DECEMBER 2021 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

The Ignominious Absurdity of the Month (IGGY) award used to be called The Bonehead Absurdity of the Month. I used the word “bonehead” because I thought the utterances selected were largely products of stupidity or ignorance. Coming to believe that the people I selected were not just ignorant, but downright evil, I decided to change bonehead to ignominious, hence was born The Ignominious Absurdity on the Month. This shouldn’t imply, however, that ignominious individuals are not also ignorant; in reality, there is a close affinity between the two, as some of this month’s selections will attest.

1. The Usual Suspects. It’s become habitual that certain persons will repeatedly distinguish themselves as IGGY candidates. This month, Reps. Jim Jordan, Matts Gaetz, and Marjorie Taylor Green put their ignorance and stupidity once again on display. If we can’t require IQ tests as a prerequisite to serving the US House of Representatives, at least we should require an MRI of their brains to check for nougat. It’s the least we can do for the American public. The nougat brains of Jordan, Gaetz and Green showed their tangle of glitching neurons when commenting on the Covid virus.

First, Jordan’s brilliant observation: “Real America is done with Covid-19. The only people who don’t understand this is Fauci and Biden.”

Done? As the year ended, there were over 580,000 new cases in the U.S., the highest on record.  Worrisome projections about the new Omicron variant suggest Jordan must have been absent when brains were passed out.

Next, Gaetz: “Still the best vaccine we’ve found is mother nature’s vaccine, it’s contacting the virus that’s what has provided the greatest, most durable, protection over the longest period of time.”

Sorry Matt, scientific research has revealed that people who have had Covid are not immune to getting it again, especially, apparently, from the Omicron variant.

The immutable Taylor Green apparently thinks cancer is somehow analogous to COVID-19. In her words: “Every single year more than 600,000 people in the US die of cancer. The country has never once shut down. Not a single school has closed. And every year, over 600,000 people of all ages and races will continue to die from cancer.”

Apparently, Georgia’s Greene missed a few days of school—including the day all Peach State schools are required to set aside once a year to teach something other than creation science. So, the nougat-brained Green thinks cancer is somehow analogous to COVID-19, a communicable disease that continues to spread, evolve, and kill innocent people across the globe.

It’s a tragedy that so many people still die of cancer each year. But what we haven’t done in the face of this ongoing crisis is demonize effective treatments, politicize basic precautionary measures, or relentlessly attack one of the world’s foremost experts on the problem.

Obviously, there’s a significant difference between cancer and COVID-19. Let me see if I can puzzle this one out. Hmm. No luck. Guess I’m just too obtuse.

2. Rep. Madison Cawthorn. Cawthorn is trending because he has gone on yet another absurd racist rant. He just can’t seem to stop calling for violence and attempting to mix religion in with his xenophobic racist ideology.

The Donald Trump minion who has been accused of sexual harassment and warned of bloodshed” over elections has now gone beyond his claims that the 2020 election was “stolen.” Cawthorn is now campaigning against the “welfare state,” claiming that, while he has “no problem helping the needy,” he “will not fund the lazy.”

But that’s not all! In the same senseless speech, he also discusses racism, religion—because he’s a great Christian—and flights. You got that? He also talks about his difficulty waiting for airline flights—which he (obviously!) blames on people of color.

How does it all tie together? Well, why don’t you watch these clips and tell me.

Let’s begin with him perpetuating stereotypes as he attempts to discuss his lack of understanding of welfare. Of course, after doing this he must find a way to attack feminism and create a link between America, the great, and Jesus Christ.

But he cannot do this without claiming that the schools “teach [children] that America is some racist, hateful country.” Which he must assure the audience is a lie, because “America is the greatest force for good to happen since Jesus Christ died on the cross.”

Here’s when he claims he couldn’t get on a flight because of “very destitute-looking people” who “didn’t speak English.” That’s not racist to say though … because well America isn’t racist, remember.

This rant isn’t the only thing that has had Cawthorn making headlines this week. His gun fixation led him to put his ignorance on display yet again when he took a pot shot at, of all places, Australia, saying:

“Next time a leftist asks you why we need the Second Amendment, say “Australia” and walk away.”

Australia banned several weapons and put into place options, including a firearm “buyback” plan, to turn in weapons for amnesty. Australia decided: no more. As a result, this August, Australia celebrated their 25-year stretch of living without fear of a school shooting or other horrific large-scale attack.

Australians, and Americans in Australia, were left wondering: What the hell is this guy talking about? This seems to imply that if only Australian residents had guns, they would be eager to go to their government and start murdering people to overthrow their government. Now, it is rather odd to have a U.S. Representative indicate that the violent overthrow of a government—any government—is something they want to encourage, but here we are in 2021 awaiting another school shooting.

3. Representative Lauren Boebert. One House Republican is under investigation for trafficking minors. Another helped cover up the molestation of college athletes. A third partners with neo-Nazis and shows "humorous" invented clips of himself killing Democratic colleagues. A fourth was booted from House Committees for expressing support for political violence—even as that violence threatens her own colleagues.

That Rep. Lauren Boebert can remain a serious candidate for Worst Person in Congress in that crowd is a testament to just how aggressively she works at it, but Boebert's claims to fame are many. She's mostly known at this point for being so virulently bigoted against her fellow lawmakers, against Muslims worldwide, and especially against Rep. Ilhan Omar, that even her own caucus of deplorables has largely steered clear of defending her. For months, Boebert has made a game of inciting her base against Omar, and those repeated anti-Muslim tirades turned into another weekend's news when Boebert mocked Omar as a supposed terrorist to a crowd of supporters last weekend, calling her a member of the "jihad squad."

