The FBI is scheming to lock up Clarence Thomas. Tim Walz will burn down America. Anarchy is about to erupt in the streets.

For the millions of Americans who have ended up on the mailing lists of Republican fundraisers, the world is a dark place, and the United States is carnage-ridden and on the verge of total collapse. That is, according to the text message solicitations that come pouring into their cellphones day after day. Years ago, after signing up for some right-wing material for reporting purposes, I ended up on the lists used by conservative outfits and Republican candidates to hit up people for money. I’m now at the receiving end of a firehose of emails and texts from the Trump campaign, other GOP politicians, and far-right organizations desperately begging for money.

Like many of you, I also receive solicitations from Kamala Harris and Walz. Apparently, they want to meet me (I’ve met Harris before—has she forgot?), have coffee with me, fly me to a rally, hear my views on the great issues of the day, and take a selfie with me. First, I have to make a donation. Okay, that’s fine. These requests often come with photos of them on the campaign trail looking happy. How nice. They seem like decent people having a good time while trying to win support.

That’s hardly the case with emails and texts from the Rs. They rain down gloom-and-doom upon their recipients. They are apocalyptic. The world is ending. All is lost. Hell is upon us. Unless we all chip in $40 or more. And it’s complete bullshit.

A recent text blared this concerning news: “FBI RAIDS CLARENCE THOMAS' HOUSE?!? WHEN WILL THEY STOP?” Really? Did I miss FBI agents bursting into the home of a Supreme Court justice? How could that be? I clicked the link and was transported to a website that declared, “FBI PROSECUTES CLARENCE THOMAS?!? FORMER FBI DIRECTOR LAYS OUT THE PLAN TO PROSECUTE CLARENCE THOMAS.” The site proclaimed, “Clarence Thomas continues to call out the Woke Mob's blatant insanity,” and it noted, “Now, we are at a breaking point - the FBI has DECLARED AN ALL-OUT ASSAULT on Clarence Thomas. The DEEP STATE won't stop until Clarence Thomas is gone forever.”

I imagine for a conservative this would be highly alarming—the FBI raiding and attacking Clarence Thomas. But…it wasn’t true. What had happened, I found out after a 10-second Google search, was that Andrew McCabe, a former FBI deputy director, had appeared on a podcast and explained how the federal government might be able to investigate Thomas for his failure to disclose millions of dollars in gifts and luxury travel received from well-heeled friends, including GOP big-money donor Harlan Crow. The FBI had not declared war on Thomas.

After presenting this disinformation, the site asked for donations ranging from $20.24 to $1,000, with the beneficiaries being the Trump campaign and the Iowa Republican Party. And if you did donate and didn’t uncheck a particular box, your contribution would automatically become a monthly charge on your credit card. (Always read the fine print!)

Another text message arrived with this troubling news: “TIM WALZ WILL UNLEASH HELL ON EARTH!” It noted his goal was “to WIPE MAGA OUT.” Click on the link, and there was a page asserting that the Democratic vice presidential candidate will “open our borders to the worst criminals imaginable” and that he had “already pulled in MILLIONS in dirty cash to buy the White House!”

More disinformation. Walz is not in favor of importing criminals, and the money he has raised after joining the ticket was not soiled. But all this was reason to donate between $20.24 and $3,300 to the Trump campaign. A similar text—sent out by the California GOP—led to a donation site that claimed Walz was a “self-proclaimed socialist” who would “MAKE AMERICA BURN.” It went on: “He thinks SOCIALISM is ‘neighborliness.’ He let the biggest city in his state BURN TO THE GROUND in the 2020 riots… And he put TAMPONS in boys’ bathrooms in the name of Woke.” None of that was true. (If you want the skinny on the ridiculous tampon controversy ginned up by commentator Megyn Kelly and others, read this.)

And there was a text from Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who warned that the “radical Left” had launched an “all-out assault” on her. That solicitation led to a page that claimed if the Democrats win in November, the consequences would be horrific: “State-mandated Woke. Communist bread lines. And full-blown ANARCHY in our streets.” It asserted, “That’s what the Democrat party is running on in 2024.” More crap. And, yes, Mace asked for money.

It’s easy to laugh at these ham-handed efforts to scare conservatives out of their hard-earned dollars. And anyone who falls for this obvious bunk has no one to blame but themselves. Yet think about the recipients of these solicitations. They receive probably several a day—and without any counterprogramming. (Or any fact-checking!) All of this hyperbole could easily lead them to believe the Democrats are demonic deceivers bent on destroying the United States. It’s a constant stream of disinformation. Whether hysterical appeals raise money or not—and they must work, otherwise they wouldn’t be so prevalent—this sleazy tactic ends up reinforcing and boosting paranoia and hatred on the right.

