#Steven Bannon

[megankoumori]

Four months and a fine? That's it?

[harrison-abbott]

and steve bannon is also going to jail

good stuff

[gusty-wind]

Julian Assange • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Edward Snowden • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Seth Rich • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Gonzalo Lira • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Donald Trump • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Elon Musk • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. General Mike Flynn • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Steve Bannon • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Peter Navarro • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Tucker Carlson • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Steve Baker • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Alex Jones • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Kyle Seraphin • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Steve Friend • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. James O’Keefe • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Steve Kirsch • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Robert Malone • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Owen Shroyer • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Joe Rogan • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Gina Carano • targeted bc of her dissenting voice. Russel Brand • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Candace Owens • targeted bc of her dissenting voice. Jack Posobiec • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Tim Pool • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Benny Johnson • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Rogan O’Handley • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Scott Adams • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Hans Mahncke • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Tracy Beanz • targeted bc of her dissenting voice. Steven Crowder • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Tommy Robinson • targeted bc of his dissenting voice. Journalists/Reporters • targeted bc of their dissenting voices. Medical Professionals • targeted bc of their dissenting voice. Conservatives/Trump Supporters • targeted bc of their dissenting voices. Parents • targeted bc of their dissenting voices. Professors/Teachers • targeted bc of their dissenting voice. The Unvaccinated • targeted bc of their dissenting voices. Whistleblowers • targeted bc of their dissenting voices. and many more... When you oppose the narrative, you become the target.

[naturalrights-retard]

Hollywood actor Jim Caviezel has warned that the CIA operates the world’s biggest pedophile ring and has some of the world’s most powerful leaders as members.During an interview with Steven Bannon on Tuesday, Bannon focused on promoting Caviezel’s new film Sound of Freedom, which is based on the true story of a former government agent who embarked on a mission to rescue children from sex traffickers in Colombia.

[1americanconservative]

Steven Bannon is going to prison for ignoring a congressional subpoena and the man who put him there is currently in contempt of Congress for ignoring a Congressional subpoena.

The Biden administration is a tyrannical joke

[tomorrowusa]

A MAGA think tank (sort of an oxymoron) published a document with the official title Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise but is widely known as Project 2025 after the name of the group inside the Heritage Foundation which compiled it. Whatever you call it, it is a bloodcurdling blueprint of the shape a second Trump administration would take.

Carlos Lozada of the New York Times read 887 pages of it so we don't have to.

[W]hat is most striking about the book is not the specific policy agenda it outlines but how far the authors are willing to go in pursuit of that agenda and how reckless their assumptions are about law, power and public service. “Mandate for Leadership,” which was edited by Paul Dans and Steven Groves of the Heritage Foundation, is not about anything as simplistic as being dictator for a day but about consolidating authority and eroding accountability for the long haul. It calls for a relentless politicizing of the federal government, with presidential appointees overpowering career officials at every turn and agencies and offices abolished on overtly ideological grounds. Though it assures readers that the president and his or her subordinates “must be committed to the Constitution and the rule of law,” it portrays the president as the personal embodiment of popular will and treats the law as an impediment to conservative governance. It elevates the role of religious beliefs in government affairs and regards the powers of Congress and the judiciary with dismissiveness. And for all the book’s rhetoric about the need to “dismantle the administrative state,” it soon becomes clear that vanquishing the federal bureaucracy is not the document’s animating ambition. There may be plenty worth jettisoning from the executive branch, but “Mandate for Leadership” is about capturing the administrative state, not unmaking it. The main conservative promise here is to wield the state as a tool for concentrating power and entrenching ideology.

We hear a lot of far right rhetoric about destroying "the deep state" or "the administrative state" – particularly from the odious Steve Bannon. But what's clear from Project 2025 is that what MAGA really intends is an unfriendly takeover of "the administrative state".

Executing a conservative president’s agenda “requires a well-conceived, coordinated, unified plan and a trained and committed cadre of personnel to implement it,” the document says on its opening page. The phrasing quickly grows militaristic: The authors wish to “assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day 1 to deconstruct the administrative state.” That deconstruction can be blunt. Portions of “Mandate for Leadership” read as though the authors did a Control-F search of the executive branch for any terms they deemed suspect and then deleted the offending programs or offices. The White House’s Gender Policy Council must go, along with its Office of Domestic Climate Policy. The Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations is a no-no. The E.P.A. can do without its Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights. And the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration should be dismantled because it constitutes “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.”

