The incredible Gullibility of Trump Supporters/the Right

Idaho white vigilantes.

As I have noted many times, I continue to amazed - shocked might be a better term - at the willingness of Trump supporters, evangelical christians (lower case "c"), and the far right in general to believe every Trump lie and far fetched lie put out by extremist groups or just as likely Russian bots. Fact checking is seemingly an unknown concept to many of these people and they share falsehoods on social media and have near apoplexy over "news stories" that are not even true - often not even legitimate.  I truly do not comprehend a mindset so eager to believe the worse about others or believe any and ever inflammatory lie. Are they simply ignorant and too lazy to fact check, bigots or some mix of the two?  This gullibility and mindlessness was recently illustrated by events in a town in Idaho that were based on a social media myth that bore no relation to reality.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the manner in which armed white vigilantes/residents were played for fools while endangering the rest of the public.  Here are article excerpts:

Protesters had only begun assembling peacefully in Idaho when a Facebook page for retired police officers advised its followers to stay on high alert. “We will protect our neighborhoods,” it vowed.

So when early reports about potential violence surfaced a day later — claiming “ANTIFA agitators” were storming the state this week — scores of residents took to the streets. Armed with military-style assault rifles, they stood guard in places such as Coeur d’Alene, a resort town of 50,000 on a lake in northwest Idaho.

“Enough of us swung into action, and put the word out on social media and elsewhere, that we were able to deploy and meet any violent elements that might come here from out of state,” said Trevor Treller, a sommelier and one of the armed locals. Treller, 48, said he mobilized after hearing from trusted voices that “antifa types” were on the move.It would not prove to be true.

As vigils and protest actions unfolded in Idaho this week, local officials across the state confirmed that not a single participant was known to have defiled a home or storefront in the name of “antifa,” a loose label attributed to far-left activists. Many of the rumors about violent protests originated from dubious Facebook posts, often shared widely and rarely debunked, residents there said.

The raft of myths and misstatements that triggered visceral reactions throughout Idaho illustrates how long-standing grievances have fused with the vast reach of social media during protests that have swept through the country — in big cities and rural towns — after the killing of a black man in the custody of Minneapolis police last week.

As President Trump militarizes the government’s response to the roiling demonstrations, armed civilians across the country are taking matters into their own hands. They have engaged in preemptive acts of escalation, often in response to imaginary threats, raising tensions at demonstrations touched off by the death of 46-year-old George Floyd and intensified by the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic collapse, which have disproportionately affected black Americans.

Such actions are particularly visible in Idaho’s Treasure Valley, long a hotbed of the anti-government militia movement and a magnet for disaffected whites fleeing more-diverse and increasingly liberal enclaves, experts said. The mobilization of counterprotesters, these observers said, offers stark evidence that rising calls for racial justice are echoing across the country at the very moment that white resentment is also flaring.

“It’s combustible,” said Todd Shallat, a historian at Boise State University. “The local acts of vigilantism show how a rising population of discontented whites is reacting to the increasingly visible claims of minority groups.”

There’s so much implicit bias about black people’s criminality that some people assume there’s going to be violence or infiltration when we gather,” said Whitney Mestelle, a local activist in Boise who helped organize a peaceful vigil Tuesday. “They may even have good intentions, but it doesn’t make me feel more comfortable to see people open-carry.”

[D]iscussion about antifa has reverberated especially widely across Facebook, including on a page that bills itself as “North Idaho News.” The page acknowledges in fine print that it is “not affiliated with any real news company.” On Monday, though, it claimed to have “credible information that violent rioters, not just peaceful protesters, have plans to come to Coeur d’Alene.” Reached Wednesday via Facebook message, the unidentified operator of North Idaho News declined to comment.

The post quickly gained widespread attention, troubling the likes of Chris Dawson, a retired police officer from Santa Clarita, Calif., and the president of the ex-law-enforcement group on Facebook that put its members on high alert. His Facebook page shared the notice, and Dawson said he had been “given information that antifa would be coming in from Portland or Seattle.” Amplifying their fears was the destruction that marked some demonstrations in neighboring states.

Soon, armed members of local militia groups began patrolling the streets of cities including Coeur d’Alene, said David Hagar, a captain in the city’s police department who described the gatherings as peaceful. Asked whether antifa-affiliated individuals had targeted the city, Hagar said, “Not that we’ve identified.”
“I think a lot of it was fueled by social media,” Hagar said.

Similar rumors gripped Payette County, a rural expanse on Idaho’s western edge. One post shared widely on Facebook said antifa had dispatched a “plane load of people” arriving from Seattle, targeting Idaho’s rural regions. “The sheriff in Payette has already spotted some of them,” the notice continued.

Phone calls soon flooded the sheriff’s office, leaving local law enforcement perplexed.

The false notion continues to have traction with local paramilitary groups, including the far-right Three Percenters, who draw their name from the disputed claim that just 3 percent of American colonists were fighting at any one time during the revolt against the British crown. An Idaho branch said in a Facebook post Sunday that it had “credible intel” about plans for an antifa-induced riot in Boise. No such riot took place.

What is truly frightening is that people this ignorant and bigoted are walking around with military assault style weapons.  They would appear to be a bigger threat to public safety than mythical leftists.

The New Culture War: The Fight Over "Masculine" Men

Those on the far right and the base of today's Republican Party - i.e., Christofascists and angry white males - seem to always be looking for something to hold up as a threat to their "values" and have found a new rallying cry over the growing recognition that some aspects of "traditional masculinity" are downright toxic and harmful not only to the males who subscribe to it, but also to women and to the larger society. Last week, the American Psychological Association released guidelines addressing "toxic masculinity" and the right wing outcry was loud and clear.  Adding fuel to the fire, Gillette ran an add with a simple message that men can be better and should embrace values like kindness and empathy towards others and what might be described as subscribing to the so-called "golden rule" - basically a concept in keeping with Christ's gospel message.  From the push back from the right and the farcically named "men's rights movement" one would have though Gillette had proposed raping nuns on the high altar at St. Peter's Basilica.  A column in the New York Times looks at this new culture wars battle ground.  Here are excerpts:

How you see the role of men and women at work and at home has become an integral element of contemporary political conflict.

