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.”

Policy positions v. a baseball bat

Testimony in the nasty guys business fraud case is wrapping up. He wanted to give his own closing arguments, an unusual move. The judge, Arthur Engoron, first thought to let him provided he didn’t turn it into a campaign speech, then on Wednesday said no he couldn’t. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reported that early morning Thursday, the day of closing arguments, authorities went to Engoron’s home in response to a bomb threat. No actual bomb was found and the court proceedings continued as scheduled. A second AP article reported:

Barred from giving a formal closing argument, Donald Trump seized an opportunity to speak in court at the conclusion of his New York civil trial Thursday, unleashing a barrage of attacks during a six-minute diatribe before being cut off by the judge. “We have a situation where I am an innocent man,” the former president protested. “I’m being persecuted by someone running for office and I think you have to go outside the bounds.” After a few minutes, Judge Arthur Engoron — who had denied Trump permission earlier to give a closing statement at the trial — cut him off and recessed for lunch.

This article added a bit more about the bomb threat and also reviewed the case. Bill Bramhall of the New York Daily News tweeted a cartoon of a bomb squad in Engoron’s office and the squad leader saying, “All clear to write the verdict.” Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote about projection and the nasty guy’s escalating use of it.

Donald Trump dropped some blatant teasers last week revealing what the day-to-day experience of living under a second Trump regime would be like. They all share a common theme or motif, one routinely employed by fascists and despots in autocratic societies to bamboozle the public while keeping their critics (often the media) off balance. The method is called “projection,” and for Trump it is a well-documented, well-established rhetorical tool. ... Projection essentially means accusing your opponents of the crimes and misdeeds you are actually guilty of yourself in order to distract from your own behavior. Its effect is reminiscent of the classic old carnival attraction known as a “hall of mirrors.” A hall of mirrors, of course, is a room or series of rooms staged and set up to reflect back grotesquely distorted images of everyone who passes through. The purpose is to unsettle and confuse, to keep the observer off balance and questioning their reality through a repeated sequence of disturbing illusions.

The projection is now to the point where the nasty guy is calling Biden the insurrectionist. Dartagnan quoted Jason Stanely, professor of philosophy at Yale University:

Fascist tactics always involve projection. The fascists are always accusing their opponents of being the totalitarians. The fascists are always accusing their opponents of being the threat to the nation that they in fact are. The fascists are the most corrupt people, like the Nazi party was incredibly corrupt, incredibly lawless. But they accused their opponents of being corrupt.

Dartagnan quoted professors Chris Bell and Gary Senecal who wrote an article for Room analyzing the nasty guy’s rhetorical tactics. They said projection can make a situation difficult to understand. That creates confusion and obscures reality. It gives the appearance the opponents are doing the same things, creating a false equivalency. Back to Stanley, who said projection manipulates a susceptible population, to make them feel like victims, that they’ve lost something because of a particular enemy. Stanley wrote, “This is why fascism flourishes in moments of great anxiety, because you can connect that anxiety with fake loss.” Dartagnan quoted David Renton, writing for Jacobin, who said fascists use projection to co-opt the state institutions best equipped to perpetrate the violence that sustains fascism. In fascists states the violence is aimed at women (for violating the “natural order”) and anyone that blurs the line between male and female, such as LGBTQ people, especially transgender. In present day America that means co-opting the military and the intelligence services. The nasty guy will escalate the sense of threat and use the formidable tools to eliminate the threat. He and his enablers have announced they will do just that in a second term. Escalating the threat keeps the focus off the person doing the escalating. Bell and Senecal explain that projection bypasses logical debate, including developing a background knowledge of an issue and engaging in a reasoned case over position. Instead, it confirms preexisting biases. This is what is coming in a second term. It will be similar to the first but with a much more sophisticated propaganda and disinformation apparatus. If you don’t wish to live in such a country understand this well and vote accordingly. Clay Bennett of the Chattanooga Times Free Press shows a modern debate. The Democrat has a stack of policy positions. The Republican has a baseball bat. Mark Sumner of Kos has a few things to say to those who believe the nasty guy won’t impose a national abortion ban. First, instead of participating in the last Iowa debate (Haley and DeathSantis on stage) the nasty guy had a solo “town hall” on Fox News where the host lobbed easy questions so he could talk about himself. As part of that he bragged about he was the one to end Roe v. Wade. Second, he has been talking, not about enacting a national abortion ban, but warning fellow Republicans that talking about abortion before the election isn’t good for getting elected. But after the election he’ll be ready to sign a national ban through executive order. Third, he’s been repeating a hideous lie, one that Fox News hosts are letting slide, that Democrats want to kill babies, even after they are born. (See above about projection.) Dartagnan also discussed the nasty guy telling European officials he intends to pull us out of NATO. A fundamental position of that organization is if one member is attacked it will be seen as an attack on all and all will respond. That’s why during the Cold War the Soviets never attacked West Germany. It why in the current war Putin isn’t attacking Poland or the Baltic states. That deterrence won’t mean much if the US president says the other members are on their own. If Russia doesn’t fear a US response they are much more likely to attack. Ask Ukraine about it. The US betrayal of Europe would also make South Korea, Taiwan, and Israel wonder if they’re next. The US military would lose standing in the world. Trade agreements would be seen as suspect or worthless.

