This is Juvenile Damage

JD Vance claims that efforts to suppress misinformation and hate speech "are going to destroy Western Civilization. They're gonna destroy Europe, and they would destroy the United States of America if we allowed them to fester. Thank God we have a president now who believes in… pic.twitter.com/EKIIF4rXoD

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 4, 2025

March 4, 2025

Sometimes I wonder what JD Vance stands for, but to me, the persistent thing about him is that he tells stories. He creates narratives. He likes a good yarn. Jesuitical Dissembler Vance is insisting that lying is good, actually. I guess if you have a problem with it, you are probably "virtue-signaling." 

See what happened there? Lying is good and being concerned with what is true is fatally dangerous. (I personally despise the term "virtue -signaling" FWIW--people have VALUES and CONFESS THEM and LIVE BY THEM publicly if they are sincere in any fashion. Scoffing at the notion means you are basically an amoral putz.)

Seeing things in Pictures

 

While Elon Musk is channeling Fonzi, 

The withered husk of Trump

is a played out Ponzi. 

His expression wry, 

his head seems bare

as if worry at last has

worn off his hair.

Tucker Carlson's Daddy Issues

 

Just so we're up to date on this, not that long ago, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (my imaginary boyfriend from Canada) testified that Tucker Carlson was a paid propagandist for Russia. Which I really don't need more "proof" about because we are looking right at him. Like Tucker is that guy you absolutely know is a sell-out. 

Now, you could ask yourself how this white supremacist-identified misogynist stays around after his break with Fox News, but wow. I dunno. Some people probably do feel like his break with the mainstream (I know, I get the joke--it's the joke I'm actually making) gave him freedom and power to be more truthy, or whatever.  But I think he really just has to bite down harder on his schtick, and that is entirely what he did just now bigging up Trump at Turning Point, by referring to the US rejecting Trump as a willful little girl and Trump, vengeful, as a disciplining Daddy figure. 

Can one's mind's eye vomit? Because I think my forebrain just virtually puked a little. 

Does the GOP Know What a Woman Is?

 

As of Saturday, JD Vance and Donald Trump were both still misgendering Imane Khelif, an Algerian boxer who was born female and was raised female. There is no good reason to believe that she either does have elevated testosterone or is chromosomally XY. She seems to just be a hard-working girl with a heck of a punch who is living her dream and representing her country in a sport she loves. 

This is why I insist transphobia is in part, misogyny. And delusional. Imagine the contortions your mind must go through to suspect the "woke" government of Algeria sending a trans boxer to the Olympics. Imagine being so careless about facts that you would say this not caring what kind of blowback falls on that young lady, who is just trying to do her best? 

She is tough, strong, muscular. Calling her "male" is saying women cannot be these things. Suddenly, people who insist on anatomy being destiny started to ask whether, like Caster Semaya, this woman might be intersex. Transphobes understand gender exists on a spectrum after all, when it suits them, but only when it comes to trying to exclude someone. They seized on this woman for no good reason other than they needed someone to "other" at the moment. 

More Listening to the Felon

 

Ingraham asks Trump about his comments telling Christian backers they won't have to vote again in 4 years. Trump responds by saying Jews should have their heads examined if they vote for Dems. Ingraham presses him & Trump doesn't exactly quell concerns he wants to end elections. pic.twitter.com/khGeauqp9S

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 29, 2024

I'm just going to leave my comment at this--if Trump's response to an obvious question to get him to ameliorate his "Christians won't have to vote again" sentiments is to bash Jews, I think that's a good indication he is NOT walking back his anti-democratic Christian Nationalist inclinations.

And it isn't a one-off. Not at all.

He's a Creep. He's a Weirdo.

 

Unearthed audio: JD Vance calls for a “federal response” to block women in red states from traveling to another state to get an abortion pic.twitter.com/t9YAbFuoPc

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) July 26, 2024

What the hell is he doing here? (Don. Jr. and Eric wanted dad to pick him.) He doesn't belong here. (But there's Silicon Valley money and Project 2025 backers behind him, so we will likely be seeing him for at least a minute more.) 

Yeah, JD may not be a sofaphile and maybe he isn't into dolphin porn, but he is a really weird guy. From a kind of racist take on stopping women from traveling to get an abortion, to being on board with tracking women's menstrual cycles--literally policing their bodies! to defending his unfortunate and weird "cat lady" comments in a way that is still unfortunate and weird, while taking a swipe at Jennifer Aniston, he's really shaping up to be one of the worst running mate choices imaginable.

