Midnight Meme Of The Day!

 

by Noah

They were founded in ignorance. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion, The people cannot be all, and always, well informed.
-Thomsas Jefferson, on the revolutionary war against the tyranny of England

I look at our psychotic president in a straitjacket and it fills me with a bit of relief but it's not enough. It's too easy now to see him as a symbol for this whole country that he's so eager to tear apart with his statements and incitements. It's not enough to make up for his desire to plunge us, supporters and non-supporters alike, into this darkness. I've seen the interviews of Republicans outside their mini-Nuremberg Trump rallies. The shit (courtesy of the likes of Sean Hannity and the other Tokyo Roses) these idiots and fools believe is astounding. Once you add in the vote tallies (whether Biden ends up on top or not) you can easily see those rallies getting bigger and bigger, just like their car caravans, until we see them as large as Hitler's original Nuremberg rallies. These Trump boat parades and Trump car caravans of grossly dumbed down zombies that we see are a near perfect equivalent of those rows and rows of goose stepping German soldiers. I doubt that we'll ever get to the Nuremberg Trials stage in my lifetime but this mess is going to grow and grow unless it implodes of its own weight like a red star which first expands and torches everything in its path. Certainly, the rest of America doesn't appear to have the stomach to do anything about this tyranny of the idiots. Idiocracy indeed. The Jefferson quote above about needing a revolution every 20 every years or so is apt? Well, a lot of "20 years" have come and gone. What we did in 1776 appears to have been a one off. Trump, McConnell and the rest are dead set on poisoning the tree of liberty to death.

We're gonna need millions of straitjackets. Sadly, we'll need them both for the Trump cultists and we who are left to be driven crazy by their Dear Leader. If Trump ends up losing his home in our house, his cult will still be here, walking among us, aliens that they are. The straitjacket might as well become the official national uniform. Even if by some miracle, Donnie Psycho disappears into prison or escapes to parts known or unknown, his cult will still be here and his surrogate, Moscow Mitch will still be around as will the others. Even if Trump is gone, FOX "News" and their kind will still be laying the groundwork for a Fourth Reich.

A LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE

OK, enough of being morose, for now: I remember those old black and white pics of Harry Houdini hanging upside down suspended by a crane in a straitjacket 60-70 stories above the pavement or an icy river and I know that, if we could do that with Trump, my heart would be filled with joy! My heart would sing! I think the ghosts of the Founding Fathers, even with their shortcomings, would concur. Would it be cruel and unusual punishment? Not a bit. Just like Houdini, Trump would have the opportunity to escape. That's fair, no? It still wouldn't be the full punishment he deserves, though. It wouldn't be enough. I'd love to see him hanging from that crane on a 40mph windy polar vortex kind of day in February. Watch him swinging in the gale, you know. Back and forth. Back and forth. Round and round! Like a fat orange tether ball! Above the city. So high up, no one can hear you scream, Donnie! Swirl and spin baby swirl and spin! Here comes another gust!

In reality, we can't put all of Trump's voters in straitjackets, nice as that would be, but we can at least start at the top. So what about all of his staff and other close enablers? Straitjacket for Moscow Mitch! Put him at the head of the line! Straitjacket for Stephen Miller! Kellyanne! Sarah Huckabbe Sanders in a straitjacket? Make one out of those early 1950s tablecloths she wears as dresses! Looking nice Sarah! Looking real nice! Twitch those wacky eyebrows for us Sarah! Lindsey Graham? No, he might like a straitjacket, probably already has a few, for parties. Devin Nunes in a straitjacket! Give him a nice trial and then hang him for treason in one. Tucker in a straitjacket? Yeah, and I'll throw in the matching white hood for free. My gift to you Tucker Tiki Torch. My gift to you! Your old one was getting too ratty anyway. Rudy in a straitjacket, covered in his own sweat and spit! Try to tuck that in, Rudy! But what about Trump's kids? Yeah, what about those children of the damned? Oh, just stuff them all in a giant burlap bag. The crane can hold it. Their combined weight is about the same as dad, no problem. And on down the line! We could even have a pay per view crane cam!

At this point, maybe you think I forgot Mike Pence. I didn't. He Who Attracts Flies already has a straitjacket. He calls it "Mother."

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

 

by Noah

T Minus two weeks.

Whenever election time comes around, it's hard to beat enthusiasm. If your opponents have enthusiasm that, in the case of the Republican Party, amounts to a Taliban-esque fanaticism, you have to work hellaciously hard to turn out your voters in numbers that will bury the other side, up and down the ballot, not in a wave but in a death-dealing tsunami, especially when that other side is not just willing but eager to incite violence upon the legal system and those who are trying to exercise their Constitutional right to vote. Nothing is guaranteed when one side calls for amatuer armed miltia to go to polling places. Nothing is guaranteed when your opponent is asserting that their judges will uncover or even invent some fine print that says your votes were never meant to count. Stalin mastered that roughly a hundred years ago and he is now an iconic role model for Donald Trump and his devoted followers, as are Hitler and Kim, just to name two.

