Many of the most evil people in history have had genius IQ! Look at Steve Bannon.

Also see "Holy Terror", book by Flo Conway and Jim Spiegelman

@fishline79 Thanks I've just ordered a copy

Do you mean, "If you can't lick 'em , join 'em"? Were that true, it would be a monumental "collective cop-out"!

Reagan was funded largely by the political machine of the "Religious Right", facilitated by billionaire, Richard Viguerie (now deceased) This book (title below) was a real eye-opener for me back in the 80s...Also thank the network, "Clear Channel Broadcasting" for the dissemination of right-wing and religious propaganda. (Rush Limbaugh, et al.)

Look up: "Holy Terror", by Flo Conway and Jim Spiegelman

One more. Deify snakes.

@fishline79
Time and again all over the world the earliest forms of deity are snakes, birds, bears and trees
Even the Bible refers to this
The Holy Spirit manifesting as a dove
Satan being called the old dragon or the serpent
God incarnating as a bear to protect Elijah from 44 mocking children
The tree of Knowledge in the garden of Eden

@LenHazell53 Ironically, an important symbol for them. By the way, your reference to your LDF past reminds me of Mitt Romney. Whatever else I might think of him and his religion, he seems not to be a hypocrite. I feel the same about Jimmy Carter. At least they both adhere to their vows, unlike the MAGA Morons.

@fishline79 Mitt is considered a progressive amongst the LDS, and him being the age he is is not faithful to his temple vows and ordinances, if he were he would be still trying to track down the decedent's of the killers of the prophet to make them suffer "Blood Atonement" and would also be obliged to slit the throats of anyone like me who discussed Temple vows and ordinances in public.
Fortunately the Blood oaths were removed from the temple oaths in 1992, much to the disgust of of many TBMs (true believing Mormons) who believe that the ordinances were forever and eternal as preached by the first two prophets.
The Ordinances and Endowments were changed again in 2019 to take in to account "modern sensibilities" of Sister Mormons who objected to being washed and groped by "Worthy Brethren" before they were allowed in to the Temple.

@LenHazell53 That last paragraph was a real eye popper! WTF?!?! I was 12 or so when that call to God failed for me. The whole chruch/religious thing made no sense and we (my sisters and I) were just going to the Methodist church. Methodists think the Catholics are the devil/satan.

@fishline79 That's the sense I get from those two: however imperfectly, they actually try to live by Jesus' teachings.

@LenHazell53 I think LDS qualifies as a "cult".

@Flyingsaucesir Take it from me, Mormon Jesus is not Christian Jesus, he's even more of a dick

If you mean to say that they pretend to support him because they are so sure he will lose, I hope you are right, but his "empire" has had four more years to infiltrate and corrupt our democracy and besides, he may not even be a candidate, but just a "puppet-master" of whomever is.

If the Dem Party leaders, and their corporate donors, are hoping and expecting Trump will lose, I think they will be proven wrong. I think he will get the nomination and will then win a close general election. And I think the only way I will be proven wrong, is if someone from the right ends up running as an independent or third party candidate, and takes enough votes away from Trump. I really don't see that happening, as right now, the only third party and independent candidates in the race, are ones like Jill Stein, Cornel West, and RFK, Jr., who will all take votes from Biden.

@TomMcGiverin We seem to forget he lost the last election by a wide margin. Then we had no idea of the crap he would pull and how much of a criminal he is. I can't imagine people in this country would vote him in considering what a POS he continues to prove he is. Supporting him only means dumping all the other scofflaw republicans running for power. Right now the Democrats are winning a lot of elections mostly concerning overturning anti-abortion laws. Also, this train wreck of a human and his horrible physical shape and all the pressure he is going through to avoid jail and being muzzled will only add to his vulnerability. My concern is that when and if he losses he and his enablers will try another coup. If he wins that simply means our country has reduced itself to preferring fascism over democracy. We will deserve whatever we get but so far there are few signs of that happening except for a couple of surveys. I suspect all the rumors are simply a way to increase click baiting people.

@TomMcGiverin, @fishline79 And hows that working? SO far Democrats are starting to win and overturn anti-abortion laws and electing more in the state legislatures.

I do not endorse such tactics. If by some chance the orange slime were to win it would be an unqualified disaster. It's a very dangerous game to play. The next election is probably going to be like the last one, which came down to only 50,000 votes in a few battleground precincts.

@jackjr I think you are overestimating the voters, concerning Trump.

@jackjr I think you are missing what many experts are saying, regarding the wins Dems are having on referendums on abortion, vs. winning general elections, on the strength of the abortion issue. In a nutshell, they are saying there is a big diff between winning votes that are solely about abortion, and winning a general election, where there are always other issues at play, as well as what voters think about particular candidates. I think Biden and the Dem Party leaders, are overestimating how much voters will be single-issue voters in a general election, vs. some referendum or ballot measure on abortion.

