TWGB: They Aren't Joking

 

There's a funny thing about Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that if she and Steve Bannon were at the head of the 1/6 insurrection, they would have won, and they would have been armed: she says she was joking, now. But she certainly was not.  We know this because we know her record. She was explicit about what she stood for--talking about "the price of blood" pre-election.  We know in December 2020 she was at the White House meeting with other GOP electeds. We know some 1/6 insurrectionists actually were armed.  What she seems to be saying, and pretending to walk back, is that she would want more bloodshed of Capitol police and possibly her own colleagues in congress. 

Ha ha. The conservatives are getting better at humor, and the libs don't like it, indeed. (See latest iteration thereof.)  Actually, we know what "only joking" means to fascists. (Can't you take a joke? Why are you punching yourself? I'm not the problem, you have no sense of humor. etc.)

When the NY Young Republicans, who I used to think were just twenty-somethings who looked like forty somethings and had the values of the 1950s and wanted to undo the civil rights movement, has VDARE's Brimelow and Posobiec, I start to think we've got people in their thirties and forties who look like they are traitors and have the values of would-be herrenvolk and want to undo Reconstruction. 

So, color me pretty alarmed by that. Also alarmed by Justice Kavanaugh hanging out with the Schlapps, you know, the CPAC wanna-be domestic terrorist Orban enthusiasts. Just a Supreme Court justice hanging out in the most partisan and kinda-fash-leaning crowd, and we're supposed to shrug about that? (And shouldn't RW SCOTUS justices be more on guard about their propriety since we know they are cozy as hell with activists? I mean, Clarance Thomas' wife is a whole activist, which is as cozy as things get.)  

It isn't a joke. 

After all, the modern conservative movement isn't modern, isn't conservative, and if it's moving, honey, I don't want to see where it wants us to go.  You take the Claremont Institute, where our TWGB old friend John Eastman hails from, and you reckon with the idea that even blood and soil Americans, of the bluest eye and longest pedigree, like, um, me! Aren't even American anymore. 

I know, right? I'm so woke I believe that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among them, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is how out of whack with American values my happy ass has become. 

But wait! There's more:

Claremont Institute Fellow: "even if conducted legitimately, elections no longer reflect the will of the people" therefore the right should stop participating in "the technocratic accumulation of votes" pic.twitter.com/P5yTm6HBXV

— Christian Vanderbrouk 🇺🇸🇺🇦🌻 (@UrbanAchievr) December 9, 2022

The voting ain't right if the white right people ain't voting, is how I suss that one out. Because of all those not-Americans, like my white liberal not-Americanism and the variegated Kamala Harris/Barack Obama styled not American/Americanism. And that is exactly why something better had to come along, and it was the insurrection. And if you think the right-wingers are over it, no, they are not. 

Talking Points Memo (of which you should go ahead and be a paying member--do it) is unearthing a trove of the Mark Meadows texts as reported out by the estimable Hunter Walker--and this is riveting and also sort of hilarious. I guess for me the thing is our democracy almost got undone by people advocating for "marshall law".  

But also I can't help but note that supposed grown "sensible" adults were ready to go to the mattresses over the absolute stupidest voter fraud conspiracy theories without the least diligence. Rep. Rick Allen thought a YouTube link was a pretty good "source".  Rep. Scott Perry fell for the Italian Job. which I derisively posted about on 1/6 eve.  Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities, indeed. 

They wanted to believe. They were the most open-faced marks. I can joke about Venezuelan machines, German servers, Italian satellites, Korean boats to Maine, Chinese bamboo ballots and the like, but the tragedy is that there are people who think any of that is believable. It's hard to believe, and they only do because they want to. 

These voter fraud theories are absolute jokes. Bamboo paper. Cyber ninjas. The purposeful idiot one would have to be to not grasp the concept of the "red mirage" and how vote counting works in different states after so much explaining. 

But the believers aren't joking, because they subliminally if not overtly believe Democratic votes aren't real or valid. 

And I don't have an answer to that horrific thought I've been staring at since Whitewater turned into a politics of personal destruction. And study the Clinton years and Bush v Gore, and look at our current SCOTUS. Some Republicans want actual war. They low-key support the Eric Rudolph's and Timothy McVeigh's, the Robert Dears etc.  They want to see liberals crushed. threatened, stripped of power. 

And we need to confront that by stepping into our power wherever we can. Local action. Demonstration. Voting. Showing up.  They are not joking,

We can't afford to, either.