A Little TrumpWorld Idolatry for Your Sunday Services

This feels unhealthy to me, but of course, it's parked right there at Trump International Golf Course now, because why not? It's a Trump property, and if he wants to decorate with assorted artworks promoting the man, the myth, the legend, I guess that's his business. It's just that when he does stuff like this,

it's hard not to feel like he's sending a very political message:

The White House moved the official portrait of former President Barack Obama to a new location in the building’s Grand Foyer, replacing it with a painting of President Donald Trump with his fist raised in the air right after last year’s assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The portrait appears to be based on a photo of then-candidate Trump, bloodied and surrounded by Secret Service agents, still onstage after being shot at the campaign event. That image, along with Trump’s words to “fight, fight, fight,” became a hallmark of Trump’s bid for a second term.

"Appears to be"? Of course it is.  Trump didn't just suddenly find himself like a martyr, you know. His cult believes that what didn't kill him made him stronger. 

For All They Care

 

You know, there was a little part of me that thought I'd write a little bit about the Jack Smith 1/6 report, but honestly--no. People who care already have a good idea what it's all about (and can even tell you about missing pieces FWIW) and people who don't care--don't care. I've developed a kind of "you can lead a horse to water" sense of these revelations, and I don't think I could find a better example of why than today's Senate confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense. 

Hegseth came into the hearing with a cloud of controversies hanging over his nomination. But after he was questioned for more than four hours, Republicans came away feeling optimistic that Hegseth, a former Fox News host and Army combat veteran, would be confirmed to lead the Pentagon.

“He comported himself extremely well and made a strong argument for why he ought to be the next secretary of defense,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., adding he will “work quickly” to get Hegseth confirmed.

I would like to know what Senator Thune thought the "strong argument" was, because I'm not sure the hearing actually demonstrated that he was in any way particularly well-qualified or that he had some unique qualities that overrode his various personal controversies. But if what we have is a not-especially well-qualified serial adulterer and accused rapist who bankrupted a couple of NGO's being selected by a not-especially well-qualified serial adulterer and accused rapist who bankrupted several companies, well, you might as well talk about the weather as judge him on any set of serious criteria. 

Sure, "advise and consent" is part of a US senator's job. Sure, you could try and say that having an unfit person running the DOD is a national security problem. But you see that sign in the picture up above--where the word "military" is misspelled? 

Trump Sexual Abuse Verdict Upheld

 

A federal appeals court has issued a written opinion upholding Trump's defamation verdict which found him liable for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll:

"We conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” the 2nd Circuit said. “Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial.”

There is something about this case that fascinates me: the first defamation case found him liable with a $5 million dollar verdict. The second, at which he briefly testified, awarded an additional $83.3 million in damages. Something about Trump was very unsympathetic to a jury. 

Oh, They'll Get in Line

 

I can recall finally understanding what "elitism" meant to anti-intellectual MAGAs, and basically, it was them being told they were wrong or cruel and being made to feel bad by...anybody. It wasn't about class or education status--it was the idea that someone out there was gonna tell you you wasn't exactly as good as them. So there! 

So, in the H-1B visa debate that is roiling TrumpWorld, Vivek Ramaswamy seems to have been part of the mild fracas happening on X by letting US (White) Americans know they culturally weren't producing well qualified tech job applicants because they didn't rise and grind the way Asian kids do. Too many jocks and prom queens and peaking in high school. MAGA was fine with "pull your pants up and take care of your kids" lectures directed at Black Americans, but if you tell them that their four touchdowns in a single game for Polk High School doesn't qualify them for more than selling shoes, they are going to get Big Mad. 

And we already know where white supremacist Laura Loomer was on this one:

One Rough Hour, One Rough Beast

 

Trump says his idea for stopping crime is to allow for “one really violent day”: “One rough hour, and I mean real rough...” pic.twitter.com/6XeVXL6R8b

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 29, 2024

When someone shows you who they are the first time--believe them. This is Trump, ostensibly talking about crime. But what I think he means here is--what he calls "a crime". And that could be any damn thing. Making his hair look bad on television.  Saying he didn't win in 2020, or that Russia helped him in 2016. Crimes are crimes in the run-up to a dictatorship, and then things the dictator doesn't like are crimes. 

It's a "crime" that people believe him capable of crimes. It's a "crime" that his rallies aren't attended to his liking. They have a fix for that, in North Korea. 

