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This reminds me of a 2010 poll of Tea Party supporters in which 84% said that "the views of the people involved in the Tea Party movement generally reflect the views of most Americans." Only 20% thought Obama shared the values of most Americans.

 Full polling data here. I was asked to give a talk on campus about the Tea Party in 2010, and one of my main points was that it was a weakness of the movement that it had such a delusional perception of the American people. Oops. https://t.co/DQx43ckn7R
Anyway...the dynamic described here has been a long time coming. https://t.co/skjA9Zl1gz
That's the weird, seemingly illogical, thing about the right's culture war. They simultaneously think of themselves as speaking for the majority of Americans, AND they think that they are the saving remnant protecting a decadent society from ruin.
What squares this circle is the assumption that "the real American people" consist of straight white, rural or suburban people, & anyone not in that category doesn't really count as an American. That's how right wing culture warriors can both be the "majority," and a minority.
That explicitly exclusionary vision of "Americanism" (which is often articulated in more implicit ways like "our beautiful suburbs w/o low income housing") has very deep roots in our political culture. Trump's GOP hardly invented it.
But what's arguably new is the pride with which Trump's GOP has embraced the politics of hierarchy and exclusion. No more paeans to "compassionate conservatism," no matter how empty that rhetoric was. No more talk of "a nation of immigrants," no matter how weak that often was.
Thanks to this person in the replies who said it far more succinctly than I could have. https://t.co/ylrOwmEJyw
Understanding contemporary conservatism as an attack on pluralism helps explain the ever more explicit Islamophobia of the American right, the transphobia, the hatred of higher education, the hatred of "Hollywood," the disdain for cities.
"Pluralism" is an essential value in any functioning, modern democracy. When one party ceases to even give lip service to pluralism, then it threatens to transform that democracy into something quite different.
This is why, IMHO, there is important work to be done in red & purple parts of the US to talk people off the cliff of GOP anti-pluralism. My sense (hope?) is that most (not all) of my fellow Americans are pluralists in practice, even if they may vote an anti-pluralist party.
Part of this hope derives from having grown up in a small town in PA that is now big time Trump country. Within their own communities/neighborhoods, there was often a good deal of toleration for difference. A kind of "live and let live" attitude.
But there was also a suspicion of "outsiders" borne of a lack of knowledge about the world outside that place. I'd guess that over 50% of my classmates had never left the state before they were 18. The "outside world" was an abstraction to them (and me).
Reagan's "welfare queen" rhetoric really resonated in the 80s (when I was in HS there). There was not a single African-American student in my HS, but boy did my classmates spend time talking about black people as if they knew something about them.
There is no better way to get a white, Trump voting former classmate of mine from Central Pa to recirculate a pro-Trump message on FB, than to have it come out of the mouth of a person of color. If they have a black co-worker, they will assuredly post pictures of them together.
So in their interpersonal lives, these people express a desire to be pluralists. I was the only Jewish kid in my HS, and while this sometimes produced some awkwardness, it mostly produced an "oh, that's kind of weird and exotic and I don't know what to do with it, but cool."
But that unfamiliarity and discomfort can also be turned to more angry, sinister purposes by savvy politicians and media outlets that see an advantage in it. Those former HS friends can now be found circulating Soros memes in abundance.
A kid I played Little League with is now a full blown Q adherent who posts videos fantasizing about the day when the "cosmopolitan elite, the cultural marxists" (like me) will be "eliminated from the earth." Needless to say, I don't believe he thought that way about me in 1981.
I also suspect that were I to encounter him IRL and ask him about it, he'd still stick to his guns about the Q stuff but he'd assure me that he knows I'm not one of the bad guys and that he means me no harm. Perhaps I'm naive, but I think he'd really mean it too.
What the GOP has done in the county where I grew up is that they've encouraged people to look upon their neighbors as enemies. To look at that barista with the nose ring not as a kid expressing themselves, but as an antifa terrorist who hates America. https://t.co/n8nz08cLOq
"Turning neighbors into enemies" is a hallmark of fascist political cultures. Turning benign differences into existential threats is the essence of anti-pluralistic politics. At that point, that is virtually the only message that the GOP is sending its voters.
How many times was this story repeated across the US. People vote for Trump. A person of color who they like is harmed by Trump's policies. People then say (in earnest, I believe) wait a minute, I didn't want *him* to be harmed. He's a good guy. https://t.co/1O89mGJBNs
Connecting the dots between federal policy and what happens in one's community is incredibly difficult, even for people with PHDs in Political Science or History. Most voters just don't see those connections, and the GOP has taken advantage of that knowledge gap.

