solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless — if the left allows it to be.”

The Heritage Foundation’s official position is that I shouldn’t be allowed to exist; that I – along with every other LGBT person – should be illegal.

Nor or we the only ones. We’re just high in the queue.

Nothing about their “second American Revolution” will be bloodless, and they do not want it to be bloodless. They want to be executioners.

This is “submit, allow us to kill who we will, or die along with them.”

You have got to get through to any Trumpy friends or family you have. Maybe you’ve tried before, maybe you failed, maybe you’ll fail again. But you have to try.

124 days remain.

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solarbird: (widowmaker)

After today’s Republican Supreme Court decision granting presidents complete criminal immunity for anything that qualifies even remotely as an “official act” – something even George III didn’t have – everything else is secondary. Trump got more than he asked for. Read Justice Sotomayor’s dissent.

Trump has, of course, declared victory and called for a military tribunal to try Liz Cheney for treason over on Truth Social. If, you know, you’re wondering how he’s reacting. But yeah, as Sotomayor says, a president can now order military strikes on his political opponents and if he declares it an “official act” as Commander in Chief and remain immune from the law, so there y’are.

There is no more room for even a single electoral mistake. The next authoritarian – or the next person with authoritarian tendencies – elected President will be the last elected President. Every election has to go right until this is reversed, somehow, and until then the republic is truly dead, because that means you have one party that isn’t primed and ready to launch a dictatorship the moment they have power. and one that absolutely, positively is.

Here’s a bunch of stuff I was working into a few posts. It’s not important now, but you might skim the headlines. There are a few different topics, and they should matter more, still. And I suppose, really, they do. But, you know. Precipice of dictatorship, and all that. So.

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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

Not just Twitter this time, though I assure you, there is plenty of Twitter. But let’s start with my favourite article of the last few weeks: I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again. I love this article and I love it very much. It is distilled catharsis. Enjoy.

Now to get into some of Elon Musk’s Twitter fascism before moving on to other items:

Well, that was a lot. Let’s see what else we have.

Ah, this one’s good: Research finds pattern of YouTube recommending right-leaning, Christian videos. It does that to me, too. It really wants people to find fash content. I wonder if it’s related to the politics that lead to Tech Company Hit With DOJ Fine After Racist ‘Whites Only’ Job Posting and Stanford’s top disinformation research group collapses under right-wing pressure. I’m pretty fucking sure it is.

Here’s the least surprising thing ever: Someone managed to get Gab’s AI’s setup prompt. It is, naturally, everything you’d expect out of a fascist site.

Meanwhile, Meta accused of trying to discredit ad researchers – Meta allegedly tried to discredit university researchers in Brazil who had flagged fraudulent adverts on the social network’s ad platform. Fundamentally, Meta doesn’t like people saying things about it that it doesn’t like, and will absolutely throw its weight at people. See also A local news site was critical of Facebook—then Meta banned all their links.

If you’re wondering, the story that pissed them off was When Facebook fails, local media matters even more for our planet’s future.

Clearly, Google was fine with it: U.K. forces Google to remove websites selling gender-affirming medications. TERF Island is go go go.

Finally, to come back aground and close with more general news – stuff that isn’t actually directly fash / far-right / fundamentalist related, but is still tech bullshit:

We’ll close on some better news, from CheckMyAds: Google’s breaking down, but we need to keep our eye on the ball. They’re doing some good work. You might give them a looking-over, maybe sign up. I did.

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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

There’s a form of writing called epistolary storytelling, where the story is told in letters written for the story. The novel Dracula is a particularly famous example, but in no way is it the only one.

There doesn’t seem to be an equivalent term for telling stories in the from of news articles, though. Which is a bit of a surprise to me, but then, I can’t think of many that have tried it. World War Z comes close, in the form of its collection of oral histories. So maybe it’s not that surprising.

Can we tell a story in the form of news article headlines? Maybe one about a man who is out for power at any cost, explicitly – in his own words – for retribution?

The problem with telling that story is how very, very, very good Americans are at denial, after all. Denial about Donald Trump is deeper than ever. Authoritarians have often told us what they are going to do, but people have rarely believed them.

In fact, one might say We’ve Hit Peak Denial, that we are living through a terrible time in humanity. Here’s why we tend to stick our heads in the sand and why we need to pull them out, fast.

(Ooh, that kinda worked. I don’t think it’ll work that well in general, but that part works.)

But seriously, though – denial is absolutely rampant and overwhelming, particularly amongst low-information voters. It’s the single biggest breakthrough we have to make this election. I’ve said that many times. I doubt it’s sunk in, so here it is again: we have to get through to the low-info voters.

If you know some, that’s kinda on you to do the job. It’s on all of us, but those of us who know the low-information voters who hate to talk politics but still vote anyway? It’s kinda extra so. Sorry.

Chapter 1: What kind of man is Trump, and what kind of President was Trump?

Trump praises authoritarian leaders, saying Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping and Viktor Orban are “at the top of their game, whether you like it or not.” He’s a huge fan, and wants to be part of the club. He’s always admired them, like in this “personal story about Donald Trump, Marla Maples. The “Carpet King” Bob Shaw, Adolph Hitler and my wife Martha

A person’s friends can be revealing: Trump’s Spiritual Adviser Quasi-Confesses to Molesting 12-Year-Old Girl. He did spend a lot of time on Epstein’s airplane, so this shouldn’t be a surprise.

How about that aide of his bragging about ‘causing innocent people to be arrested’? That’s a revealing character note, don’t you think?

There’s also that whole “Amendment Abolishing Slavery Missing from Trump’s USA Bible” incident.

I guess he considers that one apocrypha, if he considers it at all.

Chapter 2: How does he plan to “win”? What’s that story?

How’s this for a spicy thriller: ‘Start the Steal’: Trump Once Again Planning to Overturn an Election: Two shadow campaigns are ramping up — one aiming to create a constitutional crisis, the other aiming to prevent one.

Donald Trump and Mike Johnson just mixed two big lies together: the continued effort by Trump and his allies to convince rank-and-file Republicans that any election they don’t win must be fraudulent is a profound threat to American democracy.

Bankrolling the Big Lie: the corporations funding the Trump 2024 campaign. Trump Is Now Openly Threatening CEOs Who Don’t Support Him: Donald Trump is warning CEOs to fall in line—or else.

Groups like True the Vote and Michael Flynn’s America Project want to mobilize thousands of Trump supporters by pushing baseless claims about election fraud—and are rolling out new technology to fast-track their efforts. The Trump campaign says it will deploy thousands of election workers to monitor poll sites.

‘Georgia Is Our Laboratory’, says Trump operative, speaking from Inside Trump’s Plan to Rig 2024.

In the meantime, Roger Stone Touts Plan for Trump Win in Secret Recording: a crush of lawsuits over voting in multiple states to create a shadow war for the 2024 election as Trump and his allies are laying the groundwork to contest potential election loss.

Does that tell a story? I think it does. But I’m not sure others will.

Chapter 3: Promises and Threats

What kind of story do these headlines tell about a second Trump presidency? Particularly one with Speaker Mike Johnson in the House.

Religious conservatives see opportunities for fresh gains after a series of victories during Trump’s first term.

Donald Trump’s allies are quietly laying the groundwork to get him to restrict access to contraception if he wins. If you think that’s unlikely, remember Senate Republicans just blocked a bill to protect access to contraception. (They also want to restrict the right to divorce.)

