Today the House of Representatives approved awarding Congressional Gold Medals to members of the Capitol Police for their defense of the Capitol on January 6. Four hundred and thirteen members voted in favor, and 12 Republicans opposed the measure. A number of party members took offense at the language in the bill, which referred to the Capitol as “the temple of our American Democracy” and called the rioters “a mob of insurrectionists.”
Had the mob killed Pence and Pelosi and junked the electoral college votes of a few states, the congress by state would have voted, state by state, one vote each. Trump would have claimed four more years. Riots would have brought Martial Law. Flynn and Flynn were prepared. Trump planned this.
We were close. Fascism was winning. And the big lie of the GOP threatens still.
It really discombobulates me that there are people, who are either as dumb as a dingo’s dung, or prepared to ignore reality for some inconsistent or opaque goal, that could overturn thousands of years of human endeavour. Why? What do they gain? How do they see that playing out? This is the question that keeps me awake at night. What’s wrong with people having equality and equity? What’s wrong with us all living happily together? What’s wrong with trusting our neighbours? With having no fear? Whats wrong with the family down the road having health cover? Why deny science? Why do they want humanity to go back to no dentistry, no anti-biotics, no anaesthetic, dying of a scratch or a rotten tooth. I just don’t get it
I figure that many of the Republicans must have been Russian operatives. The list of all the things the Russian operatives did corresponds to what the Republicans were saying.
There are statesmen from other mature Democracies that would scoff at the U.S. capitol being called a "temple" of Democracy, but that would be coming from the perspective of witnessing U.S. imperialism interfering in other countries elections. However in Canada, US exceptualism has been identified as the US civic faith, so using the word temple instead of church would make sense.
Regardless of the use of the word chosen, the capitol is the highest symbol of our Democracy. To attack it specifically in orderto interupt the certification of the national vote and the will of the people and the electors, would be reported by democratic news media outside the US as a failed overthrow of the election. It was a planned insurrection to overthrow the Democratic process. If we do not call it that, it is to deny we are a Democracy.
While the Republicans rubbed me the wrong way throughout 45's fascist administration, they grate even more offensively now as they reveal their contempt for every act that smacks of decency, valor, and ethical values! Thank you, Dr. HCR, for holding their feet to the fire of truth!
I keep remembering Fiona Hill's testimony in the first impeachment trial. No one seems to have remembered or commented on that, but I distinctly remember her saying something to the effect that some of her questioners were saying exactly what Russia wanted them to say, that they were peddling Russian talking points. She, of course, put it much better than I just did. But I would love to see someone interview her right now . . .
“Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines declassified the assessment of the intelligence community of foreign threats to the 2020 U.S. federal elections that had been provided to the previous administration and congressional leadership on January 7. The community assessed that Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized influence operations, which “a range of Russian government organizations conducted,” “aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the U.S.””
Yesterday, the New York Times published an article describing a recent study of the segregation of our neighborhoods along partisan lines. It is an unsettling piece, not least because the corrosive effects of the previous administration and the political philosophy it supported, has taken root so firmly. Russia, Ron Johnson and the Right political establishment generally, if not coordinating their efforts to divide Americans from one another, are at the very least, singing from the same songbook.
What follows is one of the reader comments to the article.
“I am a 71 year old Jewish male living in a suburb of Sacramento County, and in fact in the same community as Governor Newsom who is 2 miles downriver from me. I have lived in my home for 35 years and in the beginning when the homes were built it was a solidly professional yet liberal tract. However over the years more and more people moving near me are Republicans. My neighbor across the street blasts right wing radio from his garage when he works, and my neighbors of 4 years directly over my fence, knowing my religion, have spent countless hours trying to convert me, to the point I believe them to be anti-Semitic. When they moved in, in October of 2016 right before the election I tried to be friendly and take them to lunch....after praying over the meal, telling me Hillary should be jailed, and that only Trump could save white Christians I have tried to keep my distance. After loving my neighborhood and never having a problem, I have decided it might be best to move the Bay Area around Berkeley or Oakland to be near my children and to get away from these people....I am the classic example of what the article discusses.”
