Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid. ~George Carlin.I saw this Friday night when I was getting ready for work.
Chuck Grassley yapping on Twitter about eating popcorn while watching Democrats hammer out the particulars of the American Rescue Act, which ultimately passed and is on its way back to the House for a few adjustments and expected to be on President Biden's desk fairly soon. It's not "Partisan" if one side simply refuses to do anything. Then it becomes other people doing your work for you, Chuck.
Dude, if you don't want to do your job what the fuck are you even doing there? I mean, seriously, at this point if you're not helping try to deal with all the problems created by COVID-19 you're part of the damn problem. What the fuck is wrong with you? I mean, come on dude. Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.
But if you were ever the person you say you are, you'd know this.
Work seems to fascinate Republicans, they like to watch other people do it.
Over the last few months I've seen a lot of people trying to make sense of the preceding five years. I don't think it's chemicals in the water, defective genetics, hate, racism, religion, rotten philosophies, selfishness, etc. etc.
Or rather, it isn't JUST that.
A more proper answer would be "All Of The Above." But at the same time that answer would also be incomplete.
Among Republicans and the Republican-adjacent these days, there's something else I've observed. I noticed it when I had dinner with an ex-partner of mine a few weeks ago. I feel like there's a few things that overrule even all of the "traditional" Republican vices, while still allowing for their existence...if you want. Those things are:
#1 A fundamental un-seriousness. This particular ex-partner of mine has been scheming for *Years* to try and get me to get back with her, yet when we met for dinner she acted like it was some kind of miraculous, unbelievable coincidence that we were going out to dinner...even though she'd very clearly planned this, that and the other thing.
And everything is funny, because nothing really matters. Call it giving up, laziness, learned helplessness or whatever, but since the rest of the world has not enabled them to enforce their ways by the means they wanted (mostly just straight up savagery) and the world hasn't ended yet, a lot of these people have adopted an "Eat, Drink and Be Merry, For Tomorrow We Die" point of view.
Needless to say, I didn't go for it.
#2 A kind of Bourgeoisie indifference literally to the existence of other people, as Chuck Grassley demonstrated in the first pull-quote. Republicans literally don't give a shit about the rest of us, they believe they can do whatever they want, because to them, the rest of us don't really exist. Why make anything better? Why work for anything when they're doing Okay no matter what happens?
This is exactly why these fucking people turn government into nothing more than Jackass Theatre when they're given a chance. This is why people like Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Green, and Tommy Tuberville have ended up in government.
#3 The same kind of national Affluenza that infects all Empires eventually. It's best summed up by Daffy Duck in the Looney Tunes cartoon "Ali Baba Bunny" as he's walking away from an angry Genie: "Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich."
Maybe that doesn't make sense to you if you haven't seen a little of how the global Other Half lives, but even a poor person in the United States of America often has as much or more in terms of creature comforts and possibly even material wealth as more well-off people in some other countries do. I know a guy named Joseph from Uganda who I wrote about once before. Trust me when I say that for some people in the world, even a few dollars spent could be a life-changing event for them.
The United Nations defines the global poverty line at $ 1.90 per person, per day, and is talking about raising it a little to account for financial inflation.
Think about that for a second. Relatively few Americans will ever have to face that kind of poverty.
In places like Afghanistan, on the other hand, it's pretty common.
Yet more than one of my friends talked to me about walking through fields of Opium poppies and having been specifically ordered not to destroy the crops, or interfere with their cultivation.
And in more than one case, they were given these orders during the height of the US Opioid epidemic.
Again, think about that for a second.
And to tie all three of these things together, American-style capitalism demands an underclass. You think the Sackler family or whoever it is these days gives a shit about some poor farmer in Afghanistan who's working for $2 a day to grow the crops that their companies turn into pain medication eventually? I'm here to tell you, that person doesn't even exist to them.
They don't care, and its inevitable that this lack of care, this lack of giving a shit, and thinking they could do as they damned well please would eventually be turned on the regular Americans these motherfuckers have nothing but contempt for.
I guess yesterday and today, Tom Cotton has been name-dropping criminals and terrorists, saying that those people will get stimulus checks under the American Rescue Act, as if that somehow invalidates the whole thing.
Dude shut the fuck up, not only does Dzhokar Tsarnaev need the money, you know damn well who's going to get most of that money.
Stuff is expensive in prison, from phone cards to snacks to toothbrushes, anything the State doesn't have to give you is sold through prison canteens and contractors and it tends to be way overpriced, and there is an entire ghoulish industry lined up to constantly try and exploit and price-gouge inmates and their families, and to find new ways to do it, even though most of the people who are in there, and their families, don't have much money.
It's surprisingly very expensive and time-consuming to be poor in America when you aren't in prison.
Not that a rich poser like Tom Cotton, who joined the Army to pad his political career would even know that...or care.
But I'll bet Dzokhar Tsarnaev's wife does.
.What the profit-from-prison industry does is at least as bad as anything that was done by the inmates to get them in there, but I'm sure Tom Cotton considers
that to be godly, righteous capitalism.
And that's exactly the problem.
Poverty and wealth have both become generational in America, a system that has always prided itself on rejecting how the rest of the world does things has become exactly like the rest of the world, with malice aforethought towards its own citizens...and the very people doing this shit are either in denial or wrapping themselves up in the sentiments of previous generations to try and hide this bullshit from their followers who are increasingly just as cynical, jaded and uncaring as they are, and from whom hiding this stuff is increasingly unnecessary because they, too, revel in it and in the pain that it causes.
I found the snipped picture on the Facebook feed of some random asshole who was being a dick in a discussion about Dr. Seuss that included several of the ferret group people on my list. Some old white guy with a Confederate flag ballcap and a long gray beard whose timeline was nothing but a Never Never Land of pro-Trump and racist bullshit.
As a lifelong student of Civil War history, I am here to tell you that none of that shit is true except for the stars representing the states. There was in fact some debate about potential religious aspects, which was why the George Cross (which was also seen as the symbol of England) was not adopted, and the "X" design was chosen for secular reasons like its utility in terms of battlefield recognition.
It wasn't some icon of holy, religious purpose.
The Confederacy was about owning people.
It's this kind of navel-gazing, rabbit-hole religious bullshit (in indirect defense of racism as well) that's exactly what I'm talking about. People who have real shit to worry about don't have time for this kind of stupidity. All this assigning of meaning to the flag of a nation 156 years dead is what people do when they're either comfortable enough to not have to worry about much or when they've effectively given up on reality and nothing else really matters anyway.
At this point, there really isn't much the rest of us can do but exorcise the bad spirits, keep the majority in government where we have it and fight to get it where we don't, and let these assholes stew in their own hate while guarding against the possibility that they'll resort to violence. The truth is, there isn't much else we can do. These people have simply decided they don't want to participate in a democratic, free society unless they can rule it and get everything they want, which would in short order mean it was neither democratic nor free, in any case.
They believe leadership and persuasion are beneath them, that having morals is for suckers and that everybody is against them anyway...and then they behave in a manner that will bring about exactly that. They used to say it was because they were "right." But I've noticed lately that they seem to have even stopped caring about that.
If we're ever going to move forward as a society, we have to stop putting up with this crap from our fellow citizens and it's as simple as that. You get what you tolerate.
If you want a better nation, you have to be a better citizen.
And frankly, I think it's past time we move on from these fucking people and their barbaric view of the world. It's the 21st century. We'd best start acting like it.
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