Fox News and the very bad no good COVID-19 infections map

[solarbird]

Something I wrote today on Twitter, before the latest SCOTUS rebuff of Donkeyballs Donald's attempt to saty in power. The original thread, on Twitter, includes the maps.

---

Let's talk about this thread for a minute.

Fox news is going with a coronavirus graphic which is both scaled bizarrely and also just flat wrong. It's a lie. And it's a lie tied to a larger power play.

[Fox News map implying most of the physical area of the country had zero to few new Coronavirus cases in the last week, with most states labelled blue (zero to small numbers in their scale) or green (small numbers to less small numbers)] [Real data, for comparison]

What Trump has been doing has been a coup attempt. But he's known the coup wasn't going to happen for a while. That he lost.

And that's when the plan changed to making the Republican Party knows they can't have power unless he's in charge.

People talk about this coup attempt as one last dip, as yet another looting festival, and to a degree, it is.

But it's more about making sure everybody in the Republican Party knows that he's still in charge, and that it's him or the highway.

He doesn't even need the majority of Republicans on his side to pull this off. He just needs his cult to be willing to sink the GOP if they don't toe his line.

And he absolutely has that, as per the way Trumpists are getting violent at _Republicans_ who don't go along with the whole "stolen election" scam.

State Republicans know better, because they know their states. _Some_ of them have said so.

Now they're the enemy too.

He also knows better. He knows everyone going along with it knows better.

That's the point: making them complicit in the big lie and in the coup attempt, making them traitors to the republic and the constitution.

And making his goal true: they can't have power except under him.

This bullshit map - this complete farce, this insane "he was right all along" fabrication that _will kill tens of thousands of his own followers who believe it_ - is a victory flag in Trump's fight to retain ownership of the Republican Party.

It doesn't matter that it's free of fact, it doesn't matter that it doesn't make any sense, it doesn't matter that it kills or maims them and their own.

Because it's all about power, and the cult.

We've been past the point where _anything_ would snap them out of it for a while.

COVID-19 denial/sabotage is their sacrament, this graph their flag, and hundreds of thousands of deaths their testimony.

Devotion unto death.

And if you think I'm exaggerating, the Arizona Republican Party officially disagrees - with _you_.

[IMAGE: Screencap of Arizona Republican Party official tweet encouragingly asking if people are willing to give their lives "for this fight" to keep Trump in power.]

Now, all of that said - I still don't see how this coup attempt succeeds at this point. You can't get there from here. It does leave Trump in charge of the ruins, which is all he cares about.

It also sets up the fascist insurgency. That's happening. The question isn't "will there be violence," the question is "how much violence will there be?"

This is in fact the actually _better_ outcome here. It's the one I've been aiming for, because the alternative was fascism by election. And if you don't see that as worse, well, I remind you:

Hitler _lost_ his insurgency.

He _won_ after getting his hands on the levers of power.

Don't get me wrong, insurgencies don't always lose.

But this election made their fight a _lot_ harder. I mean, a _LOT_ harder.

And that's still a win, _as long as we make it stick._

Stay on station. We're still needed.

Comments

[kathmandu]

The hypothetical path to Trumpian victory I can see is like the Gulf War: all these stupid lawsuits are to create a cover story, equivalent to "they have weapons of mass destruction". Repeat the cover story a lot, then launch a violent takeover on the excuse that institutions are too corrupt to follow the legal path and it's an emergency. Like the lies about Black Lives Matter protests being 'riots' and the allegedly-federal badgeless thugs being there to 'restore order'. He has ICE, Border Patrol, some number of National Guard, some Army units, and mercenaries; yes, many high-ranking generals believe in rule of law, but the right-wing fundagelical-nazis have been working their way up the military chain on purpose for a while now.

And he might not need that much violence; clearly most of the Republican legislators and some state and local governments would be on board with it. Permanenent Republican majority is what they've been dreaming of, and this would be a way.

I'm hoping it doesn't go that way. But I live way away from DC, and I don't know what I can do to influence things either, now that the actual voting is over.

I'm glad to hear you don't think it will; I respect your judgement.

[solarbird]

I'm from Seattle, luv. I've got no influence at all.

But he's shown a couple of times that he doesn't actually have an army. He tried to call out his MAGA forces earlier this year and they just straight up didn't show. The second time he tried this autumn, he got some Proud Boy forces to show up with a few Boogaloo Boys and that didn't get him much of anywhere either.

So as much as he wanted one... he doesn't have an army.

[hour_of_the_wolf]

I've been trying to figure out when the line moved from simply "Republicans" to "Trumpists". For a while, they were intentionally blurred. But as you're pointing out here, as some of the country that were in the blurred camp starts to accept reality that precipitation has started to happen.

The usual rule of thumb I've worked from for ages has been 15% of the population is strongly authoritarian/fascist leaning, but another 25% is happy to go along for the ride.