収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

It’s amazing how quickly paranoid delusions can go from being paranoid delusions to being the black-letter reality on the ground, isn’t it?

I mean, I was mad about the Bush II administration making the Edgy Left actually correct in ways they’d never actually been correct before, via his torture regime, via adopting hideous domestic policies including mass surveillance (with Democratic complicity), and via the horror show of their war in Iraq. Unfortunately, they actually did.

But even then, there were limits. I was assuring my nervous friends that Bush II, despite all this, was functionally an old New England Republican when it came to matters of having a Republic, and that he would leave office on time and in an orderly fashion – as he did – just as I assured Republicans that Obama would do the same.

Now, obviously, all of that is out the window.

So I want to present a list of items which are very well documented facts, but would’ve been absolutely, patently insane 10 years ago. I mean, the kind of rantings that got you thrown out of every conversation and mocked for years afterwards – and which are all now verified as true. It’s mostly not a list of their social agenda, thought there’s a bit of that at the end; it’s mostly a list of their authoritarian agenda, and the lengths to which they are going in their attempt to claim absolute power forever.

I want to present them this way so that they are all in a single place, easily accessed, and from a wide variety of sources.

And I want you to convince your friends that all this absolute paranoid conspiracy-theory lunacy is no longer any of those things, but is instead actually absolutely real.

For most people, the Republican Party has become so authoritarian, so treasonous, and so despicable so quickly that the mere act of reporting their own words gets you classified as a conspiracy-theory-swallowing lunatic. This must end.

I have no doubt in my mind that many people most of you know absolutely refuse to believe that any of this is happening despite the fact that it’s all horribly real.

What I’ve been doing for years is trying to break through that wall of disbelief, and what everyone needs to do now is exactly the same thing. You get it; that’s great. But you’ve got to break through the wall of denial still held up by so many, many, many others.

You have to convince them that it’s real, and you have to convince them that it affects them, personally, because frankly, most people will vote for the Leopards Eating Faces Party if they think they’ll get something out of it and the leopards will only eat other peoples’ faces.

And it’s never just other peoples’ faces.

That reality will not be denied forever, but it can – and if the Republicans have their way, absolutely will – be denied until it’s too late.

Here’s the list:

• The Republican House is a tool of Russian intelligence, routinely using disinformation from Russian intelligence services, and either not caring whether the disinformation was true or not or knowing it was using disinformation and using it anyway, in conjunction with the Russians. They will continue to use these Russian propaganda lies throughout 2024 and afterwards – a long as they think it will help them gain or retain power.
  
  There are those who call them the new ‘useful idiots.’ I agree they are idiots, but the term carries an implication of ignorance. Their actions are not so much those of idiots as allies, and I think it’s the better term. They are allied with and approve of Putin’s form of governance, and have a shared goal: a permanent hold on power, with an artificial shell of elections and faux ‘democracy.’
  
  I remind readers that even Stalin’s Russia had elections and what they called ‘democracy.’
  
  I further remind you of this video, in 2016, when Candidate Trump called for Russian help against Hillary Clinton live on the air, and he received that help immediately.
  
  The ‘Russia hoax’ was never, ever a hoax.
  .
• Trumpist allies within in the FBI and US intelligence services have similarly shown willingness to either take money from Russian agents or suppress information about Russian intelligence disinformation, particularly when doing so benefits the Republican party.
  .
• CPAC – the Conservative Political Action Conference, where insurrectionist leader and former President Trump spoke on Satuday – is a Nazi forum that welcomes Nazis. This isn’t an allegation anymore, there were literal Nazis openly welcomed on the floor and throughout the event.
  
  Some of these fascists overtly called for the end of democracy at this event and its replacement by a theocratic government. One of those approving of their statements was former Trump administration official Steve Bannon.
  .
• Said former president and insurrectionist is running for president and thus far easily winning the Republican nomination. Amongst other actions, he’s promising to be a dictator on day one, and he and his allies are planning to use Red-state militaries against Blue states and to build a mass system of concentration camps.
  
  He and his party – who have never met an ally they wouldn’t betray, just ask the Kurds, or secular Afghanis – have worked diligently to further Russia’s attempt to conquer Ukraine and threatened to destroy the cornerstone alliance of democratic countries, NATO, actively encouraging Russia to attack NATO states and saying he wouldn’t honour US treaty obligations if it happened.
  
  His efforts to betray Ukraine to Russia are now supported by a majority of Republican elected officials in the House.
  .
• Where Republicans have power now, they are trying to overturn marriage equality as a stepping stone to making LGBT people illegal again, arresting women for miscarriages, banning trans people and health care for trans people, banning books at scale and criminalising librarians who try to run underground book sharing programmes with laws which carry felony sentences, appointing terrorists to library oversight committees, introducing bills to criminalise sexting between adults, pledging ‘holy war’ against women pop stars.
  
  Oh yes, and doing everything they can to stop people from voting.
  
  And they will do all of this – every single bit of it – nationally, if they can.

I could put a lot more in this list, but I think it’s long enough already.

Get out there. Good luck – and good hunting.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.