Fly Eagles Fly

 

Trump: I watched this great quarterback who has a phenomenal wife. She’s a MAGA fan.. when quarterback wins as much as he’s won, I’d have to go with Kansas City.. pic.twitter.com/RszJlOLSdF

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 9, 2025

Then you go losing, because the Eagles soared.  Philadelphia won. The birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. A minority-majority city Trump hates because we have no use for his ass. 

I don't especially care about sports, but I love my city, and I love it when Trump is wrong. I am wearing green tomorrow and being fucking insufferable. I want to point out Trump had some braindead shit to say about Patrick Mahomes and Tommy Tuberville, and I still consider Mahomes a great player.  This wasn't his night, and I don't blame him for what Trump says or does.

But I celebrate my city and this win because, because, because. 

Good things happen here, and we will celebrate them. 

Sometimes this city wins. Sometimes people Trump doesn't support wins. That's all I'm saying. 

Nancy Mace and Her Personal Space

 

Nancy Mace would like to not share a bathroom with Sarah McBride, who is the first transgender member of Congress. I truly don't know how much time pick-me pygmy Mace spends in the bathroom at work, but because there are stalls in public bathrooms, McBride would never see Mace's ladybusiness in a shared bathroom and Mace would never satisfy her probable curiosity about trans bodies. 

I would prefer not to share public bathrooms with those weird people who, in a bathroom with several empty stalls, have to sit in the stall RIGHT NEXT to mine. I don't want to share a bathroom with those bitches who can't sit their ass down and pee on the seat. I hate those heifers who assume automatic flush is going to zhush all their mess away--and it does not when you are that messy! Hit the button, nasty!

Kristi Noem, Dog Assassin

 

SD Gov. Kristi Noem is getting a roasting over her depiction of killing a backwards "untrainable" puppy as well as a smelly goat that came from her political memoir No Going Back: Descriptive Stuff After the Colon. A lot of people on social media are posting pictures of their own good doggos--and that's great. But to give her her due, sometimes a dog just is either traumatized or dimwitted, or for some other reason has misplaced aggression issues, and they aren't fit to their environment. You could try rehoming them with a family--hopefully in a "single pet, no small children" situation, but once they have demonstrated they will kill livestock, like a neighbor's chickens, there's a real chance they aren't "fixable". She may have simply made a pragmatic choice with the dog because she didn't want to see it turn and attack a human--especially not a little one. 

There's more humane ways to put down an animal, though--we aren't living in Little House on the Prairie times. And also killing (poorly) a goat because it is smelly and misbehaved just feels gratuitous, because what do you expect from adult goat? And wasn't she responsible for how the dog was trained and controlled (crated or fenced?) Feels like she might have set that pup up by not preparing it for success.

Are You Now or Have You Ever?

 

Tom Cotton: "Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party?"

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew: "Senator, I'm Singaporean. No!"

Cotton: "Have you ever been associated or affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party?"

Chew: "No, Senator. Again, I'm Singaporean!" pic.twitter.com/5Wa72aJIr9

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) January 31, 2024

Sen. Tom Cotton (R--1950s Red Scare) indulges in a little McCarthyism overlayed with anti-Asian bigotry. He so completely serves as an example of my theory that the Ivy League schools have a form of affirmative action for mediocre conservatives that I'm almost embarrassed to show him off.  Is he over-compensating for attending an egghead school by aggressively Bubba-ing like this?

(I think Sen Kennedy does the same thing, TBH.)

I think he's coming at it from the wrong direction: one doesn't have to be a member of the party to be influenced by leverage from the party. His performance is a sort of distraction; appeal to the audience watching, without getting to the heart of the matter. In other words, the need to represent (echoing McCarthy) has significance that effectiveness does not. 

This is a problem that is going around. 

The Dangers of Vice-Signaling

 

I wrote very recently about Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas' determination to pardon a convicted killer because Tucker Carlson told him to, and the publication of former Sgt. Daniel Perry's prior social media history highlights how very, very, ill-advised it would be to pardon someone like this. 

The documents released Thursday were filed on March 27, when prosecutors announced their intent to introduce messages and posts they'd gathered from Perry's cellphone. Some of Perry’s messages were presented during his trial, including a May 31, 2020, social media post where he said he might have to kill people. But the newly unsealed filing contains dozens of other posts and messages that weren’t presented publicly. 

