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The Reason for the New Homophobia

Yesterday, millions turned out for "No Kings" protests literally all across the country, include red states, to protest the Felon's regime and his policies. Most notably the Felon's war of choice in Iran and the cruel and brutal deportation operations topped the list of motivations for participants, but also fueling the protests was opposition to the Felon's implementation of Project 2025's racist, homophobic and white "Christian" nationalist agenda that depicts anything that benefits non-whites, non-Christians, and non-heterosexual individuals as discriminatory against white males, particularly the less educated.  Indeed, for the LGBT community, the "anti-woke" and anti-DEI obsession of the Project 2025 agenda includes ending same sex marriage, reviving anti-LGBT discrimination and even a reinstitution of sodomy laws. Sadly, this agenda plays to white males who always need someone else to blame for their own lack of achievement or unhappiness rather than pausing to look in the mirror. For those of us in the LGBT community the agenda of Project 2025 and the support for open discrimination the Felon's regime is normalizing - a hallmark of fascist regimes that always need scapegoats - is frightening.  A long piece in The Atlantic looks at the resurgence of homophobia and the straight white male anxiety and feelings of inadequacy that is helping to fuel it. One can only hope that the growing opposition the the Felon and his regime will bring about a backlash against bigotry.  Here are column highlights:

Homophobia of course never went away, but not long ago, it seemed like it might. Implicit and explicit bias against gay people fell steadily from 2007 to 2020 and was on track to soon hit zero (!), according to a 2022 study by the psychologists Tessa E. S. Charlesworth and Mahzarin R. Banaji. This accorded with the ambient feeling of late-2010s culture, when Lil Nas X was the pink-hatted prince of pop and Budweiser was striping its cans in rainbow colors without fear of a bullet from Kid Rock.

But something changed in the early 2020s. Pollsters began noting diminishing approval for LGBTQ legal protections. As trans issues became inescapable in polarized national politics, explicit anti-trans bias spiked 16 percent from 2021 to 2024, according to Charlesworth, Banaji, and the researcher Meriel Doyle. Less intuitively, the trend line of long-declining homophobia reversed, resulting in a 10-point jump for explicit anti-gay bias over that same period.

The past few months in politics have made this turn obvious. Prominent right-wing voices who justified the killing of the protester Renee Good described her as a “lesbian agitator” and a “rug munching leftist,” as though her sexuality might have any bearing on whether she deserved to die.

The White House advertised car deregulation with a video that mocked two blue-haired, queer-seeming people pathetically stalled in a Prius. Commentators have taken to treating gay and its synonyms as an insult. Conservative groups launched a campaign to roll back marriage rights, with the name “Greater Than”—as in, the well-being of kids (allegedly endangered by gay parents) is more important than equality.

In the wilds of digital culture, gay panic roams in more anarchic forms. Reels and TikTok teem with jokes about Jeffrey Epstein, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and a feminized version of Charlie Kirk preying on boys—though Epstein serially exploited girls and Kirk was a straight, married conservative whom no one has accused of abuse. Nicki Minaj, that longtime queer icon turned MAGA trophy, has taken to dissing “cocksuckas” like Don Lemon. Millions of views accumulated for a kid rapping about the demonic nature of LGBTQ people. Zesty became Zoomer-speak for “fruity” or “swishy” a few years back. And in livestreams and chat rooms, the old-school slurs seem as hot as ever.

This wave is one symptom of a broader cultural regression. During the 2020s, measures of intra-group prejudices of all sorts—racism, sexism, ageism—have been rising, according to a New York Times article about the return of homophobia by Charlesworth and her Northwestern colleague Eli J. Finkel. Trans folks, long the subject of sustained conservative criticism, continue losing not only public acceptance but legal rights; Kansas, for example, just revoked driver’s licenses for people whose listed gender doesn’t match what they were assigned at birth.

But although transphobia overlaps with homophobia, Charlesworth and Finkel argue that trans backlash is not the primary reason for rising anti-gay sentiment. Instead, they suggest that one factor explains the rise in all kinds of identity-based biases: the same blend of economic anxiety and anti-establishment sentiment that’s driving so much of American politics. They write, “Gay and lesbian people, newly woven into the fabric of mainstream society, may have been collateral damage in a broader revolt against a system that felt broken.”

The irony is that a minority once viewed as filled with sissies and losers is now portrayed as filled with bullies and power brokers, and straight people, especially men, seem to perceive themselves as the weak and afraid ones. This inversion explains a host of baffling political and cultural phenomena of late. It also shows that some of the most durable stereotypes about gay people were never really about sexuality—which might explain why the homophobes, more and more, seem to fit those stereotypes.

Over the past few months, the young and male-dominated online subculture of “looks-maxxing” has blown up into a mainstream-media cycle . . . . Looks-maxxing is an ethos of self-improvement taken to an extreme, and its more explicit inspirations are the pickup artists of early-2000s infamy and the incels of 2010s 4Chan. The idea is that in a society that has allegedly become hostile to men—male privilege coded as toxic masculinity, and so on—the only way for boys to gain an edge is to be handsome. Methods for maximizing looks range from workouts and skin-care routines to more radical options, such as chewing hard gum for hours to get a squarer jaw.

The poster child for this world is a waifish, wavy-haired 20-year-old who goes by the name Clavicular. He says he started taking testosterone at age 14 and that he does crystal meth to attain hollow cheeks. . . . . He’s also a frequent user of sexist, homophobic, and racist slurs—usually delivered in a tone of icy boredom—and is pals with the Hitler fan Nick Fuentes and the professional misogynist Andrew Tate.

The ostensible point of looks-maxxing is to bag hot chicks, but quite clearly the real fun comes from inspiring awe in men. To the Times, Clavicular described sex with women as mostly a waste of time—something that “is going to gain me nothing.” What he really wants to do is “mog,” meaning attain status over other dudes (mog is short for AMOG or “Alpha Male of the Group”). He’s considering getting double-jaw-replacement surgery in order to look like the guy who (according to his pseudoscientific calculations) has the the most handsome face on earth: Matt Bomer, a gay actor frequently featured in work by Ryan Murphy, TV’s king of queer dramedy.

