It is insane how common it’s become.

It’s hard to even explain to people that there was a time when it used to be a very shocking thing to hear about.

“Back in my day, parents didn’t have to send their kids off to school every morning pretending everything was normal, but internally struggling with anxiety they might never see them again.”

Don’t forget Columbine. People always leave that out, but as far as historical milestones that shaped how awful American society has become, it was a big one.

It’s never evil if it’s all just a game, at least not to the ones playing the game.

TIL that the cofounder of the Heritage Foundation, author of the original mandate for leadership (the very first in an annual series that was eventually became Project 2025) also wrote a 1987 op-ed in WaPo that said the Iran-Contra should have been all the proof we needed to know democracy is a failure that should be replaced with a shadowy group of government of experts.

The funny thing is, we know now that he (Paul Weyrich) was one of the main people working in the shadows under Reagan.

A CONSERVATIVE’S LAMENT

As conservatives, we have to help the nation face a stark choice: either modify our institutions of government to play the game of great power, or move back toward our historic, less active foreign policy.

Third, our current system institutionalizes amateurism. Unlike European parliamentary democracies, we have no “shadow cabinet,” no group of experts who are groomed by their party for decades before they take high office. Our presidents can be peanut farmers or Hollywood actors. They can choose their top advisors either from among “professionals” who may not share their goals or supporters who often have no background or expertise in policy. Either way, they lose, and so does the country. The current crisis could not make the point better: our foreign policy was set by an admiral and a Marine lieutenant colonel, neither of whom had any background in the field. The resulting failure is not their fault. The system by which they were chosen is defective.

Sounds kind of familiar.

Guess what shadow group is in the White House right now? Almost makes you wonder if the plan was always to make America and democracy look incompetent via embarrassing debacles like the Iran Contra, and now they’re just picking up right where they left off?

Another Paul Weyrich gem regarding voter suppression:

“I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

You hurt me pretty bad, but I forgive you. I think if we both really try hard, we can still make it through this.

Ok…, I won’t 🆗👁️🙅‍♀️

Ok, sorry to upset you. Just an attempt to cope with the inevitable and absurd destruction of the world due to the action of ~4 men in a pissing contest, with a little humor. Btw, the inside joke wasn’t even supposed to be relevant, but I do feel like it adds a little lagniappe to the whole ambiance/vibe of wtf are we even doing at this point?

Hopefully everyone starts taking this community a little more seriously, and content improves with each one up that brings us closer to our impending doom. I hear the memes in the afterlife (if there is one) are to die for.

What?

That part is just a very complicated and dumb inside joke

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned on Saturday that if the U.S. were to get involved in the Israel-Iran conflict, the result would be “very, very dangerous” for everybody

Araghchi also claimed that Iran has “many indications” that the U.S. has been involved in Israel’s bombardments of Iran since “day one.”

Oh yeah, hadn’t even thought about that big beautiful wall (BBW) in a few years. Kinda got buried in the chaos. And

When I clicked on the link and saw the image of the wall that just abruptly ends, my mind auto played the music from Idiocracy

Exactly, especially when you look at how we got here.

The Real Origins of the Religious Right

This should be mandatory reading for all Democrats.

You’re competing with advertisement campaigns that were persuasive enough to convince most people to vote for things they didn’t even support.

Democrats picked up on the advertising part, but somehow haven’t realized that nobody is going to be persuaded by the moderate compromise bullshit. That is exactly what the Republicans were doing when Paul Weyrich got frustrated and started looking to civil rights organizations to strategize a movement to invigorate the right. It was quite successful.

How do you pursuade? You at least pretend you have fucking skin in the game. You worry about your donors and what they will think second to your principles. You at least pretend you care more about what is happening than holding on to a position for 40+ fucking years as the country burns around you.

Weyrich hailed as conservative pioneer

Joining his boss, Colorado Republican Sen. Gordon Allot, one day at a meeting with civil rights and other left-leaning groups, Weyrich watched the liberal activists strategize as a coalition and was inspired to create a parallel apparatus on the right.

“Here, before my eyes, was the whole panoply laid out,” Weyrich told reporter Ron Brownstein years later for a book on the rise of political partisanship in the capital. “I had seen the effectiveness, but I didn’t know the mechanics.”

In 1973, Weyrich co-founded the Heritage Foundation with Edward Feulner, creating what would eventually be the dominant think tank on the conservative landscape. Initially funded by the Coors family, Heritage helped provide ideas and issues to the many young conservatives who were running for office in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and who would eventually become the party’s leaders.

“In the early ‘70s, when most conservatives were reduced to wringing their hands and resigning themselves to life in the political wilderness, Paul just seemed to know what was needed to break the liberal stranglehold,” recalled Feulner.

