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This reminds me of a 2010 poll of Tea Party supporters in which 84% said that "the views of the people involved in the Tea Party movement generally reflect the views of most Americans." Only 20% thought Obama shared the values of most Americans.

 Full polling data here. I was asked to give a talk on campus about the Tea Party in 2010, and one of my main points was that it was a weakness of the movement that it had such a delusional perception of the American people. Oops. https://t.co/DQx43ckn7R
Anyway...the dynamic described here has been a long time coming. https://t.co/skjA9Zl1gz
That's the weird, seemingly illogical, thing about the right's culture war. They simultaneously think of themselves as speaking for the majority of Americans, AND they think that they are the saving remnant protecting a decadent society from ruin.
What squares this circle is the assumption that "the real American people" consist of straight white, rural or suburban people, & anyone not in that category doesn't really count as an American. That's how right wing culture warriors can both be the "majority," and a minority.
That explicitly exclusionary vision of "Americanism" (which is often articulated in more implicit ways like "our beautiful suburbs w/o low income housing") has very deep roots in our political culture. Trump's GOP hardly invented it.
But what's arguably new is the pride with which Trump's GOP has embraced the politics of hierarchy and exclusion. No more paeans to "compassionate conservatism," no matter how empty that rhetoric was. No more talk of "a nation of immigrants," no matter how weak that often was.
Thanks to this person in the replies who said it far more succinctly than I could have. https://t.co/ylrOwmEJyw
Understanding contemporary conservatism as an attack on pluralism helps explain the ever more explicit Islamophobia of the American right, the transphobia, the hatred of higher education, the hatred of "Hollywood," the disdain for cities.
"Pluralism" is an essential value in any functioning, modern democracy. When one party ceases to even give lip service to pluralism, then it threatens to transform that democracy into something quite different.
This is why, IMHO, there is important work to be done in red & purple parts of the US to talk people off the cliff of GOP anti-pluralism. My sense (hope?) is that most (not all) of my fellow Americans are pluralists in practice, even if they may vote an anti-pluralist party.
Part of this hope derives from having grown up in a small town in PA that is now big time Trump country. Within their own communities/neighborhoods, there was often a good deal of toleration for difference. A kind of "live and let live" attitude.
But there was also a suspicion of "outsiders" borne of a lack of knowledge about the world outside that place. I'd guess that over 50% of my classmates had never left the state before they were 18. The "outside world" was an abstraction to them (and me).
Reagan's "welfare queen" rhetoric really resonated in the 80s (when I was in HS there). There was not a single African-American student in my HS, but boy did my classmates spend time talking about black people as if they knew something about them.
There is no better way to get a white, Trump voting former classmate of mine from Central Pa to recirculate a pro-Trump message on FB, than to have it come out of the mouth of a person of color. If they have a black co-worker, they will assuredly post pictures of them together.
So in their interpersonal lives, these people express a desire to be pluralists. I was the only Jewish kid in my HS, and while this sometimes produced some awkwardness, it mostly produced an "oh, that's kind of weird and exotic and I don't know what to do with it, but cool."
But that unfamiliarity and discomfort can also be turned to more angry, sinister purposes by savvy politicians and media outlets that see an advantage in it. Those former HS friends can now be found circulating Soros memes in abundance.
A kid I played Little League with is now a full blown Q adherent who posts videos fantasizing about the day when the "cosmopolitan elite, the cultural marxists" (like me) will be "eliminated from the earth." Needless to say, I don't believe he thought that way about me in 1981.
I also suspect that were I to encounter him IRL and ask him about it, he'd still stick to his guns about the Q stuff but he'd assure me that he knows I'm not one of the bad guys and that he means me no harm. Perhaps I'm naive, but I think he'd really mean it too.
What the GOP has done in the county where I grew up is that they've encouraged people to look upon their neighbors as enemies. To look at that barista with the nose ring not as a kid expressing themselves, but as an antifa terrorist who hates America. https://t.co/n8nz08cLOq
"Turning neighbors into enemies" is a hallmark of fascist political cultures. Turning benign differences into existential threats is the essence of anti-pluralistic politics. At that point, that is virtually the only message that the GOP is sending its voters.
How many times was this story repeated across the US. People vote for Trump. A person of color who they like is harmed by Trump's policies. People then say (in earnest, I believe) wait a minute, I didn't want *him* to be harmed. He's a good guy. https://t.co/1O89mGJBNs
Connecting the dots between federal policy and what happens in one's community is incredibly difficult, even for people with PHDs in Political Science or History. Most voters just don't see those connections, and the GOP has taken advantage of that knowledge gap.

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Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
It's important to note how deeply rooted & completely canonical these kooky ideas are in the US far right, & how dangerous it is that a sitting president is giving legitimacy to them. It's like Father Coughlin, the John Birch Society, and Geo Lincoln Rockwell had an orange baby.


Thanks (I think) to @z3dster for bringing this batshit tweet to my attention.

There's a long history of the American center-right and center-left laughing at this kind of stuff. It is indeed laughably ludicrous. But it's important to know that to millions of people, this is their truth. This is how they see the world. And now the President is condoning it.

One hallmark of fascism is that it defines "communism" as its enemy. One can be opposed to communism without being a fascist. But it's impossible to be fascist without being obsessed with the existential (and often hysterically overblown) threat of communism.

Every significant, US variant of fascism has depicted itself as a movement of Christian patriots defending the US from anti-American enemies of Christ. One can be a Christian and/or a patriot without being a fascist, but fascists almost always call themselves Christian patriots.
POLITICS
Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
The "center" of American politics is not a fixed point, it shifts over time. What is "the center" today would have been considered pretty far left in the 1990s. Likewise, what was the imagined "center" in the mid-1980s would have been considered pretty far right in the 70s.

