No One Hates America More Than Trump and the MAGA Cretins

Believe it or not, the election of 2020, up to and through Election Day, was pretty much a triumph of the American electoral system at all levels. At the height of a global pandemic, with hospitals overwhelmed, with corpses being kept in trailers, with supply chains fucked, we held a presidential election and that motherfucker was run amazingly well. Yes, there were the usual, preventable, bullshit problems of long lines at polling stations, especially in poor and non-white majority areas in Republican states. That's a huge bastard of a problem that needs fixing. But the combination of early voting and mail-in ballots, along with Election Day voting, worked. It should have been one of the great civic celebrations in US history, as in "Holy shit, we really did that. We really made it work. And it was the most secure election in this country possibly ever." We should have been cheering for election workers and officials at the local, state, and federal level like we cheered for essential workers. We should have been patting ourselves on the back for coming through and voting at the highest rate since 1900. We should have been beaming with pride at how awesome this country can be when it wants to be. 

But we were not allowed that pride. We were not allowed that celebration. Instead, we were treated to an entire movement, led by the goddamn President of the United States, beating that triumph to death. They went after everyone with their lies about the "stolen" election. They fucked up the lives of those election workers and officials who had busted their asses to make sure they got the job done. And that's across the political board. They fucked up Republicans and Democrats in positions to run elections or count votes. They took this great moment and shit all over it. And then they took it further to shit all over the entire system, outlawing the things that made the election work, disenfranchising voters, shifting responsibility for elections to politicians who would undermine them. 

You know, I watched as an election was actually stolen. That was in 2000. I know what that looks like. 2020 was a goddamn paragon of competency and effort. Yet Democrats didn't wage war on the entire election process (or even do as many reforms as should have been done once they were in power again, which, again, fuckin' Democrats). 

When your country has done something undeniably, well, great and you disparage and destroy that, you hate your country. When it comes to elections, you can hate the voting results. Fuck, I've done that on any number of elections. You can hate the people who voted against your candidate. I will freely talk shit about Republican voters. You can hate anti-democratic things like the Senate and the Electoral College. I mean, fucking hell, those need to be amended out of existence. And, yeah, when your country does something shitty, you call it out and demand better. When your country's history is shitty, you say so and demand better. But when it's done something incredible? You can allow yourself to have a bit of patriotism. At the very least, it's okay to do a Jeremiah Johnson nod. Loving your country isn't the same as being blind about your country. So fucking nod and take a moment to say, "Nicely done." Then get back to solving the shit that's wrong. Relationships take work, goddamnit.

It's long been taken as an article of faith on the right that Democrats and the "left" (which has become such a nebulous term, along with "liberal" and "progressive" that it can describe anyone who leans even a little away from "fucking crazy") hate the United States. Trump says it all the fucking time. A regular line at his rallies of the damned is "We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country and they do hate our country." They think we hate in so many ways. Schools that accurately teach American history, with its good, its bad, and its very, very ugly, are seen as making children hate the country. If you believe diversity is a strength, you hate this country. And, in the eyes of Trump's devoted idiot hordes, if a grand jury and a court think he's committed crimes, then the judicial system hates America because, as you should fucking know, Trump is America and America is Trump. Or he's Jesus. Maybe both. It's hard to keep track anymore. 

(Side note: When that fucking awful "God Gave Us Trump" video came out, all I could think was, "Well, let's hope this goes the same way as the last time God supposedly gave us someone." Although you'd need some pretty strong nails.)

They're running the same playbook that they've run since I can remember: they're the "real Americans" and we're the assholes who hate America. What's different this time is that they are using it to undermine our institutions. They love the country, but our election system is corrupt and must be destroyed because they didn't win in 2020. They love the country, but they they want to dismantle the federal government because something something Deep State. They love the country, but the justice system won't let Trump get away with rampant criminality and so it must be filled with cronies and hacks who will do his bidding. They love the country, but they want to throw out people who came here because they love this country. 

The MAGA cretins don't love the United States. They love themselves and they love Trump. And that's it. Fuck everything else. Fuck your rights. Fuck your compassion. Fuck your laws. Fuck you if you don't love them and Trump, too. They hate us. They hate the country we want. They hate the present. They hate the future.

Trump had two great things that he had a hand in doing and any politician not Trump would have been proud to run on them: the successful 2020 election and the speed with which the Covid vaccination was developed. He should be running on hoping the 2024 election is even close to as successful as the 2020 one and on all the lives saved because of the vaccine. But he can't claim either of them because of the hate he's propagated for them both. So instead he runs on the hate and distrust. 

Why bring this up? Isn't this shit obvious? 

There's something else that's a regular line in Trump's stump speeches. He ends by saying all the things that "will" happen if he's elected again, and right there is this line: "We will love our country." It's just so clear. The love of country is conditional. It's transactional, like everything else in Trump's life. In other words, he's saying he doesn't love his country now and neither should his followers. That's why they're good with his tilt into dictatorship. It's the vile thrill of killing what others love. 

(I know I've talked about the success of the 2020 election before, but it just sticks in my craw like a pubic hair I swallowed and I can't cough up.)

Martin Luther King Would Still Fuck the Right's Shit Up (Still Getting It Wrong Edition)

It's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and that means it's time for the racist dickscabs of the right to trot out that one quote from "I Have a Dream" they use to attempt to colonize King's power and message. And while they are still talking about judging people by "the content of their character" as a way of avoiding how King was actually saying that can happen after you deal with all the bigoted shit woven into the filthy fabric of America, there's actually another quote conservatives have glommed onto this year. Check out this Truth Toilet post from Trump's taint dabber, Rep. Elise Stefanik from New York:

Yup. They've moved on to other speeches. This one can be traced to a commencement address at Oberlin College in June 1965, and you won't be surprised to know that, in context, King is saying that the time is always right to, non-violently, fuck some right-wing racist shit up. 

Here's what he said:

"[W]e are challenged to work passionately and unrelentingly to get rid of racial injustice in all its dimensions. Anyone who feels that our nation can survive half segregated and half integrated is sleeping through a revolution. The challenge before us today is to develop a coalition of conscience and get rid of this problem that has been one of the nagging and agonizing ills of our nation over the years. Racial injustice is still the Negro's burden and America's shame. We've made strides, to be sure. We have come a long, long way since the Negro was first brought to this nation as a slave in 1619. In the last decade we have seen significant developments - the Supreme Court's decision outlawing segregation in the public schools, a comprehensive Civil Rights Bill in 1964, and, in a few weeks, a new voting bill to guarantee the right to vote. All of these are significant developments, but I would be dishonest with you this morning if I gave you the impression that we have come to the point where the problem is almost solved.

