A psyop to destroy manhood

Jelinda Montes, in an article for Uncloseted Media posted on LGBTQNation, discussed “The social psychology behind trans terrorism panic.” The article begins by describing male teens being sucked into alt-right websites. One of those was Joseph McConville, who managed to find his way out. The message he kept hearing was: As a male he’s entitled to everything and soon realized he wouldn’t get it all (he heard this one before he got online). Transgender people are a psyop to destroy manhood – “It’s all about making men hate themselves, to become women, to weaken the American hegemony.” The second part of the article is the anti-trans lies being pushed by various more mainstream media outlets. They’re giving false information to get one to support their position. The third part is why it works. Thekla Morgenroth, a professor of psychology at Purdue University said:

People are very attached to the way that they think about gender because it gives them a sense of certainty—it gives them a sense of who they are and who they’re not. ... Here’s an explanation for why I should be scared. I’m gonna endorse that and I’m gonna believe that regardless of whether that makes logical sense or not.

It is the same method used against gay people and other marginalized people. Frame them as a threat, an issue of protecting the community.

[Joseph Vandello, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida,] says many young men fall for anti-trans narratives because they confirm their place of privilege in the world and validate their insecurities. He coined the term “precarious manhood,” which is the idea that manhood is a social status that has to be won and can be lost. His research indicates that threats to one’s sense of manhood—like trans and queer identities—provoke not only insecurity, but aggression.

Fourth, the way out. Justin Brown-Ramsey was sucked in and found his way out. That happened in college when a professor required him to read about Frederick Douglass, which forced him to engage in ideas outside his usual diet. The phenomenon of getting sucked into the alt-right algorithms fascinated Anthony Slteman, so he began to study how it happened. But he could feel the “empathetic communication” of the network sucking him in. He turned to his professor to keep him grounded. He described the content: “ It’s always framed about fear, anger, and just some sense of belonging.” In Sunday’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos Chitown Kev quoted Cory Doctorow writing for The Guardian.

Donald Trump’s tariffs have opened up a new possibility for the technology we have become increasingly dependent on. Today, nearly all of our tech comes from US companies, and it arrives as a prix fixe meal. If you want to talk with your friends on a Meta platform, you have to let Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg eavesdrop on your conversations. If you want to have a phone that works, you have to let Apple’s Tim Cook suck 30p out of every pound you spend and give him a veto over which software you can run. If you want to search the web, you have to let Google’s Sundar Pichai know what colour underwear you’ve got on. This is a genuinely odd place for digital computers to have got to. Every computer in your life, from your mobile phone to your smart speaker to your laptop to your TV, is theoretically capable of running all programmes, including the ones the manufacturers would really prefer you stay away from. This means that there are no prix fixe menus in technology – everything can be had à la carte. Thanks to the infinite flexibility of computers, every 10-foot fence a US tech boss installs in a digital product you rely on invites a programmer to supply you with a four-metre ladder so you can scamper nimbly over it. However, we adopted laws – at the insistence of the US trade rep – that prohibit programmers from helping you alter the devices you own, in legal ways, if the manufacturer objects. This is one thing that leads to what I refer to as the ens***tification of technology. There is only one reason the world isn’t bursting with wildly profitable products and projects that disens***tify the US’s defective products: its (former) trading partners were bullied into passing an “anti-circumvention” law that bans the kind of reverse-engineering that is the necessary prelude to modifying an existing product to make it work better for its users (at the expense of its manufacturer). But the Trump tariffs change all that. The old bargain – put your own tech sector in chains, expose your people to our plunder of their data and cash, and in return, the US won’t tariff your exports – is dead.

