SALON REPORT — MAGA fatigue and the "exhaustion of outrage addiction"
Honored to have my words included in Chauncey DeVega’s latest report in Salon
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"Tucker Carlson being summoned to Moscow is not a show of strength. It’s evidence of weakness.”—Heidi Siegmund Cuda, Salon
Today in Salon, the great political reporter Chauncey DeVega continued his series on the longest election ever, which includes predictions and reporting from such esteemed colleagues as David Pepper, Rick Wilson, Jared Yates Sexton, and Norm Ornstein.
Your truly was included in today’s report by DeVega, which you can read here:
My thoughts on 2024 were included along with authors Sexton, Gregg Barak, Matthew Dallek. Sexton wrote The Midnight Kingdom; Barak wrote Criminology on Trump and the upcoming Indicting the 45th President; and Dallek wrote Birchers.
Here is an excerpt:
Investigative reporter and author Heidi Siegmund Cuda writes about U.S. politics and culture for Byline Times and Byline Supplement.
As a practical matter, what does this “longest election” mean? There will be staged horror events daily, forcing Biden to fight too many fronts, but this is because Trump does not have the votes. So, these are not signs of strength. Tucker Carlson being summoned to Moscow is not a show of strength. It’s evidence of weakness. From Kansas to Ohio, it is clear that voters are waking up to the stakes — overwhelmingly showing that women’s health care rights matter, as people quietly exit MAGA. The dark money villains who cynically fund organizations that weaponize people to destroy their own democracy now realize they overshot the mark when Roe was overturned. So, they find new targets, new boogeymen, to take over from the diabolical plot that turned people into single-issue voters. They take aim at trans people, immigrants, books, Taylor Swift, whatever sells in the much coveted 18 to 49 demo. But they’re failing, as the exhaustion of outrage addiction has given way to a fatigue and desire for some semblance of democratic normalcy.
It is, of course, troubling to see the merger of the MAGA-QAnon Cult, because we can’t reach people who are brainwashed. They’re addicted to Russian conspiracy theories sold to them as patriotism, with the Democrats in the role of witch. I do, however, believe there will be a resounding repudiation of Trumpism in November, as the merger of the MAGA and QAnon Cult will not prove strong enough to derail Joe Biden’s re-election. Mike Flynn is the wild card. But I am heartened by the tireless work independent investigative journalists are doing to expose U.S. Putinists. The Kremlin and US traitors have not yet won the hearts of the majority of the American people.
Trump has been on an impressive losing streak since 2018.
Public opinion polls are psyops. I don’t pay attention to them. They are designed to cause despair and anguish, which are weapons of fascism. The metrics on Trump have been trending downward for six years, but billionaire-owned media is big business and big business bets on fascism. Recall, William Randolph Hearst offering a syndicated column to Benito Mussolini. When we defeat these fascists — and we will — corporate media will have been the biggest villain.
It's unbelievably rare to have voted out a dictator while he was in the process of authoritarian capture — that just doesn’t happen. Americans should feel really good about that. It was messy and it’s ongoing, but the rest of the world could see us take a stand for democratic values after being duped. So now, we have the knowledge that we were attacked in 2016 — our unresolved issues of misogyny and racism exploited by Russian military intelligence and a network of US white supremacist cells. The cover-up continues as the same group of criminals tries to downplay the crimes of 2016 and are involved in 2024 election subversion campaigns, but many of us are aware of what happened and remain rooted in reality. Unfortunately, Putin is desperate for a win in Ukraine, and Ukrainians are putting up an unbelievable fight, so information warfare is cranked up to 11, continuing to inflict casualties on a daily basis. People are being dragged down rabbit holes of dystopian lies every minute— and the ultimate goal is to conjoin MAGAnon with Putin, as we see by Tucker Carlson bouncing on his knee. Western leaders need to step up and let their citizens know we are target nations of information warfare and begin the inoculation process. Information warfare will continue regardless of what happens in November, and that is our real fight — likely, the fight of our lifetime.
Our country is under attack, the attacks are ongoing — this isn’t Democrats vs Republicans. It’s Putin vs. America. That’s the framework. We have allowed hostile nations to tube-feed their poison into our minds, and we have to get tougher. We have to be made of tougher stuff. I’m tired of America playing the role of victim-nation to these malign forces — both foreign and domestic.—HSC
To read the full report, please do so at Salon. A big thanks to Chauncey for including me. He’s been doing the hard work for years, and you can read and support his personal reporting here and his Salon catalog here.
Onward and upward.
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