Each piece of evidence is listed separately in the 76 pages. They include Internet searches for news about George Floyd-related protests, posts of memes that appear to encourage or rationalize shooting protests, and Perry's own messages in which he talks about being angry and scared over the protests or writes about committing violence.

More documentation of Perry's social media history is here.  And to be fair, I might have searched many of the same things he did--because I write about movements like Black Lives Matter being in favor of them and I write about extremist violence being very much against. 

Trains and Gaslight

 

new: OH officials appear to have relied solely on prelim H20 sampling conducted by a rail contractor to initially declare water in East P. safe

Ind. experts called sampling "sloppy" & "amateur"—initial batch not collected in accordance w/ EPA standardshttps://t.co/ZbpzrlnmZY

— Chris D'Angelo (@c_m_dangelo) February 18, 2023

It's difficult to wrap my head around how we do things in this country when it comes to potential corporate malfeasance: we take their word for things. If the rail company is responsible for a chemical disaster, why would we take their word for whether the water and soil are ok? If the rail company advocates for a release of toxic chemicals to be burnt in the first place (which cleared the tracks for more trains to come through) certain governors will just accept that advice. Even though there are hundreds of train derailments every year, and they many times do involve chemical spills and even explosions, we still listen to lobbyists on behalf of those companies who want less, not more regulation. 

And certain presidential administrations have even agreed with them. 

I've noticed that this particular accident and subsequent health concerns has become fodder for the right wing to demonstrate something about the Biden Administration. Whether it's when DeWine has finally requested federal assistance or whether FEMA even really is the agency that aid would come from seem like a weird muddying to me of who is responsible for what and creates a space for conspiracy theory and resentment to grow. 

When the rail company is just living in 1899 with the robber barons just enjoying cover from the partisans and trying to get people to sign away their future settlement rights for a pittance. It's what they've come to expect. They have a history. 

Now, Trump says he's going to make an appearance in East Palestine to basically be as useful as a cottage cheese dildo while additionally fanning the flames of conspiracy and (white) resentment. And we wouldn't expect anything less.

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. 

Martha's Vineyard and the Migrants

 

So, I think that the DeSantis stunt of hijacking undocumented people from Texas (who had not ever stepped a foot in Florida) and were mostly Venezuelan (escaping a left-wing government nightmare that would be familiar in treachery to Cuban immigrants) was obviously signaling about his national ambitions, not the current gubernatorial battle; his ass thinks he has that sewed up.  I want to concentrate on how what he did here, spending some ridiculous sum to transport asylum seekers processed by DHS to try and own libs, was dumb as hell. (Is it human trafficking--or kidnapping? It totally feels like a violation of human rights.)

I have been saying DeSantis is covering up his clusterfuckery with culture war signifying, and this is just another example of that. Does someone need to spend taxpayer money for 50 people that never set a step in Florida to actually get decent treatment in a receptive and empathetic community of people who are welcoming and actually happy to help people in trouble--in a whole other state? 

You know, a lot of liberals are going to focus on the cruelty. That these people were misled to get them onto the transport with promises of jobs and they weren't even fed or told where they were going to go. I don't think that matters to DeSantis fans. They love the cruelty part of it. They get off on it. These thimble dicks think that owning libs is exactly what went down and...

That isn't what happened. 

Migrants and local high school AP Spanish students, who have been dismissed from school to help interpret, play a ball game in the Parish House parking lot to pass the time. pic.twitter.com/KsyRKsoslv

— Brooke Kushwaha (@BrookeKushwaha) September 15, 2022

What really happened was a whole community chipped in.  This could have been Ron DeSantis, but he doesn't have that grace. This could have been Greg Abbott too, who did the same stunt times two in DC. What if just treating immigrants and asylum-seekers like human beings was such an accessible idea that governors in an election year never had to signify about treating them like pawns and not even people, and just--fucking showed basic human decency? What if decency was always an option, and we recognized that choosing whatever this is--is not ok? 

