Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Have you noticed that Trump has run off his mouth constantly about the fires that resulted in Portland, Oregon during the BLM protests but took over three weeks to say anything about the California and Oregon wildfires that are displacing at least 500,000 people and killing as yet unknown numbers in the the region, and, he had to be forced into even speaking up about it? It's all about appealing to his party. It seems that, while he has no problem blaming the arson fires of Portland on "The Blacks" (even if they might not have been set by African-Americans), he just could not bring himself to blame the years of failure to address climate change for the fires and when he finally did bring up the subject on Monday, he made a point of throwing kerosene on the ol' anti-science, climate change denier fires. He's an arsonist in everything he does. Western suburbs are burning to the ground but all Republicans worry about is that more brown folks might move in. How long before he locks the doors and burns down the White House?

During the aforementioned protests, he even sent troops to Portland, but troops to help put out the wildfires? Mexico has but not House. I guess he likes the orange skies because they match his ugly face. Next Psycho Donnie will be trying to sell "Make America Great Again" rakes and launching a "Rake America Great" campaign.

Meanwhile, a Trump smoke detector would be an excellent gift for any republican. After all, like its namesake, it deliberately fails at its job, and, I'm sure most Republicans would regard a functioning government-provided smoke detector as "Big Government Socialism" anyway.

Foolish Republican Politicians Are Terrified At The Prospect Of Puerto Rican Statehood

Racist Republican senators warn their racist base that if Democrats win the White House and Congress in November, they will make Puerto Rico a state and the Republicans will never have a Senate majority because, of course, those brown Puerto Ricans will always automatically vote for Democrats. I wish... but it's just a mark of GOP paranoia and racism. Puerto Rico would probably be a swing state and certainly not a Democratic slam dunk. Now, Democrats making Washington DC a state, is probably what Republicans should really be worried about.

Yesterday, Olivia Reingold, writing for Politico Magazine, took a closer look at the idiotic GOP fears about Puerto Rican statehood, pointing out that, as usual, Republicans have it totally backwards. "People in the continental U.S. think that Puerto Ricans are going to vote Democratic, but on the other hand, the conservative values and Latin traditions are more akin to the values of a Republican Party," said José Garriga Picó, a political scientist and former member of the Puerto Rican Legislature. "You can’t really predict what voters are going to do here."

Some of the assumption that Puerto Rico would go blue is based on the fact that Puerto Ricans, when they move to the mainland, are often a reliable Democratic vote. A Politico poll from last spring asked Puerto Rican voters in Florida about their political preferences. It found that 38 percent of respondents identified as Democrats, but 42 percent said they weren’t committed to either party.

Both major islandwide elected officials in Puerto Rico are registered Republicans, as is the sitting governor, who was installed by the island’s Supreme Court. Puerto Rico’s Legislature, which has made a mark in recent years by enacting conservative laws including restrictions on abortion and expressions of gender identity, is led by registered Republicans in both its House and Senate. Seven of the past eight elections for governor or resident commissioner were won by members of the New Progressive Party, the more conservative of the island’s main parties—including the territory’s current nonvoting member of Congress, Jenniffer González-Colón, who is a member of the NPP, the chairwoman of the Puerto Rican Republican Party and a former co-chair of Latinos for Trump.

Meanwhile, as national Democrats flirt with the prospect of a Senate majority in 2021 and agitate for statehood for Puerto Rico, there’s a real political risk: They would add two seats to the Senate, but contrary to Republicans’ vocal fears, it’s no safe bet that those new senators would be Democrats.

Which may well mean that while this year, the path to a Senate majority runs through Denver, Birmingham and Billings, come 2022, San Juan might be the next battleground. Puerto Rico could be a purple state.

In Puerto Rico, statehood is the axis around which all politics revolve.

There are two main political parties-- the New Progressive Party and the Popular Democratic Party. Neither fits neatly into the Democratic-Republican binary, but the NPP is typically seen as the more conservative coalition, and has advocated tax cuts and conservative social policies-- positions which align it more closely to the Republican Party, even as national Republicans generally oppose statehood. But perhaps the most important contrast between the two parties comes on the issue of statehood: The NPP supports it, while the PDP is pro-commonwealth. The NPP advocates closer ties with Washington, whereas the PDP advocates local control.

In recent years, the NPP’s platform has proved successful at the ballot box. The party has two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate, and controls both the governor’s mansion and the island’s nonvoting seat in the U.S. House.

Carmen Yulín Cruz, the high-profile mayor of San Juan who is a member of the opposition PDP, says it would be a mistake to conflate the NPP’s dominance with widespread support for conservatism-- many of its members identify as Democrats, she notes. Even so, she’s not sure whether Puerto Ricans would identify more with the Republican or Democratic Party if statehood were achieved.

“It depends,” she told Politico. “What Puerto Ricans see, and this is wrong for us to see it this way, but what they see is that the pro-statehood party is equivalent to the Republican Party, and that the commonwealth party is equivalent to the Democratic Party.”

Yulín Cruz, who frequently appeared on cable news after Hurricane Maria as a Trump critic, has been embraced by the progressive wing of the national Democratic Party and served as a co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. During her recent gubernatorial primary, she was endorsed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, then lost her race for the party’s nomination by almost 50 points.

...“It’s really tough to argue that we would be a blue state,” said Mayra Vélez Serrano, a political science professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras. “The [2020] primary tells you that. Someone like Carmen Yulín Cruz, who’s very progressive and has a lot of support from the mainland, did horribly locally.”

...In 2011, during an official visit to the island-- the first of any sitting president since John F. Kennedy-- Barack Obama promised to support whatever decision Puerto Ricans made about their status. “When the people of Puerto Rico make a clear decision,” he said to an audience at the Luis Muñoz Marin International Airport, “my administration will stand by you.”

A little more than a year later, Puerto Ricans voted in favor of statehood in a nonbinding referendum. Over 60 percent of voters said they wanted to see the island become a state. But many observers said the results were muddied by confusion about whether the results actually resulted in any sort of mandate. Rather than offer voters a simple up-down vote on statehood, the ballot presented three options for Puerto Rico’s preferred form of government: statehood, sovereign commonwealth or independence. Leading up to the vote, the PDP urged voters to leave the ballot question about statehood blank altogether, in protest of the fact that their preferred option-- "enhanced commonwealth," which would keep the island’s current status but add some of the benefits of independence, like exempting it from some federal laws—wasn’t on the ballot. Ultimately, more than 498,000 ballots-- 26.5 percent of all ballots cast-- were left blank.

When asked about the election results at a news conference in 2012, White House press secretary Jay Carney said the Obama administration declined to endorse the outcome “because of the process itself.” The next day, the Obama administration reversed its position and endorsed the pro-statehood results of the referendum. The Congress, with its Republican-controlled House and Democratic Senate, never ratified the results of Puerto Rico’s statehood vote, and the island was not granted statehood.

