Michigan is a so-called swing state that neither Democrats nor Republicans have a lock on. Serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) won the state in 2016 and then lost it to Joe Biden in 2020. But then SSAT went on his delusional bender about how the election was stolen, pointing to this state as one that he actually won. Many of his supporters picked up on that and the state GOP went all in on the lie. Following SSAT’s defeat, the party leadership swept out all the old guard at all levels and put in place the most extreme election deniers.
But while the voters of Michigan may not be firmly in the Democratic camp, it appears that they were not that enthused about the Big Lie and, in the 2022 elections, Democrats won big and the proponents of the Big Lie lost. Currently the Democrats control the State House, the Senate, the Governor’s Office, and most of the Congressional seats, leaving the GOP in the most marginalized situation in 40 years.
So when the state party held its convention at the beginning of 2023, you would think that they would remove all the people who had led them into the wilderness and put in place those who were, you know, at least reasonably sane. But that is not what happened. They doubled down. Since the people who were the local party chairs were now pretty much all MAGA enthusiasts, they rejected anyone who was seen as even remotely connected to the party old guard that had at least kept them competitive, and put in place the most extreme members.
Symbolic of this was the election of Kristina Karamo as state. party chair, who is about as extreme a MAGA cultist as you can imagine. She is a QAnon follower and had run for secretary of state in 2022 and lost by a whopping 14 points but as a true MAGAite, she refused to concede defeat and to this day still has not done so, saying that the election was stolen from her. Her Wikipedia page provides some interesting tidbits about her beliefs
Karamo believes that demonic possession is real and may be transferred through sexual relations. She has also said that abortion is child sacrifice and a satanic practice, that pop stars such as Beyonce, Jay-Z, Cardi B, Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish are tools of Satan recruiting their followers into paganism, and that yoga is a ritual to summon demons.
After her election as party chair, the next task was to get the party ready for the 2024 election and an important part of that was raising money to run the campaigns at all levels. But since the party had given the raspberry to all the traditional supporters of the party, the ones who gave money and were good at raising money, the party coffers rapidly depleted and it is now on the verge of bankruptcy, hardly in a position to mount any kind of serious challenge to the Democrats. This has caused considerable discontent within the party and now there is talk of a revolt and attempts to oust Karamo. Even the co-chair and her former running mate Malinda Pego has turned on her.
Pego is not the first supporter to turn on Karamo.
Just days earlier, state committee member Dawn Beattie apologized for her role in getting Karamo elected.
“If I would have known that Kristina Karamo would have turned out to be such a tyrannical incompetent dumpster fire I would never have worked so hard to get her elected,” Beattie wrote in an email. “For that I apologize.”
Since the state party leadership is now firmly in the hands of QAnon sympathizers and Big Lie devotees, it should not be surprising that the effort to rid the party of Karamo goes even further into the conspiracy rabbit hole, with some suggesting that Karamo is a globalist establishment plant who inveigled her way into the leadership position in order to destroy the party from within, while others suggest that it is those trying to remove her who are the ones who are secretly trying to pursue a globalist agenda. It seems like once you go full conspiracy theory, you never get out, instead burrowing further into new nooks and crannies.
The radio program This American Life devoted an entire show to exploring what is going on with the Michigan GOP, interviewing the key players. It provides a fascinating insight into the minds of these extremists and was what alerted me to all the Michigan GOP shenanigans. What is puzzling is that while election deniers and conspiracy peddlers are losing elections, SSAT, the biggest election denier and conspiracy peddler of them all, is riding high in the polls, even in Michigan.
Well, so what?
What does this have to do with elections and the government?
Demonic possession is legal and so is sex.
I thought the cure for Demonic possession was prayer, exorcism, and xianity anyway.
Is she implying that Demons are more powerful than jesus and god?
Not very accurate here.
Paganism isn’t the same thing as satanism at all.
And both are also legal.
If that was the case, we would be surrounded by Demons.
More so what.
Summoning demons is also perfectly legal, if not as some claim, always a good idea.
