When the Crazy Get Crazier, Whatcha Gonna Do?
When the Crazy Get Crazier, Whatcha Gonna Do?
“They just slay me,” says this brown Jewish Middle Eastern guy going by the name of Jesus, when asked about the Christian white nationalist movement in a country Jesus never even visited.
”They hate Jewish people, Muslims and basically two thirds of the world that’s darker than they are,” Jesus explained, “and I sure don’t like them attaching that hatred to my name at all.”
Via John Blake at CNN:
The insurrection marked the first time many Americans realized the US is facing a burgeoning White Christian nationalist movement. This movement uses Christian language to cloak sexism and hostility to Black people and non-White immigrants in its quest to create a White Christian America.
I’d add that Hitler once called himself a ‘German Christian’, which was a Protestant group that supported Nazi ideology. And it’s precisely why US founders created a wall to separate church and state. Lack of that wall invites revisionized pop religions that justify atrocities.
It’s not so difficult to spot false prophets. They always advocate violence and exclusion of targeted groups of people. They are dangerous in any religion in any society.
Look at what this one guy did. He hurt his mother, daughter and siblings by choosing suicide instead of justice. How very sad.
Blowhard hobo Steve Bannon, via Huffpost:
Bannon vowed to “go medieval” on his enemies when he was served with his subpoena last year and said he would make the charges against him the “misdemeanor from hell” for the Biden administration. Instead, he didn’t even take the stand in his defense. The jury determined he was guilty after deliberating less than three hours.
But, unsurprisingly, he’s still blowharding:
Steve Bannon is now calling on “4,000 shock troops” to “deconstruct” the federal government “brick by brick.”
He wants to see people “stepping forward, say[ing], ’Hey, I want to be one of those 4,000 shock troops,” Bannon said on his “War Room” podcast Monday. “This is taking on and defeating and deconstructing the administrative state,” he added.
“Shock troops” are assault forces that lead an attack.
“Suck on it,” said Bannon. “We’re destroying this illegitimate regime.”
Bannon’s incendiary comments evoked his ominous call the day before the U.S. Capitol riot, when he told supporters of then-President Donald Trump on his podcast: “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. We’re on ... the point of attack ... strap in.”
His cult leader, the Zyklon Bozo, is even worse, leaking plans to replace thousands of federal employees with his handpicked toadies. He’ll destroy the careers of competent people, their retirement plans and wreak havoc on thousands of families innocent of any wrongdoing.
But wait, there’s more. Per The Hill:
Former President Trump on Tuesday voiced support for imposing the death penalty as punishment for convicted drug dealers as part of a speech in which he laid out a series of drastic measures to curb crime.
“The penalties should be very, very severe. If you look at countries throughout the world, the ones that don’t have a drug problem are ones that institute a very quick trial death penalty sentence for drug dealers,” Trump said at the America First Policy Institute.
“It sounds horrible, doesn’t it? But you know what? That’s the ones that don’t have any problem. It doesn’t take 15 years in court. It goes quickly, and you absolutely — you execute a drug dealer, and you’ll save 500 lives,” Trump continued.
“It’s terrible to say, but you take a look at every country in this world that doesn’t have a problem with drugs, they have a very strong death penalty for people that sell drugs,” he said.
Trump’s comments calling for a crackdown on drug dealers, which included praise for quick trials in other countries, came as part of a broader vision for harshly cracking down on crime.
He’s trying to sell the notion that crime is out of control:
He called for police squad cars to be parked on every corner.
Trump suggested moving encampments of homeless people out of major cities and to “large parcels of inexpensive land at the outer reaches of the city” and creating tents with medical professionals.
Trump called for passing laws to give police more authority and strengthen qualified immunity so law enforcement does not fear repercussions.
He called for a “no-holds-barred national campaign to dismantle gangs and organized street crime in America.”
The former president called for efforts to defeat violence “and be tough and be nasty and be mean if we have to.”
“We’re living in such a different country for one primary reason: There is no longer respect for the law, and there certainly is no order. Our country is now a cesspool of crime,” Trump said.
Cesspool?
Crime hit a 23 year low in 2014. It’s risen some, especially between 2019 and 2020, when Trump was in office, which most crime analysts attribute to the financial disruptions of the covid pandemic, the backlash against the BLM movement, the rise of violent hate groups and excessive income inequality. Most of that has been violent crime …. with forcible rape leading the way.
And where did violent crime increase the most? Of the 15 states with the highest violent crime rates, 11 are in GOP dominated states, 3 are in the swing states of AZ, NV, MI and only New Mexico is a Democrat dominated state. (Washington DC is also Democrat dominant with a high violent crime rate).
And property crime is not showing any increase through 2020. It was still declining.
