Political Memes

Umberto Eco (a survivor of Mussolini’s actual regime) identified this as one of the core traits of Ur-Fascism. Specifically, #8…

The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.… However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.

You will note that Republicans check literally every single box of Umberto Eco’s list.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism

Is Doublethink a more adequate term?

To be fair, they have a problem with trans women in women's sports. They don't have a problem with trans men in men's sports because they can't imagine a situation where a trans man could possibly compete with "real" men.

It goes along with their idea that women are weak, so women are weak athletes and women's sports teams are weak. If you accept that, it's not a big stretch to think that someone who has gone through puberty as a male will have an automatic huge advantage in every women's sport because their body has male characteristics.

On the other hand to them, the military is the ultimate in manly activities. Anybody other than a pure, manly man will be at a disadvantage in anything military. That includes trans men, trans women and regular women. Right now the focus is on trans people, but I'm sure they'll want to kick women out of the military too eventually.

So, if you accept that logic, it makes sense that trans women are too weak for the military, but too strong for women's sports. There's no contradiction there.

doublespeak fr

True story. Back in 2008 there were two op-ed pieces on the smae page of the Murdoch owned New York Post.

One said that voting for Obama was a waste of time, because he was a centrist neoliberal who'd only serve up milder versions of GOP programs, so you'd be better off with an actual Republican.

The other screamed that he was a radical Socialist who would destroy America.

Same newspaper, same page, no irony

Now that we're solidly in the era of alternative facts, all that seems to register is what a politician says in the moment. It's really depressing to watch both political parties and 99% of voters just shrug their shoulders and go along with the utter stupidity of our political culture, even in full knowledge of its deleterious effects on their own lives.

Schrodinger's Canada: we don't need anything from them, but we'd love to own them anyway.

Schrodinger's energy crisis:

We need to sell public lands for oil extraction since we have an energy crisis!

We need to cancel wind energy and solar facility construction!

watching trump squirm about how all these Mexican gangs got up to Canada.

schrodinger: jeez cmon guys all i did was kill a cat (maybe)

Their military excuse is actually that a person who switches gender can’t be honest and committed, which is just as crazy, it still has that view that people “choose” to be trans and by choosing to be trans they should a lack of commitment to their birth gender i guess??

This is a mixed metaphor. Women are kept out of frontline combat much like they’re sidelined to the WNBA: segregated under the guise of inclusion.

Err does anyone on the right actually think we have secure borders?

Like wasn't "securing the borders" part of Trump's pitch? As in "there's an invasion taking place and we need to secure the borders"?

The trans one is spot on though

Classic fascist doublethink. Straight out of the book. The enemy is both strong/dangerous enough to be a serious threat, but the fascist is still somehow very superior to them. 🤷

Schrödingers free speech: You can tweet everything unless it's against Muskrats opinion.