He isn't really helping the Republican ticket, but it's sort of worse than that. He could be an active drag. In the voting sense--not in the George Santos sense. Except he has changed his names as many times as George Santos, so there's that.

Vergogna!

 

EXCLUSIVE UNDERCOVER AUDIO:
Martha-Ann Alito Unfurled

"I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month." pic.twitter.com/okNsW7SPlu

— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) June 10, 2024

There's a lot to unpack in the conversations that undercover reporter Lauren Windsor had with the Alitos. The verification of Samuel Alito's sense of culture war driving his juris-imprudence doesn't entirely surprise me. Does he endorse the return of our country to "a place of godliness? So he does!

It seems to me he must be using his own personal notes for what he thinks godliness means--as for myself, I'm less ambitious, and would like to see the Supreme Court be a place of cleanliness, which would, I am told, be the next best thing and a bit closer to his job. 

But it's Mrs. Alito's sense of an ax to grind over Pride flags, her desire for revenge against the media (how dare they report unpleasant things--like her squabble with the neighbors, or the way her family's security detail may be threatening them), her combination of privilege and aggrievement, that fascinates me. It's her unselfconscious use of the term "feminazis". It's her reference to her German heritage. How she intends to get even. Eventually.

Appeal to What, Now?

 

Breaking News: A second provocative flag linked to Jan. 6 was flown at a home of the Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito. https://t.co/DCnJ1drXPR pic.twitter.com/MB3JN3TapZ

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 22, 2024

Funny old thing about me, if you didn't know--I'm big on the separation of church and state. Once I realized the incompatibility of the first commandment and the first amendment, the idea that the ISA is, in any sense, a Christian or even biblically based nation flew out the window, and I realized that no person tries to present a government as divinely inspired without there being some real fuckery afoot.

Trump, a hedonist, a personification, in his way, of the deadly sins, is a "tool" in the vernacular, but has also been used by Christian Nationalists as a tool to get their feet in the door of the White House. Why? How? I suspect it's that his hands are dirty and theirs stay clean, while their agenda will fall into place under him because he simply is an authoritarian. They don't care "what's in his heart". 

He's a gift to them. A gift from heaven. He'll outlaw abortion and birth control and eradicate wokeness and restructure society back to where everyone knew their "place" in the great chain of being. Where's the catch?

This is a democracy, and most people here don't actually want that, is the catch. We were supposed to have done away with the idea of terrestrial kings who have a "divine right" to do anything. Let alone place religious tests on who participates in government or how laws should induce people to behave. The founders of the US were all too aware of European sectarianism and the dangers thereof, and were trying to manage a system that would accommodate an already diverse society.

Justice Alito Should Pack it In

 

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is facing calls to recuse himself from cases involving the 2020 presidential election after reports emerged of an inverted American flag flown outside his home days after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. pic.twitter.com/BumAk9E8y1

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) May 17, 2024

If ultra-conservative SCOTUS Justice Samuel Alito (and family) feels so thin-skinned about the burden of the public commenting on the job he's doing (which affects all Americans, and no shit people are rightly concerned) , so much so that the US flag, inverted, was flown on his lawn like a cry for help or a signal that it was time for a revolution (or insurrection), if his bias has become so apparent that people deem it fit that he recuse himself from the most important cases relating to the preservation of our republic and the continued relevance of the Constitution as well as the court on which he sits (what the whole hell else is the "presidential immunity" question?), then he can really do us a favor and retire. 

Before the election, thanks. Because apparently, elections make him just too emotional, and as a nation, we've already had two long national nightmares over that sort of thing. 

As Goes Ohio? Kansas? Arizona?

 

If Nikki Haley, who dropped out weeks ago, is pulling 20% in the GOP primary against Trump in Ohio--this is a worrisome thing for him. Here's what I'm thinking--it's well-educated and female voters who realize that Trump is an appalling person. Some of these people will end up voting for Biden. Some will stay home. But this is an issue that Trump actually CAN'T address. 

What do I mean by that? Take the E. Jean Carroll defamation suit. He counter-sued and lost, because what in the hell is the difference between assaulting someone digitally vs. with a penis? He's going back in against ABC and George Stephanopoulos because Nancy Mace kind of made him do it.  So we are now going to be talking about Trump's being a rapist and Trump INVITED it. 

We are going to go back to the Ukraine issue in the first impeachment because Trump invited that, too. We are going to se him condition Jewishness as it relates to Zionism, for a degree of Zionism that truly is anti-Palestinian. We are going to question what he REALLY wants done at the border because he stopped the border deal. We are going to question whether he understands foreign policy because after all--Russia is being expansionist, dare I say, imperialistic? And there's stupid tyrant fanboy Trump, wanting to be recognized by the Big Kids Dictator Club. 