...[T]he Democratic Party’s official platform commits to giving Puerto Ricans the opportunity to determine their status. Last week, Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nydia M. Velázquez, both New Yorkers of Puerto Rican ancestry, introduced a bill that would accomplish that-- the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act.

Velázquez, who was born in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, says if her bill passes and Puerto Rico decides to become a state, she’s not sure whether the island will send two Democratic senators to Washington.

“That’s certainly the fear of the Republicans in Congress. They truly believe that for the most part, Puerto Ricans will be in the Democratic Party. I just, I do not know,” Velázquez told Politico. “It will be a different ballgame. People are learning that they need to hear from both parties what are their platforms on the issues that matter most for Puerto Ricans.”

Picó, the former Puerto Rican legislator-turned-political scientist, notes that when Hawaii and Alaska were admitted to the U.S. as states in 1959, the assumption was that Hawaii would be a Republican state and Alaska would be solidly blue. That’s not how either state votes now. Hawaii is solidly blue, and Democratic presidential candidates have carried it in all but two elections since 1960. Alaska is beet red and has voted for a Democratic presidential nominee only once.

“I know that’s the assumption in the states that Puerto Rico would become a Democratic state,” Picó said. “Then again, you never know.”

No? With DC you know though. No? Dependable-- just like secessionist South Carolina. Although...

So Far, Trump-Stoked Chaos And Anomie Are Not Helping Him With Voters

Rev. John Pavlovitz was frustrated when he woke up yesterday-- very frustrated. He wrote that he felt "done being represented by a needy, belligerent, barely literate mobster, done with unrepentant racists and anti-science religious zealots, done with confederate flags and Fox News and MAGA cultism, done with a grotesque Frankenstein Christianity wildly stumbling around without Jesus’ tender heart, done living in a nation, nearly half of which wants it to be more white, less diverse, and less kind." On second thought, he noted that dwelling on that frustration isn't what he needed to do as much as the fact that America is "he place we’re going to shout down the bigots, the place we’re going to outnumber the close-minded, the place we’re going to demand equity, the place we’re going to tear down the flags and the statues and mindsets that perpetuate white supremacy, the place we’re going to expand so that every hungry, exhausted, hurting soul finds rest, and the place we’re going to lock arms and dig in our heels and push back the terrified bullies trying to drag us backward."

Pavlovitz concluded that "The racists are growing desperate. I think their violence is going to get worse. I think they feel the head winds of History blowing fiercely against them and they are going to make one more frantic, brutal, ugly assault on diversity and decency-- and we’ll have to be here to be the line that will not be moved." He's ready "to be here to be the line that will not be moved... We have to make a stand."

Trump made a deranged and extremely worrisome appearance on Fox News with one of his worst media enablers, Laura Ingraham. You should watch this and see if you can count the lies (hint-- more than one every 20 seconds). Try to remember that almost a third of Americans-- many of them armed to the teeth-- believe whatever this sociopath says:





That was Monday. On Tuesday, on his way to stir up trouble in Kenosha, he was still carrying on about how "an entire plane" was "filled with looters, the anarchists, rioters, people looking for trouble. When reporters, trying not to laugh in his orange face, asked him to speak to a witness who TRump claimed was made to feel "uncomfortable" on the plane filled with looters and rioters and thugs, he told the reporters he will try to put them in touch with the person. "Maybe," he said, "they will speak to you, maybe they won’t."

Has Trump lost his mind-- or is he just gaslighting and feeding his low-IQ base the red meat they thrive on? Even Ingraham noted that some of this crazy off-the-top-of-his-head nonsense she was getting out of him was conspiracy theory stuff.

NBC News reporter Ben Collins explained where Trump got it. He wrote that the conspiracy theory that Señor Trumpanzee was pushing Monday about the plane almost completely loaded with thugs in "dark uniforms, black uniforms" ready to disrupt the Republican National Convention "was almost identical to a rumor that went viral on Facebook three months ago... There is no evidence of any such flight. When Ingraham asked for more information about the flight, the president said, 'I'll tell you sometime.' He then alleged the people had been headed to Washington to disrupt the RNC. Before mentioning the uniformed men who allegedly boarded the plane, Trump claimed that there are 'people that are in the dark shadows' and 'people that you haven’t heard of' controlling Democratic nominee Joe Biden." He also claimed "they control the streets" and are being paid by rich people and corporations.

Ingraham pressed the president for more details and said it sounded like he was alleging a conspiracy.

“They’re people that are on the streets. They’re people that are controlling the streets,” Trump said.

The claim about the flight matches a viral Facebook post from June 1 that falsely claimed, “At least a dozen males got off the plane in Boise from Seattle, dressed head to toe in black.” The post, by an Emmett, Idaho, man, warned residents to “Be ready for attacks downtown and residential areas,” and claimed one passenger had “a tattoo that said Antifa America on his arm.”

That post was shared over 3,000 times on Facebook, and other pages from Idaho quickly added their own spin to it, like the Idaho branch of the far-right militia group 3 Percenters.

One post claimed that “Antifa has sent a plane load of their people” and that the Payette County Sheriff’s Office confirmed it. Within days, that version of the rumor picked up enough steam in Idaho Facebook groups that the Payette County Sheriff’s Office had to release a statement insisting that the viral rumor was “false information.”

Rumors of marauding bands of Antifa supporters have plagued local Facebook groups, chain emails and forwarded text messages since mid-May. One of the most viral rumors on an Antifa invasion into the suburbs was taken down after Twitter said it was created by a troll account with ties to white nationalists.

Some armed Americans took to town squares in several towns to fight off fictitious busloads of Antifa in June, spurred by false rumors on Facebook pages. Seven days after the original Idaho rumor went viral on Facebook, armed men stood guard over protests in Missoula, Montana, worried about the planeloads of Antifa supporters.

In his Washington Post column about Trump's flawed election strategy August 20th, David Byler pointed out that not only is "Trump's suburban pitch... off-key in an election dominated by the coronavirus," but that "Playing the race card is more likely to backfire now than in any time in a generation. In 2019, the libertarian Cato Institute found that 52% of Americans who live in the suburbs favor 'building more houses, condos and apartments' in their community while 46% oppose the idea. According to YouGov, 50% of suburbanites think Biden would be better at handling race relations than Trump, and only 28% prefer Trump to Biden... These communities are no longer all-White bastions where fathers work and mothers stay home with the children. These neighborhoods are racially diverse: According to a 2018 study, only 68% of suburbanites were White, 14% were Hispanic and 11% were Black. And no matter where they live, Pew Research Center found that the share of mothers who stay home with children declined from 49% in 1967 to 27% in 2016. The audience Trump believes he’s targeting-- White stay-at-home suburban moms-- may be smaller than he thinks.

