#or rightwing families

[blujayonthewing]

once again thinking about how never leaving the house or being around other human beings makes you actually insane but also I am living in an era of both widespread disabling plague and near universal disinterest in avoiding plague at the same time

#and even the people who still give even paltry lipservice to covid #friend a month ago: do you want to come over? everyone in the house is sick but it's rsv not covid :) #friend now: I have not stopped coughing for an entire month #not that the lipservice to covid helps either she's been doing karaoke at a local bar every week all year #and anyway it just... feels kinda hopeless regardless... almost all my friends have preschool/ daycare age kids #or rightwing families #or work in schools or hospitals #this has all been true the entire time but now it's also like 'aw is everything okay?' if I wear a mask around them indoors #2021 when 'everyone present is vaccinated' felt like it actually mattered sure was nice #I don't want covid and I very do not want long covid and I STILL do not think that is weird or irrational of me but!! fuck me I guess!! #anyway I'm married and have the internet so I'm not COMPLETELY isolated but I am still... mostly...... you know #and like! okay what is the alternative!! I wanna go to my friends' house and lay on their floor and get jumped on by toddlers #I wanna invite people over for dinner! I wanna have movie nights!! I wanna see and talk to and touch other people sometimes!! #and like... you Need to as a human being. you need those things #I feel like I'm withering away #haha his sucks dot jpeg #about me

[terrifyingkitten]

lets talk about ageism.

if you go in the tags youll find young posters who post about their issues being young and not being taken seriously irl and online. here theres some overlap with #autism and #actuallyautistic. Then there was a meme i reblogged with some commentary. (i actually tagged my post #literaryanalysis because i believe memes are a literary genre but that is beside the point.) the gist of it was, that we are using youth as a punchline. Youll also find old posters who normally talk about other stuff but use #ageism to tag the hate they receive, mostly from younger people shaming them for using new tech and media wrong.

weve kinda seen the dynamics play out before but havent really talked about it a lot. old ppl think young ppl are dumb and naive and young ppl think old people are out of touch and outdated. the inbetweens are on a slippery slope to becoming what they swore to destroy, we all know the drill.

i want the youths to know that we see you. we have the vocabulary to talk about all other forms of injustice, we just have to start applying it to this convo too.

i stopped using age related self deprecation and i recommend everybody do the same. i wasnt a dumb 13 year old, i was a 13 year old. i wasnt passionate about silly things, i was passionate.

yeah thats it. thats the post. but dont let it be the last. and read the tags

#ageism #actually guys we gotta start a positive tag #how about #seeingage #or #family values #or smth #family values would be lit actually because that way wed bait the weird rightwing folks back to the left #that being said #this has been #leftblr #propaganda #and i am #actually autistic #actually adhd #this #discourse #has been presented by the #lingblr #langblr #toki pona #communities #age

[iminaworldofpureimagination]

so the velma show isnt as terrible as i thought it was and im kinda annoyed about that oddly enough i wanted to hate it but i dont i feel the mysterish hooks ya a bit but the main problem is velma

I dont like Velma in it.. she's the mouthpiece for the creators viewpoints and her viewpoints kinda suck. she just isnt that likeable. and i have a lot of favs that are worse but the prob is she's condecending she comes off as Imbetterthanothers and that just not fun to watch i dont like smug people..

not thrilled on what they did to fred either.. (fred is not a whiny littlebitch gosh being feminist isnt about hatingmen)

also is mindy transphobic for liking a jkr post? very possible.. hense im pirating it otherwise id prob watch it legally.. shameif it didnt disrespect former scoob fans/came off as condecending // had better writting/ it wouldnt be too bad.

i give it a 5/10

#velma show #it prob was originally meant to be its own SHOW #but networks hate original ideas i mean the ppg dude had a bunch of em #and networks went nah just do ppg again #its sad really networks are afraid of new ideas #it really feels like the rightwings view point on woke people family guy style if that makes any sense

[formerlyknownas-delight]

I planned to bring my diary but forgot so here goes

I haven’t been in contact with my grandmother for a couple of years now. And honestly it’s a relief.

But it’s also messy bc she doesn’t accept that boundary I set, and (and this i realized only recently) because it doesn’t fit an orderly narrative of “rightwing relative uninvited queer person from holidays due to homophobia”.

