Opinion

Libs of TikTok took Trump's place – and inadvertently revealed the right's ever-growing sociopathy

How many millions of words have been exhausted by pundits trying to figure out what appeal Donald Trump has to the MAGA base? For years, theories were floated about his "populism" and the way that his run on "The Apprentice" deluded people into thinking he was actually a successful businessman. Much digital ink was spilled wondering how his followers didn't notice his comical comb-over, orange make-up and the massive gap between his self-image as a tough manly man and the doughy senior citizen that he actually is. The curiosity lingers: What accounts for the charisma that his followers see that is utterly invisible to people with any modicum of decency?

Turns out the secret to Trump's success was not all that mysterious and staring us right in the face, 240 illiterate letters at a time: The man is a relentless Twitter troll.

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Loud-mouthed pro-Trump conspiracist promises to somehow lower gas prices if he's elected Nevada's secretary of state

“END the Gas Tax and HELP local Nevadans out at the pump. VOTE for Jim Marchant in 2022 and get gas prices back down!”

Finally, a politician who will lower gas prices. Jim Marchant, who recently tweeted the preceding statement, must be one heckuva can-do sort of guy.

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Republicans plot to overturn elections on every level

Mike Allen of Axios, one of D.C.'s most venerated purveyors of conventional wisdom, dropped a big bomb last week when he wrote that Democrats who study polling are panicking over the possibility that Donald Trump could win the trifecta in 2024 and end up with a "compliant filibuster-proof Senate majority in January 2025" courtesy of what data analyst David Shor, best known for his "popularism" theory, predicted would be "a minority of the vote.

How's that for a cherry on top of a shit-sundae?

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The most efficient form of propaganda and misinformation

Like most people on social media, I enjoy a good meme. A favorite internet culture moment was when people were talking about storming Area 51. Some memes had me in tears I was laughing so hard.

But even though most memes are comedic quips, these media objects have a darker side when used as propaganda. Memes make us laugh, but they also can be one of the best, perhaps the best, ways to spread misinformation – especially when they deal with issues of identity.

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Desperate Republicans throw a temper tantrum after the public rejects their culture war nonsense

There's no surer sign that Republicans have given up on trying to appeal to moderates and swing voters than declaring war on Disney. Things were already getting dicey when GOP leaders and Fox News pundits went all-in on this strategy of accusing anyone who disagrees with them of being child molesters. Flinging such risible and obviously false accusations at innocent people tends to backfire on the accusers, as demonstrated by the way Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson saw her approval ratings rise after enduring three days of charisma-free Republican politicians falsely implying she had some affection for pedophiles. But you know they've lost the plot when they're running around trying to argue that Disney, which most Americans view as the gold standard in family-friendly entertainment, is covertly converting the nation's children into perverts.

I'm just saying: If your idea of championing "family values" is delaying parents who are trying to get their kids into Disney World, you need some remedial classes on how to win friends and allies.

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Rick Scott's 11-point plan for American theocracy

Why do I consider Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, the wealthiest person in the U.S. Senate, so thoroughly dreadful? Is it his background in defrauding the American taxpayer? His penchant for spreading disinformation? His smarmy habit of getting all Jesus-y, even in the face of a public health crisis?

It was indeed very Christian of Scott to release his new plan to "save" America — but I don't mean that as praise. At least he's honest: The gentleman from the Sunshine State openly advocates for dismantling the federal government, undoing all federal laws and regulations and effectively transforming our democracy into a white male Christian theocracy.

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Here's how Republicans on the Supreme Court could make your life more dangerous

Your life could get a lot more dangerous. Republican appointees on the Supreme Court seem poised to strip away basic safety standards for our workplaces, our food, our air and water.

Congress gives federal agencies the authority to enact regulations that protect us in our daily lives. Congress defines the goals, but leaves it up to the health and safety experts in those agencies to craft and enforce regulations.

