I don't see any of the Trumpista phenomenon as irrational. It, along with right-wing talk radio, "reality" TV, and a host of other recent trends simply value being a star over all of the more traditional virtues. I seriously expect that Greene would not say (or even think) anything about killing Pelosi if it did not garner a following. We seem to live in a click-bait era. I don't doubt that Greene would actually shoot Pelosi under the right circumstances, but those circumstances have more to do with ratings than ethics.
I get the impression that many QAnoners exist in a world where Democrats are wicked Godless baby killers intent on destroying the American Way and instituting Communism. They are told this by their chosen media outlets. They are told it by their pastors. One has only to look at the otherwise inexplicable Latinx vote for Trump in Florida - how anyone can imagine that Biden == Castro from outside that milieu is unimaginable but clearly many did and do. In that situation, how hard is it to believe that Democrats are part of a secret cabal of evildoers with powerful friends in high (or low) places?
I don't think Latino support for Trump has anything to do with QAnon. You can find plenty of Democrats who loudly proclaim their fondness for socialism, and not a few who have expressed sympathy for socialist Latin American regimes; it's hardly surprising that some of those whose families have fled such circumstances find the Democrats unpalatable.
We don't honestly think that MTG believes the things coming out her mouth, do we?
She says these things as part of an act. She doesn't believe there's actually a Jewish Space Laser - she just wants to see who'll agree with her.
If the story had literally been phrased as a "Jewish Space Laser", I'm pretty sure Green would have rejected it, given that open anti-semitism is verboten across the political spectrum these days.
But my understanding is that it was described as a "Rothschild" space laser. Someone like her might not pick up on the innuendo.
And assuming you weren't being sarcastic, no, I can imagine someone in her position believing wacky stuff. It doesn't take that strong a grip on reality to get elected to the House or similar positions. Sonny Bono was a Scientologist, for example, and the Larouchians and David Duke have won votes at the state level.
But it's ironic that Karl cites a certain view of Adam and Eve as irrational. Erm ...
I make no comment as to its rationality.
Yes, sorry. It's about enculturation really. For example, ancestor worship is accepted in some cultures, so you are not thought wacky, or delusional. So Dawkins was wrong.
And speaking of Jews and anti-semitism in regards to all this stuff, one of the putschists arrested in Texas a couple of days back was described in the local media as a "rabbi". But doing a bit of research reveals that he is in fact Messianic, ie. a Jew who accepts Jesus as his saviour, and subscribes to pre-mil eschatology.
Though I think the guy IS actually of Jewish descent, unlike a lot of other Messianic Jews, who just seem to be cradle Christians adopting Jewish trappings for their worship.
But it's ironic that Karl cites a certain view of Adam and Eve as irrational. Erm ...
I make no comment as to its rationality.
Yes, sorry. It's about enculturation really. For example, ancestor worship is accepted in some cultures, so you are not thought wacky, or delusional. So Dawkins was wrong.
I'm guessing you're referring to psychological definitions of delusion, where a belief doesn't qualify, however irrational it may be judged, if it's commonly held in the culture in which a person lives.
This is useful here inasmuch as delusions (as defined psychologically) are symptoms of psychosis. QAnon and YEC both share that they are subculturally commonly held beliefs, so they don't indicate psychosis, so don't indicate mental illness.
Dawkins was only automatically wrong if you insist on a clinical definition of delusion.
We don't honestly think that MTG believes the things coming out her mouth, do we?
She says these things as part of an act. She doesn't believe there's actually a Jewish Space Laser - she just wants to see who'll agree with her.
If the story had literally been phrased as a "Jewish Space Laser", I'm pretty sure Green would have rejected it, given that open anti-semitism is verboten across the political spectrum these days.
But my understanding is that it was described as a "Rothschild" space laser. Someone like her might not pick up on the innuendo.
We don't honestly think that MTG believes the things coming out her mouth, do we?
She says these things as part of an act. She doesn't believe there's actually a Jewish Space Laser - she just wants to see who'll agree with her.
We do a major disservice to these people, and ourselves, when we posit that they don’t believe what they’re saying. Other than a deep desire for Representative Greene to not be fully off in conspiracy theory world, all of the evidence points to her actually being there and believing it. The same is true with QAnon followers and conspiracy theorists generally.