As those alliances disintegrated, the entire idea of democratic representation—the idea that people deserve a voice in their own government—would start to erode on a global scale. It wouldn’t happen quickly, as Applebaum notes, but, “By the time people here realize how much has changed, it will be too late.”

The nasty guy may have complained about US protection being a handout to Europe. But this is about “our own country’s future and its ability to survive in the world we are faced with.” And the nasty guy seems willing to throw that away. My goodness, I’m getting tired of writing about this guy and the havoc he intends to inflict. I want to ignore him until after election day, but I dare not. Last week I wrote about environmental tipping points. Pakalolo of the Kos community reported that science has determined another. This is the “snow loss cliff.” As long as the average winter temperature of an area stays below 17F (-8C) the snowpack at higher elevations is stable. What melting it does provides water to people who live downstream. But when the average temperature rises the snowpack decreases. Here’s the tipping point part: each degree of warming means faster decreases in the snowpack. This is not a linear relationship. By the time the temperature reaches 32F (0C) half the snowpack can be lost. Snow cover is not the same as snowpack. Snow cover refers to the geographic range of the show. Snowpack refers to the amount of water frozen in the snow.

Promoting a proven hoax

I had a quiet Christmas with Sister and Niece, who came to visit for a few hours. We had a simple meal and talked, and not much beyond that. Haggard Hawks, who enjoys language facts, tweeted a thread about tidbits related to the song the Twelve Days of Christmas. For example:

The ‘four calling birds’ in the Twelve Days of Christmas were originally ‘colly birds’. COLLY is a dialect word meaning sooty or stained with coal dust, and is recorded in the 18th and 19th centuries as a nickname for a blackbird.