Don't go being naive and think that the house in the above picture is at all unique. This particular house is in Pennsylvania but I have seen many similar shrines to Donnie Super Spreader in my travels throughout the northeast which is the region of the country I come from and live in. Yes, it's shocking and our first tendency might be to laugh at the poor souls that did this to their home, but they did it out of love and adoration. The biblical line "Thou shalt have no other gods but me" went out the window long ago or things would not have gotten to this point. I know of one house up in New York state that is surrounded by Trump flags and a ring of cannons. Trump's neo-nazi maga flags, Confederate flags and giant Trump stand-ups are commonplace. These people are in a walking dead state of hypnosis that they will never wake up from. Trump, his Russian Intelligence allies, and FOX "News" have done their job and done it all too well. I can only imagine what scenes I would see in the Confederate states or Afghanistan-like places like Michigan. Those goons who took over the Michigan State House and allegedly planned to kidnap the governor are no aberration. They walk among us reciting their QAnon conspiracies like mantras and chants. They are shepherded by the RNC, and people with names like Trump, Pence, Carlson, McConnell, Giuliani, Graham, Barrett, and Hannity. They are a fanatic-piloted plane with full gas tanks, taking dead aim at America.

Will RAGE Mean Anything To Trump Supporters?

I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but do Trump supporters read books? The release of Woodward's book, right on top of The Atlantic's revelations about what Trump thinks of American military servicemembers, should be the coup de grâce. But we've all lost track of the instances that were the straw that broken the camel's back. They never are and never will be. Not the stuff from Michael Cohen, from Trump's niece, from Michael Wolff, from Brandy Lee, from Amanda Carpenter, Tim Alberta, Arlie Russell Hochschild, Phil Rucker and Carol Leonid, Jonathan Karl, Doug Wead, Neal Katyal, Alan Grayson, John Lithgow, Sarah Kendzior... So, as much as I am looking forward to reading Rage, I don't expect the revelations-- which were all over the news yesterday-- are going to change the minds-- the lizard brains-- of the hardcore 38-40% of voters who are addicted.

However... with all the TV channels-- even Fox-- running the tapes, maybe some of the congressional Republicans will... nah. Carl Bernstein termed Trump's lies about the virus "homicidal negligence." Where does that leave knee-jerk Trumpist governors Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Greg Abbott (R-TX), Brian Kemp (R-GA), Bill Lee (R-TN), Henry McMaster (R-SC), Kristi Noem (R-SD), Doug Ducey (R-AZ), Kim Reynolds (R-IA), Kevin Stitt (R-OK), Tate Reeves (R-MS), Kay Ivey (R-AL), Doug Burgum (R-ND), Mike Parson (R-MO), Gary Herbert (R-UT), Chris Sununu (R-NH)...

Chris Cillizza tackled the question many of us are asking: Why, why, why would the President grant Woodward so much access? And why would the famously denial-prone Trump allow Woodward to tape the conversations so that there can be no doubt about a) their authenticity or b) what he actually said? Obviously, it's all wound up in the sick Trump psyche.

For all the attacks he lobs at the media, there is NO president who has more closely followed how he is covered and treated by the press than Trump. And it's not even close. He is a voracious consumer of cable news as well as print newspapers. Cable TV has long been the lens through which he views the world and, since being elected president, the way that he analyzes-- in real time-- how he thinks he is doing.

That obsession with perception has naturally lead Trump into forever hunting out ways to cement his legacy in office. Whether that's the almost farcical attempt to buy Greenland or his fascination with the possibility of his face being added to Mount Rushmore, Trump has shown a unbending focus on creating and preserving his legacy. (Trump thinks like a real estate developer; he goes big!)

Aside from those attempts to secure a legacy in stone-- literally!-- Trump regularly uses campaign rallies, supposed policy speeches and his Twitter feed to promote the idea that he really deserves to be considered as one of the best presidents ever.

"I've always said I can be more presidential than any president in history except for Honest Abe Lincoln, when he's wearing the hat," Trump said in 2019. In a speech at the United Nations in 2018, Trump said that "in less than two years my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country." (The audience laughed.)

...Woodward is writing the history of each president as it happens. He is the most recognizable and famous political journalist in the country. When Bob Woodward says he wants to write about you-- even if you are a billionaire businessman or the president of the United States-- you are flattered. And you see opportunity, because if you can convince Woodward that the coverage of you is unfair and biased and that you are really doing a great job, well, then, maybe history starts remembering you the way you want it to.

...Trump has two Achilles heels in politics and life. The first is that he cares so desperately about how people think of him and remember him that he is willing to do almost anything to impact his legacy. The second is that he believes far too much in his own ability to persuade. Woodward (and the book he has produced) cuts at both of the heels.

Which means that Trump was essentially poking at his own weakest spots with every single word he uttered to Woodward. And yet, he couldn't stop himself.

