Thursday, May 27, 2021

Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

We're at the point now where one in six American adults believe "patriots" will have to resort to violence to "save our country" and I'd like to remind you that means about 30 million people or so are ready to throw down for a civil war or three, as a new PRRI poll finds some depressing news.

A nontrivial 15% of Americans agree with the sweeping QAnon allegation that “the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation,” while the vast majority of Americans (82%) disagree with this statement. Republicans (23%) are significantly more likely than independents (14%) and Democrats (8%) to agree that the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.

Similarly, one in five Americans (20%) agree with the statement “There is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders,” while a majority (77%) disagree. Nearly three in ten Republicans (28%), compared to 18% of independents and 14% of Democrats, agree with this secondary QAnon conspiracy theory. Trends among demographic groups are similar to those of the core QAnon conspiracy theory.

Fifteen percent of Americans agree that “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” while the vast majority (85%) disagree. Republicans (28%) are twice as likely as independents (13%) and four times as likely as Democrats (7%) to agree that because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence.

The sources that Americans turn to for news are closely linked with openness to QAnon views. Americans are most likely to say the television news sources they trust most to provide accurate information about politics and current events are the major broadcast networks (17%), such as ABC, CBS, and NBC. One in ten or more report most trusting local television news (13%), Fox News (11%), and CNN (10%). Fewer rely on public television (8%), MSNBC (5%), and far-right news networks (3%) such as One America News Network (OANN) and Newsmax. Three in ten (30%) say that they do not watch television news, and 2% report turning to some other source.

Around four in ten Americans who say they most trust far-right news outlets such as OANN and Newsmax (40%) for television news agree with the statement that “the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.” Around one in five Americans who do not watch television news (21%) and trust Fox News (18%) agree. Around one in ten Americans or less who trust local news (12%), CNN (11%), broadcast networks such as ABC, CBS, and NBC (8%), public television (7%), and MSNBC (5%) believe this core tenet of QAnon.

Nearly half of Americans who trust far-right news (48%) and one-third who trust Fox News (34%) agree with the statement that “There is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders.” About one in five who do not watch television news (22%), those who report trusting local news most (18%), and those who report trusting CNN most (17%) agree with this theory. Fewer Americans who trust MSNBC (14%), broadcast news (12%) or public television (11%) agree.

Around four in ten Americans who most trust far-right news sources (42%) and around one in four who most trust Fox News (27%) agree that “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” Less than one in five Americans who do not watch television news (19%) or who trust local news (16%) agree, and less than one in ten who trust CNN (9%), broadcast news (8%), public television (7%), or MSNBC (7%) agree.
 
The absolutely vile right-wing noise machine is fomenting, best-case scenario here, multiple terrorist attacks against the US government and Democrats in particular. Worst-case, it's 1861 again. I think people are badly underplaying how widespread the threat is here. 

We're talking tens of millions of radicalized Americans, and if even one percent of them acted, it would still be catastrophe for the nation.

I honestly believe it's coming, and soon, and the return of Trump's hate rallies next month will only add napalm to the fires.


The teams behind the poll determined that 14 percent of Americans fall into the category of “QAnon believers,” composed of those who agreed with the statements in all three questions. Among Republicans only, that rises to roughly one in four. (Twelve percent of independents and 7 percent of Democrats were categorized as QAnon believers.)

But the analysts went a level further: They created a category labeled “QAnon doubters” to include respondents who had said they “mostly disagreed” with the outlandish statements, but didn’t reject them outright. Another 55 percent of Republicans fell into this more ambivalent category.

Which means that just one in five Republicans fully rejected the premises of the QAnon conspiracy theory. For Democrats, 58 percent were flat-out QAnon rejecters.

Mr. Jones said he was struck by the prevalence of QAnon’s adherents. Overlaying the share of poll respondents who expressed belief in its core principles over the country’s total population, “that’s more than 30 million people,” he said.

“Thinking about QAnon, if it were a religion, it would be as big as all white evangelical Protestants, or all white mainline Protestants,” he added. “So it lines up there with a major religious group.
 
One in seven American adults are indoctrinated fully into a violent death cult.

We will not emerge from this without a ruinous cost.

(Un)Vaccination Nation

Ohio Republicans are about to get rid of vaccine requirements and make them illegal. Not making COVID vaccine requirements illegal,making all vaccine requirements illegal.

