Mostly Monday Reads: Martyrdom Syndrome vs Real Suffering

Posted: August 21, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Climate change, Climate/Inflation Package | Tags: , , , , | 8 Comments

Northeaster, Winslow Homer,1895

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

New Orleans got some much-needed rain this morning!  It was too late for several homeless folks in the city who were overcome by heat exhaustion and stroke. They are not alone, as there are victims throughout the Southern United States with similar fates.

President Biden will visit the site of the Maui Fires, which will take unprecedented federal resources to return many people to a new normal situation. Having been part of a diaspora and major disaster–Hurricane Katrina–I can attest to the remaining devastation here and the impact on the psyche of its victims that never entirely goes away.  We’re just beginning to get information on the flooding and storms that have damaged cities like Palm Springs. National resources, Charitable funds, and ordinary citizens will come to the rescue with basic needs as well as much-needed hugs and comfort.

Prairie Meadows Burning, on the Missouri, George Catlin, 1852

These climate-change-related disasters are on the minds of concerned Americans who are reaching out with grace and resources to make their fellow citizens whole again.  Scanning the headlines, I notice that a specific group of Americans doesn’t appear to be part of the massive acts of neighborly love that will begin so many paths to healing and restoration. Hurricane Ida is still an issue down here. Resources are still finding their way to those just trying to get back to some kind of routine. The only thing I can find on the Maui fires and Trump is a fake video telling his acolytes he visited there during the fires.  This was obviously not true.  The other headline is him lambasting President Biden for a “disgraceful” response.  This after his response to Puerto Rico’s American citizens after a hurricane was to toss paper towels at them and appear surprised they were actually tax-paying and voting U.S. Citizens. Trump delayed $2 billion in aid.  No word about the California Hurriquake from His Orange Assholines yet.

So, what kind of person isn’t focused on helping their neighbors during these multiple disasters?  Well, you know, but I’m going there anyway.  This is from Sidney Blumenthal, writing at The Guardian. “Trump’s legal woes are part of his quasi-religious mythology of martyrdom. These criminal entanglements are not only means but ends – not a sideshow, but the heart and soul of Trump’s campaign.?”   Yes, it’s his continual refrain of “poor, poor pitiful me.

Even more than during the gripping performance of his various indictments, the theatre of his trials will subsume politics. There will not be another campaign, some semblance of a normal campaign of the past, a fantasy campaign, separate from Trump’s trials. The scenes from courtroom to courtroom will overlap with the primaries – the final ones taking place on 4 June 2024 – only intensifying the zeal of his base. And then Trump’s battle with the law will engulf the general election.

The trials are a continuous spectacle, featuring an all-star cast in far-flung locations. Political reporters are barely heard from, while legal analysts fill the airwaves. Every twist and turn, every motion, every argument is the breathless lead story. Everyone, from prosecutors to co-conspirators, named and unnamed, indicted and unindicted, are characters in Trump’s new reality show – part violent action movie (the insurrection), part sleazy porn flick (Stormy Daniels), part conspiracy thriller (Mar-a-Lago), and part mafia drama (the fake elector racket).

But the Trump trials are more than his means; they are his ends. The trials are not the sideshow, but the heart and soul of Trump’s campaign. They have become his essential fundraising tool to finance his defense, his platform for whipping up his followers into a constant state of excitement, and his instrument for dominating the media to make himself the center of attention and blot out coverage of anyone else.

The trials are the message. They are the drama around which Trump plays his role as the unjustly accused victim, whose rights are trampled and who is the martyr for his oppressed “deplorables”. He is taking the slings and arrows for them. The narcissist is the self-sacrificing saint. The criminal is the angel. The liar is the truth-teller. If any Republican lapses in faithfulness, they are more than a mere doubter or skeptic, but a betrayer and traitor. Trump’s trials are the rigorous trial of his followers’ faith. Rejection of temptation in an encounter with an impertinent fact that might raise a qualm shows purity of heart. Seduction by fact must be resisted. The siren song of critical thinking must be cast out as sin. Trump’s convictions are the supreme test of his followers’ strength of conviction.