Until recently, most of the attention has been focused on partisan evaluations of problems confronting women. A 2017 Pew Research report found, for example, that by nearly 3 to 1 (73-25 percent), Democrats believe women face “significant obstacles that make it harder for them to get ahead than men,” while Republicans believe those obstacles are largely gone (63-34).

Last week, however, the American Psychological Association entered the fray with the release of its long-planned “Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men.”

The A.P.A. guidelines argue that the socialization of males to adhere to components of “traditional masculinity such as emotional stoicism, homophobia, not showing vulnerability, self-reliance and competitiveness” leads to the disproportion of males involved in “aggression and violence as a means to resolve interpersonal conflict” as well as “substance abuse, incarceration, and early mortality.”

According to the A.P.A., the persistent commitment of many boys and men to the norms of traditional masculinity helps explain why . . . .Men commit 90 percent of homicides in the United States and represent 77 percent of homicide victims. They’re the demographic group most at risk of being victimized by violent crime. They are 3.5 times more likely than women to die by suicide, and their life expectancy is 4.9 years shorter than women’s. Boys are far more likely to be diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder than girls, and they face harsher punishments in school — especially boys of color.

Republicans and Democrats have sharply polarized views on such findings.  According to an October 2017 Pew Research report, a quarter of Republicans said the country has not done enough to insure equal rights for women, while 54 percent said the country has done enough and 18 percent said the country has gone too far. Among Democrats, 69 percent said the country has not done enough, 26 percent said the country has done enough and 4 percent said the country has gone too far.

Even Gillette has joined the debate with its new television commercial, “We Believe: The Best Man Can Be,” a critique of toxic masculinity:  “It’s been going on far too long,” the narrator declares. “We can’t laugh it off.”

In a Jan. 7 National Review article, “Grown Men Are the Solution, Not the Problem,” David French, one of the most outspoken critics of the A.P.A. guidelines, wrote “We are in the middle of an intense culture war focused around men.”

There is a major difference between the two parties regarding the basic nature versus nurture issue that plays such a prominent role in the debate about men. Edward M. Adams, past president of Division 51 on Men and Masculinities of the American Psychological Association, emailed that the guidelines espouse positive manhood to include living in cooperation, respect, appreciation, courage, and fearlessness about being fully human. We do not see negativity, shame, unwarranted violence and aggression, gender domination, or hate and prejudice as ways to promote a better quality of life for any one of us.

The men most negatively affected by changing economics, according to Hibbing, are also those most often inclined to reject the fact that “government is the best source for providing assistance and retraining in the face of these changes.” Instead, these men “resist such assistance and feel they are entitled to the arrangements of the past.”

In this heated debate, Judith Butler, a prominent feminist and a professor of comparative literature at Berkeley, provided a strong case for the progressive argument in behalf of expanding gender norms. Butler argues “that feminism has opened up possibilities for boys to play football or to pursue the arts, or even to do both.”

The larger point, she wrote, is to let boys find their way toward activities and passions that more fully express who they are and let them flourish apart from any social judgments about what is appropriate for their gender. Indeed, the only prescription that most feminist positions make is to treat people with dignity, to honor the equality of the sexes, to accept gender diversity, and to oppose all forms of violence against people, whether young or old, on the basis of their gender or sexuality.

Many Republicans believe gender roles to be distinct and that categorical denial of hormonal or biological underpinnings to sex differences is erroneous — while simultaneously voicing doubts about the legitimacy of the science of evolution.

The current era has been marked by a continuous series of challenges to once indisputable truths about sex and gender. Ubiquitous contraception, for one thing, has altered the fundamentals of reproductive roles. The alteration of these fundamentals has been followed by a series of transformations and dislocations — women’s rights, reproductive rights, gay rights, transgender rights, new forms of family formation and dissolution, and vastly altered patterns of fertility. Challenges to core understandings of masculinity — and femininity — are inescapable.

The immensity of these upheavals should not be underestimated. That people are seeking political solutions to rapid societal changes is no surprise. That these solutions erupt in political conflict is also inevitable. For some, new horizons in matters of sexuality and sexual identity offer opportunity; for others, discomfort and fear predominate.

Mass Shooters: Entitlement and Rage Nurtured by the Far Right

Not everything that is wrong in America today flows from the rise of the far right in the Republican party and right wing "news" outlets such as Fox News and Breitbarth deliberately fan the flames of hate and resentment on the part of the ugliest elements of the GOP base: white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and Christian extremists/evangelical Christians.  All of these elements of the right wing base experience rage that they are not adequately respected, blame their societal isolation or lack of economic good fortune on others be it blacks, women, gays, immigrants, etc.  They are never the ones at blame regardless of their actions, be it dropping out of school, mistreatment of others or the embrace of ignorance.  Sadly, today's Republican Party is only too happy to play upon this rage and hatred factor and wittingly or not, nurtures those most threatening to society, including mass shooters who almost invariably are disaffected white males., many of whom are obsessed with guns. A piece in Salon looks at this connection between the white male mass shooters and today's political and social far right.  Here are excerpts:

Many mass shooters end up shot dead, either by their own hand or by the police. Unlike serial killers, they aren't generally available for post-crime interviews by psychologists or criminologists. But the Washington Post published a profile last week of Jesse Osborn, who survived his attempt to become a nationally famous school shooter on Feb. 14, 2016, when he was tackled by a voluntary fireman after Osborn's gun jammed during his attempted mass murder at an elementary school. He was 14 years old at the time. His rampage left two people injured and two others dead -- his father and a six-year-old boy. Osborn himself is alive and on trial for murder.

Osborn offers "extraordinary insight into the mind of an American school shooter." Those who have studied him report that Osborn shows little to no signs of remorse, and in fact seems proud of the will to dominate that led him to his crimes. He "considered himself the victim of an unfair world," Cox writes, and tried to manipulate psychologists by faking autism and schizophrenia, unsuccessfully, and claiming, again unsuccessfully, to be a victim of bullies.

