Hispanic Fanatic

As we all know, hot-tempered lovers of authoritarianism recently held a rally that was supposed to attract thousands of like-minded neo-fascists. But the rally brought in just a handful of sad racists who looked pathetic standing around, preaching right-wing gospel and reminiscing about their glory days, when they could drive over protesters and march around with torches and smash heads open whenever they damn well felt like it.

However, this fizzled assembly should not convince us that Trumpism is dead. 

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Jesus Christ was racist.

OK, I’m not saying that the actual historical Jesus — who may have been black — was racist. He seemed to be a pretty chill guy.

But certainly the European Christian concept of Jesus — all blonde and blue-eyed and ready to do some smiting — was crazy bigoted. 

Of course, the link between racism and Christianity has been strong for centuries. Think of the forced conversions of indigenous people in the Americas, or the zealotry of missionaries in Africa.

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They either stopped right away or they kept going to the end.

Most of them ignored the screaming, and the pleas to stop, and the obvious indications that they were causing enormous pain and needless suffering.

They just kept cranking it up.

I’m talking, of course, about the participants in one of the most infamous psychological studies of all time: The Milgram shock experiment.

In 1961, Dr. Stanley Milgram set up a test in which participants administered electrical shocks to people. The participants were put in front of control panel that had increments of voltage marked — from 15 volts (“slight shock”) to 450 volts (“danger, severe shock”). The test subjects were told to increase the voltage gradually, delivering stronger and stronger jolts to a person hooked up to the machine in another room.

Now, it was an elaborate ruse, in that nobody actually got shocked, but the participants didn’t know that. They couldn’t see the person in the other room, but they heard him yelling and telling them to stop (again, the yelling was fake).

What Milgram found was that despite the screaming, most participants obeyed the researcher’s insistence to keep administering the shocks, and to keep increasing the voltage. Most people just kept inflicting pain, going all the way to the top level (450 volts) simply because they were told to.

Milgram’s experiment is regarded as a milestone in the study of human obedience. His findings — replicated many times in numerous other studies — proved that “people tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as morally right and/or legally based.” The disturbing conclusion is that it’s pretty easy to talk individuals into doing horrible things, and “ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being.

These findings apply to such well-known atrocities such as Nazi Germany, the Rwandan genocide, and the killing fields of Cambodia.

But they also apply to, for example, a wannabe despot who exhorts his followers to attack the US capitol in a deranged bid to overthrow the government. As many of those rioters later admitted, they rampaged through the capitol because Trump told them to. They were “just following orders.”

And where have we heard that excuse before?

In any case, in the aftermath of the riot, 43 Republican Senators continued to just follow orders — continued to display abject obedience — by acquitting a man whom the vast majority of Americans want punished.

The GOP’s compliance is, of course, sadly predictable.

But there is another angle to Milgram’s experiment that is not often discussed, and it has direct relevance to the Republican Party.

You see, not everyone in Milgram’s experiment kept shocking the hell out of people just because they were told to. 

About 18% of participants stopped when the indicator reached 150 volts, and the first yelps of pain came from the other room. Of those who went past 150 volts, the vast majority kept going to the end (450 volts).

Basically, people either stop at the first sign of trouble, or they never stop at all.

Similarly, many Republicans who begrudgingly voted for Trump in 2016 bailed on him circa Charlottesville (i.e., when he said there were “very fine people on both sides”), which was arguably the point when his racism could no longer be denied.

But if they stuck with Trump after he insisted that Nazis weren’t so bad? Well, at that point, they were in it to win it (if by “win it” you mean “excuse storming the capitol”).

There is a psychological condition in which we refuse to alter our behavior — even if it is harmful or irrational — if we have emotionally invested in a course of action. In such cases, we go deeper and deeper, because to stop would be admitting that we have wasted our time and been wrong all along. And that’s just too psychologically distressing.

So those conservatives who stuck by Trump past Charlottesville, past the caging of babies, past the botched response to coronavirus, and past the myriad outrages and failures are now at the point that they will justify any abhorrent behavior to rationalize supporting Trump to this point. To disavow him now would be to admit that they have spent the last four years cheering for a corrupt lunatic. And they just can’t have that.

