Here’s how Stoermer describes Liberal Nationalism and the role it plays in american politics:
There’s a belief system that combines two things — first, that change must happen through official channels (voting, courts, proper debate), and second, that this procedural faith is wrapped in American exceptionalism. The system isn’t just legitimate. It is sacred because America itself is exceptional.
Now here’s where it gets complicated. Klein says the project is “the American experiment.” Newsom builds on that. Kirk said the same things, but meant something completely different. Kirk’s American experiment would destroy Klein’s and Newsom’s — he wanted to dismantle multiracial democracy, restrict voting, and return to what he called the real Founders’ vision. That would end everything Klein and Newsom claim to value.
Yet Klein’s nationalism enables Kirk’s. By treating Kirk’s anti-democratic project as legitimate discourse within the American experiment, by claiming they share common ground, Klein validates extremism as just another voice in the great American conversation.
And I keep wondering: Does the white Christian nationalist movement understand something about liberal nationalism that we don’t? Do they realize that as long as they frame their goals in terms of the Constitution, the Founders, and the American experiment, individuals like Klein will always find common ground with them?
I found other notable liberal figures saying similar things while perusing twitter. Notably senator John Fetterman recently insisted that americans (sorry, I refuse to capitalize demonyms. Sue me) should stop calling Trump an autocrat and pleaded for toning down the anti-Trump rhetoric. To me this attitude plays right into MAGA’s hands. This is the kind of stuff that whitewashes bigotry and helps reactionaries move the Overton window further right.
I would venture that in a similar situation, on this side of the pond we would be out on the streets, striking the economy to a screeching halt. But in the US, there seems to be this nationalist bootlicking mentality that prevents people from even considering direct action, simply because they believe the system will somehow fix itself and everything will be honky dory in the end.
I can’t help but think the US of A was never truly the haven of freedom we were told it was. And as much as I appreciate the comparably stronger fighting spirit of the working class here, I’m not sure it will be enough to resist the rise of the far right here in Europe either, propped up by the ever influential american politics. I’m a pessimist, so please give me hope, or don’t. Thoughts, please?
JD Vance called Trump Hitler, so… JD Vance is “strongly attached to the left”? You are full of bull by any standard, including your own.
Right-wingers, especially extremist wackos, also call Trump Hitler – and they love him for it. This includes JD Vance.
What are you saying here? That Trump is as good as Reagan, another actor-president?
But Reagan’s acting career was one thing and his presidency another. Whereas Trump’s TV career and clownade at the office are the same smokescreen of lies and deception, not to mention a display of incompetence (and bad acting, if it’s supposed to be judged based on acting).
Do you think it’s okay that “everything he says and does is a performance”? Whatever they did together with Epstein was also “a performance”?
Let’s do some research to see if you are right on anything: “Republicans are split with 40 percent approving of the way the Trump administration is handling the Jeffrey Epstein files, 36 percent disapproving and 24 percent not offering an opinion.” https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3928 (it’s from July, but still probably the most recent on this exact topic showing the partisan split)
So, looking at it your way, i.e. the hypocritical hyperpartisan way, more people of your ilk approve of Trump’s handling of the Epstein files (or “performance” as you call it) than disapprove. Sorry, you are, as always, absolutely wrong on everything! Your opinion – defend the pedo to your last breath – is POPULAR where you stand 😀
Typos like these are some of the last signs of humanity that colewd displays – ignorant and very depraved, but still human. These are signs that we are not interacting directly with Grokbot, but someone with their little hands is retyping from Grokbot with heart-warmingly human errors.
Allan Miller,
Show me his most egregious statement and prove it is a lie. Not that it is simply untrue but that when Trump made the statement he knew it was untrue.
colewd, to Allan:
I could go on all week.
Trump made 30,573 false or misleading statements during his first term, as documented and fact-checked by the Washington Post. Are you actually arguing that none of those were intentional? That’s absolutely bonkers.
You’re setting yourself up for failure, Bill, but if that’s what you want to do, fine. Keep an eye on the ‘Untruth Social’ thread, because I have a ton of Trump lies to post there which are clearly intentional.
For now, let’s look at a recent topical example: prices. Trump has repeatedly claimed that prices are down. In reality, prices are up. He knows that. He’s lying.
Do you seriously want to argue that he is so delusional, so incompetent, so stupid, that on the single issue that was most important to the voters, he has no idea what’s actually going on and is too inept to find out?
I’ll grant you that Trump is a stupid guy. Math is not his forte,* but do you really think he can’t tell when one number is bigger than another? And if he can’t, do you think he belongs in the White House?
He knows. It’s intentional. He’s lying.