Making the US safe for fossil fuel companies is a HŪGE Trump priority which gets too little attention. Remember "drill drill drill" from Trump's dictator interview? If there's any hope of reversing climate change, you can kiss it goodbye if Republicans win in November.

Of course abortion is a target of Project 2025. Christian nationalism would become the semi-official ideology.

If “Mandate for Leadership” has its way, the next conservative administration will also target the data gathering and analysis that undergirds public policy. Every U.S. state should be required by Health and Human Services to report “exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence and by what method.” By contrast, the government should prohibit the collection of employment statistics based on race or ethnicity, and the Centers for Disease Control should discontinue gathering data on gender identity, on the grounds that such collection “encourages the phenomenon of ever-multiplying subjective identities.” (Why the executive branch might concern itself with the subjective identities of American citizens becomes clearer some 25 pages later, when the document affirms that the government should “maintain a biblically based, social-science-reinforced definition of marriage and family.”)

A far right army of ideological zealots is to be recruited to replace anybody in the federal government not sufficiently pro-Trump.

One of the “pillars” of Project 2025 is the creation of a personnel database — a sort of “right-wing LinkedIn,” The Times has reported, seeking to attract some 20,000 potential administration officials. “Mandate for Leadership” maintains that “empowering political appointees across the administration is crucial to a president’s success,” and virtually every chapter calls for additional appointees to wrest power from longtime career staff members in their respective departments.

In short... (emphasis added)

This book does not call for an effort to depoliticize the administrative state. It simply wishes to politicize it in favor of a new side. Everybody does it; now it’s our turn. Get over it.

The book is hardly a secret. The far right is quite open about its intent.

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (PDF)

As with Mein Kampf, we know ahead of time what the bad guys will do if they hold power. We need to take the danger more seriously than Germany of the early 1930s.

What's needed to defeat Trump is a pro-democracy mobilization of the United States. That means putting aside ideological quibbles with other anti-Trump groupings and becoming more politically active in real life.

EDIT: Tumblr is telling me that the link to Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise isn't working and refuses to let me post it. But I just checked it twice and it's fine. Until this peculiar glitch gets fixed, go to this Substack article and click "Mandate for Leadership" in the middle of the first paragraph.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Cathy Wilcox, Sydney Morning Herald

* * * *

GOP in full panic mode.

June 6, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

Republicans are scared. They understand that Trump's conviction for election interference is a devastating blow that threatens their prospects in November. If they lose—and they should—their eight-year delirium will come crashing to an end like a bad acid trip. MAGA extremism will not recede entirely, but its high-water mark will be in the past.

That prospect frightens MAGA to its core because they understand they have no vision, no organizing principles, no plan other than revenge—Trump's revenge to be exacted in a second term. If they lose that dark animus, the GOP’s reason for existence evaporates.

The surest sign of the GOP’s panic is the apoplectic rage that characterizes the ugly threats of Republican officials and surrogates after the guilty verdicts. They have lost their collective minds and their grip on reality, history, humanity, decency, and rationality. Their threats are a sign of weakness—not strength! Like the threats of schoolyard bullies everywhere, they emerge from deep-seated fear and insecurity; they are designed to conceal the underlying panic of imposters worried they will be found out for who they really are.

Still, Trump and his surrogates' parade of threats and lawless actions is difficult to bear—especially when they pile upon one another as they did on Wednesday. But as we review those actions, remember that they are signs of desperation and fear by a party on the run. All it took to put the GOP into full panic mode was a verdict by twelve randomly selected citizens who heard the truth about Trump's corruption.

We should not dismiss the revenge fantasies of the Convicted Felon and his pathetic homunculi. But we must keep them in perspective. For all the wild talk about retribution, House Republicans could not impeach Joe Biden despite holding control of the House for the last two years. And after a four-year investigation of Hunter Biden, the best (or worst?) the Trump-appointed special counsel could do was allege that Hunter denied he was an addict on a standard form gun purchase application and paid four years of taxes late.

