Creeping Fascism SUXX, and Other Hot Takes (Ferret)
This week has been…an unusually specific We Didn’t Start the Fire verse, and that’s all I’m going to say on the matter. You may want to put on something splatter-proof before proceeding. I mean, what the fuck.
(As ever, git this nonsense with links n’ in color here: http://showercapblog.com/creeping-fascism-suxx-and-other-hot-takes/)
A whistleblower granted the world a terrifying peek behind the curtain at the human -misery-manufacturing plant called Facebook, and dear lord, the scope of the damage wrought by one nerd’s unrestrained greed, it’s…it’s fuckin’ widescreen, friends. From genocide in Myanmar to inflicting lifelong trauma on an entire generation of young women, look on Mark Zuckerberg’s works, ye mighty, and despair.
There’re certainly some big issues to be grappled with here, and of course it doesn’t help that so many of our elected leaders are just too damn old to understand these newfangled “apps” and “platforms,” with their tight pants and their rock n’ roll music, but if folks could get their shit together in time to regulate these assholes before some random cow on their hellsite knocks over the lantern that sets the whole world on fire, that’d be swell.
Meanwhile, the brain poison peddlers at Fux Nooz took a break from excusing/normalizing violent insurrection and spreading vaccine lies to attack Senator Tammy Duckworth for taking a tax break for wounded veterans which she most definitely earned. But hate her anyway, and don’t forget to tithe to your draft-dodging dirtbag divinity.
“Make America Great Again Again” is the latest asinine bit of branding which, let’s be honest, will totally fucking work on the legion of pliant rubes who are, after all, still (STILL) ineffectively ingesting livestock dewormer in the face of a highly contagious, potentially lethal virus, out of spite.
I see Off-Brand Orbán somehow managed to flounder his way off the Forbes 400, a testament to his one true talent: losing. Not only did this sloppy fop recently hold the most prestigious political post on the planet, but he’s legit the head of an enormous cult, millions who demonstrate daily that they are literally willing to die for him…and STILL the dumb shit figures out a way to crash his brand and decrease his net worth. Like, if Lee and Kirby had pit the Fantastic Four against some sort of cosmic embodiment of the very concept of failure, Donald Trump would still be the bigger loser. He’s amazing.
Tacking back to Cult45 for a second, Sultan Spraytan claimed, with hubris light years beyond parody, “nobody has done more for Christianity or for evangelicals or for religion itself than I have,” which will surely strike the sincerely devout as a touch on the sacrilegious side. Lucky for him, the modern Republican Party contains precisely zero actual Christians, only seething zealots whose only creed is hate, madly demanding religious exemptions from the responsibility to peacefully coexist with others.
Speaking of which…by now you’ve surely noticed the surge in threats of violence against public school employees and officials by once-normal Americans driven insane with rage by the right-wing propaganda machine’s relentless stream of lies.
Well, Merrick Garland announced he’s allocating Justice Department resources to battle this trashfire terror epidemic, because that’s what the Justice Department is fucking for: fighting crime. Threatening to physically harm another human is against the law, and I thought, equally against the agreed-upon rules of civilization. Still, Rand Paul sure seems mad.
Indeed, the Libertarian Lummox waggled his fashy finger flamboyantly at all who would dare impede the sacred right of any frenzied psychopath (provided they’re White, naturally) to terrorize perceived infidels into submission. Rand and co. sure do have some wacky notions about freedom; one almost wants to ask ‘em to work up an official Wingnut Bill of Rights, which’d surely make for quite the obscene little manifesto, smeared, in feces, on Tucker Carlson’s garage door.
And there’s an element of “wow, what a weird hill to die on,” to Paul’s tantrum, of course, but then you remember the hill in question is really “violence and threats of violence should be permissible tactics in the public sphere, admittedly only for our side,” and the reason they’re so desperate to defend that hill is, facing a slide into minority status, the Right is contemplating a hard turn towards fascism. And it is not currently the Kinzinger/Cheney wing of the party dominating that debate. And our little metaphorical hill no longer seems “weird,” only frightening.
Senator Paul, some dude just MURDERED HIS OWN FUCKING BROTHER, a pharmacist, in the name of the snakes fuckwads like you shoved into his head. Like, while we grudgingly understand that your party fucked up so fucking badly that lying to people until their brains break is your only viable electoral strategy at the moment, we really must insist upon drawing the line at submitting to your slaughter.
God picked up his iPhone and went, “Siri, have Chuck Grassley demonstrate the casual racism of old, white, paternalistic, conservative dudes, during a Senate hearing if possible,” and, well, that’s what happened…he’s God. (I would REALLY love it if people picked fights about the gender of god in the comments, by the way.) You don’t get Trump or Trumpism without the sleepy acquiescence of a whole lotta Chuck Grassleys, y’know.
Congratulate Ron Johnson for graduating from using his platform as a United States Senator to parrot dangerous coronavirus disinformation, to using his platform as a United States Senator to elevate dangerous and previously obscure coronavirus disinformation; growth in the wrong direction is still growth, I suppose.