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Trump-appointed judge lives up to her 'not qualified' bar rating with stunning ruling

Fifteen days after Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, a 33-year-old conservative lawyer whose only courtroom experience was as an intern while in law school was handed a lifetime appointment as a federal judge in Florida.

Kathryn Kimball Mizelle was confirmed on November 18, 2020, by a straight party line vote of 49-to-41 by the Republican Senate, then controlled by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The American Bar Association had labeled her “unqualified” in opposing her nomination because of her inexperience.

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Republicans are ramping up their mission to spread ignorance

When Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis rolled out a bold new plan to crush public education under the boot of literacy-suspicious authoritarians, Republicans swore up and down that this was not actually the war on public schools it looked like. A pair of deliberately vague bills — one aimed at censoring "critical race theory" and another at banning "instruction" on "sexual orientation and gender identity" — were justified with disingenuous claims that Republicans merely wanted to protect children from "indoctrination" and even "grooming." Critics, however, noted that the funding and organization behind these efforts linked the DeSantis plan to a larger religious right assault on the very concept of public education.

Then Florida banned over two dozen math textbooks, proving critics right. This is, and always has been, an assault on education itself. DeSantis praised the ban, declaring that the books are "indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students."

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Does Trump still have the juice? His spotty endorsement record suggests decline

When you read about all the ring kissing and boot-licking that's going on at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort these days, it is clear that Republicans of all stripes see him as president-in-exile, our once and future Dear Leader. He is believed to be so powerful that his endorsement will make or break any candidate, from the loftiest seat of power in the U.S. Senate to a lowly election clerk in a small jurisdiction in Real America. The big question facing the GOP now is whether or not that's actually true. And new reports from around the country suggest that it may not be as clear-cut as many think.

The New York Times' Shane Goldmacher characterized Trump as a "modern-day party boss" and quotes insiders comparing his "Mar-a-Lago Machine" to the notorious Tammany Hall, which dominated New York politics for centuries. Naturally, Trump is personally making money from it and he's not the only one:

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Democrats can win on the issues. But they need to sell them

There’s no way to sugarcoat it. The news for Pennsylvania Democrats is bad.

Both Gov. Tom Wolf’s and President Joe Biden’s approval ratings have taken another hit in the most Franklin & Marshall College poll.

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Many Republicans see Putin as a rugged individual guided by the Ayn Randian philosophy of self-interest

As the war in Ukraine drags on, it becomes increasingly apparent that one of the major parameters is disinformation. For example, the attitude inside Russia seems to be that Vladimir Putin's military operations are justified because Putin is protecting "the fatherland" from neo-Nazis. Pro-Putin propaganda has been disseminated throughout the world; It has infected Republican legislators.

Russia: In the United States, a narrative has circulated suggesting the war will end when Russians rise up and depose Putin. Nonetheless, Russian opinion polls suggest that Putin is very popular because the average Russian believes that Putin is protecting "the fatherland." A recent Levada poll discussed in Newsweek "Showed that approval of Putin's actions increased from 69 percent in January to 83 percent in March." (Statista confirms that within Russia, Putin has strong approval ratings.) Nonetheless, a recent academic study discussed in the Washington Post indicates that Putin's ratings are fragile: "These findings suggest that much of Putin’s support is based on perceptions that he is popular. Without that perception, Putin’s popularity fades."

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Ron DeSantis transforms Florida's Education Department into his Ministry of Propaganda in stunning move

It isn’t every day that a presumably non-partisan state agency issues a press release with a headline reading like this: “FLORIDA REJECTS PUBLISHERS’ ATTEMPTS TO INDOCTRINATE STUDENTS.”

But that was the choice of the taxpayer-funded Florida Department of Education (FDOE) late Friday. The release -- apparently translated from the original Russian -- announced that state authorities “found 41 percent of the submitted textbooks were impermissible with either Florida’s new standards or contained prohibited topics.”

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