I didn't get around to this last night, and by now most of you are probably already aware of the reaction by all too many Republicans to the attack on Paul Pelosi. In a word, it's been vile.
If Republicans were just trying to claim that the attacker didn't have any kind of partisan motivation, that would be par for the course. Wrong, but hardly surprising—especially this close to an election.
But they're going way beyond that. Charlie Kirk asked his listeners to post bail for the attacker since the whole thing is just fake liberal news. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin admitted the attack happened, but then joked about it. Donald Trump remained silent over the weekend, but spoke up today to blame everything on lax Democratic crime policies. This is also the line Fox News has been pushing all weekend. Donald Trump Jr. retweeted a joke about Pelosi being in his underwear. And there's more:
A forum devoted to former White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon’s right-wing radio show alerted its 78,000 subscribers to “very strange new details on Paul Pelosi attack.”
Roger Stone, a longtime political consigliere to former president Donald Trump, took to the fast-growing messaging app Telegram to call the assault on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband an “alleged attack,” telling his followers that a “stench” surrounded mainstream reporting.
....Dinesh D’Souza, whose recent film “2000 Mules” burnished his right-wing bona fides by pushing Trump’s debunked claims of widespread voter fraud, aired falsehoods and innuendo in a viral Twitter thread suggesting the attack on Paul Pelosi was a form of intentional misrepresentation sometimes referred to as a “false flag.”
....The story shared in the Telegram channel for Bannon’s “War Room” show . . . ominously pronounced, “It appears we are not getting the real story.”
....[Elon] Musk . . . [retweeted] a story in the Santa Monica Observer claiming without evidence that Paul Pelosi was drunk at the time of the assault and “in a dispute with a male prostitute.” Musk, who later deleted the tweet, did not respond to an email seeking comment.
....Scores of tweets included claims that the attack was a false flag, including some responding directly to messages from the House speaker. “@SpeakerPelosi Accountability is coming,” one user warned. “Tired of your Lies and False flags. Your Treasonous.” Another wrote, “I don’t know why the Paul Pelosi story falling apart is such a surprise. False flag attacks are a common tool of the left.”
....Wendy Rogers, a Republican state senator in Arizona who has set fundraising records in her state while aligning herself with right-wing extremists, shared a spurious Amazon listing for a “Paul Pelosi Fake Attack Novelty Item Headpiece.”
Garrett Ziegler, a former Trump White House aide, directed his more than 125,000 followers on Telegram to a meme sexualizing the assault.
Larry Elder, a conservative radio host who mounted a failed bid for governor of California in the recall election last year, reacted to the assault by ridiculing Pelosi for a charge earlier this year of driving under the influence. “First, he’s busted for DUI, and then gets attacked in his home,” the commentator wrote on Twitter. “Hammered twice in six months.”
Even after all the events of the past few years it's hard to believe that this is how things go today. So despicable.
And yet, the only coverage in the "legitimate" media will be "Both Sides!!" All evidence to the contrary.
Without wanting to take sides, would a person from Mars see any substantial difference between this and the claims about Trump being a Russian puppet?
yes, yes, yes, we know, the difference is that the Trump case was true. Well true -- except that it appears to be impossible to find any substantive evidence to that effect, just vagueness and innuendo. And of course the Trump case, apart from the Russia link, also had its salacious supposedly sexual claim.
My point is: put yourself in the shoes of Republicans, especially those who support most of the the Trump policy agenda, whether or not they liked the man himself. They do not see these attacks on Paul Pelosi as something new and indefensible; they see them as a milder version of how Trump was (smeared?) from the campaign through his four year term.
I'm well aware that the median Jabberwocky reader is incapable of empathy. But for those few that still retain this skill, consider my point... As Auden said: “Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return”.
What are YOU going to do to get off the treadmill?
I must conclude that most people on this blog like their echo chamber just as much as the most rabid fox viewer. I like getting different points of view which is why I read this blog. This posting and the comments taught me just how despised I am because I believe in controlling our borders, don't like mail-in ballots, and think it is a good idea to check and see if some regulations are past their prime, etc.
I have no idea how your comment is relevant to Kevin's post.