View From an Ohio Bunker

 

I've been following the Ohio Republican Senate primary with interest because it really feels like a dance-off between two jerks with no rhythm. J.D. Vance is an appalling try-hard, no question, what with tut-tutting the child-free and musing over the ridonk boss Tweets Trump would make in the wake of an actually human person being tragically killed in an accident with liberal Alec Baldwin involved. Because of course, Trump is known for making comments that aren't at all disrespectful, unkind, or outright hurtful. (I mean wait--he is: why do we need that right now, exactly? While people are actually shocked and grieving? To own libs? Or because the faithful need callouses to build up over their human-feeling parts so they can sink still further into deplorability?) 

But Josh Mandel is a special little culture warrior, and from his bunker (under, I presume, freedom's anti-vax cornfield) is suggesting libs (they!) hate "normal Americans" for eating meat (my husband is a meat cutter--I learned that vegetarianism interfered with my drinking so I had to give it up), having babies, guns (I just recommend keeping the babies and the guns in separate spaces is all, we have guns) and for some weird reason, hashtag bitcoin. 

Oh man, I really hate hashtag bitcoin. It's the woooooorst. Hyping assorted forms of funny money that real people invest actual money in feels like a really grifty economics LARP to me. But I see Mandel is committing to his bit, and his bytes. 

Everything is Teaching the Controversy, Now

 

I was recently reminded, now that we're in the age of "alternative facts" regarding Covid-19 and the 2020 election and climate change and who knows what else, of some of the strategies of disinfo I first encountered when intrigued by the creationism movement.  It still strikes me as interesting that creationism still exists even after we've got oodles of examples of transitional types (as are we all) from the fossil record, and that nothing will ever persuade people who have made it their mission to not be persuaded. 

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. 

    Georg C. Lichtenberg

One of  the things to understand about humans is we are political animals--we do tribalism. We have a need for belonging, we are not islands to ourselves but members of societies. We tend to consider our "goodness" according to the ideas of our immediate culture.  We identify and signify. And when we see our opposite number, we attack.  People who have found a disinfo tribe will defend their territory. They are defending their very identity. They see defending a thing that might even not be true as being existential for them,

 For many people, it might be necessary to profess untruths to continue in their identity. I don't think that it's a coincidence that the main group of folks who support Trump, creationism, are climate change denialists, and now antivaxxers, are evangelicals. They are basically who the old news media covenant of "both sides" was made for--the habit of mainstream journalism to also include minority views no matter how batshit or miniscule. So as to satisfy a vocal and activist minority.

They are "teaching the controversy" and so long as some kind of controversy exists, even if it is just some ignoramus sticking their tongue out and saying "Nyah!"--that's enough controversy for some to hang a movement or at least, a meaningful sense of tribal belonging on to. You could say that the existence of UFO-enthusiasts is proof aliens are among us, if you don't actually require proof of the aforementioned aliens and only need proof that people are asking questions and looking into it. And that also stands for any other "controversy". 

So, Andrew Wakefield was debunked, but persists. because having existed, one could also say there is a controversy. Just like any tobacco farmer could claim they don't think there's a really for real link between smoking and cancer, and any oil company can deny climate change. Transport ballots hither and yon under the auspices of being contracted by a GOP State Senate and count them and count them and fiddle with machines a bit and stow some ballots in a cabin somewhere and invalidate future use of those election machines and also be really dodgy, and you've got some kind of...election controversy, I guess (Although a goddamn stupid one, because who believes anything this stupid? --Oh yeah! Tribalism!) 

I'd love to believe that as a species we could be better than this especially since recent weather events show the climate crisis foretold by science is really upon our asses, but I also get that for many, tribalism is a form of survival. They depend upon signifiers to tell other people of the tribe they are fit to endure. They need to tell the kind of lies that make their lives worth living. Their belonging is their infrastructure, even if their roads and bridges and potable water and electric grid and other stuff that government should manage, goes to pot. As long as they represent their team, they suppose they have a means to a necessary social end. 

So I view with rank skepticism the idea that vaccine deniers just need someone to talk pretty to them, for example, or that rational arguments will debunk election denialists. I sometimes find myself thinking they just need shunning and gross disapprobation, to understand that neighboring tribes won't harbor their asses. That there is some activity beyond the social pale. This seems far more commensurate with primate psychology. 

Petty-Coat Junction!

Serious question: I have to go to New York soon and I'm trying to figure out where to stay. I have heard it's disgusting and violent there. But is it like Walking Dead Season 1 or Season 4?