Trump's bullshit about "saving Kenosha" is not being bought by voters, who are finally recognizing how Trump lies and manipulates to push his personal agenda. Even with support for Black Lives Matter sliding in Wisconsin, voters are still backing Biden, not Trump.

Yesterday, Chuck Todd's team at NBC News speculated that playing the race card "is-- at best-- break-even for Trump. And at worst, it’s another liability for him. According to our August NBC News/WSJ poll (conducted before the violence in Kenosha), Trump held a 4-point advantage over Biden when it comes to which candidate better handles crime, with 43 percent picking Trump and 39 percent Biden. But on uniting the country, Biden’s edge over Trump was 23 points, 49 percent to 26 percent. And on race relations, Biden’s lead over Trump is 24 points, 53 percent to 29 percent. So despite the conventional wisdom, it’s not clear at all this issue is a winner for Trump.

The new poll from Morning Consult that was released yesterday-- so post-conventions-- shows Biden ahead 51 to 43% nationally. 55% of voters view Trump negatively while just 46% view Biden negatively. But it's the swing states where the campaigns are in full gear that are most interesting. According to this set of polling, Trump is losing every swing state but Ohio and Texas. But what about that normal convention bounce? Well, there was some. Biden increased his support after the 2 conventions in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Texas and Wisconsin-- stayed the same in North Carolina, Ohio, Minnesota and Colorado-- and lost one point each in Pennsylvania and Florida, each of which he is still leading in. Trump, on the other hand, had a bounce down in Michigan, Georgia and Arizona, stayed the same in Wisconsin and Colorado, and increased his positions slightly in Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Minnesota-- in each of which he's still losing-- and in Ohio and Texas.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

In Monday's Midnight Meme, I wrote about how accused Kenosha Killer Kyle Rittenhouse had been inspired by the words of overt white nationalists like President Trump and those at FOX "News" like Tucker Tiki Torch Carlson. I mentioned that, not only Mr. Tiki Torch but other Republicans were offering defense and even praise for the murders in the streets of Kenosha. Now, encouraged by the likes of Mr. Tiki Torch and others, that feverish idiocy has all too predictably grown. Anyone who can look into the Republican mind and see the racism that drives the Republican Party would have seen that it would.

Rather than call for justice for Jacob Blake or raise money for his children who watched a cop shoot their father in the back 7 times, a Christian GoFundMe-style funding site, GiveSendGo, had raised over $280,000 for the legal defense of Rittenhouse by Tuesday morning, calling him "unfairly accused of murder." By the time you read this, I expect that the amount of money raised will have passed $300,000, maybe much more. In turn, that will inspire and incentivize more of the Republican Party Taliban to pull the triggers of their own guns or maybe bring back lynchings.

It's not just FOX "News" and an ersatz "Christian" crowdfunding site, Trumpist republicans in social media are also trying to justify the murders as self-defense. They claim Rittenhouse was defending himself from a "relentless, vicious and potentially deadly mob attack." If so, it was an attack Rittenhouse eagerly drove to from out of state. Did he do so while armed to the teeth or did he borrow the AR-15 he carried once he arrived in Wisconsin? The answer to that question may matter to the court or courts in which Rittenhouse is tried as it relates to any gun charges but the murder charges? Not nearly as much. The Daily Show's Trevor Noah assumes the truth of reports that he left home with the gun, but the second and third sentences in his quote below probably have an equal pertinence when it comes to Rittenhouse's motivations.

No one drives to a city with guns because they love someone else's business so much. They do it because they are hoping to shoot someone. That's the only reason people like him join these gangs in the first place.

But the rightwing crowd is pushing the self-defense angle big time. It's Tiki Torch Tucker's #1 theme, now. Self-defense? Really? How is traveling across a state line from Antioch Illinois to Kenosha Wisconsin and killing not one but two people with an AR-15 self-defense? GiveSendGo lies and tells us Rittenhouse had just "bravely tried to defend his community" but the truth is that Rittenhouse's town, aka his community, is 22 miles from Kenosha. Whether he left home with the gun or picked one up in Wisconsin, that sounds a lot more like taking a hunting trip to me. If he picked up the gun when he arrived, he must have known who would lend it to him and someone should investigate them. Regardless of the questions, Rittenhouse appears to be just another Trump Trooper like Florida pipe bomber Cesar Sayoc whose sticker-encrusted van was what amounted to a mobile ad for FOX "News" and other Republican goonery.

Facebook is now awash with Trump supporters who are, like former San Francisco Giant baseball player Aubrey Huff, describing Rittenhouse as a "national treasure" and an American hero. An American hero for what, taking the law into his own hands?

They also point to the legal troubles of the victims as though they actually deserved to be executed in the street by vigilantes. FOX "News," the fellow Rupert Murdoch family-owned New York Post, and other NAZI-friendly propaganda outfits have been touting Rittenhouse's alleged good deeds, even with pictures of him doing things like cleaning graffiti from the walls of schools, as if that would excuse what he is accused of. Charlie Manson used to sing in churches. Should I suppose that makes him a hero, too, especially since his gang killed some "liberal Hollywood types?"

Today's Republicans exist in a self-promulgated vicious circle of brainwashed mass hysteria which no amount of intervention will ever cure. Clearly, the murders of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and the wounding of Gaige Grosskreutz in Kenosha mean nothing to the psychopathic very fine people that make up the membership of the Republican Party. An attorney for Rittenhouse named John Pierce calls Rittenhouse "a shining example of the American fighting spirit" and, apparently pushing for more murder and mayhem, also says "More American men should fulfill their duty." Pierce's framing of the story gives us a clear indication of how republicans see this horrid incident and how they want all of us to see it. An alternate reality defense of Rittenhouse, where what he is accused of is righteous, normal, permissible and encouraged is being constructed just like Trump himself constructs alternate realities about COVID-19. In short, the right wing is using the Rittenhouse case as a call to arms for a race war, thus fulfilling the dream Charlie Manson had when he sent his brainwashed goons out to kill Sharon Tate and others over 50 years ago. Creating such an alternative reality is all about creating a reality that grants permission to create more death, destruction and mayhem. Even the phrase "Law and Order" is now a code for permissiveness, incitement, and invitation, at least as it comes from the lips of Republicans.

My additional questions at this moment are:

1) How long before Trump begins maniacally insisting that Wisconsin's Democratic governor should preemptively pardon Rittenhouse? Trump pardoning Rittenhouse himself would require that Rittenhouse be found guilty of a federal crime or facing federal charges. What Rittenhouse is accused of does not appear at this time to violate any federal statutes but that's why we have lawyers and courts (such as they are). Trump is already openly supportive of the accused, thus sanctioning more of the same behavior. And of course he has loudly condemned the shooting of a far right counter protester in Portland, Oregon. With Republicans like Trump, it all depends on which side of the issue you are. Shoot a NAZI = bad. Shoot a BLM protester = good. Expect Trump to become more and more of a cheerleader for such mayhem as the countdown to election day progresses.