Lucy Saunders tweeted a thread of photos of a team of Star Wars Storm Trooper action figures assembling an artificial Christmas tree. Be sure to check out what the dolls in the background are doing. I finished the book Playing the Palace by Paul Rudnick. Back in June, I wrote that my bookstore had a table of LGBTQ books for Pride Month I saw two books of gay romance in which one of the couple was an American and the other was the openly gay crown prince of Britain. I bought one – this one – and later saw reviews saying the other one was better. Not that this one was bad. It was an enjoyable, breezy read that took only a few days to get through. Carter is the American. He works as an “event architect” – setting up and running whatever sort of event a customer might want to hold. He’s at the United Nations building in New York installing all the decorations for Prince Edgar’s speech. Edgar shows up early to practice that speech and Carter, with some acting in his background, gives Edgar some tips on how not to be so bland and boring. It proceeds as romance novels do, including the expected mishaps and ending. What makes one romance novel different from another is the setting and how that affects the characters. So there is discussion of what it is like to be a royal in England and how said royal is affected. It seemed real enough to me and I assume Rudnick did research with actual royal watchers to get details right. But I think he got one important detail wrong. Carter is staying at Buckingham Palace as Edgar introduces him to what his job entails and to get England used to them as a couple. Of course, many of those events go wrong (as in let’s see how many roadblocks the author can throw up). The night before one of these events, which turns into a climactic scene, Carter sneaks out of the palace. My reaction was nope, can’t happen. I’m sure the palace, with both the queen and crown prince in residence, has very tight security. Someone near the building exits or on the grounds (there is a reason why tourists can see the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace) would have seen him and either detained him or became his security detail (and by this time Carter is on a first-name basis with the prince’s personal team). Even if that night’s incident is allowed to happen that security detail would have been a witness, gotten more info on the perpetrators, and given a report to the prince and queen in the morning. Beyond that it was a cute story. And the idea that the crown prince, and eventually king, of Britain could be gay and be a trailblazer for LGBTQ and human rights is refreshing. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed something that Drewtoothpaste uncovered – one way to track this pandemic is to chart the number of reviews on Amazon for Yankee Candles in which the reviewer says the candles have no scent. Yankee Candles are known to be highly scented, though there is debate on whether those scents are pleasing. December, with omicron rising, brought a fresh batch of bad reviews. Hunter of Kos, prompted by a report on CNN discussed that the Republican Party is now a fully fascist movement. That CNN report says that Republican candidates have near-unversally adopted the Big Lie. Hunter wrote that CNN is good at identifying the claims are false and at noting if a candidate admits the nasty guy lost the race he will lose his primary. But Hunter wrote that CNN missed the larger context, which Hunter supplied. The second paragraph of my quote is important.

The only reason to demand fealty to an abject hoax even after it has been proven, proven for all the world to see, that the hoax has resulted in violence and an attempted coup is because you believe the same violence and sedition may prove useful in the future. It would have cost the party not a damn thing to reject Trump's criminal farce after violent insurrection proved the party could not serve both his whims and their country, but they did not. Across the country, they repeat it. They endorse it. They look to use it in their own campaigns. ... That is the context. A fascist coup. It is not a coup "in slow motion"—it is being carried out with the same speed that past versions were. A first attempt, an evaluation of what didn't work, a purge of those unwilling to go along, new laws passed wherever the coup supporters have enough power to do it, in order to dismantle the specific roadblocks that held things up, an absolutely rabid demonization campaign against whichever public officials foiled the attempt, and an unrelenting campaign to drill the same pro-coup hoaxes even deeper into the public brain. This is how it's done. These candidates are promoting a proven hoax, even after it led to violence, even after members of their party specifically used it to incite violence. There is no innocuous explanation. They are using a hoax intended to discredit democracy and replace it with something else. This is propagandism. It is specifically crafted to deceive. Call these candidates what they are: anti-American. Enemies of our Constitution. Cowards. Corrupt. There is no excuse for promoting, defending, or even staying silent on a hoax of this magnitude. The only reason to do it is a belief that your own political career is of more value than the peaceful transfers of power that America once held sacrosanct.

Darrell Lucas of the Kos community, quoted and discussed a tweet from Liz Harrington, a nasty guy spokesperson, who quoted the start of a nasty guy rant:

All the Democrats want to do is put people in jail. They are vicious, violent, and Radical Left thugs. They are destroying people’s lives, which is the only thing they are good at.

I note this is pure projection: One person accusing his opponents of doing what he feels constrained by society from doing. Lucas quoted former FBI Counterintelligence Chief Frank Figliuzzi who sees a bomb about to go off – a person who believes he is cornered by the House January 6 Commission and various other legal cases and is about to become violent. Melissa Block of NPR explored the Big Lie. The webpage for this radio segment is a news story rather than a transcript of the audio. Rich Hasen of the Fair Elections and Free Speech Center said he is scared about American democracy because of the metastasizing of the Big Lie. He feels he is sounding an alarm and no one is listening. Timothy Snyder of Yale said the nasty guy is exploiting an old tactic of inverting the lie. Snyder said:

Part of the character of the “big lie” is that it turns the powerful person into the victim. And then that allows the powerful person to actually exact revenge, like it's a promise for the future.

