CPAC 2021

[The Great Zaganza]

I still think that the star of CPAC 2021 was Jay “Hiroaki” Aeba, member of the Happy Science cult.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/forme...that-channels-ghost-of-trump-speaking-at-cpac

It's not the first time he spoke at CPAC.

 

[CapelDodger]

I can easily see Trump getting the nomination for the GOP again. And I can easily see him being their best chance of winning in 2024. If they select a normal person, they probably lose because they will have pissed off their lunatic base to appease their non-lunatic fringe. If they try to go Trump-lite with somebody like Ted Cruz who just doesn't quite have the shamelessness to double down on his escape to Cancun, then they lose as well because he is hated by lunatics and non-lunatics alike.

I have heard, from more than one source, that to know Ted Cruz is to loathe him. I find that more than credible.

 

[CapelDodger]

It's very destructive, and the fact that so many Americans buy into his lies is incredibly discconcerting, too. It's a symptom of the deeply polarised postfact society the US has devolved into. Truth matters less and less. Worst thing is, I'm not sure where to even begin with digging the country out of that hole. If a bloody coup wasn't enough of a wake-up call to people, I don't know what will be.

I saw a clip in which a Trump-tick used "fact-check" as a pejorative - "If we speak out we just get fact-checked!", in tones of great outrage.

 

[CapelDodger]

Anyone who thinks embracing full-bore insanity would be bad for the GOP is deluding themselves.

It won't expand their following, which is currently insufficient, and will likely shrink it, in my opinion.

 

[Cavemonster]

Again, if you missed it....



Anyone who thinks embracing full-bore insanity would be bad for the GOP is deluding themselves.

It increases commitment, but it limits the size of their tent.

They've GOTTEN this crazy and sustained themselves by picking up new greivance groups ever cycle or two. They grabbed the angry southern racists in the 60s. Then the evangelicals. The tea party loons and now conspiracy theorists and open white supremacists. They may have hit the bottom of the barrel and find themselves with no more angry crazy groups to add going forward.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

America is Rome before The Fall.....

I see similarities both to the Roman empire and to the Soviet Union.
And if other empires and nation could collapse, so can the United States. And if it does, the fall will be huge.

Also, for the people who seem to be gleefully awaiting this fall, let me remind you that the US collapsing will also probably have major consequences to the rest of the world.

 

[shemp]

I see similarities both to the Roman empire and to the Soviet Union.
And if other empires and nation could collapse, so can the United States. And if it does, the fall will be huge.

Also, for the people who seem to be gleefully awaiting this fall, let me remind you that the US collapsing will also probably have major consequences to the rest of the world.

Speaking of similarities, how about drawing some between Trump and Brezhnev?

The Republican Party Is Now in Its End Stages

The GOP has become, in form if not in content, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of the late 1970s.

We are living in a time of bad metaphors. Everything is fascism, or socialism; Hitler’s Germany, or Stalin’s Soviet Union. Republicans, especially, want their followers to believe that America is on the verge of a dramatic time, a moment of great conflict such as 1968—or perhaps, even worse, 1860. (The drama is the point, of course. No one ever says, “We’re living through 1955.”)

Ironically, the GOP is indeed replicating another political party in another time, but not as the heroes they imagine themselves to be. The Republican Party has become, in form if not in content, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of the late 1970s.

I can already hear the howls about invidious comparisons. I do not mean that modern American Republicans are communists. Rather, I mean that the Republicans have entered their own kind of end-stage Bolshevism, as members of a party that is now exhausted by its failures, cynical about its own ideology, authoritarian by reflex, controlled as a personality cult by a failing old man, and looking for new adventures to rejuvenate its fortunes.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Speaking of similarities, how about drawing some between Trump and Brezhnev?

The Republican Party Is Now in Its End Stages

The GOP has become, in form if not in content, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of the late 1970s.

Any incredibly strained comparison to avoid the more direct observation that Trumpism is simply American fascism.

 

[CapelDodger]

Any incredibly strained comparison to avoid the more direct observation that Trumpism is simply American fascism.

That may be, but shemp was referring to the GOP, and its existing decrepitude was what allowed the Tea Party and then Trump to make it their bitch.

 

[Mumbles]

They've GOTTEN this crazy and sustained themselves by picking up new greivance groups ever cycle or two. They grabbed the angry southern racists in the 60s. Then the evangelicals. The tea party loons and now conspiracy theorists and open white supremacists. They may have hit the bottom of the barrel and find themselves with no more angry crazy groups to add going forward.

Those are the same group, just with varying levels of anger and fear. Minor exception for conspiracy theorists, who are in theory all over the map (qanoners, Pizzagaters, and the like, however, are just retreads of old antisemitic garbage).

Also, um, you mean *white* evangelicals by and large.

