The Republican Agenda 2021 and Forward

SuperMatt said:
popular.info

1 truth and 3 lies about Critical Race Theory

Between now and November 2022, you will be hearing a lot about Critical Race Theory (CRT).
popular.info popular.info

Pretty decent explanation of what CRT is (and isn’t) and also how the right is trying to use it to influence the 2022 elections.
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But as that joke pointed out, just those words strung together are going to trigger some on the right. They aren’t going to bother to find out the facts about it and their media is just going to feed into the outrage about those words and how it can be shown in the most negative (for their viewers) light.

It’s kind of a grotesque extension of special snowflake parenting, you’ll achieve great things just because you are alive and the playing field is level for everybody.
 
This article compares the new anti-CRT laws to Russian policies to whitewash their history of genocide. One thing the author noticed is that this is all about feelings:

But the most common feature among the laws, and the one most familiar to a student of repressive memory laws elsewhere in the world, is their attention to feelings. Four of five of them, in almost identical language, proscribe any curricular activities that would give rise to “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race or sex.”

History is not therapy, and discomfort is part of growing up. As a teacher, I cannot exclude the possibility, for example, that my non-Jewish students will feel psychological distress in learning how little the United States did for Jewish refugees in the 1930s. I know from my experience teaching the Holocaust that it often causes psychological discomfort for students to learn that Hitler admired Jim Crow and the myth of the Wild West. Teachers in high schools cannot exclude the possibility that the history of slavery, lynchings and voter suppression will make some non-Black students uncomfortable. The new memory laws invite teachers to self-censor, on the basis of what students might feel — or say they feel. The memory laws place censorial power in the hands of students and their parents. It is not exactly unusual for white people in America to express the view that they are being treated unfairly; now such an opinion could bring history classes to a halt.
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The people wearing shirts saying “F*** your Feelings” are passing laws banning the teaching of any truths that make them feel bad.


Here is the link: I used a code so you should not be paywalled if you want to read it without a NYT subscription.

www.nytimes.com

The War on History Is a War on Democracy (Published 2021)

A scholar of totalitarianism argues that new laws restricting the discussion of race in American schools have dire precedents in Europe.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
 
www.tpr.org

Texas Sheriffs React To Gov. Abbott's Call For Jailers To Aid Border Counties

Gov. Greg Abbott has issued a call for qualified current and former county jailers to assist border sheriffs with operating detention facilities and providing jail beds.
www.tpr.org www.tpr.org

The last 2 paragraphs show this is a response to a problem that doesn’t actually exist, unlike their power grid and Ted Cruz….and for Republicans the fact Texas is turning bluer by the minute. Quick, somebody make some party of Lincoln statement which in comparative history terms is like Italy trying to use “the country of Julius Caesar!” as some kind of pertinent rallying cry.
 
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Aaaand speaking of Russia:

www.salon.com

My very brief night on the town: A movie screening with Seb Gorka and Devin Nunes

Salon reporter was booted from the venue and Devin Nunes never showed: Can Seb Gorka even drive his Mustang?
www.salon.com www.salon.com

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the voting booth! This summer’s blockbuster is a combination of Hitchcockian intrigue and Lynchian bizarreness. Yes, it’s Russiagate: The Movie!

​
 
Speaking of Russiagate, after the NSA said they are not reading Tucker Carlson's emails at least one member of the liberal media applied their mental gymnastics to translate it as they not reading HIS emails. They are reading a foreign agent's emails who happens to be in contact with Tucker Carlson. So they are reading that agent's emails and Tucker's responses just happen to be part of it.
 
Some interesting (scary) insight on Joe Walsh’s latest podcast. For those who don’t know Joe is a former Tea Party congressman who turned anti-Trump. He has publicly apologized for his role in the rise of Trump as a Tea Party member and has made it his life mission to fight Trump and his cult. He recently lost his radio show because the station owner is pro Trump and most of the content of Joe’s show was anti Trump. He still engages with thousands of Trump supporters via social media in hopes he can open their eyes and help them to leave the cult.

He still has many government insider contacts and is being told that Trump at this time is planning to run again in 2024. Do you have full confidence he won’t win again? What do you think will happen if its another close loss? Do you think Biden and the Democrats can accomplish enough things in 4 years to squash all the anger on the right?

Short of Trump landing in prison all these legal cases and even convictions of his associates won’t mean shit. It will just embolden Trump and his supporters as Trump being the victim of a witch hunt.

Trump supporters know exactly who he is and what he does. They don’t support him despite his extreme moral, ethical, and legal flaws and lies. They support him because of those things because they wish they could get away with the same thing. He’s the ultimate hero of sticking it to the system, a system they feel screwed them too. So don’t think all these lawsuits are going to change any minds.
 
