Are Republicans just crazy-pants dingle-bunnies?

The Manhattan Institute carried out a poll that dissects the current Republican coalition. It’s not a particularly trustworthy think-tank — Christopher Rufo is a senior fellow, and it publishes the City Journal, a magazine that only catches my eye because it is egregiously racist and pro-eugenics — so don’t accept its conclusions without question. A major result of the poll is that it detects two broad categories within the party that are somewhat in conflict, but also have much in common with each other.

  • Core Republicans (65%)—longstanding GOP voters who have consistently backed Republican presidential nominees since 2016 or earlier; and
  • New Entrant Republicans (29%)—recent first-time GOP presidential voters, including those who supported Democrats in 2016 or 2020 or were too young to vote in cycles before 2020.

I don’t like either group. The Core Republicans are boringly familiar, they fit the old stereotype of Republicans. The New Entrant Republicans are much more interesting and unexpected (to me), and have a more complex perspective. They’re a mess, and I don’t understand how they’ve aligned themselves to Republicans — they mainly look a bunch of flighty and weird people who bumble about looking for self-justification of their views, some of which I might agree with, except they somehow end up supporting Trump.

This description starts out positively, and ends up horrifically.

But a sizeable minority—new entrants to the GOP coalition over the past two presidential cycles—look markedly different. Younger, more racially diverse, and more likely to have voted for Democratic candidates in the recent past, this group diverges sharply from the party’s core. They are more likely, often substantially more likely, to hold progressive views across nearly every major policy domain. They are more supportive of left-leaning economic policies, more favorable toward China, more critical of Israel, and more liberal on issues ranging from migration to DEI initiatives. A significant share also report openly racist or antisemitic views and express potential support for political violence. Yet they overwhelmingly identify as Republicans today and voted for Donald Trump in 2024.

Yikes. “A significant share also report openly racist or antisemitic views and express potential support for political violence” — I think that alone is enough to explain why they ended up in the Trump camp. That’s the glue that is holding the coalition together.

With one other feature: they’re crackpots. This is the lunatic party.

Over a third of the Republican party thinks vaccines cause autism, that NASA faked the moon landing, that the Holocaust was exaggerated, that 9/11 was engineered by the US government. Over half believe Trump’s claim that his election losses were criminally engineered, and that the pandemic was produced by China. They’re nuts. This party is not salvaged by the fact that most might disagree with these conspiracy theories, it contains a substantial number of loons.

This explains a lot about the Republican party.

Although I’d like to see a similar analysis of Democratic voters — I’m lacking too much context here.

Farage needs to go away, apologies would be redundant

You’re not convincing me that I should get out of my American bubble, UK. What’s this I hear? You might end up making Nigel Farage your prime minister? Haven’t you noticed how the US is self-destructing after electing a flaming buffoon to the presidency? Don’t repeat our mistake.

The latest revelation is that Farage’s behavior as a schoolboy. He was a goose-stepping bully singing Hitler youth songs!

When he was 17, a teacher wrote a letter protesting the prospect of Farage being appointed prefect at his school. She was in disbelief that he was even considered for the role.

She wrote: “You will recall that at the recent and lengthy meeting about the selection of prefects, the remark by a colleague that Farage was a ‘fascist but that was no reason why he would not make a good prefect’ invoked considerable reaction from members of the [staff] common room.

“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views, and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set that he had to be removed from his lesson …

“Yet another colleague described how, at a [combined cadet force] camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler Youth songs; and when it was suggested by a master that boys who expressed such views ‘don’t really mean them’, the college chaplain himself commented that, on the contrary, in his experience views of that kind expressed by boys of that age are deep-seated and are meant.”

The letter concluded: “You will appreciate that I regard this as a very serious matter. I have often heard you tell our senior boys that they are the nation’s future leaders. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that these leaders are enlightened and compassionate.”

He was, of course, appointed to the position anyway.

We should all learn from this: don’t let young people with fascist impulses get away with it. They don’t get better, except in the sense of getting better at concealing it for a time, but give them a little bit of power and the viciousness reemerges. Nigel Farage is the UK’s Stephen Miller wearing clown paint.

The letter expresses dismay that Farage hasn’t even apologized. I don’t give a damn whether he can put up a facade of regret — his actual identity as a racist and anti-semite was exposed, and no amount of “I’m sowwy” would make up for it.

Some UK citizens are retaining a sense of humor about it all, though.

