Prospective hires say agreeing with Trump’s false election claim appears to be a new litmus test for being hired by the party
That’s fucked up and it ensures that the GOP will be full of MAGA types for a long time to come
It’s a thinly veiled loyalty test. Thankfully they picked an octogenarian as their dictator and it’s a cult of personality that it seems nobody else has been able to replicate. I expect there is going to be a generational shit show in the party once he (finally) dies.
Lmao, you think this current loyalty test - and the future party filled exclusively with Trump loyalists - will simply pack up and go home after Trump dies? Or anyone living will be able to wear Trump’s mantle next?
You do realize Christian Nationalism follows the (misinterpreted and cherry picked) words of someone who died 2000 years ago as their North Star right?
Trump dieing would simply make him the new Jesus. Shit, he’s already being accepted as such while he is alive.
Absolutely nothing will stop the current trajectory of the GOP until the people who make it up find something else more entertaining or fulfilling to do with their time.
Unless by “Generational shit show” you mean a contest to see who can preform fellatio on Trump’s ghost the best.
Trump is the new Ronald Reagan of the GOP. The good news about that is the GOP has largely forgotten Reagan at this point. The bad news is they worshiped Reagan for decades after his death. I suspect Trump will largely be treated the same.
You realized Christian Nationalism follows the (misinterpreted and cherry picked) words of someone who died 2000 years ago as their North Star right?
I’ll push back on this as I think it’s a mistake to view Christian nationalism as a religious thing. It really should be called “White nationalism” because that’s more what it means. They’ll prop up the bible but they really don’t give a fuck about what’s in it. Rather, it’s just a tool to justify hating Muslims, Jews, and other “brown people” religions. The christian part of christian nationalism is really a tool to sell to grandma “See, we just want a Christian (white) nation. That makes it good because anything christian is automatically good”.
As someone raised in a white evangelical household, an ex-evangelical myself, and someone who lived in a number of very conservative communities and as someone who regularly works with police and military, I feel I have a very solid understanding of (and have been thoroughly traumatized by) the conservative/evangelical/christian nationalist mindset - and I think the Christianity part is way more central that you are giving it credit.
Similarly, while there is most certainly racism present, I have encountered few overtly, stereotypically racist people in those communities. They will enthusiastically accept any minority that shares their beliefs. I think it’s far more about ideology than race. Where the racism comes in is they automatically distrust people of other races unless they discover there is a shared ideology.
They hate white Democrats/liberals/progressives just as much, maybe even more, than those of other races, because those are people who have “rejected the word of God” rather than being those who have simply not heard it yet and potential converts.
I grew up in a similarly christian conservative community. I think it’s a mistake to conflate conservative Christians with christian nationalists (though there is overlap for certain). Several of my very conservative christian family members are disgusted by the christian nationalists.
That’s why I don’t think it’s the christianity driving the nationalism but rather the nationalism driving the christianity. Hence the reason nazis have felt pretty comfortable attending CPAC this year in nazi garb.
There are athiest christian nationalists who will talk about how it’s “the culture” that matters and makes a “christian nation” superior to other government forms.
In my home state of Idaho, I see a lot of christian nationists in public office, and they are much more occupied with rooting out “CRT” (re: anything mentioning civil rights and slavery) and LGBT literature than they are focused on “getting prayer back in school” or other overtly “christian” motives.
By atheist Christian nationalist, do you mean people who aren’t religious but believe in Christian values? Or as I think they’re trying to reframe it: family values - to try to disguise their religion and appeal to more people.
People who have previously stated they are atheists but also are christian nationalists because they believe in the “cultural values” it grants. Generally just people with bigotries that line up with christian nationalism’s current targets.
“I’m an atheist, but I believe that being gay will destroy society and this CRT stuff will erode the moral values of this nation” that sort of shit. Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson are two that fit right into this mold. Though there have been atheists that have explicitly said they are also christian nationalists, they are just more minor public right wing figures who’s names I’ve already forgotten.
You’re definitely right, and I kindof lumped those together - it’s hard to write a complete response during a poop break at work.
I was not aware of ‘athiest christian nationalists’ being a thing. Fascinating.
I also didn’t adequately explain that I feel ‘modern’ Christianity has very little to do with the teachings of Christ, much less the content of the Bible even as a whole. It seems it’s much more a justification of their targeted hatred.
I also didn’t adequately explain that I feel ‘modern’ Christianity has very little to do with the teachings of Christ, much less the content of the Bible even as a whole. It seems it’s much more a justification of their targeted hatred.