This was grotesque behavior—even for a Republican caucus that's made a name for itself supporting extortion, rape, molestation, tax dodging, and attempted government overthrow, and pressure quickly mounted on Boebert to either muster up an apology or prepare for potential consequences.

Boebert couldn't muster it, as it turns out. She ostensibly called up Omar to offer that apology, but somehow the end result was to equate Omar with terrorists yet again, get hung up on, and produce a video further stoking the one-sided battle with decency.

Boebert capped off that video with the claim that she would "never" sympathize with "terrorists," but "unfortunately Ilhan can't say the same thing."

A note here: Lauren Boebert is being currently investigated by the House select committee probing Jan. 6 for her ties to a domestic terrorist attack on Congress.

This should be a helpful reminder that there is nothing to be gained from continuing to tolerate Lauren Boebert in Congress. There is no lesson she will learn, and no mote of decency she will eventually stumble onto. There is no value in having yet another lawmaker whose household raked in nearly half a million dollars "lobbying" for the energy industry while writing up new laws favorable to it, or who breaks laws to use campaign funds to pay off personal bills, or whose primary rhetorical tools consist of nonsensical gibberish, not to mention her office throwing their lot in with seditionists bent of toppling government rather than tolerating a Republican loss of power.

The House Republican caucus may be a cesspool of indecency and outright crookery, to the point where phrases like "is under investigation for links to violent seditionists" or "was caught using campaign funds to pay off personal bills" no longer much narrows things down, but Boebert's already been caught gleefully mocking Washington, D.C.'s gun safety laws, compromising the House Speaker's safety during a violent coup, and palling around with, ahem, terrorists. There may be a lower bound of behavior that disqualifies a person from public office, and it's probably considerably higher than what Boebert can manage.

4. Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace. Mace, inflicted on us by the state of South Carolina, has been running a bold new online ad condemning Democratic plans to boost funding for the Internal Revenue Service. Why, you might ask?

"Biden's policy will double the size of the IRS at the cost of billions of dollars in unpaid taxes. We should stabilize our nation's economy first."

Say what? Let’s parse out what Mace implies when she says: "At the cost of billions of dollars in unpaid taxes?"

At the ... cost? But going after tax cheats is widely recognized as being a net federal win, because just a little money allocated to investigating the most prolific tax-dodgers results in much larger revenues when the dodged taxes actually get paid, so—ooh. Ooooooh.

Right!

What the House Republican is saying here is, of course, boosting IRS capabilities will "cost" the wealthiest tax dodgers in the country billions of dollars, and forcing rich tax cheats to pay what they owe will harm the economy so very much that we shouldn't even think about it until we've "stabilized" everything else first.

You've heard of trickle-down economics? This is trickle-down tax fraud. If we don't let rich Americans who have more offshore bank accounts than you have spoons get away with their current level of financial crimes it is all of you who will suffer, because that money being paid in taxes won't be going to buying new yacht chandeliers, or underwater television sets, or the spiffy new uniforms the upper classes want you to wear while hunting you for sport.

Instead, that money will be going to the government, and the government will probably waste it on stupid things like rebuilding roads in places you don't live, or saving coastlines you don’t visit, providing healthcare for those without coverage, or funding the management of emergencies somewhere else.

In any event, what Mace is suggesting is that American financial criminals have been hiding so very damn much money that attempting to collect it could destabilize our nation's very economy. Shouldn't be done! Too dangerous!

Oooookay?

See, our problem here is that we're taking a Republican message literally instead of treating as the propagandistic word salad it is intended as. It’s not meant to make sense. Mace may or may not distance herself from the premise of her own self-promoted statement after she's gotten sufficient mockery for it, but it was crafted not to make an actual argument but to burp scary-sounding words at Republican base members primed to react to them without thought. "At the cost of billions" is meant to invoke the notion that it will be costing the nation money, rather than bringing it in. "Stabilize" is meant to invoke the notion that the nation's economy is currently not stable, when all the facts and figures suggest that the economy is now actually in pretty darn good shape.

The "Biden's policy" bit is also rote party schtick: While nigh-on everybody who is not personally evading taxes or being lobbied by people who do all agree that returning IRS funding to something approaching normal is both necessary to curb now-rampant tax dodging by the wealthy and an enormous government gain, calling it "Biden's policy" is intended to portray the move as partisan rancor, or spreading socialism, or otherwise controversial.

It's all gimmick. Republicanism may no longer have policies of its own, but each new congress creature is in tune with the larger movement's dictionary of cult phrases and contrarian phrasing. Going after tax dodgers will "cost" you money. Doing the "Biden policy" on anything will further "destabilize" the glorious f--king paradise of corpses and lines for toilet paper gifted to us by Dear Crabby-Ass Leader in his final year.

It's all a game; there is little effort being put into attempting to discern what policies would best serve the nation here, and flopsweat-level effort being put into selling the base on the nation that whatever policies actual experts come up with are most certainly an effort at "socialism," an attempt to abridge your "freedoms," or a flat-out conspiracy to harm you because the "elites" will do nigh-on anything to oppress you, whether it be bamboo-laced ballots or firefly chemicals in your vaccines or arresting "patriots" whose only crime was attacking the U.S. Capitol during a joint session of Congress in a seditious attempt to cancel the results of a United States election.

Anyone?

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And the winner is:

With due disrespect to the Usual Suspects, all of whom are headed to the Ignominious Hall-of-Shame, I must award the December IGGY to Representative Lauren Boebert, a recognition long overdue.