EveHammond13
EveHammond13's JournalTwitter thread: Trump, the ACA, and Sadopopulism
I think it is hard for good people to understand bad people. It is hard for good people to believe how devious and concertedly evil bad people are. We need to dive deeper than "trump just wants to win" ""GOP just wants to win at all costs." There is a such a deep depraved evil behind it that we need to understand. We need to understand the true nature of the poison they are injecting into this country. I think this twitter thread does that.
This thread was written by Teri Kanefield:
Author, lawyer (U.C. Berkeley). I tweet about the law, books, politics, and history. All my threads are here as blog entries: http://terikanefield-blog.com
BEGIN THREAD:
The Trump administration is backing the full elimination of the Affordable Care Act:
@JoyAnnReid, maybe it isn’t spite. Maybe it's what Yale prof. @TimothyDSnyder calls Sadopopulism.
"What the heck is that?" you ask? . . .
1/ Snyder talks about sadopopulism here:
…
Sadopopulism explains how oligarchy—those who seek to have both power and wealth—stay in power. It works like this: Sadopopulist leaders enact policies designed to inflict suffering on the people . . .
2/ Policies such as tax cuts for the rich and eliminating health insurance for millions of Americans creates an abundance of suffering. The leader directs that suffering into anger at the "enemies" (immigrants, minorities, migrants seeking asylum, Democrats, etc."
3/ If the GOP repeals Obamacare, 21 million Americans could lose health insurance👇
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/health/obamacare-trump-health.html …
Think how many families this will hurt. When families can't afford the medical bills, they'll be thrown into poverty. Loved ones will die unnecessarily.
4/ Trump then channels all that suffering into anger at immigrants, minorities, and the Democrats who champion their rights. See how clever this is? Trump enacts legislation that (1) makes him richer, (2) hurts his constituents and (3) keeps his base enraged.
5/ When the people are suffering, he consoles them by promising that he is hurting their enemies.
He's the strongman protecting them from minorities who are displacing them and beggars at the gates who want to take what they have.
6/ NYT reporter Maggie Haggerman explained that Trump’s base “thrills at his fights with the establishment, seeing him as warrior against self-satisfied elites who look down on many Americans.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/us/politics/trump-two-years.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage …
7/ What Snyder is suggesting there is that the repeal of Obamacare isn't spite.
The repeal of Obamacare part of a larger pattern of policies and legislation specifically designed to inflict suffering on the very people who put Trump into office.
8/ Just before the 2016 midterm elections, Trump tweeted this: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1055077740792160256 … Now that it's clear the Trump administration is working to repeal all parts of the ACA, you might expect his base to dislike discovering that he lied to them.
Nope. They don't mind at all!
9/ Here's the part that is just as bizarre as the effectiveness of sadopopopulism: Trump’s base loves it when he lies.
Scholars Hahl, Kim, and Sivan, in “The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue” explain why Trump’s base loves it when he lies.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122417749632 …
10/ The authors explain that those who want to destroy the political establishment enthusiastically embrace a “lying demagogue” because they know that the lies are destructive and they want to be destructive.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122417749632 …
11/ The reason: They believe the establishment puts the needs of others ahead them, the “real Americans."
The best explanation for why Trump’s supporters not only accept but actually cheer his lies comes from Hannah Arendt’s the Origins of Totalitarianism.
12/ When a demagogue’s followers learn that he has lied, “instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”
H/t @jenmercieca
13/ If Trump’s supporters believe that this👇 lie tricked people into voting Republican, they’ll cheer the lie.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1055077740792160256 …
They will cheer—even though many of them will suffer when Trump makes it harder for them to get health care.
14/ They cheer as Trump and his inner circle enrich themselves at their expense.
They cheer the strongman who hurts them and who lies to them because they think he's "protecting them" and hurting their enemies more.
There you have it, folks: Sadopopulism.
I'm adding this for the people who are saying that Sadopopulism=fascism.
Nope. There's solid evidence that the Nazis redistributed much of their plunder to the German people. 20th century fascists thus differ from the 21st century variety . . .
. . . in key ways. Modern oligarchs want to be billionaires AND powerful. https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-Welfare/dp/0805087265 …
I often apply "fascism" to what we're seeing today, but there are distinctions between 20th and 21st century fascists.
The concept of Sadopopulism captures the distinction.
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If you haven't read On Tyranny by Tim Snyder, Yale professor, get it and read it. It's a mini book and full of plain, concise straight-talk about the signs of tyranny unfolding around us. Includes some suggested responses.
Seth Abramson: Has anyone asked Matt Schlapp how he knew Mueller would be "gone"?
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1111411053768802311For 2 years trumpers were BRAGGING about collusion with their "Thank You Russia!" signs.
and carrying giant Russian flags in marches and bringing Russian flags to rallies.
Well, now we are going to make you eat those Thank You Russia signs because no one believes your "No Collusion" crap or the Barr Cover Up.
the only reason the Anita Hill hearings are a liability for DEMS against someone like TRUMP
is media bias.
NO I am not saying I'm pleased with how it was handled.
I am saying, given there is a fascist raping racist criminal lawless treasonous dictator in the White House, the only reason it would ever be a primary campaign issue is because of media bias against Dems.
Talk about asymmetrical warfare.