 

[phiwum]

He seems to suggest that if he hadn't been president, "hundreds of millions" of Americans would've died from Covid -- so basically the entire US population

That's not so. I saw the quote in context and it seemed perfectly clear to me that he's talking worldwide. He's suggesting that but for him, there'd be no vaccines and so the death toll would be much worse.

It's utter nonsense, sure, but I don't see how you can read his claim as hundreds of millions of Americans dead.

From the transcript:

And therapeutic relief, also, if you're sick. If you're sick, we have things now that are incredible. What has taken place over the last year under our administration would have taken any other president at least five years. And we got it done in nine months. Everyone says five years, five years. Can you imagine if you had to go through what all of the countries of the world who are now getting the vaccine or soon will be getting it from various companies. But can you imagine if all of those countries had to go through what they've been going through over the last year? You'd lose hundreds of millions of people.

It's incoherent, of course, but the highlighted bit shows that the context is the world, not the nation.

 

[Cavemonster]

Those are the same group, just with varying levels of anger and fear. Minor exception for conspiracy theorists, who are in theory all over the map (qanoners, Pizzagaters, and the like, however, are just retreads of old antisemitic garbage).

Also, um, you mean *white* evangelicals by and large.

There's a lot of overlap and a lot of people in more than one of those groups.
But Jimmy Carter was the first evangelical president. Evangelicals as a whole didn't even have such a hardon for pro-life before the GOP shaped the issue. You could see it as the continuous rolling southern strategy, but there were particular efforts and benchmarks along the way.

 

[ponderingturtle]

There's a lot of overlap and a lot of people in more than one of those groups.
But Jimmy Carter was the first evangelical president. Evangelicals as a whole didn't even have such a hardon for pro-life before the GOP shaped the issue. You could see it as the continuous rolling southern strategy, but there were particular efforts and benchmarks along the way.

Not exactly they got a hard on for politics when they had to let blacks into their schools. They realized that fighting to keep out the blacks was bad optics and so they needed some other cause as their beard.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133

 

[Cavemonster]

Not exactly they got a hard on for politics when they had to let blacks into their schools. They realized that fighting to keep out the blacks was bad optics and so they needed some other cause as their beard.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133

I think you might have misread my comment.
I didn't say that abortion got the evangelicals into politics. But it sure was part of the GOP push to keep them as hardcore devotees over the long term.

My point was that evangelicals weren't all swept into the party with the first flush of southern racists. It was part of a distinct push and it came to fruition slightly later.

 

[Minoosh]

Those are the same group, just with varying levels of anger and fear. Minor exception for conspiracy theorists, who are in theory all over the map (qanoners, Pizzagaters, and the like, however, are just retreads of old antisemitic garbage).

Also, um, you mean *white* evangelicals by and large.

In Panama I worked with a bunch of student journalists who were doing a series for my newspaper on sovereign Panama and its enduring ties with the U.S. One of the participants mentioned an outreach program that brought dentistry to remote jungle areas. He said, "It's run by evangelicals" and then, seeing a few winces, said, "They're not mean like in the U.S."

Sad.

 

[dudalb]

There are even posters on this forum who are very comfortable with that idea!

And a lot of them are on the left, sadly.

 

[dudalb]

I see similarities both to the Roman empire and to the Soviet Union.
And if other empires and nation could collapse, so can the United States. And if it does, the fall will be huge.

Also, for the people who seem to be gleefully awaiting this fall, let me remind you that the US collapsing will also probably have major consequences to the rest of the world.

If the US goes down, it will pull a lot of the west down with it.

I note that the ones pushing this are Kiwis. New Zealanders tend to have a 'We are not effected by what happens in the outside world" attitude.
Which is nonsense, of course.
If the US goes down, it will leave a huge power vacume in the Pacific. I hope the Kiwis like their new Chinese masters.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

There appears to be an ongoing debate over whether the CPAC stage was deliberately designed to resemble an Odal_(rune)^WP or whether it's just a weird coincidence.

View attachment 44323

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cpac-stage-nazi-symbol/

https://twitter.com/allisongill/status/1365390452824756224/

I'm sure there's all sorts of other weird **** going down as well, and I didn't see another thread on topic.

The Owls Are Not What They Seem

 

[Armitage72]

The Owls Are Not What They Seem

You're thinking of the Bohemian Grove.

 

[sackett]

For some reason, perhaps living in a state of nervous apprehension for the past four years, I was uneasy, even tense, during the run up to Donnie's Great Speech at CRAPAX. I feared that he'd make a real effort to blare out a new politics, something blatant and aggressive, something inflammatory that would reinvigorate his mobs. Perhaps he would call the professional Repblublicans to him, and give them hope again. Hell, I was imagining a new Trumpf, wily and dangerous.

Laugh all you want. At least I've come clean. If anything trumph-related can ever be clean.