As many social-media users have suggested, all of this seems a bit, well ... y’know. Clavicular is like a blend of Dorian Gray and Patrick Bateman, those fictional creations of gay authors out to probe the sinister side of male vanity.

The psychologist Alan Downs’s The Velvet Rage deconstructed the “best little boy in the world” syndrome that makes many gay guys into overachievers. Susan Sontag’s “Notes on ‘Camp’” crystallized a way of seeing the world as full of artifice, which can lead queer people to behave in a self-conscious, knowingly false manner. Oscar-winning movies such as Moonlight and Brokeback Mountain depicted gay men disguising their gendered shame in traditionally manly trappings. The theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick examined the extent to which jealous imitation drives all manner of same-sex relations, straight and gay.

Gay people realize, at some early age, that the world isn’t made for people like them. And for men, raised with the social pressure to seek dominance, that realization can lead to an obsession with climbing the rungs—whether in the context of sex, money, or something else. All of which is to say: Gay men are the original incels. They are born into heightened status anxiety and must maneuver to get ahead. And one way to do that is to be hot.

The looks-maxxers have stumbled into a similar set of psychological conditions by dint of socioeconomic circumstances and social media. The 21st century’s obstacles for young men—as seen in deaths of despair and lagging employment—have been amply publicized both by credible journalists and by charlatans such as Fuentes. Clearly, many boys are struggling with a sense of futility. In one stream, Clavicular explained that he felt “we live in one of the worst societies ever throughout the entire history of the world.” What he meant, he went on to say, is that a woman will barely look at a man unless he’s high status.

Women and girls are becoming only more fixated on their beauty. But they’ve faced the pressure of being pretty for generations. . . . . . Straight men are just catching up, vanity-wise, and political opportunists have eagerly fed into their insecurities. Fuentes, a self-declared proud virgin at age 27, recently urged his followers to spend all their energy trying to “ascend,” the looks-maxxing term for becoming your best self. Tate has said that any man who has sex with women for pleasure is “gay” because they should be focused on procreation. Men like these preach that various historically marginalized groups—gays, Jews, Blacks, women—are to blame for the cultural conditions their viewers chafe at. Self-improvement, in this view, isn’t pursued to, well, improve the self. It’s to win a competition.

Yet the link between looks-maxxing and rising anti-gay sentiment is probably even simpler than that. Straight men feel they’ve fallen in the social hierarchy. And when they look up, who do they see?

The factual basis for broader perceptions of gay prosperity is mixed. . . . . In any case, the young generation that’s now transforming American politics grew up at a time when pop culture made LGBTQ people into aspirational figures. . . . . To many adults who’d grown up in a world in which LGBTQ people were stigmatized and sidelined, this visibility felt groundbreaking. To many of the kids who were just coming online then, gay acceptance was simply a mainstream norm—and queer people were affiliated with success. In the conspiracy-minded 2020s, that success is more widely feared than admired or understood.

This conflation of anti-establishment angst and homophobic paranoia didn’t arise organically. After Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, conservative activists looking to rebuild an electoral majority stoked conspiracy theories about queer people’s newfound cultural visibility. Efforts such as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law and the various protests against drag-queen story hour pushed back against an alleged liberal plot to “groom” or “indoctrinate” kids. And the censorious and controlling nature of those efforts offers a reminder of another comparison for the vanity of the new homophobes: fascism. A fascination with appearance, self-mastery, and masculinity has also long been the provenance of authoritarian regimes—including ones that brutalized gays, Jews, and immigrants. Mass status anxiety, history has shown time and again, can be exploited for the most dangerous kind of politics.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

 

Republicans Know This War Is Going Badly

I may be dating myself, but I am of an age where I remember and lived through some of America's disastrous wars starting with Vietnam - I was in my teens and avoided the draft due to a high lottery number - through Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Iran.  In each conflict falsehoods and/or a military leadership that never would admit the dire nature of the true military situation lead to thousands of military deaths (especially in Vietnam) and the squandering of billions of dollars.  With Iran more than any of the other wars, the warnings of what starting a war could lead to were seemingly utterly ignored by the Felon - the Iranians are calling him the "orange pig" - and his utterly unfit Secretary of Defense who seemingly care nothing about the lives being lost, be they American, Iranian, or citizens of Gulf states.  The result is that the Felon is desperate to save face and have some sort of "victory" real or fabricated while Iran seems to clearly understand that by keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed, it has the upper hand economically even if it cannot match the U.S. military.  A column in the New York Times aptly describes where the Felon has put himself and the nation:

Because the diplomatic option is so unappealing, Trump seems poised to seize an even worse one: dispatching ground troops to invade Iran. He is sending thousands of Marines and paratroopers to the region, and The Wall Street Journal reports that the Pentagon is considering whether to send another 10,000 ground troops.

“This is a dangerous point,” Vali Nasr, a veteran Iran watcher at Johns Hopkins University, told me. “Maybe Trump has no choice but to go down this path, because to go to the table right now would really admit defeat. But this is the quandary of his own making.”

Meanwhile polling in America shows very strong opposition to the war, particularly if it comes to involve a ground invasion even as gas prices at the pumps keep rising and aiding financial strain to average families and the stock markets continue to fall.  As a second piece in the New York Times notes, even Republicans are beginning to realize that the Felon's war of choice is not going well and that no clear off ramp is in sight:

It is not just Democrats in Congress who fear that Donald Trump’s war in Iran is going sideways. After a classified Pentagon briefing on Wednesday, Republican lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee appeared shaken.

