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As of 2018, a total of 13.7% of U.S. adults (16.7% of men and 13.6% of women) smoke.
Showing posts with label stupid fucking assholes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stupid fucking assholes. Show all posts
Thursday, July 8, 2021
Tuesday, July 6, 2021
Muslim scum are afraid of women.
New York Times
Aware of its harsh rule, the Taliban is trying to rebrand itself as capable as the U.S. finishes its withdrawal from Afghanistan. But the evidence is to the contrary.
The insurgents are pressing a ruthless, land-grabbing offensive across the country; an assassination campaign against government and security workers continues; there is little effort at peace talks; and women are being forced out of public-facing roles, and girls out of schools. There is fear that worse is on the horizon.
Back in the U.S., an unlikely coalition of veterans, many of whom have clashed bitterly over the years, supports President Biden’s decision to withdraw.
Aware of its harsh rule, the Taliban is trying to rebrand itself as capable as the U.S. finishes its withdrawal from Afghanistan. But the evidence is to the contrary.
The insurgents are pressing a ruthless, land-grabbing offensive across the country; an assassination campaign against government and security workers continues; there is little effort at peace talks; and women are being forced out of public-facing roles, and girls out of schools. There is fear that worse is on the horizon.
Back in the U.S., an unlikely coalition of veterans, many of whom have clashed bitterly over the years, supports President Biden’s decision to withdraw.
Sunday, July 4, 2021
I wrote this comment at the Washington Post. It's about Republican stupidity.
"But while 6 percent of Democrats say they aren’t likely to get vaccinated, 47 percent of Republicans fall into that camp, with 38 percent of Republicans overall saying they will definitely not get shots against the virus."
This is a good thing. It means more Republicans will be dropping dead. Dead Republicans can't vote.
This is a good thing. It means more Republicans will be dropping dead. Dead Republicans can't vote.
Wednesday, June 23, 2021
I have just one comment: FUCK YOU CHINA.
New York Times
BREAKING NEWS |
Apple Daily, a pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong, said that it would shut down by Saturday after the police froze its accounts and arrested staff. |
Wednesday, June 23, 2021 4:04 AM EST |
The closure will silence one of the biggest and most aggressive media outlets in the city, highlighting the vast reach of the security law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing last year. |
Monday, June 14, 2021
China's dictatorship lies about everything.
Wall Street Journal
OPINION
COMMENTARY
Beijing Protests a Lab Leak Too Much
Strong evidence the virus escaped: the Communist Party’s vicious attacks on anyone who speaks out.
By Perry Link
June 13, 2021
I am as eager as anyone to follow the world’s virologists as they try to determine how Covid-19 emerged in Wuhan, China. But as a longtime student of Chinese Communist political language, I will need considerable persuading that the disease came from bats or a wet market. The linguistic evidence is overwhelming that Chinese leaders believe the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source.
Many years ago a distinguished Chinese writer, Wu Zuxiang, explained to me that there is truth in Communist Party pronouncements, but you have to read them “upside down.” If a newspaper says “the Party has made great strides against corruption in Henan,” then you know that corruption has recently been especially bad in Henan. If you read about the heroic rescue of eight miners somewhere, you can guess that a mine collapse might have killed hundreds who aren’t mentioned. Read upside-down, there is a sense in which the official press never lies. It cannot lie. It has to tell you what the party wants you to believe, and if you can figure out the party’s motive—which always exists—then you have a sense of the truth.
A few years ago another outstanding Chinese writer, Su Xiaokang, brought me one step deeper. You Westerners, he explained, are too hung up on the question of whether propaganda is true or not. For the regime, truth and falsity are beside the point. A statement might be true, false or partly true. What matters is only whether it works. Does it advance the interests of the party? The top leaders hand out words and phrases for their minions to use, like trowels in a garden. The minions dig with them.
