The Antifa Case for Voting Trump

Kristin Devine

Kristin has humbly retired as Ordinary Times' friendly neighborhood political whipping girl to focus on culture and gender issues. She lives in a wildlife refuge in rural Washington state with too many children and way too many animals. There's also a blog which most people would very much disapprove of https://atomicfeminist.com/

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259 Responses

  1. Hari says:

    “People like me – those who see the truth and act on it …” This made me laugh. Everybody thinks they see the truth and act on it. Rationalize your vote any way you like.Report

    • Kristin Devine in reply to Hari says:

      When it shakes out, I suspect that many of you will think back on stuff I’ve said along the way and realize that I wasn’t wrong, that the “liberal” movement was so corrupt and rotten that Donald Trump, as terrible as he is, actually was the better alternative. Tragically, at that point, it will be too late, and you will have all flushed a pretty good thing down the toilet in pursuit of a utopia that could never exist. But at least I will rest easy in knowing that I said what needed saying, whether any of you listened or not.Report

      • Swami in reply to Kristin Devine says:

        Kristin,

        In my book you have taken the baton from Slate Star Codex as the most interesting writer on the internet. I love this piece. It is profound and important and, I fear, prescient.

        I have chosen to sit out the election again, though I was tempted to register just to counteract my wife’s vote (her symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome are even more extreme than mine). That said, you almost convinced me to vote. My best attempt at a rebuttal is that I think he is such a reprehensible human being that he generates more harm in leftist fascists than he generates in value opposing them. The anti fascist movement needs a better figurehead.

        Thanks for writing this!Report

      • Aaron David in reply to Kristin Devine says:

        And you, my father, there on the sad height,
        Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
        Do not go gentle into that good night.
        Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

        -Dylan ThomasReport

  2. Sir Arcane says:

    Mr. Trump has stated in public that he will not commit a peaceful transition of power, and has told a domestic terror group to “Stand back and stand by.” Oh and he, or at least the federal government he is ostensibly in charge of, sent armed, camouflaged, para-military troops with no identifying insignia on their uniforms into an American city to grab people off the street and throw them into unmarked vehicles.

    While these statements and actions may not meet your definition of fascist, I personally find them to be disqualifying for the position he seeks to retain.Report

    • Pinky in reply to Sir Arcane says:

      A minor point, but the Proud Boys aren’t domestic terrorists, and Trump was trying to repeat Wallace’s “stand down” and it came out wrong. Unless you’re trying to claim that when Trump babbles, the words are calculated.Report

      • Sir Arcane in reply to Pinky says:

        No they aren’t calculated. But that’s worse. You do see how that’s worse don’t you?Report

      • JoeSal in reply to Pinky says:

        Notice also the “grab people off the streets” somewhat intentionally obfuscates who the “people” were and what they were participating in.Report

        • Sir Arcane in reply to JoeSal says:

          Or that I don’t feel the actions of the victims matter. They could have been having a tea party, having an orgy in the streets, or actively attempting to overthrow the government using violent means. What was done to them, and how it was done, is still wrong.

          To make an extremely unkind comparison. You are sounding like the sort of person who asks what a woman was wearing when she was raped.Report

          • JoeSal in reply to Sir Arcane says:

            Haha, wooo, ok let’s for a second suppose the whole Hobbesian view isn’t going to work out. A complete mystery.Report

          • George Turner in reply to Sir Arcane says:

            So up until now, did all the people with outstanding warrants for attacking poiice accidentally wander into a police station, or perhaps (and this is a stretch), did the police go out on the streets, find them, and apprehend them?

            What’s interesting about the Woke left is how easily they can pretend that something they’ve seen all their lives, in real life and on every TV show about crime, is somehow new, novel, and extremely disturbing. They take the thing that’s absolutely normal and convince themselves that it’s proof that Trump must be a Fascist – because now police have to go out and arrest suspects instead of waiting till the suspects wander into a jail cell like Otis did on The Andy Griffith Show.Report

  3. JoeSal says:

    Geez Kristin how dare you!!!

    Haha, expect massive ridicule for this, it’s part of the strategy.

    Good on ya for offering up at least one divergent consideration in the bubble. Don’t get too annoyed when everything you typed here is a complete mystery in two days.Report

    • Kristin Devine in reply to JoeSal says:

      I don’t care in the slightest, but thank you. I know it’s an Alinsky-type strategy and I find it to be utterly devoid of intellectual merit, so I can easily dismiss it.

      If this site is meant to be a cross-partisan site rather than just being yet another self-congratulatory group of angry Woke Fascists belly bumping each other over owning the cons, SOMEONE has to be on the right, and apparently that someone is me.Report

      • Jesse in reply to Kristin Devine says:

        There are center-right people on this site, but then the crazies full took over the GOP and now, they have to ally with weirdo social democrats like me, because they put country over ideology, figuring they can argue with silly lefties like Chip and me about tax rates and how to get health care to people another time.Report

        • JoeSal in reply to Jesse says:

          Like to see a cite on this. B-psycho was about the only one i know of that charted center. There is one i think charted slightly right of center, and usually takes a ton of grief from the social democrats here. Hell anyone right of Stalin is going to catch grief here.Report

          • InMD in reply to JoeSal says:

            I assume he means posters like me. Though the strangest thing about this entire discussion is that it has Jesse and I on the same side. I’m not sure that’s ever happened before.

            Of course where he’s wrong is that I’ll work with him and Chip on universal healthcare and something approaching a normal tax structure any day of the week. It’s some other stuff where there’s a problem. We can be friends until Wednesday though.Report

  4. y10nerd says:

    Now I understand what its like to be in the fever dreams of Rod Dreher.Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to y10nerd says:

      hey remember how you were all sadface about how mean the commentors here were

      all mean together, thenReport

    • Pinky in reply to y10nerd says:

      Permit me to quote myself from last week:

      “And no one reads Rod Dreher. No one. Not even him. That might not even be his last name. No one knows, because they’ve never read that far. Not even him. I know that liberals often cite Mother Jones, The Atlantic, and some of the NYT opinion writers. The silly ones cite The Daily Beast. If I want to know what well-reasoned conservatives are thinking about, I’m going to National Review Online, The Daily Wire, The Federalist, a few others. I might click on a link to The Daily Caller but I probably won’t believe what the article says.”Report

      • JoeSal in reply to Pinky says:

        I run the farthest right circles here, and the only place I see the guys name is here. I figure it’s just part of this particular bubble.Report

        • Pinky in reply to JoeSal says:

          Whenever liberals discuss conservatives, they talk about Rod Dreher. Maybe Ross Douthat. Or that guy who hasn’t been on Fox News in 15 years, that Jon Stewart used to make fun of. It’s like that old joke about looking for your keys where the light is better.

          I think y10nerd is new around here. I bet wherever he usually hung out, they think Rod Dreher is the Voice of Conservatism.Report

        • George Turner in reply to JoeSal says:

          I’ve never heard of him, except here, have no idea who he is, and yet the BBC has cited me as a conservative pundit. I even know many obscure authors who write for rather obscure websites. It’s not a name I recall seeing on a byline. Is he perhaps more of a Youtuber?Report

          • Pinky in reply to George Turner says:

            I just googled him, and he writes for The American Conservative. His bio there notes that “he has appeared on NPR, ABC News, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and the BBC”. Also, the 4th and 5th things that came up on my google search were profiles in The New Yorker and The Washington Post. So I guess he’s one of those “also joining us and representing a different perspective” guys. Rent-A-Con.Report

            • CJColucci in reply to Pinky says:

              Dreher is fairly well known, and has been for a while. I’m frankly surprised by all the right-leaning people who say they haven’t heard of him, though I can see why they might want to say so.Report

              • Pinky in reply to CJColucci says:

                Do you see the problem now? Like, if every conservative on a political blog says they’ve never heard of your “well known” conservative, do you think they’re wrong or you are? I mean, if you asked around, probably a lot of conservatives think Juan Williams is a prominent voice of liberalism because he appears on Fox News as the third commentator who never gets air time.

                I made my comment initially on 10/24, after Chip referred to him. I repeated it in response to y10nerd. Since we started this conversation, Saul mentioned him below. How many conservatives have brought him up in that time?Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Pinky says:

                I think they are. As you did the homework to prove.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Pinky says:

                You provided all the evidence anyone could want that Dreher is a well-known figure. (I now remember reading the New Yorker profile, though I had long known about him before then. Otherwise, I might not have read it.) I obviously can’t speak to whether some particular people are either lying about what they know or not well-informed, but Dreher is, embarrassing or not, a well-known figure.Report

              • Pinky in reply to CJColucci says:

                I provided evidence that the kind of person who reads The New Yorker would think Dreher’s influential.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Pinky says:

                “Influential”? Maybe not, and thankfully so, but prominent. The New Yorker doesn’t cover nobodies, and neither does WaPo, but maybe that’s just the “vague fear of sophistication” talking.Report

              • Mike Schilling in reply to Pinky says:

                “John Derbyshire? Yeah, he got a really raw deal from National …, um, I mean, never heard of him.”Report

              • Jesse in reply to Mike Schilling says:

                In the modern era, Derbyshire would’ve never gotten fired for his article. The NR still had some shame back then.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to CJColucci says:

                This whole exchange makes me snicker.

                People are nervously backing away from Dreher like he is some weirdo on Reddit, as if there is some larger group of well known respected conservative thinkers, with whom they would be proud to be associated.

                Who would those Respectable Deep Thinkers be?
                Charlie Kirk? Ben Shapiro? Ben Domenech? D’nesh D’Souza? Jim Hoft? Or the Dear Leader Hisself, Donald J. Trump?Report

              • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                I quote Shapiro a lot around here. Has anyone on the right around here ever quoted Dreher? We’re not nervously backing away from someone we never think about. And remember, the whole purpose of this digression is to help your side of the conversation understand our side better. It’s an act of charity, not concealment.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

                Now I understand what its like to be in the fever dreams of Ben Shapiro.Report

              • George Turner in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Of those, I’m familiar with Ben Shapiro, Jim Hoft (I had to look him up to see that he’s Gateway Pundit), D’nesh D’Sousa, and Trump.

                Keep in mind that “conservatives” who appear on CNN or in The New Republic or The Atlantic, but not all over conservative media, are likely almost invisible to conservatives. When we do read something like The Atlantic, we’re reading to see what some liberal thinks, not some RINO or niche conservative whose in one of those “conservative movements” that only liberals seem to be aware of.

                The reverse would be conservatives talking about how you all follow Daniel Barnett, a staunch liberal leader from Texas.. I mean how could you not be aware of the huge pro-gun movement among Democrats?Report

              • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                I listed NRO, The Daily Wire, and The Federalist as go-to sites for me. Shapiro is at The Daily Wire. I think Domenech is at The Federalist. I read some D’Souza a long time ago, but he’s been in a 15-year rut. I don’t know Jim Hoft, and I’ve never listened to Charlie Kirk.

                I also listed The Atlantic, Mother Jones, and some of the NYT editorial page as my go-to sites to understand liberal thought. Are there any decent ones I should put on my list? I’m assuming that liberals regard HuffPo the same as conservatives regard The Daily Caller.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Pinky says:

                A question, again: to y10nerd, CJColucci, Mike Schilling, Jesse, Chip Daniels, and anyone else left-of-center who happens to be reading this: which liberal sources that I don’t know about do liberals turn to? This is a chance for something constructive on the thread. Work with me. If any righties reading this want to mention good right-wing sources, please do as well. If any centrists, hahaha. I crack myself up every now and then.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Pinky says:

                My sources:

                Report

              • Mike Schilling in reply to Pinky says:

                I try to keep up withJames Fallows, Radley Balko, Popehat, and the Atlantic in general.Report

              • greginak in reply to Mike Schilling says:

                Balko and Ken White excellent. Daniel Larrison at the amcon is good on foreign policy from a C view.Report

              • Tim (@Gurdur) in reply to Pinky says:

                On Twitter, @CathyYoung63, @AmyAlkon.

                In general, the Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/ . Be aware though that quite often Guardian op-ed writers will adopt slogans and themes from the American ‘left’ that they don’t actually understand well.
                It all depends on exactly what question you’re concerned about. Always better to find someone honest who specialises in the question.