“We will not sacrifice American lives for the same failed foreign policies,” said Nancy Mace, warning about the possibility of American troops in Iran. The committee chair, Mike Rogers, complained that members aren’t getting nearly enough information about war plans. Troop movements, he said, should be “thoughtful and deliberate.” The implication was that they might not be.

“This is the first week where I have felt that there’s been really any resistance to this war from Republicans,” Jason Crow, a combat veteran and Democratic member of the committee, told me. His colleagues’ public comments, he suggested, only hint at the depth of their anxiety. In closed meetings, he said, they express many concerns “that they’re unwilling to show publicly.”

Some conservatives are still arguing that pessimism about the war stems from a blinkered and biased elite. . . . . But at least some of the Republicans hearing directly from the Pentagon aren’t so sanguine. “On a bipartisan basis, it was pretty clear to us that there was no plan, no strategy,” said Sara Jacobs, another Democratic member of the committee. The briefers, she said, “could not articulate an endgame, and we are three weeks into this war.”

The big question now is if an American ground invasion is imminent. I suspect people are underestimating the possibility because it’s such a manifestly terrible idea. Americans certainly don’t want to see troops on the ground: In a Reuters/Ipsos poll last week, only 34 percent of respondents said they would back the deployment of Special Forces soldiers into Iran, and a mere 7 percent support a larger-scale attack. The markets — one of the few forces that can constrain Trump — seem to assume a relatively quick resolution to the war, which is most likely why oil prices haven’t risen as much as some anticipated.

Yet despite all the reasons America shouldn’t escalate its war with Iran, there’s a good chance it will. Trump is sending thousands more troops to the Middle East, and in the past, when he’s massed military forces outside a hostile country, he’s used them. “Some U.S. officials think a crushing show of force to conclude the fighting would create more leverage in peace talks or simply give Trump something to point to and declare victory,” Axios reported on Thursday.

Jacobs, the Democratic congresswoman, told me that the Pentagon’s request for $200 billion to fund a war that’s burning through hundreds of millions of dollars a day is a tell. “That’s not a one-time cost to wrap things up,” she said. “That’s a down payment on a long war.”

This would not, obviously, be the first time the United States ramped up a war of choice just to avoid a humiliating defeat. In his memoir, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara wrote about how, during the Vietnam War, the C.I.A. warned that failure “would be damaging to U.S. prestige,” leading the United States to prolong a pointless conflict in the hope of saving face. During years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, Crow recalled, military leaders would repeatedly claim “that one more big troop surge, one more big offensive, would get it done and put us in a better position and win the war.”

Never before, however, did America arrive at the threshold of a quagmire so quickly, with so much advance warning about the precise errors it was making. . . . . And yet here we are, lurching toward a new version of a familiar catastrophe, suffering from some national form of neurotic repetition compulsion. “This is like the horrible, lame-dad cover band version of the worst of American foreign policy,” said Matt Duss, the executive vice president of the Center for International Policy.

Someday, perhaps, when we’re picking up the pieces from yet another ill-conceived war, Republicans will explain that behind the scenes, they opposed it. One of the biggest problems in Congress, said Crow, is the gap between what people say privately and their willingness to demonstrate “the strength of their convictions” in public. “I’m always trying to close that gap with folks, and I always remind people that it’s never too late to do the right thing,” he said. He may be right, but the sooner the better.

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The Felon's Countdown to a Ground War

 When George W. Bush announced the launch of the Iraq War, I had a very bad feeling about what the outcome would be - a bad feeling that proved all too correct.   I have a similar bad feeling about what could be an utter debacle that Felon seems to be leading the nation towards. Perhaps part of my bad feeling stems from living in an area with a huge number of military personnel, some of whom deployed to the Middle East.  Unlike the Felon and Hegseth who seeming view members of the living toy soldiers to be used for enhancing their egos, I know these individuals as friends and neighbors.  The biggest source of my fears are the very real possibility that the Felon and Hegseth are ignoring the warnings of military commanders and others who see a potential ground war as both dangerous and not fully a road to victory. Also, a ground war could result in many deaths of our military members, potential destruction of more oil facilities, and the Strait of Hormuz still under an Iranian stranglehold.  With the Felon, we have leadership that are both delusional and convinced they know more than the true experts.  Also disturbing are Hegseth's statements making this a war of religion - Christofascist America out to destroy Muslims. A long piece in The Atlantic looks at where things may be headed and why outcomes could differ from what the Felon expects. Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump [The Felon] announced this week that the United States and Iran had made significant progress in negotiations, and he was allowing five days to reach a deal. Tehran denied that it was talking with Washington at all. This is not, in any meaningful sense, a negotiation: It is a countdown.

The timing is not coincidental. Thousands of Marines and much of the 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne are en route to the Middle East. Trump may intend the talks to act as cover for an escalation decision already made. Even if he doesn’t, the structural reality is the same: When the deadline expires, he will be close to having significant ground-combat capability in the region and a collapsing diplomatic process to justify using it.

The gap between the two sides makes the collapse of talks likely. The American framework is, in essence, a demand for Iran’s surrender. The administration’s 15-point proposal, delivered to Iran via Pakistan, requires Tehran to dismantle its entire uranium-enrichment infrastructure, surrender its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, sever all ties with proxy forces across the region, and accept strict limits on its conventional military. In exchange, Washington is offering sanctions relief and support for a civilian nuclear-energy program. The proposal is very similar to the deal that the United States put on the table before the bombing campaign began.

Iran’s counter-framework reflects a regime that does not believe it is losing. Tehran is demanding binding guarantees that neither the United States nor Israel will strike again, reparations for the damage already inflicted, and formal recognition of its control over the Strait of Hormuz. On enrichment and proxies, Iranian negotiators have shown no willingness to move.

The war has not moderated the Iranian regime. It has hardened it. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps now dominates Iran’s internal deliberations to a degree unprecedented even under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran effectively controls the strait, and it knows that this control affords Tehran real leverage. Iran appears to have concluded that it is better positioned for a war of endurance than for a negotiated capitulation.