She keeps opening the metaphorical door for me, pressuring me into making peace with her neonazi son, forcing hugs and gifts and conversations about forgiveness and tolerance upon me that I have to perpetually reject. So over and over, I am put in the role of the coldhearted agressor who shuts out family members “for nothing but different opinions”. Meanwhile she and my uncle can be oh so civil and accepting of my lifestyle, because, after all they never “did” anything wrong to me or anyone specific. She did come to my wedding! He would have, too! So why oh why must I be so cruel and narrowminded to shut them out?! Just because he is a literal, electable candidate of a far-right party that works to pull the carpet out from under me and people I love and that wouldn’t have given me any civil rights to begin with if they had a say??? And rationally I know that is bullshit, and that I did my best to explain my position several times and that it is she who just won’t listen to anything I said. That it should go without explanation that I obviously can’t have a positive relationship with people who hold such opinions and do actual hateful activism. And yet, emotionally, it’s difficult to feel in the right if she so convincingly plays the hurt and wronged party. What morally good granddaughter would behave the way I do despite being given so many upportunities to make peace, after all? I myself don’t know how to hold that in my brain, despite being on my side. No conclusion, just my most recent thoughts on why I still spend hours lying awake about this.

#rightwing family cw #doesn't helpp that she's the storybook version of a tiny cute granny who knits bakes and takes care of others. but votes far-right without #regrets apparently. same for her son. upstanding educated citizen if there ever was one. just really really hates minorities and women🤷‍♀️ #sometimes i just want to move as far away as possible. disappear from reach. #i apoligize #this is my forever-issue. the thing that broke my core trust. tja. #following the fish

[politicsofheroin]

i hate liberals so fucking much im going to lose my mind. the shit they put so much energy into picking a fight over sometimes is just. holy fuck

#im a fucking far left COMMUNIST so if any rightwing dipshits touch this #ill personally kill your family in front of you and force feed them to you

[wilwheaton]

As any professional interrogator can tell you, deep down inside, all of us humans are really just scared little kids. The more we’re broken down by the circumstances of life or government policy, the less secure we feel, the harder it is to get by in life, and the more scared we become. And, for many people, out of that fear comes the willingness — hell, the enthusiasm — to embrace “big daddy” in the form of a tough guy leader who promises to “restore” those who feel the fear back to their previous (or imagined future) positions of power, wealth, and authority. This becomes particularly easy for fascist leaders when their followers are convinced that the nation’s government has become hopelessly corrupt, a project rightwing fossil fuel billionaires, rightwing media, and Republican politicians have been promoting here in the US for decades. Ever since the Reagan Revolution, in their zeal to cut their own taxes and stop regulation of the fossil fuel and other polluting industries, they’ve been hammering the message that our government has been seized by “deep state socialists” bent on destroying our country. Republicans and the billionaires who own them have repeated this conspiracy theory so often for the last few decades that an entire religion, Qanon, as arisen around it. This belief, that much of what our government does is illegitimate or even malicious, makes it easy for low-information voters to bind themselves to a fascist “reform movement” that promises better times ahead. As fascist followers act out their violent threats against their leaders’ perceived enemies, they get an inner sense of strength and the feeling that they’ve joined a community: that diminishes their own fear for a short while. The more an “other” — political enemies; racial, religious, and gender minorities; women — are blamed for the ills of the nation, the more vigilante-style violence against them is justified and the more violent the future becomes. When the state pushes back against that violence, as America did after January 6th, the calls for increased violence become even louder. Trump is practically shouting “kill them!” with a bullhorn and even our court system is afraid to stop him by throwing him into jail as they would have any other common criminal who encouraged such violence against judges, juries, witnesses, court officials, and their families.

Will Trump's Violent Movement Conquer America?

[memecucker]

10 years ago it seemed like left-liberal online culture was so much more into sex positivity like people were into the idea of providing accessible sex ed information online and that this could be especially useful for young people to ensure they practice safe sex but now it seems like so many people have ceded ground and are like “well OBVIOUSLY teens have to be shielded from anything involving sexuality” and don’t even think there’s something conservative with that. People went from making videos laughing at moral-panic Lifetime movies about the dangers of online porn to suddenly “porn addiction” has become a thing people just assume is “common sense” and totally exists in a non-placebo way and not something invented by Evangelicals when they decided to co-opt therapeutic/clinical language in the 80s through stuff like Focus on the Family

Was it just because the right took a slight break from making Bush-era “abstinence only no sex before marriage between a man and a woman and we don’t need to talk about that either because there’s only one way you should do that also” or something? Maybe that’s part of it but honestly considering how in places like tumblr and twitter this frequently paired alongside other “How Do You People Not See How Reactionary This Is” stuff like anti-multiculturalism or anti-atheism and I’m sorry but you cannot just chalk that entirely up to a rightwing psyop

[probablyasocialecologist]

“We’re seeing a tsunami of police investigations,” Sfard said. “People who are targeted go through a very frightening experience and even if it ends with no indictments, it’s still horrendous.

