Month: February 2022

Amanda Marcotte expresses all our anxieties this morning:

https://twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte/status/1493202174813343751?s=20&t=vgkeV3eQ9E1zhuM21R93cA

https://twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte/status/1493204416832282625?s=20&t=vgkeV3eQ9E1zhuM21R93cA

“The only thing that will crack the shell of ignorance is arrests and trials,” Marcotte tweets. She’s likely right. The people who need to see Trump naked are not those who’ve shouted for years that he has no clothes.

“The Republicans are actively trying to destroy democracy. Worse, there was a high-profile assault on the Capitol a mere year ago that should, by any reasonable measure, illustrate the profoundly fascistic leanings of the current GOP,” Marcotte wrote in January. Those leanings must be paraded in public.

https://twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte/status/1493207854681145346?s=20&t=vgkeV3eQ9E1zhuM21R93cA

Yeah, and our other frustrations, too:

https://twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte/status/1493213442018353155?s=20&t=vgkeV3eQ9E1zhuM21R93cA

Beutler wrote, “[I]f crooks can opt out of the criminal law through public intimidation, we should wonder how much they’ll ultimately get away with simply by threatening to whip up a public shitstorm if they meet any resistance.”

Like schoolyard bullies, they count on others backing down to intimidation. How much more will Democrats take before bringing the legal hammer down?

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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

Progressives tend to live too much in their heads. We think politics is all about the best ideas, the right message, and a focus-grouped mix of policies. (Lately, that list would include maximizing social media engagement.) The number of campaigns political junkies have won in their heads and lost on the ground is beyond number. 

Winning in your head is like bringing sports visualization training to the Olympics and thinking you’ll be competitive when you show up with no conditioning and no skills.

At some point, you have to play the game for real. At some point, you have to run the election and count the votes. At some point, you have to win on the ground instead of in your head. You’d best be good at it.

A long article in New York magazine chronicles the journey of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from “adrift, broke, and disillusioned” to holding a seat in Congress as “the face of a resurgent left.” A single, degreed, millennial Latina, in debt and supporting family, she confronted the post-Great Recession economic wasteland while debating politics from behind a bar.

But she did not stay in her head. After campaigning for Bernie Sanders in 2016, she watched in horror, Lisa Miller writes, as Hillary Clinton, even with “her elite education, multimillion-dollar war chest, institutional support, decades of experience, and recognizable name,” lost to an incompetent, “shady real-estate developer” type Ocasio-Cortez knew too well from bartending. It was time to do something.

That December, she and a friend took a short trip to the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock in North Dakota. It gave Ocasio-Cortez space to contemplate options:

Ocasio-Cortez would later describe the experience as “transformative.” She saw how her anger, frustration, and isolation could be channeled, productively, into principled opposition, how historical grievance could be converted into strength, and how worldliness — cynicism and spiritual fatigue — weakened resolve. “There is something to be said for seeing and smelling and tasting and breathing” another person’s reality, Ocasio-Cortez has said. “Indigenous people who just wanted the same rights to their own land that anybody else had — it really internalized the intersection of racial and economic and criminal justice into one, and I felt like we had to do something.”

It would involve running and winning an election. Cynicism has no place there. Visualization won’t cut it. Complaining from the stands is just a mind game. She stepped out onto the field.

James Shelton last week at Daily Kos wrote of efforts 31st Street Swing Left to support state parties in Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina and Georgia with a “neighborhood team approach.” Their goal is to grow state parties beyond the boom-and-bust cycles of campaigning, to reduce the duplication of effort of siloed campaigns, to see more money and emphasis placed on down-ballot races in redder areas, and more year-round outreach there. All good, needful stuff.

Two important caveats. As progressives, we cannot resist the impulse to set up new organizations rather than strengthening and improving existing ones from the inside — the very “duplication, lack of coordination, reinventing the wheel” Shelton’s group and many others want to see reduced.

Second, the vast bulk of organizing by candidates, parties, and independent groups goes into getting voters to the polls. State and federal legislative caucuses, the state party, the governor, etc. work on it. Every candidate. MoveOn, VoteVets, NAACP, Voto Latino, Swing Left, Indivisible, the League of Women Voters, EMILY’s List, OFA, DFA, and a dozen other groups all work on getting people to the polls. Do you know what they are not working on? What voters do with their ballots once they get there.