Trump could still choose to declare victory, or even accept terms closer to Iran’s position, if he concludes that the alternative is a longer and more uncertain war.

Last year’s trade confrontation with China ended with significant American concessions obscured by wins against U.S. allies and dressed in the language of reciprocal success. A similar reframing is conceivable here. He could point to Iran’s degraded navy, its shattered air force, the deaths of senior regime officials, and the setback to its nuclear program and argue that the threat But the Iran case will be harder to obscure than the China one was. Trade balances are abstract; the Strait of Hormuz is not. A deal that leaves the IRGC in effective control of the world’s most crucial shipping lane, imposes no enforceable limits on Iran’s missile or enrichment programs, and offers the regime international legitimacy cannot easily be framed as victory, especially when America’s closest regional partners will be lining up to say otherwise.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly told Trump that the United States should continue fighting to destroy the Iranian regime and remake the region. The United Arabmirates’ ambassador to the United States rejected the idea of a “simple cease-fire,” calling instead for “a conclusive outcome that addresses Iran’s full range of threats.”

Meanwhile, Israel remains committed to regime change or, failing that, maximum degradation, and it worries about a deal that meets Tehran halfway or a cease-fire. These governments can be expected to push Trump to continue the war once the talks collapse, although they seem to have concerns about ground operations.

But Trump wants to avoid a messy, long war, which could lead to sustained high oil prices and a possible recession. Ground troops would seem likely to bring this outcome about—but Trump appears to believe that their introduction will instead deliver a decisive knockout blow, which will either compel Tehran to accept his terms or make a U.S. declaration of victory credible. . . . . three ground operations are most likely: a raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities at Isfahan to seize its stockpile of highly enriched uranium; the seizure of Kharg Island, Iran’s principal oil-export hub; and the deployment of troops to Iran’s shoreline to suppress its attacks on shipping through the strait.

Each carries risks that the administration appears to be underestimating. . . . . Iran’s highly enriched uranium is a white, crystalline solid, uranium hexafluoride, stored in thick, steel cylinders, and cannot be reliably and permanently destroyed with explosives. If the cylinders are pierced, they emit a severely hazardous gas. A successful seizure from Isfahan would require U.S. troops to secure a wide perimeter, locate and excavate up to 970 pounds of the uranium buried under an unknown depth of rubble, protect it from counterattack, load it onto aircraft, and depart under fire. The operation would be arguably the most complex raid ever carried out by U.S. forces. The 970 pounds of uranium could also be spread among Isfahan and two other sites, raising the possibility of multiple raids.

Kharg Island and the coastal positions present different but equally serious problems. Forces on Kharg would immediately be within range of sustained Iranian fire; Iran could respond by attacking energy infrastructure and desalination plants across the Persian Gulf or destroying the island’s oil facilities to deny them to the Americans. Coastal positions are reportedly located near population centers, which would complicate both the military mission and the international response. In each scenario, the most plausible outcome is not a clean victory but a situation that demands more troops, more time, and more exposure to avert failure.

The deeper problem is that military operations, however successful tactically, cannot substitute for what the war is trying to achieve strategically. Trump launched this conflict believing that Iran was weak, and that a short, sharp campaign would force a new leader to terms. The regime has proved more resilient and more capable of inflicting sustained damage on the region than the [Felon] president expected.

[The Felon] Trump has a long history of claiming victory in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This may be the rare moment when that instinct serves the country—because the alternative appears to be doubling down on a losing strategy by launching a ground war.

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The Felon and MAGA Have Destroyed Conservativism

I often note that I grew up in a Republican voting family and was actively involved in the Republican Party for over a decade.   That Republican Party of yesteryear that I belonged to is dead and gone, destroyed by the rise of the Felon and his MAGA movement which have not only welcomed into the GOP "big tent" some of the ugliest elements of the far right that back in my era in the GOP were kept to the fringes and and viewed with mistrust - if not horror - by many traditional Republicans.   Traditional Republicans who are not living in a fantasy world where they pretend nothing has changed have fled the GOP like the author of a piece in The Atlantic, myself and many others I know.  Open racism and misogyny are now welcomed in the GOP of today and by embracing the Felon, it's clear that morality and some semblance of decency are no longer a requirement for admission to the party leadership. Neo-Nazis and white supremacists are now fully welcomed as are the most extreme right wing "Christians." As long as one hates racial minorities, gays, and wants a quasi-theocracy, the welcome mat is there for joining the GOP.   As the piece in The Atlantic lays out, the destruction of traditional American conservatism has been nearly complete.  Here are article highlights:

The “Make America Great Again” movement is the beating heart of the GOP, the dominant political party in America—which makes MAGA the most important political movement in the world. And that is why some recent developments within the MAGA movement are so disquieting.

Earlier this month, the College Republicans of America, one of the oldest youth organizations affiliated with the Republican Party, hired Kai Schwemmer as the group’s political director. Schwemmer has past ties to the white supremacist and anti-Semite Nick Fuentes and his Groyper movement, a loose network of white-nationalist activists and internet trolls who gravitate around online influencers, primarily Fuentes.

College Republicans of America President Martin Bertao defended the hire on X, writing that he had reflected on the decision and chose “to apologize … to absolutely NOBODY,” adding, “CRA will never back down to the WOKE mob!” . . . . Schwemmer is hardly an isolated case. Last year, Politico reported on leaked Telegram chats spanning seven months from leaders of Young Republican chapters in several states—chairs, vice chairs, and committee members exchanging racist and anti-Semitic messages.

While some figures in the GOP criticized the comments, Vice President Vance came to the defense of the Young Republicans, saying that the “reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys.” Vance added, “They tell edgy, offensive jokes. Like, that’s what kids do.” Several of the worst offenders were in their 30s.

