Politics & Stuff

[Vesper 30,091]

Down the Memory Hole

[Vesper 30,091]

JD Vance Shows That the Future of the GOP Is in Racist Conspiracy Theories

Trump’s deluded fantasies have now become the GOP gospel.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-vance-gop-conspiracy-theories/

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance speaks to supporters during a campaign event in Traverse City, Michigan.(Scott Olson / Getty Images)

JD Vance is Donald Trump’s heir, but an awkward one. Trump has spent decades shamelessly hustling, so deception comes as naturally to him as breathing. Trump no longer operates, if he ever did, in a world where the difference between truth and falsehood is relevant: He only says and believes what is most convenient for him at any given moment. Better than anyone else in our era, Trump illustrates the crucial distinction, insisted on by the late philosopher Harry G. Frankfurter, between being a liar (someone who consciously fabricates) and being a bullshitter (someone indifferent to the truth).

As I’ve noted before, JD Vance is a liar with a bad conscience because he can’t bullshit. Vance always knows he’s spreading falsehood and has to develop post facto rationalizations. Which doesn’t mean that Vance isn’t given to lying profusely.

The way the two men handle conspiracy theories illuminates this distinction. Conspiracy theories have long been central to Trump’s political vision. He rose to prominence for his unabashed embrace of birtherism: the lie that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. Throughout his rise, Trump and those closest to him embraced a host of sinister delusions, buying into Pizzagate and the QAnon movement’s portrayal of Trump’s political foes as pedophiles and Deep State cabalists. The Big Lie of election denial in 2020, the motivating force behind the January 6 attempted coup, was a distillation of Trump’s conspiracism: the master narrative of Trump as a brave rebel leading a mass movement against a corrupt elite.

Conspiracism is Trump’s instinctive mode, fitting in with his formative years as a resentful outer-borough real estate developer who felt that Manhattan old money looked down on him. Vance, by contrast, has risen from a working-class background by studiously imitating the elite, fueled by emulation and admiration rather than resentment. Until his recent conversion to Trumpism, Vance in fact aspired not to overthrow the establishment but to join it, which meant going along with the elite consensus against conspiracy theories about the American ruling order.

As NPR noted last month:

JD Vance not long ago described conspiracy theories as the feverish imaginings produced by “fringe lunatics writing about all manner of idiocy.”

That was before he became a rising star in Republican politics.

The Ohio senator and GOP’s vice presidential nominee has in recent years declared that the federal government deliberately allowed fentanyl into the United States to kill conservative and rural voters. He has praised Alex Jones, a well-known conspiracy theorist who claimed the deaths of 20 young children in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax.

And he’s echoed—contrary to all evidence—former President Donald Trump’s assertion that the 2020 election was unfairly won by Democrats and that those charged in the subsequent Capitol insurrection are “political prisoners.” More recently, he gave credence to the debunked idea that Haitian immigrants were abducting and devouring pets in Ohio.

Vance is also an ardent (but in this instance possibly sincere) proponent of the racist Great Replacement theory, holding that elites are bringing in non-white immigrants to supplant the white population.

NPR describes Vance as someone who has gone from being an “intellectual” to being a “conspiracy theorist.” This description obscures the truth. Vance is still an intellectual—but now uses his considerable mental energy to defend conspiracism and use it as a glue to bind together the MAGA coalition. Writing in AlterNet, Lindsay Beyerstein notes that Vance’s function is to reassure the more buttoned-down Republicans that it’s possible to collaborate with outlandish fantasists such as Alex Jones and Marjorie Taylor Green. Beyerstein also notes that Vance uses conspiracy theories to unite “integralist Catholics, protestant New Apostolic Reformation types, and the more secular Silicon Valley contingent exemplified by Elon Musk.”

Beyerstein helpfully calls attention to a talk Vance gave in 2021 at the Teneo Network conference, where he laid out why respectable conservatives should accept conspiracy theorists as part of their coalition. According to Vance, “Believing crazy things is not the mark of whether somebody should be rejected. Believing important truths should be the mark of whether we accept somebody, and if they believe some crazy things on the side, that’s fine. We need to be okay with non-conventional people.”