                By the way, Popehat, no. The man’s a berk who confuses being angry with being righteous, and he can be amazingly hypocritical.Report

              • greginak in reply to Pinky says:

                Specifically Kevin Drum at Mother Jones is very good. Noah Smith on twitter and at Bloomberg is good. Mike Konczal is another good econ.
                Jamelle Bouie is excellent.
                Andrew Serwer is good.

                Haven’t read huffpo in years. Never thought much of it when i did. Dont’ bother with the NYT editorials either. Not all of the writers are bad but editorials are typically to short and polemical to be useful.Report

              • Koz in reply to greginak says:

                “Jamelle Bouie is excellent.”

                Jamelle Bouie is hackiest hack in all of media, like hackier than Sean Hannity. He can’t string together 10 words in a sequence that’s not utterly hackworthy.Report

              • Andrew Donaldson in reply to Koz says:

                *League/Ordinary Times alumnus Jamelle Bouie.Report

              • greginak in reply to Andrew Donaldson says:

                Correct!. I forgot to include that. Many a giant oak has grown from the seeds of the L/OT.Report

              • Koz in reply to Andrew Donaldson says:

                “*League/Ordinary Times alumnus Jamelle Bouie.”

                The same. Which is kind of unfortunate, really. Between Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig and Freddie DeBoer the League has two legitimately powerful and credible voices from this generation of the Left as alumni (and frankly there aren’t very many).

                Jamelle Bouie, otoh, utterly hackworthy shameful disgrace.Report

              • Koz in reply to Pinky says:

                “I listed NRO, The Daily Wire, and The Federalist as go-to sites for me. Shapiro is at The Daily Wire. I think Domenech is at The Federalist.”

                Gotta admit, I’m not following this line of comments at all. Ross Douthat and Rod Dreher are obviously in the top tier of right wing thought leaders.

                The Federalist and Daily Wire are obviously second tier at best. NRO used to be a big deal, but they have lost a lot of their talent and don’t really know how to position themselves any more. Ben Shapiro is kind of the same way. He has a big podcast, but not big enough to live in the same world as Fox News. He wants to be respectable and I don’t have any particular complaints against him but Trump doesn’t place much value on respectability which undermines his position quite a bit.Report

              • Marchmaine in reply to Koz says:

                I have an original copy of Crunchy Cons and keep track of Dreher’s meanderings and Douthat is at the top of the Punditry game right now.

                The problem with being the Pointy-end-of-the-massively-offline-TradCath-Hispano-Uprising is that all of my people only write letters. With fountain pens.

                My role as the sacrificial-online-layman is to circulate an illustrated manuscript with the week’s goings on. This week’s manuscript features a picture of my closest inner circle on a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time.Report

              • North in reply to Marchmaine says:

                I’m surprised that Dreher isn’t on your radar more considering how well his “it’s the end times, we need to build arks/monasteries/fortresses to preserve some fragment of the faith for once this flood of trans people recedes” books have been doing.

                I’m quite fond of Chait, Sullivan and Bernstein as centrists go. Though the former is more center left.Report

              • Marchmaine in reply to North says:

                Hey, I said I had an original copy of Crunchy Cons. I’m OG Dreher…before he sold out to big Benedict.Report

              • North in reply to Marchmaine says:

                Ahhh gotcha.Report

              • Koz in reply to Marchmaine says:

                “I’m OG Dreher…before he sold out to big Benedict.”

                Imo, Crunchy Cons is his least interesting, least mature book. Everything he’s written since then is much better.

                It was foolish for him to believe that he could make a separate peace with the Left (and frustrating for me to watch him). To a large extent, the reason the Left hates us is because they think we’re traditional religious like Dreher.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Koz says:

                I hear Kevin Drum’s name a lot. When I mentioned Mother Jones, he’s the guy I was thinking of.

                I’m glad Huffpo gets no attention. I know that the Drudge Report disappeared from the right’s notice long before it went anti-Trump. These are healthy signs.

                I see Larison’s name sometimes, but only from left-wingers who are talking about the right. This confirms my suspicions about The American Conservative.

                Chait always struck me as the bottom of the partisan barrel, like a political cartoonist who couldn’t draw.

                Thanks to all participants. I’ll do my best to check out the names that are new to me.Report

            • George Turner in reply to Pinky says:

              I clicked on over to “The American Conservative”. I’ve probably landed there maybe five times over the past five years, if that. I’ve somewhat more frequently been to “American Thinker”.

              Looking for a rough and quick viewership metric, “worthOfWeb” says

              $81K – Lawyers Guns & Money blog
              $1 million – American Conservative
              $2 million – American Thinker
              $29 million – Instapundit
              $32 million – National Review
              $92 million – The Daily Beast
              $556 million – Buzzfeed
              $892 million – Fox News.comReport

              • Pinky in reply to George Turner says:

                I think The American Conservative was Buchananite and anti-war. The anti-war part gave them some cred among liberals, and the Buchananite part is why liberals think all conservatives are theocratic culture warriors. It’s like I said, looking for the car keys where the light is better. “I can understand this group of my political opponents, so I’ll turn to them to understand what my political opponents think.”

                Sites like OT are great for getting a sense of what your better-read opponents are reading. But if you don’t believe them, you’re handicapping yourself.Report

              • George Turner in reply to Pinky says:

                Well that would explain why I’d be pretty unfamiliar with the people who write there. I was a pro-Israel war blogger, and decidedly non-theocratic (I’m Presbyterian, which is somewhat akin to traditional agnosticism but with choir practice) from a Baptist town that boasted our own version of Jim Jones.

                I would be the polar opposite of a Buchananite, although I’d agree that we should avoiding fighting in the Middle East and try to keep our wars in Europe, where they have beer.Report

    • Kristin Devine in reply to y10nerd says:

      I laugh and laugh when you guys invoke the names of conservatives who I have never read and have only heard of because other Ordinary Times liberals say them all the time.

      I know it’s easier to imagine your opponent as some brain dead dogma swilling slob but there are millions of people out here who have no clue who Rod Dreher is who are all drawing the exact same conclusions I am right about now.Report

      • CJColucci in reply to Kristin Devine says:

        Which ones have you read or heard of, aside from the old, dead guys, and one gal, who haven’t weighed in on anything lately? Seriously, I want to know so I can look them up.Report

        • DensityDuck in reply to CJColucci says:

          this reminds me of when people said “no major liberal pundit has ever said ANYTHING like this” and I said “remember how Ward Churchill said that the people who died in the World Trade Center deserved it because they were Little Eichmanns” and everyone claimed that he was some who-datReport

  5. InMD says:

    Kristin, I respect your opinion but I think there are a lot of the same errors going on in this piece as the ones made by the Woke Twitterati. There’s a basic principle that says if you don’t want to be painted with a broad brush, or be able to credibly criticize those who do, then you yourself must put the tool away. Even if you feel the other side is the one that started with all the broad brushing to begin with.

    Anyway, no matter what happens on Tuesday we’re all still going to be in this thing together. You and the woke fascists. Them and the deplorables. I suggest walking away from social media for awhile. Most of the people who pull the lever for Biden are out there doing the same as you, making the best they can of a challenging situation.

    Many of your posts strike me as a plea for people to try to see each other in their complexities. This reads like a total rejection of that idea.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to InMD says:

      This.

      It’s not that I think Biden is awesome, it’s that I’ve seen the GOP capitulate to an idiot. They didn’t even try to reign him in, they just decided he’s right about everything and ran with it.

      I get a choice of voting for a party that still acts as if it cares about my opinions, or one that has decided to only pander to it’s fringe.

      So obviously I voted for Jo (because let’s face it, WA is in the tank for Biden, my vote for Jo is a protest vote).Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to InMD says:

      Biden’s biggest political insight was that Twitter was not real life and it was certainly not the base of the Democratic Party. The base of the Democratic Party is various intersecting interests between suburban women and/or African-American women. There are upper-middle class liberal professionals in cosmopolitan cities but they are a rather small faction of the base. 10 percent at most and I include myself in this group. I would have loved to see 538 discussing how Warren is crushing Trump right now. But Biden is good. I concede that Warren’s problem was that she basically only appealed to people with graduate degrees like me as much as I loved her.

      But I find it astonishing how many people, including people here, seem to exist in a fever dream, where woke Twiterrati is really in control of the Democratic Party. The problem with Trump and a lot of the GOP right now is that they only know how to play to the Fox News Cinematic Universe. A person on another blog lives in Virginia. This was a relatively conservative state that went blue very quickly during the course of the last 8-12 years. According to this poster, Democratic congressional candidates ads in his part of the state are about healthcare and schools. The GOP ads are basically unhinged rants about “AOC plus 3.” This does not play well in Virginia anymore or other places and yet the GOP can’t help themselves. Even Trump’s play for suburban women sound like he is trapped in 1958.

      Rod Dreher has been going on several meltdowns because the radical Boshelviks at (checks notes) Nabisco came out with some rainbow colored Oreos and issued a tweet on the importance of using preferred gender pronouns.

      https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/rainbow-oreos/

      I can’t seem to find the gender pronoun tweet right now. I apologize for that.

      Trump is basically the last gasp or trying to be the last gasp of ruralish, conservative, Evangelicalish America fighting against a sea change in demographics going against them.Report

      • InMD in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        Twitter is not real life is the most important lesson of all.Report

        • North in reply to InMD says:

          Yeah, that really is the core sentence the defenestrates the whole argument that this article makes. A Democratic Party that was enthralled by the woke wing like, Kristin alleges, would not have been capable of nominating some old moderate white dude. Such a Democratic Party would have found his very candidacy offensive and outrageous- as liberal twitter did.
          And yet… Biden was nominated; indeed he was decisively nominated and the most woke-propriate candidates barely even placed. Woke candidates weren’t runner up, they weren’t really even in third place.

          I mean, I understand why conservatives desperately need to pretend their opponents are utterly captivated by the woke but I can’t imagine why Kristin, a libertarian, would suffer from such motivated reasoning. So it just boils down to- social media is not reality. Step away from twitter. Twitter is the mind killer.
          https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2020/10/26/prayerReport

          • InMD in reply to North says:

            Yea, I mean, I read the driving force for his nomination as (relatively) socially conservative black voters in the south and rump establishment, Clinton types. The woke (sadly for me) are part of the coalition but I don’t see how this was a win for them. I’d say it shows that they are way louder than they are numerous.Report

            • North in reply to InMD says:

              Yep. The contortions the right has had to go through the define Joe fishin Biden as a wild lefty wokester have been endlessly amusing. I was always thinking Biden would win the nod; always wishing it’d be a fresher centrist but Lord(lady?) it got awfully scary there between Nevada and South Carolina.Report

          • Kristin Devine in reply to North says:

            It is against the rules of this site to imply that a person has mental health issues for holding a viewpoint you disagree with.

            If I didn’t happen to be on Twitter, you’d be saying Breitbart, Fox News, the Catholic Church, whoever you know me to be affiliated with, because it’s easier to dismiss me as being an Internet crank than to take a look at your own movement being taken over by fascists.Report

            • George Turner in reply to Kristin Devine says:

              You could write another interesting piece on how you manage to take care of a ranch, “way too many kids”, cook, write really long essays like this one, AND apparently somehow spend 20 hours a day on Twitter, tweeting and tweeting and tweeting until its effects on you are toxic. Your time management skills are sooooo amazing!!!! 🙂Report

      • LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        The first transsexual state representative was elected in Virginia in 2018. I believe her campaign was a classic I’ll fix the potholes type thing rather than anything dealing with social justice and intersectionality. That shows how little pull the Twitterrati have over the Democratic Party.Report

    • George Turner in reply to InMD says:

      Kristin, this is an example of the “step away from the keyboard and seek mental help” response. You’ll get a lot of that under Fascism, because only crazy people, or those undergoing some kind of mental health crisis, oppose Fascism. We can set up camps for people in your situation, where they can be treated. We can gently get you to confront your wrong-think and, with a warm guiding hand, get you to see reason, and to once again think and act like a productive member of society. But of course if it fails, if you resist and insist on asserting your wrong-think, it will of course mark you as irredeemably evil, and evil people, like a cancer, must be purged from society, lest they spread their disease of hatred and intolerance and whatever other buzzwords they’ll throw at you.

