Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has an editorial which really needs to be read more widely. Genocide is a strong word, but there are times when it is the right thing to use. We may be headed there. Here are some excerpts from behind the paywall:
Incitement to Genocide Rising Under the Waves
In a matter of weeks the rankest QAnon conspiracy theories have gone mainstream in the GOP and conventional journalism has barely noticed. — Josh Marshall, April 22, 2022
One of the abiding features of early 21st century American politics is that a lot of change on the right happens in the subterranean world of what we used to call “the Crazy.” In the pre-Trump years it’s not that any of this was really hidden. It wasn’t subterranean in that sense. But it was off the radar of most of conventional journalism and the mainstream political discourse because it wasn’t serious. It wasn’t real. It was just crazy antics on the margins. But as we’ve tried to chronicle for decades now, that was never the case. That was the real GOP politics. It controlled and drove the presentable mainstream leaders — the Boehners, Ryans, McConnells and more. The ascension of Donald Trump was in many ways a simple inversion of this dynamic, putting “the Crazy” in formal and open leadership of the party.
Something has happened as recently as the last four to six weeks that follows this pattern, is important and dangerous and is still mostly coasting under the radar of “proper” U.S. political discourse and reporting.
emphasis added
You can see this is the way the most outrageous behavior of the Republican Party has been normalized, both-sidered, horse-race narratived, until full blown fascism in plain sight is dismissed by the mainstream media. You’d think January 6 and the entire 4 years of the Trump regime never happened. You’d think open collusion with Russia, two impeachments, and grift in plain sight might have some significance. You’d think stealing Supreme Court seats and packing the judiciary with Federalist Society activists might ring some alarm bells. And now Republicans are painting Democrats as the party of Pedophiles.
More from Marshall:
Let’s start with this tweet from three weeks ago from Ben Collins, a reporter on the far right beat at NBCNews …
You can look at the full thread to see all of what he was talking about. But the gist was the “grooming” discourse I mentioned here and here. In short, the entire bundle of conversations about transgenderism, gender identity and homosexuality have been very suddenly repackaged as “grooming” and “pedophilia.” Any discussion of gender identity or homosexuality in schools is now “grooming” kids for pedophiles. Even same sex marriage — which is, of course, by definition for adults — is another part of the “grooming” agenda. Disney is now routinely attacked as a hotbed of “grooming” and pedophilia as a downstream effect of the corporation begrudgingly taking a position against Florida’s “don’t say gay” law.
Nikki Mccann Ramirez, a researcher at MediaMatters, captures some of that here.
Republicans have been playing Culture War for a while now, but this is taking things to a new level.
...The new equation is that anything that doesn’t amount to a staunch defense of sexual and gender traditionalism is just some form of pedophilia and “grooming” children for pedophiles. That is the governing equation that has exploded across the right really just over the last two months. While it’s true that claims about predation on children have been a staple of anti-gay politics for generations, what we are seeing here is still genuinely new.
You may have seen this story today about the Michigan Republican who sent out fundraising texts with a faux appointment confirmation for “your child’s gender reassignment surgery.” Perhaps you saw this viral video of a speech by Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow (D) lashing out at a Republican colleague who accused her of “grooming and sexualizing” children in a fundraising email. (Michigan, amirite?) Or maybe you remember high flying degenerate Marjorie Taylor Greene calling Democrats “the party of pedophiles … the party of princess predators from Disney … the party of teachers … trying to transition their elementary school age children.” These aren’t just a few random weeds popping up on your lawn. They’re part of a vast welling up from the deep recesses of the earth that you just heven’t fully seen yet.
emphasis added
How much of this is projection? Far more that the GOP would care to acknowledge. Charles P. Pierce in his weekly subscriber email details a particularly egregious case among the GOP’s evangelical base, the people they are playing to with these slanders against Democrats and liberals. The story is grim. Pierce describes the atrocities - and where it is going.
