The GOP Put Out "An 11-Point Plan to Save America" and It's Hysterical Hysteria

Perhaps reacting to the fact that the Republican Party has given up on everything to do with actually governing, choosing, instead, to become a cabal devoted to fake outrage and outdated ideas of morality, Sen. Rick "This Fucking Skull of Doom Will Haunt Your Dreams" Scott has put out a pamphlet titled "An 11-Point Plan to Save America." Yes, it is exactly as fucking idiotic and worthless as you already know it is. Perhaps even more so. From its preamble to its conclusions, it's nonstop hysteria over "wokeness" and trans rights, along with policies based on complete lies and nothing about the actual issues facing the country. 

I mean, how do you take seriously any however many point plan to "save America" that starts with (and, no shit, this is number one), "Our kids will say the pledge of allegiance, salute the Flag, learn that America is a great country, and choose the school that best fits them." Oh, it goes way further than that in the explanation: "Kids in public schools will say the Pledge of Allegiance, stand for the National Anthem, and honor the American Flag. We must foster national unity." The only way to assure that this happens is to pass a law and punish those who don't. Is that what you're gonna do, Sen. Skeletor? Are you gonna arrest kids who say, "Fuck you, I'm not standing"? Maybe send them to reeducation camps since the rest of the fuckin' "plan" is all about enforcing beliefs.

There's so much conservative extremist fuckery in here that it reads like porn for the Federalist Society, like a bunch of Hillsdale grads are gonna sit around and circle jerk to things like finishing the stupid border wall and naming it for Donald Trump. "Yeah, that'll own the libs," they'll say as they jizz and then immediately feel shame and then immediately start jacking off again when they read the next line about funding the police.

Look at this savagery in attacking the poor: "No government assistance unless you are disabled or aggressively seeking work" (okay, so are you gonna provide child care?) and "Eliminate federal programs that can be done locally" (sounds good if you're in Massachusetts, scary if you're in Texas) and "All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount" (which is raising taxes on the poor instead of forcing million/billionaires to pay their share). There's fucking nothing in there about poverty other than that "socialism" apparently causes it. Not paying shit wages or corporations dicking over workers in favor of shareholders and executives. 

On it goes, just a steaming shit pile that you'd just have to be a sociopath, and a fucking dumb one, to buy into. In addition to essentially ending the federal government except for the military, the paranoia over "cancel culture" bullshit and the outright terror over trans people is bizarrely overwhelming. In a weird merging of "science" and religion, the plan declares "Men and women are biologically different, 'male and female He created them.'" And "No doctor will be allowed to perform irreversible surgical or gender-altering procedures on any minor child," going against the advice of every major medical organization when it comes to gender dysphoria (and it's something Texas is already on board with). 

And then there's "All social media platforms that censor speech and cancel people will be treated like publishers and subject to legal action," which makes no fucking sense at all. Publishers cancel books all the time. It's their right as a business. But I guess rights only exist to make right-wingers feel good about shit and they suck when they make Nazis sad. Quoting the only thing that the GOP knows about Martin Luther King, it says, "We will be a nation where people will be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin." And if they meant, "We need to make sure that laws are applied equally and without current racial disparities," well, sure. But all that means is "I don't like my white kids hearing that white people did bad things to nonwhite people."

Much of it is really just a call to anarchy. "Americans will not be required to go against their core values and beliefs in order to conform to culture or government," it reads, and yet it doesn't define what happens when one person's "core values" conflicts with another person's "core values." This is beyond "reasonable accommodation" and into "unreasonable clusterfuck." Of course, Sen. Voldemort goes all in on the Big Lie, with a section on "voting rights" that is all about how to prevent Democrats from voting and will assure a completely unmanageable electoral system.

Helping them out, the thing says that the police should be allowed to run wild and consequence free as Point 2 is all about "safety" and "crime" and says, among other things, "We will strengthen qualified immunity and legal protections for law enforcement officers to protect them from frivolous lawsuits." But that goes against my core values on holding cops accountable. 

This maniacal shitpost of a declaration is about a nation that simply doesn't exist except in the heated, phantasmagoric delusions of the most MAGA-broken brains and the political garbage humans who exploit them, no matter the consequences. It imagines a country in flames, repressing true Americans, one where the greatest issue facing us is white people not allowed to say the n-word without consequences. It's hyper-Christian, nationalistic, fascistic, and deranged, ignoring all the real problems in this nation, which, to be fair, are mostly caused by Republicans. 

Interestingly, it doesn't mention the Supreme Court. In fact, the only mention of courts at all is the assertion that Democrats want to "pack the courts." And it doesn't call for abortion to be outlawed, usually a central tenet of these fucking weirdo right-wing documents. I don't think that's an oversight, though. It's something that's way, way worse. 

I think it means they know where they already won and are focusing on other battles. And that's scarier than anything in the thing itself.

Coming Out of the Pandemic, Some of Us Faster Than Others (and That's Okay)

Lemme admit something here. I haven't been the most dedicated Covid warrior. I mean, sure, yeah, I got vaccinated and boosted as soon as I could because you're just a motherfucking delusional piece of shit if you don't. And, for a good while, I wore masks pretty devotedly, especially once I found one style that fit my big, bearded face decently. Hell, I started wearing a mask before wearing a mask was cool, before it was recommended. I had people in grocery stores staring at me a long time ago.  I also had Covid really early on, in late March 2020, a mild case, but, still, during the scary period where each of the days I had a low fever I wondered if all that cocaine was gonna finally catch up to me, if I was gonna take the plunge into the depths of the virus's effects, fucking up my lungs and more. It didn't. 

So what I'm admitting is that I've been a bit cocky since I got my second Moderna shot a little over a year ago. My thinking has been that, at some level, you gotta believe that the vaccine works. Early on, we thought it prevented you from getting Covid, but now, with that bitch Omicron, we know now that it prevents serious illness and death, which, you know, still means you're just a motherfucking delusional piece of shit if you don't get it. 

I've been living my life, going to concerts indoors, eating indoors at restaurants, drinking indoors at bars, going to movies, plays, and comedy shows. I've traveled on planes and trains and buses. When I say, "I haven't been the most dedicated Covid fighter," it's because that, in situations where I can take off my mask, I usually take off my mask. And I almost never wear it outside. I haven't for a long time. Shocking, right?

I'm not a dick about it. If a place wants me to keep a mask on, I keep my damn mask on because other people are allowed to want that. I suppose if I felt strongly enough, I could avoid places that demand masking, but why be that person? I hate those people. Those of us who want to get out in the world and do shit ought to have the good sense to know there are limitations. 

It's really not that hard to give a damn about other people. I'm fortunate in that I don't live with a child under the vaccination age or someone who is immunocompromised. I don't even see people in that situation too much. I recently visited a dear friend who had a bone marrow transplant. I took a rapid Covid test before going to see him, as I would before seeing anyone in such a position.  If someone would like me to put on a mask, sure, I'll put on a mask. 

And, yeah, despite what right-wing cumrags say about us, I fucking hate wearing a mask, even if I've found a relatively comfortable one. But my feeling of discomfort for a short period isn't worth being a total asshole to others. What is worth it is acting like we can live again. And if I say I believe in science, then I fucking well should act like it.

I'm not saying we're getting back to normal because that implies that we can ever return to the pre-2020 times. That's over. And our leaders need to be honest about that. It's a fucking lie to say we can ever not take the kinds of precautions that prevent the spread of Covid, even if it's just a buzz in the back of our head when we're in a crowd, even if it's just taking a test before going to Grandma's house, even if it's just an awareness that it could all close down again, that we know what that's like. And it's also a fucking shame that we haven't done all the things that would make everyone feel safer about the lifting of restrictions. 

Let's put aside the danger that antivaxxers are putting everyone in as being incubators for variants or for clogging the hospitals with their failing bodies. I'm talking about the practical things that could be done with some effort and expenditure.