"We must face the honest fact that we still have a long, long way to go before the problem of racial injustice is solved. For while we are quite successful in breaking down the legal barriers to segregation, the Negro is now confronting social and economic barriers which are very real. The Negro is still at the bottom of the economic ladder. He finds himself perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. Millions of Negroes are still housed in unendurable slums; millions of Negroes are still forced to attend totally inadequate and substandard schools. And we still see, in certain sections of our country, violence and man's inhumanity to man in the most tragic way. All of these things remind us that we have a long, long way to go. For in Alabama and Mississippi, violence and murder where civil rights workers are concerned, are popular and favorite pastimes.

"Let nobody give you the impression that the problem of racial injustice will work itself out. Let nobody give you the impression that only time will solve the problem. That is a myth, and it is a myth because time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively. And I'm absolutely convinced that the people of ill will in our nation - the extreme rightists - the forces committed to negative ends - have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation, not merely for the vitriolic works and violent actions of the bad people who bomb a church in Birmingham, Alabama, or shoot down a civil rights worker in Selma, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, 'Wait on time.' Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals. Without this hard work, time becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always right to do right."

Man, that's gotta fuck with the heads of any dumbass MAGA redcap who takes two minutes to look shit up (which, yeah, I know). King cites 1619. He says that the laws that were passed and the court cases that were won are great but don't solve "the problem of racial injustice" (which is some total CRT shit right there).  

And, as far as the concept of "time," he's imploring people to act and not wait for shit to get done. "To do right" is to oppose being dragged back to the allegedly great America that Republicans want to drag us back to. 

Trump's Silence on Death Threats Is Evidence Against Him

I remember, as I'm sure you do, in the years after the 9/11 attacks, that every time some violence was committed by someone who was Muslim, the entire Muslim community in the United States was expected, if not forced, by the right and by the media to make a statement condemning the violence. It's always been an absolutely ludicrous thing since it presumes that a Muslim who committed a shooting represented all Muslims if the denouncement didn't happen. It also takes away focus from the very real Islamophobia and violence against Muslims in this country. But even though the local imam had nothing to do with a shooter, that imam always had to say on camera that Islam is a religion of peace and the shooter was really degrading his faith.

I also remember, as I'm sure you do, the Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin. Sometimes, some people connected to the protests (very few people in the context of how huge the marches and rallies were) rioted and committed violence, looting and starting fires (allowing that some this might also have been caused by infiltrators). Any leaders who supported Black Lives Matter, any politician, especially Black politicians, had to get in front of reporters to condemn the violence and call on supporters to stop. This actually made sense. When some in your nonviolent movement get violent, you say something to try to end it or distance yourself from it, even if it's being blown out of proportion. A burning police station is never a good look. 

So it's fascinating and horrific and entirely expected that former president/charity thief and current indicted felon/rapist/GOP frontrunner Donald Trump has not said a word to denounce the death threats, swatting incidents, and actual violence, including murder, done in his name. And that goes across the board. The regularity with which anyone who opposes Trump gets death threats against them and their families means that it's a feature, not a bug, in the polluted MAGA ecosystem. We know that Republicans stay in line at least partly because they don't want to deal with the flood of violent crazies calling, messaging, and posting about the harm that will come to those heretical to the MAGA mob. And it's not just members of Congress or other elected officials who are the targets. We know that regular election workers and regular federal government workers get called out by name by President Trump or one of his cabal of lickspittles, goons, and lackeys, and then their lives are made intolerable by the threats against them. Trump knows exactly what's going to happen, and he gleefully participates in it. It's why Judge Engoron in his fraud trial placed a gag order on Trump because he was making a clerk's life a nightmare.

In recent weeks, hoax calls to law enforcement have led to swatting against judges in Trump's cases (yet oddly not against Trump appointee Judge Aileen Cannon), as well as against Special Counsel Jack Smith. Swatting is especially insidious because of the potential for such incidents to lead to unintended death and destruction. And, sorry, but I can't help but think of some MAGA cop using the opportunity to "accidentally" gun down someone who might put Trump behind bars. 

This doesn't even get into the actual violence committed by Trump supporters and MAGA redhats, from mass shootings to racist and homophobic attacks. 

And before you even say it, yes, there are incidents where someone on the left is to blame, like the recent swatting of Marjorie Taylor Greene. But, if asked, any leader on the left will call it out and condemn anyone who does it. 

Trump revels in the bullying of anyone who breathes a negative thing about him. Over on his worthless Truth Toilet, he regularly, savagely degrades the judges and prosecutors and opposing attorneys and rape victim E. Jean Carroll. He recently posted a clip of an interview with convicted Mafia member and murderer Sammy "the Bull" Gravano where the mobster said he couldn't "get" Trump, implying Trump was too honest. Trump implored, "Thank you to Sammy the Bull. I hope Judges Engoron & Kaplan see this. We need fairness, strength and honesty in our New York Courts. We don’t have it now!" That's right. A guy who had a hit list is a character witness. How is that not an implied threat? Trump advocates for violent people and threatens that violence will occur if he's not acquitted and re-elected. And he is perfectly content to let others suffer from the violence and the threats from his cult members. He can't be bothered to tell them to knock it off because it's part of a strategy of sowing chaos into the legal system.

Frankly, this silence on those committing or promising violence in his name, as well as his own threats, implied or otherwise, are of a piece with his inaction for most of January 6, 2021. Trump watched the insurrectionists riot and attack the Capitol. He could have immediately called for it to end and denounced everyone involved. But, as we know, he didn't. He stayed quiet for hours and watched to see if it would pay off in his favor, only grudgingly telling them to go home but assuring them that "we love you," thus giving them license to continue violently agitating. That's what he wants: others to do his bidding while he does nothing to stop them. His continuing silence should be used as evidence in his January 6 trial. It's a pattern of behavior to allow people to be hurt in his name.

It works both ways: if you have to condemn violence in your movement to prove you're nonviolent, then if you're not condemning violence in your movement, it means your movement is violent. And your followers. And you. And the justice system should deal with you as such.

When You Say Trump Should Be Allowed to Run for Office, You Sound Like a Fucking Idiot

Jesus fuck, stop being such pedantic idiots about whether or not Donald Trump should be prohibited from holding public office. The fucking 14th Amendment is absolutely fucking clear that he shouldn't be allowed near an election. And yet we keep having these pearl-clutching debates about what it means, how it's the end of democracy, and other assorted shit. No, it's the way the country avoids our stupid electoral system and our stupid voters putting a madman into office...again.

Look at these insane arguments.

1. "We should let the people decide." You sound like an absolutely pathetic little bitch if you say this and more than a little brain-damaged. The fucking people fucking decided in 2020 and the reason we're even having this discussion is because Donald Trump and a whole bunch of other elected officials decided that they were going to overturn that result because of shit they made up, shit that no court anywhere with every kind of judge agreed was real, and shit that no one has every been able to prove other than to keep asserting the shit is actual shit when it's just shit shit. If Trump is on the ballot again in 2024 and the people decide again that he should be shoved into the history books as another "holy fuck, that really happened" chapter, do you honestly think that this time he'll go quietly? He never goes quietly. Between the bellowing and the flatulence and the heavy breathing, he will always make a racket. It's madness to insist that any election with Trump involved will end up as a regular election unless he outright wins (even when he does, he's a total cockknob about it), and he shouldn't even have a chance to do that. I don't wanna keep going through this shit again and again like some moronic time loop we can't escape from. It's not supporting democracy to allow the person who says he's going to pretty much murder democracy run for the office that will let him do it. Fucking madness.