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) July 11, 2021

You are all too young to know about this, but back when I started watching tv (birth) coincided with something happening on television called "the rural purge", because in the 1970's, the cutting edge of modernity, we were all about the gritty reality of Starsky and Hutch and The Streets of San Francisco and wanted New Yorkian stories like Taxi and whatnot. Your Quinn Martin production of that age was not rubes being obliquely country, but crooks and cops being abruptly urban. You know, despite the genius of Hee Haw, rural/small town entertainment was not appreciated for this era's kicks, unless you count stuff like The Dukes of Hazard and basically anything with a truck, a CB radio and a monkey (and why were the 70's and early 80's so interested in trucks, CB radios, and monkeys)? 

(Truth is, the thing with monkeys almost feels like a mainstreaming of Bonzo Reagan-era B-movie hijinks--of course people love monkeys. Much of my childhood is weirdly stereoscopic because I retcon how politics might've influenced any of it, and wow! But like, stalwart Republican Clint Eastwood in "Every Which Way But Loose" with Clyde: tell me where that math doesn't start to add up, amirite? Because people don't for real have monkey buddies. They just don't.)

Anyhow, in the 1970s and 1980s, and I guess the early 1990's, Big City crime was just this obvious joke thing. The actual crime rate went down since. 

But in conservative land, the rural purge never happened and the big cities are still weird places where folks have different values and do terrible things, but the real America with Andy and Opie and them is still the place where the hearth fires glow with books about evolution and CRT and JD fucking Vance, who is not actually an unfrozen caveperson, wants to know where to stay in Nueva York where he won't get mugged like he never ventured out of Mayberry before. 
 

Vance is a phony's phony. He's from the flatlands and wants to hail from the hills (then run in Ohio--like he never left). Well, hail, no. His carpetbag is pricey, but it is what it is. He's as authentic as a very synthetic thing. And he can stay wherever he stayed doing media on his big-ass book-tour. He isn't new! He isn't going to drown in the cement bird pond in the big old park they got thar in the Metropolis. 

Not to say Mandel is authentic at all. Oh fuck, he's a smacked ass. But I dunno. Vance is try-harding at shameful levels for a c-lister. 

UPDATE: I also want to point out that I am a dozen years older than this podgy middle-aged wheeze and if he reminds me of the Lawrence Welk era my grands enjoyed he certainly isn't relating to the youngs. So how will he ever fair in Youngstown? 

Louie Gohmert is Speaking "Jive"

 

ORBITS: Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) asks whether the Forest Service or the BLM can alter the orbit of the moon or the Earth in order to fight climate change during a House Natural Resources hearing pic.twitter.com/yYiOyi2cMZ

— Forbes (@Forbes) June 8, 2021

I'm seeing a lot of liberals assume that the gibberish that Rep. Gohmert is spouting here is ignorance or signs that he's nuttier than chipmunk turds, but actually, I understood what he was getting at because he isn't talking liberal language. He's talking a very specific kind of climate denialist "jive"--and I get it. I'm by no means fluent in it, but just to cut through the "Can we change the orbit of the moon?" bullshit--

 

He's being disingenuous. It's usually a kind of Christian climate denialist cop-out I think of as the "God is God" gambit. Climate change can't be anthropogenic because we're not powerful enough, and even if we were, nothing happens that isn't God's will, and since you can't change the moon's orbit or solar flares, well then! There's nothing to be done, so sorry. Nice run, old Planet Earth, but we've a place way up yonder.

(Often, it goes along with "God promised he would not kill us with a flood again", which is just--also bizarre and not right.)

It's not supposed to be connected to any science. He mentions the orbit of the earth and moon and the solar flares thing as a distraction. Scientists largely agree that climate change is mostly caused by humans. The slight changes in either the moon's orbit or Earth's around the sun are happening a a rate we wouldn't really notice. Solar flares cause barely a ripple. But the dismissiveness is the point. 

See Marjorie Taylor Green on the "so-called science" of evolution. The coronavirus had to be created in a lab because it didn't evolve you guys. That's just silly heathen science. Demons invented it in the labs with alien DNA and baby parts. That's the only thing that makes sense. Use your brain, morans!