Addressing his willingness to listen to Alex Jones, Vance said:

But then the second criticism that I get is, well, he’s a crazy conspiracist, right? He doesn’t believe that 9/11 actually happened or he believed 9/11 was an inside job. And look, I understand this desire to not be called terrible names. It’s like, yeah, okay, this person believes crazy things. But I bet if you’re being honest with yourself, every single person in this room believes at least something that’s a little crazy, right? I believe the devil is real and that he works terrible things in our society. That’s a crazy conspiracy theory to a lot of very well-educated people in this country right now. Even though, of course, they participate in it without knowing about it. But that’s a separate, a separate matter.

But ladies and gentlemen, the most important truths often come from people who are crazy 60% of the time, but they’re right 40% of time. I don’t know Elon Musk very well. I know him a little bit. I’ve had a couple of private conversations with him. Elon Musk believes some crazy stuff.

Vance’s arguments are, of course, pure sophistry. There’s a difference between saying that otherwise good and intelligent people can believe in conspiracy theories and actually elevating those conspiracy theories to the forefront of your politics.

In fairness, conspiracy theories aren’t just the preserve of the right. There are plenty of liberals and leftists who believe in absurd conspiracies—see Hillary Clinton’s willingness to loosely denounce her critics as Russian assets, or the recently popular idea that the assassination attempts on Trump were staged. Fortunately, the more fanciful versions of Russiagate sputtered out, and in general the Democrats don’t promote conspiracism on the national stage.

The ascendency of Vance, by contrast, shows that conspiracism has become central to the GOP. In the long run of American history, we can trace an apostolic succession of paranoid politics: Joseph McCarthy mentored Roy Cohn, who in turn tutored Donald Trump, who provided a role model for Vance. McCarthy and Cohn flourished only briefly on the national stage, while Trump and Vance prove that conspiracism is now the central ideology of the Republican right.

Podcaster Matthew Sitman, cohost of Know Your Enemy, recently noted, “Vance is one of the highest profile conspiracy theorists in U.S., he should not be Trump-eating-one-too-many-Big-Macs from the presidency.” Unfortunately, Vance also proves that embracing conspiracism is good politics for a Republican. Even if Trump loses in November, Vance’s version of cynical conspiracism is here to stay.

[Vesper 30,091]

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/gaza-al-aqsa-hospital-attack-fire/

Fire breaks out on the tents of displaced Palestinians after Israeli attacks in the garden of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza City, Gaza, on October 14, 2024. (Ashraf Amra / Anadolu via Getty Images)

 

It was around 2 am on Monday when an Israeli air strike tore through the tents of the displaced at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza—where families, patients receiving treatment, and many of my friends and colleagues were sheltering. The strike cast a horrific, searing glow of fire that soon consumed the place they thought would provide safety.

 

In videos from the scene, the people’s cries for help could be heard as they stumbled through the dense smoke, searching for loved ones amid plumes of smoke that curled up into the sky. The air itself seemed to scream, and the ground burned with the heat of destruction.

 

What brought me to tears were the wails of people burning alive before they even registered the sounds of the attack. That night has left both the living and the dead destroyed beyond recognition.

 

 

Among the chaos, nurse Amira struggled to reach the patients whose fragile bodies lay in beds just inside the tent perimeter. “I could feel the heat on my skin, smell the burning plastic,” she recalled. “People were running in all directions, and I had to shout over the noise just to be heard.”

 

“We were asleep, or at least trying to sleep, when the explosions started,” said Abu Khalid, a father who lived behind the hospital with his three children. His voice quivered as he described the scene: “We woke up to smoke and fire. Burning pieces were falling on the tents from every corner. The explosions—I’ve never heard or seen anything like them.”

 

His children clung to him as they ran, ducking between burning tents, the smell of scorched fabric and flesh overwhelming their senses. Around them, “It was like hell on earth,” he said.

