Projection Much?
There is an episode of South Park where some of the boys go watch “The Passion of Christ” by Mel Gibson. They concluded that it was a snuff film that sucked. They embarked on a pilgrimage to Gibson’s house to get their twenty dollars back. They found a downright batty Gibson who seemed determined to be tortured.
I suppose that plot line follows. If you watch a number of his movies that seems to track. He gets tortured or beaten down in most of them. He was Jesse Pinkman before Breaking Bad. I suppose conservative thought seems to be arriving at the same place as Gibson.
https://mobile.twitter.com/JennaEllisEsq/status/1275215576684802049?cxt=HHwWgsC9xfDzvLIjAAAA
As some of you may know, Ellis is one of the attorneys that was supposed to help Donald Trump overturn the election. Unfortunately, she is probably a C level attorney in an A level world. For those that don’t want to go down the rabbit hole, she is essentially saying here that if we want to cancel their Christianity then she will go down fighting. Good for her.
Studying conservative thought these days is a fascinating study for those of us with some psychology in their background. Sigmund Freud came up with his defensive mechanisms and the password here is projection. See, when your movement is about canceling stuff (abortion, CRT, history, LGTBQ+, ect) then I suppose it makes perfect sense for them to believe everyone else thinks the same way.
As you might surmise, there were a ton of good responses to her twitter. My personal favorite was the woman that retorted that Donald Trump spent more time in Stormy Daniels than he has a church. Well played ma’am. This projection goes beyond just Christianity into just about everything else. If you want to guess about their plans and their confessions you can simply wait to hear what they are accusing you of doing.
The idea of converting any human being into a god is distasteful. We don’t have Biden flags. We don’t camp out at Biden rallies. We don’t paste Biden bumper stickers all over our cars. We don’t worship the guy. So, you can focus on gaffes, past cringeworthy statements, or his son’s laptop. We simply want a decent human being and not a deity.
When you worship the golden calf you will find that calf threatened or stolen. We’ve seen what happens to those folks. Our number one objective is not to become one of them. If you are picking up your arms to combat the phantom menace you need to ask yourself who is telling you to do this. It certainly isn’t God.
A great analysis of the conservative right’s views is found in the book, Jesus and John Wayne by Kristen Kobes DuMez.
1It’s a constant struggle to not hate Trump and his minions. If you give in to hate you’re in danger of turning into a Republican.
2Ted@2
3I don’t hate them. It’s more like loathe and despise them.
OT, Yeow, the DJIA is up 436, and crude oil has fallen a huge amount today, after a downward trend for months now. Down today, $5/bbl, ~6%, 81.89/bbl now. If it holds let’s see how long it takes to reflect at the pumps…
Do you think that the Rethugs will now give President Biden some credit? After all, all of this inflation and formerly rising oil&gas prices were 100% his fault, and the Rethuglikan were justified in blaming him, right ? /s /s snaaarrkk
Market IndexesNameValueChangeChange (%)
Gold 1,715.20 14.90 0.88%
SilverClosed17.79 0.36 2.03%
PlatinumClosed806.40 13.30 1.60%
–Light Crude 81.89 4.99 −5.74%
Natural Gas 7.83 0.32 −3.88%
Sep 7 3:18 PM CDT
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Ted @2, You had damned well better start hating them, –and acting on it–. If you don’t, you’re headed for the ovens after they complete their fascist takeover of the USA. It’s happened before, notably ~1933…
Watch the latest PBS Frontline episode [below], it’ll singe your socks off.
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Watch this, it will take your breath away, and get you so effing mad you’ll need to keep throwable objects and firearms out of reach…:
–This is the most definitive look at the fascist and dictatorial future of America under tRumpism and MAGAotville yet!
A summary, and you can stream the whole two hour program here:
[I watched the broadcast last night, which the local PBS channel –normally repeats several times later–. Looking at the schedule, it looks like they’re already –censoring– any future repeats of this one, substituting another episode! SOAMFB!]
Lies, Politics and Democracy
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/lies-politics-and-democracy/
“FRONTLINE’s season premiere investigates American political leaders and choices they’ve made that have undermined and threatened democracy in the U.S.
In a two-hour documentary special premiering ahead of the 2022 midterms, FRONTLINE examines how officials fed the public lies about the 2020 presidential election and embraced rhetoric that led to political violence.”
.Watch it…
4Nick I enjoy your articles on this site but this one was very insightful to the point and just wanted to thank you for you clear thinking and the ability to put it into words.