John Snow was the last Democratic state senator standing in North Carolina’s far west. Jane Mayer wrote about his 2010 reelection race in a New Yorker piece titled “State for Sale.” Conservative kingmaker Art Pope poured almost a million dollars into that one race. His PACs sent two dozen attack flyers into John’s district. One echoed the infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad.

Snow lost that race. But even after all the money spent against him, John lost by 161 votes in a district spanning eight counties with an average population under 30,000. That count was less than the undervote in his race in his two largest counties. People there cast ballots but didn’t vote in John’s race.

North Carolina Judge Cheri Beasley is running for U.S. Senate this year after losing her state supreme court reelection bid in 2020 by 401 votes out of 5.5 million cast. Over 130,000 fewer votes were cast in her race than in the presidential contest. Over 130,000 voters went to the polls and didn’t vote in her contest.

That is where down-ballot candidates often lose. Only county parties are positioned, at least in theory, to address that, as I wrote before about Democrats’ “last mile” problem:

The focus on voter turnout is vital (and I address how local committees can support that in For The Win). Step 1 is getting the right voters off their couches, out their doors, and to the polls. We don’t bank votes, however, simply by getting people to the polls. The frenetic work that goes into that typically assumes what happens next happens on its own. But banking votes is not like the Sidney Harris cartoon where Step 2 is “THEN A MIRACLE OCCURS” and we win.

It is the reason to provide electioneering training and cover shifts outside polling places during early voting and on Election Day. Poll greeters need to be supplied with easy-to-read sample ballots or slate cards. It is the last opportunity to influence voters’ choices and how they fill out their ballots. And to make sure they do, and all the way to the bottom to minimize the undervote. We don’t pay it near enough attention.

Covid precautions surely contributed to Beasley’s 2020 loss on the field. There were enough undervotes in my county alone to close the gap. But there are 99 others spread across North Carolina. There are over 3,100 counties and county equivalents in the country. Most county committees are under-resourced and under-organized. They need help not just from the outside but from the inside.

Furthermore, party training geared toward precinct captains turning out their voters on Election Day is out of date. It’s not how elections have operated in decades. The majority of states have some form of early voting. Multiple states vote by mail.

Party trainings assume a precinct turnout model as though elections are still a one-day, 14-hour marathon at a time when two-thirds to three-quarters of the vote is cast before Election Day.

Addressing the undervote is a persistent blind spot that money alone won’t solve. Nor will neighborhood canvassing, nor the best ideas, the right message or a focus-grouped mix of policies. More of us need to get out of our heads and, like Ocasio-Cortez, onto the field.

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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

He’s such a grotesquely immoral, profane creep. And yet they love him more than ever:

Former President Donald Trump, unlike most ex-presidents, hasn’t yet inked a multimillion deal for post-presidential memoirs. But he has signed his name on a coffee table book documenting his presidency that’s bringing in millions, CNN reports. 

The coffee table book, titled “Our Journey Together,” has drawn in $20 million in gross revenue since Winning Team Publishing released it in November, CNN reported.

Winning Team Publishing was founded by Trump ally Sergio Gor, also a business associate of Donald Trump Jr., for the purposes of publishing  “Our Journey Together,” and now has additional conservative writers’ projects in the works. 

“Our Journey Together,” CNN said, includes about 300 pages of official White House photographs and other snapshots from the Trump presidency. They all come with captions written — some with Sharpies — by Trump. 

Trump annotated the photos with colorful commentary reminiscent of his Twitter missives, peppered with insults and slights at his political foes. Twitter permanently suspended Trump’s account in the wake of the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol. 

“Attempting to listen to crazy Nancy Pelosi in the Oval Office — such natural disagreement,” Trump wrote alongside a photo from a contentious December 2018 Oval Office meeting with former Vice President Mike Pence and Democratic congressional leaders over the federal government shutdown taking place at the time. 

“She was screaming and shaking like a leaf, she’s fucking crazy, hence the name ‘Crazy Nancy,'” Trump said in another handwritten caption, according to CNN. 