2. "He needs to be convicted of insurrection first." Read the third section of the 14th. You see anything in there about a conviction being necessary? That's also part of Trump's argument that he shouldn't be tried for anything because the Senate already absolved him of all crimes (actually only one and that one isn't even part of the indictments against him). Being prevented from holding office isn't even really a punishment. Barring his conviction on any of the roughly 8000 other crimes he's committed, Trump is free to speak his normal bullshit. He can wander the mildew-scented halls of Mar-a-Lago, waiting for the omelet bar to open up again. He can pretend he's a businessman and launder more cash for Russian oligarchs. Fuck, he can do anything he likes. But he violated his oath of office pretty fucking clearly, so fuck off on running for president. It's like if you write a bad check at a business and they put your fuckin' photo up and say, "Don't sell cigarettes to this asshole." You can go to any other store you like, just not the one you fucked with. Oh, and everyone forgets the final part of Section 3: "But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability." Yeah, Congress can, if it wants, say, "Oh, it's cool that you wanted to dick over the entirety of democracy. All is forgiven." Wait. On the other hand, keep that part quiet. I could see Democrats actually going along with that for the sake of going high when they go low or some other lie that conveniently lets you off the hook of actually doing something.

3. "The 14th Amendment doesn't include the presidency." Oh, fuck off. The Constitution doesn't specifically bar dead people from running for office. Look at it. Someone should try running the corpse of JFK or something. Except everyone fucking knows that dead people can't run. In the debate over the 14th Amendment in 1866, one senator asked why it didn't say the president or vice president. Senator Lot Morrill from Maine responded, "Let me call the Senator's attention to the words 'or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States.'" In other words, are you fucking blind? Stupid? Both? Of course it includes the presidency. And if you are also saying that it was only meant for the Confederacy, well, they also debated whether or not to put a sunset date on it and decided against it. C'mon, motherfucking textualist judges, you know what to do.

4. "Trump didn't commit insurrection." Shut the fuck up, you nattering Nazi. Read the January 6 Committee report. That prick was planning to steal the election before the first vote was even cast. And the only reason we're still talking about the Big Lie is because an entire economic ecosystem is based on this fraud, from mind-numbing podcasts to entire careers built on promoting that lie and, in the most insidious of ways, slowly degrading the faith in our elections (the last of which was the most secure presidential election in history), like rising seas eroding a coastline. Trump never stopped committing insurrection. And he never stopped profiting off his insurrection. 

5. "His followers will cause violence if he's off the ballot." I'm not a fucking hostage and neither should the election or the country be. You could make the same argument as to why Trump needs to be president. I could go into why his idiot hordes of MAGA drones mostly won't do shit, but instead lemme turn it around and say, "Oh, so you would rather have the leader of those violent morons running the joint? Fuck outta here."

It's so blatantly obvious, and yet the apologists and pollyannas dance around like they believe their feet will touch lava if they come down on the side of the plain language of the Insurrection Clause. But such cowardice is the way that totalitarians take over. We have the ability to stop this Trump bullshit. It's right there. Hell, it was put there by Republicans, you know, the ones the GOP is always bragging about ending slavery. And they knew that if you let traitors in the door, then the traitors become the government. 

By the way, it's not just wild and woolly internet liberals who believe the Insurrection Clause says what it plainly says. Lots of conservatives are on board, too, because the most conservative thing you can do is follow the words of the Constitution (except the first part of the 2nd Amendment, of course). 

Fucking hell, the Constitution has the stake already sharpened to put in the heart of the fuckery we've been dealing with for the last 8 and a half years. Can the Supreme Court break out the mallet and get the job done? 

Haiku Review of 2023: The End

Big, rude thanks to everyone who submitted their haiku about the just-murdered year of 2023. When we look back, let's hope we remember it as the beginning of the end of the control Donald Trump has over our consciousness, like some kind of thought Hitler, and not the beginning of the beginning of the control Donald Trump has over our actual existence, like some kind of real Hitler.

Let's punch 2023 in the stones with these gems:

From Shannon M.:

It's easy to say

"Fuck Hamas and Fuck Likud"

Why is this so hard.

From BB in LA:

Saying "Beetlejuice"

Three times makes Lauren Boebert

Leave her home district

From Chris in Hong Kong:

Trump, Putin and Xi

triumvirate of pure cunts

the death of freedom

From Christine Arendt (no relation to Hannah):

Church & State 

nine judges supreme

fucking taking us backwards

democracy hangs

From Math Guy in Minnesota:

We love climate change!

No more freezing winter days

In coastal Nashville.

From war gerbil:

SURPRISE!

Crypto wonder-kid:

Sloppy hair and dress and fraud

Who woulda thunk it?

From RG in Illinois:

Daily Thought

I heard what you said.

And you strongly believe it.

You're just fuckin' wrong.

From Don the Canadian:

Yeats was right – he said

The center would never hold.

America’s fucked. 

From Curmudgeon in Chevy Chase:

Though a hurricane 

Of horror, we keep up hope.

But it ain’t easy.

And one more from me:

Laborers March

Striking workers all

Over America kicked

Ass. Let's hope for more.

Haiku Review of 2023: No Reason to Believe Maybe This Year Will Be Better Than the Last

More haiku than I can shake a cherry tree branch at. Here's another round of readers looking back on this fucked up year, which came after another fucked up year and before what will inevitably a fucked up year. 

From Q.S. on Facebook:

Hunter! Hunter! Ugh

At least he managed not to

Rob cancer patients

From H.L.W. on Facebook:

Secrets stacked in piles

Spilling from toilets out doors;

Spoils of a tyrant

From Grumpy, Esq.:

No textualist

spells Stephen Miller without 

spelling Hitler’s men.

From Rose W. in Brooklyn:

The pussy-grabber

Is finally going down

(Not in a good way)

From SPL:

daily gun slaughter

but on today's front pages

joe biden is old

From Abner in AZ:

Lincoln Logs

The Lincoln Project

Another Republican

Scam. History lost

From TMangrove in WI:

“Let’s pile on the queers

and immigrants!” is something

Jesus never said

From Sarah in Seattle:

Orca behavior 

got drastic. No wonder, with

guts full of plastic.

From Eric in Lewistown, PA:

Great economy

American Rescue Plan

Dark Brandon kicks ass

From Craig in CA:

Keep Fighting

With no more lost hope,

We can do this again, folks,

Vote in November

Okay, one more day of this and then we're done with this bitch of a year. Send 'em on: rudepundit@yahoo.com. And don't forget the form: a line of 5 syllables, a line of 7 syllables, and a line of 5 syllables. Title it if you want. Let's keep it going until the bitter end of the bitter times.

