Why? Because they think that women (or children!) would fabricate a fraudulent case...

...to the cops? And go through a sexual assault medical exam as well? All of that in order to procure an abortion?!

Oh, I forgot..."right to life" extremists are now trying to make this some kind of mainstream position. You can see it for yourself if you tune in radtrad Catholic networks like EWTN or Relevant Radio. And that kind of medieval thinking is found in the fundamentalist Protestant churches as well.

Grocery prices out of control (some are *still* rising!), forever wars, etc.

Jobs are also increasingly contingent; it seems that everywhere you go, it's either "right to work" aka "no rights at work", or else it's an "at-will" job. Supply chains are also still pretty messed up, particularly if you work for or own a company that still makes a physical product. Some parts, especially electronic ones, are still a year or more delayed, and the smart money is on those parts never coming back.

Things are most definitely better compared to the smoking crater we climbed out of after the disastrous Trump regime. However, life is still pretty unsettled for a lot of people, especially if they aren't part of the 1% club.

Except once (and only once, AFAIK), when Trump got hosed...

...by Merv Griffin. I recall a 60 Minutes episode from the late '80s where a really coked-out-looking Trump made a poor attempt to put a spin on the Griffin deal.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/1988-the-year-donald-lost-his-mind-213721/

Trump also got out-negotiated by the Taliban. Only in this case, instead of just Trump losing, we all did, as the withdrawal from Afghanistan became a total shitshow.

Randi Rhodes has her own "bon mot" for the Ann Coulter types...

..."the right-wing fembots". (I guess it helps if you are of a certain age and can remember the "fembot" plots from ridiculous '70s sci-fi shows).

By the '90s, it was obvious that there was an organized plot to hire women, mostly blondes in their 20s to 30s, to go on the cable news shows and make the most outlandish far-right arguments they could get away with. It was also clear that they were there because they looked a whole lot better than the old men who ran the "think" tanks that hired them.

There were/are so many that it's hard to keep track: Coulter, Ingraham, Monica Crowley, the late Barbara Olson, etc. PBS even has at least two shows which regularly feature the "fembots": To the Contrary and Firing Line with Margaret Hoover.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216795709#post4
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217859970#post7
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216734161

It was alt-right Pepe shit. The soundtrack was "The Protomen". Apparently...

...most of it was stolen from sites that are/were popular with alt-right chuds and gamers (but now I'm being redundant!). There were idealized images of far-right European leaders, obsessions with "white genocide" and non-existent racial "no-go zones", etc. My favorite image was Trump holding the severed head of Osama Bin Laden. Hmm...who actually was President when Bin Laden was taken out?!

Whoever made the video (out of mostly stolen material) was probably a regular at 4chan/8chan/8kun/whatever-the-hell-they-call-it-now.

And most who witnessed and fought WWII are no longer with us...

...and with them seems to have gone many lessons learned.

It's hard to believe that the intellectual climate in this country was once at such an apex that President Eisenhower could recommend a book like Eric Hoffer's The True Believer to his fellow Americans. But it actually happened; I first heard about it in a talk given by reporter Max Blumenthal.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218041638#post17

https://web.archive.org/web/20111114143910/http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/second-term/documents/1051.cfm

Civics was also taught--at least by high school--until the late '80s. And books like Hoffer's and Erich Fromm's Escape From Freedom were once best-sellers. That would be impossible today.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017842811#post8

They also were able to hack a video clip into the DU site in such a way that...

...it was nearly impossible to remove. I recall that a lot of the site code had to be audited to figure out how the hack even occurred. It turned out to be an unknown vulnerability that was somehow discovered by the intruders. The video clip would start playing and take over the browser tab or window. The only thing that could be done was close the tab and leave the site. And yes, I also remember DU being down for several days, maybe more.

The video clip from the hack was posted at YouTube for a while, but fortunately it seems to be gone now. It was very heavy-handed with the alt-right imagery, including authoritarian leaders such as Viktor Orban.

This is what I'm talking about (from the article).

The article touches on the role of the online "manosphere" grifters, nearly all...

...of whom are from the alt-right, and who have served as a cultural wrecking ball in the lives of so many young men--particularly those who are most alienated and lost. Even worse, some of these men have a psych diagnosis, some have substance-abuse problems, some are on the autism spectrum, and those are the ones to worry about in particular. It's too bad that the article does not go deeper into this destructive online subculture, because it is feeding a lot of the negative emotions and helplessness among young men ( e.g. "incels" ).

Jack "Prilosec" really needs to get an actual job, especially since the alt-right grifting...

...had the unfortunate but predictable consequence of costing him his security clearance. Whoops--there goes that cushy career in the Navy!

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jack_Posobiec

Jack Prilosec is one of a handful of alt-right media "influencers" pushing ridiculous Taylor Swift conspiracy theories to incredibly gullible Trumpers. One wonders who is bankrolling Prilosec's dubious "employment", which consists almost entirely of culture-war shit-stirring. He's been at it for years.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218636423
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218636423#post15