At its heart, the right-wing ideology even with its veneer of "compassionate conservatism" and with its mask of right-wing evangelicalism, it still sees mental illness as a sign of the "other"; as a consequence of sin, as a personal failing, as a flaw, a defect.

The "cure", according to them, isn't talk therapy, isn't understanding, isn't working against binary thinking and other perceptive errors, isn't anti-psychotic medication, but you know what it is? More marginalization, more isolation, more exclusion, more stigma, more shame.

In political science, legitimacy is the right and acceptance of an authority, usually a governing law or a regime. Whereas authority denotes a specific position in an established government, the term legitimacy denotes a system of government—wherein government denotes "sphere of influence". An authority viewed as legitimate often has the right and justification to exercise power. Political legitimacy is considered a basic condition for governing, without which a government will suffer legislative deadlock(s) and collapse. In political systems where this is not the case, unpopular régimes survive because they are considered legitimate by a small, influential élite. In Chinese political philosophy, since the historical period of the Zhou Dynasty (1046–256 BC), the political legitimacy of a ruler and government was derived from the Mandate of Heaven, and unjust rulers who lost said mandate therefore lost the right to rule the people.

In moral philosophy, the term legitimacy is often positively interpreted as the normative status conferred by a governed people upon their governors' institutions, offices, and actions, based upon the belief that their government's actions are appropriate uses of power by a legally constituted government.

The Enlightenment-era British social philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) said that political legitimacy derives from popular explicit and implicit consent of the governed: "The argument of the (Second) Treatise is that the government is not legitimate unless it is carried on with the consent of the governed." The German political philosopher Dolf Sternberger said that "legitimacy is the foundation of such governmental power as is exercised, both with a consciousness on the government's part that it has a right to govern, and with some recognition by the governed of that right". The American political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset said that legitimacy also "involves the capacity of a political system to engender and maintain the belief that existing political institutions are the most appropriate and proper ones for the society". The American political scientist Robert A. Dahl explained legitimacy as a reservoir: so long as the water is at a given level, political stability is maintained, if it falls below the required level, political legitimacy is endangered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_(political)

A Man Spent Two Years in Prison for 'Cocaine' That Was Powdered Sugar

Delaware may be the second smallest state in the US, but it's had some big problems with its drug testing lab. A scandal in 2014 revealed that employees at the state's Controlled Substances Lab were stealing drug evidence. The lab was shut down after it was found to be riddled with "systemic failures" including mismanagement, nonexistent security, and bumbling incompetence.

The fallout from that scandal continues as this week Jermaine Dollard, a man convicted in 2012 of supplying cocaine to a Kent County distribution ring, is free and suing the state along with several of its current and former employees. The reason for his lawsuit is that the evidence in his case—alleged to be two kilograms of cocaine—was recently retested (or tested for the first time, as no one is sure it was ever really tested before) and found to be powdered sugar.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/8qkxzv/a-man-spent-two-years-in-prison-for-cocaine-that-was-powdered-sugar

Florida Man Awarded $37,500 After Cops Mistake Glazed Doughnut Crumbs For Meth

In December 2015, 64-year-old Daniel Rushing had just dropped off a friend at chemotherapy and was driving home an older woman from his church who worked at the 7-Eleven and would otherwise walk the 2 miles home.

As Rushing drove away from the convenience store, police pulled him over. The officer said he had been driving 42 miles an hour in a 30 zone and had failed to come to a complete stop before entering the roadway. When Rushing handed over his driver's license, Officer Shelby Riggs-Hopkins noticed his concealed-weapons permit. Rushing confirmed he had a pistol, and she asked him to step out of the car for her safety.

But Riggs-Hopkins had noticed some crystals on the floorboard of the car, and when officers used a field testing kit, the white substance tested positive for methamphetamine.

Orlando police sent the evidence it had collected from Rushing's car to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for further testing — which determined that just as he'd said, the white crystals were not a controlled substance. (Results did not indicate whether the substance was sweet and delicious.)

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/16/558147669/florida-man-awarded-37-500-after-cops-mistake-glazed-doughnut-crumbs-for-meth

$2M worth of 'fentanyl' seized turns out to be sugar, lab says

What officials thought was $2M worth of fentanyl seized in a drug bust turned out to be sugar, a drug testing company said.

On July 13, three people were arrested in a drug raid, and deputies in North Carolina seized what they believed to be 13 pounds of fentanyl.

According to CBS affiliate WREG, the New Hanover County Sheriff's Office tested several samples of a powder-like substance that was found with a Scott Company Drug Testing CSI field test kit and determined that the substance was fentanyl.

However, when the state lab tested the powder again, they realized the error. Results from a private company, NMS, proved that the "fentanyl" was actually sugar.

https://www.wvlt.tv/content/news/2M-worth-of-fentanyl-seized-turns-out-to-be-sugar-lab-says--492118231.html

Rick Wiles: Hillary Clinton Has A Body Double, Fakes Her Campaign Rallies

Citing videos he viewed on the internet, “Trunews” host Rick Wiles on Friday suggested that Hillary Clinton is faking her campaign stops, claiming that in videos of the events, the images that appear on the attendees’ smartphones are not images of the rallies.