Theocrat Chat with Tommy Taterhead

 

I beg this very stupid man's entirely irrelevant pardon, but how does he think in this day and age that folks in Central American have not heard about Jesus? Just hordes of uncontacted tribes "with languages nobody heard before" I guess. https://t.co/n1LFvvPmJE

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) March 1, 2024

There is a lot going wrong here in just a few brief sentences. The first thing I take issue with is that we need "God" in government at all. Individuals might take something from having the presence of a deity in their lives and have comfort and strength in their faith, but government itself--our government, is made of laws. Our country's population is made up of people with many different faiths. I think that the First Amendment to our Constitution is the remedy against the sectarian wars and religious persecutions our forefathers were well aware of in Europe--and Tuberville here completely demonstrates why the Christian nationalist desire to get God in government is folly.

Whose God? Because the various immigrants crossing the border aren't ignorant of the concept of God. It seems to me that Tuberville is concerned that they might be followers of the "wrong" God. All of my ancestors came from countries where Protestants and Catholics clashed. Does Sen. Tuberville think Papists follow the Whore of Babylon? Or has he been misguided into thinking "foreigners" are probably some sort of untutored heathens? Is he unaware that Protestant evangelism has penetrated Central and South America? The same religion, roughly, he himself follows? 

This is a man who should be very careful indeed whom he considers to be untutored. I've met many a non-Christian whose grasp on theology is very likely better than the Senator's grasp on anything. 

Army of God and the Texas Tangle

 

Rubber Duck, hold on to your shorts, because it looks like we might have us a convoy again. 

What? Well, Gov. Abbott of Texas can't defend the border against (reads notes) US Border patrol and continue to hold up supply lines without the help of Trump's little Christian soldiers. I mean, can he? So of course he will need weirdo civilians showing up in job lots to just confuse the fuck out of everything, because that's completely effective border security. He will want a kind of posse, made up of the sternly written opinions of red state governors and maybe they send their National Guards to do nothing but stand about at the border. Bored and listless. Away from home.

This is the Republican approach to a serious issue--stunt-queening. The legislature could just vote on fully funding agencies involved with border security to do a really great job, but instead we get this shit. They want to impeach DHS Mayorkas because he can't do his job because they didn't give him the funds--even if he's still doing as much of his job as he can--within constitutional limits. I'm the kind of nut who thinks people get impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, not for trying to obey the law. 

It's just as fucked-up as the GOP Hunter Biden investigation--it rests on the idea that the kayfabe of Breitbart and Gateway Pundit are real shit. It distracts from the GOP inability to do policy or govern ever. Let's interfere with the people trying to do the job, to hold up the job getting done. Let's not do an immigration deal--ever! Then bitch about there never being an immigration deal. Blame Democrats for existing. Blame them harder when they want to make a deal. Because how dare they!

Ballots vs. Bullets

 

NEW: Colorado Secretary of State "extremely concerned" about pro-Trump violence

Jena Griswold received 64 death threats and 900+ threats of non-lethal abuse just within the first 3 weeks of filing the case to keep Trump off the state ballot. https://t.co/aEwbadUZtZ

— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) December 20, 2023

This follows a pattern that occurs around Trump, mostly because he encourages it. Trump's people do not respect the law because they have decided that supporting Trump is something higher than the law. What people who want to say that Trump has to be rejected at the ballot box don't understand is, Trump's insurrection started with undermining the importance of the ballot box. That pattern of violence and threats--includes poll workers and election officials.  

Trump has already established his people don't respect the ballot--he lost in 2020, and 1/6 was the result of that. There are two things I strongly suggest cause this. The first is the Tea Party and militia-based kayfabe that the 2nd Amendment is a remedy against one's own government in the event that it becomes "tyrannical" (which seems to include Trump receiving due process for indictments received at the determination of a grand jury).

The Terror by Night

I think about the Bible sometimes. When the Internet was cut off in Gaza, and the electricity, I thought about the "terror by night"--the nameless and wordless horrors of the obscured, when the beasts come out after sundown, and you can barely make out the face of friend from foe. The thieves and knives come out at night. 

That terror is called "pachad". It is the terror for one's life. What is also to be feared? The arrow by day. 

That arrow pierces to the quick, because the target is seen. There is nothing done under cover of night that doesn't come out in the daylight.