Here are some reports of particularly damning revelations from the book, aside from the web of lies he wove about the coronavirus to deceive the public:

1- Dan Coats, a former very conservative Republican senator from Indiana who Trump hired and fired as director of national intelligence told Woodward that could not shake his "deep suspicions" that Putin "had something" on Señor Trumpanzee, seeing "no other explanation" for the president’s behavior. Coats and his staff examined the intelligence regarding Trump’s ties to Russia "as carefully as possible" and that he "still questions the relationship" between Trump and Putin despite the apparent absence of intelligence proof... "To him, a lie is not a lie. It's just what he thinks. He doesn't know the difference between the truth and a lie."

2- Trump spilled the beans to Woodward on a top secret new nuclear weapon, a very grave breach of national security. "I have built a nuclear-- a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before. There’s nobody-- what we have is incredible."

3- Former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who referred to Trump as "dangerous" and "unfit" with "no moral compass," told Woodward that Trump took foreign policy actions that showed adversaries "how to destroy America. That's what we're showing them. How to isolate us from all of our allies. How to take us down. And it's working very well."

4- Fauci was willing to go on record calling Trump's leadership on the virus "rudderless," saying his "sole purpose is to get reelected," and noting that "his attention span is like a minus number."

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

I know I covered the same topic yesterday, but the Trump Cult's watery debacle on Lake Travis, aka Dumbkirk, this past weekend just demands more attention. Besides, I am a firm believer in what I call weaponized derision. Apparently, a ton of sensible people agree with me since the amount of memes on the Trump Boat Parade topic being sent around computerville appears to be endless. The idea has taken on a life of its own, much like the Chris Christie beach chair memes of a few years ago (Those have never actually stopped.) There are more of these Trump boat parade memes than I can possibly use, or can I?

The Travis, TX sheriff's office has now released a "final" total about the @realDonalTrump boat parade: 5 Mighty MAGA Cult ships sunk, 2 others towed. 3 still submerged. Other boats took on near catastrophic amounts of water. No apparent fatalities. The weather was calm. There is no evidence of foul play.

What there is plenty of evidence of, however, is the overwhelming stupidity of Trump-supporting goons. It seems that those with the especially large "penis compensation" boats either failed to recognize that gunning their engines would generate waves large enough to endanger and/or sink "lesser" boats or, with typical arrogance, just didn't care. Being as the guilty parties are republicans, though, it is likely that they really didn't care, do you? Even within Trump Cult circles, it's all about "screw the little guy."

I'm glad Lake Travis has a lake monster and I'm especially happy that it appears to be an ANTIFA Kraken since part of being a Republican is to fear something you know nothing about, especially if that something might be standing up to your bigotry-based world view. Funny, I can't quite hear the voices of screaming dumbass Texans blaming Obama for the whole thing but Texas is about 2000 miles away from where I am right now. No worries, I'm sure I can turn on FOX "News" and hear Tucker Tiki Torch say exactly that.

Think Of All The Reasons You Detest Trump-- Many Of Them Are The Reasons His Base WIll Never Abandon Him

Peter Wehner served in the administrations of 3 presidents-- Reagan and each Bushs. Now he's a #NeverTrumper and yesterday he did a piece for The Atlantic, Why Trump Supporters Can’t Admit Who He Really Is, concluding that many Republicans believe-- despite "the corruption, chaos, and general insanity that is continuing to engulf the Trump campaign and much of the Republican Party right now"-- that if Biden wins the presidency "America dies," although I think what Wehner meant to say is they fear that if Biden is elected the America of white privilege dies. He wrote that the "chthonic portrait... allows Trump and his followers to tolerate and justify pretty much anything in order to win. And 'anything' turns out to be quite a lot," beyond just "a four-year record of shame, indecency, incompetence, and malfeasance." He painted a stark picture of severe mental illness in the Oval Office as well. "Trump," he concluded, "because of the corruption that seems to pervade every area of his life and his damaged psychological and emotional state, has shown us just how much people will accept in their leaders as a result of 'negative partisanship,' the force that binds parties together less in common purpose than in opposition to a shared opponent." [That pretty much describes the entire 2020 presidential race-- on both sides, I'm afraid to say.]

In an interview by CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick yesterday, John Bolton warned that Trump's inability to think strategically, is the blame for the severity of the pandemic in America and he warned that if Trump is reelected it could-- he really meant would but was unable to say it-- get worse.

Bolton said that during his tenure, “In many cases, the president came to decisions in the national security space that I agreed with.” “But he did it not because of the merits of the argument in favor of a particular policy, but because of the fear of the political blowback he would get domestically if he went in a different direction,” said Bolton.

He said that if Trump is re-elected, “that political guardrail is, if it’s not eliminated entirely, it’s certainly minimized.”

“And so I think the possibility for erratic decisions centered on what Trump perceives as his own personal good fortune increases and the political pressure to move in other directions decreases,” Bolton said.