      You’ve hit the group’s first immune response, where the chorus is “You’re having an emotional breakdown, we’ll help!” because you seem to be a defector, not a sworn enemy. Next they’ll probably try to gaslight you. Normally you’d then get censored, where you might notice that you can’t share certain Newspaper stories with your friends, or say certain words, but the left has already crossed that Rubicon.

      In 2016, Donald Trump beat all the other GOP candidates, and then Hillary, really for one reason only. He stood up to Political Correctness, and the vicious, nattering chorus of our “moral superiors”, and he didn’t back down. He called them out. That drove them insane, and they became the Fascist Woke Brigades who committed themselves to stopping him by any means possible. The one thing they can’t abide is someone pointing out that they’re not actually “good people”, even as they run around with sledge-hammer busting out Jewish shop windows, or cheering on such behavior.

      Trump refused to bend the knee, and did so proudly. He punched back twice as hard. And he stayed firm no matter what they threw at him. And that’s why he’s still drawing massive crowds of supporters, who likewise refuse to bend a knee. The powers-that-be are terrified of those crowds, because if thousands and thousands of white, black, brown, Asian, and gay people are will to march through Beverly Hills waving Trump flags, cheering a hooting, it means that they are not going to be intimidated. Not by anyone, and especially not by a bunch of rich sanctimonious Karens or a bunch of black-clad soy boys.Report

      • InMD in reply to George Turner says:

        George what the hell are you even talking about? There’s some dissenting opinions, some concurring opinions, and some ‘yes, but’/meta opinions. You know, a normal OT comment section.Report

        • George Turner in reply to InMD says:

          I suggest walking away from social media for awhile.

          As someone on the right, I have seen all kinds of phrasings and colorings of that sentiment from the left. If someone expresses a thought outside the group’s norms, they naturally try to protect the “wrong-thinker” from harm, and give reassurances that it’s not too late to reconsider their opinion.

          If that fails, after much patience and effort, they say “You are an irredeemable racist, sexist, bigot, and I am never speaking to you again, mom!” ^_^

          Glenn Greenwald is going through the same thing right now. His editors tried to gently draw him back into the fold of acceptable opinion, but he wouldn’t back down, chill out, shut up, or seek mental health treatment. So they came out and said:

          ‘Glenn demands the absolute right to determine what he will publish. He believes that anyone who disagrees with him is corrupt, and anyone who presumes to edit his words is a censor.

          ‘Thus the preposterous charge that The Intercept’s editors and reporters, with the lone noble exception of Glenn Greenwald, have betrayed our mission to engage in fearless investigative journalism because we have been seduced by the lure of a Joe Biden presidency. A brief glance at the stories The Intercept has published on Joe Biden will suffice to refute those claims.

          ‘The narrative he presents about his departure is teeming with distortions and inaccuracies – all of them designed to make him appear a victim, rather than a grown person throwing a tantrum. It would take too long to point them all out here, but we intend to correct the record in time.

          ‘For now, it is important to make clear that our goal in editing his work was to ensure that it would be accurate and fair. While he accuses us of bias, it was he who was attempting to recycle a political campaign’s – the Trump campaign’s – dubious claims and launder them as journalism.

          ‘We have the greatest respect for the journalist Glenn Greenwald used to be, and we remain proud of much of the work we did with him over the past six years. It is Glenn who has strayed from his original journalistic roots, not The Intercept.

          The journalist Glenn Greenwald USED TO BE. You see, he’s snapped, gone nuts, sold himself out to Trump. He lies lies lies!!!

          The great thing about being on the right is you can say pretty much anything and nobody cares. “You go dude! Ride that Barbie Jeep like a boss!” We don’t have a rigid orthodoxy to enforce. We don’t question the sanity of regular people who aren’t voting for Trump. Some people don’t like him. No big deal. Heck, he’s had everything thrown at him.

          But if any journalist dares to speak less than glowingly about Joe Biden, well, they’re not a “real” journalist anymore.Report

          • InMD in reply to George Turner says:

            Heh the irony of your answer here is I was suggesting it for the purpose of taking a breather from all the shrill woke nuttery. I’ve done it myself and am much happier for it. It helps maintain perspective that the world isn’t the hordes of implacable, take no prisoners fanatics it can look like online.

            It certainly wasn’t a request to self-censor. That’s just you projecting.Report

          • CJColucci in reply to George Turner says:

            Glenn Greenwald SAYS HE is going through the same thing right now.

            Fixed that for you. As for myself, I will wait until we’ve seen something more than he-said, they-said.Report

            • George Turner in reply to CJColucci says:

              Why would he lie? He wanted to run a story about the avalanche of evidence implicating Joe Biden in massive under-the-table bribery, money laundering, tax evasion, and kick back schemes, many involving hostile foreign powers. He’s a reporter. That’s what reporters are supposed to do.

              His editors obviously, by their own admission, directly prevented him from doing that. So he bailed. His editors are now saying that he’s somehow a broken man, a shadow of his former self, untrustworthy, and probably pushing Russian propaganda.

              It speaks for itself.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to George Turner says:

                “Why would he lie?” Really? Why would anybody lie?
                Greenwald wanted to run a story. His editors spiked it. Greenwald says “censorship.” His editors say the story was an unpublishable piece of crap. Right now, all we have is two sides talking. Talk is cheap. I suspect that in due time enough actual information will leak out that it might be possible to have an informed opinion on who’s right. But not now.Report

              • George Turner in reply to CJColucci says:

                Uh, do you realize how MUCH information has already leaked? I’m looking at Hunter Biden’s Pornhub account, for goodness sakes. I’m reading endless e-mails between Hunter, his dad, his uncle, and multiple business partners, many discussing illegal activities in detail. In one, Hunter explains the procedure for getting a foreign burner phone to Devon Archer so nobody will intercept their communications when Joe arrives in country three days later. That was the trip where Joe was paid by Burisma (according to an executive at Burisma) to pressure the Prime Minster to fire prosecutor that was investigating Burisma.

                The e-mail headers have confirmed their authenticity, as has contacting the people who received the e-mails. The Bidens haven’t even tried to deny their authenticity. It’s all real, and it’s just like the big corruption scandals are when they break and send an Illinois governor to prison for years, except worse., because governors never launder hundreds of millions of dollars for Kremlin people who are under US sanctions.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to George Turner says:

                The relevant information is about Greenwald’s story and whether it was solid or warranted spiking. Anything to offer on that?Report

              • George Turner in reply to CJColucci says:

                Well, the entire right side of the press corps, small though it is, including pretty much all conservative blogs, are writing tons of in-depth stories on it, with original source material. You’re not allowed to know those exist. The stories are vastly more solid than anything thrown at Trump, and in fact even a tiny fraction of what’s coming out would have gotten Republicans to remove Trump from office.

                Suppose Eric Trump did a secret deal through the wife of the mayor of Moscow to launder $200 million dollars for Kremlin officials and other Russian oligarchs who’d been singled out for US sanctions. Suppose he was directly paid over $2.5 million dollars for doing it. Suppose he e-mails Ivanka that he had to give Donald a 10% cut of the take. Suppose Eric’s business partner confirmed it all.

                Suppose Donald Trump Jr’s e-mails revealed him ranting about doing a $10 million dollar deal with a Chinese spy-chief for access to his dad, and suppose multiple other e-mails and sources discussed the deals in detail?

                Suppose in other e-mails Eric Trump explained how to use burner phones, and that all “business” deals with his dad must only be done face-to-face, because the family was paranoid.

                Suppose other e-mails discussed Erics habit of getting naked with minors, like his niece, and discussed his father, Donald, being fully aware of it? Suppose those e-mails were backed up with video evidence?

                And suppose that was about a tenth of what leaked out over the course of two weeks? And suppose the FBI confirmed that it had an ongoing criminal investigation into the Trump family laundering money that was launched last year? Suppose the Senate Homeland Committee confirmed that the documents and e-mails were both real and valid? Suppose the FBI came out and said the laptop was real, and not any kind of foreign intelligence scam?

                Now imagine that no press outlet, not ABC, CBS, NBS, or CNN, would report the story – at all, and that Twitter and Facebook would automatically delete any posts that even mention the story?Report

              • Jesse in reply to George Turner says:

                ” I’m looking at Hunter Biden’s Pornhub account, for goodness sakes”

                George, I don’t kink shame, but we really don’t need to hear about your nighttime habits on this site.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jesse says:

                People have actual accounts, rather than just visiting when the mood strikes them? Who knew?Report

              • George Turner in reply to CJColucci says:

                Yep. It turns out the Hunter was what you might term “a content provider”. He didn’t just have an account, he had one where he posted videos of his antics with young (but at this point we assume legal) girls.

                Some stuff he didn’t post there, for obvious reasons, but those videos were on his laptop. The one where he’s doing lines of cocaine with what appears to be Malia Obama’s credit card is especially interesting.

                He also had a Reddit account.

                How did people come to find out about these accounts? Well, it turns out that he left his laptop up in many of those crazy, drug fueled videos, and his account names and such were clearly visible on the screen.

                Then, aside from professional journalists on the right, 4/chan unleashed their “army of weaponized autism” on it.

                As some have pointed out, Hunter’s antics are far less worrisome than the way the media and big tech absolutely stifled the story. Politicians have always had ne’er-do-well relatives with drug problems. What they’ve never had is a media establishment so complicit in covering it up.Report

        • Saul Degraw in reply to InMD says:

          I’m astonished people still bother with him really.Report

        • Kristin Devine in reply to InMD says:

          In George’s defense this was exactly how I took your comment and responded accordingly.

          Regardless of your intent, questioning my mental state IS NOT ALLOWED on Ordinary Times whereas me questioning liberals being fascists actually is.Report

      • Chas M in reply to George Turner says:

        This is such a strange view of Trump’s rise, at least to me. A liberal. Sure, he’s a bully, and probably a real pain to deal with if he wants something from you personally. If that’s your idea of leadership, well you’re entitled to it. We on the left just see Trump shitting and pissing on everyone. You, me, our neighbors, our states. Everyone everywhere. Some folks might interpret all this as standing up to the woke left, and stand behind him, but back there you’re just going to end up with more shit on you.

        Second, people of the left persuasion are, I think on a whole, a LOT more concerned with what he has done in and to the office than we are with either his fucking tweeting or his abusive relationship with the truth. You know, the kids in cages and willful separations and coddling racists and white supremacists and corrupting the justice department and using the office to enrich himself and his friends including the Turkish President apparently and an utterly utterly shambolic disastrous self-centered response to a global pandemic that the US by all rights and measures should have been a global leader rather than a global loser.

        You know, there was a point when trying to get through the above essay when I began so suspect it was satire. The opening was fair enough, asking me to recall my reaction to some Florida bog-bigot getting fired from his reality tv show I’d never heard of. As I am generally opposed to people losing livelihoods over personal lives and beliefs, I can sympathize. But also, Duck Dyno guy didn’t lose his job hunting ducks, he just lost his ability to do it on TV, and that’s an entirely different thing. He signed a contract with a studio and network that says they can fire him if he brings bad publicity to said studio and network. I’ve signed the same contract. And nobody ever said Trumps’ suits disrespected the Office of the President, they just said he looks like a clown. And who, exactly, ever gave up even a single shit about Melania and whatever crap pictures she took except to point out the right’s hypocrisy?

        I scrolled down. And scrolled and scrolled. “Surely this must be a joke, right?” I thought to myself.

        Everyone’s entitled to their vote. Just try to stay out of the shit.Report

    • Pat in reply to InMD says:

      Mostly this.

      What we seek when we claim we want to reject classification often just shows what our implict biases are.

      The difference between the woke Twitterati and the Democratic party leadership is a couple of orders of magnitude bigger than the difference between the fringe right Twitterati and the GOP leadership. Woke Twitterati can’t win a majority of primaries. Fringe right Twitterati is in the White House.

      I accept there is variance between the GOP leadership and the folks who are pulling Red levers, just like there is variance between the Dem leaders and those who are pulling Blue ones.