So, we should take the Convicted Felon’s threats seriously, but we should recognize that MAGA has a dismal track record of delivering on their revenge fantasies.

With that preface, let’s look at the various ways that MAGA extremists are seeking to protect Convicted Felon Trump after 34-guilty verdicts.

Speaker Mike Johnson floated the idea of defunding special counsel Jack Smith, something he rejected in early May (before the guilty verdicts).

Senate Republicans have signed a letter vowing not to cooperate on any legislation that does not directly relate to public safety.

Convicted Felon Trump said that “it’s very possible that it’s gonna have to happen”—referring to locking up his political enemies.

Steve Bannon—a surrogate of the Convicted Felon—said that District Attorney Alvin Brag “should be—and will be—jailed.”

Bannon also said that “media allies” of Biden should be “investigated.”

The Felon’s architect of the Muslim ban—Steven Miller—asked, “Is every House committee controlled by Republicans using its subpoena power in every way it needs to right now? Is every Republican DA starting every investigation they need to right now.”

GOP Rep. Ronny Jackson said “he would encourage Congress to ‘aggressively go after’ President Biden and his family.”

The Felon’s judicial allies are also doing their best to protect him from further criminal jeopardy:

First, the US Supreme Court continues to delay its ruling on Felon Trump's baseless claim of presidential immunity for his attempted coup and insurrection. Every day that the Court delays its decision makes trial in the DC election interference case less likely. The Court’s glacial response to a matter of national urgency is reprehensible. And transparently partisan.

Second, the Georgia court of appeals issued a stay of the trial proceedings in the state RICO prosecution of Felon Trump for interfering in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. See CNN Politics, Donald Trump election subversion conspiracy case indefinitely paused by Georgia appeals court.

The stay of the Georgia case is worrisome. Per the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the court of appeals issued a stay on its own motion. AJC writes:

Because none of the defendants had requested a stay, this means the appeals court decided on its own to issue the stay, leading some observers to speculate the court may ultimately reverse McAfee’s decision and disqualify Willis and her office. The appeals court, if it agrees to hold oral arguments, has indicated it will do so some time in the fall, and it must issue its decision by mid-March [2025].

As Joyce Vance noted,

“Unlike federal courts where judges are appointed for life, Georgia elects its judges in races that are non-partisan in name only, with predictable results.”

So, unless and until a different prosecutor replaces Willis, the Georgia case is going nowhere. And if Fani Willis removes herself, it is not clear that a different prosecutor would pursue the case. I do not know how Willis would be replaced if she voluntarily steps down, but per NBC,

Under a 2022 Georgia law, when a district attorney is disqualified, the case is referred to the executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, who is tasked with finding another prosecutor for the case.

If Willis is disqualified on appeal, we should expect the appointment of a prosecutor who will dismiss the case.

Third, Judge Aileen Cannon has dropped all pretense of presiding over a criminal trial involving unlawful retention of defense secrets and is converting her courtroom into a theater-in-the-round for right-wing attacks on the special counsel appointment process. In a move so unusual it has never happened before, Judge Cannon invited strangers to the Trump defense secrets case to submit briefs and present oral argument over a day-and-a-half hearing.

The challenges to the appointment of Jack Smith are baseless. Similar challenges have been rejected numerous times. But Cannon seems intent on fabricating a record to justify removal of Jack Smith. See Salon, "Not normal at all": Legal experts say Judge Cannon's "absurd" ruling shows she's an "absolute hack".

Meanwhile, Cannon has not ruled on Jack Smith’s request for a protective order to protect FBI agents and other witnesses from Felon Trump's dangerous accusations that they had orders to “shoot to kill” him during the search of Mar-a-Lago.

It is difficult to describe how inappropriate and unprecedented Cannon’s actions are. While we should avoid falling into conspiracy theories, it seems doubtful that Cannon came up with the stagecraft of a right-wing assault on the special counsel in her courtroom on her own. A plausible explanation is that she is being coached by political operatives working for Convicted Felon Trump.