More from Seth Cotlar

Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
I seem to recall a story from a while back that revealed that Ginni Thomas met weekly with a group of right wing operatives that included the Project Veritas hoax artist.


Oh hey.

Gosh, look at that.

It’s all just so absurd, and yet so potent.


Here’s Anna Khait speaking at a pro-Trump, pro-steal the election rally last December.
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Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
Wish folks cared as much about countering the political culture of far right hyper-nationalistic populism that traffics in anti-Semitic tropes and naturalized conceptions of racial and gender hierarchies, as they care about dissing those who use the word “fascism” to describe it.

Ultimately, I think that’s what lay behind this terminological dispute. Is democracy more threatened by “center-left/center-right neoliberalism” or by the far right? People who resist the f-word say the former is the *real* threat. People who use the f-word focus on the latter.

My sense is that the people who use the "f-word" are not the neoliberal simpletons their critics tend to think they are. And likewise, the f-word refuseniks are no fans of the far right, they just don't see it as being as powerful and threatening as others do.

This might be overly reductive, but I think at least some of this has to do with where one lives. If one lives in a very blue part of the country, I can see how the threat of far right paramilitaries would seem hyperbolic and exaggerated.

I happen to live in a state capitol were heavily armed, far right paramilitaries have spent the past year assaulting people on a regular basis and working in cahoots with GOP legislators to invade and shut down the state legislature. Things feel quite edgy here.
POLITICS
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Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
Thinking about all of those Oath Keepers and Proud Boys who drilled for months (if not years) in preparation for January 6 while visions of “Antifa super soldiers” danced in their heads.

Anyway, watch this video and share it with everyone you know.
INSURRECTION
Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
It's important to note how deeply rooted & completely canonical these kooky ideas are in the US far right, & how dangerous it is that a sitting president is giving legitimacy to them. It's like Father Coughlin, the John Birch Society, and Geo Lincoln Rockwell had an orange baby.


Thanks (I think) to @z3dster for bringing this batshit tweet to my attention.

There's a long history of the American center-right and center-left laughing at this kind of stuff. It is indeed laughably ludicrous. But it's important to know that to millions of people, this is their truth. This is how they see the world. And now the President is condoning it.

One hallmark of fascism is that it defines "communism" as its enemy. One can be opposed to communism without being a fascist. But it's impossible to be fascist without being obsessed with the existential (and often hysterically overblown) threat of communism.

Every significant, US variant of fascism has depicted itself as a movement of Christian patriots defending the US from anti-American enemies of Christ. One can be a Christian and/or a patriot without being a fascist, but fascists almost always call themselves Christian patriots.
POLITICS
Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
The 90's called and it would like it's sneering depictions of "pathetic right wing rubes" back. I know it makes a certain segment of the educated classes (of which I'm a member) feel good about themselves to read paragraphs like this, but it's lazy political analysis.


That crowd was comprised of scores (if not hundreds) of well off business owners as well as highly skilled paramilitary warriors (many of whom were trained by our own government) who came very close to achieving their goal. Their gauche affection for Olive Garden is irrelevant.

This is the article. I share the author's revulsion at what this mob did. But this is not a time for ribald humor at the expense of people who erected a gallows upon which it appears they intended to hang the Vice President and probably

Every violent political upheaval is messy and chaotic and disorganized and comprised of people who are far from paragons of wisdom and rational thought. Wednesday's uprising was not uniquely pathetic...to think it was is just to invert a celebratory American exceptionalism.

I can guarantee you, none of the people of color in the Capitol building, especially the officers who bravely fended off this mob, mistook them for a second as bumbling rubes.
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1) Looks like Trump KNEW what the coup plotters were plotting on the 6th, so he arrived an hour late to the stage, and talked longer than he intended, before he asked MAGA to walk peacefully down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol.

He also didn't walk WITH them as he promised.
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1 “Amazing Juan O'Savin Video: America's New Day Dawning, the Rebirth of America" 12.21

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David Burney
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@jdburney1
What does "patriots in control" mean?
What would that "look like" in reality?


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Jugal / \u091c\u0941\u0917\u0932
Jugal / जुगल...
@jugalrp
IMP 🚨 INVESTIGATION

India's lockdown was called world's largest, strictest etc. @ BBC, we wanted to know how the govt planned it.

So, what're we looking at?