He also says, “I will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female—and they are assigned at birth” thus legally detransitioning everyone of every age, and writing intersex people out of legal existence.

Speaker Mike Johnson’s spiritual journey reveals ties to Christian fundamentalists who support slavery. Johnson’s office won’t say where he stands on that issue.

Donald Trump shares stage with rightwing activist who’s discussing stoning gay people to death

Speaker Johnson wrote foreword for book filled with conspiracy theories and homophobic insults.

Trump vows to be ‘side by side’ with group that wants abortion ‘eradicated’ – which is particularly telling given that Post-Dobbs, Abortion Bans Have Given Abusers a New Power. Trump also Indicates He Would Back a 15-Week Federal Abortion Ban

In all, Project 2025’s 180-Day Playbook is a remarkably detailed guide to turning the United States into a fascist’s paradise.

As for dissent?

Trump Wants to Deport Pro-Palestine Protesters—and GOP Lawmakers Are Filing Bills to Make It Happen.

Tom Cotton Thinks Protesters May Need To Get ‘Their Skin Ripped Off’ and Sitting Senator publicly incites others to engage in politicized murder of civilians.

I think that part tells a story just fine.

Chapter 4: Courts? What courts?

I have no idea how to make low-info voters care about the courts; like the police, they just tend to assume it’ll be fine for them. But what story does this tell?

Peering into the Corrupt Court’s Pretensions and Corruption

The Saga of Clarence Thomas and His Luxury RV

Sam Alito Clearly Thinks He’s Untouchable

Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events

The Republican Party’s man inside the Supreme Court – Justice Samuel Alito brings no vision and no unique insights to his job — other than unrelenting loyalty to the GOP.

The Roberts Court conservatives erode voting rights protections. Again.

Justice Alito Caught on Tape Discussing How Battle for America ‘Can’t Be Compromised.’ In a new, secret recording, the Supreme Court justice says he “agrees” that the U.S. should return to a place of godliness. Meanwhile, his wife Martha-Ann Alito Condemns Pride Flags, the Left, and the Media – but none of them will ever recuse.

Chapter 5: Once In Office

Donald Trump Says Local Police Will Play Key Role In His Mass Deportation Plan – he would give officers immunity to carry out his plan. Unlike in 2016, they’re openly stating they plan to build and use concentration camps. I don’t know how you get to a bigger fascist flag than that, but wait, there’s more:

Conservative-backed group is creating a list of federal workers it suspects could resist Trump plans. “I Want To See Lists of Which Democrats Are Going to Prison.”

Trump Lawyer Says Having Political Rival Killed Could Constitute ‘Official’ Presidential Act – and thus, be immune from prosecution. I remind you, he actually specifically argued this to the Supreme Court.

I remind you also that he’s repeatedly talked about a third term, Constitution be damned.

How Far Would Trump Go? As far as he can get away with. Last Week Tonight says Trump’s Second Term would be a clear example of one thing – What American Fascism Would Look Like

What kind of story does that tell you?

It tells me that we have a very big story to tell, with 130 days left in which to do it.

Best get on the job.

We’ve got a lot to say.

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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

I don’t normally re-boost my own posts here, but this time, the fascist disinformation machine threw something out that so perfectly highlights the problem I wrote about just a couple of days ago that I can’t not put it out there again.

There’s a video being pushed – hard – by right-wing disinformation activists and by large right-wing media that supposedly shows President Biden “wandering off” into a field at G7. This video is a lie. It is intentional disinformation, edited to excise the people he was talking to from the visible frame.

He was not wandering off. He was congratulating paratroopers who had just completed a demonstration and were folding up their parachutes. Here’s the fuller context.

This editing was intentional and designed to deceive. It was designed to push the “Biden is senile” narrative, and as one other commentator said today – and I am paraphrasing here – nothing convinces me that Trump is falling apart more than this kind of disinformation. They always project their fears and their weaknesses onto others, and this is probably another example.

But at the same time – and this is critical:

Millions of low-information voters hoovered that disinformation shit right up, unquestioned.

That’s why they must absolutely, positively, be reached. Because without serious intervention, they will fall for this kind of shit literally every. single. time.

If you have low-info people in your circle, then for the sake of literally everyone, you have got to find a way to get through to them this time around. Show them the video. Show them the other lies. Show them what’s done, how, and why.

No matter what.

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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

This is one of the best sentences I’ve read about the rest of this year: Messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio explains that victory in November depends on convincing low-information voters that the MAGA threat to democracy is real. That they want to be in charge, regardless of what you have to say about anything, and that they want elections to happen, maybe – but they most certainly do not want them to matter.

I can’t agree more. The MAGAts want elections only they can win, and the low-information voters desperately – desperately – want to believe that everything is normal and fine and ordinary when it is ever so not. They will and do absolutely both-sides everything, and yes, they’re the people who will believe Trump when he says he made insulin cheaper when it was Biden, and yes, they’re the people who think Biden caused Roe v. Wade to be overturned.

These are the people we have to find a way to reach, in no small part because the MAGAts rely on them in so many ways, and are always looking for ways to reach them with disinformation. Not just at the national level, but at the local level, too.

Just for one example, here’s Sinclair Broadcasting pushing another faux “local” story onto every local TV station they own, this one a hit piece on Joe Biden. They do this regularly and will do more of them, particularly as the election approaches.

These are disinformation pieces with scripts sent to each local station with orders to produce them as “local” stories, but in reality, they are centrally coordinated propaganda campaigns.

I don’t normally edit to add in an essay like this, but I am; today, June 14th, rightist media across the board pushed a disinformation video claiming President Biden wandered off into a field at the G7. This is a lie. The video is deceptively edited, and cropped to hide the paratroopers he was talking to, and the parachuting demonstration they had just completed. Here is a more complete video. This was done knowingly, with intent to deceive, but that doesn’t stop millions of people from accepting the lie without question.

Low information voters have no idea that this is happening. None. They’ll catch “joe biden so old and feeble isn’t it worrying” and integrate it without much of a thought while waiting for Wheel of Fortune to come on. And as much as that sounds like a slam, it’s not; the local Sinclair station literally drops these things in before Wheel of Fortune.

Because they know how that works.

Another example are the new crop of disinformation websites that have gone up posing as local news, funded by “dark money” sources, particularly in swing states, where they outnumber actual newspapers. These are, naturally, honeypots, and they overwhelmingly – overwhelmingly – lean hard right.

So since we’re talking about state and local propaganda and state and local disinformation and state and local low-info voters, let’s turn to actual state-level Republican actions across the country. Let’s talk about what they’re doing with power, things “low information” voters don’t know, but might be less likely to tune out reflexively as soon as you bring it up.

I mean, they’re used to aggressively turning out the national situation. Maybe they’ll pay more attention if it’s closer to home, right?

The Colorado Republican Party issued a call to burn all Pride flags, complete with a nod to an infamous anti-gay slur. The slur they reference is “God Hates Fags,” and the reference is “God Hates Flags.” They also called LGBT people paedophiles, using the phrase “godless groomers.”

I want to stress: this isn’t a faction, or a fringe group. It was put out by the state party on their own social media, and it was signed by the party chair, Chairman Dave Williams.

That’s the kind of reality you have to stress when you talk about this: it’s not fringe groups anymore – not that it ever really was – and it’s not people on the sidelines trying to get attention. It’s entire state parties and their leadership calling for this, and it’s all the state parties.