“She’s nowhere to be seen, the flags are not there, you can’t even distinguish what they are looking at, it’s nowhere to be seen on the stage,” he said. “Are they faking her personal appearances?”

Wiles also alleged that Clinton’s campaign sent out a body double to speak to the press outside of her daughter’s apartment after she had fallen ill at a September 11 memorial event: “I personally think it was a double. I don’t think Hillary passed out on the curb and then an hour or two later was walking around smiling and grinning. That just doesn’t happen in normal life.”

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/rick-wiles-hillary-clinton-has-a-body-double-fakes-her-campaign-rallies/

Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2019 suggested Ruth Bader Ginsburg was replaced with a body double

Marjorie Taylor Greene said in February 2019 that then-Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- who died in September 2020 -- didn't really make a public appearance, implying she was replaced by a body double. Greene is now a member of Congress from Georgia and has been selected by her Republican colleagues to serve on the House Budget Committee and the House Committee on Education and Labor.

https://www.mediamatters.org/supreme-court/marjorie-taylor-greene-2019-suggested-ruth-bader-ginsburg-was-replaced-body-double

Right Wing Bonus Tracks – 9/16/16

Bradlee Dean can’t believe that people are so stupid that they can’t see that Hillary Clinton is obviously using a body double.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/right-wing-bonus-tracks-91616/

Alex Jones Has Been Named In Two More Defamation Suits

Two lawsuits were filed against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars network last night on behalf of the parents of children murdered in the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in 2012, who Jones claimed were “crisis actors”—a claim he maintains to this day.

The suits filed against Jones last night seek more than $1 million in damages from Jones for proliferating the objectively false claims that the parents of children murdered at Sandy Hook were actors and that no children actually died on the scene of the mass shooting. Sebastian Murdock at HuffPost reported:

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex-jones-has-been-named-in-two-more-defamation-suits/

Trump’s Team: The Bigoted, Unhinged Conspiracy Theorists Benefiting From Donald Trump’s Campaign

Ahead of the crucial Florida primary, Trump released a statement touting the endorsement he received from Pastor Carl Gallups, and then asked Gallups to deliver the invocation at a campaign rally in Pensacola.

Homosexuality has been a major focus of Gallups’ activism; he has repeatedly warned that same-sex marriage will completely destroy society by bringing about economic turmoil, severe persecution, the “enslavement” of Christians and divine punishment.

Gallups has also latched on to the Sandy Hook truther movement, which claims that the government faked the murder of schoolchildren and educators in Newtown, Connecticut, in order to justify new restrictions on firearms.

He called the massacre a “hoax” and said that grieving parents were actually crisis actors.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/trumps-team-the-bigoted-unhinged-conspiracy-theorists-benefiting-from-donald-trumps-campaign/

Is the QAnon Fantasy Unravelling?

Q’s disappearance (which lasted for nine days until the anonymous figure resurfaced again on Nov. 12) coupled with Trump’s defeat in the presidential elections, led to a range of responses from his followers. Some stood their ground and doubled down on the conspiracies, while others began to question whether they themselves had been fooled. Followers (known as Anons) flooded forums, Telegram chats, and Q-friendly spaces to discuss the events, share their despair, and seek comfort from others.

“We Have (sic) been told time & again Trump wins in the end!! Don’t give up so easily, if you believe don’t give up,” one poster told a QAnon group of several hundred members on Telegram. Another responded that “giving up is NOT an option for me!!”

This is not the first time that QAnon believers have faced disappointment. One of the initial claims of the conspiracy theory was that Hillary Clinton would be arrested and imprisoned in 2017. When that did not happen, QAnon followers recalibrated and decided that Clinton had been placed under house arrest and was wearing an ankle bracelet. Even her appearances in public only emboldened them to raise the stakes and claim that the deep state had replaced her with a clone.

Then in 2018, Q claimed that Republicans would dominate the midterm elections and reclaim the U.S. House of Representatives. This, of course, did not come to pass, and while this likely impacted some of Q’s followers, the movement only continued to grow over the next couple of years.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/is-the-qanon-fantasy-unravelling/

Right Wing Bonus Tracks: The Blood Drinkers

Stella Immanuel, one of MAGA world’s leading anti-COVID-19 vaccine “experts,” claims that many world leaders are clones inhabited by demons whose “job is to make laws that will cause people to die. And you know why? Because they are blood drinkers.”

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/right-wing-bonus-tracks-the-blood-drinkers/

Right Wing Bonus Tracks: Rational People Like Us

Bishop Larry Gaiters claims that President Joe Biden, Tom Hanks, and Bill and Hillary Clinton are all dead and have been replaced by clones.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/right-wing-bonus-tracks-rational-people-like-us/