Jane Mayer, in her August 9, 2021 report on the rich conservatives funding Trump's Big Lie about the 2020 election, documents the myriad dirty tricks wealthy, anti-democratic forces such as the Bradley Foundation deploy in their attempt to overthrow what's left of representative democracy in America and maintain the oligarch's hold on po…
Jane Mayer, in her August 9, 2021 report on the rich conservatives funding Trump's Big Lie about the 2020 election, documents the myriad dirty tricks wealthy, anti-democratic forces such as the Bradley Foundation deploy in their attempt to overthrow what's left of representative democracy in America and maintain the oligarch's hold on power. It's a grim account of the Trump republicans ongoing assault on voting rights and the lies they spread to distort the perceptions of ordinary Americans.
"Since the 2020 election," Mayer writes, "this movement has evolved into a broader and more aggressive assault on democracy. According to some surveys, a third of Americans now believe that Biden was illegitimately elected, and nearly half of Trump supporters agree that Republican legislators should overturn the results in some states that Biden won. Jonathan Rauch, of the Brookings Institution, recently told The Economist, 'We need to regard what's happening now as epistemic warfare by some Americans on other Americans.'"
Mayer's valuable piece confirms that we are now indeed on a wartime footing in our politics in this country, a war started by Trump and his band of miscreant outliers. By identifying the players and in exposing their deceits, including their attempts to falsely blame Biden's immigration policies for the spread of the Delta variant, Mayer has performed a valuable service by making it clear who the enemies of democracy are and thus helping lay the groundwork for prosecutors as they work to hold these grifters accountable.
Reading the Jane Mayer article in The New Yorker was a visceral shock to my whole being: physical and mental. It presents the magnitude of the assault on American democracy and paid for by hundreds of dark money organizations...all of which are tax exempt non-profits. I am literally shaking. American democracy is truly in danger from the Republican party. I can now understand why Republican senator Adam Kinzinger wept when he talked about his reason for joining Pelosi's Select Committee. I feel helpless and hopeless.
Well girl, you can collapse, but you must stand up again with some grit and intentionality to do your active part in securing our democracy.and it will mean going out of your comfort zone. Taking feet on the ground actual action. Heaven knows we need your smarts, teeth, and determination.
Now is no time to falter. And no need to feel helpless. Simply by keeping a strong sense of what is right within your self will give you a confidence that will influence those around you, and may allow you to more readily see and seize opportunities to spread hope, and counter fear and hatred. Keep the light alive!
Biden’s team is making progress. I wouldn't underestimate them. The scatterbrained hare will exhaust himself before he reaches the finish line and the slow but sure tortoise will sedately, with the dignity that comes from being honest, step across and win.
Mayer's article is excellent, but the fact is that we, small-d democrats, should have seen the threat decades ago. Kim Phillips-Fein's Invisible Hands lays out the foundational story of the anti-democratic movement that grew out of the reactionary response to the New Deal and led to the communist witch hunts of the 1950s, the hard-right politics of Barry Goldwater and to the election of Ronald Reagan. A bold line can then be drawn from Reaganism, to Gingrich, Cheney/Rumsfeld and to Trump.
We, democrats, have been arrogant, naive and complacent while the storm gathered around us. Only now are mainstream voices finally recognizing the events of the past year as a coup attempt. It was not an insurrection. It was a multi-part coup attempt, much of it executed in plain sight. January 6th was just its climax.
But it "wasn't" a coup attempt, as in past tense. It is ongoing.
And we must confront another deeply disturbing aspect of Trumpism. Yes, there is a hard core group of nihilists who seem set on "burning it all down." But more influential in the movement, and more
dangerous, are Christian and Jewish millennialists who are hoping for, and actively seeking to bring about, the discord and devastation that is to precede the coming of their Messiah.
This is the end to which they embraced Trump as a very effective means, just as the secular elements of the GOP coalition came to do.
Once we recognize this hard fact, we can better understand the seemingly self-destructive politics of the religious right. Climate change, global pandemics, racial strife, culture wars, and eventually, a religious hot war on secularism are features, not bugs, for this Book of Revelation cult.
Great thoughts. Thank you for defining that it is a a sub-group of Christianity and Judaism. The majority of us don't think that way, and are just as horrified about it as you are.
I think we have enough to be guilty about, without adding this to it....
What a horror, the situation described in painful detail by this article of Jane Mayer’s… It’s vile. It’s back to the Weimar republic and the Nazis’ backers. (Remember that Nazi racism drew inspiration from Jim Crow America…)
But now I’m going back to white South Africa and that classic rhetorical question:
“Would you give a vote to a baboon?”
No, I wouldn’t.
A pity, though, because baboons’ survival instincts and skills are without question far superior than those of human beings.
Especially human beings whose brains have been addled by decades of exposure to virtual reality and the black arts of Rupert Moloch et al. Always bearing in mind that stupidity is no respecter of persons or political allegiances, and dangerous stupidity (“higher stupidity”) is largely the preserve of persons with high IQs, well equipped to stampede the herd…
The above remark does not cover the strange being that got itself into the White House in 2016. Its defense politics resemble those of baboons and its baaskaap is quite as absolute as that of any baboon pack leader—absent the wisdom…
"Rupert Moloch." Perfect! Absolutely fitting. He has single handedly wrought more destruction to functional politics around the globe than any person I know of.
