264 Comments
Dec 21, 2022Liked by Tim Miller, Jonathan V. Last

ty Tim. This stuff would never make it into my bubble if you weren't bravely wading in and reporting it out. We are all that embarrassed middle-school girl.

I need a few bourbons myself.

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Dec 21, 2022Liked by Jonathan V. Last

For some reason I read this piece in Walton Goggins' voice: "Be not afeared, children! We're movin' to the promised land! Yellowstone Ranch is real! A man can breathe the clean air, shoot him a bear, and have a passel of little 'uns with nary a librul in sight! *breaks out in clog dancing*....fade.....

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Presenting the defeat of the Montana Born Alive Infant Act as a sign of "underlying evil" makes me what to punch a wall. (The wall would win)

It essentially would have made palliative care for pre-term infants with fatal diseases illegal. I believe, as a doctor who is personally pro-life, that families opting to carry a child to term knowing that the prognosis is not good, deserve to make decisions about care for these infants. In my experience, this usually means they want to hold the baby and be a family together as long as possible, not have their baby whisked into the NICU for a series of futile interventions. Had this passed, women pregnant with babies who had Trisomy 13, 18, or serious abnormalities would have had two options: get an abortion or give birth to a baby that was destined to be treated like a medical pincushion instead of an actual human.

This is the kind of legislation you get when fighting a culture war becomes more important that the real world consequences of said legislation. Maybe Montana's voters are more astute than Tucker Carlson.

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Dec 21, 2022Liked by Catherine Lowe

I was really struck by the "Support good journalism. Get smarter. Be a part of a kind community." Bulwark+ ad in the middle of this because it reminded me of how much more I have gotten out of this membership than I expected. The quality and depth of the written content here seems to increase by the week, and if I'm being completely honest, that's maybe only the third-best compliment I would give to the Bulwark (the first being that it is fundamentally rewarding to support good humans, with values, who act on them; the second being that you actively had a hand in saving the country from lunatics this fall). Thank you.

P.S. The people cry out for a "Good Show, Long Show" line of merch. Or at least a sticker.

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A few reactions:

1. So we pagan leftists are bringing Nazism to America? Um ... it's already here. And was having dinner with your boy the other week.

Also, Nazis weren't pagans. Bonus points if you can guess which religious tradition they (nominally) subscribe to.

2. It's time someone gave us credit for how amazingly good we are at stealing elections; particularly the ones with the most loudmouthed candidates crying well in advance about how the election is going to be stolen from them and Republicans in charge of the government. You'd think those would be hard!

And while we're on that topic, somebody get on the horn with George Soros and ask him why the f*** he didn't steal five more House seats in the midterms.

3. Hey, did Matt Gaetz just imply that Democrats actually turn out voters to win elections? Now I'm confused.

4. Apparently white Evangelicals are at least tuned into how much they are hemorrhaging youth, hence the "be fruitful and multiply" theme of the evening. If there are any entrepreneurs who have ever contemplated the viability of a Christian porn website, now is probably your best opportunity.

5. Don't be melancholy, Tim. We knew they weren't going to learn the lesson they needed to, so it's best they don't learn any lessons at all. If the Republicans want to switch to a "thoughts and prayers" election strategy, that's really for the best.

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"Carlson lamented modern art and architecture"

Degenerate art? Conservatives these days really never miss a chance to go full Nazi

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#INSHALLAH....AND THEN SOME...!!!!! Thanks for risking your life to report on Naziism Is Alive and Well in America and the Crazies are calling the Shots 101 !

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Thanks for attending and reporting, Tim, but good grief!

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Every time MAGA loses, they will go to a conspiracy theory as a communal coping mechanism. This is their new normal. Call it "copespiracing" if you will, and when they're not going to the debunked copespiracy of "election rigging" then they quickly pivot to the copespiracy of "god's plan." They secure their own minds in making "big believes" that god is inevitably on their side and that in the end he will deliver them victory. I've heard this spiel before, and it came from the members of groups like Al Qaeda in Iraq in their propaganda videos to their fighters that they would try to keep motivated, even as their impending doom seemed all but certain.

Never mind that journalists have debunked large swaths of "Stop the Steal" and science has debunked large swaths of holy books, if you make the "big believes" in copespiracies like religion with enough people around you who are also making the "big believes" in said copespiracies, then the collective copespiracy worship has this effect of pulling people out of their woes and into a communal spirit of feeling like "everything is going to be okay." That's where the tent-circus-revival vibes come from, and from AMERICAFEST to Joel Olstein to Ayman al Zawahiri propaganda videos, it's all the same copespiracy nonsense. An appeal to religious copespiracies that scientific facts have already debunked to reinforce their beliefs in other political copespiracies that journalistic facts have also already debunked. It all comes back to believing in bullshit that science and facts have already debunked just so that you can feel better about your losses. This includes ignoring or minimizing opposing evidence.

Finding my atheism in the far corners of the religious world really gave me a lot of insight into the radicalization of America's most religious political party. The radical traditional conservatives ("rad/trad cons") in this country have so much in common with their Islamic enemies of the last 20 years. They're more similar than different in how they self-radicalize and bath themselves in ideologies that have long since been disproven by facts and science. There's a reason that secularism, science, and open journalism are among the favorite targets of rad/trad conservatives in any country around the world: these are the groups who expose their bullshit beliefs and hamper them from recruiting younger generations into the copespiracy fold by showing the kids which parts of the various rad/trad copespiracies are straight up lies via the evidential record. The best rad/trads can do is demonize these three opposition groups and tell followers never to listen to them, omit the facts these enemies bring up when spreading their copespiracies, and "flooding the zone with shit" as Steve Bannon says to overwhelm the truth with heavier volume of lies until people give up on their mental faculties and just assume that both sides are motivated liars. That's their playbook in a nutshell.

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Dec 21, 2022·edited Dec 21, 2022Liked by Tim Miller

"The way we win is to do away with the World Economic Fund, Great Reset garbage. We buy land. We have lots of kids,” Johnson said.

So their strategy is the premise of the movie Idiocracy? I actually find this alarmingly plausible.

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One question: How many showers did it take?

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Dec 21, 2022·edited Dec 21, 2022

Thank you for your service, Since you went out there on my dime, I hope you found something more interesting to do, while you were there. Even if it was look at a rock. One thing about AZ they have a lot of good rocks. That and cactus flowers. is about it, as far as I could tell the few times I have been in the state.

BTW, it is the solstice, so have a cool yule.

Jack

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thanks for taking one for the team and going to TPUSAFest! ugh - I just can't even

and do they know what YMCA is about? curious that this is an anthem for them

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This 86 yr old voting woman salutes YOU…. Grit, grit GRIT! To be there…..

Watched a film, Amsterdam…. Knew nothing about it…. Recommend

I keep learning about our country, important history that is being written, “A Southerner’s Reckoning with the myth of Robert E. Lee and Me” by Ty Seidule……. Recommend

The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek

The Bookwoman’s Daughter Kim Michele Richardson ….. Recommend

And as Jerry Lee sings…. “Whole lotta shakin’ goin on!”

Gail Harris

THANK YOU and the Bulwark

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I was so hoping you'd get that press pass because no one could write a better (and hilarious) recap of that nightmare "festival" than you!

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The comments containing "buy land, have children" are a "nice try" to regaining voting power. What is funny is that they are all trying to make Abortion illegal, and if they are successful which group is going to have a lot of babies? Rich people can always fly to Europe to have an abortion, but this option not available to the less fortunate. Seems to me that this latter group will align with Democrats.

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