Republicans are not prisoners of Trump’s narcissistic rage. They don’t reject it. They don’t regret it. They don’t apologize. They mirror it. They mimic it. They exult in it. It is the gratification they receive for passing through the ordeal of belief. His rage is their reward. It is their cheap vicarious defiance of the evil-doers: the establishment, the globalists, the Fauciists, the FBI, the Barbie movie. As Trump has received target letters, so judges, district attorneys, the special counsel, and their wives, too, must be targets. Fair game is fair play. Hallelujah!

After the Hurricane Bahamas, Winslow Homer, 1899

Yup, it’s all about him, and whatever it is they developed in terms of connecting their own little grievances to him.  Even getting airplay in Trumpland requires a little sumpin’ sumpin’.  Every Republican has a grievance about somebody else interfering with their KKK cosplay. “Republican candidate told associates Newsmax tried to make him pay for coverage.”  It’s one big grift in Trumplandia, especially for the propagandists. This is from Salon.  Meanwhile, the USA drowns, burns, and melts. 

If Vivek Ramaswamy wants to appear on Newsmax, he should pay to do it.

That was the message that network chief Chris Ruddy delivered to the Republican presidential candidate during a private call earlier this summer, according to two people to whom the candidate described the conversation. Ramaswamy had complained that the right-leaning network was sticking him in little-watched midday slots or ignoring him outright.

Ruddy also suggested a solution, Ramaswamy told associates: buy more television ads on the network. Ruddy, Ramaswamy told them, noted that such a transaction had helped Republican businessman Perry Johnson, a gadfly candidate who has thus far garnered only passing attention among mainstream and even conservative outlets covering the 2024 presidential cycle.

In a statement, Newsmax spokesperson Bill Daddi told Semafor that the insinuation “that Newsmax is asking candidates to advertise in order to ensure coverage as some quid pro quo … is categorically untrue and incorrect. Newsmax would take an assertion such as that very seriously. There is no correlation between advertising and editorial visibility for any candidate on Newsmax.”

“If candidates want to reach our audience outside of our programming, then, of course, advertising would be a good way for them to do this. That is the basis of all political advertising,” he said.

Tornado over Kansas, John Steuart Curry.1929

And all that time, the League of Woman Voters could’ve been collecting booty for the Voter’s Guides. But wait, there’s the House of Representatives that’s supposed to really care about the people, right?  This is from Axios. “House Freedom Caucus fires warning shot over government shutdown.”  Just as we need Federal resources to handle all these natural disasters, why shouldn’t we just close all of it down?  What could be more important than helping our citizens in desperate need?

Members of the House Freedom Caucus are making it harder for leadership to avoid a government shutdown, announcing on Monday that they’ll oppose a stopgap funding bill unless it caves to their terms.

Driving the news: The HFC is demanding more funding for border enforcement, cuts to the Department of Justice and FBI, and an end to “woke” policies at the Department of Defense.

  • “We refuse to support any such measure that continues Democrats’ bloated COVID-era spending and simultaneously fails to force the Biden Administration to follow the law and fulfill its most basic responsibilities,” they said in a statement.
  • “Any support for a ‘clean’ Continuing Resolution would be an affirmation of the current FY 2023 spending level grossly increased by the lame-duck December 2022 omnibus spending bill that we all vehemently opposed just seven months ago.”

The big picture: Congress is unlikely to complete its work on appropriations bills by the deadline on Sept. 30, with leadership calling for a continuing resolution to provide themselves with more time.

  • “If you think we’re going to come in and in three weeks, three partial weeks in September and get the appropriations bills done — that seems unlikely, given the extent to which there was a total failure in settings, spending levels where they needed to be set in order to get to 218,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told Axios.

