In the discourse around what hoodie and shorts aficionado Senator John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, wears on the floor of the Senate, one theme comes out again and again: we used to expect better from our elected officials. It's led normally not-entirely nutzoid writers to opine stupidly. Kathleen Parker (motto: "Three cosmos to the right of Maureen Dowd") writes in her Washington Post "column" (if by "column," you mean, "A train wreck that's been allowed to just sit there so long that the corpses stink"), "As little as I have loved Republicans the past few years, coinciding with the rise of our own little autocrat, at least Donald Trump knows how to dress."
As gut-churningly galling as that sentence is, she follows it with "Clothes might not make the man or woman, but they do tell us a great deal about them." Do they, Kathleen Parker? What did Trump's ill-fitting, cheap-ass suits and ties-down-to-his-dick tell us about him? Then it gets even more fucking childish as she talks about how her father complained about how people used to dress nicely everywhere, and, heavens to Betsy, at Westminster Cathedral, she saw some woman dressed like "she was taking a quick break from the trade" (which I think means like a prostitute). Keep it classy, Kath.
Well, if we're gonna talk about how shit used to be, let's expand beyond clothing. I remember when it would have been a big fucking deal when a former president who is the current frontrunner for the GOP nomination in 2024 stated that he believed that the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed for treason. That's the message that Donald Trump sent out over Truth Toilet this week, no doubt while dressed impeccably over his diaper and Spanx, in response to an Atlantic article on Gen. Mark Milley, who is stepping down as Chair of the Joint Chiefs. In it, Milley says that he told his Chinese counterparts not to worry about the bluster coming from Trump, who really was the Commander-in-Chief of the entire military, in order to prevent a stupid war. For Trump and others, that was treasonous, while for most of us normal human beings, it was cold assurance that we wouldn't fight this time just so that a man-baby could see things go "boom."
And, by the way, I remember when it would have been a big fucking deal if we learned the frontrunner for a party's nomination for president shit all over a wounded veteran or disparaged an entire US territory as not being part of the US, both of which are also in the article.
But we're apparently now numb to this kind of umbrage, this flouting of convention, this disrespect to tradition. We're supposed to dismiss it as more Trumpian bluster and pretend it's what we're putting up with until he loses next year. How did that work out in 2016? How did that work out when we were told he would just fume for a bit about losing the 2020 election and then accept his loss? Used to be the media would have relentlessly hounded Trump and his vile supporters to see if they really believed a decorated, celebrated four-star general should face the firing squad. It would have been a dividing line between sane and insane. Instead, it's just Tuesday. And this could go for a thousand other attacks on civility, decorum, and decency from Trump.
You see, when you start mouthing off about all the traditions that Sen. Fetterman is stepping on, you open yourself up for questioning about all the other things we've decided are normal now. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, believe it or not, is a member of Congress despite, to all appearances, being a meth-addicted simian of some kind, called President Biden an "old fart" in response to a Biden tweet. That was on her official congressional account, not her personal one. She also showed a photo that included the genitals of the president's son in a real congressional hearing. What was so important to the safety and prosperity of the United States that Hunter Biden's pretty decent penis needed to be seen by the world and become part of the congressional record and thus archived forever so alien archeologists digging through the Atlantis-like ruins of a sunken Washington, DC can find it and think, "This not-bad penis must have ended it all"? Nothing. Not a goddamned thing.
Every fucking day we get another indecency from the GOP, another threat of a shutdown or of shooting migrants seeking asylum or of arresting women trying to cross from their brutally cruel state to another in order to get an abortion so they don't die or of George Santos being there. Every fucking day they break all the guardrails of civility and humanity, and then they want us to get angry because John Fetterman doesn't like wearing suits and Chuck Schumer changed an unofficial dress code to allow him not to for quick votes.
Just fuck off. This is another thing that conservatives with one or two rational cells left believe they can control while the out-of-control conservative animals run around thrusting their flag-colored asses in our faces, hooting and happy that they can shut shit down, and telling us that's patriotism. Some on these assholes bitched about Ukrainian President Zelensky wearing his combat-ready outfit to speak to the Senate this week. It's all just an excuse to degrade something that threatens them.
There's one criticism of Fetterman that I think is quaint in its old school hysteria. Barking mad Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins, who looks like a thumb and dresses like he's running a the shittiest brothel in Deadwood, said that Fetterman is "a communist and he’s demonstrating his allegiance to Marxist principles by wearing 'workers clothes.'" I love that idea. Fetterman should wear a Che Guevara hoodie next time.