Through PSAs, press appearances with doctors, and even launching an unheard of $1 million lottery for immunized residents, GOP Gov. Mike DeWine wants to persuade Ohioans to choose to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

He said the facts on vaccines, which are credited with saving millions of lives and eradicating smallpox from the face of the earth, will win out.

Republicans in the state General Assembly, meanwhile, are pushing sweeping legislation to weaken Ohio’s vaccination laws — for all vaccines, not just COVID-19. On Tuesday, anti-vaccination activists crammed into the House Health Committee hearing room to testify in support of House Bill 248.

The legislation would ban vaccine requirements on customers, employees or students from businesses, hospitals, nursing homes, K-12 schools, colleges, daycares, or others. It would also prevent governments, insurers, or businesses from offering incentives for people to get vaccinated, or even requesting that people get vaccinated.

In interviews, public health experts warned the legislation would hold the door open for infectious diseases to spread among Ohioans.

Under the bill, a small business owned by asthmatics or cancer survivors — both of whom are at higher risk of serious COVID-19 complications — would have no legal right to require or even request that employees or customers who come inside be vaccinated. That’s according to Dorit Reiss, a professor with a focus on vaccine policy from the UC Hastings College of Law.


“It’s against business rights, it’s against the individual rights of private businesses, it’s against safety, and it’s in support of the virus,” she said.
 
Ohio already allows parents to exempt kids from vaccinations out of choice (and the state's vaccination level among children has dropped to 88%), but this would essentially reverse decades of medical science and thousands would end up suffering from preventable diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella.

But Republicans are bound and determined to kill as many Ohioans as possible. Everyone has to suffer and die for their utter stupidity. DeWine, for his part, is trying to stop this bill, but he can easily be overridden.

We'll see if Ohio becomes a third world country.

The Big Lie, Con't

We go from Arizona across the country to New Hampshire, where The Big Lie is running into problems in the Granite State like a stone wall, and Trump continues to be a blockhead.

Outside a nondescript building, guarded 24/7 by state troopers, the leaders of Windham's election audit field questions on the type of tape they're using to seal boxes, why the livestream briefly failed and whether any ballot boxes have gone missing. 
Unlike audits of 2020 election results that have popped up in Arizona and Georgia, New Hampshire's audit arose from a tangible gap in vote tallies in a race for state representative. Auditors have said their early assessment reveals no sign of fraud and instead points to human errors that they don't believe are pervasive statewide. 
Even so, the bipartisan audit has become a flashpoint in this small town. And some conservatives are clinging to claims that the issue in Windham could point to broader election integrity problems throughout New Hampshire or even beyond. 
Harri Hursti, an expert in electronic voting security and part of the three-man team leading the audit, said he's been surprised at the level of "malicious misinformation" swirling around the audit. 
"I'm a little bit surprised at the level of confusion and the level of deliberate trolling," Hursti said. "The level of this is more than I expected. Nevertheless, we have to get the truth out. We have to make sure that people have the facts." 
While the Windham audit wraps up this week, the 2020 election conspiracy theories are sure to persist. Among those amplifying them: former President Donald Trump and his allies. In a statement Monday night, Trump seized on the errors auditors are uncovering in New Hampshire and then claimed -- without any supporting evidence -- that Democrats were somehow behind it. 
"Why aren't Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republicans doing anything about what went on in the 2020 Election? How can the Democrats be allowed to get away with this?" Trump said. 
Trump's longtime political ally Corey Lewandowski, who lives in Windham, has also seized on the audit as evidence that there are voter discrepancies elsewhere. 
"This isn't just about the town of Windham," Lewandowski said at an event flanked by conservatives who are pushing for an even broader audit in New Hampshire. "We're seeing things take place across this entire country." 
There's no indication that the presidential tallies were miscounted, and Trump's race is not being audited here. He lost the state by nearly 60,000 votes and -- even if Trump had managed to turn his fortunes around -- New Hampshire's four electoral votes would not have been enough to land him back in the Oval Office.
 
Every audit the doesn't somehow prove a massive democratic party conspiracy somehow still proves and even worse Democratic party conspiracy, you see. It'll never end, until we get rid of elections entirely and just declare Republicans the permanent winners in everything.

At the very least, it'll be used to justify the next wave of political violence against Democratic candidates and voters, and if election nullification comes along like I expect it will in 2022, it will be widespread and lethal violence.