As for your policy concerns, no one here or elsewhere thinks all regulations are sacrosanct, most are willing to discuss the pros and cons of mail in ballots though you have not expressed an argument against them just a feeling and just saying "controlling our borders" is an empty slogan not a sincere attempt to deal with a difficult problem. The problem with Trump and his cult followers and all the cowardly apologists for him is that he recently tried to have a democratic election overturned, inspired a mob to attack the Capital which he apparently watched gleefully for almost 3 hours and continues to spew his unrepentant nonsense in a way that endangers our democracy. If you can't see that then there's not much to discuss.
None of those things are what conservatives are despised for, yet you claim to have read this entire comment thread.
You insist on forcing yourselves into circumstances where you are not competent, that's what you are despised for.
"Controlling our borders" tells us nothing of your substantive beliefs. In what manner do you wish said borders to be controlled? The experience of myself and many here is that most people who say "control our borders" mean "immigration should be massively restricted in ways that are borderline if not outright racist and classist, and those who attempt to evade those restrictions should be treated shabbily," which is in fact a despicable political position. Perhaps you are using this term to mean something else.
If by this you mean you prefer to vote in-person, then nobody despises anyone else for this preference. If by this you mean you think mail-in ballots are poor public policy and should be forbidden, then odds seem high that you have policy beliefs that are at best ill-founded and at worst actually despicable.
The official numbers say that CBP "encounters" with suspected illegal immigrants in the neighborhood of the Mexican border are at an all time high; last year set a record and this year is projected to break that record. That says to me that under the Biden administration border enforcement is at an all time high. Far from being "open" the border is more tightly policed under Biden than under any previous president.
Trump was unable to state that he would accept the results of an election in his debate with Hillary Clinton. That alone should have disqualified him from office right then and there. No one like Trump who has lied and cheated about just about everything his whole life has every been near the White House before. Moreover. it's very clear he was happy to get whatever support he could from Putin and Russia in 2016 or did you forget about the meeting his son, son in law and campaign manager had in that hotel room in 2016 ? That was not vague at all. So, your both sides excuse for the nasty tactics of the likes of Roger Stone and company is pretty hollow.
Trump's links to Russia were of course incredibly well-documented and immensely substantive, including those in a report published by Republican-controlled Senate committees.
Unless by "Russian puppet" you mean "Russia was literally controlling his every move," which of course is a claim few serious people were making.
Jared trying to set up a secret communications link with the Russian embassy, the server in Trump Tower that only communicated with a Russian Bank, Michael Flynn literally on the Russian payroll . . .
Instead of the easily over the top "Trump is a Russian puppet" straw man, how about "Trump stole classified documents from our US government" or "instigated an attack on the US government in hopes of overturning a fair election" and then try and both sides that.
Matthew Gertz at Media Matters called this a day or two ago. You'll see one or more conspiracy theories about it shifting blame on the Right start spreading among the lower levels of the conservative media crowd, at first. Odds are good that eventually Tucker Carlson will all but openly embrace it, and at that point you'll have some folks like Marjorie Taylor Greene embracing it while other Republican politicians merely hint at it.
Gee, did not see that coming.
Where is the tipping point before social conservatives simply can't even pretend to care about the harm they cause as long as they get to cause it?
Can someone define or quantify this? Because that's the point where they cede all pretensions to citizenship and we should think of them as legally accountable collectively.
BREAKING NEWS: Republicans are SCUM.
There ought to be a law against what they're doing. It's the same crap A;ex Jones pulled on the parents in Newtown. Despicable. If we had a working democracy, they'd be DQ'd from major party status. But it won't even hurt them politically. Instead, they'll win a few news cycles by diverting attention from a MAGA attack on a top Dem leader, for the 2nd time in 21 months.
So, let me get this straight.
You're telling me republicans are fascists.
If this were 1995, I'd be surprised.
Also, political assassinations were always going to be a part of the collapse of the US as a democratic republic. And it's not even a Presidential election year.
Gabby Giffords, Gretchen Whitmer, Ilhan Omar, Cory Booker, Eric Swalwell, Nancy Pelosi. (I'm sure I'm missing a few.) All have been attacked or threatened by MAGA/right-wing nutcases. And of course the granddaddy of them all, Jan. 6.