So instead of conservatives coming to their senses, we have the Oregon Republican Party suggesting that the January 6 insurrection was a “false flag” operation by Democrats to discredit Trump. We have the Texas Republican Party openly supporting the QAnonconspiracy theory. We have GOP lawmakers in Ohio proposing an annual state holiday in Trump’s honor. We have Republicans giving a standing ovation to “a woman who trafficked in anti-Semitic and racist conspiracy theories, and questioned whether 9/11 and mass shootings were real events.”

To be sure, many right-wingers feel no distress at supporting Trump and his minions. They adore the man and crave more of his special brand of chaos and madness and hatred.

But for those conservatives who know, on some level, that all this hero worship of an obvious sociopathic incompetent was a severe mistake, but who didn’t get out while they could, well, they can’t stop now. They have to keep twisting the dial to deliver more shocks to the system.

And they will continue to just follow orders.

There is no graceful reaction to seeing lunatics get their hearts broken.

When we hear about adherents of QAnon weeping and wailing because their infamously psychotic theory didn’t quite come to pass, well, it’s a question of how we should respond.

Should we laugh?

Should we gloat?

Should we feel pity?

All are understandable reactions when we’re talking about individuals who sincerely believed that Trump was going to round up satanic cannibals with the help of JFK Jr., then wipe out the lizard people that run the world economy.

Really.

Yes, true Q devotees honestly thought that at Biden’s inauguration, Trump would stride to the stage, proclaim himself president, and have every Democrat and Hollywood celebrity promptly thrown into jail. They believed this right up to the moment Biden had his hand on the bible to receive the presidential oath — literally to that second.

And afterward? Well, many Q believers are now saying, “My bad” and trying to slink back into American life. So we’ve had ex-Q fanatics go on television to tell journalists they are sorry for accusing them of eating babies. And we’ve had multiple news stories expressing sympathy for these poor misguided souls who shrieked for suspending the constitution and publically executing anyone who displeased them.

Hey, minor mistake, right? We’ve all been there. Could have happened to anyone. 

Ahem.

What we are seeing is, yet again, the media’s benevolence toward violent White people, and the airing of full-throated rationalizations for delusion, hubris, and horrific behavior among “respectable” citizens.

You see, the link between QAnon and white supremacy is well-established. To no one’s surprise, many disgruntled ex-Q followers are now embracing straight-up Nazism. Furthermore, the anti-Semitism and Islamophobia at the core of the conspiracy theory naturally lend itself to all forms of bigotry.

Of course, it’s not just that you are unlikely to see Black people waving WWG1WGA signs (although that is indeed unlikely). It’s that the very act of becoming a QAnon supporter is a twisted form of White privilege.

Again, look at any article rationalizing the growth of this insanity. You will inevitably read — perhaps to the point of faint praise — how new followers spent 14 hours a day online researching their conspiracy theories.

This is one reason why there are few Latino QAnon freaks. Hispanics are working too fucking hard to spend 14 hours a day researching idiocy. It is only comfortable White people who can indulge in clicking on link after link about Pizzagate and the Storm and similar nonsense.

In addition, Latinos and Blacks don’t need to conjure up imaginary enemies. We had a real-life, 100% verified adversary in the White House for four years, and we see bigots marching in the street, or calling the cops on us for no reason, or even shooting us in our bedrooms. What ethnic minority needs to make up a threatening force? We don’t, because we live in America.

Furthermore, the rise of QAnon is another example of the belief that if things are not working out for white people, it must be a conspiracy. It is also an illustration of how racists will hide their motives by insisting there is some greater good — like rescuing children from blood-drinking sex traffickers — rather than broadcast their hatred. 

Finally, it is perhaps the ultimate example of bigots using their power and privilege to lash out at ethnic minorities, which should not be a shocker because “throughout American history, political violence has often been guided, initiated, and perpetrated by respectable people from educated middle- and upper-class backgrounds.”

And yet numerous media outlets have expressed compassion for this White-centric movement. We hear that QAnon supporters are “regular people” who got “seduced” by a nefarious force beyond their control.

But these are not people who were conned by a compelling theory. These are people who leaned in for a sloppy tongue kiss with craziness.

