I wrote earlier that even the mighty propaganda juggernaut that is Fox News led by Roger Ailes had to abruptly reverse course and take Donald Trump back into its bosom after the furious reaction they got from their own viewers at their obvious attempt to sandbag him at the first debate.
Erick Erickson is another person who did not see it coming. He is the creator of an extreme right wing group called RedState that has an annual gathering to which all the Republican presidential candidates were invited. This was scheduled a couple of days after the debate and Erickson, riding the wave of what seemed like strong anti-Trump sentiment following Trump’s statements about Fox News personality Megyn Kelly, in a fit of righteous hauteur disinvited Trump.
He clearly did not expect the fury with which his own supporters reacted. The level of vituperation they unleashed on him, sometimes at the rate of 100 messages per hour, is incredible and has to be read to be believed. Chastened by the onslaught, he has taken on a martyr’s tone and appealed for calm.
But folks, this is anger at an unhealthy level. It is anger that has gone beyond the righteous anger of repeated betrayals from Washington. It is an anger that has become unhinged and is potentially uncontrollable. Anger at that level is more often destructive than constructive.
…But I don’t get this anger. If this is the anger that flows out of Trump supporters, I do not think it is sustainable. Yet it comes daily. It is poisonous to debate, to democracy, and to the soul itself.
…The people above and those like them are not happy warriors. They are malcontented souls who need prayer. If you read those emails above and nodded with them, I do hope you will consider that a recalibration of your anger is order.
For Erickson to deplore angry rhetoric as “poisonous to debate, to democracy, and to the soul itself”, that is “unhinged” and “uncontrollable” is rich in irony because that has long been his stock in trade. Erickson has a history of saying the most inflammatory things and siccing his followers on those whom he saw as enemies of his toxic brand of conservatism. This man, who referred to Supreme Court justice David Souter, as mild a man as you would encounter and someone of unblemished reputation, as a “goat fucking child molester” is now lecturing his followers for being angry and using foul language, when they have merely taken his prior actions as a model.
I did read the emails he provided. I did not nod in agreement because the contents are truly awful. But I could not resist a feeling of schadenfreude that people like Erickson, who carefully cultivated and nurtured a horde of political piranhas to unleash on their enemies, and are now finding that they are turning on their creators.
He now seems to want to ingratiate himself with the political establishment but like so many others before him, he sowed the wind thinking that he would not suffer any consequences, with disastrous results. Ask not for whom the whirlwind comes. It comes for thee.
Something about petards and hoists and selves seems apt here.
Nah, it all sounded like “Normal” internet comments. If you haven’t loose the sensation yet then it mean either you are not reading the comments or new to internet.
@ ^ atheistblog : Have you read them? The Erickson Trump fans ones liked here specifically?
“Nah, it all sounded like “Normal” internet comments”
No, if you would go to any right wing political site, the blog entries usually start another attack and give a liberal target to aim at. The vitriol is given a direction. This time there’s splash-back of the acidic nature of the community he’s created.
Attacking is normal and no one bothers to weigh it means to the target.
The more pain, the more gain.
To repeat myself: If Trump manages to split the Republican Party, we will all owe him a debt of gratitude, and this will cause me some feelings of conflict.
It’s not really schadenfreude when they are not your friend.
The right has created and nurtured a population of cloistered hothouse flowers used to being spoon fed a rich mix of their own illusions of nobility and adequacy mixed with xenophobia and fear of the others. This diet keeps them hopped up on and addicted to ever higher concentrations of disgust, outrage, and self-righteous fury. The dose and purity of the incitement needs to keep increasing in effectiveness because, as with most addictions, they develop a tolerance and need ever stronger medicine to get the same high.
They like Trump because he serves his provocations straight up. Undiluted with rationality or compromise. He is the dealer that offered the purest, most poisonous, product. Delivered straight to the anger, fear, and euphoria centers of the brain. They like the high and they are not going to easily accept anyone offering a lesser product.
Erick Erickson did everything to establish and feed their addiction. They were his useful idiots and attack dogs. Then Trump, always the fabulist, and willing to go “up to eleven”, steps in with a purer form of irrational outrage and self-righteous anger driven by loss and disgust to fire their minds and they are his.
It is too late for appeals to moderation and rationality. The instinct to trust rationality and to be moderate have been systematically beat and bred out of the right.
The only remaining options are distraction, the GOP would like to find a way to get them to focus their outrage and hate on Hillary, and Thorazine.
There’s nothing funnier than the Freeper hate machine turning on one of its own. Suck it up, pal.
Fauxnews reports the latest poll numbers
They tell you who gained points.
They tell you who lost points.
Only then do they deign to tell you who is on top.
The Washington Post is climbing on that bandwagon as well:
We can now name the winner of the GOP debate: Ben Carson
Sure, it’s “objective” to report who shifted points in a poll, rather than who is on top by a ratio of approx 2:1 over any other Republican candidate.
And they have decided that the best way to decide the “winner” of a debate is the candidate who gained the most points. BTW, it is also “objective” to report a gain from 7 to 12 points in a poll as a percentage, error margins be damned.
Donald Trump Lies to Little Boy: “I Am Batman.”
“love children, but wont even defund Planned Parenthood.”
Fuck you. And everyone who looks like you, and everyone who looks like everyone who looks like you!
*ragequits