And then there's Steve Scalise, whose victimhood got the full treatment on 60 Minutes. No political news coverage since then will ever point the finger at the MAGA cult, and all political violence must the described as a "both sides" phenomenon.
This front-page comparison shows what the NY Times believes is news worth playing up and worth playing down.
https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/1586385409348898816?s=20&t=HSS3QDWPmwjJ5XixlxgFng
BothSidesDoIt™ now
BothSidesDoIt™ tomorrow
BothSidesDoIt™ forever
It’s ok. When something bad happens to my enemies, I don’t mind much either. Terrorists, criminals, Russians, republicans… all the same in my book.
Anyone who doesn't immediately delete their Twitter account because they can't possibly live without it is supporting a fascist. Period, end of f*cking story.
yup. did it friday. and i'll be far better off not wasting my time there.
Since this is now standard on the right, will the response have to be lawsuits?
Well yes. I fully esxpect the MAGA crowd to sue the Pelosi's.
It shows how out of touch Kevin is with Trump Republicans if he finds this "hard to believe". Far from being hard to believe, it was utterly predictable and predicted the moment the news broke about the attack. I bet Fox talking heads had a conference call to discuss how they could turn the story into an attack on Democrats.
Two items in the original report have been highlighted by the creatures peddling the story that DePape was either Pelosi's boyfriend or a male prostitute he'd hired: firstly that both men were in their underwear, and secondly that police were admitted to the house by an unnamed third person. Both claims have since been retracted as baseless, but they've served their purpose. The Trump Cult is utterly convinced that there has been another Deep State cover-up.
It shows how out of touch Kevin is with Trump Republicans if he finds this "hard to believe". Far from being hard to believe, it was utterly predictable.
Boy, I'll say. I don't think Kevin has been on another planet since 2016 but the big change for me was the percentage.
I used to think, like, maybe 5% Repubs are wackos, tops. Its really like 60 to 70 percent, and thanks to Trump we see proof every damn day.
I don't think Kevin, or many others, really has let it sink in what the effect of like 40 to 50 million people believing whatever nonsense they hear means.
It may not even be that high. Possibly only, say, 30% of Republicans are true whackjobs. But the other 70% are indifferent because they're into white supremacy and/or glibertarianism and they know a revved up base helps them win elections. Alex Jones represents the first flavor. Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon or Roger Stone the second.
To get votes the GOP has to court extremists. That's the whole explanation in one sentence.
OK, so why does the US have so many extremists? This is not normal politics in other English speaking first-world countries, or even non-English speaking first world countries. Acting Republican would be political suicide in the UK, or Canada, or Australia, or New Zealand, or Japan or anywhere in Western Europe.
Take a look at the history of the European people who colonized this country. They said they came here for religious freedom. Turns out, their religion was fringe 450+ years ago.
These are their descendants.
This is the kind of nonsense they used to teach as American History; maybe they still do. There were a few colonists with some religious motivations. The Puritans settled Mass so they could have a little theocracy of their own and push everyone else around. There were some Catholics in Maryland and some Quakers in Penn seeking relief from life in England. But the overwhelming majority of Europeans who came to what became the US did so to get rich, or at least a better living. Maybe also, because they saw more opportunity for their kids.
Most people in 18th century American were nominally religious, but most weren't ready to kill over it. Officially Anglican South Carolina openly welcomed Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Jews. During colonial times Catholics political rights were restricted, but that changed with independence.
No the wacko religious extremists are home-grown and we can't blame it on the 17th and 18th century. It would be comforting if we could.
Don't forget the Salem witch trials....the Puritans were kind of nutty.
Yale was founded because Harvard was far too liberal, though founded by Puritans.
Of course CT fought PA around the time of the Revolutionary War--the Yankee-Pennamite wars.
Tsk, tsk. This is the sort of nonsence expected from someone who has never read, say, Albion's Seed. You also contradicted yourself in that bit about the Puritans but I count that as small beer given your other insufficiencies.
OK, so why does the US have so many extremists
I'm not sure the gap is very large*. But A) our elites are worse and less ethical; B) our constitution gives extremists more power; C) our society in general is much more violent and well-armed and places a lower premium on human life.
