What's known as American conservatism is mostly rural white cultural sensibilities that have been marketed as a political philosophy. This is nowhere more evident than the many children's books that have been published to fulfill a supposed need for "godly" kid-lit.
A few more. Please note that these are all real and that I've provided only a small sampling here.
More:
Still more. You'll notice that Rush Limbaugh has an entire series of kids' books.
The content of some of the books is terrible as well. The "Pepe and Pede" book is anti-Muslim propaganda and promotes white nationalist themes. It was written by a (since-fired) junior high assistant principal vice.com/en/article/vbb…
And then there's the author of the Donald the Caveman series, Trumpvangelical radio host Eric Metaxas.
He hosted Alex Jones and other crazies to call for a coup against the election and has said he'd be "happy to die" for Trump religionnews.com/2020/11/30/eri…
This is cultic politics, something you dedicate your entire life to, & the lives of your children, whether they want it or not.
Adults listen to Rush at work, the kids homeschool and read My Parents Open Carry, & everyone gathers round at night for Carlson, Ingraham, and OAN.
Via @tina_nguyen, here's another addition to this thread. Mike Huckabee has decided to get into the kiddie Trump worship business.
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Flashback lol of the day: Trump's top tariff adviser Peter Navarro made up a LARP of himself named "Ron Vara" which he repeatedly quoted in multiple books.
He even gave himself fictionalized biographical details, including being an Iraq war veteran. cnn.com/2019/10/16/pol…
Peter Navarro is such a crackpot that he has to literally invent economists who agree with him because everyone thinks he's insane.
This is who Donald Trump thinks is smart.
And btw, after Navarro was exposed for citing a fictionalized version of himself, he went and did it again, making up an email address for Ron Vara and circulating a memo during the first Trump term nytimes.com/2019/12/11/us/…
🧵Carl Sagan wasn't religious, but he was still a prophet.
Working together, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, and countless aids built the greatest diplomatic and economic structure the world has ever seen. This enraged religious fundamentalists.
Humanity was headed for the stars. But not on religious literalism's terms.
The Christian right rallied and began tearing at American greatness while blaming others for their actions.
Carl Sagan saw them coming.
Education investment and regulation was stopped. Superstition was enshrined in schools. Instead of covering health care and adding job guarantees, extreme Republicans cut welfare and outsourced jobs.
The far right created almost all the problems Trump voters are angry about.
🧵 Republican hatred of Democrats and of separation of church and state has significantly damaged political polling because reactionary Americans are willing to lie about their opinions if they think it helps Trump.
This fact has serious implications for Democrats...
I've written about how Republican voters now evince NPC-level responses to political polls. We're seeing that in particular with how Trump followers falsely thought the economy was in recession during Joe Biden's presidency, only to drastically reverse themselves under Trump
In academic political science, there have now been several studies about "expressive responding" among committed Republicans, especially regarding Trump's obvious lies about his 2017 inauguration crowd size online.ucpress.edu/collabra/artic…
Why is this happening? Primarily because fundamentalist Christianity has become an undead intellectual zombie.
What's even more bizarre and grotesque, however, is that Trumpian Christianity is much more about Nietzsche than Jesus.
Most contemporary fundagelical Christians have never heard of Friedrich Nietzsche, the profane atheist philosopher who died at the beginning of the 20th century. But his ideas are at the epicenter of the fascist Christianity they have embraced. plus.flux.community/p/the-apocalyp…
Living at the cusp of modernity, Nietzsche saw earlier than most that science and philosophy had totally destroyed Christianity's moral and scientific claims. "God is dead," he proclaimed, eager to establish a new morality based on power.
🧵 The election is going to be decided by people who don't like the candidates. Donald Trump always had a core of voters who don't like him but vote for him anyway.
It seems that the Harris campaign wanted to build a group of this kind for herself.
But the two parties' possible voter universes are not the same and cannot be motivated with the exact same tactics.
Historically, speaking, American political parties were multi-ideological. But the right wing activists who took over the Republicans changed the party.
They changed the nature of who was in the party. As the inventors of cancel culture, they kicked out all of the liberal and moderate Republicans who used to be very common.
They did this through relentless media propaganda aimed at Republicans to make them more reactionary.
🧵 After 9 long years, it's starting to look like Donald Trump has become overexposed to his fans.
Democrats have been significantly more enthused since Kamala Harris entered the race than Republicans have.
In a base turnout election, Trump loses.
Trump lost in 2020 because he failed to get some of his 2016 voters to come back to support him. You can slice who these people were, but demographically it was primarily white men. Trump improved his share among most other demographic groups.
These former voters either chose to vote for Joe Biden or they stayed home.
In 2024, he is trying to bring them back but Trump has not modified his message really at all. So why would they return?