Friday, October 01, 2021

Talking To The Peanut Gallery 🥜

The months-long examination ordered by the state's Republican-led Senate and conducted by the Cyber Ninjas firm turned up more votes for President Joe Biden and fewer for Trump, but the twice-impeached former president complained on the right-wing Victory Channel that media reports have not declared him the winner.

"The media is corrupt, pastor, you know it as well as I do," Trump told host Gene Bailey, "and many people know it and probably the ones that know it best are the media itself. They are corrupt, they don't tell the truth and they are, in fact, the enemy of the people, and it's a terrible thing."

"We had a tremendous audit, it was done by the Senate, the Arizona Senate, and they're brave people, and the findings were unbelievable, so the media doesn't want to call it," Trump added. "I think they called it findings, said they had findings, and the findings were just brutal, and yet the media doesn't want to report the findings. It's really a very sad thing for our country."

The what channel?  Where?  You know, the SPLC has been following right-wing cranks for decades, and almost nobody paid attention to their reports.  Which isn't to say we did the right thing or the wrong thing in not making SPLC required listening/reading, but none of this shit sprang full blown from the brow of Satan last January.  The crazies have always been with us, and some of them are determined to be in charge.

But they want to be in charge of school boards, which is a problem school boards have had since the KKK in the '20's attended them in full Klan regalia.  Not that it isn't a problem today (I've seen school board responsibilities up close, or close enough, and I wouldn't want them in normal times.  In these times?  HELL NO!), but it's a problem we've dealt with for at least a century now.  Remember?  No?  Does that mean it's all brand-new now?

Hardly.

And now there's a poll showing a large percentage of Americans want to split the union into red and blue states.  It wasn't that long ago it was "the South" that wanted to finish the dissolution it started in the 19th century; at least that's what we were being told.  I grew up calling "northerners" "Yankees," in jest more than truth.  I have my copy of the comic Texas map where Texas dominates the lower 48 and New England is just labeled "Dam Yankee Land."  I ran into people on the internet deeply offended by such sentiments.  I grew up with those sentiments. It was a joke, and a way of marking regional identity.  Is the desire to dissolve the union stronger than it was in the 19th century, or in the 1970's when "Texas Secede" was a common logo on coffee mugs, and "Freeze a Yankee In the Dark!" was a favorite bumper sticker?

Nah.

Trump's a clown and he says incredibly stupid things and credulous people take him to heart because "fear of a brown planet," basically.  Economic anxiety is at the heart of it after all, but that label is just a euphemism for racism, for fear of losing the white default position of authority.  Those people see the TV shows and even the ads showing mixed race couples and same-sex couples and mixed-race same sex couples and mixed race children (are we tired of noticing "race" yet, even in this sentence?  I am.).  They don't see their world reflected in the world anymore.  Read that Tribune article linked above and you'll find a small county in Texas tearing itself apart because they fear the future they don't see themselves reflected in.  The headline picks up on the incendiary "God's will" quote in the article,  but the speaker of that quote was trying to connect ballot record measures to free will in a way bizarre and silly at the same time.  Still, gotta reach for something that sounds "serious" and "objective" when your argument comes down to who has the power and who gets to use that power.  White people see the power leaking away to non-white people.  It's really all that simple.

Is Trump driving that train, or is he chained to it?  I think it's more the latter, and in truth he's about as effective as MTG.  She's been reduced to trolling the steps of the Capitol for attention (was it coincidence she was there that day?).  Debbie Dingell would have done better to ignore her, but no matter.  MTG is in the peanut gallery, and Trump is sitting right next to her.  We can't silence them; but we don't have to give them importance they are not due.  Trump is a businessman in Florida who may soon face criminal charges in New York and in Georgia.  MTG is a representative without a committee, a member of the House with no authority at all.

This is America.  Crazies abound.  Give Trump and MTG and Hood County the attention they deserve.  After all, no one ever said "As goes Hood County, so goes Texas."

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