riding the echo down

Posted by ziggywiggy

https://www.wonkette.com/p/no-kings-pictures-from-wonkette-readers

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Posted by Dominic Gwinn

https://www.wonkette.com/p/cpac-canceled-for-lack-of-oh-wait

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) used to be a thing journalists were desperate to get assigned. Now, the only thing more empty than the broadcast riser were the seats.

The narrative among many journalists at this year’s CPAC is that CPAC is dead.

“It’s cooked,” one told me.

“This is sad,” said another when seeing the half empty room.

Mother Jones quoted one attendee saying “it’s shitty.”

The feeling that CPAC doesn’t have the juice anymore was mentioned onstage by Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, the two former Bush 43 staffers who took over the whole thing in 2015. Back then, the American Conservative Union, the parent organization of CPAC, was fledging. The William F. Buckley-founded organization hadn’t really weathered America’s affair with tyrannical tan-suit wearing socialist Barack Obama. So the Schlapps hitched their wagon to the Trump train, zhuzh-ed things up a bit, and never looked back.

But Donald Trump wasn’t at CPAC this year. Last year, he wasn’t announced until the final day. It’s only the second time in the last 15 years he’s bailed on CPAC.

In 2016, Trump skipped CPAC because he, according to a piece in the historically conservative Washington Examiner, wanted special treatment. Back then, Schlapp said Trump’s refusal to do a normal sit-down interview was “bullshit,” adding that Trump was “trying to run us over.”

The Examiner reported Schlapp as saying:

“You can’t both say ‘I’m going to claim the Reagan mantle, I’m a Reagan conservative,’ and make this kind of a decision,” Schlapp said. “I think it’s unfortunate. We want him here. We have a lot of respect for him. He’s the front-runner in the race...If you’re competing against other conservatives for the nomination, you got to get the same amount of time as everyone else and you got to answer questions,” he added.

A decade later, the Examiner is reporting the same thing as MoJo: that Trump might have killed the conservative movement in favor of himself, and that groups like Turning Point USA are eating CPAC.

There’s been some posturing that Trump, his cabinet, and members of the House and Senate were too busy with Trump’s special military operation in Iran, and attempting to fund the Department of Homeland Security. But Congress just went on a two-week vacation. Trump gave a speech in Memphis on March 23, and to Saudi investors in Miami on March 27. Prominent faces in right-wing TV land were also absent. Not even Trump’s kids or the usual Fox News talking heads showed up.

Instead, they got Nick Shirley, Benny Johnson, Matt Foldi, and Josh Hammer, people whom much of the aging crowd seemed either unaware of and/or uninterested in. These are smug dorks and acne-faced internet trolls hurling culture war buzzwords and memes they themselves started, breathlessly plugging their podcasts and livestreams.

It is not without a deep irony that Franklin Graham, the now elderly scion of his father’s televangelist empire, started with a predictable fire and brimstone speech, only to veer off course and rail against internet hucksters, like podcasters, telling the crowd to be weary of those who profit from “clicks,” likes and views.

I didn’t see a “radio row” of right-wing podcasters and blowhards. The big media riser sat empty most of the time. The only broadcasters were bootlickers at Newsmax, RAV, OAN and Lindell TV. There were only a few freelance wire photographers, including myself, who’d ever covered a previous CPAC. The conference regulars are only getting older as groups like Turning Point USA poach the conservative youth, bussing them to TPUSA rallies where they dole out armfuls of branded swag.

Matt Schlapp claims he can’t hold CPAC in a blue state because of bureaucracy, which might be true, but it could also be true that he’s got champagne taste on a beer budget.

Once again, CPAC was at Gaylord Resort. A subsidiary of Marriott, Gaylords are all-inclusive resort hotels. CPAC’s flagship conference is typically held in or around Washington DC. For the last couple of years, CPAC was held at the Gaylord in Maryland’s National Harbor, right by Joint Base Andrews. The Dallas-area Gaylord in Grapevine is a short and insane drive north from Dallas, next to a secluded lake. Next year, Schlapp says CPAC is moving to Orlando, which also has a Gaylord (complete with a maze-like atrium, a boat, a waterfall, a little fort, a mini alligator zoo, and a tiki bar).