A few months later the Miami Herald revealed that leaked chats from a Republican group at Florida International University showed participants using racial slurs, repeatedly expressing a desire to violently attack Black people, and describing women as “whores.” The text messages contained jokes about gas chambers, slavery, and rape. There was also plenty of praise for Adolf Hitler. Such praise appeared so regularly that at one point, the group was renamed “Nazi Heaven.”

These incidents are evidence of the normalization of white-supremacist and neo-Nazi rhetoric among younger Republican activists.

Among the older generations, a ferocious, intra-MAGA civil war is being waged between high-profile media and political personalities, including people such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Matt Walsh on one side and Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin on the other. There’s also Laura Loomer versus Elon Musk, and Musk versus Steve Bannon, and Bannon versus Dinesh D’Souza, and D’Souza versus Carlson. On and on it goes, with no end in sight.

The most recent bitter recriminations center on the Iran war and Israel. Consider an exchange between the current and former Fox News hosts Mark Levin and Megyn Kelly.

Levin, a popular radio-talk-show host who strongly supports both the Iran war and Israel, took to social media last Sunday to describe Kelly, a critic of both the war and of Israel, as an “emotionally unhinged, lewd, and petulant wreck” who is “utterly toxic.” Kelly, who hosts one of the most-listened-to podcasts in America, responded by calling him “Micropenis Mark Levin,”

Levin soon fired back. “Busy Sunday morning for Megyn Kelly,” he wrote. “She wakes up and has ‘micropenis’ on her mind. Suffice to say, if it talks like a harlot, and posts like a harlot, it’s … well, you know the rest. Shalom!”

Then Donald Trump weighed in, posting a defense of Levin on Truth Social, calling him “a truly Great American Patriot” who is “far smarter than those who criticize him.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, however, sided with Kelly. . . .The MAGA movement, like other radical political movements before it, is eating its own.

In January 2016 I was a lifelong Republican, having served in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations. Yet that month I wrote in The New York Times that Republicans should not vote for Trump under any circumstances, even if his opponent was Hillary Clinton. I described him as a “virulent combination of ignorance, emotional instability, demagogy, solipsism and vindictiveness.” But I went beyond that.

Trump’s nomination, I said, would threaten the future of the Republican Party, because although Clinton might defeat it at the polls, only Trump could redefine it. I added this: Mr. Trump’s presence in the 2016 race has already had pernicious effects, but they’re nothing compared with what would happen if he were the Republican standard-bearer. . . . Mr. Trump would represent a dramatic break with and a fundamental assault on the party’s best traditions.

What we have seen in the decade since is the realization of those worst fears. To be clear, the MAGA movement’s rancidity isn’t due to only Trump. The impulses now on display within MAGA existed long before he entered politics. But those impulses were, for the most part, confined to the fringes. Republican presidents and other political leaders did what they could to keep it that way.

But from the moment Trump announced his candidacy in the summer of 2015, he sought to cultivate and encourage the ugliest passions within the GOP, dousing the embers of hate with kerosene. Among Trump’s most consequential legacies has been his deformation of the temperament and disposition of virtually the entire Republican Party.

I don’t mean to suggest the Republican Party pre-Trump was anything close to perfect. Like any political party, it had weaknesses, and its record was mixed. It was hardly the ideal embodiment of conservatism; no political party could be. But under Trump, the GOP has become a profoundly different, and a far more malicious, party. Within the Republican Party, from top to bottom, Trump has made cruelty and transgressiveness cool. And in the process, he killed American conservatism.

Trump has overturned many long-standing public-policy commitments of conservatives—supporting free trade, reforming entitlements, supporting foreign assistance to save lives and advance American interests, standing by NATO, and standing against Russian oppression at home and aggression abroad. But the deeper and more lasting damage he has done is to conservatism as a sensibility.

One of the most important figures in the history of conservatism is the 18th-century Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke. In Reflections on the Revolution in France, his most famous work, Burke warned about the dangers of a revolutionary zeal aimed at completely redesigning a civilization. Burke rightly feared it would unleash destructive passions and horrifying violence. . . . Burke’s key insight was that stripping civilizations of their beauty and sense of reverence would lead to spiritual impoverishment and, eventually, to terror. And like his contemporary Adam Smith, Burke believed that the cultivation of human sympathy, including the capacity to feel the pain of others, was essential to a good society.

British conservatism is somewhat different than American conservatism; the latter has traditionally been somewhat more forward-leaning, a bit more rights-based and ideological, and focused more on the individual as opposed to the community. . . . both recognize the importance of the education of character, the cultivation of decency, and the taming of the dark passions.

MAGA is not just antithetical to conservatism; it is at war with it. . . . At the core of the MAGA project and Trumpism is disruption and destruction, the delegitimization and razing of institutions, and the brutalization of opponents. Its leader, the president, abuses power, hurts the innocent, and mocks the dead before their families have even begun to grieve.

The MAGA ethic celebrates dehumanization. It is lawless, crude, and combative. Its entire ecosystem—social media, podcasts, and talk radio—is committed to spreading lies and conspiracy theories, to stoking rage and resentment. The disciples of the MAGA movement define themselves by what they hate much more than by what they love. They pursue culture wars with revolutionary zeal even as they vandalize our civic culture.

Trump and the key figures within the MAGA movement rejected conservatism not because they failed to understand conservatism well enough but because they understood it all too well. If conservatism is to ever again find a home in the GOP, it will be because the party decides that what is true and good and beautiful is indeed worth conserving. Right now the Republican Party is light-years away from that, and those who cherish conservatism should say so.

