God; Guns; Gays; Prayer in Schools; War on Christmas; Politically Correct; Death Tax; Illegals; National Anthem; ACORN; Benghazi; Massive Voter Fraud; Stop the Steal; White Genocide.  These, and dozens of other bumper sticker talking points are all fodder to whip up fake outrage in the base to keep them wound up and angry over non-issues.  The latest is Critical Race Theory.  Virtually unheard of before March of this year, it is now the key topic on Fox Noise, OAN, social media, and Hate Radio all over the country.

What’s going on?  What’s going on is what always goes on…whip up an issue to piss off the base, flog it until it becomes ingrained in conservative DNA, then find another fake issue to piss off the base, flog it until it becomes ingrained in conservative DNA, rinse, repeat.  They use the tactic to drive the base to the polls and for fundraising.

Media Matters has been following these tactics for years and have publish a new review to the Critical Race Theory outrage.  Now, to be clear, Critical Race Theory has been in academia for over 40 years.  It was developed back then, primarily in law schools, including Harvard, to frame the approach to legislation in an effort to understand how racist policies from centuries ago have become ingrained in our laws.  It’s not political and has not been taught in schools to children.  This issue was dredged up as Trump started flogging the fake issue by banning discussions of race in the military and in government agencies call it “sensitivity training” and other pejoratives as part of his campaign in the 2020 election.

To show how these issues are flogged, Media Matters tracks the number of mentions of certain key words.  Here’s their recent tracking of Critical Race Theory on Fox Noise.

Media Matters did a great exposé a couple of years ago about how Bill O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs whipped up the War on Christmas in 2004 which is now resurrected and marched down Bullshit Street every holiday season.  Bullshit is the proper descriptor for all of this, but it’s worse than that.  It’s corrosive and undermines people’s confidence in government, has destroyed all decorum between political ideologies and is a common tactic in totalitarian governments like Russia.  The proliferation of this bullshit makes truth unknowable.  Normally rational people spout said bullshit on social media in a continuous stream, destroying civility between digital and even actual friends.  This is how you get a HUGE proportion of Republicans actually believing Trump is still president and how whites are being systematically eliminated from society.  It’s all bullshit, but it’s also ingrained in the belief systems of millions of Americans.  Even in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary, people still believe this bullshit.

It’s tragic and seriously threatens our democracy.

UPDATE: Politico is reporting that the DHS is taking the August reinstatement conspiracy theory seriously in terms of stepping up efforts to follow discussions of extremists on social media, concerned about potential violence caused by disinformation pouring our of right wing media and lunatics like the Pillow Guy and other nonsense peddlers.  This story is coming from those who are familiar with a private briefing by DHS to members of Congress.

ORIGINAL POST: Seth Abramson, a defense attorney and author, has been after Trump for years.  His latest work is digging into how Trumpland planned and directed the insurrection on January 6, but he also has posited the only theory I’ve heard that makes any sense about one of Trump’s most outlandish lies, and that is how he’s going to be reinstated to the presidency in August.  Now, you know, and I know that there is simply no mechanism to restore someone to the presidency, even if an election was stolen, which this one most certainly was not.  Once the Congress certifies the Electoral College vote from the states and the new president is inaugurated, it’s over, game, set, and match period, end of story.  No one outside of the line of succession to the presidency can become president unless he/she is elected in the next national election.

So what the hell is Trump and his loudmouths doing?  Why is he repeatedly asserting he will be reinstated?  Abramson says that is all a dodge to avoid indictment in NY.  Abramson says that Trump believes that with his rallies starting back up and his incessant repeating of The Big Lie, he can keep his insurrectionist based whipped up and the threat of violence would be so great that prosecutors wouldn’t dare indict him for fear of major social unrest.  This is the only thing that makes any sense to me, that Trump believes he can keep the grift going long enough to run and win the presidency again in 2024, which will hold back the prosecutorial wolves from the door another 4 years.

https://twitter.com/sethabramson/status/1400470960587816961?lang=en

Sounds crazy, right?  Of course it’s crazy and I don’t think the NY AG or NY DA give a good goddam about Trump’s fantasies.  If they can nail him, they will, and they most certainly owe it to all of us Americans who suffered through over 4 years of the Trump Shitshow to protect our democracy by prosecuting that son of a bitch.  I do think Abramson is onto Trump, and having written about him for years, most certainly knows him well enough to have an informed opinion.  Besides that, NOTHING else makes the slightest bit of sense.

The Washington Post has published a harrowing account by insiders of Trump’s case of Covid19 last October that was downplayed and lied about since the day he got sick.  As we all assumed, Trump was a LOT more ill than his staff or doctors lead us to believe, and he left for the hospital only when convinced how bad it would look if he waited so long that he would be taken on a gurney rather than walking to Marine One.  The story also confirms what we all assumed, that he lived ONLY because he was president.  WH doctors poured every known treatment to him as he got more ill, including the experimental therapy, the monoclonal antibody treatment.  And then HHS secretary Alex Azar pulled strings so Trump could jump the line in front of others.  At the time Trump received the treatment, only 10 people had received it.  That treatment, and the others performed at the same time (which was unprecedented) undoubtedly saved his sorry life.

Trump’s contempt for science, human life, and common sense is well known.  He forced aides to remove their masks in his presence, even while complaining to them that WH visitors would often get too close to him during events he insisted on holding.  Covid19 outbreaks became so common that then CDC director Robert Redfield labeled 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as “not safe”. Because of Trump’s defiant ignorance, untold numbers of staffers, their families, and visitors were exposed and fell ill.  Almost 900 Secret Service employees contracted the infection, HALF of them special agents who protected Trump, his family, and Pence.  God knows how many fell ill from exposure during Trump’s idiotic Hitleresque rallies.