All the above reeks of desperation to protect Trump from further political damage. Those who humiliate themselves and undermine democracy to protect Trump will be remembered by history alongside those faithless servants who abandoned America during prior crises. In the meantime, recognize that their angry outbursts are signs that they are running scared. They can visualize life after the Convicted Felon has been defeated and they understand they have given up everything for the worst president in American history.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[realtalkingpoints]

https://rumble.com/v510rus-steve-bannon-responds-to-being-ordered-to-prison.html

The link above is a Tucker Carlson segment with Steve Bannon shared from Rumble.com. The links I share from Rumble.com usually don't work when shared using the standard dashboard buttons here on Tumblr. As the links I share from Rumble are often political in nature, I wonder if this is some sort of political censorship. Whatever the case, I have included a screenshot, and a second attempt at a link below, which usually work. It's a powerful segment. Please watch.

"Steven Bannon is the former White House Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to President Donald Trump. He hosts The War Room podcast. WarRoom.org."

In this segment, Tucker and Bannon discuss Bannon's conviction and sentence for contempt of congress and the contradiction to Obama officials who simply walked away from very similar contempt of congress rulings.

Try this link:

Link to Tucker on Rumble -> ( Tucker with Bannon )

If that doesn't work, go to Rumble.com, search for Tucker Carlson, and watch the segment with Steve Bannon as mentioned above.

[unfug-bilder]

Jeder Tag, an dem Steven Bannon in einem Gefängnis sitzt (UND von der Kommunikation mit der Außenwelt abgeschnitten ist), ist ein guter Tag.

[originalleftist]

Even though the frenzy has mostly died down, and public opinion has shifted somewhat, Amber Heard's image remains poisoned by the trials and the associated hate campaign against her.

Just as an example, I typed "amber heard" into the search bar on Youtube. Here, in order, are the top 14 prompts it gave me:

amber heard

amber heard kate moss

amber heard johnny depp

amber heard my dog stepped on a bee

amber heard cross examination

amber heard interview

amber heard now

amber heard mentions kate moss

amber heard kiss

amber heard testimony

amber heard aquaman 2

amber heard lawyer gets owned

amber heard trial

amber heard johnny depp funny moments

See the problem? 14 prompts, and of those, 9 directly reference her abuser, the abuse, or the trial, and 3 of those are overtly derogatory/demeaning to her or her legal team.

A grand total of ONE references her work as an actor, in 11th place on the list, and then only her most recent film.

Actually search "amber heard" and view the search results, and it's even worse. Of the videos (not counting shorts) that come up, 6 of the top 10 are, just by glancing at the thumbnail/caption, overtly hostile and derogatory to her/her legal team, 3 pretty clearly are (ie using photos of her chosen to appear ugly or hostile, asserting that Aquaman 2 "failed"), and the last one appears to be an SNL skit about the Virginia trial. Of the shorts, 2 or 3 out of the first 8 visible are overtly negative, and at least 6 reference the trial or other scandals/controversies.

Granted most places I've seen aren't as bad as Youtube, Youtube is the absolute bottom of the barrel for hate content on social media, a recent study by the Anti-Defamation League actually found it was the worst offender for monetizing hate over Facebook and Musk's Twitter. But still.

If you are a random person who searches her name on Youtube, nearly everything you see about her will be about the Virginia trial or related controversy, most of it overtly demeaning/vilifying her. You have to actively look to find anything positive about her or her work or any other aspect of her life, and even then, you WILL have to trawl through a lot of MRA/Alt. Reich-ish content designed to illicit feelings of hatred, disgust, and contempt toward her, and often toward women and abuse survivors generally. If you are someone who didn't follow the trial, or a young person in a few years who was too young to remember it, and you look her name up, these are the first things you'll likely see, and your first impression of her. Everything else about her life- her dozens of film and television roles, her other relationships, her extensive activism and charitable work, is obscured. And any future work that she does will likely be difficult to promote, because it'll get quickly buried in all this shit (I am reminded of Steven Bannon's infamous remark describing his media tactics, "flood the zone with shit", and much of the hate campaign against Heard is very much in his style). And that will follow her for years- to some extent, probably, forever.

And somehow, that's not the saddest part about all of this. The saddest part is that she has a young daughter who, if not already, will soon be old enough to go on social media, or talk to people who have, and find out exactly what much of the world says about her mother, and by association her. Lovely.