“There is a wave of silencing of any type of, not only criticism, but also just compassion.”

Protests in sympathy with Gaza have been dispersed with force and Israel’s chief of police, Yaakov Shabtai, said last week: “Anyone who wants to identify with Gaza is welcome. I will put them on buses now that are headed there and I will help him get there.”

At the beginning of last week, Israel’s attorney general’s office also announced that it had instructed universities and colleges to forward cases to the police of students who had posted “words of praise for terrorism”.

In the wake of the attorney general’s instructions, there has been an apparent purge in Israeli universities. The legal rights group Adalah has reported that about 50 Palestinian students have been summoned to disciplinary committees about their social media posts and some have been suspended from their studies.

Intimidation of both Jewish and Arab Israelis with dissident views has also come from faceless individuals and groups, stirring up hate online.

In one notable incident, the ultra-orthodox leftwing journalist Israel Frey posted a video saying Kaddish (the Jewish prayer for the dead) for the victims of the Hamas slaughter and Palestinian civilians under fire in Gaza.

Soon afterwards, an anonymous user of the Telegram messaging platform published his address, which was shared widely by rightwing groups, and a mob turned up outside, lobbing fireworks at his windows, forcing him to flee with his family. He is now in hiding.

#israel #palestine

[odinsblog]

Gaza's death toll has exceeded 7,000 people. (pdf here)

More than 7,000 people killed. (announcement here)

So far.

Women and children. The sick and disabled. Elderly people. Pregnant women. And many other noncombatant civilians. All indiscriminately murdered in collective punishment by Israel.

Are we to believe that Benjamin Netanyahu wants peace, or … should we believe the past 75 years of lived history + the evidence before our eyes, and understand that Netanyahu’s extreme, far, rightwing Israeli government wants the subjugation or the death of all Palestinians, who the government has repeatedly called “children of darkness” and “human animals”?

Hate doesn’t breed hate, injustice and oppression breeds hate.

In the past two weeks, multiple generations of Palestinian families and entire bloodlines have been wiped out and by Israel. These civilians were not members of Hamas. These are heinous war crimes. This is a genocide that will not bring a lasting peace.

#politics #palestine #gaza #israel #war crimes #genocide #collective punishment #bds #boycott divest sanction #nakba #benjamin netanyahu is a war criminal #israel is an apartheid state #hamas ≠ palestine #settler colonialism #never again #never again to anyone #settler violence

[a-very-tired-jew]