Washington State Republicans want to hide the cost of their pro-climate-change anti-health-care-funding tax-cuts-for-the-rich initiatives. So far, happily, they’re failing – but they’re still in court trying to get it done They’re also backing a stealth anti-LGBT initiative they’re calling a Parental Rights Act, as so many other state Republican parties are doing. Read up on “Let’s Go Washington” and their Tim-Eyman-with-a-budget leader, hedge fund manager Brian Heywood.

Low-information voters will absolutely fall for the “make gas prices cheaper!!” campaigns. It’s a lie, obviously. But most of ’em will fall for it, if we can’t get through to them.

Virginia Republicans blocked a bill banning police from getting search warrants for menstrual data. This data is already being used elsewhere to try to prosecute women for possible/theoretical abortions, so it’s not just theory, and even if it were – why would you block this if you didn’t want to use it that way?

Low information voters need to know that yeah, the Christofascists really do mean to follow through on all this, and yeah, it’ll affect them and theirs, not just “other people.”

Republican North Dakota passed a bill requiring anti-abortion propaganda be shown to elementary school children; several other Republican states are considering similar laws. Not to put too fine a point on it, if you can’t get rid of public schools, you can at least – they feel – turn them into fundamentalist propaganda machines.

In Republican Arkansas, Arkansas governor says state won’t comply with new federal rules on treatment of trans students, pledging to continue their abuse of trans kids. Republican Oklahoma and Republican Texas are making the same pledges, along with other states.

MAGAts and Christofascists have a marked fondness for hurting children. I hope that pattern is clear, and that you can make that pattern clear to those who refuse to acknowledge the reality of it.

In Republican Florida, “Florida’s Anti-Trans Bathroom Law Spurs Harrowing Vigilante Attacks.” That’s absolutely by design; the fundamentalist movement that now jointly controls the Republican Party with the neofascist movement has always thrived on personal violence, and, well, the fascist wing? Of course they want that.

They’re also banning rainbows. Laugh if you want, but this is literally exactly how Putin started, and how LGBT people are completely illegal in Russia again. And that’s exactly what they want here, and worse.

In North Carolina, Donald Trump endorsed pastor Mark Burns, who calls for LGBTQ+ executions. Literally death to queers. He’s in a runoff for the Republican nomination for Representative, having made it past the first round.

Even when I was being handed pamphlets calling for my own death, low-info and even moderate-info voters refused to accept it was serious, even when I had the pamphlet. So this one’s real work.

Republican Mississippi Passes Bill Allowing Cis People To Sue Over Trans Bathroom Usage. They’re targeting trans people in general, of course, but in particular college students. And yes, the governor did sign it, according to LegiScan.

Republican Idaho passed a “Book Bounty” bill allowing anyone to sue a library for any material that their 1972(!) law considers “harmful to minors,” including – naturally – any reference to LGBTQ characters. As a result, many libraries are trying to figure out how they can operate, and some have barred anyone under the age of 18.

This is, of course, exactly what the Christofascists want. The next step will be to close those libraries. Low-information voters don’t want to think anything like libraries can actually change, so this might be a good one, in that “it already is changing” way.

In Republican Texas: “Texas professors sue Biden for the right to discriminate against trans students. They also want to fire teaching assistants over abortion history” Yes, they want to be able to fire TAs if they had abortions at some point in their lives, and they want to be able to fail trans students for being trans. See also this horror show.

One repeated cry of the low-information voter is “they don’t really mean it” and “they won’t really do it.” They do mean it, and they are doing it, and you will not be an exception. We have to communicate that, and we have to make it stick.

So let’s close on a few examples of the national attacks on the Republic being brought down to the state level.

Pennsylvania Republicans – or a bunch of them – jeered and booed officers who defended the Capitol building on January 6th. This tells you whose side they were – and still are – on.

Back in Republican Texas, Texas’ Attorney General Ken Paxton Is Increasingly Using Consumer Protection Laws to Pursue Political Targets. Again, not a fringe figure, a statewide leader. When Republicans talk about “weaponising the justice system,” they know what they’re talking about because they’ve already been doing it. We’ll talk about that more in an article later, that focuses on the Federal level.

Finally – and again in Republican Texas – the GOP have learned from their loss of gerrymandering in Wisconsin, and want to set up an in-state Electoral College to break voter equality and insure they cannot lose elections, like Hungary and Russia on a state scale.

The idea is to change elections so that you cannot win a statewide vote without carrying the majority of counties, which will make extremely Republican counties of a few hundred people have the same voting weight as millions of people in San Antonio, diluting Democratic votes by tens of thousands of times.

In the most extreme case, the votes of 4.8 million people in Harris County, Texas will count exactly the same as the votes of 43 fine residents of Loving County, making one (1) Loving County vote count exactly the same as 112,000 votes in Harris.

The number of people voting won’t matter, and that’s what they want.

Again, to stress the reality: this is not a fringe group, this is the platform of the Texas Republican Party. Not of a faction: of the whole.

As one commentator I know likes to say, “they don’t want to represent you, they want to rule you,” and that’s what we have to get through to the low-info voter.

The Republican Party do not want to represent, they want to rule.

And that’s what we have to get the low-information voter to understand.

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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

Here we go. This is clearing everything else off the deck. At least it’s sorted.

Climate first:

Elon Musk’s disinformation and fascist propaganda fountain next:

Racism:

Clarence Thomas:

Cartoon supervillain evil:

Disinformation:

Misc, even within misc:

This is what you get when Republicans have any level of power, anywhere. “Both sides” my shiny metal ass.

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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

What’s there to say?

Trump says some migrants are ‘not people’, and warns of ‘bloodbath’ if he loses. He means the former, he hopes for the latter. He said years ago that the way you get “real change” is when there’s riots in the streets, and he wants those riots.

Dictator Trump says he will give cops immunity to look at names and “take out” the “bad ones” (video). Remember: the oh-so-clever “trick” of being a “dictator” on “day one” means that you can make everything you do after day one “legal.” He’s promising to send red-state national guard forces into blue states to “round up” the “bad guys.” What do you think that will look like?

Trump asks for donations in ads that run next to Rumble videos that praise Hitler as a “hero”. They blame “algorithms.” Rumble is a specifically pro-Nazi video streaming platform. Fascism is what it’s for. If you’re advertising there at all, you want the Nazis on your side. (See also: Twitter, also now a fascist platform, hosting literal neo-Nazi organising workshops. This is what Twitter users fund with their continued usage of the platform. See also also: The Rise of Techno-authoritarianism)

I mean, come on. Donald Trump had dinner with a Nazi. How is advertising to Nazis a reach?

Trump – and the MAGA GOP – love dictators like Putin and Orban. That meeting with Orban should be a red-alert end-of-campaign for him, but it’s not, because it’s what his backers want. I mean, the Russian imperialists – self-described, I note – love it, and look forward to Trump the the Republican Party abandoning Ukraine and handing a US ally over to them. (See also: Putin interview with Tucker Carlson shows Kremlin outreach to Trump’s GOP, and see also Russian propaganda painting Trump as an oppressed political enemy of the state. He absolutely eats that up, as we all know.)

The Trump Effort to Infiltrate Voting Systems Was Worse Than We Knew. Because of course it was.

The GOP can’t leave MAGA — “Americans must electorally mercy-kill the Republican Party”
An ex-MAGA activist warns “no civic savior is coming” as Donald Trump’s cognitive decline becomes undeniable

This guy used to be my Federal Representative until he retired: Why an ex-congressman is living in a ‘safe house’ from Trump. And what happened in Arizona last month felt a lot like a little dress rehearsal.