They possess a strong need for chaos and an insatiable desire for control. QAnon disciples cheered when Trump’s reign “reached its natural culmination, the activation of an army of White thugs who could be motivated by the oldest trick in the nationalist playbook: the promise that they operated in service of some grand idea — to be explained at a later date — and that it was going to take some head-cracking and bloodletting.”

There is a “substantial correlation between those who support or sympathize with QAnon and ‘dark’ personality traits,” such as “extreme, antisocial psychological orientations and behavioral patterns.”

QAnon followers were not seeking explanations for a complex world or trying to rescue America or striving for anything remotely noble.

No, these are people who are sincerely disappointed that a military dictatorship did not institute capital punishment without trial.

So naturally, we should feel sorry for them.

In any case, many QAnon supporters have kept the faith, and simply repurposed their labyrinthine belief system to fit a new set of inconvenient circumstances. 

And those who have renounced it are not sorry for unleashing madness. No, they are angry that Trump didn’t come through, or that democracy prevailed, or that firing squads aren’t lining up Jews right now. 

Others are embarrassed to be so thoroughly humiliated in public, or pissed that they wasted so much time on cryptic prophecies that never came true.

But they are not apologetic for embracing a ludicrous theory that led to actual death, and may yet lead to more destruction. They are bewildered that most Americans would object to their violent uprising, or that anyone would have an issue with their desire to just get on with their lives.

And getting on with their lives is exactly what many of them will do, because their privilege will come through intact.

Hell, some of them might even get elected to Congress.

Wait, check that. Some things are just too crazy to believe.

It may surprise you, but I have friends who are Trump supporters.

OK, they’re primarily Facebook friends, but still…

In any case, a guy I will call Jorge (not his real name) has been clogging up my social media feed for years now with rants about how Trump is unspeakably brilliant, and liberals are hypersensitive haters, and China is plotting with AOC to force everyone to be bisexual — or something like that (I lost track of all the craziness).

Until a few weeks ago, Jorge was adamant that Trump was the most super-patriotic president ever and would one day be regarded as the savior of the nation.

And then a bunch of racist, wild-eyed goons in face paint attacked the capitol.

Soon after, Jorge offered a meek defense of the president’s behavior, but mostly stayed very, very quiet. Then a week or so later, Jorge posted what he said was his last Facebook post. He insisted that the platform had gotten “too negative,” so he was quitting it. He looked forward to everything “getting back to normal.”

And just like that, it was as if his years of cheering for Trump had never happened. 

Jorge made it all go away.

A similar phenomenon is happening with conservatives across America.

You see, for “the majority of GOP officials, apparatchiks, and commentators who sacrificed their dignity at the altar of Trump, a collective case of amnesia seems destined to set in the moment he leaves office.”

It’s important to note that conservatives are not disavowing Trump. They are not denouncing anything he or the GOP did, and they have shown no signs of regret.

Indeed, the Republican Party is once again proving that it would rather implode and die before it condemns the worst president in history. 

Rather, conservatives are simply dismissing the chaos of the Trump years, and the massive failure of yet another GOP president, and the hollowness of their whole movement, by pretending that the last four years were not really that bad.

His supporters, including Republicans implicated in the capitol riot, “are downplaying the attack on our government and suggesting that impeaching the president or holding accountable the lawmakers who helped the attack is ‘cancel culture.’” 

They are insisting that we all need to move on, and that unity consists of letting homicidal treachery slide. They demand, in essence, that we “give the man a break.”

The hope, of course, is that four years from now, voters will not remember the widespread death and economic collapse that occurred on the GOP’s watch, and that Americans will forget about Trump’s narcissistic depravity and grotesque incompetence. Right-wingers hope that people will focus on the good stuff — like god and fluttering flags and owning the libs. Oh, and remember those rallies where MAGA types cheered while the president insulted his enemies? Yeah, those were the motherfucking good old days, all right. 

When looked at in this way, “Trump’s race-baiting, corruption, and cruel immigration policies — not to mention his attempts to overturn an election — are treated as minor subplots, rather than defining features.”

