Tag: Radical Right

The Ghost Of Gramsci

This is my continuing series on the success that the DSA has recently had at the polls and the meltdown that the Right is having dealing with this success…..passing out propaganda like candy to a 6 year old and it is working…..

Gramsci?  If you are not familiar with the workings of socialism then the name means little to Americans and yet the Washington Times invoked his name.

Before I go any further a quick lesson on Gramsci….

Key points:

  1. Historical materialism reworked
  • Society is shaped by material conditions but mediated by culture, institutions, and political practice.
  • Emphasis on how social forces, ideas and institutions interact over time to produce historical change.
  1. Hegemony
  • Core concept: ruling classes secure consent for their rule by shaping common-sense beliefs, moral frameworks, and cultural norms.
  • Hegemony = domination through a combination of coercion (state apparatuses, police, law) and consent (civil society: schools, churches, media, unions, cultural institutions).
  • Hegemony is never absolute; it requires continual work to maintain and is always contested.
  1. Civil society vs. political society
  • Distinction between political society (state, law, coercive institutions) and civil society (associations, culture, education, media).
  • Civil society is the terrain where hegemony is produced and reproduced; control of civil society is crucial for long-term stability of a social order.

Very basic but if you want more…..https://theconversation.com/antonio-gramsci-his-philosophy-explained-286341

That out of the way this is the bullshit article that made me go to this rant….

 

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jul/14/democrats-embrace-gramscis-marxist-playbook-america/

 

Just another MAGA rag that spread manure like it was real…..

Personally I think Gramsci was an excellent thinker and some of his ideas deserve a second look….but think about this MAGA and the GOP have been using his concepts for many decades….so is he all that wrong?

Questions?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

How Many Communists?

With the popularity of the DSA so far in the midterms the rage by the Right has once again exploded into the usual stupidity about socialist or communists or Marxists and as usual none of it is accurate….

I have been fighting the false narrative for many many years and here we go again….soon the MAGA people will be counting all the communists in the country for exposure….

This is something I wrote about 14 years ago during an earlier attack on the Left….I use to have a feature in IST called the VOMITORIUM……

 

How Many Communists Are There?

 

That movie exposed just how stupid the whole thing becomes when you let idiots define the political landscape….

Enjoy.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Are You A ‘Cultural Marxist’?

To begin with the term ‘Marxist’ ought to send the more ignorant among us into some form of stroke mode…..but this is about culture more than the man…..but your IQ needs to be larger than your shoe size to differentiate.

Before we tackle this subject maybe a little background would help…..

1930s: originally denoting a theory that the oppression of the working class is effected through social and cultural means, developed by the Frankfurt School of social theorists.

(among some right-wing thinkers) a radical political ideology said to be promoted by left-wing activists with the aim of undermining or subverting western social and cultural institutions, ultimately resulting in the imposition of a progressive agenda on society.

Yes it is bullshit but that is what right wingers do best….spread manure.

Now for the meat of this post.

“Not to disparage David Bowie,” Alan Bennett remarked in 2016, “but if even a fraction of the tributes being paid to him and his influence were true, we would never have had a Conservative government.” Not to disparage Theodor Adorno, Jürgen Habermas and the other members of the Frankfurt School, but if they’d been one-millionth as potent as their detractors maintain, we would have had no Margaret Thatcher, no Ronald Reagan, no Liz Truss and no Donald Trump.

Yet, to hear some on the American far-Right tell it, “critical theory” – the Frankfurt School’s mash-up of Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche’s proto-existentialism – is responsible for everything that has gone wrong since the Second World War. Spoilt children, promiscuous teenagers, student radicals, transsexuals, rock ’n’ roll – each is the by-product of what the conservative activist Andrew Breitbart described as the Frankfurt ideology’s “adolescent rebellion against all rules and norms”.

What a load of claptrap, says the British historian AJA Woods. In The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy, he depicts a cult of wealthy American cranks and crackpots who kid each other that a few highbrow German-Jewish aesthetes managed to wreck Western civilisation. Certainly, the truth is more mundane: critical theory was just a logical extension of the highly moral form of literary criticism invented in Victorian England by Matthew Arnold at Oxford and carried on into the 20th century by F R Leavis at Cambridge.