We don't honestly think that MTG believes the things coming out her mouth, do we?
She says these things as part of an act. She doesn't believe there's actually a Jewish Space Laser - she just wants to see who'll agree with her.
At some point the purpose of the system is what it does, I'm not sure it matters much whether she 'actually' believes in it -- and I suspect it depends on how you'd phrase -- but regardless, as you point out it's an article of faith for some of *her* followers and more dangerously sets the outer bar of implausibility alongside which "Antifa are being funded by Soros to bring about a Marxist society by over throwing the government" sounds relatively sober.
Mental illness, delusions, paranoia. General definitions as found on the 'net: A delusion is an unshakable belief in something manifestly untrue. The belief system/ delusional system of thought defies normal reasoning, and remain intact even when clearly shown to be false, cf, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusional_disorder I suspect this person qualifies for the disorder.
Another one is "shared psychotic disorder" usually called "Folie á deux". The word "psychotic" doesn't characterise what's going on with these paranoid and delusional people. But the shared nature of the delusions does fit. Consider also the shared delusions which some cult leaders have managed to inculcate into their members, like the Branch Davidians and those of Jim Jones cult in Guyana in the 1970s.
The beliefs these people have are coherent, systematic and don't seem to affect their functioning in other areas of life: they drive cars, they have families, have regular routines, may be charming and otherwise "nice", they work at jobs, etc. They believe in their weird and dangerous things because of their ideology, not because there's actually proof. I think these people are probably reasonably smart too.
Doc Tor, if you believe that the people who agree with her believe what she says, why do you think she doesn't?
For the same reason that I don't think the people who promulgate the idea that global warming is a hoax or that Sandy Hook never happened actually believe that. They say these things because they want something else - in this case, money from the oil companies or simply not to change their way of life, or the political and financial support of the NRA or the 2nd amendment rights as a further cover for white supremacy.
For some to assert that 'bankers control the world' is simply a shorthand way of being anti-Semitic and a fascist, without having to go to the trouble of throwing Roman salutes. I fully expect that most, if not all, journos at the Daily Mail don't believe the tripe they're writing - but they say they will because they think they can convince enough people it's true.
It's performative. It's a way of gathering people to you - to give you money, prestige, votes, retweets, whatever - so that you get what you want. You don't believe it yourself. You just have to convince others you can save them from it.
Do the two Houses of the US legislature have enforcement powers, such as suspension, to censure members of their House for contempt? If so, to the eyes of a foreigner who is at least aspiring to be objective, making threats or advocating violence against a fellow legislator, or for that matter the Vice President before the end of his term, ot the new President either before or after installation looks like the sort of contempt that her House should censure.
Have there been any moves to do this? If not, why not? Or am I looking at this from the assumptions of a different tradition?
Not sure why Trump didn'i issue pardons: maybe because he thought it would be taken as proof that he supported the rioters.
Trump lets down someone when it isn't in his immediate interests not to do so. What a surprise.
Although really it's not Trump's fault. It's the fault of all the people who found it in their interests to help spread the impression that Trump has any kind of moral compass or sense of decency.
I will not relieve Trump of moral agency or culpability.
There was some confusion, above, which a quick google would have dispelled, regarding another dangerous Congress creature, Lauren Boebert.
Apparently Kevin McCarthy (GOP House Minority Leader) has scheduled a sit down with MTG to discuss how things will move forward.
And yes, Gramps, there are a number of crackpots, but none is so vocally unhinged and publicly beloved by Trump .
Also she's the one this thread is about. Nothing stops anyone from starting another thread about another person, or a thread about a group of people as a whole.
Our equivalent to DC can make laws generally applicable within the Territory - and @Orfeo used work in drafting those laws for consideration by the Territory legislature.
Doc Tor, if you believe that the people who agree with her believe what she says, why do you think she doesn't?
For the same reason that I don't think the people who promulgate the idea that global warming is a hoax or that Sandy Hook never happened actually believe that. They say these things because they want something else - in this case, money from the oil companies or simply not to change their way of life, or the political and financial support of the NRA or the 2nd amendment rights as a further cover for white supremacy.
For some to assert that 'bankers control the world' is simply a shorthand way of being anti-Semitic and a fascist, without having to go to the trouble of throwing Roman salutes. I fully expect that most, if not all, journos at the Daily Mail don't believe the tripe they're writing - but they say they will because they think they can convince enough people it's true.
