The Roundup

Continuing protests in Georgia, Jackson Hinkle’s latest round of negative attention and more!

Can't Resist Regurgitating This Again

Yesterday Donald Trump was found guilty on all counts in his hush money trial, which capped off a horrible week for him that also included being booed by the Libertarians and a critical biopic that he unsuccessfully attempted to squash getting its debut at the Cannes Film Festival. He's now a convicted felon, the first US president—either current or former—to receive such a distinction. A jury in New York has proven that no one is above the law, not even a former President of the United States. Here's a video from The Lincoln Project that really makes me feel good whenever I watch it.

Continuing Protests in Georgia

Last weekend was Georgia's Independence Day and the people are continuing their protests against the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party on the streets of Tbilisi.

The Georgian parliament has overridden the Georgian president's veto of that proposed foreign agents bill that has jumpstarted those street protests because it's similar to the one in Russia that the government uses to crackdown on dissent. That foreign agents bill is now the law in Georgia. Expect more protests in the future because this bill is clearly unpopular.

An Airport as a Metaphor for Ukraine

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has a series of before and after pictures of the Donetsk Sergei Prokofiev International Airport, which was originally built in 2012 only to have it become completely destroyed starting in 2014 (when Vladimir Putin responded to both the Maidan protests that ousted Putin's preferred Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovich, and the subsequent election of Petro Poroshenko as the new president by annexing Crimea and encouraged separatist movements in the Donbass region). That airport is the perfect metaphor for how destruction is the only thing that Russia has to offer Ukraine.

The Gen-Z Lord Haw-Haw Gets More Attention

Jackson Hinkle and his political philosophy of MAGA Communism is getting more noticed. The Daily Kos did a story about him citing this article that the British newspaper The Guardian ran about Hinkle. That's the good news for Jackson Hinkle. Now for the bad news: Both stories are less-than-glowing about Hinkle and MAGA Communism. The Guardian included this analysis of MAGA Communism:

“If you look at their policies, like what they actually propose, it’s clear that this is a deranged fringe movement that doesn’t really have a great deal of articulation,” said Alexander Reid Ross, a lecturer at Portland State University and author of Against the Fascist Creep, which explored how rightwing movements co-opt the language of the left. “It seems ludicrous, but I would say it’s really a symptom of the erosion of rational political life.”

The Daily Kos rendered this verdict:

I do not know if MAGA communism has legs. Probably not. As anyone who has tried to make money off the young knows, youthful tastes are fickle. And they crave novelty. If the horde were to adopt MAGA communism, the cool contrarian would be on to the next thing. And in the internet meme age, that could be in the next five minutes.

If Jackson Hinkle was smart, he would realize that this career that he made for himself is simply not sustainable and it’s time for him to make drastic changes, such as either returning to college and getting his bachelor's degree or going to a trade school and learn one of the in-demand blue collar trades that pays really well (such as installing solar panels). The fact that he lost his accounts on YouTube, TikTok, WhatsApp, Twitch, Represent, Teezily, PayPal, and Venmo should have given him a clue on the real long-term viability of his career. More recently he made this post on Twitter/X claiming that he had just lost his Instagram account because he defended the terrorist Houthis that are based in Yemen. It's obvious that Instagram and many other platforms are skittish about allowing terrorist apologists like Hinkle to use its platform to spread positive messages about certain terrorist groups and try to make money doing so.

That Instagram ban should serve as yet another wakeup call to Hinkle that he is on a bad career path that will harm his reputation in the long-run but he's clearly not listening. I don't think he's smart enough to seriously consider a total career change that would enable him to earn an honest living without simping for authoritarian dictators (like Vladimir Putin) and terrorist groups (like Hamas). His career as a propagandist who defends some incredibly despicable people is literally a dead end one with fewer opportunities for promotions with pay raises than Walmart. Most Western corporations would be very leery about hiring someone with a background like Hinkle’s. (Can you imagine the organized boycotts that would happen if Hinkle got hired at a Fortune 500 company and word got out about his past work praising Kim Jong-Un and Bashar al-Assad?) At this rate, I wouldn't even be surprised if, one day in the future, he ends up just like Gonzalo Lira and Russell “Texas” Bentley.

US Politicians and Gaza

Ever since the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7 there have been frequently pro-Palestinian protesters disrupting events by Democrat politicians by yelling “CEASEFIRE NOW!!!” and “STOP THE GENOCIDE!!!” While you could legitimately criticize President Joe Biden for his handling of the crisis, these people are going further. That Instagrammer I wrote about previously isn't the only one who has decided to vote third party based solely on Palestine, even though doing so risks throwing the election to Donald Trump, who is worse when it comes to Palestine. (Heck, some of these people are foreigners living outside of the US pretending to be Americans.)

When you see Republicans being even more pro-Israel and anti-Palestine than Democrats, these same pro-Palestinian protesters are remarkably silent. They go through the effort to protest Joe Biden's public appearances but they can't be bothered with doing the same with Donald Trump's public appearances.

A case in point: Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was recently photographed signing this on an IDF artillery shell: “Finish them! America ❤️ Israel! Always, Nikki Haley.”

That IDF bomb that Nikki Haley signed will eventually be dropped in Gaza. There's a possibility that this bomb may kill a Palestinian or two or three. But there is complete silence from the pro-Palestinian movement people. I looked around the Internet and I found that most of the outrage about Haley signing that bomb came from liberal and moderate Democrats. As for any reaction from the pro-Palestinian crowd, it's basically crickets. No response from people who have the Palestinian flag and/or watermelon in their profile name.

These pro-Palestinian protesters in the US haven't done anything to make me less suspicious that they may actually be Republican Trump supporters pretending to be radical in order to discredit Joe Biden and possibly affect the outcome of the election in November. The fact that there had been almost no outcry among the pro-Palestinian protesters about Nikki Haley signing that IDF missile have made me more suspicious. If Joe Biden had signed something similar on an IDF bomb there would have been tons of social media posts decrying this and more protests at Joe Biden events.

Comic Books as Propaganda Tools

Using comic books to explain the point of going to war in a foreign country isn't new. Captain America and Wonder Woman were both created during World War II to keep people entertained on the home front while trying to make the point that the Axis powers were the truly evil villains who needed to be defeated.

Russia has latched on to that tradition by creating comic books that explain why Russia had to invade Ukraine. Those comic books were originally created to target young Russians after a poll by the Russian state pollster suggested that young Russians were least supportive of the war.

But these comic books aren't just for Russians only. They have been translated into English, Chinese, and Arabic in an effort to reach out to an even wider audience and expose them to the Kremlin version of the war in Ukraine.

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