Showing posts with label Republicans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Republicans. Show all posts

April 30, 2023

My title is too clever by half, but Republicans really row Roe up the river

 By Hal Brown

Original uploader was Brett Weinstein (Nrbelex)
 at en.wikipedia
 - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons

I grew up in a suburb of New York City where everyone knew what up the river meant. Up the river referred literally to Sing Sing Prison which was about 30 miles up the Hudson River from New York City. 

Going up the river had nothing to do with navigating against the current. Inmates obviously wouldn't arrive on a boat. If they came from New York City they might arrive in one of these:

The virtual museum of the American Police Car

When I was a kid Ossining was rural. We used to go on picnics at nearby Pound Ridge Park and there probably were campgrounds in the area (they currently have them). Quite obviously, anyone sent up the river was decidedly not a happy camper. 

Now we have the ass-backwards position that the GOP has adopted as a major part of their positioning as they campaign for the 2024 elections to represent the country 2024.

They are rowing up the river against the current, meaning the majority opinion about favoring abortion with various restrictions. More than any other of the GOP positions their anti-abortion stance is the one that most Americans are against.

If you've every rowed a rowboat or are into skulling you know that you literally sit backwards as you row. Thus they are leading with their asses.

Public domain from Wiki
The boat they are rowing is certain to capsize. Even the Coast Guard won't be able to save them:


Put another way, they have hitched their campaign cart to asses that are, well, too stubborn to go anywhere.
Adapted by author

Remember how the Democrats defined the tendency to shoot themselves in the foot when it came to campaigning? For example, Hillary and her basket of deplorables comment might have cost her the election.

"Basket of deplorables" is a phrase from a 2016 presidential election campaign speech delivered by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on September 9, 2016, at a campaign fundraising event. She used the phrase to describe "half" of the supporters of her opponent, Republican nominee Donald Trump, saying, "They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic". The next day, she expressed regret for "saying half", while insisting that Trump had deplorably amplified "hateful views and voices". Wiki.
It isn't only the Republican candidates and their anti-abortion extremism that is rowing them up the river against the majority of the beliefs of the population. The entire so-called anti-woke agenda earns a hokum ho-hum from the majority, some of whom don't even know what woke or elements of woke like Critical Race Theory are.

Add to that the fact that the majority don't see LGBTQ+ people as carriers of a disease deadly as diphtheria and drag as dangerous as dengue fever. Quite the opposite, so many people have friends, family, and acquaintances who are members of the LGBTQ+ community that they know from personal experience that they are just as human as everyone else.

The pundits I follow lean towards saying that Trump would be an easier candidate for Biden to defeat and express concern than DeSantis would be more difficult. In fact because both of them, and also all of the other candidates described as likely GOP candidates, are embracing and running on, positions and policies not supported by the majority.

This is why I say they should dig their dumbass ditch deeper and deeper because the more they do so no ladder will be long enough for them to climb out of.


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December 28, 2022

Is it time for a female president? If Republicans or men prevail the answer is no.

Is it time for a female president? If Republicans or men prevail the answer is no.
by Hal Brown 
The slogan and ads  for Virginia Slims probably sold a lot of cigarettes, but it is interesting to note that the use of the word "baby" smacks of male chauvinism. The word "lady" could just as easily have been used. It also show bias because it reads "you've come a long way, baby" rather than simply "we've come a long way." Below you will find some of my Freudian political analysis but even the word "long" could have been chosen by advertisers of the time who were steeped in depth psychology to unconsciously appeal to women. Here's a review of The Hidden Persuaders.

Susan Page, who wrote a USA article yesterday, was on Morning Joe this morning discussing 

In search of the perfect president: What Americans say they want, from age to gender




She was discussing the results of a recent poll about what Americans want in a president This is the portion that, while it didn't surprise me at all, it did pique my interest because it verified what I would have predicted (my emphasis added):

Is it time for a female president? 

Maybe not.

Most voters, a 55% majority, volunteered that gender doesn't matter. That would be news to Hillary Clinton and other female candidates, who believe they encountered political headwinds because of their sex. 

For a significant number of Americans, the Oval Office remains a man's world. Overall, those who expressed a preference chose a man over a woman as ideal by more than 2-1, 28%-12%. 

Among Republicans, 50% said the ideal president would be male while a negligible 2% said she would be female. In contrast, Democrats with a preference chose a woman over a man by 2-1, 24%-11%.