Strongly agreed here: Voters don’t have a clue about how much worse Trump’s second term would be: Many voters seem fooled that Trump 47 would be a bland replay of Trump 45, not the authoritarian nightmare he actually plans. Even as he takes credit for overturning Roe v. Wade, you’re seeing uninformed/low-information voters blaming it on Joe Biden, because he was president at the time.

For the love of the gods, get your people informed. Whoever they are. Get them informed. Because We must start urgently talking about the dangers of a second Trump presidency isn’t the half of it.


Related:

Cat Valente: Take My Life, Please: The Media’s Will They/Won’t They Love Affair with American Fascism Prepares For Its Terrible Wedding Night – Our media, mainstream and otherwise, is about to sell us all out because fascism makes them feel alive.

Newly released messages detail roots of the ‘fake electors’ scheme, and how much more extensive it was than discussed for so long.

How Republicans successfully “both sided” January 6 (They got a lot of help from the mainstream press.)

Trump’s Defense: He Intended to Steal Boxes and Boxes of Classified Documents

More Bullshit from the NYT: Ken Vogel Covers Up Rudy Giuliani and His Alleged Russian Spies

Mother Jones: It Can Happen Here – A new project tracking creeping authoritarianism

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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

This is going to be something akin to a list post, if not a true list post. Sorry, I’m not fond either.

I never know in these things – should I start low key and build up, or lead with an overhand smash and fill out details? Eh, I’m not even sure I have time for that. So here’s a bunch of stories on what the fundamentalist-dominated MAGAts and their Republican Party have been up to the last few weeks.

Heritage Foundation: Make Recreational Sex Banned Again. No, really. Yes, they mean it. They always have.

North Carolina Republican nominee for governor: ‘I Absolutely Want To Go Back To The America Where Women Couldn’t Vote’

I talk a lot about how the fundamentalist doesn’t give a single fuck about objective reality and how they define truth to be whatever furthers the movement. Katie Britt’s false linkage of a sex-trafficking case to Joe Biden is a great example. (The trafficking happened in Mexico City, not in the US; it happened during the Bush II administration, not the Biden administration.) (See also: The Fundie Baby Voice.)

Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 again: “Department of Life”: Trump allies plot abortion crackdown for second term (and please tell me you don’t think it’s just them: 145 GOP Members of Congress Ask Supreme Court to Slash Access to the Abortion Pill, Republicans’ Absurdist Reproductive Policies Are Coming for Us All, Remember The Stem Cell Research Controversy?, The GOP’s Next Target? Prenatal Tests, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson rallies with anti-abortion advocates at March for Life)

The GOP Is Too Scared to Let South Dakota Vote on Abortion – Gov. Kristi Noem’s new “emergency” law is meant to kneecap a pro-choice referendum. Red state after red state, the GOP changes laws to stop the people from overturning their fundamentalist-backed abortion and birth-control bans. As you hear a lot these days, “that’s because they want to rule you, not to represent you.”

Law Dork: This week, we faced all that the Dobbs justices unleashed. I wouldn’t agree with him on “all” but he talks about some.

Here’s a rundown on the Society for American Civic Renewal, an organisation of very wealthy Dominionists whose goal for the US isn’t the American 1950s, but the South African 1950s. (see also Inside A Secret Society Of Prominent Right-Wing Christian Men Prepping For A ‘National Divorce’) See also: Donald Trump may not believe in God, but he still plans to turn America into a Christian theocracy, mostly to take and maintain power.

Project 2025 talks about how they’re going to largely end biomedical research, particularly when it comes to “leftist” science.

Anti-abortion centers raked in $1.4bn in year Roe fell, including federal money. These “pregnancy crisis centres” have always been scams and always in the hunt for Federal bucks. Now they’re getting more of it.

‘We are losing our kids to a satanic cult,’ Sen. Tommy Tuberville warns during Utah campaign stop, mostly because this refers really to a generation where more are LGBTQ than Republican and they’ll do literally anything to stop it.

I went to CPAC as an anthropologist to understand Trump’s base − they believe, more than ever, he is a savior. It’s pretty lightweight if you know much about them and their movement, but if you don’t, give it a glance.

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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

Okay, so let’s catch up a little bit. Seems all I’m doing lately to be honest, but, well, it is what it is.

First, a quick update on our internal refugee situation:

Let’s move to disinformation. The fundamentalist movement, which forms the core of the MAGA fascist movement, has trafficked in it my entire life. I’ve written many, many times about how they redefine “truth” to mean “whatever serves the cause,” most recently in the Superbowl Jesus series. Until you understand this, you can understand nothing about how their movement works.

Media need to stop cooperating with it. Media are still assigning good faith to bald-faced lies, and in some cases – such as the New York Times – it’s to the point where you have to ascribe motive.

So much of this is fuelled by media taking repeatedly disproven bullshit in good faith over again every single time they see it. The right know they do this. They rely on it.

And the American Psychological Association can post all of these things they want:

But it won’t matter because the right don’t care about reality until and unless they’re absolutely forced to. If you’re in a position within US media to go “We have to care about what’s actually real,” you need to be bloody well at it, while there’s still time.

Everything else can be a list, I guess. Gotta clear it out!


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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

I was determined to get through the backload of links and stuff, and I’ve done it. It’s not my best work but at least it’ll be out there.

So: incoming, starting tomorrow morning.

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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

Let’s get caught up on Musk Twitter. It’s fairly short but I wanted to get it cleared out.

CHEQ, the online market security company, reports that a stunning 75.85% of web traffic from Musk Twitter during the Superbowl was manufactured/bot content, rather than real content. This is versus the 1-3% from literally everywhere else they track.

Mashable has more details if you’re curious, though they’re from the same place.

I don’t know whether this includes Elon Musk’s latest sockpuppet account which exists to praise Elon, but with numbers like that, I don’t think it really matters.

I also wonder whether the sockpuppet account feels the same peer-pressure to use the same drugs Elon does, as reportedly so many of his executives do.

In somewhat older news:

Germany found a massive Russian bot propaganda op on Musk Twitter, specifically focused on undermining support for Ukraine’s defence against the Russian invasion. No word on whether Musk Twitter is going to do anything about it; they’ve refused, whenever they can.

FrameLab published a longish article over a year ago describing in specific steps how Elon Musk uses Twitter to promote far-right and fascist political causes and push their normalisation. I’ve never linked it, but I’ve talked about this since he took over the company, and maybe people will like it more from other people.

They describe specific techniques applied algorithmically to further his very clear aims. Like me, they’ve tried to get people to leave Twitter; like me, they’ve failed more than they’ve succeeded.

The longer people stay active on Twitter, the more likely it is that real advertisers will return.

Finally, Elon went Level 4 wingnut after his attempt to proclaim he Was Never An Anti-Semite by declaring himself Aspirationally Jewish. I’m not Jewish but I can’t not see Trump’s deeply racist commentary that he claims to have thought would actually attract Black voters as a direct parallel.

Remember, it’s always a good day to leave Twitter behind forever and take your followers with you!

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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

It’s amazing how quickly paranoid delusions can go from being paranoid delusions to being the black-letter reality on the ground, isn’t it?

I mean, I was mad about the Bush II administration making the Edgy Left actually correct in ways they’d never actually been correct before, via his torture regime, via adopting hideous domestic policies including mass surveillance (with Democratic complicity), and via the horror show of their war in Iraq. Unfortunately, they actually did.

