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Katherine Cross Profile picture
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6 Jan, 5 tweets, 1 min read
The Republican Party has proven its spinelessness many times over, but after tonight's election it looks even more pathetic. Trump was an actively *destructive influence* on the GOP's chances. Trump's fans/cult will never support them. Time to cut bait.
There will be many stories to come from this election. Black community organising, groups like Voto Latino causing a big bump in Latino votes for the Dems, Trump depressing GOP turnout, they're all factors.
But for Republicans who privately scorn Trump, the argument for their ongoing, grovelling support, was that he won them votes. He turns out his fanbase for them.

Except, clearly, he didn't. He weakened the GOP against a *strong* Dem challenge.
I don't expect that lesson to be learned publicly. There will be many MAGA maniacs in Congress who'll lodge spurious objections aplenty when the EC votes are counted in ten hours time. But they look even more pathetic.
And, yet again, I must emphasise to everyone on the left: Trump is not magic. He is not invincible. He's noxious and his cult represents an ongoing threat to democracy, but he is not invulnerable, and we should never talk about him as if he is.

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Katherine Cross Profile picture
7 Jan
This is why I've been all but screaming at people (mostly on the left, frankly) for years that these people are not the "forgotten men" of the rural working class or whatever. They're middle/upper class, trying to gain even more power.
The common denominator is not being part of a forgotten working class, it is largely a politics of whiteness that adopts a specific lifestyle as an in-group solidarity marker. It may, at times, pantomime a fun-house mirror view of working class life, but it's not proletarian.
It's as authentic as Kelly Loeffler's faux-trucker aesthetic or Don Jr.'s faux-rancher pantomime for Twitter, and deployed for the same reason: pretending to salt-of-the-earth authenticity while being privileged as all fuck.
Read 4 tweets
Katherine Cross Profile picture
6 Jan
You're already hearing this a lot, I imagine, but those of us who have warned for years that what's said and done online is consequential, that people like this were not 'just trolling,' have known something like this was inevitable if nothing was done.
And I will add: this did not in any way start with GamerGate, as some are claiming. GG was an inflection point, a moment when the far-right online invaded a mainstream hobby for recruitment. But it should be blatantly obvious that today's events didn't *begin* there.
The alt-right predates GG, despite what you may commonly hear. And, as for the long arc of American history, there are deeply alarming analogues. It's all part of a long history of white supremacism in this country. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmingto…
Read 8 tweets
Katherine Cross Profile picture
5 Jan
Indeed, that's why the US has failed in its COVID response. Too *much* planning.
Honestly, this argument gets worse the longer one stares at it. The US has had a markedly *de*centralised approach to the pandemic. A lot has been left to the states, and even different cities and counties in the *same* state may have different policies.
I won't stand here and pretend that central planning has no limitations, but the US has applied far too *little* of it in this crisis, and where power *was* centralised, it was not with the "bureaucratic elite" but in the hands of people like Jared Kushner and his pals.
Read 4 tweets
Katherine Cross Profile picture
5 Jan
The more mealy-mouthed GOP apologists for Trump's fraud claims treat the perception, the *feeling* that the election was fraudulent as prima facie evidence.

As always, the right does everything they falsely accuse the left of, and they pursue it to the hilt.
Like, of course the "facts don't care about your feelings" crowd would stoop to this, because what they really want is a world where *their* feelings ought not care about facts. And that's all its about: ego spiralling wildly out of control.
That's the unshakably attractive fantasy Trump has always sold them: a world that bends to their will, where they never have to hear a word they don't like, where what they say and feel is always true and determinative.
Read 4 tweets
Katherine Cross Profile picture
2 Jan
This is why I've always vehemently disagreed with those who assert Trump is some kind of secret evil genius who only pantomimes his buffoonery. There are smart, progressive people who *still* believe this!
The buffoon who hides his sinister cunning behind a "wot, me guv?" panto act is definitely a type in politics (see: Johnson, Boris). But it's not Trump. He *is* actually as catastrophically incompetent as he appears to be, incapable of planning, much less executing one.
The pandemic was an issue no one had preconceptions about, because it was completely new. Most people knew what they thought about Trump re: immigration, say. But Trump and COVID was obviously novel. It was an opportunity for him to dramatically reset the story of his own gov't.
Read 12 tweets
Katherine Cross Profile picture
30 Dec 20
Remember, this was the signature audit many of the right wing conspiracy theorists were screaming for. They'll either say nothing, or come up with some ridiculous argument that the audit was itself fraudulent. The goalposts will always move.
Some earnest reformers, as well as moderate Republicans speaking in bad faith because they're too cowardly to tell the truth, claim that the conspiracy-mongering can be cured through transparency, audits, and investigations.
This, of course, pretends that any of this was about *facts* in the first place, as opposed to power.

Nothing. Not. A. Thing. will persuade the average MAGA maniac that they're wrong. There'll always be another excuse, another bit of sophistry to paper over the latest loss.
Read 4 tweets

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