This GOP leader’s concerns are irrelevant to the lives of anyone who lives in the USA.
She isn’t going to stop anyone from doing Yoga, listening to popular music or having sex.
I think this is further evidence of the contempt very religious people have for evidence in determining what is real and what isn’t.
“Reality has a well known liberal bias”
--Stephen Colbert, 2006
In the words of Han Solo -- I don’t know, I can imagine quite a bit.
https://images.app.goo.gl/pr89FLSm9mZKH3df9
In the words of the Celestial Toymaker -- well that’s alright then.
https://images.app.goo.gl/AaWKR7Y7jDPMN8MC6
Textbook cognitive dissonance. In order to get out, it requires you to accept that you fully believed and bought into ideas that are not merely questionable, but are actually bugfuck crazy to the point that you look like an irredeemable cretin to anyone with two functioning braincells. Of course people can’t come back from that. I do actually have some pity for them -- they must lead terribly stressful and unpleasant lives, constantly paranoid about the government/Democrats/commies/Jooz/lizards/literal hellspawned demons they imagine are coming for them.
Seriously -- it’s easy to mock them if you’ve a basic level of intelligence, because by definition you think they’re kidding. You think they’re cynically manipulating the rubes with crazy conspiracy theories that they don’t themselves believe a word of, because they’re actually Machiavellian geniuses with a thirst for power. Consider for a moment the alternative -- that they really do believe even a tenth of what they spout. It’s terrifying. Not for us, here in reality, but for them, in their horrible dystopian fantasy world. Poor fuckers.
#6, sonofrojblake wrote,
It is terrifying to the rest of us when they get their paws on the levers of power.
Then they can attempt to implement their dystopian worldview, and reality is more thermoplastic than we generally acknowledge.
The underlying laws of the universe do not change. But the very plastic laws of human society, which includes our conception of justice, fairness, and worth, can (and are) modified by those who hold the levers of power.
Rut row! Is it possible that someone deep into the MAGA universe is on the verge of uncovering the unholy union of Donald Trump and George Soros and their dastardly plot to utterly destroy the Republican Party in America? Hmmmm, coud be!
The superfluidity of conspiracy theories. That’s what I thought of when I read, “… instead burrowing further into new nooks and crannies.” Then my brain leapt to another idea.
Let’s call it the Turing-Kruger Test Effect (TKTE). It’s a way to check your AI for real, not simulated, intelligence. When you can get your AI to believe in many different conspiracy theories, and no matter how much conflicting, true data is added to its search database it refuses to change its outputs, then your AI is on its way. But it can’t fully pass the TKTE until it starts considering itself the smartest intelligence in the room and the only way to fix this AI is to reprogram it. Of course, this suggests that intelligences, whether artificial or natural, may have limited usefulness unless the educational systems they are trained on are robust.
The full on conspiracy theorists reach a position where there is no straight route to realize they are wrong. For them lack of evidence or evidence contrary to their position is just evidence of the strength of the global conspiracy suppressing the truth of their position. When both A -> B and not A -> B there is no way out of B.
I feel I should point out that the reason the dems swept control of the legislature in 2022 is that redistricting was taken away from the legislature and given to an independent redistricting commission. The new legislative make up reflects the state electorate, where democratic voters have a slight majority over republicans.
The republicans have since lost their collective minds, including one particularly looney group which took over Ottawa county.
The new legislature wasted no time in reversing some of the damage done by republicans, including rescinding the right to work law, reproductive rights, clean energy, health insurance protections, LGBTQ protections, juvenile justice reform, and many more.
“SSAT is rising high in the polls…”
I wonder if the testimonies about his foul body odor will have any effect?
It is at such a primitive, visceral level that it may influence MAGAites that ignore “high-brow” arguments about SSAT contradicting himself, or the Jan. 6th riot or A LOT of other issues.
birgerjohansson @12
Unless they get a direct whiff themselves it will make no difference at all. And, even smelling the stench with their own nose, some will blame a “Democrat plant” for farting in his general direction.