After the Communist Party locked down the city of Wuhan in winter 2020, a local writer named Fang Fang began recording the conditions and moods of the people around her and posting entries on the Internet. “Fang Fang’s Diary” quickly attracted a large following, and the author became known as “the conscience of Wuhan.” Michael Berry, a UCLA professor of Asian languages and cultures who was translating one of the author’s novels, went to work on her posts as well. They were published last summer by HarperCollins.
The book, “Wuhan Diary,” consists of plain truth-telling. It is unadorned, simple language that stood out in Wuhan only because no one else was daring to write anything. But the regime’s response was to attack Fang Fang more ferociously than any Chinese writer has been attacked since Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s. In his day, Mao had made “struggle” a transitive verb: to struggle someone was to surround him or her, in the street or on a stage, and hurl taunts, insults, threats and demands for confessions; no bystander would dare speak for the struggled for fear of becoming the next target. Verbal abuse often led to physical beatings, sometimes even to death.
Xi Jinping has revived struggle in a form that might be called “cyberstruggle.” The young zealots of Mao’s era, called Red Guards, have been replaced by equally frenetic strugglers nicknamed “Little Pinks.” In spring of 2020, Little Pinks and others struggled Fang Fang: “Down with the imperialist running dog and traitor to China, Fang Fang!” To them, the diary was a “pile of messed up garbage and fabricated rumors [that] should be called ‘Fang Fang’s Sexual Fantasies’!” She received death threats. A witch hunt identified her supporters and began to struggle them, too. Mr. Berry, her translator, wasn’t spared. Hundreds of text messages arrived on his cell phone: “You ugly white devil, feasting on the flesh of man and drinking human blood, the eighteen realms of hell were created especially for you!”; “If you ever set foot in China again I will kill you”; and others.
The invective may tell us something about the origins of Covid. Two facts are worth noting. First, the attacks are coordinated, not a random explosion of vitriol. Second, they are much stronger—orders of magnitude stronger—than other verbal attacks on individuals in China recently have been. These two facts, taken together, make it all but certain that the campaign against Fang Fang came from the top.
Borrowing Wu Zuxiang’s technique of reading “upside down,” what the Fang Fang campaign tells us is that Xi Jinping is extremely worried that the world will hold his regime responsible for the pandemic. The most radioactive question has been where the virus originated. Fang Fang made no mention of whether the virus originated in a wet market or a lab; she merely documented all of the suffering that began in Wuhan. The regime’s focus on the origins question alone all but screams a truth.
The Chinese Communist Party’s official account of the virus is that it “jumped” from bats to humans at a wet market not far from the Wuhan lab. The city government was quick to close down that market, seal it off and provide the world with photos showing that the sealing had been done. Why were the authorities so swift and conspicuous? Because they suspected the wet market or because they wanted the world to? If they were certain that Mother Nature was the culprit, why silence their scientists and seal laboratory records? And why begin a vicious cyberstruggle against someone who records daily life as she sees it?
Mr. Link is a professor of Chinese at the University of California, Riverside and an emeritus professor of East Asian studies at Princeton.
Appeared in the June 14, 2021, print edition.
OPINION
COMMENTARY
Beijing Protests a Lab Leak Too Much
Strong evidence the virus escaped: the Communist Party’s vicious attacks on anyone who speaks out.
By Perry Link
June 13, 2021
I am as eager as anyone to follow the world’s virologists as they try to determine how Covid-19 emerged in Wuhan, China. But as a longtime student of Chinese Communist political language, I will need considerable persuading that the disease came from bats or a wet market. The linguistic evidence is overwhelming that Chinese leaders believe the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source.
Many years ago a distinguished Chinese writer, Wu Zuxiang, explained to me that there is truth in Communist Party pronouncements, but you have to read them “upside down.” If a newspaper says “the Party has made great strides against corruption in Henan,” then you know that corruption has recently been especially bad in Henan. If you read about the heroic rescue of eight miners somewhere, you can guess that a mine collapse might have killed hundreds who aren’t mentioned. Read upside-down, there is a sense in which the official press never lies. It cannot lie. It has to tell you what the party wants you to believe, and if you can figure out the party’s motive—which always exists—then you have a sense of the truth.