But what struck me is how much Osborn — like many other mass shooters, including Nikolas Cruz, the shooter in Parkland, Florida — reminds me of the army of right-wing trolls that has grown online: The ones who call themselves "edgelords," who decorate their profiles with Pepe the Frog and who call Donald Trump their "god emperor." Like mass shooters, alt-right trolls are predominantly white men of various ages, but leaning young, fueled mainly by a belief in their own superiority and resentment that the rest of the world doesn't seem to respect it.

They are unapologetic in their sadism, relishing the pain and trauma they attempt to inflict on "libtards" and "snowflakes." Mass shooters get competitive about their body counts, and online trolls treat harassment like a game, where they "win" by maximizing the amount of abuse they dish out.

Mass shooters should be understood, it seems, as the radical edge of a larger trend of celebratory sadism spiked with right-wing politics -- a great boiling-over of rage from young and disaffected white men who believe they are victims and take great glee in trying to dominate, abuse and even assault others. This brings up extremely serious questions about the role the larger conservative movement is playing in allowing this toxicity to fester and grow.

In 2014, researchers published a paper demonstrating that online trolls showed high rates of what psychologists call the "Dark Tetrad" of personality traits, . . . "Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others)." [The piece correctly notes that the current occupant of the White House displays all of these traits.]  

Mass shooters and the alt-right intertwine directly in many other ways as well. A recent Southern Poverty Law Center report counted 43 murders at the hands of alt-right-aligned killers in the past four years. . . . Perhaps even more tellingly, the alt-right has made a habit of swarming after any high-profile mass shooting, targeting the survivors for re-victimization. Often within minutes of the first news reports, right-wing trolls will begin spreading rumors online that the survivors and family members of victims are "crisis actors," and may even encourage their followers to harass these people.

That we have seen an apparent surge in sadism, rooted in white male entitlement, is troubling enough. What makes the situation worse is the way the larger conservative movement has, almost habitually, run interference for not just alt-right trolls but, to some extent, the mass shooters who represent the most extreme expression of the same problem.

Whenever alt-right conspiracy theorists and white supremacists face actual consequences for their behavior — social media bans, public protests or just higher security expenses at public events — more mainstream conservatives, including Fox News pundits, have been willing to defend them, usually by declaring their "free speech" is being attacked by "snowflake" liberals.

Similarly, whenever there's a mass shooting, the conservative press snaps into action, seeking to minimize the situation and dissuade any effort to stop future mass shooters by disarming them.

In both cases, conservative pundits play a manipulative game, where they swear up and down that while they disapprove of the actions in question — whether it's bigoted harassment or mass murder — their supposed commitment to principles like "free speech" or "right to bear arms" prevents them from supporting even mild, common-sense efforts to rein in the bad behavior in question.

It's high time to understand mass shootings as not an anomaly, but as part of a larger ecosystem of viciousness that is growing in our culture, and has been shielded and fed by a conservative movement more interested in retaining power than confronting these larger social problems. Until we make these connections, and take actions are taken to counter the epidemic of white male sadism and rage, we can expect these terrible events to keep on happening.

Is The Only Problem in American Politics the GOP?

Continuing the theme of the previous post, a piece in New York Magazine ask the question of whether or not the only real problem with American politics is the Republican Party.  True, there are far left elements in the Democrat Party, but is the false equivalency that many pundits and self-appointed mavens of the media try to construct between the far right and the far left true?  In view, it is not and I tend to agree with the author that most of the pathology we see in the political realm comes from the far right, the Christofascists and white supremacists who now dominate the Republican Party. Say what you will about the far left, it doesn't seek to disenfranchise, deport or perhaps even kill its political opponents and/or those who look different or adhere to a different faith or no faith.  Like it or not, most of the hatred we see and domestic terrorism comes from and is committed by right wing extremists. Here are column excepts:

Political scientist Lee Drutman argues in a Vox essay that American politics is descending into what he calls “doom-loop partisanship.” Drutman notes that Americans have been “retreating into our separate tribal epistemologies, each with their own increasingly incompatible set of facts and first premises,” . . . Drutman attributes this to winner-take-all elections, the expanding power of the presidency, and the growing influence of money in politics. I think, despite all the very real design flaws in American politics, the problems he describe stem mainly from the pathologies of the Republican Party.

It is certainly true that the psychological relationship between the parties has a certain symmetry. Both fear each other will cheat to win and use their power to stack the voting deck. . . . But while it is not true that Democrats have allowed illegal voting in nontrivial levels, it is extremely true that Republicans have deliberately made voting inconvenient for Democratic-leaning constituencies. The psychology is parallel, but the underlying facts are not.

Likewise, there is a superficial similarity to the terror with which partisans now greet governments controlled by the opposing party. Obama’s presidency made Republicans [wrongly] terrified of rampant socialism and vengeful minority rule. . . . Trump’s presidency has inspired a similar terror among liberals terrified that Trump would take their insurance and deport immigrants.

Liberal fears have had a much closer relationship to reality. The reason is that the Democratic Party is racially and economically heterogeneous. Even if he had wanted to take vengeance upon white America for its sins, Obama had far too many white supporters to make such a course of action remotely practical. (A majority of Obama’s voters were white, in fact.) On economic issues, the Democratic Party relies on support and input from business and labor alike. Whatever terrors of rampant Jacobinism may have gripped the economic elite, there are limits to the fiscal and regulatory pain Democrats can impose on a constituency that has a seat at the table (many seats, actually).

There is little such balance to be found in the Republican Party. . . . [Republicans] have bottomed out on their minority support and proven able to win national power regardless, by using racial wedge issues to pry away blue-collar whites. Advocates for labor or the poor have no voice whatsoever in the Republican elite. It took a massive national mobilization to narrowly dissuade the party from snatching health insurance away from millions of people too poor or sick to afford it.

[T]he fact is that the Democratic Party is fundamentally accountable to the mainstream news media. And that [mainstream] media play[ers] try to follow rules of objectivity that the right-wing alternative media does not bother with.

What matters is that Democratic politicians need to please a news media that is open to contrary facts and willing — and arguably eager — to hold them accountable. The mainstream media have have its liberal biases, but it also misses the other way — see the Times’ disastrously wrong report, a week before the election, that the FBI saw no links between the Trump campaign and Russia and no intention by Russia to help Trump. One cannot imagine Fox News publishing an equivalently wrong story against the Republican Party’s interests — its errors all run in the same direction.

