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!

2. Fox Nation Host Lara Logan. Lara Logan needs an intervention. I say that with sadness as she was once an intrepid and well-respected war correspondent. Now she’s a QAnon believer with a full-blown set of delusions, painful to listen to. Appearing on the QAnon-promoting show “And We Know,” she offered her most recent craziness, telling the host,

"Does anyone know when, who employed Darwin? Where Darwinism comes from? Well, I mean, you know, look it up. The Rothschilds."

Right-wing zealots are always telling people to “look it up”. Why? If you want me to buy your theories, provide the links. It is not my responsibility to make your argument for you. The truth is that there are no links except those to the hysterical, ill-researched, evidence-free claims that ricochet around the vacuous echo chamber of the right-wing’s fear-mongering.

But, the Rothschilds?

Why would the Rothschilds pay for Darwinism? How does a belief in evolution line the pockets of the Jewish bankers and finance their New World Order? How does a Covid vaccine-delivered chip advance the Gates/Soros plot for world domination? What is the mechanism? But that is the lunatic fringe for you — not much thought given to ‘how’.

But Logan had more. She roped in the British Prime Minister and the origin of the universe,

It goes back to Ten Downing Street. The same people who employed Darwin. And that’s when Darwin wrote his theory of evolution — and so on, and so on. I’m not saying that none of that is true. I’m just saying that Darwin was hired by someone to come up with the theory. OK. Based on the evidence, OK fine. But even the people, the scientists, all of the people who can take you back to the Big Bang, what is the one question they can never, ever, ever answer? They can never tell you what that was. Whether it is the molecules or the energy, or, you know, all that stuff.

Darwin “hired?”

But Logan did not stop to explain the details of this nefarious ‘science for hire’. She had to connect the ancient with the current and tie all the loose ends together — while getting in some jabs at a vile person she does not name. She did not disappoint. She brought her narrative to a close with an all-out gallop that will impress the listener with its passion — if not its coherence.   

“All these scientists, you know, like that evil, horrible person who is the science adviser to Klaus Schwab at the World Economic Foundation who says there is no such thing as freedom. There’s randomness, but that’s not freedom, blah, blah, blah. The same people who employed Darwin. And that’s when Darwin wrote his theory of evolution. There was this and there was that. You can explain it away, anyway you like. But how did those things come into being? It was that combination of … it’s that question of what came first the chicken or the egg? Right? They can’t answer that scientifically. You just can’t, because something made that into being. Whatever it was.” 

The most brutal part of the exercise was the sniggering from the show’s host, who was well aware he was listening to the ravings of a lunatic — but knew there was gold in the insanity. Logan’s family must get her the help she needs. I am not a professional. I cannot make a diagnosis. But even the layperson can see something is wrong. Her mouth cannot keep up with a mind which is racing from one subject to another. Subjects connected in the darkness of her decline in a manner that is only clear to her. Her sentences either run on or end too soon. Her eyes dart, she is breathless, and she talks too fast. She needs help.

3. Senator Tommy Tuberville. This month Tuberville commented on several topics regarding his first year in office, offering Tubervillisms that strengthen his case for supplanting Louis Gohmert as America's dumbest elected official.  The topper was his comment on the current situation involving Russia and Ukraine.

When asked about Russia invading Ukraine, Tuberville dug deeply into the inner reaches of his pea brain, to observe that Putin invaded Ukraine because Russia was a communist country that needed more land for its people. Via 1819 News, he said:

“He can’t feed his people, “It’s a communist country, so he can’t feed his people. So, they need more farmland.”

Most Russian experts are perplexed about Putin’s motive and objectives, but now they can turn to the insightful Tuberville.

4. Tennessee State Senator Frank Nicely. On Wednesday, the Tennessee State Senate voted 22-10 to pass a bill that criminalizes homelessness in the Volunteer State. It will now be sent to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk for his expected signature. The bill gives local authorities the discretion to bring more severe charges against unhoused Americans. Proponents of the bill say that they’ve tried nothing, and since nothing has worked, we need to allow police to scatter encampments of unhoused people or threaten them with jail.

During the state senate floor debate on Wednesday, Republican state Sen. Frank Nicely got up to talk about homelessness and the need to light a fire under homeless folks. Nicely is given to revisionist history lessons lauding treason and fascism, and Wednesday’s tedious folkism was no different. In fact, this was an inspirational story about Adolf Hitler.

Nicely began by saying: "I haven't given y'all a history lesson in a while and I wanted to give a little history on homelessness." Maybe one of the reasons Nicely hasn’t y’all’d up a history lesson for a few months is because the  last time he did, he told the world that the South not only didn’t lose the Civil War in 1865 when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered—they were actually “winning.”

Nicely then launched in: “Nineteen and ten, Hitler decided to live on the streets. So, for two years Hitler lived on the streets and practiced his oratory and his body language and how to connect with the masses. And then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books. So, a lot of these people it’s not a dead end. They can come out of these homeless camps and have a productive life, or in Hitler's case a very unproductive life.”

Let’s follow your logic: Hitler was homeless for a time and then became the historic monstrous anti-semite who ruined a mustache and set of names for generations, and this means that homeless people can be important people to history—but don’t be Hitler. Or be like Hitler, but more “productive?”

Say what? I can’t seem to get my head around how criminalizing being poor helps children. Incarcerating their parents? That’ll work! How about putting the resources devoted to prosecuting the homeless into the resources needed to build more housing? Sadly, this obvious solution doesn’t register with Republicans who believe homeless people are lazy and choose to be homeless.

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And the April IGGY winner is:

State Senator Nicely’s history lesson is probably the most absurd utterance to ever disgrace the pages of Phronesis, yet for pure evilness I have to award the August IGGY to Florida Senator Rick Scott and the RNC.