*It's possible it's large: I'm open to persuasion. But I'd need to see evidence. My guess is the "extremist" faction in the US is a bit larger, mostly owing to more poverty/greater inequality and thus weaker education outcomes in general that most other rich countries. But again, I doubt the differential in numbers is all that big. We have much less ethical elites, though, on the right wing side of the political spectrum. Can you imagine UK Tories or Canadian conservatives or Australian Liberals exhorting their followers to storm parliament? Can you imagine them tweeting the types of things we've seen on the Pelosi assassination attempt?
Elites matter.
Acting Republican would be political suicide in the UK, or Canada, or Australia
I'm not sure it would be "political suicide" in the parallel universe where leading right-wing politicians in such countries have gradually but effectively encouraged the normalization of such behavior over the years, and there's a constitution in places that allows ruthless and determined minorities to frequently hold power well beyond their numbers. Throw in a lot of guns and a tradition of violence, and...
Right wing politicians in all the countries mentioned have tried to normalize such behavior; however, the attempts have generally prevented them from becoming "leading" politicians. Parliamentary governments give minorities much more positive power than the American system, which is designed to give minorities veto power. It's not unusual in the other English speaking countries for one political party to get a parliamentary majority and effectively absolute power with less than 40% of the popular vote.
Extremism may be unpopular in Europe due to their history in the first forty years of the 20th century, when political extremism ran wild on the continent. The US hasn't had the kind of up close and personal look at fascism that the European countries, even those that didn't become fascist themselves, had.
However, that doesn't explain why the US is so different from Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Australia in particular was effectively founded by criminals; it's the place where a politically extreme, violent, gun-happy culture should have thrived, but didn't.
Donald Trump remained silent over the weekend, but spoke up today to blame everything on lax Democratic crime policies.
We should be locking up more Trumpy, Q-Anon-supporting wingnuts? Well, ok, if you think it will help, Don....
Somehow, I almost smiled at this, but then I felt dreadful - just the way I feel at each viewing of the local Republican "Law and order matters [sic]" sign, which they display unashamedly in commercial sites & the county government center's polling place.
Most of the time, I just want to live long enough to see this situation turned around. The local governments & the DoJ can't prosecute such base behavior- instigators & attacker alike - soon enough.
Texas Republican writes novel in which Anne Frank converts to Christianity,
https://www.rawstory.com/texas-republican-wrote-anne-frank-fan-fiction-in-which-she-converts-to-christianity-report/
I haven't known many Evangelicals but I have known plenty of Catholic religious psychotics and this is exactly the kind of thing they'd have come up with, entirely oblivious to the offense and obscenity of it.
This is why a government founded on freedom can never countenance a presence of religious interest in public life because invariably it will bring offense and division, and seek the power to enforce itself on everyone else.
The fact that this "false flag" vomit is the standard Republican/ 'conservative' response to an act of brutality against someone not in their cult is sick. It's sick, and it's very, very dangerous. It's not a joke. It's dehumanizing in the extreme. And that no Republican outside a very few of unusual character will even try to reject this sewage is even sicker. Youngkin ‘joking’ about it like it’s funny? The governor of Virginia sniggering like a sick child about an eighty year old man getting his skull fractured in an unhinged attack? What the f**k is this shit?
Kevin, I know it’s not in your character but Americans must start calling this kind of behavior, and all the people who say and parrot it, what it is and what they are - sick, dehumanizing, and dangerous. It's not a ‘joke.’ It's not ‘misspeaking.’ It's sick, inhuman, and malignant, and calling attention to it without calling these grotesque, disgusting people what they are is no longer an option. Musk is sick. Roger Stone is sick. Dinesh D’Souza is sick. Every Republican who refuses to unilaterally condemn them (and every sick f**k like them) and the vomit they spew is sick, every one of them, sick, disgusting, maggots trafficking in amoral, demented sewage that has no place - none - in a civilized society.
There is no equivalence on the left. There is no excuse. This is how societies die, and unless everyone not brain rotted by Fox propaganda calls these people what they are, and calls this s**t out for what it is, we are not going to make it as a liberal democracy. This is not a “have you no decency” moment. This is not about Democrats “condemning this is the strongest terms.” It’s not about asking for OR accepting half assed apologies. No. This is war, against the worst of the human, the sickness that’s become the entirety of Republicans and American ‘conservatism.’
