APRIL 2022 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Florida Senator Rick Scott and the RNC. GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has decided that the best way for Republicans to prevail in the midterms, and thus regain Congress, is to simply run against President Joe Biden and use inflation, mask wars, vaccine wars, and gas prices to defeat him. McConnell has decided not to release a competing Republican agenda—to have a plan Republicans will run on. Too bad, because that gives the guy he picked to head up the Senate Republicans 2022 effort, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, all the room he needed to go full-on fascist with his vision for America.

Politico got its hands on the Scott plan, and it is a chilling vision for the end of America as we know it. He calls it a plan to “rescue America.” It’s 11 points with 128 action items to fight the “militant left,” which “now controls the entire federal government, the news media, academia, Hollywood, and most corporate boardrooms.” Here’s what he says we militants are out to “change or destroy: American history, patriotism, border security, the nuclear family, gender, traditional morality, capitalism, fiscal responsibility, opportunity, rugged individualism, Judeo-Christian values, dissent, free speech, color blindness, law enforcement, religious liberty, parental involvement in public schools, and private ownership of firearms.” That’s just him warming up.

His 11-point plan is beyond radical and terrifying in its embrace of white supremacist, eliminationist principles and policy. It is also ridiculous. No. 1 is public education, where the Department of Education will be abolished and schools will “focus on the 3 R’s [sic], not indoctrination children with critical race theory or any other political ideology,” and where parents will “choose the school that best fits.” So that’s public funding of private, segregated, and preferably for Scott, Christian schools.

With that comes “color blind equality,” or Point 2. Because “we are all made in the image of God” and “dividing people by race, skin color, ethnicity, or country of origin” is “an immoral and corrosive habit of the woke crowd.” However, the brown people whose country of origin is not the U.S. can’t come through the southern border. Scott wants to not only build that wall, but to name it for Trump. Because of course he does. And he has no problem dividing out LGTBQ people, declaring: “Humans are born male and female, there are two genders, and to deny that is to deny science.” To that end, “No government forms will include questions about ‘gender identity’ or ‘sexual preference.’”

Poor people are going to have to fend for themselves, by the way. “No government assistance unless you are disabled or aggressively seeking work,” Scott declares, leaving retired people hanging. Does that mean an end to Social Security? Also, in a nod to Utah Sen. Mitt Romney’s infamous  47% of Americans are moochers rant, Scott declares: “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax.” Elderly, disabled? Tough.

Having declared all Democrats “socialists,” Scott has a plan for us. “Socialism will be treated as a
foreign combatant which aims to destroy our prosperity and freedom,” which is pretty much a threat to imprison and/or execute a huge swath of the population based on their political beliefs. Because freedom.

Also, he’s got some pretty wild plans for government. First, what’s left of the IRS will be halved, both in funding and in staff. Everyone in government, elected and civil services, will be limited to 12 years in service. Just to make everything that much more chaotic, “All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years.” From the party that can’t manage to fund government from year to year. Also, he would: “Sell off all non-essential government assets, buildings, and land.” Bye bye National Parks.

Also, they’ll destroy the national and global economy. “Prohibit debt ceiling increases absent a declaration of war,” and “stop spending money on non-essential state and local projects until the budget is balanced.”

And of course, “we will protect the integrity of American Democracy [sic] and stop left-wing efforts to rig elections.”

Scott’s ideas are an amalgam of standard Republican economic principles—keep taxes low for the rich, punish the olds and poor—and batshit Fox News, MAGA culture warrior propaganda fueled by conspiracy theories.

There it all is: what Republicans really think about the majority of Americans and how they intend to “govern.”

No wonder McConnell didn’t want to put out an agenda; he knew it was going to be full of this kind of stuff. Too late, though. It’s been embraced by the Republican National Committee (RNC)—you know, the official Republican Party that said the Jan. 6 insurrection was “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political protest.”

Republicans have been good at telling people what they’re against. Now we know what they want to achieve and it’s terrifying. Wake up America!

MARCH 2022 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Senator Lindsey Graham. The hypocritical, deceitful Graham called for a “Brutus” or Stauffenberg” to rid the world of Vladimir Putin. I find this ignominious worthy for a couple reasons.

First, to the age-old debate of whether history makes the man, or the man makes history, let me say I lean to the side of history. Did Rome become better off without Ceaser? Had Hitler been assassinated, would the world be better off with Hess, Goring, or Bormann in charge? With Putin gone, would a successor be more reasonable? You get my point.

Second, official talk about killing Putin implies US support for regime change in Moscow. If you make a nuclear-armed enemy believe your strategy requires the end of their regime (or life), you are pushing them to nervous finger on their nuclear trigger. I’m reminded of Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet military who in 1983 was assigned to the command center that monitored Soviet early warning satellites over the US. During one of his shifts when Cold War tensions were running high (downed Korean airliner, revelations about nuclear winter) an alarm went off signaling that the Americans had seemingly launched five Minuteman ICBMs. Petrov had just a few minutes to decide whether to report the attack to the chain of command, which, under the tense circumstances, could have triggered a swift retaliatory strike. Fortunately for the US, Soviet Union, and the world, he decided to report the alert as a malfunction-a false alarm. Which it was: the satellite had misread sunlight reflecting off clouds as a missile attack.

Think about what would happen today with Russian nuclear forces on alert if a similar false warning were to occur. Would we be so lucky?

Lindsey Graham is one of the lowest of” humans”: a seemingly intelligent man who should know right from wrong, but time and time again defers to political expediency. His latest low life display was to announce he would vote against the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson after voting to confirm her when she was appointed to an appellate court. It doesn’t matter if he contradicts himself, speaks with forked tongue, or tells an outright lie, if it benefits him politically. He’s the epitome of what it means to be ignominious.