And now the inevitable ravages of time are showing on CPAC’s stage setup, which hasn’t changed in years. The red carpeting is shredding and fraying at the edges; the white chairs are showing indentations from all the butts that have sat through CPAC’s 20-minute panels; the giant red circle looming over everything is even looking stressed.

Some of the video bumpers between speakers and panels this year featured flashy graphics with heavy fades and wipes, like promos for a UFC match, highlighting different cabinet members and countries with and without the CPAC endorsement. One of them noted that Russia had a zero percent rating for its press freedom. Hungary earned a 90 percent.

Hungary’s authoritarian leader, Viktor Orbán, has made bold attempts at silencing the free press. He’s used his power to install wealthy supporters in Hungarian media, and targeted journalists for reporting on stories critical of his government. Reporters Without Borders has called him a “free press predator.” Last week, it was reported that Trump is actively trying to help Orbán in his upcoming election, and that Russia and Hungary plotted to fake an assassination attempt on Orbán in an effort to swing the vote.

While its influence in the US may be waning, colleagues overseas tell me that it appears to growing abroad. Hungary has been hosting its own outposts of CPAC. UK Prime Minister-For-Head-Of-Lettuce-Period-Of-Time Liz Truss took the stage to announce a CPAC UK later this year. George Weinberg, from Republicans Overseas in Germany, did that weird Trump-style dance, and mused about a CPAC in Munich. When I asked a colleague based in Germany who Weinberg was, they called him “off the rails.”

This comes following an FT report in February about a US State Department “slush fund to get MAGA-style things going in various places” through various think-tanks, as a way to “undermine government policies” throughout Europe. The US pushed back, saying it wasn’t setting up a “slush fund,” but rather “a transparent, lawful use of resources to advance US interests and values abroad.” It’s still unclear which think tanks the administration is targeting.

Ken Paxton, Texas’s scandal-plagued attorney general, is the CPAC favorite to win the GOP’s run-off primary election against Senator John Cornyn. Paxton gave the keynote during the annual Ronald Reagan dinner, a slot historically reserved for party stalwarts and rising stars, but Trump hasn’t endorsed either him or Cornyn. Gov. Greg Abbott’s well-received speech full of red meat and one-liners suggests he’s considering a run at the Oval Office in 2028.

During one panel titled “Women Warriors,” Rep. Kat Cammack made a good joke about freaking out House Speaker Mike Johnson when he walked in on her breastfeeding. It seemed to sail past much of the audience.

Later, Former Rep. Mayra Flores, a far-right conservative bomb thrower challenging Rep. Henry Cuellar, told the half-empty room the party needed to reach out to Latino people and women, many of whom share traditional conservative values. She was heckled.

But then, so was Sen. Ted Cruz. He boasted about being unlikeable when someone shouted, “Do your job!” Cruz went on to give detailed instructions on how to subscribe to his podcast via text message.

There was also the bit on impeachment that was hastily dropped, a forehead-slapping fuckup I saw firsthand from the photo buffer and still can’t get my head around. And as far as I know, nobody mentioned Mike Lindell getting served during a livestream.

One thing that hasn’t seemed to get enough attention this year was the makeup of the crowd itself. Maybe it was the alcohol, which I’m told led to one obnoxious J6-er getting thrown out (at least twice), but some folks were just rowdy. Particularly the Iranian expats and Persians who came to see Reza Pahlavi, the self-proclaimed heir-in-exile to Iran.

It’s difficult to say exactly, but it sure as hell seemed like they filled up half the room. Of course, that does a bit of disservice to the Brazilians waiting for the Bolsonaro brothers, and South Koreans supporting Yoon Suk Yeol, the former president of South Korea who was jailed for attempting a coup, and Poles waiting for Polish President Karol Nawrocki to profess his love of the US, the EU and military alliances.

But it was the Persian community that showed up en masse.

On several occasions at least 100 people took to the halls to start chanting, “KING Re-za Pah-lavi,” prompting reporters and photographers to rush out of the ballroom. One scene on the second day devolved into chaos as the alleged mother of Reza Pahlavi called someone via video chat. Police had to break up the crowd.

Spirits were high. People in costumes and traditional garb wandered the hall with smiles. Some men were smoking in the bathrooms after the smoking patio 15 feet away became too crowded.

Back in the ballroom, people onstage were railing about the Arab community in North Texas. They claimed the US was at risk of becoming a Muslim nation under Sharia Law.

