It's funny (or it would be if it weren't so tragic) that right-wing anti-democratic rhetoric so often employs the notion of "the mob", the hoi polloi, the unwashed masse — Pfhorrest

That's an American phenomenon, leftists do the same in the US...when it's not the politically correct poor, but those for example who support Trump. Do note the extremely condescending way that so-called liberals often talk about Southern or countryside people as rednecks and hillbillies.

You see, there's a very strange phenomenon is the US where people fear above all to be called a racist, because of the ugly history. Yet for some reason, it's then totally OK to use similar language that racists would use at people of your own race. I get it, in many countries country folk or poor people are ridiculed, but not with such hostility and contempt as in the US. For example, the term "White Trash" comes I think from early 19th Century and is still used. If their would be more social cohesion, Americans wouldn't call poor people garbage, it simply would be a taboo. Such derogatory names for poor people vanished from use for example here in the early 20th Century.

But of course, everything the right every complains about is projection, so I should have seen this coming. — Pfhorrest

So, do you see how more worse it's going to get?

I'm sure you can name a decent and reasonable Republican, but I cannot
— tim wood
I also have to say I think Mike Pence deserves kudos... never visibly losing his cool. — Wayfarer

Yes, being in the presence and company of women his wife not present. Sorry, but four years has shown this is not a good man. As Trump's man in charge of Covid....

Blistering piece by Ben Sasse in The Atlantic:

The violence that Americans witnessed—and that might recur in the coming days—is not a protest gone awry or the work of “a few bad apples.” It is the blossoming of a rotten seed that took root in the Republican Party some time ago and has been nourished by treachery, poor political judgment, and cowardice. When Trump leaves office, my party faces a choice: We can dedicate ourselves to defending the Constitution and perpetuating our best American institutions and traditions, or we can be a party of conspiracy theories, cable-news fantasies, and the ruin that comes with them. We can be the party of Eisenhower, or the party of the conspiracist Alex Jones. We can applaud Officer Goodman [who led the mob away from the unlocked door behind which Mike Pence and others were sheltering] or side with the mob he outwitted. We cannot do both.

Q Anon is Destroying the Republican Party from Within

If there's a Civil War in the US, it's now fought inside the GOP.

And as usual, the Republicans aren't the sissies in US politics:

I think there's a connection between American protestant fundamentalism and the extreme gullibility that you see in these ludicrous conspiracy theories. It's the willingness to believe. That manifests in a lot of ways, you also find it in New Age movements.

Sasse's essay picks up on that:

Conspiracy theories are a substitute [i.e. for faith]. Support Donald Trump and you are not merely participating in a mundane political process—that’s boring. Rather, you are waging war on a global sex-trafficking conspiracy! No one should be surprised that QAnon has found a partner in the empty, hypocritical, made-for-TV deviant strain of evangelicalism that runs on dopey apocalypse-mongering. (I still consider myself an evangelical, even though so many of my nominal co-religionists have emptied the term of all historic and theological meaning.) A conspiracy theory offers its devotees a way of inserting themselves into a cosmic battle pitting good against evil. This sense of vocation that makes it dangerous is also precisely what makes it attractive in our era of isolated, alienated consumerism. — Ben Sasse

This coming from someone who voted in line with Trump's policies nearly 85% of the time. These shitbags are all talk.

I think there's a connection between American protestant fundamentalism and the extreme gullibility that you see in these ludicrous conspiracy theories. — Wayfarer

QAnon is already in Australia. Look around you to understand what kind of people are willing to embrace it.

It has to come from inside the party that’s responsible if it’s going to make any difference.

Look around you... — frank

I don’t see many. A couple of sleazebag climate denialist anti vaxxer politicians but they’re hardly mainstream.

It has to come from inside the party that’s responsible if it’s going to make any difference. — Wayfarer

I don't particularly want it to make a difference. Trump tore the Republican party into pieces. I think it would be to the benefit of all if it stayed that way.

I don’t see many. — Wayfarer

Give it time.

Extremists sometimes quote each other interspersed among others:

Yes, It Was a Stolen Election (John Perazzo; Frontpagemag; Dec 23, 2020)

(The Federalist, Breitbart, The Epoch Times, Washington Examiner, The Daily Wire, Project Veritas, ...)

Questionable Source
Factual Reporting: Low
Extreme Right, Propaganda, Conspiracy, Anti-Muslim — Media Bias Fact Check: Frontpage Magazine

Free expression with accountability of some sort seems like a good idea.
There are people out there only getting their news from such publications, e.g. having been told everything else is ungodly deception and lies, and when that turns to action, problems happen.
If I told my hopeless colleague that drinking a liter of Vodka + bleach would take care of their headache, then I might just be right, and I'd definitely be immoral and have committed a crime.

