Right wing extremist violence - "Where's Nancy?"

Right-Wing extremist violence has been evident ever since Trump rose to power and encouraged it.  It goes back to native American slaughters, slavery, and the Klu Klux Klan, and elsewhere, of course, but was most disturbing on the January 6 coup attempt by Trumpist fanatics that injured scores and killed a few.  The insurrectionists who broke into the Capitol that terrible day called out for V.P., Mike Pence, and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, with intent to kill.  It was not a joke. It was deadly serious, and people died.

And today, it is reported that one of the fanatics broke into Nancy Pelosi's home asking, "Where's Nancy", and proceeded to use a hammer to violently assault Nancy Pelosi's 82-year-old husband.

The threats of Right-Wing extremist violence are flooding our country, and this assault is a loud shout that violence is their chosen path.

Damn.

How do we convince this Trump Cult that we are neighbors, not enemies?

(Update - the guy is apparently a QAnon, election denier, who said "Hitler did nothing wrong".  I'd like to write him off as a nutcase, but the delusions of election deniers and QAnon are widely held in today's delusional Republican Party.)  Sadly.

They will do what they say they will

James Carville suggests this message to voters:

You thought Republicans wouldn’t actually outlaw abortion - 

    THEY OUTLAWED ABORTION 

          just like they said they would. 

You think the Republicans won’t close down the government until the Democrats allow them to end Social Security and Medicare - but they said they will 

     CLOSE DOWN THE GOVERNMENT and 

         they will END SOCIAL SECURITY 

              

                and END MEDICARE -

                        Just like they say they will. 

Why?  Because they will be able to, and they have been trying to for DECADES, so THEY WILL - just like they say they will.

Welcome to the Right Wing extremists taking over your life. 

                                        VOTE. 

Biden’s Demand Side Economics

How is the economy doing under Biden? Pretty darn good actually. According to historian Heather Cox Richardson:

Added 10 million jobs

Dropped unemployment to a 50 year low of 3.5%

Added 700,000 manufacturing jobs

Cut the deficit $1.4 trillion – the largest cut ever

Cut the deficit $350 billion the year before

Trump rose the deficit every year in office

Ever since Reagan, Republicans have grown the deficit and Democrats have shrunk it

Reagan – $70 - 175bb increase 

HW - to $300bb

Clinton - to ZERO

W - to $1.2 trillion

Trump - skyrocket 

Biden - biggest reduction ever

But we about inflation?  I don’t see how U.S. social and infrastructure spending caused 10% inflation in England and Germany. Inflation is a global response to the pandemic and the Putin war. 

I know facts have very little influence on dogmatic political beliefs that but they do matter. 

 I was a believer in Reagan’s supply side economics for a couple of decades.  But it really did not work to grow the economy and the middle class the way Bidens demand side economics does. Put money into the middle and lower classes and they spend it on the economy. Money going to the wealthy grows their wealth but doesn’t do much for the middle class or the economy. 

This is the Land of the Free - if we vote for it

 The Republican Party has clearly chosen to strip Americans of their personal freedoms. Freedom is on the ballot this election. 

• Freedom to choose when to give birth - gone in many states, everywhere soon. 
• Freedom to use contraception and birth control - on the chopping block 
• Freedom to love and marry the same sex - on the chopping block
• Freedom to marry another race - eventual target
• Freedom to breathe fresh air - under constant attack
• Freedom to have clean water - under constant attack
• Freedom to read - going - book burning already
• Freedom from religion - the Christian Taliban is taking over
• Freedom for children to be safe in school - guns are more important than children
• Freedom to earn a living wage - opposed for decades
• Freedom from bankruptcy due to late life medical emergencies - profits above everything 

Freedom to vote - whites only is the goal

It’s not about taxes, or inflation, or immigration.  It’s about freedom. 

This is the Land of the Free.  But only if we vote for freedom

Trump’s limited tricks

 Maggie Habernan has her Trump book out - “Confidence Man: the Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America”. Apparently it is more about who he is and how he was formed than just a depressing chronicle of his time in office. I’m not sure I can stand to read 600 pages about this toxic person. But she lays out his surprisingly few tricks in the first few pages as to how he exploits the world around him:

• The counter attack
• The quick lie
• The shift of blame
• The distraction and misdirection 
• The outburst of rage
• The performative anger
• The designed-just-for-headlines action or claim
• The indecisiveness of masked by a compensatory lunge
• The backbiting about one adviser with another adviser, creating a wedge between them

His current trick is his made-just-for-headlines-claim that he wants to testify publicly to the January 6 Committee. He will never testify but it somehow gives his Trump Cult comfort to make the claim. I don’t know why. 

Soon, I hope, this endlessly repetitive bore will go away. Prison would be nice. 

House of cards is collapsing

 The January 6 Committee gave its final presentation today.  New evidence from Secret Service’s complete knowledge of armed men threatening violence, with Trump fully aware of their threat, being sent by Trump to the Capitol with the intent of mayhem and overthrow. He knew. He relished it. They were obeying his wishes.

He planned ahead of time to declare himself the winner regardless of the outcome. 

He knew he had lost. 

He told the Big Lie. The gullible believe him. Sigh…

He is planning the same thing in two years (but will likely either be barred from office or in prison). 

He is being subpoenaed to testify before the Committee. He’ll play the victim, of course and pretend that cowardly refusing to testify will be an act of Manly Courage. 

He thinks he is invulnerable.  He’s not. 

Time for the make believe house of cards to collapse. 

Authoritarian societies worship authoritarian tyrants

 In the late ‘40s, after the horrors of WWII, the great psychologist, Erich Fromm, wrote his seminal work “Escape from Freedom”.  He was trying to understand what the hell happened that created the German Nazis and thus the slaughters of the war, and what the hell happened that created the Russian Soviets who were at that time creating the Cold War.  His answers help explain some of today’s threats.

As I recall, his main conclusion was that authoritarian societies, and authoritarian upbringing of children, created countries easily embracing authoritarian leaders like Hitler and Stalin.  People were raised to be obedient, unimaginative, manipulated and bullied by dominant male hierarchical leaders. And so, in both Germany and Russia (and Italy and Japan too I suppose) tyrants rise to the top and created slavish, fanatical followers who placed all of their faith in the fierce, punishing, tyrannical father figures.  And, indeed, they gladly gave up their own individual identities to become identified with that domineering image and take it on as their own.  

This is scary stuff because it seems that Russia today has been taken over by their current punishing hyper-masculine leader who is on the brink of escalating his already horrific slaughters to unimaginable depths of depravity.  I am hoping, and counting on the people of Russia to be independent and free enough to resist Putin’s headlong charge into oblivion to stop his madness.

Where else is authoritarian society embracing authoritarian leadership?  Sadly, the American MAGA Cult, dressed in camouflage outfits, carrying AR15s, waving Confederate and American flags, and threatening to overthrow elections, are playing out that terrible drama here at home. 

But I think the authoritarian attempts cannot capture this country which is so deeply steeped in personal freedom of thought and expression.  I fully expect American liberal democracy will withstand the assaults coming from the authoritarian tribes within.