Using scare-’em rhetoric has been a mainstay of the right for decades. (Remember the Red Scare?) And Trump has been an extreme fright-monger since he rode down the escalator. For years, he has insisted that the Democrats are commies in league with Black radicals and antifa to annihilate the suburbs—and the rest of the nation. And the GOP has fully embraced his falsehoods-fueled demagoguery.

These text messages, churned out ceaselessly by candidates, campaigns, and consultants, show that the GOP is operating a Ministry of Fear. Sure, it’s grift. But it’s also dangerous and inflammatory propaganda that poisons the minds of the targets (or marks) and perverts the national conversation, undermining reasonable national discourse. Your neighbors and fellow citizens are being besieged and influenced by an ongoing and immense disinformation crusade operated for profit and political advantage. And we’re all victims of it.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

We at the Our Land World Headquarters appreciate our workers and believe they deserve a break to mark the end of the summer and eat as many vegan hot dogs as they’d like. Thus, we’re skipping an issue. Meanwhile, here’s a fun fact about Labor Day. Democratic President Grover Cleveland in 1894 signed an act declaring the first Monday in September a federal holiday to celebrate workers. But this wasn’t purely an act to honor laborers. He had an ulterior motive. By this point, May 1 had become recognized in the United States and around the world as the day to hail workers, but this commemoration was associated with socialists, anarchists, and rabble-rousers. Cleveland and others were aiming to establish a competing holiday that would undercut May Day and not be tied to all those radicals. So we ended up with a long weekend for summer’s finale. Not a bad deal.

The judges of this contest tend to define “comment” as something uttered or posted in social media, not a published article. But this week they are breaking new ground and citing the editors of the New York Times’ opinion section. First, theses pooh-bahs of the commentariat published a piece by Patrick Healy, the paper’s deputy opinion editor, that seemed designed to buzzkill the Democratic convention with this bold headline: “Joy Is Not a Strategy.” What a diss on the D’s big shindig. Healy huffed, “If the Democratic convention’s message for America had to fit on a bumper sticker, it would read, ‘Harris is joy.’ The word has gone from being a nice descriptor of Democratic energy to being a rhetorical two-by-four thumped on voters’ heads.” He groused, “‘Joy’ is the new ‘fetch’ from ‘Mean Girls,’” and he added, “joy is not a political strategy.” But here’s the thing: Two sentences later, Healy noted, “The good news for Democrats is that Harris seems to understand this.”

In other words, there’s no problem here. No one ever said “joy” was a strategy. (Actually, it’s more of a tactic.) And Healy acknowledged Harris was not joy-riding. Still, he ended up in the piece asserting, “Harris can’t coast on ‘joy’”—after stating she wasn’t trying to. It seemed an effort to concoct a provocative and contrarian take that was predicated on nothing.

Then came the move that won the Times’ editors and Rich Lowry, the editor of the conservative National Review, this week’s prize: an opinion column headlined “Trump Can Win on Character.” Lowry began with this reasonable observation:

Presidential races are won and lost on character as much as the issues, and often the issues are proxies for character. Not character in the sense of a candidate’s personal life but the attributes that play into the question of whether someone is suited to the presidency — is he or she qualified, trustworthy and strong, and does he or she care about average Americans?

Then Lowry went on to say that Trump could best Harris by assailing her character to make the “case that Ms. Harris is weak and a phony and doesn’t truly care about the country or the middle class.” He cited Trump’s “talents as a communicator” and pointed to his use of “sheer repetition, which, when he’s on to something that works, attains a certain power. Everyone knew in 2016 that he wanted to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. It would be quite natural for him, if he settled on this approach, to call Ms. Harris ‘weak’ 50 times a day.”

The judges were gobsmacked that the venerable Times would find merit in the argument that Trump, an inveterate liar, bigot, narcissist, and misogynist who tried to murder American democracy ought to campaign by disparaging Harris’ character and that a fine way to do this would be to repeatedly diss her as “weak.” And how could Lowry, who is no Trump fan but a right-winger who has always seemed more annoyed by Trump’s critics than the man himself, ignore the very standards he set? Can he say that a man who attempted to overturn American democracy is “qualified, trustworthy and strong” and cares “about average Americans”? (His article made no mention of the Big Lie, January 6, or the Covid pandemic.)

By the way, two days later, Trump used his social media website to boost a post that claimed Harris had risen in politics by giving “blowjobs.” This was part of a stream of Trump posts that referenced the nutty QAnon conspiracy theory and called for the prosecution and imprisoning of top Democrats. So this is the guy who Lowry—with the Times’ blessing—says should be questioning Harris’ character?