What’s next: Some members have discussed potentially attempting to block a continuing resolution on legislation from reaching the House floor unless it meets their criteria, upping the likelihood of a government shutdown if Democrats don’t vote for the measure.

The Gulf Stream, Winslow Homer, 1899

So, I guess the “basic” responsibilities don’t include rebuilding anything after a natural disaster.  Just let them eat dust and fire-rotted logs!  Who needs schools?  Food?  Water?  This is from NBC. “Freedom Caucus rebels against a short-term funding bill with new demands.  The new list of policy changes sought by the ultraconservative House lawmakers drew immediate pushback from Democratic leaders, who warned it would cause a shutdown.” So, they have the ability and want laws to shame people but have no shame themselves.  Got it!

In a statement Monday, the Freedom Caucus said its official position was that the group’s members would oppose any bill unless it includes their preferred language on border security, new laws to address what they call the “weaponization” of the Justice Department and FBI and a shift in some of the Pentagon’s policies — although they didn’t detail all the changes they want.

Yup, more hypocrisy.

Here’s some of the latest on the Maui Fires.  This is from the New York Times. “Maui Knew Dangerous Wildfires Had Become Inevitable. It Still Wasn’t Ready. As President Biden arrives to survey the damage with state and local officials, shock and grief are giving way to anger and questions about the government’s preparation.”  The photos are shocking.

Here’s some of the latest on the damage caused by Hurricane Hilary.  This is from CBS News. “Video, pictures of Hilary aftermath in Palm Springs show unprecedented flooding and rain damage from storm.” Again, more shocking photos.

This is from the Washington Post.  “Record central U.S. heat wave delivers ‘life-threatening’ conditions. Heat indexes topped 130 in Kansas on Sunday. Several days of similar heat are on the way.”  This isn’t your grandfather’s August Summer Days.

More than a third of Americans are under heat alert early this week as a monster heat dome stifles a huge swath of territory across the central United States, threatening the hottest temperatures of summer. As officials warn of “life-threatening” conditions, numerous records in parts of the Midwest could be reached as the heat continues to pummel the South.

Excessive-heat warnings stretch from Texas and Louisiana to Wisconsin and Minnesota, including the entire states of Iowa and Missouri. Cities under excessive-heat warnings include Des Moines, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Dallas and Little Rock. Combinations of heat and humidity will lead to feels-like values of 110 to 120 degrees across much of the Midwest and South, with some spots even surpassing those marks.

That already happened Sunday, with heat indexes in numerous locations topping 120, focused on Kansas, Iowa and Missouri.

More than 200 long-period record highs were set since Friday alone, including an all-time high of 112 degrees in College Station, Tex. Another all-time high was reached in Alexandria, La., where it reached 110 on Saturday. August records were set in Abilene, Tex., at 111, and in Stephenville, Tex., at 110.

But, hey, the majority party in the House of Representatives believes we need to stop responding to public health emergencies and start paying more attention to making Trump’s indictments about politics and not his crime spree.  That sounds about right.  It’s their idea of our priorities.

What’s on your blogging and reading lists today?

Let us know how you’re making out from the heat, the hurriquake, the fires, and the overall Republican plan to turn us into victims of their shame and plunder policies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not Just Another Monday Reads: Living through Traumaverseries

Posted: August 29, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Climate Change, Climate change, Climate/Inflation Package, corporate greed, corporatism, Environment, Environmental Protection | Tags: | 15 Comments

Good Day Sky Dancers!

It’s difficult to explain how much one date could traumatize and change an entire American city but today is one of those days.  17 years ago, the levees topped after Hurricane Katrina directly hit the city. It’s still very hard for me to look at these pictures of the devastation my youngest daughter took in the Lower 9–across the canal from me–on the Thanksgiving weekend following Katrina.  They were still pulling dead bodies from the debris at that time.