Whatever interest liberals may have in finding congenial media, they don’t dismiss the mainstream media out of hand in the way conservatives have been trained over decades to do. When the conservative news media criticizes Republicans, it is almost always to play the role of ideological enforcer, attacking them for their lack of fervor. One party has a media ecosystem that serves as a guardrail, and the other has one that serves only as an accelerant.

The left has no equivalent to a Rush Limbaugh in influence and sheer lunacy. . . . . There are figures just as crazy as Limbaugh on the left, but they are almost uniformly outside the Democratic Party coalition.

[W]hatever the very real flaws in the American political and electoral system, it is simply impossible to design any kind of a system that can withstand a stress test like a major party captured by a faction as radical as the conservative movement. Its absence of limiting principles to its ideology, indifference to empirical evidence, and inability to concede failings of its dogma lead to an endless succession of failures explained away to the base as faintheartedness.

Republicans are sealed off in a bubble of paranoia and rage, and Democrats are sealed off from that bubble. Democrats fear Republican government because it is dangerous and extreme. Republicans fear Democratic government because they are dangerous and extreme.

 Like the Christofascists who hijacked the GOP base in earnest around the time I left the Republican Party, today's GOP is defined by hatred of others and the embrace of ignorance.  It IS the problem behind so many of the nation's political woes today. 

Radical Islamists and the American Far Right: Cousins of the Terrorist Kind

I have long maintained that both American right wing extremism and Islamic terrorism ultimately stem from largely the same source: religion.  Religion and modernity that threaten the simplistic house of cards fantasy worlds that both American born Christian extremists - be they KKK members or members of "patriot groups" - and fundamentalist Muslims live in.  To both groups, those who are different or who reject their beliefs are mortal enemies.  While the violence of Islamic extremists gets far more media coverage, the reality is that "real American" and "godly Christian" extremists pose a real risk to the general public and the LGBT community since religion labels us as "other" in the minds of the weak minded and mentally challenged.  An essay I came across looks at the parallels between the two extremist/would be terrorist groups.  Here are excerpts:

The gay community in Los Angeles, seemingly, got very lucky last weekend. Especially compared to their counterparts in Orlando. A 21-year-old Indiana man with a car full of guns and bomb-making chemicals was arrested by Santa Monica police Saturday. He told police he was going to the Los Angeles gay-pride parade later that day, but didn’t say what he had in mind.

In the car was an astonishing arsenal: a loaded AR-15 assault rifle rigged to allow 60 shots to be fired without pausing, two other loaded rifles, a stun gun, a hunting knife, loads of ammunition, and a trunkful of chemicals mixed and ready to explode as a car bomb. It soon emerged that the man – James Wesley Howell of Charlestown – had a history of violent confrontations and gun-related criminal charges, and was fleeing charges of child molestation when he left Indiana. The situation spoke ominously of an imminent domestic-terrorism attack – especially in light of the massacre that had occurred at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando late Saturday. However, since none of his arsenal was used and no violence committed, Howell was only charged with a variety of felonies related to bomb and gun possession. The parade went off without notable incident, though anti-gay protesters were present and visible. The outcome stood in stark contrast to what occurred that same evening at Pulse, . . . The Orlando massacre sparked an Islamophobic backlash, with some radicalscalling for the immediate deportation of all Muslims from the United States and arming U.S. citizens in response. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump used the occasion to declare himself “right” for his earlier declarations about Muslims, and doubled down by reiterating his earlier call for Muslims to be banned from entering the United States. He also suggested that President Obama might be secretly conspiring on behalf of the terrorists. In the meantime, reporting on the potential terrorist attack on the Los Angeles gay-pride event was subdued, since whatever Howell had been planning was diverted when police pulled him over in a traffic stop and found the arsenal. It was further complicated by the eventual discovery that Howell was himself bisexual, and his friends and family indicated he had no known animus toward gays and lesbians.  In a similar vein, it soon emerged that Mateen had actually frequented Pulse and had advertised on gay hookup forums, . . .
 The ongoing questions about the motivations of both Mateen and Howell made murky at best any public understanding of the two incidents – which were seemingly unconnected, especially when it came to the specific motives and backgrounds of the actors involved. One seemed clearly inspired by Islamist anti-western rhetoric, while the other seemed at most fueled by the typical far-right-wing loathing of gays with an added twist of self-loathing. Yet they were in fact deeply connected by the simple reality that both represented acts of domestic terrorism directed at LGBT targets, and both occurred on the same evening, separated only by a few hours. And coming to terms with these acts – both in a realistic sense and with the hope of taking action that actually prevents them from bubbling up in the first place – requires understanding them as closely related, two aspects of the same vicious and hateful coin: right-wing extremism. The murders, and the near-miss, this weekend were not, of course, the first time that gay and lesbian establishments have been the targets of terrorist acts. Indeed, this sort of violence is hauntingly familiar to anyone who has tracked the history of hate crimes and other vicious acts that have been the horrifying reality for most members of the LGBT community for the past half-century and longer.  Until recent years, the violence has emanated primarily from two sources: hate groups, particularly neo-Nazi and skinhead groups as well as various Klan organizations, all of whom have placed the LGBT community as one of their most loathed targets; and far-right evangelical Christians, particularly those who claim that the Bible demands the death penalty for homosexuality, and the radicals who act on those beliefs.

Prior to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, most Americans readily thought of radicals like Rudolph and his far-right cohort, Timothy McVeigh, as the terrorists they clearly were. After 9/11, however, the picture became increasingly muddled, as public and law-enforcement officials, as well as the media, increasingly focused on the image of terrorism as emanating solely from turbaned, Arabic-speaking radicals inspired by extreme Islamic fundamentalism, or Islamism, as it’s popularly known. It’s also worth recalling that the American far right – particularly the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who are among the most vicious homophobes most often associated with hate crimes and terrorist anti-LGBT violence – openly celebrated those Islamist attacks on Americans back in 2001, just as they recently celebrated the Orlando massacre. (Wrote Andrew Anglin, editor of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer: “From the bottom of my heart, and on behalf of all neo-Nazi White supremacists, I want to offer a sincere ‘thank you’ to Omar.") That is because even though the nominal wellsprings of their ideology may differ widely – i.e., either white-supremacist/neo-Nazi ideology or far-right Christianist ideology, or extreme Islamic fundamentalism – the cores of their respective appeals, as well as the psychological profiles of the people they attract as followers, is remarkably similar in nature as well as outcomes. They have the same enemies, and the same targets, because they think and behave in remarkably similar ways.