I remember thinking that the Telegraph and other right-wing comms in advance of 1/6 reminded me of "The Turner Diaries"--specifically, the "Day of the Rope" part. Multiple posts from Trump-affiliated right-wingers were looking to do something to "antifa". And I don't think they were at all confused that "antifa" means "anti-fascist". This is why there was only Trump fans there.

You First, Assholes

 

“People are so sick of being preached at about politics from rock bands”

“Stick to what you’re good at. You’re not a political analyst. You’re probably not really well read on the issues that Americans really care about” pic.twitter.com/vnGna7jkzo

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 2, 2024

Maybe Fox News pretend analysts need to shut up--at least long enough to hear what others are saying.

Actually, successful rock bands are political analysts or at least, seize the zeitgeist and appeal to people because they enunciate feelings other people can vibe with.  Are people really sick of being preached at about politics from rock bands--or is it that something they say resonates and that's why they have a following? I mean, songs like "For What It's Worth", or "Ohio" or "Southern Man" or "Leaving on a Jet Plane" or "Eve of Destruction"--the "freedom rock " Woodstock era stuff I heard as my early lullabies, weren't any more neutral than the "Ballad of the Green Berets" was. 

Now, whether I listened to the Dead Kennedys or INXS or The Clash, I heard politics, even as a kid. I don't understand people who ever listened to the lyrics of Rage Against the Machine and never understood what the machine was. Was it a soda machine? Were they just mad they couldn't get their Barq's root beer jones on?  Of course, they were political. 

Look, one of my ear-influences is Billy Bragg. Punk as fuck. Not punk as fuck--slipping in your old age and deciding Trump is punk. Trump is The Man that fighting the power has been about since, whatever. 

And Green Day's "American Idiot" was explicitly a political album. Just like Neil Young's "Living with War."  Bob Dylan--political. Bruce Springsteen--political. Patti Smith, Bikini Kill, Hole, Pussy Riot. 

Fox News talking heads are not political analysts.  They are propagandists. Who knows what ass they pull what they say from? They aren't musical, they aren't artful, they aren't well-informed, and they say whatever the network wants. Conservatism isn't edgy when they go against the mainstream--mostly they are just counterfactual and fronting for some paymaster--the dead opposite of the punk ethos.

Or to put it in rank Gen X terms--they are sell outs. They want you to dismiss what you are hearing because "you can't handle the reality of it". But you totally could get "woke" if you listened to the lyrics around you.  Fox News "analysts" are fake and don't represent anything going on in the real world. If they want someone to stop talking about politics--instead of shutting up artists who care about the world, they could shut the hell up because they just care about payday. 

Maybe the Boomers who listen to Fox should go ahead and re-listen to that "freedom rock" I teethed on as a kid. It was politics. And a lot of it was dead-on. 

Six Days of Bomb Threats

 

There is one political side that has resulted in rhetoric that leads to the arson and mass shootings at mosques, gurdwaras, synagogues, and supermarkets and schools, and the threats of bombings at hospitals and now, six days of bomb threats at an OK school district over a video shared by a school superintendent. 

The threats began the same day that Walters retweeted a post from a day earlier on the conservative provocateur account Libs of TikTok, which featured a video of a librarian at Union Public Schools. The video shows the librarian walking next to a book shelf with the text “POV: teachers in your state are dropping like flies but you are still just not quite finished pushing your woke agenda at the public school.” That’s different from the caption that the librarian originally posted on her TikTok account, which Libs of TikTok removed: “My radical liberal agenda is teaching kids to love books and be kind — hbu??”

When Walters retweeted the Libs of TikTok post to his nearly 10,000 followers, he added: “Woke ideology is real and I am here to stop it.” 

See what happened there? The original sentiment of the librarian in question was "My radical liberal agenda is teaching kids to love books and be kind." Are conservatives deciding that loving reading and being kind really are some kind of scary agenda, and that the comment wasn't a frightening manifesto about left-wing indoctrination, but an ironic comment about how a librarian's job is to do something totally normal and not-scary: show kids that books are great. Encourage them to be nice to each other! 

Boogedy!

See, this is how easy it is to create a boogeyman. Just drop some charged language like "woke" into the mix and frame things as if they were a problem when they are not, and watch simple-minded drones fly in to stir shit because they want to signify for something. Look at me! I am a culture warrior against....

