CSotD: Deliberate lies and foolish sincerity
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One of the advantages for a newspaper of employing a local cartoonist is that, when someone in your congressional delegation says something really stupid, he can quickly bring it to the attention of your readers.
I don’t know how well this Andy Marlette (Creators) cartoon is going to go over with readers of the Pensacola News Journal, but invoking Fidel Castro is a red flag in Florida’s Latino community, which is likely larger further south, but still a presence throughout the state.
And if their Senator didn’t use the term “Comrades” as Marlette has Fidel Rubio doing, he said the rest in his NY Post Op Ed screed:
When our leaders openly define “patriotic” as being obedient to the government and the “national common good,” my Goebbels detector goes off, but I think, given his location, Marlette is far better off drawing the Castro connection.
I also think we can retire the joking phrase about “saying the silent part out loud” because the fascisti are no longer even trying to hide their intent.
Nor, as Pat Bagley points out, are they trying to get by with spinning the facts when blatant lies work just fine.
The “Biden bans meat” lie seems to have fallen apart — perhaps thanks to the “plant-based beer” blunder — but they’ve added a new one: A single copy of VP Harris’s children’s book, “Superheroes Are Everywhere,” was donated to a migrant shelter, and the NY Post promptly suggested that every child was given a copy:
Note that this follow-up story, which reproduces the initial Page One, doesn’t quite say that each child will get a copy, but you’d have to read beyond that caption and then very carefully not to think that was the case.
The reporter on that story has resigned. I’m sure that, if she had refused the assignment, they’d have ordered someone else to write it, but at least she’ll move forward now with no more filth on her hands.
The Murdoch-ordered fraud worked: The Fauxosphere promptly drew the false connection and exploded in rage.
As Bagley suggests, the GOP Loyalists are combining the Big Lie theory with the concept of throwing mud at the wall to see what sticks.
Meanwhile Rubio is coming out clearly in favor of the same lockstep fascism that Cuban-American Floridians have been fleeing for more than half a century.
Secure in the knowledge that other people’s fascism is bad but that our brand is simply good patriotic loyalty.
President Biden will present his State of the Union address tonight at 8 EDT, and Bruce Plante depicts the conflicts GOP legislators will face, or should face, and the Loyalist response they will no doubt adopt.
It’s okay: They’re just following orders.
Lisa Benson (Creators) is already against Biden’s economic plan, as well as the wearing of masks, because everyone knows taxes are bad.
I was going to sarcastically congratulate her for making over $400,000 and thus facing this increase, when it occurred to me that being the heir to the Swanson frozen food company and getting $6 million a year from Fox News really does put Tucker Carlson firmly in the affected tax bracket.
Poor baby.
Too many people fail to realize that the tax increase is not on everything these plutocrats make, but only the part over $400,000.
It is intended to act as an incentive for business owners to reinvest their excess profits instead of squirreling them away for themselves. If you use that money to build additional factories or upgrade your equipment or hire more people, you can write it off rather than hand the money over to the government.
This applies both to corporate taxes and your own profits.
So, yeah, we can tax our way to prosperity. It worked before, it can work now.
Though, as Ann Telnaes points out, perhaps some opthamalogical intervention is required.
Meanwhile, in all fairness, I realized that poor Tuck has no real way to shed those immense profits. He probably has no leverage at the frozen food plant and his Fox job doesn’t offer him many ways to invest his immense salary.
He could make donations to charity, of course.
(Sorry. Hope the coffee cleared the spring pollen out of your sinuses.)
Howsoever …
Juxtaposition of Let’s Not Get Too Smug
It’s a little more complex on the other side of the divide.
Jones is right to laugh off the idea that the Chauvin verdict has fixed everything, but the question is “Who said it did?” and the answer is “Not many people, and the ones who did are idiots.”
And Hall is correct that, to quote Marvin Gaye,
Mother, mother
There’s too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There’s far too many of you dying
But on May 21, that song will be 50 years old. George Floyd wasn’t even born until two years later. We’d damn well better figure out what’s goin’ on.
Jones throws in the hated phrase “You people,” because it is, indeed, wrong to lump all Black people into a convenient stereotype.
Then again, not all deaths are the same, either, and going to the mattresses for every tragic interaction between Black people and police is self-defeating.
I don’t agree entirely with every point Cathy Young makes in this Bulwark article, but her lede sets the stage for an important conversation.
Brodner cites a developing case that seems worth bringing to the fore, because, when someone is fleeing, the only justification for shooting at him is that he presents a clear and present danger, not because you’re frustrated that he’s getting away. Brown was not carrying a bomb.
However, while we need to press for justice in that case, we also need to chill on the foolish political rhetoric that drives away those who agreed with the Chauvin verdict and are potential allies in halting the unjustified murder of Black people.
In his Vox interview, James Carville nails a problem for the Democratic Party, and you don’t have to imagine the future if you simply remember how “wokeness” and insistence on perfection alienated voters and gave us George McGovern’s massive defeat, more Nixon and then eight years of Ronald Reagan.
Wikipedia shows how it went by counties. McGovern was a saint, but people don’t vote for saints and saints don’t get things accomplished. We can’t afford any more prefect martyrs.
I’m over length for the day, but check those links, tune in to the speech tonight and let’s give Marvin’s plain-spoken demand for answers the last word:
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