This top picture shows one of the few houses that didn’t collapse with its Katrina cross, indicating someone had died in that home. I watched all of this on CNN from the safety of a pink futon on the floor with my two yellow labs and Miles the Wondercat from a motel in St. Charles, LA that would later be devastated by Hurricane Rita.

My house sat high and dry on the high ground with a nearly new roof and some minor wind damage. The following six months were an experience of camping out in your own home with minimal electricity and chasing around to find working gas stations and open grocery stores.  I also made a daily pilgrimage to the Red Cross station in the Quarter to pick up cleaning supplies and food.  I really experienced survivor guilt too.  Something I hadn’t had since I wound up being the only person known to survive the rare type of cancer I had five years before that. That was definitely not an enjoyable emotional experience either.

I’m also reminded of Hurricane Ida last year, which disrupted my life and significantly impacted my house. However, now, my insurance company wised up, gave me a $10k deductible, and basically told me I was on my own. Thankfully, I got a FEMA grant.

Teacher of the year and Katrina Survivor Chris Dier has a tremendous long thread on the federal mishaps that led to our devastation and the crony capitalism that has crippled us since then.

Diel lived in extremely hard-hit St. Bernard Parish, with most houses and infrastructure destroyed. He was 17 at the time.  He’s chosen a series of articles to orchestrate the steps that have led us to where we are today, which is not fully recovered or whole.  It’s also left us, victims, to charter schools and AirBNBs.

Today, I’m here to remind you that climate change is real and has already had devasting impacts all over our sweet mother earth and ecosystems and the life it supports. Failure to deal with it is a failure of global governance.

From The Washington Post: “Greenland ice sheet set to raise sea levels by nearly a foot, study finds. New research suggests the massive ice sheet is already set to lose more than 3 percent of its mass, even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases today”.

Human-driven climate change has set in motion massive ice losses in Greenland that couldn’t be halted even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, according to a new study published Monday.

The findings in Nature Climate Change project that it is now inevitable that 3.3 percent of the Greenland ice sheet will melt — equal to 110 trilliontons of ice,the researchers said. That will trigger nearly a foot of global sea-level rise.

The predictions are more dire than other forecasts, though they use different assumptions.While the study did not specify a time frame for the melting and sea-level rise, the authors suggestedmuch of it can play out between now and the year 2100.

“The point is, we need to plan for that ice as if it weren’t on the ice sheet in the near future, within a century or so,” William Colgan, a study co-author who studies the ice sheet from its surfacewith his colleaguesat the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, said in a video interview.

https://twitter.com/JacksonVoss/status/1564266109058023425

This is the link to the above Twitter and is from Southerly Magazine.  Minorities and the poor are the ones suffering the most from the impact of climate change. “ ‘They want us gone’: Black Louisianans fight to rebuild a year after Ida. Residents of Ironton and West Point a la Hache are still pushing federal and state agencies to help them make their communities safer before the next storm.”

A year after  Hurricane Ida brought eight to 15 feet of floodwater to Plaquemines Parish—a coastal parish in Southeast Louisiana—historic Black communities Ironton and West Point a la Hache are still fighting for a just recovery. Slow-moving action from federal agencies like HUD and FEMA, a massive shortage in affordable housing, and inadequate flood protection have left residents facing a difficult decision: leave behind neighbors, traditional lifeways, and ancestral lands to migrate in search of housing, or fight to rebuild, elevate homes and make the coast more resilient to intense storms.

I’ve been working as an organizer in Plaquemines Parish since 2020, starting with a successful campaign to stop an oil terminal from excavating a cemetery where enslaved people were laid to rest. I continue to support residents in their efforts to rebuild after Ida and advocate for stronger flood protection. Recently, I spoke with several residents to hear about their experience with recovery from the storm. A year since Ida’s landfall, nearly all of my friends in Plaquemines Parish have yet to return home.