We have to talk about Leftist Antisemitism

One of the things I have been grappling with since Oct 7th is the rise of antisemitism in Leftist spaces. Often we find ourselves falling into the same old position of blaming the Right for these issues. However, over the past few decades minority voices have pointed out that the Left has issues with bigotry in its own way. For myself, and likely many other Jews, growing up in Leftist spaces I heard antisemitic jokes and lines all the time. However, they were never the overt hate fueled rhetoric I would hear from the Right. Conspiracies were relegated to "The Rothschilds control the world" rather than "The Jews control the world." Regardless of how you feel about the rich, the Rothschilds are a dog whistle for Jews. Hell, my own family members would say this same line because the majority of us are on the Left. So obviously we take a position regarding the ultra rich. However, this Rothschilds line isn't the only dog whistle. Often there were jokes at your expense from outside your in-group. Common refrains that *insert Jewish dog whistle* couldn't be trusted due to *insert conspiracy coded in Leftist language*. That's the issue... The antisemitism on the Left is coded in a language that makes it more subtle than overt rightwing antisemitism. But how did we get here? It definitely predates Oct 7th. We can partly lay blame at this at the feet of something that feels like an old and tired trope at this point: Russia. In particular, the good ole USSR. You see, dear reader, regardless of how you describe your sociopolitical and economics leanings, and regardless of whether or not you reject USSR style Communism, their style and impact still influence you and the rest of the world. As Leftists we often stand opposed to many aspects of Western capitalist ideals, which in turn exposes us to many of the anti-Western writings, philosophies, beliefs, etc... The issue is that the USSR has a very sordid history with antisemitism. Some of you may be saying "but wait! There were Jewish Bolsheviks! Stalin even supported Israel!", don't you worry. We'll get there. While there may have been Jewish Bolsheviks and members of the party post revolution, it does not change the policies and actions that preceded and followed. Robert Weinberg, Dara Horn, David Nirenberg, and other historians have all written extensively at some point or another about this very issue. I highly recommend Dara Horn's latest piece for the Atlantic "Why The Most Educated People in America Fall for Antisemitic Lies". She briefly covers this topic. If you can't access it, well here we go. Zionism as a concept had already been around for a few decades by the time the Communist Revolution occurred, having been solidified by the Dreyfuss Affair in the late 1800s. Zionism is/was also considered Jewish nationalism. While a Jew could be a Russian Jew, German Jew, or any other "nation" Jew, they were still considered an other and thus they could never truly be a nationalist for that country. Only for Israel/Zion. As such, Jews in the USSR were not trusted as it was argued they could not be truly devoted to the Party. Jews were then labeled as Zionists. Zionism was considered anti-Communist, and racist due to the Party purposefully putting out that the "chosen people" line meant that Jews were supremacists and believed themselves to be better than others (The chosen people line actually refers to us choosing to adhere to certain laws). As such, Zionist activities were shut down as they were an act of treason and betrayal. This means that synagogues, shuls, business, and more were shut down as a means to disrupt the "Jewish conspirators". It did not matter that Jews were involved in the revolution, if you were Jewish you were an other and could not be trusted. pt 1.

#leftist #judaism #activism #antisemitism

[atsualek]

i know this probably isnt very relevant to most tumblr users, but if could take a bit of time to read this, id really appreciate it... i know portugal is a very small country in europe, but i just wanted to call awareness to the fact that two days ago, fifty fascists were elected to represent us in the parlament.

They belong to a party led by an openly transphobic, racist, xenophobic and misogynist guy. this on the 50th anniversary of our revolution agaisnt a fascist dictatorship, more than one milion people voted for the same thing again. the lider of the party (CHEGA) literally reused the motto of the old fascist leader, just added the word "work" to it. (its god, homeland, family and work) they want to "erase woke ideology from schools" they want to review our abortion laws, the laws in support of the queer community, review immigration laws, and are openly xenophobic and racist. they have stated they want to "fight" gender ideology, and are vehemently agaisnt trans people using the right bathrooms. there are multiple videos of them doing the nazi salute. its true, portugal is in very bad political state rn and the people want extreme changes, and thats why we now have a rightwing majority on our parlament. but its fucking terrifying. most CHEGA voters dont even know what they are voting for, but we still need to hold them accountable for this.

most of my friends are queer. its so deeply disheartening to watch your own country vote against you, against your right to exist. we dont feel safe anymore, and we know that in the next few years we will watch the already short list of laws that protected us be erased. they claim to want to build a "better future" for the young generations, but if we are queer, it seems that we dont belong in it.

#politics #awareness #chega #portugal #fascism #voting #democracy

[russilton]

Wait why don't you like Carlos? Genuinely asking!

He has made racist jokes about people in Asia eating cats, his families karting company was involved in blackface controversies, his family and he himself have been strongly involved with the Spanish fascist rightwing, including his father backing alonso when his fans showed up in blackface at a race to taunt Lewis, and he was part of the stand up six who refused to do the bare minimum of kneeling at Lewis’ appeal to support Black Lives Matter. He also went on to complain about being called racist and like others in the six, made it about himself.

He also laughed at his fans standing in his number pattern looking like swastika. That tweet was left up for years. Along with past casual homophobia

I also just find him to be generally dickish and he’s constantly blamed his own crashes on anyone other than himself, usually George, but also at points, the wind. I’ve seen a lot of these defended with “oh that was a long time ago” but together they build a pattern. All of that in combination makes me really think he should take a long walk of a short pier.

#asks #anonymous #anti sainz #wank/rants #tw racism #sources are linked

[causalityparadoxes]

If i had a penny for every time I saw the most braindead, authoritarian ass kissing, take on Home Education? I'd be so rich

Some of yall looooove to preach anarchism, socialism, general anti capitalist 'takes a village' non-nuclear family social concepts.