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Trump’s Hypocrisy on Religious Freedom

Like many in todays Republican Party and the MAGA universe, the Felon, his regime and the sycophants that surround him claim to be champions of "religious freedom."  The reality, however, demonstrates that this so-called support for "religious freedom" translates into special rights for right wing "Christians" and the demonization of those who do not subscribe to the Christofascists' agenda and beliefs, particularly Muslims. Also on the lists of targets are transgender Americans, members of the LGBT community and other religious minorities. Indeed, Project 2025 is a blueprint for increasing the rights of "conservative Christians" and bolstering white privilege.  It also plots ending same sex marriage, restricting voting rights and erasing separation of church and state as it pushes a de facto official religion based on Christofascist dogma.  The religious freedom of others, be they non-believers, atheists, liberal Christians and religious minorities, especially Muslims, are either trampled upon or erased.  A main editorial in the New York Times looks at the hypocrisy of the Felon and Republicans who bloviate about religious freedom, but despise the rights of others. Here are highlights:

The Trump administration holds itself up as a defender of religious freedom. It has created a Religious Liberty Commission, increased funding for faith-based schools and changed vaccine policies to allow more religious exemptions. It ordered a Christmas Day missile attack in Nigeria on what President Trump described as a terrorist group that was killing Christians. The administration has punished universities in the name of preventing antisemitism. “I’ve done more for religion than any other president,” the president claimed at the National Prayer Breakfast this year.

Yet there is an exception to this effort. Mr. Trump and his Republican Party appear uninterested in protecting the religious rights of Muslims. Instead, they are often hostile to Islam.

Their words are odious. As a presidential candidate, Mr. Trump called for a “Muslim ban” on entry to the United States, and a version of it remains in effect. “I think Islam hates us,” he has said. Several other Republican politicians have made similar statements in recent months.

“Islam is not a religion. It’s a cult,” Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama posted on social media. Representative Brandon Gill of Texas wrote, “Islam is incompatible with our culture and our governing system.” Representative Randy Fine of Florida called for “radical deportations of all mainstream Muslim legal and illegal immigrants and citizenship revocations wherever possible.” Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee — who has said that Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York should be expelled from the country — this month wrote that “Muslims don’t belong in American society.”

Of the Somali diaspora in the United States, the president said: “They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country.” He referred to them as “low-I.Q. people.” He described Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a Somali American, as “garbage” and said the United States should stop “taking in garbage.” He has directed similar ire at Afghan refugees, and his administration has smeared pro-Palestinian activists as terrorists.

The statements are particularly alarming when viewed in the context of Mr. Trump’s tendency to behave as an aspiring autocrat. Autocrats have a history of targeting vulnerable minority groups to justify their moves.

Recent events in Minnesota show how the scapegoating of a minority group can mushroom into broader violence. The Trump administration chose the state for an immigration crackdown last year, citing a government fraud scandal centered in the large Somali community there. The president unfairly maligned the full community for the scandal. The resulting crackdown led to the brutalization of many residents, both Muslim and not, immigrant and citizen, and to the killing of two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Irrational fear of Shariah — a set of principles, based on the Quran, that guide life for Muslims, much as biblical precepts guide Christians and Jews — is another way in which anti-Muslim hate is translating into policy. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas recently signed a law that would prevent what he called “Shariah compounds,” supposedly communities that are open only to Muslims and that subject their residents to religious law.

These efforts are based on ludicrously false pretenses. Extreme versions of Shariah are a problem in some countries, including Afghanistan and Iran, but they are not a threat in the United States. American Muslims are not attempting to impose Shariah principles on others. As Mustafa Akyol of the Cato Institute has noted, the recent proposals mimic anti-Catholic and anti-Mormon laws enacted in previous centuries. They are based on lies and are intended to scapegoat.

The millions of Americans who practice Islam are just as American as anyone else. They pay taxes, own businesses and serve in the armed forces. Many have been here for generations. Others upended their lives to move here, in some cases because of this country’s constitutional protection of religious freedom.

The surge of anti-Muslim hate has caused many of them to feel threatened in their own country. Some feel anxious about entering a mosque or wearing obvious signs of their faith. In Texas and other places where political leaders have spread hate, the fears can be acute.

Mr. Trump’s disparagement of Muslims is part of a broader pattern of bigotry by him. He has targeted Latinos and trans Americans, too. While he criticizes universities for tolerating antisemitism, he and other Republicans have allied themselves with some of the worst peddlers of anti-Jewish hate. Since he entered politics more than a decade ago, with a campaign kickoff speech full of anti-Mexican sentiments, a wide variety of hate crimes have surged, according to F.B.I. data.

In an editorial last year decrying the surge of antisemitism, we emphasized that not all accusations of discrimination are legitimate. . . . . A fundamental American principle is that people should be judged by their behavior, not their identity. Mr. Trump and too many other Republicans are instead besmirching an entire faith even as they claim to protect religious freedom.

Mr. Trump is prosecuting a war against Iran, which identifies as an Islamic republic and has an overwhelmingly Muslim population. His planning for that war has been reckless, and his explanations of its aims have been contradictory. Combined with the surge of anti-Muslim bigotry from Republicans, the attack on Iran has the potential to look like a war against Islam. Certainly, the bigotry weakens America’s position in the world, especially with heavily Muslim countries, including American partners like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

The attacks against Islam and Muslims from Mr. Trump and other Republicans are shameful. They are filled with lies. They deserve denunciation from all Americans, regardless of politics or religion.

