Junk Politics
Trump uses a Nazi tactic to prove he's nothing like Hitler.
Chris Hedges, January 8, 2023:
Our political class does not govern. It entertains. It plays its assigned role in our fictitious democracy, howling with outrage to constituents and selling them out. The Squad and the Progressive Caucus have no more intention of fighting for universal health care, workers’ rights or defying the war machine than the Freedom Caucus fights for freedom. . . . This moral vacuity provides the spectacle, as H.G. Wells wrote, of “a great material civilization, halted, paralyzed.” . . .
Governance exists. But it is not seen. It is certainly not democratic. It is done by the armies of lobbyists and corporate executives, from the fossil fuel industry, the arms industry, the pharmaceutical industry and Wall Street. Governance happens in secret. Corporations have seized the levers of power, including the media. Growing obscenely rich, the ruling oligarchs have deformed national institutions, including state and federal legislatures and the courts, to serve their insatiable greed. They know what they are doing. They understand the depths of their own corruption. They know they are hated. They are prepared for that too. They have militarized police forces and have built a vast archipelago of prisons to keep the unemployed and underemployed in bondage. All the while, they pay little to no income tax and exploit sweatshop labor overseas. They lavishly bankroll the political clowns who speak in the vulgar and crude idiom of an enraged public or in the dulcet tones used to mollify the liberal class. . . .
The internecine warfare in the House . . . is a battle for control among con artists, charlatans, social media celebrities and mobsters. McCarthy joined the majority of House Republicans in support of a Texas lawsuit to void the 2020 Presidential result by preventing four states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia — from casting electoral votes for Biden. . . . There isn’t much in the Freedom Caucus extremist positions, which resemble those of Alternative fur Deutschland in Germany and Fidesz in Hungary, McCarthy doesn’t embrace. They advocate greater tax cuts for the wealthy, further deregulation of corporations, a war on migrants, more austerity programs, champion white supremacy and accuse liberals and conservatives who do not line up behind Trump of treason. . . .
This political vacuum has spawned anti-politics, or what the writer Benjamin DeMott called “junk politics,” which “personalizes and moralizes issues and interests instead of clarifying them.” Junk politics “maximizes threats from abroad while miniaturizing large, complex problems at home. It’s a politics that, guided by guesses about its own profits and losses, abruptly reverses public stances without explanation, often spectacularly bloating problems previously miniaturized . . . A major effect of junk politics — its ceaseless flood of patriotic, religious, macho and therapeutic fustian — is to pull position after position loose from reasoned foundations,” DeMott noted.
The result of junk politics is that it infantilizes the public . . . It solidifies the cult of the self . . . The cult of the self fosters a psychopathic cruelty, a culture built not on empathy, the common good and self-sacrifice but on unbridled narcissism and vengeance. It celebrates, as mass media does, superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and an inability to feel guilt or remorse. This is the dark ethic of corporate culture, celebrated by the entertainment industry, academia and social media. . . .
The billionaire class, for the most part, prefers the mask of a Joe Biden, who deftly broke the freight railway unions to prevent a strike and forced them to accept a contract a majority of union members had rejected. But the billionaire class also knows that the goons and con artists on the far right will not interfere in their disemboweling of the nation; indeed, they will be more robust in thwarting the attempts of workers to organize for decent wages and working conditions. . . .
As Robert O. Paxton writes in “The Anatomy of Fascism,” fascism is an amorphous and incoherent ideology. It wraps itself in the most cherished symbols of the nation, in our case, the American flag, white supremacy, the Pledge of Allegiance and the Christian cross. It celebrates hypermasculinity, misogyny, racism and violence. It allows disenfranchised people, especially disenfranchised white men, to regain a sense of power, however illusory, and sanctifies their hatred and rage. It embraces a utopian vision of moral renewal and vengeance to coalesce around an anointed political savior. It is militaristic, anti-intellectual and contemptuous of democracy, especially when the established ruling class mouths the language of liberal democracy but does nothing to defend it. It replaces culture with nationalist and patriotic kitsch. It sees those outside the closed circle of the nation-state or the ethnic or religious group as contaminants who must be physically purged, usually with violence, to restore the health of the nation. It perpetuates itself through constant instability, for its solutions to the ills besetting the nation are transitory, contradictory and unattainable. Most importantly, fascism always has a religious coloring, mobilizing believers around rites and rituals, using sacred words and phrases, and embracing an absolute truth that is heretical to question.
Fortunately, that doesn’t sound like any country I know.
In exchange for six words on his resume (“Speaker of the House of Representatives”) the weak and spineless Kevin McCarthy has handed a tremendous amount of power to the unrepentant seditious insurrectionists who incited the Capitol Riot and want to destroy the very government they are supposedly serving. One concession is that any member can call for a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair. What this means is that if McCarthy fails to adequately kiss the asses of House fascists, they will throw him out on his ass. Mccarthy’s actual power is nil; his job is little more than window-dressing.
Dan Friedman, Mother Jones, January 7, 2023:
McCarthy’s genuflecting finally won him support from House Freedom Caucus chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.). Perry, as my colleague David Corn points out, is known for his central role in a scheme to have the Justice Department falsely claim to have found evidence supporting Trump’s election fraud lies. That effort is the subject of an especially robust part of the sprawling DOJ criminal investigation that includes FBI agents searching Perry’s phone. . . .
