What The H?

Today’s episode is brought to you by the letter H.

Few things in life are as predictable as reactions to gun violence in America. (“In America,” of course, goes almost without saying.) When one of their own is threatened, Republicans will blame the rhetoric of Democrats. They’ll call for repression of speech. Like Gym Jordan, they’ll make connections that don’t exist and lie about them, as when he said, "I don't think it should be lost on anyone that we have a third assassination attempt on President Trump in the same week we learned that the Southern Poverty Law Center has been paying and generating hate."

For the record, like the FBI, with which the SPLC cooperates, it engages paid informants within hate groups, which is not “paying and generating hate.” Jordan knows that. He’s venal but not stupid.

If it’s one of their own who committed the act, they’ll make no mention of Republican rhetoric that preceded it. Like, oh, “Journalists are the enemy of the people.” “Democrats are the party of ‘hate, evil, and Satan.’” “Democrats want to destroy our country.” “I’m glad he’s dead.” “No Kings marchers hate America.” “[Senator Mark Kelly and others] ... should be put to death.” Stuff like that.

You didn’t hear criticism of Trump from the right when he shared the home address of President Barack Obama, following which a man was arrested outside, with a gun.

Until Trump, there was never a president who openly sought to foment that level of hate and violence against an opposing political party. And, before Trump, no president had a party that loved him for it.

What you will hear is that the person was mentally ill and doesn’t represent their party, and that a “president” spewing hate for liberals has nothing to do with it. What you won’t hear are suggestions for making guns less available to people with a history of violence or mental illness. Nor will you hear calls for funding treatment of mental illness.

You will hear conspiracy theories from both sides. Staged. False flag. Crisis actors. Ear cartilage. Groomed. In that, there is political equity. However, those theories generally emerge from higher up the right-wing chain than ones from the left, both media personalities and elected officials.

Still, people pushing those theories, from whatever direction, demean us all, just as political violence endangers us all. As do calls to punish those who speak the truth. Or tell jokes on TV. As Donald Rumsfeld famously told us, “Democracy is messy.”

Something original did come from the correspondents’ dinner episode: Trump demanded, his words received throughout right-wing media like tablets from Sinai and put on loop, that his ridiculous ballroom be built immediately, lest he be in “grave danger.” Lindsey Graham wants taxpayers to pay for it. Let's keep the secret hidey-hole underneath. Rebuild the East Wing.

More sponsorship from the letter H:

Trump just re-indicted James Comey. Remember when Rs investigated President Biden for “weaponizing” government and came up empty? Trump’s is as obvious as it is copious.

Republicans rejoiced when Texas initiated the mid-term gerrymandering that gave them five newly red districts. Trusting Democrats to cling to their tradition of clinging to their tradition, other red states followed suit. Then, OMG! Virginia Democrats did the same dang thing. Backlash from the right is set to eleven. The Washington Bezos, which previously editorialized that the Texas ploy was no big deal, called Virginia’s move a danger to democracy. N.B.: House Democrats teed up a bill outlawing gerrymandering months ago. Republicans refuse.

Trump just fired all members of the National Science Board, which sets scientific standards “for how rigorous, intellectual, scientific decisions should be made.” Like education, rigorous science, whether applied to healthcare, climate change, pollution, and more, is a greater threat to Trumpism than Democratic gerrymandering. Right up there with free speech.

Some have praised Trump for dropping his suit against Fed Chair Jerome Powell. No, it wasn’t because it was petty and unfounded. It was to get Senator Tom Tillis to drop his hold on the nomination of Kevin Warsh until the suit was dropped. It was and he did. As with every Trump nominee, Warsh is expected to do Trump’s bidding, for his sake, not ours.

We’ve just learned Trump’s State Department, headed by born-again yes-man Marco Rubio, will be putting Trump’s image on US passports, in honor of America’s 250th anniversary. It’s always and only about Trump. He’ll be on our money next.

Never has any American leader displayed such malignant narcissism. It’s reflected in everything he does. In foreign “policy,” the results have been disastrous. Can anyone imagine the reaction from the right, the apoplexy on Trump-state media, if Presidents Barack Obama or Joe Biden had demanded such a thing? Or added their name to the Kennedy Center, torn down the East Wing for a ballroom, proposed a garish memorial arch? Or launched a war, expecting surrender in two days, after ignoring warnings of the inevitable consequences?