 

Dr. Anas Wazeer, a volunteer anaesthesia specialist, was at the emergency department door when the first patients arrived. “It was a horror show,” he told me, his voice cracking.

 

“The burns covered 60 to 80 percent of the bodies that came in—most wouldn’t survive. The air smelled like burned flesh and melting plastic,” he said. “It was hard to breathe, hard to see through the smoke and fire. People died trapped between the flames.”

 

The overwhelmed medical staff struggled to prioritize care. “There were so many people with burns. Their skin was blackened and charred, their eyes open but lifeless.”

 

“Some were barely clinging to life as we worked to ease their suffering.” Dr. Wazeer pauses, shaking his head. “We didn’t have enough supplies, not even basic pain relief. It was as if we were asked to perform miracles with our hands tied.”

 

 

The blaze consumed over 20 tents, collapsing the frail shelters onto families who had nowhere else to go. People attached to IVs were seen burning alive, and others succumbed to smoke inhalation. Those who survived the initial explosion were left with scars that would never heal.

 

The attack stole more than just lives—it seared away what little hope remained in the hearts of those who had been living on the edge for a year.

 

Osama, a 19-year-old who had fled from Beit Lahia, had been staying in one of the tents closest to the fire when the strike hit. “The heat was unbearable,” he told me. “It felt like my skin was peeling off, and the smoke.… I watched my friend, someone I grew up with, die right in front of me. We were trying to pull people out, but he didn’t make it.”

 

Osama described the helplessness of that moment, the way he screamed at the sky, his voice drowned out by the roaring flames. “We had nowhere to go. There were no fire trucks, no way to put out the blaze. It just kept burning. There were bodies everywhere.” He struggled to finish his sentence, his hands trembling.

 

 

For Amira, a 38-year-old mother of four, the attack was yet another chapter in a year-long journey of displacement and terror. She and her family had fled northern Gaza last year in October, following the evacuation orders issued by the Israeli army to the residents in Gaza City and the north.

 

“We thought we would be safe here, that the south would shelter us,” she said. “But safety does not exist in Gaza. Not in our homes, not even in hospitals.”

 

She recalled how her children cried that night, not just from fear but from a coldness that seeped into their bones as they huddled away from the fire. “We had fled our home with nothing, and now, once again, we have nothing,” Amira said. “This is not a life. It’s like the world is trying to erase us, as if we have no place anywhere.”

 

The assault was the third time in two weeks that the Al-Aqsa Hospital had been targeted, according to Gaza’s Media Office. The recurring strikes left an indelible message to the displaced—there was nowhere left to run.

 

Inside what remained of the hospital courtyard, the charred ground bore silent testimony to the devastation. The tents were now little more than blackened cloth and twisted metal.

 

 

The grief was compounded by the sheer inhumanity of peoples’ final moments. “It wasn’t just death,” Dr. Wazeer told me. “It was suffering—slow, excruciating suffering. That’s what haunts me.”

 

For many, the scars—both visible and invisible—may never heal. With each passing day, those dreams slip further from reach, replaced by the stark reality of their suffering—caught between endless trauma and the faint glimmer of hope for a peaceful tomorrow that doesn’t seem to be coming anytime soon.

 

Yet despite the devastation and heartbreak, Amira has not lost her spirit of resilience. “We are still here,” she said, “and we will keep hoping, even if it’s all we have.”

 

Edited October 18, 2024 by Vesper

[cosmicway 1,333]

12 hours ago, Vesper said:

Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon calls for the public execution of women who falsely claim to have been sexually assaulted: "#MeToo would end real fast ... All you have to do is publicly execute a few women who have lied."

https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/joel-webbon-wants-publicly-execute-few-women-who-have-lied

 

 

They are thick on the ground.
If you are an mp or something like that chances are there will be 25 false accusations against you.

[Vesper 30,091]

7 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

They are thick on the ground.
If you are an mp or something like that chances are there will be 25 false accusations against you.

So you agree with Webbon?

