When the hangers-on finally figure out that there's been a shift, and the celebrity they've been so into for so long isn't who the cool kids are down with now. So they have to disconnect and go where their friends are going.
People like Brittany Mahomes really don't give one empty fuck about policy, or rights, or how others are being treated, or anything else. They spend zero time thinking about much of anything other than how to focus on their own need to believe that they're being very stylish because they're in with the most popular crowd.
MAGA is fraught with radical skepticism, and melting down as they watch one thing after the next "go against them".
And they're so well-conditioned to look for "signs" of The Great & Evil Librul Cabal in action, they glom onto anything - and I mean any-fuckin'-thing - that helps them deny that they're losing, that they're insistent on following losers, and that they're more and more desperate about being made to feel comfortable with the fact that they're losing - and denying.
They double down, and triple down, and fourple down on denying that they're denying.
The uncomplicated, dumb engine driving political false claims about Taylor Swift
A team won a football game, which is obviously part of a devious plot for Democrats to retain power via a pop star
I am professionally obligated to begin this article by explaining to you who Taylor Swift is, who Travis Kelce is and why I am talking about them. I know this will come off as condescending (if not insulting) to most of you, but for that one person who, this very morning, emerged from a 20-year-long meditative retreat atop Aconcagua and — as one would — opened The Washington Post’s website: Here you go.
Taylor Swift is a musician. More specifically, she is one of the most famous musicians that has ever existed on this Earth, in the company of Michael Jackson, certainly … if not, like, Beethoven. Travis Kelce is a football player who was well-known in sporting circles a year or two ago but who, by virtue of dating Swift, is now also well-known among Swift fans and, by extension, most Americans.
The reason I am talking about them is that Kelce’s team, the Kansas City Chiefs, won a playoff game Sunday that will return them to the championship game. And in response, a surprisingly large section of the American political right decided that this was somehow related to politics.
There are lots of manifestations of this, including multiple presentations on the right’s preferred cable news channel. The iteration that attracted perhaps the most attention, though, came from former presidential candidate and Donald Trump cheerleader Vivek Ramaswamy (speaking of people who suddenly emerged in the public consciousness to polarizing effect).
In a social media post, a prominent right-wing conspiracy theorist linked Swift to … let’s see here … ah yes, George Soros. In response, Ramaswamy offered a prediction.
“I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” he wrote. “And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”
The implication (again: forgive my telling you something obvious) is that the Chiefs are being ushered to the Super Bowl … somehow … to secure Swift’s endorsement for President Biden.
This makes a lot of sense because the Chiefs haven’t been to the Super Bowl since, uh, last year, when they won. But before that they hadn’t been since, well, two years before. But that one they lost! But they’d won the year before that.
You can see why they need … someone … to give them a boost. Because otherwise, Taylor Swift wouldn’t endorse Biden, something she hasn’t done since 2020 — the last time Biden ran.
A lot of the responses to this broad line of argument — that the commingling of the Chiefs and Swift is somehow targeted at politics — note that it’s probably not wise for Republicans to side against the NFL. The NFL is wildly popular, and attacking popular things is not a good way to yourself become more popular.
But this backlash from the Fox-News-iverse isn’t about electoral politics. It is about appealing to a more immediate source of power on the right: online and on-air attention.
This was the crux of Ramaswamy’s entire presidential campaign. He understood, having observed Republican politics over the past decade, that attention can be parlayed into a lesser form of power, elected office. Trump blazed this trail, certainly, showing others the path and helping clear it of overgrowth. Ramaswamy’s 2024 bid was centered on jumping into the online conversation and bringing its themes and rhetoric to the campaign trail. It built him a loyal following of similarly online types, enough to get him about 4 percent of the primary vote by the time he dropped out.
But this is the incentive path that’s feeding the Swift clamor. The wilder your assertion, the more traction it’s going to get. Your allies will riff on it and build on it, and you can come along for the ride. Maybe you’ll end up as a member of the House of Representatives from Georgia or Long Island. Maybe you’ll go higher: landing a recurring spot on Sean Hannity’s prime-time show.