Definitely agree there. I think the union of conservative politics and christianity has made both worse.
It’s that bigotry and hatred that is the core of christian nationalism and nationalism in general. Having a target to hate is just how these fascist operate. Religion helps to have outgroups to hate, and nationalism exploits that to try and radicalize.
hillary lost the entire election because a sect of cubans in florida decided to vote ‘pro choice’ due to their ultra conservative religion.
a non-white religious minority decided the election.
Hillary lost the election because she’s a supremely unlikable person that ran a campaign of “Who else are you going to vote for, Trump?”. She ran on a center right political platform (if you can call it that) nearly as derelict as Trump’s 2020 platform. She further was pretty insultingly dismissive of the progressive wing of the party. She alienated strong base support when she should have been courting the bernie supporters.
She also did not JUST lose Florida. Further, Biden did not win Florida so that sect of ultra conservative Cubans weren’t the deciding factor.
Her lose is also why I fear for 2024. Biden isn’t running as bad a campaign as she did, but he is still heavily banking on the “What, you aren’t going to let Trump win, right?”
She ran on a center right political platform (if you can call it that) nearly as derelict as Trump’s 2020 platform.
This is flatly untrue. She obviously wasn’t as left as Sanders, but she ran on a policy platform more progressive than Obama and was arguably the most liberal nominee on a relative basis since McGovern.
He’s saying they’re being lead by Christian/white nationalism. They’ll still take the votes of religious people, but that’s not who they are anymore. They are not actually religious, they are nationalistic.
I saw a leaked video of one of these new “Christian” churches. They basically replaced the 10 Commandments with 10 nationalistic/fascist statements.
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The RNC is also going bankrupt. It’s not going to go away because of Trump’s death, but it will stop existing because he completely drains their coffers
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Not thinly veiled at all. It’s a straight up loyalty test. Typically, that’s not an issue for a partisan job, but this is concerning
There no longer is a Republican Party.
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This is the type of thing you do after you have obtained and locked in your power. Not when you’re about to lose the House and have already lost the Senate and are likely to lose the presidential election.
So please continue, GOP. Show the country what you’re made of (MAGA sycophants/pro-insurrectionists/traitors). Not only that but keep it up! Don’t ever change, even after Trump is broke and rotting away in prison.
Change is for liberals!
Maybe the Democrats will get a supermajority in the Senate and actual governing can take place.
I would love to believe that the GOP losing the Senate and White House were likely.
Just vote. Don’t “believe” anything until it’s over with.
Trump is currently campaigning as hard as he can, while Biden is just doing normal Presidential things and taking a lot of flak for it. Trump has no money to spend on his campaign and few big donors. His supporters are not likely to grow.
The Democratic Party is building a GOTV apparatus in swing states to prevent a Hillary sized fuckup (this was the real problem, not conservative Cubans in FL). Trump is spending all the Republicans’ money on legal fees.
Just vote. I think Trump is going to bomb in November and everyone will say “of course! It was obvious! He had no money and was distracted by legal issues!”
I continue to wonder how it is that anyone holds to the belief that the election was stolen when every single actual investigation - even by Trump’s most determined supporters - into every single accusation regarding it has failed to provide sufficient evidence to support the claim.
I mean - yeah - obviously it’s some combination of a desperate desire to believe and affirmation through the constant barrage of bombastic headlines over stories that don’t actually say anything of substance, but isn’t there an upper limit to credulity? It just seems ro me that any reasonable person has to conclude that even to the extent that there was near certainly some fraud, it still wasn’t and couldn’t have been sufficient to change the results.
And yeah - I know that a lot of these people simply aren’t reasonable, but it seems that the number of people who (claim to) believe that the election was stolen far exceeds the number of people who could possibly be that unreasonable, even in this benighted country in this benighted century.
Just another of those instances in which I find myself looking around in dismay, wondering how it is that I came to be in a world that’s so blitheringly insane, and how it is that seemingly no one else recognizes how insane it is.
it’s a cult tactic - you have to show submission and acceptance to their reality to be part of the “in-group”.
A lot of people do recognize how insane it is but that’s not enough to shut down the 30% of people who don’t. There’s a lot of reasons for that but suffice it to say that rural idiocy has an outsized electoral influence.