And that’s why my friend (or more accurately, my former Facebook friend) Jorge can just put all this messiness behind him. He no longer needs to defend Trump. He no longer feels like debating the horrific consequences of his support. Yes, America has gone to hell, but that’s not Jorge’s problem — or Trump’s problem, or the GOP’s problem, or Fox News’ problem.

There will be no introspection or the basic acknowledgement of bad decisions. And there certainly will never be apologies or admissions of guilt. There will be none of that.

Because it’s like all of it never happened.

Hey, remember when America got all wacky and thought it would be funny — just fucking hilarious — to elect as our president a racist, misogynistic, ignorant, hate-filled, narcissistic, delusional, incompetent, unqualified, corrupt, greedy, xenophobic, sociopathic, doddering, dimwitted, impulsive, unpatriotic, fascistic, blowhard megalomaniacal liar who had a history of sexual assault, bigoted attacks, shady business dealings, backstabbing, adultery, bankruptcy, and malicious behavior and who would — as anyone could have foreseen — lead the country into widespread chaos, economic ruin, international ridicule, open sedition, and mass death that would rupture society, destroy families, shatter our culture, damage our institutions, and provoke a tsunami of fear, rage, hatred, and violence that will last for years to come? 

Yeah, that guy.

Whatever happened to him?

I rarely tweet (unlike our fascistic president).

But I am still able to tweet (unlike our fascistic president).

In any case, the recent riots in Washington DC provoked me to send out tweet after tweet, mostly because it was a good way to corral my thoughts about a full-fledged insurrection going down in real time.

You see, whenever some travesty or grotesque injustice occurs in our frazzled country, I usually focus on one or two key issues and write a lengthy article about it. However, the sight of redneck Nazis bum-rushing the nation’s capital conjured up multiple storylines, all of them grim. So instead of writing 87 separate posts about this right-wing siege on democracy, I will just compile my tweets here, because there is a lot going on.

So here are my tweets, a kind of instant time capsule, starting with the earliest and ending with my most recent missive today. Here we go:

For four years, liberals have been saying Trump was a sociopath who would lead us into chaos and violence. Today, the GOP acted surprised when chaos and violence erupted.

GOP (every day since 2016): “You liberals suffer from Trump Derangement Disorder. Why do you have so much hatred?” GOP (since yesterday): “Holy shit, Trump is a dangerous lunatic. Who possibly could have known?”

If you support a neo-fascist lunatic for 3 years, 11.5 months, you don’t get credit for ducking out for the last two weeks.

Post-Watergate, the GOP was supposedly finished. Post-GW Bush, the GOP was supposedly finished. Post-Trump, the GOP is supposedly finished. Third time’s a charm?

Trump supporters: “It was Antifi! They infiltrated us! The cops held the doors open to draw us in! The deep state planned the whole thing!” Once again, conservatives who shriek about personal responsibility will say anything to avoid personal responsibility.

Has anyone checked with Q about when the mass arrest of child-eating Satanists begins? This is just the last move in Trump’s brilliant 4-D chess match, right? Right?

GOP congressmen: Kids hiding under desks from gunmen is the price of freedom. Same GOP congressmen: Hiding under our desks from an angry mob is unacceptable. Conservative mantra: Nothing is a problem unless it affects me.

In retrospect, calling his hardcore supporters “deplorable” was too kind.

This will be the last time I ask this question: Are you tired of all the winning yet?

“I am deeply regretful” or I got caught up in the moment” are sad excuses from teens who steal cars for joyrides. They are not sufficient explanations from grown men who commit violent treason and get people killed.

GOP: Private businesses can deny service because you’re gay. Also the GOP: Private businesses can’t deny service if you call for violent sedition that gets people killed.

The GOP has finally agreed with progressives that Trump is a wannabe fascist, so now would be a good time to agree that he is also a racist misogynist. Or do you want to keep defending him on that one too?

For 20 years — from invading Iraq to supporting Trump — the GOP has insisted it knew best and that liberals were anti-American fools. After every disaster, the GOP then says, “Oh well, time to move on.”

Conservative conversation: “We look really bad now, guys. How can we distract people?” “We can scream about Big Tech and free speech and censorship.” “Isn’t that a tone-deaf response to a deadly attack on America?” “We got nothing else.” “Fuck it. Start bitching and moaning.”

