Rep Cory Mills malicious malevolent tweet about Pelosi's husband shows why we need Twitter

  Rep. Cory Mills malicious malevolent tweet about Pelosi's husband shows why we need Twitter  

Today's blog is a twofer. I address both the malignant narcissism on the far-right and why Twitter is, like it or not, a necessary town square.

by Hal Brown, MSW

Read HUFFPOST article here.

I wish it wasn't so. I wish it was possible to dismiss the benefits of Twitter out of hand. I hate the fact that because so many newsworthy tweets are on Twitter Elon Musk is able to make money off the platform.

President Biden has 36.8 million followers there:

It isn't like it or not, I don't like it at all, but Twitter has become the national (and international) town square. We can try to live in fantasy land about Twitter just going away. Case in point, read the HUFFPOST article and see how tweets are used. Consider what this dirtbag would have gotten away with without Rep Swalwell posting on Twitter .

There's nothing to say about this despicable new member of the GOP contingent of the House that isn't in the HuffPost article except for me to add my perspective as a retired psychotherapist who has written a lot about a particular psychological personality type.

Brought into the public awareness by the founder of the Duty to Warn group Dr. John D. Gartner malignant narcissism was a conceptualization several psychopathologies described by noted social psychologist Erich Fromm in 1964.

Malignant narcissism is an extreme mix of narcissism, antisocial behavior, aggression, and sadism. Fromm described it as a "severe mental sickness" representing "the quintessence of evil". He characterized the condition as "the most severe pathology and the root of the most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity. Wikipedia

From Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Tucker Carlson to a witches' brew of actors on the public stage like Putin and the two Steves, Bannon and Miller, those who love democracy, not only in America but in Ukraine and elsewhere, are suffering because malignant narcissists wield power. 

Back to Twitter and the story on HUFFPOST. You can see just from this one example how Twitter functioned as a worthwhile town square. 

Cory Mills, in his malignant narcissism, was unable to resist making a tweet which sent a message to hard-core extremists and showed his true colors.  When it proved to be against his own best interests he deleted it but it was too late since like with many similar tweets it had already been noticed and copied. In this case we can thank Rep. Eric Swalwell:

His tweet generated the dozen replies which augment the HUFFPOST article. None of them are notables. They are from ordinary people with Twitter names like Jack-O'Lantern and booklady2002.

Just as the open mic*, sharp-eyed photographer, or accidental video can catch someone whose impulses outweighed their good judgement, the ease of making a tweet without considering the negative consequences can reveal one's true character and beliefs.

Consider the recent example of a CSPAN camera catching liar Rep. George Santos making what appears to be a white power symbol.

C-SPAN video of the incident shows that Santos had pre-positioned his hand along his body in an unusual way to create the gesture.

Far-right extremists, mainly white supremacists, have coopted the gesture to symbolize a “W” and “P” for white power, according to the Anti-Defamation League. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center also categorizes the gesture as a white power gesture but explains that on the right, the gesture is often used to troll liberals. YahooNews 

Click "Read more" below to continue.  

Let the governing UNGOVERNING begin

 ....

Let the Governing Ungoverning Begin

By Hal Brown, MSW

 (about)

 

I'll leave it to the gaggle of political prognosticators and pundits to predict what the next two years will be like in the House of Representatives. I have nothing of substance to say today. This blog is about how observing the debacle which took place on the floor of The People's House on the second anniversary of the January 6th invasion of right-wing cultists attempting a coup to overthrow our Democracy made me feel. 

I felt a mix of outrage and sadness that the ceremony President Biden held honoring the police, election workers and public officials who in various ways worked to defeat the attempted insurrection was attended by only one Republican member of Congress.

I also wanted a chance to use the image of Magnum Chaos, a wood-inlay by Giovan Francesco Capoferri at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, based on a design by Lorenzo Lotto in an illustration. Last night was magnum chaos. It looks like the next two years will devolve in chaos maximus in the House.

I was briefly tempted take a deep dive into satire ands sarcasm and write something and post it in my Burning Bunion sub-site.  

I'd like to skewer them with biting satire, but I won't do this, at least for now, because there's nothing remotely amusing about what the House Republicans are poised to do to the country. 

Besides dozens of political cartoonists like these nine from a story in The Week have done their work to eviscerate the hapless House GOP. The Washington Post (subscription) has seven more. I can't draw so between Jan. 3-5th I made a few illustrations with easy to use software and posted them here.

These pathetic excuses for legislators can be likened to doctors and nurses tripping on LSD or drunk who are about to operate on the body of American democracy.