Democrats face a real dilemma. It appears increasingly that the GOP has become a traiterous body, much like the Southern States iafter Lincoln was elected. Their loyalto is NOT to the union, and therefore not to the unity of the country. From all the available evidence, it appears there is deliberation to this, because the big money that funds the GOP does not want a functioning democracy. In other words, the GOP is receiving marching orders from their financial backers and those orders appear to be the destruction of American democracy. The dilemma Democrats face is knowing this and doing something about it. They could call out McConnell et al and vote to enact restrictions on moneyed political influence. But they won’t because the GOP will accuse them of being anti-democratic if they do and the Supreme Court would overrule it again. Unless Chief Justice John Roberts has had a change in heart since Citizens United. If the Republicans take back the Senate in 2022, Democrats are probably screwed: because I think we have to take McConnell at face value. I think he willndestroy the Senate in all but name if he gets the chance because a destroyed Senate is better for his masters than a Senate that is always at risk of falling again into Democratic hands. One of the great weaknesses of the Democrats is a failure of imagination: they seem unable to imagine what the GOP will actually do, what form their scorched earth policy might take. That’s because Democrats still think in terms of what’s legal and what’s not, while the Republicans don’t care. They have learned to think only in terms of power. The Democrats could go after the big money in some way, but they won’t, though Shenator Sheldon Whitehouse is making a reall effort to expose the effect of dark money on the Supreme Court. I think the GOP is just waiting for Biden or Harris, if she becomes president, to hand them the keys to power the way Obama handed Trump those keys. That’s the way Democrats role-- they want to respect the norms and the procedures, even if following those norms lead to ensuring that the next administration destroys them. So, again, the dilemma that Democrats face is do they try to exert power in the way Republicans have exerted power in order to save democracy? Or do they draw back from the exertion of power because they don’t wnt to be the ones accused of destroying the norms?
Does good avoid restraing evil because it regards the act of restraint as an aspect of evil? Is good more concerned with maintaining an umage of holding the moral high ground? Or with actually saving what is good? These are not easy times and I can make an argument that, “Yes, it’s better to hold on to the moral high ground because then at least the ideal survives! That I think was what Obama probably felt when he realized that Trump was his successor.
Good morning HCR and all the folks in this community! I admit that I hope that AG Garland is able to take charge of this "whitewashing" (great use of the term HCR as it is literally that) of the events of January 6 because today some things that, for me, are far more infuriating and more immediate have happened:
The sheriff in charge of the "investigation" (I use that term loosely) of the white man who murdered 8 people, 7 of them women and 6 of them Asian women told the press (I am paraphrasing) that the guy was "having a bad day and this was the result" and that the attack was not directed at women, rather they were "in the wrong place at the wrong time." The women were AT WORK. Let me repeat: they were AT WORK. They were not" innocent bystanders" caught up in a madman's rampage. They were TARGETED because they were AT WORK.
And as an extra sweetener to the above: the House passed a revamped Violence Against Women Act--which had been mothballed by Murderous Mitch and His Malevolent Minions in 2019--that includes enhanced protections for women who are in non-marriage relationships with violent partners and for trans women. The Gormless Obstructionists in the Senate are upset. They are upset at the idea of trans women not being targets of murder--trans women are the single most vulnerable group to assault, murder, and abuse. They are upset at the idea that the courts might be able to demand that a violent boyfriend who threatens to kill his "love object" turn over his guns for a period of time.
I am wondering how these revolting dangling members can look at their wives, daughters, and mothers--and indeed at any woman or girl--and continue to claim they care about their welfare. Oh, I forgot: they don't care. They just find it useful to trot their womenfolk out when they are caught with their pants down, or when they think it will bring them votes.
Ron Johnson is a racist, which is nothing new. I'm a longtime liberal who grew up working class in Flint, Michigan. I'm for the BLM movement. I voted for Ralph Warnock for Senator from Georgia. I'm support equality for all.
I'm a racist.
I was brought up in a house with parents, hard-working, highly moral Democrats who occasionally used the N-word, so I did, too. Over the years, when if became socially unacceptable to to do so, I used Blacks and African Americans. I adapted because, like most other humans on this planet, I am a sheep. I told friends that, unlike myself, racists were full of fear and resentments and would do anything to hold onto their strange semblance of superiority. By pointing this out, I anointed myself an Enlightened Man. But I was still a racist at heart. Small degree racism is still racism. Like the Bible says, sordid thoughts are still sins.