“APPARENTLY it costs the NHS over E300,000 a year to remove foreign objects from people’s rectums. Why aren’t we removing British objects instead? was Brexit all for nothing?
– Gerry Paton, London”

Humor seems to be all we have left, unfortunately. This is the era when entire countries turn themselves into a joke.

I thought Canada was supposed to be better than us?

I just assumed that since the US government has been such an overwhelming shitshow, it was distracting us from the better job being done in the nation to our north. The prime minister is Mark Carney, who leads the liberal party, so he must be doing good things. Maybe not.

A University of Toronto professor, Laura Tozer, teaches a grad level course in climate and climate policy. She has a few complaints for Carney to address.

“Every single semester, a student raises their hand in my class and asks: ‘Professor, is there any hope on climate change?’ How about this year when the new semester starts in January, you get to look them in the eye and answer,” she wrote in her letter, posted on LinkedIn, which also rattles off the laundry list of climate rollbacks under Carney.
X Suspended Canada’s Clean Electricity Regulations in Alberta

X Weakened methane regulations

X Scrapped the Oil & Gas Sector Emissions Cap

X Abandoned Canada’s consumer carbon pricing system

X Ended Canada Greener Homes retrofit program to electrify and improve household efficiency

X Ended Canada Greener Homes Loan Program to electrify and improve household efficiency

X Ended the Electric Vehicles (iZEV) program

X Delayed Canada’s Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate

X Passed bill C5 ‘Building Canada Act’ to allow government to override 12 laws and 7 regulations, including the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, for designated projects

X Committed to clawing back Canada’s anti-greenwashing legislation

> Announced plans to eliminate a tax on private jets and yachts

X Weakened the Alberta industrial carbon price from the $170/tonne it should have been (if the federal government enforced its own policies) to $130/tonne

Whoa. I’ve been ignoring Canada (forgive me, you know we Americans kind of have our hands full), but apparently the Canadian government has been fucking up, too. It sounds like Carney has been fully captured by the oil interests and is giving up on conservation efforts.

How is he doing on health policy and vaccination? Is he planning to take over Greenland? I’m afraid to look.

Benny Johnson wants to kill people

I don’t think I’ve ever heard this right-wing freak, Benny Johnson, speak before, but he spoke at a TPUSA conference recently, and it was chillingly hateful. This is scary stuff; it’s straight up fascist ranting, advocating for a terror campaign against our own citizens. I heard this on the Majority Report, but if you don’t want to hear any of the commentary but just want the straight filth from the mouth of Benny Johnson, start this video at the 2:00 minute mark and stop when you can’t take it any more. Or you can just read the transcript I’m posting.

Charlie Kirk taken from us, well, God is the author of life and death, obviously, it was God’s will, there’s nothing outside of God’s will, God didn’t make a mistake. Charlie is now a martyr. But who pulled the trigger? Well, let me tell you. As somebody who knows a lot of people who have been briefed on all of this and who have seen all the evidence and all the available evidence is empirical and demonstrable the person who pulled the trigger is part of the demonic transgender ideology that warps the minds of our young children, that poisons them, that is antithetical to creation itself.…[garbled by overtalking] I make of you man and woman, God doesn’t make mistakes, transgenderism is a lie from the pit of hell, and I’m sick of seeing transgender violence and murders in my country.

[cheers from the audience, standing ovation]

And what has made me so angry about this moment is that it should have been a unifying moment for us all to say what a horrid and wretched ideology. Now it’s time to kick in doors, right, come on FBI, do some door kicking, round ’em up. The violent antifa members, the transtifa members, it’s time, use this as a moment, that should have been a moment, but we didn’t have that moment, sadly, because there was too much tearing at the seams. It’s time to focus, ladies and gentlemen, on what’s truly ripping, the demonic evil that is ripping this country apart. Yes, this is the ideology that took Charlie Kirk from us, and what was, what was the last words that Charlie said on Earth? He was actually answering a question about transgender violence…

So much vile ideology on display in that short speech. It starts with a bizarre religious dogma that a god “wills” all actions, but then has to change gears to blame someone who pulled the trigger…and accuses a “demonic transgender ideology.” But we do know who pulled the trigger: Tyler Robinson, a young Mormon man from a conservative family. If there’s any ideology there besides radical far right conservatism and a weird religious cult, it’s gun culture.

Then he works himself into a frothing rant urging the FBI to kick down doors and round up antifa and trans people, to the roaring approval of the crowd.

This was a speech that wouldn’t have been out of place in Germany, 1933.