2) How many more of the Republican Taliban army will kill how many more protesters? How many will satisfy the Republican Party's bloodlust? Someone please ask Moscow Mitch, Kayleigh McEnany, Steve Scalise and the rest of Washington's good little NAZIS. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the corporate media to do so, though.

3) How long before this devolves even further to the point where we start to see shootings like the aforementioned one in Portland? That is what any psychopath like those we saw at the Republican Con-Vention would welcome, Americans shooting Americans in a Civil War without borders of any kind. The more corpses, the merrier. Divide and conquer so you can be the biggest looters of all! All hail the billionaires in their gated mansions! Where this is going, they'll need moats, just like the good ol' days. Ask yourself, can you see the likes of Don Jr, Rudy, Jamie Dimon, Pence, the McCloskeys, or Kimberly Guilfoyle wanting it any other way?

4) Can we expect an escalation of gunfire from Trump's Troopers if he loses the election? That one is the most rhetorical of all the questions in this list. It is the Republican Party's mad goal; rubber stamped by the $enate vote not to remove Trump from office. If you want to see step one of the Republican Party platform, look no further. What we are already seeing is prelude. 5) Will there be talk of a Medal of Freedom for Kyle Rittenhouse ala career inciter Rush Limbaugh? Among the Republican Taliban twitter crowd, there already is. I've seen the memes and I've seen the tweets. You can google them for yourselves.

This strife and the coming escalation of it all stems from the attitude of President Trump and those he addressed from the White House lawn last Thursday night, He has incited them, encouraged them and emboldened them from the moment he took that tacky ride down the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy. His madness has been the proverbial snowball down hill since then. It's not like he didn't tell the world who and what he is and, as I said, when the opportunity presented itself to remove him from office, his party said they like what he is just fine and his $enators voted for more of the same and worse to come; exponentially worse the longer he remains in office, and at this point, long after that. Category 5 storms don't just disappear as soon as they hit resistance. They slowly cut through whatever they can, leaving their path of destruction in their wake. This is the current state of governance, folks.

There is nothing technically in the way of removing President Donald J. Narcissyphilis by the end of this week. Impeachment 2, conviction and removal only the desire and the will of all those who sit in the Capitol Building; the very fine people of both parties. Any and all present and future deaths from shootings of protesters and anti-protesters alike, in the streets are more on Trump and his 53 protective wiseguy $enators than anyone else, just like all of the other Trump-caused chaos of the last 4 years. Trump ordered the arson and Moscow Mitch poured the gas. But those of us who put up with Congress being complicit and say nothing to those in government share some blame as well. Our so-called representatives, the representatives that we the people voted for continue to ignore their oath to the Constitution and abdicate their responsibilities. It's no longer just about the COVID-19. It's about the virus of fascist, racist Republicanism. No one nipped it in the bud so now it's killing this country while the donor class laughs.

A Vote For Trump Is A Vote For Radical Right Terrorism

A new poll by the Military Times of active-duty service members shows Trump job favorability underwater, just 38% saying he's doing a good job. Officers have the most unfavorable view of Trump-- 59.1% disapproving. As for voting... Biden's ahead among all service members by nearly 6 points.

And this was even before it came out that Trump has been knowingly been accepting at least 30 campaign contributions from American Nazi movement leader, Morris Gulett-- and other known Nazis. And before it came out that Trump has been stoking vigilantism and violence in American cities to cause chaos. Washington Post reporters David Nakamura, Matt Viser and Robert Klemko wrote Sunday that Trump spent the weekend fanning the flames of partisan tensions between his supporters and social justice protesters in Portland and Kenosha, underscoring the threat of rising politically motivated violence.

In tweeting a video of the caravan on the move, Trump called the participants “GREAT PATRIOTS!” The reaction marked a sharp contrast to his silence during a large and peaceful civil rights march on Friday in Washington that drew thousands to the Mall, where some speakers denounced his leadership.

In a statement Sunday afternoon, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden “unequivocally” condemned the Portland shooting and accused Trump of “fanning the flames of hate and division in our society and using the politics of fear to whip up his supporters.”

“We must not become a country at war with ourselves; a country that accepts the killing of fellow Americans who do not agree with you; a country that vows vengeance toward one another,” Biden said. “But that is the America that President Trump wants us to be, the America he believes we are.”

The violence has escalated as Trump has seized on the social justice protests as a campaign wedge, attempting to tie Biden to “radical” elements on the left. Eager to shift the political debate from the rising deaths and economic toll of the pandemic, Trump has relentlessly attacked Democratic mayors and governors for failing to quell protests, and he dispatched federal law enforcement authorities into cities to help arrest demonstrators.

...Trump aides, including White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, asserted recently that the violence and chaos will help his reelection bid.

“The only people to blame for the violence and riots in our streets are liberal politicians and their incompetent policies that have failed to get control of these destructive situations,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement. “This President has condemned violence in all its forms. Americans want peace in their streets and for their children to grow up in safe neighborhoods, and only President Trump has shown the courage and leadership to achieve law and order and deliver results.”

Trump’s conservative supporters, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have seized on Rittenhouse as a figure of sympathy, suggesting that he acted legally and in self-defense. The president on Sunday appeared to offer his support by liking a tweet from a self-described former liberal activist who cited Rittenhouse as a reason to vote for Trump.

Conservatives also rallied around the Trump caravan in Portland, where the man who was killed was wearing a hat bearing the words “Patriot Prayer,” the name of a far-right group organized in 2016 to bring pro-Trump rallies to liberal strongholds.

In a tweet, Trump referred to Biden as a “puppet” of “crazed leaders” on the left who envision the Portland chaos as emblematic of “Joe Biden’s America.”

“This is not what our great Country wants,” Trump wrote. “They want Safety & Security, and do NOT want to Defund our Police!”

Biden has stated that he does not support efforts of some liberals to drastically cut funding for local police departments and instead has outlined a proposal that would increase funding for community policing programs by $300 million as long as local departments agree to conditions such as adopting new use-of-force standards and increasing diversity among their ranks.

In recent months, Trump has increasingly used official White House events, along with campaign rallies, to vilify protesters as violent and to fan fears along racial lines.

During his renomination acceptance speech, delivered Thursday on the South Lawn of the White House for the Republican National Convention, Trump attacked Biden for failing to condemn “rioters and criminals spreading mayhem in Democrat-run cities” even though the former vice president had already spoken out against the violence and looting, saying the day before that “violence that endangers lives, violence that guts businesses and shutters businesses that serve the community-- that’s wrong.”