If you wanted to question, well, how then, did anyone learn to engineer a virus except by observation of biological changes in organisms over time? Well, the moran is you, because nothing about her statement is intended to invite a debate or even a real conversation.  It signifies to people who agree with her that she's with them--it doesn't have a thing to do with the objective reality we want to talk about.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think the both of them are dumb as hell, and it's just as well. They aren't conveying anything of any sense to people who want a meaningful conversation, anyway. So maybe they deserve the Twitter outcry--it's just, they are probably wearing it as an "owning the libs" moment because they got the pointless display they wanted. 

The Republican War on History

 

I guess I want to open this one with Nikki Haley (who may or may not be thinking of running in 2024, keeping in mind she would definitely step aside if Trump wandered into the race), who is critical of critical race theory, as she told Dennis Prager. Because it makes white kids sad. Because you know, there isn't anything so depressing as being told people with your same skin color are basically criminal and capable of terrible violence, I guess? You know, the way people of color are sometimes depicted, too--because racism exists, and Nikki Haley sometimes knows it, and sometimes, when it is convenient, she would prefer not to. 

After so painfully informing us that tearing down statues of Confederates and colonizers was a form of "erasing history", Republicans are now preferring that some history not be specifically taught because it is too controversial.  From Tennessee to Arizona, state legislatures are trying to stop the teaching of critical race theory or the 1619 project, even though it isn't always clear that the people trying to ban these things know what they even are. 

I mean literally, they don't know thing zero. Just recently, a lawmaker in Tennessee somehow got the idea that the 3/5th compromise had something to do with representing Black people and trying to end slavery, instead of being a way for the white men of slave states to gain additional representation according to the number of Black bodies they held in bondage. This is more than mere ignorance of the facts, but a case of someone who, even with the facts laid out before them possessed an utter inability to place them into context. 

But this isn't rare. A Louisiana legislator alleged that there were fine points to slavery. More than one. Actually. But despite what we think about slavery, it isn't even really over in this country. For example, the carceral system, even enshrined in the Constitution, permits a degree of slave labor. Who today argues against raising the minimum wage, or even argues about whether one should exist? (After all, what is unpaid and low paid labor but a form of reducing choices, creating dependencies?) And we also deny full citizenship rights in this country, such as voting rights, to felons--but who in the US is more likely to run afoul of the law? Even explicitly due to racism? Even explicitly to disenfranchise them? Or even lose their lives in a conflict with the law? 

Critical race theory is basically just connecting dots that actually exist, in the way that the 1619 Project is just covering actual historical events like slavery, colonialization, segregation and so on, without the whitewash. As near as I can tell, some Republicans aren't even mad about critical race theory as such or whether it's Marxist (because come on--is that so wrong?) as they are with the teaching of any Black history when it isn't even February. (And don't get them started on leap years!) They want to be the party of Lincoln, but not acknowledge what happened next, and after that, and so on. What happened after 1964 Or 1965. 

I don't think I'm ok with the idea of ignoring the loud signaling on the right that we need to not call things what they are for the sake of "unity" or bipartisanship, because that's how massive steps backwards get made. Especially not when they are actively trying to disenfranchise people based on race, right out in front when we're looking right at them, and aligning themselves with avowed hate groups and have haters and conspiracy theorists run as Republicans. 

The question that has been recently posed: Is the US a racist country? is really inadequate to discuss where we are. We are definitely at a crossroads. We have a past that is racist. Racism exists in the present day. The question to me really seems to be--can we work to eliminate it? Racism can not be necessary to what it is to be American, and to live up to our democratic ideals and in the interests of justice under the Constitution, we should act to be anti-racist. But as Ibram Kendi explains, you have to chose--racist or anti-racist. To be neutral implies consent to the system of racism. And yes, it exists as a system. It has been enshrined in law, even in laws we forget the origination of, and is perpetuated in implicit bias--the kinds of things we think, but don't think about. 

Republicans also have a war against the word "woke"--a word that as a white person I know was not ever meant to be put in my mouth. The idea of wokeness has existed as a form of situational awareness for people about the means of their own survival existing in a hostile dominant culture. Conservatives have now landed on "Woke Island" in full combat gear, to fight against the reaction to their Plymouth Rock forebears. They have been made uncomfortable for being called "white" as a label. They should be uncomfortable if that label addresses what they stand for and what they do--whether they stand for white supremacy, or reject it.