When Pahlavi finished speaking around lunchtime on the third day, the room began emptying out. Some came back for RFK Jr.’s chat with Mercedes Schlapp — the big finale! — but not everyone.

Still, there is something notable about all these people being under one roof, or the lack thereof. It’s not like CPAC is the only storied political conference struggling to stay relevant in the 21st century. The progressive Netroots Nation had a poor turnout last year as well. Whether that means political conferences should adopt TPUSA’s T-shirt cannons and pyrotechnics, or dial it back to old-fashioned smoke-filled rooms, is a fair question to ask when some asshole yelling at a phone in their car for magic internet points can be just as loud as elected officials and policy wonks.

Regardless, all the bloviating and hot air means nothing if your deeply flawed and scandal-ridden promise-making candidate can’t win an election, or sit in a room with people they don’t like to do their damn job in the interest of the people — even the ones that didn’t vote for them.

https://www.wonkette.com/p/cpac-canceled-for-lack-of-oh-wait

Posted by Denny Carter

https://www.wonkette.com/p/were-going-to-need-more-earnestness

We can have cringey and sometimes overbearing and humorless earnestness, or we can have soul-killing nihilism. These are our choices in 2026 and beyond.

I wrote for Bad Faith Times this month about the coming resurgence of political and cultural earnestness, as seen in Minnesota’s anti-fascist mobilization during the Trump regime’s terror campaign, and at myriad No Kings protests over the past year (including another massive No Kings turnout this past weekend), because this is the future of American politics. Earnestness has largely animated opposition to the nakedly criminal and anti-constitutional regime, and will guide whatever comes after the regime’s fall.

Think of it as a return of sorts to Obama-era cringe: People — especially young folks — daring to say publicly and loudly that a better world is possible and that they will work toward the version of the world they want for themselves and their loved ones. No one is trying to be cool and detached. No one is deeming themselves Above It All, intellectually and otherwise. No one is saying they’re too savvy to fall for the lie that a better world is possible.

We’re seeing cringe everywhere during this second Trump term — a veritable ocean of cringe coming to wipe away the fascist nihilism that fuels this hideous regime — and that’s a good thing. We need more. We need the Cringe Machine to be cranked up to 11.

The Obama-era cringe has been replaced by a nihilism that pervades everything the Trump regime does, from intentionally starving human beings in developing countries, to forcing detained children to watch ICE goons eat a delicious dinner, to posting Nazi-adjacent memes on official government social media accounts. In place of a movement that dared to say a better world was possible, we now have a movement that knows a worse world is possible and sees it as its job to deliver that version of the world.

Like every fascist movement in history, the Trump regime longs for the void. Its leaders have no politics but those that advance us toward that void, where they will no longer feel the pain of being alive and miserable and hateful and loveless.

So we can have one or the other: Cringe or the void. It’s not a hard choice for me, and maybe it’s not a tough call for you either. Just remember that the next time you see someone in person or online being earnest as hell, so very vulnerable, and have the urge to detach, to be cool, to be above it all. Take in that cringe and be cringe yourself, because it’s cringe that will deliver a better world.

Disabused of the notion that we can’t or shouldn’t fight fire with fire, our earnestness can be weaponized against those who would tell us that nothing matters, that the void awaits.

Here are all the Bad Faith Times blogs from the past month if you’re into it. I always have stuff to analyze because the faith is bad and getting worse every day, unfortunately.

This Is Not What Winning Looks Like

The American fascist movement had no real, tangible goals beyond upsetting liberals online. That much has become miserably, terribly clear over this past year as groypers — a phrase I wish I did not know — have taken over the Trump regime’s communication apparatus, namely the government’s social media accounts.

I wrote about the explicitly fascist messaging found in many of the regime’s posts and memes, shit that can make you sound deranged if you were to explain it to a normie who doesn’t spend eight hours a day breaking their brains on social media.

But here’s the thing about all this lib triggering: It’s not in any way what winning looks like. These people are lazy and stupid and have no understanding of history beyond knowing that mom and dad said Hitler was bad so maybe Hitler was actually good. Their definition of winning — taunting their enemies on the internet with genocidal imagery — does not constitute winning, as American monarchist Curtis Yarvin knows well.