For the love of God trump has raped/assaulted 20 women and bragged about wanting to bang his own daughter. This all exists in the media blind spot. The media is still dutifully following rules the GOP bullies laid down for them years ago. It's like they have been lobotomized.
I demand fairness. We all should and must.
"The bias of the mainstream media is toward sensationalism, conflict and laziness." -Jon Stewart nt
A timeline of Trump's impeachable offenses - the Democratic Coalition
A timeline of Trump’s impeachable offenses....
During Cohen’s testimony, Trump’s former fixer and attorney submitted copies of checks that Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and the COO of the Trump Organization made to him — evidence supporting Cohen’s claim that the president engaged in criminal conduct while in office. Cohen provided a copy of a check that he says was personally signed by Trump in 2017 to reimburse him for paying off Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actress who had alleged having an affair with Trump. Added Cohen: “The President of the United States thus wrote a personal check for the payment of hush money as part of a criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws.” This is evidence of a federal crime committed by Trump while in office, and yet another impeachable offense.
According to a March 5, 2019 report, Trump pressured Kelly and McGahn to grant security clearances to Ivanka and Jared so that it wouldn’t look like the president was inappropriately influencing the process. Both McGahn and Kelly refused, and Trump ultimately granted the security clearances himself. The reports contradict statements made by both Trump and Ivanka, who have denied there was any inappropriate influence in granting the security clearances. Clearly, this is an abuse of power and it is extremely reckless with our national security.
On March 4th, 2019 we learned that Trump ordered former White House Economic Adviser Gary Cohn to pressure the Department of Justice to block the AT&T Time Warner merger. Trump opposed the merger because Time Warner owns CNN, a news network Trump regularly derides and refers to as “fake news.” This is another obvious abuse of power and disgraceful attack on the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.
On March 13th, 2019 we learned from Rep. Jerry Nadler that Whitaker in closed door testimony “did not deny” that Trump reached out to him to discuss a case against Cohen. This contradicts Whitaker’s February public congressional testimony and, if true, is yet another example of the president obstructing justice.
...
much more at link https://medium.com/@TheDemCoalition/a-timeline-of-trumps-impeachable-offenses-daa8950c3921
A timeline of Trump’s impeachable offenses by @TheDemCoalition https://link.medium.com/zpbD332chV
this guy is dirty. and corrupt. and evil. with Russia and without.
Here's CREW's massive conflicts-of-interest report on trump
We, the media, EVERYONE has lost the forest for the trees. We are getting royally steamrolled and flattened by a very vile, powerful, shameless and united propaganda blitz from the right.
Meanwhile there is already such extensive evidence of trump wrong-doing and impeachable offenses.
https://www.citizensforethics.org/trump-timeline/
CREW is committed to holding government officials, including President Trump, to account when they abuse their power and fail to work in the public interest. Because President Trump refused to divest from his business empire, we tracked interactions these businesses had with the government and those trying to influence it during the president’s first year in office. By doing so, CREW documented more than 500 conflicts of interest for President Trump.
As CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said when President Trump announced he would not divest, President Trump’s failure to adequately address his massive conflict of interest issues means that “[e]very decision he will make as president will be followed by the specter of doubt, and will be questioned as to whether his decision is in the best interest of the American people or the best interest of his bottom line.”
Here we present a timeline of instances in which the government and special interests interacted with President Trump’s private business interests since he took office. The events can be filtered by broad categories in the pull-down menu and narrower categories by checking the boxes below, so we encourage you to take a look at whatever interests you. Check out our report on these conflicts, Profiting from the Presidency: A Year’s Worth of President Trump’s Conflicts of Interest, by clicking here.
https://www.citizensforethics.org/profitingfromthepresidency/
....
FIRST, President Trump and other government officials have routinely visited Trump properties and promoted them throughout the past year, signaling to those seeking to influence the government that the president’s commercial properties are important new centers of power and influence.
-President Trump spent a full third of the first year of his administration—121 days—visiting his commercial properties.
-Seventy-two executive branch officials, more than 35 members of Congress, and over a dozen state officials visited Trump Organization properties during the first year of the Trump administration.
-President Trump and his White House staff promoted the Trump brand by mentioning or referring to one of the president’s private businesses on at least 54 different occasions during the president’s first year in office.
SECOND, far from this signaled access to power being an empty promise, those who patronize President Trump’s businesses have, in fact, gained access to the president and his inner circle. Indeed, it appears that at least some of those guests are trying to use that access to exert influence.
THIRD, the promotion of the president’s businesses as centers of power and influence appears to be paying off: During President Trump’s first year in office, a variety of industry groups, foreign governments, and political committees patronized his businesses.
-There have been more than 40 instances of special interest groups holding events at Trump properties since January 20, 2017.
-Eleven foreign governments have paid Trump-owned entities during the president’s first year in office, and at least six foreign government officials have made appearances at Trump Organization properties.
-Political groups spent more than $1.2 million at Trump properties during the president’s first year in office. Prior to President Trump’s 2016 campaign, annual spending by political committees at Trump properties had never exceeded $100,000 in any given year going back to at least 2002.
Taken together, the 500+ entries on the Trump Inc. timeline present a clear picture of a presidency being used to turn a profit and the president’s businesses serving as points of access to the corridors of power. As many feared, President Trump is not only making money in spite of his official position—in many cases, he’s making money because of it.
....
Sarah Slander's tweet today proves their guilt
innocent, good people don't behave the way she, the White House and the GOP behave
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