Political independents were the most likely to say gender doesn't matter. Nearly two-thirds, 63%, volunteered that view. 

Is there a gender gap on gender? 

Among those voters with a preference, men by 8-1 preferred a male president over a female one, 32%-4%. Women were somewhat more likely to prefer a male president as well, 25%-19%.  

 I think in writing "maybe not" above, Susan Page was being optimistic. I would have written "probably not" and perhaps added that if Republicans and men had their say we won't have a woman as president in the foreseeable future.

I was trained as a psychoanalytically oriented therapist and then practiced psychodynamically informed though eclectic psychotherapy for 40 years. I often channel Freud when I try to understand behavior, beliefs, opinions, and such.

When it comes to the opinion of the men as to whether they'd be comfortable with having a woman as president one term comes to mind. It is castration anxiety. This is  is a psychoanalytic concept introduced by Sigmund Freud to describe a boy's fear of loss of or damage to the genital organ as punishment for incestuous wishes toward the mother and murderous fantasies toward the rival father.

We can put it less graphically as, say, fears of emasculation, or even less so, feeling threatened by having smart, competent, and confident women in power because it makes them feel diminished.

In Freudian theory, the female counterpart of castration anxiety is penis envy. Both concepts are now quite controversial with the later being the subject of considerable debate and attempts at debunking not only in Freud's time but especially during the Women's Lib era.

The saddest part of this poll, again not a surprise, is that women who had a preference were somewhat more likely to prefer a male president as well, 25%-19% While a 6% difference may seem insignificant to me it suggests that while since the chauvinistic 1950's, while women have come a long way, there are still many many adult women in the United States who I think have a serious self-esteem problem.

Consider the numbers: There are about 108 million women over the age of 18 in the United States. Six percent of that is about 6.5 million. My hunch is that the under 50 years of age demographic of those with a preference would rather have a female president with a much higher percentage the even younger adult women.

The poll doesn't separate middle-of-the-road and never-Trump Republicans from MAGA and far right Republicans. I think the further to the right one is the more they have a belief that men are superior to women.

I don't have polling date to confirm my, hopefully educated, hunches, but my sense is that Republican men are more likely to feel superior to women than Democrat and Independent men. I think that women married to the Republican men who have chauvinistic beliefs are more likely to have low self-esteem. 

Addendum:

You can read more about castration anxiety here:


Unrelated:

Just for the hell of it, now that I have my new MacBook Pro I can make images again. Here's what I just made to post on my Mastodon page.

Click to enlarge:


This is from the scene in which the spaceship hits the Moon's eye from Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès 1902 film "A Trip to the Moon" would go on to become one of the most iconic images in cinematic history. Musk has made history by being the man in the moon who sent a rocket of his making into his own eye.




December 20, 2022

The GOP has gone beyond The Outer Limits


GOP has gone beyond The Outer Limits
By Hal Brown

The series "The Outer Limits" was never as popular as "The Twilight Zone" but I still rarely missed an episode of either of them when I was a kid. Both could have been used in the title for this blog. I went with The Outer Limits because I found an image I liked.

No extremist has beliefs too far removed from reality or too fascist to be embraced by the Republican Party as long as its adherents can be counted on to vote for their candidates.

The GOP welcome mat has been rolled out for adherents of QAnon, which is based on the premises that "an international cabal of Satanic pedophiles extract and consume a mysterious substance found in the bodies of trafficked children. They think well-connected devil-worshippers also control the United Nations, the global economy, and even the Oscars (Salon).

GOP members of Congress have refused to roundly and soundly condemned the NAZISM espoused by the likes of Ye and Fuentes. "Oh sure it's bad but - wink, wink - it's not really all that bad."

Between these two we have all the Republican politicians who have embraced the Big Lie. If they believe it they are delusional, gullible, and/or stupid as these three are not mutually exclusive, or they are craven, power hungry, and/or unethical as these three aren't mutually exclusive either.

The Republicans who are savvy enough to understand the inevitable demographic shifts in the United States realize this is their last chance to turn the country into a white supremacist fascist autocracy at the ballot box.

Their solution to this has been, and continues to be, to try to destroy fair elections.