In the end, both a religious and cultural variations of right-wing extremism. And what they share in common is much more substantial than the differences of their nominal religions. As Joshua Holland recently observed, in an ironic kind of twist, the absolutism associated with the most fanatical expressions of their respective religions, which in turn induces them to denounce “unbelievers” of other faiths, is something they all share: “The details differ, but the defining characteristic of all right-wing religionists is an abiding contempt for religious pluralism. They deny the legitimacy of other faiths. All conservative religious traditions are hostile toward gays and lesbians and those who reject traditional gender roles. Most embrace religious nationalism and reject multiculturalism.” They also share a fundamentalist approach to their belief systems, insisting on the inerrancy whatever their founding scriptures might be – in the case of Islamists, the Koran; of extremist Christians, the Bible; of far-right “Patriot” militiamen, the Constitution of the United States; of neo-Nazis, Hitler’s Mein Kampf as well as a handful of other works that have scriptural import for them. . . . . They all insist that only their interpretation is the correct one. [F]undamentalism is natural byproduct of modern life, representing the needs of the people who are left behind by modernity – economically, culturally, socially, and spiritually. This applies equally to other kinds of fundamentalism, such as the bizarre interpretation of American law and the nature of government that arises in the worldview of right-wing American “constitutionalists.” The terrorists who are produced by these belief systems are all deeply alienated from modern society, and their violence is always directed at the goal of returning society to its “traditional” values.

To fundamentalists and other right-wing True Believers, multiculturalism is an abomination, since the notion of the legitimacy of other religions or belief systems is nonexistent for them. It’s their way or the highway – though only the most nakedly racist among them admit that their hostility to multiculturalism naturally defaults back to a race-based system of white supremacy. In the end, this means that, for the radicals inclined to act out their beliefs violently, the targets of their hatred and violence often are the same. Right-wing extremists almost universally direct their terrorism at the representatives of modernism and multiculturalism in their own minds: democratic institutions and governments, liberals, LGBT folk, various racial and ethnic minorities (especially Jews). [R]adical Islam is a kind of right-wing extremism, and has much more in common with American Klansmen and “Patriots” than any of them are willing to acknowledge. . . . . This is important to place in the larger context of domestic terrorism: As a study I have recently completed of American domestic terrorism between 2008 and the present (to be published later this summer through the Center for Investigative Reporting) demonstrates, American right-wing extremists committed acts of terrorism in the United States at more than twice the rate of domestic Islamist extremists in that time period, with more than double the casualties. 

These recent events have all underscored not just the importance of coming to terms with domestic terrorism of all kinds, but of recognizing that Islamist and American right-wing extremist terrorism are very closely related, and often target the very same vulnerable people – as well as understanding that, over those past eight years, American right-wing extremist terrorists (nearly all of whom are white) have been even more dramatically increasing the levels of lethal violence in the country. To understand terrorism, we first have to shed our great national blind spot regarding who commits it – namely, the racial one.

Trumpism: Made in Europe

In a number of posts I have drawn parallels between the rise of Donald Trump and the rise of Adolph Hitler in early 1930's Germany.  Both men share the traits of egomania and both saw opportunity in playing upon economic grievances, pushing statements once deemed unthinkable, and targeting segments  of the population as "enemies" to be confronted and destroyed.  There are also parallels with the current far right in Europe where extreme right parties - some with Neo-Nazi ties and history are advancing by using the same tactics as Trump here in America.  Thus, the irony is that the "America first" crowd is actually rallying to European imports of bigotry and misogyny.  A column in the Washington Post looks at these frightening parallels and how too many looked the other way and failed to oppose the forces of hate.  Here are column highlights:

Here’s the irony of Donald Trump’s “America First,” immigrant-bashing, free-trade-averse, make-us-great-again nationalism: It is a European import.

The American right has typically been anti-government, reverent of the Constitution, suspicious of political strongmen and resolute in insisting that “American exceptionalism” makes us different from other nations.

But Trumpism is not an American original. Almost every plank in the candidate’s vaguely defined platform is derivative of the European far right. It is gaining ground on the basis of opposition to immigration, fears of terrorism and crime, economic nationalism, and promises of a government wielding a muscular hand against the forces of disorder.

While one would like to think that the copycat nature of Trump’s ideology will, in the coming months, make it increasingly less attractive to American voters, his rise is no less disturbing for being emblematic of what’s happening across so many democracies.

The weakness of these parties was brought home dramatically this week in Austria where Norbert Hofer, the candidate of the far-right Freedom Party that has explicit roots in the Nazi past, nearly won the country’s presidency.

Yes, it was good news that Hofer was edged out by Alexander Van der Bellen, who was backed by the Green Party. But Van der Bellen’s margin was unsettlingly small — he won 50.3 percent of the vote to Hofer’s 49.7 percent.

The fact that the alternative to the far right came from the Greens reflected the decline of the two parties dominant in Austrian politics since World War II. 

The voting patterns in Austria closely resembled those visible on our side of the Atlantic. Polls commissioned by ORF, Austria’s public broadcaster, showed that Hofer (like Trump in the primaries and in the polls) led handily in rural areas, among men and among manual workers. Van der Bellen swamped the right-wing candidate in the big cities and among women, while also leading him among white-collar workers.

Mainstream parties, which can be infected by complacency, certainly bear some responsibility for what’s happening. The defection of working-class voters to the far right is a cross-democracy electoral phenomenon that reflects a serious failure on the part of social democratic and progressive parties whose historical task had been to represent citizens in blue collars.

