Portland mayor rips Trump to shreds: 'It’s you who have created the hate and the division'

 

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler reacts after being tear gassed by Trump Storm Troopers on July 22.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

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Somehow Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler got hold of my bile duct and squeezed out all my personal feelings about Donald Trump like it was a very unfunny whoopee cushion.

After Saturday night’s Trump-encouraged unrest in Portland, Mayor Wheeler went on a righteous rant today — and he successfully diagnosed the disease currently afflicting us. Surprise! It’s Donald Trump and his followers!

But first, here’s The New York Times’ take on what went down in Portland last night:

A man affiliated with a right-wing group was shot and killed on Saturday as a large group of supporters of President Trump traveled in a caravan through downtown Portland, Ore., which has seen nightly protests for three consecutive months.

The pro-Trump rally drew hundreds of trucks full of supporters into the city. At times, Trump supporters and counterprotesters clashed on the streets, with people shooting paintball guns from the beds of pickup trucks and protesters throwing objects back at them.

And now Wheeler:

WHEELER: “President Trump, for four years we’ve had to live with you and your racist attacks on Black people. We learned early about your sexist attitudes towards women. We’ve had to endure clips of you mocking a disabled man. We’ve had to listen to your anti-democratic attacks on journalists. We’ve read your tweets slamming private citizens to the point of receiving death threats, and we’ve listened to your attacks on immigrants. We’ve listened to you label Mexicans ‘rapists.’ We’ve heard you say that John McCain wasn’t a hero because he was a prisoner of war. And now you’re attacking Democratic mayors and the very institutions of democracy that have served this nation well since its founding. Do you seriously wonder, Mr. President, why this is the first time in decades that America has seen this level of violence? It’s you who have created the hate and the division. It’s you who have not found a way to say the names of Black people killed by police officers even as people in law enforcement have, and it’s you who claimed that white supremacists are good people. Your campaign of fear is as anti-democratic as anything you’ve done to create hate and vitriol in our beautiful country. You’ve tried to divide us more than any other figure in modern history, and now you want me to stop the violence that you helped create. What America needs is for you to be stopped so we can come back together as one America while recognizing that we must demand that all people, Black, brown, white, every color from every political persuasion, pull together and hold all people accountable in stopping racism and violence.”

Yup, that about sums up Donald Trump’s life. Will this rant change him?

No, of course not. But it’s cathartic, and I needed that.

One of Trump's Storm Troopers holds a heavily armed protester at bay.  Who is really causing the violence in the streets?
 

 

What I Would've Said in June, Had I Been Asked

Garrison Keillor. (photo: MPR)

By Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website

30 August 20

(Gazette editor's note: It's my birthday so I'm taking a 24-hour break from the trials and travails of Trump's tenure, posting instead a great Sunday read from Garrison Keillor.   He offers some unique insights into this trying time we are all sharing.)

gave my love an Italian cookbook Saturday and she cut the plastic off it and opened it and found recipes for leg of kid, eel, pork liver, braised snout, sweet-and-sour snout, and I could tell that we will be eating vegan for the foreseeable future. I was just finishing up a nice helping of short ribs and she gave me a moralistic look, the sort you might give a cannibal if there were one around. And yet—who in this household is worried about high cholesterol? Not me, the butcher boy. The Queen of Greens, that’s who. Thus once more we discover the fundamental unfairness of life. The good are punished while the wicked get off scot-free.

My favorite breakfast is a sirloin steak with two fried eggs. I’m only a writer at a desk but that meal makes me feel like a stevedore looking ahead to a day on the docks running a forklift. I feel young and strong. Then I sit down at the laptop and taptaptap for a while. Meanwhile, my love eats her steel-cut oatmeal and goes for a run in the park and worries about cholesterol.

I’ve been the beneficiary of injustice for many years. I was an indifferent student and slogged through useless humanities courses and read Kafka and Camus and wrote papers about existentialism, which was all the rage back then and which nobody knew what it was exactly nor even approximately, which allowed an ignorant twerp to write inscrutable term papers about it, meanwhile the best and the brightest were studying engineering or medicine or law and forging ahead, and I, because I have a somber face and no social skills, went into radio during a boom period, and they became serfs in tall buildings in fast-moving fields (especially engineering) where obsolescence set in around age thirty-five, and I did a radio show that, because it was nostalgic, defied change, and thus did the turtle outrun a great many hares.