“Trump has been inciting violence for years and with deadly effects,” said author Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who studies authoritarian regimes. She pointed to a mass shooting in El Paso last summer by a gunman who cited anti-immigrant views with echoes of Trump’s rhetoric in a manifesto.

In 2018, Cesar Sayoc, a Trump supporter, mailed inoperative pipe bombs to Trump’s critics, a crime for which he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. And in 2017, a white nationalist in Charlottesville drove a car into a crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer as she protested the extremist “Unite the Right” march-- a movement the president failed to condemn unequivocally.

“Now he’s trained his aim on Black Lives Matter protesters and antifa,” said Ben-Ghiat, referring to a loosely connected set of left-wing, anti-fascist groups. “So what is happening now with an escalation of violence is something beneficial to Trump. Strongmen leaders incite crises so they can pose themselves as the law-and-order solution.”

...Homeland security experts said the combustible mix of sharply polarized and ideologically minded agitators mixing on the streets in cities where law enforcement authorities are strained and, in some cases, inadequately trained is a recipe for potential violence.

“It’s important for government leaders at all levels to calm everyone and keep political rallies peaceful,” said Tom Warrick, an Atlantic Council expert who left government service last year after serving as a career official at the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.

“The problem is that things can quickly get out of control and the uncertainty and chaos become weapons in the fight,” Warrick said. “Merely the uncertainty that it will take days, or weeks, to sort out something that’s happening in itself becomes a tool for division of the country, rather than the unity.”

Yesterday, another Post team, Joshua Partlow and Isaac Stanley-Becker, reported that some local police departments-- which don't even try to screen out facsists and racists-- are supporting neo-Nazi Trump supporters, militants and vigilantes. Many people think officers in the Kenosha police department should be charged with abetting and encouraging the Kyle Rittenhouse murders in Kenosha.

The trio wrote that "As protesters march against racism and police violence in cities and towns across the nation, they are being confronted by groups of armed civilians who claim to be assisting and showing support for police battered and overwhelmed by the protests. The confrontations have left at least three people dead in recent days: In addition to the two protesters killed Tuesday in Kenosha, a man thought to be associated with a far-right group called Patriot Prayer was fatally shot late Saturday in Portland, Oregon. Both incidents have drawn complaints that local authorities abetted the violence by tolerating the presence of these self-appointed enforcers with no uniforms, varied training and limited accountability. The stated motives of these vigilante actors, who are virtually indistinguishable from one another once massed on the streets, range from protecting storefronts and free speech to furthering White supremacy and fomenting civil war."

Many sheriffs and police chiefs, including in Kenosha, have disavowed these armed civilians, saying police don’t want their help. Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said he responded “hell no” when asked to deputize civilians. And Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian said this week, “I don’t need more guns on the streets in this city when we are trying to keep people safe.”

But elsewhere, local authorities have at times appeared to support people who took up arms against protests that have occasionally turned violent and provided cover for vandals and looters. In Snohomish, Washington, the police chief was ousted in June after welcoming dozens of armed men, including one waving a Confederate flag, who responded to false Internet rumors that “antifa” looters planned to ransack the town, referring to a loosely knit movement of far-left activists.

In Hood County, Texas, a constable in May encouraged the Oath Keepers-- an armed group that claims to have thousands of members of current and former law enforcement and military members-- to defend a Dallas hair salon after rumors of possible looting. And in Salem, Oregon, a police officer was captured on video in June advising armed men to “discreetly” stay inside while police began arresting protesters for violating curfew.

On other occasions, police officers have been photographed smiling or fist-bumping with members of far-right armed groups. Even in Kenosha, individual police officers seemed to welcome the help of armed civilians, including Rittenhouse, a member of police and fire cadet training programs who said on video before the shooting that it was “our job” to help people and protect property.

We were welcomed very warmly,” said Kenosha Guard leader Kevin Mathewson, 36, a former city alderman who summoned men with guns to gather in Kenosha on the night of the shooting. “I was at the entrance to my neighborhood. [Police] rolled down their windows and said, ‘Thanks for being here. We can’t be everywhere.’”

Mathewson has said that he does not know Rittenhouse. The teen, from the nearby town of Antioch, Ill., has been charged with first-degree homicide. His attorneys say he acted in self-defense after being “accosted by multiple rioters.”

In a letter last week to Kenosha officials, Mary B. McCord, legal director at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, said “the bloodshed . . . throws into sharp relief the danger posed when private and unaccountable militia groups take the law into their own hands.”

McCord has called on police and prosecutors to enforce laws that prohibit private militias from usurping law enforcement functions. In her letter, she noted that “several provisions of Wisconsin law prohibit private paramilitary and unauthorized law enforcement activity.”

Raul Torrez (D), the district attorney in Bernalillo County, N.M., agrees. In June, one person was shot after members of an armed group that calls itself the New Mexico Civil Guard clashed with protesters trying to tear down a monument to Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate in Albuquerque. Torrez filed suit against the militia, seeking to block it from assuming law enforcement duties.

“I don’t think a lot of Americans understand how fragile democracy is,” Torrez said. “One of the early signs of a troubled democracy is when people decide that they’re no longer going to address their political differences at the ballot box-- or in elected legislatures or in Congress-- but they’re going to do it on the street, and they’re going to do it with guns.”

“Police officers, district attorneys, leaders in law enforcement here and across the country have to make it unambiguously clear to anyone that it is not their job-- it is the role of law enforcement-- to” defend property, Torrez said. Militia groups are “not hearing that message from enough leadership in law enforcement. And this takes us down a very, very dangerous path.”

While racial justice protests typically condemn police behavior and include calls for defunding police departments, militia-style groups are predominantly pro-police and often rally behind slogans such as “Blue Lives Matter” and “Back the Badge.” In Portland and other places, law enforcement has been accused of treating far-right groups more leniently than leftist protesters.

“The vigilantes will come out, and their rally will be ‘Back the Blue,’” said Alexander Reid Ross, a doctoral fellow at the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right, a London-based group.

Ross has compiled a database of 497 public appearances of militias and far-right groups in about 300 U.S. counties since May, including 56 that he says suggest collaboration with police.

This summer, for instance, a commissioner in Bonner County, Idaho, called on residents to mobilize against a Black Lives Matter protest planned for Sandpoint, the county seat. His Facebook post asked people to “help counter anything that might get out of hand,” drawing a rebuke from Sandpoint Mayor Shelby Rognstad, who called it “grossly irresponsible.”

The commissioner, Dan McDonald, said he stood by his message, despite critics who derided the assemblage as “Dan’s private army.”

