Feelings

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In a speech set against a fiery backdrop, President Biden called out Trump and the MAGA extremism as a threat to US democracy.

It was a sharp rebuke of the extreme faction within the Republican Party and their unwavering loyalty to Trump.

And I can’t disagree with Biden. This week Trump was on his Truth Social platform calling for the 2020 election to be overturned and Trump to be installed as President. Or at least to toss out the 2020 election and immediately have another election.

If you don’t see that as the totalitarian and anti-democratic move that it is, you’re kidding yourself.

Of course, several Republicans and MAGA devotees decried the speech.

But when they’ve spent the past 6 years wearing shirts, flying flags, and tossing comments saying, “Fuck Your Feelings,” I don’t feel too badly if their feelings are hurt.

CPAC’s Authoritarian Hero

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CPAC, the prominent conservative political conference, was held this week in Hungary. Setting aside the irony of the “America First” crowd taking their money and convention jobs to another country, what’s most disturbing is the way they’ve cozied up to the authoritarian leader of Hungary, Viktor Orbán.

Orbán provides a template for authoritarian rule, being called a modern dictator in Europe. Several groups have looked at the ways he’s gerrymandered voting districts and limited voting rights for those who oppose him. This is on top of his control of the media, cracking down on free press, limiting religious freedom of non-Christians, removing rights for LGBTQ people, and demonizing immigrants.

Oh yeah, and he’s very cozy with Putin.

The quotes you see in the cartoon are all real from the sources noted. The alarm bells have been ringing for years about Orbán. He’s made Hungary into a country that some NGOs now dub, “partly free.” The Economist (hardly an alarmist, leftist magazine) has said Orbán has hollowed out Hungary’s democracy.

And this is the hero the conservative action committee holds up as an example.

Don’t be surprised when the conservatives and GOP try to bring these tactics to the US, undermining freedoms for anyone “different” than them and eroding democracy. They’re telling us what they value. We know what they want to do.