78 percent of Republicans think Biden stole the US election.
That is a broken country, folks. Fourty-five percent think the January 6th occupation was justified, which seems oddly low; I’d certainly think it was justified — if I also believed the election was stolen. In fact, I’d think it was mild, and that far more than that was justified. In a democracy, stolen elections can’t be tolerated, which is why Gore was wrong to stand down in the face of Bush’s theft in 2000.
What the US has, is a broken media system: There are two sets of facts circulating, and often more, on many issues, and people live in completely different worlds. Most Democrats don’t have any Republican friends, and vice-versa.
The weird bit is that false narratives are driven by facts with ur-truth. “Q” is wrong about the specifics, but not wrong that many American elites are pedophiles. Part of the Q myth is that rich people use a drug made from the pituitary gland of tortured children: That’s not true, but some elites do use the blood of young people (in their twenties) to help rejuvenate themselves.
Ironically, there was a great deal of election fixing, mostly by Republicans. It’s like the old joke from the Iraq war era: “We know they have WMD, we have the receipts!” Biden won despite vast Republican efforts to suppress the vote, but Democrats also suppressed the third-party vote, keeping Green candidates off the ballot wherever they could in a sickening anti-democratic display, and did a great deal during the primary that was anti-democratic against Sanders. It’s not that Democrats don’t believe in suppressing votes; they don’t believe in suppressing their votes, and in general elections, the more people vote, the more Democrats win, unless they’re pesky third-party voters.
The UR-Stories told, then, are true. US elites are evil, anti-democratic, and many are at least pedophile-adjacent (see all the pictures of famous politicians and other rich people with Jeffrey Epstein, including Clinton and Bill Gates.)
Even leaving aside the blood bit, the rich do live off the health of young people: The younger the generation, the poorer they are compared to previous generations. The US economy destroys the health of poor people for the benefit of rich people. Ordinary people, by the time they’re sixty tend to look old; rich people tend to still look young, and keep charging around well into their seventies due to avoiding hard physical labor, eating very expensive food (which is, overall, better for them) and using far superior health care, which they can afford, and the poor and middle class can’t.
The US is an oligarchy where the rich and powerful live longer and are healthier and richer because they oppress everyone else. That’s a fact. The mechanisms of how they do so are boring: Obama immunizing all the bankers and helping them steal people’s homes. Trump’s gigantic tax cut for the rich. The IRS hardly auditing rich people. Laws that make it easy to hide money offshore. Private islands where unspeakable lusts are indulged, and entirely legal use of young people’s blood to feel younger.
Most of this is done out in the open. If you were in the right circles, “everyone knew” about Epstein, but he was protected by the intelligence agencies, presumably because pictures of important people with underage girls are very, very valuable. The laws are passed in the Senate; the Treasury and the Department of Justice bail out and immunize the rich and everyone who belongs to the club is taken care of unless they steal from the club (Madoff) or egregiously embarrass the club by constantly talking up their evil like Martin Shkreli, the so-called “Pharma Bro.” Plenty of other pharma execs have jacked up prices and killed people, including for epi-pens and insulin, but those execs didn’t scream about it to the rooftops.
So conspiracy theories like “Q” are garbage, but they work because the ur-truth is that US and Western elites are, in fact, evil and engaged in hurting and killing ordinary people. It’s just that most of how they do it, Epstein aside, is boring and at scale.
So the US is broken. Republicans think the election was stolen. Back in 2000, an election was actually stolen, and voter suppression and election fixing is routine. Rich people do kill and hurt you for money, and a lot of rich people do seem to like under-aged girls, but certainly don’t need to go to some pizza joint to indulge.
There’s no need for “Q” or most other conspiracy theories (though surely, there are conspiracies). Most of the evil is done in the cold light of day.
(All the content here is free but food and rent aren’t, so subscriptions and donations do help.)
Hugh
I think that our ruling classes are made up evil rich unproductive parasites. I don’t feel I need to stretch their associations further to fit into or validate QAnon conspiracies.
Billionaires are treated like our age’s heroes when they are its villains.