Haiku Review of 2023: The Haiku Before the Storm

Once again, I asked and you sent a fuckton of haiku. Coming in from sea to shining sea, even across a sea or two, you've once again defined the year with your simple, short poems. Here are a few of the absolute best so far (and I've only read the emails up through yesterday).

From Anonymous in AZ:

The fetus at all costs!

Until it’s born and breathing.

Then “Welcome cruel world.”

From John in Anderson, Indiana:

written on my heart

from the songs of Palestine

I wish I was free

From an American who fled to England, then to Spain, to escape the madness:

Mediocre men

Think that they should rule us all

We should smash their balls

From Rabbitearz in Los Angeles (who has gotten one in most every year):

It puts the Dick in

Dicktator. What a fucking

Blood-chilling dick-head.

From Doug in Sugar Pine:

Ethics

Clarence Thomas sucks

The meaning out of the words

Supreme Court Justice

From Ruth Ann in Madison:

Pageantry 2023

Miss America,

a nuclear engineer:

real Barbenheimer.

And from me:

Israel Can Liberate Itself

Bibi's been babied

By bilious bullshitters.

But bye-bye, bitch?

Prison Violence Is Wrong Or...

I know I should care

That Derek Chauvin was stabbed.

I'll wait 9 minutes.

Jeb = Ron

Maybe Florida

governors should stop running

to be president. 

Keep on sending them in to rudepundit@yahoo.com. I want to get haiku'd in the face repeatedly. Make that happen, rude readers.

Haiku Review of 2023: American Fiction

Welcome to the end of one more motherfucker of a year in this stupid age we're damned to live through. It was a year of repetition, of shit that we've been through seemingly a thousand fucking times yet various assholes and cockmites are forcing us to go through them again, like we're in some awful wormhole plot of a terrible sci-fi show. I mean, goddamnit, we've been through this anti-LGBT bullshit, we've been through the book bannings, we've been through the immigration hysteria, and we've had enough fucking wars between Palestine and Israel, for fuck's sake. And, Jesus fuck, I can't take another Trumpy election.

Still, as shitty as things seemed to be, there are some glimmers of what we used to call "hope" before right-wing media beat hope into a bloody heap and pissed on optimism. But, hey, listen: Donald Trump is careening towards some kind of legal reckoning. Despite the best efforts of Republicans to torpedo it, the American economy is chugging along quite well. Despite the best efforts of Republicans to torpedo him, Joe Biden is chugging along quite well, with no major fuckups since the Afghanistan withdrawal (which was always gonna suck - and we can argue about his support of Israel). Ron DeSantis was once the golden boy of the future GOP and now he's lucky if he ends up on some shit nutzoid right-wing media outlet like MAGA Ball Washing Today. So not all bad.

Around these parts, we tell the year to kiss our asses goodbye through the power of poetry. More precisely, through a couple of days of haiku, those 3-line expressions of all that is beautiful or all that is ugly or all that is awesome or all that is disturbing in this filthy, degraded world that can still give us something as lovely as, well, haiku.

Submit your haiku about anything 2023-related, fucked or not, to "rudepundit(at)yahoo(dot)com." I'm the only judge and jury here, and I am generally fickle, cranky, drunk, high, and pantsless. 

I'm also a stickler for the form: one line of 5 syllables, one line of 7 syllables, and one line of 5 syllables, in that order. They can be as filthy, funny, or fucked-up as you like. You can be serious, silly, or sanctimonious. Titled or untitled. The ones I like the best get published on here over the next few days, so lemme know what name you want on it (in case your boss or mate or Mom sees it) and where you're from. Like "Rudy Giuliani's Filled Diaper from Gunfuck, AL" or "Alisha from San Francisco" or something.

Here are a few to get your engines running:

Tuck Us

"I'll be back, bigger,"

Said Carlson upon leaving.

The rest is silence.

Hotter Than

Most of India

Will need somewhere else to live

That's how bad it's fucked

Pity the Omelet Bar Chef at Mar-a-Lago

"Add more cheese, more ham!"

Trump bellows, hoping to hide

His deep fear in grease.

Okay, now it's your turn. Send 'em on.

The Rude Pundit's Annual Nativity-palooza, Now with Bonus Folk Horror

Like movies about suicidal snowmen and tortured ghosts and pole-frozen tongues, some things are a tradition around the rude house. Beloved reruns are good for the soul. My favorites to trot out this week are the Invader Zim Christmas episode and Olive the Other Reindeer. Even here, in Left Blogsylvania, we can indulge in revisiting old posts.

Before Threads, Twixter, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, Buzzfeed, and many other places you can get your fix of weird shit, I posted this Christmas blast back in 2004, updated yearly with new bits of freakishness (some links might not work anymore, but they were or are all real and unironic):

Xmas - And, lo, a small teddy bear will lead them:
In the days before Christmas, the Rude Pundit roamed his neighborhood, looking at the displays in the charming stores and corner markets. There he saw the agony of so many dichotomous feelings about this holiday. One window had a kneeling, praying Santa next to a baby Jesus in the manger. Santa's hat was off. He was balding. Another display had the jolly old fat man landing his sleigh and reindeer on the roof of the manger. Surprisingly, neither Mary nor Joseph seemed rattled by the noise, although a camel was looking upward, as if asking, "What the fuck?" The Rude Pundit loved that camel.

Ah, sweet camel, what the fuck, indeed. Christ and commerce, Alleluia. The Savior has been born and he thanks you for your presents. Santa showing that he'll even honor the king of the Jews in the land of Islam. There's no telling what it means (and don't get all up in the Rude Pundit's face about St. Nicholas). Except this: we want to embrace both things, good deconstructionists that we are: Santa, who soothes our greed, and Jesus, who promises us peace. Either way, we want them both to tell us we're good people, nice people. And, of course, guilt-ridden Christians want to make sure that Santa toes the party line, you know.

For the holiday, here's a few of my favorite nativity sets, none of which are intended to be mocking of the event:

That right there is the Veggie Tales Nativity. In case you don't know, Veggie Tales are cute vegetables who love Christ and salad tossing. The newborn savior up there is a carrot. Get it? A baby carrot? What a delight.


Holy shit, that bear nativity is one of the creepiest fucking things I've ever seen. Staring straight ahead with their dead eyes, it looks like a satanic cult sacrifice to some horrible bear-demon. Although, the three wise bears have provided snacks for the blood rite: salmon, honey, and berries. All go well with cub entrails.

Every year, I think, "I wonder if there's an even weirder nativity set that I can find" and every year I come across something where I think, "Yeah, that's friggin' crazy shit, man." Here, it's the snow people nativity, with a snow angel, a snow Joseph, a snow Mary, and horrible, smiling snow kings. Did Snow Mary give birth to Snow Baby Jesus? Or did they all just make Snow Baby Jesus out of snow? And the temperature in Bethlehem this time of year is in the 60s. Is that why they seem to be festooned with turds, to try to hold their globular shape a little longer?