Jane Mayer, in her August 9, 2021 report on the rich conservatives funding Trump's Big Lie about the 2020 election, documents the myriad dirty tricks wealthy, anti-democratic forces such as the Bradley Foundation deploy in their attempt to overthrow what's left of representative democracy in America and maintain the oligarch's hold on power. It's a grim account of the Trump republicans ongoing assault on voting rights and the lies they spread to distort the perceptions of ordinary Americans.
"Since the 2020 election," Mayer writes, "this movement has evolved into a broader and more aggressive assault on democracy. According to some surveys, a third of Americans now believe that Biden was illegitimately elected, and nearly half of Trump supporters agree that Republican legislators should overturn the results in some states that Biden won. Jonathan Rauch, of the Brookings Institution, recently told The Economist, 'We need to regard what's happening now as epistemic warfare by some Americans on other Americans.'"
Mayer's valuable piece confirms that we are now indeed on a wartime footing in our politics in this country, a war started by Trump and his band of miscreant outliers. By identifying the players and in exposing their deceits, including their attempts to falsely blame Biden's immigration policies for the spread of the Delta variant, Mayer has performed a valuable service by making it clear who the enemies of democracy are and thus helping lay the groundwork for prosecutors as they work to hold these grifters accountable.
Reading the Jane Mayer article in The New Yorker was a visceral shock to my whole being: physical and mental. It presents the magnitude of the assault on American democracy and paid for by hundreds of dark money organizations...all of which are tax exempt non-profits. I am literally shaking. American democracy is truly in danger from the Republican party. I can now understand why Republican senator Adam Kinzinger wept when he talked about his reason for joining Pelosi's Select Committee. I feel helpless and hopeless.
Well girl, you can collapse, but you must stand up again with some grit and intentionality to do your active part in securing our democracy.and it will mean going out of your comfort zone. Taking feet on the ground actual action. Heaven knows we need your smarts, teeth, and determination.
Now is no time to falter. And no need to feel helpless. Simply by keeping a strong sense of what is right within your self will give you a confidence that will influence those around you, and may allow you to more readily see and seize opportunities to spread hope, and counter fear and hatred. Keep the light alive!
Thank you, Syd,
Yes, helpless and hopeless 😢
Biden’s team is making progress. I wouldn't underestimate them. The scatterbrained hare will exhaust himself before he reaches the finish line and the slow but sure tortoise will sedately, with the dignity that comes from being honest, step across and win.
Mayer's article is excellent, but the fact is that we, small-d democrats, should have seen the threat decades ago. Kim Phillips-Fein's Invisible Hands lays out the foundational story of the anti-democratic movement that grew out of the reactionary response to the New Deal and led to the communist witch hunts of the 1950s, the hard-right politics of Barry Goldwater and to the election of Ronald Reagan. A bold line can then be drawn from Reaganism, to Gingrich, Cheney/Rumsfeld and to Trump.
We, democrats, have been arrogant, naive and complacent while the storm gathered around us. Only now are mainstream voices finally recognizing the events of the past year as a coup attempt. It was not an insurrection. It was a multi-part coup attempt, much of it executed in plain sight. January 6th was just its climax.
But it "wasn't" a coup attempt, as in past tense. It is ongoing.
And we must confront another deeply disturbing aspect of Trumpism. Yes, there is a hard core group of nihilists who seem set on "burning it all down." But more influential in the movement, and more
dangerous, are Christian and Jewish millennialists who are hoping for, and actively seeking to bring about, the discord and devastation that is to precede the coming of their Messiah.
This is the end to which they embraced Trump as a very effective means, just as the secular elements of the GOP coalition came to do.
Once we recognize this hard fact, we can better understand the seemingly self-destructive politics of the religious right. Climate change, global pandemics, racial strife, culture wars, and eventually, a religious hot war on secularism are features, not bugs, for this Book of Revelation cult.
Great thoughts. Thank you for defining that it is a a sub-group of Christianity and Judaism. The majority of us don't think that way, and are just as horrified about it as you are.
I think we have enough to be guilty about, without adding this to it....
What a horror, the situation described in painful detail by this article of Jane Mayer’s… It’s vile. It’s back to the Weimar republic and the Nazis’ backers. (Remember that Nazi racism drew inspiration from Jim Crow America…)
But now I’m going back to white South Africa and that classic rhetorical question:
“Would you give a vote to a baboon?”
No, I wouldn’t.
A pity, though, because baboons’ survival instincts and skills are without question far superior than those of human beings.
Especially human beings whose brains have been addled by decades of exposure to virtual reality and the black arts of Rupert Moloch et al. Always bearing in mind that stupidity is no respecter of persons or political allegiances, and dangerous stupidity (“higher stupidity”) is largely the preserve of persons with high IQs, well equipped to stampede the herd…
The above remark does not cover the strange being that got itself into the White House in 2016. Its defense politics resemble those of baboons and its baaskaap is quite as absolute as that of any baboon pack leader—absent the wisdom…
"Rupert Moloch." Perfect! Absolutely fitting. He has single handedly wrought more destruction to functional politics around the globe than any person I know of.
I’ve heard this current state of affairs we find ourselves in referred to as a “Cold Civil War”. I find I can’t disagree with this.
Even before January 6th I called it a slow-burning coup.
I thank the Creator every day for a free press. Even if it has to include the one note FOX free liars.
Is this Jane Mayer piece in the New Yorker? I want to find the article.
We believe this is the link, Laurie: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/09/the-big-money-behind-the-big-lie
This article needs a CSI whiteboard to connect all of the conspiracies and players.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/09/the-big-money-behind-the-big-lie
August 9 issue, pages 30 - 41 or the links below.
See below
yes