Like Leavis and Arnold, the Frankfurters abhorred the rise of industrial capitalism. Unlike Leavis and Arnold, the Frankfurters were openly ideological. They were, to be precise, materialist Hegelians: they believed that, by melding their respective skill sets – philosophy, sociology, psychology, aesthetics – they could mint an entirely new and holistic explanation of history and society, premised on empirical grounds.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fiction/review-cultural-marxism-conspiracy-frankfurt-school-woods/

If you are interested this may be a good piece for you…..

https://ammo.com/articles/cultural-marxism-gramsci-how-disciples-of-gramscian-marxism-subverted-america

It is all so much smoke screen for mental midgets that flock to the likes of Donny and his brand of fascism…..belittle the opposition…..it works for them.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

I Hate Redundancy

But sadly that is how you get mental midgets to pay attention…..just keep bombarding them with the facts….some times redundancy is necessary and this is one of those times.

I have tried to explain antifa to the unwashed masses but they7 still keep going on and on about something they know nothing about….so as an FYI I offer these links for people that have an open mind to check out the situation (comments will be very telling I believe)…

https://www.commondreams.org/news/antifa-protest

https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-has-no-idea-what-antifa-is

https://reason.com/2025/09/18/what-does-it-mean-for-trump-to-designate-antifa-a-terrorist-organization/

This whole affair shows just how badly Donny and his ilk will lie to try and look as if they care….and two it shows just how f*cking gullible his rabid supporters truly` have become.

I see Donny’s favorite authoritarian, Orban, has followed suit……

Hungary will replicate a policy announced Thursday by US President Trump and designate antifa a terrorist organization, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Friday. Antifa, short for “anti-fascist,” is an umbrella term for loosely affiliated far-left-activists and groups that resist fascism, fascists, and neo-Nazis, especially at demonstrations. It resembles more an ideology than an organization, though some have embraced militant tactics. Orbán, a right-wing populist and strong Trump ally, said in comments to state radio on Friday that he was “pleased” by Trump’s announcement that he plans to designate antifa as a “major terrorist organization” in the United States, the AP reports.

“Antifa is indeed a terrorist organization,” Orbán said. “In Hungary, too, the time has come for us to classify organizations such as antifa as terrorist organizations, following the American model.” It was unclear what prompted Orbán’s decision to make the move. Antifascist groups rarely engage in political actions in Hungary, where Orbán and his party have held near-total power for more than 15 years. Yet in his statements Friday, Orbán referenced a 2023 incident in which antifascist activists engaged in assaults against several suspected participants in an annual far-right event in Budapest.

One of the alleged assailants, Italian antifascist activist Ilaria Salis, was jailed in Hungary for over a year following the assaults, resulting in a diplomatic dispute between Rome and Budapest over her treatment in detention. Salis was released to house arrest in May 2024 before winning a seat in the European Parliament, as a result of which she gained legal immunity. Hungary continues to demand that she be returned to face trial, where prosecutors have sought an 11-year sentence. Orbán on Friday bemoaned Salis’ release, saying antifa had “come to Hungary and beaten peaceful people in the street, some were beaten half to death, and then they became European members of parliament and from there lecture Hungary on the rule of law.”

Birds of the feather sort of thing.

Here are those organizations that Little Donny puts on his hate list….

Here are the groups Trump has designated as terrorist organizations

You decide.

Donny and his merry band of slugs want to go after progressive donors as well…..saying they are fomenting the hatred….but can he prove that?

High-ranking members of the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, are accusing certain progressive organizations of encouraging violence against right-wing public figures and suggesting they played a role in Kirk’s death.

Miller, for example, has likened those groups to “a vast domestic terror movement.”

Vance has said the government will “go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence,” in a reference to nonprofits he alleges are supporting illegal activities.

President Donald Trump has blamed Kirk’s death on “a radical left group of lunatics” that doesn’t “play fair.” He has stated that they are “already under major investigation,” although no such probe has been disclosed to date.

Trump has raised the possibility of criminal charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as the
RICO statute, which is typically used to prosecute gangs and organized crime rings.

