Jeez. What’s he doing with Trump then, the biggest ‘whiny brat’ of all time?
12 Likes
Indeed. Atrios has been pointing out for almost a decade now that this is the great motivator of the GOP.
19 Likes
Sure, it’s just like high school. The bullies liked to pick on the nerds and pointlessly make fun of them for being “smart”. The point was never to be better than them but to make other people angry for fun. When high school bullies grow up they become asshole GOP bullies. I don’t like bullies or people whose purpose is to hate other people for who they are, and I don’t identify with their way of thinking.
25 Likes
It’s not all republicans or conservatives. It’s just the loudest, stupidest ones. But I’ve seen many memes that delight in the nightly protests since the election, quoting Emperor Palpatine or Eric Cartman, as if either is someone to emulate. I guess that’s what happens when we elect the God Emperor of Internet Trolls.
11 Likes
The worst of the current GOP are the HS debate-club nerds who never fully embraced their geekiness and instead wanted to be the bullying popular kids and enjoy the power that was once wielded against them. Newt Gingrich is exactly what those vengeful and bitter types grow up to be. Unreformed knucklehead HS bullies also go conservative, but in the U.S. they usually end up as henchmen of the bitter debate-club nerds.
17 Likes
This is honestly something that depresses me more than simply having a President Trump — all of the Reddit trollies and Twitter egg accounts are now justified and triumphant. All of their greatest wishes have come true. I don’t like seeing bullies win, but last Tuesday, millions of bullies won.
23 Likes
Well, not really though. trollies turn “being despised” into “winning” by pretending to want to be despised; but there is a distinct cap on how much joy you can ever get out of that.
I mean, look at Bannon. Oh, congratulations, Steve! You’ve achieved “love-proof, rotting hobo whose death can’t come soon enough for basically everyone”. Just like you wanted. /slow clap
18 Likes
It may not be as simple as “power” – although that’s certainly part of the answer.
Republicans know as well as anyone else that power corrupts, and executive power corrupts, er, executively. Obama went into the Oval Office full of sincere good intentions, and turned into the droningest surveillingest deportingest whistleblower-persecutingest president ever. Every time the Republicans get elected, they ride into office on a promise of small government and fiscal responsibility, and then spend the next four years in a tax-cut-and-spend orgy, while government sprawls ever more bloated into every aspect of American life.
They probably figure that they’ve got Bannon’s number: that being that close to power will work on him the same way it does everyone else, and he’ll end up hopelessly compromised and corrupted by the system. His fiery rhetoric about burning everything down notwithstanding, he’ll just end up spending all his time doing sweetheart deals for lobbyists and special interests (the non-burning-everything-down kind of special interests, that is), like everyone else. All his bright little dreams of using his position to fan the flames of hate and then skipping through the ashes of American democracy in his shiny new alt-right jackboots may just disappear once the system of incentives has been explained to him and he’s been sucked down into Donald Trump’s newly-restocked Washington swamp.
If that’s their reasoning, they may turn out to be right. Experience has shown that villainous hate-filled scumbags are often the most easily corrupted of all. Why should Bannon be an exception?
6 Likes
So only the ones in power and with any voice.
5 Likes
That’s why they pray to Saint Reagan.
7 Likes
Holy shit, the ‘mouth-eyes’ pictures are just terrible. Please, stop. We get it. It’s satirical, it’s witty, Well, it was. Now it’s just frickin terrible and old and all these articles featuring a picture of a conservative with mouth-eyes (read: ALL OF THEM) make me cringe. I have no comment on the actual meat of your article, I’m sure it’s well thought out and has a good point, but I can barely read these anymore when I see these stupid pictures.
3 Likes
Is there an enterprising BB’er who can write a script that will let me filter out all pictures on @beschizza’s posts?
1 Like
But what exactly did they win? It’s like somebody bragging that they are eating a shit sandwich.
6 Likes
8 Likes
The thing is, I think they know that and just don’t care. Executive power is gonna screw up pretty much anyone who gets it, but Republicans seem to relish the opportunity to weaponize it as much as possible.
2 Likes
They got what they wanted: a horrible shit sandwich that will destroy much of what they have. Bizarrely, its far more important to them to be able to crow about their terrible awful “victory” and to “watch the tears flow” (a phrase I’ve seen over and over again in the past week) than to achieve something that might help them personally.
9 Likes
I’m thinking the best way to combat that “strategy” is to let them leave the Union again.
Amen!! I’m tired of seeing those.
I figure most of the GOP are “Christians” and they think that Jebus/JAYUS/Supply Side Jesus is going to come and take them just as things are going to Hell. So they don’t care if they burn down the whole planet.
13 Likes
Except for the not insignificant percentage of decent people still living there who would suffer even more than they already do.
8 Likes
[…] Here at least
we shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
to reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.
Lines 258-63, Paradise Lost
15 Likes