It’s important to recognize the overlaying element here: The speculation should leverage the widespread belief on the right that Democrats only get legitimate votes by brainwashing their idiotic base. (Republicans also believe Democrats get lots of stolen votes too, of course — a similarly incorrect theory.) This idea comes up a lot, that Democrats win by snookering college kids or duping credulous city voters into ignoring their apocalyptic surroundings. (This is ironic, given that believing that cities are hellholes requires a credulous acceptance of propaganda from the right, but I digress.)
Republicans losing the presidential popular vote in 2016, the House majority in 2018, the presidency in 2020 and underperforming expectations in the 2022 midterms has built a strong incentive to look for nonpolitical explanations for strong Democratic performance — since many Americans don’t know anyone who holds opposing political views, including Republicans baffled at the idea of voting Democratic. So, particularly given Trump’s insistence that the 2020 race was “rigged” by media and cultural elites … somehow, it is quite fashionable on the right to suggest the existence of intricate plans aimed at securing Democratic votes from glassy-eyed voters.
Like, say, that a football team gets ushered into the Super Bowl to secure an endorsement from Taylor Swift.
I’ve avoided doing so but I can no longer resist: How would this work? Did the Baltimore Ravens take a dive? Did someone pay them? Are they just that committed to Democratic politics that they all agreed to lose? Did the Buffalo Bills before them? And the Miami Dolphins before the Bills? Or does the government have some Havana-Syndrome-esque device that it trains on opponents, causing field goals to go wide right? What’s the mechanism, exactly?
It doesn’t matter, obviously. These are not rational conclusions drawn from observed facts. They are, instead, clout-chasing assemblages of words that, through a process of grim Darwinism, seek rewards in the right-wing conversation.
Never mind that the supposed outcome here — the Swift endorsement — is itself wildly overpowered in the right’s imagination. One of Swift’s first prominent endorsements came in 2018 when she backed the Democrat in Tennessee’s U.S. Senate race. Polling was close; he then lost by double-digits. You think that Swift — whose fan base includes millions of people younger than voting age — is so valuable an endorser that you’re going to rig the NFL? Okay. Sure.
It’s all silly, but the silliness exists over a range that runs from innocuous to bizarre.
I’ll leave you with the wise words of Ramaswamy, almost certainly responding to the (wonderful! desired!) controversy he’d stirred up with his football observations.
“What the [media] calls a ‘conspiracy theory’ is often nothing more than an amalgam of incentives hiding in plain sight,” he wrote. “Once you see that, the rest becomes pretty obvious.”
The natural Step 2 here: When the media points out that my comments make no sense, it proves that I’m right. Okay.
Wait. Actually, I’ll leave you with an observation attached to Ramaswamy’s second post, one that comes from the world’s most prominent seeker of attention by way of posting controversial/bizarre/unnecessarily-political comments.
They're afraid. If someone really really really popular comes out in opposition of the assumed predominant populist appeal - well - let the freak out and losing of shit begin.
"Breaking the wheel" is a notion that carries an appeal that's almost universally popular - thus its political enshrinement as Populism - but in the end, it's almost as universally false. Revolutionaries ride in promising some variation on "peace bread freedom and justice", but they deliver struggle and pain and sorrow and privation. For as long as there's been any kind of political structure, people have been out to conquer the world. The world is bruised and bloodied, but it remains undefeated. When will we ever learn?
Vox: A majority of Americans, 51 percent, have a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act, the law’s highest mark ever in the seven-year tracking poll; 41 percent said they had an unfavorable view. --and-- Half of Americans also said they thought they would be better off if Obamacare remained the law of the land, versus 36 percent who thought they would be better off under the Republican bill.
I'll make one radical assumption by saying: Maybe a bunch of the Leftie Purists managed to get their heads outa their asses long enough to stop insisting that "fucked over completely" is somehow better than "fucked over a little (or even a lot)".
