You saw the whack-a-mole, SNL-esque exchange between the candidates for Liz Cheney’s seat yesterday in Wyoming. That eclipsed anything I had ever seen debate-wise until just now in what you are about to see from Arizona.
If you didn’t catch the Wyoming clip, you will have a chance to see it in this piece, as part of a wraparound, where a woman makes the observation that while it is lamentable that Cheney had to be on a stage with stick stone stupid people, it was foreseeable. This is the underbelly of the GOP and has been for many decades.
First, to Arizona and the Republicans running for governor of that beleaguered state. Only seeing is believing. Behold, candidates discuss alien life and what a grey area rape and incest is. Seriously.
This might be the funniest thing I’ve seen since ‘Coming to America.’ https://t.co/CvafcfJa3z
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) July 2, 2022
Is that not completely remarkable?
Here is yesterday’s GOP bomb du jour, with a wrap around by a woman whom we presume to be a Democrat, saying that it all makes sense, considering the history of the GOP. And it does. This runs about six minutes.
It's not funnier than #LizCheney on the debate stage with those clowns last night. Though it is just as lamentable. pic.twitter.com/XI1eCWCv6B
— Adreana Langston (@AdreanaInLB) July 2, 2022
Yes, it is hilarious. But the fact is, people do get the government they deserve, and if people vote for these clowns, Washington will be a circus and an unserious United States will descend to the level of banana republic, if it doesn’t turn into a fascist hell altogether. I call your attention to the fact that Marge Greene is very pro-Putin these days. I don’t know about you, but that scares the hell out of me.
And you know what statistic I’m going to drag out again: 74 million people voted for Donald Trump. 74 million people wanted four more years of the most corrupt, incompetent, shambolic, not to mention deadly four years of an administration that this nation has ever seen. 74 million Americans.
Ergo, these tapes sicken me, but they don’t surprise me.
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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” (H.L. Mencken) All these common folks conservatives, the ass (as in MAGA) hats believe to their core that government is their enemy, and that left alone business (whether corporations or those who own what matters in their small town/rural environs will if freed of government “interference” turn their lives into paradise. Suckers, the lot of them.
I lived my first twenty-six years in a small midwestern town in a part of the state an hour and a half from the closest suburban area. The whole area was small town/rural – farms and coal mines. I later lived in a similar place out east for over ten years (closer to eleven) and I can assure you these same people routinely bitch and complain about the local “big” people. The ones who own the businesses they must frequent, and control the local politics and therefore entered into contract doing things like say limiting phone/cable/internet service in their country to ONE provider and the costs being so fucking high because of lack of competition. Or how even though they “compete” those who own grocery stores, car dealerships etc., that “country club set” have a loose alliance to keep the pressure on the regular folks. The old saw about resenting the “rich” guy/family in the fancy house on the hill is alive and well in this “real Murica” as it always has been since long before I was born.
From the time I can remember the powers-that-be, the so-called pillars of such communities routinely let it be known (to regular folks) that “things would be better if we could just get a Republican(s) in charge. Even as jobs were being shipped first to Japan and then other places wholesale this refrain continued and common folks bought it hook, line and sinker. Oh, they’d still bitch and complain about the “big shots” but they kept thinking that at some point THEY would get taken care of. “Taken care of” however depends on the perspective of whether one is in the have or the much larger have not group. “Take care of” means to the former that the common folks are a resource to be exploited. It’s really that simple.
And, human nature being what it is (who among us likes admitting we got suckered?) people having what little they have stripped away from them by these business/corporate types choose to blame government for trying to set and enforce standards that give everyone a fair shot at success. Instead of the UNELECTED people, those defacto overlords. They’ve already transferred most of the wealth in this country to themselves and it’s STILL not enough for them. They want it ALL. So they can then go Game of Thrones on each other and fight until one of them is master of all.
The worst part? The overwhelming number of people out there haven’t been and never will be rich. They won’t even earn fifty or even forty thousand a year. But they not only hope, but BELIEVE that with just a break here or there they will suddenly be making not just six figures but two or three hundred grand a year and within ten years be “rich” themselves. That whole “Joe the Plumber” thing. They are so convinced of it that they resist the concept of higher taxes on people who should in fact be paying more than they do. Because they believe that before long they too will be one of those people. Even at my best (which was better than most h.s. players in Illinois – I actually played at the college level albeit not Division 1) there was no way in hell I was ever going to be in the NBA. In my heart I knew that. Same with me playing major league baseball. I’m old, fat and broken down so my chances of either are even worse than zero. I accepted all that long ago, along with the fact that unless I were to beat incredible odds and buy a winning lottery ticket I’ll never be rich. But most common folks out there believe they will be.
Well, I’m rambling at this point and I got little sleep last night and need a nap so I’ll STFU for now. But I had to vent a little.