Their identity as victims is proportional to wanting to victimize others

Leah McElrath included the results of a Fox News poll conducted last week:

Supreme Court Action on Roe V. Wade Let it stand: 63% Overturn it: 31%

McElrath added:

Republicans and SCOTUS know this. It’s one reason why they’ve been dismantling Roe v Wade in increments, using specious rationalizations to effectively eliminate access to abortion without overturning the decision. So far. I expect that will end when the GOP regains control.

Kit O’Connell tweeted:

Speaking as someone who teaches online security classes to activists... I don't know who needs to hear this, but please don't plan your underground abortion access network using Facebook, Twitter or any unencrypted chats.

He then discussed particulars, such possible replacement apps. Better yet, don’t use your phone. Being part of an abortion access network is a vital activity with high risk of legal and physical violence. So understand threats and security culture. And find your local underground network and join. You may never know who else is in the network beyond your immediate supervisor. McElrath quoted Hannah Allam who include included photos of some yellow armbands:

Have spotted a few yellow Star of David symbols and other signs/chants likening the mandates to Nazi rule.

McElrath added:

The armband has pseudo Hebrew-ish lettering saying “unvaccinated outcast” inside the yellow six-pointed star The degree to which these people identify as victims is proportional to the degree they wish to victimize others. This symbology is more than antisemitic. This symbology is a manifestation of reaction formation and reveals a desire to annihilate the other. The extent to which this symbology is spreading is a bad sign.

Aldous Pennyfarthing of Daily Kos wrote:

Donald Trump will try to steal the 2024 election—just as he tried in 2020—if he sees enough daylight in front of him to encourage his open corruption. Those of us who were shocked to our core over the events of Jan. 6, 2020 are equally as shocked to see the recent (and dogged) PR campaign to minimize the insurrection and pass it off as a rowdy pep rally for representative democracy. We’re also shocked about Republicans’—and two “moderate” Democratic senators’—lack of concern for voting rights. Sadly, some days it feels like we’re slouching toward fascism no matter what we do—and every day it feels like white people’s fear and grievances simply trump the truth in the GOP and elsewhere. ... An ex-president who tried to steal one election and is meticulously laying the groundwork for another attempted coup? Sure, that sounds like a fun, newsy little nugget. Let’s cram it in there somewhere between “Marmaduke” and the Jumble.

Why isn’t this effort getting more notice by mainstream media?

We really need to call him out every time he does it. And not just with a chuckle and an “aw, shucks, there he goes again.”

Dartagnan of the Kos community started a post with:

One of the time-honored, irrefutable laws of the political right is to accuse others of doing heinous things that you’re actually doing yourself.

And what are they accusing? Cheating in an election. The variation this time is the nasty guy is up to and perhaps over the line in asking his followers to cheat. When called out for advocating a felony the nasty guy campaign issued a “clarifying” statement. Which his base would never read. Besides, the message isn’t for his base – which would have a hard time cheating at the scale required – but for the election officials the Republicans are busy installing in communities across the country. Dartagnan quoted Rule 1 in the 2016 essay Autocracy: Rules for Survival by Masha Gessen (alas, behind a paywall):

Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable.

Walter Shaub, formerly of the Office of Government Ethics, tweeted:

Hey anyone else remember those few days this month when the President belatedly put some effort into voting rights? That was fun while it lasted. It would be neat if he could, oh I don't know, keep trying.

SemDem of the Kos community reported on the high number of COVID deaths in Republican counties and states because of the Republican related disinformation campaign. SemDem reported the math: there are 1,300 to 1,900 nasty guy voters dying every day.

It’s a very cruel death, and one that is completely unnecessary. Every one is also a vote for Trump and the Republican agenda that is forever lost. The GOP knows this, which is why they made protecting voter suppression their top priority. It’s really all they have. Of course, if the GOP were smart, they would promote the vaccine as much as we do. A simple jab would save them from an untimely and painful death. Many, however, will follow their right-wing messiahs right off the cliff. Ironic that if Trumpists really wanted to “own the libs,” they would do everything in their power to keep from getting sick so they could vote.

As SemDem suggested killing their own voters isn’t a problem because they plan to steal the election. Kos of Kos posted his weekly survey of pro-vaccine memes. Both of my favorites this week include an image of Gene Wilder dressed for his role in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory:

Tell me again how wearing a mask is “fear” but carrying a gun is “protection.” If your “natural defenses” are best for repelling invaders you won’t need any guns if you’ve got your fists, right?