It's performative. It's a way of gathering people to you - to give you money, prestige, votes, retweets, whatever - so that you get what you want. You don't believe it yourself. You just have to convince others you can save them from it.
Your explanation does not cover Sandy Hook or Parkland. As I see it somethings are so horrible that they want to deny it and will develop a belief system that explains them away.
On the other hand, there can be other facts that just do not align with preconceived notions have to be explained away as well. Growing up in Georgia, Greene did not notice much change in the climate until just recently. Of course, she has her hand out to the oil companies, but I really think she believes climate change is a hoax.
Doc Tor, if you believe that the people who agree with her believe what she says, why do you think she doesn't?
For the same reason that I don't think the people who promulgate the idea that global warming is a hoax or that Sandy Hook never happened actually believe that. They say these things because they want something else - in this case, money from the oil companies or simply not to change their way of life, or the political and financial support of the NRA or the 2nd amendment rights as a further cover for white supremacy.
For some to assert that 'bankers control the world' is simply a shorthand way of being anti-Semitic and a fascist, without having to go to the trouble of throwing Roman salutes. I fully expect that most, if not all, journos at the Daily Mail don't believe the tripe they're writing - but they say they will because they think they can convince enough people it's true.
It's performative. It's a way of gathering people to you - to give you money, prestige, votes, retweets, whatever - so that you get what you want. You don't believe it yourself. You just have to convince others you can save them from it.
I think attributing this level of machination to all of these influencers, if you will, somewhat diminishes the problem.
On the other hand, there can be other facts that just do not align with preconceived notions have to be explained away as well. Growing up in Georgia, Greene did not notice much change in the climate until just recently.
If that’s the case then she hasn’t been paying attention. The effects of climate change, including the changes in temperature, have been just as noticeable in the American South as they have been elsewhere for quite some time.
Doc Tor, if you believe that the people who agree with her believe what she says, why do you think she doesn't?
For the same reason that I don't think the people who promulgate the idea that global warming is a hoax or that Sandy Hook never happened actually believe that. They say these things because they want something else - in this case, money from the oil companies or simply not to change their way of life, or the political and financial support of the NRA or the 2nd amendment rights as a further cover for white supremacy.
For some to assert that 'bankers control the world' is simply a shorthand way of being anti-Semitic and a fascist, without having to go to the trouble of throwing Roman salutes. I fully expect that most, if not all, journos at the Daily Mail don't believe the tripe they're writing - but they say they will because they think they can convince enough people it's true.
It's performative. It's a way of gathering people to you - to give you money, prestige, votes, retweets, whatever - so that you get what you want. You don't believe it yourself. You just have to convince others you can save them from it.
I think attributing this level of machination to all of these influencers, if you will, somewhat diminishes the problem.
Not all, but the top level, certainly. IIRC, Alex Jones' defence on being sued over Sandy Hook was simply "I didn't expect people to believe what I was saying, it was an act because that's my schtick, and it was just done for entertainment."
Likewise, I don't believe the top YECcies believe it themselves. It brings them money, tribal loyalty, influence. That's why they do it. It's a pattern that's repeated over and over again by not just lead proponents of fringe and conspiracy theories, but in any form of belief system. People who say X, but don't believe X, because they get something out of it.
Maybe people usually believe (in some sense) because they get something out of it? A way of life; eternal salvation; saving from other situations; feelings of being important and being accepted; something to hang onto right now, even if they shift later. Even just whistling in the dark.
And maybe that holds true whether we're talking about religion, sports teams, political parties, methods of acquiring wealth, who are The Right People (tm), activism, or breakfast cereals.
Our equivalent to DC can make laws generally applicable within the Territory - and @Orfeo used work in drafting those laws for consideration by the Territory legislature.
No I didn't.
Have you always worked for the Commonwealth? I thought that was a more recent move
Sonny Bono was a Scientologist, for example, and the Larouchians and David Duke have won votes at the state level.
Amusingly, the story of Trump as a Soviet Agent was pushed by Larouche himself back in the 1980s.
Really? I did not know that(and I'm a bit of a Larouche geek.) That would be another reason to be suspicious of the "hard" collusionist narrative as pushed eg. by that defector.