But, to be clear, the Trump administration has not yet produced evidence to support any of its allegations of wrongdoing by nonprofits and their funders.

https://www.salon.com/2025/09/19/will-trumps-threats-against-liberal-organizations-after-kirks-death-succeed_partner/

Why this urgent need to ‘go after’ his detractors?

President Donald Trump announced in a social media post on Wednesday night that he is “designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.” He made the same declaration in 2020 amid the Black Lives Matter protests against the police killing of George Floyd, with no real effect on the ground.

But Trump’s new declaration came with another, more specific order: “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices.” And that may be the real significance of his decision.

There is no such thing as a domestic terrorist organization list in the United States. When Congress debated the first counterterrorism legislation in the 1990s, the Clinton administration and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) pushed for sweeping domestic police powers. It was Republicans who opposed those measures at the time because they worried that counterterrorism would be weaponized against the right.

https://reason.com/2025/09/18/what-does-it-mean-for-trump-to-designate-antifa-a-terrorist-organization/

But that did not answer the question….why this urgent need?

This is one opinion….

President Donald Trump is aware that public opinion on him is getting worse and worse by the day — and he’s desperate to consolidate authoritarian control over government — and do things like lock up his political adversaries — before polls get to the point that his underlings stop listening to him, argued former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum for The Atlantic.

“President Donald Trump is worried that Attorney General Pam Bondi is moving too slowly to prosecute his political adversaries on fake charges,” wrote Frum. “Trump has good reason to be concerned. He is carrying out his project to consolidate authoritarian power against the trend of declining public support for his administration and himself. He is like a man trying to race upward on a downward-moving escalator. If he loses the race, he will be pulled ever deeper below — and the escalator keeps moving faster against him.”

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-2674016258/

Personally most of the MAGA will stick with him…..so I do not think this article is going to be accurate….I can only hope I am mistaken.

It is official Donny has ‘sanctioned’ a non-existent group….want to see how this plays out.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

So It Begins!

Donald the Orange has been flexing his muscle to the tune of lies and misinformation…..while the people of this country suffer with slashes to their health care and rising food costs as well as rent going out of sight….the idiot in the room has decided  to takeover the nation’s capital on a LIE.

President Trump is deploying the National Guard onto the streets of Washington, DC, and placing the district’s Metropolitan Police Department under temporary federal control, reports the Washington Post, which describes the moves as an “extraordinary flex of federal power.”

  • “I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor and worse,” Trump said in a Monday morning news conference.
  • One big part of the initiative is clearing out DC’s homeless population, and the White House already had mobilized FBI agents to aid local law enforcement. Now it plans to activate about 800 members of the Guard as well, reports Politico.
  • Before his announcement, Trump declared that DC “will be liberated today!” in a Truth Social post. “I will make our capital great again!” he added, in all caps. “The days of ruthlessly killing, or hurting, innocent people, are OVER!”
  • Earlier this year, the US Attorney’s Office in DC trumpeted a stat that seems to contradict Trump’s narrative of crime run amok, notes the New York Times: Violent crime is at a 30-year low in the district.
  • Last week, a high-profile member of the Department of Government Efficiency was car-jacked in DC, and Trump called attention to the attack on Monday. He was “savagely beaten by a band of roving thugs,” said Trump. “Can’t believe that he’s still alive.”

Liberated from what?  Crime has been down for 3 years running….what is this asshole’s desire here?

But the best stuff coming from motor mouth himself is about the homeless….

President Trump has ordered homeless people to move out of Washington, DC, “immediately.” “We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital,” he wrote Sunday morning on Truth Social, not long after arriving at his Virginia golf club from the White House, the Guardian reports. Trump shared photos that appeared to be taken from his motorcade, showing a handful of tents near a highway on-ramp about a mile from the White House and one person sleeping on the steps of the American Institute of Pharmacy Building.