We could have invested a shit-ton of money on new ventilation systems at schools or offices or, really, in lots of places, but especially schools. We know that having upgraded ventilation helps prevent Covid from spreading, and some school systems are using federal funds to get new HVAC systems and HEPA filters and other things that I'm sure begin with H. But it's not enough and not fast enough. The great thing about those kinds of coronavirus mitigation projects is that they're passive enough that even willingly unvaccinated assholes are protected and we're protected from their unvaccinated asses. 

We could have done something about our ongoing horror of a health care system and poured funding into nursing training and salaries and more on a permanent basis, not just as crisis pay. We already had a shortage of health care workers, especially nurses, and now it's a full-blown crisis on top of the crisis of the pandemic. We could have said, "You know what? It's just motherfucking dumb to not have a national health care system. People shouldn't be afraid of their co-pays so they don't go to the doctor and spread the sick around." We could make mental health care far more widely available for all the trauma everyone has suffered. We still get more than 4 rapid tests to households. There are all kinds of things we could do so that everyone could participate in the world again with some amount of caution, sure, but still able to do so. 

A nation that really gave a shit as a whole would have passed a Covid tax on the wealthy to help get us the fuck out of the crisis. We are not that nation. So, instead of roaring into the end of the pandemic, we have a two-tier reopening: a decent level of safety for most of us, an indecent level of risk for those most at risk and for families with young children.

The nation is still ridiculously bifurcated between the places with high vaccination rates and places with low ones. The reason we have 2500-3000 people a day still dying of Covid is because the corpses are piled up in Unvaxxed America. It'll be a while before those numbers decline, as well as the numbers in hospitals (which will also be playing catch up with all the surgeries and other things that were put off because of the Omicron and Delta surges). 

As the nation opens up, even in the unvaccinated places, the people to thank are the vaccinated and the masked. If you're unvaccinated and all of a sudden vaccination card checks go away so you can go back to Chili's again, thank all your vaccinated friends and family and everyone else. It's because enough of us did what we're supposed to do and weren't selfish twatfleas about it like you that you can get your baby back ribs again. It wasn't ivermectin or piss-drinking that got us to where we are. It's because a bunch of us are responsible goddamn people. You're welcome, you pathetic fucks.

(Note: I'm sure some of you will get all pissy about my relatively relaxed attitude towards getting out in the world. But I respect your fear of the virus. I respect your limitations. Mine are just different.)

(Note 2: Obviously, you could respond that "It's not over" and you're right. But it kind of is for a lot of people. We just have to not be cavalier about things, like back in April of last year when everyone went fucking crazy and having orgies in the streets.)

Why Those Saying AG Garland Needs to Act Soon on Trump Aren't Wrong

The podcast Wild Things: Siegfried & Roy is a genuinely fascinating look into the lives of the illusionists who had a long-running Las Vegas show performing magic with their white tigers. The focus of the podcast is the night in October 2003 when one of the tigers attacked Roy Horn during a performance at the Mirage Hotel, almost killing him. Host Steven Leckart talks to the main investigator from the USDA, and the podcast discusses a few times how the USDA was denied the videotape of the attack by Feld Entertainment, the company that produced Siegfried and Roy's show. The magicians and Feld were so distressed by the possibility of the USDA having the tape that a friend of theirs contacted Nevada's then-senators, Democrat Harry Reid and Republican John Ensign, for help.

The senators probably made phone calls to get the USDA to stop pursuing the tape. They might have reached out directly to the investigator himself. But, as Wild Things discusses, Reid and Ensign went much, much further. They drafted an amendment to the 2004 budget bill that would have specifically prohibited federal money from being used for obtaining the tape "through a subpoena...or any other means." Reid said then and he says on the podcast in one of his last interviews that he was concerned with the privacy of Roy Horn because images from the tape might leak. Agree or disagree (as the podcast discusses, the USDA was pretty lax in enforcing its rules on Siegfried and Roy, a major Vegas money generator), just the threat of the amendment worked. The USDA backed down and agreed to view the footage in a supervised situation. Even then, the investigator was only shown a small clip of the incident.

This isn't really about the truth or lies behind a tiger attack, which was really just a tiger being a damn tiger. It's about Congress's power of the purse and how it can be wielded. Two senators from different parties were ready to make it impossible for an agency of the government to do an investigation in the way it saw fit. While the amendment threat did not shut down the investigation, it sure as hell hampered it. 

Congress has the ability to do that, to target with precision how money cannot be spent. Remember Iran-Contra? That had to do with Ronald Reagan trying to get around the Boland Amendment, when Congress said that federal money could not be used to support the Contras attempting to overthrow the government in Nicaragua. 

The power of the purse is something that has been used to affect policy for good reasons, especially with a bad actor (on so many levels) like Reagan. And it is something that is occasionally used for petty political points. It's also one of those many things that we've learned in the last few years absolutely depends on our leaders actually caring that government functions. It relies on the legislative branch not being jerks. We've seen the fraying of that since Newt Gingrich decided to shut down the government in a hissy fit. We see it with the Republicans' bad faith in the wielding of the debt ceiling as a weapon. 

When some of us say the committee looking into the January 6 insurrection needs to act quickly, it's because there is a decent chance that the GOP takes over the House of Representatives and simply ends the committee. Any referrals to the Justice Department need to happen soon because if the House changes hands, then in January 2023, it's over. When we say that Attorney General Merrick Garland better have charges out there, it's not because we're anxious and curious and need to move the plot forward for our emotional satisfaction and our need for vengeance against the Trump mob. 

It's because the Republicans who will take over the House are motherfucking crazy and don't give a single shit if they blow the whole place up. And I'm not sure I just mean that metaphorically with these insane lizard-brained savages. 

There is nothing that stops a Jim Jordan-led House (you heard me) from passing a budget resolution that defunds any effort by the DOJ from pursuing any case against Donald Trump or his shitty children or the assorted clowns, whores, thieves, and Jared that made up his administration. They won't play chicken with Democrats because the idea with chicken is that both sides have the chance of turning before the crash. That's not the way a House of Representatives with barking mad mongrels like Paul Gosar or Marjorie Taylor Greene leading or in the majority on committees will work. They're not playing chicken. They're playing demolition derby. These America-hating cockscabs will gladly shut down the government. And Democrats will give in because they want the government to function. They will give in with the bullshit hope of fighting another day.

And you might say that the investigations in Georgia or New York would do the trick on Trump. Except the same kind of targeted budgetary action can take place. I'd bet that New York's own shit Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik would sponsor a resolution saying that federal funding for her state is contingent on dropping the cases against Trump and the Trumplings because that's exactly how fucked up Republicans have made the whole fucking political system now. 

And you might say that this kind of blatant fuckery can be taken to court. Except, you know, the Supreme Court has lost its shit, too.

Yes, we don't know what exactly is going on with all the investigations. Yes, they are doing so much work, interviewing so may witnesses, going through mountains of documents, all with no leaks, and we don't know if something is going to drop any day now. All of that can be true, but the motherfucking clock is ticking. 

If a couple of senators can use the power of the purse to protect some rich-ass magicians, a criminally insane political party, freed of the straitjacket of minority status in Congress, is gonna go much, much further and strangle the investigations with the purse strings.

Why I Was Serious When I Said Jailing Donald Trump Until Trial Would Be Good for the Country (Part 2)

Earlier this week, I said that former president and current terrorist Donald Trump should receive the same treatment as the leader of the terrorist Oath Keepers. That is, he should be held in jail without bail, unable to rally his supporters until he's faced trial. Not only that, but it would be good for the country to see an ex-president face justice and treated like other alleged criminals are. Let me list the ways:

1. It would prove to a fickle public that the Justice Department and law enforcement are absolutely serious about this shit. Right now, with very little actual news coming from the DOJ or the January 6 committee in the House, and with this investigation taking so very much longer than it ought to have, the attitude on the right is that all of that shit is just one more thing they'll eliminate should Republicans win one or both houses of Congress. The narrative conservative media and politicians are creating about the Trump investigations is one of boredom, bias, vengeance, and incompetence. I know that doesn't matter should indictment come from any of it, but it sure as fuck is damaging the public image among the majority of the nation that doesn't anally-probe every tweet or statement from Liz Cheney or Letitia James. 

