The Lost and The Furious: Stop the Steal!

They seem nice

 

By Nellie Bly
Spy Washington Bureau

Will the Former Loser Grifter run again?

Gee, we don't know.  Will Ben and Jennifer's PR team leak more romantic photos until they get the production deal they're looking for?

(We gave the wild bears the week off, so we looked elsewhere for obvious questions that can only be answered in the affirmative.)

That didn't stop author Michael Wolff from writing a New York Times op-ed, excuse us, guest essay, to offer his answer.  Did he write the piece to generate publicity for his new book, which, since he didn't send us a copy, we won't plug here?  Where are the wild bears when you need them?

Here's his not terribly surprising answer:

I know the obvious: Donald Trump will run for president again.

But to be fair to the modest, self-effacing Mr. Wolff, he makes a few excellent points:

He can’t be Donald Trump without a claim on the presidency. He can’t hold the attention and devotion of the Republican Party if he is not both once and future king — and why would he ever give that up?

He wouldn't. 

But that wasn't actually the most arresting part of Wolff's column. What caught our eye was Wolff's analysis of the bulls**t claim that the Former Loser Grifter lost the 2020 election because it was “stolen.”

We know he'll never drop that preposterous claim, no matter how much evidence falsifies it. We thought that was because he was an empty narcissist would couldn't face the fact that he was badly beaten, by 7,000,000 votes. That's a lot of votes.

But we were, wait for it, wrong. Yes, it can happen. It's true enough that the “stop the steal” shtick does serve as a balm to the FLG's ego, like groping innocent women or Adderall.

According to Wolff, though, it's so much more:

But perhaps most important, there is his classic hucksterism, and his synoptic U.S.P. — unique selling proposition. In 2016 it was “the wall.” For 2022 and 2024 he will have another proposition available: “the steal,” a rallying cry of rage and simplicity.

Wolff's thesis is that the FLG's endless whining about the election he lost is in fact another huge jolt to his hate-addled base, as thrilling and addicting as tales of Mexican assassins, fake news, hordes of faceless government storm-troopers breaking down your door and injecting you with Bill Gates's microchips, or the crank they brew in their trailers.

Can this be true?  In a country still reeling from pandemic, insurrection, climate change, and the results of generations of plutocracy (leading to the immiseration of much of the FLG's base), is the most important issue really “the steal?”

Let's put on our police uniform, including Kevlar vest, helmet, and shotgun, rev up our war-surplus tank and play Joe Friday for a minute.

The first thing Officer Friday would ask the victim of a theft, we think, is “what was stolen, ma'am?”

Is it really the election?  One thing we've learned about angry white supremacists over the last 50 years is not to assume that what they tell us is true.  Does anyone now think that the enraged attack on President Obama for daring to provide health care for all was really based on white racist concerns about the – budget deficit, as we were repeatedly told in 2010?

Given that not one of the “stop the steal” ravers can provide anything resembling a fact supporting the stolen-election narrative, we think that the election is only one aspect of a larger allegation of theft.

Consider the neo-Nazi “white replacement theory,” a formerly fringe notion asserting that the increasing diversity in the American population is in fact a mortal threat to the glorious White Race, because underachievers like Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka, and Sunisa Lee will shove aside deserving hard twerking [Surely, working? – Ed.] white people like Donny Jr., Chuck Woolery, and Rudy Giuliani.

Sounds nutty, no?  Yet it has become a mainstream principle of angry white supremacists in part because it is spewed out on a nightly basis by raving racists like Turkey Breast with Giblets and Stuffing Carlson:

Carlson has often used his show to launder white nationalist ideology, and his recent attachment to the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, “white genocide” narratives, and race war fearmongering is the culmination of years of violent and racist rhetoric. 

No wonder he's the highest rated Fox “News” prime time attraction, outpacing the woman who bites the heads off of chickens and the high-pitched carnival barker.

It will be recalled that the FLG started his rise to the Presidency by claiming that Mexico was sending assassins, rapists, and robbers across the border to steal heavens knows what.

Look Mee-Maw, we stopped the steal!

The FLG's enraged white mob is angry about what they regard as a steal, but it's a steal of much more than one election.

It's a theft of everything they have held dear throughout the sordid history of white supremacy in the United States, all rooted in the notion that white men, assisted by their loyal submissive wives, have the inherent and inalienable right to power and riches.  Any change to that sacred order is by definition a steal, whether it is giving people of color the right to vote (now being successfully attacked by white racists in red states), health care, or any other measure of social wealth and dignity. 

And when you fear that you're losing everything that makes you feel superior there's no length that you won't go to to protect what you see as rightfully yours, up to and including seizing the Capitol and hanging Mike Pence.

There's a lot of hilarious Tweeting about how stupid the FLG is, but he's always been smart enough to play to and inflame his white supremacist base, while doing nothing to ease any of their afflictions.  If you didn't think back in 2015 that it would work, who's the stupid one?

And if you don't think it can work again in 2024, then how smart are you?

In fact, relentlessly pimping the white-supremacist “steal” narrative, combined with Trumpublican assaults on the right to vote, could be a winning formula for the second FLG term and the subsequent larceny of American democracy.

That larceny is being carried out every day and in plain view, in states like Texas, Georgia, and Florida.  The only way to stop it is to enact Supreme Court-proof voting rights legislation.

Right now, the outlook is not good, because the Administration doesn't want anything to threaten their miserable gnawed bone of infrastructure spending.  But no one in their right mind would sacrifice democracy for bridges.  Who wants to drive on a newly-paved highway if the destination is a fascist-adjacent hate-based oligarchy?

We'd like to report a theft in progress.  Will anyone respond? 

UPDATE, 2100Z:  Don't believe me?  Maybe you'll believe Richard Hofstadter!

A crisis of legitimacy happens when ⤵️

That's fancy language for "they don't like the fact that women, Blacks, and other minorities are moving into positions of power."

Richard Hofstadter says something similar. They think "others" are taking what is theirs.

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— Teri Kanefield (@Teri_Kanefield) August 1, 2021