A few years ago another outstanding Chinese writer, Su Xiaokang, brought me one step deeper. You Westerners, he explained, are too hung up on the question of whether propaganda is true or not. For the regime, truth and falsity are beside the point. A statement might be true, false or partly true. What matters is only whether it works. Does it advance the interests of the party? The top leaders hand out words and phrases for their minions to use, like trowels in a garden. The minions dig with them.
After the Communist Party locked down the city of Wuhan in winter 2020, a local writer named Fang Fang began recording the conditions and moods of the people around her and posting entries on the Internet. “Fang Fang’s Diary” quickly attracted a large following, and the author became known as “the conscience of Wuhan.” Michael Berry, a UCLA professor of Asian languages and cultures who was translating one of the author’s novels, went to work on her posts as well. They were published last summer by HarperCollins.
The book, “Wuhan Diary,” consists of plain truth-telling. It is unadorned, simple language that stood out in Wuhan only because no one else was daring to write anything. But the regime’s response was to attack Fang Fang more ferociously than any Chinese writer has been attacked since Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s. In his day, Mao had made “struggle” a transitive verb: to struggle someone was to surround him or her, in the street or on a stage, and hurl taunts, insults, threats and demands for confessions; no bystander would dare speak for the struggled for fear of becoming the next target. Verbal abuse often led to physical beatings, sometimes even to death.
Xi Jinping has revived struggle in a form that might be called “cyberstruggle.” The young zealots of Mao’s era, called Red Guards, have been replaced by equally frenetic strugglers nicknamed “Little Pinks.” In spring of 2020, Little Pinks and others struggled Fang Fang: “Down with the imperialist running dog and traitor to China, Fang Fang!” To them, the diary was a “pile of messed up garbage and fabricated rumors [that] should be called ‘Fang Fang’s Sexual Fantasies’!” She received death threats. A witch hunt identified her supporters and began to struggle them, too. Mr. Berry, her translator, wasn’t spared. Hundreds of text messages arrived on his cell phone: “You ugly white devil, feasting on the flesh of man and drinking human blood, the eighteen realms of hell were created especially for you!”; “If you ever set foot in China again I will kill you”; and others.
The invective may tell us something about the origins of Covid. Two facts are worth noting. First, the attacks are coordinated, not a random explosion of vitriol. Second, they are much stronger—orders of magnitude stronger—than other verbal attacks on individuals in China recently have been. These two facts, taken together, make it all but certain that the campaign against Fang Fang came from the top.
Borrowing Wu Zuxiang’s technique of reading “upside down,” what the Fang Fang campaign tells us is that Xi Jinping is extremely worried that the world will hold his regime responsible for the pandemic. The most radioactive question has been where the virus originated. Fang Fang made no mention of whether the virus originated in a wet market or a lab; she merely documented all of the suffering that began in Wuhan. The regime’s focus on the origins question alone all but screams a truth.
The Chinese Communist Party’s official account of the virus is that it “jumped” from bats to humans at a wet market not far from the Wuhan lab. The city government was quick to close down that market, seal it off and provide the world with photos showing that the sealing had been done. Why were the authorities so swift and conspicuous? Because they suspected the wet market or because they wanted the world to? If they were certain that Mother Nature was the culprit, why silence their scientists and seal laboratory records? And why begin a vicious cyberstruggle against someone who records daily life as she sees it?
Mr. Link is a professor of Chinese at the University of California, Riverside and an emeritus professor of East Asian studies at Princeton.
Appeared in the June 14, 2021, print edition.