My whiteness doesn't bother me (does your conscience bother you--tell the truth?) What bothers me is whether I do right. I think the problem is seeing morality as an identity and not a practice. You aren't good because of whiteness, blackness, wokeness, religion, or any other "ness" or "ism". You have to live your correct life. That means taking in what is and isn't so, and what did and didn't happen. Facts matter, and reasons why matter. Intent matters. Results matter. But in the end, it's what you do. Right now. History doesn't hurt you--it informs, even if it vicariously tears at your soul to know what others have lived through, even if it should tear at you to know what people live through right now. That is the human condition. 

But you can not address a wrong, or solve an injustice, by refusing to even confront or name it. To refuse to do so, and to reject naming, shaming, and blaming so decisively, is to share in the wrong by aiding and abetting it. It is a statement of intent to continue. 

The Red Meat Diet

 

The one time leader of the free world who now lives alone in a hotel sharing buffets, common areas, and staff with strangers, yearns for attention and relevance so badly, he now stands on a patio step every night ranting to tens of people about a 6 month old election that he lost pic.twitter.com/xIuZ7jAkZD

— Mystery Solvent (@MysterySolvent) April 30, 2021

Consider if you will a world where Republicans will, for hardly any reason at all, insist that the current president is going to ban hamburgers because of cow farts, and I'll show you a world where the former president still thinks maybe he could have won that last election, and there's a bunch of ninjas in Arizona trying to prove him right. 

The Twilight Zone? Sadly, no. This is America, a country internally divided because people are looking at two different realities, one that exists in the material world, where germ theory and evolution and a round planet are kind of understood to be real things, where democracy is the thing where people get to vote and where the widely available public historical facts pretty much indicate that slavery and segregation and all that were bad and racist, and um, the other one that Republicans seem to be living in. 

You know, the one where kids (who aren't getting vaccinated right now) wearing masks might be a sign of child abuse (is it just me who sees a Q shout-out in one of Tucker Carlson's latest rhetorical abominations, or is my brain just uniquely broken by trying to rappel down the Q rabbit hole on a digital shoestring?) and where Kamala Harris' book is being stuffed in welcome bags to the migrant kids that are, one who was a certain kind of person might insinuate were invited into the US by Biden's policies already in a sort of replacement theory way except yeah, totally hinting at it in that way, also, too. Because criminy, I have heard of people inviting migrants to the US to swell voting rolls in a particular way, but I didn't think any asshole would be so cynical as to also assume it was to plump book sales.

I mean, there's conspiratorial thinking muscle, and then there's conspiratorial thinking muscle on steroids. And with plenty of red meat for protein. 

I've been saying this sort of thing for more than a minute, but I'm developing the conclusion that additional conspiratorial thinking on the right is increasingly a kind of vice-signaling thing. You know, like where if the CDC says masks are good, then fuck no! I'm not wearing them, and if Michelle Obama wants my kid eating vegetables, then fuck no! they are eating hot chips and sprinkling extra salt on, and if the libs want clean air fuck no! we're buying the biggest truck possible and maybe even rolling coal, and if...etc. Like when cigarettes were bad so Rush Limbaugh sucked on cigars until he got cancer and died.

I'm saying it's not a perfect system, but I kind of get it. They're so punk they're Pat Boone. They're so metal they're formica. They're so edgy they're a Nerf football with the ends chewed off. They are different and not made like other men. They eat red meat. They have mad guns. 

They have mad guns specifically because somebody might take them . Robbers are totally going to come to this house to take guns because guns are expensive and this is a totally fucking expensive pile o guns. It's like people deciding they are going to give up and go be racists now because the libs made them that mad by saying stuff like, I dunno, racism actually exists. 

Basically, we're at a point in Cleek's Law where pointing out that the shit's fucked up might actually lead to Republicans actually eating shit. 

I don't know if it behooves me to respect that level of commitment or not but I'll watch it on YouTube. Because I guarandamntee the signifiers will be filming themselves doing it, since they chug milk, bleach and Trump's vomit right out in public where people can see.

Saying Trump won is a kind of vice-signaling--it isn't true, but Republicans will say it anyway. Calling right-wingers hypocrites doesn't work because the double-standard is the point. Just call them filthy fucking liars who believe dumb ass stupid shit. Respect is earned and they want a cookie for filling their diapers and painting the walls with their mess. I'm over it.

It's Part of the Plan, See?