The book is now literally flying off the shelves, with Gor struggling to keep up with the demand and recently putting in a request for 300,000 more copies to be printed. The few copies available online are being sold at a massive upcharge by third-party resellers. 

“We still can’t keep up with the customers,” Gor told CNN.

Since leaving office, Trump has been the subject of many dishy books by top journalists and tell-all memoirs written by some of his former aides, like former press secretary Stephanie Grisham. The former president has also offered up copious amounts of his time to authors, voluntarily sitting for interviews for at least 17 book projects at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. 

But Trump hasn’t had any known offers from any of the major publishing houses for his memoirs, Politico reported in June. Publishing industry insiders told the outlet that the lack of interest from big publishing houses is due to Trump being “radioactive” following the Capitol riot. There are also concerns that his book will being “a fact-checking nightmare,” they told Politico.

One industry source told Politico that Trump “has screwed over so many publishers that before he ran for president none of the big 5 would work with [him] anymore” on top of the baggage from January 6.

“If my book will be the biggest of them all, and with 39 books written or being written about me, does anybody really believe that they are above making a lot of money? Some of the biggest sleezebags [sic] on earth run these companies,” Trump said in a statement to Politico, adding that publishers care about “no morals, no nothing, just the bottom line.” 

The former president of the United States, beloved by white evangelical Christians throughout the land, writes, in his own handwriting, “she was screaming and shaking like a leaf, she’s fucking crazy, hence the name ‘Crazy Nancy'” and makes millions doing it. And he says that publishers don’t care about morals, just the bottom line.

At the end of a Biden photo op, when reporters shouted Q's hoping he'd respond, Fox's Peter Doocy asked, "Do you think inflation is a political liability in the midterms?" Biden deadpanned: "It's a great asset—more inflation. What a stupid son of a bitch." pic.twitter.com/Tt4ZVz5Ynj

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) January 24, 2022

I don’t blame Biden for being sarcastic there. It’s a stupid question. Of course inflation is a very big problem — the biggest economic challenge the administration faces and it’s not an easy one to fix.

Dan Pfeiffer has some thoughts on how to deal with it:

​The political peril for Democrats can be summarized as follows: people are very worried about inflation and the electorate does not believe President Biden and the Democrats are sufficiently focused on addressing that worry. A January CBS News/YouGov poll showed the magnitude of the problem; nearly two-thirds of voters believe the Biden Administration is not sufficiently focused on inflation.

A Navigator Research poll from early February found that 40 percent of voters selected inflation as an issue that Biden and Congress should be focused on, but only 20 percent of voters selected it as an issue that Biden and Congress are most focused on.

I do think it is important to note that the Biden Administration is tremendously focused on dealing with inflation. They are working hard to deal with the supply chain issues contributing to higher costs, and the Build Back Better legislation would put money in people’s pockets. But we should also be honest with ourselves. There are limited levers to pull to bring down costs in the short term.

Go on Offense

Because they are power-hungry nihilists, the Republican reaction to the inflation news was not one of concern. It was a celebration. Punchbowl News reported:

Republicans are convinced the spike in consumer prices is the single most important dynamic right now. They’re also convinced Democrats don’t have a real plan to address it. “It’s the biggest issue in the country, and I think their biggest liability going into the fall,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told us in a brief interview Thursday.

The best defense is a good offense. So instead of parrying these attacks with proof points about what we have done and want to do, Democrats should consider turning the entire conversation around inflation into an argument for populist economics. This is an opportunity to expose Republicans for siding with highly profitable corporations. There are two elements to this message. First, Democrats should grab onto the mantle of economic nationalism. Data for Progress recently tested several messages on inflation. The best testing one by far was:

President Biden says that we need to bring back manufacturing jobs in the United States to drive down prices. Our supply chains need to be housed here at home, rather than outsourced abroad.

Making things in the U.S. and bringing jobs home is the top testing message in basically every poll I have ever seen in every campaign I have ever worked on. But it is also a point of contrast with the Republicans. The 2018 Trump Tax law rewarded companies that shipped jobs overseas. That fact is political kryptonite and gives Democrats the opportunity to punch back with an argument about how Republicans made the problem worse.

