Now that Mitt Romney’s retiring, we’re hearing from him – through a book written about him – that at least one “top” Republican Senator voted to acquit Donald Trump on January 6-related impeachment charges because he was afraid Trumpholes would come after his family. And I’ve heard this kind of thing before before! Still, in America, we expect better from our leaders than that. Cowing to imagined threats, even threats against your family, means you shouldn’t have any power in the first place.
In a related note, bomb threats “prompt” the city of Chicago to close all of its public libraries this past Thursday, but anyone can threaten to blow a place up! I just want to see one library respond to a bomb threat by saying no more and staying the hell open. I’m tired of the worst people getting all the say about everything, and I’m beyond tired of the politicians who defend them by saying they have legitimate grievances. No grievance excuses terrorism.
Maud Newton at Slate writes an extensive, personal essay about dealing with her mother’s extreme right-wing views – in the process describing a Christian nationalist TV network called the Victory Channel, run, of course, by a super-rich right-wing evangelist. So now you know where folks who say “I don’t get my news from Fox” get their news! I always suspected Fox News would be a gateway drug for far worse things – not to mention far more lucrative scams! – and sadly, I was right.
It's sad that I hardly blink at the news that South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has apparently been having an affair with Corey Lewandowski for years despite being yet another anti-gay marriage, “family values” politician. Her votaries – and there’ll be more of them if Donald Trump makes her his running mate – not only don’t care about the hypocrisy, they like it when their people get away with being hypocrites; they think they're sticking it to us, but they're just sticking it to themselves. We’re going to come back to this point momentarily.
As promised: Vivek Ramaswamy says he’ll “gut” the H-1B visa program that he just so happened to use 29 times as he was making his fortune in the big pharma biz. One could make a point about how corporations use such programs to drive down wages for everyone, but of course he doesn’t make that point! And I’m sure his votaries would applaud him for using the system to get ahead and then pulling up the ladder before others could. (As an aside, his press hack’s analogy in paragraph 9 is ridiculous. No, it’s not like “using water and electricity” though water and electricity regulations are “broken,” because using water and electricity isn’t the same as trying to get rich. The stupid, it burns!)
Finally, I’m not surprised that all these indictments have only hardened Trump votaries’ support for their Personal Lord and Savior, and not just because I’ve watched it happen at my own job. But when they talk about “the system” being “rigged against him – and, by extension, them,” they are demonstrating their utter ignorance of not just recent American history, where Walking While Black still gets you the death penalty in too many areas, but of distant American history, during which police have spent far more time beating up strikers and protestors than arresting men of means. All of which reminds us, again, that we should only minister to those we can save, and leave the rest to God’s mercy.
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