At the same time, the moderate conservative parties have seen some of their own natural constituents drawn away by rising anti-immigrant feeling.

Here again, the Trump analogy holds: Mainstream Republicans winked and nodded toward a hard line on immigration; Trump has embraced it whole with his calls for a border wall and a temporary ban on admitting Muslims to the country. . . . . another cross-Atlantic similarity: Opinions that were once far outside the normal political discourse on immigration and nationalism are now expressed routinely. 

Trump’s relentless attacks on “political correctness” are intended to break the barriers against what had once been beyond-the-pale sentiments on immigrants and race. His crude approach to campaigning . . . . reflects an indifference to norms that reinforces popular contempt for politics and traditional politicians.

Standing up against the new far right should be a shared task across the old political divides in all democracies. But Republican politicians are falling in line one by one behind Trump, choosing to ignore the threat he poses to political decency and his challenge to democratic values themselves.

The United States should not look to the European far right as our model. The land of opportunity and freedom with a long tradition of welcoming newcomers should be leading the resistance to the new authoritarianism.  

We are living in very dangerous times and it is crucial that people wake up and learn from the past where demagogues like Donald Trump may lead the nation.  In the early 1930's far too many Germans were complacent and they - and millions of others who died in Hitler's wars - paid a terrible price.  Bad things can happen in America too if we don't stop them.  

The Growing Hysteria and Dangerousness of the Far Right

Candidly, if I were a Muslim American, I would be very frightened by the current atmosphere on the right of the political spectrum which is depicting every Muslim as a would be terrorist.  Perhaps I am especially sensitive to demonization since gays have long been called out as deviants and a danger by the "godly folk" and I know what it is to be fearful of my safety on occasion simply because of who I am.   Most often this fear was triggered by "godly folk," those who see themselves as "real Americans," and on one occasion, the Norfolk Police.  How long will it be until some self-appointed Christian vigilante lets loose violence on Muslims or others who they deem to not be "real Americans"?  A piece in Salon looks at this increasingly dangerous atmosphere.  Here are excerpts:.  

The escalating right-wing hyperbole is not just irresponsible but dangerous, as it promotes undue fears and offers more confrontations and violence as a solution, such as calls for all Americans to carry guns. What’s forgotten in that line of thinking is that many people won’t, or don’t want to use guns.

The GOP presidential candidates, in contrast, relish the thought of war with ISIS. One after another, at Thursday’s Republican Jewish Coalition summit in Washington, they declared the nation was “in a time of war” (Ted Cruz), facing “terrorist attack” (Chris Christie), “they’re already here” (Lindsey Graham) and the feds should spy on anyone, anywhere, anytime . . . .

There’s “fear in the air,” the Times reported Friday, echoing a national poll released Thursday finding 83 percent of Americans expect a major terrorist attack. Meanwhile, overseas, the U.S. is deepening the military response to ISIS following the Paris attacks, and NATO allies that had limited their involvement are now sending troops, planes and ships.

In other words, contrary to what the GOP presidential candidates would have the public believe, the U.S. is very much at war in Iraq and Syria. Meanwhile, they and their propagandist allies are opposed to removing weapons of war from individuals at home.

Americans who don’t believe the answer to violence is to carry a gun anytime they step outside find themselves in an escalating climate of fear-mongering, panic-driven gun sales and an urge by many to strike real or imagined foes.

What is lacking are people who can put these latest events and trends into perspective, historic contexts or offer wise responses—although the New York Times ran its first front-page editorial in decades on Saturday morning, urging Congress to ban militarized weapons and calling the recent domestic gun-caused slaughter terrorism. Most of the TV news, however, is reading a different script, hyping the FBI announcement that it was investigating the San Bernardino shootings as a terrorist incident.

The White House has ignored most of the noise coming from Congress and the 2016 campaign trail, making reasonable remarks that are quickly overshadowed by hyped headlines. The lack of a stronger, clearer and wiser countervailing presence from Obama has had serious consequences, however. It’s created a void filled by an onslaught of irresponsible GOP hyperbole and right-wing propaganda. Ironically, Obama is allowing the end of his presidency to be colonized by exaggerated fears and darkness, though he was elected by a majority of Americans seeking a far more hopeful future.

The Right’s Ferguson Ploy: Why they Want to Focus on “Riots”

In the minds of the members of the far right - especially the Christofascist/Tea Party element - anyone who is not a white, heterosexual, Christian conservative is not really a citizen of the United States or, worse yet, fully human.  In their minds the rest of us, blacks in particular, are not even really fully human.  One might say they view us as some lesser species or, at worse, animals.  Hence the right's desire to focus on the riots and lawlessness that followed the in appropriate grand jury verdict of not returning an indictment against Darren Wilson (see the images above from Fox News) who by his own testimony suggests that he did not see Michael Brown as a fellow human( some of the Norfolk police I encountered in the past - and I would argue perhaps even two Norfolk Circuit Court judges - did not see me as human because I was gay).  They want to use the riots and unrest as justification for police brutality and their own view of minorities as little more than animals.  Sadly, those who engaged in looting and the destruction of private property - who are cretins and betrayers of their own community in my view - played right into the hands of the far right, their mortal enemies.   Some may think me harsh, but sadly I don't think I am misjudging the "godly folks" and their far right allies.  A piece in Salon looks at the far rights desire to change the subject from police misconduct and a law enforcement system biased against blacks in particular.  Here are excerpts:

From the very beginning, before St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Robert McCulloch had uttered the first word of his defensive and dissembling speech, the fix was in. The conspiracy this time was not to protect Officer Darren Wilson from standing trial for the killing of Michael Brown, though that was certainly related. This time, the conspiracy was to organize the announcement of Wilson’s exoneration in as provocative a way as possible. The ultimate goal was to manipulate the public and the press into forgetting the real story of Ferguson — of police brutality and racial injustice — and bickering about the morality of rioting instead.