2. I'm not worried that arresting Trump on suspicion of seditious conspiracy will make his armed lunatics go apeshit. In fact, I think quite the opposite for most of them (there will always be a stray lunatic). It would make a whole lot of people fucking realize that they better back the fuck down and/or give up what they know. The delay tactics by potential witnesses is working, forcing the 1/6 committee to postpone public hearings for at least a month, from April to May. If all of a sudden real consequences were in the mix, those who participated in or helped plan the insurrection would be shitting themselves in fear, wondering, "If law enforcement is willing to arrest a former president, what the fuck else might they do to me?" Democrats don't understand the power of fear in the same way Republicans do. So while there are totally legitimate reasons to lock up Trump, the intimidation factor would be a huge benefit to the investigations. I'd bet that at least one Trumpling turns on dear ol' grabby, abusive dad.

3. While bewilderingly roaming free, Trump keeps having rallies and putting out statements that profess support for the 1/6 rioters and promise they will not be punished for crimes that some of them have confessed to. He refuses to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election fairly, which has kept a not-insignificant portion of the population enraged and ready for action, action that Trump has already stated he wants if he's indicted federally or in New York or Georgia. Trump has done nothing to disabuse the armed fucknuts of the notion that he is telling them to lock and load and go on his command. He is unwilling to turn down the heat in the country, preferring to piss gasoline wherever he can. Shutting Trump the fuck up would leave all the troop-rallying to his surrogates, none of whom have a scintilla of the deranged orange juice that Trump brings.

4. Republicans are normalizing the attack on the Capitol. This goes hand-in-hand with the first point. The more distance we get from January 6 without visible progress beyond arresting the ground troops for the coup, the more it will seem like No Big Deal, and that's what the GOP wants more than anything. It's why so many of them can say shit like it was "legitimate political discourse." The GOP has taken the side of the insurrectionists, which means they will welcome this fuckery when it happens again. Whatever shreds of a mask of democracy remained on the face of the Republican Party have fallen off. They got a taste of tyranny, and they fucking liked it. You put Trump in jail and you change the whole conversation and throw off the whole plan. And I guarantee that some Republicans will be fucking relieved.

5. Everything we keep learning points to a conspiracy to steal the election by Trump and the Trumpinistas, including preparing for the possibility before recounts or anything could happen. They tossed around things like sending the military to seize voting machines. They organized the attempt to get the fake rosters of electors accepted. This is on top of trying to get the Attorney General to sign off on the lie of election fraud and the obvious crime of pushing the Georgia Secretary of State to "find" just enough votes to put Trump on top there. A jailed Trump would give a frame to hang all of this on and make it easier to comprehend. 

Look, I'm not a fucking idiot nor a childish naif. I'm in an area of speculation, if not outright fantasy, that this would actually happen. But I'll stand by the idea that Trump should have been arrested on January 6 or even earlier. To me, it's absurd that he hasn't been. 

Because, sure, we can say that arresting a former president would never happen. Except if we're a country that really does want to live up to the ideas of our founding, as so many people on all sides of the political spectrum like to pretend, then no person is above the law. Arresting Trump would prove we are, occasionally, who we say we are.

Jailing Donald Trump Until He Faces Trial Is the Best Thing for the Country (Part 1)

It's genuinely shocking to realize how much of the American electoral process is less about laws and codified procedures and more about elected officials not being dicks. Think about it: The whole idea of a "peaceful transfer of power" is that the loser isn't a dick about it. What we've learned since the 2020 election is that all it takes to start wrecking the entire system is for the loser to decide, "Yeah, I'm gonna be a dick about it" and move ahead with tearing shit apart. And it seems like there's no law that says, "Whoa, whoa, you can't be a dick even if you want to be one."

But the legal system, you know, the whole Law and Order shit, does have a way to put dicks away so that they can't spread their dickishness far and wide. 

Check this out. It's from U.S. Magistrate Judge Kimberly C. Priest Johnson in her decision to hold Stewart Rhodes, the one-eyed leader of the band of feculent-brained loons and goons known as the Oath Keepers, in jail without bail pending his trial on seditious conspiracy related to the events of January 6, 2021. She writes, "It is not unusual for Americans to be disappointed by election results or offput by the functioning of federal, state, or local governments. Indeed, the right for such individuals to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances is enshrined in the Constitution and is core to American freedom and our system of governance. Here, the Court is not faced with a peaceable assembly and petitioning, as Defendant’s extraordinary actions and the ripple effects that followed are outside the bounds of protected activities." She's talking about the First Amendment here, saying that Rhodes's calling for halting Congress's certification of the election results, including planning to actually do it, isn't protected because that's how you get fucking anarchy. 

The First Amendment is not a suicide pact. It's time we stopped treating it like that. There are responsibilities that go along with freedom of speech, assembly, etc. And one of those is not using it to overthrow the government that is protecting your speech, assembly, etc. because you don't like who won the election. It doesn't fucking matter how much you believe an election was actually stolen. Reality isn't negotiable. A guy who tries to burn down his neighbor's house isn't let off because he sincerely believes his neighbor is Satan.

Johnson continues on Rhodes, "The evidence shows Defendant orchestrated a large-scale attack on the federal government with the purpose of intimidating, by violence, federal officials and disrupting official governmental proceedings incident to the transfer of power in the Executive Branch following a national election...Defendant’s authoritative role in the conspiracy, access to substantial weaponry, and ability to finance any future insurrection, combined with his continued advocacy for violence against the federal government, gives rise to a credible threat that Defendant’s release might endanger others by fostering the planning and execution of additional violent events." Now, obviously, Rhodes is a crazed fucknut, armed to the teeth and leading a bunch of other crazed fucknuts. But what about the fucknuts above him when it comes to the January 6, 2021 insurrection and future attempts to overthrow a legally elected government? Like Donald Trump, clearly the fucknut-in-chief?

What Johnson worried that Rhodes would do in fomenting further rebellion is exactly what Trump is doing. His speech in Conroe, Texas (motto: "Conroe: Crazy and Caucasian"), this past weekend was an abject, shameless call to action, promising to pardon the idiot hordes who fight for his delusions of victory. In addition to flat-out committing obstruction of justice, Trump commanded his stormtroopers to be ready: "If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt." Those just happen to be the places where they're investigating his ass. Jesus fuck, he says the intention of his Leni Riefenstahl-ready rallies is to "Save America." From what? Legal elections? In an interview with some fucking bullshit conservative outlet, the only places he's not too much of a little bitch to appear, Trump again asserted that he would pardon the 1/6 criminals. This is not to mention that statement he put out where he said that Vice President Mike Pence "could have overturned the election." 

So, yeah, Stewart Rhodes should be kept locked up because of what he might do and what he might say. I would argue it's even more important for the President of the United States or even the former one to not engage in language that might lead to violence as an intended consequence. And if that former president refuses to back down from calling for an organized attack to put him back in power, then he should be fucking jailed, pending trial for seditious conspiracy. Jail him. Silence him. For fuck's sake, this should have been done on 1/6, and it's more imperative than ever. 

In Part 2: "Wait, you're fucking serious about this?" Yeah. Yeah, I am.

One More Time: Nearly Every Parent Is Too Fucking Dumb to Decide on School Curriculum

In the early 1970s, my mom became the secretary for Gus Sakkis, the Superintendent of Schools in Pinellas County, Florida. Sakkis got the job during an insanely tumultuous period in the school system, what with desegregation, teacher walkouts, student protests, and more. It was enough to have driven several superintendents out after a short time on the job. One of the things he did during his 9-year tenure was give teachers and parents more of a role by creating school advisory committees. While that was mostly a good thing, of course, it also bit him in the ass. 