Literacy and decency. Good job, so-called Christian conservatives. Feeble sarcastic golf clap for the bomb threat people. You are literally barbarians tearing down Western Civilization. You've struck a blow against public safety and demonstrated the superiority of your side at mindless terroristic posturing. 

The Weak Dictator DeSantis

 

I keep thinking I want to write something about Desantis (because he is uniquely awful as a 2024 GOP candidate and as a governor) but it just always feels like there is more Trump news. It's hard for even a dedicated, intentional troll to maintain headlines of any kind when your primary opponent is a) a former president and b) keeps getting indicted and stuff. So, in the midst of avoiding writing yet another damn TrumpWorld post, I thought I'd just catch up with Ron. 

Trump likes to tout that he's rising in the 2024 polls, but it's more the case that DeSantis, his nearest competitor, has fallen and possibly can't get up. The Florida governor's campaign "reset" just saw his campaign manager replaced with his state COS. He fired about a third of his campaign staff, but some campaign aides got jobs working for his state office.  

Some of his aides must have really shown quite the work ethic. His campaign does feel like it's chock-full of hustlers. 

Justice Thomas has Very Dear Friends

 

The owlish device of Bohemian Grove says" Weaving spiders come not here" and this is the crux of the story--weaving spiders be everywhere when a Supreme Court Justice is accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gifts from politically involved billionaires.  Why, yes, that story was from 2011. Clarence Thomas has told on himself when he admits his dear friendship with Harlan Crow has been for something on the order of 25 plus years, when he has been on SCOTUS for nearly 32 years. 

Did he get endeared by this very good friend after having become a SCOTUS? and wouldn't any one of you find the lavishing of multi-million-dollar trips and so on very endearing? Of course, you are dear friends--now. 

Now, where this stands in the current court, where a leak was probably covered up, shouldn't we worry? Don't we respect this court though, all warts and blemishes aside?

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

 

 I have explained the terrible compulsion behind some of my posts--unless I post about whatever stupid thing is gnawing at me, I don't get to move on to other business--and here this weird thing is, still nibbling at my neocortex:

A queer music artist did a dance performance in a devil Hallowe'en costume and right-wingers decided Hollyweird was shoving Satanism down their throats. 

There's a long history of regarding Satan and music, especially popular music, as connected and it's certainly been written about before, so I don't need to hash out the secular and profane aspects of modern music. But this isn't really about that, or not quite.

In a climate that has tried to start a "satanic panic" over Drag Time Story Hour that has since boiled its way down to getting books banned and even removed from schools--it isn't Satan that's the problem. Sam Smith isn't a satanist, they are queer. And it isn't Devil's Advocacy on my part to point out what I think is the real problem folks like Matt Walsh or Ali Alexander have: The real problem is they are homophobic, transphobic grifters--the hate dollar keeps them going.

It's the funniest part of the culture war--on our side, we talk about Poe's Law, where outrage among the religious right is so daft you can't tell parody from their actual genuine product. But I always suspect it's because the genuine product itself is so adulterated with self-conscious schtick. 

On their end, they think we are feeding babies to Satan (allegedly) when most of us cultural left folks really don't believe literally in the biblical bogeyman. The saying that the greatest trick the devil pulled was convincing people he didn't exist isn't quite right. The greatest trick ever pulled was telling people there was supernaturalism behind their actions, and therefore they had to listen to priests and other jumped-up demagogues instead of thinking for themselves. 

Our sin is scoffing at their "deeply held beliefs"--which is their only basis for anyone going along with them. And I also scoff at them for getting all exercised over a singer in a shiny little top-hat with  horns.

Give me a break!

It's a Gas, Gas, Gas!

 

So, the freakout on the right today was a panic that The Man was coming for your gas stoves because the avocado green of your best-loved steak-cooking appliance wasn't green enough for the uncanny valley of our future dystopia. Or something like that. 

This is a thing that isn't happening. Jack-booted Bidenistas are not going to confiscate people's kitchen appliances. What the whole entire heck? 

But no, there was much ado:

So much signifying. They'd rather fight than switch, etc.--which no one was asking them to do. People just wanted to look into the idea that maybe gas ranges were giving kids asthma. I am so sorry that one's ability to properly sear pork chops is more important to them than whether their kids have asthma, but I guess I have to respect your deeply held Maillard-reaction traditions and pass the Albuterol. 