Some Incredibly Inconvenient Data For College Republicans

All those bad-faith complaints about college Republicans being harassed and treated as second-class citizens on campuses across the country turned out to be bullshit. Imagine that.

I looked into some recent polling data that (strongly) suggests college Republicans feel very much welcomed on campus, not tormented by left-wing professors and students determined to pump out a generation of communists or whatever. The recent data says liberal/left students are the ones who feel their views are being censored.

That checks out considering every major educational institution immediately bowed to the Trump regime, which now dictates, through the power of AI, what college students can and can’t learn, and what they can and cannot say.

Everybody Loves DEI Now

I recall a few polls in the early days of the second Trump regime that showed a disturbing if predictable decrease in public support for diversity efforts in the US. This, naturally, came on the heels of a presidential campaign in which white folks were told they are the victims of systemic discrimination because the government and universities and some businesses sometimes hire ladies and people of color.

Recent polling from The Economist and YouGov paints an entirely different picture a year after the regime used AI to resegregate American society. Americans, it turns out, are very much into the idea of diversity in hiring practices. Even non-MAGA Republicans — whatever that means — seem to believe diversity is a strength, according to the polling data. It appears people are repulsed by a federal government run by ferocious white supremacists.

No Gerrymander Can Save Republicans Now

The emergency pro-democracy coalition that formed in 2019 and 2020 in response to the president’s first attempt at ending representative government in the US appears to be reconstituting after it fell to fucking pieces in 2024.

In early March we saw that coalition — supercharged by a tyrant who hasn’t made shit any cheaper — show its strength in the Texas primaries. For the first time in a long time, more Democrats cast a ballot than Republicans in the Texas primary elections.

I wrote for BFT about how many of the Republican gerrymanders we’ve seen over the past year — including the Jim Crow-style Texas gerrymander — are based on the idea that the 2024 electorate is a permanent one. Republicans seem to believe that Latino men and zoomer bros and others who left the pro-democracy coalition in 2024 are permanently in the GOP camp for 2026 and 2028 and beyond. All available polling, of course, says this is dead wrong. Trump’s 2024 coalition, forged with the power of Elon Musk’s weaponized X algorithm, has already fallen apart.

The 2026 electoral maps conservatives have created were built on this faulty belief, which is why no gerrymander can save Republicans from what’s coming: The biggest electoral wipeout of our lifetimes.

Judge To RFK Jr: Vaccine Policy Has To Be Reality-Based

The Trump regime in March continued getting its teeth kicked in by federal judges who don’t abide by the American right’s unreality, as most clearly seen on Elon Musk’s social media website.

That’s a tough break for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., our protein-packed HHS secretary, who had all his stupid anti-vaxx shit thrown out by a judge in Massachusetts a few weeks ago.

The judge pointed out to the anti-vaccine eugenicists making the country’s vaccine recommendations that the US government has traditionally been focused on vaccine policy that eradicates and reduces diseases, and uses “a method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements” to develop said policies.

“Unfortunately,” US District Court Judge Brian Murphy said, “the government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions.”

It’s the latest sign that a viable legal system can sustain itself against an authoritarian onslaught — at least until these cases reach the red-pilled freaks on the Supreme Court.

From Edgy To Evil: The Contrarian’s Fate

Going into this piece, I was blissfully unaware of the professional contrarian take that Jeffrey Epstein did nothing wrong. I wish I had remained ignorant of this bad faith bomb. Maybe you do too. Sorry about that.

Anyway, Michael Tracey — the guy who insists nothing actually happened on January 6, 2021 — has turned his contrarianism up to levels never before seen in his defense of Epstein and those connected to the infamous sex trafficker. That’s the thing, Tracey says: There is no such thing as sex trafficking. It’s all a left-wing myth.

This, I think, is the natural and nightmarish endpoint for anyone committed to being a contrarian for the sake of being contrarian.

Fascism Depends On The Presumption Of Good Faith

Media outlets largely treated the president’s mobilization of his paramilitary into US airports as a good-faith effort to solve a seemingly intractable funding stalemate made worse by Republican lawmakers who actively loathe the people they represent. It was the same story of the past decade, one that grants the presumption of good faith to a man who only operates in the worst faith.