Many residents are still living in temporary housing. FEMA has long been criticized for its inability to address emergency housing needs in a timely manner. In Southwest Louisiana, some families whose homes were destroyed in Hurricane Laura waited 10 months for FEMA to issue temporary trailers. After the 2021 hurricane season, Louisiana set up a new emergency housing program called the Ida Sheltering Program to issue travel trailers more quickly, and the state has housed nearly 12,000 residents through this program. But it’s unclear what other housing options are available to them. Louisiana faced a severe shortage of affordable housing before the hurricane.

Ironton residents have hung signs throughout their community to let Plaquemines Parish know they intend to come back and rebuild.

The Biden Administration and Democratic Congress have made meager but credible steps toward alleviating Climate Change devastation.  But will it be enough for Democrats to hold on and improve their position in Congress to continue the fight?

In Nevada, the intense heat brings drought and different problems due to climate change.  This is from The Washington Post. “In fast-warming Nevada, climate bill may not lift Democrats. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) has campaigned on the biggest climate bill in U.S. history. But her pitch may not resonate with voters who are more worried about the rising cost of living.”  Is it really the short-term economic woes that will draw voters?

About a week after President Biden signed into law the largest climate bill in U.S. history, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) laid out to voters here how she helped get $4 billion in the bill to combat the acute drought now punishing the American West. Outside the air-conditioned offices of the Las Vegas Valley Water District where she spoke, the temperature stood at 93 degrees — on its way to an oppressive 106 later that day.

“As you all know, the western U.S. continues to face a historic drought, and we need to do all we can to combat it,” Cortez Masto said Monday, standing before a photo showing the nation’s largest reservoir, Lake Mead, at record lows. “That’s why I have been championing measures to help Southern Nevada further conserve, recycle and reduce water use.”

Cortez Masto — one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators up for reelection this year — has spent recent weeks courting Nevada voters who want leaders in Washington to prioritize the climate crisis. Yet climate change has rarely decided the outcome in congressional races, even in Las Vegas, the nation’s second-fastest warming city in a region experiencing the most extreme drought in 1,200 years.

Voters across the country have consistently ranked the economy and health care as a higher priority than global warming. And if Democrats cannot successfully sell their environmental agenda in Nevada, which has seen a cascade of climate disasters this summer, it’s unclear whether climate concerns will ever become paramount in key national races.

Warning of doom: ‘Hunger stones’ surface in drought-stricken waters

Any part of the country served by the waters of the Colorado River is bound to be uninhabitable sooner than later. The Deserts and Coasts of our country are rapidly becoming places where life cannot be sustained.

The generous monsoon season along the Upper Basin of the Colorado River has been a relief to those who remember recent summers suffocated by wildfire smoke in the American West. But according to Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at the Colorado Water Institute and director of the Western Water Assessment at Colorado State University, the relief we’re feeling now is a sign of bigger problems for years to come.

“Next year’s runoff will be really interesting to see what happens, it will be a test of this theory of depleted soil moisture,” Udall told a packed room at the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens Education Center on Aug. 19. The theory he referenced examines how the recent precipitation affects the trending drought conditions, drying reservoirs and the lowering state of the Colorado River, which is the primary source of water for over 40 million people spread across seven Western states, over thirty Native American tribes and into Mexico.

Udall’s relationship with the Colorado River goes deeper than just the focus of his studies. He grew up along its banks and worked as a river guide in his earlier years. He also comes from a long lineage of family members who have been influential in the river’s management for more than a century. His father, former congressman Mo Udall, fought to channel river water to Arizona. His uncle, Stewart Udall, was the former Secretary of the Interior who opened the Glen Canyon Dam. And his great great grandfather, John D. Lee, established Lees Ferry in Arizona. “Udalls are, in fact, Lees,” he told the crowd.