Free expression with accountability of some sort seems like a good idea. — jorndoe

Commitment to honesty, to facts, is all that is required. It goes for all sides, all factions, all movements, all parties. Given the facts, arguments can be made across the spectrum, but without that commitment, then corruption is the only possibility.

1/20/21 > conservative (rightwing) post mortem on TR45H:

Goodbye to Donald J. Trump, the man who wanted to be Conrad Hilton but turned out to be Paris Hilton.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/witless-ape-rides-helicopter/amp/

also by the same writer (re: appeal of MAGA, etc)

Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in the Dank Woolly Wilds of the "Real America", Kevin D. Williamson

Blistering piece by Ben Sasse in The Atlantic: — Wayfarer

It is a really tiresome piece of hyperbole and exaggeration. Again, the entire Republican party is now to blame, in some insane logic, for a few hundred people who broke in and entered government buildings are equated to those who refused to do so. A protest gone awry an a few bad apples is what it is.

The Republican party is fine, despite wishes to the contrary. Anyone can see the character of their representatives such as Mitchell McConnell . If people wish to demonize Republicans for voting with their conscience, and having a right to non-conformity of opinion, then it is indeed a huge reversal of what the progress towards freedom of speech and especially a failure to respect the Constitution. There was no danger of the party being led by Alex Jones. What is dangerous if forbidding the Republicans for agreeing in any way with the polices that Trump, in any case the winning Republican candidate of 2016. It is this sort of thing that has damaged democracy, people do not have a freedom to express their opinion without being censured, so be it, but I guess reason if not literacy has taken a real step backwards.

Anyone can see the character of their representatives such as Mitchell McConnell — FreeEmotion

McConnell was a bigger villain in all of this than Trump ever was, and I think you're right that he represents the real core of the Republican party. Trump was just a useful idiot for the real Republicans.

*

Bill Buckley would be proud, though probably a bit more restrained. Except where Gore Vidal was concerned.

Just to be clear, the received truth is that the Republican party is bad and the Democratic party is good, is that correct? An objective standard would be if anything they do violates the constitution.

Personal insults and vilification as well as accusing the others side as being communists or traitors or idiots is not expressly or tacitly unconstitutional, is that how it works?

I am trying to figure out how the system works that a free fair election produced Donald Trump in 2016 and then Joe Biden in 2020. Are the voters to blame, and is it always the voters on the other side?

The framers of the Constitution did not write it for a two-party system.

Just to be clear, the received truth is that the Republican party is bad and the Democratic party is good, is that correct? — FreeEmotion

No, they’re both bad, the Reps are just the much worse of the two.

America needs something much better than either.

I am trying to figure out how the system works that a free fair election produced Donald Trump in 2016 and then Joe Biden in 2020. Are the voters to blame, and is it always the voters on the other side? — FreeEmotion

The system is designed in a way that breaks when you have a country with population density disparities the likes of which we currently have. The people overall overwhelmingly lean more toward D than R, but the system gives disproportionate representation to a demographic that also tends to lean R, meaning every election is really close and down to tiny unpredictable factors.

The framers of the Constitution did not write it for a two-party system. — FreeEmotion

That is correct, but they did unknowingly write it in a way that guarantees a two-party system. That two-party system plus the disproportionate representation in turn sets where the threshold of the country’s politics falls: one party (currently D) represents the underrepresented majority’s interests plus enough of the overrepresented rural minority’s interests to actually stand a chance of crossing that threshold, and the other party (currently R) leans as hard as it can on the differences between those two demographics to pull as much as possible away from the other party’s acceptable standards, daring them to compromise their principles for a chance to win, or else hold on to them and lose completely.

That inevitable two-party system, plus more recent intentional political exploitation of it, results in an intensely polarized politics, where the differences between the two factions are played up harder and harder. Except for the golden rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules. Anyone who opposes that is quickly shut out by the people who own the people who put the people in charge in charge.

the received truth is that the Republican party is bad and the Democratic party is good, — FreeEmotion

You will be screwed by both the Republicans and Democrats; the difference is that the Republicans won't use vaseline.

Anyone know how much truth there is to this stuff?

• Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney General (The New York Times; Jan 22, 2021)
• New York Times: Trump and DOJ attorney had plan to replace his acting AG and undo Georgia election result (Washington's Top News; Jan 22, 2021)

The Georgia runoffs later seemed to confirm the election results.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/25/dominion-rudy-giuliani-lawsuit-election

I'm not complaining.

those reports seem entirely consistent with Trump's other actions to overturn the election. If he coulda done it, he woulda done it.

Now, the Senate is unlikely to convict. I still say the second impeachment was mandatory. And I would ask those Republicans who vote to acquit, what it is they're defending, because it sure ain't the Constitution.

Oh, btw ... fyi:

The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of TWO THIRDS OF THE MEMBERS PRESENT. — US Constitution, Article I, section 3

So if, for instance, 20 GOP senators are absent when the vote is taken, 53 (rather than 67) votes will be needed to convict, or 2 GOP senators + 50 Dems + 1 VP. Only 2 Republicans. Don't be distracted by the kabuki theatre courtesy of Mssrs. Paul, Graham, Grassley, Cruz, Hawley et al; no Putin's Bitch-enabling senator wants to face this vote, and the only out for many of these craven crypto-fascist shits is to be absent on the day ... (quasi-deniably) allowing the US Senate to convict tr45h.

:victory: :mask:

A conspiracy theory offers its devotees a way of inserting themselves into a cosmic battle pitting good against evil. This sense of vocation that makes it dangerous is also precisely what makes it attractive in our era of isolated, alienated consumerism.
— Ben Sasse — Wayfarer

I hadn't seen this before.

Sasse writes that he's an evangelical, and claims conspiracy theories are a substitute for faith. But he says it's the deviant evangelicals that that fall for the conspiracy theories. This means, I suppose, that the true religion will save us from conspiracy theories--spawned by evil consumerism--believed by bad evangelicalism. Jesus--the right Jesus--will save us from the effects of rampant secularism.

More of that oldtime No True Scotsman glossolalia methinks (re: Ben Sasse). Voltaire had it right – succinctly and to the point:

Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.

To wit: e.g. Evangelical 'vicarious redemption via human sacrifice memorialized by ritual incantations culminating in symbolic cannibalism' dogma is indistinguishable in absurdity from the e.g. QAnon 'pedophiliac cannibalizing lizard people disguised as "deep state" politicians & functionaries' conspiracy ... consequently followed by blindly self-righteous atrocities.

I think there are, or I hope there are, decent republicans. And I also hope that not all who identify as 'evangelical' are evil and/or stupid, although many here will, apparently they know better. But then, I'm not the misotheist.

I think it was Chesterton who said that people tend to believe in something - so, in the absence of religion, then all kinds of substitutes will flourish. I think that's what's happening with all this conspiracy theory stuff. Many people are not sufficiently educated, they are easily swayed, and willing, in fact desparate, to believe something that will give them a sense of validation. Hopefully with the demise of the ridiculous Trump presidency, some of these tendencies will start to diminish.

, the US conspiracy theorists are largely Christians, though (but vice versa surely not all Christians are conspiracy theorists).
Maybe a variation of 's Voltaire quote could be something like ...
"If you've come to believe enough absurdities, then what's one more?"
Might be evident to some extent:

A particular strength of our findings is that we assessed the interactions of a converging set of cognitive biases in a single theoretical model that explained several types of supernatural beliefs — Cognitive biases explain religious belief, paranormal belief, and belief in life’s purpose (2013)

Secular children were more likely than religious children to judge the protagonist in such fantastical stories to be fictional. The results suggest that exposure to religious ideas has a powerful impact on children's differentiation between reality and fiction, not just for religious stories but also for fantastical stories. — Judgments About Fact and Fiction by Children From Religious and Nonreligious Backgrounds (2014)

The results showed that supernatural beliefs correlated with all variables that were included, namely, with low systemizing, poor intuitive physics skills, poor mechanical ability, poor mental rotation, low school grades in mathematics and physics, poor common knowledge about physical and biological phenomena, intuitive and analytical thinking styles, and in particular, with assigning mentality to non-mental phenomena. — Does Poor Understanding of Physical World Predict Religious and Paranormal Beliefs? (2016)

more radical participants displayed less insight into the correctness of their choices and reduced updating of their confidence when presented with post-decision evidence
[...]
our findings highlight a generic resistance to recognizing and revising incorrect beliefs as a potential driver of radicalization — Metacognitive Failure as a Feature of Those Holding Radical Beliefs (2018)

he US conspiracy theorists are largely Christians, though (but vice versa surely not all Christians are conspiracy theorists). — jorndoe

They call themselves Christians but really it's a degenerate form of Christianity.