From Pine View Farm

Hate Sells category archive

A Notion of Immigrants 0

They call themselves news hawks, but they are actually carrion crowers.

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Republican Thought Police 0

The SPLC tells one teacher’s story.

Afterthought:

The Republican Thought Police have a motto:

Don’t educate. Indoctrinate.

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Twits Own Twitter X Offenders 0

Above the Law reports that Elon Musk seems ill-deposed.

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“As the Twig Is Bent, So Grows the Tree” 0

Oh, boy, these are some bent twigs.

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An Alternate Reality 0

The Inky’s Will Bunch tells what it was like when he visited a Trump rally over the weekend. A snippet:

Things have changed a lot since I talked to folks outside Trump’s 2016 rally in Chester County, when they were intrigued by Trump’s not-a-politician bluster and his “get-’em-out-of-here” rage at liberal protesters. Eight years later, a Trump rally has become an Orwellian celebration of an upside-down world where the lowest unemployment rate in more than 50 years is actually the worst U.S. economy ever, the nation’s cities are cesspools of violence despite a plunging crime rate, and the only person wronged on Jan. 6 was not the scores of injured cops, but Ashli Babbitt, shot by “a Black police officer.”

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The Chaos Agent 0

At the Las Vegas Sun, Bryan Greenspun argues forcefully that, thanks to Donald Trump and his dupes, symps, and fellow travelers, America’s new normal is chaos. Here’s part of what he says:

The normality of American life, which was theretofore defined by the chaotic daily challenges of raising children, creating jobs, enhancing personal finances, paying off mortgages and car loans and all those things that made America what it was, changed. Not forever but, as it turned out, for the four years from 2017 to 2021 as the Trump administration took hold and would not let go of the idea that everything the Founding Fathers had wrought should no longer be wrought.

Every day of the four years produced one form of chaos or another as norms were upended, laws were ended and civility expunged from the daily discourse.

All that ended with the election of Joe Biden. Normalcy was certain to return and the bananas-like blip in the American psyche could subside. Or so we thought.

What the entire world didn’t count on was that Trump and his cult would not do the honorable thing and just go away.

He did the opposite.

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Republican Family Values 0

Hoist on their own petard.

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Establishmentarians 0

Disestablishmentarian readers of The Denver Post weigh in on the threat posed by establitarianism.

(I have so wanted to use “disestablishmentarian” in a post.)

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“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Echoes”* 0

Now comes Charles Dew, writing at the Tampa Bay Times, documenting an echo.

___________________

*Mark Twain.

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Republican Family Values 0

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

Clarence Page decodes de code.

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Looming Darkness 0

Title:  Eclipse.  Image:  Donald Trump's head blocking Lady Liberty's lamp.

Click for the original image.

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All the News that Fits 0

Russian impulses.

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A Total Eclipse of the Sane 0

Caption:  Total(itarian Eclipse).  Image:  Donald Trump's profile casting a shadow over Aamerican.

Click to view the original image.

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Megaphones on the Disinformation Superhighway 0

Steve M argues that a strong factor for the spread of mis- and disinformation is not necessarily the often anonymous liars who make it up, but rather well-know persons provide megaphones. A snippet:

Those of us who go back to the early days of blogging remember that the wannabe gatekeepers have blamed anonymity for the spread of dangerous material for a couple of decades now. But if that’s the case, why does the problem seem worse now? Because large corporations run by people whose names we know either tolerate bad content or, in Elon Musk’s case, eagerly draw attention to it.

But we’ve known for years that disinformation spreads most rapidly when high-profile people spread it. Thirty years ago, false rumors about Bill Clinton were spread widely in a video called The Clinton Chronicles, which featured an appearance by Reverend Jerry Falwell, who was a hosehold name at the time; Falwell also promoted the video. In 2004, the false attacks on John Kerry’s service record in Vietnam were made openly by named right-wing operatives. And the most famous promoter of many right-wing lies — that Barack Obama wasn’t born in America, that the 2020 presidential election was rigged — was Trump, who is very much not an anonymous figure.

I commend the entire article to your attention.

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The Disinformation Superhighway 0

Shining sun labeled

Click for the original image.

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Twits Own Twitter X Offenders 0

The Arizona Republic’s E. J. Montini dissects the debunking of some Muskrat bunk.

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The New Believer 0

F. T. Rea has a question:

Why has Donald Trump recently decided to become an unabashed, self-styled religious figure?

He also has some answers.

They’re at the link.

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The Undammed 0

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Gene Collier is skeptical that any court’s gag order with stifle the flood of vitriol, venality, and viciousness that streams daily from Donald Trump. A snippet:

As the legal system should know from decades of its own pratfalls, issuing a gag order against Trump is, in the words of an old Penguins coach, like trying to teach table manners to a shark.

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Freedom of Screech 0

Above the Law reports that, following Donald Trump’s attacks on the families of various court personnel, including Judge Merchan’s daughter, Trump’s gag order has been extended to include said family members, but that

Trump continued to insist that it’s his First Amendment right to rain terror down on his enemies . . . .

Details at the link.

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