In fact, everyone can imagine it. It’s filed under “H.”

First, Last

Among the many examples of RWS™, Congressional Rs, and their willing teabagging fodder neither respecting, agreeing with, or understanding the US Constitution is the way they respond to the occasional person who questions their venom or lies. "My First Amendment rights are being violated!!!" they shriek, tears flowing, waves of victimization slopping the shores of their self-pity.

The latest boos and hoos come from "Dr" Laura, who's parlayed her lack of qualification into a multimillion dollar enterprise, based on rudeness, hate, biblical misunderstanding, and advising people on stuff about which she bears strong opinions, and no education (a hallmark, pretty much, of mamas of grizzle). To Sarah Palin and to Michele Bachmann and to Sharon Angle, the First Amendment not only guarantees their right to say stuff, but it also wraps its arms about them (when they're not trying to amputate them) like the ivy at Liberty U., protecting them from criticism. You can say whatever you want, right or wrong, true or false, and if anyone pushes back, it's a violation of the Constitution. Take to the streets.

The mind reels; or would, if it had any reels left.

Sorry, pandas: if you're not being rounded up (or put behind a fence!), taken to court, or censored (by the government!), your free speech hasn't been infringed. You'd think it didn't need explanation, except that it evidently does:

You, the realest of real Americans, have every right to talk stupid. You have every right to be stupid. Heck, there's one whole political party for you that counts on it, and there's a nationwide propaganda machine that's predicated on it. So go crazy. But you'll have to show the rest of us where exactly it says in the Constitution that your rights to stupid include the abrogation (big word) of the rights of everyone else to call it what it is. Or that you will suffer no consequences.

At least there's one conservative who sees a teensy problem. I wonder if there are any others. And I wonder how low the people who listen to and admire such idiocy will have to sink before they come out the other side.

How Things Change

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Gun Show - Barrel Fever
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

Recently watching, as is my wont, The Daily Show, I saw a bit that bears repeating. Today, people are bringing guns -- pistols, assault rifles -- to presidential town meetings. Remember back in Days o' Bush, when a couple was arrested for wearing T-shirts? Arrested. T-shirts.

I wonder if the same people defending the right to bring guns to presidential events were outraged at the arrest of that couple? You know: those right wing lovers of free speech and gun rights as long as the words and bullets are aimed appropriately. Anyone remember right-sided outrage over the arrest that previous time? I don't. Rush, Bill, Shawn, Ann? Nazi-fearing Glenn? Any of them? Nor do I have a minimicronanoliter of doubt that had the gun-toters been arrested, every one of the aforementioned would still be screaming, into the long dark night.

When, exactly, did the world stop making sense?
.

Goose/Gander

I wonder if the same right-wing screamers who had no problems with illegal wire-tapping of suspected terrorists will have a problem with legal wire-tapping of right-wing militias, if it comes to that.

It seems I'm not the only one worried that the anti-American fury being whipped by those screamers (I should develop a shorthand, like RWS™ for "Hannity, Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Cavuto, Savage, Coulter, Ingraham, Malkin, Bachmann, Gingrich, Delay, Boehner...." It gets pretty tiresome typing it out each time) could be getting to the point of inciting violence. If/when something horrible happens, it wouldn't be the first time.

Naturally, the report has generated a lot of righteous anger from the righteous right. Probably won't do anything to quell the claim of secret concentration camps for rounding up conservatives.

Well, the slope is slippery on both sides. I'd rather live in a country where even the RWS™ have a voice, than one in which all anti-government talk is stifled, as was attempted when Bush was in office. (Funny, isn't it, that none of the RWS™ types were upset at Ari Fleisher.) But, like the cliché, there are limits.

Maybe I've posted too much on this theme -- the idea that the extreme right wing and their RWS™ seem not to understand the concept of "democracy" and "elections" -- but I have a hard time finding the best way to express it, and it eats at me. On some level, it's laughable -- funny, even. But I don't find myself chuckling much. Depressed, worried, angry, baffled: those are closer to it. It's one thing to be appalled at the direction the country is headed: for the last eight years, I certainly was. By the end of it, so were 80% of my countrypersons. But I don't recall anyone on the left grabbing the airwaves every night and literally calling for violent overthrow, stakes in hearts, or demonstrating what Bush was doing by fake-pouring gasoline on someone and holding a match.
.