If anybody’s worried they’re sleeping too soundly, let it be known RoJo, for all his shitbaggery, is nowhere near the fringe of the GOP’s elected official class. Certainly not when compared to New Hampshire State Representative Ken Weyler, who claims coronavirus vaccines are a plot by the Pope to inject “octopus-like creatures” into the bodies of unsuspecting patriots. No, really. That happened. In real life.
Republican Governor Chris Sununu called for Weyler’s removal from House leadership, a reasonable enough request, but look, if the GOP kicks everybody who believes the pandemic is a conspiracy to infect children with microsquid out of their steadily-shrinking tent, how’re they supposed to win elections?
Palace intrigue at the Idaho Governor’s Mansion (which, I just learned, does not exist), when Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin took advantage of Gov. Brad Little’s trip to an out-of-state meeting to USURP POWER and repeal vaccine and testing mandates, because death cult coups are just something that happens in America now. (If nobody’s claimed “Potato Republic” yet, I’d like to plant my flag.)
And a new report from Senate Judiciary recounts all the zany ways Hairplug Himmler and his accommodating stooge, Jeffrey Clark, schemed to hollow American democracy out from within, like cartoon termites, only scarier and much less likely to understand how umbrellas work. Republican response to the report has been…let’s say, “predictably disloyal.”
The Deposed Dotard formally ordered his old Turd Reich underlings to defy the January 6th commission’s congressional subpoenas, a key procedural milestone on the slow-motion legal front of the nation’s great Nazi or Nah? struggle. While I normally wouldn’t wish Steve Bannon’s presence on anyone, (it takes multiple boilings to remove the viscous residue he leaves in his wake) let’s get to work enforcing those subpoenas, kids.
Oh, and it turns out prominent hate group attorney Michael P. Farris worked behind the scenes to shape the Assclown Autogolpe’s legal strategy, and you know, I’m starting to think the religious right skipped over a few parts of that Bible. I mean, just the stuff between the front and back covers, though should Ben Garrison recover, I’m sure we’ll someday get to see his approving portrayal of Jesus-as-MAGA-capped-brownshirt, clubbing little caricatures of CNN anchors to death in the street.
Speaking of bigotry wearing faith like a cheap plastic Halloween mask, North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson won’t resign over his appallingly dehumanizing comments about LGBTQ people; why would he, when viral hate speech so frequently rockets one into the highest echelons of Republican politics?
Every other random conservative shitfit continues apace, incidentally. Ron DeSantis keeps on inflicting petty punishments on school districts who refuse to obediently sacrifice their charges to his carrot-colored death god. All the vaccine crap and the CRT crap and the abortion rights crap is still pilin’ up. All frogs are still a-boilin’.
And despite the Cirque du Soleil-quality public failure of the sham Arizona recount, auditmania runs wild, from Wisconsin to North Carolina, because what could possibly go wrong, perpetually reinforcing the Big Lie that the Biden/Fauci/Soros/Big Tech/Snuffleupagus/Big Candy Cigarette/Harvey the Pooka/Big Common Sense Cabal has stolen the nation away from real (coughcoughwhite) Americans?
Oh right. The surge in violence. The one Rand Paul luvs so very, very much.
Debt Ceiling Theatre must be the shittiest show on C-SPAN, right? It’s certainly the most irritating. Mitch McConnell pulled his customary game of chicken (a monstrous, withered, turtle/chicken hybrid, lurching towards catastrophe, somehow leaking horse manure from every orifice) with the global economy, at least until he started getting phone calls from his plutocrat employers; Mitchell is ultimately a servant, albeit a well-compensated one, a sort of “head butler,” but even he isn’t trusted with the combination to the master’s safe.
‘Course, Yertle failed to account for Newton’s Second Law of Ted Cruz: certain assholes are incapable of catching the merest whiff of the spotlight without succumbing to the compulsion to pucker and preen. Lindsey Graham felt like yipping for a bit, too…what cheer. And then one final mini-crisis, because though all agreed the United States must not be permitted to default on its obligations, few were brave enough to cast the necessary vote and thus face the wrath of soft fashy boi Sean Hannity. Real Profiles in the Bottom of my Sneakers After a Trip to the Dog Park stuff here, folks.
Whatever. In the end, Mitch folded, and human civilization lived to fight another day. Honestly, any day this careening gaggle of buttholes fails to blow us all to atoms counts as a good day in my book.
…as does any day when the fridge holds at least a few stray cans of local craft brew. Today, thank all the gods in all the heavens, is such a day. And if you need any more good news, well, howzabout I finally begin teasing the next offering from Resistance Comics…
= new reply since forum marked as read
Well, once again I find myself beyond words... I think the black-hole of dumbassery which was the whole flush the USofA down the commode to make President Smiling Joe look bad debacle was the tipping point of my ability for commentary. So, if nothing else, I've learned I have limits.
Please, keep in mind. The best solution agreed to was a punt in the middle of a global pandemic. Yeah, these people have your best interests in mind. Straight out of 2012. Sleep tight.
Thanks, Cap!