In scrolling through movie listings I dismissed watching Black movies without a second thought. When interacting with minorities I was always very friendly (perhaps overly so) and their culture held a secret fascination to me. But at the end of the day I went home to my comfy white suburb where my neighbors were also closeted racists.
We live in a world which demands yes or no, for or against. But in reality extremes are the exception. Most of us are simply evolving. Acknowledging even a scent of racism that resides inside us is a first step in that evolution. Admission of our current or former racist tendencies and a willingness to change should be cheered, not judged. Let's no longer hide our dirty little secrets. Let us bring them into the light so they may be washed clean.
The only thing Ron Johnson can attest to is his own white male privilege. He's either an idiot, liar, hypocrite, or some combination. No one can ever count on safety, reasoning with or deterring a mob; that is what differentiates them from crowds. Mobs do not think; they act, usually degenerating toward worse behavior. They often start with one goal and may be diverted toward another, and they can blindly ignore reality right in front of them. Any grey-haired senator, any greying person, could have been mistaken for Mike Pence and been in mortal danger -- especially masked. Also for Nancy Pelosi and other women.
Jan 6 fits into well-documented historic patterns of crowd behavior, mobs and riots. Crowds are under control or can be managed; mobs cannot, they are crowds out of control. When completely uncontrolled, mobs become riotous. Jan 6 saw all three phases, though the latter two were not inevitable (that's where the deplorable GQP leadership matters). Mobs only stop when confronted with superior force, or when their energy dissipates and they disperse, which is what happened on Jan 6 in the absence of counter-force. Collusion of elements in government and law enforcement is also characteristic of many mobbing events. As are subsequent denials and coverups.
I've been in countless crowds, never seen a riot, and luckily had only a couple of slight brushes with mobs when living in Zambia. But all my study and experience says that mobs must be avoided whenever possible. A peabrained, privileged Repug senator simply has no credibility claiming otherwise. He will only be credible when confessing his own crimes.
Thank you for reading. Another version appeared here in January.
P Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown
D Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot
The Ox-Bow Incident (film)
G Rude, The Crowd in History
EP Thompson, "Moral Economy of the English Crowd," Past & Present 1971
C Weatherford, Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre
Published here before, never too many times to remind people what they are. We need to start using Hofstadter's term "pseudo-conservative" to describe them, rather then letting them hijack the honorable old word "conservative."
From "The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt", 1954:
It can most accurately be called pseudo-conservative — I borrow the term from the study of "The Authoritarian Personality" published five years ago by Theodore W. Adorno and his associates — because its exponents, although they believe themselves to be conservatives and usually employ the rhetoric of conservatism, show signs of a serious and restless dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions. They have little in common with the temperate and compromising spirit of true conservatism in the classical sense of the word, and they are far from pleased with the dominant practical conservatism of the moment as it is represented by the Eisenhower Administration. Their political reactions express rather a profound if largely unconscious hatred of our society and its ways — a hatred which one would hesitate to impute to them if one did not have suggestive clinical evidence.
From clinical interviews and thematic apperception tests, Adorno and his co-workers found that their pseudo-conservative subjects, although given to a form of political expression that combines a curious mixture of largely conservative with occasional radical notions, succeed in concealing from themselves impulsive tendencies that, if released in action, would be very far from conservative. The pseudo-conservative, Adorno writes, shows “conventionality and authoritarian submissiveness” in his conscious thinking and “violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere. . . . The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.”
I agree, the continuation of the Big Lie remains one of the greatest threats to the future security of our democracy, creating an insidious erosion of trust in our ability to have fair elections. The rhetoric is dangerous and unhinged.
Indeed it was.
Had the mob killed Pence and Pelosi and junked the electoral college votes of a few states, the congress by state would have voted, state by state, one vote each. Trump would have claimed four more years. Riots would have brought Martial Law. Flynn and Flynn were prepared. Trump planned this.
We were close. Fascism was winning. And the big lie of the GOP threatens still.