About a quarter to a third of the American electorate is fascist or trends that way. Yet this word remain taboo in American politics. The not so much euphemisms but locutions used to avoid it I hear every day. They give cover to those who don’t deserve it. Biden and the Democrats talk about “bipartisanship.” That sounds very traditional and high-minded. Working with and collaborating with fascists, not so much. If we are ever going to reverse the ratchet effect and the Overton window, we are going to have give our politicians no cover for defending and working with fascists.
bruce wilder
I don’t think the election was stolen; I think the election was bought.
edmondo
78% of Republicans think Biden stole the US election.
That’s because 100% of the population doesn’t have a clue how the electoral system works. The proper punishment for those idiots who attacked the Capitol on January 6th would have been to make every one of them write 1000 word essay on how elections work and why attacking the Capitol was stupid and idiotic. Show them how they got played by the biggest hustler to every occupy the Oval Office (after Obama).
Ché Pasa
Clue: Republicans are a minority party. (So are Democrats, but not as small a minority). What 78% — or any percent — of Republicans think or don’t think is not even close to the electorate’s thinking. Much of the media, however, focuses on the interests and opinions of that diminishing minority of voters to the near exclusion of any other point of view because that minority represents the interests of many of the media owners and their talking heads. This has been going on for so long it seems natural. It’s been going on for so long that many Americans take for granted that the opinion of many minority Republicans represents “American opinion.” It doesn’t.
On the other hand, our politics is decadent, our election system(s) are still an international embarrassment, and the legitimacy of pretty much every president since Eisenhower has been questioned, sometimes violently. For example, as I recall, the legitimacy of JFK’s election was questioned due to supposed (and possible) massive fraud in Chicago and other places, and eventually I believe he was assassinated by somewhat shadowy forces operating through other shadowy forces in Dallas and elsewhere one bright and shiny autumn day in 1963.
1963!
There hasn’t been a fully “legitimate” president since, and there may never be one again.
What do we do about that?
metamars
“Ironically there was a great deal of election fixing, mostly by Republicans.”
Well, according to Kevin Barrett, this might be technically true, if we take the US Senate races as representative of the domain of fixed elections, save the Presidential one. See “Hey Trumptards, HERE Is the real Evidence of Election Fraud”
Say, Ian, why don’t you tell us if you think Mitch McConnell legitimately won his election? And, if he didn’t, WHY aren’t the Democrats making a fuss about it?
On second thought, don’t bother, unless you’re willing to delve into specifics. Your arguments are basically arguments from assumptions, spiced with a couple of historical points. This is quite distinct from arguments/analyses such as the one, based on statistical inference in comparing reported results vs. exit poll results that showed that Bush stole Ohio, and thus should have lost the election to Kerry. This was covered by Bob Fitrakis, IIRC. That analysis “brought the receipts”, to quote Steve Bannon.
You also shouldn’t bother unless you frame things, properly. Do you actually believe the DOJ and FBI has any interest (as organizations, controlled from the top) at getting to the bottom of vote fraud claims? Do you think the FBI, e.g., has moved to preserve evidence? Or, seized and shredded evidence?
Of course, we’re talking about the same FBI that sat on Hunter Biden’s laptop, and didn’t bother correcting the nonsense by “50 intelligence professionals” about the laptop likely amounting to Russian election interference.
I don’t want to ferret out the quotes – Rumble doesn’t have a transcript facility like youtube has – but Patrick Byrne has recently given a quantitative overview of legal challenges to the 2020 election. It’s not what I thought it was, and it’s not what I think you think it is. Also, AFAIK, even long after the ‘election’, Democrats (as well as some Republicans) are strenuously resisting forensic audits. This fact, alone, casts this diary into doubt, since it goes unmentioned.
Patrick Byrne has consolidated and partly re-written his multi-part series about “how DJT lost the White House” in a book, The Deep Rig.
Apparently, ace investigative reporter Shaun Hannity hasn’t read it. Hannity recently interviewed Trump (who I wish would go away, except maybe to rally support for authentic national populists; especially ones who have a spine) and I don’t recall any questions about the ubiquitous accounts and analyses pointing to tremendous vote fraud, or even his throwing under the bus of the Jan 6 “insurrectionists”.
Both these men have gelatinous spines – at best* – and sort of deserve each other. I would have hoped the nation deserves better, but apparently not.