Now, I don't remember a whole lot about this time because I was a wee Rude Pundit, but I do remember one battle that Mom was closely involved in. A group of parents were demanding that several books, including, as I recall, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, be banned from county school libraries and classrooms. As secretary, Mom had to field all the angry, threatening phone calls and open all the mail from shitty people saying shitty things. They yelled at her, they cursed at her for allowing books with curse words, and they demanded that they knew better about what their precious children should have put in front of their innocent eyes. Sakkis wasn't having any of it. The way Mom told it, he walked into a school board meeting, looked in their stupid faces, and told the parents that he wasn't getting rid of the books and that, in essence, they can go fuck themselves because they're not educators. 

They clamored for his head, Mom said. But Sakkis had them beat before he ever said a word. See, for years, student test scores in Pinellas County had been in the shitter. But once Sakkis arrived and reorganized the district and instituted reforms, the scores started to go up, for elementary school students, for high school students on their SATs. Eventually, the scores were some of the best in the state. He had also brought cooperation and progress to the county's school system, including due process and fairness for students who were accused of bad behavior. No one was gonna fire Sakkis because he had been right about just about everything else. Mom was proud as hell to be working for him.

I've been thinking about that story a lot lately and not as some lesson in history repeating itself, although, surely, that fucker does.  See, here's the problem with all of this critical race theory and book banning and anti-LGBTQ bullshit. We rarely hear about the students. How are the kids doing? Not emotionally, although that matters. I mean, we base everything on test scores and shit. How are the schools doing in actually teaching students? 

Because, see, Loudoun County, Virginia, where some of the most heated, screaming fights about teaching racial history have taken place, is actually a successful school district prior to this whole blow-up. Average SAT scores are higher than the average in Virginia or the United States. On the bullshit tests that we force students to take every year, the kids in Loudoun County are doing quite well, with 85-91% of middle- and high-school students doing their reading and rithmetic at or above grade level. Clearly, like, really, statistically, demonstrably fucking clearly, the teachers are doing something right in Loudoun County. So why the hell would you try to fix something that isn't broken? Whatever is being taught is getting nearly every student to graduate high school. As a parent, you should be supporting an education system that is doing that good of a job and not make the life of teachers even more fucking miserable in the middle of a motherfucking pandemic.

But that's just what so many states are doing. They're empowering parents, the vast, vast majority of whom have no fucking business having any say in how teachers teach shit (and, as I've said before, the only ones who should are those in education themselves like, well, fuck, me), to narc out any educator who teaches anything that makes their kids feel uncomfortable. Or, to be more precise, anything that makes the parents feel uncomfortable because they're racist, homophobic shitheels whose children are on the short road to fucking hating them.

In Florida, the state legislature is considering two bills, both recently voted out of committees: one would prevent teachers from discussing anything related to LGBTQ topics and allow parents to sue a school if a teacher does; the other forces educators to "objectively" teach everything and not do or say anything that might make a student "feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin." Think about that from the perspective of a teacher. You've already got parents screaming at you every time you give their tender babe a grade below A. You've got administrators demanding you do more and more work with assessment and planning. You have to buy toilet paper for the school with your own money. You have to teach so that students can do well on annual tests that lawmakers demand they take. And now you've gotta gauge if talking about Ruby Bridges to your 5th graders in Social Studies is going to cause distress? Fuck that. Why bother? And who the fuck are parents and legislators to tell you how to do your fucking job?

By the way, what if not teaching about, say, Ruby Bridges causes distress to Black students? What if whitewashing that history gives them feelings of anguish? But, of course, these bills are written by people who don't give a shit about the feelings of non-white students or LGBTQ students. They are strictly for parents who think they know better than teachers and they fucking don't. But expertise doesn't matter any more in this stupid country where some troglodyte grunting on a YouTube video or podcast has more authority and sway than people who devoted their lives to something.

It keeps going. In Texas, Governor Greg "Fuck DeSantis. I'm the Craziest Motherfucker" Abbott has proposed a "Parental Bill of Rights" that would amend the state's constitution to give parents more say over school curriculums (and, weirdly, leave it up to parents if a student should repeat a grade or class). In Florida, a parents group (funded by national organizations) is trying to get books like Beloved and The Kite Runner banned from high school libraries for being "pornographic." In Virginia, Governor Glenn "Surprise! I'm a Crazy Motherfucker, Too" Youngkin is taking seemingly masturbatory pleasure in asking people to narc out teachers who dare talk about racism as a bad thing, setting up a "tip line" for offended parents and students (and the email and phone numbers were spammed beyond belief by people treating an asshole like the asshole he is). And, of course, in McMinn County, Tennessee, the school board removed Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus as a text 8th grade teachers can use to talk about the Holocaust. Was it too violent? Too heart-wrenching? Nope. It showed the breasts of a dead woman and some mouse peen, and it had a couple of cuss words. 

By the way, in an opposite way from Loudoun County, Virginia, the test scores of McMinn County, which is a mostly rural place dead in the middle between Knoxville and Chattanooga on I-75, are just fucking pathetic. 31-30% read at or above their grade level, meaning that over two-thirds can't read at their grade level. 40% can do math at or above grade level. Maybe the school board needs to spend a little more time worrying about that shit than worrying about mouse tits. Maybe parents need to get their kids those books that Dolly Parton provides.

I went to public school in south Louisiana in the 1980s. My schools all had a solid mix of races, income levels, and backgrounds (although it was pretty monolithically Catholic because, well, Louisiana in the 1980s). For the most part, my high school teachers were awesome because they were free to teach almost anything that fit into their subject (except sex education because, well, Louisiana in the 1980s). I've mentioned before that my caffeinated, chain-smoking Vietnam vet U.S. history teacher took out a dollar bill on the first day of class and said, "This is what American history is all about," and proceeded to blow our minds by tying everything, the Revolutionary War, slavery, and more, into how the almighty dollar mattered more than human lives. In my English classes, we read Catcher in the Rye and Native Son and other books that were perfect for our age. In my computer science class, I was allowed to create a game where you played as a Native American trying to protect your land from the white people. In the science fair, I had a project on evolution versus creation that had nude dolls in the Garden of Eden display because how the fuck else are you gonna do it. 

Importantly, our parents respected the teachers. Those oil field workers and store clerks and shrimp boat workers didn't try to fuck with the schools just because of their beliefs (and, besides, the Supreme Court had recently slapped down Louisiana on a creationism law). Parents who gave a damn were at-home partners with the schools, helping their kids get their homework done and supporting the efforts of the teachers. And, to be honest, a good many parents just didn't care.

It wasn't perfect. There were conversations and conflicts. There were shitty parents and shitty teachers. But, mostly, teachers got to do their fucking jobs without a bunch of assholes telling them they know better. 

Democrats Need to Do What They Will Never Do: Burn the GOP Down

If nothing else, we should thank disgraced former House Speaker and a fatberg clogging up the sewers of the body politic Newt Gingrich for saying what the Republican Party really stands for now. On some fucking Fox "news" show with Maria Bartiromo, who is really just a slightly more sober Jeanine Pirro, Gingrich explained how a Republican-controlled Congress would subpoena everything from the members of the January 6 special committee and concluded, "I think when you have a Republican Congress, this is all going to come crashing down and the wolves will find out that they are now sheep and they are the ones who are...in fact, I think, face a risk of jail for the kind of laws they are breaking." 

That's a warning. That's a shot across the motherfucking bow right there. We know that Republicans are squirting in orgasmic delight over having a years-long investigation into Hunter Biden's laptop or election "fraud" or the "crimes" of Dr. Anthony Fauci, as well as a Standing Committee to Keep Investigating Hillary Clinton Because We're Fucking Maniacs. Jesus, Marjorie Taylor Greene is secretly humping AOC's office doorknob every night in anticipation of dragging her before some committee to answer questions about...fuck, socialism or something. Who the fuck knows. 

The more important point here is that Democrats better fucking understand that Republicans don't talk in hyperbole anymore. They do the shit that sounds absolutely insane. Try to steal an election? Sure. Ban books and words from schools? Fuck, yeah. Let their voters die than promote vaccines? Of course. Jail Democrats? Well, why the fuck not. If someone who has already shit on your porch, wrecked your car, and shot your dog tells you that they're gonna murder your ass next, you believe them.