[Fulham Broadway 17,299]

Blokes who claim some woman stuck something up their Arne Slot should also be executed

[Vesper 30,091]

Trump Suggests Abraham Lincoln Should’ve Let the South Keep a Little Slavery

He answered a 10-year-old’s question about his favorite president by saying Lincoln should have “settled” the Civil War.

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-suggests-abraham-lincoln-shouldve-let-the-south-keep-a-little-slavery

Donald Trump appeared on Fox News this morning, where, during a characteristically bizarre interview, he suggested Abraham Lincoln could have avoided the Civil War by cutting a deal with the South—which, as a reminder, wanted slavery to remain legal.

Asked by a 10-year-old who his favorite president was when he was “little,” Trump began by saying he “liked Ronald Reagan.” (Note: Trump was 34 when Reagan first took office, and 42 when he left.) Then he turned to Lincoln, who he believes was a great president—but could’ve been better if he’d “settled” the Civil War.

“Great presidents?” Trump said. “Lincoln was probably a great president, although I’ve always said, why wasn’t that settled? You know, I’m a guy that—it doesn’t make sense we had a Civil War…. You’d almost say, like, why wasn’t that [settled]? As an example, Ukraine would have never happened, and Russia, if I were president. Israel would have never happened; October 7 would have never happened, as you know.”

It’s not exactly clear what Trump thinks Lincoln should have done to “settle” the dispute between the North and the South, the latter of which seceded from the Union largely because it wanted to keep enslaving people. Does Trump think Abe should have come to the negotiating table, Art of the Deal–style, and let the South keep some slaves? Because that’s what it sounds like.

As for the idea that “Ukraine would have never happened…if I were president,” or October 7 for that matter, these are claims that he has repeatedly made with zero evidence to back them up. He did suggest on Thursday, though, that he would end the war in Ukraine by siding with Russia, bizarrely claiming that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy “let that war start.” (In fact, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.)

Elsewhere in Trump’s sit-down with Fox, he claimed that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “very much into women’s health,” that Kamala Harris is “a low-IQ person,” and that in a Harris presidency, “you won’t have any cows anymore.”

Trump: Joe Biden should just let Benjamin Netanyahu do his thing

 

In which the GOP candidate suggests a convicted rapist got a raw deal

 

 

Edited October 18, 2024 by Vesper

[cosmicway 1,333]

1 hour ago, Vesper said:

So you agree with Webbon?

I would send them to desert island Gyaros to eat lobsters.

[cosmicway 1,333]

47 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Blokes who claim some woman stuck something up their Arne Slot should also be executed

We are common Joe Bloggs types so they don't bother.
But stealth and deceit is in their blood.

[Vesper 30,091]

7 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

We are common Joe Bloggs types so they don't bother.
But stealth and deceit is in their blood.

in who's blood?

[cosmicway 1,333]

7 minutes ago, Vesper said:

in who's blood?

Metoos.

There was this Greek actor who got convicted.
One metoo comes forward and says he took her in his car drove to blind alley and proposed sex. I opened the door and ran away she says but that is rape.
Then a friend of hers comes along and says "I had almost forgotten (!) but he raped me also ten years ago (!) - he promised to give me a role in his show, we had sex but he did n't let me play - sp it's rape".
This was enough to convict the man, to avoid the street demonstrations by the metoos.
 

Edited October 18, 2024 by cosmicway

[Vesper 30,091]

4 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

Metoos.

There was this Greek actor who got convicted.
One metoo comes forward and says he took her in his car drove to blind alley and proposed sex. I opened the door and ran away she says but that is rape.
Then a friend of hers comes along and says "I had almost forgotten (!) but he raped me also ten years ago (!) - he promised to give me a role in his show, we had sex but he did n't let me play - sp it's rape".
This was enough to convict the man, to avoid the street demonstrations by the metoos.
 

You are a deeply misogynistic individual.

Based on what I have seen you spew for ages, you, IMHO, detest women on balance, and certainly think that we belong in a subservient role and/or are some sort of scheming arch-villains who exist to torment poor, forever-victimised men. 

Your own vile, casually pejorative use of the term 'metoos' instantly exposes that.

