I caught a glimpse of the Republican National Convention out of the corner of my eye last night: Sarah Huckabee Sanders praising Trump as the the greatest president ever, while Trump himself smugly grinned and mugged for the camera, and then she went on to talk about how she was the first woman governor of her state, a woman press secretary, a woman this, a woman that, and that the Democrats hated her and were mean to her, implying that she was disliked because she was a woman. No, sorry, we disliked you because you were a dishonest propagandist for a corrupt administration. That was enough for me. I had to leave the room to avoid more exposure to the Trump cultists and liars avoiding mentioning their evil policies to revel in authoritarianism ahd cult of personality bullshit.
I went in to a different room and listened to Rebecca Watson explain Project 2025.
The Supreme Court nominations, of course, led to policies beyond what they previously would have even dreamed of stating publicly, such as Roe v. Wade falling and more recently giving the President the power of a God Emperor. All of that set the stage for Project 2025, where they could finally say the quiet part loud and publicly reveal their end game, which includes but is not limited to outlawing abortion nationwide through the Comstock Act, ending same sex marriage, removing all protections for LGBTQ+ people, criminalizing pornography, neutering Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act, eliminating public education and replacing it with private Christian schooling, consolidating control of the government under the President, and replacing tens of thousands of civil service employees with political appointees who will do whatever the President wants, drawn from a vast database that the Heritage Foundation has been building for the past decade or so.
That’s what they want to do. That’s what they say they are going to do. They’re not going to openly brag about it at the convention, because those are wildly unpopular policies, so we’re only going to see Republicans wallowing in victimhood and avoiding talking about how they’re eagerly planning to fuck over the entire country if they get into power once more. The RNC is simply the shiny, glossy, colorful cake made out of poison that they’re enticing the electorate to gobble down. They want what’s worst for everyone. They’re just plain evil.
Rebecca is covering Project 2025!? I can hardly wait. Rebecca is someone I can listen to, usually is well informed, and nicely sarcastic about it.
I ran into an acquaintance on my walk the other night just as Trump was taking the stage. She was listening to it on her phone and sort of offered to share the experience. I told her I can’t stand him and the whole business so bid her farewell. It would have ruined my evening. She’s not a Trumper because she said something about “too bad Crooks missed” but she was going to subject herself to it. More power to her. I told her that my wish is not for Trump to get shot…though drop dead would be OK…I want him defeated overwhelmingly and so humiliated that he scurries back into the sewers he crawled out of. Let him live out his life in shame and hugging his gold toilet. I don’t expect that, but it’s what I wish would happen.
We don’t like Huckabee because she’s a self-serving bigot who wraps her hate in Christianity.
I’m sure they will try to do this if Trump gets reelected.
It is something essential to their power base, the fundie xians.
And, it is definitely going to cause a huge amount of conflicts and problems in the USA.
So far, the Blue states have been bailing out the Red states. As they usually do. The number of abortions in the USA didn’t go down after Roe versus Wade was repealed. They went up.
All that happened is women in Red states mostly traveled to Blue states for abortions or went the DIY route with abortion pills.
That escape route will be closed.
The number of abortions doesn’t fall when abortion is made illegal. They just become far more hazardous to the women involved.
As to exactly what will happen who knows?
.1. Probably, the Feds will try and arrest anyone involved in facilitating abortions and women who get caught getting an abortion.
.2. Some of the Blue states might find their ovaries and backbones and simply defy the Feds. The South has been doing this with civil rights since 1865 when they lost the civil war.
.3. The new escapes for abortions will be Canada, Mexico, and Europe.
Young and poor women will be the ones who are unable to catch a flight to Toronto or Tijuana.
No doubt it will be ugly and dystopian.
The only question is how ugly and dystopian it will get.
And yet people are still insisting that there’s no meaningful difference between Biden and Trump or that they just don’t feel like this election matters.
(Crossposted from the infinite thing)
.
The Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Song (We Don’t Think We’ll Have to Kill You) .https://youtube.com/watch?v=Qwsi23FzOwM
N
The Ballad of Marjorie Taylor Greene-O”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=gad85zYopJY
The state of Oregon has been stockpiling one of the abortion pills, mifepristone, just in case the US Supreme court outlaws abortion or abortion pills.
If there is a nationwide ban on abortions, what happens to that stockpile?
.1. The Feds might try to seize it, sending in the FBI or the abortion police.
.2. The state might just keep providing them and dare the Feds to arrest the governor.
I hate to say it, but I am beginning to wonder if Western liberal values are on the way out. For most of human history most people at most times and places have lived under authoritarian structures under which rights, as we think of them, simply did not exist. The last couple of centuries in which political freedom, free speech, religious pluralism, requirements of due process and equal protection, to say nothing of living in relative peace and safety, are a huge anomaly. The fact that those values in large part were imperfectly applied to the politically unpopular is true but irrelevant to my point.
And, surprise surprise, it turns out a lot of people never really were on board with those values, especially to the extent that they have been applied to the politically unpopular. The fascist-friendly racists and misogynists and religious triumphalists among us never really did go away; they just quieted down because their views had become unpopular.
Trump’s huge political accomplishment was to organize all those people and give them a voice. And now that they’ve been organized and given a voice, they now want to undo centuries of liberal progress. And it’s not just in the US. Country after country has been abandoning Western liberal values in favor of authoritarianism.
So, maybe we had a good run, such as it was, and maybe we’re just going to have to wait for a better time. But I’m really starting to feel like I’m living in 1930s Berlin.
FORTY-FIVE! – A Randy Rainbow Song Parody
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MMRxhfYSdhc
Cory Doctorow on Project 2025 is worth a read.
