And they vote
The Bizarro World in which MAGA lives descended another level last week with the response to the video by six Democratic members of Congress reminding servicemembers that they are duty bound not to carry out illegal orders. While never mentioning Donald Trump, they caution that “this administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.”
The rage from the right was as telling. As was their lack of listening comprehension. Repeatedly, one might say deliberately, many GOP congress members and online trolls claimed that the Democrats had urged servicemembers to disobey legal orders and Donald Trump himself. That is, just the opposite of what the video said.
It is as if, like the dead in The Sixth Sense (1999), they just see (and hear) what they want to see. They demanded to know what illegal orders Trump had issued. (Ask former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley about that.) Trump himself accused the six of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”
I’m struck this week with the image from Charlotte of CBP agents violently arresting a worker reportedly doing restaurant construction. He is in a chokehold here and his face is bloodied in another photo.
It’s what the MAGA right sees in the photo that impresses. Good luck seeing what they are seeing. I see a cell phone in his right hand and nothing in his left. The Latino man is, by their photo analysis, holding a knife.
They see the emperor’s invisible clothes too.
If he were really holding a knife, CBP would have shot first and asked questions later.
The responses to the Charlotte arrest photo on X include a string of photos of a Latino man accused of statutory rape in Wake County (Raleigh). They just see what they want to see.
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