Tuesday, April 6, 2021

Republicans are back to their old games: if THEY decide you are "undeserving," you can't have it

 

Ever since the November election, when most Republicans seemed to support Donald Trump’s fraud conspiracies—and then followed that with many initially expressing belated “alarm” at the results of making those false claims and outrageous lies leading to the events of January 6—the Republican Party seems incapable of settling on a moral or ethical “standard,” substituting it with the usual hyper-partisan propaganda, and returning to their  clown show tent for another performance with the Fox News freaks. Like Trump, some of these people are such raging narcissists that they just don’t realize that deliberately alienating and insulting people every time they open their mouths is bound to result in the creation of an army of enemies eager and ready to exact vengeance.

Thus when news surfaced that Rep. Matt Gaetz is being investigated for having sex with a 17-year-old “child,” it doesn’t matter that half of high school students have had sex by the time they graduate—“children” having sex with other “children” happens all the time—Gaetz just had it coming to him. Few of his colleagues wish to defend him, and if the Justice Department investigation results in criminal charges, his career will be over, and presumably his fiancé will decide they are over too. Maybe Fox News will give him a job if he doesn’t go to jail first; given that Fox still employs Jeanine Pirro, they obviously will hire any ding-dong off the street.

Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell abandoned his “moderation” quicker than crap out of a duck. Isn’t it amazing how a guy who nuked any evidence of ethical or legal credibility by jamming two right-wing Supreme Court justices down our throats is now is spending his time leading his pack of hypocrites wailing away off Bald Mountain, most of them at least giving lip service to the return of the man they have spent four years satanically worshipping, and we are forced to take all this juvenile behavior “seriously.” The Senate parliamentarian—after first denying the Democrats the ability to include a $15 minimum wage in the COVID relief bill because it “violated” the budget reconciliation rule—has turned around and gave Joe Biden’s infrastructure proposal his “blessing.” Damn does that have McConnell steaming.

And that isn’t all. After the MLB decided to move the All-Star game out of Georgia because of complaints about its election law changes that are plainly meant to suppress voting in Democratic-majority districts. McConnell’s claims that these complaints are “misleading and bullying” the public is Orwellian doublespeak. No one is being “misled” about this; even Republican voters know what this is really about, because they also want to suppress as many votes as they can so that they don’t “lose” again. The “public” that is being “bullied” are those who are being told their votes shouldn’t “count” as much as those who vote Republican.

McConnell is also accusing corporations of suddenly being stung by the “woke” bug, warning them that there will be “consequences” if they take any action against Republican politicians. What exactly that means is not clear; perhaps corporations are just giving “lip service” to “woke” causes, or maybe they will withhold campaign contributions or advertising on Fox News. It isn’t like Republicans have much “leverage” in the matter anyways: what will they “threaten” to do? Raise corporate taxes, strengthen regulations, or charge corporate donors for the “privilege” of donating to their campaigns? There is the suggestion that Republican legislatures will rescind tax breaks for “woke” companies; well, I’m sure that if said companies shut down or moved elsewhere Republicans will have a fine time explaining how defending white grievance “culture” is worth losing jobs over.

This is all so BS. The Biden administration needs to make clear to the public that its “raising” of taxes on corporations is not really a tax “increase,” but decreasing the excessive tax cut passed by Republicans and signed by Trump that was not used in the manner supporters claimed it would be. It has not been used for research and development—spending which was tax deductible anyways—or to improve manufacturing infrastructure, or even to create jobs; all the profit went into the pockets of the wealthy and shareholders. That money is better spent on a program that actually does create jobs, like Biden infrastructure plan certainly will if implemented properly.

With the possibility of another win for the American people if Biden’s infrastructure plan is passed, Republicans and their friends on Fox News are left with nothing better to do except re-convince the already convinced that this is all an attack on “culture”—meaning “white” culture—which in “lay” terms is simply white nationalism and grievance. The nationalists and the grieved know that these Republican election laws are about race, and that any spending project that doesn’t “clearly” benefit themselves must surely be going into the pockets of the “undeserving” –meaning minorities. To quote Alfred P. Doolittle: “Look at it my way. What am I? I’m one of the ‘undeserving’ poor, that’s what I am. Now think what that means to a man…if there is anything going, and I puts in for a little bit of it, it’s always the same story: you’re underserving, so you can’t have it.”

That’s pretty much the “philosophy” of Republicans as opposed to that of Democrats: only the “deserving”—meaning the white people who vote Republican—have any say in what happens in this country, or are entitled to the “privileges” that come to being called an “American.” Whether it is about voting rights, jobs for the “underserving” or businesses turned “traitor” by criticizing white nationalist policies, Republicans just can’t seem to get a handle on the things they do and say, utterly unmindful of how it plays to 81 million voters plus give or take a few millions here and there who benefitted from a $1400 check that passed without a single Republican vote.

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