      But what I see in the above piece is comparing the Red lever pullers to the woke Twitterati, instead of the Blue lever pullers.

      And kinda no acknowledging that the woke Twitterati is still pissed about Biden being the nominee, whereas Richard Spenser is still a Trump supporter and Steven Miller is setting immigration policyReport

        • Patrick in reply to Pat says:

          Here’s a quote from the actual head of the Texas GOP:

          https://twitter.com/steve_vladeck/status/1322703211959099397

          You might not have heard of the fringe right, Kristen, but boy howdy the leaders you’re talking about electing have.Report

          • Aaron David in reply to Patrick says:

            That is possibly the dumbest tweet I have seen all week.

            Watching the left have a total aneurysm over the Trump supports trolling the Biden bus has been while exercising their first amendment rights has been weird.Report

            • George Turner in reply to Aaron David says:

              The left is completely wrong on the bus incident, even though there’s plenty of videos from multiple angles. The left only shows a few seconds of what happened, and from only one angle, because narrative über alles.

              A Biden person in a white SUV attempted to run a Trump supporter off the road. The Trump supporter was in the right hand lane, as pretty as a picture, right behind the bus. Then the white Biden vehicle tried to force the black Trump vehicle into the emergency lane. Since the Trump supporter couldn’t see around the bus, they couldn’t safely slide into the emergency lane because they might killed anyone who could be over there, such as a highway patrolman helping a motorist. So instead the Trump supporter forced the white Biden vehicle to get back into their own lane.

              And the driver of the bus couldn’t seem to stay in one lane either. Straddling the white line is not how people are supposed to go down the highway. I assume the bus driver was smoking crack with Hunter and Kamala or something.Report

            • Pat in reply to Aaron David says:

              If you attempted to surround the Presidential vehicle like this the police would pit stop you en masse.

              And I am sure that Aaron would be here in the comments talking about how it was totally the fault of the dumb protestor that he got shot by the secret service because who in their right mind would defend this sort of protestReport

              • Aaron David in reply to Pat says:

                The Kyle Police Department confirmed in a statement to KXAN they received reports around 4 p.m. Friday that indicated two or more vehicles may have made contact while traveling north on Interstate 35. Officers responded to the area but no vehicles stopped to share information with them.

                “Members of what is believed to be a campaign bus for Kamala Harris as well as following vehicles with campaign staffers advised the Kyle Police Department via telephone that they did not intend to stop, so Kyle Police obtained contact information so contact could be made at a later time,” the emailed statement continued. It went on to say that the “vehicle contact” happened in San Marcos and that all involved parties are being referred to the San Marcos Police Department if they want to file a police report.

                San Marcos police said the Biden-Harris bus requested a police escort, but due to excessive traffic officers were not able to catch the bus before it left the jurisdiction.

                The police department also said it has researched the crash and watched online video. It said the “at-fault vehicle” may be the Biden-Harris staffer’s car, while the “victim” appears to be one of the Trump vehicles.

                So, we have people exercising their first amendment rights and are then attacked by a Biden/Harris supporter. If people holding Biden signs tracked down Trump’s bus and did the same, my answer would be the same; the 1st amendment is more important than some ass in a bus.

                But sure, take your anger out on me. It’s a real classy look.Report

    • Kristin Devine in reply to InMD says:

      There is a rule on this site, and I think it’s a good one, that commentors are not supposed to question the sanity of the people who write pieces here. This rule appears to apply to everyone but me, but I am invoking it now. No “fever dreams”. No telling me to “walk away from social media”. Anyone who implies I’m mentally unbalanced or whatever is not only wrong but is not playing by the rules of Ordinary Times. I am the same person I always was, and I have drawn a conclusion that was in no way easy but is the only conclusion I can make based on the data available to me.

      I have done more than anyone on this site IMO to attempt to reach across the aisle and find common ground and again and again I’ve been treated pretty poorly by the people on this site. Not on any “social media”, but here. All I can do is explain why I’m casting the vote I am casting and urge others to do the same.Report

      • Jesse in reply to Kristin Devine says:

        “attempt to reach across the aisle ”
        “woke fascists”

        Choose one.

        I disagree with Dennis Sanders, Oscar Gordon, and other more right-leaning people on this site a lot, but they at least try to engage in some sort of argument about policy, as opposed to complaining left-leaning people are being mean to rural who just want the world to never change in ways they don’t like.Report

        • CJColucci in reply to Jesse says:

          Back when KD was doing what she describes as trying to reach across the aisle, some of us really thought that was what she was doing and sought further elaboration. When we pointed out that what she was saying amounted to “I’ll gladly vote for the Democrat as long as the party nominates a Republican,” some folks thought this was unfair. That was then.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Jesse says:

          Point of Order, I do think there are a lot of left-leaning elites in media and academia who just can’t seem to find any empathy with right-leaning rural folk, seem determined to “own the rubes”, and who then show their ass in print on the internet.

          I just don’t think the entire population of left-leaning folks have a similarly alarming lack of empathy. Just like I don’t think the entirety of right-leaning folks are A-OK with Proud Boys or Trump, etc.

          But I do agree, the brush being applied here by Kristin (whom I always enjoy reading) is far too broad.Report

    • James K in reply to InMD says:

      Yeah, I agree. It’s not that they’re aren’t nuts on both sides, it’s that on the right the nuts are in charge while on the left they are rightly marginalised.Report

  6. Jaybird says:

    The problem with universal solvents is that, once you make them, you can’t really put them anywhere.

    There is a recent X-Men comic where one of the arguments that takes place has a particular phrase thrown around. This particular phrase is an exceptionally powerful phrase. It’s a universal solvent.

    There has been so much emphasis on multiculturalism, soft relativism, and soft perspectivism that I’m not sure that the new and improved Protestant Brigade is prepared for the missionary work they’re going to have to do.

    Anyway, if you want this universal solvent, just say “That’s one way of seeing things. There are others.”

    Just watch out. You’ll never be able to stop.Report

  7. DensityDuck says:

    But Kristin, there’s racism! There’s racism! Don’t you understand, there’s racism, there’s racism, there’s RACISM! You need to understand that there’s racism, there’s so much racism!

    Modern society is run by abusers, and abusers are very much into the notion of Balance, and they tell you that you can cancel out something bad you did by doing something good — and, similarly, you can cancel out feelings of guilt by having feelings of righteous zeal in a good cause. So the modern liberal who feels vaguely guilty about not having a shitty life processes that guilt by getting really mad about Racism, and mad people do silly things like set police cars on fire and explain how blacks looting Jews’ shops is Actually Good, and the abusers give them headpats and strokes and say that this is proper behavior…but whooooops you’ve got a little more privilege that you haven’t atoned for, better agree with them that this random woman who wrote a book is actually a Secret Horrible Racist!Report

    • Great comment.

      It occurs to me that another thing abusers do is tell their victims that any time the victim says things the abuser doesn’t like, that they are mentally ill, overwhelmed, maybe they need to cut ties with their friends like, you know, the social media, it’s making you sooo confused, and don’t you just need a little break from it all???

      Interesting.Report

  8. CJColucci says:

    But for a couple days there the brouhaha was well-nigh unignorable; I couldn’t help but pay attention because Duck Dynasty opinions were EVERYWHERE.

    Millions of people managed to ignore it, including millions of people you would probably despise for not watching or caring about Duck Dynasty in the first place.

    I adamantly felt that had the tables been turned, and someone gotten fired from Fox News for saying something pro-gay-rights, the liberals would have been shrieking about the importance of free speech, and the cons would have been all private enterprise, hurr de durr.

    The Hypothetical Hypocrisy(TM) card is an easy one to play. And whatever happened to Shep Smith?

    It’s ironic to me that Trump could have done a lot of fascist shit over the last year and probably gotten applauded for doing so.

    Yes, and by whom?Report

  9. Saul Degraw says:

    There is no anti-fascist case for Donald Trump. What there is are lots of people worried that they are losing power because Americans under 40 are not deferential or reverential to rural locations and do not particularly believe Ronnie Reagan was a saint. There are stupid “heighten the contradiction” arguments from trustfund socialist cosplayers like Walker Bragman and Megan Day.

    Yesterday, we saw Miles Taylor reveal himself as the author behind the so-called anonymous/resistance in the White House op-ed. Turns out that Mr. Resistance was relatively fundamental in the family separation/put kids in cages category.

    You can be a fascist, an authoritarian, and fundamentally hostile to democracy and rule of law without rising to the level of Hitler. Currently GOP dominated courts are doing their best to undermine rule of law in blatant hope of helping Trump eek a win on Tuesday or cause chaos.

    https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1321960341966884870?s=20

    The reason for this is I suspect that they know that lots of people really dislike the GOP and Trump right now and Americans under 40 plus actively reject the old assumed dominion that was white, Christian to varying degrees, assumed rural superiority, heterosexual, and often male. They have to steal this election to make sure they can hang onto power during reapportionment. Otherwise it is over.

    As much as I dislike Turner. He admits what he is and what he stands for. A lot of people here seem to know that Trump is immoral and cruel but are stuck thinking “but Democrats are (((rootless cosmopolitan))) city dwellers, Park Slope/Noe Valley/Pearl District/Queen Anne wine moms with cooties and I don’t want to give up on my psychological hangups and hatreds for them” and find themselves dancing interesting wires.Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      “What there is are lots of people worried that they are losing power because Americans under 40 are not deferential or reverential to rural locations and do not particularly believe Ronnie Reagan was a saint. ”

      …nominating Joe Biden does not look like a capitulation to the under-40 Americans who don’t think much of Reagan.Report

  10. Chip Daniels says:

    This essay shows how reaction to culture is the driving force in conservatism.
    There really aren’t any political ideas here, as in foreign affairs or economics or even crime and justice.
    It namechecks all sorts of cultural riffs like Duck Dynasty, or Woke this or that.

    Its a vivid example of how conservatives now find themselves on the outside of culture and marginalized and how the loss of that hegemony feels to them like oppression. And as I noted before, the conservatives are now an insurgency that sees the established order as illegitimate and unworthy of compromise and powersharing.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      I don’t think Kristin is an outright bigot or Trumpist like the writers of the Federalist or Breitbart or the Proud Boys. She does seem to have a vague fear of sophistication that you see in a lot of rural writers. Similarly, there was an essay I read a while ago (I think Will posted to it here) where a right-wing blogger praised Cyndi Lauper’s video for Time after Time because it centered on a universe where everyone “was a prole” in some kind of remote industrial/rural area. A railroad town kind of place. What I see in a lot of not quite Trumpists but never going to vote Democratic types is a yearning for a world that is more of these “everyone is a prole” railroad towns.

      But then there is the city with its professionals, arts institutions, and yuppies who watch Prestige TV and not Duck Dynasty, and won’t these people just please go away.Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      A lot of the panic that conservatives feel is because the old certainties of American life are disappearing. Take religion for example. Not only are we more diverse religiously than we were before but there are enough irreligious people that civic deism is disappearing. A big but unspoken reason why Sanders and O’Rourke are popular is that they don’t play the religion game at all. So the type of vague Protestantism, latter replaced by Judeo-Christian appeals, that permeated American life is gone. Likewise, the 1619 project and Indigenous People’s Day makes challenges to the patriotic school of American history much easier and more acceptable. In the not too distant past, meaning when I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s or even unto, my early adulthood, these things would be unthinkable outside a left fringe in American life. Now they are common place.Report

      • George Turner in reply to LeeEsq says:

        Did religion go away, or did it metastisize in those who thought they were beyond all need for it? A commonality to the really bad “isms” of the 20th century was the insistence that the old religions were stale and weak and in decline. That the old regime, and the religions that propped it up, must be swept away and replaced with new unifying beliefs, vastly better and more progressive ones.Report

      • Kristin Devine in reply to LeeEsq says:

        Way to parrot the party line, Lee! Polly want a cracker?Report

        • DensityDuck in reply to Kristin Devine says:

          I like the part where he brings up the 1619 Project with apparent approval.

