Republicans
Cartoon: A return to morality
The things Mike Johnson has said are so over the top that I thought I might place him in the role of my flaming conservative character (hence the flames, in case anyone was wondering about that). Johnson may look bland and boring, but his beliefs are extremist. It's almost impossible to exaggerate this man's theocratic worldview, so I tried to use actual quotes where I could. Everything in quotation marks is something he said. You can find most of these statements, with links to original sources, here.
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Cartoon: Intimi-nation
Over the weekend I encountered a smattering of stories about the intimidation tactics being used by the growing extremist movement within GOP. This is nothing new, of course, as we’ve seen all manner of threats against politicians, election officials, schools, etc. in recent years. The latest stories have been about the bullying of House Republicans as they vote for a new Speaker, much of it coming from supporters of Jim Jordan (CNN posted the audio of one threatening call to a lawmaker’s wife). Mitt Romney recently revealed that another Republican senator voted against convicting Trump during his January 6 impeachment because he feared for his family’s safety. Trump himself been attacking judges and prosecutors handling his various cases, leading to predictable death threats. The blog Lawyers, Guns and Money has a quick rundown of various incidents.
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Cartoon: Speaker of the House auditions
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Cartoon: Always blame the left
To put it simply, blaming Democrats (or the left) for the right's behavior -- or for Trump possibly getting re-elected -- is relying on a false paradigm. Elections don't hinge on rational responses to policy minutiae in a vacuum. Everything passes through media of some sort, and the right's sources of information are dominated by a top-down movement that seeks to enrich itself and entrench corporate power at any cost. After all that has been revealed about Fox over the last year, we know this to be true, yet some people like to pretend it never happened! As far as the left's behavior is concerned, the worst and very non-representative examples of overzealousness from someone on social media or elsewhere will always be cherry-picked and blown out of proportion.
As a commenter mentioned below, there is a name for this assumption that Democrats are responsible for everything Republicans do: "Murc’s Law." According to David Roberts, who is quoted in the post:
This is not some quirk, it is central to reactionary psychology. Every fascist (and fascist-adjacent) movement ever has told itself the same story: our opponents are destroying everything, they’re forcing us to this, we have no choice but violence.
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Cartoon: Cheeseburger in paradise
To be clear, I’m not criticizing Jimmy Buffett, who seemed politically reasonable.
Trump surrogates such as Steve Bannon have been talking about destroying the "administrative state" for years now, as though federal government employees are all in on some grand conspiracy. Now this ridiculous idea has been explicitly codified in a Heritage Foundation plan for the next Republican President, ominously called "Project 2025." This document, brought to you by a highly influential, oft-cited think tank, is nothing short of a blueprint for authoritarian rule. But don't take my word for it. Consider the AP headline: "Conservative groups draw up plan to dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision."
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Cartoon: Republican textbook fair
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Cartoon: Republican creature features
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Cartoon: Quackery quotas
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Cartoon: Hanging workers out to dry
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Cartoon: Junk jargon
Obviously we can't ignore the creep of fascist ideology, as it leads to real people being threatened and harmed. But we can become aware of these narratives and contextualize them, and understand how they are part of a hateful, abnormal agenda rather than just another point of view. I recently came across a good post on Kottke.org which quoted a Heather Cox Richardson essay on a U.S. Army pamphlet from 1943 on fighting fascism in America.
It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”
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