Govt docs that reveal every department/agency who was consulted by PM Modi before imposing #lockdown.

#Thread


How did we access the docs? Well, for months my colleague Arjun Parmar and I filed RTI applications with the relevant govt depts - State & Centre. Hundreds in fact. We then filed appeals, then filed second appeals..phew!

Background - this day last year, India had less than 600 cases and nine deaths. Some European & Latin American nations (with way higher numbers) had imposed lockdowns.

China, with thousands of deaths and cases by March 2020, never imposed a national lockdown.

One more thing - India started monitoring and preparing it's response to coronavirus from January 8, 2020. It was repeatedly mentioned that none other than PM was personally leading the effort.

Let's start with what we've got now.

India's lockdown was imposed by an @ndmaindia order. Who heads NDMA? Prime Minister.

So we asked NDMA - who all were consulted before lockdown? Also, how many NDMA meetings did the PM attend? Their response.

NIL to both. Yes, NIL.
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Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein
@ezraklein
So I've been reporting a story about how you'd fix the impeachment process. It doesn't work for removal, as currently designed. Impeachment was built for a political system without parties. It fails in a system with polarized parties.

The one time it functioned as intended, confusingly, was the time it didn't happen: Richard Nixon wasn't impeached! But the impeachment process, which came at the low ebb of party polarization in American history, convinced his party to force him to resign.

Would Republicans force Nixon to resign today?

Oh, you're cute. Thank you. I needed that.

The problem of impeachment is pretty simple: Presidents are leaders of parties. Parties are tied to the political fortunes of presidents. You're asking a party to basically wreck its immediate political future for the good of the system.

This doesn't just have the effect of making impeachment ineffective as a remedy. It's worse than that. It makes impeachment dangerous to the president's party, and gives them a reason to defend him and either normalize or minimize his crimes. As we are seeing right now.
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'Treasure Gods' - Sangha Nidhi' and 'Padma Nidhi', Tirumala, Tirupati.

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These are the two guards guarding the Wealth and Treasure of Lord Sri Venkateswara.

They are representatives of two treasures of Kubera, the God of Wealth.


One guard who is holding shangam (conch) on both the hands is known as Shanka Nidhi ('nidhi' means wealth).

On the other side, the guard who is holding Lotus flowers on both the hands is known as Padma nidhi.

Shangu is from the ocean which includes all types of wealth like pearls and corals.

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H was always unseen in S2NL :)

Those who exited at 1500 needed money. They can always come back near 969. Those who exited at 230 also needed money. They can come back near 95.

Those who sold L @ 660 can always come back at 360. Those who sold S last week can be back @ 301
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Starting my 2nd thread on Sringeri Parampara. This will cover the Jagadgurus after Sri Vidyaranya to Sri Shivabhinava Nrisimha Bharati.

It is really very tough to match the brilliance and achievements of Vidyaranya. After whom came 15 - Chandrashekara Bharati [1386-1389].

The next Acharya was Nrisimha Bharati [1389-1408]. Harihara raya found a town for this Acharya - Narasimhapuram. Acharya helped the king by guiding him in political affairs. He also initiated the kind with mahamantras for spiritual development.

Subsequent Acharyas were
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16-Shankara Bharati[1448 - 1455]
17-Chandrasekhara Bharati II [1455 - 1464]
18- Nrisimha Bharati II [1464 - 1479]
19-Puroshottama Bharati II [1479 - 1517]

20-Ramachandra Bharati [1517 - 1560]. Sadashiva Raya was emporer of Vijayanagara during this time.
21-Nrisimha Bharati III [1560 - 1573]
22-Nrisimha Bharati IV [1573 - 1576]
23-Nrisimha Bharati V [1576 - 1600]

24-Abhinava Nrisimha Bharati [1600-1623]. When he visited Malahanikareswara temple for first time he noticed there was no Vinayaka there so he took piece of turmeric and drew outline of Ganesha on a pillar and offered puja.
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I'm going to attempt to chronologically list all of the Marvel characters Stan Lee had a hand in creating. Working with his genius collaborators, Stan and his team produced an insane amount of iconic characters in a roughy ten year period. (Thread)


With his younger brother, writer Larry Lieber, and Jack "the King" Kirby:

Groot

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With writer Lieber, and artist Kirby:

Fin Fang Foom

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With the King, Stan gives birth to the Marvel Universe:

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Steve Stewart-Williams
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THREAD: 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ

1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE


2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less. https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n


3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)

(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)


4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.

For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3


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