The worst part of this story, though, was that the gargantuan effort to save Trump actually backfired.  Everyone had assumed that Trump having a near death experience would change him and he would reverse himself on the Coronavirus response, encouraging mitigation measures and preparing for the vaccine.  Doctors were trying to decide when they would start speaking their mind about the disease.  Staffers were preparing for a reversal of Trump idiocy.  They were all wrong.  Literally dead wrong.  Trump insisted on returning to the WH early, and when he did return he was still very ill, but even more defiant.  He insisted on climbing the stairs on the South Portico and barely made it.  He then turned to the cameras and yanked off his mask revealing his heavy orange stage makeup, turned and stalked back into the WH.  Nothing changed.

That was the day that hope died because Trump didn’t.  And that’s the truth.

Facebook announced today that Trump was banned from Facebook for two years from the January 6th insurrection to overturn the results of the election in his favor.  He will be considered for reinstatement at that time if the danger for violence has subsided.  That’s bullshit.  Everyday since January 6 Trump has publicly made statements perpetuating The Big Lie, amplifying the lies from his surrogates and the entire Republican Party.  The appropriate decision would have been to ban him for life from the platform because he’ll never change.  Alternatively, I would be OK with the two years AFTER he repudiates his lie and stops telling it as well as all of his sycophants stop repeating the lie.  Two years from THAT action would be appropriate.

I’m not holding my breath, though.

Republicans are flogging their latest fake outrage about “critical race theory”, turning a long used academic term into a boogeyman using their normal tactic, which is accusing others of doing precisely what they’re doing, which is dividing people by race.  In recent years, they’ve weaponized academic terms to politicize any thought that might vary from their narrow views, like “critical thinking”, last year’s boogeyman.  We’ll talk about critical race theory in a future post, but for now, let’s talk about their latest focus, critical FLAG theory.  During Trump’s 2016 campaign, he sold all kinds of cheesy crap from China with his name plastered all over the items, but there were two big sellers: MAGA hats and Trump flags.  Both really caught on, but the flags were the item that Trumpists LOVED.  They would put them on their trucks and race around in what they termed “Trump trains”, blocking traffic and doing their best to piss off everyone around them, which is usually the goal for most of them because “owning the libs” is a key tenant of Trumpism.  They also do Trump Boat Parades, which famously sank more than a few boats on Lake Travis last summer.  They seemed to believe that the more flags they have on their truck or boat, the more likely he would win the election, so Critical Flag Theory was born which translates as: Trump’s electoral win probability is directly correlated to the sum of the flags flown per vehicle multiplied by the number of said vehicles.  I’m not making this up.

This year, as Trump speaks of being “reinstated” to the Oval Office in August and Mike Flynn talks at a QAnon conference of a military coup to do that, the TRUMP WON flag parades have already started in an effort to increase the probability of it happening.  Trump’s reinstatement has been predicted through the latest devised Critical MyPillow Theory, promulgated by none other than Cheap Chopped Foam in a Bag founder, Mike Lindell.  Lindell announced last week on Steve Bannon’s HateCast that he has evidence that the election was stolen and when he takes it to the Supreme Court they will oust Biden and reinstate Trump.  Never mind that there is no mechanism to actually do that, even if it was remotely true; all the Trumpists have jumped on board:

Clearly based on the photo above, Trumpists are attempting to raise the value of Critical Flag Theory by squaring the total of flags flown.  Yep, that’s the ticket.

We had a quiet holiday weekend at home this year, similar to last year’s, but most certainly not as fearful as that one.  We binge watched television series, cooked, and went on walks with our dogs, even sans masks since we’ve both been vaccinated and continue social distancing from people we don’t know are vaccinated.  Ignoring the nonsense going on in Austin, we had a relaxing and less stress-filled holiday and I realized yesterday the main reason – no Trump Show.  One of the most infuriating intrusions Trump made into our lives for the last 4 years was his constant co-opting of holidays to draw attention to himself.  Besides his incessant tweeting, childish insults, and rambling press gaggles, he LOVED the self aggrandizing rallies he organized at every opportunity, especially national holidays.  For those 4 years, I couldn’t watch Memorial Day, 4 of July, and other national events because Trump turned them all into rallies for himself.  Not during a holiday, but he even turned the White House into a 3 ring circus during the GOP national convention which was an assault on everything from the senses to federal laws to common decency.  He was a one man shit show.

The pain of watching Trump turn the entire government apparatus into his own personal plaything has now been replaced by Biden’s quiet and steady leadership.  He has returned us to our traditions of wreath laying and serious speeches about public service, the courage of our armed forces, and the keystone of our country, democracy.  He never talks about himself, his personal grievances, or his political enemies.  He restarted the WH daily brief with a competent press secretary who answers all questions truthfully without the personal attacks on the press that were commonplace under Trump.  He’s played golf one time since becoming President as compared to Trump who had played at least 25 times at this point in his term.

What this weekend really drove home for me is that we must make goddam sure that Trump, or any of his Mini-Trumps, get anywhere near the Oval Office, ever again.  The toxic waste of the Trump presidency came within inches of actually destroying our government and our way of life and continues to corrode our institutions, even from his lair at Mar a Lago.  We must never let that happen again.