But the MOMENT someone mentions that hey isn't state/public school is kind of fucked up and literally designed to keep the poors off the streets and funnled into low income work? Maybe I'll try something else with my kids? Right back to fascist ass kissing.

Like god forbid we allow alternate forms of education. God forbid we allow social protest. God forbid theres an option to take children out of abusive school enviroments without being thrown in prison. God forbid there's alternate options for disabled children that don't force them into 'special classes' if the state thinks they're too disabled or given no accommodations if it thinks they're not disabled enough.

The moment it comes to a kid's autonomy and not being forced into actively harmful environments? Its right back to 'think of the children 😱' conservative bullshit and workhouse apologism. Its not based on facts, because that would show Home Ed kids achieve just as well in the end. Its based on rightwing style emotional politics. Get fucked honestly.

I am not your little victim. I am not a brainwashed religous nut. I am a leftwing socialist BECAUSE i was raised in an anti-authoritarian style of education which focused on my autonomy and interests.

#i have a more thought out post i was writing on this #but i saw another brain dead take and i just had to rant i feel so fucking angry rn #i know i would have been so fucking traumatised in state school #i never would have been able to develop into the person I am. i probably would have killed myself #god knows i got so suicidal during the 3 years i was in higher education #and its so fucking stupid because home ed kids have been studied!! and achieve the same are school kids!! #suprise suprise some people fit in alternate forms of education better which is why they stick with it!! #some of yall have no brains when it comes to how your education tried to traumatise you #rambles #rants #actually home educated

[tomorrowusa]

A rich guy who died 17 years ago is still funding rightwing causes. The only good news is that the money runs out in 2025.

From the Ambien and Dramamine in millions of bathroom medicine cabinets, to the sugar substitute that makes diet sodas sweet, to the first-ever birth control pill, some of America’s most common medicines and supplements can be traced back to the G.D. Searle pharmaceutical company. Now, more than a century after the company’s founding, the massive family fortune built from those scientific advances has emerged as a major benefactor of the right, mostly out of the public eye. The Searle Freedom Trust, a foundation funded by the company’s former chairman, has doled out more than $200 million in grants over the last decade, sending more money to conservative nonprofits than nearly any other private foundation in recent years, according to a CNN analysis. This year, the Searle trust is poised to play an even bigger role as it empties out its coffers. Following the wishes of its founder, the late Daniel C. Searle, the trust is closing down in 2025 and planning to award most of its last major grants in 2024. That means a potential windfall during a key election year for groups that push conservative policies: as of the beginning of 2023, according to its most recent tax return, the trust had more than $59 million left to spend.

Thanks to the Republican Supreme Court, the filthy rich can shit money into the coffers of rightwing causes and candidates.

“The fact that our political system works in a way where wealthy people who died years ago can continue to have such profound influence over our politics and our beliefs about science and the world is just incredibly damaging,” said Galen Hall, a University of Michigan researcher who’s studied the flow of money from foundations like the Searle trust to climate change denial groups. “It’s one of the key aspects of American politics that makes positive change on issues like climate change so difficult.” [ ... ] The Searle trust is one of the most prolific funders of conservative groups among all private foundations, according to a CNN analysis of nonprofit tax data. From 2020 through 2022, it has given a total of more than $29 million to a selection of conservative nonprofits identified by CNN. Only one other private foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, reported giving more to the groups over the same time period, based on data from hundreds of thousands of public tax filings. The analysis only included publicly reported donations, so it may be missing some foundations that donated through donor-advised funds, which help conceal the path of their money.

The billionaires and their poorer multimillionaire buddies know that liberals tend to overlook state governments. So they focus disproportionately on controlling state legislatures and passing reactionary laws. The late Daniel C. Searle was no exception.

The trust has also given more than $2.75 million to the American Legislative Exchange Council, which over the years has written cookie-cutter model legislation that has inspired conservative bills around the US – including laws that expanded the use of private prisons, restricted the ability of state pension funds to consider environmental risks when making investments, and limited local governments’ ability to restrict firearms. The Searle trust has “been a key financial driver of the development of right-wing political infrastructure,” said Brendan Fischer, the deputy executive director of the progressive watchdog group Documented. “They’ve had a pretty successful track record in areas including attacks on workers’ rights, the freedom to vote, state efforts to thwart action on climate change.”