The main thing here, Lefties, is that you don't get to prescribe punishment for me in order to pressure me into serving your political goals.
There is nothing good about losing what we gained with Obamacare because it just doesn't go far enough to satisfy your pixie-dusted dreams of unicorns and universality.
There is no silver lining in having 45* as POTUS. Damage is being done to our institutions that will take decades (if not generations) to repair.
So if you think the shit we're going thru now, and the shit yet to come, is all good in the end because it's sure to transform the voting public into good little Liberals, then y'all can go fuck yourself with a horny toad.
Tomorrow, on the day we commemorate the beginning of our experiment in self-government, it may be of some value to look at where we started, and try to gauge the probabilities of where we may be headed. Here's the bedroom of King George III as it is supposed to have looked in the 18th century:
And now, the bedroom of a certain Populist "Billionaire", masquerading as a champion of the American Workin' Guy:
Gotta give Trump some props though. He's doing one thing really well - he's using a sales tactic called "Isolate And Bypass". He knows this questioner is a complete fucking moron, but Trump also knows he currently has that guy's vote and he's not gonna get anywhere without it, but he can't afford not to widen out beyond his looney-tunes base if he expects to have any chance at all once he gets past the first coupla Primaries. So he has to deflect - "we're looking into it". He doesn't embrace this nutball, but he doesn't alienate him either.
And he uses the Sales-y language that makes it easier for his Spinmeisters to twist it all into whatever shape is needed to continue the illusion that Trump is never ever ever wrong about anything.
You may have noticed Wednesday nite, when Trump and Jeb got into it over the Florida casino thing - Jeb saying he torpedoed Trump, and Trump coming back with the standard blustery blowhard-ery, "If I'd wanted it, I woulda got it, believe me."
So what I think the Press Poodles should ask at the next "debate" is this:
"In your career, what have you gotten wrong - what mistakes have you made?"
--and/or--
"What 2 decisions in your professional life would you like to revisit now, and what would you do differently to improve the outcome?"
(Of course, while the Poodles may actually ask the questions, I'm betting they wouldn't think to follow up and demand a real answer after each candidate tried to make a funny out of it.)
Anybody willing to spin some kind of Infallibility Bullshit about themselves or any of their mentors, role models or idols should never get anybody's vote for anything.
In addition to donating change to the troops, we are repeatedly impelled to “support our troops” or to “thank our troops.” God constantly blesses them. Politicians exalt them. We are warned, “If you can’t stand behind our troops, feel free to stand in front of them.” One wonders if our troops are the ass-kicking force of P.R. lore or an agglomeration of oversensitive duds and beggars.
Such troop worship is trite and tiresome, but that’s not its primary danger. A nation that continuously publicizes appeals to “support our troops” is explicitly asking its citizens not to think. It is the ideal slogan for suppressing the practice of democracy, presented to us in the guise of democratic preservation.
--and--
In reality, the troops are not actually recipients of any meaningful support. That honor is reserved for the government and its elite constituencies. “Support our troops” entails a tacit injunction that we also support whatever politicians in any given moment deem the national interest. If we understand that “the national interest” is but a metonym for the aspirations of the ruling class, then supporting the troops becomes a counterintuitive, even harmful, gesture.
Every time a candidate does the Food Pander, some joker snaps a pic that casts the poor schmuck in the most unflattering light possible, and then we all get to point and laugh. As it should be. But day-um, bubba - you'd think they'd learn a little something after a while.
Every election cycle - actually, we're well into the Era of the Perpetual Campaign, but that's a different rant - anyway, every election cycle for at least a good 35 years, we hear the same crap: "We need the government to run like a business". This is the dumbest fuckin' nonsense imaginable.
