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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