Andrew Sullivan may not have been watching, but he noted yesterday that Trump is a metastasizing cancer and urged his readers to vote for Biden as quickly as possible. He wrote that "the complete loss of any moral authority the United States might have once had, along with the collapse of a system of alliances that rallied liberal democracies against foul tyrants for decades, are the consequence" of having elected a man sympathetic to authoritarians to the presidency... Gone is "the kind of basic moral clarity that the West once tried to advance, even if we often failed, and has now been sacrificed tout court for one wannabe tyrant’s depraved, delusional psyche... He has delegitimized capitalism by his cronyism, corruption, and indifference to dangerously high levels of inequality. He has tainted conservatism indelibly as riddled with racism, xenophobia, paranoia, misogyny, and derangement. Every hoary stereotype leveled against the right for decades has been given credence by the GOP’s support for this monster of a human being."

The only way out of this spiral is an unlikely figure, Joe Biden. An old-school moderate representing a party fast moving leftward, he is, quite simply, the least worst we’ve got. I’m worried the far left will eat his lunch in office, but that is a less pressing worry than the potential destabilization of the entire system if Trump wins in November. The potential for spiraling unrest in a Trump second term could prompt the dictatorial nightmare many of us have been worried about for years.

Biden is not perfect. He’s too old. But he understands our democratic system; he loves this country and has a grasp of the Constitution. He’s trusted by African-American voters who gave him the nomination, and has not alienated white voters in the middle who loathed Hillary Clinton. He is not deranged; he is not lacking in basic human empathy; and he does not treat all his opponents as enemies.

Some Democrats mock his vow to restore a semblance of dialogue with some Republicans. And I understand their position. It is not without reason. But I reject it. If Trump is defeated, and a modicum of reason and decorum returns, and the embers of liberal democracy are not completely extinguished, we have a chance to rebuild the republic. But it may be our last one.

CNN analyst Stephen Collinson is seeing a Trump "close to full derailment." So this isn't full derailment, just close to it? This is going to be a scary couple of months! "Trump," he predicted, "will ignite a new uproar soon enough. It's clearer than ever that his platform for this election is his own wild behavior that animates his hyperbolic claim that a Democratic presidency would see the suburbs torched by rioters-- not the statesmanlike script choreographed at the RNC. No President in modern history has gone into a reelection race warning that the process of choosing a government that is the bedrock of American democracy is illegitimate. Trump's conduct risks a full-on post-election constitutional crisis."

[W]hile Trump's constantly disruptive behavior and refusal to play the role of a traditional president horrifies Beltway elites, it's exactly what makes him attractive to supporters who long ago soured on conventional politicians. The more he trolls the media, the more his base and his conservative media cheerleaders love it. The question is whether a President who looked every day for four years like he's waging an endless GOP primary campaign can secure a path to victory without broadening his base.

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?

Why Do So Many Evangelical Voters Still Back Trump?

A new YouGov poll of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin registered voters for CBS doesn't offer much hope that the Trump campaign can win in either state and that, in fact, neither can really be seen as a 2020 swing state the way Florida, Arizona, Iowa and even Texas and Georgia are. About three-quarters of voters in each state say things are going badly in the U.S. If the election were held today, Biden would thrash Trump decisively in both states. About two-thirds of voters in each state-- more so in Wisconsin-- dislike how Trump handles himself personally.

When asked which candidate most demonstrates these traits it went this way in each state:

Pennsylvania

1- Compassion

• Biden- 51%
• Trump- 30%
• Both equally- 7%
• Neither- 11%

2-Honesty

• Biden- 44%
• Trump- 31%
• Both equally- 4%
• Neither- 20%

3- Religious

• Biden- 38%
• Trump- 26%
• Both equally- 13%
• Neither- 23%

Wisconsin

1- Compassion

• Biden- 53%
• Trump- 25%
• Both equally- 6%
• Neither- 16%

2-Honesty

• Biden- 45%
• Trump- 26%
• Both equally- 5%
• Neither- 23%

3- Religious

• Biden- 39%
• Trump- 22%
• Both equally- 13%
• Neither- 26%

A few days earlier, Pew released a poll that shows Trump's approval nationally is even lower than in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania-- just 38% approving (59% disapproving). 77% of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters approve of Trump. He draws much higher job approval ratings among white adults who have not completed college (55% approve) than among those with a four-year degree (33%).

And the national CIVIQS poll that was released last week shows Trump's approval numbers greater than his disapproval numbers in just 18 states, most of them known for racism, ignorance and evangelicism:

• Alabama- 56%
• Arkansas- 62%
• Idaho- 56%
• Indiana- 51%
• Kansas- 50%
• Kentucky- 57%
• Lousiana- 53%
• Mississipi- 53%
• Missouri- 54%
• Nebraska- 54%
• North Dakota- 60%
• Oklahoma- 60%
• South Carolina- 49%
• South Dakota- 57%
• Tennessee- 54%
• Utah- 50%
• West Virginia- 62%
• Wyoming- 61%

You've probably noticed that there is not one single swing state on that list. None of the swing states approve of the job Trump is doing. These are the traditional swing states' plus potential 2020 swing states' disapproval:

• Alaska- 52%
• Arizona-54%
• Colorado- 60%
• Florida- 52%
• Georgia- 53%
• Iowa- 52%
• Maine- 59%
• Michigan- 56%
• Minnesota- 58%
• Montana- 51%
• Nevada- 60%
• New Hampshire- 62%
• New Mexico- 55%
• North Carolina- 53%
• Ohio- 50% (47% approve)
• Texas- 49% (48% approve)
• Virginia- 58%
• Wisconsin- 54%

That list absolutely screams: No Path To Victory. Still, it's shocking that only 5 states' disapproval is 70% or better: California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts and Vermont (76%).