Trump Still Hasn’t Called Family Of Man Killed During His Rally
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=caoFoRYL6a4
He is like Homelander. When people die around him and he is inconvenienced, it is all about him.
True.
As has been pointed out many times, fascism is self limiting. Because it doesn’t work.
Then again, after the last major outbreak of fascism with the Nazis and World War II, Europe was in ruins and 50 million people were dead.
We’ve seen it many times with Portugal, Spain, Argentina, Iran, and Chile, etc.. Fascistic regimes seem to be fond of mass murder and leave behind piles of dead bodies. That isn’t popular with the general population.
If Trump and the GOP get in, the only question is how long they can hang onto power and how much it will cost the USA.
re robro @1:
Him dropping dead would be okay, but I would much rather him have a stroke which leaves him unable to speak and move freely about. A thoroughly disabled shell of a man, much like the people he loves to make fun of. Karma at its best!
One thing this misses (she may talk about it later, I haven’t seen the video yet) is that they’re also intent on labeling all positive or neutral depictions of LGBTQ+ people, as “pornography,” too. The intent is also clearly to treat public expressions of LGBTQ+ identity as “public indecency” under the same rubric. They’re not just talking about levying fines here, either- they’ve specifically said they want to imprison anyone who makes or promotes this “pornography,” and label them sex offenders.
They’ve also said they want to expand the use of the death penalty to sex offenders. It’s not hard to work out what their plan is.
I also want to point out that a key point of Trump’s “Agenda 47” is making a law (well, more like a king’s decree) that there are only two genders, assigned at birth, and that this may not be altered.
Farron Cousins:
“I Was Wrong – Trump Does NOT Get Post Shooting Poll Bump!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=dq0y4S_nJ7U
I would add a link to Cool And The Gang’s “Celebration ” but I don’t want to jinx it.
Raven @ 10
Fictional villains like the Joker at least have some vision they are willing to take risks for. Stavro Blofeld at least has panache. This is the most trivial of the triviality of evil, performed by people who -among other things- think the rainbow was invented after the biblical flood.
“All of that set the stage for Project 2025, where they could finally say the quiet part loud and publicly reveal their end game, which includes but is not limited to . . . consolidating control of the government under the President”
Most people fail to appreciate exactly how far back in time the Republican Party and its Court want to drag the country – the key assumption of their platform, after all, is that the Magna Carta was a big mistake. That’s early 13th century, not merely the mid 19th or 20th centuries more commonly posited as the focal time period of Republican nostalgia.
Project 2025’s purpose is to reintroduce the divine right of kings as the formative philosophy of government.
@vucodlak 12:
I find it increasingly sad/funny/disturbing that as one of the + categories (asexual), I’d be branded as a sex offender under this madness.
Tangetial but Biden ha s just tested positive for covid with mild symptoms so far :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/07/06/infinite-thread-xxxii/#comment-2228160
@15. Robert Johnston : “Project 2025’s purpose is to reintroduce the divine right of kings as the formative philosophy of government..”
Which the hijacked Trump SCOTUS has now made the POTUS / itself as LegalEagle notes here in his ‘Trump is Immune clip. (25 minutes length.).
The sign in the cartoon saying Democrats “can’t govern” (middle left) is wrong. The Democratic party governs really well – at least a lot better than the Repugs who often badly get in the way of it actually being able to do so.. But even with hostile Congress and SCOTUS, Biden’s govt has been pretty competent and decent. Certainly far better than Trump’s alternative. So that part isn’t fair although they’ve had trouble getting enough people to understand that.
You can have my porn when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
(They’d really, really hate it too — a substantial majority of it is female pleasure centric.)
Oh no no no no no. This is not the time! <tears hair out>
After the next major outbreak of fascism, Earth may be in ruins and 5 billion people may be dead.
That is existential risk, meaning it must be prevented by any means necessary, be that voting or something involving playing at least a little bit dirty. (Where is Dark Brandon when you need him?! He’s technically king now…)
Not to dispute the thrust of what you’re saying, but the Divine Right of Kings was an early modern rather than a medieval concept.
The only saving grace so far is that they are largely stupid. Incredibly stupid. In the event that they actually acquire a smart person for their fascism, racism, misogyny and homophobia, the planet is screwed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/07/17/neo-nazi-murder-cult-poison-jewish-kids/
Because there is nothing suspicious about dressing up as Santa and going to a Jewish religious school to hand out poisoned candy.
@5 The other option is that the stockpile quietly gets distributed to the Janes, as it were. The problem with the whispering network is that you have to know it exists in the first place.
https://www.heyjane.com/articles/jane-collective-abortion-history
On the plus side, Lou Dobbs expired.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/07/18/lou-dobbs-obituary/
SHS can bootlick and brownnose all she wants, she still isn’t getting a position in Trumpworld.
And she can’t get a table at the Red Hen restaurant either.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2018/06/23/why-a-small-town-restaurant-owner-asked-sarah-huckabee-sanders-to-leave-and-would-do-it-again/
@19 The real problem is the Democrats’ abject willingness to seize defeat from the jaws of victory.
@22: The Democrats’ apparent desire to sabotage themselves every time they start winning seems to be a very large part of why this is even a race.
How are the Republicans going to actually implement Project 2025 when the people who turn policy into reality and keep the country running (doctors, teachers, lawyers, civil planners, IT professionals, etc. are overwhelmingly Democrats and the Republicans have no replacements for them? Imagine trying to bring in housewives, plumbers, and car dealership owners to manage the education system, or really any system. I wouldn’t be surprised if the intelligence agencies launched a coup just to stop them from breaking the whole American empire with their desperate flailing and thrashing.