The plague struck in March. All of the gifted artists I knew—musicians, actors, comedians—were out of work, whereas I, the writer of homely tropes and truisms, was busier than ever. Like most introverts, I enjoyed the pandemic to the utmost.

Life is unfair. This is what the Class of 2020 should’ve been told at commencement, if there had been one. They don’t need to hear about marching to a different drummer and lighting a candle and making a difference in the world because it’s the only one we have. That is a bowl of chicken wieners in canned beans in instant gravy.

No, they need to be told that they got a third-rate education and they need to toughen themselves up so they can blow up the gates and take over the world and seize from their greedy boomer parents a fair share of the national wealth. Manufacturing is dying: everything’s made in China. The farms are industrialized. The arts? Ha! You get paid in candy wrappers and bottle caps. Your future gets more limited every day. The rules are rigged and the country is at war with itself and people are stupefied by Twitter and Facebook and it’s time to storm the barricades.

The problem with revolution, though, is that life is unfair. The revolutionaries who go to the barricades never get to enjoy the rewards. Their grandchildren do.

Revolutionaries get into bitter feuds with fellow radicals and wind up in jail or exile, embittered by a long string of betrayals. Meanwhile, billionaires live in fear of losing the mansion and the grounds, the heated pool, the staff at the ready to satisfy your every whim, if only you had a whim, but billionaires don’t have time for whimsy. It’s a hard life on both sides of the battle. So skip it. Just declare victory and go live your life.

School can’t teach you to be independent so teach yourself. If you can be happy alone, then you’ve got a good start. Try sitting in a boat on water with nobody else around, or sit in the yard the morning after a rain, or walk in the woods at dusk. Fall is coming, when the world is gorgeous to all of the senses. Let your soul breathe; experience buoyancy without spending money. Once you learn to be good company for yourself, you’ve achieved the revolution and earned a fortune. Then you can go on to the next step, which is coming in out of the rain, and lying down in the bed you have made.

Ranks of chairs on the White House lawn were a pop-up Arlington for a single day of Trump's victims

Chairs set up in front of the White House as Trump turns South Lawn into coronation site.

Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff

Friday August 28, 2020 · 8:04 AM MDT

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The stage at the front of the Republican National Convention (RNC) on night four was a surreal parade of Republicans pointing to things that are going on right now and claiming that the only way to stop them is by electing the man currently in charge. But in addition to treating the White House with all the dignity and restraint of a gun show at the Newark DoubleTree, the night of Trump’s nomination had another symbolic purpose: It showcased the Republican Party’s ongoing disdain for public health and continuing refusal to accept the recommendation of experts.

Even as Trump was claiming that he “followed the science” on addressing the novel coronavirus pandemic, he was standing in front of a crowd of hundreds packed in almost shoulder to shoulder, with limited testing and barely a handful of visible masks. Even though the gathering was outside—which makes it safer than meetings in close confines—it still had all the makings of a “super spreader event.” This didn’t escape the notice of CNN reporter Jim Acosta, who repeatedly expressed astonishment at “all of these people, hundreds of people sitting side by side in the audience, not wearing masks” and about how “the senior White House official brushed off these concerns about the lack of social distancing at the president’s speech.”

The ranks of white chairs represented more than just places for Trump’s chosen to park their white asses during a dull evening of content-free speeches. They also roughly matched the number of Americans who die in a single day from Trump’s deliberate mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump certainly didn’t mean for the rows of closely packed white chairs to represent any sort of memorial, because the entire point of the whole week has been pretending that Trump took swift action against the coronavirus and everything was just great. No one who has taken the stage through the entire week has acknowledged the millions of cases in the United States, the suffering of those afflicted, the 185,000 families mourning their dead. Instead, the RNC followed the great tradition that Trump established from even before the pandemic struck: demeaning scientists, dismissing the threat, and openly sneering at the losses America has suffered.