That goddamn nightmare fuel isn't a lab experiment gone horrible awry. It's a bunch of white mice with eyes so wide they look like someone laced some cheese with meth and let the little bastards go crazy. It's gonna be horrible when baby Jesus mouse gets crucified in trap.

This is not to mention the Chickentivity, the Moosetivity, the Barntivity, the Native American Nativity, and the various Beartivities, all available unironically for your Christmas consumption.

And then there's the baby nativity:

You might think, "Oh, that's adorable. What's so wrong with it?" To which I can only inform you that the implication of it is that a baby Mary shoved a baby Jesus out of her baby vagina.

Speaking of implications, think of what this dog one means:  

This means there is a dog Pilate who will sentence dog Jesus to dog crucifixion. It means that there is a dog Mary Magdalene who is a dog prostitute. This is not to mention the dog centurions who routinely torture and kill dogs, the dog slaves who serve their dog masters, and the Jewish dogs who get blamed for everything. But don't worry. Dog Jesus will rise from the dead in three days. Have some damn kibble waiting for him. 

And to all a good night.

Oh, wait. What's that you say? You think that last one was kind of a weak one to end on? Well, then, fuck you. Here's the Day of the Dead nativity:

Yeah, you might think they're singing Christmas carols, but they're all screaming in horror and pain. Essentially, that's Christmas in the time of MAGA and Covid.

Oh, wait. What's that? Those aren't that bad after all we've suffered? Then how about these terrifying motherfuckers:

Or maybe that's just how we'll all look after climate change has its way with us.

All of those are preferable to this fucking thing here. This might be the first of these nativities to make me feel visceral anger. Check this shit out:

It's like someone was taking a crap in an IKEA bathroom and thought, "I've got it! The birth of our lord and savior, but stackable!" Imagine the fun you could have with these. I'm already thinking about arranging the Wise Men around Ass for a sticky menage. Mostly, though, this is just middle finger to your guests if you put this out, like you're saying, "Oh, you expect a nativity at Christmas? Suck on these posts."

Wooden blocks not your thing? Want something that's a bit more of a weapon so you can strike down the heathens who won't let you say, "Merry Christmas"? Maybe a little more Flintstone-ish? Then here's some fuckin' rocks. 

Not enough like the nativity you might see on the mantle of the leader of a forest cult dedicated to cannibalism and blood drinking? How about this folk horror: 

It's like the last thing you see before the cellar door closes and you wait to find out if you're meant to be sacrificed to the corn god or impregnated by the wheat cock in a fertility rite. Puritans would look at these Puritan-looking motherfuckers and decided, "Nope. There's no god. Let's just jump in the ocean."

Finally (for real), here's one I actually like. It's the Recycled Auto Parts Nativity: 

C'mon. It's got everything. Skeletal camels, edges that would slice open a loaf of bread and some fishes, and baby Jesus sleeping on a bed of chicken wire. That's awesome art by Armando Ramirez, and I'd proudly put that up in my home next to my Peanuts creche and dare some internet asshole to talk shit about it. 

Merry Christmas, baby. Let's just get out of this year alive. May George Bailey finally get to push Mr. Potter into the frozen river.

(Note: Previous editions of the nativity post have included the Zombitivity, Dogtivity, the Boyd's Bears Nativity, and the Rubber Duck...oh, fuck, you get the idea.)

If You Support Donald Trump, You're a Nazi

I said what I said.

I've been thinking, as former president and current inevitable doom of the republic Donald Trump proudly goes full Hitler in his speeches and social media pronouncements: do MAGA redcaps pause between filling their kids' Never Surrender Christmas stocking with Trump candy bullion and wiping their dicks with a Mar-a-Lago towel after jacking off to their iPhone videos of when they went into the Capitol on January 6 (and still haven't been arrested yet, motherfuckers) and think, "Am I a Nazi? And if I am, am I okay with that?" 

I mean, sure, sure, I know that this straw MAGA moron doesn't believe what the wackos in the fake, failing lamestream media are saying about Trump. But the orange goon himself is giving credence to the Hitler comparisons by insisting that "I never read Mein Kampf" and saying to lipless fuck weasel Hugh Hewitt, "I know nothing about Hitler. I’m not a student of Hitler. I never read his works." (You just know that behind all that is that Trump doesn't want anyone to get credit for the shit he says. I'm sure he's told one of his lickspittles, "Hitler wasn't as smart as me" or some such fuckery.)

To be a loyal redcap stormtrooper, you gotta go along with Trump no matter which way his insistent madness drives his rhetoric. And, truly, you don't disagree with him when says, "They’re coming from all over the world. People all over the world, we have no idea. They could be healthy. They could be very unhealthy. They could bring in disease that’s going to catch on in our country, but they do bring in crime, but they have them coming from all over the world and they're destroying the blood of our country." But what you're agreeing with is Nazi shit. It's flat out Nazi shit. Trump can say, as he told Hewitt, that it's not the same as what Hitler said, but it is the same as what Hitler said, except Hitler was talking about Jews and Trump's talking about undocumented migrants. And Trump wants to round them up and put them in camps before deporting them by the millions. And he wants laws passed that would allow authorities to check the papers of anyone they "suspect" of not being American. It's absolute insanity that would fundamentally alter the fabric of the country. It will cause upheaval and violence and economic ruin. But Nazis don't give a shit about that kind of thing because purity matters above all. The rest will take care of itself once the blood is purified. Or, you know, un-poisoned. 

I'm gonna bet that your average redcap doesn't give a shit if they're called "Nazis." Indeed, many of them are likely to embrace it because they think it drives the liberals crazy. They'll post memes of that screaming bespectacled woman as a snarky reaction to how the left thinks mass execution of undocumented migrants at the Trump concentration camps is wrong and tweet out to the Nazis on Elon's Internet Bullshit Factory that we should be rounding up liberals and hanging them. Oh, wait. They already do that last part.

Sure, sure, some Trump supporters, desperately hoping to rationalize away the stink of Nazi, will try to say that they know the "rhetoric" Trump uses is over the top and even problematic, but they just think what he did for the country was so awesome that they have to support him and, hey, he can't do all those bad things. You know what you call someone who tries to justify what a Nazi says? You call them a "Nazi." (You also call them "fucking brain damaged" if they don't remember how Trump gave this nation a bloody ass fisting during Covid.)

That's where we are right now in the United States as we watch the MAGA redcaps goosestep closer and closer to mass violence. Trump promises to abuse the criminal justice system: "What I’m going to do is give indemnifications to any police officer that gets in trouble for pursuing a criminal because that’s what we have to do." And to have mass purges of perceived enemies: "We will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media." And he declares that America under Biden is a nightmare: "We are a failing nation. We are a nation that has lost its confidence, its willpower and its strength. We are a nation that has lost its way, but we are not going to allow this horror to continue." Man, Nazis know how to use propaganda to keep the rubes all pissed off and ready for action.