Now, think back to the questions about honesty, compassion and religion-- this was right after Trump's psychotic screed about Biden wanting to hurt the Bible and God. Is anyone buying it? Even many of the people who like the idea of Trump as a president understand he's a profane, blasphemous person who has more in common with Satan than with Jesus. Of all the charlatans selling Trump to low-IQ evangelicals, none is a bigger hypocrite than the pervert just fired from Liberty University, Jerry Falwell, Jr. He vouches for Trump but who vouches for him? Calum Best, a Liberty University graduate, writing for The Bulwark yesterday noted that his zipper's been down for years and that "his bizarre Instagram picture is just the latest in a long line of bad decisions that have harmed Liberty University... The board of trustees... announced on Friday that the president and chancellor of the university, Jerry Falwell Jr., had assented to the board’s request to take 'an indefinite leave of absence' from both positions, 'effective immediately.' The board’s request followed several days in which Falwell had been widely criticized in the news and on social media." It wouldn't surprise me if he went to work full time for the Trump campaign... which brings us to Elizabeth Dias' horrifying NY Times column over the weekend, , about the deal with the devil white evangelicals made with Trump.

Paraphrasing a great deal from the first chapter of Kristin DuMez's important book, Jesus and John Wayne, Dias began her narrative with the famous Trump speech from 2016 at Dordt University, in Sioux Center, Iowa-- the one you know by his boast that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and “wouldn’t lose any voters. But Dias had another quote from that speech she chose to talk about: "I will tell you, Christianity is under tremendous siege, whether we want to talk about it or we don’t want to talk about it... And yet we don’t exert the power that we should have. Christianity will have power. If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else. You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well. Remember that."

He took 81% of the voters of Sioux County in November-- and 81% of evangelicals nationwide. Dias continued that today this group could be Señor Trumpanzee's best chance at re-election. His response to the pandemic has battered his political standing and "even among white evangelicals, his approval rating has dipped slightly. But 82 percent say they intend to vote for him, according to the Pew Research Center."

To the outside observer, the relationship between white evangelical Christians and Donald Trump can seem mystifying.

From the start it appeared an impossible contradiction. Evangelicals for years have defined themselves as the values voters, people who prized the Bible and sexual morality-- and loving your neighbor as yourself-- above all.

Donald Trump was the opposite. He bragged about assaulting women. He got divorced, twice. He built a career off gambling. He cozied up to bigots. He rarely went to church. He refused to ask for forgiveness.

It is a contradiction that has held for four years. They stood by him when he shut out Muslim refugees. When he separated children from their parents at the border. When he issued brash insults over social media. When he uttered falsehoods as if they were true. When he was impeached.

Theories, and rationalizations, abound:

That evangelical support was purely transactional.

That they saw him as their best chance in decades to end legalized abortion.

That the opportunity to nominate conservative justices to the Supreme Court was paramount.

That they hated Hillary Clinton, or felt torn to pick the lesser of two evils.

That they held their noses and voted, hoping he would advance their policy priorities and accomplish their goals.

But beneath all this, there is another explanation. One that is more raw and fundamental.

Evangelicals did not support Mr. Trump in spite of who he is. They supported him because of who he is, and because of who they are. He is their protector, the bully who is on their side, the one who offered safety amid their fears that their country as they know it, and their place in it, is changing, and changing quickly. White straight married couples with children who go to church regularly are no longer the American mainstream. An entire way of life, one in which their values were dominant, could be headed for extinction. And Mr. Trump offered to restore them to power, as though they have not been in power all along.

“You are always only one generation away from losing Christianity,” said Micah Schouten, who was born and raised in Sioux Center, recalling something a former pastor used to say. “If you don’t teach it to your children it ends. It stops right there.”

Ultimately Mr. Trump recognized something, said Lisa Burg, a longtime resident of nearby Orange City. It is a reason she thinks people will still support him in November.

“The one group of people that people felt like they could dis and mock and put down had become the Christian. Just the middle-class, middle-American Christians,” Ms. Burg said. “That was the one group left that you could just totally put down and call deplorable. And he recognized that, You know what? Yeah, it’s OK that we have our set of values, too. I think people finally said, ‘Yes, we finally have somebody that’s willing to say we’re not bad, we need to have a voice too.’”

Explained Jason Mulder, who runs a small design company in Sioux Center: “I feel like on the coasts, in some of the cities and stuff, they look down on us in rural America. You know, we are a bunch of hicks, and don’t know anything. They don’t understand us the same way we don’t understand them. So we don’t want them telling us how to live our lives.”

He added: “You joke that we don’t get it, well, you don’t get it either. We are not speaking the same language.”