In total, 1,500 people were there to listen to Trump drone on about his “bold” actions on a day when 1,143 Americans died. And watching Rudy Giuliani gesticulate in front of those chairs was a good reminder that more Americans died of COVID-19 during the RNC than died on 9/11. By far.

Those four nights, as Republicans were speaking again and again as if the pandemic is in the past, victory is won, and didn’t Donald Trump do such a good job, saw 4,232 Americans die from COVID-19. And that’s ignoring the fact that deaths are still being chronically underreported, especially in Republican-controlled states. What Donald Trump rolled out on the South Lawn wasn’t just a demonstration of contempt for social distancing guidelines, it was a kind of instant Arlington—an accidental monument to a single day of the Americans he has sent to die.

And of course, there’s a not-so-happily-ever-after to this story. In cramming people together at the White House, and Fort McHenry, on every night of this “celebration” in which making believe that the virus is gone has been a key talking point, Trump and his supporters have helped to make sure that it will not go away. There will be victims among the crowd of Trump supporters. There will be victims among those exposed to these supporters. And victims. And victims. 

Because no matter how much everyone wishes the pandemic is over, it’s not. Hydroxychloroquine is not a miracle cure. Oleander is not a miracle cure. Plasma is not a miracle cure. And vaccines are still months away. People are still dying, and what Trump did on Thursday night wasn’t just deliver the worst acceptance speech in modern history, it was to model exactly the wrong behavior at exactly the wrong time.

And it can never be forgotten that America’s worst-in-the-world results from the pandemic didn’t just happen. It wasn’t even just the malignant incompetence Trump brings to so many issues. The decision to allow COVID-19 to ravage the country was deliberate, made expressly because Trump believed that the people sitting in front of him on Thursday night would gain an advantage by allowing Americans in blue states to die.

 Maybe it's just me, but when I squint my eyes this scene looks like a bunch of empty white folding chairs just waiting for occupants.

 

Trump accepts nomination, may still be speaking, because no one made it past the first hour

 

Trump's White House backdrop was gaudy and illegal.  See photo at the end of story for more accurate representation of his first term.

Mark Sumner

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Friday August 28, 2020 · 6:58 AM MDT

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Last night Donald Trump accepted the Republican coronation in an extravaganza whose central theme was “Farewell to democracy.” In a genuinely horrific display of authoritarian ownership, Trump not only filled the South Lawn with white chairs—and equally white supporters—but bracketed the White House with enormous LED signs surely secunded from their normal roles of advertising mattress sales along the interstate. Then Trump-themed fireworks burst over the National Mall. It was gaudy. It was sickening. It was deeply, intrinsically tacky.

In front of the Vegas-ified White House, Republicans delivered a night of lies which repeatedly turned to one theme: We wouldn’t be in this mess if Trump was in charge. The pandemic, the economic collapse, the violence … all could be solved if someone like Donald Trump was at the helm. Gee, what a shame Trump isn’t here to steer this ship out of the storm some absolute jackass got it into.

As Joe Biden tweeted during the evening, Trump wasn’t asking for a second term; he was asking for a do-over. 

When it came his turn to speak, Trump demonstrated that the complaints that “anyone can read from a teleprompter” were not true at all. Not only did Trump struggle to follow along in an emotionless drone—like a large, orange, sweaty bee—he also mangled multiple phrases, from “profoundly accepting” the nomination to “we pioneered the fatality rate.” Reading, as it turns out, is a skill.

When he was managing to chew his way through the words on the screen, Trump spewed so many outright lies that real-time fact checking could have been on Olympic sport. Trump once again claimed to have given veterans the choices in health care that President Obama signed well before Trump came down the escalator. He exaggerated the miles of useless border wall constructed by 6000%. He repeatedly painted Joe Biden as being somewhere to the left of Che Guevara. And, like every other speaker on every other night of the RNC, claimed that he had handled that China virus brilliantly. Good thing that’s over. 

Overall, Trump spoke for over an hour, dragging the closing on toward midnight. It’s fair to say that while some number of American televisions might still have been tuned in, it’s a very good bet that American eyeballs had long closed. It was a bad speech. Not just a speech filled with lies and riddled with vindictive, but a bad speech in the sense that it was badly written, badly structured, and very badly delivered. It was like the laziest writer imaginable took the off-cuts from Trump’s rally addresses and tossed them in a blender, with no concern for sequence, impact, or consistency.

