I would describe it as the sub-level of Hell known as “Marketing”.
It’s possible to sell rather a lot of different things if you slap the appropriate labels on them.
Phil Foglio’s “What’s New? With Phil & Dixie” had a two-part story in which this vile practice played a significant part: they needed to get rid of around…

Think of it as the regressives’ version of Plato’s Cave. The MAGA-caps see ‘shadows on the wall’ which they, themselves, cannot understand. They accept programming from their leaders, who point at one shadow and say “weaklings” and a nearly-identical one and say “violent”, while labeling both “anti-American”.
I use…

Just because it’s a well-worn playbook doesn’t mean that it’s ineffective. “Controlling the narrative” was practiced by all manner of fascists and dictators since long before either terms had been coined.
Fortunately, because the playbook is also so well-known, the people fighting against fascism have had time to come…

I’ll serve up a piece of blame for his father. (Not to excuse the Redcap In Chief’s actions, but to explain where they started.) Fred Trump served up abuse with a bucket and praise with an eyedropper, and Don-John Two-Scoops learned very early on that he could get away with anything as long as he had enough ‘ablative’…

Exactly! This is not a matter of ‘intellectual debate’, this is literally a clash of faith. NOTHING about supporting the Redcap In Chief and the GOP’s agenda has ANYTHING to do with rationality. It’s all about manipulating fears about change, leaders making impossible promises and blaming ‘the others’ for their own…

Exactly. We aren’t dealing with a population of ‘rational’ people when we talk about MAGA-caps, especially the ones who literally die from COVID-19 while screaming (well, gasping) that it’s a hoax. We are dealing with religious zealots, whose every word and deed is guided by the same emotional convictions that let…

We need to stop treating them like ‘merely’ rational people whose logic is flawed. This kind of behavior is functionally identical to religious zealotry; the fact that they are dying from a disease that their Beloved Master has dismissed as a hoax amounts to a ‘test of faith’, in their perception. And altogether too…

“Trumpism” is a cult, pure and simple. And it’s not even an _original_ cult; like practically everything else, it rips off the work of those who have gone before.
Every influential Evangelical who touted the Redcap In Chief as “God’s Anointed Savior” shares the blame for convincing people that he speaks nothing but the…

And “Hile Gunslinger, Long Days And Pleasant Nights” to you, as well!

Given the fact that the MAGA-caps are bright red, coupled with the murders they have enabled and the mayhem they have fomented, the parallel between “redcaps” and “MAGAcaps” seemed painfully literal.

As far as my “WoT handle” goes, I feel obliged to point out that Robert Jordan started writing WoT in 1984... roughly 13…

The main reason they’re focusing on student debt is that it’s the one and only debt that WILL NOT GO AWAY from bankruptcy. Credit cards, mortgage, alimony and all the rest can be reduced or eliminated, but not student debt.
It’s head-bangingly frustrating, when we’ve got about half a continent’s worth of proof that…

He’s “rich” and can throw lots of expensive ‘treats’ at people. He can make introductions between his targets and the people they want to meet. And, within his own guidelines, he can make people’s problems ‘go away’. Maybe he did have to pay ‘premium rates’ for his ‘adult escorts’, but he’s still wealthy enough to…

Sadly, no. The individual zealots will die, but not in sufficient numbers to correlate with refusing to take precautions. The greater tragedy is that the sources of these ridiculous beliefs (the Redcap In Chief himself, as well as altogether too many members of the GOP) remain intact, and continue to *ahem* infect new…

Remember that it’s not just him. He learned from a very young age to keep himself surrounded by ‘ablative followers’; people he could and has sacrificed after placing blame for his own actions on them, which is part of the reason why he kept demanding ‘loyalty oaths’ sworn to HIMSELF, rather than to the office of the…

Agreed. The Founding Fathers had cynicism to spare for the ‘common man’, which was why they set up the Electoral College in the first place; a last gasp for ‘elitism’ that, for all practical purposes, reduced the actual number of votes for POTUS to a very small pool of men. (And yes, I’m using the term ‘men’ here, for…

All McConnell and the rest of the GOP very-old-guard want to do is die while the country is still embroiled in the messes created by regressives. Whether they can spawn any young idiots who ‘believe’ in the regressive stance while still remaining politically viable is a lower priority.

The terms are pretty fluid, and very much depend on the mood of whomever is holding his leash.

It’s one thing to ‘know’ he was a Russian asset. It’s quite another to be able to do anything about it. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Russian State Intelligence can draw upon centuries of terrifyingly subtle manipulations, and they’ve been working on screwing up America for decades. And they’re used to…

Very few POTUSes went through their tenure without some scandal or other. The current administration is simply the culmination of a century or so of corruption at every level of government.

Don-John Two-Scoops would have found a way around almost any laws between him and what he wants. His record is quite clear: no punishment or threat of same written in official legal codes carries sufficient weight to scare him away from doing something he’s decided to pursue. It would literally require an organization…