Now because I am class-conscious, I get that one is not always at cause over one's kitchen appliances. You might just rent, for example.  I have a thirty-something year old Magic Chef gas stove that my husband complains about because he can't get a proper flame from it. I hate it personally because the oven doesn't work right and cleaning it is gross. One of the burners goes out occasionally and I am 50 years old and still light a pilot like I want to duck and cover.

Take my gas oven you fucks! Give me a nice clean new induction chrome MF than makes me feel like a real woman! Why can't the government interfere in my kitchen just this once? 

But look, if you right-wingers want to get misty over the blue flame of freedom, you just go on ahead and follow Catturd's example:

Turn on all the burners.  Don't turn them off. Leave them going as an eternal flame for all the things they took from you. Your guns. Your Bibles, Hot teachers who didn't have temporary hair colors and piercings. Breast milk cheese. Um, Burgers with real meat. Movies where white dudes are the only good guys and are definitely virile and like, getting it. Make a shrine. Put up drapes around your gas stove, which is totally all burners going at once. Rip out that carbon monoxide detector. It's a green new deal fink. Gather the children in to see your spectacle and make them take deep breaths of freedom. 

Now you're really cooking with gas, friends. Look! I'm shedding real tears! You win!

UPDATE: I guess it could be stupider, like if right wing world got riled up over whether the M&Ms were sexy enough, and not obese feminist candies or whatevs.  Or, like, if Dr. Suess got unironically cancelled for wokeness after conservatives got all pompous about how woke was censorship over actually--Dr. Suess. No really. Totally a serious political movement and not a bunch of slackjaws trying to figure out where the cool kids table is. 

Fox News Hates Families

 

what a monster pic.twitter.com/Nmj2HZl3BO

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 11, 2022

Last night, the above screencap sums up the argument that Sean Hannity wanted to make against President Biden--he's a loving father. 

That's it. Joe Biden, the man, not the politician, understood his son was going through a rough time and offered support and unconditional love, and that was...suspicious? As if, if your child was going through troubles, was imperfect, you should throw them out? 

It makes me wonder if conservatives like Hannity are the way they are because they don't have the grace to do that, and I understand a little better why they were ready to kill their own viewers with lies about COVID-19 and profoundly damage LGBT kids with lies meant to alienate their families from them, to not accept them for who they are. 

The most horrible lie--that we are not responsible to one another, that we don't need to care for one another, not even our own families, lies at the heart of it. Suddenly the sad stories of older people watching Fox News all day who can no longer talk to their family members makes sense--their sense of connectedness was undermined in a culture war. 

There is rehab for substance abusers. How does one rehab a person who does not understand compassion? How do you walk them through the baby-steps of learning to regard another human's feelings, their life? 

Fox News attacks Joe Biden through his family not because he is a bad man, but because he is not bad. But they must attack him somewhere, so they find what they think is the softest part. I do not think they understand--it is the strongest part. Compassion is the strength to support others, and Biden has used his time after time in a lifetime of loss and confrontation with the worries of the world. 

I am aghast they this is not understood, because it seems the most human thing to understand. 

Defining the GOP

 

Is that a pizza menu Rep. Elise Stefanik holds in her hand in the picture above? Why, no, it is the Republican party's plan to define itself ahead of the midterms! Many GOP legislators, we are assured, worked long and hard to boil down what the party plans to do in their Commitment to America, and while I think what's on offer is long on goals and short on policy specifics, I can already envision what the party will do, because they have been telling us.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, I think, has done the best job of defining the party: it's about a federal abortion ban.  He has literally said the words "defines our party" regarding this issue, and I sure as heck don't disbelieve him, because even if they can't manage it federally, you can be sure GOP governors and state houses are ready to exercise their "states' rights" to take away the rights of people who can become pregnant. 

They have goals regarding crime and inflation, and also oversight of the White House. I think we can predict fairly well what House Republicans would do with their opportunity--pretty much nothing useful for the economy (tax cuts for the rich and "cutting waste" really won't accomplish much) and maybe they are only concerned about crime regarding some people, but as long as Biden is president, they have a great incentive to not make things better and to, I dunno. Try impeaching him for something. Anything, really. 

They say they want to protect Social Security and Medicare, and Sens. Rick Scott and Ron Johnson have given us a good window into their thinking about that--they are going to destroy the village to save it. 