Chaos can be crazy and funny when it's on the screen but these Republicans aren't the inept but benign Keystone Kops in a silent movie classic. Benign they're not. Silent they're not. 

Update - okay, one attempt to be sarcastic:

I wasn't able to resist manipulating this photo of McCarthy holding up the Speaker's gavel in celebrating what history may call one of the most briefly celebrated Pyrrhic victories of all time. He will get what he deserves.

Does something worse than Jan. 6 have to happen to wake all of America up

 Does something worse than Jan. 6 have to happen to wake all of America up?

By Hal Brown

Reading this story in Salon got me to pondering the question in my title.

Excerpt:

But while some of these demands are alarming because they invite legislative chaos for the next two years, there's one aspect of this very public fight that may be even more dangerous: The way that both the demands of the anti-McCarthy group and his concessions to them could signal to would-be domestic terrorists that they have the support of the Republican party. While the conflict between McCarthy and his Republican opponents seems at a stalemate as of Friday morning, both sides do agree on these security-related issues. Two years after Donald Trump incited an insurrection at the Capitol in a desperate bid to remain in power, the Republican-controlled House is making moves that read strongly as winking encouragement not just to the people who rioted that day, but to anyone who would follow in their footsteps. 

"At this point, the Republican party's entire strategy is incitement," Melissa Ryan, an expert in right wing extremism who writes the "Ctrl Alt-Right Delete" newsletter, told Salon. "They're keeping the MAGA base constantly worked up with increasingly violent rhetoric."

Even before the drama of seeing McCarthy repeatedly lose the vote to become Speaker began, the first, dramatic gesture was made by House Republicans: The metal detectors in the halls of Congress were taken down, even though it's not at all clear that, without an elected Speaker, Republicans have the authority to do this. 

Then I read this:

Excerpts:

“A lot of my Republican colleagues glorify violence and proudly display the firearms they have in their offices, so it just makes me nervous that we could have a workplace violent event. They’re not the most stable people,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) told Raw Story after voting for Speaker this week...

“They already have a history of letting insurrectionists in the building and showing them around,” Swalwell—who made public some of the vile death threats his family has endured—said. “So it just seems like a recipe for disaster.” 

Metal detectors or not, the nation’s politicians—right, left, and indie—are now bigger targets than ever before. 

My photo illustration depicts two violent wake-up calls that jarred the county from the slumber of denying that there were violent forces that were hellbent on destroying our democracy.

These were external rather than internal actors. January 6th insurrectionists and their instigators and co-conspirators were, and continue to be, homegrown terrorists. Only some of the foot soldiers have been brought to justice. Those who set the coup attempt in motion from Donald Trump on down to the upper echelons of the conspiracy so far have escaped the hand of justice for their deeds.

It took Pearl Harbor and 9/11 for America to unite against the forces that threatened us. Not so with January 6th. This was a group incited to attempt to stop the certification of a free election lost by a president they worshipped as a Demi-god who gaslighted them into believing what has come to be called The Big Lie. 

The House members trying to dragoon their will on the country by coercing concessions to enable Mitch McConnell to become the new speaker with a few exceptions are MAGA election deniers.

Today we learned that metal detectors which anyone entering the House chamber had to pass through were removed. Nobody can determine who ordered this.

We know that there are GOP members of Congress like Lauren Boebert who are gun-crazy.

I am not suggesting that she or any other member of Congress would commit an act of violence. As Amanda Marcotte suggests it is the message that these far-right heroes sends to their violence prone followers. Pistol packing Boebert, for example, has over 2 million followers on Twitter alone.

She begs to be singled out so I make no apologies for presenting a possible scenario involving her.

Click above to read NY Post article

I assume that for someone who isn't a Member or a staffer to get into the United States Capitol building they have to be screened for weapons by the Capitol Police. I don't know whether people who have credentials can bypass the vigorous screening the general public has to go through. 

What I worry about is that someone who has ingratiated themselves to the likes of a Boebert to the extent that they are able to finagle a way to have a member of the House or staffer actually accompany them when they enter the building and try to bypass the magnetometers. 

It might be worth the risk of getting caught and thinking they could avoid serious consequences by pleading ignorance. If an armed person with violent intentions made it into the House, whether on the floor or in the hallways, it doesn't take any imagination to know how horrific the outcome could be.

Would it take an incident like this for the vast majority of Americas to wake up to how violent rhetoric can provoke actual acts of violence? 

I am not stupidly sanguine. I doubt very much that if something like this happened, even if there was a loss of life, that very many of these far-right extremists mouthing words that subtly or not-so-subtly promote violence, most or all of whom purport to be Christian, would have a come to Jesus moment.