Kevin McCarthy claims QAnon ignorance after denouncing it last year https://t.co/8bVZGYUAYH

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) February 4, 2021

When House Minority Leader is pretending he doesn't even know how Qanon is pronounced, even though he's had plenty of time to study up on the subject, and seems to have know perfectly well what they were a handful of months ago, he's signalling exactly what people at, say, Fox News do, when they exclaim, "Why, there's hardly any white supremacists! I bet you've never even met one! I know I never have!" He's saying "We'll ignore the crazy so long as you're on our side. We won't even see it."

You know. Big tent and all that. It's just that, they literally pissed in his tent. Literally. And he thinks not calling them out now is going to remedy that? Maybe he's a little touched himself.

Maybe You Just Bite

It's time to stand up against the muzzling of America https://t.co/rrTrtfrYZn via @nypost

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) January 25, 2021

Is there anything conservatives love more than pretending they are being free-speech martyrs and being depicted with their mouths all duct-taped? It's a fetish. But no, Josh, "America" is not being "muzzled", anymore than, say, when Trump is impeached, all of his voters are being impeached. It's called personal responsibility. Conservatives could look into it, if they wanted to.

First of all, Josh Hawley represents Josh Hawley, not "America". The little stunt of trying to throw out my vote here in Pennsylvania was pure ambition, even if he wants to pretend that all of his Missouri constituents are so, so concerned about the constitution of our commonwealth. Josh Hawley needs to shut up, but that's not "cancel culture". That's shunning, because he fucked up. Dozens of police officers were injured and people died because Josh Hawley is an ambitious little liar. He shares this ignominy with other conservatives like Ted Cruz, but they are not being muzzled, even if they are a bit like mad dogs.

So no, America doesn't have a "social credit" problem. Hawley has a "He shit the bed and wants to sit here and polish the shit" problem. But it still smells.

Following a Clown Car to Do Evil

 

Trump has now moved to intervene in the frivolous Texas lawsuit. This has become a true basket of deplorables.https://t.co/mAN98tVVJK

— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) December 9, 2020

In addition to Trump (well, obviously, Trump), 17 other states have signed onto Texas' peculiar signifying election lawsuit stunt, not against all states that had mail-in voting or whatever very specific problem they had with the voting itself, but the states that Trump's campaign indicated were a problem for not having swung his way. It's riddled with the same kinds of error in logic and fact that the "Kraken" suits had (except for being run through Spellcheck). So of course this is the great new hope, and Ted Cruz would like to argue this thing (because first it has to not be denied, doesn't it?) and Trump is having a nice lunch this afternoon with all the parties.

And "Civil War" has been trending on Twitter, and Rush Limbaugh has suggested secession on his radio program. 

So basically, things are all still just fine. And how about that Hunter Biden?

Also, US COVID-19 deaths marked a grim milestone, exceeding 3K yesterday. Some people have highly fucked-up priorities.

Being Cringingly Racist To Trigger The Libs and Other BS

NEW: In upcoming book, Michael Cohen writes Donald Trump's disdain for Obama was so extreme he hired a "Faux-Bama" to participate in a video in which he "ritualistically belittled the first black president and then fired him." He includes this photo: https://t.co/LGrqsUUrY2 pic.twitter.com/otwYW8VSmQ

— Pervaiz Shallwani (@Pervaizistan) September 6, 2020

Trump's overt racism hardly needs pictures to be verified, but it does help--of course Trump wanted to do a bit where he berated a Fauxbama and told him he was fired. Just think, at the 2012 RNC, celebrity guest Clint Eastwood did a similar act with an empty chair. Wanting to degrade Obama in effigy but being too afraid of letting down "the team" to actually have him be there to whip one's ass seems to be a signifier of Republican males of the Obama age. And let's face it, Obama did whip Trump's ass over birtherism at the 2011 WHCD and like mopey children, a certain group of GOPers have simply never let it go. They blame Obama for sleeping on Katrina, for crying out loud.

Of course some will still say, after all was ludicrously said and done, that Obama is either a Muslim or not born here, because saying things and believing them aren't the same thing. I am reminded of the birthers who managed to believe that somehow, Obama was foreign even if both of his parents were born in the US regardless if Stanley Dunham even visited Kenya or not. The point has nothing to do with reality. It's signifying.

