Krugthulu (via email, so no link) shares the following chart and commentary:
A normal political party would respond to this problem by trying to solve it. OK, some blame-shifting — attributing rising prices to forces beyond the president’s control or insisting that current problems were caused by the previous administration’s policies — would also be par for the course.
But MAGA is trying to deal with its affordability crisis simply by denying reality. Over the past few days multiple prominent Republicans have gone on TV to insist that gas prices are falling. On Thursday Sen. Tim Scott said that “gas prices continue to come down,” while House Majority Leader Steve Scalise declared that gas is much cheaper than it was “two years ago,” when, he claimed, it was $6 a gallon. The average price then was actually $3.66.
And Pete Hegseth, the Defense secretary, told Congress that gas prices in California were $8 a gallon on the eve of the Iran war; the average was actually $4.64. . . .
So what’s the purpose of these MAGA lies? The answer, of course, is that they’re aimed at an audience of one. Voters know that gas prices are way up and that inflation is elevated, but Donald Trump, swaddled in his Mar-a-Lago bubble, doesn’t. Trump says that we have no inflation. He recently insisted that inflation was 5 percent at the end of Biden’s term and took credit for falling inflation before he took office. So Republicans determined to say whatever he wants to hear — which means everyone still in the party — feel obliged to praise his inflation record, the facts be damned.
Right. In fact, the person occupying the office of President of the United States is a demented lunatic who is living in an alternate reality of delusional grandiosity. This is disconcerting because the situation is completely unpredictable. There's no telling what he'll do next -- maybe he'll suddenly remember about Greenland, who knows? He is surrounded by groveling sycophants and amoral cowards, which includes the entire Republican congressional delegation.
The question is why? Why are all Republicans "determined to say what he wants to hear"? Is Lindsey Graham afraid that Vladimir Putin will reveal to the world that Graham is gay? Maybe, but that doesn't account for the rest of them. They could have been rid of him in 2020. They can get rid of him now -- all it would take is four Representatives and 18 senators. If they don't want to remove him from office, they can effectively neuter him. Is Putin really blackmailing all of them? I really want to know.
5 comments:
Precisely! What the hell is going on here? Is our society so completely rotten from within, that every single Republican in Congress has no other motive than impression management?
These are people with personal lives, probably most of them with wives and husbands and children. It's not just that they have no shame; they seem to have no brain activity.
How could one Russian dictator manage to blackmail every single Republican member of Congress? What fear is so great that it drives these people to completely abdicate every responsibility in their public lives?
The other gobsmacking thing here is this: everything we hear on "the news" is a watered-down version of reality. What actually is going on--that is, the ineffable magnitude of the president's treason--is never spoken of. A president who is murdering his own country at the behest of a malignant, murderous foreign dictator who is blackmailing that very president. No one speaks of it in the mainstream media.
It's not just that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes; the emperor is a treacherous, cancerous infestation of the body politic.
And why aren't Democrats saying this?
All of the explanations I can think of for this behavior - brain damage, fear, greed, loyalty to a party/man over country, social bullying - would disqualify these guys from representing my interests, indeed the interests of any non-subversive community.
Please help me!
Come up with just one legitimate reason why an ordinary person could support any of them.
Can "fear" be considered a legitimate reason? In this case, the fear would be of "them"--"taking our jobs, taking over our way of life, taking our women, blah blah blah"--none of which are legitimate concerns.
Can racism be considered a legitimate reason? What about hatred? What about the drive to follow a cult leader--because it allows a person to suspend all critical thinking, which could be uncomfortable?
One of the people I unfriended after the election of Shitler (I don't mean on Facebook; I mean in real life ... I don't participate on that platform, which is owned by Mark Fuckerberg) was a friend who helped me a lot in life. I helped her, too, but I couldn't take her racism anymore. I was disgusted by her views toward Mexicans, in particular, as she lumped them all into one big undesirable group.
She is a small-minded person who lives in a small town, and was raised by an insane, violent father and an equally insane mother. I think that, to people like her, Shitler feels like mom and dad--comfortable, in a sick way.
Since violence, sexual abuse and trauma are endemic in our society, I think a lot of people have followed Shitler for this very reason. Perhaps not a legitimate reason, but an explanation.
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