Before Trump appeared to sing the nation an all-too-familiar lie-lullabye, the a tag team of some of Trump’s biggest supporters appeared. That included a visit from Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who seemed to be present to show that he could out-sweat even Trump. During his time on stage, Giuliani repeated and expanded on a claim made several times over the course of the RNC, saying that Joe Biden is "a Trojan horse with Bernie, AOC, Pelosi, Black Lives Matter and his party's entire left wing just waiting to execute their pro-criminal, anti-police policies."

First off, there’s not room in a horse for all those people. Secondly, Joe Biden isn’t hiding his support for, or from, any of these people. Both Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (do Republicans really burst into flame if they say her full name?) had speaking slots at the Democratic convention. As for Black Lives Matter, both Biden and Harris have expressed outspoken support. In Giuliani’s version, the Greeks apparently knocked on the door and informed the Trojans that they were all going to climb into this horse, please drag it inside.

But despite trotting out such reliable fire breathers as Giuliani and Tom Cotton, the whole of the fourth night of the RNC failed to generate as much heat as Karen Pence talking about art classes. It’s hard to imagine that even the most ardent Trump supporter found the night something to enjoy. It was just … something to be endured.

Now, everyone stay tuned for night five of the RNC. Because that’s apparently where they’re going to reveal all the optimism, positive statements, and detailed plans they promised before the convention began.

 

 

People in position of power always want everyone else to shut up about abuse of that power

Mark Meadows thinks co-opting the government as a political prop is no big deal.

Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday August 26, 2020 · 1:39 PM MDT

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When white collar criminals want to break a law, they always find it trivial and inconvenient. After all, tax fraud, misuse of charities, and plain-old duping people out of their savings are all minor affairs that can be settled with, at worst, a fine. So it should come as absolutely no surprise that when it comes to the Hatch Act, White House chief of staff Mark Meadow has this to say in a Politico interview: “Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares.” Meadows went on to call complaints about the illegality of Republican actions “a lot of hoopla” and to suggest that everything they did was just fine. But the RNC didn’t wander into a minor technical violation. Trump’s convention broke the Hatch Act in every possible way. That includes not just the civil portions of the act. Trump and others made multiple criminal violations that exceed even the sizable carve-outs that the law allows executives. 

Still, according to Meadows, nobody outside the Beltway cares. Just like no one who isn’t on Wall Street cares about insider trading. Just like no one who isn’t on a corporate board cares about corporate fraud. Just like how everyone in a position of power is convinced that they are not just privileged to be in that position, but that their privilege extends to ignoring the law.

Meadows has it backward. The people who really care about the Hatch Act are the people outside the Beltway. Because those are the people directly affected by abuses of the act. The only ones who don’t care are the people who benefit from not caring. Oddly enough, Meadows used to know that. Because the guy who wrote some of the toughest penalties around the act was Mark Meadows.

When my mother worked as a secretary at a government agency, she was forbidden from wearing a political pin or having a bumper sticker on her car. Millions of Americans, whether they’re at the FBI or the Post Office, know and follow the law as defined in the Hatch Act. And there’s a very good reason—access to government power and resources means that government employees, top to bottom, have the ability to affect elections in ways that far exceed normal citizens. Also, there’s tremendous value in creating a government where someone can pay their property tax, or stand in line for a driver’s license, with a fair degree of assurance that they won’t be subject to penalties or harassment because of political beliefs.

Joe Biden had it exactly right at the Democratic convention: Politicians run for office as representatives of their party; they are expected to govern as representatives of the people.

As The Daily Beast reports, Meadows’ disregard for the Hatch Act comes now, when it’s an inconvenience to him personally. But in the past, Meadows signed on as co-sponsor for legislation that increased the punishments for violations of the act. 

And while Meadows now says that people “expect that Donald Trump is going to promote Republican values and they would expect that Barack Obama, when he was in office, that he would do the same for Democrats,” that hasn’t always been the case. When Obama was in office and Meadows was in Congress, he conducted multiple investigations of possible Hatch Act violations, even by low-ranking members of Obama’s administration.

