Sick Facts, Dude
I’m sorry, but it’s insane that no top Republican will simply acknowledge the fact that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Insane. Corruptive, corrosive, bonkers-ass bullshit. As a nation, have we ever been in this situation before, a situation in which one of our political parties devotes most of its energies to denigrating America?
The Republicans have successfully eroded trust in academia, science, the intelligence community, the justice system including the jury system, FEMA, denigrated the military when they’re not pretending to care about the military, the election system, teachers, civil servants, the press, legal immigrants, Muslims, gay and trans people, the NFL, and Taylor Swift. They have redefined patriotism to mean anti-patriotism. They have redefined America as anti-American. But it’s the election thing that really chaps my well-formed ass.
Joe Biden won the election. This is incontrovertible. So why can’t Mike Johnson say it? Why can’t Tom Cotton or JD Vance or any of our other Republican “leaders”? Why does the truth choke in their throats? “We’re focused on the future,” they say. No, they’re focused on their Fuhrer.
They’ve destroyed truth. I don’t know how else to say it. It used to be that we had different opinions about a shared set of facts. Now we have entirely different truths – one set of which is actually, you know, true.
This is why Project 2025 is so important. Not because they’re necessarily going to actually do all the things they promise to do (abolish the Department of Education, get rid of FEMA, whatever other idiotic shit is in there), but because the primary goal of Project 2025 is to swap out apolitical civil servants with MAGA careerists. Once that happens, the truth is whatever they decide it is. Don’t like the trajectory of a hurricane? Sharpie a new path into existence. Need a political opponent to “go through some things?” Sic the Attorney General on them.
And no, I do NOT believe that the current administration is guilty of committing “lawfare,” because the people they’ve gone after have actually DONE CRIMES. Giuliani, Bannon, Navarro, Trump himself. But guess who they’ve also gone after? Democrats Robert Menendez, Hunter Biden, and Eric Adams. The difference? Democrats aren’t screaming that the entire judicial process is rigged against them. Instead we hear nonsense from the MAGA right complaining of a two-tiered justice system, which is actually correct, except for the fact they are the fucking beneficiaries of that system!
You think some kid picked up for assault or whatever has access to the high-priced attorneys defending these Republican elites? Of course not. And yet, even with their high-powered legal assistance, juries still found Trump guilty of 37 felony counts. They still found him liable for sexual assault. The normal thing to do in that instance would be for Republican leaders to tell Donald, “Sorry man, you’re out. We can’t have a fucking felon sitting in the Oval.” Instead, they’ve done the opposite, claiming that the entire judicial system has been arrayed against their man. Never mind that the opposite is actually true, that every judge in every case has bent over backwards to accommodate this malignant hemorrhoid. The Supreme Court even went so far as to declare him, essentially, immune from prosecution. Or, at least, they’re trying.
How do we maintain a functioning democracy when every single institution of that democracy is attacked and undermined unless it produces results which please the capricious whims of a single deranged individual? Answer: we don’t. We already know that, if Trump loses, he will unleash every tool at his disposal to challenge the results and delay certification. Every American understands we may have political violence as a result. It was never like this before.
Elections were celebratory affairs, in which neighbors stood on line together, chatted, selected their candidate, and got a sticker. Now it sort of feels like we’re a nation of soccer hooligans waiting for an excuse to start throwing fists at the polling stations.
I do have some hope that the politics we see portrayed on television don’t reflect the goodness most Americans still hold in their hearts – Democrat and Republican. The problem isn’t with the American heart; it’s with the American mind, which appears to be shedding IQ points by the dozen every time Trump opens his mouth. Yesterday’s NYT analyzed speeches between Harris and Trump. The scope of his lies in a single speech was breathtaking. What’s scarier is I don’t think he even knows if he’s lying. Because, in addition to everything, he’s legitimately stupid.
So we find ourselves in a situation where a stupid, 80-year-old narcissistic sociopath running for the highest office in the land gets on stage, spews bullshit for an hour and a half, has his surrogates repeat the same bullshit, ad nauseum, until the entire Republican apparatus convinces themselves that immigrants are eating dogs and cats, that Venezuelan gangs have taken over apartment complexes in Aurora, CO, that babies are murdered upon birth, that immigrants have killed “thousands of Americans,” that children are going to school one sex and coming home another. And that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.
None of it is true. I’ll say it again: NONE OF IT IS TRUE. It’s almost like they’ve created a new kind of American currency, which is only accepted at Trump rallies and in Trump safe spaces. All currency rests on trust. The dollar is meaningless if the two parties conducting business disagree on its worth. The same is true with facts. Our facts, the kind which are rooted in reality hold no value to our fellow Americans because the only currency they accept is a totally different set of fact, which – and I will reiterate this again just to make the point – are LIES. But they prefer the lies because the lies make them feel good. They want this nonsense to be true, not only because it helps make the case for Trump, but because, more insidiously, the lies provide moral license for their own hatred.