From the skimpy pamphlet that GOP House leadership brandished, to the video that contained a lot of stock footage from...Russia (Really? A national party won't foot the bill to contract a videographer to shoot B-roll out in Indiana or wherever?), you can really see the loving, thoughtful work that has gone into their messaging. 

Even the comments of their probably-planted concern-mommy let you really know what they are all about:

"Critical race theory; diversity, equity, and inclusion; gender identity ... anti-bullying programs ... These are all Marxist-style programs targeting our children."

— A mom at the House GOP's "Commitment to America" agenda rollout, as Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy nods along pic.twitter.com/AiLhVvX07f

— The Recount (@therecount) September 23, 2022

So, you understand, they will defeat classroom communism with a commitment to be....pro-bullying, anti-inclusion, and definitely crack down on that diversity and equity stuff. You bet! In sum, f you want a party that stands for culture war, inaction on kitchen table issues, the Big Lie, book-banning and making kids carry their rapists' baby to term, well, the GOP have well and truly demonstrated who they are! 

"Not Many People Know it...."

 

TN GOP state senator uses Hitler as an example of how people can make something of themselves after being homeless.

This is absurd. pic.twitter.com/bhyTWIz6C1

— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) April 14, 2022

There was a time when I would wonder if this kind of nut-picking was fair. Can you really point to what some state legislator dumbass says and then somehow judge the whole GOP because of it? And as I looked around me, I eventually decided yes. Yes, I absolutely should make the connection. When someone takes a look at the life story of Adolf Hitler, the takeaway should not actually be that, say what you will about the man, he was a real go-getter. (And a terrific dancer!) 

There is a real problem when a party regularly demonstrates that they don't actually see the problem with Hitler comparisons because, well...they don't see the problem. They are deliberately not seeing the problem.  And if Republicans wonder where folks get the idea from that they are represented by people like Patrick Little or Arthur Jones or Paul Nehlen, or...you get the picture. 

This was a gaffe. They guy made an unfortunate positive reference to Hitler, in regards to a bill that punishes people who have no homes for camping in public spaces. (I rankle at the term "camping"--it's called "living". People exist with bodies that have to go somewhere. They are living in those bodies in those places because shelters are for whatever reason not a possibility for them. But it isn't a pastime for them and they don't have a home to otherwise go be in. 

Why am I pointing this out? The idea that vagrancy is a choice and should be punished is to classify the people as the problem. There is a long history of the in the US and elsewhere--but it certainly isn't helpful. And absent good options, it can lead to people deciding where "undesirable people" or "asocials" need to go. 

I worry about that. Republicans are very good at labelling people as the problem. And they are even re-locating people they consider a problem. Stupid, dangerous stunts today--but with a kernel of something very dangerous in them that makes me wonder what we will see from them in the future. The party of "Don't say Gay" and "Where's your Papers?" feels like they aren't making mistakes when stuff like this pops out, just letting a mask slip/ 

This Would Be Appeasement

 

Former Trump Advisor Douglas MacGregor says we need to stop demonizing Putin, lift all sanctions, stop providing weapons and aid, that it’s “hopeless,” and just let Putin take whatever part of Ukraine that he wants. pic.twitter.com/HBnLWVdVgD

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) February 28, 2022

From a purely defensive point of view, I realize that the loss of lives could be temporarily paused by something like this--if you wanted to gamble with the freedom of actual human beings, if you wanted to count on Putin not going further. If you thought this action would not lead to Putin executing Ukraine's leadership and destroying whatever industry or organizations that made Ukraine a functioning independent state. If you thought a little bit of totalitarianism was okay. If you were without ideals about what we in the US actually are supposed to stand for. If you didn't also know our other allies would be imperiled. If you just swore an oath to the constitution and incidentally never cared what our democracy means or what our ideals mean, to the world.

I don't know what American exceptionalism means if it means catering to bullies and telling other nations to bow their heads and kneel to totalitarianism. It can't be that. Not ever that. 
 

Putin isn't being demonized but accurately described based on the words coming out of his word-hole and his long history of death and destruction.  I understand to some extent the rationale of people who want to see strongmen like Putin as a father figure--but these people need to get psychoanalysis, not an opportunity to advise countries about foreign policy. 