My guess is that when the defector says that his Russian hosts were "feeding him KGB talking-points", it's a sensationalized way of saying that they were just pushing the Soviet government's line on him, probably like they did for any prominent person who went over and met with high-level officials.
We don't honestly think that MTG believes the things coming out her mouth, do we?
She says these things as part of an act. She doesn't believe there's actually a Jewish Space Laser - she just wants to see who'll agree with her.
If the story had literally been phrased as a "Jewish Space Laser", I'm pretty sure Green would have rejected it, given that open anti-semitism is verboten across the political spectrum these days.
But my understanding is that it was described as a "Rothschild" space laser. Someone like her might not pick up on the innuendo.
Well, she didn't write the video, she just shared it. And it's possible that the word "Zionist" wouldn't register with her as an anti-semitic code word, or even as its technical meaning of "supporter of a Jewish homeland". She might have just lumped it in with "the UN" and "George Soros" as meaning "all the bad people who are ruling the world".
That said, the general anti-immigrant and racist themes of that video seem pretty clear, and she could not possibly been unaware of those.
Our equivalent to DC can make laws generally applicable within the Territory - and @Orfeo used work in drafting those laws for consideration by the Territory legislature.
No I didn't.
Have you always worked for the Commonwealth? I thought that was a more recent move
I corrected this a couple of weeks ago. I've worked in the 2 different Commonwealth offices (from when there used to be 2, now there's only 1).
We don't honestly think that MTG believes the things coming out her mouth, do we?
She says these things as part of an act. She doesn't believe there's actually a Jewish Space Laser - she just wants to see who'll agree with her.
If the story had literally been phrased as a "Jewish Space Laser", I'm pretty sure Green would have rejected it, given that open anti-semitism is verboten across the political spectrum these days.
But my understanding is that it was described as a "Rothschild" space laser. Someone like her might not pick up on the innuendo.
Well, she didn't write the video, she just shared it. And it's possible that the word "Zionist" wouldn't register with her as an anti-semitic code word, or even as its technical meaning of "supporter of a Jewish homeland". She might have just lumped it in with "the UN" and "George Soros" as meaning "all the bad people who are ruling the world".
Sure, and maybe she doesn't understand any of the words that anyone uses. About anything. Could be!
But I doubt it. I don't think it's possible for even the most unaccountably ignorant person to hang out on the fringes of the right wing for long without connecting "Zionist" with "Jews".
Our equivalent to DC can make laws generally applicable within the Territory - and @Orfeo used work in drafting those laws for consideration by the Territory legislature.
No I didn't.
Have you always worked for the Commonwealth? I thought that was a more recent move
I corrected this a couple of weeks ago. I've worked in the 2 different Commonwealth offices (from when there used to be 2, now there's only 1).
I shall try to keep that in my old, retired man's brain.
Sonny Bono was a Scientologist, for example, and the Larouchians and David Duke have won votes at the state level.
Amusingly, the story of Trump as a Soviet Agent was pushed by Larouche himself back in the 1980s.
Really? I did not know that(and I'm a bit of a Larouche geek.) That would be another reason to be suspicious of the "hard" collusionist narrative as pushed eg. by that defector.
My guess is that when the defector says that his Russian hosts were "feeding him KGB talking-points", it's a sensationalized way of saying that they were just pushing the Soviet government's line on him, probably like they did for any prominent person who went over and met with high-level officials.
I think the surprise was not that he was fed the propaganda but that he regurgitated it so readily. It does accord with the hypothesis that what Trump says publicly about things that don't concern him directly depends a lot on the last person he spoke to. He lacks critical faculties and tends to latch on to things fed to him and parrot them.
Likewise, I don't believe the top YECcies believe it themselves. It brings them money, tribal loyalty, influence. That's why they do it. It's a pattern that's repeated over and over again by not just lead proponents of fringe and conspiracy theories, but in any form of belief system. People who say X, but don't believe X, because they get something out of it.
Yup. Personal faith only becomes profitable if/when you corral it into corporate religion.
No wonder judgment day starts with the household of God.
Sonny Bono was a Scientologist, for example, and the Larouchians and David Duke have won votes at the state level.
Amusingly, the story of Trump as a Soviet Agent was pushed by Larouche himself back in the 1980s.
Really? I did not know that(and I'm a bit of a Larouche geek.) That would be another reason to be suspicious of the "hard" collusionist narrative as pushed eg. by that defector.