          You know, the research thing that claims the American Revolution happened because the British wanted to abolish slavery and the American Colonies wanted to keep it.Report

    • George Turner in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      That’s how you knew the opposition to the funny Italian or the German with the mustache weren’t real thinkers, and could be easily dismissed as reactionaries. They never offered up a clear economic plan, or a coherent foreign policy, or talked about police reform or modern art. No, they just screamed “These insane lunatics are going to burn the world to the ground!” Heck, to them it probably felt like oppression.

      So yeah, you’re the cultural driving force right now. Looking around, that is not something to be proud of, now, or back then when similar self-righteous woke people were culturally ascendant.Report

    • “Conservatives are now an insurgency against the established order” sure sounds a lot like “anything that threatens unity must be stopped”.

      Thanks for such a great example of your fascist leanings, Chip.Report

  11. Marchmaine says:

    “If you’re on the same side as the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and every major corporation…”

    I’d say that’ll leave a mark, but I don’t know anyone on the left for whom it would anymore. Maybe the Bruenigs. I miss the old Left.

    I share a lot of the critiques/observations about the left and their shifting political philosophy(s)… but I still disagree on the prudence of voting for Trump. Two points on that: Trump is neither a bulwark we can depend upon nor a politician advancing a ‘better way’ if anything he’s poisoning what little good he stumbles into and accelerating the things we dislike the most by virtue of his incompetence and inability to build a political movement; second, the path ‘out’ of the wilderness will come from abandoning Trump and the Left attempting to govern. It’s no secret that I think the left is incoherent with regards politics and policy… but this just *isn’t* the most important election ever. Biden will likely win and will likely govern poorly (though poorly in an entirely different way than Trump) and the way forward is the breaking of both parties… which Biden will accelerate. Trump is neither shield nor weapon… he’s a trap.

    Meagre hope, perhaps, but prudence isn’t voting for Trump it’s for hastening the realignment. I know you have some Libertarian sympathies (if Solidarity is a bridge too far 🙂 ) I’d say, consider voting Libertarian… we’ll revisit in 2022 and 2024.Report

    • InMD in reply to Marchmaine says:

      The interesting thing is that there is a case for Trump revolving around these points. Obviously I don’t buy it (or at least find a different case more convincing) but this post doesn’t make it, even if it flirts with the idea a few times.Report

      • Marchmaine in reply to InMD says:

        Assuming you mean the quoted sentence? I’d say there’s a Post-Trump case revolving around these points and that Trump is the reason we’re not making those points.Report

        • Aaron David in reply to Marchmaine says:

          Why? What is it about Trump that makes you feel this way?

          Why do you feel that he is, in your words, a Trap? Is he not doing the things we have talked about wanting; no foreign wars, bolstering the economy? I see those two things, and I couple them with real, important work being done in the Middle East and the active measures to shut down the deeply racist CRT actions that have been popping up, and as a card-carrying Libertarian, I feel he is the strongest choice to increase liberty.

          What am I missing? What are you (and Koz) seeing that isn’t hitting me? Or, for that matter, the 83%+ of the Republicans that like him?

          The Dems are going to hate anyone who isn’t a Dem; Regan, Bush the younger, Romney. And now Trump. And they have given up all of their principles in this process, in my view as an ex-Dem.

          So, what does Trump change?Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Aaron David says:

            I am not Marchmaine but if I were to answer the question for why Trump is a trap, it’s because the game is iterated.

            And even the neo-Protestant Left, in all its Righteousness, will not be able to make the game stop being played.Report

          • InMD in reply to Aaron David says:

            I mean, one example is exactly what you mentioned below. Its driven an important and consistent voice like Greenwald’s totally into the wilderness. He’s never going to be welcome on the Trump wagon. Its purger versus purger.

            Koz’s point I think (and obviously I can’t speak for him) is that personality matters and with someone like Trump the battle will always rage around him the individual, ultimately to the detriment of whatever cause he may be in some very limited way advancing.Report

            • Aaron David in reply to InMD says:

              Trump didn’t drive Greenwald into the wilderness.

              It isn’t that he would be welcome on the right, it that he is being driven away from the left.Report

          • Marchmaine in reply to Aaron David says:

            Goosing the economy with printed money isn’t navigating our way towards a better or more sustainable politico-economic model. It isn’t reckoning with Labor Arbitrage; it isn’t accounting for productivity gains being allocated poorly; it isn’t in any way “boosting the economy” for a period greater than getting Trump elected. This is precisely what I mean by the way his promises and actions actually undermine the people he’s proposing to help… at best he’s kicking the can down the road (which is his #1 objective in governing) at worst he’s setting us up for a harder fall having done none of the ‘difficult’ work of trying to address the underlying issues.

            I agree that the Left doesn’t really have good ideas here either… but just because the Left has bad ideas doesn’t mean Trump’s are good for not being their bad ideas. They are just bad or short-sighted policies unique to his own self.

            With regards Foreign Policy it isn’t enough merely to avoid some conflicts; we still need to build a Military and Diplomatic Framework that helps us achieve our goals… like with the Economy, he isn’t charting a new path… he’s making ad hoc decisions that may be ok for this, but maybe not for that… but there’s no particular assurance that the next time he assassinates a general that it won’t escalate. He hasn’t in any meaningful way curbed the Saudis as a proper client state… he hasn’t pulled us out of the atrocities in Yemen. We’re getting all of the down-sides of a Russian reboot with none of the upsides. He’s not building a better foreign policy because he has none… he’s reacting to other actors and that’s a merely a short term snapshot in time that will be adequate until its not… like dealing with a Pandemic.

            Since you ask, that’s what I’m seeing and it strikes me that *I’m* the consistent one…

            I can’t answer why 83% of Republicans like him… I haven’t been a Republican since I was maybe 12. I get not liking the left, but not liking the left doesn’t strike me as a reasonable requirement to like Trump. And that’s why supporting Trump for negative partisan reasons will not address the Economic issues we’re facing, and we’re not any closer to a better Foreign Policy. You’re not getting what you paid for.Report

            • InMD in reply to Marchmaine says:

              The lack of actual retrenchment is a good point. And I think we’re also quite lucky Trump’s resolve hasn’t been tested by something like Libyan military forces advancing on Benghazi.Report

            • Aaron David in reply to Marchmaine says:

              The Dems won the money wars. Full Stop. There is no way around that fact. Whatever he does with printed money, it is no different (and probably better than) what the left does with healthcare. Yes, both are an attempt at bribing the voters, but I would rather that the money goes straight into people’s hands as opposed to a gov’t mandated pass-through.

              And I drastically disagree with you vis-a-vis foreign policy. That work he has done in the middle east, not to mention India and Japan, in no way shows an ad hoc take on the issue. They show a willingness to actually meet the problems on the ground. Real Politic, if you will, as opposed to pie-in-the-sky thoughts on the goodwill of other leaders. Simply reacting to situations would be going into Syria; increasing the bombing and expanding of warzones; continuing the China shuffle. And not treating the players as they lay.

              I am not saying any of this to convince you to vote for anyone. I really am just curious. And a big part of that curiosity comes from anyone who says let the left attempt to govern. And THAT comes from a front row, behind the dugout seat to the culture wars.Report

          • Koz in reply to Aaron David says:

            “What am I missing? What are you (and Koz) seeing that isn’t hitting me? Or, for that matter, the 83%+ of the Republicans that like him?”

            Pretty simple really. There are things we think we believe in that lead us to support Trump. There are lots of supporters out there and not all of them have the same reasons. Eg, immigration reform, better paying manufacturing jobs in America, strategic opposition to China, etc. Whatever those reasons are for you, we need to make a case for among the American people in general. We can’t do that while Trump is President, because we’re with Trump and they’re tuning Trump out.

            Like the OP, for example. There’s lots of Americans who don’t like antifa, and not all of are right wingers by any means. But, there not going to care very much about getting rid of them while Trump is President. And Kristin can vote for Trump if she wants, but that isn’t materially going to change anything.Report

        • InMD in reply to Marchmaine says:

          Yes, and I concur completely.Report

    • I can’t vote Libertarian this time. It feels like a punt to me and I just can’t do it. It would be very easy to do it, but I can’t.Report

  12. Aaron David says:

    Two things;

    One, I am sure that everyone and their dog has heard about Glen Greenwald’s quitting the Intercept, a news source he founded to allow journalists to actually do their jobs and follow the news where it leads, good or bad, as opposed to bowing to a corporate master. And his quitting was due to him actually wanting to do a little digging into the Biden pay to play scandal that is shaping up on the eve of this election, but the editor putting the kibosh on it, and then blaming it on him being sexually confused, misogynistic, racist, and financially desperate. Matt Taibbi covers this quite well, but I just want to remark on all non-explicitly conservative news sources is going along with this “if it hurts Biden we can’t publish it” set of actions.

    This is textbook fascism. And the Dems are applauding it.

    Second, have you ever seen that gif, the one showing the audience at an opera? You know, the one where everyone is silent after an aria, but slowly people start to stand and clap, and soon everyone is standing and clapping? A true standing ovation?

    That is what this piece deserves.Report

    • It IS textbook fascism. I don’t understand why so many people are incapable of seeing it. To be honest that happening made the doubts I had about publishing this piece evaporate. What is happening is NOT RIGHT and that people cannot seem to see it is both baffling and terror inducing.

      Thank you so much, Aaron. I really appreciate it.Report

      • greginak in reply to Kristin Devine says:

        An editor squashing a piece by a writer is not fascism in any way. It also seriously misstates the claims by the editor of the Intercept.

        It may be bad to spikes GG’s piece though there a lot of issues undiscussed. i’ve seen GG’s emails and claims which have been eviscerated as unproven and poorly sourced. Even GG’s draft admits he doesn’t have proof of his claims but he makes them anyway. It also dances over the fact all the info came from T’s lawyer who got it from a definite( or by Rudy’s own admission very possible) russian agent. Yes btw Rudy said it is 50/50 chance the guy he got the info from was a russian agent. Where the info came from and whether there is separate evidence outside of the questionable channel is a really good question for a news org to ask.

        So there is a lot more to the GG situation they his defenders are presenting. They are accepting his narrative completely w/o any of the other info or issues.Report

        • Again, I try to patiently explain that the thing that happened is not the thing, the thing that happened is that the people who are supposed to be principled in a particular way that I once saw as “liberal” don’t care about the thing that happened.

          It’s Duck Dynasty all over again.Report

  13. This is going to be a rare time where i disagree with you (although I respect your opinion on this). Because I don’t think you can balance the hypotheticals of what a Biden Administration might do against the very real things that a Trump Administration is doing. i’ll be writing my own piece (probably on my own blog) about why I’m voting for Biden. But the gist is that I can’t let my vote be decided by the worst elements of each candidate’s supporters (and that’s putting aside the Biden has explicitly rejected identity politics and condemned the violence done by his supporters while Trump has, at best, demurred on both.)Report

  14. Kazzy says:

    Is this satire?

    Because “People like me – those who see the truth and act on it…” feels about as fascist as it gets.

    “Me and people who think like me alone know the one true way!”Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

      “Fascism is when you see things and believe them to be true and then act on them. The truer you think them, the fascister it is.”

      –Benito MussoliniReport

    • Kristin Devine in reply to Kazzy says:

      I’m sure I could have phrased it better, but all I’m saying is that I refuse to self-delude myself into a course of action based in fear that some people won’t like me any more if I do a naughty.

      Not sure that’s too awfully fascistReport

      • Kazzy in reply to Kristin Devine says:

        That’s fair and apologies if I was overly snippy there. I just get my hankles up when folks take the, “Well, there is obviously one way to see this correctly and it just so happens to perfectly align with how I see it.”

        I give you credit for speaking your mind and now being kowtowed by others. Agree or disagree, free thought and free expression are important. I appreciate your perspective here, even though I find much to argue with. I also find much to wrestle with and that provides immense value.Report

  15. DensityDuck says:

    Shoutout to the sensitive intellectual pro-feminist bros here suggesting that hysterical Karen needs to put the phone down for a while. Real intersectional heroes, you are.Report

    • Yep, exactly. Thank youReport

    • Koz in reply to DensityDuck says:

      I sympathize with most of what Kristin write in the OP, but the same reasons that are leading her to support Trump for reelection are the motivations for me to oppose him.