* On prescription drug costs, Trump flunks arithmetic in embarrassing fashion
There’s also the question whether colewd is so delusional, so incompetent, so stupid, that he is unable to recognise any of Trump’s lies as lies. He is competent enough to post repeated denials of having ever noticed any lie by Trump. In colewd’s opinion, Trump – six-fold bankrupt convicted business fraudster, serial adulterer, adjudicated rapist, twice impeached corruptant and insurrectionist – is a choir boy compared to keiths.
I go with that colewd *knowingly lies* about not having noticed any lie by Trump. Once you have successfully proven to him that Trump lies, the next hurdle will be to prove to him that he himself lies. It’s not that he has a bad bullshit detector – he is a bullshitter emulating his Fuehrer. Good luck!
When asked for evidence of lower prices, Trump cited Walmart’s Thanksgiving basket. And yes, that basket costs less than it did last year. Now, it just so happens that last year’s basket held 21 items, and this year only 15. Also, some of the items this year are in smaller quantities than last year. I can understand why neither Trump nor his Republican puppets are willing to admit this – I’m quite willing to speculate that Walmart was asked specifically by the Trump administration to construct a cheaper basket, but give it the same name as last year. This is a perfect example of Republican-think.
Flint,
It’s also an example of the propaganda nature of Trump administration policies. A cheaper basket is proof for the talking point that prices are going down. Nevermind that it’s nowhere near the same basket anymore. Also nevermind the inflation and employment (i.e. job loss) figures, which are now suppressed, no longer within easy reach, therefore easier to lie about. Cultists have always unquestioningly swallowed Trump’s lies about hundreds of billions raked in from foreign countries through tariffs (even though tariffs are not paid by foreign countries in the first place), billions saved by DOGE etc., so tiny figures like percentages are absolutely undiscussable with such brainwashees – they do not have the understanding and comprehension to discuss details like that.
While campaigning, Trump did the McDonald’s photo-op stunt, which for MAGAdonians proves that he cares for the common working people. Also “no tax on tips” is thought of as helping common working people. Nevermind the tariffs that shock the supply chains of common consumption goods and raise the prices on everything (obviously affecting most those whose spending goes on necessary consumption, i.e the common working people) and that tips these days are mostly not delivered in cash to waiters and the like, but are added to the bill usually paid electronically, so the designated “tips” line on the bill routes through the company and may or may not reach the employees. More likely not, if you have worked in the business and know how it goes – it becomes an additional taxless profit pocketed by the company.
Also, the designated list of qualified occupations for “no tax on tips” includes podcasters and influencers, that is those who actually live on donations and sponsorships, not on what is commonly understood as tips. This clearly provides yet another loophole for political campaigners, fundraisers and lobbyists – the big launderers. Trump’s “no tax on tips” was not really about tips.
keiths,
I made a challenge and you result in posting a vague statistic vs showing you can prove 1 lie.
As a self proclaimed independent voter do you trust the Washington Post?
Flint:
And they substituted store brands for name brands. I watched a reporter point out all of the above to him, and instead of responding to her question, he attacked her network (NBC) as “fake news” and went on to something else. He’s pitiful.
Erik:
Promising money to people and then not delivering it is another classic Trump move. Right now he’s promising $2,000 tariff revenue checks to everyone. That won’t happen, because there isn’t enough tariff revenue. Remember the DOGE dividend checks? Funny how none of those showed up in anyone’s mailbox.
Trump is a conman, and a huge number of Americans have fallen for his scams, but they’re starting to wake up, which is why Trump’s approval numbers are so dismal.
colewd:
I’ve responded in the “Untruth Social” thread.
Nostradamus points for anyone correctly anticipating where the Epstein file release is going.
I’m thinking about Geraldo’s Vault.
Predictions about hyperpartisan hypocrites like yourself are not difficult. For you, Pizzagate is irrefutable evidence that Hillary Clinton eats children and drinks their blood. Whereas Epstein files
1. Do not exist
2. Are a hoax written by Democrats
3. Dems are all over the files and Trump is not
4. Trump’s name in the files clearly indicates that he did nothing wrong
5. All the above is true at the same time!
(Edit: Oh, I forgot – additionally the files are on Pam Bondi’s desk while they do not exist and there is nothing in them worth releasing and they are being released because there is nothing to hide… and I still probably forgot something.)
This petrushkian reasoning was lucidly on display as Trump’s birthday letter to Epstein unfolded. There is no backing down now.
You judge everything strictly on a partisan basis. When Repubs are implicated, they are choir boys, always, no matter what the evidence says. When Dems are implicated, they are demons, always, no matter what the evidence says. (Demon is even in the name of Dems, absolute proof!)
Edit: There is no room in your head to understand that the files do not care about the party divide and that people of all sorts are implicated, like Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Trump, Elon and other luminaries in tech&industries, academia, art and worldwide politics. Much of the time when Trump and Epstein were closest friends, Trump was a Dem (!) and that’s when he (well, both of them, the entire bunch of them) should have been taken down. I know, this is all totally unfathomable and very odd for you.