Another way to look at the Republican Party as it is today is to compare it to the Democratic Party and consider which is the "big tent" party which embraces true democratic principles. Consider: 

Wikipedia defines big tent party as a term used in reference to a political party's policy of permitting or encouraging a broad spectrum of views among its members. This is in contrast to other kinds of parties, which defend a determined ideology, seek voters who adhere to that ideology, and attempt to convince people towards it.

This is how they describe how the term has been used in the United States. Consider especially the part which I highlighted below:

The Democratic Party, during the New Deal coalition, which was formed to support President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies from 1930s to the 1960s, was a "big-tent" party. The coalition brought together labor unions, working-class voters, farm organizations, liberals, Southern DemocratsAfrican Americans, urban voters, and immigrants.

The Blue Dog Coalition is a big-tent caucus of centrist and conservative Democrats in the House of Representatives, some of whom are socially conservative and fiscally and economically progressive or vice versa. For a brief period after the 2006 and the 2008 elections, when Democrats held a majority in the House, the Coalition wielded increased influence over the party, but its power declined again after most of its members were defeated or retired in the 2010 elections. Its Republican counterpart is the Republican Main Street Partnership.

To counter the New Deal coalition, the Republican Party was for much of its history a "big tent" party that encompassed a wide range of right-wing and center-right causes, including a wide range of politicians who were fiscally conservative and socially moderate or liberal and vice versa. During the 1970s and the 1980s, the Republicans attracted support from wealthy suburban voters in the South and MidwestNortheastern moderates, Western libertarians, and rural conservatives across the country. From 1968 to 1988, Republicans won five out of six presidential elections, with the only exception being a narrow loss to the Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976. The culture wars of the 1990s and the growing influence of the Christian right within the party have prompted the socially moderate and liberal sections of the Republican base, particularly in the Northeast and the Midwest, to begin slowly leaving the party in favor of moderate Democrats or independents.

What began in the 1990's as a slope which became more and more slippery as time passed became a precipice with the election of Donald Trump and more and more extremist Republicans. The moderate Republicans who remained in Congress now find themselves at the mercy of the extremists for their political survival.

The party became toxic to legislators like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger who maintained their ethical compass.

Many if not most of the episodes of "The Outer Limits" and "The Twilight Zone" were morality tales which ended with a lesson. Two classic Twilight Zone episodes come to mind. One is "The Obsolete Man" with Burgess Meredith as the librarian who survives the end of the word but realizes he still have his books to read, and then steps on an breaks his glasses. The other is "People Are Alike All Over" where an astronaut lands on Mars and is greeted by friendly seeming aliens and ends up in a closed room. Then the wall on one side goes up and he sees he's in a cage in a zoo being gawked at by a crowd of Martians looking at an Earth creature. The last lines are: 

Specie [sic] of animal brought back alive. Interesting similarity in physical characteristics to human beings in head, trunk, arms, legs, hands, feet. Very tiny undeveloped brain. Comes from primitive planet named Earth. Calls himself Samuel Conrad. And he will remain here in his cage with the running water and the electricity and the central heat as long as he lives. Samuel Conrad has found The Twilight Zone.

Among these 10 episodes of "The Outer Limits" you will also find many which were morality tales, for example "The Galaxy Being" which warns about man's hubris. 



November 30, 2022

One person train wrecks and a huge traffic pileup

One person train wrecks and a huge traffic pileup
By Hal Brown

Archives on Right >

 


Is it any coincidence that all of the people who have become one person train wrecks and the large group that has become a huge highway traffic pileup are Republicans? I can't think of a Democrat but would be happy if readers can find one to add to my list.

In a quick glance at RawStory this morning I saw these articles:

The first one is about the coming battle in the House for who will be Speaker. I consider this just the beginning of what will be a huge traffic pileup for the House GOP as they begin their investigations into Hunter Biden, who everyone has heard of but few care about, to Alejandro Mayorkas who nobody has heard of but will once the hearings start.  Their eventual goal may be to try to impeach President Biden, an effort that might be successful in the Republican controlled House but will go nowhere in the Senate. 

What it all adds up to is a gridlocked (to use another traffic term) legislative agenda in the House which you better believe Democrats will publicize to their advantage when popular bills go down to defeat.

The individuals who have the most ginormous train wrecks Donald Trump and Elon Musk who are the most publicized. The lack of judgment and self-defeating grandiose narcissism of these two is 

If Herschel Walker loses he will be added to the list. Hell, if he wins, covering his putting his foot in his mouth as a Senator will prove irresistible to media.