      There is no way the libs would be pro-riots and pro-arson if it weren’t for the distortion field surrounding Trump as President. The GOP would skyrocket in the polls if they did, but frankly the libs would be able to get it together enough to oppose arson and riots even before then.

      For some people, Kristin in this case, support for the reelection of Donald Trump feels like such an extreme and emotionally charged thing, that there has to be a lot of leverage in actually going through with it. Unfortunately, in the plain light of day I don’t think there is.Report

      • DensityDuck in reply to Koz says:

        I don’t read this as “support Trump”, I read this as “Democrats, stop being the thing you say you hate”.Report

      • Aaron David in reply to Koz says:

        “There is no way the libs would be pro-riots and pro-arson if it weren’t for the distortion field surrounding Trump as President.”

        Your Honor, she was wearing a short skirt! I had no choice…Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Saul, I appreciate arguing that people who vote for Trump are voting for whatever you’ve linked to.

      I don’t think it’s right to say that people who vote third party are voting for that. There are plenty of reasons to not vote for Biden and some of them are even principled.

      The best you can say is “IF YOU VOTE TRUMP, YOU ARE VOTING FOR THIS!!!”

      You don’t get to say “if you can’t bring yourself to vote Democratic, you are supporting this”.Report

  16. LeeEsq says:

    Miller’s plans for a second Trump administration is to totally gut immigration. One thing he wants to do is interview American citizens close to immigrants to see if they have been radicalized or not. Radicalized means seeing immigrants as fellow humans probably. Any administration that takes advice from people like Miller or where the Attorney General allows the President to engage in open bribery is by definition authoritarian if not fascist.Report

  17. greginak says:

    To much hyperbole, which the US has, leaves every argument as shouting insults. For the record, card carrying liberal that i am, i got sick of people yelling out facist or racist all the damn time. Which isn’t in anyway a defense of trump or R’s in general. Those words are overused to the point of being meeningless. Heck Aaron above thinks an editor spiking a story is facsism….LOL (FWIW even GG admitted he didnt’ have proof of his assertions, he just wanted to make them anyway, but i digress).

    Along with fascism and racism being overused so are socialism and communism etc. So much dialogue is shouting insults w/o any argument. There is one way to read this piece as just an updated version of “Obama is going to institute Sharia law and turn us into a marxist socialist dictatorship” that we saw for about 8 years. I respect you Kristen but this does sound a lot like that.

    One of the problems with the intertoobz in general and sadly this hear website is to often people argue against the weakest version of the other sides argument. The weakest version of often a hearty stew of shallow insults, quarter truths and poorly thought out arguments so that can be easy to argue against. You are doing a lot of gutting the shallowest, worst arguments of liberals here. Heck i agree with your attacks on the worst arguments. But then again those are the crappiest arguments.Report

    • North in reply to greginak says:

      Yeah the whole Greenwald piece was “Noone has proved this documentation they aren’t allowed to examine is false”. It’s amazingly weak stuff even before you consider that it’s being provided by Rudy fishin’ Giuliani.Report

      • Jesse in reply to North says:

        Plus, Glenn’s new best friend Tucker, on his White Nationalist Power Hour, went, “so, we should stop talking about Hunter because it’s mean. Not because what I was trying to pull was blocked by even Fox News lawyers. Not at all.”Report

      • InMD in reply to North says:

        Greenwald could stand to learn the art of brevity, but he has a real point about the media. I don’t think the Hunter Biden story is any more compelling than everything that came out of the Steele Dossier and yet the difference in treatment is obvious. It’s not like Rachel Maddow is back doing her best Glenn Beck impression over it.

        His other point is the one which he has always made about the absurd level of credulity given to America’s intelligence establishment. And frankly hes right about that, even if it’s extremely inconvenient in a cross partisan way.Report

        • greginak in reply to InMD says:

          The “problem” with the Steele Dossier is that is was used by the right to attack everything they didn’t like about the Mueller Report or the subsequent Senate report or the sworn testimony in trials of Stone and Manafort. The Dossier became the target, but it was always more raw data then a finished product. Ignore the SD and there is a metric crap ton of evidence of the trump admins corruption and complicity. But going after the subsequent reports and convictions would be harder and uglier.Report

  18. Jesse says:

    Just dropped off my vote in the ballot box outside of my local community college today, so that means whatever Kristen thinks doesn’t really matter, as her vote is now zeroed out. Of course, so is mine, but oh well.

    So, keep on keepin’ on about how you’re the brave hero fighting against the facism of…*checks notes*….a modest tax hike on rich people, a slightly more expanded role for government in health care, right not deporting brown people for the crime of wanting to work, for trans people having equal protection under the law, and reproductive rights for working class women, in your part of Washington that never evolved past being the home for the same type of people who unfortunate, originally set up the Pacific Northwest as a whites only colony.Report

    • Jesse in reply to Jesse says:

      Also, I’ll look forward to you continuing to retweeting nutbar conspiracy theoriests and weirdo right wingers on your Twitter timeline, all while trying to paint yourself as just a moderate homespun normal working class women, who’s just afraid of the woke taking things too far. Going to openly wonder more about whether Scalia was murdered?Report

      • Kristin Devine in reply to Jesse says:

        Yep, I do. I wonder about a lot of things, a shocking number of which have been proven to be true the past four years – starting with the media being completely in bed with the Democrats. The behavior of people in high positions of government and the media has shaken me to my very core, made me start questioning everything I once believed in, and take a look at some things I had previously written off as impossible.

        I make no apologies for that.

        I take absolutely nothing for granted where America’s corrupt institutions are involved, not any more.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Jesse says:

      If women weren’t allowed to vote, your vote would still be counted.

      I’m just saying.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird says:

        This is a piss poor trolling Jaybird. Just because Kristin is a woman does not mean she can’t be criticized for her views. But at this point, I basically think you have right-wing sympathies but do not want to admit to them.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          Saul, I am *EXCEPTIONALLY* conservative. That whole “Enlightenment” thing that was big in the 1700s? I’m a *HUGE* fan.

          One of the things that I think is confusing is that I don’t know what you mean by “right-wing”. Does it mean “Evangelical Christian”? “Trump supporter”? “Capable of balancing a household budget”? “Cis-het White Male”?

          Because I’m some of those and I’m not some of others.

          I’m one of the most right-leaning people on this board, kinda.

          (But I think it’s in the same way that you’re one of the pro-fascist commenters on LGM.)Report

          • Kristin Devine in reply to Jaybird says:

            …was you being a conservative a secret Jay?Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Kristin Devine says:

              Well, when people use the term “conservative” to mean “Trump supporter”, I push back against being categorized as a conservative.

              When people use the term to mean “knowing that these awesome progressive plans will blow up within 3 minutes of attempting to hire someone to run the system security position for the servers that will be running the webpage”, then I very much am conservative.

              But they get me to agree that I’m a conservative because I believe that there are things that won’t work even if you believe in them and then turn around and say “AH HA! I KNEW YOU WERE A TRUMP SUPPORTER!”

              So… I am exceptionally conservative. I’m downright reactionary.

              But I’m not a Republican. And I’m not a Trump supporter.

              But people say “YOU SAID YOU WERE EXCEPTIONALLY CONSERVATIVE!” and extrapolate out from there to weird things that aren’t true.

              I assume it’s because they aren’t used to encountering sophisticated belief systems.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

                I mean, like, I am conservative. And people go from there to say “You’re right-wing”.

                I’m not right-wing.

                But I am conservative.

                And trying to argue “I’m conservative, I’m not right-wing” gets people saying “YOU’RE LYING!” or “YOU’RE DELUDED!” because they can’t imagine definition problems in discussions much like this one.

                We used to hand out humanities degrees that were worth a damn, I swear…Report

              • Jesse in reply to Jaybird says:

                I agree, Jaybird, you aren’t a Trump supporter. But, you are anti-Left/anti-Democratic Party, and secured you are as an upper middle class white dude in safely blue state, the best thing for your own entertainment is us loser lefties losing again, so you can point and laugh and talk about how you were right and the Woke are running everything, all while nothing terrible happening to you.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Jesse says:

                Pointing at you in your segregated school districts.

                And it’s not that you loser lefties are losing again.

                It’s that this ain’t Peter Pan and clapping really hard won’t bring Tinkerbell to life.

                But I appreciate that you feel things really strongly. Seriously, I do.Report

              • Saul Degraw in reply to Jesse says:

                I didn’t say he was a Trump supporter. I said he had right-wing sympathies. And you are right, he is anti-Left/anti-Democratic Party and this at times turns him into an anti-anti Trumpist and sometimes anti-anti Proud Boy.

                He likes to engage in what he thinks are clever Socratic question gotchas but are nothing of the sort. And he deeply dislikes anyone who pushes back on his mantras of “divorce or war” and monomania support for marijuana legalization as cure all.*

                *FWIW I support marijuana legialization but do not think it is a cure all.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                No, but we need to do something, and that is something.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                See? I’ve never argued that marijuana is a cure-all.

                (I’ve even got an essay where I talk about some of the potential problems that I see that follow legalization.)

                But Saul is demonstrating that he cannot comprehend the differences between things that are not things that he believes.

                Like “conservative” is synonymous with “right-wing” in his head.

                It’s… well, it’s unsophisticated.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

                (And do you see that? A right-winger who thinks that legalizing marijuana is a cure-all! He doesn’t even see the dissonance there!)Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                And here I thought that parody Jaybird would spare us the real thing. Guess I was wrong.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                (I don’t understand this particular criticism. I understand that it’s intended to be one. I just don’t understand how it’s supposed to work.)Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                I believe you.Report

          • Rufus F. in reply to Jaybird says:

            Jay, I probably agree with plenty of what you have to say, in general, but I’m going to disagree about the Enlightenment. I too am a huge fan, but there was a fairly robust counter-Enlightenment, which at least called itself conservative. In France anyway- sorry, Mr. Burke- the early theorists of ‘conservatisme’ saw themselves as countering the Enlightenment philosophes who they believed wanted to undermine the foundations of the family, the throne, and society itself! Meanwhile, the pro-philosophy side just wanted to save us from the fanatics who were preparing another auto de fe. It was a heated debate until today.

            In many cases, it was a religious reaction to the more materialist philosophes, but the interesting thing is, if you read the arguments for and against “philosophie” from the 1700s, they sound *exactly* like the current culture wars we’re still having. In fact, to the people having them, they sounded exactly like the arguments from the Reformation.

            Which I guess is to say that tomorrow never comes, but yesterday never comes back.Report

        • DensityDuck in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          “Just because Kristin is a woman does not mean she can’t be criticized for her views.”

          yeah so that criticism includes “[g]oing to openly wonder more about whether Scalia was murdered?”

          just, y’know, keep that in mind when you’re smugly telling us about how Jaybird is “a piss poor trolling” [sic].Report

      • greginak in reply to Jaybird says:

        Jay, someone already has this idea covered.

        https://twitter.com/jesse_sumpter/status/1321602107623968768Report

        • Jaybird in reply to greginak says:

          I don’t think that Jesse is married, though.

          I’m sure he’d only marry someone who agreed with him about IMPORTANT things, though.

          Which means that he’d only marry someone who voted the way he did. At least at the top of the ticket.Report

      • Jesse in reply to Jaybird says:

        I’m equal opportunity -. I generally think the right to vote of all white people who live east of the Cascade Range in Washington should be limited.Report

    • Kristin Devine in reply to Jesse says:

      Remember when you said “Kristin pretends to be a human being who voted for Obama but then has opinions I don’t like?”

      I remember.

      Calling people you disagree with subhumans is not a good sign of what your movement is about.Report

      • Jesse in reply to Kristin Devine says:

        In retrospect, I was wrong about that. There were a lot of rural voters who voted for Obama, then got upset he decided Black Lives Matter had a point, and as a result, he wasn’t One Of The Good Ones anymore.

