Feet Of Clay (American Revelation V: Part Four)

 Thou, O king, saw and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible.

This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass,
His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.
Thou saw till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. ~Daniel 2:31-34

Yesterday, Trump told House and Senate Republicans "His representatives" to stop negotiations for the stimulus package until after the election.

My initial comment on this was "Holy shit, we get to watch a political mass suicide in real time."

But, no, really; It's worse than that.

But these Republicans are not the disciplined Samurai kneeling, drawing out their Katanas and stabbing themselves in the guts, no, we should be so lucky.

When Trump shouted "Takbir!" before the assembled mob, in typical call-and-response fashion they replied as one "Ayn Rand Akbar!" as they lift their Kalashnikovs and swords to the sky and strap on their suicide bomber vests, and they have resolved not only to sacrifice their Party and political careers and reputations in the service of Trumpism...but to see who they can take down with them as well.

Doesn't matter if that's "Millions of Unemployed Americans" or "People with Pre-existing conditions" or the goddamned White House Staff, the Secret Service, or the guy who carries the Nuclear Football around. Hell, it doesn't seem to  matter to Republican elected or even appointed officials if they or their loved ones catch COVID-19, or if thousands or even millions more Americans die of it as well.

It didn't have to be like this, but the causes of this mess as it stands right now are many and varied.

Lots of people, including myself, have pointed the finger at Newt Gingrich and other Republicans in the 1990's creating an adversarial relationship between the two parties that was full of partisan rancor. That's true enough.

And let's not forget the Militia movement and the explosion of far-right crazy that went with it at the same time.

But there's more to it than that, some far more...mundane...factors at work.

For one thing, starting in the later 1990's I remember there being a fair number of "Conservatives" who were more or less obsessed with the idea of "Population Control" which was basically code for killing off people who weren't like them...generally including other conservatives.

This tracked closely with modern incarnations of "Going Galt" like in Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged." Meaning that some elite group, which always seemed to include primarily the person proposing it and whoever they liked, or all the "smart people" or something something Gazpacho should just all go hide out on a tropical island or something and ride out the imagined decline of civilization in some form of splendid isolation.

It's basically a lazy person's view of Eugenics. These people's idea of civilization is the some condos, a golf course, the mall and Walmart...surrounded by the Killing Fields.

Fundamentally, if you want to know why so many Republicans half-assed the response to, or outright tried to ignore COVID-19, that's why. They never thought it would hit them. They never thought it would strike down their new god.

They didn't understand when I said that the virus doesn't care who you are. It's incapable of that. It doesn't know politics, it's a strand of DNA that makes you sick if it gets in your body, and all it exists to do is propagate itself relentlessly.

And long before The Apprentice and the rise of Trump as some kind of media star there were TV shows like Friends and Seinfeld that were mostly nothing but vapid nonsense, or garbage like Jackass and Survivor that glorified stupid shit and antisocial behavior.

And that's on top of 50 years of embracing declining educational standards, intellectual incuriosity, and low-rent racist bullshit.

When I was a kid, I remember one year there was a TV miniseries about Mussolini that was rather unsparing in its appraisal of the man and not shy about dealing with his ultimate fate, either.

Now? Here's one of these dumb white nationalist shits commenting on Trump's "Mussolini moment" like it was some great show of strength.

I deal with chronic pain every day. It was obvious to me that Trump was in pain and miserable and struggling to breathe and I don't wish that on anybody because I've been in that kind of position. But what these fucking people do is see what they want to see.

And what they want to see, is people dying, mostly for no damned good reason.

Yet to get what they wanted, they elected a man who has shown himself to be nothing more than a demented useless fart factory that spends more money on his hair in a year than the entire Gay Men's Chorus of San Francisco does, and who spends most of the time when he should be working on Twitter and watching TV, who is afraid of such dangerous things as being mocked for shit that he said in public, eating real food, and walking down ramps.

They went All In on this guy.

And now that, thanks to his own actions, Trump has COVID-19, has infected half the Republican Party and is being exposed as the human garbage fire that he is, they mad.

But the truth is, this is America, power doesn't flow from the top down, it flows from the bottom up. You can Immanentize that Eschaton all you want, but first you have to actually convince people that it is heaven. Politics is downstream of culture, and eventually the Right got exactly the "leadership" it deserved.

This is America, it is and should be unforgivable that Republicans have forgotten this.

And we're all paying the price right now.

Vote. Them. Out.

All of them.

Remember when your fifth grade social studies teacher told you that history is shaped by the deeds of great men? Well the bitch was lying. Fuck Julius Caesar, Fuck Abe Lincoln, Fuck Mahatma Gandhi. The world keeps moving because of you and me, the anonymous, revolutions get started 'cause there ain't enough bread, wars happen over a game of Checkers. ~Augustus Hill, From the HBO series "Oz."

Part Three.