But even then, there were limits. I was assuring my nervous friends that Bush II, despite all this, was functionally an old New England Republican when it came to matters of having a Republic, and that he would leave office on time and in an orderly fashion – as he did – just as I assured Republicans that Obama would do the same.

Now, obviously, all of that is out the window.

So I want to present a list of items which are very well documented facts, but would’ve been absolutely, patently insane 10 years ago. I mean, the kind of rantings that got you thrown out of every conversation and mocked for years afterwards – and which are all now verified as true. It’s mostly not a list of their social agenda, thought there’s a bit of that at the end; it’s mostly a list of their authoritarian agenda, and the lengths to which they are going in their attempt to claim absolute power forever.

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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

The last time everything anti-LGBT was flying this thick and furry, I was naturally covering it, but I was also working the anti-abortion activism side of the story. Everyone involved in anti-LGBT law was also deep into anti-abortion law, so it was simple. Not all the rank and file were joined at the hip, but the leadership was; I had lots of exposure to all of it.

At one point, I started seeing anti-abortion activists saying outright that once they won on abortion, they’d be coming for birth control next. Again: that was them saying they would do this. Not others asserting that’s what they’d do; what they said they’d do.

It was an obvious inevitability even without that outright statement, though. Their definitions of “abortion” included most forms of birth control, including the birth control pill, which in no way actually causes abortion. Was there any medical or scientific basis for this? Of course not, no. They’d just decided that using birth control was abortion, and so, for them, it was.

As per usual – remember, they lie like they breathe as long as they’ve decided God Said – the scientific truth of the matter doesn’t matter, not in the least.

Naturally, I’d already been talking about that lie, and how it would be used, and getting dismissed if not laughed at for it. So I started quoting anti-abortion activists saying “yes, that’s right, we’re coming after birth control next.”

I still got dismissed if not outright laughed off.

And now, finally, here they come. Alabama has ruled that in-vitro fertilisation embryos are “people.” Naturally, the chief justice of the court is from exactly the same crowd and has the same beliefs and goals.

The idea is, of course, insane, but it’s fully in line with their moment’s historical attempts to have IVF fertilised eggs designated to be people. In their propaganda, they called them “snowflake babies” – yes, really, snowflake babies, this was before they started calling their enemies “snowflakes” – and tried to recruit women to carry every single one of them to term. They even talked about requiring every single one of them be implanted and that destroying the spares – there are always many spares when working IVF – be declared criminal.

Some warned then that this would make not just but many other fertility treatments illegal, of course. That doesn’t matter, because while the point is more white babies, the real point is control and ownership of women.

The idea of “God Said life begins at conception” is so universally accepted in rightist circles that agreement with all of this is immediate and universal amongst Republican politicians, with walkback only starting after truly massive blowback. The most hateful part of this lie is how absolutely nothing about it is actually Biblical; life is breath, God breathed the breath of life into Adam, it’s in fucking Genesis and consistent through the old testament, and none of it matters. God Said, and so it is, even when God Said Something Else.

Not that any of these psychopathic baying fascists actually care about any of that anyway; it’s just another example of their infinite ability to lie as long as the lie serves the movement.

So even as Alabama and the inevitable spread of anti-IVF campaigning serves as an example of continuation – even as they now effectively mandate that all fertilised eggs be implanted just like they tried to do 30 years ago – it also serves the signpost showing how they will move to ban all forms of birth control next. They will continue to lie about hormonal birth control as they have always done, and then will assert that all hormonal birth control is in fact abortion, and under such “reasoning,” ban it.

They say they will ban birth control; they will do so if they can. At this point, they’re just saying it, but they always have been saying it, sometimes by implication, and sometimes just outright in words.

I can’t draw this line any more clearly. I truly don’t know how. Everything they’re doing is something they’ve said they were going to do if they could, and have tried every chance they got. They’ve been saying all of it for decades, and it’s the one place where they’ve always meant every word – you can tell because the actions actually match the rhetoric – and all anyone has had to do to know all of this years in advance is just listen to them, and refuse to turn away.

The biggest problem in American politics isn’t the fascist right; the biggest problem is everyone else absolutely refusing to believe what is literally happening directly in front of them.

We can’t afford denial anymore. Not even one more minute of it. If you’re one of the people still desperately trying to pretend it’s not real, wake the fuck up. If you’re not, figure out how to get through to the people you know.

I’m lucky in that I’ve always preferred horrible truths to comforting lies. It’s why I’m still alive; I’ve always looked hideous reality straight in the face, because I know all too well that reality will not be denied. Not forever. And all of this is all too very, very real.

2024 is the key year. We win here, it starts getting slowly easier, then much easier all at once.

Wake everybody up. Reality’s here. Time to fight.

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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

There are people out there who are dismissive of the whole term “culture war” and “cultural warfare,” and I can see their point a little – a very little – but the idea that somehow “war” and “warfare” is downplaying what they’re committing on us frankly blows my mind.

I mean, the point of war is to kill enough of the enemy until they surrender, and that’s what they’ve been doing my whole life. So even though they used it first, frankly, I’m kinda good with that description.

So, what’d you miss last week? Let me catch you up with a comment-heavy linkfest.

I want to lead with this because it happens literally every time fascists take over: The brain drain from red states continues as 73% of college applicants consider reproductive rights, and a quarter are ruling out colleges based entirely upon political politics such as abortion bans. It’s a video-only story, unfortunately, but that’s the key takeaway.

Mind you, the people behind thes laws are against education in general anyway, even if it’s free, if any “liberal” politics are are involved. It always ends up with the smart and motivated people going anywhere else they can – if they can.

Which is why so many fascist states work to close their borders. Like Republican states are toying with, regarding women and abortion. This is not a coincidence.

Now, let’s get into some of those laws – new ones showing up in state houses, and court cases as they unfold:

The Utah Republican State House passed an invasive anti-trans bathroom ban, and it’s a bad one. “Papers, Please” is how Law Dork describes it and he’s not wrong.

The Supreme Court is allowing Idaho to enforce its strict abortion ban, even in medical emergencies. I’ve been saying it for a long time, and the reality is self-evident, and sometimes they even say it themselves: they want women with bad pregnancies to fucking die already, because God Said.

Reporting on the Idaho Republican Party’s official position opposing abortion even to save the life of the parent is what got me my first Twitter ban, back in the day. If you have friends still in denial about this, find some way to get them out if it. See also Slate doing the same.

There’s more on Indiana’s attempt to re-ban same-sex marriage in “Indiana Republicans want to re-write the law to eliminate the word ‘gender’” In addition to eliminating ‘gender’ in law in favour of ‘biological sex’ as defined as Republican fundamentalists would insist, it specifically also says that the queers can’t marry. So there you go, yet another example of “they won’t stop with the T” in action.

They’ll make all of us illegal again if they can.

Kansas Republicans are putting together an abortion ban despite the state passing a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights in the state in 2018. This is again because – as Beau says – they don’t give a fuck what you want, they don’t want to represent you, they want to rule you.

Oklahoma’s got a real two-fer going: first, the state chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party has proposed licensing for journalists. That’s not fascist at all! Secondly, Republican Representative Justin Humphrey filed a bill targeting furries, banning them from schools and extracurricular events, and requiring them to be removed by parents – or animal control.

This is how far Republicans are willing to go to find people to oppress. Jesus fuck.

These are a little ancillary, but it’s still about the effects of Republican cultural warfare laws:

In leopards and faces news, Bill O’Reilly Is Furious As His Own Titles Get Removed After Supporting Florida Book Bans.