        Anyway, isn’t the actual reality that my vote doesn’t even really matter, since one of your kids will be voting against you as well, or have you convinced them of the Woke Fascist threat as well?Report

    • Jesse in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      The conservative movement and have made it too obvious they don’t actually care about what the majority of the populace wants, thinks, or needs. We’re All Woke Fascists now. Say what you will about Karl Rove & George W. Bush, and maybe they didn’t believe it, but at least when they got a minority in 2000, they actually did things (Miedcare Part D/NCLB/immigration/etc.) that they thought would lead to a majority win and hey, look, they were the only folks to get a majority for the GOP since 1988.

      The reality is, I believe in One Person, One Vote. If the GOP won the popular vote, won the House popular vote, and represented a majority of the populace through a reformed upper house, and wanted to cut taxes, limit abortion, make woke training illegal, etc., I wouldn’t like it very much, but as long as there were no impediments to voting and basic civil rights were still followed, I’d just have to organize and convince people the GOP were wrong. The modern Right isn’t interested in convincing a majority of the populace that their ideology will work best – they believe their minority deserves to rule, no matter their actual numbers.Report

  19. I presume everyone saw https://ordinary-times.com/2020/10/29/utah-or-weimar/, which includes videos of those two intelligent, friendly, and upstanding candidates saying they both support a peaceful transition of power, regardless of who wins the election. Good for them and good for Utah that both parties chose such fine people to represent them.

    But that fact that they feel the need to say it is all you need to know about Trump.Report

  20. Owen says:

    “ Regardless of how much you personally hate him, what did Trump do that was so terribly fascist, anyway?”

    Well for one thing he has repeatedly and publicly encouraged his supporters to engage in violence against his political opponents.

    Joe Biden, meanwhile, has consistently denounced the violent protests that have occurred, even to the point of angering some of his supporters.

    I understand the impulse to “what-about” this stuff away, but it really doesn’t work here, sorryReport

    • Aaron David in reply to Owen says:

      Do you have anything to prove it? A quote or a video snippet? ‘Cause I gotta say, that smacks of BS. BS on the order of how he never condemned racism, which he did 32 odd times on camera. (Not to mention, the people going nuts over that are usually backing a dude who was for segregated schools and did the funeral of a KKK leader. But whatever.)

      And Biden’s teleprompter didn’t denounce the BLM riots until they saw the polling come back on them. Just sayin’.Report

  21. Owen says:

    Also, I guess this is a pet peeve of mine, but if you are going to claim that “the same people who do X also do Y” you should probably provide, like, 1 or 2 examples of the same person actually doing X and Y

    There’s plenty of hypocrisy out there in The Discourse, but this sort of non-specific hypocrisy allegation is basically useless. There are literally millions of liberals and conservatives in America, it would be pretty weird if they held perfectly uniform views within each groupReport

  22. Chip Daniels says:

    Its amazing how there isn’t any effort being made here, or anywhere I can see that makes the argument that voting Trump is somehow a positive good.

    In this essay, it reads like an extended list of resentments, ranging from petty to inchoate.

    There isn’t a Trump-onomics to make us all more prosperous, there isn’t a Trump International Doctrine to make us more safe, there isn’t even a Hope & Change desire for renewal and harmony.

    Rich Lowry was at least honest in saying that Trump is a middle finger to America.Report

    • y10nerd in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      I mean, my understanding of this author (who I have read occasionally here) is that there’s just a lot of resentments. In looking at their blog (always curious to see what people write in their own space), they defended Trump saying he had the largest inauguration ever because the media lies.

      In my continual perusal (because I’m bored) I see posts like this – https://atomicfeminist.com/2017/10/25/hit-the-road-joad/ – and the politics really are just all resentments.

      Which is fine, I suppose. I know lots of people that do things for resentments. But I’m not sure it’s the basis of a political program.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to y10nerd says:

        It’s been the basis of pretty much every political program since Cain and Abel.Report

        • y10nerd in reply to Jaybird says:

          Right. I mean, I think resentments do matter in how they motivate political programs. I think one of the interesting things about looking at the resentments of certain rural white voters is that it seems really focused on respect and culture (I’m making a broad generalization here) – and like, I don’t know how to even approach that other than like, stop having influence in media?

          At least some of my nemesis on the right, I know what would make them like me more – I’m just not willing to do it because I believe the things I do. But on the specific issues of white rural resentment from certain peoples, particularly the not-very-religious ones? I don’t know what to do.

          (The resentment thing often explains a lot of the DSA left, which will only be made happy when we supplicate to them and acknowledge them as the smartest, bestest people ever!)Report

      • DensityDuck in reply to y10nerd says:

        “the politics really are just all resentments.”

        you can barely write a post without telling us how strongly you feel that people are looking down on you and how bad that makes you feel but sure, go on about “resentments”Report

  23. y10nerd says:

    I think one of my posts went away :(. This is what I get for trying to use the edit function.Report

  24. Tim (@Gurdur) says:

    I have a million comments on this all, including on all the replies here. But that would be boring, wouldn’t it. Just a few then.
    — as someone who has long commented on the strange and hypocritical sudden volte-faces in sections of American scientific society, then yes, I recognise what’s being described here, only all too well.
    — But I’m going to counsel against over-reacting, in a way that just picks a partisan side, then excuses that side’s own sudden back-flips.
    — And I’m going to recommend networking with those who half-way agree with you on essential points, rather than in essence continually and angrily demanding understanding from those who won’t agree with you on any essential points.

    What you choose as essential points is of course the determining factorReport

    • Jaybird in reply to Tim (@Gurdur) says:

      Networking with those who half-way agree with you is the secret to a happy life.

      Visit them, make food together, exchange bottles of wine at Christmas and tell them “we don’t do this often enough” when you say goodbye.

      This damn pandemic drank up a *LOT* of lubricant.Report

  25. James K says:

    You’re not wrong that 95% of political commentator are rank hypocrites. Affiliates of both parties routinely exchange scripts based on pure expediency. So you’re definitely not crazy, most of this discussion is just partisan sniping.

    But here’s the thing, people can come to the right conclusion using a bad reasoning process. Identifying a logical fallacy in someone’s argument doesn’t prove they’re wrong, you actually need to examine their claim directly.

    Your position appears to be that voting for Trump is a necessity because of a handful of nutjobs on the far left want to take over society, like they always do? This is where I think Twitter is leading you astray. And to be clear, that is not a dig at your mental state, the availability heuristic is a normal part of human cognition, but it will mislead you if your attention is focused on a a small number of unusually loud buffoons rather than the average person. And since social media points you at the former over the latter, that is a problem.

    The Democratic party base was given the opportunity to vote for some very left wing candidates, but they chose Biden, the normiest of normie candidates. The media went on about how no one was enthusiastic for Biden and yet it turns out a lot of people like Biden, it’s just that none of them live on Twitter so the media class missed it. The critical Race Theory / Abolish the Police crowd hate Biden, and yet he easily won anyway. It’s fair to conclude from this that the radical left has very little power in the Democratic party.

    And what is it about Biden that terrifies you so? That he wants a “strong response” to COVID? When faced with a 100-year emergency a strong response is exactly what is called for. We did it here and it worked out really well. No distancing, everything is one, they ask us to record our movements and wear masks on public transport but it’s not mandated. The month and a half of lockdown was hard, but it bought us normality, at least within our borders. When you’re driving off a cliff, taking strong action is appropriate, continuing to drive straight is a sign of dysfunction not admirable restraint.

    As for Trump, whether you want to call him a fascist or not, he is a serious problem. Over 200,000 Americans are dead from COVID (more like 300,000 if you go by excess deaths), and while some of them would have died regardless, if you had done as well as us proportionately you would have fewer than 2000 deaths. He has responded to political unrest by deploying secret police (law enforcement with no identification or clear lines of accountability are secret police) in cities against the wishes of the State Government. He has tried to manipulate the US’s data collection process to undercount constituencies likely to vote against him. He has, without embarrassment, that accepting help to manipulate the election for hostile governments is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. We can argue semantics about fascism, but that’s a lot more serious than people demanding apologies.

    The office of President has been growing steadily more powerful for over a century, and the reason is that each side keeps excusing the misdeeds of each President because it never seems so bad when “your guy” does it. Both sides are guilty in this, but right now the President is a Republican, so it is incumbent on Republicans to rebuke the latest overreaches. Once the Democrats get the Presidency I’ll go back to hassling them.

    Your vote won’t change the outcome of the election, one vote never does. All you can do is declare what you’re willing to support. A vote for Trump is a vote for undermining American democracy, and bringing you ever closer to dictatorship.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to James K says:

      She has motivated reasoning. She hates Democrats but kind of sort of knows that Trump is a bad hombre. Yet the concept of voting for Democrats fills her with ick. So she went looking for reasons to vote for Trump.Report

    • George Turner in reply to James K says:

      Are there arguments against voting for Biden? Well, yes.

      Racism:
      He’s an unrepentant racist segregationist whose mentor (so he says), was a Grand Kleagle in the KKK. He accepted an award from George Wallace, and in later life spoke glowingly of the Dixiecrats. He boasted that Delaware was a slave state, and praised the Confederacy. He led the fight against school busing, and his leadership got House Democrats to swing hard against it. He authored the infamous 1994 crime bill that put millions of blacks in jail. He didn’t just support it. He authored it. But rest assured, he’s also racist against Indians (you can’t run a 7-11 in Delaware without an Indian accent), Asians, and Jews.

      When Biden threatened Menachim Begin on the floor of Congress, Begin responded ““Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”

      Yesterday Biden’s hand-picked running mate, Kamala Harris, said she restore the status of the PLO, pressure Israel, and re-open the US Consulate in East Jerusalem. She’s as daft and hateful as he is, and as dumb. The old US consulate in Jerusalem was upgraded to an embassy. The building in East Jerusalem, which had also been a consulate, was renamed the Palestinian Affairs unit, because Jerusalem is now the location of the embassy, and it is still open and functioning. She’s just angry because Trump brought Peace agreements that we’ve wanted for sixty years, and that Barack Obama and Joe Biden couldn’t deliver.

      Corruption (Daily update):
      The FBI has confirmed that Joe and the rest of the Bidens have been under criminal investigation for money laundering for at least a year. There’s so much that I’ll just touch on today’s news.

      Today it was revealed that Hunter and Devon arranged and got a White House meeting between Joe Biden and the Chinese spies and businessmen they were all in bed with. As we all know, the other Biden’s got at least $100K of walking around money, while Hunter got at least $1.5 billion in investment funds from China. China got highly favorable treatment and were left unopposed in the South China Sea, which is giving the US Navy and the entire region nightmares that may become WW-III.

      Senility:
      Biden is already having spells where he can’t seem to form words. He will not be President very long because he’s in rapid decline. We won’t get a Biden Presidency, we’ll get a Harris one, and everybody knows that. Biden is just the draw to get people in the door, because virtually nobody supported Harris.Report

    • Pinky in reply to James K says:

      As I’ve pointed out here before, the US is roughly the same scale as the EU, in terms of economy, population, and physical size, and we’ve got roughly the same coronavirus death rate as the EU. I don’t know where you’re from, but I’m going to guess New Zealand, or some other place with natural barriers. Either that or limited transportation, or a totalitarian-leaning government that can limit transportation (and I don’t mean little travel bans, I mean martial law-type lockdowns).Report

      • Pinky in reply to Pinky says:

        But that’s not even really the point. (I forgot to make the point.) What Biden is talking about, and what it sounds like you’re talking about, are so general that I can say we had tighter and looser in this country, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill. There’s no indication that a “strong response” would help now, even if we could define what “strong response” means. The one thing we can be sure of is greater economic damage.

        I don’t remember who it was, but some major political figure was once asked if he was going to run for president, and he said no, he didn’t want to spend the next two years of his life convincing Americans that the country was in terrible shape. I think you’re confusing Biden’s description of what’s been happening with what actually has happened. Actually, I’m sure you’re misreading the situation in the states if you’re complaining about the secret police.Report

        • InMD in reply to Pinky says:

          Pinky, this is one of those things where it seems like a lot of work is being done to excuse really piss poor federal leadership, a lot of which was caused by Trump. Now I think you’re right that this was never going to go for us the way it has for small countries with geographic barriers and better (but also way easier to run) administrative states. IMO it’s a dumb comparison.