With a litany of charts, peer-reviewed studies and side-by-side chronological photographs of depleting reservoirs, Udall’s presentation, titled, “Colorado River Crisis: A Collision of 19th Century Water Law, 20tth Century Infrastructure and a 21st Century Population Growth and Climate Change,” broke down the intricacies of the compact that draws the water rights between these states, while establishing the environmental agitators that have formed, and grown, since the compact was agreed upon in 1922.

Merriam-Webster defines “drought” as “a period of dryness especially when prolonged.” According to Udall, we are beyond treating the Colorado River crisis as something that will soon pass, or ever will.

People walk near a bank of the Loire River as historical drought hits France, in Loireauxence, France, August 16, 2022. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe

From Daily Sabah: “Warning of doom: ‘Hunger stones’ surface in drought-stricken waters.”

Carvings in boulders that were used to record historic droughts are resurfacing in waterways across drought-stricken Europe.

Ancient ominous warnings carved on usually submerged boulders along the Elbe River had for centuries driven fear into the hearts of Czechs, but their reappearance during this year’s drought is just a reminder of how tough people had it.

The stones can only be seen above the water surface during droughts and are used to presage bad harvests, interrupted river navigation and consequent famine. Now, the messages appear weeks after weather and crop forecasts.

Such a stone on the banks of the Elbe River, which starts in the Czech Republic, and ends in Germany dates back to 1616. The boulder was inscribed with “Wenn du mich seest, dann weine” – “If you see me, then weep,” according to a Google translation.

A view shows a branch of the Loire River as an historical drought hits France, in Loireauxence, France, August 16, 2022. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe

From Reuters: “France’s river Loire sets new lows as drought dries up its tributaries.” 

France’s river Loire, famous for the hundreds of castles gracing its shores, is a shallow river at the best of times, but this year even its flat-bottom tourist barges can barely navigate waters greatly reduced by a record drought.

Even some 100 kilometers from where the Loire empties into the Atlantic Ocean, sand banks now stretch as far as the eye can see, large islands connect to the shore and in places people can practically walk from one side of the river to the other.

This is not normal.  The nations in Africa address Climate Change today in a conference in Gabon.

One last thing from Louisiana!

Okay, maybe two! What’s on your reading and blogging list today? It’s okay to put other topics up. Our threads are always open!

Finally Friday Reads: BFD is on!

Posted: August 5, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: 2022 Primaries, abortion rights, Climate/Inflation Package, White Christian Nationalism | 7 Comments

Max Liebermann, Country House in Hilversum—Villa in Hilversum, 1901

Good Day Sky Dancers!

This was a great headline to wake up to today!  “Sinema Agrees to Climate and Tax Deal, Clearing the Way for Votes.  The Arizona Democrat had been her party’s last remaining holdout on the package, now slated to move forward on Saturday and pass the Senate within days.”  It’s from The New York Times, as reported by Emily Cochran.

Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, announced on Thursday evening that she would support moving forward with her party’s climate, tax and health care package, clearing the way for a major piece of President Biden’s domestic agenda to move through the Senate in the coming days.

To win Ms. Sinema’s support, Democratic leaders agreed to drop a $14 billion tax increase on some wealthy hedge fund managers and private equity executives that she had opposed, change the structure of a 15 percent minimum tax on corporations, and include drought money to benefit Arizona.

Ms. Sinema said she was ready to move forward with the package, provided that the Senate’s top rules official signed off on it.

Sinema must be awash in Wall Street donations to make the sticking point of her grief being the removal of that giveaway tax cut for the richest of the rich. However, I have less grief about that than the NAZIs of a feather flocking together at CPAC.  Someone must tell these nutters that White Christian Nationalism is not American or Conservative.

This is from Steve Benen on the visit of the Hungarian Dictator to the craziest show on earth. “Viktor Orbán’s racism not a deal breaker for the right in the U.S. Viktor Orbán’s recent racism offered Republicans an opportunity to distance themselves from the authoritarian Hungarian. They’ve done the opposite.”  Hey Steve, racism is a feature of today’s Republicans.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s anti-immigration positions help define him politically. Indeed, the authoritarian leader has spent years extoling the virtues of racial “purity.”