Once again, it looked as if the Times was striving to be ultra-contrarian to pull in clicks and put aside logic and responsibility. It was pure dumbassery.

Though it’s the sleepy dog days of the summer, Our Land readers have been quite active in their correspondence. Marty Klaif had a much better take than Rich Lowry, writing:

While I understand that it is normally valid and vital to examine and debate candidates' and political parties' positions and stances on the range of domestic and foreign policy issues, the most important issues of this presidential election cycle are being subsumed. The Republican party nominee is a person with no moral compass who has committed traitorous acts and who is psychologically unfit. I will not recount the evidence, as you and others have and can do a much better and more comprehensive retelling of the countless examples of incompetence and narcissistic acts, and George Conway is doing a great job illuminating and focusing the mental health issues. I realize that it's not going to go this way, but to me, policy issues are in third place for consideration in this election.

Larry Roth had his own beef with the New York Times:

While it's a little late to submit for Dumbass Comment of the Week, the New York Times had a guest editorial by Leif Weatherby titled "Trump is Losing the Humor War" on August 17. It opens with this:

Over the past decade, there’s one truth that liberals have been loath to admit: Donald Trump is funny. This aspect of his appeal prompts far less commentary than his far-right positions, his venality or his mogul’s bravado. But when you watch him at a rally, you can see he’s playing for laughs: jabbing at his opponents, doing crowd work, even being self-deprecating, sort of.

Cicero could write a treatise on Mr. Trump’s use of irony, as he’s proved himself a master of humorous misdirection. Liberals tend to think that irony is a type of wit that is aligned with progressivism. But for nearly a decade now, if you went looking for comedy in American politics, Mr. Trump would have been your best bet for finding it.

It goes downhill from there, and yes that's possible. There is something seriously wrong at the Times. Who thought this was worth running? 

Patricia Connolly had a complaint about the Democrats:

Genocide supported by our tax dollars is being carried out against the Palestinians. The Democratic convention refused to allow a Palestinian to speak from the platform. No, this isn't only an issue with young people. I'm 86 this very day, and it makes me sick in my stomach that our government is blindly supporting the Israel Can Do No Wrong meme. Netanyahu is putting the lives of Jews both in Israel and around the world in harm’s way by pursuing vile actions against civilians. The only reason I'm voting for Harris/Walz is because of Trump, who is frighteningly unserious, as Harris pointed out. He is still a real danger to this country's survival. What is the Democratic Party's foreign policy? You don't use the word “Palestine” in your piece. What's up?

In the most recent newsletter, I did say that the Democrats’ refusal to allow a Palestinian American state representative from Georgia, who was a Harris supporter, give a short speech highlighting the plight of civilians in Gaza was wrong.

A fellow named Mark emailed:

Enough already with the name calling and personality attacks. Focus on important policies and programs (immigration, inflation, healthcare, economy, environment, etc.) to demonstrate why Harris/Waltz, rather than Trump/Vance, deserves to be elected in November. If you really want me to subscribe, you need to provide info I can use, not gossip and naysaying.

I don’t think I engage in much gossip. Perhaps some naysaying once in a while. And I often mention assorted policies. Maybe Mark needs to read more issues of Our Land.

Helen Kessler sent in a correction to the lead item in the last issue:

Nice article. Adam Kinzinger is from Illinois, not Michigan!

Ugh. Apologies to former Rep. Kinzinger and both states.

Karen Martin educated us on two new vocabulary words:

I agree with your observations and insights. I particularly reveled in the remarks by Barack and Michelle Obama, Leon Panetta and Adam Kinzinger. Buttigieg was pretty good, too. Belittling a pathetic, insecure (and dangerous) Trump looks to me like a great strategy. My hope is that independents still on the fence were paying attention. I recently learned (via New Scientist magazine) two terms that apply so well to Trump: gelotophobia (fear of being laughed at) and katagelasticism (a psychological condition in which a person excessively enjoys mocking others). Trump would probably think gelotophobia is a fear of Italian ice cream. Trump's fear of ridicule, of being laughed at, and his obsession with mocking others (but not being mocked in return) seem so hard-wired that he's one of the easiest marks on the planet for the kind of baiting the Harris campaign is so good at.

Responding to a recent item about both-sidesism in the major media benefitting Trump, Philip Ratcliff observed:

The news organizations must appear to be objective and treat each side equally. Objectivity separates modern journalism from the opinionated and partisan journalism of yesteryear. As you pointed out, however, treating a foul specimen such as Trump with civility, and equating him with his rival, is to Trump's advantage. 

“How are you doing, Moxie?”
“Much better now that the polls are moving in the right direction.”
“Really? Feeling the joy?”
“I would if you would throw that stick.”