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Beyond the TPUSA delusion fest... It's even more ominous when you look at U.S. history [1]
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Date: 2022-12-21
Turning Point activist Charlie Kirk earlier this year with J.D. Vance and Josh Hawley
David Neiwert has a post up about the anti-LGBTQ hatefest at the Turning Point USA annual gathering, in Arizona. It’s worth reading because it shows how much of what might once have been dismissed as radical fringe stuff is now tied right in with mainstream Republican figures.
Tim Miller of the Bulwark was there, and his reporting adds a further dimension to the story. What It Was Like at TPUSA’s Post-Election AmericaFest exposes just how disconnected from reality the TPUSA faithful are. The failure of the “Red Wave” to materialize in the midterms might have given some people cause to reconsider what they might have gotten wrong. Not these people. Miller summarizes what one of the organizers, Bennie Johnson, had settled on as themes for the event:
Most of the speeches reflected Benny’s proposed rhetorical posture: ignoring the midterms beyond vague acknowledgments that some attendees might be dispirited while focusing instead on three main categories of material: (1) Megachurch-style Ted Talks about how woke ideology has turned America into a fallen Sodom and Gomorrah that requires missionaries in an existential battle against evil itself. (2) Celebrating the areas in society where they believe conservatives are ascendant, such as comedy. (3) Harangues against the election thieves, particularly the host county’s municipal officials. In practice, that meant being treated to: A 20-minute speech entirely concerning the evils of preferred pronouns (by Matt Walsh, natch).
A competition for who could offer the most ostentatious praise to the gathering’s South African golden calf and his epic victory over Taylor Lorenz (on Twitter.)
Repeated ridicule of Sam Brinton, a non-binary deputy assistant secretary in the Energy Department who was fired recently after they were charged with felony theft.
A panel about how the American left are the spiritual successors to the Gnostic and Hermetic pagans and how they are on the cusp of either bringing Nazism to America or installing the devil in the kingdom of heaven.
Assorted treatises on how woke-ism is an assault on truth, followed by brazen lies about election theft and vaccine efficacy. And speaker after speaker came back to one unifying message: The fight for MAGA values must continue, but believers should fear not—because the heathen Democrats are not really in charge, the man upstairs is. As such these foot soldiers were called to not concern themselves with worldly matters such as elections, but by engaging in a demographic competition of sorts by siring lots of children, getting a plot of land, and putting their faith in the Christian God. “The way we win is to do away with the World Economic Fund, Great Reset garbage. We buy land. We have lots of kids,” Johnson said.
[Take a look at the Quiverfull movement, including the part about raising an Army of God.]
UPDATE: If you want to know what kind of person Benny Johnson is, his tweet about Zelensky coming to the White House is pretty revealing: x Shut the F up, you little Commie.
https://t.co/x9WUvuP0R7 — Republicans against Trumpism (@RpsAgainstTrump) December 21, 2022 Here’s the text: Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson 6h This ungrateful piece of sh*t does not have the decency to wear a suit to the White House -- no respect the country that is funding his survival. Track suit wearing eastern european con-man mafia. Our leaders fell for it. They have disgraced us all. What an incredible insult.
Read the whole thing.
The wall between church and state is going to need to have a locked ward added on if these people act on their fantasies. When someone truly believes the Lord is on their side, they can only believe anyone opposed to them must be evil, doing the Devil’s work. When the Republican Party embraced the Religious Right, they set us on course for the worst kind of civil conflict, a war based on religion.
Miller ends with a look at Kari Lake’s unhinged exhortations to the crowd:
Like many other speakers, Lake infused her delusions with Christian Nationalist bromides. The former kabbalah practitioner declared that “We are Americans and we bow to one king. That is our creator, God.” She went on, “We gotta bring back God, guys. I wanna bring someone else back too. I think you know who I’m talking about. Donald J. Trump.”
These are the people to whom the incoming GOP crazy caucus in the House will be playing. Here’s the thing though. We’ve been here before.
A bit of inconveniently relevant history
There’s some joke about history doesn't repeat, but sometimes it rhymes. It’s not possible to fully appreciate how dangerous the Republican Party has become without understanding how much of their current extremism is in the Party’s DNA, or just where the U.S. has been before.
David Corn’s book American Psychosis — A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy is a must read to make sense of how one of the two major parties we allow ourselves has has a long-running embrace of the Dark Side. This article at Mother Jones gives a quick summary version of how the GOP has always dallied with extremism.
For a better look at the book, I strongly recommend downloading sample pages of the eBook versions out there; Apple Books has the first 88 pages available. That should be more than enough to allow you to judge whether or not to get the rest. If you are still looking for a last-minute gift, check your local bookstores for a copy or go with the eBook version.
ICYMI, Lydia Polgreen has an editorial at The NY Times that is also very relevant to where we find ourselves: How Will History Remember Jan. 6?
Far-right groups stockpiling guns and explosives, preparing for a violent overthrow of a government they deem illegitimate. Open antisemitism on the airwaves, expressed by mainstream media figures. Leading politicians openly embracing bigoted, authoritarian leaders abroad who disdain democracy and the rule of law. This might sound like a recap of the past few years in America, but it is actually the forgotten story told in a remarkable new podcast, “Ultra,” that recounts the shocking tale of how during World War II, Nazi propagandists infiltrated far-right American groups and the America First movement, wormed into the offices of senators and representatives and fomented a plot to overthrow the United States government. “This is a story about politics at the edge,” said the show’s creator and host, Rachel Maddow, in the opening episode. “And a criminal justice system trying, trying but ill suited to thwart this kind of danger.”
emphasis added — the link should allow passage through the paywall
If January 6 seems unprecedented, it’s only because America has a very selective memory. Every time someone say America has always had a peaceful transition of power, I marvel at how they forget that little unpleasantness called The Civil War.
I hadn't heard about the subversion attempts in any detail although there have been hints. Not surprisingly, as it’s not the kind of American history taught in most schools. I haven’t had a chance to go through the 8 episodes of Ultra so far, but it’s on my list. The very first one starts with a really dramatic incident, a horrific plane crash that killed a U.S. Senator, among others.
There was no obvious reason for the crash: the weather wasn’t that bad, the aircraft was new, the pilot was experienced — but there was speculation that there might have been some kind of fight among people on the plane before it dove straight down into the ground. The Senator was reported by his secretary to have been extremely upset before leaving for the flight. And then Maddow gets into the rest of the story behind the events that led to that crash.
Here’s a link to all 8, plus some additional discussion. Rachel Maddow should get an award for this.
This is something to have in mind as we wait to see what the Department of Justice is going to do about the referrals from the January 6 committee, the investigations underway, the continuing threat coming from what was on full display at TPUSA, and where the Republican Party goes from here.
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