Mini-thread: Mike Lindell and the right-wing plutocrat network
The MeinPillow guy's never-ending spew of lies and delusions about the 2020 elections have damaged the country, but his craziness does provide a great example of how insane your average right-wing donor is.
The fat cats who bankroll the GOP (even pre-Trump) are lunatics, pure and simple.
The biggest right-wing donors out there are Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer. They are outright Christian supremacists who also are in love with the atheist Ayn Rand.
To a normal person, these two worldviews are utterly irreconcilable because they are diametrically opposed. But if you're crazy enough, they blend perfectly!
Of course, Robinson is on the boards of several well-funded right-wing non-profits, including the Heartland Institute. He's also a donor to the creationist bullshit factory, the Discovery Institute.
The Mercers lobbied for Trump to make him the National Science Adviser
I could do this all day but I have to walk my dog so I'll go to Peter Thiel, one of the other big funders of Trump. He's an atheist gay man who has a very odd habit of financing and associating with people who hate gays and atheists.
Thiel has extensive ties to self-described white nationalists, including ones who have glorified racial violence: buzzfeednews.com/article/rosieg…
Thiel even was scheduled to address a white nationalist conference until he was exposed by the SPLC. splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016…
One thing I'd like to see tech journalists declare independence from is their blatant pro-Apple bias.
I'm going to review this iPad pro review to show you what I mean, and why most tech sites' star ratings are utterly worthless laptopmag.com/reviews/ipad-p…
The iPad Pro 12.9 has some nice aspects, but it has a lot of negatives. But you never see tech sites ding Apple for the negatives.
The biggest negative of iPads is that they are drastically overpriced for what they can do. You have to pay a minimum of $1,000 US for...
A tablet that comes with none of the following:
-Storage card slots
-Upgradeable internal storage
-Keyboard
-Stylus
-A headphone jack
-More than a single port
-An OS that can actually open files
-An ability to boot third-party OSes
Since Joe Biden became the president, Republicans consultants and politicians have been desperate to find a way to attack him. But nothing has worked, his approval rating has consistently been above 50%. So instead, right-wing elites have decided to completely embrace trolling.
The important thing to realize is that GOP elites are trolling everyone, including their own supporters. This is vital because as Biden has embraced stimulus spending and family support, he's forced the right to defend its greatest weakness: their anti-government views
1/x If you really want to see how things are in GOP politics, don't listen to talking head shows, just read the articles at Townhall written by party loyalists who want sore loser Trump to go away & then scroll down to the comments.
The article in question, by @RebeccaRoseGold, is a fairly neutral writeup for the crybaby speech the exprez delivered. It was massively triggering to the supposedly "tough" and "manly" Townhall audience.
The #1 voted comment whines that she invaded his safe space
"Douglas" gets some pushback but doubles down by implying that anything Trump claims is a "hoax" or a "crime" should be assumed to be so. No quotation marks allowed according to little Douglas.
Right-wing media audiences expect total devotion to the great leader
@DiscoverFlux As many political observers have noted, the filibuster tactic in the U.S. Senate has blocked many progressive bills from becoming laws.
Its institutional effect is even more pronounced, however, because it's enabled Mitch McConnell to create his own form of "triangulation"
In politics, triangulation means manufacturing a new political position that makes your own look more moderate or reasonable. This is exactly what McConnell's done w/the filibuster. He's convinced many people (incl Kyrsten Sinema) that it keeps the Senate centrist.
1/x I haven't published anything about growing up in fundamentalist Mormonism until today.
Most people outside the sect have no idea how weird it really is. Here's a story of the day I almost sold my soul--to God flux.community/matthew-sheffi…
In the LDS religion, adherents are forced to give everything they have to the church. My father took things several steps further and made his kids promise to become perfect or be cast into hell. It was a very disturbing experience and the first time I didn't believe.
The idea came to my father on a trip we took to a field in northwest Missouri where Mormons believe that Adam from the Bible lived after being cast out of the Garden of Eden, which was also in Missouri, dontcha know