Wednesday, June 9, 2021
Christian retards, evolution makes them cry. It's hard to imagine how much stupidity is required to be a Christian asshole. This is what I wrote at the Wall Street Journal
"Third, for more than a century, white evangelical Protestants have had a tense relationship with modern science, which they see as challenging core tenets of their faith. They are less likely than other Americans to take 'follow the science' as their benchmark."
These religious people are very anti-science. For example they want to throw out evolution. They prefer god-did-it.
These religious people are very anti-science. For example they want to throw out evolution. They prefer god-did-it.
Here is more evidence for the idea that Republicans are fucking morons. These are the assholes who suck up to Trump, the stupidest president in United States history.
Wall Street Journal
What Drives GOP Resistance to Vaccines?
Eight in 10 Democrats have at least one dose, compared with about half of Republicans.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
I wrote this comment:
What Drives GOP Resistance to Vaccines?
That's easy. About half of Republicans are not too bright.
What Drives GOP Resistance to Vaccines?
Eight in 10 Democrats have at least one dose, compared with about half of Republicans.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
I wrote this comment:
What Drives GOP Resistance to Vaccines?
That's easy. About half of Republicans are not too bright.
Monday, June 7, 2021
Most Republicans are stupid fucking assholes.
New York Times
Republicans are leaning into Donald Trump’s lie that he won the 2020 election.
Across the country, a group of Republican challengers are running on the “Stop the Steal” fallacy, touted by protesters above. If elected, they would bring the G.O.P.’s assault on the legitimacy of elections — a bedrock of American democracy — to Congress.
But it might not work. In Arizona, an extravagantly flawed “audit” of the swing state’s election is alienating some Republicans. Polls say it will hurt the G.O.P. in 2022. Still, state party leaders continue the count.
And Trump plans to resume regular rallies this summer. That will help him spread his message, but despite social media bans and his blog’s low-readership, loyal supporters still pushed Trump’s words out on their feeds.
Republicans are leaning into Donald Trump’s lie that he won the 2020 election.
Across the country, a group of Republican challengers are running on the “Stop the Steal” fallacy, touted by protesters above. If elected, they would bring the G.O.P.’s assault on the legitimacy of elections — a bedrock of American democracy — to Congress.
But it might not work. In Arizona, an extravagantly flawed “audit” of the swing state’s election is alienating some Republicans. Polls say it will hurt the G.O.P. in 2022. Still, state party leaders continue the count.
And Trump plans to resume regular rallies this summer. That will help him spread his message, but despite social media bans and his blog’s low-readership, loyal supporters still pushed Trump’s words out on their feeds.
Every day, especially on the weekends, people get killed in Chicago where I used to live. This weekend was typical.
11-year-old girl among over 50 shot, 5 killed over the weekend in Chicago.
Monday, May 31, 2021
Sunday, May 30, 2021
"People are starting to travel again and they’re acting like assholes." "The coronavirus restrictions were tough, but at least it forced many of the nation’s assholes to stay home."
Mother Jones
MAY 29, 2021
People Are Starting to Travel Again and They’re Acting Like Assholes
NATHALIE BAPTISTE
Reporter Bio | Follow
Southwest Airlines announced it would not resume alcohol service on its flights. The airline had stopped serving alcohol during the beginning of the pandemic, but was set to rescind that policy next month—until a passenger assaulted a flight attendant last week. The incident was just the latest in a disturbing rise of unruly and dangerous passengers on planes.
According to the Port of San Diego Harbor police, a woman was arrested on felony assault charges after striking a flight attendant. “The passenger repeatedly ignored standard inflight instructions (tray table in upright position, seat belt, etc.) and became verbally and physically abusive upon landing,” a Southwest Airlines spokesperson said in a statement. The suspect has been banned from the airlines. Sonya Lacore, the airline’s head of in-flight operations, decided “based on the rise in passenger disruptions in flight, I’ve made the decision to re-evaluate the restart of alcohol service on board.”