Party Like it's 1959

 

You know, being lectured about whether it's cool to say "Jim Crow" or not about present voter suppression laws passed/proposed by Republicans is mighty Rich (Lowry), but the funny old thing about invoking Godwin is he isn't exactly right about what Godwin said (which was only that in online discussions, a comparison to Nazis will eventually come up--not that one has lost by so invoking, although it usually is over-the-top) and sometimes you have to call a fascist a fascist. But having another National Review writer argue that suppressing votes is good, actually is just--

Well, it's tradition, obviously. Of a long-standing sort. 

It's really hard to be sympathetic to cries that calling voter suppression laws what they are instead of the GOP's present sleight-of-tongue "voter integrity" are unfair when if we consider what voting can mean to a community in terms of allocation of resources--as our present argument regarding what constitutes infrastructure and who needs it, and as the previous arguments about, for example, the ACA, indicate, demographics do say a lot about what policies are proposed, what laws are enforced, what resources are allocated, and who benefits. It certainly isn't an argument about who is a "better" voter. Or at least, a better educated one. 

It's been about race, and we know this very good and well by now. Take the recent NYT story about what motivated the January 6 rioters. It only said something we already knew about Trump supporters in general: they are mad white people mad about white stuff. 

The GOP in the post-Trump era is just McCarthyism and anti-civil rights shit interspersed with pro-nuclear family circa-1950s and pro-religion stuff. Witness the Trump campaign's evangelical lawyer (who doesn't seem to know "Do not bear false witness" is one of Moses' top ten) calling Sen. Raphael Warnock a false Christian for saying that the resurrection alone is not the sole message of Christianity. As a Catholic adjacent atheist, I was raised to understand "faith without works is dead" and remain, culturally Christian as a Matthew moralist--I hold that you have to werk for your salvation, honey. 

But calling a Black pastor a non-Christian isn't just an echo of denying President Obama his Christian faith as a way of rejecting fellowship with him in mere racism, It's like denying him his Christianity because he's a Commie, the same way the hard-right once denied MLK his faith. Just as the Right today wants to label every little thing to the left "socialist". And use, as a donation-begging scam, the fear of being a traitor to encourage people to subscribe to more funding of this bullshit--otherwise you are a DEFECTOR!  (The term we used to use for people from behind the Iron Curtain who came here to the "free world" or vice versa.)

They aren't a 2021 party--they are regressive and backwards. And suppressive. And yeah, kind of racist. 

While They Were in the Nursery

 

Things had come to such a petty pass when last I blogged that I took a small break in the hopes that the revelation of so much smallness would not, actually, shrink my spirit like cotton trousers in a warm soak. The American Rescue Act passed, and not a single Republican wanted dick to do with it. Dr. Seuss they have time for. (I hear there there are more important things.) Mr. Potato Head they have time for. They will make time for lecherous cartoon skunks--before they bother with the needs of the American working class, who have been battered by the COVID-19 recession, and have been alternately told they are "essential" and treated like they are expendable if not disposable, and small businesses that need a helping hand. 

But when I saw Thursday night what we'd been missing for so long, I found myself back on my blogular bullshit. We have an adult in the White House now and the Republicans don't know how to act. Our dad kicked their dad's ass on the electoral playground and now he's kicking him in the nuts every chance he gets and they're big mad, you guys. I mean, sure, Biden is more popular than Trump ever was, but like, Trump was president, um, too? And did a job of it, right? Very productive!

And while we're at it, where's Trump's participation trophy for throwing money at pharmaceutical companies to get a vaccine going and only getting like, half a million people killed? 

Okay. Here:

Let's call it the Donald J. Trump "What Have You Got to Lose?" trophy and let him stick it wherever he puts his newspaper clippings about getting nominated for the Nobel Prize, right by the portraits of himself he bought with his fake-charity slush fund money and his also fake Time Magazine covers, because the real ones aren't always that flattering. 

But I've already spent too much breath on Trump, haven't I? (Hasn't everyone?) The real story is how the GOP had no after-Trump plan, and now they have nothing at all but "not whatever Democrats want". And since Democrats just mostly want good government and our people not dying, broke, or sick, um, what they want looks bad, actually. 

Also they want to suppress people voting because of course they do. They've given up on expanding their map and have definitely reached the "quiet parts out loud" part of their desperation--but it's okay, because they kind of think the Supreme Court is with them on this. I mean, compare what the representative from AZ said with Buckley and Bozell from another era. (The sins of the fathers, etc.) They can't win on the kitchen table talk, so they want a culture war. 