So, yeah, I'll call these sick motherfuckers "Nazis." If you're gonna follow someone whose language lines up with Hitler, who has praised dictators and who wants to bring their methods to the United States, who promises to round up millions of people just trying to live their lives, who threatens to attack our neighbors and break our alliances, who sees non-white people as invaders or criminals who must be dealt with harshly, who wants to "cleanse" the country of people who don't believe the same shit he does, fuck, yeah, you're a Nazi. I don't wanna wait around until gas chambers are built to finally sound an alarm. 

And that's how the 2024 campaign should go. You can be with the Nazis or you can be with the people who think Nazis deserved to have their asses kicked into the garbage heap. Indeed, history teaches us that we are obligated to kick Nazi asses. If only there was a short, punchy word we could use for anti-facist...

The Republican Strategy: Make Everyone Think Democrats Are as Fucking Awful as They Are

There is one thing tying together a bunch of shit that Republicans are doing right now. They know that the GOP brand is tarnished with insurrection, hatefulness, and the stink of Trump. Rather than try to change or kick Donald Trump to the curb, which would be hard work involving convincing the idiot hordes of MAGA drones to stay on board without their orange idol or shifting policies to reflect what the majority of Americans actually believe on things like guns, abortion, and more, they are saying, "Fuck it. Let's just fuck shit up instead. It's what we're good at." Playing to their vile strengths, Republicans in Congress and their media lackeys have decided that the best way to win in 2024 is to do everything possible to drag the image of Democrats down to their level and then rub some more shit on it. 

What else explains House Speaker Mike Johnson, who always looks as if he's contemplating the next boy he'll keep in the cellar for a while, shifting from expressing doubt about impeaching President Joe Biden to full-on supporting a vote on an impeachment inquiry. This came about in the most obvious way possible: a visit to Trump at his shitty country club estate, Mar-a-Lago. And it's happening for the most obvious reason. If Biden has an impeachment on his record, even for something he simply hasn't done, then in the eyes of morons, or at least in the eyes of one flabby clown-faced moron, it will balance the ledger on Trump's impeachments (including the bipartisan second one). 

Then there's the attempt to label any protest from the left as an "insurrection." It's as ridiculous as it sounds. Republicans have said that kids protesting for new gun laws to protect them at the Tennessee state capitol was an insurrection. As the Washington Post pointed out back in April, GOP coup-supporters have said that Democratic insurrections include a protest on the Florida House floor and a protest against overturning Roe v. Wade in Arizona, not to mention an editorial saying that Trump will be a dictator who Republicans will readily follow. That last one is from a recent letter calling for an investigation into Post writer Robert Kagan from Senator and grifter extraordinaire JD Vance. He wants Kagan to be treated like the dickholes who stormed through the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, looking to murder some elected officials. All of this is a desperate, transparent attempt to make light of the actual crimes of the 1/6 insurrectionists and, again, create a false equivalence in voters' minds.

The most sinister of these has been the attack on colleges and universities for not doing enough to defend Jewish students from purported antisemitic attacks. I'm not talking about actual physical attacks or direct threats, which should be dealt with severely and quickly. I'm talking about young people having shitty beliefs about Israel and, indeed, Jews (like genocide), beliefs that should be condemned without hesitation. There's a discussion to be had about how, for instance, the presidents of Penn, Harvard, and MIT whiffed it at a congressional hearing where they were totally setup by Republican fuck nozzles and what their responses mean. But let's be crystal fucking clear here: conservatives are politicizing the shit out of this for two reasons. It forwards their agenda of dismantling higher education. That's a topic for another time or another writer. 

The other thing that this line of attack achieves is to equate a 19 year-old chanting, "From the river to the sea" with actual fucking Nazis doing Nazi shit in this country. If that 19 year-old is implying the genocide of Jews, then calling yourself an actual fucking Nazi is also implying that because that's what Nazis do. And Republicans have a Nazi problem. The Texas GOP just voted down a prohibition on the party associating with those "known to espouse or tolerate antisemitism, pro-Nazi sympathies or Holocaust denial." 

It's all just fuckery by the GOP. And the only real question is how much this will work on depressing the Democratic vote or getting the idiots all hot and bothered and ready for some fascist action.

I Applied for a Job in a New Trump Administration.

As you might have heard, allies of Donald Trump are gearing things up for a new administration for when (they assume) Trump wins back the presidency in 2024. Called Project 2025, it's an effort sponsored by the crazed right-wing Heritage Foundation (motto: "Unfuckable turds wrecking the joint for the rest of you") to "to install a pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists across government to rip off the restraints imposed on the previous 46 presidents," as Axios put it. In other words, they are going to fire tens of thousands of civil servants and install people who want to remake the government in the image of Trumpism. It's dictator shit and needs to be called out as such.

So there's an application form that anyone can fill out. Its purpose is laid out clearly: "With the right conservative policy recommendations and properly vetted and trained personnel to implement them, we will take back our government." The application is an ideological litmus test to see how deeply your head is up MAGA's dumb, cruel, spiteful ass. You, too, can be on the frontlines of taking Donald Trump's personal grievances and moronic political beliefs and making them policy. The more people you hurt, the better.

"Fuck it," I thought. I'll fill out their little bullshit questionnaire. And so I did. I gave my address as the same as Trump Tower, and then I got to work on the essay part. 

 Fingers crossed that I get the position. I am totally ready to serve. 

Stop Normalizing Trump-Inspired Death Threats

Over on the online version of the conservative magazine American Spectator (motto: "We're batshit right-wingers but also pretentious as all fuck"), Jeffrey Lord, who is what you picture when you think,  "Soon-to-be-extinct kind of old white man," wrote a thing last month titled, "The Trump Gag Order: Corrupt Judge Assaults Free Speech." It's an attack on Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is on the January 6 trial, for the now-stayed limits on the incendiary accusations and lies that Trump has been gleefully tossing like a stink-faced 1930s street urchin cackling as he throws firecrackers at dogs and horses. 

One moment in the "column" (if by "column," you mean, "The pathetic bullying of a bully-adjacent loser") has stuck in my craw. It comes after Lord quotes Chutkan's order. After discussing the truly fucked-up shit that Trump has said, she wrote that "once an individual is publicly targeted, even revoking the offending statement may not abate the subsequent threats, harassment, or other intimidating effects during the pretrial as well as the trial stages of this case." 

And Lord, who I need to remind you at this point is an actual elderly adult, writes in reaction, "To which I can only say: Oh boo-hoo." Which might be the most bitch-ass moment I've seen in a while, and that includes Elon Musk's whiny twerp tweets. Lord explains, "The moment anyone steps into the world of 'public service,' they are putting themselves out there for others to ridicule, scorn, and, yes indeed, threaten them. A situation multiplied endlessly by both the internet and television." Then he asserts that all the public workers who don't want to get nonstop streams of rape and death threats, as well as antisemitism, sexism, and more just because they're doing their goddamn jobs "clearly have no business whatsoever being in public service."