The reasons for the recent spike in inflation are complex and specifically tied to the pandemic. However, while American families are struggling to make ends meet, corporations are reaping record profits. Instead of lowering costs, they are using the money on stock buybacks and bonuses for executives. According to a recent report from Accountable.US:

[The big four oil companies] raked in $24.4 billion in quarter four of 2021, bringing their total profits for last year to over $75.5 billion. Chevron, Shell, BP, and Exxon used these bloated profits to shower billions onto their shareholders – including their wealthy executives whose salaries are heavily padded with stocks.

Groundwork Collective has a rundown of how mega-retailers used the holiday season as an opportunity to jack up prices under the cloak of inflation. One example from the report states:

After a strong second quarter profit this year, Macy’s paired price hikes with stock buybacks, recently approving $500 million in buybacks. The company’s chief executive even admitted it is experimenting with where it can get away with higher prices: “We’ve clearly been through these inflationary cycles before, and so we have a lot of experience with it… And with fashion, sometimes you can pass that on, and you can get a higher ticket and a higher sale price.”

Pushing hard against rapacious corporations is strong political ground for Democrats. Right now, polls show that most voters cite increased government spending as the leading cause of inflation. This is factually incorrect and politically problematic for Democrats. Therefore, we need to shift the blame in a more accurate and politically advantageous direction. In that same Data for Progress poll, the Republicans have an eight-point advantage over Democrats on whom the public trusts to control inflation. But Democrats have a nine-point advantage on “cracking down on corporate abuses and corruption.” Hammering corporations as part of a populist argument has the added advantage of exploiting the fundamental tension in a Republican Party with a working-class base and a corporatist agenda.

Under all scenarios, inflation will be a “liability in the midterms,” but going on offense is our best bet. In politics, you can either parry or you can punch. I vote punch.

I think this is such a good idea. They should start attacking these rapacious corporations and business who are obviously price gouging. We know they are. This is an opportunity to change the argument and seize some of this populist energy. Let Fox News defend these opportunistic corporations that are using this emergency as an excuse to raise prices.

With the impending loss of Roe vs Wade I think it’s a fair bet that many of the religious right are going to turn some of their attention back to gay rights. If they can eliminagte a constitutional right that’s been in place for 50 years, I’m pretty sure that LGBTQ rights aren’t secure from this Supreme Court either. They clearly care nothing for precedent.

Here’s the latest from Ron DeSantis:

A funny thing about Republicans is that despite claiming to be the party of “personal freedom,” in the last year alone, they have tried to prevent Americans from: reading certain books, teaching about systemic racism, making decisions about their own bodies, and, in the case of some groups, voting in democratic elections. A lot of people would look at this evidence and conclude that Republicans are massive hypocrites—and they would be right! So while deeply depressing, it’s in no way surprising that Florida conservatives want to ban talk of gender identity and sexual orientation in the state’s primary school classrooms, and that Florida’s governor, who seems to have his eye on the White House in 2024, has signaled his support for the initiative.

On Monday, Ron DeSantis offered tacit endorsement for the Parental Rights in Education bill, a.k.a. the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which would require the implementation of “procedures to reinforce the fundamental right of parents to make decisions regarding the upbringing and control of their children,” ban teachers from encouraging conversations about LGBTQ+ topics in the classroom that are “not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students,” and allow parents to take legal action against school districts if they think their “fundamental right” as parents has been violated. Asked about the bill, DeSantis insisted it is “entirely inappropriate” for teachers to talk with students about gender identity, claiming to have heard examples of children being told, “Don’t worry, don’t pick your gender yet,” and where teachers are “hiding” lessons from parents.

“Schools need to be teaching kids to read, to write,” DeSantis said, completely ignoring the emotional development that also occurs during kids’ formative years. “They need to teach them science, history. We need more civics and understanding of the U.S. Constitution, what makes our country unique, all those basic stuff.… The larger issue with all of this is parents must have a seat at the table when it comes to what’s going on in their schools.” While he did not outright say he would sign the bill into law, as NBC News notes, “it was the first time the Republican governor signaled his support for the measure since it was proposed by the state’s House of Representatives last month.” Which is incredibly worrisome.