I’m absolutely with you though. I’m convinced that I will go to my grave bewildered by the level of delusion I’ve witnessed in this country over the last 8 years. No amount of empathy or attempts to see things from another perspective have come close to justifying the sheer volume of obvious bullshit you have to swallow to be a Trump supporter in 2024.
>I continue to wonder how it is that anyone holds to the belief that the election was stolen when every single actual investigation - even by Trump’s most determined supporters - into every single accusation regarding it has failed to provide sufficient evidence to support the claim.
dinesh d’souza lied to everyone about ballot drop boxes. but if i spent 2 hours watching a “documentary” about it (and believed the message), i don’t think i’d be likely to believe any debunking.
now, i did watch that shit show, and i will say that my philosophy degree gave me a leg up on spotting the dishonest rhetoric. lots of innuendo, a lot of unexplained methodology, and a lot of footage without knowable context. so when i found out that the crack investigative team told a judge they didn’t have evidence per-se, my suspicions were confirmed.
i doubt anyone who believed dinesh even heard about the court case.
It’s not meant to be a demonstration of belief, it’s about a demonstration of subservience. Getting people to say something that everybody knows to be a lie, and do it in public, is a way of getting them to demonstrate that loyalty is more important than anything else.
Ah…
Yes - that tracks.
I used to buy into the conspiracy theory that 9/11 was a government plot. Given the unusual circumstances I don’t blame anyone for holding that view at one point, but it’s been over 20 years and not a single American has confessed to the plot. Conspiracies are based on secrets and it’s hard to keep secrets for long, especially when it’s a big scale operation like 9/11. I eventually shook off the belief after seeing a few engineers debunk the claims and back it up with experiments and, again, the fact that the movement had zero momentum (i.e. the claims were bs).
So why did I buy in at all or for so long?
First, the seeds of doubt were planted by some charismatic people that didn’t seem like basement trolls or had an at least somewhat positive reputation up until then (so they had something to lose by being labeled a kook or being proven wrong).
Second, lots of unusual stuff happened all at once. Not going to list all of the stuff, but as someone that knows little about air traffic, security policies of airlines, protocols for hijackings, explosions, and the stability of skyscrapers I thought, “No way this is normal.” I wasn’t really claiming to be an expert in these things but my “common sense” did me dirty and I kind of refused to hear explanations. I don’t think I had a fear of being wrong, but (leading into reason 3) I had a laser focus on “the truth” and I was convinced my view was correct.
The biggest reason I probably stuck with the belief is that it kind of felt good to believe in it. I was in college and was doing fuck all. It felt good to be part of the group, to feel like we were crusaders for truth, to feel smarter than everyone else for seeing what others couldn’t see. This was the hardest thing to overcome (especially without separating from the group). My subconscious didn’t want to let me go down the road of “maybe I’m wrong” because not only would the ride end, I’d feel like an idiot.
All that being said I’m not sure if I have any advice for helping to snap people out of the trance. I think it’s gotta be a self-realization thing unfortunately. Their subconscious needs to register that they’re not getting a good enough “high” from believing in something, which can allow them to think critically. Or they need to form some negative association with the belief (e.g. the belief causes them to lose friends or gain friends they dislike).
“But if you say the election wasn’t stolen, do you really think you’re going to get hired?” one former RNC employee asked.
People acting like they want people who believe that. They dont, because people that believe it are really really stupid.
The point of the question is to see how willing and proficient applicants are at lying.
Which is a hell of a lot worse.
It’s so strange to be of the position of feeling bad for like… Mitt Romney / Mike Pence republicans with all this shit. Because they have some pretty awful takes between them, but for gods sake it felt like ideological differences regarding where life starts and how economic policy should work and whatever else.
The GOP being almost entirely co-opted by genuine morons who are only there because of the cult of personality around a fat old guy is incredible.
Ehh, even Romney and Pence aren’t that level headed.
It was John McCain, man. Yeah he still bought in to Reaganomics which is a huge L. but I actually miss him, he was at least reasonable and honorable compared to the shit we have now. Those are the
Well, they did welcome the MAGA crowd into their party, so…
Reagan wasn’t that fat.
I disagree. Those clowns are a major part of the reason we are in this mess in the first place. They had plenty of time and opportunities to stop this nonsense and they decided to be spineless wimps. What we needed at minimum were the congress members that got on the phone with Nixon and told his ass to resign. At the very least they had respect for their positions and some respect for the rule of law.
The current batch are trash, the party owns them. And their constituents and oath of office fall somewhere 6 feet below Cancun.