Chew Toy McCoy said:
Speaking of Russiagate, after the NSA said they are not reading Tucker Carlson's emails at least one member of the liberal media applied their mental gymnastics to translate it as they not reading HIS emails. They are reading a foreign agent's emails who happens to be in contact with Tucker Carlson. So they are reading that agent's emails and Tucker's responses just happen to be part of it.
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So, why is Tucker Carlson emailing a foreign agent? And doesn’t he know that foreign agents’ emails are most likely monitored by the NSA? 🤦‍♀️
 
SuperBillionaire said:
So, why is Tucker Carlson emailing a foreign agent? And doesn’t he know that foreign agents’ emails are most likely monitored by the NSA? 🤦‍♀️
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That's not what anyone is saying happened other than a liberal commentator hypothesizing.

The NSA said they aren't reading Tucker's emails. Full stop. Everything beyond that is fan fiction.
 
Chew Toy McCoy said:
That's not what anyone is saying happened other than a liberal commentator hypothesizing.

The NSA said they aren't reading Tucker's emails. Full stop. Everything beyond that is fan fiction.
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Not that it would surprise me hearing that he did. He's a particular nasty piece of work with less morals than a swamp rat.
 
Also republican candidates are running only on trying to make it possible to change election results. it is getting so blatant and ugly trump really has let loose the Kracken.
 
Chew Toy McCoy said:
Some interesting (scary) insight on Joe Walsh’s latest podcast. For those who don’t know Joe is a former Tea Party congressman who turned anti-Trump. He has publicly apologized for his role in the rise of Trump as a Tea Party member and has made it his life mission to fight Trump and his cult. He recently lost his radio show because the station owner is pro Trump and most of the content of Joe’s show was anti Trump. He still engages with thousands of Trump supporters via social media in hopes he can open their eyes and help them to leave the cult.

He still has many government insider contacts and is being told that Trump at this time is planning to run again in 2024. Do you have full confidence he won’t win again? What do you think will happen if its another close loss? Do you think Biden and the Democrats can accomplish enough things in 4 years to squash all the anger on the right?

Short of Trump landing in prison all these legal cases and even convictions of his associates won’t mean shit. It will just embolden Trump and his supporters as Trump being the victim of a witch hunt.

Trump supporters know exactly who he is and what he does. They don’t support him despite his extreme moral, ethical, and legal flaws and lies. They support him because of those things because they wish they could get away with the same thing. He’s the ultimate hero of sticking it to the system, a system they feel screwed them too. So don’t think all these lawsuits are going to change any minds.
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Still, the chance of Trump getting the 2024 nomination seems practically nil to me for a number of reasons -- age, physical and mental health issues, pending criminal investigations, the high levels of the RNC are more in flux than may seem to be the case, at least while Liz Cheney is still out there shocking people by insisting on speaking truthfully about who won the 2020 election and what January 6th was about...

And it remains to be seen how the evangelical vote sorts out in 2022. I don't think Trump's best days are ahead of him on the political circuit. If they were, he'd already have a robust social media site grabbing mainstream media headlines every day. Not happening.

On the other hand anything can happen in American politics and it's not like the Democrats don't have a raft of problems.
 


I feel like a big part of the Republican agenda is having a big fish bowl full of folded up papers with concepts they know absolutely nothing about written on them which they pull from at random and then instantly issue a proudly ignorant statement about it. It’s like a giant trigger word salad or ink blot test where all they ever see is evil socialism.
 
lizkat said:
Still, the chance of Trump getting the 2024 nomination seems practically nil to me for a number of reasons -- age, physical and mental health issues, pending criminal investigations, the high levels of the RNC are more in flux than may seem to be the case, at least while Liz Cheney is still out there shocking people by insisting on speaking truthfully about who won the 2020 election and what January 6th was about...

And it remains to be seen how the evangelical vote sorts out in 2022. I don't think Trump's best days are ahead of him on the political circuit. If they were, he'd already have a robust social media site grabbing mainstream media headlines every day. Not happening.

On the other hand anything can happen in American politics and it's not like the Democrats don't have a raft of problems.
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Agree. The GOP's only two chances are:
1) People getting pissed about DNC impotence in the senate
2) Voter suppression

Trump will be a yuuuge 2024 headache because
1) The issues you listed with his mental, physical, financial and legal health
2) Losing his platform to keep hardcore voters engaged (to be frank his appeal dissipated the moment he got owned by the libs)
3) Trump's approval of a candidate will be used to galvanize the majority of people who can't stand Trump. Trumps disapproval of a candidate would lose hardcore trumpists.

I also don't see how DeSantis' anti CRT efforts won't backfire when he'll be confronted with Florida's past as the lynching capital of the early 20th century where the legal system actually protected lynchers and fulfilled what fascists of the same era would proudly declare to be rule by terror (i.e. terrorism).
 
It remains to be seen whether news media outlets decline to give Trump's self-publicizing stunts and rally appearances for 2022 GOP candidates enough oxygen to reignite the flagging interest of some of his own former supporters.

The editors of some newspapers with online presence have vowed not to provide any more coverage of claims by Trump or his supporters that he won the 2020 election or that it was stolen from him. Some papers though will probably not be able to resist testing the value of clickbait headlines and pieces about "the former guy" as the midterms approach and meanwhile news consumption in general appears to be declining.
 
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