Southwest isn’t the only airline experiencing a rise in horrible customers. The Federal Aviation Administration announced that since January 1, the agency has received 2,500 reports of “unruly behavior” with 1,900 of those being passengers refusing to comply with the federal mask mandate. In a January incident, a passenger on an unidentified airline shoved a flight attendant who was walking down the aircraft’s aisle to ensure each passenger was complying with the mask mandate. The FAA has announced penalties as high as $15,000 for disruptive customers.
As vaccine rates climb and local governments lift restrictions, more people are traveling. But that also means more people are engaging in troubling behavior. “We’ve never before seen aggression and violence on our planes like we have in the past five months,” Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, said in a statement. “The constant combative attitude over wearing masks is exhausting and sometimes horrific for the people who have been on the front lines of this pandemic for over a year.”
It’s exhilarating to see public life resume in a quasi-normal way, after a year of being unable to see our family and friends. But in a classic case of This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, some people are choosing to treat the return to widespread travel as a chance to act like utter jerks. The coronavirus restrictions were tough, but at least it forced many of the nation’s assholes to stay home.
MAY 29, 2021
People Are Starting to Travel Again and They’re Acting Like Assholes
NATHALIE BAPTISTE
Reporter Bio | Follow
Southwest Airlines announced it would not resume alcohol service on its flights. The airline had stopped serving alcohol during the beginning of the pandemic, but was set to rescind that policy next month—until a passenger assaulted a flight attendant last week. The incident was just the latest in a disturbing rise of unruly and dangerous passengers on planes.
According to the Port of San Diego Harbor police, a woman was arrested on felony assault charges after striking a flight attendant. “The passenger repeatedly ignored standard inflight instructions (tray table in upright position, seat belt, etc.) and became verbally and physically abusive upon landing,” a Southwest Airlines spokesperson said in a statement. The suspect has been banned from the airlines. Sonya Lacore, the airline’s head of in-flight operations, decided “based on the rise in passenger disruptions in flight, I’ve made the decision to re-evaluate the restart of alcohol service on board.”
Southwest isn’t the only airline experiencing a rise in horrible customers. The Federal Aviation Administration announced that since January 1, the agency has received 2,500 reports of “unruly behavior” with 1,900 of those being passengers refusing to comply with the federal mask mandate. In a January incident, a passenger on an unidentified airline shoved a flight attendant who was walking down the aircraft’s aisle to ensure each passenger was complying with the mask mandate. The FAA has announced penalties as high as $15,000 for disruptive customers.
As vaccine rates climb and local governments lift restrictions, more people are traveling. But that also means more people are engaging in troubling behavior. “We’ve never before seen aggression and violence on our planes like we have in the past five months,” Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, said in a statement. “The constant combative attitude over wearing masks is exhausting and sometimes horrific for the people who have been on the front lines of this pandemic for over a year.”
It’s exhilarating to see public life resume in a quasi-normal way, after a year of being unable to see our family and friends. But in a classic case of This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, some people are choosing to treat the return to widespread travel as a chance to act like utter jerks. The coronavirus restrictions were tough, but at least it forced many of the nation’s assholes to stay home.
Friday, May 28, 2021
Thursday, May 27, 2021
Muslim scum are afraid of women.
Someone else wrote this comment at the New York Times:
"What I care about are the Afghani women and girls. They are already seeing the few fundamental rights they gained while the U.S. propped up the country's government quickly disappear again. Once the last U.S. troops are out, all Afghani women will once again be treated worse than farm animals, with no access to education, health care, or even a meaningful ability to walk outside their homes without being threatened by the religious police if an inch of their skin happens to show outside their burqas."
"What I care about are the Afghani women and girls. They are already seeing the few fundamental rights they gained while the U.S. propped up the country's government quickly disappear again. Once the last U.S. troops are out, all Afghani women will once again be treated worse than farm animals, with no access to education, health care, or even a meaningful ability to walk outside their homes without being threatened by the religious police if an inch of their skin happens to show outside their burqas."
