Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
Dec 28, 2020 8 tweets 6 min read Read on X
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. ImageImageImageImage
A few more. Please note that these are all real and that I've provided only a small sampling here. ImageImageImageImage
More: ImageImageImageImage
Still more. You'll notice that Rush Limbaugh has an entire series of kids' books. ImageImageImageImage
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. ImageImageImage

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More from @mattsheffield

Aug 7
🧵Right-wing extremists like Libs of Tiktok and Charlie Kirk totally concocted the Sydney Sweeney "outrage."

The supposed left-wing outrage at Sweeney never happened. Republicans made it up.

Republicans have been inventing people to rage against for decades… Image
As @kenbensinger and Stuart A. Thompson report, the actual numbers show that almost no one was criticizing Sydney Sweeney for her American Eagle ad.

But Libs of TikTok decided to pretend that lefties were angry. A story that was nothing became huge. nytimes.com/2025/08/07/bus…Image
This tactic, often called nutpicking, is a go-to strategy for RW media. I know this because I was in it for 15 years.

Highlighting random people as supposed representatives of evilness or stupidity is the bit.

Jesse Watters built his career on ridiculing bikini-clad women.
Read 17 tweets
Jul 19
1/ Donald Trump's obsessive defensiveness about Jeffrey Epstein is causing a deep rupture within his far-right base.

It's an echo of the last time this happened, when he tried to tell MAGA to get vaccinated. They didn't listen.

Link in next post🧵
2/ This episode is also related to Elon Musk's chatbot Grok going into a "MechaHitler" rant.

Reactionaries have built an anti-epistemology and the leaders sometimes can't control it. plus.flux.community/p/epstein-grok…
3/ For years, QAnon and its spinoffs have painted Democrats as part of a secret pedophile cabal. Yet the most documented religious abuse scandals happen within conservative religious denominations.

Data shows 67% of politicians accused of child sex crimes are Republicans.
Read 9 tweets
Jun 22
🧵 Donald Trump has never been "anti-war."

He supported George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq until it became an overwhelming disaster. Then hey pretended to have always opposed it.

One of only a few things Trump has ever been consistent on was wanting to bomb Iran.
Trump often criticized other presidents' foreign wars, but this was not because he opposes war and wants diplomacy.

The fact that Trump was willing to criticize other presidents for getting into ill-fated foreign wars confused some people....
Donald Trump is not smart enough to have an ideology. His mind is a fetid rat's nest of conspiracy theories, hairspray, and stimulants.

When he criticized Obama or Bush for engaging in wars, he did so because he knew that's what a lot of people wanted to hear.
Read 11 tweets
Apr 6
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/…
Read 4 tweets
Apr 3
🧵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.
Read 14 tweets
Mar 17
🧵 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 Image
Image
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…
Read 13 tweets

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