We can no longer afford to be slackers when it comes to state politics. Increasingly we need to give extremist Republicans more pushback in state capitals.

Take more interest in legislative matters in your state. Let news outlets know you want more coverage of what legislatures are up to. Support outlets which already do provide such coverage.

And find out who exactly is representing you in the legislature. If it's MAGA Republicans who get loads of campaign contributions from billionaire sugar daddies, work for their defeat in the next state election.

Find Your Legislators Look your legislators up by address or use your current location.

This is a Substack about state politics by the idiosyncratic Carolyn Fiddler. It looks at state politics from a national and Democratic perspective. It's worth subscribing to.

This Week in Statehouse Action

It's good though it isn't a substitute for a news source for your specific state's politics.

Filthy rich rightwingers can be stopped if we get involved and remain focused. Winners in politics are not people with short attention spans.

#the filthy rich #searle freedom trust #daniel c. searle #rightwing political infrastructure #billionaire contributors to rightwing causes #republicans #galen hall #brendan fischer #get involved in state politics #state government #vote blue no matter who #election 2024

[kp777]

By Thom Hartmann

Common Dreams

March 31, 2023

The Republican Party's most dangerous grift today has been their embrace of the lie that America is not a democracy but instead is a theocratic republic that should be ruled exclusively by armed Christian white men. It's leading us straight into the jaws of fascism.

Nobody ever accused Republicans of not knowing how to make a buck or BS-ing somebody into voting for them. Lying to people for economic or political gain is the very definition of a grift.

Whenever there’s another mass- or school-shooting, Republican politicians hustle out fundraising emails about how “Democrats are coming to take your guns!” The result is a measurable and profitable spike in gun sales after every new slaughter of our families and children, followed by a fresh burst of campaign cash to GOP lawmakers.

But the GOP’s ability to exploit any opportunity that comes along — regardless of its impact on America or American citizens — goes way beyond just fundraising hustles.

When Jared Kushner was underwater and nearly bankrupt because he overpaid for 666 Fifth Avenue and needed a billion-dollar bailout to cover his mortgage, his buddies in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia and the UAE) blockaded American ally (and host to the Fifth Fleet) Qatar until that country relented and laundered the money to Jared through a Canadian investment company.

Just this week, after Trump deregulated toxic trains leading to a horrible crash and the contamination of East Palestine, Ohio, Steve Bannon — already charged with multiple fraud-related crimes and then pardoned by Trump — showed up this week to hustle $300+ water filters to the people of that town.

The grift is at the core of the GOP’s existence, and has been since Nixon blew up LBJ’s peace talks with the Vietnamese in 1968 and then took cash bribes from the Milk Lobby and Jimmy Hoffa in the White House while having his mafia-connected “plumbers” wiretap the DNC’s offices at the Watergate.

— Republicans successfully fought the ability of Medicare to negotiate drug prices for decades; in turn, Big Pharma pours millions into their campaign coffers and personal pockets (legalized by 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court).

— Republicans beat back Democratic efforts to stop insurance giants from ripping off seniors and our government with George W. Bush’s Medicare Advantage privatization scam; in turn, the insurance companies rain cash on them like an Indian monsoon.

— Republicans oppose any effort to replace fossil fuels with green energy sources that don’t destroy our environment; in turn, the fossil fuel industry jacked up the price of gasoline into the stratosphere just in time for the 2022 election (and you can expect them to try it again in 2024).

— Republicans stopped enforcement of a century’s worth of anti-trust laws in 1983, wiping out America’s small businesses and turning rural city centers into ghost towns while pushing profits and prices through the ceiling; in turn massive corporate PACs fund ads supporting Republican candidates every election cycle.

— Republicans authored legislation letting billionaires own thousands of newspapers, radio stations, and TV outlets; in turn the vast majority of those papers (now half of all local papers are owned by a handful of rightwing New York hedge funds) and stations all run daily news and editorials attacking Democrats and supporting the GOP.

— Republicans Trump and Pai killed net neutrality so giant tech companies can legally spy on you and me, recording every website we visit and selling that information for billions; in turn, major social media sites amplify rightwing voices while giant search engines stopped spidering progressive news sites.

Newspeak — George Orwell’s term for the grift where politicians use fancy phrases that mean the opposite of what people think they mean — has been the GOP’s go-to strategy for a half-century.

