Like many Americans, Carolina Giuliani was paralyzed over the prospect that Donald Trump — the man she blames for ruining her father and damaging her family — could be close to returning to the White House.
…
“It’s a hard phenomenon to understand. It definitely is,” Carolina Giuliani said. “I view Trump as a disease, and I think it’s really important to remember that with every disease, prevention is a much more effective strategy than treatment. … I thought we had cured ourselves of it the first time, but it doesn’t seem like we have.
“And I think if he becomes the president again, we may have a terminal illness in our country. And that really, really scares me.”
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She’s close. Trump isn’t the disease, though, he’s a symptom. The disease is Christian nationalism, and it’s been festering far longer than Trump has been on the national scene.
The disease lies in the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and a few other groups hell-bent on turning the US into a theocracy. They’ve been working on this for a very long time, and have been testing the fences for decades, like velociraptors, only making their move now they’ve found all the weaknesses they need to succeed.
It worries me how focussed people are on the threat trump poses, because even if he dropped dead today, it would only be a temporary inconvenience to these dominionists who have infiltrated nearly every facet of the US government. They will not stop if trump disappears, or if Harris is elected.
Please, watch The Family documentary. You’ll be amazed and likely sick at how deeply they’ve embedded themselves.
For those interested in more info about the Dominionist views: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/peers-of-pope-francis-criticize-steve-bannons-apocalyptic-worldview/
Here’s another recent article (2022) that goes into more detail: Who are the Dominionists backing conservative candidates?.
And another: Dominionism Rising: A Theocratic Movement Hiding in Plain Sight
Other notable dominionists:
Ron DeSantis
Ted Cruz
Kari Lake
Amy Coney-Barrett
Brett Kavanaugh
Mike Johnson
Mike Pence
Roger Stone
Tucker Carlson
Bill Barr
Pretty much everyone in Trump’s orbit.
There are hundreds more. This should scare the shit out of all of us.
Here’s the Wikipedia article on Christian Dominionism.
This is not fringe. It’s mainstream.
e: names
The disease is the dixiecrats, Christian nationalism is the latest syndrome after we tried to treat jim Crow and the KKK, which was what was left over after slavery went into brief remission during reconstruction.
The south will always find a new way to be evil and un-American, it’s their legacy.
This is all true, but there’s not clear line of succession after Trump, so they’ll splinter. Redirecting the fervor to some new dear leader will take a long time. The Trump thralls are entirely invested in him alone.
I think part of the danger here lies in ascribing too much power to the presidential office. I can easily name dozens of dominionists in Congress, thousands in state office, and they’ve captured the Supreme Court. They’ve infested government at local levels, too. The president is just icing.
I think people put too much emphasis on the president, and mostly ignore the real threat. Trump is absolutely replaceable. People make fun of trump’s ‘3D chess’ phrase as though he meant it as a metaphor for thinking ahead – but he got that phrase from Bannon, and Bannon wasn’t talking metaphorically. Bannon meant it literally, as they were moving ‘tens of thousands of operatives’ (his words) like chess pieces into local and state office over the past couple of decades, ready to move and checkmate the government from within. And they’ve done that.
Every state is a theocracy.
The Trumpist members of my family are proud to be recalcitrant about it all. It’s at least three parts: first there’s the gulf between us, and then the knowledge of the breadth of it, and lastly the pride of standing so far away from everyone. It’s not just that they’re way past the orbit of Pluto. It’s also the fact that they’re so proud to be so far out.
My grandfather, who is generally a good-natured but immature man, really ate up everything Fox News spewed at him about Trump. He and my grandmother always play the pity card that I don’t visit them, but they’ve been supremely unpleasant to be around for the last 8 years because they can’t leave politics out of it.
He wore a MAGA hat to my nephew’s 3rd birthday party and explicitly stated that he did it to make others uncomfortable. So no gramps, I don’t really want to visit you these days.
really ate up everything Fox News spewed
It’s amazing how little accountability exists for those spreading it.
Your grandfather sounds like a dick, not a good natured man. Punch him in the face next time you see him.
I completely understand that reaction. When I say immature I mean a man who was abused by family so he ran away at 14 and kind of arrested his development at that point. So even things like this that sound completely insane don’t feel that insane to my family members.
I’ve had conversations with other family members to try to get them to imagine hearing this story without knowing who he was to really see how beyond the pale it was.
People want to believe that they’re informed. Want to believe that they know things others don’t. That they are wise. And will push back when challenged. Because they don’t know the one thing every wise person knows. Just how much they don’t know. Fools are confidently wrong. The wise are cautiously correct.
You’re absolutely right. I’d just like to add on:
Wise people learn from the mistakes of others. They observe and take note of chains of events, and use that knowledge in order to guide their own decisions in the future.
