• The TrumpRepublican Party's Culture of Violence

    From ELON X.@21:1/5 to All on Tue Oct 24 17:14:36 2023
    XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.misc, talk.politics.guns
    XPost: rec.arts.tv, alt.atheism

    October 23, 2023
    The Republican Party’s Culture of Violence

    October 23, 2023, 5:54 PM ET

    This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you
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    The MAGA movement has been infused with violence and threats of violence
    for years. Those threats—now aimed at Republican lawmakers—are the new
    normal in the GOP.

    First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

    Sleeping With a Gun by the Bed

    The trash fire that is the Republican competition to elect the speaker of
    the House is entering a new phase now that Representative Jim Jordan of
    Ohio is out of the running. Nine men have put themselves forward; Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota is the apparent favorite, at least
    for now. Of the nine, seven voted to overturn the 2020 presidential
    election. (Emmer and Representative Austin Scott of Georgia voted to
    certify the results.)

    Before this contest moves into horse-race handicapping, we should revisit
    the astonishing stories from over the weekend about the threats made
    against Republican legislators during Jordan’s brief candidacy. CNN’s Jake Tapper, MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, and Aaron Blake at The Washington Post, among others, reported on these threats, but many Americans seem unable to
    muster more than a shrug and a kind of resigned acceptance that this is
    just how some Republicans are now. The only people who seem angry about
    this are the Republican lawmakers who, along with their families, received these threats.

    Although Jordan repudiated these tactics, some of his colleagues blame him anyway, and Americans are now, as Blake wrote last week, in a “long-
    overdue” conversation about the role of threats in public life, one that “should include a recognition that these threats and intimidation can
    work, and probably have.”

    That “conversation,” unfortunately, is unlikely to continue. Republicans
    have long feared their own voters, and have for years whispered about it
    among themselves. Now that Jordan has been defeated, they will likely go
    back to pretending that such threats are isolated incidents. But the
    threats during Jordan’s candidacy should confirm that Trump’s MAGA
    loyalists, firmly nested in the GOP, constitute a violent movement that
    refuses to lose any democratic contest—even to other members of its own
    party.

    Some of these threats can be dismissed as the result of technology: The frictional costs of threatening people are basically nonexistent. Angry
    cranks once needed time and materials (envelopes and stamps, or at least a
    call to an information line) to say awful things. Today, people are
    surfing the internet with a smartphone—their personal secretary and
    valet—right by their side, so the interval between having a repulsive
    thought and expressing it to a target is now functionally zero.

    But email and the internet, and political violence in the United States,
    have been around for a while. Only in the age of Trump have threats become
    a common part of daily American partisan politics. Almost anyone who is
    even remotely a public figure now gets them over almost anything, and
    Trump and his movement have gone quite far in killing any sense of shame
    for saying terrible things to other people or their families over
    political differences.

    Not only does Trump expressly model this kind of behavior; he and his
    media enablers provide rationalizations for such threats. Ironically, many
    of these excuses were once associated with the violent far left a half-
    century ago: The system is rigged; democracy is a mug’s game; anyone who disagrees with you is an enemy; those in power will never give it up
    without being subjected to violence and intimidation. But much of it is
    also out of the far-right, fascist playbook: The elites are plotting
    against you; anyone who disagrees with you is obviously in on the plot;
    the only salvation is if We the People engage in violence ordained by God himself.

    We’ve seen these illiberal, populist attitudes and beliefs before. What we
    have not seen in America until now is the capture of a major political
    party by this kind of paranoia and violence.

    The threats around Jordan’s attempt to gain the gavel are also different because the people making them are reaching down into granular, inside- baseball GOP politics. In recent years, some MAGA adherents have made
    threats against their partisan opponents in order to defend Trump’s honor,
    or because they were convinced that the 2020 election was stolen. Now,
    however, the movement is turning on its own. Some people follow internal
    House conferences as if they are members of the caucus, and treat the
    election of a speaker—which is important, to be sure—as an existential
    battle.

    Amazingly, these people made threats in support of … Jim Jordan. They are actually menacing other human beings over the ambitions of a loudmouthed, ineffectual member of Congress.

    After threats over the speakership, what’s next? Death threats over who
    becomes deputy whip? Put the honorable Mr. Bloggs on the Rules Committee,
    or I’ll hurt your family? As the writer Eric Hoffer so presciently noted
    more than 70 years ago, decadence and boredom can be among the most useful
    raw materials for the construction of an authoritarian movement, and
    clearly, American society has plenty of both.

    Many Republican legislators are scared, and they should be. Only 25
    members of the House GOP conference voted against Jordan on the floor
    during the last round of voting. Many more opposed making him speaker; in
    a secret ballot, 112 of Jordan’s colleagues voted against him—which
    suggests that more than 80 of them feared doing so in public.

    It’s not uncommon for members of Congress to vote one way among themselves
    and then cast a different vote on the floor, especially if the issue is
    one where the national party is at odds with the voters in a member’s
    district. Such political calculations, though sometimes distasteful, are common. But democracy cannot function if legislators feel that their
    lives—and those of their families—are in danger from their fellow
    citizens. No matter what happens with Trump and the MAGA cult, the
    Republican Party cannot go on this way, and some of the legislators who
    spoke up about threats during Jordan’s attempt to become speaker seem to
    know it.