It really discombobulates me that there are people, who are either as dumb as a dingo’s dung, or prepared to ignore reality for some inconsistent or opaque goal, that could overturn thousands of years of human endeavour. Why? What do they gain? How do they see that playing out? This is the question that keeps me awake at night. What’s wrong with people having equality and equity? What’s wrong with us all living happily together? What’s wrong with trusting our neighbours? With having no fear? Whats wrong with the family down the road having health cover? Why deny science? Why do they want humanity to go back to no dentistry, no anti-biotics, no anaesthetic, dying of a scratch or a rotten tooth. I just don’t get it
I figure that many of the Republicans must have been Russian operatives. The list of all the things the Russian operatives did corresponds to what the Republicans were saying.
Remember these a names that voted against honoring the Capital Police who fought to defend our democracy.
The Post truth neo-fascists awards of the day go to.....
Andy Biggs (Ariz.)
Thomas Massie (Ky.)
Andy Harris (Md.)
Lance Gooden (Tex.),
Matt Gaetz (Fla.)
Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.)
Louie Gohmert (Tex.)
Michael Cloud (Tex.)
Andrew S. Clyde (Ga.)
Greg Steube (Fla.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/17/dozen-republicans-voted-against-congressional-gold-medals-police-who-protected-them-jan-6/
Bob Good (Va.)
John Rose (Tenn.).
There are statesmen from other mature Democracies that would scoff at the U.S. capitol being called a "temple" of Democracy, but that would be coming from the perspective of witnessing U.S. imperialism interfering in other countries elections. However in Canada, US exceptualism has been identified as the US civic faith, so using the word temple instead of church would make sense.
Regardless of the use of the word chosen, the capitol is the highest symbol of our Democracy. To attack it specifically in orderto interupt the certification of the national vote and the will of the people and the electors, would be reported by democratic news media outside the US as a failed overthrow of the election. It was a planned insurrection to overthrow the Democratic process. If we do not call it that, it is to deny we are a Democracy.
While the Republicans rubbed me the wrong way throughout 45's fascist administration, they grate even more offensively now as they reveal their contempt for every act that smacks of decency, valor, and ethical values! Thank you, Dr. HCR, for holding their feet to the fire of truth!
Professor Richardson, please compile all your letters into a book. These need to be available in every High School in 4 years.
I keep remembering Fiona Hill's testimony in the first impeachment trial. No one seems to have remembered or commented on that, but I distinctly remember her saying something to the effect that some of her questioners were saying exactly what Russia wanted them to say, that they were peddling Russian talking points. She, of course, put it much better than I just did. But I would love to see someone interview her right now . . .
The Republican Party is the biggest threat to the Republic.
In today’s Letter, Professor Richardson writes,
“Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines declassified the assessment of the intelligence community of foreign threats to the 2020 U.S. federal elections that had been provided to the previous administration and congressional leadership on January 7. The community assessed that Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized influence operations, which “a range of Russian government organizations conducted,” “aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the U.S.””
Yesterday, the New York Times published an article describing a recent study of the segregation of our neighborhoods along partisan lines. It is an unsettling piece, not least because the corrosive effects of the previous administration and the political philosophy it supported, has taken root so firmly. Russia, Ron Johnson and the Right political establishment generally, if not coordinating their efforts to divide Americans from one another, are at the very least, singing from the same songbook.
What follows is one of the reader comments to the article.
“I am a 71 year old Jewish male living in a suburb of Sacramento County, and in fact in the same community as Governor Newsom who is 2 miles downriver from me. I have lived in my home for 35 years and in the beginning when the homes were built it was a solidly professional yet liberal tract. However over the years more and more people moving near me are Republicans. My neighbor across the street blasts right wing radio from his garage when he works, and my neighbors of 4 years directly over my fence, knowing my religion, have spent countless hours trying to convert me, to the point I believe them to be anti-Semitic. When they moved in, in October of 2016 right before the election I tried to be friendly and take them to lunch....after praying over the meal, telling me Hillary should be jailed, and that only Trump could save white Christians I have tried to keep my distance. After loving my neighborhood and never having a problem, I have decided it might be best to move the Bay Area around Berkeley or Oakland to be near my children and to get away from these people....I am the classic example of what the article discusses.”