April Sands, who served as an attorney for the Federal Election Committee, was forced to resign after participating in a political internet forum from an office inside an FEC building. Meadows called the action “troubling” and used Sands’ actions as an example in increasing fines for violations of the act (in the Deep Irony department, that bill, which Meadows helped to create, also included expanded protections for whistleblowers). 

The truth is: No one who is determined to be a criminal is a big fan of the law. Burglars wish no one cared about theft. Murderers wish no one cared about murder. And in particular, people who want to use their position of power to their advantage, always wish that those outside of that power would just shut the f#ck up and take it. 

Mark Meadows, Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, and other members of the White House staff have repeatedly broken a law that millions of others are required to follow under pain of prosecution and punishment. It is a gross abuse of their position of power, and everyone should care.

"The Hatch Act?  I thought you said 'hatchet.'"

 

Joe Biden has three simple words for all of us aghast at the Trump sh*tshow convention

 

Dartagnan

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Tuesday August 25, 2020 · 11:41 AM MDT

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It’s difficult to settle on which is worse: the fact that one of the two major political parties in this country has willfully abandoned its powers of critical thought, or the fact that so many millions of Americans have chosen to follow that party as it leaps off the cliff, into an abyss of ignorance.

Witnessing our fellow Americans succumb to the cult of personality that Donald Trump has spun around himself, as he has scurried about, collecting in his web some of the worst human specimens this country has produced—people with no sense of moral obligation toward the nation, people who countenance the betrayal of the country’s founding principles, people willing and almost desperately eager to believe any lie, no matter how outrageous or self-destructive—is a dispiriting experience, to say the least.

Watching a convention made of up venal sycophants and self-interested grifters like those put on display Monday (and now Tuesday) night is to painfully bear witness to just how degraded this nation has become, in such a short period of time. That we are forced to watch the likes of Donald Trump, Jr., his girlfriend, that lawsuit-happy, race-baiting couple, and Eric Trump, among others—human beings lacking any visible merit—paraded in front of screens as creatures somehow worthy of attention, admiration, and respect is, for many of us, nausea-inducing.

And tonight, and the next night, it will get worse, as the parade of these people continues with its toxic spew of lies and its crazed, worshipful obsequiousness toward the worst human being ever to occupy the Oval Office, if not any elective office. By the end of the week any person possessing even a hint of decency would feel more than a little soiled by the whole experience. It is depressing, yes. But mostly it is downright embarrassing.  Being forced to endure such truly bad people in positions of relative power makes us embarrassed—for a moment—to be Americans. 

But the reality is that these people are not the majority. We are. And Joe Biden gets that.

From 11:22 PM, Monday night:

Joe Biden

@JoeBiden

Just stay focused, folks. Let’s get to work.

So as Trump’s shitshow of indecency continues tonight, just remember that we all have work to do. Donate, call, write, and contribute your time and energy toward getting out the vote (voting starts in just a few weeks, you know). Don’t be distracted by this garbage convention or its garbage people. It’s intended to demoralize us, but if anything it really should strengthen our resolve to kick these people out of office for good.

As Vice President Biden says: “Just stay focused.”

This is the end of the elephant speaking at Trump's "sh*tshow" convention.

 

Ominous RNC opens with a night of lies, screaming, and apocalyptic warnings of doom

Kimberly Guilfoyle summons the MAGA demons to join her minions at this year's Republican National Convention.

Mark Sumner

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Tuesday August 25, 2020 · 6:22 AM MDT

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As expected, the Republican version of “optimism” turned out to be apocalyptic ravings about the inevitable destruction of America, many of them at a volume that appeared not to recognize the existence of microphones. Highlights, if that’s the right word, included Donald Trump Jr. sweating his way through a addled presentation that left “cocaine” trending on Twitter, Kimberly Guilfoyle waving her arms during a high volume frenzy … something, and gun-waving “Karen” Patricia McCloskey warning that Democrats would “abolish suburbs.”