As we have repeatedly said, you are choosing between lying and addled, and preferring to go with ‘addled’. He’s a 4d chess player without a clue what’s real? Come off it man. It is absurd to take a position that he has not uttered one word of a lie in his entire life. That would be ridiculous for anyone; for someone with his reputation it’s just dense.
Channel 4 managed to get 5 hours out of it. Why hasn’t he sued them? I’d love to see him try the “sorry, I’m addled” defence on the stand.
colewd,
Is the Post lying 30,000 times? That’s a lot of effort to go to; 1,000 would do. Why the overkill? Do they know they are lying? Can you prove they know they are lying?
According to some sources, the Epstein files contain over 1000 references to Trump. We know Bondi suddenly reversed course after her army of examiners looking for Trump references reported their results to her.
So here’s a “reference pool” we can all enter: How many unredacted references to Trump will be in the released files? How many of the hundreds of gigabytes of stuff (not including all the videos or audio recordings) will turn up missing, or somehow will never have existed in the first place? How many wealthy Republicans will be named anywhere in those files (as opposed to Democrats)? A White House mouthpiece has already started preparing this ground by saying that the public will never be satisfied because what they believe is in the files, doesn’t exist. Of course, what the public expects in the files definitely won’t exist by release time.
I’m becoming convinced that Trump is less a liar than a bullshitter. A liar says things he knows are false in order to deceive the listener. A bullshitter says things he wants to be true, or wishes were true, or which fit a fantasy version of reality, and doesn’t really care if what he says is true or not, his goal is to make his fantasy come true. Trump needs to believe that prices are lower, and immigrants are all rapists, and ethnic minorities are all IQ challenged, and that enriching himself by requiring payoffs, etc. are all perfectly true in his mind.
(I read that Trump hit the Swiss with a 39% tariff, so some Swiss government representatives gave Trump a Rolex clock and a personalized gold bar weighing several pounds. Two days later, by pure coincidence, that tariff was lowered to 15%. In Trump’s world, nothing corrupt there. No lies, just truth.)
Allan:
What’s even more ridiculous is that if the 30,573 entries in their database were fabricated, we would know all about it by now. It would have been front page news. In an earlier thread, Bill and I had the following exchange:
colewd:
keiths:
Bill, if the WaPo database were a massive fabrication, do you really think that no one — including Fox News and the rest of the right-wing media ecosystem — would have mentioned it by now?
Could be many more references,
So, of all email threads, Trump is in half of them – and those emails are not even from the era when Trump and Epstein were closest friends https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj97x2lere0o
A con man is more of a liar than an average liar. A con man is not just knowingly telling falsehoods, but also intending to wreak havoc, rip off others and profit himself.
petrushka:
You seem to think that there’s nothing damaging to Trump in the Epstein files, which is weird to me. If Trump has nothing to hide, why has he fought so hard against their release? The only reason he relented yesterday is because he knew, after failing to get Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace to remove their names from the discharge petition, that the bill was going to pass. He’s trying to lessen the humiliation by saying, “Oh, I actually want the House to vote yes.”
As for whether this turns into a Geraldo’s Vault situation, that depends on the extent to which Trump and the DOJ will doctor or destroy evidence, as Flint points out.
My question for you is: if Trump has nothing to hide, why did he pull out all the stops in trying to prevent the files from being released? He even summoned Boebert to the White House and met her in the Situation Room, fercrissakes.
I have no knowledge of what’s in the files, but I’ll make a small wager that Epstein would not implicate anyone in criminal behavior in an email. He does not strike me as mentally defective.
petrushka:
Whatever it is, we can be sure that it’s terrible for Trump, because he has told us emphatically that it is. Not in words, of course, but by his behavior. Why has he acted the way he has if not because he’s terrified of what the files will reveal if they are released undoctored?
You (pretend to) have no knowledge whatsoever, yet you pontificate. The hidden premise of your statements is that you do not even know what Epstein files are. Yet you do! One of these is, for example, the birthday book. How did that go for Trump? (and for yourself, yet you are not learning – obviously, because why would a hyperpartisan hypocrite brainwashed cultist pedo-defender learn; a hyperpartisan hypocrite brainwashed cultist pedo-defender’s job is to pontificate, spread ignorance and recruit more cultists and pedo-defenders, and that’s what you are doing)
Other Epstein files:
– the black notebook of contacts
– the flight logs
– the emails
– Epstein’s/Maxwell’s photo and video collection
– Epstein’s/Maxwell’s bank transactions
The first three are now public. Trump is all over everything as the biggest name after Epstein and Maxwell themselves, as was reasonably expected due to the *always* very well known fact that Epstein and Trump were best friends for over a decade.
