Jean-Pierre Dumas
Friday, January 8, 2021
Figure 1 A clown at the Congress…
At the beginning I was shocked, as everybody, by the storming of the Congress by a bunch of clowns. As everybody I thought that this country turned into a banana republic.
1 A lot of fun
I was also amused to see a clown in a “Chewbacca bikini” in the heart of the US democracy and respectability. I thought; at last we have some fun.
Figure 2 Pro-Trump people admiring the paintings
Figure 3 pro-Trump guy taking a souvenir, “see you…’’
Figure 4 New office of the pro-Trump movement, “life is beautiful here’’
Figure 5 Pro-Trump guys at the museum…who said these people have no culture?
I really enjoyed looking at these pictures, at last some (not so) young people not very respectful of good manners having a good time in the temple of conventions.
2 As a matter of fact, this is not so fun.
The populace composing these people were full of white supremacists as the Proud Boys “stand back and stand by’’. The Proud Boy is a racist, far right, male only group. QAnon movement, represented by Jack Angeli wearing a buffalo headdress, is a conspiracy movement alleging that a cabal of satan-worshipping pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and, of course, plotting against Donald Trump…ideology amplified by Russian state-backed troll accounts on social media. There was also neo-Nazis (the base) wearing visible swastikas.
The Proud Boys are a far-right, racist, hate group. The group is best known for street fighting, strange rituals and wearing black-and-yellow Fred Perry polo shirts. They are against the radical left.
Figure 6 Proud boys with their weapons in a civilized country...
Figure 7 Proud Boys going to University?
Figure 8 Proud Boys praying…
Figure 9 Trump praying with faith leaders, take a picture please…
Source: Alex Wong, Getty
“Whenever I see a picture of him standing in a group of pastors, all of their hands on him, I see a thought bubble [with] the words ‘What suckers,’” Mary Trump, the president’s niece, told me.
In Cohen’s recent memoir, Disloyal,
“Trump returning from his 2011 meeting with the pastors who laid hands on him and sneering, “Can you believe that bullshit?” But if Trump found their rituals ridiculous, he followed their moneymaking ventures closely. “He was completely familiar with the business dealings of the leadership in many prosperity-gospel churches,” the adviser told me.”
McKay Coppins, “Trump secretly mocks his Christian supporters’’, Sept. 2020, The Atlantic
The alliance of Republican leaders with religious conservative is strange. In the US there does not seem to have a clear-cut separation between religion (mainly some Protestant sects (evangelicals, Mormons, etc.) and politic.
Trump’s faith seems more for TV shows, he thinks that his wealth and celebrity would attract high-profile Christian surrogates to vote for him.
“I’ve been talking to these people for years; I’ve let them stay at my hotels-they’re gonna endorse me’’.
3 Something, we don’t understand
In all countries you have extremists, thugs and uneducated people, but why so many smart, educated people follow these ultra-right movements? Trump lost but with a lot of voices (more than the first time). Why a man so primitive, is still so popular whereas he was and is “unfit for the job”? How can decent people follow these ridiculous people?