I'd bet that contradiction was deliberate, a back-door required to get the bills passed, some of that famous law/sausage making process. What Miller brings to the Republican party is a level of blood and soil purification mania that would make Blease say "dial it back a little". Of course he would sieze on that contradiction as a weapon, it was meant to be one, just not at this scale because this scale is flat-out insane.
Trump's theory of politics is that if you can manipulate the media you can manipulate reality. The Big Lie is the core of it but Miller is trying to apply it in reality and failing because that's not how a Big Lie works. Demonizing the Other, sure. The Republican party has been demonizing Democrats and liberals for many decades now, but have stopped short of kidnapping them for made-up crimes and dumping them in camps mostly because if you do that you get what Miller's project is delivering now, a slowly building anger as the damage spreads. A moral disillusionment is there, but what motivates most Americans is pain that affects them personally, and that is also starting to build because the real goals of the Trump administration and the Republican party have nothing to do with making anyone's life "better" other than their donor class, and mostly only the ones at the very top. That core contradiction will continue to leak into reality and only get worse.
They really are running on the fumes of their program now. You know, the program that grew from their loss of any coherent answer to the nation's problems back about 50 years ago. The lack of coherence was soon supplanted by the expedience of the lie. The lie and its ilk grew and grew and got Bigly. They are the entirety of the message, and have been for most of my lifetime. Their followers have bought in: the christo-fascisti, the anti-abortion freaks, the bog standard racists (and among them, the trigger-happies), the education devolutionists, the gold-encrusted corporatists, the science denier/decryers. And the simple folk of the video screen.
oh, yeah. Jason Pargin has a great YT vid about this, based on growing up in rural Illinois. Dumb people being repeatedly told they're dumb are unlikely to hit the books in response, this isn't 5th grade
I'd bet that contradiction was deliberate, a back-door required to get the bills passed, some of that famous law/sausage making process. What Miller brings to the Republican party is a level of blood and soil purification mania that would make Blease say "dial it back a little". Of course he would sieze on that contradiction as a weapon, it was meant to be one, just not at this scale because this scale is flat-out insane.
Trump's theory of politics is that if you can manipulate the media you can manipulate reality. The Big Lie is the core of it but Miller is trying to apply it in reality and failing because that's not how a Big Lie works. Demonizing the Other, sure. The Republican party has been demonizing Democrats and liberals for many decades now, but have stopped short of kidnapping them for made-up crimes and dumping them in camps mostly because if you do that you get what Miller's project is delivering now, a slowly building anger as the damage spreads. A moral disillusionment is there, but what motivates most Americans is pain that affects them personally, and that is also starting to build because the real goals of the Trump administration and the Republican party have nothing to do with making anyone's life "better" other than their donor class, and mostly only the ones at the very top. That core contradiction will continue to leak into reality and only get worse.
The last two paragraphs are the best summary of the present moment I’ve come across.
Thanks!
"Miller and Noem and Bondi promised over and over again to d̶e̶l̶i̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶u̶s̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ hire the “worst of the worst”"
and they appear to have done so.
I know, too easy, but it's sooo on point.
They really are running on the fumes of their program now. You know, the program that grew from their loss of any coherent answer to the nation's problems back about 50 years ago. The lack of coherence was soon supplanted by the expedience of the lie. The lie and its ilk grew and grew and got Bigly. They are the entirety of the message, and have been for most of my lifetime. Their followers have bought in: the christo-fascisti, the anti-abortion freaks, the bog standard racists (and among them, the trigger-happies), the education devolutionists, the gold-encrusted corporatists, the science denier/decryers. And the simple folk of the video screen.
"treated" like fools? or acting and thinking like fools?
Being fools, perhaps, but it's the treatment, or the perception of the treatment, that makes them resentful, that's the point I wanted to make.
oh, yeah. Jason Pargin has a great YT vid about this, based on growing up in rural Illinois. Dumb people being repeatedly told they're dumb are unlikely to hit the books in response, this isn't 5th grade