In the comments LEastsound posted a cartoon by Michael de Adder that shows a scene that seems quite accurate to me. It shows a TV with a news program with the banner, “Trump wants Greenland.” In front of the TV is Putin with a big smile, jumping on the furniture, and popping s champagne cork. In the comments of Monday’s roundup paulpro posted a cartoon by Smit. It shows three ICE agents beating a person on the ground. A fourth agent approaches and says, “Make way guys! I, too, wish to cleanse a lifetime of cowardice, inadequacy, powerlessness and resentment through this one glorious act of obscene inhumanity which can’t possibly ever come back to bite us in the ass!” Maybe a decade or so ago people came to Detroit to take photos of the dilapidated buildings. It was called “ruin porn.” In Wednesday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted David Frum of The Atlantic who talks about what might be called “revenge porn” or “violence porn.”

For MAGA America, ICE is an instrument for cleansing violence. Visit ICE social-media accounts and you’ll see, again and again, videos of armed force against unarmed individuals, against a soundtrack of pumping music. There’s a montage of aggressive arrests in Minnesota of unarmed, nonwhite men, many of them thrown to the ground and cuffed, set to the 1977 hit “Cold as Ice”: “Someday you’ll pay the price.” A dozen heavily armed and armored agents round up a single unarmed woman in a T-shirt and two similarly defenseless men in California. In Indiana, armored agents throw handcuffs and ankle chains on a big haul of men and shove them in a cell, where they can be seen pacing, weeping, or with their heads plunged in their hands. Rarely do these videos present a situation that couldn’t be managed with a couple of plainclothes officers bearing holstered sidearms. The point is to prove that the fearsome power of the American state is being wielded by righteous MAGA hands against despised MAGA targets.

From the New York Times:

While Mr. Trump still says the ICE agent was acting in self-defense, his latest comments suggest that disrespecting law enforcement could help to justify the killing. The comments raise serious questions about the use of force by those carrying out Mr. Trump’s crackdown on immigration, and they underscore the extent to which Mr. Trump’s impulse is to condemn anything done by his critics and to defend the actions of his supporters.

In the same topic Paul Veronese tweeted:

In his book, "Kent State: What Happened and Why," James Michener concluded the best explanation for why the Ohio National Guard shot and killed multiple students is that the working class males in the Guard couldn't handle disrespect especially from *coeds* (female students).

Wall Street Journal, in an article about the nasty guy complaining about AG Pam Bondi:

“The better an attorney is, the more process-oriented they are going to be, and that is in direct opposition to what Trump wants, which is someone who is outcome-oriented,” said Sarah Isgur, who served as a spokeswoman for Sessions at the Justice Department. “He can never find a great attorney general because, by definition, they can’t be a great lawyer.”

In the comments paulpro posted a meme from Mr. Fish. It shows an ICE agent in full gear and aiming a gun. The caption says, “Only a coward arms himself against the First Amendment.” Mayra tweeted an image of a member of the Klan, a German SS officer, and an ICE agent. The caption says, “History doesn’t repeat. It rebrands.” Also in the comments FarWestGirl posted a long description of projection. It is from Simply Psychology, a website discussing psychological conditions. I’ve mentioned projection many times because the nasty guy and Republicans do it so frequently – enough that some people say every one of their accusations is a confession. The article is long so I’ll post only part of it.

Projection is a psychological defense mechanism that involves attributing one’s undesirable traits, feelings, or impulses to other people. For instance, someone who is dishonest might accuse others of being dishonest, thereby shifting attention away from their dishonesty. How does projection serve as a defense mechanism? + Projection, as a defense mechanism, helps protect the ego from anxiety-provoking thoughts or feelings. + By attributing these unwanted aspects to someone or something else, the individual distances themselves from what they find unacceptable within themselves. + This process helps reduce internal conflict and preserve a more favorable self-image. + For instance, a person who struggles with repressed anger might perceive others as hostile and aggressive, thereby avoiding the anxiety of confronting their own anger. Projection centers on attributing specific traits to others that we deny in ourselves. Sigmund Freud viewed projection as a way for individuals to manage aspects of themselves that contradict their self-concept or violate internalized moral standards. In Freudian theory, this process occurs unconsciously, with individuals unaware of the traits they project onto others. Projection emerges when repression, the primary means of keeping unacceptable material out of consciousness, proves ineffective. Narcissistic Projection: Narcissists will project their own negative qualities, insecurities, or shortcomings onto someone else to protect their fragile self-esteem and maintain their grandiose sense of self.

