While even “liberal” media outlets like CNN and the New York Times apparently don’t want to shill for Brazilian President/irredeemable asshole Jair Bolsonaro – despite all the “good” he’s done American corporations with his “reforms” – Fox News has proven it’s up to the task. Hilariously they’re using booga-booga about China as a reason to support Mr. Bolsonaro, when Brazil spend four times as much on Chinese goods as Americans do – and that number’s actually gone way, way up since Mr. Bolsonaro took office. Sadly, Glenn Greenwald has slipped further down the rabbit hole at almost as rapid a pace. I know, the guy who literally broke the Sergio Moro corruption story! But obsession with censorship über alles has ruined many a good thinker.
A University of Chicago Institute of Politics Poll informs us that one out of every four Americans feels so “alienated” from our government they think it “may soon be necessary to take up arms against it,” but let me be the one to tell you that this information is not that startling if you’ve long thought, as I have, that about 25% of the electorate is bat-guano insane in the first place. It’s just that back in the day they wanted to put Iraq war opponents in jail for treason, and today they think they need to take up arms against their government. It’s not even much of a devolution, frankly, and if you’d asked folks this question in, say, 2004, I think the only reason that number would have been lower was because you had a Republican government then. Strange, isn't it, how liberals talk about changing government while right-wingers talk about burning it all down?
It’s easy to dunk on Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA) for voting against protecting gay marriage at around the same time he was toasting his own son at his son’s gay wedding. And Mr. Thompson seems like a good guy – his resume includes decades spent as a physical therapist, a firefighter, and an EMT – so we’re better off saying that he’s the sort of Republican who should be forcing his party to do better. But I don’t have the power, I guess he’d say, and setting aside the fact that he’s in line to be Agricultural Committee Chair if Republicans take the House, the first power you have, as a civilized person, is the power of shame. It’s a great power, if we would but use it.
What do you call it when a long-time advisor to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán breaks with him over his latest speech decrying all the European “people of mixed race”? Same thing you call it whenever right-wingers fight: drama! I mean, I really do like to think the best of people, but right-wingers have spent decades making positive noises about courage without delivering any actual courage, and the evidence does pile high after a while. (Don't object with "but Liz Cheney," for reasons including, but not limited to, the fact that for every Liz Cheney there are a hundred Jeff Flakes who talk a good game but do nothing.) In any case, I’d lay money that Zsuzsa Hegedüs will soon go back to work for the Master Race in some other capacity.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of overtly anti-democratic BS that has crept into mainstream political discussion lately, let me sum up “mysterious” and “complex” concepts like “neoreaction” in three words: you don’t count. Seriously, if you’ve grown up your whole life believing that anyone can make it in America (or that anyone should be able to make it in America), you shouldn’t take up with statements like “all organizations – irrespective of size – are best managed by a single executive” even after Joe Manchin scuttles the 135th attempt at Build Back Better. Here’s another five words about wishing for strongmen: boys do that, not men.
Finally, Ohio Senate candidate/pretend redneck J.D. Vance has caught a lot of well-deserved flak for saying that folks shouldn’t leave violent marriages for the sake of the children will no one think of the children! And I guess some folks easily fooled by robot talk will find his “defense” of marriage convincing. But Mr. Vance presents a false dichotomy: he posits only two possible worlds, one in which you “stay with your abusive spouse no matter what,” and the other in which “people change spouses like they change underwear,” and a great nation needs not submit to these false choices. Besides which, neither choice describe America as it actually is – the divorce rate, for example, is considerably lower now than it has been in decades, maybe because real Americans navigate all these issues better than Mr. Vance wants you to think.