Trump’s chief objection to the rioters was that they looked “low class” (which they did). Aside from his misplaced priorities, it’s ironic that the people most willing to kill and die for Trump are the last people on Earth he would deign to talk to.

If you voted for Trump for the tax cuts, I hope it was worth it. The rate of inflation on blood money is staggeringly high.

I’ve heard people say that the assault on the capitol defines Trump’s legacy. Only in an administration as horrific as this could a botched response to a pandemic that killed 350k Americans be relegated to the #2 slot.

Surprised that no journalists have tried to justify the abhorrent behavior of Trump supporters by claiming they’re suffering from “economic anxiety” or “being cruelly left behind.” Yeah, that argument aged well.

GOP believes punishing Trump to deter future autocrats is overkill. GOP also believes yanking kids out of their mothers’ arms at the border deters illegal crossings, harshly penalizing BLM protesters deters vandalism, and keeping money from unemployed people deters laziness.

The GOP’s argument is that impeaching Trump will make his supporters angry and violent. No, we don’t want to do that. Because to this point, they have all been so calm and reasonable.

For years, this country mythologized Trump supporters. They were “left behind,” unfairly stereotyped, deserved to have their voices heard, etc. Now we hear we can’t punish rioters because Trump supporters might get angry. When do we stop making decisions based on how they feel?

Congressional Democrats have been informed by the House Administration Committee that “the purchase of a bulletproof vest is a reimbursable expense.” This is a perfectly normal sentence that we always hear in functioning democracies.

Some in GOP fear voting to impeach, because they’re afraid Trump supporters will assassinate them. Trying to imagine Democrats having a similar fear about their own base, but it’s absurd. 

GOP afraid psycho mob they created will turn on them. On top of being traitors and cowards, GOP was stupid enough to believe it could control bloodthirsty lunatics:

GOP admits their base consists of homicidal racists. Wait a minute. I thought they were patriots suffering from economic anxiety. Are you implying Trump and his enablers lied to us?

Interesting how liberals are “sheep” when we’re not the ones storming government buildings and committing treason just because one angry guy told us to do it.

Old GOP: “We don’t cut and run. No negotiating with terrorists!” New GOP: “No, we can’t possibly punish the terrorists, or daddy will be angry with us.”

Hey you Republicans, let me ask you a question you hurled at progressives 20 years ago: Why do you want the terrorists to win?

Four impeachments in US presidential history. Trump accounts for half of them by himself. He really is the best at something.

Yesterday was my birthday, and no, I did not ask for coup d’état, so whichever despotic lunatic ordered one should kindly take it back for a full refund.

Of course, redneck Nazis storming the capitol is less of a shocker and more the inevitable final act to a presidency based on lies, authoritarian tactics, racist appeals, and conspiratorial rationales.

Every day since Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, Republicans have been smugly dismissing the legitimate concerns of progressives as Trump Derangement Disorder, and snapping that we need to get in line and stop hating the president.

And then this morning, the GOP exclaimed, “Holy shit, Trump is a dangerous madman. Who possibly could have known?”

For years, liberals have been saying Trump was a sociopath who would lead us into chaos and violence. Today, the GOP acted surprised when chaos and violence erupted.

But if you supported a neo-fascist freak for three years, eleven and half months, you don’t get credit for ducking out for the last two weeks.

Republicans could have removed Trump via impeachment just one year ago. But they demurred.

Interestingly, Republicans are now openly debating getting rid of this crazed imbecile through the 25th Amendment. Many conservatives are also now willing to say Biden actually won the election. 

And all it took was a riot, the attempted overthrow of the government, and someone getting shot to death in the capitol.

Before yesterday’s insurgency, the capitol had been “overrun by a mass group one other time, in 1814 during the War of 1812, when British troops set fire to the building.”

And not even Robert E. Lee came close to marching through the capitol waving a Confederate battle flag.

So these are Trump’s latest milestones, to go along with the unprecedented death and destruction that he has provoked across America.

Yesterday, the president asked right-wing thugs to attack his enemies. And they did as he asked. So who the hell is actually surprised?

This is what happens “when one group of Americans are taught generationally to believe they are the sole, true owners of a country their ancestors seized from the indigenous and reaped via the blood and toil of others they never viewed as fully human.”