Trump then teased Monday’s press conference, where he vowed to address crime and the “beautification” of the capital. “The Crime Numbers get worse, and the City only gets dirtier and less attractive,” he wrote. “Before the tents, squalor, filth, and Crime, it was the most beautiful Capital in the World. It will soon be that again.” Data released in January shows violent crime in DC was actually down 35% in 2024 for its lowest level in 30 years, per the Guardian. Mayor Muriel Bowser said Sunday that violent crime has declined another 26% so far this year, and that overall crime is down 7%, per MSNBC.

Homelessness, though a visible problem, is not an epidemic. About 800 unsheltered people sleep outside in the city of 700,000, according to the Community Partnership. Another 3,275 use emergency shelters and 1,065 are in transitional housing. As president, Trump controls only federal land and buildings in DC. It’s unclear what legal authority he plans to use to evict homeless people. “The Criminals, you don’t have to move out. We’re going to put you in jail where you belong,” he wrote as he reportedly prepares to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington, per Reuters.

He also said he would find them a home far from DC….that translates into another gulag deep in the disease infested Everglades….

Nothing about any of this should sit well on the stomachs of Americans….if it does then you are NOT an American you are a Nazi looking for blood from those you hate.

Was that plain enough for you MAGA d/bags?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

They “Hate America”!

Jeez I have not heard that piece of crap since my protests days in the 70s when some old fat white guy would get in my face and utter garbage.

I bring this up because an adviser to Little Donny has publicly made the statement about anyone that disagrees with the Orange Man on deportations hates America.

These accusations came from the demented mouth of one Gorka, a Trump adviser and a Nazi in sheep’s clothing….

One of President Donald Trump’s cronies has heavily implied that Americans who demand due process for a Maryland father who was wrongly deported could meet his same fate.

On Tuesday, Trump’s senior director for counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, appeared on “Rob Schmitt Tonight” on Newsmax and said that those who publicly criticize Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s incarceration in a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador could be committing a federal crime.

This is despite the Department of Justice admitting that Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national, was wrongly deported due to an “administrative error,” and the Supreme Court ordering the Trump administration to help to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States.

“The taxonomy of American politics is dead,” Gorka said a little over two minutes into his interview. “It’s not left and right. It’s not even Republican or Democrat. There’s one line that divides us: Do you love America or do you hate America? It’s really quite that simple.”

According to Gorka, who was born in the United Kingdom to Hungarian parents, those who “love America” include Trump, his administration and his supporters because they want to “protect” the U.S..

Gorka then went on to describe those who “hate America” as anyone who opposes Trump and his administration’s actions by claiming they are “on the side of the cartel members, on the side of the illegal aliens, on the side of the terrorists.”

Gorka, a former Newsmax host, then dialed up the autocratic tone of his argument to an unsettling level

“And you have to ask yourself, are they technically aiding and abetting them?” Gorka said of critics. “Because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime in federal statute.”

The implication of Gorka’s threat wasn’t lost on social media users on X, formerly Twitter.

“This is how freedom of speech dies,” one user pointed out.

“That’s the mark of authoritarianism. When you can’t win an argument, you criminalize the people who disagree with you,” another said.

“They’re saying it — if you criticize them, you are ‘aiding and abetting’ terrorists,” another user echoed. “If you take a stand against them, you’ll be targeted too.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-adviser-threat-oppose-deportations_n_68010f63e4b0f92ccce14fae

It is getting close to the rule of the ‘brown shirts’….we cannot say or do anything that does not conform to what Donny and his Merry Band of thugs feel is best for the country….you know damn the Constitution full speed ahead for authoritarianism.

Once again I guess I am being pigeon holed by morons that pretend to ‘love this country’ when everything they do is to the contrary.

Screw this sanctimonious asshole and the political wave he rode in on.  PERIOD!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

A Call To Arms?

We do not need Paul and his horse anymore for we have the internet and social media.

Of course I am referring to the re4sponse from MAGA loyalists after the conviction of their hero recently…..

Is it truly a call to arms?

After a jury found Donald Trump guilty of 34 felony charges yesterday, Bronze Age Pervert, the alter ego of the edgelord influencer Costin Alamariu, retweeted one of his own posts from March. It is a movie clip depicting a scene of armed men storming buildings and gunning people down. In the text accompanying the post, Bronze Age Pervert jokes that the clip is real footage of a “well-planned neutralization operation” that will take place after Trump wins his reelection campaign.