But what does that even mean, anymore? When Marco Rubio sides with an Amazon union bid because of culture war--it means less than nothing. When alt-right gadfly Milo Yiannopoulos declares himself an ex-gay for attention, we get a little nearer to whatever minute we're in now on the conservative clock (or check with Andrew Sullivan, still gay but basically a phrenologist).  

The conservative case seems to be a whole battle with the entire arc of history. (For everyone bending the arc of history towards justice, there's these pricks, riding athwart with dragging spurs yelling "stop".) The concept of time, even. The idea of getting out of the nursery. It's meatheads who practically swallow their tongues in the face of men who aren't their kind of manly and women who aren't their kind of feminine, families that don't look like the dolls that came with their dollhouse playset and human beings that aren't easily labeled. Who might be from somewhere else or even have a different idea of God.

So here's my take--I don't want unity with toddlers who break their toys and have tantrums when they don't get things their way, and who don't see others, for example, atheist, feminist and queer, or in any other way multicultural or diverse, or divergent in perspective, as deserving of respect or recognition. The GOP lost me when I was in the nursery, and so were they--when the Silent Majority of Nixon gave way to Reaganism, trickle down, and the culture war I always kind of thought was a little bit personal--against me. 

They are still in the nursery, and have opinions about, I guess, reefer madness. But we need to move on, even if Republicans aren't coming. So I just don't give a shit about unity or bipartisanship. I care about doing what works and protecting real people, not cartoon characters and plastic spuds. I hope Republicans get over their Trump-Daddy issues eventually, but they can't hold up fucking progress.

PSA: Saving Your Blessings

 

I know a lot of people have already left to get to their family holiday get-togethers, and some others might be very certain that warning about the spread of COVID-19 is a liberal plot to destroy the family by attacking our sacred holidays, but I think it should be said that if our service-members and veterans do and have spent holidays away from their loved ones for the protection of this nation, isn't that really something any of us should be patriotic enough to do? 

COVID-19 has killed over 250K Americans (given the excess death figures, probably tens of thousands more). That's an enemy you shouldn't want to bring home with you for the holidays. And while it isn't fatal for everyone who comes into contact with it (although it is dangerous enough for older people and immune-compromised people), it can certainly send someone to the hospital. Those beds are already filling up. Hospitals and health care workers are stressed to the maximum. 

No one is saying not to celebrate Thanksgiving--in a small group within your household and maybe making some nice long phone calls to folks who are distant. Be thankful! But sometimes the best way to show thankfulness for your blessings is to save them. Social distancing saves lives. Too many people have learned this lesson the hard way.

The Puppies Weren't Canceled, Kayleigh.

So, for one thing, of course not. And the doggos are not all cops. They do different things. And that's how I know she isn't even a real fan of the show, and isn't excited that there will be a feature movie next year.

Then, why claim cancel culture has taken the scalps of cartoon dogs like some liberal Cruella de Vil come to life? Because cancel culture is the imaginary enforcement arm of political correctness and if the bogeyman doesn't do bad things, how will you know to be scared? She's telling fairytales to kiddies.

Of course, there are real things to be afraid of out there in the real world.  But let's not dwell on that if you can get mad over, really, anything else. Like the images of TRUMP's America that the White House wanted us to see.

This is a White House press briefing. pic.twitter.com/bbzQKEX6MD

— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) July 24, 2020

Tom Cotton: Literally or Seriously?

On Fox & Friends, Sen. Tom Cotton compares protesters to the Confederacy: "These insurrectionists in the streets of Portland are little different from the insurrectionists who seceded from the union in 1861 in South Carolina, and tried to take over Fort Sumter." pic.twitter.com/7ylYh3N1dB

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) July 21, 2020

Um, so, should we be raising statues to the Portland protesters then?

Ha--I kid, but you knew that. It's kind of hard to tell when Sen. Cotton is kidding and it's kind of hard to take someone saying that seriously. It's just goddamn stupid. They aren't trying to secede from the US, they want the US actually support the rights enumerated in the Constitution. His comment could be considered a kind of hyperbole, but it's only hyperbole if that isn't how the person saying it seems to think and talk all the time.

This is why I hold that the best way to treat Cotton (see here, and here, and here, and here) as a dangerous fuckwit. Treat the culture war like Confederate secessionists, and then what? Have a new civil war? (There's imagery Trump uses a lot, also.) It's obscene.