Other train wrecks who make the news who come to mind are Kari Lake (read story) and Ye (who is apparently going to run for president with 

Nick Fuentes and Milo Yiannopoulos helping in his campaign ). 


I predict that there will be many opportunities for the likes of Jim Jordan (read yesterday's blog story about the soon to be chair of the GOP Judiciary Committee) and other House Republicans, especially those in the Freedom Caucus who crave attention like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Matt Goetz, to vie for the dubious distinction of becoming headline grabbing train wreck of the day or week.

The reason some of the individuals who will crash and burn will be due to calculated attempts to gain notoriety and to stand out in a crowded field. Keep my highway metaphor, compare it to someone driving 100 MPH in attempt to beat everyone else to a destination.

Most of them also just happen to meet the many of the clinical criteria for having a narcissistic personality disorder.  This is from The Mayo Clinic:

Symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder and how severe they are can vary. People with the disorder can:

  • Have an unreasonably high sense of self-importance and require constant, excessive admiration.
  • Feel that they deserve privileges and special treatment.
  • Expect to be recognized as superior even without achievements.
  • Make achievements and talents seem bigger than they are.
  • Be preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate.
  • Believe they are superior to others and can only spend time with or be understood by equally special people.
  • Be critical of and look down on people they feel are not important.
  • Expect special favors and expect other people to do what they want without questioning them.
  • Take advantage of others to get what they want.
  • Have an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others.
  • Be envious of others and believe others envy them.
  • Behave in an arrogant way, brag a lot and come across as conceited.
  • Insist on having the best of everything — for instance, the best car or office.

At the same time, people with narcissistic personality disorder have trouble handling anything they view as criticism. They can:

  • Become impatient or angry when they don't receive special recognition or treatment.
  • Have major problems interacting with others and easily feel slighted.
  • React with rage or contempt and try to belittle other people to make themselves appear superior.
  • Have difficulty managing their emotions and behavior.
  • Experience major problems dealing with stress and adapting to change.
  • Withdraw from or avoid situations in which they might fail.
  • Feel depressed and moody because they fall short of perfection.
  • Have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, humiliation and fear of being exposed as a failure.





November 3, 2022

The Humpty Dumpty Trumpty Republican Party

 The Humpty Dumpty Trumpty Republican Party, 

with due credit to Mother Goose and Lewis Carroll

by Hal Brown

Click above enlarge image
Read all of Chapter Six here.

More of the above excerpt:

And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'

'I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't — till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'

'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'


If you don't recall the final demise for Humpty, here it is:

'I shouldn't know you again if we did meet,' Humpty Dumpty replied in a discontented tone, giving her one of his fingers to shake: 'you're so exactly like other people.'

'The face is what one goes by, generally,' Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone.

'That's just what I complain of,' said Humpty Dumpty. 'Your face is the same as everybody has — the two eyes, so —' (marking their places in the air with his thumb) 'nose in the middle, mouth under. It's always the same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance — or the mouth at the top — that would be some help.'

'It wouldn't look nice,' Alice objected. But Humpty Dumpty only shut his eyes, and said 'Wait till you've tried.'

Alice waited a minute to see if he would speak again, but, as he never opened his eyes or took any further notice of her, she said 'Good-bye!' once more, and, getting no answer to this, she quietly walked away: but she couldn't help saying to herself, as she went, 'of all the unsatisfactory —' (she repeated this aloud, as it was a great comfort to have such a long word to say) 'of all the unsatisfactory people I ever met —' She never finished the sentence, for at this moment a heavy crash shook the forest from end to end.

Indeed the crash shook the forest from end to end. Democracy and truth loving Americans can only hope for such a story tale ending to befall (pun intended) Trump and his MAGA Republicans including all the Tweedledees and TweedleDums who like, in "Thorough the Looking Glass," never contradict each other, even when one of them, according to the rhyme, "agrees to have a battle". Rather, they complement each other's words.

Look closely, it does say MAGA on their caps.

Of course we have quite a few of these:

Don't get me going on who the Queen of Hearts would be. Hint: He screams a lot.



I'm not the first to compare the United States under Trump and his cult to being something even Lewis Carroll might have had trouble believing could happen in real life in his own England or the fledgling democracy across the ocean which had fought a civil war during his lifetime and was becoming one of the world's greatest democracies when he died in 1898. (He wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass in1871.)

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