dobrojim wrote:I fully expect the cult will come up with what they think is a reasonable explanation
for "something big" not happening on Saturday. It's what has happened in the past.
Rational and/or critical thinking is not their strong suit.
Religio-political doomsday cultists are just like any other doomsday cultists. Walk around with a sandwich board proclaiming the end of the world. When the end of the world does not come, just change the date.
I somehow ended up on some right wing mailing list that’s resulted in me receiving texts from right wing political action committees. They come “directly” from Trump, DeSantis, and a bunch of other Republicans that are lower down the chain. They all have the same tone, send us money and defeat the liberals that are destroying our country in November or else all is lost.
In my experience with Trump supporters, and I have a bit of it, I see addiction to fear, like the adrenaline rush from a video game or your team’s game going down to the wire, or a sci -fi movie with tyrannical alien lizards secretly controlling the world. Blowouts are boring. Close games are exciting, all-or-nothing, everything on the line. Winning close games is ecstasy, and the agony of defeat is that “they cheated!” Constant fear. My Trump supporter friends and family have been conditioned to live in constant fear, and that keeps the cash and ego trains rolling. Not Pavlov’s dog, more like Pavlov’s Triggered Karen, with money.
All politics plays on fear, but the Republican party is much better than the Democratic party at stoking fear in rank-and-file supporters. With the overturning of Roe v Wade (aided by three justices who uniformly lied under oath), they may have overplayed the fear hand.
Republicans scare their supporters with end of the world, stolen elections, murderous illegals, drug-addicted transgender pedophiles sharing a bathroom with your child, Comet Pizza, and other compelling issues detached from reality. And while everyone is distracted by these fictions the Republican party is tearing down democratic safeguards. They scream “freedom” while appearing to be just like any other authoritarian movement on the ascent.
Democrats now have an actual, authentic, real issue that they told us we should be afraid about all along, And then it happened. Under Republican ideology, women are second class citizens who must subordinate their individual liberty to the male controlled pro-life movement.
I don’t come from an overly liberal family, but with the exception of one evangelical, all of the women in my extended family including moderates, Republicans, and former Republicans, have flatly rejected the Republican party, and Roe v. Wade is the primary issue that unites them. As far as I know, none of these women have ever had an abortion. Right wingers and anti-abortionists really don’t understand that for most women it’s not about the right to have an abortion, it’s about who has sovereignty over their bodies. They know that if the state can force a child to give birth to her rapist’s baby, the Handmaid’s Tale is just around the corner. They see an actual doomsday happening to them.
It’s a game to Trumpists. But the Most Dangerous Game was also a game. They must win, and if they do, all really is lost. The links in pancake’s post demonstrate some of the effects of such psychological conditioning. Thanks to Trump‘s cult of personality and relentless disinformation campaign, the Republican party has transformed into the most dangerous threat to US democracy I have witnessed in my lifetime, much more dangerous than any threat presented by ferners, antifa (whatever that is), Covid mandates. It makes Nixon’s strategy to pull southern racist Democrats into the Republican party (while shamelessly proclaiming themselves the party of Lincoln) seem like garden-variety politics by comparison, but they similarly encourage violence and hatred. A good look for America.
That was practically a Hands post