Democrats should be doing everything possible to burn the fucking GOP to the ground and then vacuuming up the ashes before shooting them into the sun. That means to go on the attack savagely. Scare the shit out of those fickle fucks in places like Virginia where the vote swung from Biden to the Trumpy nutball Youngkin. Portray Republicans as racists and sexists, that they're going to take away abortion rights and ban books and take away same sex marriage and do other shit that makes those suburban assholes feel squeamish. Put Greene and Gaetz and Gosar front and center as the face of the congressional GOP like some kind of three-headed gargoyle of hate and treason. You wanna be on the side of these objectively shitty humans?

Sure, sure, Democrats, you believe in havin an Uplifting Message. You want to Inspire people and get them to love your Big Ideas. But Democrats fucked all that up by overpromising during the 2020 election. You don't go up to some guy in a bar and tell him that you can suck a dick so good that he'll see Jesus and Satan while he's cumming. That sets the expectations too high and if he only sees an archangel, well, you've failed. You should promise a good time, but don't fucking promise the best time. Let him say that after you've done the deed. 

If you'll remember, for a good bit of 2020, we were told (and believed) that the election was going to be a Blue Wave, where Democrats overwhelmed Republicans. And, not without reason, candidates, including Joe Biden, started making big promises that were based on a larger majority in the House and a comfortable majority of three or four seats in the Senate. As the wave seemed more likely, the promises got bigger, including eliminating student loan debt, trillions in expanded domestic programs, and more. Had the wave materialized, much of that would have been a no-brainer. The problem, though, was not anticipating that it might not happen and lowering the promise heat. I know hindsight and all that, but Build Back Better, student loan forgiveness (which still could happen), ending the filibuster, and even more infrastructure spending all failed because they were doomed from the start. Despite the hope and optimism of idiots like me, it wasn't going to happen with a margin so thin in each house of Congress that if you farted through it, only dogs would be able to hear it.

And while we can and should blame Democrats (especially a liar like Joe Manchin), the focus should be on blaming the fucking Republicans. Enough with the worthless "I'm bipartisan and I can work across the aisle" horseshit. Motherfuckers tried it and, except for a brief moment in the Senate on infrastructure, that hand was stabbed every time it reached out. So fuck 'em.

As the midterm elections approach, Democrats need to do, as a party, what they never do. They need to call Republicans the fucking enemy. Not the loyal opposition with whom they can compromise. The fucking enemy. They're trying to destroy democracy. They are the reason the goddamn pandemic is still going as hard as it is. They are why you don't have paid family leave or a higher minimum wage. The message should be simple. Not "We can work together," but "They refuse to do shit you want. They're fucking crazy. If you're not crazy, don't vote for those cockmites." 

It probably won't happen, but if Biden's being real about finally giving up on finding the bipartisan unicorn, then maybe it's a strategy with a chance. Milquetoast appeals to goodness and hope won't work. Fear and rage? That's just the world we live in, and the only way to change it is to use it.

By the way, perhaps the real tell with Gingrich happened before he started talking about jailing Democrats and (to his deranged mind) RINOs. He compared contemporary Democrats to other groups in history. Sure, he went with the expected, the Russian revolutionaries of 1917 because communism, of course. But he also said they are "people who are as fanatic[al] as the revolutionaries in the French Revolution." Now, you can say what you want about the Reign of Terror or the rise of Napoleon. In the long view of history, though, the French Revolution eventually brought about the end of monarchy, reduced the power of the Catholic Church, and expanded rights to ordinary citizens. So if Gingrich is saying the French Revolution was wrong, well, fuck, I guess that explains a lot.

Martin Luther King Would Still Fuck Our Shit Up (2022 Edition)

It's more frustrating than ever to hear conservatives who are opposed to legislation that would expand voter participation, supportive of gerrymandering that specifically reduces the power of non-whites, and losing they goddamned minds over teaching the hard truths about the United States's racial history quote Martin Luther King, Jr. like they actually give a single segregated fuck about what King really was about. They sure can trot out the whole "judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" without bothering with the radical context. They can directly tie MLK to whatever racist bullshit they want. But they can't be bothered to fucking learn about King.

Let's put this as plainly as possible: If you are against voting rights or against getting rid of the filibuster so you can vote for the voting rights you claim you're for, you may as well just piss on King's monument in DC. And we will all judge you by the shitty content of your shitty character.

But the truth of the matter is that King has always been talking about the political things that hold back Blacks from achieving full equality in this country. He had called out whites who paid lip service to the Civil Rights Movement but ultimately did nothing. He called bullshit on the filibuster. And he had no fucking patience with the way that some states decided to defy the Supreme Court after the Brown v. Board of Education decision. 

In his speech "The Summer of Our Discontent," delivered at the New School in New York City on February 6, 1964, King clearly connected rising racial protests around the country directly to the lack of progress post-Brown: "The Negro had been deeply disappointed over the slow pace of school desegregation. He knew that in 1954 the highest court in the land had handed down a decree calling for desegregation of schools 'with all deliberate speed.' He knew that this edict from the Supreme Court had been heeded with all deliberate delay. At the beginning of 1963, nine years after this historic decision, approximately nine percent of southern Negro students were attending integrated schools. If this pace were maintained, it would be the year 2054 before integration in southern schools would be a reality...the statistics make it abundantly clear that the segregationists of the South remained undefeated by this decision. In every section of Dixie, the announcement of the high court had been met with declarations of defiance. Once recovered from their initial outrage, these defenders of the status quo had seized the offensive to impose their own schedule of change."

King wasn't just blaming the racist dickholes of the South. See, MLK would still fuck our shit up because he saw both political parties as the problem: "A second reason for the outburst in 1963 was rooted in the failure of both political parties to live up to their campaign promises. From the city of Los Angeles in 1960, the Democratic Party had written an historic and sweeping civil rights pronouncement into its platform. From Chicago, the Republican Party had been generous in its convention vows on civil rights, although its candidate had made no great effort in his campaign to convince a nation that he would redeem his party’s promises. Then 1961 and ‘62 arrived, with both parties marking time in the cause of justice. In the Congress, reactionary Republicans were still doing business with the Dixiecrats, and the feeling was growing among Negroes that the administration had oversimplified and underestimated the civil rights issue."

And he took it directly to the Oval Office (which, as we know, had recently changed hands): "Negroes had manifested their faith by giving a substantial majority of their votes for President Kennedy. They had expected more of him than of the previous administration. In no sense had President Kennedy betrayed his promises, yet his administration appeared to believe it was doing as much as was politically possible and had, by its positive deeds, earned enough credit to coast on civil rights." You got that? King is saying that Kennedy was taking the votes of Black Americans for granted while not following through. "Politically, perhaps, this was not a surprising conclusion," King continued. "How many people understood, during the first two years of the Kennedy administration, that the Negroes’ 'now' was becoming as militant as the segregationists’ 'never'? Eventually the president would set aside political considerations and rise to the level of his own unswerving moral commitment." This is a full-throated endorsement of hardball tactics, including mass protest, to bring about change. 

Today, this would get him nasty tweets from people not thinking he was sufficiently deferential to the leaders who would give him crumbs they think he should be grateful for.

The entire speech is a pretty damn stunning indictment of the way that the nation failed to live up to its promises. It directly connects racist laws to racist economic conditions and the racist history of the nation to the propagation of those conditions. Quite plainly, despite what morons and assholes, like House Minority Leader and Man So White He Drains Color Out of Others Kevin McCarthy, say, King would not only support critical race theory, he'd think you were a liar or ignorant if you didn't. 

Every year since 2004, I've written an MLK Day post based on something King wrote or said. Every fucking year it's a scream of defiance against everyone who wants to do what lynch mobs did and neuter the Black man who stood up to them. Martin Luther King was a radical motherfucker and we have not yet fully grappled with his insights into the nature of race in this backsliding nation. 