It’s only a letter to the editor, but the Columbus Dispatch not only published it, but pushed it to wire services and Apple News, and that’s good: A disturbing sight. Ohio Republicans joy over hurting kids, families show true hatred. It’s pretty solid, and shows how letters to the editor can still be meaningful – particularly when syndicated. This got put in front of a lot of people.

Finally, let’s move to propaganda and knock-on effects. These might not be laws, but they’re still important:

Dr. Phil’s upcoming show, developed in partnership with Christian media, will feature a doctor who admits to leaking trans children’s private health information to a right wing think tank,” reports Assigned.

People ask me, sometimes: what can I do about all this? Well, this is one of those cases what you do is get ahead of this story if you know people who watch this kind of show. Talk to them about the reality first, before the propagandists can plant their disinformation flags.

It really does help, because even if they believe the disinformation, they’ll still be less likely to take it up as unquestioned truth.

But you have to get there first for it to work.

Missouri health clinics priced out of gender-affirming care by rising malpractice premiums. This is intentional, and a technique from before they overturned Roe v. Wade. If you can’t ban health care, you can at least make it impossibly expensive. Either way, you get what you want: no health care for the people you hate.

Conservative Magazine Wonders Why Women Don’t Accept Transphobia as the New Feminism, also writes that women would be happier if they’d just accept that “evolutionary biology” says that women are different to and therefore lesser than men. Astoundingly, this has had some traction in the UK. Less, happily, in the United States so far.

Also in the UK: James Cleverly to ease restrictions on anti-abortion protesters outside clinics. They’re coming for abortion rights there, too.

This Week in Barrel Scraping: Chaya Raichik Accuses United CEO of Wearing Drag. It’s because United supports having a diverse workplace, because of course it is.

Finally, let’s wrap up on a long-read: The Outing of Bubba Copeland:

Before Stonewall, getting outed could be deadly. After an Alabama mayor’s suicide, it’s clear that’s a climate some want to revive.

By Evan Urquhart, for Slate

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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

Republicans love racism and hate education so very very much, so when they can do both at once it’s a bloody bonanza! And they’ve been really going at both again over the winter.

Where do we start?

DeSantis was behind this: New Florida law blocks Chinese students from academic labs. It’s Chinese as in came themselves from China, specifically, but c’mon. Like this won’t be seen as the racist broadside it is.

Also in Republican Florida, Palestinian-American Student Expelled Over Mom’s Online Support for Gaza. Mmm, group punishment and oppression. It’s a private school, but that doesn’t really make it better, just maybe less actionable.

In Republican Texas, Prosecutors Won’t Drop Charges Against Brownsville ISD Honor Student who was arrested on bullshit charges after reporting his principal for bullying. HE’S ELEVEN YEARS OLD. ELEVEN. And for a little while, they put him in solitary, because that’s who they are. It’s the kind of sadistic horror show that wouldn’t play in a movie because it’s too bluntly evil, too stupidly, blindly cruel, and yet, here we are.

(In non-education related abuse by cops, we have Ohio prosecutors broke rules to win convictions and got away with it and 3 Tacoma police officers found not guilty in 2020 death of Manny Ellis – the latter is now being investigated by the Feds.)

Naturally, Elon Musk has been involved in attacking schools and boosting racist lies on his fascist propaganda fountain once known as Twitter, where he endorsed a tweet saying students at HBCUs – Historically Black Colleges and Universities – have very low IQ scores, far below the (white, obviously) average. He may’ve done a little walking back of that, but if he did, it’s just to cover his ass. He does this shit all the time, and uses the power of his platform to broadcast it to as many people as possible.

Over in Republican Texas, evangelicals continue their efforts to either destroy public schools or take them over as religious schools: In Texas, debate over school chaplains escalates school board culture wars. “Conservative Christian activists are hoping to turn Texas public schools into a ‘mission field.'” They’ve long seen it that way, of course.

Furor over the Ivies — and crickets about Florida addresses the right’s war against the Ivy League schools. This was written before they were able to whip up enough of a ragefest to force out Claudine Gay, but sets the stage well. The key takeaway is that this didn’t start with her and won’t end with her.

Talking of, Indiana University just suspended a tenured professor for two semesters. Officially it’s for bullshit reasons involving improper paperwork and use of a meeting room, in reality it’s in response to allowing an anti-war Israeli to speak about Palestine.

(Meanwhile, on the pro-war Israeli side, Israeli military chief rabbi-designate under fire over remarks on rape, by which they mean he said raping enemy women was basically okay, that “it was permitted [for warriors] to ‘satisfy the evil inclination by lying with attractive Gentile women against their will.’” He doesn’t deny saying it, he just says it was a “theoretical question.” Don’t fucking care, he’s still literally arguing “soldiers raping enemy women is fine.”)

To round off and give you an historical medium-read that’s not too bad, Teen Vogue once again does the heavy lifting so many US newspapers won’t, writing up how the Second Ku Klux Klan rose to prominence a century ago. As they say, it’s good background to have in times like these.

Finally, I have a few updates about anti-LGBTQ campaigns outside the US that I haven’t been able to fit in anywhere else. So given a lack of “anywhere else,” let’s get these out here:

  • This is one of the way anti-LGBTQ law is used against straight people, as Russian rapper who attended ‘almost naked’ party jailed for second time. It wasn’t his New Year’s party, he was just there, but they’re making an example out of him, charging him with “Gay Propaganda” and re-charging him with something new every time he gets out.
  • Burundi President calls for stoning of gay couples. While African countries had their fair share of post-Colonial-era homophobia, American evangelical groups have been encouraging it, growing it, and test-marketing anti-queer hate propaganda for decades.
  • For example, in Uganda, where fundamentalist evangelical group The Family are hugely behind much of the propaganda used to whip their government into making our existence punishable by death. There’s not that much we can do, but there are measures like this: Joe Biden boots Uganda from trade deal over horrific “Kill the Gays” law. It’s not much, but it’s something that carries at least a little actual weight.
  • Meanwhile in the UK, Disgusting Transphobic Labour Leader Set Upon By Disgusting Transphobes, as Terf Island shows how these purity tests have no lower limit and are eternally self-ratcheting. There’s now a conspiracy that Keir Starmer – who has been running from his previous lip-servious support for the rights of trans-people since he realised he has a shot at becoming PM – has a trans child and they’re using it to go after him. The horrible party is that he’s still better than the Tories – if he can manage somehow not to fuck this all up.

That’s it for today. Good luck out there, stay healthy, and stay warm. Things will slowly get better – but only after we win in 2024.

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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

I’m pretty far behind again so this is a pot-pourri, a linkpost sorted by goals of the right as topics, of collected news stories from the last week.

They want women to die if they aren’t good at making babies (presumably for Jesus):

They want political violence from the very top…

…and lower down, on the ground:

They want Christian Authoritarianism:

They absolutely want people to shut the fuck up and do what they’re told, particularly when it comes to any discussion of racism or homophobia:

And they really, really, really want to fuck up the queers:

Basically, I’ve said it long enough that I should be blue in the face by now:

They want Putin’s Russia. That’s why they’re willing to end NATO and betray Ukraine and more.

They want what he has, here, and with themselves in charge.