(Source: Comment to NYT article, “A Close-Up Picture of Partisan Segregation, Among 180 Million Voters” https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/17/upshot/partisan-segregation-maps.html?searchResultPosition=1)
Democrats face a real dilemma. It appears increasingly that the GOP has become a traiterous body, much like the Southern States iafter Lincoln was elected. Their loyalto is NOT to the union, and therefore not to the unity of the country. From all the available evidence, it appears there is deliberation to this, because the big money that funds the GOP does not want a functioning democracy. In other words, the GOP is receiving marching orders from their financial backers and those orders appear to be the destruction of American democracy. The dilemma Democrats face is knowing this and doing something about it. They could call out McConnell et al and vote to enact restrictions on moneyed political influence. But they won’t because the GOP will accuse them of being anti-democratic if they do and the Supreme Court would overrule it again. Unless Chief Justice John Roberts has had a change in heart since Citizens United. If the Republicans take back the Senate in 2022, Democrats are probably screwed: because I think we have to take McConnell at face value. I think he willndestroy the Senate in all but name if he gets the chance because a destroyed Senate is better for his masters than a Senate that is always at risk of falling again into Democratic hands. One of the great weaknesses of the Democrats is a failure of imagination: they seem unable to imagine what the GOP will actually do, what form their scorched earth policy might take. That’s because Democrats still think in terms of what’s legal and what’s not, while the Republicans don’t care. They have learned to think only in terms of power. The Democrats could go after the big money in some way, but they won’t, though Shenator Sheldon Whitehouse is making a reall effort to expose the effect of dark money on the Supreme Court. I think the GOP is just waiting for Biden or Harris, if she becomes president, to hand them the keys to power the way Obama handed Trump those keys. That’s the way Democrats role-- they want to respect the norms and the procedures, even if following those norms lead to ensuring that the next administration destroys them. So, again, the dilemma that Democrats face is do they try to exert power in the way Republicans have exerted power in order to save democracy? Or do they draw back from the exertion of power because they don’t wnt to be the ones accused of destroying the norms?
Does good avoid restraing evil because it regards the act of restraint as an aspect of evil? Is good more concerned with maintaining an umage of holding the moral high ground? Or with actually saving what is good? These are not easy times and I can make an argument that, “Yes, it’s better to hold on to the moral high ground because then at least the ideal survives! That I think was what Obama probably felt when he realized that Trump was his successor.
Good morning HCR and all the folks in this community! I admit that I hope that AG Garland is able to take charge of this "whitewashing" (great use of the term HCR as it is literally that) of the events of January 6 because today some things that, for me, are far more infuriating and more immediate have happened:
The sheriff in charge of the "investigation" (I use that term loosely) of the white man who murdered 8 people, 7 of them women and 6 of them Asian women told the press (I am paraphrasing) that the guy was "having a bad day and this was the result" and that the attack was not directed at women, rather they were "in the wrong place at the wrong time." The women were AT WORK. Let me repeat: they were AT WORK. They were not" innocent bystanders" caught up in a madman's rampage. They were TARGETED because they were AT WORK.
And as an extra sweetener to the above: the House passed a revamped Violence Against Women Act--which had been mothballed by Murderous Mitch and His Malevolent Minions in 2019--that includes enhanced protections for women who are in non-marriage relationships with violent partners and for trans women. The Gormless Obstructionists in the Senate are upset. They are upset at the idea of trans women not being targets of murder--trans women are the single most vulnerable group to assault, murder, and abuse. They are upset at the idea that the courts might be able to demand that a violent boyfriend who threatens to kill his "love object" turn over his guns for a period of time.
I am wondering how these revolting dangling members can look at their wives, daughters, and mothers--and indeed at any woman or girl--and continue to claim they care about their welfare. Oh, I forgot: they don't care. They just find it useful to trot their womenfolk out when they are caught with their pants down, or when they think it will bring them votes.
Give me strength.
Ron Johnson is a racist, which is nothing new. I'm a longtime liberal who grew up working class in Flint, Michigan. I'm for the BLM movement. I voted for Ralph Warnock for Senator from Georgia. I'm support equality for all.