(One final thing: In the Q&A part of the evening, King was asked what he thought about the more violent tactics of the Nation of Islam. While King said he opposed their approach and their belief in racial separation, he offered, "It did not come into being out of thin air; it is symptomatic of the deeper unrest, discontent, and frustration of the Negro. And I think it is an indictment on the laxity of Christianity and the laxity of democracy that a movement like this came into being. And I think that the challenge of this movement is not so much to condemn its philosophy, as I will continue to do, but go out and work harder to get rid of the conditions that brought it into being." That's some badass compassion right there.)

Covid Tests, Sick Leave, and More: This Country Has Lost Its Ability to Give a Shit About You

It's sadly fucking hilarious and hilariously fucking sad how the Biden administration is rolling out its at-home COVID-19 tests. Sure, 500 million will be available for free, but, for most of us, we've learned that our health insurance will be forced to cover the price of any we buy at the local Walgreen's. Which means, likely, we'll have to fill out forms, upload receipts, deal with fuckups, deal with denied claims, and handle the usual fuckery that is part and parcel of the insanity of our health care "system," all in the name of some kind of perverse version of "freedom." Just give the fucking tests away. Just make them available to everyone. Why the hell should everyone have to go through this just to see if they have Covid before they visit their parents? Why the hell should anyone who can't afford them have to rely on going to wait in line at a clinic or testing site? Easily-available testing helps everyone. This isn't vaguely up for discussion.

President Biden could have flooded the country with tests by now, and that no one has thought to do this bespeaks a reality about living in this United States. The country doesn't act like it gives a shit about you when it comes to health care (and many other things, but let's just stick to health care right now). Oh, it talks a good game (and there are amazing people working in health care), but the official actions of our state and federal governments are bound up in ideologies that can't help but hurt people. 

Jesus, it's like being in a relationship with an intense sadist when you're not into BDSM: "Wait, we can't just fuck for once? We gotta break out the whips and nipple clamps and ball crushers and spiked spanking gloves? Can't we just fuck and enjoy it? Why does everything have to be complicated and painful? My sphincter just healed from last time." But, no, your partner wants to cuff you and beat you before you're allowed to get off, and, well, shit, fuck, sometimes it's just easier to take it than to fight about it. Otherwise, you have to break-up, move out, and who's got the time. "Fine. Fist me."

That's not the way it should be. Mutually-consensual BDSM is a beautiful thing, filled with love and pleasure. (No kink-shaming here.) But if it's not mutual, it's just abuse. And the United States has gotten really good at caning our asses whether we like it or not, with Covid making the blows sharper and more frequent.

What this pandemic has starkly revealed just how failed so many of the policies we've been forced to live under have been. 

We were warned early in the pandemic that the lack of paid sick leave for workers was going to fuck us over. While there was an actual effort to provide for this during the lockdown period of the pandemic, now, as Omicron has its viral way with us, the fact that most workers get little or no paid sick leave has led to, well, sick people going to work (if they aren't forced to by their employers), which leads to more sick people, including people who are too sick to work, which depletes the work force and makes it so no one can work. Or is that math too fucking hard? As in so many things, the US is an outlier as one of only 11 countries where there is no national paid sick leave law. In other words, our selfish capitalism is freedoming us to death.

Even worse, there's the lack of any or of decent health insurance in this country. I personally know people who refuse to get help for their obviously symptomatic Covid because they are afraid of how much it will cost if they end up in the hospital. This has been one of the brute realities for Americans, and even with Obamacare and expanded Medicaid (not to mention Medicare for the many elderly who are sick), the out-of-pocket cost can go into the thousands and thousands of dollars and, fuck it, that's not worth it unless you might die. How much undiagnosed Covid is out there? How much untreated? 

Fuck, I'm not even getting into the lack of support for parents whose children have to stay home from schools.

Think of the stress all this causes, stress that's added to the stress of the pandemic. Our country is doing that to us. Our leaders, especially Republicans, are doing it. But, honestly, Biden has broad powers that he could draw on right now in a crisis that we're two goddamned years into. Could he say that government is going to cover all Covid-related medical expenditures, creating a de facto Medicare for all? (Maybe, but then the savage dickbeasts on the Supreme Court would tell everyone to fuck off and die.) I remember when President Obama decided to make health care his major first-term goal, and many wondered why that in particular, why not go for a greater economic and infrastructure package to build on the Recovery and Reinvestment Act? But Obama knew that health care insecurity was overwhelming for many Americans. Of course, what we got was severely compromised and has been undermined by Republicans at every turn, at every level, so that, while an improvement, the Affordable Care Act is still a fucking sieve of a program.

Fuck, I'm not even getting into the PTSD everyone is going to have to deal with for the next few decades. I'm not even getting into the absolutely unforgivable burden we've put on health care workers repeatedly, breaking many of them. 

It's not working, this way of existing without caring about each other on a national basis. Yet what can you say about a nation that allows this to happen and a people that don't rise up and demand something better other than that we have lost our ability to care about each other (not you, of course, not you personally, unless it is you, in which case, go fuck yourself). Instead of doing the things that would make us better, our leaders keep things the same, even in the face of a genuine catastrophe, even when one easy thing, free at-home Covid testing, would ease some of the burden of this sadistic time we're damned to live through and allow us to at least pretend we care.

(Note: This isn't about anti-vaxxers or anti-maskers because fuck them always.)

Notes on the Anniversary of a Failed Coup

The riot/insurrection/coup on January 6, 2021 was violent. We know that various members of law enforcement were beaten, gassed, cut, crushed, and more. We know that a great deal of property was damaged. If you had been on the receiving end of it, it would have fucked you up. And if you had been a Democratic member of Congress or Mike Pence, you would have shit yourself when you heard the violent herd of morons yipping in gleeful rage as they tried to get to you so they could...what? I'm pretty sure that once someone's beaten a cop with a pole that has an American flag on it, they're not there to have a calm discussion about election law.

But that violence and threat of violence isn't enough for too many Americans, including members of Congress, who crawled on their bellies and invited Donald Trump to jack off on their backs as they begged for forgiveness for ever saying a truthful word or two about his complicity. No, we're told by right-wing media figures and by insane and/or opportunistic politicians, this wasn't violent, this was just people expressing their anger over an election loss, calm down, nobody died. And all I can think when I hear that shit is that they're saying that they need corpses to even consider the seriousness of what happened. They're saying they need to have had Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mike Pence hanging in the rotunda in order for it to have been more than a bit of overzealousness. And even then, those motherfuckers would still be yelling, "False flag" or "Lies" or whatever because to admit that the actions of the insurrectionists were wrong would be to have to grapple with their role in the insurrection.

There are things I get and things I will never understand about January 6.

For instance, I understand why law enforcement didn't just open fire on those who were trying to breach the Capitol (with the exception of the barking mad Ashli Babbit). I get the fear that they would then be overwhelmed by a tide of racist yahoos, many of whom had weapons of their own or were improvising with things like the shields they took from riot cops. While I fully believe that 90% of the rioters would have scampered away like surprised squirrels, it would have been a bloodbath. And, with the exceptions of those who may have helped the yahoos, law enforcement ended up preventing the absolute worst from happening, at the cost of their bodies and minds. 

On the other hand, I will never understand why Donald Trump and his staff and advisors weren't immediately arrested. Don't fucking tell me that he was the president. The idea of a goddamn president was always that no person is above the law. And Trump had already taken the presidency and pissed on its face before telling it to sign an NDA about his water sports fetish. Arresting him would have been saving the presidency.

I'm not saying that Trump shouldn't have had a trial or been denied any due process. But he should have immediately been jailed without bail until his trial, along with Giuliani and Bannon and Kerik and anyone else who was trying to figure out a way to steal the 2020 presidential election. But fuck them because fuck them. None of this happens without Trump refusing to accept the court-approved, state-approved election results. He's the goddamned ringleader. You put him the fuck away and tell the others, "We're not afraid to lock any of you up." Treat people who try to overthrow the government like they fucking tried to overthrow the government. And if Trump's people wouldn't do it, then it should have happened right after Biden was inaugurated. Frankly, Trump should have been handcuffed and frogmarched after the phone call with the Georgia Secretary of State where he begged Raffensperger to conjure up enough votes to just get past the margin of Biden's victory became known.