I know that there are some states, such as Iowa, my state, where abortion is not going to be enough for Dems to win elections, because the voters, in rural states like mine, care way more about other issues than abortion, and also that the Dem Party is so weak, disorganized, and underfunded compared to the Repubs, that they are never going to win elections in the forseeable future, at least not as long as they don't offer any significant differences from the Repubs on economic policies that would help rural Iowans.

@TomMcGiverin And Biden's actions are rolling out the red carpet for Trump. The Democrats are just as responsible for the demise of democracy as the "Publicans".

@TomMcGiverin, @jackjr Meanwhile Biden is alienating the "left" and the U.N. with his actions re. Israel. Interviews with the very large numbers of Palestinian supporters demonstrating in the cities indicate that people are planning to withhold their votes in '24.

@fishline79 That is particularly true in Michigan, which Biden has to win, and will lose, with all the Arabs in the Detroit area that will stay home and not vote for him.

@fishline79 Haven't I already been saying that for years on this site? The Dem Party leadership are responsible for giving us Trump, because they refused to let us have Bernie, twice, as a nominee, so Trump is who we got. Bernie would have beaten Trump both times, but the Dem leaders care more about keeping him out of power, than about winning prez elections, or stopping Trump. The Dem leaders serve Wall Street and corporate America, not us, so their party's funders win either way, no matter which corporate candidate is elected prez...

@TomMcGiverin Yes, I heard that today on NPR.

@fishline79 It's a pretty old truth about the Dems, so I'm surprised that neoliberal NPR finally got around to admitting it to their listeners, since, like MSNBC, they are pretty much uncritical cheerleaders for the Dem Party, no matter how many of their listeners are much to the left of those two networks. I quit listening to any talk radio programs on NPR many years ago, because I knew that once they started accepting corporate funding, same as PBS, their reporting, commentary, and shows on politics, would move towards the right, to please their corporate funders, like the Dem Party, despite what the peasant listeners wanted or thought politically. Because nowadays, NPR cares way more about the corporate funding, than about what the listeners of each public radio station want or donate to their local station.

@Flyingsaucesir So far the results have been better than predicted. We still have a year to go and many republican tactics (gerrymandering) are failing. djt is also headed for disaster either jail time or a heart attack (hopefully, both).

@TomMcGiverin I think you are underestimating voters that hate djt and all his enablers.

@TomMcGiverin Many 'experts? A lot of so called experts work for the new companies and employ lost of baits to get people to view their programs. Abortion is a liberal topic and people are smart enough you cannot vote to uphold abortion yet, at the same time, vote in a pro (human) life politician. Pro-life is a misnomer as we are now experiencing the 6th great extinction and we humans are the cause of a huge loss in bio-diversity. Pro-life is actually anti-LIFE (writ large).

@fishline79 Yet, at the same time a lot of positive things are being done under his administration. People tend to forget it's not one person doing all the work as a true leader has an army of advisors and they follow the advise from the advisors. Except, of course the republicans and djt as all they care about is power.

@TomMcGiverin Bernie, Bernie seems all we heard. We tend to forget Hillary won the popular vote. I doubt even Bernie would have won with all the cheating republicans did.

@TomMcGiverin Unfortunately, the world situation has gotten with so many people needing viable information it takes a lot of money to break through the crap from broadcasters like faux noise. I do agree NPR and PBS have changed and hold back on many things they used to broadcast. One problem is with honest reporting public services get their subsidies reduced by the republicans so they have to go begging for funding elsewhere. There are other groups like this, as well as the Nature Conservancy and now the National Geographic is owned by Disney Corp> (but it hasn't seemed to affect their reporting, though.

@TomMcGiverin I couldn't agree more, and more PC and more religion as well, and I used to work for NET back in the late sixties, and 70s. I left when Nixon cut federal funding and most of our best producers (WITF, Hershey) packed up and left also.

@jackjr If Bernie had been the nominee in 2016, I don't think it would even have been close, in the first place, so the Repubs cheating would not have mattered..

@TomMcGiverin But the fact he was not selected as the nominee should tell us something.

@jackjr Yeah, it tells us how the DNC operates, not how most voters feel. And, BTW, there are many opinion surveys that told us that lots of Trump voters would have supported Bernie, rather than Trump, if they had been given that choice by the nominating process, because those voters were populists, and the system only allowed us, in the general elections, the choice of a lying right wing populist, and not a left wing populist, so those voters went with the closest option of populism that was allowed under the nominating process. Which is why I think Bernie would have won easily in a general election, both times, even with the Dem Party leadership and the corporate media against him all the way.

@TomMcGiverin I did not support him and a lot of others I know did not either. But with our two party system bad things do happen.

@jackjr Whatever, I am tired of your Bernie-bashing. You either support socialism, like I do, or you don't. Obviously you don't. Because you obviously are ok with capitalism as usual, and probably also the greed and inequality that it supports..

@TomMcGiverin I did not dislike Bernie. I felt he was too idealistic. How can one go from Bernie to tRump is a mystery to me.