Yeah, it was in the EIR from 1987 - as amusement you may want to check out what they say about Biden on the following page.
Likewise, I don't believe the top YECcies believe it themselves. It brings them money, tribal loyalty, influence.
I believe that a number of them are in this category; I think there are also a number who hold to this view but don't necessarily believe all the arguments they use (but advance them anyway because they think it's in the cause of a greater truth).
We don't honestly think that MTG believes the things coming out her mouth, do we?
She says these things as part of an act. She doesn't believe there's actually a Jewish Space Laser - she just wants to see who'll agree with her.
We do a major disservice to these people, and ourselves, when we posit that they don’t believe what they’re saying. Other than a deep desire for Representative Greene to not be fully off in conspiracy theory world, all of the evidence points to her actually being there and believing it. The same is true with QAnon followers and conspiracy theorists generally.
Agreed. Mental confusion of this type is normal, human, a by-product of evolution for small scale natural, including social - tribal - complexity being exposed to factorially increasing social and technical complexity since the neolithic, 5% of our human evolution at most. It takes privileged educational experience and aptitude to transcend it, and even then.
If Biden was against SDI in the 80s, that would definitely have put him on old Lyndon's shitlist. The Larouche cult were OBSESSED with promoting Star Wars in those days.
I remember a week-long Doonesbury series featuring a nerdy little guy who was supposed to epitomize the whole Morning In America optimism of the Reagan era, with the joke being that he kept saying things that unwittingly revealed the more sinister aspects of Reaganism. In one strip, he was discussing SDI with one of the gang(I'll assume Zonker):
ZONKER: I'm afraid I don't know much about that.
NERD: Oh, it's easy to learn. There's some very good information about it in airports.
In those days, the Larouchians were promoting Star
Wars from info kiosks in airports, and were known to get into crazed shouting-matches on the topic with passersby.
If Biden was against SDI in the 80s, that would definitely have put him on old Lyndon's shitlist. The Larouche cult were OBSESSED with promoting Star Wars in those days.
Germane to this thread is that while Larouche may be seen as whacky, he did have contacts with further right elements in the military and intelligence services who seemed to view him as occasionally useful. So the right dabbling in conspiracy is not entirely new, it's just no longer as deniable.
Sonny Bono was a Scientologist, for example, and the Larouchians and David Duke have won votes at the state level.
Amusingly, the story of Trump as a Soviet Agent was pushed by Larouche himself back in the 1980s.
Really? I did not know that(and I'm a bit of a Larouche geek.) That would be another reason to be suspicious of the "hard" collusionist narrative as pushed eg. by that defector.
My guess is that when the defector says that his Russian hosts were "feeding him KGB talking-points", it's a sensationalized way of saying that they were just pushing the Soviet government's line on him, probably like they did for any prominent person who went over and met with high-level officials.
I think the surprise was not that he was fed the propaganda but that he regurgitated it so readily. It does accord with the hypothesis that what Trump says publicly about things that don't concern him directly depends a lot on the last person he spoke to. He lacks critical faculties and tends to latch on to things fed to him and parrot them.
Yes, but what he was saying in that NYT ad doesn't quite strike me as what would be fed to him by someone mouthing the "KGB talking-points" of that era. Trump's line in that ad was that Japan should pay Americans more for defense. But I'm pretty sure that's not what the Soviets were regularly telling their American guests, since it acknowledges that Japan NEEDS American defense in the first place.
If Biden was against SDI in the 80s, that would definitely have put him on old Lyndon's shitlist. The Larouche cult were OBSESSED with promoting Star Wars in those days.
Germane to this thread is that while Larouche may be seen as whacky, he did have contacts with further right elements in the military and intelligence services who seemed to view him as occasionally useful. So the right dabbling in conspiracy is not entirely new, it's just no longer as deniable.
I wasn't aware of Larouche having ties to the military and intelligence services, though it doesn't surprise me. His campaigns in the 80s were, for all practical purposes, campaigns for Reagan, with Larouche's own brand of loopiness thrown in.
Certainly nothing new about the right playing footsie with the conspiracy theorists. Without even going back to the Birchers in the early 60s, Pat Robertson in the 90s was publishing Illumanti stuff that was barely disguised anti-semitism.
