Moscow Mitch's Goat

Moscow Mitch McConnell thinks he is the greatest of all time. So you know that goat as used herein does not mean greatest of all time. No, Moscow Mitch's goat is a scapegoat!  Mitch does not dare to say it publicly, but he is trying to blame the R-MAGA fascists and (as obliquely as possible) Donald Trump for what he, McConnell, euphemistically calls the GOP's “candidate-quality problem!” 

The problem for Mitch is two fold: He cannot come out and say it's Donald Trump's fault that the Republican Party is nominating sanctimonious fascists, crack pots, and delusional election deniers as congressional and senatorial candidates without putting himself on the MAGA Mob's hit list. Furthermore, Moscow Mitch is culpable of empowering the lunatics who made Donald Trump the unquestioned leader of the Republican Party.

When Moscow Mitch and the party establishment decided not to convict Trump of his crimes during the impeachment trials, and they started treating Trump’s attempted coup as a minor detail they could brush aside, the consequences were foreseeable: their cowardly acquiescence ceded the argument over the 2020 election to Trump and allowed his power over the Republican Party to go unchallenged. Predictably, Trump used that power to endorse primary candidates such as election denier Kari Lake and Christian Nationalist – NAZI Sympathizer Doug Mastriano without so much as a whimper from any other leader of the party. That would be perfectly fine with Moscow Mitch if those horrible candidates could win, but it is now more than likely that Republicans are going to lose elections that could have been won by reasonable candidates – at least that is what Moscow Mitch wants his fellow Republicans to believe.

This is serious business.  Mitch McConnell is all about the power, his (Mitch's) power! In politics you have the power people think you have – no more, no less. You are in trouble as a political leader if people question your judgment or your power. Unfortunately for Mitch, the mid term election polls are hitting him in the face like a stiff breeze coming by way of the garbage dump! And the odor is setting off the panic alarm in his mind! ”Oh Shit! You don't think the Party will blame me for pissing off the broads by packing the supreme court with sanctimonious fascist justices who took away the protection of a woman's right to control her body and make her reproductive choices without the interference of any government, do you?” God no, Mitch! They can't do that, not when so many of them are advocating the sort of draconian prohibitions that were forbidden by Roe v. Wade.  That may sound like a typical Republican retort, but Moscow Mitch knows that the “et tu” argument does not wash away the blame; it just spreads it around a bit.  So Mitch has to deflect.  He cannot allow people to blame the likely Republican loses on a reaction to the Dobbs decision.  It has to be the result of someone, not Moscow Mitch, helping unelectable candidates get nominated to represent the party! “It's on you,” Moscow Mitch wants to shout, “you unmentionable whoever!”

Poor Mitch!  Life is so difficult when you are trying to hide your dirty laundry in plane sight and your scapegoat bites!

Fear And Loathing Of Logic And Facts

You of the enlightenment, you who practice the empirical method, you who observe that something cannot be true and not true at the same time cannot blindly adhere to any religious or political faith without suffering cognitive dissonance. This is the lesson learned when our ancestors finally sought to discover facts and determine what is real through observation and the use of reason rather than trying to control our environment by making pleas and sacrifices to some deity!

“Cognitive dissonance is a term for the state of discomfort felt when two or more modes of thought contradict each other.”

 An example of such an uncomfortable conflict is when one learns new information that challenges a deeply held belief. The response of the right wing to cognitive dissonance is to try to ignore not merely the source of the conflict but also the fact that there is a conflict, and any attempt to point out the contradictions or address the denial of such contradictions is seen by the right wing as a personal attack. That is, in large measure, why the right wing always sees itself as a victim!

One way to ignore contradictory modes of thought is to go primitive, to simply say that it is God's will, and that no one can understand God's mind or purpose. In one fell swoop, this deity explanation dispenses with the need to be consistent or logical. And in the case of the extreme right wing it fully justifies the poisoning of any and all wells outside of the retrograde universe of the primitive mind. In a very real sense the right wing is a victim of intrusive logic and facts that threaten to encroach on a belief system that is not flexible enough to adjust to reality. This constant attack from the real (read evil) world fosters a feeling of victim-hood that makes right wingers so susceptible to the most irrational conspiracy theories spun by fear mongering demagogues! How dare we accuse those demagogues of hypocrisy for claiming that Donald Trump has every right to take even the most sensitive government documents to Mar a lago when just a few short years ago they were chanting “lock her (Hillary Clinton) up” for the way she handled government records! How dare we point out the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the MAGA Republicans for saying that the FBI's search of Mar a lago was a political act and a witch hunt when those same MAGA R's said nothing or even encouraged the Justice department when it opened investigations of Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton and just about every other government employee who displeased Donald, dumb ass, Trump.

The reason why fascist leaders and other autocrats always claim to be victims is because fear and loathing is their stock in trade, and feelings of aggrievement and victim-hood are the accelerants kindling the fear, the loathing, and the anger that justifies the unjustifiable in the minds of the right wing. The fact that there are so many hateful, irrational right wing activists controlling a major party makes this a very dangerous time. We must kill the damn fascist elephant before it kills us! The threat of violence posed by the R-fascists threatening civil war is not a reason to back down; instead that threat of violence is the reason we must oppose the fascists now with great resolve and using every legal means needed to defeat them!

All Fall Down

Did you hear it? It was a great big thud coming form Kansas on August 2. It was the sound of the misogynistic elephant tripping over his sanctimony. The drama casters danced with joy. This is the sort of drama that draws the rubes to the pitchmen. Screw the polls! It does not matter that the polls have been showing just how out of step the fascist court and the R-fascist party are about a woman's right to choose; this is Kansas, deep red Kansas! “And,” the drama casters scream, “it, dead red Kansas, just gave the R-fascists and Moscow Mitch's politicized abomination (aka SCOTUS) the finger!” The pundits, though a bit more restrained than the drama casters, repeated those excited utterances as they rushed to Kansas to examine the prints the elephant's prat fall must have left on the political landscape.

“Epic! Downright epic ass plant,” they Dare say. But what does it mean? For better than a decade the party of the Greedy Old Plutocrats has been waging a cruel war on women, and they have been getting away with it -- much to the frustration of we rational beings. Now the Republicans are in full fascist mode and are trampling on the rights of voters, veterans, women, LGTBQ people and everyone who loves liberty and democracy. Hopefully the Dobbs decision and all of the sanctimonious fascist Republicans trying to stamp out a woman's right to control her own body and make her own reproductive choices will be the last straw! While I cannot say the Kansas thud indicates that the Republicans' anti-choice position will lead to the election victories the Democrats are hoping for, I can say with certainty that the message Kansas sent is not a good one for the R-fascists.

Wake up America! Those fact denying MAGA fascists subverting our system of government and burning up our constitution are a plague* on our house, and all I can say to them is: “Ashes! Ashes! All fall down!" Never rise again!

*Since the R-fascists are so fond of a mythical history of our nation rather than actual history, I thought this play on "Ring around the rosie” was appropriate.