I frequently quote excerpts from Greg Dworkin’s pundit roundup for Kos. But this time what is worthwhile is the image at the top of the post. Charles Jay of the Kos community wrote a post about his experiences in Chicago in 1968 as one of those protesting the Democratic Convention. He also discusses the trial of the Chicago 7 (the subject of a 2020 movie) and related trials. Jay’s reason for telling all this now is all the details of the Capitol attack that have come out over the last year. Jay wrote, quoting Aaron Sorkin, who directed the movie:

“First of all, Donald Trump did exactly what the Chicago Seven were on trial for,” he said in February 2021. “He incited a riot. Not just a riot, an insurrection. Let’s be clear, this wasn’t a protest that went wrong. It was an attack on the U.S. Capitol. They did what they went there to do.”

So why isn’t the nasty guy on trial? Ben Franklin quoted Joseph Robertson:

Newt Gingrich is actively participating in an illegal effort to aid insurrectionists by obstructing ongoing investigations & by making menacing threats. This is not political analysis or free speech; this is open incitement of illegal activity to subvert our democracy.

Ah, yes, Newt Gingrich, the guy who, as Speaker of the House in the 1990s, set the Republicans on their current anti-democracy path. Franklin wrote:

I think the fact that the government is allowing this to play out by not doing anything is a major clue that something is very wrong, big picture. Compare their response to this vs any other political movement (BLM, pipeline protests, occupy) and this is part of an established pattern that you see going back to 2016 of allowing national security threats to move forward without doing anything to stop them. if the institutions were acting in good faith the situation never would have gotten to this point

A big threat to national security they ignore. Little things, such as protesters, they bring out the big guns. Iyad el-Baghdadi, founder of Islam and Liberty, tweeted:

August 2021 was the first domino. We can't read what's happening today - Putin vs Europe, China escalating threats to Taiwan, or the Iranian regime axis more emboldened to attack US allies - without understanding the geopolitical impact of the Afghanistan withdrawal. At the same time, we cannot miss how this is connected to the internal dysfunction in American democracy. America is no longer able to uphold or dictate rules around the world, but the foreign policy dysfunction is connected to a domestic politics dysfunction that's unmistakable. ... We're transitioning away from familiar territory and towards unfamiliar territory. The transitions are based on long-term, very gradual trends; the actions/inactions of individual politicians only accelerated trends that were already at play. The question laid at our feet is: How do we protect our values in this new, unfamiliar territory of failing empires, collapsing order, resurgent revanchism, ethnic nationalism, right-wing populism, rising inequality, and toothless institutions? The answer starts with this: Vision If we can't provide a vision, we cannot build movements. If we cannot build movements, we cannot build power. We need a vision of a world of peace, dignity, equality, and prosperity that is not dominated by Western ex-colonialists, but also not dominated by revanchist dictators. If you're a smart person, I implore you not to waste your coming decades trying to salvage an order that is failing anyway. We need a vision of humanity that we can all get behind; a world we'd want our children and grandchildren to live in. Because our own ship has sailed.

Kendra Pierre-Louis of Gimlet Media quoted Dr. Genevieve Guenther of End Climate Silence:

I wonder whether so much of the news media is reluctant to report on climate & ecological scientific findings because so many of those findings present an implicit critique of our current systems & assumptions, and so even the act of reportage seems "activist" in some way?

Pierre-Louis added:

Yes. An NYT editor told me explicitly that I needed to be careful because climate as a subject was already seen too close to an activist desk. Made it almost impossible to layer on additional contexts like economic inequities and racism. The "be careful" was because we were being watched closely by masthead to make sure we didn't "overstep".

Here’s a tweet that got forgotten in my browser tabs of Greta Thunberg speaking at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in November. The tweet includes a nine minute video of her whole speech. This is a quote from the speech.

Many are asking what it’ll take for people in power to wake up. But let’s be clear - they’re already awake. They know exactly what they’re doing. They know exactly what priceless values they’re sacrificing to maintain business as usual.

That business as usual isn’t just business. It is also maintaining the oppression of those towards the bottom of society. And oppressing them with a world on fire is one way to do it.