This is exactly where the Democrats are over 50 years later. Reduced to hand wringing and afraid to step out of line.

There is a reason Weyrich partnered with people like Falwell and used fire and brimstone messaging. It gets attention. It refuses to compromise. It’s not worried about saying the wrong thing. It doesn’t really matter what you’re trying to get people to support. People are compelled to follow it based on the way it makes them feel. The feeling is what convinces.

Weyrich has been dead for almost 2 decades, but people in the White House are continuing to use this same strategy, and usually just recycle his old playbooks bc they’re not as smart or creative as this evil bastard was. Take back the fucking narrative!

Red-Letter Christians

Red-Letter Christians is a non-denominational movement within Evangelical Christianity. “Red-Letter” refers to New Testament verses and parts of verses printed in red ink, to indicate the words attributed to Jesus without the use of quotation marks.

The organization was founded by Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne in 2007 with the aim of bringing together evangelicals who believe in the importance of insisting on issues of social justice mentioned by Jesus (in red in some translations of the Bible). They believe Christians should be paying attention to Jesus’s words and example by promoting biblical values such as social justice issues. These issues include the fight against poverty, the defense of peace, building strong families, respecting human rights and welcoming foreigners.

Fighting back is often the only choice you’re left with when Nazis gain power, but I do wish people would keep in mind there’s a difference between strategizing and being smart about how and when you fight back vs encouraging individuals to run full speed at the entire U.S. military with a bullseye on their forehead.

Also, if you’re bringing fascists and rule of law into this, hopefully you’re not wilfully ignoring how they gain power in the first place, or the fact that the Nazis literally used a legal expert that provided them with the legal shield they needed to carry out a genocide without ever breaking the law.

Carl Schmitt

Or that one of Trump’s biggest defenders against the “crooked courts” that keep getting in his way, and leaving him with no choice but to act like a dictator, is a Harvard Constitutional Law professor who also just happens to be a Carl Schmitt fanboy.

Adrian Vermeule-OUR SCHMITTIAN ADMINISTRATIVE LAW

Common-Good Constitutionalism Is an Idea as Dangerous as They Come

No shit Sherlock

I believe the most obvious is they benefit (or at least believe they will benefit) from that outcome.

Except this is also how the “democracy” that is modern day Russia was created. Everything that’s happened in the U.S. since ~2012 that has been driving us to the brink of collapse by furthering the divide between left and right has been eerily similar.

Psychological Inoculation and Astroturfing: Preparing for exploitation of U.S. secession movements

A lot of people don’t know this, bc it’s not exactly clear what they were doing there, but coincidentally the Heritage Foundation also seemed to play a role in the creation of the first free market in the earliest days of post-soviet Russia.

Isn’t this all footage that we’ve known about for a long time?

Just to be clear, I felt like we shouldn’t be electing a creepy rapist that hung out with Epstein even before he got elected the first time. I never thought we would somehow do it twice, especially after he almost killed us all the first time around, but c’est la vie, I guess.

Just wonder how much of this is just a reality TV/wrestlemania style distraction IRL. Like what does it really change that Elon is reposting information we already knew?

Like there is other big shit going on with Israel, Gaza, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, and the EU going on right now but nobody is really talking about it bc we are paying attention to Elon re-screening videos of Trump/Epstein that we’ve already seen.

Yeah I don’t trust this guy. He’s got no moral backbone or real ideology other than a desire for power. I seem to remember him being very vocal against Trump at points, then backing away from criticisms at important times during Trump’s first term. Putting a D next to his name now definitely doesn’t make me trust him. Even fucking Trump would have stuck with being a Democrat if he thought it would have made him rich and powerful.

If Walsh actually wanted to help this country he’d run as a Republican, but be vocal against Trump. Or better yet, just remain an independent. This country needs to start electing 3rd party candidates, especially with name recognition on his side, he might have a decent chance with the positions he’s taking.

We don’t need more people like Fetterman weaponizing the title of Democrat to keep putting a “bipartisan” spin on Republican policy, and move the party more towards the right.

If that’s where the Democrats really believe we should be headed then yeah now is the time (before we get any closer to midterms) to decisively say we’re going to need a new party for left candidates.

2019 viewpoints of Walsh

No Republican with any common sense or shred of decency would have this take: 2012 Republican Joe Walsh: abortions to save mother’s life never necessary

People can change, and I applaud him if he has genuinely changed,… but we also need to stop pretending like an older conservative with name recognition, is somehow the best way forward for the party.

There are younger progressive candidates who actually have the drive to make this country better than it was in the first place, instead of just returning us back to normal, only to keep compromising, and losing the little ground we managed to get back over and over again.

deleted by creator

Yeah, I thought it was pretty clear, but I guess not. I definitely would have on Reddit but figured it wouldn’t be necessary here