I worry about people who want to use the Bible about this conflict. A lot of the ancient of days stuff is just outdated, and I don't think it's right that we hear a chant of "Khaybar, Khaybar" in pro-Palestine marches, or references to Simon of Trent. 

The House GOP Found Their Johnson

 

You know, usually I like to make link-heavy blog posts that substantiate all the facts I drop in one of my screeds, but I will leave the research on this one to my readers because I had limited connectivity to the internet this week and have a whole carton of huevos to fry. But here's the funny thing to me: 

Look at the happy-ass motherfuckers in the picture above.  They think they just got their shit together and ended a long national nightmare. They just picked the most problematic of dudes to unify themselves around. He doesn't look like a whole lot, but whoo, this dude right here. 

This is a Christian nationalist of the kind it's been my whole life's business to want to take down. He's anti-science: a young earth creationist who doesn't believe in climate change. That right there is an air raid siren for me: he does not care about facts and doesn't care whether facts are even useful to the betterment of life for other people. He talks in terms of "belief" because empirical knowledge is inconvenient to his worldview. He is a 2020 election denier: that right there--he cares about power, and GOD DAMN the facts. 

He says he finds his proofs in Scripture: people write books all the time, but if you "believe in" God--who do you think put facts in the world? It feels very much to me like people who deny empirical knowledge are the ones really denying a revelation that can be understood and made accessible, and instead support a kind of false-witness bearing of twisting Scripture to one's own ends. 

TWGB: You Can Consider All The Options

 

Recently seen unfurled at Yankee Stadium was an absolutely enormous banner reading "Trump or Death". It showed the dates "1776-2024" which sort of suggests something happened in 1776 that would definitely end in 2024. I guess the opposition of the United States to monarchy, since the weirdos brandishing this flag seem to want to install Trump in office regardless of how the rest of us feel about him.

I encourage Trump followers, of course, by all means, to consider all of their options. No one here gets out alive, etc. 

Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, father of Sarah, pastor (?), tv host and promoter of cartoon pseudohistory, certainly seems to think that if Trump loses in 2024 it will be the last election decided by ballots rather than bullets. Wild, if true, right? He subscribes to the idea that Trump is being persecuted for his political beliefs, when those beliefs were that he should be president for life and the hell with what the voters said. OK. Trump's beliefs are very much a problem. The idea that violence is the answer to your candidate losing an election because he isn't popular is the actual stuff of banana republics. Your political candidate deciding he should be president for life is a problem--and yes, this is a thing Trump hinted at. 

Shiny Happy People

 

I cannot recommend this Amazon Prime documentary enough, because the reality of the IBLP and the legacy of Bill Gothard has a real impact on politics today. The "Evangelical vote" in this country is about, to some degree, this anti-science and abusive cult of kept-sweet femininity and abusive masculine authority. It's about deadening children's creativity and independence.  It's about reinforcing gender stereotypes and blaming victims for their abuse. It's about taking away the voices of the abused. 

It's about taking away scientific facts, and inserting one's own religious bias.  You know how they do. It's about wisdom books that have no wisdom in them. It's about elevating positive thinking and shutting down critical thinking. It's about denying reality and smiling when the camera is on. It's about little kids being made emissaries of their parents' religion and not being compensated. It's about Jim Bob Duggar being a stingy controlling SOB. It's about Mike Huckabee helping whitewash child abuse. 

When you look at Josh Hawley and his weird kvetching about masculinity, or the Liberty Mommies astroturf bullshit--you are seeing something that stems from this movement. They want to be the umbrella over you to prevent Satan doing his closet boogeyman stuff to your life. It's kind of really well-funded and super-sad. Because it is rooted in patriarchy and ignorance and weirdos who want to spank little kids. 

DeSantis and the Debts

 

In Pennsylvania, where Dr. Oz and Doug Mastriano are contending for US Senate and the governorship, respectively, former president Donald Trump has a nickname for a certain governor of his party up for election in Trump's own current state of residence: he calls him "Ron DeSanctimonious." And why not? Trump is spoiling to run for president in 2024 himself and wants to kneecap other contenders who have forgotten who he is. 

Now, the reason why Trump wants to run for president in 2024 might understandably be construed to be in part his belief that being a political contender will wash away some of his legal woes.  We've known that for more than a minute. He doesn't need to run to prove himself--he has been in the White House. Even if he lost. And was impeached twice....What he does need is to manufacture the kind of pre-emptive immunity he once had when he was in office.