I'm a racist.
I was brought up in a house with parents, hard-working, highly moral Democrats who occasionally used the N-word, so I did, too. Over the years, when if became socially unacceptable to to do so, I used Blacks and African Americans. I adapted because, like most other humans on this planet, I am a sheep. I told friends that, unlike myself, racists were full of fear and resentments and would do anything to hold onto their strange semblance of superiority. By pointing this out, I anointed myself an Enlightened Man. But I was still a racist at heart. Small degree racism is still racism. Like the Bible says, sordid thoughts are still sins.
In scrolling through movie listings I dismissed watching Black movies without a second thought. When interacting with minorities I was always very friendly (perhaps overly so) and their culture held a secret fascination to me. But at the end of the day I went home to my comfy white suburb where my neighbors were also closeted racists.
We live in a world which demands yes or no, for or against. But in reality extremes are the exception. Most of us are simply evolving. Acknowledging even a scent of racism that resides inside us is a first step in that evolution. Admission of our current or former racist tendencies and a willingness to change should be cheered, not judged. Let's no longer hide our dirty little secrets. Let us bring them into the light so they may be washed clean.
The only thing Ron Johnson can attest to is his own white male privilege. He's either an idiot, liar, hypocrite, or some combination. No one can ever count on safety, reasoning with or deterring a mob; that is what differentiates them from crowds. Mobs do not think; they act, usually degenerating toward worse behavior. They often start with one goal and may be diverted toward another, and they can blindly ignore reality right in front of them. Any grey-haired senator, any greying person, could have been mistaken for Mike Pence and been in mortal danger -- especially masked. Also for Nancy Pelosi and other women.
Jan 6 fits into well-documented historic patterns of crowd behavior, mobs and riots. Crowds are under control or can be managed; mobs cannot, they are crowds out of control. When completely uncontrolled, mobs become riotous. Jan 6 saw all three phases, though the latter two were not inevitable (that's where the deplorable GQP leadership matters). Mobs only stop when confronted with superior force, or when their energy dissipates and they disperse, which is what happened on Jan 6 in the absence of counter-force. Collusion of elements in government and law enforcement is also characteristic of many mobbing events. As are subsequent denials and coverups.
I've been in countless crowds, never seen a riot, and luckily had only a couple of slight brushes with mobs when living in Zambia. But all my study and experience says that mobs must be avoided whenever possible. A peabrained, privileged Repug senator simply has no credibility claiming otherwise. He will only be credible when confessing his own crimes.
Thank you for reading. Another version appeared here in January.
P Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown
D Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot
The Ox-Bow Incident (film)
G Rude, The Crowd in History
EP Thompson, "Moral Economy of the English Crowd," Past & Present 1971
C Weatherford, Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre
Published here before, never too many times to remind people what they are. We need to start using Hofstadter's term "pseudo-conservative" to describe them, rather then letting them hijack the honorable old word "conservative."
From "The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt", 1954:
It can most accurately be called pseudo-conservative — I borrow the term from the study of "The Authoritarian Personality" published five years ago by Theodore W. Adorno and his associates — because its exponents, although they believe themselves to be conservatives and usually employ the rhetoric of conservatism, show signs of a serious and restless dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions. They have little in common with the temperate and compromising spirit of true conservatism in the classical sense of the word, and they are far from pleased with the dominant practical conservatism of the moment as it is represented by the Eisenhower Administration. Their political reactions express rather a profound if largely unconscious hatred of our society and its ways — a hatred which one would hesitate to impute to them if one did not have suggestive clinical evidence.
From clinical interviews and thematic apperception tests, Adorno and his co-workers found that their pseudo-conservative subjects, although given to a form of political expression that combines a curious mixture of largely conservative with occasional radical notions, succeed in concealing from themselves impulsive tendencies that, if released in action, would be very far from conservative. The pseudo-conservative, Adorno writes, shows “conventionality and authoritarian submissiveness” in his conscious thinking and “violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere. . . . The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.”
I agree, the continuation of the Big Lie remains one of the greatest threats to the future security of our democracy, creating an insidious erosion of trust in our ability to have fair elections. The rhetoric is dangerous and unhinged.