Afghanistan will always be a shithole country because it's infested with Muslim scum. When the Americans leave the women will be treated like farm animals. Children, especially girls, will never learn anything.
New York Times
BREAKING NEWS |
A wave of Afghan military surrenders to the Taliban is picking up speed in rural areas as American troops withdraw. |
Thursday, May 27, 2021 10:55 AM EST |
Since May 1, at least 26 outposts and bases in just four provinces in Afghanistan have surrendered, according to village elders and government officials. With morale diving as American troops leave, and the Taliban seizing on each surrender as a propaganda victory, each collapse feeds the next. |
Monday, May 24, 2021
I wrote this for some god-soaked cry babies at the Wall Street Journal but what I wrote was not published. Christian assholes hide behind censorship. The stupid, it burns.
"The existence of the universe"
Your god thing didn't magically create the universe. We have something called "science". Look it up.
By the way, what created your imaginary god thing? The usual excuse is "God always existed". That's just being childish.
Your God is equal to Santa Claus. It's for children and for people who never learned how to grow up.
Also, the child abuse thing. It's brainwashing and it's disgusting.
Your god thing didn't magically create the universe. We have something called "science". Look it up.
By the way, what created your imaginary god thing? The usual excuse is "God always existed". That's just being childish.
Your God is equal to Santa Claus. It's for children and for people who never learned how to grow up.
Also, the child abuse thing. It's brainwashing and it's disgusting.
Friday, May 21, 2021
The United States has a Bill of Rights which includes keeping church and state completely separate. But Fucktard Texas has thrown out our constitution so they can force school children to suck up to the Magic Man. What a bunch of stupid fucking assholes.
I found this at the New York Times:
“I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God.”
That’s how schoolchildren in Texas start their day, every morning.
“I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God.”
That’s how schoolchildren in Texas start their day, every morning.
Tuesday, May 18, 2021
Thursday, May 13, 2021
From the New York Times, more stuff about why Republicans are fucking morons.
By David Leonhardt
Liz Cheney’s ouster is a sign of the Republican Party’s growing discomfort with democracy.
‘Dangerously anti-democratic’
The Republican Party’s big recent moves — the ouster of Liz Cheney from a leadership position and the passage of new state voting laws — do not have much immediate impact on Americans’ lives.
Cheney’s removal doesn’t change congressional Republicans’ approach to President Biden’s agenda, and the voting laws will mostly start to matter next year. With Biden in the White House, Democrats controlling Congress and many Americans still focused on Covid-19, internal Republican debates can sometimes feel like an exhausting partisan sideshow.
They are not. The last few months have the potential to be a turning point for the country because of what is happening inside the Republican Party.
I don’t say that lightly. Readers of this newsletter know that I don’t believe any political ideology has a monopoly on truth. Democrats have their own problems, including an elitist intolerance for debate about some subjects and a set of Covid fears that are at times disconnected from scientific evidence. But the issues inside the Republican Party — involving its attitude toward democracy — are of a different order of magnitude.
In a defiant speech from the House floor before her ouster, Cheney said, “I will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law.”
Six significant months
It’s worth stepping back for a minute to think about what has happened since November.
After losing an election, many Republican leaders spread the lie that their opponent had cheated. On its own, this lie resembled the historical tactics of authoritarians, who often try to delegitimize any political party but their own. The similarity became starker when multiple elected Republicans either encouraged or excused a mob that violently attacked the U.S. Capitol.
A peaceful transfer of power involves both the peaceful part and a willing transfer. It depends on the ability to acknowledge defeat. Never before have so many elected members of Congress from one party tried to disrupt a clear victory by the other party.
At first, that Jan. 6 attack seemed as if it might cause party leaders, like Senator Mitch McConnell, to reassert the importance of democratic principles. Instead, Republicans who called out Donald Trump’s falsehoods found themselves marginalized. The central message of Cheney’s ouster is that Republicans must lie, or quietly endorse Trump’s “big lie,” to remain Republicans in good standing.