Opponents of the bill—which include the White House—have warned it would be extremely harmful to the mental health of LGBTQ+ teachers and students. “Make no mistake—this is not an isolated action. Across the country, we’re seeing Republican leaders take actions to regulate what students can or cannot read, what they can or cannot learn, and most troubling, who they can or cannot be,” a spokesperson for the White House said in a statement. “This is politics at its worse, cynically using our students as pawns in political warfare.”

Naturally, they;’re starting with kids. They are the most vulnerable. What could be easier?

And good for the Biden administration for speaking out on it.

As someone who spends my life online I really try not to let that fool me into thinking that it is reflective of the country. I know it isn’t. But I admit that this one surprised me:

Judging by the raging argument over this online, I honestly thought these numbers were probably reversed. The argument seems to be completely political at this point and I just assumed that polling must have shown a large majority of Americans saying they are “done with COVID.” How else to explain this rush to remove mask requirements and the intense pressure to go back to “normal” (whatever that is these days) when we still have high numbers of hospitalization and death and lots of virus in most communities?

This blows up my theory. I still assume that it’s political but it must be based on other criteria than public opinion. Economics would seem to be the logical choice but everyone is working and growth is through the roof. Inflation is a problem but it’s unclear how lifting the mask mandates would affect that.

So, I don’t know. Maybe they just wanted to “do something” to make everyone feel more normal. I just hope they haven’t inadvertently prolonged this surge by doing it.

Tucker is really full of himself these days. He needs to lay off the espresso.

TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): We want freedom, the truckers are saying, freedom from mandates. It’s a very straightforward ask, but so far, the truckers don’t have that freedom, and so their blockade continues. So far, that blockade has forced the Ford motor company to shut down one of its manufacturing plants and to operate another plant with a skeleton crew. Toyota says it won’t be able to manufacture vehicles in Ontario for the rest of the week. General Motors has canceled multiple shifts at its plant in Lansing, Michigan due to part shortages. 

So, this protest is less than a week old and already is causing deep pain to at least one global industry. It’s hard to overstate the historical significance of what we’re watching right here. The Canadian trucker convoy is the single most successful human rights protest in a generation. If nothing else, it has been a very useful reminder to our entitled ruling class, the working class man can be pushed, but only so far. When they push back, it hurts. It turns out that truck drivers are more important to a country’s future than say, diversity consultants or even MSNBC contributors. Who knew?

Tucker being the voice of the blue collar working man will never stop making me laugh, It’s even more ludicrous than Donald Trump.

I would guess that Trump has given up on taking credit for the vaccines. His people are so hostile to them that it’s not worth it:

In late January, a blast of fundraising emails for Donald Trump featured a “MUST-SEE: New Trump Ad” that, among other things, championed Trump’s role in creating a COVID-19 “vaccine in record time, saving millions of lives.”

Trump’s vocal backing of COVID-19 vaccines puts the former President in a new, and possibly vulnerable, political position. While his support for the vaccine puts him in line with a majority of conservatives—57% have been willing to get at least one shot, according to a December Monmouth University poll—it also lands him squarely in the crosshairs of his most ardent base, many of whom see the federal government’s vaccination campaign as overreach. Thirty percent of Republicans say they “likely will never get” a COVID-19 vaccine shot, according to the Monmouth poll. According to data analysis by the KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor, Republicans also make up an increasingly large share of the unvaccinated, comprising 60% of the unvaccinated in October, up from 51% in July.

“He’s out of touch on the vaccine,” one user wrote on a pro-Trump forum that was a staging ground for the Jan. 6 insurrection after Trump appeared on OAN. Another asked “Why lose half your base over a faulty vaccine actively being used to take away rights?” Someone else responded, “I love Trump but this shit is getting intolerable.” At a rally in Cullman, Alabama in August, Trump was booed when he told the crowd he recommended getting vaccinated.

As he angles for a possible run for the White House in 2024, Trump finds himself in a tight spot, caught between highlighting his Administration’s significant achievement of working with pharmaceutical companies to jumpstart vaccine development and production and an evermore outspoken anti-vax Republican base. If Trump runs for the White House in 2024, he’ll need to appeal to voters beyond the most enthusiastic fringes of his supporters.

