A few things to note this morning before we begin:
Serious guys purge 1000s of Florida voters, battle family end-of-life decisions & hawk a 3rd family invasion of Iraq https://t.co/pp5zwFdiKK
— Adam Weinstein (@AdamWeinstein) December 8, 2015
In impolite company I call them “Sand N****rs”.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence says he’s asking a Roman Catholic archdiocese to not bring a Syrian refugee family to the state.
Pence met for about an hour Wednesday at his Statehouse office with Indianapolis Archbishop Joseph Tobin amid a dispute over the Republican governor’s order blocking state agencies from assisting Syrian refugees bound for the state.
How dare Donald Trump, right?
How dare his angry rabid mouthbreathing ign’ant supporters!
How dare they espouse such anti-American views! By all means, let’s describe THEM as beyond the pale, and let Mike Pence slide.
Let’s let ourselves slide, too, for two decades of drone-striking wedding parties and saying tomato, tomahto. Let’s let ourselves slide for equating Iraqi citizens with Saudi fanatics and bulldozing their country. Let’s just forget unloading entire pallets of cash into Afghanistan.
Let’s keep comparing Donald Trump to Hitler! Let’s forget that John Kasich’s administration was only slightly kinder to organized labor than Donald Trump’s fascist inspiration.
Let’s act like Dick Cheney and George W. Bush are now voices of reason! I mean, they didn’t OPENLY say they agreed with anti-Muslim sentiment. They just kind of implied it from time to time — Islamofascism, anyone? — and hey, if lots of Muslims wound up dead because of their actions, at least their WORDS were nice!
I get so annoyed with this shit not because I think Donald Trump’s “honesty” is somehow refreshing or bold or whatever people who can’t say WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU BOLOGNA PONY on TV will have to say about it. I get so annoyed with this shit because if by some miracle Donald Trump is NOT the Republican nominee, we will be able to shove him back into the guest bedroom of American politics where we put David Duke and Pat Buchanan and George Wallace and everybody else who just couldn’t hide it well enough.
And then we’ll nominate someone like Marco Rubio, who is so intelligent he thinks the state should have the power to force a woman to bear a child against her will. Then we’ll nominate someone like John Kasich, who is funny and charming while he tries to bust unions. Then we’ll nominate someone like Jeb Bush, who thinks Syrian refugees should have to pass a Christianity test to get let in the door.
We’ll congratulate ourselves on our superior American-ness and generous spirit, and go back to talking about just how many Muslims we need to kill to make ourselves feel safe. We’ll feel like the problem is solved, and it won’t be solved, and in four years or eight years or sixteen years or one year we’ll do this whole goddamn shebang all over again, and we’ll say, again, that the person on whom we’ve focused our rage comes from out of nowhere, and we can’t imagine how he or she got so awful.
We’ll wash our hands of this particular fascist, and go right back to the task of making the next one.
A.
But the next fascist will be so much better behaved in polite company. His rhetoric will use many of the same words other people use, so the chucktodds can overlook the policy and badger other people who use the same words about “Well, isn’t that what you’ve been saying, too?” Then both-sides will once again stride the land, and the people will know peace and plenty to the nth generation.