The speech in Sioux Center symbolized why there has been so much confusion about evangelical support for Mr. Trump. From the beginning, the outside world focused on the comment about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. Those in the town, though, ultimately heard something else entirely. What mattered was not just what Mr. Trump said. It was where he said it. And to whom.

And so to understand the relationship, one has to go back to Jan. 23, 2016. One has to hear the speech at Dordt the way the evangelical community heard it.

...Schouten said "Trump’s an outsider, like the rest of us," he said. "We might not respect Trump, but we still love the guy for who he is."

"Is he a man of integrity? Absolutely not," he went on. "Does he stand up for some of our moral Christian values? Yes."

The guys agreed. “I’m not going to say he’s a Christian, but he just doesn’t attack us,” his friend Jason Mulder said.

Mr. Schouten’s wife, Caryn, had walked over with the other wives. After the election of President Barack Obama, the country seemed to undergo a cultural shift, she said. “It was dangerous to voice your Christianity,” she said. “Because we were viewed as bigots, as racists-- we were labeled as the haters and the ones who are causing all the derision and all of the problems in America. Blame it on the white believers.”

None of them said they had wanted to vote for Mr. Trump, but they did-- “When he was the last option,” Heather Hoogendoorn said. The group laughed.

But they agreed it would be easier to vote for him this time. Before, it was hard to know what he would be like as president. Now they knew, and they liked the results: Supreme Court justices, conservative judges, including a Dordt graduate now on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, and growing clout for the anti-abortion movement.

“Obama wanted to take my assault rifle, he wanted to take out all the high-capacity magazines,” Mr. Schouten said. “It just —”

“— felt like your freedoms kept getting taken from you,” said Heather’s husband, Paul, finishing the sentence for him.

When the Schoutens got home, Caryn, 36, scooped a chip into sour cream dip and plopped into a chair in her living room.

She spoke of her concern about sex trafficking. She had seen posts on Facebook about mothers being followed to their cars if they went shopping at Target in Sioux City, almost an hour away.

“I’m safe when I’m here. I’m not afraid when I’m here,” she said.

They thought about the lives they want for their children, and why they send them to a Christian elementary school. “We hope our kids eventually find a Christian spouse, and that exposes them to other kids of like-mindedness,” her husband said. The two of them met through their rival Christian high schools.

People seem to get married younger around here than they do in corporate America, Mr. Schouten said. “It’s fairly common for women to go to Dordt to get their M.R.S. degree, their Mrs. degree,” he said.

When she was younger, his wife said, she used to say she would leave Sioux County. She remembered the shock of traveling to Europe in high school and seeing “men in full drag” for the first time.

“We have life very easy, it is laid back, it is like-minded people. And it’s just, I like the bubble,” she said. “I like not worrying about sending them outside to play, or whose house they are going to if they are going to the neighbors a few houses down, they might not go to the same church, they might not hold all the same beliefs, but I trust them. I don’t know, maybe that is naïve.”

The years of the Obama presidency were confusing to her. She said she heard talk of giving freedoms to gay people and members of minority groups. But to her it felt like her freedoms were being taken away. And that she was turning into the minority.

“I do not love Trump. I think Trump is good for America as a country. I think Trump is going to restore our freedoms, where we spent eight years, if not more, with our freedoms slowly being taken away under the guise of giving freedoms to all,” she said. “Caucasian-Americans are becoming a minority. Rapidly.”

She explained what she meant. “If you are a hard-working Caucasian-American, your rights are being limited because you are seen as against all the races or against women,” she said. “Or there are people who think that because we have conservative values and we value the family and I value submitting to my husband, I must be against women’s rights.”

Her voice grew strong. “I would say it takes a stronger woman to submit to a man than to want to rule over him. And I would argue that point to the death,” she said.

Submissive wife by Nancy Ohanian

She felt freer as she spoke. “Mike Pence is a wonderful gentleman,” she said. “This is probably a very bad analogy, but I’d say he is like the very supportive, submissive wife to Trump. He does the hard work, and the husband gets the glory.”

She turned to her husband. “Let’s be real, Micah, do you have any clue what goes on in our children’s lives on a daily basis? No.” They laughed.

“Pence you can picture as your father, as your dad,” he said.

But Mr. Biden as president really worried her: “Biden is a few fries short of a Happy Meal.”

...The Trump era has revealed the complete fusion of evangelical Christianity and conservative politics, even as white evangelical Christianity continues to decline as a share of the national population. There are some signs of fraying at the edges of the coalition, among some women and young people. If even a small fraction turns away from Mr. Trump, it could make the difference to his re-election.

But even if he loses in November, mainstream evangelical Christianity has made plain its deepest impulses and exposed where the majority of its believers pledge allegiance.





There is a straight line from that day at Dordt four years ago to a recent scene at a chapel in Washington, where armed officers tear-gassed peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square and shot them with rubber pellets. They were clearing the way for Mr. Trump to march from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church and hold up a Bible, a declaration of Christian power.

“We have the greatest country in the world,” he said. “We’re going to keep it nice and safe.”