5The last post was from Ted was not Ted or Ted2. I guess I am Old Ted
6A few years ago we had a local yahoo going on about “canceling Christmas” on every platform he could find: letters to the newpaper, radio talk show, and social meda. At a local forum for the public to meet with the major, he mounted this hobby horse.
A woman followed his spiel and pointed out that he made his restaurant employees work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. She then asked if he would stop “canceling their Christmas”. His outraged response: “but that’s different”. He was laughed out of the room. Of course that year he did not close his restaurants for Christmas, or work in one of them to free an employee to have the day off. Nope, to him “canceling Christmas” meant the far greater horror of somebody saying “Happy Holidays”.
7Ted @2, Here ya go Ted, the current variety of Hitler’s SA Sturmabteilung, AKA Brownshirts.
They will be coming for you, and all of us hated ‘libtards’, if we don’t repel them with any and all force necessary! Up to and including lethality if required.
And another’s review of the most excellent PBS Frontline “Lies, Politics and Democracy” program.
1.
Patriot Front Mastering Media Landscape; Awakening “Young Warriors” to Reclaim America
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/7/2121308/-Patriot-Front-Mastering-Media-Landscape-Awakening-Young-Warriors-to-Reclaim-America
2.
Must See TV – Frontline episode: Lies, Politics, and Democracy
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/7/2121390/-Must-See-TV-Frontline-episode-Lies-Politics-and-Democracy
I rest my case.
8I’m with Ted#2 on this one. Hate takes time and emotional resources I don’t have. Disgust is quite enough to motivate me.
– there’s no room for a car in the garage; it’s full of T-shirts and yard signs.
– I carry bumper stickers and slate cards in my bag at all times.
– I’ve already been on campus registering new voters.
– We’ll be printing the fundraising letter for the campaign I’m running and addressing envelopes tonight.
– I’m knocking on doors every Saturday until the election.
– and I’ll be standing outside the busiest polling site with slate cards accosting voters every hour I’m available, for two weeks
because….oh, yeah…..that’s in addition to my day job.
9I have to agree with Ted #2 – I don’t hate them, I just don’t understand them or agree with them. I have a Beto sticker but don’t feel he’s a god, just a good candidate who could help Texas out of the mess we’re in. I just see these MAGA types as I would if I were walking down the sidewalk and noticed someone didn’t pick up after their dog. I see it, walk around it, and go on to the voting place.
10I believe ideas of the recency of the current version of rightwing attitUdes are antihistorical. If you read J. Allen Broyles’ ‘The John Birch Society: Anatomy of a Protest’ (published 1967) you will find whole paragraphs that you would swear were written yesterday.
I pick Broyles especially since it was his dissertation for a degree in social psychology. (He was, by the way, a Methodist minister and particularly peeved by the right’s attacks on the social gospel and the National Council of Churches.)
11David Roberts has described the “conservative thought” / GQP psychology as reflecting a “process as a perfectly sealed feedback loop” and “a natural outgrowth of reactionary psychology — always claiming victimhood; always demanding special treatment.”
Fir example, he notes:
>>1) the RW propaganda networks spreads a bunch of lies & lunatic conspiracy theories.
2) other RWers implement particular policies in response to the “appearance” of something shady.
It’s a perfectly sealed feedback loop — the propagandists “raise questions” & then pols and judges pass/implement laws based on all the questions that have been raised. An ouroboros of bullshit.
The most familiar version of this bullshit loop is in reference to voting law. RW propagandists have spent decades “raising questions” about voter fraud. Of course, the questions have answers. It’s all bullshit. There is no appreciable voting fraud. Nevertheless red state after red state has passed restrictive voting laws based on these bad faith questions that have been raised. Real voting restrictions in response to fake voting fraud.
You make up bullshit about your opponents & then pretend that you are responding to the bullshit.
Human beings have a strong instinctive heuristic that says, “where there’s smoke there’s fire.” If enough people are talking about X or “raising questions” about X, then the default presumption is that there *must be something fishy about X.* RW media is basically a machine designed to exploit that heuristic. What RWers have realized is that they can create smoke around literally *anything*. Then they can use that self-created smoke as evidence of fire, and then pass policy to address the fire. It’s a neat trick.
I don’t even think it’s some grand, conscious scheme. It’s just a natural outgrowth of reactionary psychology — always claiming victimhood; always demanding special treatment.<<
12I’m the Ted who posted about hate turning me Republican. I do loathe and despise TOG and his minions, though.
Anyway, I’ll now post as “Ted, not Cruz,” to differentiate me from the other Teds.
Remember, though, that greed and hate are core Republican values.
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