          But Trump can’t even get behind making the case to the public for mask wearing. And now hes politicized the issue so much that he himself is out there causing spreader events. Even now hes sowing confusion by downplaying the seriousness at every opportunity.

          Back in spring he told governors to take the lead then promptly threatens to and in some cases does seize supplies and equipment for redistribution. He publicly speaks out against state and local governments not following the ‘who cares if grandma dies we need go save the stock market’ approach, undermining the authority of those he said were supposed to take charge. We had the whole kerfuffle here of tests being flown in from South Korea essentially in secret because of fear the feds would take them.

          Because I’m charitable I admit that there is a force that seems to say lockdown until vaccine is the only answer. I don’t think that has to be true. Will had a great post about the school situation a few months ago I found myself nodding along with. But this has not been a debate between shutdowns and manage the situation in a reasonable way with an eye towards minimizing economic damage as best we can. If it had been I’d be 100% for the latter. Do we really have to pretend otherwise? That Trump is just saying lets avoid overkill, not actively making the situation more difficult?Report

      • James K in reply to Pinky says:

        I am indeed a New Zealander, and I simply don’t think the natural barriers mean that much. The US got COVID via air travel, not its land borders, and even now the US isn’t really importing COVID from Canada or Mexico. And New Zealand had over 4million international visitors a year pre-COVID, many of whom came from China, so it’s not like we’re really that isolated. We were just willing to shut down harder and faster than other countries.Report

  26. Kristin, I have read almost none of the comments.I suspect most of them are piling on in their disagreement (peppered, I’m sure, with a lot of personal attacks that violate our commenting policy).

    I, too, disagree on many points. I’ve certainly voted differently! But perhaps we don’t disagree as much as you might think. At any rate, I wish you the best and still look forward to reading your future posts!Report

  27. Chip Daniels says:

    The trouble with cultural resentment is that it becomes an irresolvable existential divide.

    There isn’t any way to define Trumpists in terms of policy. A Trumpist can just as easily support a social safety net as not, or be religiously observant or not, support business regulation or not.

    They define themselves almost entirely by cultural shibboleth and signaling.
    This is binary and impossible to compromise.Report

    • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      That tells me that you definitely don’t understand conservative policy (by your own admission), and that probably conservatism is a big tent.Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

        For just about any conservative position you outline, I could find a Trump policy or action that directly contradicts it.

        Remember, this was the big selling point in 2016, that he had “eclectic” positions that would appeal to Democrats and flip the Rust Belt.

        But hey, why bother arguing? Just have everyone look at this essay and draw their own conclusions.Report

    • George Turner in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      There was no way to define the WW-II Allies in terms of policy either. The Allies could support al monarchy, a democracy, or a Stalinist dictatorship, one run by Stalin, no less. They defined themselves almost entirely as an opposition group, and refused to compromise with the Axis.Report

  28. Fish says:

    I disagree with 90% of this, but I appreciate and thank you for writing it.Report

  29. Tim (@Gurdur) says:

    At the end of the day, never become exactly what you complain so much about. It detracts, so much.Report

  30. Mussolini made the trains run on time. Trump makes the mail not run on time.Report

  31. Saul Degraw says:

    In 2018, Harris County narrowly elected a 29-year old immigrant to replace a Republican incumbent for county judge (really the county executive). She increased the election budget from 4 million to 27 million and has been working hard to increase voting access during the pandemic. Texas Republicans resort to legal formalism and technicalities to throw out 100,000 votes and got the luck of the draw of an arch-Republican judge who decided on an emergency hearing Monday without giving Harris County time to file a responsive brief:

    Wanna tell me who are the real fascists?

    https://twitter.com/LemieuxLGM/status/1322625376586141696?s=20Report

    • George Turner in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      The people who change election procedures right before the election and con their supporters into casting ballots that aren’t legal, just because they think tens of thousands of fake ballots will give them power because one of their own side’s judges will order the ballots to count, even if they’re from Mickey Mouse and Goofy.

      Entirely different voting standards and systems in different counties violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause. But if you want to throw that out, I’m sure all those rural Republican counties would be happy to let their own residents vote three and four times and crush the urban areas.Report

      • Jesse in reply to George Turner says:

        The changes to voting were supported by the Republican Texas Secretary of State, dumbass.Report

        • George Turner in reply to Jesse says:

          The Secretary of State’s office says: “If you are physically unable to enter the polling place without personal assistance or likelihood of injuring your health, Curbside Voting is Available.”

          In a Covid-19 informational package, the Secretary of State says:

          “Voters who exhibit any of the above-mentioned symptoms associated with COVID-19 when they arrive at a polling location may want to consider utilizing curbside voting, to the extent they meet the eligibility requirements, which is available at all polling locations. These voters should contact their county election office with questions about the curbside voting process in their county and the eligibility requirements.”

          Google can’t seem to find anyplace where the Texas Secretary of State’s office gave a greenlight to mass curbside voting. So are millions of people in Harris country really that ill, or do Democrats there just want to cast fake ballots?

          And again, as the Supreme Court has ruled, counties can’t set up quite different voting procedures that would violate the Equal Protection Claus.Report

        • Philip H in reply to Jesse says:

          And the All Republican Texas State Supreme Court and now a conservative Republican Judge.

          But Man, those liberals, I tell ya . . . .Report

  32. Chip Daniels says:

    This is an example of what I was talking about, where the logic changes however it needs to, but the desired outcome by Republicans is always the same- Restrict voting as much as possible, preferably in Democratic leaning precincts.Report

  33. greginak says:

    FWIW It appears “the media” hasn’t ignored the Hunter Biden story. Not that it matters if they did since opinions are set and of course Hunter is up for election.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/here-s-what-happened-when-nbc-news-tried-report-alleged-n1245533Report

    • George Turner in reply to greginak says:

      Oh, so NBC can’t report on Hunter Biden because Trump won’t let them. ROFL.

      NBC did report on a fake Hunter Biden conspiracy theory that is completely unrelated to the real story that the foreign press and Fox News are covering. NBC reported that “the story” had been discredited, not mentioning that they were talking about a completely different story.

      The media is actively and unashamedly lying to Democrats, who must be kept ignorant.Report

      • greginak in reply to George Turner says:

        Meanwhile you are still “studying” Hunter’s Pornhub account. Lots and lots of intensive research.Report

        • George Turner in reply to greginak says:

          Hunter spent $21,000 on just one live porn account, and blew $11,400 in just one strip club, in one night.

          The British Press is dumping lots of information. They had to black out lots of the information, like Hunters Social Security number, Mastercard number (expired 1/31/17 – ends in 9231), his Passport (expired 1/6/17), his drivers license (expired 2/4/17). They also blacked out the personal phone numbers for Hillary and all of Obama’s top officials, and Joe’s personal cell number.

          What does all this tell you? The laptop is real. On it were e-mails, which have been verified by multiple sources and methods, laying out their schemes to elude authorities, launder money for Kremlin officials, and extract bribes from Chinese government agents. Hunter even brags about being in business with a person he described as a “Chinese spymaster”. Despite denials from the press, Joe Biden is directly involved in these schemes, and was taking massive bribes from hostile powers. They almost certainly hold blackmail material on him, and a Chinese government defector has allegedly provided some of that blackmail material. Some of the e-mails implicate Obama in these schemes, unless there’s some other important “O” that Biden kept having meetings with in the White House.

          Joe Biden cannot serve as President. If elected, he must be immediately impeached and removed for bribery and high crimes against the United States. This isn’t made up nonsense like the Democrats hurled at Trump when they tried to impeach him for investigating Joe Biden’s massive corruption. This is the actual corruption the Democrats were terrified would leak out. It has leaked.

          Nancy herself could face federal corruption charges for launching her impeachment with a “corrupt intent”, as her intent was clearly to use her official office to cover up bribery, graft, and corruption by launching legal proceedings. That is itself a crime under federal law.

          You will not get Biden. At best, you will get a list of crises that makes Watergate look like a simple burglary, and potentially a series of power struggles, coup d’etats, and a civil war the likes of which the modern world has not seen. Everything Democrats value will die in flames, all to defend a wildly corrupt, senile child molester (according to his daughter).Report

  34. Nikhil Bhat says:

    When I saw this article pop up, I knew the comments were going to be buckwild. I was not disappointed.

    None of the comments so far have quite hit my primary issue with the piece: it’s a literal non sequitur in that “Dems are fascist” doesn’t naturally follow “vote for Trump”. It would make an excellent case for voting third party, or not voting at all. And as someone who spent a lot of (thankless) time defending the midwest, I’m sympathetic to Kristin’s frustration with liberal condescension. But making the case that the Democrats are elitist or have fascistic tendencies doesn’t alone make the case for voting *for* Trump.

    To make this case, we’d need one of:
    1) evidence that “own the libs” is a valid policy goal, which it should be self-evident that it is not,
    2) clear evidence that Trump is less fascistic, an idea that’s undercut by the varying definitions of “fascist” above, or
    3) if they are equally fascist, some sign that voting for Trump will give us some other advantage.
    On this last point, we have ample evidence that on the issues he’s most engaged with, he’s been either ineffectual (remember infrastructure week?) or outright harmful (trade, immigration, COVID). “Success is negatively correlated with my involvement” is not a great line for one’s resume.

    I understand the emotion here, but I just don’t follow the reasoning.Report

  35. DavidTC says:

    Regardless of how much you personally hate him, what did Trump do that was so terribly fascist, anyway?

    Uh, he suggested the police hurt people as they arrested them. Or…he said it very carefully…that in police officers should not _try_ to ‘accidentally hurt people’

    Here: Now, we’re getting them out anyway, but we’d like to get them out a lot faster. And when you see these towns and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon — you just see them thrown in, rough — I said, please don’t be too nice. (Laughter.) Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over? Like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody — don’t hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, okay?

    Right there. That’s fascist talk.

    Try to keep people from entering the country illegally till we had a better, safer, and fairer system in place for dealing with them (not only for the sake of the American people, but for the benefit of the people coming into the US, who die in droves attempting to cross the border)?

    No, but he locked children up in cages and has permanently misplaced a bunch of them, and we will probably never locate their parents, because they aren’t old enough to remember them.

    And, no, Obama didn’t do that. Obama took kids that entered into without adults, and put them into fairly nice, and small, system. Trump separated away the adults, used that to claim the kids had entered without adults, didn’t bother to keep good records, and shove a hundred times more kids into that small system that worked perfectly well at the size Obama was using it, but not at the size Trump was.

    He could have sent in the Army to quell the rioting immediately.

    No…he sent in unlabeled Federal officers to attack rioters in Portland. And I don’t mean ‘defend’, I mean…they literally ran out of the building and started hitting people.

    This was a fascist move that was so illegal he had to stop. Like, literally, someone actually with some common sense in his administration (I suspect someone in DHS) pulled him to the side and say ‘You can’t actually be doing this. You are exposing our people to a lot of liability.’. He was going to start doing this in all the cities, but…someone put their foot down. We’ll find out who at some point.

    It’s actually rather amazing in your list of examples you barely include any examples of things that the left _say_ is fascist, and when you do, you include the parts that people aren’t saying is fascist.

    You could just pay attention to this actual site, and what people are saying here, and have been for years. But…you don’t really do that.

    So I was going to list what the left thinks, right now. But…I’ve actually sorta tried to swear off arguing with Trump supporters at this point, and I’m not going to until after the meltdown has happened when he losses.

    He will then, very clearly, behave like a fascist. He will do flat-out illegal things to attempt to change the results. When it’s clear he can’t, he will rant and rave and hurt people.

    He will eventually give up and just sulk. He might actually quit, if only to try to get a pardon.

    His followers won’t, and will act like insane people. Like the group in Texas that decided to go after the Biden bus. I expect a lot Trump supporters who were so worried about property damage to start shrugging it off.Report

  36. Pinky says:

    Kristin – I don’t know if you noticed, but had an article posted earlier today on the very subject. I submitted it last week before yours went up, and I asked that it be put up if no one else wrote one. I didn’t mean to be stepping on your toes. But I definitely, definitely didn’t mean anything negative or sexist when I said that none of the “Ordinary Gentlemen” had written an article on the topic.Report