December 1, 2021

"So you gave money to Michael Flynn and continue to justify it? That's why you still support him?"

That's what we call the sunk cost fallacy.

My Right Wing Infopedia is keeping a running list of Michael Flynn's lies and crazier claims, let's just say it's getting kind of hefty.

The list of lies and unsubstantiated claims made by Michael Flynn.

Summary:
He lied to Pence
He lied to the FBI
He lied to the judge at his trial
And more
But he'd never lie to the people who send him money, right?

November 24, 2021

Trumpism/The Right: The Establishment for people who say they don't like the Establishment

It's the status quo for people who say they don't like the status quo.

It's the system for people who say they don't like the system.

They don't actually scrap or abolish anything. Did Trump say "Don't worry about my audits... because I'm abolishing the dollar"? Wouldn't that have been the biggest anti-"elitist" move anyone could have done ever?

Didn't Trump just pick career politicians like Elliott Abrams or Elaine Chao instead of say, I dunno, pick random names out of a hat to serve in his administration?

Why don't Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene start their own party instead of being tied with the whims of Mitch McConnell?

You see, it's like one of those telephone psychics, they say something vague and generic about someone's father who had a name starting with 'F' and him saying something important and there will always be someone who says "YES! My father was named Frederick! And he told me to buy a house on the east side! You must be the real deal!" They say things that "shaking things up" and it appeals to so many people; the people who are genuinely jilted, the people who don't like the parties in charge, and yes, the people who are upset that the government now has people of colors, genders, and religions they don't like in it now. All united in that.

It's like nobody stops to think that the "establishment", the "status quo", the "deep state", or whatever you call it could actually co-opt anti-establishment rhetoric and cliches, sell the slogans for 5 bucks a pop, and get them into office. That they could become the "things" in the "need to shake things up".

Bookmark this thread because in 2022 and 2024, we'll see "shake things up" and "need an outsider" all over again, and we need things like this to counter that.

https://deepblueleague.freeforums.net/

November 21, 2021

Remember that episode of the Simpsons where Burns lost his nuclear plant and he made a factory...

that super-harvested all of the sea life in the area and turned it into "Lil Lisa's Slurry"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Man_and_the_Lisa

Right-wingers around the world shifting from "climate change isn't real" to "stateless people and refugees are causing all our environmental problems!"...

Republicans, aware that many of their own younger voters are turned off by the relentless climate denial as they see their futures wreathed in wildfire smoke and flood water, have sensed an opportunity. “The right is reclaiming that older Malthusian population rhetoric and is using that as a cudgel in green terms rather than unpopular racist terms,” said Blair Taylor, program director at the Institute for Social Ecology, an educational and research body.

“It’s weird that this has become a popular theme in the US west because the west is sparsely populated and that hasn’t slowed environmental destruction,” he added. “But this is about speaking to nativist fears, it isn’t about doing anything to solve the problem.”

The spearhead for modern nativism in the US is, of course, Donald Trump who has, along with an often dismissive stance towards climate science itself, sought to portray migrants from Mexico and Central America as criminals and “animals” while vowing to restore clean air and water to deserving American citizens. If there is to be another iteration of a Trump presidency, or a successful campaign by one of his acolytes, the scientific denial may be dialed down somewhat while retaining the reflex nativism.

In a document published online shortly before the (mass shooting in Texas in 2019), Patrick Crusius wrote: “The environment is getting worse by the year … So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.” The shooting came just a few months after the terrorist massacre of 49 people in two mosques in Christchurch in New Zealand, with the perpetrator describing himself as an eco-fascist unhappy about the birthrate of immigrants.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/climate-denial-waning-replacing-might-070005155.html

"You haven't changed at all! You're still evil. And when you're trying to be good, you're even more evil."
- Pretty much this.