At the very least, that’s the impression I’ve had throughout the Ferguson controversy, especially as the wait for news from the grand jury dragged on, and as the county’s offices began leaking pro-Wilson factoids like a sieve. And after witnessing last night’s spectacle, which was preceded by multiple delays and conspicuous readying of the state’s police forces, I’m no less convinced that the powers that be in Missouri approached the Wilson verdict with little concern for accountability or justice. All they wanted was to improve the Ferguson power structure’s battered images — not by doing good, but by making the protesters look even worse. It’s a tried and tested strategy; as Rick Perlstein has documented, it helped make Richard Nixon president.

A quick look at the nation’s front pages on Tuesday indicates that the plan worked on some, but fewer perhaps than these would-be Pat Buchanans wanted. By maneuvering to incite disorder and polarize public opinion along race lines, these would-be Nixons probably thought they could “cut the … country in half,” as Buchanan recommended, and walk away with “far the larger half.”

Put simply, we must not allow supporters of the Wilson verdict to distract us by making this a conversation about rioting or poverty or race. That’s not to say we should condone the riots; and it’s certainly not to say we should avoid subjects that involve issues of race and poverty. What it means instead is keeping in mind that riots are nothing new, that the unique struggles of the African-American community can’t be simply attributed to poverty, and that discussions of “race” that aren’t linked with specific policy changes often result in little more than frivolous declarations of privilege.

If we can combat the dual influences of a Ferguson elite that wants national attention to drift elsewhere; and a national media that dislikes policy and favors more watchable, clickable, shareable and fundamentally empty manifestations of the culture war — if we can do that, there’s hope that even though the killing of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson will always be an obscenity, it won’t have been entirely in vain. So let’s ignore those in American society who would rather debate the merits of trashing a bodega than the killing of a child, and let’s not listen to those who would use this opportunity to re-litigate the civil rights movement, the Rodney King riots or the Trayvon Martin case.

I by no means condone looting and violence.  Martin Luther King was onto something when he called for peaceful protests.   That said, gays and all other minority members need to remember that these same elements of the far right hate us too and look for every opportunity to denigrate us and depict us as less than truly human.  We cannot allow ourselves to fall for their propaganda. 

When the GOP Went insane:

As I have often noted, I was once a Republican activist and served on a local city committee for the GOP before the GOP went insane - which large equates with when the Christofascists infiltrated and took over the party grass roots and threw moderation, compromise and basic sanity out the window.   A piece in Salon argues that the mid-1990's is the crucial time period when the drift to insanity became irreversible.  The timing largely coincides with what I witnessed, although in Virginia Beach, it took the Christofascist and their political prostitutes a bit longer to hijack the party in that city.  In other regions of Virginia, the takeover occurred even earlier.  Here are article highlights which, in my view, under plays the role of the Christofascists:

The Republican sweep of 1994 gave Movement Conservatives a free hand to set the terms of political debate, although reporters noted that they seemed to articulate only what they opposed, not what they favored. What they opposed was very clear: they hated what they claimed was the socialist system that was turning America into a nation of dependents. Destroying it, they thought, was simple: just get rid of the taxes that paid for it.

Rush Limbaugh, whose support had been so instrumental that the Republican revolutionaries of 1994 made him an honorary member of their incoming congressional freshman class, outlined their agenda. They must “begin an emergency dismantling of the welfare system, which is shredding the social fabric,” bankrupting the country, and “gutting the work ethic, educational performance, and moral discipline of the poor.” Next, Congress should cut capital gains taxes, which would drive economic growth, create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and generate billions in federal revenue. Limbaugh kept staff in Washington to make sure the positions of the Movement Conservatives got through to voters. In exchange, every congressman knew that taking a stand against Limbaugh would earn instant condemnation on radio stations across the country.

The Gingrich revolutionaries hit the ground running. They took over control of key positions in the House—Gingrich became Speaker; Armey, House majority leader; Texas’s Tom DeLay, majority whip. In April 1995, an internal memo laid down the theme of cutting taxes, rather than paying down the national debt, as the main principle of Republicanism.
In the end, the inability of Gingrich’s revolutionaries to compromise meant they went too far. Pieces of the agenda triumphantly passed in the House were watered down in the Senate and fell to the president’s veto. Frustrated when Clinton refused to sign the Republican budget slashing funding for Medicare, public health, the environment, and education, Gingrich refused to compromise. The federal government shut down all nonessential activity for twenty-eight days between November 1995 and January 1996 . . . The crisis pushed Clinton’s poll numbers higher than they had been since his election as American blamed Republicans for the shutdown.

Disaffected Americans began to see plots everywhere: politicians were selling out America to socialism. It was imperative for regular citizens to take matters into their own hands, just as the boys in Red Dawn had done, and return the nation to the traditional values Buckley had asserted in the 1950s: religion, the free market, and a strong military.

Antigovernment extremism forced its way into American consciousness on the morning of April 19, 1995, when a bomb exploded in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City.

In October 1996, the movement gained its own television network, with Roger Ailes as its founding CEO. The Fox News Channel (FNC) was the brainchild of Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who recognized the frustration of Movement Conservatives with what they insisted was a Liberal media biased against their version of the world. . . . . presented a mythologized America based on the ideology of Movement Conservatism. Its Americans were overwhelmingly white and rural and wanted just to be independent individuals. They hated taxes and intrusive government, and they would do fine if they could just get the socialistic Democrats to leave them alone.

Movement Conservatism had always been based in ideology, not reality. As far as Movement Conservatives were concerned, Clinton was a mistaken president, an abomination, and they had finally been able to prove it.

They swung toward conspiracy theories and pure Clinton-bashing, aided by talk radio and by new websites, especially the Drudge Report. In 1997, Matt Drudge and his assistant, Andrew Breitbart—who was a fan of Limbaugh—began aggregating anti-Democratic gossip and news. They sensationalized rumor and began to build a community of likeminded right-wing radicals on the increasingly powerful Internet.

‘Sons of Guns’ Reality Show Star Arrested for Rape of 11-Year-Old

The right wing types really know how to pick "stars."  The more dysfunctional you are, the more celebrity you will have.  Sarah Palin is a perfect example of the phenomenon.  Now, a "star" of a gun nut reality show (he's pictured above) has been arrested for raping his 14-year-old daughter in a series of assaults that began with him taking her virginity at the age of 11.  Frankly, it's par for the course.  The more folks claim to laud "American values" and represent "real Americans" the more suspect they ought to be.  The Raw Story looks at this disturbing story.  Here are highlights:

The star of the Discovery Channel’s reality show Sons of Guns was arrested Tuesday on charges of aggravated rape of his daughter.

