ICYMI, a recap of the latest front in the culture war, a non-medically-trained clinic admin worker, who stole patient files for a personal database she took home and kept after leaving the job, then gave to an anti-trans blogger. May seem trivial but this is a cusp event IMHO.

https://twitter.com/alissacaliente/status/1634573255674568706

It looks like rationality is starting to break through in this area, and the fact that this worker committed numerous serious and intentional HIPAA violations, against children, seems to have shocked people who normally just ignore the anti-trans bigots.

Pollyannas are out here like "Jim Jordan's so-called FBI whistleblowers are just kooks! He's got nothin'! Ha! Got 'em!" and so we must once again repeat that things don't have to be true in order for fascists to act on them. They believe whatever they would need to believe. Do they want to go on a violence spree, smashing up anything they consider woke and brutalizing "woke" people in the streets? Yes, they fantasize about it often, it's the reason why they're eager for civil war, so they will get to do that.

Past people used to be fascinated by royalty because they wore a lot of shiny things, and people didn't get to see shiny stuff often.

But now people are fascinated because they act like the Jerry Springer show. King and Queen NPD attacking their own offspring, early and often. I bet a lot of therapists would agree that you're not going to wind up with a healthy family if you start with the premise that one family member is anointed by God and matters more than everyone else, who have no right to even object to anything they decide.

Right-wing men have been claiming that feminism/"the woke agenda" have been ruining their dating chances my entire life. I knew a guy in the 90s who was mad that he couldn't find a woman willing to vow to "obey" him. I guess they call that TradCath today. Now, that particular guy, he was also a Libertarian, so he actually wanted a woman who would vow to obey him for religious reasons, but also be OK with him growing weed in their linen closet, back during Weed Prohibition. So he had it a bit harder than the other trads.

The Tories are lying to the Brits about what happened to all their vegetables and whose fault the food shortage is. While the Murdoch-type UK tabloids focus on whether the Black duchess will celebrate her son's birthday or the coronation his grandfather planned for the same day. The so-called royal family continues to model THE most unhealthy family dynamics possible, while insisting that their entire purpose is to be role models to inspire the country. Healthy families don't ignore kids' birthdays, or tell family members their security is their problem.

I'm still mad at this. This was the line before the 2020 election too, when he was already threatening to reject it if he lost. "If we win BIG then he can't do that!" Because they were thinking of genteel lawsuits about recounts, not armed militants attacking the Congress.

https://twitter.com/revmagdalen/status/1538734894792286208

Sure, if the only dispute possible was demanding a recount to try to change fewer than 1000 votes, just make sure your lead is so big no recount could affect it. Bam! Now they HAVE TO accept it! Well turns out No, they just call the entire election rigged. Duh.

"They're rejecting any election losses with claims that the elections are rigged by an illegitimate government."

"Oh that's terrible! I know! Let's win REALLY BIG!"

"Wh...what? They...they're not accepting the outcomes?"

"But if we won really BIG, they'd HAVE to!"

"WHY?"
... (You won't get an answer to this, the people who believe that this strategy makes sense are locked in to their fantasy world and do not take kindly to questions.)

For a certain type of person, if they observe that many others are alarmed about something that they are not personally alarmed about? It never occurs to them to ask "Am I missing something they see?" It is only ever "How can I chill those Chicken Littles out?" (It's Matt Yglesias okay, that's who I'm subtweeting. But also Chuck Todd. And etcetera!)

The most obnoxious part of all this is the way that the people making these catastrophic choices, and their superfans, are absolutely certain that they are the smartest people who have ever lived and "Just ignore coup attempts," will become the new standard response to them. American Exceptionalism has warped their perspective so much that they think not only can coups never be successful here, no matter how inadequate the response to them, but in fact whatever response is made should be what *everyone* does in this situation from now on.

If Bannon decides that Lindell's not useful anymore, that his symposium doesn't have the right level of propaganda value, then he'll just create something that better suits his needs. He's a very strategic thinker, and he wants to win. While Mike Lindell appears to be having a genuine emotional crisis making him compelled to rant about being persecuted, Bannon calmly lays out three things he wants the audience to focus on: Covid as bioweapon, stolen election, J6 as either a security failure or frame-up.