Your positing that the default stance for the majority women who call out abuse (violence, psychological, and/or sexual) they have done to them is that they are lying and/or simply trying to punish 'innocent' men is offensive AF.

You take the exception (a woman making false charges) and try and paint it as the rule, when in reality, down through the millennia, the level of damage (all of types) done to us females as a whole is exponentially greater than what we have done to men.

If you take measure of all the pain, death, abuse, heinous crimes, misery, and deprevations of basic rights (including the basic rights to equality and autonomy) that has rained down on humans throughout human history, the VAST majority has been done by men, not women.

Weak men are obsessed with controlling and/or punishing women, blaming us for their own failures and short-comings.

Show me a misogynist and you have shown me, in the vast majority of cases, a weak man (and on occasion, a weak woman), the type who has to blame others for their own self-generated weakness.

 

 

[cosmicway 1,333]

44 minutes ago, Vesper said:

You are a deeply misogynistic individual.

Based on what I have seen you spew for ages, you, IMHO, detest women on balance, and certainly think that we belong in a subservient role and/or are some sort of scheming arch-villains who exist to torment poor, forever-victimised men. 

Your own vile, casually pejorative use of the term 'metoos' instantly exposes that.

Your positing that the default stance for the majority women who call out abuse (violence, psychological, and/or sexual) they have done to them is that they are lying and/or simply trying to punish 'innocent' men is offensive AF.

You take the exception (a woman making false charges) and try and paint it as the rule, when in reality, down through the millennia, the level of damage (all of types) done to us females as a whole is exponentially greater than what we have done to men.

If you take measure of all the pain, death, abuse, heinous crimes, misery, and deprevations of basic rights (including the basic rights to equality and autonomy) that has rained down on humans throughout human history, the VAST majority has been done by men, not women.

Weak men are obsessed with controlling and/or punishing women, blaming us for their own failures and short-comings.

Show me a misogynist and you have shown me, in the vast majority of cases, a weak man (and on occasion, a weak woman), the type who has to blame others for their own self-generated weakness.

 

 

You are making use of cribs.
No I 'm not misogynist, I will disappoint you.
We have always been ruled by women:

Aspasia - Cleopatra - Theodora
Lucretia Borghia - Isabella - Maria Theresia - Catherine the great - Queen Victoria
Margaret Thatcher - Angela Merkel

But metoo is an organization for false accusations, everyone knows that.

I understand why a victim of sex abuse might be reluctant to seek justice.
It's because sex is regarded as a sin.
Imagine yourself in this situation,
You are invited to the notorious villa of orgies in the northern suburbs.
It's clean cut orgy nothing to do with rapes and things like that, a nice orgy but nevertheless an orgy.
On the way back you take the tube.
You descend at the central station and there as is usual are the Antenna TV - Sky TV girls with mikes taking street interviews.
They catch you and they ask you this:

what is your opinion about the wave of immorality that is plaguing the city of Athens ?

What will you reply ? Hand auf herz, what will you say to the TV program ?
Likewise reporting rape is not the same as reporting a stolen cellphone.

So metoo is created by certain busybodies.
In this atmosphere however vagabondry plays a big part.
What about Bill Clinton ? You side with Monica Lewinsky ?
And many other frameups.

So they should be taken to Gyaros island with the lobsters.
 

Edited October 18, 2024 by cosmicway

[Vesper 30,091]

1 hour ago, cosmicway said:

What about Bill Clinton ? You side with Monica Lewinsky ?

Clinton abused his position of ultimate power, end of story.

I do not give a toss how many women offered themselves to him, he should have said no, especially as POTUS, as he instantly created a national security potential nightmare.

[cosmicway 1,333]

2 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Clinton abused his position of ultimate power, end of story.

I do not give a toss how many women offered themselves to him, he should have said no, especially as POTUS, as he instantly created a national security potential nightmare.

The question we are asked is not if we approve of the affair.
Since Clinton was married (to Hillary) it was an extramarital affair - one the bible belt condemns.
The question is was it a real metoo situation ? It was n't.