The MAGA faithful are once again on the internet threatening violence. Lots of Republicans, of course, responded to Trump’s felony verdict with simple outrage rather than calls for a “neutralization operation.” But more extreme language has appeared all across the right-wing posting ecosystem. Some Proud Boys chapters responded with the word “war” on their Telegram channels, as reported by Wired, and Reuters found instances of Trump supporters calling for violence against jurors and the judge in the case, as well as calls for civil war and insurrection.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/05/trump-trial-maga-internet-violence/678571/

The rhetoric is getting very disturbing…..

As supporters of Donald Trump flood right-wing platforms with threats against the jurors and judge following guilty verdicts Thursday in his criminal case regarding hush money payments, fears are growing that the influence the Republican presumptive presidential nominee has over his supporters will soon lead to violence.

“Until and unless he accepts the process, the extremist reaction to his legal troubles will be militant,” Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, toldReuters.

The former president gave no sign of accepting the legal process Friday as he held a press conference at Trump Tower, repeating claims that the case had been “rigged.”

Shortly after a New York jury announced its verdict in the case regarding documents that were falsified to cover up payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniel just before the 2016 election to keep her from publicizing an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump, right-wing websites like Gateway Pundit, Truth Social, and Patriots.Win saw an uptick in violent posts from users.

One commenter called for “someone in NY with nothing to lose” to “take care of” New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, while another on Gateway Pundit directed a threat at any and all opponents of Trump.

“Time to start capping some leftys,” said the user. “This cannot be fixed by voting.”

The reaction is a direct result, said Ware, of Trump’s “insistence that he is being mistreated.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-supporters-2668430042

Social media could possibly make the reality of violence very likely….for we know how some creeps take all this tough talk to heart.

Just a hint at what they propose….

Shortly after a New York jury announced its verdict in the case regarding documents that were falsified to cover up payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniel just before the 2016 election to keep her from publicizing an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump, right-wing websites like Gateway Pundit, Truth Social, and Patriots.Win saw an uptick in violent posts from users.

One commenter called for “someone in NY with nothing to lose” to “take care of” New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, while another on Gateway Pundit directed a threat at any and all opponents of Trump.

“Time to start capping some leftys,” said the user. “This cannot be fixed by voting.”

The reaction is a direct result, said Ware, of Trump’s “insistence that he is being mistreated.”

https://www.alternet.org/violent-trump-supporters/

Even more calls for violence….

“Pick a side, or YOU are next,” wrote conservative talkshow host Dan Bongino on the Truth Social media platform in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions.

The replies were even more so.

“Dan, seriously now,” one user wrote in response to Bongino. “I see no way out of all this mess without bloodshed. When you can rig an election, then weaponize the government and the courts against a former President, what other alternative is there? I’m almost 70 and would rather die than live in tyranny.”

That’s a common version of how many people on the US right reacted to the ex-president’s verdict, drawing on a “mirror world” where Trump is seen as the selfless martyr to powerful state forces and Joe Biden is the dangerous autocrat wielding the justice system as his own personal plaything and a threat to US democracy.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/02/far-right-mobilizing-biden-presidency

How likely will all this escalate into a situation of terrible conflict?

Will the idiots heed this call to arms?

In the days of my ‘pinko’ ways we were accused of wanting to destroy democracy and now the very people doing the accusing are doing what we were accused of wanting.

We never wanted to destroy democracy….but my accusers cannot say that.

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Like 8 Year Old Brats

While the Speaker tries to work around the BS in the House there is a war of words and insults kinda like a couple of kids in the sand box sniping at each other for whatever reason…..

We have MTG the most laughable dork and then there is Gaetz who just likes being a thorn in the side of whoever gets in his sight.

But back to the war of words…..

One of Speaker Mike Johnson’s seconds and one of his opponents tossed insults Thursday in the course of a confrontation on the House floor over the speaker’s performance. Three Republicans gathered around Johnson to give him an earful about his plan to put aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan to a vote this week: Reps. Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, and Tim Burchett. Rep. Derrick Van Orden went up to the three and dared them to file a motion to remove Johnson; he later told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he was trying to “call their bluff.” During the ensuing debate, Van Orden called Gaetz “tubby.”