I just can't wrap my mind around the people who are sincerely and genuinely overjoyed that a bipartisan infrastructure bill passed, like that was actually a thing they craved, and now they're partying. Like, what fascist movement? What climate change? We got BIPARTISAN! I have to think that the reason this means so much to them is that they think it will lead to more and more agreement between the parties, like first the roads, next the white supremacy and whether China attacked us with a bioweapon or not.

How is this pollyanna logic meant to work?
Step 1: Let seditionists sit in congress investigating their own insurrection.
Step 2: Get thug testimony saying "Yep we were there to install Trump and 55% of our party thinks it was justified."
Step 3: Mea culpas & reconciliation. Belief in the rightness of democracy as a form of government, its ethical superiority to any other form due to being based on consent instead of coercion, is a secular religion in America. We're all taught its tenets as children, it's ingrained in us.

Basically, Dem leadership put all our eggs in one basket, the "insurrection was a one-off, and anyway we were safe the whole time, it could never have succeeded" basket. Once you ignore one insurrection it'll be pretty hard to switch gears after future attacks. And make no mistake, declaring that seditionists get to take their seats as if they're not banned by the 14th Amendment, and get invited to investigate who those mysterious attackers were, is ignoring that their party did an insurrection. It's helping the cover-up. It's corrupt.

Once you crack the code that they see this as a race war, a lot of things that make no sense at first become clear. Why do they want to know who shot Ashli Babbitt? Why can't you shame them for cheating in elections? Why did they joke that J6 was going to be "peaceful"? All that.

https://twitter.com/GingerGano/status/1417444354130649091

They've told this story for years now, that BLM is a violent organization, while the Proud Boys are just a gentleman's drinking club that loves Western civilization. They reject that white nationalists have been caught trying to frame BLM with violence, project that on antifa.

Once a party declares that it no longer accepts the certified outcomes of elections, and instead it's going to reject all losses as illegitimate, that's the end of the "ignore their crimes, vote then out, let disgrace be the only consequence" strategy for opposing them. But hey, that was always an absurdly bad strategy, so, let it go, we can be free of the baggage of the "workarounds only, no using the tools designed for this situation" plan. We can just...use the tools. Embedded terrorist groups are what the Patriot Act was supposed to be for.

Imagine being so delusional about the danger posed by the fascist movement that you find its leader's speeches funny. You're *that* sure his heavily armed supporters won't kill any more people, that his rallies inciting more stochastic terrorism just seem like jokes to you. There's a lot of reason to believe that this delusional viewpoint is the main one guiding the party the blue wave put in power. People will just say it right out, expecting social reinforcement, like oh he's a clown, forget him, don't think about him.

People need to understand that he's not a confused unfortunate who believes these lies and is having an unhinged meltdown of gibberish. He's a fascist, and these are lies he thinks he can SELL. Because he market tests them at rallies.

https://twitter.com/RSBNetwork/status/1409353489579380740

Telling the 50 million people who believe his Big Lie that they're witnessing the cover-up of the crime of the century, and that it's only natural they no longer trust the ballot box, these are very strategic lies.

I'm sorry I'm going to be thinking about this all day, how is the guy who stood on the stage he ordered, at the rally he announced, and ordered the attack that then took place, NOT the "lowest hanging fruit"? HOW? You know how? A caste system with rich white men at the very very top, above not just the law but the rules of reason and common sense too, apparently.

Imagine being a fashy leader right now. They must be giddy with excitement. Now they know: you can incite coups and there are no consequences. You can string Democratic leaders along forever, run out the clock, and they will never catch on.

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1408773677563486208

Over and over, those of us who are mocked and trashed as "doomers," for simply treating America as a place that is not magically protected, are revealed to be right. He was totes trying to use the Insurrection Act. And yet, as always, what we're saying *now* must be mocked.

I mean, what's the point of today's talks? What's meant to be Russia's incentive to stop? Stop or we'll...give you more bilateral summits that place you as an equal to America while the nations you're invading can barely get a phone call?

It's like the old nursery rhyme "For want of a nail" about how events cascade from first causes. By choosing to pretend it wasn't an insurrection, Nancy and Chuck chose a chain of events that can't lead to justice, only more coup attempts. Because they're pretending it wasn't an insurrection, only the foot soldiers can be picked up, not their leaders, who are allowed to sit and even block an inquiry into their own behavior. Because of that, the insurrectionists get to try again and again.