Obviously, being a judge is one thing. You always face the possibility of crazy and violent people taking shit out on you. But Trump's game is not to just go after the people at the top. He wants to wreck the system by hacking away at the foundation of it, too. So, yeah, he still goes after the former FBI agents he regularly attacked while president. He derides the work of election workers. And, more to the point here, he's accused the clerk of Judge Arthur Engoron of being Chuck Schumer's secret lover or some such shit. 

Engoron, who is on the bench for Trump's civil trial on being a big fucking fraud, and the clerk (who I will not name because I fucking won't) have suffered a barrage of constant threats from Trumpist goons and fucknuts. These were detailed in a filing by lawyers for Engoron and the Attorney General's office asking for the reinstatement, fully, of a gag order on Trump. In a children's sampler of the 275 single-spaced pages of transcribed threats and disparaging phone calls and messages, you can see how much shit anyone involved here has to deal with.

Since the transcriptions were done by software, the curse words are just a string of stars. But I'll try to fill in the blanks by using my awesome powers of profanity. Here are just a couple of the hundreds and hundreds of voicemails left for Engoron about him and his clerk, who is a woman:

"Honestly, you should be assassinated.You should be killed...You should be executed. Put on trial. Executed for your crimes. You sick [fucking] pig."

"Arthur, you are a corrupt Nazi and one of the ugliest people to ever walk the face of the earth. And your clerk, who's also a corrupt Nazi, is a fat [bitch] who blew Chuck Schumer and everybody knows it." The clerk is Jewish, by the way, and the number of references to her weight is pretty stunning, like that's the only thing they know how to insult. 

"We are going to get you and any one of you dirty, backstabbing, lying, cheating Americans. You are nothing but a bunch of communists. We are coming to remove you permanently."

"Do you think being a judge changes the fact that you're a pathetic little [fucker]? You little [fucking] dork with little [fucking] Jew girl [fucking] helper [bitch]. You [fucking] stupid [shit]. God, I hope you [fucking] die. I hope they [fucking] come for you and [fucking] string you up."

I know that most of these threats aren't real threats. Nearly every one of these troglodytes is too dumb and lazy to get off their couches to make the effort to kill anyone. But it only takes one, of course. And there's always one.

That aside, why the fuck should the price of getting up and doing your fucking job be getting doxed and maligned? The clerk has said that "she has been receiving approximately 20-30 calls per day to her personal cell phone and approximately 30-50 messages per day." Imagine that shit. Imagine just trying to catch up on your regular email while you're getting a few hundred messages a week telling you you're going to suffer or die and, oh, hey, you're also unattractive. 

Let's not even think about the wave of horror that New York Attorney General Letitia James and her staff must deal with.

So, yeah, despite what Jeffrey fuckin' Lord and the death threat apologists of the right say, this shit is exactly what a gag order is meant for. Trump inspires all of these mongrel idiots, chewing on their own asses until they come up for air long enough to click out some bullshit. Shut him the fuck up already. Stop acting like it's just Trump being Trump and we all just have to fucking deal with that.

And don't fuckin' talk to me about Trump's freedom of speech. That clerk has freedoms, too, and she's not free as long as Trump puts a target on her back. She's not the one on trial. But she's the one who's been put in a kind of prison. 

A Poem for Thanksgiving from Indigenous America

For Calling The Spirit Back

From Wandering The Earth

In Its Human Feet

by Joy Harjo, who is from the Muscogee (Creek) Nation

Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that

bottle of pop.

Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.

Open the door, then close it behind you.

Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel

the earth gathering essences of plants to clean.

Give back with gratitude.

If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and

back.

Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were

a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.

Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the

guardians who have known you before time,

who will be there after time.

They sit before the fire that has been there without time.

Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.

Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people

who accompany you.

Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought

down upon them.

Don’t worry.

The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises,

interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and

those who will despise you because they despise themselves.

The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few

years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.

Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and

leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the

thieves of time.

Do not hold regrets.

When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning

by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.

You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.

Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.

Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction.

Ask for forgiveness.

Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

Call yourself back. You will find yourself caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.

Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It will return

in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be

happy to be found after being lost for so long.

Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and

given clean clothes.

Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who

loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no

place else to go.

Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark.

The Media Won't Make Republicans Own Trump's Fascist Rhetoric

You are never gonna put a stake in the heart of Trumpism in this country. That bullshit is here to stay until its followers die of some illness they could have gotten vaccinated for, or from shooting themselves with one of their dozens of guns, or of old age, alone with a red hat faded by the sun and a threadbare "Let's Go Brandon" flag they bought at a rally years ago, like an old Nazi treasuring that handkerchief the Fuhrer gave him after wiping the sweat off his brow. Truly, a Pandora's box was opened once Donald Trump began running for president on an explicitly racist platform in 2015, except in this version, all the curses that were unleashed had beaten Hope to death in there long ago. 

Trump's rhetoric in the last few months has taken the racism and general hatred of anyone who doesn't unabashedly love him and his awful family and amped it into explicit calls to round up and deport or imprison or flat-out murder large swaths of the population. It's not just that he now regularly says some variation of his "vermin" line: "We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country." That shit is frightening enough.

But he's broadened his targets. Look at this from a speech on November 11, which starts with a rant against the "deep state," that weird imagined cabal of, I guess, people who are loyal to the Constitution and not Donald Trump: "We're going to expel those horrible, horrible war mongers from our government. They want to fight everybody, they want to kill people all over the place, places we've never heard about before. Places that want to be left alone. We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, Marxist fascist. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media until they become real." So the plan is to gut the government by defining, as broadly as possible, the criteria that makes you an enemy to the nation. Along with that, the government will be used to attack the media and destroy it.

What's probably most ironic here is that the "fake news" media Trump is describing is still mostly giving him a pass on this move to openly saying full-on, actually fascistic dictator shit. Sure, they're reporting on it. But they are letting other Republicans get away with not owning Trump or his rhetoric. Today on one of the goddamn Sunday shows, Ron DeSantis was asked about Elon Musk's antisemitism but not Trump's tilt into totalitarianism. Some Republicans have been asked about the "vermin" line, and, predictably, the response is a wimpy half-swat, like 2028 GOP presidential nominee Nikki Haley, who said, "I don’t agree with that statement" before turning to Trump's weird statements about Israel and Hezbollah. Well, groovy, Nikki. 

That's not good enough. They need to be asked if they agree with, say, Trump's desire to end the DACA program and deport 800,000 migrants who were brought to the United States when they were children and are American in every sense except immigration status. They need to ask if they agree when Trump says, "We'll stop the invasion on our southern border and begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history." According to meth-faced Trump advisor Steve Bannon, that means the deportation of 10 million people. Ask Republicans from farm states how they feel about that. Ask if they agree and will support Trump, and ask the rest if they're okay with Trump opening up giant internment camps for migrants and having no due process. Hell, ask them if they agree with shooting shoplifters, as Trump has also said he'd allow.