The Wisconsin freshman said he only used “tubby” after Gaetz called him a “squish”—which Van Orden said he assumed meant he was being insulted as a soft person. The term is sometimes used by Republicans to imply colleagues are insufficiently Republican. Gaetz, who has not committed to the effort to oust Johnson, later told reporters he found his clash with Van Orden “puzzling and concerning.” He added, “The only thing I gleaned from it is that Mr. Van Orden is not a particularly intelligent individual.”

Van Orden said he went up to the group to back Johnson because “everybody needs a swim buddy.” He said Gaetz and other GOP hard-liners are “destroying our majority.” If they succeed, he said, and Donald Trump wins the election, he’ll be dealing with an “obstructionist House of Representatives run by Democrats.” As for Gaetz as an individual, Van Orden said he’s a bully. “The only way to stop a person from bullying you is to push back hard,” he said.

I have been saying for years what a collection of idiots and morons the House has become…..and they just keep proving me right almost daily.

These people are not in DC to govern in the best interests of the country….no they are there to disrupt and act up.

By the way…..Speaker got his foreign aid for Ukraine and Israel and others but needed the Dems to help…..

With rare bipartisan momentum, the House pushed ahead Friday on a foreign aid package of $95 billion for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, including for humanitarian support, as a coalition of lawmakers helped it clear a procedural hurdle to reach final votes this weekend. Friday’s vote produced a seldom-seen outcome in the typically hyperpartisan House, with Democrats helping Republican Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan advance 316-94. Final House approval could come this weekend, when the package would be sent to the Senate, per the AP. It was a victory for the strategy Johnson set in motion this week after he agonized for two months over the legislation.

Still, Johnson has had to spend the past 24 hours making the rounds on conservative media working to salvage support for the wartime funding, particularly for Ukraine as it faces a critical moment battling Russia, but also for his own job as the restless right flank threatens to oust him over the effort. “There’s a lot of misinformation about what we’re doing here and why,” Johnson told the conservative host of The Mark Levin Show. “Ukrainians desperately need lethal aid right now. … We cannot allow Vladimir Putin to roll through another country and take it,” he added. “These are very serious matters with global implications.”

What will this cost the Speaker?  What did the Dems want in return?  Will the Freedom Caucus take this lying down?

These people , Freedom Caucus, make me sick!

We deserve better!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Psychology Of Trumpism

College of Political Knowledge

2024 Election Series

I know….I know….this has been covered on many levels….however enough has not be said or written about the radical supporters of our former president…..much more needs to be aired so that the American do not err on the side of stupidity.

With all that said….why do the supporters of Trump become so rabid in that support?

This may answer some of the questions….

Americans today see two contradictory futures looming in the middle distance: In one scenario, Donald Trump is convicted of serious crimes and sent to prison. In the second, he returns to the presidency in 2025.

The urgent uncertainty of it all may be a reason why, in recent weeks, Trump has summoned forth some of the most incendiary rhetoric ever employed by an American presidential candidate. He has called for the execution of the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He now urges police to shoot shoplifters. He has begun characterizing his political adversaries as subhuman “vermin” who must be “rooted out.” Parroting the Third Reich while claiming (no doubt truthfully, in this case) that he has never read “Mein Kampf,” Trump has declared that immigrants from Latin America, Africa and Asia “poison the blood” of the United States.

And yet Trump is cruising to a third consecutive Republican presidential nomination, and many national polls show him beating Joe Biden in November. With ominous foreboding, the entire January/February issue of The Atlantic magazine was dedicated to one momentous question: “What if Trump wins?” Jeffrey Goldberg, the magazine’s editor, characterizes Trump as an “antidemocratic demagogue,” one “completely devoid of decency.” If Trump wins again, warns Mark Leibovich, author of “Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission” (2022), then we Americans will need to let go of the soothing notion that “this is not who we are.”

“Who is ‘we’ anyway?” Leibovich asks. “Because it sure seems like a lot of this ‘we’ keeps voting for Trump.”