By the way, Kirk’s last words were in reply to questions from his audience. “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” He didn’t know: Too many, he said. There was a follow up: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?” He didn’t have an answer for that, so he dodged: Counting or not counting gang violence? Then boom, he was shot by a non-transgender non-gang member.

It’s clear that these fanatics are obsessed with trans people, and even when it’s not a factor, they will use them as an excuse to foment hatred and violence.

I never have to listen to Benny Johnson ever again. On the basis of that speech alone, I condemn him.

Hey, I’ve been to huge atheist conferences, and never heard a speaker rage against religious people the way these people howl against trans people, with even less justification. Such behavior wouldn’t have got a standing ovation, that’s for sure. One exception: a few people, like Sam Harris, preached hatred against Islam, but he always did so in his usual cautious mealy-mouthed voice, and it was one of the reasons I gave up on organized atheism, and Harris in particular.

A conspiracy of absolute morons

I’m instantly suspicious of conspiracy theories, typically because believing in them requires some degree of confidence in the competence of a mob of people who somehow avoid spilling the beans. I am now faced with the possibility that if everyone involved is sufficiently below a threshold of stupidity, they can make it work, for a while at least. Now a new batch of Epstein files have been released, and they are the product of gross incompetence.

Some of the files have emerged because all you have to do is guess at likely file names, and you can access otherwise unlisted files. Some of the redactions can be circumvented by copying the text and pasting it into a separate document. This is what happens when you put Kash Patel and Pam Bondi and Dan Bongino in charge of the coverup.

Voidzilla discusses many, but not all, of the recent revelations.

There were TEN CO-CONSPIRATORS with Epstein whose names were redacted from the files? It’s true: there’s a cabal of wealthy pedophiles raping young girls, and the Trump administration is neck-deep in a cover-up to protect them.

Trump is also mentioned in some of the files.

It reads: “For your situational awareness, wanted to let you know that the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump travelled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware), including during the period we would expect to charge in a Maxwell case.

“In particular, he is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996, including at least four flights on which Maxwell was also present. He is listed as having travelled with, among others and at various times, Marla Maples, his daughter Tiffany, and his son Eric.

“On one flight in 1993, he and Epstein are the only two listed passengers; on another, the only three passengers are Epstein, Trump, and then-20-year-old REDACTED.

“On two other flights, two of the passengers, respectively, were women who would be possible witnesses in a [Ghislaine] Maxwell case.”

Trump is also accused of unsavory behavior directly.

Among the files released on Tuesday is a letter that appears to have been sent by Epstein to Larry Nassar, the US gymnastics team doctor convicted of sexually abusing scores of young gymnasts, while he was in jail.

The letter, postmarked 13 August 2019 and sent from “J Epstein” at “Manhattan Correctional” to “Larry Nassar”, reads: “Dear L.N. as you know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home. Good Luck! We share one thing … our love & caring for young ladies at the hope they’d reach their full potential. Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair. Yours, J. Epstein.”

Ugh. Our president, ladies and gentlemen.

These revelations ought to topple the government — this is far worse than anything Woodward and Bernstein dug up that led to the resignation of Nixon. Why isn’t it? Is it because the Republican party has become a rat’s nest of corrupt crooks and apologists for criminal behavior?

On a note that seems unrelated, but is entirely relevant to the abuse of the government by a senile narcissist, Trump has now announced the construction of a huge, expensive line of battleships.

President Donald Trump’s announcement of a new class of battleships bearing his name puts a fresh spotlight on a US naval shipbuilding program that has fallen short on delivering the new warships on time and on budget in recent years, something Trump himself pointed out in his speech from Mar-a-Lago on Monday.

This is insane. Battleships haven’t been part of any modern naval doctrine since what, the Korean war? Aircraft carriers are the heart of a modern navy, but maybe not forever — I’m not an expert in military strategy, but then, neither is Donald Trump! Yet here he is, unilaterally deciding to build this gigantic, absurdly expensive, probably unnecessary, archaic battleship, and you know the appeal to him is that he’ll name it after himself.

We can later just scrape his name off the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and we can just ignore the Trump Institute for Peace, but these ships are estimated to cost $15 billion apiece, and may prove to be utterly useless to the Navy. We should not trust these ego projects from a corrupt billionaire pedophile. He’s going to ruin the country, and Republicans, once regarded as the sensible, conservative party, are not stepping up to put the brakes on this wreck of an administration.

Correction: The last US battleship, the USS Missouri, was launched in 1941. We’re done with that paradigm.