The same thing is happening in state Republican parties. In Virginia this week, Glenn Youngkin won the Republican nomination for governor. By résumé, he is a country-club Republican, having served as co-C.E.O. at the Carlyle Group, a well-connected investment firm. To win the nomination, though, Youngkin evidently decided that he needed to promote false conspiracy theories. So he did.
In more than 10 states, including Texas, Florida, Georgia and Arizona, Republican lawmakers have responded to Trump’s defeat by moving to make voting more difficult. It’s true that some of these measures are defensible on other grounds and others may have less impact than Democrats claim. But the intent of the laws is clear, and they will surely have some effect.
Provisions that target heavily Democratic areas — like Georgia’s limits on drop boxes — are particularly blatant. “The typical response by a losing party in a functioning democracy is that they alter their platform to make it more appealing,” Kenneth Mayer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, has told The Times. “Here the response is to try to keep people from voting. It’s dangerously antidemocratic.”
A few states have also given state legislators more power over election administrators, potentially making it easier for politicians to reject an election’s result. These provisions may be even more dangerous than the hurdles to voting, especially since they are an explicit response to Trump’s big lie, as Joshua Douglas of the University of Kentucky has written.
Could all of these moves come to little, much as Trump’s postelection flailing did? Yes, that’s one possible outcome. But it is not the only one. In a way that would have been unfathomable a few years ago, one of the country’s two major parties is taking steps that would allow it to overturn the outcome of a future election.
And what now?
For Republicans, the question is whether they are willing to break with their own party, or at least criticize it honestly, to speak up for democracy. That’s not an easy thing to do. There are many Americans who believe in both democracy and a conservative agenda — less regulation, strict abortion laws, few gun restrictions, tight border security, strong support for police departments and churches. These Americans no longer have a comfortable partisan home.
If even a small portion of Republicans insist that the party supports democracy, they can succeed. As several experts have pointed out — including Anne Applebaum, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt — the most successful strategy for beating back a political party’s authoritarian shift has depended on defections among people who otherwise agree with that party. That’s why Cheney, Jeff Flake, Mitt Romney and other Republicans criticizing Trump’s big lie are significant.
The same experts advise Democrats to welcome the courage of those Republicans and not obsess over their many other disagreements. Cheney’s stance matters because she is a pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-regulation, deeply conservative Republican.
“The Republican Party is sliding into authoritarianism at a terrifyingly rapid clip,” Jonathan Chait has written in New York magazine. “That fate of American democracy is the biggest issue in American politics.”
For more:
The ouster of Cheney may embolden her and allow “a household-name conservative to take her case against Trumpism far beyond a Capitol conference room,” The Times’s Jonathan Martin writes.
‘Dangerously anti-democratic’
The Republican Party’s big recent moves — the ouster of Liz Cheney from a leadership position and the passage of new state voting laws — do not have much immediate impact on Americans’ lives.
Cheney’s removal doesn’t change congressional Republicans’ approach to President Biden’s agenda, and the voting laws will mostly start to matter next year. With Biden in the White House, Democrats controlling Congress and many Americans still focused on Covid-19, internal Republican debates can sometimes feel like an exhausting partisan sideshow.
They are not. The last few months have the potential to be a turning point for the country because of what is happening inside the Republican Party.
I don’t say that lightly. Readers of this newsletter know that I don’t believe any political ideology has a monopoly on truth. Democrats have their own problems, including an elitist intolerance for debate about some subjects and a set of Covid fears that are at times disconnected from scientific evidence. But the issues inside the Republican Party — involving its attitude toward democracy — are of a different order of magnitude.
In a defiant speech from the House floor before her ouster, Cheney said, “I will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law.”
Six significant months
It’s worth stepping back for a minute to think about what has happened since November.