Some Trump Administration veterans see Biden’s low approval ratings on his handling of the pandemic, hovering now in the mid-40s, as an opening. Mick Mulvaney, who was Trump’s director of Office of Management and Budget and acting White House chief of staff, thinks it’s smart for Trump to talk about his administration’s work to jump start vaccine production. “Even his harshest detractors acknowledge that it was a success,” Mulvaney says.

[…]

For a politician who thrives on the energy of the crowd, the skepticism from a vocal part of his base has created a dilemma. “I believe totally in your freedom, I do,” Trump told his supporters at the August rally in Alabama. “But I recommend, take the vaccines. I did it. It’s good. Take the vaccines.” A wave of boos went through the crowd. Trump got a similar reaction in December when he was on a stage with Bill O’Reilly at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. O’Reilly said “both the president and I are vaxxed,” and O’Reilly asked Trump if he got the booster. When Trump said yes, a chorus of jeers erupted. “Don’t! Don’t! Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!” Trump told the audience, waving his hand at them.

[…]

It remains to be seen if Trump thinks the potential benefit of focusing on his record with vaccines outweighs the potential backlash from his most loyal followers. In mid-January, Trump seemed to be trying out a reelection stump speech during a rally in Florence, Arizona, a swing state where he lost narrowly to Joe Biden in 2020. This time, he didn’t talk at length about vaccines.

“Not hearing President Trump pushing the ‘vaccines’ was my favorite part of last night’s speech,” one user on a pro-Trump forum wrote. “He’s a tough guy, but not so tough that he could take 10,000 of his own people booing him…His team had to have made that assessment and he decided to tweak his message a little bit.”

He seems to have found a sweet spot with the “mandates” which he’s out there railing against and supporting the trucker protests. If these trucker convoys do materialize in America he will be leading the protests (from afar, of course.) If the Republicans can help them hobble the US economy you can bet they will do it.

It may seem odd to find a movement openly talking about hanging political adversaries focused in churches. But that depends on which ones you’ve visited.

“Pentecostal Christianity, despite its immense size, is about as far from elite American culture as Mercury is from Mars,” writes David French at The Dispatch. “And this means it’s quite distant from elite Evangelical culture as well.”

The fringe is one place former Donald Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn finds a welcome. His “ReAwaken America” tour is part tent revival, part trade show. It’s noticeable that his tour is sponsored by a charismatic Christian organization, French writes.

There are several reasons why the movement is difficult even to describe, much less combat:

First, MAGA Christian nationalism is emotional and spiritual, not intellectual or ideological.

Second, MAGA Christian nationalism is concentrated in the churches most removed from elite American culture, including from elite Evangelicalism. 

That is, it is concentrated in a subculture as removed from mainstream Christianity as snake-handling. Its symbols, its cultural references, Baylor University historian Thomas Kidd wrote, are “easier to notice than to explain.”

It’s in the air out here

Third, MAGA Christian nationalism is often rooted in purported prophecies. I’ve spent every single day of the Trump era living deep in the heart of Trump country, surrounded by Trump-supporting friends, and attending church with Trump-supporting Christians. If there’s anything I know by heart, it’s the “Christian case for Trump.” I’ve read all the essays. I’ve heard all the arguments. It’s in the air out here. 

There’s the pragmatic or prudential cost/benefit analysis—he’s a bad man, but his judicial appointments are good. There’s the cultural argument about threat—the left has grown so terrible that we have to punch back. But there’s also another argument entirely, one that’s impossible to discuss rationally—that Trump is divinely anointed by God to save this nation from imminent destruction. 

I have up-close experience with this level of fervor. Some readers may remember that I debated Eric Metaxas at John Brown University in September 2020. While the debate was civil enough, it was clear to me that Metaxas was operating with a level of commitment to Trump that went well beyond reason. He truly believed Joe Biden would destroy America. He truly believed Trump was God’s chosen man for the moment. 