* as opposed to paid liars and actors of the Rachel Maddow type, who kept the Russiagate nonsense going, on national TV, for years
Plague Species
No, the Q myth isn’t pointed at rich people, it’s pointed at the Dems. For Q, the “Deep State” and the Dems are one and the same. That’s the tell. Q is just fine with rich people, rich people like Vlad Putin for example and McDonald Trump, but what Q isn’t fine with is Dems, rich or not. Of course, I suspect Q is cut from the very same cloth as #BLM. They both serve the same purpose.
Plague Species
Jimmy Kimmel legitimating the likes of George Dubya Bush isn’t helpful. The Late Night talk show hosts, so many of them these days when once upon a time there was just one, are inoculators in my opinion. They inure the unwashed by diffusing the abuse via humor which has a neutralizing effect on outrage. And, these traitorous manipulators get paid tens of millions to help shape perceptions and impede any notion of revolution.
Why are Joe & Mika guests on The Late Show? Don’t they have their own show? That’s not enough? Colbert is so lacking in originality and creativity, he has to showcase hucksters like himself and pretend they’re celebrities. These people are so sickening. They all think too highly of themselves. They really do believe they are special. Stewart Cink won a gold tournament this past weekend after surviving COVFEFE-45. The prize money was a million dollars. His wife said they owe it to God. This God of their’s sure is amazing, isn’t it? It’s also highly partial. Their God seems to be partial to rich people bequeathing them with one blessing after another while punishing the poor.
rosenthal
Hey, it’s PlagueSpecies and their failed abortion takes.
Plague Species
Everybody Loves Phil
Hugh
Not sure why metamars wants to resurrect the issue of non-existent voter fraud. I read that McConnell had a 20% approval rating going into his last election. So the Democrats ran a personality-less, stands for nothing, Republican-lite against him and McConnell won walking away.
The problems lie elsewhere, such as the deeply unrepresentative nature of the Senate where something under 18% of the US population lives in 26 states, enough to form a 52 Senate majority. Or that just nine states contain a majority of our population. So the majority of Americans is represented by 18 Senators and a minority of Americans is represented by the other 82. Add in gerrymandering in the House, the electoral college in Presidential elections, and widespread voter suppression and you begin to realize that the is neither a democracy nor a republic. It is deeply and structurally unrepresentative and our powerful want to keep it that way.
Hugh
Oops, should read: “that the US is neither”
anon
Liberals aren’t immune to conspiracy theories, i.e. Russiagate and the Russia bounties plot. I know liberal and conservative anti-vaxxers although the vast majority of the ones I know are largely uneducated with only a high school diploma or less.
Depraved and illegal sex acts – rape, pedophilia, sexual harassment, etc. – have always been accepted in elite circles. Wives turn a blind eye and defend their husbands because they also benefit from the power and wealth they married into. These women only leave when all other elites have turned against the husband and his career and reputation fully destroyed, for example, Harvey Weinstein. Prince Philip’s “companion”, i.e. mistress, was invited to attend his funeral. His pedophile son Prince Andrew was there in attendance and his mother, the Queen, continues to support him. This is nothing new and it surely must have been significantly worst throughout history prior to the women’s movement of the 1960s and in most recent years with the MeToo movement.
I’ve noticed that just in the last 20 years, the USA has become a lot more polarized. In my experience, Democrats and Republicans were able to be friends, date, and have civilized conversation when I was a kid. Everything became worse with Twitter and other forms of social media, which also gave Trump his platform until the very end of his reign.
Willy
the deeply unrepresentative nature of the Senate where something under 18% of the US population lives in 26 states, enough to form a 52 Senate majority
Yet even the salt of the earth cultural americana ruralness you’d think they’d be representing, is owned by the multinational likes of Monsanto and Cargill and the Wilks brothers.
When “socialism” always means Venezuela and the dark-skinned boogiemen at BLM and those beautiful Hollywood elites, all in cahoots to steal elections, but never Cuba or China or Norway, as well as the failings of the USSR, you know things have gone round the bend. Not enough of us are suspicious enough yet to suspect that the mindless repetition of plutocratic dogma by tribal cultists is probably in play.
Trump knew his people were ripe. “Lock her up!” was far too easily twisted into “We don’t care anymore, right?” To be fair, so did Biden with his own people, know they were ripe. South Carolina blacks proved they’d long forgotten what MLK even believed in when they chose Biden over Sanders.