One of Lincoln's skills as a politician was that he moved the center of American politics into an antislavery place, and he also evolved in his own thinking about slavery and race. Finding and helping to move "the center" is one (not the only) form of effective politics.

There is no such thing as a democratic political culture that lacks an imagined "center" and people who inhabit it. This is especially the case in a diverse and often fractious nation. The politics of persuasion is all about moving that imagined center in the direction you want.

Most of the people currently on the American far right are highly unlikely to move to the center, because their basic political commitments are hostile to America's multi-racial democracy. One task ahead is to prevent that segment of our political culture from growing.

How to do that is unclear. History shows that deplatforming can often work. History also shows that sometimes right wing radicals can gain fame and attention by presenting themselves as "martyrs" who've been persecuted by "elites." There's no iron clad formula.
POLITICS
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Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
Rush Limbaugh will be remembered as one of the most consequential figures in the history of American conservatism, because he reflected and shaped the world view of the post-Reagan GOP base more than any other single person.


Limbaugh is also a good example of how the distinction between “respectable” conservatism and “the more radical fringe” can easily be overstated.


In 1992 George HW Bush had Rush Limbaugh open his final campaign event before Election Day.


Rush descended from a well-off and well-connected family in Missouri, but he played the role of “pissed off Joe Six Pack” really well. He’s a perfect example of “plutocratic populism.”

Limbaugh’s cruel bigotry and aura of aggrieved entitlement was a feature, not a bug. In an era of shifting social mores, Limbaugh gave his listeners permission to be a-holes and be proud about it. He perfected the schtick that would get Trump elected.
RUSH
Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
Wish folks cared as much about countering the political culture of far right hyper-nationalistic populism that traffics in anti-Semitic tropes and naturalized conceptions of racial and gender hierarchies, as they care about dissing those who use the word “fascism” to describe it.

Ultimately, I think that’s what lay behind this terminological dispute. Is democracy more threatened by “center-left/center-right neoliberalism” or by the far right? People who resist the f-word say the former is the *real* threat. People who use the f-word focus on the latter.

My sense is that the people who use the "f-word" are not the neoliberal simpletons their critics tend to think they are. And likewise, the f-word refuseniks are no fans of the far right, they just don't see it as being as powerful and threatening as others do.

This might be overly reductive, but I think at least some of this has to do with where one lives. If one lives in a very blue part of the country, I can see how the threat of far right paramilitaries would seem hyperbolic and exaggerated.

I happen to live in a state capitol were heavily armed, far right paramilitaries have spent the past year assaulting people on a regular basis and working in cahoots with GOP legislators to invade and shut down the state legislature. Things feel quite edgy here.
POLITICS
Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
I seem to recall a story from a while back that revealed that Ginni Thomas met weekly with a group of right wing operatives that included the Project Veritas hoax artist.


Oh hey.

Gosh, look at that.

It’s all just so absurd, and yet so potent.


Here’s Anna Khait speaking at a pro-Trump, pro-steal the election rally last December.
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1) Looks like Trump KNEW what the coup plotters were plotting on the 6th, so he arrived an hour late to the stage, and talked longer than he intended, before he asked MAGA to walk peacefully down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol.

He also didn't walk WITH them as he promised.
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Edwin Hayward
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@uk_domain_names
Handy guide for Dominic Raab and other Brexiteers, and for anyone keen to replace our EU trade with trade with the rest of the world on WTO terms...


You can't magic away the vast distances involved. Clue: we fly in only 1/192th of our trade compared to the amount that arrives via sea


But even if you invented a teleporter tomorrow, WTO terms are so bad, so stacked against us, that a no-deal Brexit will be a total economic disaster


And while the Brexiteers fantasise, real jobs are being lost, investments are drying up, companies are moving assets to the EU27 or redomiciling. All already happened and happening right now, not in some mythical


Of course, there are many, many myths that Brexiteers perpetuate that are total fiction. You've seen a couple of them already. The thread below busts a whole lot
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Day1JTrumpet
Day1JTrumpet
@Day1Trumpet
... continue part two
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Feisty Cat\U0001f339 (@FeistyCat on GAB)
Feisty Cat🌹 (@FeistyCa...
@CHHR01
An orders list will be coming out Mon. Per Lin: likely a ruling in the PA case with GA and MI granted cert with/reversal and remand to follow law in PA case. Then we move on to another Conference next Friday with those orders issued Mon Mar 1st.🙏
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InSearchOfSense
InSearchOfSense
@ganesan312
The initiatives of Congress are to come in two areas. One within the party and the other with other parties.
First Congress has to Improve its communication with people, cadres, leaders and supporters.
Rahul is mainly shouldering this responsibility. But why not other leaders.
/1

It may be argued that some leaders are doing it within their areas. What about other areas, other leaders?
There will be many contenders for posts, maybe even for President’s if given a chance.
Why not leaders volunteer to propagate views, counter the Modi regime on the field?
/2

Some leaders give out statements in media, write their views on social media. Are they enough? Are they doing justice to their potential?
Even during elections, they limit themselves to their constituencies/ state.
Why should they not extend it beyond & even between elections?
/3

The statements of Congress leaders with few exceptions are bland, insipid, prosaic, not interesting and attracting enough to percolate to the people.
How many of their messages reached the people?
Can they not make it more attractive or find other ways to reach the masses?
/4

Some may say there are limitations of age, barriers of territory, egos, invitations, interference.
Most of them are artificial, self-imposed and can be sorted out.
These leaders do not devote themselves to the masses.
If Rahul does it, expected to do it why not others?
/5
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Secondly, their Appearances.
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