The People’s Temple believed in Jim Jones. Since the Reformation decentralized Christianity, by the late 20th century any American huckster with a flashy suit, an expensive coif, a sonorous voice, and a black, Morocco-bound, gilt-edged, King James red-letter edition could define Christianity pretty much any damned way he pleased. It’s the Wild West out there.

“Post-truth,” Timothey Snyder warns, “is pre-fascism.” In their minds, believers in these circles cannot conceive of themselves as enemies of democracy, French explains. It is why Antifa must be responsible for Jan. 6. “Republicans don’t act like that. That is not what we do.” Even as some call for hangings.

So we have to be careful. When dealing with a potentially insurrectionary subculture, it’s important to separate it from the population. Wrongly tie them to the mainstream, and members of the mainstream may wrongly see the insurrectionists as allies. 

But underreaction can be dangerous too. We know that fanatical religious subcultures can do an immense amount of damage to the body politic. We know that they can be both deadly and destabilizing. A Christian political movement that’s so focused on the threat from the left can often unwittingly facilitate the rise of radicals, through sins of both commission and omission.

The sin of commission is constant threat-inflation. By focusing relentlessly on “wokeism” or the worst of the left, Christian media exacerbates the sense that Evangelicals are under siege and hanging on to their place in American society by their fingertips. As a leader in a well-known Christian activist group told me this week, threat-inflation leads to “cornered-animal syndrome,” rendering Christians vulnerable to the siren call of the extremists. Join us. We’re the last hope for the nation and the church.

The sin of omission is the deafening silence from so many Christian leaders about the threat to the church and the nation from the far right. Convinced by threat-inflation of the danger from the left, and desperate for the unity that is perceived as necessary to confront existential risks, the last thing they want to do is to divide the right. Indeed, they scorn those public voices who dare “punch right.” 

Contra FDR, fear itself is not the only thing mainstream America has to fear. But it drives people to behaviors thay might otherwise abhor. There are concentration camps preserved as testament to that. But this subculture with its alternate reality makes it’s self-reinforced fears difficult to unwind.

(h/t Rachel Vindman)

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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

Deepfakes are already setting off alarm bells. Digital manipulation to alter reality is and will be a problem for separating reality from fiction, fact from urban legend. David and Barbara Mikkelson of Snopes have devoted their careers to separating the wheat from the chaff on the web.

At The Week, Grayson Quay considers how the move away from physical storage media makes it easier to memory-hole information. Problematic content is one reason. Old cartoons with racially derogatory and sterotypical depictions of people and groups disappeared long ago from TV, but may still be found on the net. Other materials may simply be “stealth edited” or erased from our timelines:

Last week, for example, Joe Rogan deleted over 100 episodes of his podcast from Spotify after a compilation video of him saying the N-word went viral. Five episodes of the sitcom It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia that feature blackface, brownface, or yellowface have also been tossed down the memory hole, though in all five cases, the joke is at the expense of the white character doing the impression, not of the group being mocked.

Of course, when dealing with problematic content, there are options other than stealth editing and memory-holing. One is to contextualize. Pull up Lady and the Tramp on Disney+, and you’ll be served with a title card explaining that the 1955 film “contains negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures … Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it, and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.”

But providing clarifying “context” to now-offensive, once-common language or content and allowing it to remain — Confederate generals on horseback, for example — would be seen as an attempt to whitewash white supremacy.

These days, Quay argues, “it’s probably easier to seamlessly alter a digital file than it is to add fig leaves to a fresco without anyone being the wiser.” Winston Smith endlessly rewrote history. Guy Montag burned it. Both characters were fiction. But reality could in the near future bear an unsettling resemblance. As physical storage disappears, so might the untidy past it contains.

Editing technology still has its limits, but that too will change. If we aren’t careful, we’ll find ourselves in an eternal present in which every fleeting whim, sentiment, and taboo could be projected back across the entire history of human cultural production. The memory hole will never be full.

I have a DVD of the James Coburn, Cold War satire, The President’s Analyst (1968). There is an abrupt cut in which Coburn goes from walking the night streets of Manhattan to inexplicably waking up with a woman in his bed. Cut is the scene where the two meet in an art house theater run by a gay director as over-the-top as Christopher Hewett’s Roger De Bris. But if there is no record of it, did I just imagine it?

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