Richard Nixon, for example, promised to crack down on drugs, but instead used that as an excuse to crack down on anti-war liberals and Black people. Instead of an economic grift, it was a political grift.

As Nixon‘s right hand man, John Ehrlichman, told reporter Dan Baum:

“You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. Do you understand what I’m saying? “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. “We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.“

The grift is a recurrent theme through Republican presidencies in the modern era.

Ronald Reagan told us if we just destroyed America’s unions and moved our manufacturing to China and Mexico, great job opportunities would fill the nation.

He followed that up by promising if we just cut taxes on the morbidly rich, prosperity would trickle-down to the rest of us.

Reagan even assured us that raising the Social Security retirement age to 67 and taxing Social Security benefits would mean seniors could retire with greater ease.

All, of course, were grifter’s lies. Republican presidents since Reagan have continued the tradition.

George W. Bush called his program to make it easier to clear-cut America’s forests and rip roads through wilderness areas the “Healthy Forests Initiative.”

His program to legalize more pollution from coal-fired power plants and immunize them from community lawsuits (leading to tens of thousands of additional lung- and heart-disease deaths in the years since) was named the “Clean Air Act.”

Bush’s scam to “strengthen” Medicare — “Medicare Advantage” — was a thinly disguised plan to privatize that program that is today draining Medicare’s coffers while making insurance executives richer than Midas.

Donald Trump told Americans he had the coronavirus pandemic under control while he was actually making the situation far worse: America had more deaths per capita from the disease than any other developed country in the world, with The Lancet estimating a half-million Americans died needlessly because of Trump’s grift.

Jared and Ivanka cashed in on their time in the White House to the tune of billions, while Trump squeezed hundreds of millions out of foreign governments, encouraging them to illegally pay him through rentals in his properties around the world.

Other Trump grifts — most leading to grateful industries or billionaires helping him and the GOP out — included:

— Making workplaces less safe — Boosting religious schools at the expense of public schools — Cutting relief for students defrauded by student loan sharks — Shrinking the safety net by cutting $60 billion out of food stamps — Forcing workers to put in overtime without getting paid extra for it — Pouring more pollution from fossil fuels into our fragile atmosphere — Gutting the EPA’s science operation — Rescinding rules that protected workers at federal contract sites — Dialing back car air pollution emissions standards — Reducing legal immigration of skilled workers into the US from “shithole countries” — Blocking regulation of toxic chemicals — Rolling back rules on banks, setting up the crisis of 2023 — Defenestrating rules against racially segregated housing

While Nixon was simply corrupt — a crook, to use his own term — in 1978 when five Republicans on the Supreme Court signed off on the Bellotti decision authored by Lewis Powell himself, giving corporations the legal right to bribe American politicians, the GOP went all in.

Ever since then, the GOP has purely been the party of billionaires and giant corporations, although their most successful political grift has been to throw an occasional bone to racists, gun-nuts, fascists, homophobes, and woman-haters to get votes.

Democrats at that time were largely funded by the unions, so it wasn’t until the 1990s, after Reagan had destroyed about half of America’s union jobs and gutted the unions’ ability to fund campaigns, that the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton was forced to make a big turn toward taking corporate cash.

Since Barack Obama showed how online fundraising could replace corporate cash, however, about half of the nation’s Democratic politicians have aligned with the Progressive Caucus and eschewed corporate money, returning much of the Party to its FDR and Great Society base.

The GOP, in contrast, has never wavered from lapping up corporate money in exchange for tax cuts, deregulation, and corporate socialism.

Their most dangerous grift today, though, has been their embrace of the lie that America is not a democracy but instead is a theocratic republic that should be ruled exclusively by armed Christian white men. It’s leading us straight into the jaws of fascism.

Bannon’s grift in East Palestine is the smallest of the small, after his being busted for a multi-million-dollar fraud in the “Build the Wall” scheme and others, but is still emblematic of the Republican strategy at governance.

When all you have to offer the people is a hustle, then at the very least, Republicans figure, you should be able to make a buck or gain/keep political power while doing it.

#republicans #gop #grift #common dreams

[warcrimesimulator]

communists on twitter have been unironically arguing that if you aren't willing to risk getting kicked out and becoming homeless for calling out your parents/family's rightwing views you're not a real communist or whatever. very unserious people.