It was another instantly infamous moment, covered by cable news and decried by Democrats as an unseemly photo op. But in Sioux Center, many evangelicals once again received a different message, one that echoed the words uttered by a long-shot presidential candidate in a sanctuary on a cold winter morning.

“To me it was like, that’s great. Trump is recognizing the Bible, we are one nation under God,” Mr. Schouten said. “He is willing to stand out there and take a picture of it for the country to see.”

He added: “Trump was standing up for Christianity.”

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

The above clip from The Villages, a Flor-i-duh retirement community, could easily run as an advertisement for FOX "News." It has all the elements: Golf carts, Trump 2020 signs, and Republican guys screaming "White Power. White Power!" All it's missing is Tucker Tiki Torch, Laura Ingraham throwing a few nazi salutes, and a Confederate or Nazi flag or two, or five.

I am, in fact, shocked that the clip hasn't been running as an ad on FOX half-hourly since it first surfaced this weekend. And why did it surface? Because President Chimp On Crack was so proud of this parade of lowlife white supremacist supporters that he thought everyone should see it. Just having it be the number one youtube clip in the White House wasn't enough for him. So, he tweeted it to the universe!

It's not the first time Trump has tweeted things with a white nationalist theme and it won't be the last. He knows who votes for him and he aims to please them. This time, he even described his fellow white supremacists in the parade as "Great people." Of course he did. It was a Charlottesville moment all over again. If one of those Nazi loons in their golf carts thought they could have killed one of the counter protesters by running them over with their golf carts, they would have done it in an instant. They would have gone right after the woman who wrote Black Lives Matter on her shirt. After all, what else would you expect from a Trump Cultist?

I bet all of the paraders have already been invited to the Republican Convention slated for Jasksonville in August. There they'll be, up on stage, driving around in circles in their golf carts like monkeys on tricycles, chanting "White Power! White Power! White Power!' You'll see and hear the delegates in the audience joining in as Ms. Ingraham and Mr. Tiki Torch introduce Trump and Pence as they slowly appear walking out of a fog cloud at the rear of the stage. Maybe Kim Jong un will be there, too, walking hand in hand with the president.

The Attack Of The Mask Truthers. Trump Even Politicizes The Wearing Of A Safety Mask

-by Noah

"You literally cannot mandate somebody to wear a mask knowing that that mask is killing people. It literally is killing people and my the people we the people are waking up and we know what citizens arrest is because citizen arrests are already happening okay and every single one of you that are obeying the Devil laws are going to be arrested and you, doctor, are going to be arrested for crimes against humanity. Every single one of you have a smirk behind that little mask but every single one of you are going to get punished by God. You cannot you cannot escape God. You cannot escape God. I'm gonna say that again. You cannot escape God, not even with the mask or six feet of separation. Okay. Six feet like I said before is military protocol and you're trying to get the people to train them so when the cameras the 5G comes out what they're gonna they're gonna scan everybody. We got to get scanned. We got to get temperature the kids have to go to school with masks. Are you insane? Are you crazy? I think all of you should be in a psych ward right the heck now because none of you, none of you know what the hell you you are all talking about. This is insane and then you want to open this meeting up with a prayer to God. Are you praying to the devil because God is not listening to that prayer because all of you are practicing the Devil's law. What happened to Bill Gates? Why is he not in jail? Why is Hillary Clinton not in jail? Why are all of these pedophiles that are demanding you all to listen to their rules? Why are they not in jail? Oh is it because you're part of the Deep State? The Deep State is going down and if any of you are in the Deep State, you're going down with me."
- Anti-Mask Trumpie Lady, one of many similar citizens who spoke out at last week's Mandatory Mask meeting held by the Palm Beach County Commission

She sure has the best words, doesn't she? I call her one of Trump's Mask Truthers. I know the rambling, disjointed, stream of "consciousness" wacko quote above is a lot to read and it's a lot to take in but it is representative of a painfully large number of the citizen comments made in public at last week's Palm Beach County meeting on whether or not to mandate the wearing of safety masks when in public. Keep in mind that this was late June, not March or April or even May. But, it was in Flor-i-duh, so, there is that. Nothing like talking about if you should close the barn door when the horses have long ago disappeared over the horizon.

When you read the quote, you can be forgiven for wondering if some of these people should be allowed out in public at all, with or without a mask. Like I always say, "They walk among us," more of them in Flor-i-duh, perhaps, but well, if you ever wondered what Republicans are thinking when they go to cast their votes, the above woman paints you a pretty good picture. Should I assume the woman and the others like her who were there with their MAGA banners have removed the seat belts and airbags from their cars? Do they drive on the wrong side of the street because "how dare the government tell me, me, me how to drive my car!" Maybe they drive on the sidewalks, backwards, down there. I don't know. Wouldn't surprise me.