    What they are willing to do about it is less clear. But I wonder if the
    arrests and convictions for the January 6 insurrection are having their
    effect: One caller to a representative, after a string of f-bombs and
    barely veiled threats, made an effort to stipulate that he was speaking
    only of nonviolent harassment. Perhaps holding such people legally
    accountable for their actions—whether they intended violence or were just trying to throw a scare into others—might begin to reverse this trend.

    Republican elected officials didn’t seem to care very much about such
    rhetoric when it was aimed at their opponents, and they were only briefly shaken on January 6, 2021, when a violent mob made clear that there was
    plenty of room reserved on the gibbet for Mike Pence and other Republican leaders. Perhaps they’ll take such threats more seriously now that their internal squabbles could lead to their wives having to sleep with a gun by
    the bed, but I suspect that the hyper-partisanship and stunning cowardice
    that brought the GOP to this moment will, as ever, win the day.



    A while back, I said that I would occasionally use this space to revisit
    some 1980s musical oddities. This week, I want to remind you how very
    political music videos could be in the Decade of Excess. You’ve probably
    seen the video for the 1986 Genesis hit “Land of Confusion,” which used Britain’s Spitting Image puppets to portray world leaders such as Ronald
    Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to trippy effect. Reagan made a lot of
    appearances in words and images in those days, including in Sting’s
    “Russians,” Men at Work’s “It’s a Mistake,” and others.

    But for my money, the best video with a Reagan reference was made by
    Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Better known for its huge dance hit “Relax,” in 1984, the band recorded “Two Tribes,” a song about nuclear war. (I wrote
    about MTV’s nuclear genre here.) The video features two actors, one
    obviously Reagan, and the other—and this is the cool trivia part—meant to
    be the Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko. The two of them beat each other
    up until the world explodes. The end.

    But wait—who? Exactly. Chernenko was leader of the U.S.S.R. for all of 13 months, mostly as a seat warmer in ill health. History has forgotten him,
    but thanks to a video filmed at the right moment in time, he will live on, forever headbutting Reagan and biting the American president’s ear in an eternal arena match.



    Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.

    When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a
    commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.


    www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/10/republican-party-jordan- threats-violence/675742/

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  • From Siri Cruise@21:1/5 to Klaus Schadenfreude on Tue Oct 24 11:48:49 2023
    XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.misc, talk.politics.guns

    Klaus Schadenfreude wrote:
    [Default] "ELON X." <elonx@protonmail.com> typed:

    October 23, 2023
    The Republican Party’s Culture of Violence

    Meanwhile....

    Democrat cities are plagued by violence

    Like Boston? Maybe we need a third continental congress.


    --
    Siri Seal of Disavowal #000-001. Disavowed. Denied. @
    'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' /|\
    The Church of the Holey Apple .signature 3.1 / \
    of Discordian Mysteries. This post insults Islam. Mohamed

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  • From Yak@21:1/5 to Siri Cruise on Tue Oct 24 15:01:14 2023
    XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.misc, talk.politics.guns

    On 10/24/2023 2:48 PM, Siri Cruise wrote:
    Klaus Schadenfreude wrote:
    [Default]  "ELON X." <elonx@protonmail.com> typed:

    October 23, 2023
    The Republican Party’s Culture of Violence

    Meanwhile....

    Democrat cities are plagued by violence

    Like Boston? Maybe we need a third continental congress.

    Nah...just need to exterminate liberals.

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  • From Mike Colangelo@21:1/5 to Siri Cruise on Tue Oct 24 12:09:27 2023
    XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.misc, talk.politics.guns

    On 10/24/2023 11:48 AM, Siri Cruise wrote:
    KKKlaun SchittenPantzen, impotent and harmless Nazi fake Jew and cocksucking dwarf, lied:

    [Default]  "ELON X." <elonx@protonmail.com> typed:

    October 23, 2023
    The Republican Party’s Culture of Violence

    Meanwhile....

    Democrat cities are plagued by violence

    No such thing as "Democrat" cities. American cities *in general* are run by *Democratic* elected officials. Cities are where the brains are, and smart people refuse to be governed by Republiscums/QAnon.

    Shithole red states have just as high *rates* of violent crime in their rural areas and small towns as they have in their cities. It's the fucking Republiscum/QAnon *state* governments that set the tone. Everyone knows this.



    Like Boston? Maybe we need a third continental congress.



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  • From Klaus Schadenfreude@21:1/5 to All on Tue Oct 24 11:22:17 2023
    XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.misc, talk.politics.guns

    [Default] "ELON X." <elonx@protonmail.com> typed:

    October 23, 2023
    The Republican Party’s Culture of Violence

    Meanwhile....

    Democrat cities are plagued by violence
    Democrats support looting and burning as "peaceful protests"

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  • From Klaus Schadenfreude@21:1/5 to All on Tue Oct 24 12:43:04 2023
    XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.misc, talk.politics.guns

    [Default] Siri Cruise <chine.bleu@www.yahoo.com> typed:

    Klaus Schadenfreude wrote:
    [Default] "ELON X." <elonx@protonmail.com> typed:

    October 23, 2023
    The Republican Party’s Culture of Violence

    Meanwhile....

    Democrat cities are plagued by violence

    Like Boston? Maybe we need a third continental congress.

    Nah. Just get rid of Democrats

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