But there's one thing I am perfectly clear on: The assholes and mental invalids and Confederacy humpers who ragegasmed at the Capitol before smearing the walls with shit were doing it based on fucking lies about the election. Anyone who defends or excuses them is saying that the fucking lies are truth. The fucking liars themselves need to be punished, not just the fucknuts who decided they could finally live out their pornographically violent racist Christian nationalist militia fantasies in DC because the chief fucking liar told them it was go time. The lie part of this needs to be taken as seriously as possible because not squelching the fucking lies like they're goddamn mosquitoes is going to drain the blood of this weakening democracy. 

The problem, of course, is that the fucking lies have metastasized because, as ever, Democrats acted as if they just let passions calm down that everyone could Come Together and Be Reasonable. That did not happen. We accommodated our abusers so they wouldn't abuse us more. There are so many woulda-coulda situations from January 6. What if the House and Senate had not adjourned after the Electoral College vote? What if they had decided right then and there to stay in the wrecked Capitol and impeach and remove Trump from office, convicting him of high crimes and misdemeanors? (And, yes, there was a chance then that the Senate might convict.) 

But, no, no, every decision has been made slowly and with great consideration so as not to upset the violent dickholes and their rhetorical enablers any more than they are.  The time called for action and everyone just went home. Thus Republicans had a chance to get all the  attacks from Trump and his idiot hordes and any spine they might have had softened into jelly and collapsed. With no prosecutions so far of the leaders of the coup attempt, including Trump, President Biden risks making another of President Obama's mistakes: letting the evil fucks get away with it and letting them set the narrative.

President Joe Biden's speech today was a good start. He was clear and forceful, stating plainly that the coup attempt was Trump's fault and that the idea that the election was fraudulent or rigged or stolen is just a fucking lie. He gave as good a talking point as any to demonstrate how stupid those spouting the fucking lies are: "The former president and his supporters have never been able to explain how they accept as accurate the other election results that took place on November 3rd — the elections for governor, United States Senate, the House of Representatives — elections in which they closed the gap in the House. They challenge none of that." Biden still holds the irrational belief that there are decent Republicans left. The motherfuckers were indecent before January 6. They are indecent to their filthy, rotting core. Stop trying to pretend there's goodness there, like you can find some cure for evil. But his definitive statements about that day are a solid, even inspiring foundation upon which we can fight back. 

And we should all be as angry all the time about what was done to us on January 6. In the midst of a deadly pandemic, in the midst of despairing about the economy, we held the fairest, best-run election anyone has seen. That should have inspired confidence in us that we could survive all this shit and get back to something like normalcy.It wasn't perfect by any stretch, but, fuck, it went so much better than anyone expected. That feeling was taken away from us by Donald Trump. Our security about the stability of our nation was undermined further. Goddamnit, every fucking day should be an expression of our anger about that until we are made whole with his ass in prison. Or else just toss the fucking country out into the trash heap of history.

Still, yeah, we're a little antsy about what Attorney General Merrick Garland and the January 6 committee are finding and what they're gonna do. It's not just because the clock is running out should the GOP win back at least one chamber of Congress. It's because everything that the GOP is doing, at the local, state, and national level, everything that their media accomplices are doing in nutzoid online videos and on Fox "news" and elsewhere points to them just fucking doing it again in 2024 if not to re-install Trump, then to put in some other deranged monument to incompetence and madness like Josh Hawley. As we learn time and time and time and time again, if you let the powerful go unpunished, they take that as permission to get more powerful and do it again. Appeasement is not an option. Even today, the right is screeching with outrage that people would dare be angry at Trump. Fuck all of them with wooden scroll holding the Constitution.

If I'm being completely honest, the only thing we should be arguing over at this point is if Trump should die in prison or be executed. (I'm for life in prison only because I oppose the death penalty.) 

On this one-year anniversary of the Yahoo Coup, we can say with quite a bit of evidence that the morons lost the battle but have a real chance of winning the war. 

Haiku Review of 2021: Blue Weekend

I'm loving the pouring on of haikuing that's happening. Yeah, slap me with haiku. Tickle me with haiku. Peg me with haiku. Here's another 10-spot of 'em to kick 2021's ass out the window.

From Madeleine Begun Kane of Mad Kane's Political Madness Blog in NYC:

Evil Dick’s spawn Lynne

Tries to save Democracy.

Hell’s frozen over.

From Q. Santi in Belize:

New GOP

Party of losers

Stolen election my ass!

Go cry in your beer

From Jim in California:

Merry Christmas from the Boebert Family

The happy Boeberts 

Clutching their guns with dreams of

A Muslim bloodbath

From Heather in Sun City, AZ:

Grandchild

A new baby breathes.

My planet just keeps dying.

I must smile and cry.

From Rabbit Earz in Los Angeles:

On the house tonight

Bleach-A-Ritas cure Covid

Drink until you die

From RG in Illinois:

Lather, Rise, Repeat

The fuck, man! The FUCK!

WEAR THE FUCKIN' MASK! YOU FUCK!

YOU FUCKING FUCKER!

From T. Mangrove in Wisconsin:

MAGA’s response to

The Audacity of Hope:

Fear, anger, and spite.

From Beth in Alexandria, VA:

Cicadas

Red eyes, freaky sounds,

Bodies falling from the trees,

Brood X in my yard.

From Mel in rural Oregon:

Q has gone silent.

Under psychiatric care?

Or tired of the joke?

From Jack in a hellishly red area of a hellish blue state:

Twenty twenty-one

Rotten to the goddamned end

Rest well, Betty White

I might have one more day of haikunification in me. I've still got a few dozen to get through. Thanks to all who made the effort, whether you got in or not. 

(The title is from Wolf Alice's incredible 2021 album.)

Haiku Review of 2021: Pink Noise

Once more, you have inundated the ol' inbox with a load of magical, mad, and messy little poems. Keep 'em pouring in until I'm slobbering drunk on your words. Here's a sampling of some of the quality haiku you've sent in from sea to not-so-shining sea and even around the world:

From The Human Stain from We Ain’t Gonna Make It, USA:

Doctors, nurses, and

COVID vaccine researchers

Pandemic heroes

From Seattle Snowflake:

1776-2021 (R.I.P.?)

Hey Joe and Kirsten--

Change the filibuster rule

So we all can vote

From Eve Fisher:

Dershowitz is now

shitting bricks. Trump wishes he'd 

pardoned her, not Flynn.

From SPL:

The kid with a gun

Cries tears on the witness stand

What tears for the dead?

From Suffering fools sadly in WI:

Reject the science

Fire Fauci! Burn those masks!

Doctor, help me breathe

From VJ in NJ:

Billionaire playtime

Cock rockets, crypto, and lies

They're our heroes, right?

From Jenny in Staunton, VA:

Marco Rubio

Dude's not worth the syllables

Not even counting

From BB in LA:

Manchin blocked the bill

Someone may have snorted crack

West Virginia bleeds

From Arthur Tiersky:

2021: On the Bright Side

In February

Racist fuckwad Rush Limbaugh

Went to rot in Hell

From Chris in Hong Kong:

Hong Kong under the

Chinese Communist Party

eviscerated

I've only been through the first 24 hours of haiku. So keep your hopes alive if you've sent them in. More tomorrow. And probably Saturday. Once again: 5-7-5 syllables. Titled or untitled. Send 'em to: rudepundit (at) yahoo.com. And make sure you tell me your nom de rude and some place somewhere. 

(Note: The title up there is from Laura Mvula's 80s dance party of an album from this year.)