But two weeks ago, Orbán was unusually brazen on the subject, publicly denouncing race-mixing. As The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank summarized in a recent column:

“Migration has split Europe in two — or I could say that it has split the West in two,” he said, after commending to his listeners a 50-year-old racist treatise. “One half is a world where European and non-European peoples live together. These countries are no longer nations. They are nothing more than a conglomeration of peoples.” He went on to contrast that with “our world,” in which “we are willing to mix with one another, but we do not want to become peoples of mixed race.”

The backlash was fierce. Zsuzsanna Hegedus, a longtime Orbán ally and an adviser in his government, not only condemned the rhetoric, she also quickly resigned.

“I don’t know how you didn’t notice that your speech you delivered is a purely Nazi diatribe worthy of Joseph Goebbels,” Hegedus wrote. She added that the prime minister’s remarks would’ve appealed to the “most vile racists.”

This, of course, also offered an opportunity for Orbán’s far-right admirers in the United States to distance themselves from the Hungarian strongman.

It is an opportunity Republicans apparently aren’t interested in.

Donald Trump welcomed Orbán to his golf venue in Bedminster this week. “Great spending time with my friend,” the former president said in a written statement. The Republican said the two “celebrated his great electoral victory in April,” but made no reference to the Hungarian’s overt racism.

And then, of course, there’s the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — by most measures, the nation’s largest conservative gathering — which is kicking off today in Dallas, and which is welcoming Orbán as a speaker. NBC News reported:

The American Conservative Union, the organizers of CPAC, defended their invitation to Orbán, regardless of his comments. “CPAC is looking forward to hosting leaders from across the country and the world. We support the open exchange of ideas unlike so many American socialists. The press might despise Prime Minister Orbán, but he is a popular leader,” spokesman Alex Pfeiffer told NBC News.

It was a curious defense. Pointing to Orbán’s “popularity” has nothing to do with merit or propriety: After all, popular leaders can be monsters, regardless of their domestic support.

The question, rather, is about the American right’s embrace of an authoritarian bigot.

Walchensee With Larch’ (1921) by Lovis Corinth.
 

We can also see that their ideas are not ideal for our pluralistic, secular country.  Misogyny is also a feature of today’s Republican Party.  This is also from The New York Times, “Republicans Begin Adjusting to a Fierce Abortion Backlash. After Kansans voted to preserve abortion access, Republicans who once said the economy reigns supreme are acknowledging the issue will be a centerpiece in the fall campaigns.”  This is reported by Jonathan Weisman and Katie Glueck.

Republican candidates, facing a stark reality check from Kansas voters, are softening their once-uncompromising stands against abortion as they move toward the general election, recognizing that strict bans are unpopular and that the issue may be a major driver in the fall campaigns.

In swing states and even conservative corners of the country, several Republicans have shifted their talk on abortion bans, newly emphasizing support for exceptions. Some have noticeably stopped discussing details at all. Pitched battles in Republican-dominated state legislatures have broken out now that the Supreme Court has made what has long been a theoretical argument a reality.

In Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano, the Republicans’ ardently anti-abortion candidate for governor, has lately taken to saying “the people of Pennsylvania” will “decide what abortion looks like” in the state, not the governor. In Minnesota, Scott Jensen, a family physician who said in March that he would “try to ban abortion” as governor, said in a video released before the Kansas vote that he does support some exceptions: “If I’ve been unclear previously, I want to be clear now.”

Republican consultants for Senate and House campaigns said Thursday that while they still believe inflation and the economy will drive voters to the G.O.P., candidates are going to have to talk about abortion to blunt Democratic attacks that the party’s position is extreme. They have started advising Republicans to endorse bans that allow exceptions for pregnancies from rape or incest or those that threaten the life of the mother. They have told candidates to emphasize care for women during and after their pregnancies.

