. Your other points are quite valid, too.
I trace the first real influence of this “New Right” in the federal government to the 1980’s, Ronald Reagan, and the rise of Newt Gingrich who also understood and expressed the ID perfectly. Followed by DeLay and his minions, on through the 1990s and the 2000’s as more and more actual Conservatives fell away and the Reactionaries took over.
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I’m glad Don McLean opted out of playing for NRA crowd. American Pie is playing on the radio right now and as I listen to the lyrics that I’ve known forever….I visualize these gun humpers singing along……and just fuck all……I can’t even process that without one big fat WTF?
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In regard to how we got here,
“Wealthy elites use White grievance to gain political power and then used that power to enrich themselves at the expense of the middle class”, Paul Krugman.
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They didn’t “fall away.” They were assimilated. Had they just fell away we’d have had a split in the GOP after Romney lost. All of this Lincoln Project, “Good Republican” stuff is smoke. The chimps are firmly in charge of the zoo.
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Exactly, the supposed surprising shamelessness with which they are pursuing a society where women’s rights are throttled, slavery is admired and loaded weapons of war are allowed in every public sphere, is actually by design where if they can’t shove these anti-American, de-humanizing, anti-intellectual, fear-based ideas down the throats of the majority, well then they’ll just start that civil war they’re all jonesing for. Win-win to them and not surprising at all to any serious observers of the Right Wing. We need to act now to throttle these mofos big time while we still have some control over the government. Bold and proactive steps need to be taken. Jail for many, throttle Murdochs empire and people to the left of these fascists need to be stating these facts every day and loudly. No quarter.
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Rusher, Weyrich, Brimelow &Co. are sometimes referred to (or styled themselves) as “conservative intellectuals.” But it needs to be said quite clearly, and this includes 3.2%-beer versions of a conservative like Andrew Sullivan, George Will, or David Brooks.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUAL. Period.
The entire body of their arguments consists of an attempt to refute every single worthwhile advancement of humanity since the Enlightenment: democratic self-government, emancipation of women, abolition of slavery, human legal equality, universal franchise. The list goes on: the environment, prevention of animal cruelty, workplace safety, the dignity of labor, universal public education. You could extend the list to exhaustion.
The whole modus of the conservative so-called intellectual is to engage in preposterous forensics and idiotic (but superficially plausible) reductio ad adsurdum arguments to say that we’re better off living in a feudal hierarchy. Or playing on the emotional resentment of some people against others to claim that human equality is a myth.
What they WILL defend is religious superstition, a hierarchical society and no legal protections for lesser breeds.
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Hey, I worked on the Hill, retired 5 years before that. Even then, there was a number of them that were burrowed in, working in GOP offices and Republican committee staffs. Paul Behrends, who worked for Russian agent Dana Rohrabacher, Stephen Miller, who needs no introduction. And a guy who eventually wrote anti-American articles for the Strategic Cultural Foundation, a Kremlin propaganda front that was sanctioned in 2020.
Quite a menagerie. I wouldn’t put Sean Spicer in that category. He was just a hapless shithead.
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Some fell away (retired in disgust). But yeah, way too many were assimilated.
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Agree. Any intellectual worthy of the name can apply basic logic to facts at hand with some degree of human decency. And the supposed intellectual foundation of the GOP project collapses upon first contact with basic logic, facts at hand, or human decency — any one of them by itself, let alone all three together.
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Great post. I recall trying to make this point – less well than you.-- to some colleagues some yrs ago. Conservatives’ “job” is/was tp protect the status quo of fhe era in which they exist. They protect it because it serves them and their patrons.
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Well, yeah, you’re correct. But of course, while conservatives 40 years ago were basically dedicated to defending the status quo, it’s now a new ballgame. They’ve conquered most of the public culture, have a lock on much of the governing apparatus, and have “wired” the Beltway establishment to serve their needs.
Now they feel confident to defend the past – by which I mean the pre-Enlightenment past of 300+ years ago – and to drag us back into that past. The whole mission of all the fake “scholars” at the conservative foundations (indirectly subsidized by you via tax exempt status), and all the bogus “professors” like John Eastman at phony universities like Claremont and Hillsdale, is to make political propaganda for the divine right of kings, and for pogroms, witch-burning, and inquisitions.
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Buffalo is not in Stefanik’s district.
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The problem with the press is that somewhere along the line they decided to emulate The Watcher from Marvel Comics. They’re above it all and merely observing. They think any acknowledgement that there are things in this world that are good and evil, wrong and right - things that should be advocated for - are a pedestrian view of the lofty ideals of journalists. I hate to single people out, but when I see folks like Peter Baker and Ashley Parker, it just oozes off of them that they see themselves as special.
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