Back in mid December The Wolfpack posted a cartoon of a discussion between the nasty guy and an elephant:

Please don’t vote to release the Epstein files! Everyone will find out that I’m a pedophile! Hmmm... If we help ya keep the files buried, what’s in it fer us? I’ll give you huge endorsements when you’re up for re-election? Why the hell would we want endorsements from a known pedophile?

In today’s pundit roundup Kev quoted Eduardo Porter, writing his Being There Substack:

It is clever. Taking out president Nicolás Maduro while leaving in place his repressive regime, cutting a deal for Maduro’s vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez to take over the presidency, and allowing the heads of the regime’s repressive apparatus to keep their jobs, will prevent American casualties. The arrangement probably can guarantee some stability in the immediate term. But it will fail. President Trump may believe that America’s show of force will cow Rodríguez et. al. into doing as he says. But his view shares the hubristic myopia that has clouded American interventions over decades now. His nifty trick does nothing to correct the fundamental shortcoming in America’s approach to war, unparalleled at winning battles, but dismally bad at building stable, legitimate equilibria in the places it just blew up. ...Trump’s “regime change without changing regimes,” as Phillips P. O’Brien, a professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, called it, will also leave a painful mess that will do nothing to improve the lives of Venezuelans. The regime Trump left in Caracas is carrying on with business as usual, It has reportedly unleashed new rounds of repression, imprisoning journalists and ordinary citizens. The State Department in Washington issued an alert noting “reports of groups of armed militias, known as colectivos, setting up roadblocks and searching vehicles for evidence of U.S. citizenship or support for the United States.”

Adam Mahoney of Capital B News wrote about the images of Venezuelans celebrating the departure of Maduro. He made the distinction between the lighter-skinned Venezuelans who are celebrating and darker Venezuelans, the ones with African ancestry, who are not celebrating and are less likely to migrate to the US. Racism is alive there too. In the comments a cartoon by Dave Granlund shows an ICE agent at a pharmacy counter saying, “Got anything for an itchy trigger finger?” A meme posted by exlrrp shows a sign with the head of an ICE agent with the words, “I murder people because a pedophile tells me to.” Lefty Coaster posted that the nasty guy has dementia, then listed common ways dementia changes a person’s behavior.

+ Losing inhibitions + Delusions and paranoia [though he’s been showing that a long time] + Agitation and restlessness + Aggressive behavior As a person’s dementia progresses, they will have more difficulty understanding logic and persuasion, so trying to reason or argue with them is not likely to help.

Tweets posted by exlrrp has one by Brooke Rollins:

We’ve run over 1,000 simulations. It can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, corn tortilla, and one other thing. So there is a way to do this that actually will save the average American consumer money.

Sara Brnić responded:

I can’t wait to have one piece of chicken, one piece of broccoli and a single corn tortilla with one other thing for dinner every night just so I can afford to still not be able to buy a house!

Chasten Glezman Buttigieg added:

Private jets and tax breaks for them and their rich friends, and one piece of broccoli *AND* a tortilla for you!

Toonerman posted a cartoon of God and Satan (looking quite red) at a bar.

God: I have to admit Beelzbub, getting all those Evangelicals to believe that a racist billionaire that makes fun of disabled folks and dead soldiers, has 5 kids with 3 wives, rapes women and children, incites riots and lies ALL THE FREAKIN’ TIME was sent by me? Ha-ha now that’s pretty darn impressive! Satan: Oh stop it God, you’re making me blush.

Off to the side, “Evangelicals must use an alternative New Testament.” Wolfpack posted a meme titled “Denmark is ready!” It shows Greenland surrounded by a fortress wall made of Legos. Nick Anderson posted a cartoon titled “Supreme Leaders.” It shows the Ayatollah of Iran and the nasty guy both saying, “We have the right to shoot domestic terrorists whose protests challenge the legitimacy of our regime.”