Ms. Green strikes me as a bit more free-floating though, a sort of DIY conspiracy-theorist, less tethered to the traditional orthodoxies of the milieu. Just sort of an impression.
We don't honestly think that MTG believes the things coming out her mouth, do we?
She says these things as part of an act. She doesn't believe there's actually a Jewish Space Laser - she just wants to see who'll agree with her.
If the story had literally been phrased as a "Jewish Space Laser", I'm pretty sure Green would have rejected it, given that open anti-semitism is verboten across the political spectrum these days.
But my understanding is that it was described as a "Rothschild" space laser. Someone like her might not pick up on the innuendo.
You know, it's kind of refreshing to come across some old-school Rothschilds-based anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Most of today's anti-Semites blame everything on George Soros. Rep. Greene seems to have some appreciation of the classics of the genre.
You know, it's kind of refreshing to come across some old-school Rothschilds-based anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Most of today's anti-Semites blame everything on George Soros.
Yeah, and they probably think "Blood libel" means bad-mouthing an LA gang member.
the right dabbling in conspiracy is not entirely new, it's just no longer as deniable.
Certainly nothing new about the right playing footsie with the conspiracy theorists. Without even going back to the Birchers in the early 60s, Pat Robertson in the 90s was publishing Illumanti stuff that was barely disguised anti-semitism.
Ms. Green strikes me as a bit more free-floating though, a sort of DIY conspiracy-theorist, less tethered to the traditional orthodoxies of the milieu. Just sort of an impression.
Ah, the John Birch Society! I've not heard of them for a long time. Remember the song:
We're the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society.......
Have you heard they're serving vodka at the WCTU......
There's no-one left by me and thee,
And we're not too sure of thee....
Oh, we're meetin' at the courthouse at eight o'clock tonight.
You just walk in the door and take the first turn to the right.
Be careful when you get there, we hate to be bereft,
But we're taking down the names of everybody turning left.
Comments
I make no comment as to its rationality.
She says these things as part of an act. She doesn't believe there's actually a Jewish Space Laser - she just wants to see who'll agree with her.
I don't think Latino support for Trump has anything to do with QAnon. You can find plenty of Democrats who loudly proclaim their fondness for socialism, and not a few who have expressed sympathy for socialist Latin American regimes; it's hardly surprising that some of those whose families have fled such circumstances find the Democrats unpalatable.
If the story had literally been phrased as a "Jewish Space Laser", I'm pretty sure Green would have rejected it, given that open anti-semitism is verboten across the political spectrum these days.
But my understanding is that it was described as a "Rothschild" space laser. Someone like her might not pick up on the innuendo.
And assuming you weren't being sarcastic, no, I can imagine someone in her position believing wacky stuff. It doesn't take that strong a grip on reality to get elected to the House or similar positions. Sonny Bono was a Scientologist, for example, and the Larouchians and David Duke have won votes at the state level.
Yes, sorry. It's about enculturation really. For example, ancestor worship is accepted in some cultures, so you are not thought wacky, or delusional. So Dawkins was wrong.
Though I think the guy IS actually of Jewish descent, unlike a lot of other Messianic Jews, who just seem to be cradle Christians adopting Jewish trappings for their worship.
I'm guessing you're referring to psychological definitions of delusion, where a belief doesn't qualify, however irrational it may be judged, if it's commonly held in the culture in which a person lives.
This is useful here inasmuch as delusions (as defined psychologically) are symptoms of psychosis. QAnon and YEC both share that they are subculturally commonly held beliefs, so they don't indicate psychosis, so don't indicate mental illness.
Dawkins was only automatically wrong if you insist on a clinical definition of delusion.
Thanks for this! : )
Apparently Kevin McCarthy (GOP House Minority Leader) has scheduled a sit down with MTG to discuss how things will move forward.
And yes, Gramps, there are a number of crackpots, but none is so vocally unhinged and publicly beloved by Trump .
We do a major disservice to these people, and ourselves, when we posit that they don’t believe what they’re saying. Other than a deep desire for Representative Greene to not be fully off in conspiracy theory world, all of the evidence points to her actually being there and believing it. The same is true with QAnon followers and conspiracy theorists generally.
Amusingly, the story of Trump as a Soviet Agent was pushed by Larouche himself back in the 1980s.
