3147

Yah, what’s most crazy is that in 2012, the GOP candidate for President actually stated that Russia was the greatest threat on the international stage… And now the GOP is in bed with exactly the same people in Russia. Like, it’s literally the exact same Russians.

I feel like at some point, a bunch of them may have been taking money from groups like the NRA, maybe without even realizing that it was ultimately coming from the Russians. Then, at some point, they’ve learned that they were being manipulated by the Russians, and instead of admitting that they got duped, they have just gone all in and taken the position of “The Russians are great!”

Part of this is because they’ve hitched their wagon to Trump, and Trump is so obviously owned by the Russians, that it’s almost impossible to take a stand against Russia without creating conflict with Trump, and they’re terrified of him. But beyond that, I feel like a LOT of the GOP is owned by Russia at this point. More than I would have previously thought was possible.

3148

Eh… not sure where this goes. There’s a whole thread.

3149

What Timex says here is true plus there’s another factor that we just cannot discount: the reality distortion field generated by Fox/Limbaugh et. al. – it’s very important to be aware that the GOP right now both presents itself as and also falsely believes that it is an anti-authoritarian party that supports due process and the rule of law: it’s just that every single factual occurrence is distorted such that the law always favors whatever position the GOP has taken and that any contradictory evidence is dismissed as fake news.

Any discussion of principle relating to the GOP is moot because it all gets sucked down the gravitational well of the reality distortion field, and the fact that the GOP itself has become massively unprincipled is also sucked down that same well such that they believe they are the only principled side and it’s the evile libs who are unprincipled.

There’s a lot wrong with American today but the biggest thing is the reality distortion of Fox etc. It’s a huge problem.

My only hope is that there is enough of the American populace either outside the field or being weakly effected by the field that reality can still win elections and push back against reality distortion.

In that sense, the current impeachment is neither a legal process nor a political process: it’s information warfare.

3150

I feel bad for laughing at Mitt about that

3151

This is totally true, and it’s one of the most frustrating aspects of it all for me.

It’s not like they have even decided, “Oh, well we’ll just change what we believe!”

Instead, they’ve just said, “Well, we’re going to keep believing this, but just not care that we are doing stuff that is diametrically opposed to our stated beliefs!”

And even if you point out the obvious, overt hypocrisy, it just doesn’t matter. They just deny it. No matter how objectively obvious it is. They just deny reality. Stuff that isn’t in any way a matter of opinion. Most things in the past could be considered through various elements of nuance… The GOP supported bad guys, but it was in service of fighting against the REAL bad guys, the Soviets. You could at least make some kind of coherent platform.

But now, we’re talking about the GOP just denying stuff that is objectively true. Or changing their publicly stated position every day… or sometimes hour to hour. First, the whistleblower’s complaints were all false. Then we saw the actual read-out memo, and the GOP simultaneously said that everything in the call was fine (despite it clearly containing stuff that wasn’t fine), while also saying that there was no quid pro quo, and that’s what’ important. But now we know that there was an explicit quid pro quo. So now that doesn’t matter any more.

But if you point out that they said X, and then the next day X is shown to be false, they just deny having said X.

A big part of it is that Trump’s core base are functioning on the cognitive level of dogs. They literally do not hear any of the words. They’re operating purely based on tone of voice and emotional response.

What’s crazy, is that it’s not just information warfare.

It’s SOVIET information warfare. They’re using, straight up, soviet disinformation tactics. Literally the same tactics.

3152

On the other hand, the one reason not to take anti-Russia hysteria too seriously is that it is basically anti-communism trotted about by people who are more or less permanently anti-communist hysterics.

Russia’s interference would be laughable if the GOP weren’t actively aiding them and preventing effective countermeasures.

3153

Actually I would say they are functioning on the cognitive level of cultists. I don’t say this lightly. I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness and my mom is still an active member. I am familiar with the language and reasoning techniques they use to re-frame all reality through an incredibly narrow and self-reinforcing lens. And the modern GOP uses many of those same techniques, which are not all that dissimilar from Soviet-style propaganda warfare.

3154

So basically Trump takes the money he stole from the public for his most recent weekend at Mar-a-lago, gives it back, and this whole thing goes away. Justice!

3155

To be completely fair, though, how many Democrats would prefer a country where it wasn’t possible to outlaw abortion, own functional military weapons, or discriminate against minorities and where everyone had to contribute to universal health care and climate change protections? Are there a lot of us who would prefer to preserve the rights of Republicans to threaten the climate, fire gays, oppress women, and run around with assault rifles? Saying you prefer democracy is only lip service until you actually have to choose between Lenin and Jeff Sessions.

Yeah, Iran/Contra was a shining example of democratic norms.

Opposing the Soviets doesn’t mean being anti-authoritarian. I don’t remember a lot of GOP leading lights in the counter-culture revolution, but that was an anti-authoritarian movement.

So… Carter was the authoritarian figure?

It’s the same platform now, it’s just that the bad guys are the Dems and the globalists.

I mean, they are worse about it now, but Reaganomics, Reagan’s anti-single-payer campaign, the Iraq War, austerity, and probably a hundred other examples in-between show that it isn’t a new thing.

Because it was never the tactics they objected to. That was just an excuse to try to tip the scale for their real goal, which was unadulterated capitalism.

3156

You understand the difference here though, don’t you?

How those issues are complex to the degree that a position on them isn’t as clearly right or wrong as “did you say this thing, which we have you on tape as saying?”

3157

“Many conservatives simply value the preservation of liberal democracy less than the maintenance of their movement’s power.”

There’s a conservative movement? When did that start happening? Maybe they’ll apply their fondness for rule of law, a fundamental principle of conservatism, to the Republican party!

That Intelligencer article is just doing that dumb thing of conflating “conservative”, “Republican”, and “Trump supporter”. One of those things is not like the other.

-Tom

3158

Or, you know, maybe you’re mistaken.

3159

I left climate change off the list - knew I forgot something. Denying objective reality is denying objective reality, whether you can create a confusing story to hide behind or not. It’s more blatant now, not fundamentally different.

3160

Ok, so you do not see the difference. That’s fine, that’s certainly going to lead to a different perspective.

3161

Tom has a Michael Bolton problem. As in, “Why should I change my name? He’s the one who sucks.”

Now you know how progressives feel about the term “liberal” being turned into a slur.* Suck it up, pick another name, and move on.

*Though, irony of ironies, thanks to Fox inadvertently normalizing it by using it to describe absolutely everything Fox is not, Dems can now call themselves “socialists” and get cheers instead of boos.

3162

I would accept that – good one, actually! – but I prefer to think of it as an English language problem.

We should know better than to ascribe to Trump supporters (i.e. Republicans) a political ideology. That’s simply not what’s happening here. When we call them conservatives, we’re actually giving them too much credit. We might as well call Britney Spears fans “conservatives”.

-Tom

3163

con-serve-atives, people who serve a con(man)

3164

We might as well say Reagan supporters didn’t really have any ideology. But we don’t; we say they were conservative.

3165

A random dude on the internets managed to channel and summarize my feelings about this whole defending conservatism thing in a comment to a blog post.

The Comment In Full @ Crooked Timber

The group that fits this description has been called many things, like Democratic-Republicans, Dixiecrats, and currently Republicans.

3166

This is very, very good.