According to FoxNews.com, the East Baton Rouge, Louisiana Sheriff’s Department confirmed that Hayden is accused of raping his 14-year-old daughter in a series of assaults that began with him taking her virginity at the age of 11.

TMZ reported that Hayden’s daughter is backing up the allegations, claiming that her father forced her to participate in oral and vaginal sex “almost daily” for the past three years.

When asked why she didn’t report the sexual assaults earlier, the girl said that she was afraid her father would hurt her.  “Don’t tell them nothing,” he reportedly told her, “because I’m all you’ve got.”

Sons of Guns is a five-season reality program that centers around Hayden’s business, Red Jacket Firearms, which sells, builds, designs and repairs guns. Red Jacket specializes in weapons fabrication and modification.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune said, “On Aug. 9, Hayden was arrested and booked on molestation charges of a juvenile and crimes against nature. Hayden reportedly told TMZ that charge was sparked from an ex-girlfriend’s allegations. Red Jacket Firearms released a statement denying those allegations.”

At 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Red Jacket posted a notice on its Facebook page that said, in part, “Today, Red Jacket Firearms has received complete legal separation as an entity, from Will Hayden. We will continue to operate, although with heavy hearts and promise to do everything in our power to fill customer orders, back orders and provide support to those affected by these new developments.”

Duck Dynasty Ratings Tank for Season Premier

While the swamp fever ridden members of the far right and the Christofascist ranks have continued to vigorously supporting the batshitery of Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty, the most important critics - i.e., TV viewers - seem to be voting against Robertson's homophobia, racism and male chauvinist pig beliefs by turning the channel dial to something other than Duck Dynasty.   Americans Against the Tea Party has details:

It seems that homophobia, racism, Islamophobia, and suggesting that people marry teenagers is not what Americans want in a role model. Fundamentalist whack-job Phil Robertson and his merry band of fauxbillies saw their ratings plummet with the beginning of season five.

While conservatives were expecting their hero to enjoy a healthy boost in popularity due to his support of “real” American “Christian” values, they instead found Bibleman and crew losing about 28% of their viewership compared to the previous season premier.

While fake Christians have staunchly defended him to the point of lunacy (even if they hadn’t read the interview), after Robertson’s remarks that people with darker skin were happier in the Jim Crowe era, likenings of homosexuality to a predisposition toward animal fornication, comments that the Chinese and Muslims have been trying to take over the world for the past eighty years, and suggestions that men should go out and bag a fifteen year old wife, Americans seem to finally be realizing what sort of person their “role model” truly happens to be.

If the flight from Duck Dynasty continues to hold, then perhaps Americans are less easily duped that I sometimes think is the case.

The GOP's Culture War Over Light Bulbs

With all of the problems facing America one would think that concern over the demise of the incandescent light bulb in favor of the more cost efficient CFL bulbs should be a non issue.  After all, although costing more up front, the new bulbs last far longer and use much less energy.  But not so in the insane world of the far right and the members of the GOP who constantly prostitute themselves to this forever aggrieved group.  Once again, I have to wonder how the Hell people become so insane and so enraged over something so insignificant.  The Daily Beast looks at this batshitery.  Here are excerpts:

[O]ne fact about this new budget is worth contemplation. It carries forward the culture war over light bulbs. Yes, light bulbs. And the reasons for the light-bulb culture war? Well, pretty much the same reasons for the rest of the culture war. Light bulbs became culture-war fodder about three years ago when they started to look like curly fries at Arby’s. They started costing more. They got… funny. And confusing. Now we had to learn about things like “lumens”—which sounds vaguely European, like some legume favored by those socialized-medicine-loving people of Scandinavia. Of course this happened after Obama became president. And, of course, libruls and gummint people started talking them up.

But it was George W. Bush’s Department of Energy that got this ball rolling, back in 2007, and the light-bulb industry immediately embraced the switchover to CFL bulbs (compact fluorescents—the squiggly spiraley ones) because they had the technology on hand to start making them and capture market share. They last far longer than incandescent bulbs and save enormous amounts of energy. If every American household replaced 15 old-style bulbs with 15 CFLs, or better yet LED bulbs (the ones that often have that kind of fan-like look on the narrow part of the body leading up to the bulb), we’d save an equivalent of more than 40 power plants’ energy output.

If liberals are for it, they automatically turn anti. A study last spring by a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania found the following: She took two sets of liberals and conservatives and explained to them that CFL bulbs cost more upfront but saved money over the long haul and could reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources. At this point, liberals and conservatives reacted with more or less equal enthusiasm. But then? As Grist reported it: “Slap a message on the CFL’s packaging that says ‘Protect the Environment,’ and ‘we saw a significant dropoff in more politically moderates and conservatives choosing that option,’ said study author Dena Gromet.”

So if official, educated-seeming people say it’s good for the planet, oppose it. Even if you liked it before you knew it was good for the planet.

Michele Bachmann was once the czarina of this counter-revolution, but now that she’s leaving, this constituency has its heroic avatar in the person of Mike Burgess, a congressman from, where the hell else, Texas.  

Burgess likes to rail against these pushy liberals and their tricky, communistic light bulbs. He recruited Joe Barton (a fellow Texan) and Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn (not exactly the House’s brightest… bulbs) to draft pro-old-bulb legislation. In this budget, he’s tucked in a provision that would bar funding for enforcement of the new light bulb standards. 

This is just so far beyond ridiculous. Light bulbs as a source of elitist resentment? Conservatives get angry when liberals sneer at them for being stupid, and sometimes liberals are condescending, and conservatives have a right to be angry. But another way to keep people from sneering at you for doing stupid things is not to do such stupid things.

[M]aybe GE can invent a CFL bulb that doubles as something you can affix to the end of your shotgun and take out into the woods and kill endangered species with. Then the Texans’ll snap ’em up. 

And people wonder why I left the GOP?  I would need to have a lobotomy to remain a Republican.