McCarthy on Friday also won over Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who—along with Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), former Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and Stop the Steal maestro Ali Alexander—“schemed up,” in Alexander’s words, a plan to put “maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting” on certifications of the presidential election on January 6. McCarthy had already agreed to restore to Gosar committee seats he lost in 2021 after participating in a white nationalist conference and posting an animated video that showed him killing Democratic Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. McCarthy likewise had vowed to restore the committee postings of QAnon-friendly Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene. Greene had previously been booted from her committees over outlandish rhetoric, like saying Jewish space lasers cause wildfires. Unlike Perry and Gosar, Greene has been a vocal McCarthy backer since the midterm elections.
Another holdout who joined McCarthy’s camp Friday was Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.). Following the January 6 attack, Norman urged Trump to impose “Marshall law” to stop Joe Biden from taking office. Also supporting McCarthy on all the votes this week: Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who is expected to become House Judiciary Committee chairman. Jordan, who received 20 votes for speaker from McCarthy foes on Tuesday, helped Trump plot his self-coup attempt and has never explained phone calls he exchanged with Trump on January 6.
McCarthy’s litany of concessions to his party’s far-right includes a vow to gut the House Ethics Committee. Last month, the House January 6 committee asked the Ethics Committee to investigate Jordan, Perry, Biggs, and McCarthy himself for refusing to comply with subpoenas from the panel. . . .
McCarthy himself joined in voting to throw out the Electoral College results, even after the insurrection. . . . The Republican meltdown this week follows years of GOP dysfunction caused by relying on the votes of radical members opposed to governing. But the party’s failure to coherently oppose January 6 and Trump’s coup attempt is no a mere continuation of a trend. It is a new nadir. . . .
Priorities are revealed in actions. . . . House Republicans are still siding with the people who stormed the Capitol and with the former president who incited them. The call is coming from inside the House.
Revenge is the animating emotion for the GQP. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post reports on
the creation of a new select committee on “weaponization of the federal government.” This is an outgrowth of the GOP’s criticisms of the investigation of former president Donald Trump and things like the expansion of the IRS. . . .
The idea seems broadly in line with the GOP’s priorities right now, but as Politico’s Kyle Cheney notes, two key provisions stand out: The panel is to be given access to highly sensitive information shared with the House Intelligence Committee, and its purview is to include “ongoing criminal investigations.”
This latter provision raises significant questions about the separation of powers, because the committee could in theory try to subpoena sensitive Justice Department information before charges are ever brought — including information about the DOJ’s probes into the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Trump and Hunter Biden. . . .
With Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in charge of the committee, it seems quite likely there could be some tense standoffs ahead that will likely include court battles.
Trump Does Not Like Being Compared To Hitler
Jose Pagliery, The Daily Beast, January 10, 2023:
Former President Donald Trump is doubling down on his “I am not Hitler” defamation lawsuit against CNN by adopting the Nazi strategy of attacking journalists as liars, with court papers claiming—without irony—that “Americans are split when asked if the media is actually an enemy of democracy.”
Since October, Trump has been waging war against the Cable News Network over the way it has increasingly drawn comparisons between his Make America Great Again movement and the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany. . . .
[P]olitical scientists who study authoritarianism have noted how his favorite insult against reporters—calling them “fake news”—is a near-direct translation of Lügenpresse, the derogatory term used by Nazis against who they called the “lying press.” . . .
The Dec. 30 court memo mentions “Hitler” 29 times and “Nazi” 21 times in a breathless screed that claims Trump was unfairly treated by the network. . . . [It] attack[s] CNN for repeatedly drawing comparisons between Trump’s right-wing, nationalist, and anti-democratic MAGA movement and Adolf Hitler’s right-wing, nationalist, and anti-democratic Nazi Party. Trump’s lawyers say that “being compared to Hitler in this manner causes and did cause reputational harm.”
“Some CNN’s audience members have been unjustly led to believe that [sic] plaintiff literally is a fascist leader,” Trump’s lawyers wrote. “CNN’s statements seriously attempt to falsely state that the plaintiff intentionally used a Nazi-like propaganda technique to preserve his political power.”
However, they refused to explain why the allusion doesn’t hold up, noting in a footnote that “there is no case law requiring a plaintiff to plead facts that show why a false statement is, in fact, false.” They wrote that their original lawsuit “clearly states” Trump “is not Hitler-like nor would be Hitler-like in any future political role.” . . .
Journalists far and wide have indeed drawn parallels to Hitler’s authoritarianism and the threat to the future of American democracy posed by Trump’s unquenchable thirst for power. But when journalists do it, they tend to spell Hitler’s name correctly. In their filing, Trump’s lawyers repeatedly referred to “Adolph” Hitler.
Diamonds Aren’t Forever
Trump has no clue — and doesn’t give a single shit about finding out — what Diamond’s actual name was. He also wrote a far nicer eulogy than he did for his first wife and mother of his three oldest children. Anyone know along which fairway Diamond will be laid to rest? (Maybe she’ll be a “diamond in the rough”.)
MAGA Rule #1: “The Grifting Must Never Stop.” The tweet announcing the death of Lynette Hardaway was also accompanied by some shameless begging for money.
In late November 2022, a tweet asked for prayers for Diamond, but there was apparently no follow-up or explanation of why:
It’s being reported Hardaway was hospitalized last November with COVID; if so, she must have been quite sick to warrant that tweet. A tweet from today: “The last few shows she did do she was visibly unwell . . . she looked ill, raspy voice, audible breathing.”
Diamond and Silk were fired by Fox for spreading lies about COVID-19 and vaccines and they claimed that the number of deaths from COVID was nothing more than a “conspiracy to hurt” Donald Trump. They also were cool with Trump committing sexual assault — as long as he grabbed only the P and not the D.