They’re sick. F***ing sick, and it’s only going to get worse, much worse. And nothing - nothing - will change this until it’s relentlessly called what it is, with force.
Kinda nice of them all to demonstrate how the attacker came to the conclusion that it was ok to try to kill the speaker of the house.
I mean, they've supported the attempt on Pence and Congress as a whole from January 6th 2021.
Don't pay attention to what they say on camera, look at their votes.
The organizing principle of the Republican party, which is just the business model of faux news and the rest of the right wing propaganda machine- is hate & fear. Unfortunately, us humans respond all to predictably to it. Expecting anything else from them is just being delusional.
The false flag and blaming the victim are so deeply ingrained in the wingnut mind they seem as if they are genetically stamped there, and they may be for all I know.
But they may be a natural outcome of another issue. Social conservatives have little capacity for genuine empathy or natural, spontaneous understanding of others' points of view, or an experience of an accurate imagination at all, --which is why they want to appeal to an authority they can look up in a rule book about almost anything, --but, in growing up with this deficit they would have faced many small social frustrations and the key theme central to all of it would have been, for them, that whatever their natural, spontaneous understanding is of something the opposite will be the real story.
And thereby they conceive of false flags and blaming the victim.
Agree with everything except calling them "conservative." They are right-wing extremists. Nothing remotely conservative about it. But the right-wing has appropriated the "conservative" brand and the MSM goes along with it.
This is what it looks like to live in a failed state. There's no coming back from where we are now. We'll spiral down and down until we get a strongman who imposes a new order.
Republicans are to blame for about 95% of the problem. Democrats deserve the other 5% of the blame because Dems have been intentionally promoting crazy candidates in the Republicans in the hopes of thereby gaining political advantage. Little did Dems understand that an increasingly conspiratorial and crazy GOP might decisively win power.
How are you even surprised?
He thinks democracy is just fine, remember?
Think about this: Trump might be the most restrained one here.
Yeah, that's what I came in here to say. When Trump is your model of restraint...
I don't know why it should be surprising. After Election Day 2016, it occurred to me that the really lethal damage would not be to governance, but to our politics. I told a friend that unless trump is removed from office in disgrace before completing one term, he would become the template for political success on the right (and maybe even on the left).
That happened. Maybe there's still a chance if he is prosecuted and convicted of multiple crimes, and -- for the love of God -- sent to prison, not fined and put on probation. Maybe.
And today on CNN, the update on the attack said DePape's "motive is not yet known."
I guess we're not quite at the point where a forthright "Bitch had it coming" is going to pass muster. Soon, though.
Isn't that pretty much what Youngkin said?
This shitheels are barely even denying their promotion of this violence. Just enough to pass as trolling that journalists (*for some reason*) feel obligated to present as good faith.
I'm guessing violence in 10 states, deaths in 2. Who wants the over?
Another CNN update, a link on their home page with this lead:
"Pelosi attack unleashes partisan finger-pointing and sows fresh fears of political violence."
Yes. "Partisan finger-pointing ." That's our problem. Excuse me while I barf, again.
The MAGA right takes repulsive behavior to whole new levels over the attempted assassination of the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
Fixed the headline, Kevin.
Like +10.
Conservatives reject the possibility of virtue except as revenge and narcissism.
It is simple: if the Republican Party is not what these performative cretins listed here say it is, let it speak up.
This has been suggested in the past. Many times. Some have spoken half-heartedly against them and their words. Most have remained quiet until enough time had passed and another incident of horribleness had taken over the cycle. And that silence and mumbling speaks much louder than the ravings of the froth covered crétins.
This is where the conservatives are often stupid and self-indulgent. The smart play would be hyping the crime angle - eg: Lawless San Fransicko. They are about to win in a number of competitive districts over crime (crime the progressives will deny endlessly). They could have hyped the hell out of this without turning off people who potentially could vote for them.
Why doesn't either party care about building a damn coalition anymore?
Gee, it's like they're a basket of deplorables. Funny thing, that.
Why don't we get Youngkin's full quote?
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