Wise people question what they believe. If they feel cognitive dissonance, they don’t ignore it; they examine their ideas and consider the prospect that they may be wrong. They can change their minds based on new evidence.
Wise people are skeptical. When they learn about a situation, they don’t take immediate sides based on knee-jerk emotions. Rather, they examine all available information and come around to their own ideas in their own time.
Using all of the above points are what guide wise people towards “cautiously correct” decisions. They are more likely “correct” because they base their ideas on a greater pool of information, and are capable of discarding ideas even if the ideas “feel good” to believe in. They remain “cautious,” because no matter how sure they believe they are, they are well aware that there’s a chance they could still be mistaken.
The trumpets in my family, aunt and uncle, are different. they pretend to be affable and loving, act like they want to see us, but every time we get together they CAN NOT HELP themselves from talking shit about liberals or whatever the latest fox propaganda is. And they know my parents, my wife and I are left to varying degrees. So I finally said fuck it, clearly you do not respect me, so I don’t need your bullshit in my life anymore.
I believe a large part of Trump supporters are that way due to some overgrown form of Oppositional-Defiant Disorder.
I’d disagree on that considering these people trend toward obedience in everything like police/laws, Christianity, “traditional values,” party politics, etc, etc.
I think it’s more a superiority complex where instead of being boring nobodies, they’re actually insiders with special knowledge that the rest of the masses don’t have. Additionally, right wing propaganda gives them scapegoats to blame for all their life problems (financial, social, personal). Add these two together and you have the modern republican base.
I certainly think it’s a part of it. As someone who knows some people I think have ODD, they’re easier to work on than true believers. You can find common ground in fuck this system talk, but guide that towards a better future instead.
Source: years of working with hearts and minds of people I care about. I identify with ODD. I probably could have been classified ODD at some point.
recalcitrant
adjective
re·cal·ci·trant ri-ˈkal-sə-trənt
1
**: **obstinately defiant of authority or restraint
2
a
**: **difficult to manage or operate
b
**: **not responsive to treatment
c
**: **RESISTANT
this subject is recalcitrant both to observation and to experiment—G. G. Simpson
She’s absolutely correct. I lost my father to Trump about a year ago. It got so bad that I had to block all contact with him. No email, no text, no calls.
I don’t speak to my mother anymore for the very same reason, but she was in the tank for Trump since day one. She’s always been a hyper conservative cunt, and honestly I jumped at the opportunity to remove her from my life.
I’m sorry to hear you had to do that. It sucks to lose a parent like this. I’m not happy about my situation. But I don’t need that in my life either.
Trump is the vector, not the disease itself.
The disease is the curdling rage of the (mostly) working class that’s massively failed to achieve the American Dream™ that was promised to them, which has been perfectly heightened misdirected and cultivated by decades of right wing radio talk show hosts, psuedo ‘philosophers’, outright racist and religious extremists, conservative ‘think tanks’ lending credibility to failed economic doctrines, 30+ years of conservative influence on our public education systems essentially ruining it to the point that now only around 10% of Americans are capable of comparing and contrasting news coverage critically… etc etc.
Trump was just the first presidential candidate to completely drop the pretense and show the country that its fine to go totally mask off with your inane bullshit falsehoods, that there is no real need for anything other than appeal via signifiers and cliches and dogwhistle.
Actual policy means nothing, only spin.
Actual hypocrisy means nothing, just sling more baseless shit at others.
Reality means nothing, everyone else is wrong, you know in your heart what I am telling you, no matter how contradictory or incomprehensible it is, is true…
… because it allows you to feel rightfully indignant.
This has always been the strong undercurrent amongst conservatives.
Trump was just the vector that metastisized it into basically mass psychosis.
People feel wronged and betrayed by the system, and like they need that reflected in who they vote for as their representative.
He is that person for those people (hence why they love the mugshot).
The Republican side of politics knows this is the emotional driver, so they direct most of their media to that kind of grievance politics, and claiming they’ll “fix” these persecution issues in extraordinary ways.
People like Musk and Thiel fund these campaigns.
Trump thinks he can fix it all by breaking the system that he sees as persecuting him; the system of democracy and the rule of law.
So he wants all its powers. He wants to be a dictator. Then you’ll see his politics and only his, and there’ll be no more persecution, no more broken system. Just him.
That’s how the right wingers feel. They’re emotionally locked into this.
That’s why they’re still on board, for the political solution to their emotional disenfranchisement, for their own sense something’s wrong with everyone but them to he proven out with power. Being onboard with Trump proves there’s a broken system they’ve been wronged by, and someone powerful is in that boat with them.
It’s a cult, just as much as neoliberal compromise with the Capitalist forces of self-sacrifice is a cult.