How is it possible that a twice-impeached former president facing 91 criminal counts can now be favored to return to the Oval Office? Why do his supporters not recoil when Trump promises to unleash an authoritarian regime as president and to assume the role of dictator on Day One? What explains his enduring appeal?

https://newlinesmag.com/argument/the-mass-psychology-of-trumpism/

My only answer to this is one of my favorite quotes….”Stupidity Is The Deliberate Cultivation Of Ignorance”….and there sums up the whole of the GOP.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

America’s Newest ‘Useful Idiot’

(I should have posted this last week but I just did not have the desire but then I thought the readers should know what a fool looks like.  I wrote this the day after the interview and could not decide when to publish….so here it is.)

Very soon dictionaries will a picture of this person to define the term ‘useful idiot’…..and that person is Tucker Carlson.

A few days ago the former FOX blowhard was granted an interview with his high highness Vlad the Invader….and it went about as most everybody thought it would go….

Tucker Carlson asked Vladimir Putin to release American journalist Evan Gershkovich during the interview with the Russian leader that aired Thursday, but he did little else to challenge Putin during a two-hour talk at the Kremlin that began with Putin delivering a very long lecture on Russian history. Four takes on Putin’s first interview with a Western journalist since the invasion of Ukraine:

Putin was “fully in charge.” Carlson’s “fixed, fascinated expression slipped a few times,” especially while Putin talked about history going back to the 9th century in an attempt to justify Russian claims to eastern Ukraine, writes Sarah Rainsford at the BBC. “But for the most part, Carlson seemed to lap up what Russia’s president was telling him,” she writes. “Putin was fully in charge of this encounter and for large parts of it his interviewer barely got a word in.” Rainsford notes that none of Putin’s statements were “challenged in essence” and Carlson made no attempt to address Russian war crimes in Ukraine. David Folkenflik at NPR writes that Putin “appeared to have done opposition research worthy of the KGB agent he once was. He needled Carlson at separate moments about having been a history major and having applied (unsuccessfully) for a position at the Central Intelligence Agency.”

A win for Kremlin propagandists. Eva Hartog and Sergey Goryashko at Politico say the interview was a win for the Kremlin, with Carlson “failing to extract any stirring insights into the Russian president’s actual war aims” and Putin taking “full advantage of the opportunity to plant seeds of doubt about America’s aid for Ukraine and the US political system.” They note that anyone “who can dent Putin’s armor is kept lightyears away from the president.”

An “olive branch to the West.” Anton Troianovski at the New York Times sees the interview, in which Putin called for the US to “make an agreement” to end the war by allowing Russia to remain in control of territory it has seized, as an “olive branch to the West.” The “uncharacteristically restrained” Putin did not resort to his usual “fiery rhetoric” when Carlson asked about Russia’s defense of “traditional values,” he notes. Putin said there’s “nothing wrong” with the Western way of doing things, which he described as more “pragmatic,” while Russians “think more about the eternal, about moral values.”

  • Carlson’s “not exactly sure” what he thought. After the interview, Carlson said he was surprised by the history lecture. “I’m not exactly sure what I thought of the interview,” Carlson said in a video posted on his website. “It’s going to take me a year to decide what that was.” He said Putin seemed sincere. “Putin is not someone who does a lot of interviews. He is not good at explaining himself,” Carlson said, per the Washington Post. “But he’s clearly spending a lot of time in a world where he doesn’t have to explain himself.” He said that while Putin denied it, it’s “obvious he’s very wounded by the rejection of the West.”

Semafor reports that Carlson also met with two Americans during his time in Moscow. He spent hours with NSA leaker Edward Snowden on Thursday and also taped an interview with Tara Reade, who, during the 2020 campaign, accused then-presidential candidate Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her when she was a Senate aide in 1993.

Carlson proved to me that he was the very definition of a ‘useful idiot’ and what is more he does not know what a fool he looked like.

But do not take my word for it….here is a transcript of the interview……

https://www.miragenews.com/full-text-transcript-of-tucker-carlson-putin-1171489/

Is there anybody that still thinks Carlson is a credible information source?

What say you?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”