Tag: authoritarian

Frank Zappa on democracy…

“Americans like to talk about (or be told about) Democracy but, when put to the test, usually find it to be an ‘inconvenience.’ We have opted instead for an authoritarian system disguised as a Democracy. We pay through the nose for an enormous joke-of-a-government, let it push us around, and then wonder how all those assholes got in there.”

Frank Zappa

California Congresswoman Wants a Truth Commission—Like a Good Little Leftist Authoritarian

Jacobs compared what happened at the Capitol on January 6 to genocides in Rwanda and Burma and said believes white supremacy is a huge problem. For groups with this explicit ideology, there are 124 in the entire country tracked by the SPLC. Being that it is the SPLC, this is likely an overestimate and indicates a few thousand closely followed members. There are also no explicit links between that ideology and the rioters at the Capitol, other than in the Democrats’ heads. President Trump expanded his minority vote in 2020, so the link to “Trumpism” is also pretty off base.

By contrast, the Anti-Defamation League tracked over 2,100 crimes related to anti-Semitism in the United States last year, the highest since they began tracking in 1979. The Anti-Semite of the Year for 2019, Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee with Jacobs. The president from her party is snubbing Israel. The entire party has an anti-Semitism problem. Maybe she ought to clean her own house first.

But Jacobs is as determined as Stelter to remove far-right-wing media from the airwaves. Jacobs praised him for stating that the “Big Lie,” a genuinely offensive term to explain the perception some had of voter fraud, was fed by it. I would encourage her to read the recent expose in Time, not because it excuses what happened. Instead, it explains why so many Americans felt something was wrong with the election. Even the author said President Trump was correct, in a way, because there was “a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes.”

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Nikole Hannah-Jones Calls For ‘Consequences,’ ‘Deprogramming’ For Republicans

Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who is best known for her flagship essay in the New York Times’ ahistorical 1619 Project, believes that 74 million Americans deserve to be “punished” as part of deprogramming them for voting for Donald Trump in 2020.

The 1619 Project creator spoke to Eugene Robinson on MSNBC, where he asked her about how the media and social elites can best “deprogram” the “millions of Americans, almost all white, almost all Republicans” who voted for Trump, as they are clearly part of a “cult.”

Hannah-Jones responded with a vague call to look toward an undefined “history,” declaring that “there has to be consequences” based on how you vote. She then decried the push towards a quick “reconciliation” between the left and right. The so-called journalist painted Trump supporters with a broad brush, lumping the Capitol rioters in with average Republicans who voted based on policy.

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