At some point the purpose of the system is what it does, I'm not sure it matters much whether she 'actually' believes in it -- and I suspect it depends on how you'd phrase -- but regardless, as you point out it's an article of faith for some of *her* followers and more dangerously sets the outer bar of implausibility alongside which "Antifa are being funded by Soros to bring about a Marxist society by over throwing the government" sounds relatively sober.
Another one is "shared psychotic disorder" usually called "Folie á deux". The word "psychotic" doesn't characterise what's going on with these paranoid and delusional people. But the shared nature of the delusions does fit. Consider also the shared delusions which some cult leaders have managed to inculcate into their members, like the Branch Davidians and those of Jim Jones cult in Guyana in the 1970s.
The beliefs these people have are coherent, systematic and don't seem to affect their functioning in other areas of life: they drive cars, they have families, have regular routines, may be charming and otherwise "nice", they work at jobs, etc. They believe in their weird and dangerous things because of their ideology, not because there's actually proof. I think these people are probably reasonably smart too.
For the same reason that I don't think the people who promulgate the idea that global warming is a hoax or that Sandy Hook never happened actually believe that. They say these things because they want something else - in this case, money from the oil companies or simply not to change their way of life, or the political and financial support of the NRA or the 2nd amendment rights as a further cover for white supremacy.
For some to assert that 'bankers control the world' is simply a shorthand way of being anti-Semitic and a fascist, without having to go to the trouble of throwing Roman salutes. I fully expect that most, if not all, journos at the Daily Mail don't believe the tripe they're writing - but they say they will because they think they can convince enough people it's true.
It's performative. It's a way of gathering people to you - to give you money, prestige, votes, retweets, whatever - so that you get what you want. You don't believe it yourself. You just have to convince others you can save them from it.
Do the two Houses of the US legislature have enforcement powers, such as suspension, to censure members of their House for contempt? If so, to the eyes of a foreigner who is at least aspiring to be objective, making threats or advocating violence against a fellow legislator, or for that matter the Vice President before the end of his term, ot the new President either before or after installation looks like the sort of contempt that her House should censure.
Have there been any moves to do this? If not, why not? Or am I looking at this from the assumptions of a different tradition?
Moves have been made.
I need to look up the details... I'll get back to you.
Moves have been made.
I need to look up the details... I'll get back to you.
I will not relieve Trump of moral agency or culpability.
Also she's the one this thread is about. Nothing stops anyone from starting another thread about another person, or a thread about a group of people as a whole.
No I didn't.
Your explanation does not cover Sandy Hook or Parkland. As I see it somethings are so horrible that they want to deny it and will develop a belief system that explains them away.
On the other hand, there can be other facts that just do not align with preconceived notions have to be explained away as well. Growing up in Georgia, Greene did not notice much change in the climate until just recently. Of course, she has her hand out to the oil companies, but I really think she believes climate change is a hoax.
I think attributing this level of machination to all of these influencers, if you will, somewhat diminishes the problem.
Not all, but the top level, certainly. IIRC, Alex Jones' defence on being sued over Sandy Hook was simply "I didn't expect people to believe what I was saying, it was an act because that's my schtick, and it was just done for entertainment."
Likewise, I don't believe the top YECcies believe it themselves. It brings them money, tribal loyalty, influence. That's why they do it. It's a pattern that's repeated over and over again by not just lead proponents of fringe and conspiracy theories, but in any form of belief system. People who say X, but don't believe X, because they get something out of it.
And maybe that holds true whether we're talking about religion, sports teams, political parties, methods of acquiring wealth, who are The Right People (tm), activism, or breakfast cereals.
Have you always worked for the Commonwealth? I thought that was a more recent move
Really? I did not know that(and I'm a bit of a Larouche geek.) That would be another reason to be suspicious of the "hard" collusionist narrative as pushed eg. by that defector.
My guess is that when the defector says that his Russian hosts were "feeding him KGB talking-points", it's a sensationalized way of saying that they were just pushing the Soviet government's line on him, probably like they did for any prominent person who went over and met with high-level officials.
Well, she didn't write the video, she just shared it. And it's possible that the word "Zionist" wouldn't register with her as an anti-semitic code word, or even as its technical meaning of "supporter of a Jewish homeland". She might have just lumped it in with "the UN" and "George Soros" as meaning "all the bad people who are ruling the world".