Haiku Review of 2021: Smiling With No Teeth

Remember how we thought this year absolutely had to be better than motherfucking 2020? The shock is that it objectively was a better year in so many ways, but it felt like a goddamn sequel, shinier but somehow shittier. Yeah, we got rid of Trump, but Trumpism's rank stench continues to pollute everything in this nation. We will not live to see the world rotate out of the eclipse shadow of his orange, jowly moon. Whatever hope we voiced with the vaccine's availability was quickly drowned out by the heaving fuck yawps of humping morons, squealing in orgasmic delight over how they're sticking it to the libs by not getting vaccinated and dying at a much higher rate than the rational rest of us. We saw a fleeting moment of actual bipartisan unity in the moments after the attempted coup on January 6, only to have the MAGA ogres and right-wing media monsters tear it apart like so many billy goats under a bridge and elevate election lies that inspired the mob of yahoos to the level of holy beliefs that one must have in order to be a true Republican shitheel.

Sure, sure, some good things happened, with that vaccine at the top of the list. And Biden's infrastructure bill. And the judges that have been approved. And, hey, howzabout that economy, huh? But all that gets ass-fucked by the two-headed Gorgon of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, and it gets face-fucked by the Supreme Court, tearing down the right to abortion, and it gets skull-fucked by the nutzoid state legislatures that are pissing all over voting rights. And let's not even get into how the climate change apocalypse is here and we somehow can't get our heads around it, even when we're being burned and frozen and drowned and blown away by it. Or racism. Always racism.

So around these parts, we kick the calendar year's ass out the door with haiku, those little 3-line poems you were forced to write in grade school and everyone made it about farts, except for that one kid who took it seriously and wrote something so beautiful it made the teacher cry and believe, once again, that her career choice was right. What was I talking about?

Oh, yeah, haiku. Send me yours. Here's the deal:

Submit your haiku about anything you want having to do with the fucked up 2021 to "rudepundit(at)yahoo(dot)com." I'm the only judge and jury here, and I am generally fickle, drunk, high, and yelling at squirrels.

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 "Marjorie Taylor Greene's Hammer Toe from Jizzpond, AL" or "Alisha from San Francisco" or something.

Here's a few to inspire you:

Insurrectionism

Break windows and doors

Beat cops bloody with our flags

Trump over country.

Covid Isn't the Only Illness

Vax should be enough

But fools would rather drink bleach

Soon, a million dead

Today's History Class at the MAGA School

White people are good!

Sure, slavery happened. So?

America rules!

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

(Note: The title up there comes from Genesis Owusu's majorly cool debut album, which was one of the things that made this year tolerable.)

The Year of Unmagical Thinking

If we hung out, sometimes you might ask me why, seemingly out of nowhere, I've gotten angry. It's not like there aren't thousands of reasons all the time to be angry, but, mostly, we all keep that in check. This last two years, though, I haven't really been able to, and I'd get morose and snippy and generally unpleasant. I can pinpoint why pretty exactly. 

It's not just the pandemic, although that would be enough. It's not the deaths and suffering, although that never goes away. It's not about my own experience of this time because I know that I have not had it nearly as bad as so, so many others. It's specifically when I think about young people, those in college and graduating during this damned period, and all the opportunities that have been lost, all the lives that have been stunted or postponed because of the foolishness of our leaders and the selfishness of a large part of the population. I'm angry for those young people because I'm a generation or two older and we should have been looking out for them and we didn't. And I'm angry because someone needs to be held to account, and we're not doing that...

If I start to list all the things connected that contribute to my anger, I'd never stop. 

I've talked to many, many people who find themselves or people close to them suddenly upset or anxious, who feel trapped or despondent, who no longer enjoy things like they used to, who don't accomplish as much as they once did, and who beat themselves up over feeling any or all of that. "Maybe it's because we're dealing all this," I'll say, gesturing at, well, everything, primarily meaning the pandemic, but all the damage that has been done because of it. I don't mean that as a diagnosis or anything. I mean it as an observation, that we have been living through trauma and damn if that's not going to have an effect on, well, everything in our daily lives. That's what collective trauma does. 

And how could it not be traumatic? At this point, we're certainly not far removed from people who have died from Covid. All of us know someone who has had it or we've had it ourselves. Again, it's not just the disease. It's being forced to learn how to interact in the world in a new way (and resistance to that is its own kind of demonstration of trauma), from how we work to how we shop to how we go to school to how we gather to how we breathe. It can be relatively minor. For instance, for years, I knew to check before leaving: Keys, wallet, phone. Now I have to add "mask." Or it can be more severe, like the fact that I've barely taught in person for nearly two years and didn't see members of my family for extended periods. It's the involuntary nature of it that gets to us. We didn't choose this, like moving to a new house or getting a new job. It was done to us.

And, for lack of a more concise way of putting it, it's fucked us up. Badly. And extensively. The world was one way and now, in the blink of an eye, really, it's another. 

"Maybe we just need to be more forgiving," I'll say to people, to fellow professors, to friends, to myself. "Maybe we need to forgive ourselves and forgive others for sometimes not being able to hold it all in. Maybe it's okay to feel like that."

I have learned the act of forgiveness in so many ways over the last two years. I've been advising professors to be forgiving to their students in ways that we never would have been prior to March 2020. Many students have written to me about how they've had to negotiate the pandemic landscape, how they've had to care for family members, how they've gotten sick, how they've just felt depressed and unable to work. Maybe I'm a sucker, but I can't help but feel like I need to forgive them and let them make up work or turn it in late or help them out. I'll be a more discerning judge of their pain in the undefined future.

The trauma is especially keen now because we've been told, at least twice now, that we were emerging from the pandemic and back into whatever normal is going to be, only to have it Greek-lettered away. And that trauma is on top of the steady thrum of stress and trauma we were already dealing with on a daily basis, the personal events or racism or sexism or poverty or abuse or some terrible combination of those and more. Yes, there are things that shouldn't be written off as related to the pandemic. But one exacerbates the other. 

Just to be clear, though: No, I don't forgive the willingly unvaccinated, especially those who refuse to get their children vaccinated. I'm only human, after all, so I won't forgive those I blame for putting us in this terrible time and those who are keeping us in it.

But this last year has been one where I had to remind myself that, despite however many meds I suck down to keep me from going on a five-state killing spree, of course I'm going to be upset, irritated, angry, even. I've been in mourning for nearly two full years. Now, though, I'm not mourning for what's past. I'm mourning for what is. And I'm trying to push myself through dread for the future. 

I want next year to be better. Truly. I'm not despairing yet. Hell, I keep writing and sending stuff out. That's gotta mean I believe in a future. I know we've got a big fight waiting for us politically in 2022, and I wanna fight it. Hell, I'm planning trips, buying tickets to concerts and shows, and looking forward to seeing friends. Hell, I'm heading to a bar now to meet up with people. See? Hope. And whiskey.

I'm filthy with hope, but I'm exhausted by this last year spent hoping. I'm exhausted because I know it's not enough, but it's what we've got.

In the back of my head, though, I know we're one slight push from it all being swept away. 

And I forgive myself for thinking that.

The Rude Pundit's Annual Nativity-palooza, Now Including Weird-Ass Glass and Metal Ones

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 Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, 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 are not meant to be ironic):

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 half-snow, half-flesh sheep chimera. Did Snow Mary give birth to Snow Baby Jesus? Or did they all just make Snow Baby Jesus out of snow?

You know how gnomes used to be just those creepy little bitches you put out on your lawn and forgot about? Well, now they can apparently give birth to the Gnome God's child, who will, no doubt, be crucified on a cute little cross one day for the sins of all gnomes. Oh, so many sins.

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.

Maybe your taste is more cutting edge. Well, you fancy motherfucker, you can cut lots of shit with this one: 

I mean, come the fuck on. It screams, "I want to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but I don't want my friends to think I'm too Christian-y." It yells, "Look how pretentious I am but still love Christmas." It cries, "A nativity, but with multicolored ghost blobs." It announces, "I don't have children and fuck you if yours break my glassy Mary."

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.)