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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

Last week, I posted about how Republicans were fighting efforts to insure that LGBTQ foster kids aren’t abused, stating in very clear terms that the fundamentalist authoritarians (and Republicans, by extension, since they control the party) actively want queer children abused, for a variety of reasons and also just because they find it fun. They always say it’s not about that, it’s about “religious liberty,” and that’s always a lie, because that “liberty” is always the right to abuse queer kids.

I got pushback on this. I was dismissed. I was accused of gaslighting. I have decades of studying these folks and have documented it for about as long, and yet.

So.

Here are a group of MAGAts on video in one of their own podcasts saying everything I said about what they want, in their own words, about themselves, now, in 2024. Saying that they enjoyed beating up queer kids – and straight kids with LGBTQ parents – because it was fun. Because nobody stopped them, because it forced queer kids into the closet, because queer kids deserved it, and because it enforced the idea that queer equals bad and is worthy of violence and contempt. And they miss it and want to bring it back and be able to do it all again.

DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY MORE FUCKING QUESTIONS?

BECAUSE THIS IS THEY THEMSELVES SAYING EXACTLY WHAT I SAID ABOUT THEM IN EVERY WAY. THIS IS WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY WANT.

Is that enough evidence, or do I still sound like I’m gaslighting?

Look, this is who they’ve always been. Yet again, this isn’t me saying this stuff about them; this is them saying things about themselves. What they say here was what they believed when I got into this, when they said exactly all these same things; it’s still so now, in 2024. They’ve said all of this and more amongst themselves, in their discussion groups, on their Christian radio stations nobody else listened to – well, except for me – for longer than I’ve been around. The only difference between the guys in this podcast and the rank-and-file is that the rank-and-file have learned that it’s bad optics to say it in public, and mostly stopped.

Mostly.

That’s not the only reason I know it, but it’s one of the reasons I know it.

So I am telling you, stop making excuses and accept it: abuse of queer children is the goal. Remember this every time you see another round of anti-LGBTQ legislation, particularly legislation aimed at queer kids, because they don’t want to protect queer kids, they want to hurt queer kids – and the straight kids of queer parents.

The damage they cause is intentional. The abuse is always the goal.

And that absolutely includes their anti-trans laws. Every single one of them. No exceptions.

Just listen to them and let them tell you, because sooner or later, as soon as they think it’s safe, they always absolutely will.

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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

Fine, let’s talk Trump and MAGA.

When I talk about things getting easier after 2024 – note that’s after, not during – I mean in terms of their absolute effective political power going into hopefully terminal decline. I don’t mean “things still can’t get violent,” because they can, and already have, and are continuing to be. It’s not at all unreasonable to suspect that they’ll in fact lean more heavily, not less so, on violence once they realise the political route is closed off to them.

The good news buried in that is that, again, most of them are past the age where they’re likely to actually engage in actual violence. But that’s by no means true of all of them, and some are entirely within the “kill the [commies|fags|dykes|(racial slurs here)] range.

But let’s keep it to 2024, for now, and lead with the latest historian begging Americans not to downplay Trump’s threats to use the military against them. Rolling Stone have a writeup on other plans to flood the country with troops. We have a report on how he wants some of his old aides from his first term to be executed, and of course we know they consider those convicted in the previous attempt to be political prisoners and “hostages.” Former members of his administration say that Trump’s stated plans to go after non-complaint media for revenge are absolutely serious – and these are people looking forward to being part of it, being “yes, and we can’t wait.”

Mike Godwin, the creator of “Godwin’s Law” on Usenet, says: Yes, it’s okay to compare Trump to Hitler. Don’t let me stop you. I mean, when someone says they will be a dictator, believe them.

There would also be the inevitable mass of corruption in a second Trump term. Authoritarian governments are almost always filled to the brim with it, and a Trump back in power will be less “exception” and more “exemplar” of personal enrichment at the expense of citizen, taxpayer, and country. It’ll make Clarance Thomas’s bribery and graft issues – and Trump’s own first term corruption – a low-noise baseline by comparison.

None of that even begins to get into what he’d do for his best friend Putin. Withdraw the US from NATO? It was reportedly planned for his second term. Cease all military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to hand it over to Russia? Russian propagandists openly say so, and hope he gets back into office. They also expect the Republican Party as a whole to make sure Ukraine falls into Russian hands. And from intelligence reports, Putin himself believes that Ukraine would fall within months without continued American aid.

But before any of that can happen, they have to get back into power, so let’s talk the 2024 election and Republicans against the Republic. I think they expect to lose, and are planning accordingly.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie tells states moving to disqualify Trump via the 14th Amendment that a Republican-controlled House may nullify millions of votes to get back at them. As in, they’ll fail to ratify the electors. That’s the same plan as last time – refuse to accept the result, throw the election into the House which they control, and then, put Trump back in power.

That’s only one axis. There’s also their Always Time Food, voter suppression, which they’re still ramping up as hard as they can and in ways that matter. The latest amazingly bald-faced example? Republicans are threatening to sue the the Nevada Secretary of State, Carson City and other counties for registering voters effectively.

But the main course today is Rolling Stone’s under-read and under-appreciated article, Inside Trump’s Plot to Corrupt the 2024 Election With ‘Garbage’ Data. It’s about the deeper meaning of Trump and MAGA’s attacks on ERIC, the system previously used to help states coordinate voter registration. Spoiler: it’s all part of setting up to contest the 2024 election the same way they contested 2020.

The intent in destroying ERIC is to create more room for doubt about his inevitable claims of election fraud in 2024 by causing voter registration data in Republican states to be less accurate, and thereby create “plausible deniability” (to use an old term), making claims of fraud sound … if not more reasonable, certainly more possible. It’s to give his supporters more room to believe his lies.

The story also covers new efforts at pre-election voter suppression (such as the above), and Republican efforts to recruit thousands of people to serve as “poll watchers” and “election integrity directors” to create as much confusion as possible while intimidating Democratic voters.

As in 2020, all their plans are very much public. They are following Steve Bannon’s law of “flood the zone with shit” and putting everything and everyone they can in place in order to seize power anyway if – or I think when – they lose in 2024.

If you’re wondering: Mike Johnson is such a person. Trump thinks he’s “good” on elections, which is to say, will break every rule and law to make sure the results come out Trump’s way. That’s in the Rolling Stone article. And I agree.

As a cherry on top, here’s a small and mostly symbolic item, a story that came out as I was writing this update:

Donald Trump didn’t sign loyalty oath for Illinois ballot that pledges not to ‘advocate the overthrow of the government’.

It’s optional, of course. He didn’t have to sign it; it’s not actually required. But it’s part of the process, and he signed it in 2016 and 2020, and he refuses to sign it now.

What’s that say to you?

As Beau of the Fifth Column says, “Republicans want to rule you, not represent you.” That has a better hook than, “the authoritarian rot goes all the way down in the Republican Party” – but both are equally correct.


In recent news about the previous coup attempt:

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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

Here, let’s have a bit of good news on a topic I talk about a lot, because there actually is some, and then go into some popular disinformation, how and why it’s wrong, and methods used to create and spread it.

The good news: Democracy might be finally returning to Wisconsin as the state Supreme Court rules along ideological lines that discontiguous districts violate the state constitution and are therefore illegally gerrymandered. Republicans are, of course, screaming to high hell – they’re the one who made these maps to insure they can’t be voted out, after all, and even keep supermajorities when losing the popular vote statewide.

It’s not over, but the odds are good for at least a partial return to representative government in Wisconsin.

