Astead Herndon reports for the New York Times on the latest festival honoring Donald Trump:
GOLDEN VALLEY, Ariz. — Great American Pizza & Subs, on a highway about 100 miles southeast of Las Vegas, was busier and Trumpier than usual. On any given day it serves “M.A.G.A. Subs” and “Liberty Bell Lasagna.” The “Second Amendment” pizza comes “loaded” with pepperoni and sausage. The dining room is covered in regalia praising President Trump.
But this October morning was “Trumpstock,” a small festival celebrating the president. The speakers included the local Republican congressman, Paul Gosar, and lesser-known conservative personalities. There was a fringe 2020 Senate candidate in Arizona who ran a website that published sexually explicit photos of women without their consent; a pro-Trump rapper whose lyrics include a racist slur aimed at Barack Obama; and a North Carolina activist who once said of Muslims, “I will kill every one of them before they get to me.”
All were welcome, except liberals.
“They label us white nationalists, or white supremacists,” volunteered Guy Taiho Decker, who drove from California to attend the event. A right-wing protester, he has previously been arrested on charges of making terrorist threats.
“There’s no such thing as a white supremacist, just like there’s no such thing as a unicorn,” Mr. Decker said. “We’re patriots.”
I’m not inclined to let these people own the word “patriots.” I think “Nazis” is a more accurate descriptor, and they’re not as rare as unicorns, unfortunately.
I don’t know whether Trump can win the Electoral College again, but I am certain that most Americans don’t want to be part of any political movement involving Guy Taiho Decker or the rest of these deplorables. It’s not a bad thing to publicize their activities and political beliefs.
“We’re patriots!”
The usual concoction of evasion, delusion and bad faith which permeates this loathsome cult.
The NYTimes has an interesting mix of stories on the front page today. Let’s see there’s the Trumpstock, another on Trumps erosion of science especially environmental science, China’s latest on retraining Muslim children for the state, and ICE raids on chicken plants in Mississippi. It all smacks of hate to me. And it’s not going away even if Trump is made to leave. It seems our world has been seriously infected.
Maybe someday the corporate media will lower themselves to talk to some of the folks in the majority who voted against the orange dirtbag, instead of giving constant coverage to idiots and would-be insurrectionists. Not holding my breath, nor am I bothering with the Times anymore. Shame on them for giving publicity to literal, actual terrorists.
Also, too, it figures that Chumpstock would be held in the area where McVeigh and Nichols tested the fertilizer bombs that they would later use to blow up the Murrah Building and murder 163 people, many of them children. That is who everyone who attended that gathering really aspires to be. That is what they really are. They don’t deserve national coverage, they deserve to be tracked by the FBI.
Glad to know I was not the only one making that connection. The moment I saw the location, memories of that atrocity came flooding back. Yep. They should be tracked by the FBI like the potential terrorists they are. That may seem harsh to some, but given that our personal safety and national security are at risk, I don’t have the luxury of being polite these days. Track ’em. Entrap ’em. Do what it takes.
Yeah, totally agree. I’ll confess upfront, I didn’t and won’t read the Times article in full, because I’m done with them and their thumb-on-the-scale both-siderism. They are culpable at this point in where things have sunk to, and pieces like this only reinforce that.
But I notice from Martin’s excerpt that this Decker character “has previously been arrested on charges of making terrorist threats”, so he’s a goddamned terrorist. And I would like the FTFNYT to explain to the class why they persist in soliciting the poisonous jabber of domestic terrorists, while continuing to refuse to have even a fraction of the same level of respect for the majority of American citizens who, once again, voted against this human centipede of an administration.
Sooner or later, the corporate mediots must make a decision whether they want to be actual journalists, or useful idiots for people who literally want to line them up against a wall first chance they get. I guess they’ve already made that decision. It’s up to us to reject their efforts to re-elect Trump.
The media situation in the US is sorry. NYT best exemplifies the problem. In a political climate where there needs to be an actual opposition media, it’s damn difficult to find any. On the corporate side the closest we get is maybe MSNBC sometimes, and WaPo makes a sort of milquetoast effort at it. Not good enough. Especially when there is an organized loyalist media apparatus to tRump: Sinclair, Fox News, OAN, Breitbart, Real Clear Media, etc. Stand for something or be consumed eventually by activist hedge fund owners who will buy the rest up for tRump (already attempted with CNN) – and then we get to have a media atmosphere equivalent to Hungary or Russia. It ain’t gonna be pretty. Blogs and social media accounts will be crushed. Any legacy media that isn’t up to the task of being opposition now when it counts deserves to fail.
So yeah, it’s all hands on deck to get this “human centipede of an administration” (a very apt analogy) the hell out ASAP – if the Senate doesn’t have the guts to do it at the impeachment trial, then vote in large enough numbers to neutralize any domestic and foreign tampering with the ballots cast. And yeah, if there are any left in the FBI who still manage to do their job, they need to be tracking these Trumpstock idjits, as they are either already traitors and terrorists or are at high risk to become so in the future.
As the Hitler movement began its rise to power in Weimar Germany, the editors and reporters of several (mostly Bavarian) newspapers were on his ass daily. They coined the term “political criminal” to describe Herr Hitler, which I take to mean he was to be understood as a criminal who entered politics. Hitler’s name for his opposition newspapers was “the poison kitchen”, if I remember right.
They were brave professional and every one of them died in Hitler’s concentration camps. But they did what they could to oppose the looming Nazi dictatorship.
As for our corporate journalists taking an actual stand against our political criminal and authoritarian National Trumpalist movement…um, not so much. Heckuva job!