“Most of the guys that showed up-- I would bet because I know some of these folks-- are former law enforcement, former military,” he said. “They’re well trained and continue to train just for their own self-defense.”

Elsewhere, local officials have advised civilians to be prepared to use violence to defend themselves. At a June news conference responding to rumors on social media of possible riots, the sheriff in Polk County, Fla., warned would-be lawbreakers that local residents “have guns. I encourage them to own guns. And they’re going to be in their homes tonight, with their guns loaded.”

The sheriff, Grady Judd, also encouraged people to shoot intruders.

“Shoot them so much you can read the Washington Post through them,” he said in an interview last week, adding: “I want people to take matters into their own hands when they’re protecting their homes.”

...“Are we really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder?” Fox News host Tucker Carlson said last week. “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”

Let me turn to the student newspaper of Louisiana State University, Reveille and writer Gabrielle Martinez, who had a few things to say over the weekend about Tucker's racism and hate-mongering on Fox. "With an average audience of 4.33 million viewers each night," she wrote, "frozen dinner heir and political pundit Tucker Carlson consistently spews hate through misinformation and misdirection as the host of the highest-rated program in U.S. cable news history, Tucker Carlson Tonight. A defining trait of the millionaire’s TV persona is his hatred for the American 'elite.' He repeatedly discusses his distaste for the 'pompous' rich, like Barack Obama, to an almost anti-capitalist degree; ironically, it’s estimated Tucker Carlson Tonight has sold $108.3 million in commercials alone this year, making up 16 percent of Fox’s billion-dollar ad revenue. Yet Carlson still attempts to portray himself as a figurehead of America’s working class. A supposed patriot, he wants the best for the United States-- or at least enough to relentlessly push Fox’s ultra-conservative narrative on their elderly white viewership."

To Carlson, "maintaining order” apparently means murdering two innocent people, a crime even our current president refuses to condemn. This is the result of Carlson’s inability to distance himself from radical far-right rhetoric in turn for higher ratings and publicity.

It’s becoming more and more clear that Carlson is intentionally pushing a narrative that he himself is writing. While it’s humorous to acknowledge as an outsider, it’s dangerous to the people who actually take his word seriously and believe the liberal left wants to destroy the American way of life.

While the left advocates for race equality and climate change, Carlson somehow twists these movements into what he views as socialist corruption. Instead of acknowledging things as they are, Carlson falsely portrays himself as a heroic character trying to save America from ruin. This tactic only heightens dramatics to further divide the country along race and party lines.

Oh, and John Oliver is... on fucking fire! Please do not miss this clip-- and all the way to the end!

It's All About The Racism... And Fear

A new poll for ABC News by Ipsos, isn't indicating that the conventions changed anyone's mind about Trump or Biden. Ipsos concluded that among all all Americans who watched at least some of the GOP convention-- about half of the voters-- responses to the RNC are more negative than the DNC. "Slightly more than one in three Americans (37%) approve of what the Republicans said and did at their convention, compared to 59% who disapprove. After the DNC, 53% approved of the Democrats’ message... Biden’s and Trump’s standings, along with their running mates, remains unchanged from after the DNC. Currently, 31% of Americans feel favorable toward Donald Trump, unchanged from last week (32%) and similar to his standing before both conventions (35%). The same is true for Joe Biden: 46% feel favorable, virtually the same as last week (45%). However, more Americans feel positive toward Biden than negative, an improvement from earlier in August. Just over a third of Americans (35%) approve of how Trump is handling the response to the coronavirus, unchanged from the end of July (34%)."

So what's a Republican operative class gonna do? Fear's worked for them in the past... and it's a natch for Trump. And racism... another Trump forte. NBC News had a cute report up late last week about how Twitter is trying to stop a Trump campaign spam operation that pushes messages from fake accounts about Black people abandoning the Democratic Party.

The fake accounts were purported to be run by Black people whose viral tweets received tens of thousands of shares in the past month. One of the accounts, @WentDemToRep, logged over 11,000 retweets on a single tweet that claimed that the user was a lifelong Democrat who was pushed to vote Republican by the Black Lives Matter movement. The tweet was posted shortly after the account was created Tuesday.

The WentDemToRep account quickly tagged two other accounts in a reply, @PeterGammo and @KRon619, which were suspended at the same time Tuesday. The Twitter spokesperson said all three accounts were suspended for spam and, "specifically, artificially manipulative behavior."

Disinformation experts and national security agencies are gearing up for the election, anticipating that social media platforms will continue to be central to foreign and domestic efforts to mislead voters.

The fake accounts, which used the images of Black men for their profile pictures, had five separate posts with at least 10,000 retweets. Recent attempts to co-opt the identities of African Americans to simulate support for President Donald Trump in the run-up to the election have had success online, researchers say.

The profile picture from WentDemToRep was stolen from the Instagram page of Nelis Joustra, a model who worked to get the fake account deleted.

...Brandi Collins-Dexter, a fellow at Color Of Change, an online racial justice nonprofit, said trolls' simulating the identities of African Americans is a coordinated practice that has been a common trope over the last decade for those trying to delegitimize social justice causes.

"The point is to provide ammunition against Black people for policymakers so they can point to things that are being said, allegedly from a Black person's account, to reinforce the idea that Black Lives Matter is a terrorist threat and put them on equal footing as white nationalists in terms of content moderation," Collins-Dexter said.

There is a decades-long history of non-Black actors posing as African Americans on social media. In 2016, Russia's Internet Research Agency "troll farm" targeted Black voters to depress turnout for Hillary Clinton, according to American intelligence agencies and bipartisan House and Senate reports.

Collins-Dexter also noted a coordinated campaign from the extremist website 4chan in April to pose as African Americans on Twitter who had just received COVID-19 stimulus checks. The fake accounts would thank the president for the checks, then brag about using them on alcohol, in "an effort to perpetuate the 'Welfare Queen' myth," Collins-Dexter said.

With Trump encouraging his KKK-like supporters to bring chaos and violence into the streets, in the hope of causing enough fear and backlash to reelect him, Biden barely understands how to push back at all. He seems torn and uncomfortable and might prefer taking a more rote "law and order" stance himself.

Frank Rich is a pretty perceptive observer of contemporary politics and he's come to the conclusion that Trump and his Republicans have decided their best shot at reelection is to just play the racist card-- heavy... and to the exclusion of anything else. Rich wrote that "During a week of police violence and vigilante murder in Wisconsin, in a year of preventable deaths and growing poverty, the Republican convention emphasized loyalty to Donald Trump, casting aside matters of policy and campaign law in favor of grievance. Was the convention just another concession to his outsize ego, part of the strategy to energize the party’s base in the run-up to November, or an attempt to win over undecided voters?" Like many Americans, Rich is worried that Trump could win and worried that if he loses "he would stop at nothing to take an already teetering country down with him."