Think about any business you've ever owned or worked for. Can you tell me, with even the tiniest kernel of honesty, that that business was operated as a democracy? Think of the lightest, fluffiest management you've ever worked under; did they put their policies up for a vote? Good management always talks about "empowering our people" and "soliciting input" on some of the more important issues, but let's be real clear; what's going on is that you're being invited to agree with decisions that have already been made, and/or decisions that will be implemented when the "labor climate is a little more receptive"; no matter what they are, and no matter how they affect you, these decisions are not yours to make. Your participation in these decisions is always post facto.
Looking for proof? You find a hundred people who've worked for any private company maybe 3-5 years, and I'll do the same. We'll ask them all this question: "Have you ever been in a meeting (or in an argument with your boss) debating company policy, where the final pronouncement on the subject has been, 'Yeah well, this is no democracy'?" I'll pay you for every "No" answer, and you pay me for every time somebody says, "Shit, that's all we ever fucking hear any more."
A business is Top-Down and Authoritarian. It's run by Powerful Elites, chosen by other Powerful Elites, who form a Central Planning Committee that sets policy and issues commands in order to make the company do whatever Ownership wants it to do.
Are you sure that's what you want your government to look like?
I think it's a good idea to remind myself once in a while that politicians are always in search of a unifying theme to shape the political narrative, and one of the most powerful is Self-Loathing.
How many of the TeaBaggers (eg) are people who absolutely deify "The Greatest Generation"? How many of them were too young - or not physically present on the planet - to have had much to do with either the Great Depression or WW2 (the events they keep telling us made that generation The Greatest)? How many of them look back at their own lives and "hold their manhoods cheap" because they didn't have the chance to test their mettle in the forges of hell?
How many Boomers are thinking they copped out on their opportunity to mount a protest and missed their chances to get "hassled by the pigs" or shot at by teenagers in Nat'l Guard uniforms? How many are thinking they should have stayed true to what they used to believe in because a lot of what they thought was wrong back then is coming back on them now? Or we can take that one in the other direction, and ask how many Boomers were happy to duck military service in the 60s and 70s, but now feel a little guilty about it?
And how many of us feel the need to make up for our past failings by finding ways to demonstrate how worthy we are now? Seems pretty natural - a shot at redemption is a powerful thing.
Nobody likes the feeling that their main problem is themselves. Smart politicians are always looking for ways for us to take the anger we all occasionally feel towards ourselves, and redirect it at a conveniently unpopular target. Starting to sound familiar?
Rick Perry took most of the pundit flak because he stumbled again and bungled his sharp-angle rebuttal against Romney's flip-flops (again).
Also, he's had to defend his position on granting in-state tuition for the kids of illegals against attacks from the Hard-Ass Retribution Wing of the GOP, saying something like "if you feel the need to punish kids for something they had no part in, then you have no heart" - and he's gettin' slammed for that defense. One schmuck on DumFux News said Repubs don't want to hear that because it sounds like something "some liberal would say". So - yeah.
First, what Perry said sounds a lot like recycled Compassionate Conservatism to me. Maybe that's what they're worried about. Hard to say of course. As hard as the Repubs have been working to wipe away all traces of Junior Bush from the national memory, I imagine they hate it when the guy they've been subtly marketing as the Cowboy Guvner From Texas Who Actually Knows Some Stuff is the one who keeps reminding everybody of the boob they're trying to get everybody to forget. Circularity's a bitch I guess.
But second, it kinda sounds like these pundits are saying, "Everybody knows we're assholes - our brand is all about Asshole now. Being assholes got us a majority in The House. We have to be ever more asshole-ish or we'll lose our credibility, and our momentum, and nobody'll be afraid of us anymore, and then it won't be any fun at all."
So how far behind the rest of us does Washington have to fall before they start to understand that they have to lead? They can't just sit there waiting for the new polling numbers to show them it's time to get up off their butts and get out in front of something. Step up or step aside, fellas.
With everybody raptly gazing at all the glorious disaster porn from Japan and Libya, it's easy to forget that we still have a few little items here at home to address.
I'm sure this guy has plenty to do, but I hope he'd at least consider running for a local office of some kind.