Trump tells female reporter ‘quiet, piggy’ after she presses him over Epstein links
Besides reinforcing what we already knew — that Trump is an ass — this is one more sign of how badly the Epstein thing is affecting him.
Trump could, of course, order the release of the files right now. He does not have to wait to be forced – and it does not look good that he’s been forced. I think the dog ate the juicy stuff; it will be scrubbed of anything damning to him. I do wonder, if the Clintons are all over them, why he’s waited.
Kudos to the reporters asking the hard questions, and getting childish abuse back. It won’t trouble a cultist of course.
This might explain why the dog did not bark.
Clintons will be noticed better after Trump has scrubbed himself out of the way.
There is now a theory floating around among commentators (a nod to petrushka’s “Nostradamus points”) that the actual process of releasing the files will be hampered by eternal “ongoing investigations” (just like with Trump’s tax records – never released due to being under investigation, so presumably still under investigation to this day). This would be ironic because Kash Patel already said that he looked at everything and there is nothing there to investigate and not even anything worth releasing. But whatever, the faithful have never been bothered by such minor wrinkles in the narrative.
By the way, petrushka, you have had so many chances to prove me wrong, but you keep failing to do so. So I tried to do it myself and I looked up what your attitude with regard to the Pizzagate debacle was. Unfortunately I was completely right, yet again.
Well, the bill ordering the release is on its way to Trump’s desk.
Dare I mention that the files were in the possession of Obama and Biden administrations for 12 years. And most of the victims are still alive. Do you believe the files could be scrubbed without someone noticing?
Epstein was prosecuted twice. Under which presidents?
Allan:
My hope is that there are enough honest people at the FBI who are aware of the contents of those files that they’ll blow the whistle if the DOJ tampers with them. We know that a thousand FBI employees were pulling 24-hour shifts combing through the files and flagging every reference to Trump. Let’s hope that enough of them are loyal to the country and not to Trump.
Petrushka, that’s just one of the many signs that there’s something very bad lurking in those files. Why would the DOJ waste all those man-hours, pull all those people away from important law enforcement work, and create the appearance of a coverup, if Trump doesn’t have anything to hide? Can you think of a plausible explanation?
Especially since the July DOJ memo stated:
No evidence that predicates an investigation, according to them. Yet Trump orders investigations anyway and Bondi jumps right on it. The level of corruption is astounding.
One of Bill’s accusations was that in criticizing Trump, we weren’t conforming to “Judea Christian” [lol] values:
Bill, does saying “Quiet, piggy” to a reporter who’s just doing her job align with Judeo-Christian values, in your view? What about what Trump wrote about Thomas Massie, whose wife died in June of last year?
Do your Judeo-Christian principles get thrown out the window, along with all the rest, when it comes to judging Trump? Or do you have the guts to condemn him when he acts like that?
Erik:
Trump:
petrushka:
Yes, despite his desperate attempts to keep that from happening. It was a massive defeat for him. Now he has to pivot to other ways of keeping the damaging information out of the public spotlight.
I hope not, but I have no doubt that Trump will try if he is desperate enough. The leader of the “party of law and order” has no respect for law and order.
Your point?
Now please answer: If Trump has nothing to hide, why the massive coverup?
Ooh! I like this game!
Which US Attorney struck the secret and illegal sweet heart plea deal with Epstein in 2008? <cough>Acosta!</cough>
Which Florida AG stonewalled the victims clamoring to revoke said illegal deal?<cough>Bondi!</cough>
I suspect that you had no idea just how badly Trump’s cabinet picks are implicated in the cover-up of Epstein’s crimes. Why else would you offer up such an epic own goal.
While we’re at it, let’s hope the moon is made of green cheese. You are hoping that a) some idiot allowed non-loyalists to be involved in this gonzo redaction; b) those non-loyalists don’t care to keep their jobs; c) this anonymous whistle blower has someone to alert, willing to jeopardize their outlet. Already knowledgeable people are telling us that there are “heavy” redactions, that Trump is not only not named in any of it, but that he’s not even alluded to indirectly, and so there’s nothing to see here. Which there won’t be.
And, of course, that DoJ can find reasons to postpone the actual release of whatever is left until hell freezes over. If they are smart, they would have burned all they removed (and will claim never existed), and all the public can do is understand that Trump really had no choice but to sanitize everything, since he was so intimately involved.
The idea of Bondi and Patel releasing material implicating Trump in a pedophile ring boggles the rational mind.
I renew the standing prediction that there are no incriminating emails or records. I have read rumors that there are videos of illegal activities, but I doubt if they will be released.
It seems likely that many people continued corresponding withe Epstein after his conviction.
petrushka:
Why do you think Trump was so desperate to prevent the files from being released?