Friend of the blog Dr. Kenneth Starnes, who works emergency medicine down in the Winter’s Bone country where Missouri and Arkansas pile into one another, hipped us to this story by Gregory Holman in the Springfield News-Leader. It is long. It is ugly. It has been going on for years. It has nothing to do with the gospels, but everything to do with what we’ve learned, to our horror, about organized religious activities.
It has to do with the sexual abuse of children at the Kanakuk Kamps, a Branson-based chain of sports camps tightly wired into the conservative evangelical network. For several years now, the camps have been riddled with allegations of sexual abuse on the part of several of their counselors. Central to the scandal was a former counselor named Peter Newman who, in 2010, was sentenced to two life sentences plus 30 years.
Read the whole thing — especially what Pierce is seeing coming from Glenn Beck, quoting from a recent Beck video.
Whatever the mumbo-jubbo gibberish topic of the day is, they're doing it. As seen here, the entire brainwashing program starts at pre-school, evolves through the entirety of a child's schooling -- and remember, this program is designed to be integrated in every class: math, English, history, everything! While we send our most precious off to school every morning, they are getting Progressive Crazy 101.
They're being lobbied now to make SEL the dominant form of curriculum at publical schools. Leftist activists are lobbying for it right now, right under our noses. And what are we doing about it? We can see what turning unqualified teachers into brainwashing psychiatrists are doing to our kids. Child suicides are spiking, and the left says, "It's a mystery! It's mystifying!" No, it's not! It's quite plain!
See the pea moving under the shells? They know that Critical Race Theory isn’t being taught in kindergarten, so they’ve blended it with Social-Emotional Learning in a generalized ooggedy-boogedycharge of, you guessed it, grooming. Again, Beck:
The left doesn't like the term "groomer." Well, what do you call an adult that thinks it's their moral duty to stand between a parent and their kids on ideological matters when it comes to Marxism and sex and gender preferences? They're grooming our children for their own warped ideological views, and they are doing it without our consent, and they're doing it with our taxpayer dollars. They are groomers, period!
And, my darling sheep, remember in the back of your tiny minds what "grooming" actually is, the preface to a horrific crime, and I’m not saying that CRT and SEL and books in your library are the same thing. I would never say that. I’d rather you came to that conclusion yourselves. Please buy my books.
Pierce concludes with this:
We should familiarize ourselves with this sleight-of-hand, because it is going to be pretty much the entire game plan of Republican candidates in the upcoming midterm elections. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has already made it plain that he will run on the Grooming Is Whatever I Say It Is platform if and when he runs for president in two years. (See also: “woke.”) The bamboozlement already is well underway. And one of the minor tragedies is that it has drowned out stories of actual grooming in the old, accepted meaning of the term.
emphasis added
Democrats trying to run on things like passing family relief and infrastructure are going to get blindsided by this if they can’t find an effective way to respond. (We need more McMorrows, please.) It’s a certainty that the mainstream media will not be able to deal with this — wouldn’t want to be accused of liberal bias after all, or openly condemn Republican demagoguery. Besides, think of the ratings from running salacious stories and vague allegations!
Interesting times ahead.
Sunday, Apr 24, 2022 · 3:45:27 PM +00:00
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xaxnar
UPDATE: Must read from Brian Beutler on the Democratic failure to message effectively. (Hat tip to Tom Tomorrow for pointing to this.
us19.campaign-archive.com/…
THIS WEEK INSIDE THE BIG TENT:
① Despite [gestures broadly] Joe Biden has a good story to tell about his presidency—the problem is it will require him to be relentlessly partisan and brutally honest about his opposition
② Unfortunately, everywhere you look these days, you find Democrats refusing to engage in partisan fights or draw bright moral lines
③ That's why Mallory McMorow's response to a bigoted GOP colleague this week came as such a breath of fresh air; Democrats can learn from her, but they'll have to drop their wallflower routine, and maybe even shove their leaders to the side
Read the whole thing.