What to do when people worship Dubya and Kristol one day, then throw them under the bus the next, just because their big-corporate news sources tells them to do so? Or to be fair, when Obama plays to prejudices and fears and at the end of the day, only helps encourage them?
Joseph E. Kelleam
The 2000 election robbery was pivotal because it was so in your face. Our democracy, what there was of it, died.
Mary Bennett
Divided country: Republicans, that is the country club folks, are losing money, which, in their universe, wasn’t ever supposed to happen. That is what provoked and fueled the tea party uprising.
As for the left, remnants of the self styled New Left are running head first into the hard reality that their religion, Marxism, is not going to take hold in North America. Marxism has been being pushed at us for not quite a hundred years now and has failed. Not happening. Furthermore, their intellectual preparation consisted of close reading of Marx and a handful of other European philosophers pus the more famous Russian novels and they still haven’t figured out yet that North America is not Europe.
My 2 cents: the right ideologues need to grow up and the left ideologues need to figure out what country they are living in.
someofparts
Actually, it may be that a good percentage of those reluctant to take the vaccine are young women who are either already pregnant or planning to be pregnant.
Plague Species
Maybe it’s a good idea not to be pregnant at this time. Fat chance when we live in a society where you must have everything you want when you want it and that includes having children. Apparently COVFEFE-45 is particularly dangerous for pregnant women and for the fetus.
Plague Species
https://www.reuters.com/world/more-risks-pregnant-women-their-newborns-covid-19-than-known-before-study-2021-04-23/
So yeah, come on ladies and have a child if you want one. Don’t listen to the scaremongers. It’s all a hoax. There is no danger. Your biological time clock is ticking. Live your life while you can. Make a copy of yourself and train it to obtain everything it wants when it wants it just like you and your significant other if you have one.
Plague Species
Meet the new currency, same as the old currency. The tentacles of the establishment are quite literally everywhere. Nothing escapes it. All creation belongs to the establishment. Every frontier. Every idea. Talk about abstract.
https://www.elliptic.co/meet-the-team
js
Of course historically Marxism had quite a following in the U.S.. It had to be crushed to be eliminated, purged from unions etc.. So the historical differences between the U.S. and Europe, based on culture, does not seem remotely accurate.
Of course it is now the 21st century, and everyone has been thoroughly propagandized, and meanwhile we’ve got 21st century problems like ecosystem collapse.
Chicago Clubs
Many of the prescriptions thought up by marxists or at least people claiming to be have gone badly, but as far as analysis of industrial economies goes there are two kinds: marxist and propaganda. Reality has a marxist bias.
different clue
I remember reading that in the 1870s to 19teens-or-so, that many kinds of non-Marxist socialism had big followings in America . . . the kind of socialisms that Marx derided as ” utopian socialism”.
Of course America’s most evil Twentieth Century President Woodrow Wilson used his tricking of America into joining the wrong side in World War One to crush and stamp out the Socialist Movements, including the Socialist Party and its candidate Eugene V. Debs.
After USSRs creation and ongoing survival, many socialist-minded people accepted Soviet Socialist leadership in trying to push left movements, so in the latest 20s and 1930s we could say that Marxism and its movements were popular here.
And of course all that was slow-motion stamped out starting with the removal from the ticket of Henry Wallace in 1944.
In our own day, Gulag Marxism is fairly discredited. Since Capitalism is also discredited, at least the neo-liberal Disordered Capitalism Under Anarchy kind, what different other sets of advice and inspiration might we look into?
Strange that no one thinks to mention the American Indian nations, who had viable societies of overall net-millions of people before the European Explorer Germocaust.
Astrid
They also don’t mention Western European Socialism, which worked well enough for working class people to go in numerous strokes in support of it. Or that even with the horrors of Communism, many Russians/Chinese/Soviet Bloc people prefer it to what came afterwards. It takes a lot of brainwashing to make people forget the past. The Chinese I met show evidence of being high propagandized because they remember their recent past less well than I do (since I check in periodically and are not affected by Chinese media in the meantime). But American full spectrum amnesia suggest this is the most propagandized populace in the world right now.