Many mainstream outlets ran the president’s announcement of ICE coming to airports — a mob boss-style threat — through the sanewashing machine they keep by the office fax machine, and came up with headlines and stories about Trump “assisting” the poor airport staffers struggling mightily with TSA workers refusing to show up for work because the president’s party refuses to pay them.

It’s the sort of thing that drives you insane. Without the presumption of good faith, the American fascist movement would have precious little oxygen with which to work.

A Fuzzy Totalitarianism

Umberto Eco, an Italian philosopher and political commentator, tried to warn western nations in the mid-1990s of the power of fascism and the everlasting allure of returning to a glorious past that never existed.

After reading Eco’s essay “Ur-Fascism,” I had no choice but to analyze our current fascist moment through the lens of Eco’s description of “eternal fascism.” The man was right about everything.

The followers of a fascist movement “must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.”

Ur-Fascism is an uncomfortable read, but one that’s worthwhile.

https://www.wonkette.com/p/were-going-to-need-more-earnestness

Posted by Marcie Jones

https://www.wonkette.com/p/call-your-girlfriend-tabs-mon-march

Woohoo, everybody have fun at their NO KINGS protests? BIGGEST IN HISTORY, with an estimated 8 million people who hate Dictator Day One Donald John Trump turning out on the streets to count the ways! These protests had everything: inflatables, paper maché puppets, signs, bullhorns, Bruce Springsteen, Bernie!

From here to there and near to far, people are furious. About the war with Iran, ICE, the treading upon of the snake, the pussgrabbing and shackling of Lady Liberty, take your pick, from coast to coast, and also in England, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Greece, France, Kenya, Australia, Ecuador, Mexico, Iceland … even up by the North Pole.

Can’t wait to go see what Dear Leader went and pounded about it all! … Aw, not one word. Low energy, sad. Maybe he and his handlers learned something after the last protest about the Streisand Effect following that AI poop plane? After a month now of war criming seems he’s still more preoccupied with trying to shitpost and bomb innocent civilians into some kind of pretend-victory in Iran. (Al Jazeera / WSJ)

Don’t forget the Russian invasion of Ukraine too, Europe hasn’t! EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and Marco Rubio reportedly got into a shouting match at a G7 meeting about it. Barked Rubles, “We are doing the best we can to end the war. If you think you can do it better, go ahead. We will step aside,” as if there is any farther aside the US could possibly get. (Axios archive link)

Trump socialposted that Bill Putle is trying to go after Letitia James for a THIRD time. (NY Daily News Archive link)

Yep, that war-peration not going great. Boatloads with thousands of Marines have now floated their way into the Gulf region, the WSJ reports the number of ground troops could soon reach 17,000, and the Washington Post reports the War Dept. is planning for a ground operation lasting “weeks.” That pig sure has his foot in some pickle juice now, just like everybody predicted. (WSJ gift link / Washington Post gift link)

Posted by Iranian foreign embassies:

Meow, meow, meow, meow NYT: “Trump’s Ballroom Design Has Barely Been Scrutinized, Architects Say It Shows.” (New York Times)

Is anything the man has done not a failure?

Chuck Todd is gone? Apparently yes, he is literally Toddcasting now. Nearly forgot, because Kristen Welker is doing so much better at his former job. Anyway, sure, Brendan, nobody is talking about any of Trump’s failures now. You did it!

“RFK Jr. Gushes Over ‘Empath’ Trump in Wild Lovefest” (Daily Beast)

Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is taking AI information warfare to new, trippy extremes. (The Atlantic)

Julie K. Brown, the world’s leading Jeffrey Epstein expert, digs into the backstory of prison guard Tova Noel, the last person to see him alive. And New York Magazine’s Jessica Bennett and Katie Ryder have a masterful take on publicist Peggy Seigal. Writing teachers will appreciate their impeccable form as it balances the questions, can we forgive the Peggys of this story, and/or should we? (Julie K. Brown’s Substack / New York Magazine archive link)

A nice time! UNESCO has designated Medellín, Colombia as the 2027 World Book Capital, as it’s home to over 110 bookstores and 25 libraries, many of which were transformed from former prisons and police facilities. (UNESCO)

Is TMZ the new Teen Vogue?

Science corner: the OneZoom visual, searchable taxonomy map of all animal life on earth. (OneZoom)

Music: Call your girlfriend, a new Robyn album is out!

Fashion: Derek Guy declares it GardenCore season!

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