You knew it was coming.
As soon as former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley emerged as the main threat to Donald Trump in the battle for the Republican nomination, it became inevitable that she would be targeted by him. Any front-runner would do the same thing. But Trump did it with his typical touch.
Last week Trump reposted on his Truth Social account a conspiracy theory that Haley, who was born in South Carolina, was not qualified to be president because her parents, born in India, were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth. In fact, the Fourteenth Amendment establishes that any person born on American soil is a citizen of the United States and therefore can serve as president.
…
By Friday the former president of the United States was referring to Haley as “Nimbra.”
There are two things to know in order to understand what’s unfolding. The first is that Haley’s given name is Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She has gone by Nikki since she was a child—a local newspaper referred to her as Nikki when she was 12 years old and she had a role in a production of Li’l Abner; and she dropped her maiden name when she married Michael Haley in 1996.
He didn’t make them that way. He gave them permission to stop pretending it was a bad look to be that way openly.
Exactly this. The only change has been that they’ve started to say the quiet part out loud. Their political behavior hasn’t especially changed, they’re just not bothering to be any shade of discrete anymore.
Like, who writes these titles? Surely anyone aware of Nixon’s war on drugs targeting hippies and black people, or Reagan ignoring the AIDS crisis, or any number of other examples would’ve made it clear that Republicans have been this way for decades, really since the southern strategy was enacted.
Right, that’s what the southern strategy was.
Get all the white voters on your side by stoking racial fears. Trump just realized that the racists are everywhere, and many of them were too dumb to understand the dog whistles enough to be motivated to vote. What some of the rest of us underestimated, was how little the rest of the conservatives would care.
Exactly, and we’ll never get any real progress if we can’t pin the tail on the real elephant in the room.
Pretty sure it’s always been like this since newt.
The first president I was conscious of is Reagan. At least since him, really.
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True, but the level that it is at now goes past Nixon. This is legitimate John Birch Society stuff. And the Birchers used to be laughed at even by most Republicans.
Reagan started normalizing them and it’s continued from there.
“I’m a faithful follower of Brother John Birch and I belong to the Antioch Baptist Church, and I ain’t even got a garage, you can call and ask my wife.”
–Charlie Daniels
The line was spoken by a green toothed hillbilly in a song he wrote. He was making fun of these types and painted them as drunk hicks.
For reference, 15 years later he had a song (the second part to this song, funny enough) that did its best to make fun of half the queer community.
I feel like the media just has to pretend it’s a new story to keep people engaged.
It’s the same with all this generational crap:
Gen X: “They are slackers who never leave their parents’ basement and don’t want to work. How will society survive?”
Millenials: “They are slackers who never leave their parents’ basement and don’t want to work. How will society survive?”
Gen Z: "“They are slackers who never leave their parents’ basement and don’t want to work. How will society survive?”
And then we all get cultural amnesia and pretend that none of this has ever been said before.
Hell, I’m pretty sure they said this about boomers too in the 60s, though I wasn’t around.
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If anything, it seems the kids are even better now than before, but I may be biased because my nibling and nephew are turning out to be straight up awesome people
This Xer really has hope for Z. As a group they seem to have figured out that a lot of our norms are bullshit to serve the 1% much quicker than we X-er’s did, and quicker than it seems like Millennials did too.
Saw this recentlyish and saved it. 100% validates your point, and goes back even further than you’d believe.
I’m saving this! That’s … really far back!
Right? About time people stopped accepting it.
Nitpick, you’re thinking of “21st century breakdown”, not american idiot. Because one album about the problems with american society didn’t cover enough of the issues.
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Not really related but your comment made me remember an old EP I have where one of the songs starts with a recording of a speech GWB was giving about what the American Flag stands for and it immediately devolves into a depraved rant-I have no idea how they reproduced his voice so well but it’s almost seamless the way the impersonator moves into talking about dripping acid on skin and torturing people with hot irons. This was long before AI.
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It’s Shaolin Punk, who have barely any presence at all online it seems-if they are even still together as the EP was from 2004: https://www.last.fm/music/shaolin+punk/Distorted+Child
It’s song #3, which I wasn’t able to listen to on the site-not sure if it’s because I don’t have an account there or it’s actually not playable. IIRC they used to make several different versions of songs so I wanted to make sure it was the same version as I was remembering. I’ll just transcribe the intro from my copy below:
“The American flag stands for corporate scandals, recessions, stock market declines, blackmail, terror, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and r*pe”
I was thinking the same thing. They’ve always been that way. He just told them it’s ok to say the quiet part outloud.
Look at Nixon quotes regarding war on drugs to target hippies and black people. It’s been going on a long time.
Ed- https://www.vera.org/reimagining-prison-webumentary/the-past-is-never-dead/drug-war-confessional
Keep going. It predates Nixon.
Last halfway decent repub was Eisenhower.
Other way around. The conservative wing has always been cruel, xenophobic, exclusionary, and bigoted. Trump is simply the natural result on top.of all that
Trump didnt make the Republican Party Cruel, Xenophobic, Exclusionary, or bigoted.
he just made it acceptable to let the those flag fly publicly.
trump changed nothing about conservatives.
The only thing that changed is that they brazenly say out loud what they were thinking before.
It was always that way don’t be stupid. Do you really think GWB’s conman party was not hostile to minorities? Back then they were just “one of the good ones.” They had more nuance with their prejudices and race conspiracies.
Now the mask is off, that’s it.
The Party of Malice. Donald Trump has made the Republican Party open about being cruel, xenophobic, exclusionary, and bigoted
FTFY
I hate this shit Trump literally did nothing but say the quiet parts out loud.
This headline is for republican’s in denial about their party to feel better about themselves. Those of us who have paid attention to conservatives knew for decades what they really were (I used to tell republicans for years this is what their party is, many used to laugh and handwave telling me I’m silly for thinking what this headline says)
“Made”?
lol, no. More like “enabled by”.Anyone else remember when W tried to popularize the phrase “compassionate conservatism”? It’s an implicit admission that conservatism is inherently uncompassionate.
i.e., the exception that proves the rule.
Kudos for using that term correctly.
It’s literally the party that is made up in part by the racists who were upset enough about the Civil Rights Act that they switched parties.
It’s been this way for a while.
Started with Reagans bitch ass
goldwater and nixon
100%.
There’s a reason Roger Stone has a huge Nixon tattoo…well probably more than one reason, all equally bad.
Who the fuck gets a tattoo of a politician?
Anyone who doubts this should listen to the slowburn season on Nixon. As you do, you’ll see such parallels with today that you will be not be able to deny how consistently terrible conservatism has been.
The title is backwards: the cruel, xenophobic, exclusionary and bigoted GOP finds its embodiment in Donald Trump.
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Donald Trump revealed to the Republican Party that they can be openly cruel, xenophobic, exclusionary, and bigoted instead of pretending they’re not.
Trump didn’t make anything. He scratched a scab which revealed a festering wound. All he did was give conservatives the chance to say, “ew, I’m not gonna let that define me,” while those who remained said, “I don’t trust medical science, that’s just a sign that we’re healing,” and those who jumped on the bandwagon said, “that’s never gonna heal properly, but if we help it get worse then we can do the medically sane thing and cut the limb off.” Finally, there are those last two in the scab camp who either say, whoa! That wound is insane, heheh! Let’s see how bad it can get," or those who say, “God wants this to rot because I’m hiding some naughty secrets. I hope we all die.”
Then there’s the rest of us who look at all of them and shout, “WHY ARE YOU VOTING FOR A FUCKING SCAB???”
Don’t forget the “how much money I can make selling band-aids?” crowd.