Yes, there are a few cities where gun violence is a problem, though notably, not in the Northeast where the strictest gun regulations exist.
There is no evidence to support the idea that fast tracking the death penalty for drug dealers will lower violent crime rates, but cult followers don’t put stock in facts and evidence. Truth is only whatever Zyklon Bozo says it is, to them.
And while I continue to mock the ex-prez, let me be fully transparent about this: I believe him to be a clear and present danger to the government and to the country. Remember this is the guy who ran full page ads trying to get the Central Park kids eliminated the same way… the last of them has finally been cleared of that crime.
But does he mean we should put the Sackler family to death for the opioid crisis and the thousands who died because of their profit motives? Of course not. They have money.
If the goal is to dismantle street gangs, hire them and pay them a living wage. He’s greenlighted sexual assault with his own misogynistic assaults on women. And serious sensible gun regs still get continually blocked by Republicans.
Zyklon Bozo is my name for him from now on because - let’s get real - this is exactly where he’s heading. Eliminate Latinos seeking to migrate here (many precisely because they’re fleeing violent drug cartels). Eliminate drug dealers, then drug users. Eliminate the poor. Eliminate the inner city gangs, especially the ‘colored’ ones.
It’s the same stuff practiced under violent state-sponsored sharia law. It’s what brutal dictators do: the Saudi royals, the Russian mafia directed by Putin, the Communist Chinese with the Uighurs, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines who personally killed criminal defendants and bragged about it (and had between 5,100 and 20,000 people killed while in office)… and maintained high popularity ratings throughout his term.
’Tough on crime’ has always been a winning platform, though it always targets the weakest and most marginalized.
Killing the poor and the weak is not justice and never will be.
But I fear what I see. The old guard Democrats seek a return to normalcy. The GOP has no intent to provide it and simply won’t. Trump and his imitators and their followers want women and racial minorities - including Asian Americans and Native Americans - disenfranchised, marginalized further, neutered and murdered. They feel they control all the arms and would love another civil war.
Be ready. Positive thoughts and hopes while sitting on your hands is not the best strategy anymore. I mean, kindness remains an important force in the world, critical to the building and maintenance of rights, just decisions and fairness. And peace.
But anyone proposing violent extremism provides no useful public service. Violent extremism leads only to more violent extremism.
After all the brutality we’ve seen since Trayvon Martin and Charlottesville, with the rise of violent street fighters, insurrectionists and white national terrorism…. after all the examples of police brutality (with no defunding of bad police departments, though the cult claims otherwise)…. Trump thinks police need to be better shielded from us, the general public.
We’ve seen police among the violent white nationalist groups. We’ve seen radicalized military and ex-military among them as well. We see split loyalties - some Secret service, some Capitol Police - with some doing their job well and some ready to go to war with the public.
But this is not about them. This is about Trump and DeSantis and Abbott and Cruz and Bannon and Hawley. This is about the billionaires who fund them and the mooks and minions who help them rise.
This is about you and your kids and future descendants. Activism and sarcasm won’t stop bullets nor Zyklon B.
Trump is following the Duterte script in the Phillipines, the Saied script in Tunisia, the propaganda scripts of Hitler and many others. We can’t hope and wish them away.
Foreign journalists are warning us. Formerly rightwinger Republicans are sounding alarms now. Read them. And listen. Their followers keep going more extreme as this fresh report detailed today:
Federal prosecutors say a former U.S. Marine plotted mass murder and sexual assault to “decrease the number of minority residents” in the United States as part of his membership in a far-right neo-Nazi group, “Rapekrieg.”
Matthew Belanger was arrested on June 10 in New York and charged with making false statements to a federal firearms licensee in order to make straw purchases of an assault rifle and handgun. Belanger pleaded not guilty to the firearms charges during an arraignment hearing on Monday.
In a July 14 court memo, federal prosecutors say that while a Marine, Belanger plotted far more serious crimes as part of the neo-Nazi group. The memo says Belanger trained with airsoft guns in the woods of Long Island as part of a plot to attack the “Zionist Order of Governments.” The memo also says Belanger was the subject of an FBI Joint Terrorism Taskforce investigation into allegedly plotting to “engage in widespread homicide and sexual assault.” Much of Belanger’s ideology and plotting, the memo says, is based around a desire to lessen the number of nonwhite Americans and to rape “white women to increase the production of white children.”
He’s charged with making false statements. That won’t lock him up for long.
Be ready. I’m as tired of the Zyklon Bozo as you are. But it looks more and more like the struggle is only beginning against these powerful forces of hatred. I think it’s time for Plan A, Plan B and Plan C to be created.
It’s sad and frightening but all too real.
I can’t soften this with a video today. Please, just be ready.