The RNC was so boring Wednesday night that Tucker Carlson cut away early on, ditching the nattering Tennessee congresswoman Marsha Blackburn so he could launch into his now notorious defense of Kyle Rittenhouse’s killing spree in Kenosha: “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?” At that instant, Carlson, implicitly speaking for Trump, the Republican Party, and its media enforcer, Fox News, crystalized what message mattered most about this convention and what message will matter most in Trump’s campaign over the crucial two months to come. As Trump would define it in a rare moment of focus during his endless drone of an acceptance speech, a vote for Joe Biden is a vote to “give free rein to violent anarchists and agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens.” The corollary, stated directly by Carlson and repeatedly embraced by Trump, is that arms-bearing white Americans can’t be faulted for wanting to take the law into their own hands.

For “anarchists and agitators and criminals,” read “Black people.” This racially tinged “law and order” message is nothing new either for Trump or a GOP that has been pursuing a “Southern strategy” since Richard Nixon codified it half a century ago. As many have noted, Trump is at a logical disadvantage in using it since, unlike Nixon, he is the incumbent president and the disorder he keeps decrying is happening on his watch. But what grabbed my attention on the convention’s sleepy third night was how Trump, on the ropes in summer polling, is nonetheless determined to take that message to a new and even more dangerous level by fomenting racial violence if need be. He will not only continue to boost arms-bearing white vigilantes as he has from Charlottesville to Portland, but, when all else fails, unabashedly pin white criminality on Black Lives Matter protesters.

Literally so. While the unrest in Kenosha was referenced repeatedly on Wednesday night, no one mentioned that the violence was all committed by white men: Rittenhouse, and Rusten Sheskey, the police officer who shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back while his three young sons looked on. Then along came Pence to raise the ante in his closing address. While trying to pound in the fear that Biden will coddle and encourage violent thugs, he brought up the ominous example of an officer who had been “shot and killed during the riots in Oakland, California.” The implication, of course, was that the officer had been killed by black rioters in that “Democratic-run city” when in fact the victim was murdered by a member of the far-right extremist movement known as “boogaloo” boys.

Next to this incendiary strategy, the other manifest sins of the week, though appalling, seem less consequential as we approach the crucial post–Labor Day campaign. They did keep those of us in the press busy. The news media were unstinting in calling out every lie and alternative fact in every speech as well as every violation of the Hatch Act. Full notice was paid to every shameless rhetorical feint and stunt contrived to create an alternative reality in which the coronavirus and mask-wearing are in the past tense, the decimated economy is about to skyrocket, and Trump is a champion of both immigration (even from what he calls “shithole countries”) and health care covering preexisting conditions. But aside from the 42 percent or so who consistently approve of Trump no matter what he or those around him do, most other Americans will see for themselves whether COVID-19 has evaporated or their economic security has improved this fall. Those are realities that Trump, for all his subterfuge, cannot alter. But racial animus is a less tangible and more enduring factor in America’s political fortunes, and it has been a toxic wild card in every modern election.

...Biden had it exactly right when he characterized this plan on Thursday by calling out Trump for “pouring gasoline on the fire” and “rooting for more violence, not less.” That was true from day one of the convention, when the gun-toting St. Louis couple, the McCloskeys, were given a prominent spot in the festivities. The rifle that Mark McCloskey pointed toward Black Lives Matter protesters in St. Louis, an AR-15, was the same that Kyle Rittenhouse fired at protesters in Kenosha the following night.

But it’s not enough for Biden to identify the strategy that is being unleashed to derail him, and it shouldn’t have taken him most of the week to get to the point. He’s in a fight for his and the country’s life. A Democratic campaign that was pitched most of all on targeting Trump’s criminally negligent response to the pandemic must now pivot to combat the most lethal of all American viruses, racism, in its most weaponized strain.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

He went to school with my little sister and she said that everyone always thought of him to be a future shooter, and so did I when I met him in high school.
- a former schoolmate of Kyle Rittenhouse

All he needed was a little bit of encouragement and he got it. Teenage White Nationalist Trump supporter Kyle Rittenhouse was already about to be a young man of note in rightwing circles before he allegedly killed two people and wounded another with a hail of rifle fire on a street in Kenosha Wisconsin last week. A reporter from the Daily Caller, a kind of Daily Stormer in disguise co-founded by Tucker Tiki Torch Carlson in 2010, spotted him and interviewed him shortly before the murders. No doubt being chosen for an interview by such a publication filled Rittenhouse with even more confidence, validation, and encouragement to be who he dreamed of being.

But it's a good bet that it was the words of our president and the glorification of people like the front yard gun-waving Patricia and Mark McCloskey and their prime time nationally broadcast Republican Convention appearance on Monday that got him motivated to travel from his Illinois home to Kenosha. Pulling the trigger was only a half step away from what the McCloskeys did. He would be more famous. He undoubtedly longed to be more celebrated. Now, if he's convicted of the six charges he faces, his name can be added to the list that includes those who murdered Emmet Till, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, the students at Kent State, Jackson State, and so many others.

Remember Cesar Sayoc? He's the self-proclaimed Donald Trump superfan with a van covered with Trump and FOX "News" stickers who sent his homemade pipebombs to prominent democrats including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Maxine Waters, CNN, former president Barack Obama, Eric Holder, John Brennan, and others. Fortunately, none of them exploded. Last week's victims of Trumpism weren't so lucky.

These lunatics feel they have permission to act. They feel they are carrying out the wishes of those like Donald Trump who speak their sicko white supremacy language non-stop. This is not at all unlike Ronald Reagan calling for "a bloodbath" on our nation's campuses and Spiro Agnew calling protesters "bad apples" and worse in order to incite similar violence 50 years ago. It's not a matter of the Reagans, Agnews and Trumps learning from such grisly mistakes and toning it down. No, they don't consider what they say to be a mistake at all. They have a goal so they continue, hoping to bring on still more murderous mayhem. It's who they are and it's why their supporters vote for them. "Law and Order" isn't just a campaign slogan. It's code.

After the murders in Kenosha, Fox's Tucker Tiki Torch doubled down on his support for such actions as the Kenosha killing by attempting to cynically and sarcastically defend Kyle Rittenhouse by justifying the actions he's accused of:

How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain law and order when no one else would?

Other Republican types instantly joined in via social media, proudly collecting 'likes' for their support of Rittenhouse and lest you think that all of the sports world is supportive of the protesters, retired San Francisco Giant Aubry Huff proclaimed Rittenhouse "a national treasure" and Hall of Fame NFL linebacker Brian Urlacher joined in on defending the accused shooter.