Though Trump had made a point of sneering at the use of recorded speeches at the Democratic convention, all of the above were also pre-taped. That includes Guilfoyle screaming at an empty room and Trump Jr. appearing to deliver a speech from Mt. Baked. Proof that Trump’s convention was stitched together in such a hurry, or with such little concern, that no one ever thought to say “great, now let’s do it again, but without making it seem like you’re summoning Cthulhu.” But if there was any real uniting theme for the convention of what the GOP is it was this: Lying our ass off for Trump.

The lies started with the pre-recorded intro and through the pre-recorded speeches that came later. They hit both of the main categories of lies—both omission and commission. For example, multiple speakers, including an also shouty Jim Jordan, raved about setting the record for the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years. None of them mentioned that it had been Barack Obama who pulled the nation out of a deep recession and left Trump with an economy that was already on the brink of that record, or that the economy actually grew more slowly under Trump than under Obama. Or that the nation was already moving toward recession before the pandemic struck. Absolutely no one mentioned that Trump had also set the record for all-time high unemployment dating back to when the statistics began in the Great Depression.

But the biggest overall source for lies might have been the attempt to recast Donald Trump as the guy who saw the pandemic coming. Speaker after speaker referenced Trump's “banning travel” to China in January—ignoring the fact that what Trump did was only place restrictions on travel … restrictions that didn’t go into effect until February. Neither did anyone point out that Trump’s action was fundamentally pointless, as by the time he finally moved, over a month after the World Health Organization announced the outbreak in China, the primary source of the virus entering the United States was through Europe.

Most amazingly, yet another canned video attempted to present Trump as the “decisive leader" who made the tough decisions on COVID-19 while Democratic leaders “got it wrong.” Coming straight from Upsidedownsia, the video made it Democrats and news outlets who “downplayed” the surging pandemic, while Trump was the guy who stepped into the breach. Somehow, the video left out the fact that Trump had golfed his way through January, and February, and into March before seeming to realize that a disease threatening the death of millions might be something about which he was supposed to express a modicum of concern. The video surprisingly left out Trump repeatedly describing coronavirus as nothing more than the flu, support for quack cures, attacks on governors who attempted to save their citizens, threats to withhold drugs and equipment from Democratic states, and unending claims that the virus would just “go away … like magic.” The video did make sure to include Trump calling COVID-19 the “China Virus.”

Overall, the night was exactly what might be expected—a direct play to Trump’s base that could have been scripted by rolling back through the last few months of Trump’s Twitter account. There was a parade of Republicans who presented themselves as victims in one way or another, screaming about how Trump’s short-finger in the dike was the only thing holding back the horde. There was all the dog-whistling about suburbia that Trump feels will net him women who secretly (or not so secretly) are still concerned about the idea of keeping their neighborhoods snow white. There was a speech claiming that "bitter, deceitful, vengeful activists” are “locking up pastors,” which is quite a trick. 

And on COVID-19, there was the concerted effort to prove that Trump was never wrong—even when his error is visible in the form of 175,000 dead and counting.

 A more appropriate background than the White House for the RNC Convention featuring a president who has killed over 175,000 Americans in the last 6 months.

 

Rep. Kate Porter gets DeJoy to admit he doesn't even know how much a postcard stamp costs

Walter Einenkel

Daily Kos Staff

Monday August 24, 2020 · 3:34 PM MDT

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Postmaster General Louis DeJoy brought his brand of cronyism to the House Oversight Committee on Monday. Attempting to obfuscate and pass the buck on his sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), DeJoy has done everything we have come to expect from a Trump-appointed bag man. Democratic representatives have been trying their best to expose DeJoy for the incompetent boob that he is.

Democratic Rep. Katie Porter of California has a solid history of not beating around the bush when asking questions in committee, and Monday was no different. Appearing via video feed, Porter began by asking the head of the USPS what the price of a first-class stamp is. It’s 55 cents, and DeJoy nails the answer. But after that, it seems DeJoy doesn’t know much about the basics of the Postal Service.