@jackjr It's not a mystery to me at all. There are millions of angry, white working class people that feel left behind by the economic and tech changes in the last few decades, so they want leaders who are populists, like Trump and Bernie. Trump is a right wing populist, who lies about who is to blame for those people being left behind, and he also lies in saying what he will do to help those people and then fails to help them or do what he said he would, while Bernie is a left wing populist, who tells the truth about who is to blame for leaving those white working class people behind, and also tells the truth about what he wants to do to help them. Faced with a system that only allows them the general election choice of a lying, right wing populist, like Trump, and an obviously corrupt, centrist, corporate Dem, like Biden or Hillary, what other choice do populist, angry white working class folks have, if what they really want is a populist, who addresses their anger and grievances against the status quo? Thus, it is not surprising, that they choose the fake, lying right wing populist of Trump, over the sellout, status quo-supporting Dem, because that choice at least appeals to their hunger for populism. The Dem leadership and their donors want status quo economics, and they will get it from a Trump or a corporate Dem, so they don't care which one wins, as long as no one like Bernie is allowed to become prez..

@TomMcGiverin I consider myself a centrist. Extreme politics should not belong in our democracy. Used to be extremists had no chance until the internet came along and added a corporate view of the world. Right now it's only the Biden administration is doing far more than any extremist group could including Bernie.

@jackjr Bernie would be considered centrist, at most in Europe, so I reject your attitude of "extremist politics" having no place in American democracy. It certainly had a place here during the Great Depression, and in fact it not only saved American capitalism from a violent revolution, it also create our first and only period of time with a large and strong middle class. So screw your so-called centrist viewpoint, because what you seem to really want, is the death of the middle class and a restoration of what we had before the Great Depression and FDR, because that is where we have been heading ever since the 80s, and the only thing that will save us from either violent civil war or a fascist dictatorship,, would be a peaceful turn to radical socialism, if that is what you would call Bernie's policies. Because this centrism bullshit that you promote, is no longer holding up as a stable form of economics and government. The shit is hitting the fan, because most too many of the peasants will no longer settle for or tolerate being left behind economically, and feeling like they have no responsiveness from our two corrupt parties in DC.

I'm betting that you have a comfortable position in either the Coordinator Class of college educated, white collar professionals and managers, or at least are in the top 10 or 15% of Americans in either net worth or income, so status quo capitalism is working just fine for you, as it is for most of the Unitarian Dem Party loyalists I run into at my local church. And like them, you are totally out of touch with most of the white working class feels and is experiencing, with our neo corporate form of feudalism we have in America.

@TomMcGiverin So now the ploy to win (rather than discuss) a topic is through insults. Unfortunately, that ploy only reconfirms the other persons idea. Yes I did go to college and earn several degrees one being in government. I also worked a polling station for 5 years and saw, firsthand the voting system (many voters are clueless). Up until recently politicians avoided extremism, unfortunately these are not normal times.
No I am not in the top percentage and have a modest fixed income. It's not about money and the status quo is not working for anyone. So nice to have others try to evaluate other people they disagree with (not). Funny, I just posted a video. It might be worthwhile to look at it (but I doubt it). So long.

And that explains why so many working class whites follow Trump. Because he appeals to their anger and bitterness about being left behind and cheated, and gives them someone to blame. Too bad, both for them and us, that he lies about who is to blame for their woes, and instead blames some vague "liberal elite", along with colored folks, queer folks, and immigrants, instead of the rich and corporations, for the cheating of working class whites. And the Dems refuse to blame the real villains for the cheating also, and instead blame the Repubs for cheating working class whites.

So, with both parties lying about who is really to blame for cheated working class whites, it's a no-brainer, as to which party they will support, as it will always be the one party that does give them someone easy to blame, that is not a political party, but groups that are powerless, faceless, and nameless..

@TomMcGiverin well said.

@TomMcGiverin I should have added to my list that they practice "projection politics" (my phrase to describe Trump's, and all fascist's M.O.) Meaning that they project their lies onto their opponents so that the rabble will believe the other side are the enemies and not them, as you said. The boobs believe the most audacious liar because they (the liars) have no shame, and are therefore the easiest to believe . Honest people are poor liars. As you know, everything Trump says means the opposite and the hoi polloy lack the insight to see that.

@fishline79 The believing in lies, I see this with my twin. She lives in Bucks County, PA. Demographically one of the whitest counties in the country and she thinks the unwashed hordes of people of color are due any moment to invade her world. I am sure she carries concealed now - as a proud PA resident she is allowed to. We currently are not communicating at all. I pissed her off with the facts.

@TomMcGiverin @Fernapple All this was predicted in the 70's with a Stanford Computer project to follow how the state of the world with our exponential growth will affect the future which included politics. Last thing I saw was were on track with the prediction. We humans, everyone of us (including me) are contributing to the breakdown of our natural life systems. Climate Change, huge bio-diversity loss, loss of clean water and air and many other ills. Everyone denies their culpability and seek to blame others which only makes matters worse. We are not in control, nature is and we are breaking all the laws of survival.

@jackjr Can't argue with any of that. Guess my remaining years will be spent helpless watching the ship figureatively sink, while the planet burns up..