And to be honest I feel guilty even posting about it any more, because even by posting about it to call it out, I'm still contributing to the fact that so much of the content on social media about her is about the abuse and trial, that that's still defining how her whole life is perceived, and I know that, and I know that she probably doesn't want to be defined by that forever. Which is part of why I've tried to consciously shift in recent months to posting more about the rest of her life and work, and less about the trials and the witch-hunt.

But sometimes I do still feel the urge to point at this shit and say "What the fuck?"

[movies-to-add-to-your-tbw]

Title: The Imitation Game

Rating: PG-13

Director: Morten Tyldum

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard, Charles Dance, Mark Strong, James Northcote, Tom Goodman-Hill, Steven Waddington, Ilan Goodman, Jack Tarlton, Alex Lawther, Jack Bannon, Tuppence Middleton

Release year: 2014

Genres: history, drama, war, thriller

Blurb: Alan Turing and his brilliant team of code-breakers are in a nail-biting race against time at Britain’s top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park during the darkest days of World War II.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

The Surprising Strength of Brazil’s Democracy

Seeming similarities between the attack on the presidential palace in Brasilia and the US Capitol abound. But Brazilian democracy has proved more resilient.

From the angry mob’s chants about a stolen election to the physical desecration of edifices of democracy to a shaken national political class trying to make sense of how things descended into political violence, seeming parallels between the violent attack on the Brazilian Presidential Palace and the Supreme Court and Congress buildings by supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro this January 8 and the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, abound. But appearances can be deceiving. Unlike January 6—which delayed the peaceful transfer of power in the United States for the first time in the country’s history—nothing of substance was interrupted in Brazil. The rioting in Brasília unfolded after the inauguration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had taken place, on January 1. The rioters stormed empty public buildings in Brasília, as Brazilian politicians enjoyed the weekend elsewhere. As for Bolsonaro, the so-called Trump of the Tropics, he had already decamped for Florida.

More important, there is no Brazilian equivalent to “Stop the Steal,” the movement that powered January 6. Devoted to undermining the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election, the movement enjoys widespread support within the Republican Party and among conservative media outlets. At least 150 election deniers were elected to the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms, an increase over the 139 Republicans who voted against the certification of electoral votes on January 6, 2021. By contrast, election deniers in Brazil appear to lack political patrons. No major Brazilian politician is on record as denying that Lula won fair and square, and a reported 92 percent of Brazilians rejected the attacks. Indeed, the most prominent voices questioning the Brazilian elections are in the United States, including former Trump adviser Steven Bannon. Even though political violence driven by conspiracy theories and mass delusion about a stolen election will forever unite the Trump and Bolsonaro administrations, Brazilian democracy fared better than American democracy under a president who was hell-bent on undermining the institutions and norms that he was elected to protect. There’s much irony in this turn of events, since Brazilian democracy only dates to 1988.

Continue reading.

[maswartz]

What kind of person gets UPSET when people tell them they're satisfied?

[kp777]

By Marc Elias

Democracy Docket

Nov. 4, 2022

As if voters and election officials did not face enough challenges, add a new one: election vigilantes. Not long ago, we worried about the threat that politicians posed to free and fair elections. When a state conducted a voter purge or enacted restrictive voting laws, open records laws and public meetings meant that we generally knew who was doing what and when. If police were stationed outside a polling location in a manner that might discourage voting, we knew what police department they were from. We could call the police chief or mayor to voice concerns and change behavior.

Disappointed with the Republican Party’s performance in 2020 and distrustful of “Republicans in Name Only” (“RINOs”) in office, a new breed of conservative vigilantes has emerged that is premised on election deniers taking matters into their own hands. As they see it, why wait for a state to purge voters when individual citizens can file mass challenges to kick voters off the rolls on their own? Why ask the police to monitor drop boxes or voting sites when armed activists can don tactical gear and do it themselves?

If you think this is an exaggeration, look at the recent images outside of drop boxes in Arizona. Review the complaints filed by individual voters who were videotaped, stalked, harassed and intimidated over the simple act of putting a sealed ballot envelope in a secure metal container. Read the decision of a federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump in which the judge ordered one right-wing group to stop photographing, doxxing or yelling at individual voters who are simply trying to drop off their ballots.