Put Bari Weiss and Kristi Noem in CECOT

That’s just the start, everyone in this rotten administration should follow.

Wait, no, I can’t recommend following any of the evil policies that the United States is using right now, not even for Nazis. It’s a struggle, but we have to be better than them, even though this story is so enraging.

Bari Weiss, the unqualified bigot who has never practiced journalism, was appointed to be in charge of the news division at CBS — the rich vermin who run the major media companies wanted to do more mergers that benefit no one but themselves used appointments of puppets as a tool to get regulatory permission to construct monopolies. Weiss has used her power to censor the news, axing a segment of the news show 60 Minutes that put the government in a bad light. The excuse given was that the Trump administration refused to comment on it, which implies that the government has de facto control of what journalism can be presented on CBS. Bari Weiss has sold out.

The segment that was killed was all about our policy of deporting people to CECOT, the inhumane torture dungeon in El Salvador. It’s a brazenly evil place; the administrators have openly encouraged ‘influencers’ to tour it and record what is going on, because they are proud of what they do. 60 Minutes was going to show what the El Salvadoran and United States government was doing to the inmates.

The deported migrants were sent to CECOT, short for the Terrorism Confinement Center, a massive high-security prison built by El Salvador’s government as part of President Nayib Bukele’s crackdown on gangs. Designed to hold tens of thousands of inmates, CECOT is known for extreme isolation, strict control, and conditions that human rights organizations have repeatedly described as inhumane.

Former detainees interviewed by Sharyn Alfonsi describe being held in overcrowded cells with little access to sunlight, medical care, or basic hygiene. Several recount routine physical abuse, prolonged confinement, and psychological trauma. Their accounts paint a picture of a system built for punishment rather than due process, with detainees often unsure why they were there or how long they would remain.

Bari Weiss could not allow that, because, Jesus Christ, it makes Trump and his lackeys look bad. Kristi Noem is shown touring the prison, strutting past prisoners held in excruciating positions, standing in front of packed cells while speechifying about how these are the worst of the worst. She looks like Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS.

So it got cancelled.

Except…it was briefly shown on Canadian networks before it was pulled. And someone recorded it — it looks like they just aimed a camera at a hotel room TV — and has made it available to the world.

Go watch it. Quick, before it is pulled down.

These motherfuckers, Kristi Noem, Bari Weiss, Donald Trump, the guards at the prison, the warden, are all evil monsters. They are committing war crimes, except that we aren’t at war, making it even worse. We are all complicit. We don’t get to claim that we didn’t know about the torture prisons — we know. You have no excuse. Are we going to tolerate this corrupt regime any longer?

After watching that video, I needed a cleanse. Maybe you do too — here’s Rage Against the Machine.

Another mass shooting

This time, at Brown University. It’s deja vu all over again. For some of the students, this was their second school shooting.

As the deadly attack unfolded at Brown University, leaving students hiding under desks and reeling as gunshots rang out, the scene was eerily familiar for at least two students.

Years earlier, Mia Tretta, 21, and Zoe Weissman, 20, had both survived school shootings. “What I’ve been feeling most is just, like, how dare this country allow this to happen to someone like me twice?” Weissman told the New York Times.

Two people were killed and nine others wounded on Saturday after a man dressed in black opened fire during final exams at one of America’s most prestigious colleges. Hundreds of police spent the night scouring the campus and nearby neighbourhoods as the suspect remained at large.

I’m working on some simple statistical problems for my genetics course — you know, basic stuff like the probability that two rare mutations would simultaneously occur in a single individual, etc. I’m not going to set up any problems around this kind of event in America, because this has become too real and too close to home. Also finals are an easy target: students are under stress, they’ve been openly studying (and complaining!) for weeks, and the finals schedules are easy to find online. It’s like we’re advertising that a herd of students will be gathering in a large space at precisely Day X and Time Y, and nobody plans on bringing a gun to such an event, other than cowards with nefarious intent. Maybe we need to start being more secure and confidential with this kind of information.

This story ends with another coincidence. Every story about a mass shooting somehow ends with a fairly typical and familiar conclusion.

Saturday’s attack has again cast a spotlight on longstanding calls for gun control in the US, where gun laws rank among the most permissive in the developed world. So far this year, there have been 389 mass shootings across the US, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines incidents where four or more victims have been shot. Last year, more than 500 mass shootings were reported.

Yeah, how weird that every story has to end with a conclusion deploring the USA’s insane gun policy.

I have another familiar part of the conclusion: nothing will be done.