I firmly believe that MAGA folks are not bad people. Instead, they’re fearful people. Fear, fed by their rightwing media ecosystem, has them convinced the nation is on the edge of civil war, that immigrants are coming to their homes to rape them, that their children are reading literal pornography in elementary school. The fear gives them hate. It activates them, giving them purpose and calling. Why do you think their slogan is “Make America Great Again”? Because they see Donald Trump as their savior and themselves as his army of Christian soldiers. They’ve decided they’re going to save an America that certainly needs fixing, but which doesn’t need the kind of help that seeks to tear it down. Ironically, the only thing they’re saving is Donald Trump’s skin. It’s sick. And I’m sick of it.
Goddamn right Michael! Everyone should share this post. We're sitting here trying to explain to a bunch of undecided voters why they shouldn't be voting based on policy because one side doesn't have any actual policies besides getting elected.
Trump is literally running to stay out of jail, while standing in front of supposedly knowledgeable professionals demonstrating how much he doesn't understand basic economics, and still many of these fuckers are going to vote for him because they expect their taxes to be lower. Trump's economic plan is literally to put tariffs on everything, which he actually believes is going to bring money into the country "at levels you've never seen before" because he thinks foreign exporters pay the tariffs.
The proper response to this should be, "This guy is s complete imbecile, and I'm very concerned about him being put in charge of America!" And yet instead it's still this Flight 93, "We've got to stop Kamala Harris because Joe Biden has been a disaster!" Forget that Joe Biden was handed a country in tatters and guided it back to health again in the midst of a *worldwide* inflation crisis, because eggs haven't come down to 2019 levels yet, and – *psst*, dont tell anyone until after the election – never will, because that's not how inflation works.
Forget that Trump was handed a country in excellent condition, hid his incompetence in the form of mountains of federal debt which Republicans only complain about when Democrats are in office, neglected our pandemic infrastructure which two successive administrations had built up, leading to some of the worst per capita death rates in the developed world, and Trump himself *literally being listed as a comorbidity* by the bipartisan COVID study group because people who voted for him were more likey to die once vaccines became available and they refused to take them.
Oh, and then he tried to overthrow our Constitutional order. Almost forgot.
But Joe Biden has been a disaster! About 55% of Americans think the Trump Administration was a success! The economy was better when Trump was in office! Sonehow he gets credit for the fact that the world was different then, and gets a complete mulligan for COVID even though he massively fumbled the response. But how can you blame him when it affected the whole world?!
Because that's *way* different than the inflation that affected the whole world, and was obviously Joe Biden's and Kamala Harris' fault. But mostly Kamala, now that she's running. Did we say it was Joe Biden? He got coup'ed out by Kamala, poor guy. Nope, it's all been Kamala. Just like the immigrants, all Kamala, even though we impeached Majorkas over it. They're the ones responsible for both inflation *and* our imaginary crime / pet consumption wave!
Once we deport all the immigrants and decimate our workforce, there will be so much economy!! You're gonna be saying, "Dear, what will we do with all this economy?? Stop it already, it's too much!!" Even though the construction industry will be particularly hard hit during a crisis of housing supply, that's ok because it's the immigrants who are buying up all the ridiculously expensive houses, obviously! Duh! Everyone understands this – immigrants bad, tariffs good, right Republican party that just loves tariffs and just tanked a bipartisan (really right-wing wet dream) immigration bill so Trump would have an issue to run on?
The Republican party is shit. Complete shit. They've been lying to their voters for so long, using shiny cultural objects and imaginary ideals of self-sufficiency to push an unappealing economic agenda, that this is the only way they know how to operate. Rationalize. Deflect. Hem and haw.
And if you have to, just fucking lie your ass off, because Fox Newsmax America has your back. Send out the most shameless people with the best poker faces to gaslight the mainstream media. They deserve it for all of those cosmopolitan journalists who see things from a broad perspective and don't represent the viewpoints of backward provincial Christian theocrats.
You're right, Michael. They hate America. They hate us for our freedom, our compassion, our desire to make America a shining example to the world of a secular ideal where people are well informed and not easily manipulated by authoritarian vibes and rich oligarchs who distort our public discourse by buying up every media company they can and turning it into unhinged propaganda.
And I hate myself for my run-on sentences, but I just can't stop myself when criticizing the Republican establishment in this country.
Because there is no end to their depravity.
"They’ve destroyed truth. I don’t know how else to say it."
There is no better way to say it.