The original big lie is in Hitler’s Mein Kampf. He blamed Jews for all of Germany’s woes. Snyder said:

The lie is so big that it reorders the world. And so part of telling the big lie is that you immediately say it's the other side that tells the big lie. Sadly, but it's just a matter of record, all of that is in Mein Kampf.

The nasty guy’s big lie has now been firmly anchored in public opinion – 36% of Americans and 78% of Republicans do not believe that Biden legitimately won the election. That has driven new voter suppression and election control laws in red states. Snyder said the likely scenario for 2024 is the candidate who lost by every measure still becomes president. Yet, the Democratic controlled Congress hasn’t passed voting rights laws. Carol Anderson, professor of African-American Studies at Emory University said it is about devaluing black people. She said:

This is about, “My nation is about the real Americans. And all of those folks aren't real Americans.” It is so vile. It is so racist. And it works. That's the thing, it works.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the Jan. 6 Commission compared the Big Lie to a cancer eating the Republican Party. He said:

More importantly in my mind, what is the rot in the system that led up to Jan. 6? And where have we come since? And how do we stop anything like this from happening again? 'Cause even though Jan. 6 technically failed, there's a lot of areas where you can learn from, if your goal is to overthrow a legitimate election and potentially do it successfully next time.

A failed coup is practice for a successful one. Leah McElrath quoted a tweet from Bree Newsome Bass:

The most misunderstood thing about those of us who are always considered “alarmist” is that we don’t want to be right. We want to warn people in the hopes a different direction is taken.

McElrath added:

Many of us literally pray to be wrong. We also often self-censor and are selective about what we discuss publicly. We speak out NOT to fear monger but rather, as @BreeNewsome notes, to warn—in the hope of encouraging action to shift trajectory from the worst of what we foresee.

Joan McCarter of Kos reported on the need to expand the Supreme Court and began by saying:

If there is anyone in Washington, D.C. as stubborn, arrogant, and thick-headed as Sen. Joe Manchin this week, it’s Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer. The 83-year-old remains doggedly committed to the fantasy that if he says the judicial confirmation process should not be politicized, it won’t be. As if the last decade of Sen. Mitch McConnell flexing his power hadn’t happened.

Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Kurt Bardella of USA Today:

From Meadows to Manchin, absolutely nobody is afraid of this White House or of Democrats in general. Republicans, on the other hand, have taken the politics of fear and turned them into a Jedi-level art form. Fear is their weapon of choice, and they love nothing more than using it to bludgeon Democrats over and over and over again.

Michael Harriot tweeted:

After the ‘08 Recession, we gave trillions to the banking & auto industries. When COVID hit, we gave families’ stimmys & forgivable loans to businesses. Apparently, just handing out money can fix any financial issue & stimulate ANY economy. This tweet is about reparations.

In another roundup Dworkin quoted Dan Froomkin of Press Watch who commented on an article Nina Bernstein wrote for the New York Times in 1999. Bernstein’s article was about then-mayor Rudy Giuliani’s intention of locking the homeless out of shelters for minor violations and the effect that had on a family of eight.

Simply by describing the facts, Bernstein was making Giuliani’s plan look cruel. And that created problems for her in the newsroom. “Getting it in the paper involved overcoming lots of editor pushback,” Bernstein recalled. She and I spoke on the phone and exchanged emails. It was a problem she ran into with some frequency: “To write factually, up close, with what I like to call intelligent compassion about these people’s lives basically invited charges of partisanship.”

Alyza Michael Enriquez tells the story of their transition. They declared being transgender but didn’t feel right in a female body or a male body. It took a while to find the words and a while more to properly explain it to a doctor. They wanted something in between to express being non-binary. Instead of taking full doses of testosterone to fully transition they took microdoses.