Update 12-5-2022: Enough is settled to know that Democrats maintained control of the senate, but lost their majority in the house. If it weren't for the high percentage of Trumpist extremists among the Republicans, we would actually get better government with control of congress divided like this, which normally forces debate and compromise.
But the Trumpist extremists prevent that, preferring instead to be the "party of no", extremized even further from the original form of that obstructiveness devised by Newt Gingrich some decades ago, during the Clinton administration. To give you an idea what their ideology is really like, their cult leader Trump himself, wants to suspend parts of the very Constitution that he swore to uphold when he was president.
Update 11-11-2022: This election is still too close to call, 4 days after the fact, in terms of which party controls congress. The anticipated "red wave" seems to have been neutralized by voters wishing to protect democracy or the rights that courts have stripped. Encouragingly, many election-denier candidates lost their races, with a few notorious exceptions. Also encouraging, a few Republicans are now saying in public that it is time for their party to ditch Trump. True, but what they really need to do is ditch Trumpism itself, and all the Trumpists.
Update 11-5-2022: A version of this appeared as a board of contributors item in the Saturday 11-5-2022 Waco "Tribune Herald".
I also see the Dept. of Homeland Security and the FBI are warning of violence on election day, likely directed at candidates, and election workers; plus intimidation of people attempting to vote. You won't see much (if any) of this coming from the left. It is the far right / alt right that is doing this. The FBI has already designated them as domestic terrorists.
So beware! Take care! But vote! And please vote against this stuff!
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I do not understand the surprise
at the explosion of misinformation and conspiracy theories about the attack
upon Paul Pelosi. I expected such. Here is why:
The attack on Gabby Giffords predated the 2015 campaign, and the attack on Steve Scalise was upon a Republican. Timing is important to understand what has really been happening, which is also quite asymmetric.
It was the 2015 campaign/2016 election that induced much of the far-right/alt-right community to coalesce into the Qanon community by 2017 and adopt Trump as its "fearless leader/deity". Leader cults are leader cults, religious or political doesn't matter. Most of the terrorists we have fought, for so many years are also leader cults. So were the Nazis, the Bolsheviks, Mao’s red army, and many more. They all share the same characteristics, most definitely including a tendency to become violent.
The election denial, the anti-semitism, the hatred of immigrants, the hatred of Democrats (and non-extreme Republicans) as part of the evil world-controlling cabal, and the exhortations to violence, insurrection, and civil war all come from that far-right/alt-right community online.
The Russians helped spread this crap during the 2015-2016 campaign, and both the Russians and the Chinese helped spread it during the 2019-2020 campaign.
They are still spreading it now. I just received some propaganda from a friend who became a devout Qanon believer back in 2017. It traces directly to RT ("Russia Today"), a known Russian propaganda outlet. RT was finally (and belatedly) banned from broadcasting in the US a couple of years ago, along with another Russian propaganda organ "Sputnik".
There simply is not a large, extreme, on-line community on the far-left side. “Antifa” is a category, not an organization. The asymmetry of this is so very clear: it is not about "fair play for both sides".
It is actually and verifiably about repeated far-right/alt-right fascist attempts to take over America and install a dictatorship headed by Trump, or someone much like him.
Had the secret service agents let Trump go to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the insurrection would have gotten much closer to that overthrow than it did, by way of a presidential martial law declaration. Trump wanted to help lead the insurrection, that’s why he was so angry when the secret service took him back to the White House instead.
And they are quite correct to be saying it! If you see a candidate who is an election denier, or who implies acceptance of violence against Democrats, then you know what that candidate really is. Vote for another candidate. Or else sometime soon you may never get to vote again!
Update 11-5-22: Political Spectrum?
People talk about the political spectrum as if it were a
straight line from the “left”, through
the “center”, to the “right”. That’s not the best model for
thinking about these things.
A better model is a circle leading from democracies on one
side to dictatorships on the other.
There’s a “right wing extremist” nationalist/populist path around to the
other side of the circle, and there is a
“left wing extremist” socialist/collectivist path around to that same other
side.
As for the dictatorships on the far side of my circle
model, there’s not a dime’s worth of
operational difference between those with “right wing” or “left wing” source
roots. They do the very same ugly things
to the people they oppress. They are
damned difficult to get rid of, too!
Make sure of your facts,
as you cannot make a good decision using bad data. Be aware that bad data is a really serious
problem throughout the western world,
and particularly in the US these days.
Then go vote. I hope you choose
wisely, so that we can all remain free.
The old adage “Look at what they do, not what they say!” really does apply
here.
As does another: “How
can you tell when a candidate for office is lying? His lips are moving”.
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