After losing an election, many Republican leaders spread the lie that their opponent had cheated. On its own, this lie resembled the historical tactics of authoritarians, who often try to delegitimize any political party but their own. The similarity became starker when multiple elected Republicans either encouraged or excused a mob that violently attacked the U.S. Capitol.
A peaceful transfer of power involves both the peaceful part and a willing transfer. It depends on the ability to acknowledge defeat. Never before have so many elected members of Congress from one party tried to disrupt a clear victory by the other party.
At first, that Jan. 6 attack seemed as if it might cause party leaders, like Senator Mitch McConnell, to reassert the importance of democratic principles. Instead, Republicans who called out Donald Trump’s falsehoods found themselves marginalized. The central message of Cheney’s ouster is that Republicans must lie, or quietly endorse Trump’s “big lie,” to remain Republicans in good standing.
The same thing is happening in state Republican parties. In Virginia this week, Glenn Youngkin won the Republican nomination for governor. By résumé, he is a country-club Republican, having served as co-C.E.O. at the Carlyle Group, a well-connected investment firm. To win the nomination, though, Youngkin evidently decided that he needed to promote false conspiracy theories. So he did.
In more than 10 states, including Texas, Florida, Georgia and Arizona, Republican lawmakers have responded to Trump’s defeat by moving to make voting more difficult. It’s true that some of these measures are defensible on other grounds and others may have less impact than Democrats claim. But the intent of the laws is clear, and they will surely have some effect.
Provisions that target heavily Democratic areas — like Georgia’s limits on drop boxes — are particularly blatant. “The typical response by a losing party in a functioning democracy is that they alter their platform to make it more appealing,” Kenneth Mayer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, has told The Times. “Here the response is to try to keep people from voting. It’s dangerously antidemocratic.”
A few states have also given state legislators more power over election administrators, potentially making it easier for politicians to reject an election’s result. These provisions may be even more dangerous than the hurdles to voting, especially since they are an explicit response to Trump’s big lie, as Joshua Douglas of the University of Kentucky has written.
Could all of these moves come to little, much as Trump’s postelection flailing did? Yes, that’s one possible outcome. But it is not the only one. In a way that would have been unfathomable a few years ago, one of the country’s two major parties is taking steps that would allow it to overturn the outcome of a future election.
And what now?
For Republicans, the question is whether they are willing to break with their own party, or at least criticize it honestly, to speak up for democracy. That’s not an easy thing to do. There are many Americans who believe in both democracy and a conservative agenda — less regulation, strict abortion laws, few gun restrictions, tight border security, strong support for police departments and churches. These Americans no longer have a comfortable partisan home.
If even a small portion of Republicans insist that the party supports democracy, they can succeed. As several experts have pointed out — including Anne Applebaum, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt — the most successful strategy for beating back a political party’s authoritarian shift has depended on defections among people who otherwise agree with that party. That’s why Cheney, Jeff Flake, Mitt Romney and other Republicans criticizing Trump’s big lie are significant.
The same experts advise Democrats to welcome the courage of those Republicans and not obsess over their many other disagreements. Cheney’s stance matters because she is a pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-regulation, deeply conservative Republican.
“The Republican Party is sliding into authoritarianism at a terrifyingly rapid clip,” Jonathan Chait has written in New York magazine. “That fate of American democracy is the biggest issue in American politics.”
For more:
The ouster of Cheney may embolden her and allow “a household-name conservative to take her case against Trumpism far beyond a Capitol conference room,” The Times’s Jonathan Martin writes.
Wednesday, May 12, 2021
Someone else wrote this comment at the Washington Post. I'm adding it to my list of favorite quotes. It's about the Republican morons who suck to Fucktard Trump.
I really didn't think they would do it. I thought, "Surely they're not THAT stupid, right?" Nope. They ARE that stupid.
Future historians may site this small idiotic action as the day the Republican Party died. Maybe it's just when the body went cold.
Future historians may site this small idiotic action as the day the Republican Party died. Maybe it's just when the body went cold.
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