Now, we could ask a number of unpleasant rhetorical questions. Such as why are we spending $700 billion on defense when a bunch of hairy old men can just take over the seat of US government in five minutes flat?

We could also ask what would have happened if the rioters were Black? Ha, just kidding — we all know the answer to that one.

But ultimately, it comes down to one undisputable fact:

Those assholes totally ruined my birthday.

Black Christmas

Just a quick note to say Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas and good riddance to 2020 and pleasant thoughts to you, onward and upward, forever and ever, amen.

Of course, this holiday season is a unique combination of depressing, horrifying, frustrating, disorienting, and disquieting. 

It is also a time of great irony. After all, Republicans have long warned us about a supposed “War on Christmas” that mainly consisted of arguments about the wording on Starbucks cups.

But it is a Republican president who has brought disaster and calamity — American carnage, if you will — to Christmas. For millions of Americans, Christmas is cancelled, because they cannot be in the same room as their loved ones. Or the entire season has become a paranoid dance with death, as we dismiss warnings to not gather together and then act shocked when everyone in our family gets infected.

Christmas has never been so bleak — let alone so dangerous — but the Trump Administration has accomplished it.

They have waged the ultimate War on Christmas.

Happy Holidays, everyone.

Once you’ve attempted to destroy democracy, overthrow the government, and seize power, it’s a little difficult to say, “Just kidding.”

Yes, I’m sure that in future years, many Republican leaders will insist they never intended to break the country wide open. They were just indulging in “political theater.”

However, even political theater is usually principled or symbolic. It is not, in general, a dangerous and delusional maneuver that breaks through “the last level of neo-fascism.”

Now, we have heard apologists explain that the recent actions of Republicans don’t prove that they are actively hostile to democracy. Supposedly, all these conservative leaders are just appeasing Trump. 

But two rejoinders come to mind:

First, haven’t they done enough appeasing for several lifetimes? And to what end? The guy lost and may end up killing off their political party. And still they’re scared of him?

Second, the idea that the GOP is just trying to keep Trump happy is the equivalent of saying, “I punched my kid in the face only because my husband insisted, and I didn’t want to make him angry.” It’s not an excuse.

The truth is that much of the right wing is all for tearing down America, and they need very little provocation to abandon any coherent political philosophy.

You see, the political party that hates judicial activism wanted judges to be active as hell and overrule voters. The party of states’ rights didn’t want states to run themselves, and instead be subservient to bigger states (like, for example, Texas). The party for freedom and against tyranny wanted to nullify an election and install its own president.

And this is not just a few rogue Republicans. It is vast swaths of the GOP and a majority of conservative voters. In fact, “about 64% of the entire House Republican conference supported Trump’s attempts to invalidate Biden’s win, using baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud as their reasoning.”

Even today, “three-quarters of Trump voters said congressional Republicans should try to keep Trump in power.” Furthermore, over 80% of Trump voters believe that Biden stole the election by committing fraud so egregious and obvious that you would have to be a moron to miss it. At the same time, the fraud is so subtle and devious that no one can find a single shred of evidence or proof. 

That is one tricky balancing act. Damn those sinister liberals.

In any case, many people thought Trump supporters would snap out of it and come to accept reality.

But they will not.

Hardcore Trumpists have turned on conservatives who question their god’s perfection. They have called for violence and martial law. They have made it clear that they will always follow this sniveling old man who “awakened an authoritarian impulse among the citizenry that was far larger and more rabid, and more easily triggered, than most of us ever imagined.”

The specifics and the level of danger may be unique to our time, but “there is a long history of building community cohesion by encouraging members to ignore the facts of the world around them.” After all, the people who believe the Earth is round don’t need to build a community. Reality handles that for them. But when faith and belief clash with logic, reason, and facts, a massive disconnect occurs. And sometimes, “the disconnect between belief and reality is precisely the point,” because when this gap “gets really large and the community becomes more insulated, cults arise.

And that is where we are today, with a cult masquerading as a political party, and truth up for grabs. And when reality itself is debatable, the world spins into chaos and cacophony.

In other words, it’s all very 2020.