Which disease is worse? COVID-19 or Trumpism? Speakers like the wackjob above are a prime example of what President Psychopath's actions have done to completely politicize the COVID-19 plague. It's a perfect storm. Trump brought the two together, not just when he called the whole thing a hoax, not just when he deliberately chose not to act and thereby give the virus free reign, but also when he said that he himself would not wear a mask. That was his leadership tone. Normal people see it as disastrous. He sees it as an achievement. As the Palm Beach meetin' showed, it's right down to whether or not you should wear that safety mask to slow the plague's spread, be courteous to others and maybe even save your own life. Courteous to others? Trump? Surely, you jest! Trump himself even claims, in fact, that people who wear the mask do so because they don't like him. In his warped mind, it's all about him. His political message is that if you wear a mask, you are Anti-Trump. He has blended being Anti-Trump and Anti-COVID-19. He's publicly made it that simple; if you don't wear a mask, you're with him. If you do you're against him. That passes for logic and common sense in Republican World. Don't believe me? Ask Louie Gohmert or any other Republican Congress Loon or Republican $enator.

Some will tell you that Trump's politicization of the plague we are going through now is only part of his win reelection at all costs strategy, like that's all it is, but there is clearly more involved. He had every warning as to the severity of the threat. Only a narcissistic psychopath would, knowing that, proceed in the way that he did. Now, the number of cases of COVID-19 exponentially increases every day, and all he does is call for the ending of testing for it so it can spread some more. Across the country, new records for the numbers of cases and numbers of needless deaths are being set on an almost daily basis. He even tries to use the disease as a weapon of racism towards Americans of Chinese heritage and China itself. At his recent rally in Arizona, he tested out his litany of derogatory anti-Chinese terms for the virus. Kung Flu got the biggest amount of cheers so we can now expect that to be the name for the virus that he uses the most.

To really understand Trump's approach to this plague, you have to put his approach to it in the context of who and what he has repeatedly demonstrated himself to be. In short, every choice he makes about anything regarding the health and well being of the United States even as a viable country is the choice that is the cruelest and most damaging to the most Americans and to this country that he can make.

This is not, as way too many naively claim, mere incompetence and/or stupidity. It's a grim, consistent pattern that can only be deliberate. Every action by Trump demonstrates a total lack of empathy, a sure mark of psychopathology. Worse, his words have become a siren call to action for every supporter. That woman in Palm Beach may as well be Squeaky Fromme or some prime recruiting material for ISIS. None of this is an accident and only the fools among us will see it as an accident. Stop and think about it. One or two choices or strategies that any of us make may inadvertently result in needless cruelty, human misery, or worse. Accidents do happen. There are such things as unintended consequences or even unforeseen influences that give a bad result. But, in the case of Trump, his family, and his party, every decision he has made, and they have eagerly followed, has obviously been made in order to inflict as many wounds upon human beings as individuals and us as a country as possible. This isn't incompetence. It is sadism. This is true about everything about the Trump presidency. When assessing what Trump has done with the current plague, consider the following as context:

1. Trump's often openly declared love for murderous dictators who kill their citizens, sometimes even personally, with impunity,
2. Ripping children out of the arms of their parents and throwing them in cages and sadistically keeping them there.
3. Taking away the hard fought for freedom to vote from millions of voters that he and his party deem inferior.
4. Maximizing the amounts of carcinogens and other pollutants in our water and air.
5. Attacking peaceful protesters with clubs, gas, and rubber bullets, all for a blasphemous photo op.
6. Suppressing education and decent paying job opportunities.
7. Executive orders that escalate damaging weather patterns that destroy our economic well-being, our property, and our lives. In his insane grandiose fantasies, he obviously sees himself as some sort of Lex Luther in control of a weather machine.
8. Encouraging, endorsing, and even cheering police brutality.
9. Fighting the concept of healthcare for American citizens even during a pandemic (He did that again Thursday night when he, once again, urged the Supreme Court to negate Obamacare).
10. Supporting the most vile governments abroad and the end of democracy wherever it tries to take hold.
11. Risks the lives of his own fans holding rallies without safety procedures.
12. Gave the commencement speech at West Point while doing and saying absolutely nothing about his friend Putin's bounty on their lives. (Traitor Don now ridiculously claims he didn't know and neither he or anyone else in the White Kremlin have denounced it!)

This is all blatant psychopathy, yet our people in authority and our media hacks deliberately downplay it by calling it or dismissing it as "incompetence." What Trump has done is transform the White House and his entire administration into the most powerful engine of harm to humanity since the days of Stalin and Hitler and it's clear that, if he continues to go unchecked, he aims to match them. All of this is the mark of a true psychopath. He is making the villains of the Superman and Batman comic books look to be not so bad by comparison and it makes him and his brainwashed party of supporters happy. And, why wouldn't it make them happy? If you look at the list, it's a large chunk of what amounts to the Republican Party platform. It is the rancidly inhumane, ravage of conservatism. This is a mass affliction. It is a Death Cult.

The words of the woman above is one manifestation of this. The wallet card depicted below is another. It is being made available by people who share her viewpoint. It's a complete fake and a fraud, but Anti-Maskers in the Carolinas and other places in the Trump Confederacy swear by its righteous need if not legitimacy. They pull it out when asked why they aren't wearing the mask that they refuse to wear. The card is not worth the paper it's printed on. Apparently to them, neither is human life, even their own. They will do anything for Dear Leader.