“This wasn’t what this interview was going to be about,” a flustered Ron Johnson said to CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins.
When asked Monday about Republicans in Wisconsin having falsely claimed to be electors for Donald Trump in the 2020 election, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) claimed that Democrats have done the same “repeatedly in all kinds of different states”—yet failed to provide even one example, telling CNN’s Kaitlan Collins merely to “check the books.”
On The Source, Collins mentioned how 10 Republicans in Johnson’s state settled a lawsuit last week that was brought by Wisconsin’s legitimate electors, who had sought $200,000 from each elector. Though no fine was handed down, each elector admitted that Joe Biden won the election and agreed to not be an elector in 2024 or any election in which Donald Trump was a candidate. They also agreed that by posing as electors, they were “part of an attempt to improperly overturn” the election results.
They’re so used to getting no pushback.
To them pushback equals betrayal. If your boss says some bullshit (especially if it’s some self serving bullshit), you’re supposed to tell everyone you agree. True and false don’t matter nearly as much; it’s mostly where your loyalties are, and who will go to bat for you and who won’t. I haven’t seen the clip, but my guess is his body language is more or less as if some trusted friend had stolen money from him or something, because that’s how pointing out someone who’s “above you” is lying reads, in their world.
Makes me think about how Ron DeSantis would intentionally mispronounce ‘Thai Food’ on dates because any woman that corrected him on anything was not a woman he wanted to be with.
Interesting. Sort of like the ‘face’ concept in parts of Asia?
Sort of. In Asia, as I understand it, there’s a shared understanding (right or wrong) of who are the “upper” and “lower” parts of the hierarchy. The American version has each individual Republican placing themselves in the “top group” of their little hierarchy in whatever interaction – so e.g. I can treat my kids however I want to treat them, but if the cops come and look into it, it’s an affront to my freedoms and I’m down trodden and abused. Congress impeaching Trump is a grave injustice the likes of which has never been seen before, congress impeaching Biden is absolutely just and natural and anyone who says anything bad about it is a traitor. Etc.
Edit: Related story: An American military guy who was trying to conduct training in a particular non-Western culture wrote an extremely frustrated article in some military journal about his experience. Basically, what he was trying to say while trying super hard not to be racist about it, was that he’d noticed that if a student in his classes ever gave a wrong answer and he corrected them about it publicly, that person would be his enemy from that point going forward. Like it was some kind of mortal insult for him to suggest to the class that they didn’t have the answers to everything already. To him with an American background this was a normal part of teaching, but in this culture it was some grave insult. He basically said, I’ve tried a bunch of different ways and I think I’m running up against just a fundamental aspect of this culture that makes it tough for adult people to ever learn anything. To me that’s similar to the Ron Johnson behavior: A culture of “the people on top are in charge of everything” coupled with “I’m the people on top, I’m at the peak of my own little hierarchy and don’t have to listen to anyone and can do what I want” in an extremely toxic way.
‘Face’ concept? I could’ve sworn people in Asia had faces. TIL!
Oh. They can also lose their face, walk around with no face, and need other people to give them some face, or spend time saving their face from time to time. Go figure.
It’s a feudalistic mindset, and it’s leading us directly back to feudalism.
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That’s genuinely all there is to conservatism. Your tribe is good. Your leaders are right. People should know their place. Right-wing politics only exist as an expression of that default human worldview.
So it’s impossible for someone above you to simply be wrong. They must be undeserving of their position. Disagreement is a personal attack. Who are you to call them a liar?, where’s your billion dollars?, etc., etc., etc.