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The Felon Is Lying About the Iran War

The Felon has been a pathological liar for decades going all the way back to his five draft deferments for "bone spurs" in order to avoid serving in the military during the Vietnam War. His political rise relied on lies claiming Barack Obama was not born in the USA and have continued nonstop ever since. Indeed, during his first term the Washington Post (before Jeff Bezos sold out to the Felon) calculated some thirty thousand lies. Now, with the USA at war in Iran the endless lies are even more dangerous as the Felon on the one hand claims he is about to "wind down" the war and on the other more ships, including amphibious  assault ships, and troops are being moved to the region and some sources suggest that ground troops may land in Iran. Sadly, the Felon's lies are similar to those told about the Vietnam War and the second Iraq War where false pretenses were used for justifying going to war and  the truth about the military situation was hidden. The result of the lies were that many thousands lost their lives ultimately for nothing - or at least not the goals originally claimed - and billions of dollars in taxpayer money was squandered. While the Felon lives in his own fantasy world, one would hope that the military leadership would be aware of America's unfortunate history and strive to avoid repeating the past. Unfortunately, the Felon's "secretary of war" seemingly sees all of this as a live video game and is invoking god as justification for both the war and the killing of Iranian civilians.  A main editorial in the New York Times looks at the ongoing lies:

From his first announcement of the attack on Iran on Feb. 28, [the Felon] President Trump has issued a stream of falsehoods about the war. He has said Iran wants to engage in negotiations, though its government shows no sign of it. He has claimed that the United States “destroyed 100% of Iran’s Military capability” when Tehran continues to inflict damage throughout the region. He has said the war is almost complete even as he calls in reinforcements from around the globe.

Lying is standard behavior for [the Felon] Mr. Trump, of course. His political career began with a lie about Barack Obama’s birthplace, and he has lied about his business, his wealth, his inauguration crowd size, his defeat in the 2020 election and so much more. A CNN tally of Mr. Trump’s falsehoods during one part of his first term found that he averaged eight false claims per day. Many people are so accustomed to his lies that they hardly notice them anymore.

Yet lying about war is uniquely corrosive. When a president signals that the truth does not matter in wartime, he encourages his cabinet and his generals to mislead the country and one another about how the war is going. He creates a culture in which deadly mistakes and even war crimes can become more common. He makes it harder to win by hiding the realities of conflict and by making allies wary of joining the fight. Ultimately, he undermines American values and interests.

There is a reasonable debate to have about the wisdom of this war. Iran’s murderous government does indeed present a threat — to its own people, to its region and to global stability. Mr. Trump could make a fact-based argument for confronting the regime now, . . . We are skeptical, but we acknowledge that there is a case to be made.

[The Felon] Mr. Trump is not making it. Instead, he has lied about the reasons for the war and about its progress, in an apparent attempt to disguise his poor planning and the war’s questionable basis.

The president was only a few minutes into his Feb. 28 announcement of the start of the conflict when he offered an obviously contradictory rationale for it. He repeated his claim that American attacks last June “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program while also citing that program as a reason to go to war. The claim of obliteration is false: Iran retains about 970 pounds of highly enriched uranium, potentially enough for 10 warheads.

The lies have continued since then. Days later, Mr. Trump said the U.S. military had a “virtually unlimited supply” of high-end munitions. The Pentagon nevertheless has had to withdraw weapons from South Korea to sustain its efforts in the Middle East. He has also asserted that “nobody” believed Iran would retaliate by attacking Arab countries. . . . . In truth, some experts had warned of precisely this scenario.

In another instance, Mr. Trump has used false information to continue his alarming penchant to portray people who contradict him as un-American. Last weekend, he posted an allegation that “Iran, working in close coordination with the Fake News Media” had spread fake videos of an American aircraft burning in the ocean. The White House has offered no examples of American media outlets having done so.

A shocking falsehood came on March 7, when Mr. Trump claimed in his typically offhand way that a strike on an elementary school in the town of Minab during the first hours of the war “was done by Iran.” The attack killed at least 175 people, most of them children. The U.S. military has conducted an investigation and preliminarily concluded that an American missile mistakenly hit the school. The military deserves credit for its honesty. The commander in chief, however, still has not retracted his statement.

This pattern is an echo of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, when small lies grew into a bigger ones, such as the covered-up massacres in My Lai and Haditha. The consequences of those untruths were long-lasting. Americans’ faith in government never recovered from the deceptions of Vietnam. And the second Iraq war, which George W. Bush’s administration sold on the grounds of fictitious weapons of mass destruction, represents the start of our cynical modern political era. Since that war began in 2003, every Gallup poll asking about the country’s direction has shown that most Americans are dissatisfied with it.

Lies about war also make it harder to achieve victory: The more one spreads falsehoods, the less one feels obliged to face reality. In retrospect, Americans understand that their leaders’ refusal to confront the truth in Iraq and Vietnam led to strategic errors. The pattern is repeating. . . . The global economy is now dealing with the consequences of his overconfidence.

He may yet learn a more personal lesson about lying in war. Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush will forever be remembered as having misled Americans about U.S. military action. They learned that falsehoods can boomerang on the leaders who tell them.

Starting a war is the most serious action that a political leader can take. It ends lives and can change history. The decisions that guide war must be based in reality, and presidents owe American service members and their families the truth about why they are being asked to fight. Whatever short-term gain Mr. Trump thinks he is getting by lying about the war in Iran is far exceeded by the cost, for him, the country and the world.

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The Felon Has Only Himself to Blame

Currently the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to shipping other than Iranian tankers, Goldman Sachs is prediction that oil prices will remain high through 2027, and short of landing ground troops on Iranian soil there may be no way to realistically reopen the Strait.  All of this was predictable and, indeed, the Felon was specifically warned that what we are now experiencing could come to pass. He, in his typical hubris filled and delusional way, ignored the warnings and now is flailing around looking for a magical fix.  His regime has requested $200 billion in additional military spending and some congressional Republicans are balking and are no doubt worried what $5.00/gallon gas prices through the 2026 mid-term elections will do to their prospects of holding control of the Senate much less the House of Representatives.  Meanwhile, the Felon's demands that America's erstwhile allies - all of which have been insulted, denigrated, threatened and hit with the Felon's insane tariffs - aid the USA in reopening the Strait of Hormuz have been ignored or rejected. Now, Israel and Iran are taking turns targeting oil and gas facilities across the Persian Gulf region and further stoking increases in oil prices even as the America stock exchanges are down significantly.  Whose fault is all of this? The Felon's, of course, along with his unqualified "Secretary of War" who seems to see the military operation as a live video game.  A lengthy column in the New York Times looks at the mess the Felon has created:

[The Felon] President Trump has created the conditions for another quagmire in the Middle East, and the question is whether American military excellence can rescue him from his own impulsiveness and incompetence.