Now, to our main topic today, disinformation:

This particular bit of truth is frankly bad, but you need to know it for countering fascist lies: The United States is producing more oil than any country in history. In real terms, again, yes, that’s very bad! But part of the fash argument is that Trump needs to be a dictator to “drill, drill, drill” and we’re right now literally the biggest oil producer ever, and an oil exporter. Even were the argument was being made in good faith – which it literally never is – it’d still be incredibly wrong.

Another popular lie at the moment is that crime is through the roof and soaring; this will be used as a major attack vector against the Democrats, as it always is. The problem is the usual problem in that it’s not true. Some of it has been active disinformation, like the retail group that got caught making up that whole “mass organised shoplifting” story they were giving as a reason to close stores. Yes, that was a complete lie from top to bottom. Another is the murder rate, and while the murder rate did go up for a little while during the peak of the plague – to levels of the 1990s, I might note, still low historically – 2023 had the biggest drop in murders in history. In fact, almost all categories of crime are sharply down. Remember that, and use it.

(I’m serious about that murder rate one. As I’ve written before, I had to talk a couple of months ago with someone I know who should know better about Seattle being yes, actually, basically fine, and not a hellscape from which people are fleeing. That’s how thick the disinformation is. The biggest problem we have is the cost of housing, which is what’s created our homelessness crisis. Tell me: how many burned-down hulks of cities have soaring property values? Not many. Keep that observation handy, you’ll find uses for it.)

Attacked by conservatives, UW misinformation researcher gears up for 2024, reports the Seattle Times. Sadly, the Washington State Republican Party even in the west is not much better than the national party, and in the east, it’s absolutely everything you can imagine – particularly the longest-standing fascists in Spokane Valley. Fundamentally, all Republicans see discussion and description of disinformation campaigns as enemy action, and have been taking SLAPP-style legal action against lead researcher Dr. Kate Starbird (yes, that Kate Starbird, star basketball player for the Seattle Storm; get her in a band and she’ll be our own real life Buckaroo Banzai) to shut her up. But so far, UW is standing firmly behind her.

Our local Republicans are also going after our own Secretary of State for similar reasons, trying to stop his efforts to track election disinformation.

One potentially useful bit of information out of Sen. Ron Johnson stunned when CNN asks him to back up his MAGA lies is that a lot of Republicans have become so used to the coddling and support from the far-right media/propaganda sphere that they’re no longer ready for any kind of pushback whatever, and can be out and out flummoxed when they get it. Handling pushback is a skill like any other, and it atrophies when not used.

This is a weakness; take advantage of it.

Here’s one of the many disinformation angles you’ll be seeing in 2024: Actors Recorded Videos for ‘Vladimir.’ It Turned Into Russian Propaganda. “Microsoft found that celebrities were tricked into making videos used to attack Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.” While yes, obviously, generative “AI” will be used to create the bulk flood of disinformation – as is already happening on Facebook – those who traffic in such trade will use everything at their disposal, and they have a lot of money to spend, so tread – and believe – carefully.

TPM writes about The Russian Propaganda Mill Beaming Out Of A Florida Strip Mall. Ben Swann, the face of the network and a registered Russian agent, naturally comes from the evangelical fundamentalist circles I write about so often, and was born into their culture. They produce Russian propaganda – anti-LGBT programmes, conspiracy theories including pizzagate and vaccine disinformation, “Ukraine is American Imperialism” content for Russia Today and other Russian propaganda outlets, and the other sorts of things you’d expect. The names you want to watch out for are “Rebel Media Productions,” “Sovren Media,” and “Truth in Media.”

On the topic of Russian-leaning far-right propaganda sources, “Verified” (paid) users on X-Twitter dumped out massive amounts of disinformation this past week about the big earthquake in Japan, all while X-Twitter itself rate-limited and silenced actual information from Japan’s emergency services. Similar ratios have been happening over the Israel-Hamas war and ongoing disaster in Gaza.

COVID disinformation: Arizona MAGAt Kari Lake latest made-up bullshit claim is that COVID-19 was engineered and released to hurt Donald Trump in particular as part of a global conspiracy against the God Emperor. And Ron DeSantis’s ideologically-appointed surgeon general is using completely made up batshittery – I realise those are highly technical terms, but I did do original research in genetics, so forgive me – to push for a ban on mRNA-based COVID vaccinations.

The Party of Plague is still the Party of Plague. If nothing else, never forget that.

Yet another study again demonstrates that the anti-LGBTQ lies about “transition regret” are, indeed, lies, with this one again showing the typical less-than-1% regret rate amongst transitioners. I note that this is much lower than almost all if not all other surgeries, including specifically CIS-gendered people’s gender affirming surgeries, which have a regret rate over 14 times as high. (It’s also lower than the regret rate for non-gender-related surgeries, such as “medically necessary heart surgery.” That’s from memory but I’m confident I’m remembering it right.)

A federal judge hearing a challenge to a transgender health care ban for minors and restrictions for adults noted… that Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly spread false information about doctors mutilating children’s genitals even though there’s been no such documented cases. Obviously, this is a standard lie of the far right in general now, a lie made up to use as an election issue by raising fear and hate against LGBT people. What’s notable here is that a judge is saying it, and that has some weight.

Leaked emails reveal that the tech giant Palantir has hired Topham Guerin to pay influencers to attack Good Law Project on social media – but the source of the money is to be kept ‘confidential’. You might recall Palantir as a major force behind far-right energizing in the 2016 election, and pushing Brexit through dis- and misinformation.

I don’t typically report on the beefiest of domestic Russian conspiracy theory batshittery, but it’s so firmly established at this point amongst the highest levels of Russian media and society that I think I have to now. Normally, it’s nonsense like “We’ve already killed all the Ukrainians, there aren’t any left, we’re fighting NATO troops now” and “Satanic United States, the Satanic Catholic Pope, and Satanist Zelensky are all literally Satan and we’re literally the forces of light.” But my favourite from the last month is probably this one:

A Russian State Duma deputy, an FSB general and others have co-written a ‘scientific paper’ about the genocide of Russians by “beast people”, feminists who worship the demoness Lilith, a lack of men due to a US plot, reptilian infiltrators, and oral sex.

The St. Petersburg-based journal “Legal Science: History and Modernity” has published a paper which argues that Russia is under siege from ‘non-humans,’ defined as Westerners, Asian migrants and supporters of democracy and liberalism.

The authors divide the world’s population into two groups: humans, created by God, and non-humans, created by the Lord God:

“In the Bible there are two main cosmic entities, God and the Lord God. … There are two main kinds of human beings living on planet Earth: ‘people of the Earth’, created in the image and likeness of God; and people created ‘from the dust of the earth’ with the help of cosmic gene technology. …”

It goes on at the link. I recommend the full thread, as well as most of what Russian Media Monitor puts out. The Russians are deep into real L. Ron Hubbard batshittery here – straight up, this in particular literally sounds like something stolen from Mission Earth – and it’d be hilarious if they didn’t 1) like war, 2) want to restore a lost empire, and 3) have nukes.

Oh, and if anyone you know pretends Russia would stop at Ukraine, please tell them to stop. The Duma have been busily repudiating the documents signed breaking up the Soviet Union, so as to claim they are the lawful government of all the former member states. Russian propagandists say outright they’re coming for other former-Soviet countries next – and maybe Poland or Finland, or both, for good measure.

As I like to say when quoting the fundamentalist movement: this isn’t me saying bad things about them, this is me reporting what they themselves actually say.

Putin wants the Soviet Union back, and absolutely will not stop at Ukraine.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

July 2025

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