- Evidence of Republican hate of the Left;
- And evidence about their incompetence;
- And wondering when their “Two Minutes Hate” will appear.
Fortunately, in this case they’re not very bright.
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Ten days or so ago, at Charlie Kirk’s funeral, after Kirk’s wife said she forgives the killer, Trump got up and said that he disagreed with Charlie, and her, on that point.
Guardian: 21 Sept 2025: Charlie Kirk memorial: Trump says he ‘hates’ his opponents at event attended by tens of thousands
At one point, Trump mentioned that, shortly before he died, Kirk told a staff member he was not afraid of students who disagreed with him in the crowd at Utah Valley University. “I’m not here to fight them – I want them to know them and love them,” Trump quoted Kirk as saying. “In that private moment on his dying day, we find everything we need to know about who Charlie Kirk truly was.”
“He did not hate his opponents, he wanted the best for them,” Trump said, before breaking from his prepared remarks to add: “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them, I’m sorry.”
And in the videos of that talk, you can see how Trump emphasized the word “hate,” almost in a boastful, prideful sort of way. That’s the Christian plan, right?
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Today’s NY Times.
NY Times, 1 Oct 2025: White House Uses Shutdown to Maximize Pain and Punish Political Foes, subtitled “The Trump administration forged ahead with plans to conduct mass layoffs, as the fiscal standoff appeared to intensify.”
(Title in print: “Trump Uses Shutdown To Punish Blue States As Layoffs Grow Near,” subtitled “An Apparent Effort to Inflict Pain as a Fight Intensifies”)
The Trump administration took steps on Wednesday to maximize the pain of the government shutdown, halting billions of dollars in funds for Democratic-led states while readying a plan to lay off potentially droves of civil servants imminently.
(Note that Republicans are still unable to get their rival party’s name correctly; they keep saying “Democrat” states. They are either not very bright, or being deliberately malicious.)
In a series of social media posts, Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, said the administration had paused or moved to cancel the delivery of about $26 billion in previously approved funds across a range of programs, describing the money as wasteful or in need of further review.
The timing seemed to be no mere coincidence, nor were Mr. Vought’s choices of location. He said the administration was terminating one tranche of funds, totaling about $8 billion, because it was “Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda,” a move that affected projects in 16 states, most of which are led by Democrats.
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Another example of how Republicans are either not very bright, or are being malicious. They keep lying about this.
Media Matters, 30 Sept 2025: Right-wing media run wild with the blatantly false claim that Democrats are shutting down the government to secure “health care for illegals”
The issue is not about illegals. Pay attention.
Right-wing media are pushing a lie that Democrats are threatening to shut down the government over “free health care for illegal immigrants” and want to “blow up the budget” for “illegal aliens” even though undocumented immigrants are not eligible for federally funded health benefits.
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Fortunately, as I said above…
NY Times, opinion by David French, 2 Oct 2025: Incompetence Isn’t an Upgrade Over D.E.I.
One of the most important distinctions in politics is the difference between people who are mainly motivated to vote against their opponents rather than for their allies. Their hatred or fear of their opponents is far more important than their embrace of any particular policy or ideology.
Recall Trump’s hate, noted above.
This concept, called “negative partisanship,” is spreading like a virus across American politics, and it’s reaching its culmination in Donald Trump’s Republican Party. Ben Shapiro, one of the most popular right-wing podcasters in America, recently spoke with my colleague Ezra Klein and described the modern G.O.P. perfectly.
“I think that on the right there is such a rage that has arisen,” he said, “at least on part of the right, that the tendency is to just rip things out by their roots, rather than trying to correct or even determining whether the thing can be corrected.”
The Republican Party, Klein replied, “isn’t conservative anymore. It’s counterrevolutionary.”
“It’s anti-left,” Shapiro responded.
One of my running themes, at a big picture level, is that most people defer to their community’s standards of morality and belief, simply for the sake of identity. It’s much easier to sign over one’s beliefs to a single holy book, and to follow the wisdom of the community, than to bother trying to understand the reality of the world, the universe, or even other people in the world different from yourself. Why bother? As long as you keep in your bubble, you can live out your life completely unaware of anything about anything outside one’s immediate zone. But humanity cannot survive living like that indefinitely.
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One more.
Paul Krugman, 2 Oct 2025: An Autocracy of Dunces, subtitled “How stone-faced generals, Wall Street pushback, and a government shutdown may save America’s quickly declining democracy”
If America still had a fully functioning democracy, Donald Trump’s speech Tuesday to the assembled generals would have ended his presidency. Trump treated the event like a political rally and was clearly taken aback by the refusal of the audience to applaud or laugh at his jokes. Delivering a nakedly partisan speech to a mandated assembly of military officers was a gross violation of the Hatch Act. The content —telling the officers to be ready to use force against U.S. citizens — was clearly an impeachable offense. In an earlier era, Trump’s incoherent ranting would have paved the way for his immediate removal from office under the 25th Amendment.
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Still they don’t have to be bright to conduct rallies and rail against the liberal elites. In fact, their ignorance is their strength. How soon until we get to this?
Wikipedia: Two Minutes Hate
Quoting George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.
I’d be surprised if many of Trump’s rallies don’t already include moments like this.