Here is the present situation, in a nutshell: The United States and Israel have established absolute air dominance over the nation of Iran. In a few short days, our combined forces have destroyed Iran’s ability to protect its own airspace, have killed much of Iran’s senior military and civilian leadership, and have sunk much of Iran’s navy.

At the same time, the United States and Israel are damaging Iran’s nuclear program from the air, and they are destroying Iran’s ability to manufacture and deploy ballistic missiles. They are also attacking the internal security forces that maintain the Iranian regime’s hold on the population.

The intention of the air campaign is clear: to destroy the regime’s capacity to harm its neighbors while also creating the conditions for a revolution on the ground. If that’s the extent of the military mission, the military is accomplishing it with remarkable efficiency. Iran is being badly battered. Even if the war ended today, it would take years for the Iranian military to fully recover from the losses it has suffered so far.

While Iran’s drones and missiles have inflicted damage on American forces and our allies, that damage is far less than what the U.S. and Israel have inflicted on Iran.

So why, then, is Trump lashing out at American allies? Why was he “shocked” that Iran struck Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait in response to American attacks?

Perhaps the answer lies in a Wall Street Journal report from last Friday. According to The Journal, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned Trump that Iran might attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz and Trump shrugged off the threat and launched the attack anyway.

“He told his team that Tehran would likely capitulate before closing the strait,” The Journal wrote, “and even if Iran tried, the U.S. military could handle it.”

But Iran did not capitulate. There is no real sign the regime is in danger of falling. Instead, it has effectively closed the strait, and it’s reportedly done so without choking off its own oil exports. In other words, while other nations can’t ship oil through the strait, Iran still is.

Iran may not be able to seriously damage Israel with its missiles (though a few missiles have gotten through Israel’s defenses and killed Israeli civilians), and it may not be able to sink American ships, but it can still potentially plunge the world economy into a state of crisis. It could well emerge from the conflict with its regime intact (and perhaps even more hard-line) and its power over the world economy undiminished.

In a recent post, the Institute for the Study of War described the problem well: “A weakened regime that remains in power after this war would be able to disrupt shipping whenever and for however long it pleases with little effort if its current, relatively limited, strike campaign on shipping proves sufficient to cause the U.S. and Israel to surrender.” “A failure to demonstrate the will and ability to deny Iran the ability to disrupt traffic,” it wrote, “will make it enormously harder to deter Iran from future disruptions.”

That’s the logic that leads to a quagmire. If America declares victory now, when the Iranian regime is still in power and the strait is closed, then Iran perversely can claim that it won. It took a huge punch, absorbed the blow, and still forced America to climb down. It employed its ultimate weapon — closing the strait — and America had no effective answer.

Commit to opening the strait (and keeping it open) by force, and the U.S. may well find itself in yet another open-ended, costly conflict with at least some American soldiers on Iranian soil. This would be war on our enemy’s terms and terrain, with the potential of slowly but surely inflicting casualties and costs on the American military until we grow tired of the conflict and leave.

Trump’s recklessness has left the United States with few good options. Indeed, the dilemma America now faces is a perfect illustration of why Trump should have taken his case for war to the Congress and the American people before he fired the first missile.

I’ve had friends ask me, “Well, if he didn’t think Congress would approve, what do you expect him to do? Sit on his hands?” The answer is simple: The Constitution doesn’t give the president the power to disregard Congress. So, no, don’t go to war if you can’t get Congress to approve.

And if a Republican president can’t get a Republican Congress to support his war, perhaps that provides even more reason to doubt the wisdom of the conflict.

Had he not alienated key allies through economic warfare and threats to seize Greenland, it could have been easier to assemble, in advance, an allied force to protect the Strait of Hormuz.

Instead, Trump launched a major war on his own initiative while announcing competing and potentially contradictory war aims. Is the goal regime change? Unconditional surrender? Or is it much narrower — the destruction of Iran’s missile and drone forces, sinking its navy, stopping its nuclear program and destroying its ability to wage war through its proxy forces, including Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and the kaleidoscope of allied militias in Syria and Iraq.

The Iranian regime, by contrast, has a single, simple theory of victory: Survive. If the regime is still standing at the end of the conflict, then Iran lives to fight again. And if it survives at least in part through closing the Strait of Hormuz, then it knows exactly how to fight again.

Even when wars are carefully planned, with allies brought on board and a majority of the public in support, they are still highly volatile and unpredictable.

My great concern is that Trump has created the conditions for failure. He has taken our well-supplied, well-trained and well-led troops and has deployed them on a mission that lacks clear public support (especially compared to previous American wars), lacks clearly defined objectives, and may not ultimately be achievable without a large-scale escalation.

And now, dismayed that the war has not resulted in the regime’s immediate capitulation or destruction, he’s flailing about, once again threatening the viability of NATO if our allies don’t come and bail him out from a war they did not start and did not ask for.

As an American, I want our forces to succeed, once they are committed. I want to see the military open the Strait of Hormuz as quickly and painlessly as possible. I want to see the Iranian regime collapse and replaced by a democracy. That regime is loathsome. It’s an enemy of the United States. It deserves to fall. If it does, I will cheer its demise.

At the same time, however, my patriotism can’t blind me to reality. This is not how our democracy should go to war. Trump is not the right man to lead our nation into battle. People I respect applaud Trump for his courage in taking on Iran. But I don’t see courage. I see recklessness. I see thoughtlessness.

I see a man who plunged a nation into a conflict without fully comprehending the risks. I see a man full of hubris after achieving success in much more limited military engagements. And he’s now counting on two of the world’s most competent militaries to essentially bail him out.

Trump has only himself to blame. He led America into an unconstitutional war. And now he’s compounding that sin by proving to be every bit as reckless a commander as he is a president.