Stephan: This issue of the fragility of the American male ego has been weaponized by the christofascists who use it on propaganda operations like FOX, and in terrorist operations like the Proud Boys. The Dark money backers of the Republicans have spent millions of dollars hiring scientists in think tanks and laboratories they created, particularly neuroscientists, to explore the psychophysiology of politics (see SR archive, "The Psychophysiology of Politics"). The have used what they have discovered to manipulate the egos and fears of the American public especially men. That's how they elected Trump, and taught him what to say, and how to say it. He was the perfect pitchman.
Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and the Proud Boys Credit: Salon/Getty
The Proud Boys had another rally in California over the weekend, and a telling moment was clipped and shared by Ron Filipkowski, a lawyer turned chronicler of the far-right. One speaker, armed with a bullhorn, pointed to a group of Proud Boys and declared, they “got some single real men over here looking for some housewives.” The men in the clip then joined together for a photo, flashing the “OK” symbol that has been appropriated as a way for white supremacists to signal each other while also — always — trolling the left.
In the space of a minute, it was a perfect illustration of the two-step process that the far-right has used for years now to recruit new followers: First, bait insecure men with fantasies of female submission. Once they’re in, recruit them to white supremacy.
Stephan: I hope all my readers are very clear what all this anti-choice legislation is about. Republican men, particularly White Republican men, all too frequently seek to have a veru fragile sense of their own manhood, and want the state to back them in controlling women. I am surprised they are not advocating burkas for women, although it may be they lack the balls to do that., even though they may want it. What I find particularly weird is the number of white women who buy into this. Please don't write me to tell me it is about saving the lives of unborn fetuses, because that is demonstrably nonsense. If there were any truth to it, these same anti-choice people would all be leaders advocating early childhood programs, child public education, child medical care, and they aren't.
Oklahoma state capitol
Pregnancy advocates and others on social media are expressing outrage after a 21-year-old Oklahoma woman was convicted of first-degree manslaughter earlier this month for having a miscarriage, which the prosecutor blamed on her alleged use of methamphetamine. https://37560d4738eb5d39e28f220a5b707af6.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Brittney Poolaw, who is a member of the Comanche Nation, according to the Comanche County Detention Center, was sentenced on October 6 by a jury to four years in state prison. Poolaw’s attorney filed a notice of intent to appeal on October 15.
Prosecutors argued that the miscarriage Poolaw suffered was from her use of methamphetamine. An autopsy of the fetus showed it had tested positive for methamphetamine, the Associated Press reported, but there was no evidence her use of the substance is what caused the miscarriage. The autopsy showed the miscarriage could have been caused by a congenital abnormality and placental abruption, when the placenta detaches from the womb, the AP said.
But the state said she had violated the Oklahoma’s manslaughter statute, which says homicide is manslaughter in the first degree […]
Stephan: Everyone who lives in the fact-based world must surely recognize how astonishingly ignorant Donald Trump is about the simplest facts of U.S. history and our democracy.. He couldn't pass a 8th grade history test, because he cannot distinguish the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Jefferson wasn't even at the Constitutional convention. While it was going on he was in Paris as the U.S. Minister representing the U.S. in negotiating trade agreements with France, and on a three month tour of Southern France and Italy. It is beyond pathetic that the American people elected such a moron.
Former President Donald Trump falsely called Thomas Jefferson a “principal writer” of the Constitution in a statement slamming New York City officials for voting to remove his statue from New York City Hall.
In the statement, posted to Twitter Tuesday evening by spokesperson Liz Harrington, Trump wrote, “The late, great Thomas Jefferson, one of our most important Founding Fathers, and a principal writer of the Constitution of the United States, is being ‘evicted’ from the magnificent New York City Council Chamber.”
Matthew K. Wynia, M.D., MPH, Professor in the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the Colorado School of Public Health, and Director of the University's Center for Bioethics and Humanities, - MedPage Today
Stephan: An internationally recognized physician friend sent me this report, with which I completely concur. In the future I suspect historians and philosophers of science and medicine will write dozens of doctoral dissertations on the weird death cult that has arisen in America, and the role some doctors have played in creating it. As usual in the modern United States the question is will anyone be held accountable?
The classic definition of a “quack” — dating as far back as the 1500s — is a medical charlatan, a “fraudulent pretender to medical skills.” Derived from the old Dutch kwakzalver, or hawker of salves, quacks typically mislead patients into buying useless or even harmful therapies by falsely promising miraculous cures. Picture a snake oil salesman peddling a proprietary elixir or “tonic” from the back of a wagon, then moving on quickly to the next town before folks start asking for refunds.
But today’s COVID quacks force us to rethink this common stereotype, which is creating challenges for state medical boards and other organizations charged with self-regulation of the medical profession.
Today, many doctors acting like quacks see themselves not as purveyors of snake oil but as mere medical iconoclasts, willing to challenge the status quo.
They seem to start down the path to quackery by convincing themselves that the unprecedented circumstances of the pandemic should lower the bar for what counts as practice-changing evidence […]
Stephan: While I was in government and watching what was happening as Nixon and Billy Graham were coming together I coined the terms crhistofascist and christofascism. All my readers are familiar with them, and I am beginning to see the terms pop up in the commentary of others. How did this happen, why did it happen? Here is a description of this process that is destroying American democracy
christofascists in church service with their guns.
Since at least the 1980s, the conservative movement has increasingly been governed by faith, which can be described as a belief in things that cannot be proved by empirical means. In practice, this means that the Republican Party and the larger right-wing movement’s policies and ideology across a range of issues — the economy, the environment, science, health care, democracy and the rule of law — have little if any basis in fact.
In the Age of Trump, movement conservatism has metastasized or devolved into its purest form: American fascism, a form of religious politics taken to its most illogical extreme. Facts, truth and even the conception of reality itself are being replaced with lies, fictions, and fantasies that serve the American fascist movement and its leader.
As public opinion polls and other research have repeatedly shown, white right-wing Christians, especially Protestant evangelicals, have pledged their loyalty to Donald Trump and his movement. Many view him as a literal prophet or savior: His evident immorality has been rationalized as somehow necessary […]