I don't trust Republicans to validly answer poll questions like "Do you believe in Q Anon" for this reason. Even if the basic conspiracy theory is grotesquely stupid and derivative (I mean eating babies! Really!) and borrows from Satanic Panic and every stupid "gay culture is pedo" bit of mis-education in the evangelical hate culture, and even has roots in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the blood libel and its adherents bring up the Rothschilds at random, eh? To own the libs?

Hey, Let's You and Him Fight This Out

Ted Cruz may be an obnoxious little toad who sucks up to Donald Trump, a man who insulted his wife and accused his father of murder, and he may also be a signifying culture warrior who engages in empty online beefs, but never let it be said the he's beyond offering some one else's behind up for a fight with a 70-year old actor.

I believe the kids call this type of behavior "thirsty". But also "chickenshit".

 



Sad.

Game of Masks

I'm going to keep it real--I do not like wearing a mask. It's a little constricting, it sticks to my lip balm, and when I'm walking, I sometimes get a little claustrophobic like, "Am I getting enough air?" which makes me hyperventilate just a bit. It's a small pain in the ass.  But when no one is about, I can take it down and suck a mean lungful if I so like.  It doesn't trouble me to wear one when I go to get gas or if I have to stop for an errand.

For aesthetic reasons, I have amassed a quantity of printed bandanas that ensure I can coordinate my outfits with my new must-have fashion accessory (I prefer to look "veiled" rather than acquire something more functional-looking) and since I literally see no one at close range in my newly-irregular travels, this is merely an adjustment. Sitting indoors and talking with a mask on is fine. I've adjusted to preferring to see other people doing the same. It's no more a hassle to me than wearing gloves in winter or carrying an umbrella (although I am starting to lose my mind a bit this spring over too much freaking rain and always carrying an umbrella). It's just a thing. I wear the thing so people are not alarmed by my potentially disease-laden exhalations. Short of locking myself in a cell like a Jainist ascetic, it's the least I can do--

And it is apparently just too much for some people out here, who have decided that their precious bodily fluids civil rights are being impaired by being asked to suit up their faces.  It's just little bit strange to have the party of "Wait a minute, what about the right to refuse service?" decide that governments and businesses insisting on masks are...."mask Nazis"? Wow. Imagine all those years we blithely saw signs outside convenience stores reading "No shoes, no shirt, no service" and didn't realize what that was going to lead to. 

Oh. Right. The bad people are the ones who don't want every smotherpucker out there horking germs onto essential workers so they can keep doing their jobs and not die.  The good people are the bare-faced liars who say this is about civil rights when it seems to be about partisan vice-signaling. 

Somehow, that doesn't sound right to me. 

I mean, take OH Representative Nino Vitale, as an example:

The man says he thinks wearing a mask dishonors God because people are made in the image of God and I dunno. He just looks like a guy who wants to show off that he invested $247 in Crest White Strips to me.  Does God wear pants? I don't know that God does, and I don't think we need an argument about whether it's cool for someone to stroll through Golden Corral with their whole braciole hanging out to determine we know people are human without seeing their various bits. Yes, if you say so, you are a stunningly beautiful child of God. Also put a mask on anyways, ya filthy animal.

Of course, it would help if the Commander-in-Chief of our very much conscripted anti-plague army of warriors would try and wear a mask himself. So far, the picture is--he sure doesn't, and goddamn the poor optics.  (Even if he limply explains he wears one "backstage" at an event at a manufacturing plant, which is the way Trump reminds you that the world is a fucking stage, baby.)   In part, I can sympathize--masks make my make-up and nose run, too! On the other hand, if you can't lead by any other way at all (and he can't) maybe he could try leading by example on one little thing.

Maybe there is a psychological reason why just wearing a mask is the cause of so much resistance--the denialism, our old friend, once again, and the visual indication that something has changed in the form of the unfamiliar mask and the change in routine. But resisting wearing a mask because "I am afraid of the unfamiliar and changes in my routine!" probably does not sound quite as butch as the anti-mask resistance intended. Also, denying the seriousness of the disease is just fucking bonkers, because no one, and I mean no one, is faking the refrigerated trucks and the bodies, or playing around with people's paychecks, for some grotesque partisan game.

The COVID-19 threat is real. Wearing a mask to protect others is a sign of strength. Making it all about anything else at all seems like a tantrum to me.