A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆Nazism is on the ballot this year, and people who consider themselves Nazis know it, even if so many of the rest of us seem not to want to.
So it came to pass that Nazis came to the pro-Trump boat show last week.
They're only the most recent Nazis.
They flew their swastikas and delivered the usual slogans and salutes and slurs. They have a more honest version of the Trump hat that they sell, which says MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN. There aren't many stories about it. "Ho-hum, Nazis at a Trump event" is the thinking I suppose.
The story I read is at pains to point out that this was only one boat among hundreds flying Nazi gear, and that the boat organizer called the Nazis "scum," so if you want to believe that this event was a one-off sort of oddity, you're invited by the story to do so.
In order to accept the story's invitation, though, you'll have to enter an intricate and multi-layered ignorance—about the fact that Nazi support for Trump (and vice versa) runs broad and deep throughout Trump's political career, to begin with.
And you'll have to ignore the fact that Trump and his party are demonizing racial minorities as subhuman vermin, using vile lies in order to foment violence against them as an entrée to fomenting much more violence against many more people on the basis of even worse lies.
And you'll have to ignore proposals like using the military against "the enemy within" or deploying white supremacist paramilitary gangs to purge the ethnic minorities "poisoning the blood" of the country, and the fact that Trump is now only lucid when delivering Nazi rhetoric.
And you'll have to ignore the fact that Trump's rhetoric and policy positions have always been near to Nazism and now are completely indistinguishable from it.
And you'll have to ignore many other things—too many to list.
f you want to ignore those things, the story about the Nazi boat show—one of the few stories about the event—has got your your back. It largely ignores them, too, and leads off and closes with rationales for minimizing the clear implications.
Now, if you're somebody who isn't into ignorance, you might find it odd that anyone organizing a pro-Trump boat show would object to the presence of Nazis at a rally in support of a clearly Nazi-aligned candidate for the presidency. You might pursue that angle.
It's almost like most people in our media and many in our country are more committed to telling comforting fictions than to observing the actual swastika that's actually flapping around.
It's almost as if people are more interested in finding a way to not know things that are difficult to ignore than they are in simply looking around and knowing.
Yesterday Donald Trump, whose brain is actively melting like a slice of Velveeta atop an Arizona Cybertruck, waxed rhapsodic to his crowd about Arnold Palmer's apparently giant penis, which isn't the most lunatic thing he's done this month, it's just the most recent.
Trump's brain resembles an accordion blind door in that it was never hinged in the first place, but he's observably batshit now, and millions and millions of people seem to not know or care.
Those who don't know might be forgiven. There's a main effort in headlines and stories to normalize with headlines like "Trump seems energetic in a scattered speech" and lines like "Trump told the crowd golf stories."
There are exceptions, but ignorance is always on the menu.
Kamala Harris sat for an interview on CBS' news program 60 Minutes the other day, as is traditional. Donald Trump skipped it, as is not traditional.
Harris is the one who continues to face accusations of ducking the media.
But never mind. This exchange caught my notice.
Now this is extraordinary for a lot of reasons.
There is the idea that Donald Trump, who is clearly a virulent racist, isn't a racist, no no—he has been accused of using racist tropes.
The normal one here is Donald Trump, who is framed not as a racist, but somebody under attack from accusations of racism, accusations that are entirely baffling despite many relevant examples. The one who has to explain themselves is anyone suggesting that a racist is a racist.
he premise: Trump can't possibly be racist, not if millions and millions of people support him. The premise I guess being it would be impossible for millions and millions of people to support a racist, because that would suggest that millions and millions of people are racist.
The idea that millions of millions of Americans being racist and loving racism and responding enthusiastically to it is not ever on the table, even as the evidence that this happens to be true is overwhelming and inescapable.
And it's never asked, is it, that since millions and millions of Americans hate Donald Trump, that Harris is actually *in* touch rather than *out* of touch? Supremacist Americans are normal, is the unspoken frame, and whoever they support must be normal, too.
What's extraordinary about this is that it's all just assumed. Republicanism (or American Nazism) is normal because it has to be normal, because if it wasn't normal we'd have a lot of things to unpack and fix and solve, and that might get us into time and money.
If millions and millions of the American people are racist, then America might be a supremacist nation, and if we started saying that America was a supremacist nation, then we would have to deal with that fact.
Trump's deranged ramblings are energetic if scattered, because they have to be.
His followers aren't racist, even though they are, because they can't be.
The Nazis at the boat show are an outlier and an unwelcome fringe, even though they aren't, because they have to be.
And so many of the rest of us—not MAGA, not even Republican—would rather not deal with it. All these abnormal tumors that American Nazism grows out of the national body *have* to be normal, because if they weren't we'd have to treat them, and treatment is *radical.*
We're like patients who would rather let the tumor spread than hear the diagnosis.
It's like many of us—so many—are just playing pretend.
All of this is normal, even though it isn't. It HAS to be normal.
So what do we do?
Full Essay: https://www.the-reframe.com/this-has-to-be-normal/
🟥 Eveline Sulman 🇳🇱🇪🇺🇺🇦@JuliusGoat excellent summary of your excellent book. Thanks for writing it!
Mx VerdaTW reblog, US politics
Flaming Cheeto@JuliusGoat we're not a melting pot. We're chunky chili
Stooryduster@JuliusGoat Sadly - I've been of that opinion since I saw Easy Rider in the 70s. Swore never to go to America. Generalisation I know, but I was young.
Robert Link@JuliusGoat I've been thinking a lot about implication as a tool of persuasion. Ever since Reagan said "l-word" there's been a well managed campaign of implication. We no longer ask "are you now or have you ever been," we simply imply.
The problem with implication is when one has been persuaded by implication the underlying premises tend to be buried far below the threshold of rational thought. It's appeal to emotion, appeal to authority.
We have at least fifty years of "normalizing" this way.
KatLS@JuliusGoat ahh #gaslighting 😖
ProScience 🇪🇺Agreed, but not the slightest limited to the US.
Humble Fan of Atty. Woothere in lies the rub