But what he doesn't want is some upstart who came to office on his presumed coattails (today, what should have been an unraveled bolero, if the media and Democratic messaging could get on the same page about his fall from grace) to supplant him. 

And Ron Desantis, who toadied with croaking and sticky-tongued fidelity to win in Florida, has decided to trip the light Olympic and set his cap among the stars, declaring that he's God's gift to politics. 

I love you, Ron.

On behalf of millions of people, never stop fighting for freedom. pic.twitter.com/5wcopo041U

— Casey DeSantis (@CaseyDeSantis) November 4, 2022

(Casey DeSantis--brainwashed tradwife or religiously-literate brains behind the rattan throne? Also too, don't care.) 

On the nth day, the creator endowed me with an amazing gag-reflex, but I sputtered a little over this one. Sure, it's serving "God created a farmer" energy and also, those various t-shirts from the kind of twee probably mostly foreign labels that appeal to millennial wine moms who decorate their houses with wooden signs with inspirational calligraphy and are advertised on Facebook. 

As far as Trump can see--DeSantis owes him. All the young Republicans do. Which leads me to once again ask--What is the play? Because you can't suck up to Trump if you want to topple him. And you need to finish him to get over him, and no Republican seems to have the taste for it. 

Does DeSanctimonious have the stones? He's ambitious, wants to be liked, and loves to retcon history. He's already earned dictator cred. He's earned the support of bigots and punched down at LGBT people every chance he can get and smeared their allies as "groomers".  He's thumbed his nose at science and history alike. (He's done a lot to reinforce my personal prejudice that the Ivies socially promote unfit conservative students because they would rather not deal with the stink they would raise if flunked for just poor all-around scholarship.)

I think DeSantis might not have the stones. I know Trump thinks he doesn't. But I'd like DeSantis to try it because I am not too sophisticated to watch a little bloodsport. 

TWGB: Everything Looks Worse in Black and White

 

The image I went with for today's TrumpWorld Grab-Bag is a black and white rendition of the one-fingered salute his faithful crowd gave him his past Saturday as he gave more of his "American carnage" type of doom-saying with the obvious punchline of how only he could fix it. He's been dipping a little deeper into Qanon signifying lately, and I can only surmise it has a lot to do with their being a goddamn cult that worships him, that they will believe anything, and they are primed as hell for violence. If you are a legally-jeopardized twice-impeached one-term wonder with multiple indictments potentially coming your way and a very limited defense, and are also Donald Trump, insurrectionist, sure, what the hell: 

Threaten mass violence in case of indictments. 

But is it fascism? Oh hell. It isn't history repeating, but it's been rhyming for a while now, ok? If you are looking for exact parallels, hey, maybe that isn't the metric we want to be looking at. I will say that Qanon is obviously a derivative of Nazi (and earlier) anti-Semitic blood-libel though. And that actual demonization of the other creates a permission slip for doing any amount of horror to one's political enemies. Look at this:

Pastor Mark Burns, at Eric Trump and Michael Flynn’s event in Idaho: “I’m coming here to declare war on every demonic, demon-possessed Democrat that comes from the gates of Hell!” pic.twitter.com/URUcHo11V8

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) September 16, 2022

Trump has been using religion as a way to prove legitimacy and religionists (Christian Nationalists) have been using Trump to try and make their religious POV into law.  There are a number of evangelical "prophets" who insist God told them Trump never lost the 2020 election or is definitely coming into power again.   And you know who would have really hated this kind of thing--our founding fathers. This religious enthusiasm is too much. This dictating from the pulpit. This non-separation of church and state. 

Want to Hear an Identity Politics?

 

Garrett Ziegler, a former Trump WH aide, lost his mind after his interview with the @January6thCmte yesterday.

He accused the committee of being “anti-white” and referred to his female colleagues who spoke out against Trump as “thots and hoes.” pic.twitter.com/S7wOdH3tY1

— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) July 20, 2022

You know, I've voiced my fears before that there are people who experience morality as a category error, in the sense that for them, morality is based on who you are, not what you do. It's why they can't understand how religious leaders, who are by identity always moral, can be perverts, or how cops, who are supposed to represent the law, can ever be perpetrators. Men based on identity are heads of household and common sense leaders, women are emotional and subordinate. White people are in good neighborhoods, etc. Christians are good, heathens bad. 

"Identity politics" is a term right wingers use, I think badly. It's fine for groups to make political alliances that are advantageous for them. They accuse Democrats of using identity politics ("the black card" or "the gay card", feminism, etc.) to signify allyship for political support, but man, have they ever weaponized the white, Christian identity folks.