Trump promised, "I will immediately restore and expand the Trump travel ban on entry from terror play [that's really what it sounds like he said] countries, which was a big thing." How do you feel about that, Republicans from Texas, where the Muslim population is growing? Or do you also admire Hungarian leader Victor Orban, who Trump praised because "He didn't allow millions of people to invade his country...So he doesn't have crime and he doesn't have the problems that they're having in other countries where millions of people are allowed to go in"? Do they believe that immigrants cause crime? By the way, except for that Orban fuckery, just about every other word here is from the written speech. It's not off-the-cuff. 

Sure, way too many Republicans would say they agree with all this shit because they are, by simply being Republican, shitty people. But you can fuckin' corner these assholes like George Stephanopoulos did when he trapped over-inflated balloon animal Steve Scalise and refused to move on until Scalise said whether or not the 2020 election was "stolen." That's what needs to be done on answering for Trump. And not just whether or not they will vote for him if he's the nominee (although that's a totally valid question).

Republicans right now are losing their goddamn tiny minds. They are in-fighting between the Trump-engorged dicks (like James Comer) and the flaccid dicks who shot their Trump loads and don't wanna go again (like sad insurance salesman Kevin McCarthy). They are pissing away their majority in the House because there are just enough not-completely-bugfuck-crazy Republicans to keep the government functioning. And when they're not losing their shit at each other, they're challenging witnesses at hearings to fist fights, like Senator Markwayne "I totally look like a 'Markwayne'" Mullin of Oklahoma did. It would be hilarious if it weren't fucking terrifying. 

But the reason to keep pushing all these jibbering cuntmites to answer for Trump is that we as a country need to hear that there won't be any checks or balances on him. We need to know the danger, the "stakes," as media expert Jay Rosen has stated, instead of the odds. That's gotta be clear because we also need to know what the fuck is going to happen if Trump doesn't win. It's not just that Trump goes away and it all gets better. 

Another thing that Steve Bannon said recently is that the MAGA movement, such as it is, will continue after Trump. "This movement is ascendant and it’s going to go on long after Donald Trump is even more powerful and broader," Bannon proclaimed, slurping the remnants of a puppy from his lips. "We are far to the right of Trump. President Trump is a moderate in our movement. You’re going to pine in future years that you wished Donald Trump was around."

At least Bannon is admitting that what he wants is for politicians to punish everyone who doesn't grovel at the MAGA altar. Now I'd like to hear if our elected leaders are willing to admit it or deny it so I know how quickly I need to get my Canadian asylum application in order.

Democrats Win Just About Everything Everywhere All at Once

In last night's absolute ass-reaming of Republicans, Democrats proved that the best strategy is just to be fucking Democrats. That means supporting abortion rights without any of the bullshit equivocating that gives credence to anti-choice arguments. That means calling out the culture war shit for the plain idiocy that it is. And it means that polls don't vote. 

A few takeaways on very, very good night, addressed directly to the GOP.

Hey, dicks,

1. You have pissed off the women of the United States in ways you can't even imagine. The last year has been a sequel to the Dobbs decision sending abortion rights back to the states. Call it "The Revenge of Roe" because women are in warrior mode over protecting their bodily autonomy. And you withering cocks have painted yourself into a corner with the blood of women who have been hurt and killed by the Supreme Court's monstrous decision. Who celebrated the end of Roe? Whose likely presidential candidate proudly proclaims that that he appointed the justices who made it possible? You kept telling women that actions have consequences when it comes to sex. Now look who's finding out after fucking around. And this won't stop and won't slow down. Democratic women are coming for you.

2. Another way you pissed off women and all parents is telling them that they don't have the right to take care of their kids. See, your child getting taught at school that slavery was bad or that gay people exist isn't impinging on your "rights" as parents. You can teach them whatever lies you want at home. What does fuck with the relationship between parents and kids is when you fucking outlaw medical treatment that  parents want for their kids, whether it's abortion or transgender care. You pass laws saying what kids can and can't talk about and force them to repress their identities and you are shitting all over parents. That's done. It failed. It failed big time. 

3. And Gen Z is coming after you motherfuckers. I love that we finally have a generation that has no reason to believe the moronic myth of the "good" Republican. They grew up with racist attacks on Barack Obama and then watched Donald Trump turn the joint into a plague-ridden hate camp, and they saw Republicans at every level merrily go along with it. They are woke, and your mocking of their wokeness makes you into everything they fucking despise. They have queer friends, they have trans friends, they have friends of different faiths. They watched the George Floyd video and marched in Black Lives Matter protests and then watched as you lied and said they were violent rioters. And then you banned the fucking books they like and are continuing to destroy the climate, which dicks them over for their futures. Goddamn, you are fucked with this generation. 

You can change. Moderate on abortion. Give up the culture wars. Do shit that shows you understand that science is real. 

But you're motherfuckers, so you'll likely just try to figure out how to suppress the vote. 

Okay, I'm done talking to the conservabitches. Lemme end here with a few awesome races beyond abortion rights in Ohio and the Virginia legislature. 

1. In Virginia, pre-election, on the long list of things that matter to voters, transgender issues placed dead last. That's not because they want trans people to not have rights. It's because no one fucking cares if people want to do something that harms no one. And then openly trans Danica Roem, already in the state assembly, became the first trans person to win a seat on the state Senate, beating a conservative ex-cop supported by giant loser Gov. Glenn Youngkin. That ex-cop campaigned on banning trans athletes from high school sports. And that wasn't enough to push voters away from Roem.

2. All over the country, school board candidates backed by the savage hatemongers Moms for Liberty lost bigly. The Moms want your kids ignorant, crazy Christian, pregnant with no choice, and hiding their true identities while not allowing them to read any books that have kissing in them. They are just the fucking worst and deserve all the scorn that can be heaped on them like piles of manure. But, man, they lost so bad everywhere. In Iowa, they supported 13 candidates. Only one won. In one district, they just had to get in the top four vote-getters to get a seat. There were 8 candidates, 4 supported by Moms for Liberty. They all fucking lost. So they can fuck off all the way back to whatever crusty old bible they crawled out from under.

3. And in New York, Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Five who was imprisoned for a horrendous crime he did not commit, on whom Donald Trump once took out a full-page ad calling for his execution, who was exonerated 2002 after 13 years in confinement, won a seat on the New York City Council. Yeah, that's right. Soon, Salaam will be an elected official and Donald Trump might die behind bars. That's karma in a perfect form.

It's okay to feel good today, Democrats. It's okay to ignore those shit polls for Joe Biden (which, c'mon, a year out, who the fuck cares?). It's okay to celebrate that we might just have a future.