That said, the general anti-immigrant and racist themes of that video seem pretty clear, and she could not possibly been unaware of those.
I corrected this a couple of weeks ago. I've worked in the 2 different Commonwealth offices (from when there used to be 2, now there's only 1).
But I doubt it. I don't think it's possible for even the most unaccountably ignorant person to hang out on the fringes of the right wing for long without connecting "Zionist" with "Jews".
I shall try to keep that in my old, retired man's brain.
I think the surprise was not that he was fed the propaganda but that he regurgitated it so readily. It does accord with the hypothesis that what Trump says publicly about things that don't concern him directly depends a lot on the last person he spoke to. He lacks critical faculties and tends to latch on to things fed to him and parrot them.
Yup. Personal faith only becomes profitable if/when you corral it into corporate religion.
No wonder judgment day starts with the household of God.
Yeah, it was in the EIR from 1987 - as amusement you may want to check out what they say about Biden on the following page.
I believe that a number of them are in this category; I think there are also a number who hold to this view but don't necessarily believe all the arguments they use (but advance them anyway because they think it's in the cause of a greater truth).
Agreed. Mental confusion of this type is normal, human, a by-product of evolution for small scale natural, including social - tribal - complexity being exposed to factorially increasing social and technical complexity since the neolithic, 5% of our human evolution at most. It takes privileged educational experience and aptitude to transcend it, and even then.
Thanks for the link! Weird yet fun memories.
If Biden was against SDI in the 80s, that would definitely have put him on old Lyndon's shitlist. The Larouche cult were OBSESSED with promoting Star Wars in those days.
I remember a week-long Doonesbury series featuring a nerdy little guy who was supposed to epitomize the whole Morning In America optimism of the Reagan era, with the joke being that he kept saying things that unwittingly revealed the more sinister aspects of Reaganism. In one strip, he was discussing SDI with one of the gang(I'll assume Zonker):
ZONKER: I'm afraid I don't know much about that.
NERD: Oh, it's easy to learn. There's some very good information about it in airports.
Wars from info kiosks in airports, and were known to get into crazed shouting-matches on the topic with passersby.
Germane to this thread is that while Larouche may be seen as whacky, he did have contacts with further right elements in the military and intelligence services who seemed to view him as occasionally useful. So the right dabbling in conspiracy is not entirely new, it's just no longer as deniable.
Yes, but what he was saying in that NYT ad doesn't quite strike me as what would be fed to him by someone mouthing the "KGB talking-points" of that era. Trump's line in that ad was that Japan should pay Americans more for defense. But I'm pretty sure that's not what the Soviets were regularly telling their American guests, since it acknowledges that Japan NEEDS American defense in the first place.
I wasn't aware of Larouche having ties to the military and intelligence services, though it doesn't surprise me. His campaigns in the 80s were, for all practical purposes, campaigns for Reagan, with Larouche's own brand of loopiness thrown in.
Certainly nothing new about the right playing footsie with the conspiracy theorists. Without even going back to the Birchers in the early 60s, Pat Robertson in the 90s was publishing Illumanti stuff that was barely disguised anti-semitism.
Ms. Green strikes me as a bit more free-floating though, a sort of DIY conspiracy-theorist, less tethered to the traditional orthodoxies of the milieu. Just sort of an impression.
You know, it's kind of refreshing to come across some old-school Rothschilds-based anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Most of today's anti-Semites blame everything on George Soros. Rep. Greene seems to have some appreciation of the classics of the genre.
Yeah, and they probably think "Blood libel" means bad-mouthing an LA gang member.
Ah, the John Birch Society! I've not heard of them for a long time. Remember the song:
We're the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society.......
Have you heard they're serving vodka at the WCTU......
There's no-one left by me and thee,
And we're not too sure of thee....
Can't remember the intervening lines.
Corrected quoting code. BroJames, Purgatory Host
There's no-one left but me and thee,
And I'm not too sure of thee....
The days when Barry Goldwater was an extremist. Compared to Ms Greene and her ilk, he's about as extreme as Harold Wilson.
Oh, we're meetin' at the courthouse at eight o'clock tonight.
You just walk in the door and take the first turn to the right.
Be careful when you get there, we hate to be bereft,
But we're taking down the names of everybody turning left.
No, every source I’ve seen credits Michael Brown.