Gabriele Munter,Strassendurchstich (A Road Pressing Through),1913

I still can’t see how they will get traction on the economy with headlines like this from the AP: “US employers add 528,000 jobs; unemployment falls to 3.5%”.

America’s employers added a stunning 528,000 jobs last month despite raging inflation and anxiety about a possible recession, restoring all of the positions lost in the coronavirus recession. Unemployment fell to 3.5%, the lowest level since the pandemic struck in early 2020.

There were 130,000 more jobs created in July than there were in June, and the most since February.

The red-hot jobs numbers from the Labor Department on Friday arrive amid a growing consensus that the economy is losing momentum. The U.S. economy shrank in the first two quarters of 2022 — an informal definition of recession. But most economists believe the strong jobs market has kept the economy from slipping into a downturn.

Friday’s surprisingly strong report will undoubtedly intensify the debate over whether America is in a recession or not.

You can’t call it a recession until the NBER says it’s a recession and job growth is not part of an economy in a recession. But you don’t have to take it from me.

So, if you’re confused about what’s going on with the fractious Republican Party, try this read: “The New Right Finds a Home at the Intersection of Populism and Elitism. Rising stars of the new right publicly bash elites for being disconnected from ‘real America’ while privately maintaining exclusive social lives.”  This is from Alec Dent writing for The Dispatch. Sheesh, these people are mean.

The Cicero party wasn’t all politicos and activists. The cultural movers and shakers of the New Right were also in attendance: Twitter personalities. They’re minor celebrities in this little niche of the world, walking about, talking about things you wouldn’t understand unless you’re extremely online, like “midwits”—someone of average intelligence and boring interests—and “chads”—an alpha male—and “based”—cool and original in a way the speaker agrees with, opposite of “cringe”—and a host of other words, phrases, and ideas used to assign moral judgments to cultural preferences and innocuous tastes, all of it smothered in irony even hipsters would think is excessive. At cocktail parties or debate nights, it’s typical to hear these “rad trads”—short for radical traditionalists—discuss how the world would be so much better if every man was musclebound, every woman had babies, and every family lived in a rural community. Thus far, these generally unmarried urbanites’ money and mouths are in decidedly different places.

At Dumbarton House, the done-up nouveau righters enjoy Bellinis and wine with little sweet potato biscuit ham sandwiches along with lavender and lemon cookies while their conversations mix and mingle:

“I had to read up on critical race theory, because, you’ve got to, you know, know your enemy and stuff.”

…

“Alex Jones was right, the water is making the frogs gay.”

…

“My coworker at work? Big time Jew.”

…

“I start my Sunday by listening to Tim Dillon and then going to church.”

…

“Alec Baldwin murdered someone.”

…

These sorts of conversations are typical of a new right hangout, both in real life and online. An unofficial Cicero Facebook group chat with hundreds of participants was scrapped after the discourse became dominated by new right figures and Sharma alluded to the Great Replacement Theory—the fringe theory that nonwhite immigrants are being brought to Western countries to replace the white populations. “Life becomes a lot easier when you realize the baseline that immigration policy should be argued from is not 1 million legal aliens a year (plus countless illegal ones), but 0,” he said in one message that was shared with The Dispatch. “Would encourage any conservative or right-leaning patriot to consider adopting that posture.

“American ruling elites have a creepy obsession with ensuring there are as few white voters as possible in the year 2100. I, and Tucker [Carlson], not sharing this creepy obsession, speak out against this priority. For this we are called white nationalists,” Sharma said in another.

So, you can creep into the same crap, whether CPAC in Dallas or an event for the Cicero Society in a crusty old mansion in the Beltway of Washington D.C. Be it beers or top-shelf martinis, it’s the same old bigotry.

The choice to vote for the full Democratic Ticket this fall has never been more urgent.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?