The judge also ordered the election vigilantes to stop lying. Indeed, he went so far as requiring them to post the truth — that it is not always illegal to drop off more than one ballot — on, of all places, the ironically named site Truth Social. I wish that the posting of the truth on a site that exists to spread lies would do the trick, but it won’t.

The famed author Hannah Arendt is best known for coining the term the “banality of evil” to describe the way ordinary Germans became willing leaders of the Nazi regime. But it was in her later work, “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” that she captured the moment in which we currently live: “Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.” 

No matter how corrupt or dishonest, even a state controlled by MAGA Republicans must contend with some undeniable truths. In order to run elections, they cannot suggest that the ballots printed were secretly sent from China or that the Italian government sent false results to the state via a secret satellite. Yet these concessions are viewed by vigilantes as evidence that the “deep state” must be in charge and cannot be trusted to protect the security of elections.

The Republican Party may be able to peddle more lies than state officials, but even the party has a limit. After all, the GOP needs its supporters to trust election systems enough to show up and cast a ballot — something that is senseless if the entire election was rigged.  

Every time the “Big Lie” grows, the truth loses.

Organizations promoting election vigilantism, on the other hand, have no similar constraints. They exist solely to spread lies and exploit their consequences. They don’t need to run a government or even support any actual candidates. There is a reason the election denier movement that fuels these vigilantes is led by Steven Bannon, not Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee (RNC). 

In advance of the 2020 election, an advisor to the Trump campaign was caught on tape bragging about the fact that “traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places” and advising Republicans to “start playing offense a little bit.” He promised his Republican audience that in 2020 they would see “a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program.”

The RNC had waited 40 years to be able to run the right-wing’s voter suppression program due to a court-ordered consent decree from 1982 that prohibited the GOP from involving itself in so-called ballot security programs. In the interim, the job of voter suppression had to be outsourced to fringe groups that were often long on rhetoric and short on talent.

In 2016, the RNC stood back and watched as Roger Stone created and operated StopTheSteal.org. After he and others involved in the effort were sued for violating civil rights laws, their efforts never became anything bigger than a catchy website and a few dozen people holding signs.

With the legal impediments lifted, the RNC was ready to prove its mettle in 2020. Yet, despite their boasting, the Republican plan for a “bigger,” “more aggressive” and “much better-funded program” fizzled. In an election dominated by mail-in voting, the party’s bravado failed to materialize into a meaningful program on the ground.

In the immediate aftermath of the election, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis became objects of ridicule and scorn as they went from state to state peddling fanciful claims that were swiftly rejected by the courts.

For the radicalized election deniers, the humiliating performance by the establishment in 2020 was too much to bear. Predictably, those extremists have taken matters into their own hands and are deploying tactics in 2022 that may mirror those traditionally deployed by the state or the party, but in a bolder, nastier and more destructive manner.

I wish I could say that we have seen the worst — armed watchers at drop boxes and tens of thousands of frivolous challenges to remove lawful voters from the rolls in states like Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. I fear we have not. The election is still days away. And the counting and certification process will take weeks, if not longer. At each stage, voters and election officials will not only have to contend with overworked staff, aggressive campaigns and a skeptical media, but also with election vigilantes whose only goal is sow doubt in the outcome while threatening the process.

The cost of election vigilantism to our democracy is incalculable. Every time a voter’s name is removed from the state’s voter rolls, a citizen’s right to participate in self-governance is diminished. Every time a voter is harassed, our elections become less deserving of the moniker “free and fair.” Every time the “Big Lie” grows, the truth loses. I wish I could say it will get better, that the fever will break and civil society will win out. Maybe it will. But, if it does, it will not be soon enough for 2022. And that is tragedy enough.

[sawkinator]

Sans and Reigen sexymen,

London sees a pine marten,

Patreon security,

Putin treason maybe

Steven Bannon, Uvalde,

Star Trek anniversary,

Trisha Paytas has a kid,

Queen of England’s finally dead

WE DIDN’T START THE FIRE