This is only going to get worse if Donald Trump and his party have anything to say about it. How long before the McCloskeys get a Medal of Freedom just like another agent of mayhem and chaos named Rush Limbaugh did? Would Trump create a new award named after them? Will Trump pardon Rittenhouse and say he was only acting in the best interests of Republicanism? Would you risk money betting that such conversations haven't already taken place in the White House?

Do You Ever Imagine How Hard You Would Fight Against A Fascist Take Over?

Lambchop by Nancy Ohanian

I don't think the theme of Suzanne Gamboa's report for NBC News yesterday-- 'White supremacy' was behind child separations-- and Trump officials went along-- would surprise many people. Like someone missed the fact that Trump's top domestic advisor, Stephen Miller is a deranged neo-Nazi, even if the media doesn't like using those words? Gamboa put it more politely just referring to Miller, as Señor Trumpanzee’s "senior adviser and immigration policy architect [as he] called for a show of hands among senior officials on separating children from parents [now looked at as] 'a damning display of white supremacy' and a repeat of crimes against humanity seen through history. In a meeting of 11 senior advisers, Miller warned that not enforcing the administration’s 'zero tolerance' immigration policy 'is the end of our country as we know it' and that opposing it would be un-American, according to two officials who were there." The Trump Cabinet, damning itself for eternity, voted with Miller who "saw the separation of families not as an unfortunate byproduct but as a tool to deter more immigration. According to three former officials, he had devised plans that would have separated even more children. No one who attended the meeting argued on the children’s behalf or on the humanity or morality of separating the largely Central American families."

Have you watched A French Village (subtitles) on Prime? It's really an excellent-- if horrifying-- depiction of life in this fictional village occupied by the Nazis during World War II, especially for Jews and other minorities. And there are plenty of French characters like Stephen Miller. Would you take your life into your hands to resist or would you collaborate-- and how much?





Two years ago NBC ran a precursor by Noah Berlatsky: The Trump effect: New study connects white American intolerance and support for authoritarianism He wrote that a new study "suggests that the main threat to our democracy may not be the hardening of political ideology, but rather the hardening of one particular political ideology. Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled "White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy." Their study finds a correlation between white American's intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy."

White people who say they did not want to live next door to immigrants or to people of another race are more supportive of the idea of military rule, or of a strongman-type leader who could ignore legislatures and election results. MAGA!!

Trump's bigotry and his authoritarianism are not separate problems, but are intertwined. When Trump calls Mexicans "rapists," and when he praises authoritarian leaders, he is appealing to the same voters.

If You Support by Chip Proser

Miller and Davis' paper quotes alt right, neo-fascist leader Richard Spencer, who in a 2013 speech declared: "We need an ethno-state so that our people can ‘come home again’… We must give up the false dreams of equality and democracy." Ethnic cleansing is impossible as long as marginalized people have enough votes to stop it. But this roadblock disappears if you get rid of democracy. Spencer understands that white rule in the current era essentially requires totalitarianism. That's the logic of fascism.

Trump's rise is often presented as a major break with the past, and as a repudiation of American values and democratic commitments. But in an email, Miller pointed out that white intolerance has long served as an excuse for, and a spark for, authoritarian measures.

"People are fond of the Framers’ grand vision of liberty and equality for all," Miller says, "but the beauty of the Federalist papers can’t paper over the real measures of exclusion that were baked into their understanding of a limited franchise."

Black people, Asians, Native Americans and women were prevented from voting for significant stretches of American history. America's tradition of democracy (for some) exists alongside a tradition of authoritarianism (for some). The survey data doesn't show people rejecting American traditions, then, Miller says, so much as it shows "a preference for the sort of white-ethnocentrism that imbued much of the functional form of democracy for the better part of two centuries."

The Founders supported democracy as long as it was restricted to white male property holders. Today, our understanding of democracy is more expansive-- at least in theory.





In practice, the GOP has increasingly been embracing a politics of white resentment tied to disenfranchisement. "Since Richard Nixon's ‘Southern Strategy,’ the GOP has pigeon-holed itself as, in large part, an aggrieved white people's party," Miller told me.

Trump's nativist language made the GOP's sympathies more explicit, leading to further erosion of support among non-white voters. George W. Bush won 35 percent of Hispanic voters in 2000; Trump won only 28 percent. His showing with Asian-American voters was only 27 percent-- worse than any winning presidential candidate on record.

White people continue to decrease as a percentage of the U.S. population; at some point, it's going to be impossible to win a national, democratic American election with a platform that alienates people of color. The GOP, seeing their coming demographic apocalypse, has pushed voter ID laws and other barriers to voting to try to prevent black and other minority voters from getting to the polls. In Wisconsin, Republican Governor Scott Walker even attempted to delay elections for state seats that he believed Democrats would win.

"The GOP has dug itself into such a hole on this that the most practical effort to stave off these impending losses is to disenfranchise the votes of the same ethnic/racial outgroups against whom GOP messaging has been stoking animosity," Miller tells me. A party built on demonizing and attacking marginalized people is a party that will have to disenfranchise those same people if it is to survive.

Blaming authoritarianism on partisanship suggests that both sides are equally to blame for the erosion of democratic norms. But greater commitment to abortion rights and free healthcare in the Democratic party isn't a threat to the foundations of democracy. The growing concentration of intolerant white voters in the GOP, on the other hand, has created a party which appears less and less committed to the democratic project. When faced with a choice between bigotry and democracy, too many Americans are embracing the first while abandoning the second.

You can imagine that self-selected groups Americans reacted differently to the nationwide protests over the extrajudicial murder (lynching) of George Floyd. A new PRRI survey found that Republicans didn't change their opinions at all, while normal people were profoundly impacted:

The CEO of PRRI, Robert Jones, wrote that "In the wake of the killing of George Floyd by a police officer, the attitudes of Democrats and religiously unaffiliated Americans have shifted significantly, but there has been no movement among Republicans and white evangelical Protestants. For example, approximately eight in ten Republicans and seven in ten white evangelical Protestants continue to say that the recent killings of Black men by police are isolated incidents, rather than part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans-- views that are unchanged since PRRI began asking this question in 2015.”

The survey found that "a majority (56%) of Americans believe that recent killings of unarmed Black men are part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans, compared to 42% who say these are isolated incidents. These views are consistent with views in 2018 but the inverse of views from 2015, when a majority (53%) believed these events were isolated incidents. Republicans are about as likely today as they were in 2015 to say the killing of Black men by police are isolated incidents rather than part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans (78% vs. 82%), Democrats are about half as likely as they were in 2015 to agree with this sentiment (17% vs. 32%). Among white Democrats, this shift is even bigger (19% vs. 43%)." White evangelicals are nearly as racist as Republicans in general, their attitudes having remained unmoved over the last five years, with 72% in both 2020 and 2015 agreeing that the killing of Black men by police are isolated incidents."