For the capitalist parasites: they’re asking for it

The right-wingers are fighting among themselves again, inspired by Hegseth’s bombing of boats. Claire Lehmann, the terrible racist founder of Quillette, starts the bickering by complaining about the sinking…not that she opposes murdering random people from South American countries, but that it doesn’t look good and you should be more quiet about the slaughtering:

This is really grotesque.
(And look I get it that sometimes hard men need to do ugly things. But if you’re going to do this, don’t broadcast it, & don’t brag about it. FFS)

Billionaire Joe Lonsdale responds. If you’ve forgotten who he is, he made his fortune by starting out under Peter Thiel at PayPal, and then got really rich with Palantir, the company that profits from spying on your internet usage all around the world. Later, he was one of the founders of the University of Austin, the fake college for far-right and libertarian freaks. He wants more publicity for extra-judicial murder.

She’s just wrong. Leftist schoolmarm leaders cause violence and evil in our civilization.
Sinking narco boats publicly helps deter others. As does hanging repeat violent criminals.
Killing bad guys is DoW job. He should brag more. Masculine truth: bold, virtuous men deter evil.

He’s a good example: bold, virtuous men failed to deter Joe Lonsdale. He might be on to something here, that maybe it’s time to hang a few billionaires to teach a lesson to those greedy parasites. He wants more than killing a few “narcoterrorists” (who haven’t been tried and convicted of anything), just public hanging for lots of crimes.

If I’m in charge later, we won’t just have a three strikes law.
We will quickly try and hang men after three violent crimes. And yes, we will do it in public to deter others.
Our society needs balance. It’s time to bring back masculine leadership to protect our most vulnerable.

For future reference, this is how billionaires want to run their utopia, in a “masculine” fashion with lots of public violence. I say we should hang them first. Viva la revolución! Give them what they want.

Jesus would have bombed those boats!

The NY Times did one of those things they’re so fond of: take an unscientific and inadequate sample of a subpopulation of voters, and ask them what they think of a recent policy decision. This time, they asked 6 Republicans what they think of bombing Venezualan boats. I’m not sure what the point is, except to let us know that Republicans are assholes.

Edward Padron, 67, thinks in principle that killing people in boats is OK, but killing survivors is wrong.

“I don’t agree with the second shot,” Mr. Padron said. “I do agree with them being stopped.”

Warning: Mr Padron holds the moral high ground in this group. It’s all downhill from there.

Erwin McKone, 55, has reservations about killing low-level guys in boats.

“If we were serious about the cartels, we would probably try to cut off the head of the snake,” he said, speculating that many of those who have been killed are “poor Venezuelans that see this as an opportunity to feed their families.”

I suspect he’d be fine if we just openly declared war on Venezuela.

Charles Vaughters, 25, favors killing alleged drug traffickers without much evidence.

“Drug traffickers are criminals who rape, murder and kill people, and they are dedicated to getting the product to Americans,” Mr. Vaughters said. “They don’t care if it harms Americans. I don’t think we should be feeling much sympathy.”

Rachel Uecker, 53, has a pragmatic perspective.

“​​If we take them to the courts, we’re going to have to pay for that and support them in prison,” she said. “If they’re bringing drugs into our country, I don’t care who gets rid of them.”

Brian Kozlowski, 41, wants more violence.

Brian D. Kozlowski, who is a strong Trump supporter, said the U.S. military should be used “more proactively to keep Americans safe.” He blamed the Biden administration for what he described as not doing enough to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the country.

He’s a lawyer. Let’s get rid of that troubling concept of presumed innocence.

But my very favorite example of twisted moral reasoning comes from Naomi Villalba (no age given), who cites the Bible as justification.

Ms. Villalba said the second strike was also justified, and she does not believe the United States is indiscriminately targeting boats.

“They should have done that strike regardless,” she said. “Every human being does have value, but if you’re caught up in something that’s very detrimental to society, I think that you should die.”

She compared these strikes to a story in the Bible, when Jesus healed someone on a Sunday, contradicting religious rules that forbid work on that day. Some laws are worth breaking for the betterment of mankind, she said, just like the biblical story was trying to show.

Well, yeah. If Jesus could break one of the ten commandments to heal someone, then Pete Hegseth can also break one of the commandments to murder two people clinging to wreckage in the ocean. Same thing. Every human being does have value, but….

Does being caught up in something detrimental to society also include evangelical Christianity and MAGA?

I take back my disparagement of the NY Times’ methods of taking the pulse of the country. I did learn something after all.