Porter asks DeJoy what a postcard stamp costs. DeJoy doesn’t know the answer to that wacky question. Nor does he know how the shape of an envelope affects the cost of the mail’s postage. He also doesn’t know the starting rate for U.S. priority mail. These are all important things to know since DeJoy and conservatives around him have attempted to defend the dismantling of our postal system right before an important election by saying they’re trying to streamline and make the USPS more profitable. If you don’t even know the basics about your product and the going costs, it seems rather amazing that you would even begin to push forward with cost-saving initiatives.

But then, in arguably the most important question of the day, Porter asks Postmaster General DeJoy whether or not he can tell anyone about how many people “within a million or so” voted by mail in the 2016 presidential election.^* Porter gives DeJoy some gasoline with which to set his garbage mind ablaze, asking “to the nearest 10 million?” DeJoy can’t answer that, and Porter points out that for someone who has been “taking very decisive action,” DeJoy seems to know jack shit about anything his organization does.

 

 

Republicanism as death cult: Republican voters say American COVID-19 death rate is 'acceptable'

And that's why Sen. Mitch McConnell continues to block efforts to address the pandemic. Because recognizing it as a crisis would make the party's leadership look bad.

Hunter

Daily Kos Staff

Sunday August 23, 2020 · 1:42 PM MDT

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Republicanism is now nothing more than a cult. That's the takeaway message of a new CBS News poll splitting out Republican voter sentiments from those of the rest of the nation. Taken together, America's registered voters now say America is not better off than four years ago by an overwhelming 65%-35% margin. Republican voters, however, believe it is—and by a 75% to 25% spread.

Republicans believe the United States' battle against COVID-19 is "going well", also by a 3-to-1 margin; among all voters, 6 in 10 say it is in fact going "badly." Republicans believe COVID-19 deaths are being exaggerated; a plurality of all voters believe it is being undercounted. And, most troubling at all, Republicans are split from the country in whether the now 180,000 United States COVID-19 deaths and rising are "acceptable."

Republicans say the number of deaths has been "acceptable," 57-43%. Other voting groups believe 180,000 pandemic deaths are not acceptable, and by very wide margins.

Even a sociopath would know to at least lie, when asked whether the death of 180,000 people was a reasonable and acceptable outcome. For these voters, however, protecting conservatism, even crooked and incompetent conservatism, from the consequences of its failures is all-consuming. And it continues to break a very large number of brains.

What we're seeing here is a segment of America that has divorced itself from reality—a now-cult that simply denies any news, from economic collapse to mass deaths, that might cause Dear Pasty Leader to look bad. The cult's extent can be gleaned from the 82% of Republicans who, when asked why they believe America is better off than four years ago, cite their own "confidence in Donald Trump."

That's it. America is doing "better" because Donald Trump is in charge, and he says so, and so the same Fox News-primed cult that sent themselves into a froth over ebola, over Benghazi, and over a dozen or more conspiracy theories about the nation's first Black president and first woman to be nominated, say that America is "better" now. Even a pandemic non-response that the rest of the world finds horrifyingly incompetent is in fact Good, with 180,000 deaths are an "acceptable" price to pay in exchange for the nebulous whatever Trump and his allies are doing inside Republican voter heads.

Modern Republicanism is, to repeat, at present a fascist movement. It is willing to forgive mass death as price for ideological purity. It is not just willing to lie about everything, all the time, to protect the movement's floundering "leaders," but aggressively purges those who refuse to embrace the lies themselves. Lawbreaking is considered good when those of the movement do it; laws elsewhere are tightened to more vigorously punish movement opponents. It is obsessed with the national purity of the white, especially over immigrants, and demands not just that immigrants be blocked, but punished. That the police state be made more aggressive, not less. That lives matter only in accordance with Dear Ignorant Crooked Leader.

To self-identified Republicans, 180,000 pandemic deaths are "acceptable" for whatever reasons can be lazily mustered. Perhaps it is a hoax; perhaps they were all old, and vulnerable; perhaps 180,000 people would have died of something, so what's the point of keeping track. But it will not be different when the numbers top 250,000. The numbers in the polls will barely change.

There are Republicans, and there are Americans, and the two no longer share the same reality. The former will do nothing, no matter which laws Trump might break to stay in power or which lies he might tell to brush off the next 100,000 deaths. The willingly corrupt Senate proves that much.

What more can we say?