OCTOBER 2020 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Fox News’ Erin Perrine. I thought I’d seen everything from this campaign, but “Donald Trump has firsthand experience with COVID-19 and Joe Biden doesn’t” has to be the wackiest political spin ever. Trump campaign aid Erin Perrine was on Fox News this month and, man, these are some mental gymnastics. We’re not talking Simone Biles here. More like the Dude’s landlord.

The real cray-cray starts at around 4:35:

PERRINE: “And listen, he has experience as commander in chief, he has experience as a businessman, he has experience now fighting the coronavirus as an individual. Those firsthand experiences — Joe Biden, he doesn’t have those. He doesn’t know what it’s like to create a job other than Hunter’s. Joe Biden doesn’t know what it’s like to have to stand up and serve as commander in chief of this country. Joe Biden’s been more worried about China than he has been about the United States. Those firsthand experiences are what are going to get President Trump four more years.”

To sum up: Joe Biden doesn’t have the experience of declaring bankruptcies, stiffing students a pay-for-degree private college, losing more money in a decade that probably anyone else in the U.S., illegally shaking down other countries to try to convince them to interfere in our election, paying women for silence, or stupidly contracting a virus because he refused to take even the simplest preventive measures.

So, because Donald Trump has been a fuckup his entire life, you have to VOTE TRUMP!

Makes total sense, right?

SEPTEMBER 2020 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

With revelations about his disregarding the seriousness of the COVID-19 virus, pressuring the CDC to release updates that fit his administration’s “all-is-well” virus narrative, heavy indebtedness and failure to pay taxes, and his horrific behavior at the first presidential debate, among other things, the September news cycle was, not surprisingly, dominated by President Trump. This forces me to include some Trump selections among the September IGGY nominations.

1. Michael Caputo, Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services. Since he was installed at the 80,000-employee department last April by the White House, Mr. Caputo, a media-savvy former Trump campaign aide, has worked aggressively to control the media strategy on pandemic issues. But over the weekend, he was engulfed in two major controversies of his own making.

First Politico, then The New York Times and other media outlets, published accounts of how Mr. Caputo and a top aide, Paul Alexander, had routinely worked to revise, delay or even scuttle the core health bulletins of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in an effort to paint the administration’s pandemic response in a more positive light. The C.D.C.’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports had previously been so thoroughly shielded from political interference that political appointees only saw them just before they were published.

Then on Monday, The Times reported that a Facebook presentation by Mr. Caputo the previous night was filled with bizarre and incendiary comments. He had attacked C.D.C. scientists as anti-Trumpers who had formed a “resistance unit,” engaged in “rotten science” and “haven’t gotten out of their sweatpants” except for coffee shop meetings to plot “how they’re going to attack Donald Trump next.” Mr. Caputo said. “There are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president.” He urged his gun-owning followers to buy ammunition because “it’s going to be hard to get” and warned that left-wing hit squads across the nation were training for violent attacks. He also referred to physical health concerns and said his mental health “had definitely failed.”

To a certain extent, Mr. Caputo’s comments were simply an amplified version of remarks that the president himself has made. Both men have singled out government scientists and health officials as disloyal, suggested that the election will not be fairly decided, and insinuated that left-wing groups are secretly plotting to incite violence across the United States. But Mr. Caputo’s attacks were more direct, and they came from one of the officials most responsible for shaping communications around the coronavirus.

Caputo’s 26-minute broadside on Facebook against scientists, the news media and Democrats was also another example of a senior administration official stoking public anxiety about the election and conspiracy theories about the “deep state” — the label Mr. Trump often attaches to the federal Civil Service bureaucracy.

Caputo predicted that the president would win re-election in November, but that his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., would refuse to concede, leading to violence. “And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin,” he said. “The drills that you’ve seen are nothing.”

Why would Caputo make such outrageous claims? Not because he is a health expert, heaven forbid (he has no background in health care), or an astute visionary. No, it’s because he’d Trump’s kind of guy: a diehard loyalist equipped with a deep antipathy and suspicion of scientific expertise who knows how to toe a political line favorable to the Trumpster.

Will these inflammatory words get Caputo fired? Of course not; he’s a Trump man. Why would the president, who on his visit to the fire-ravaged West challenged the established science of climate change, declaring “It will start getting cooler…. Just watch. I don’t think science knows, actually,” fire a chip off his ol’ bloc?

AUGUST 2020 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Fox News’ Laura Ingraham “Expert” Guest Rebecca Friedrich. Fox News’ push right now is to have schools reopen, children go to school, teachers return to classrooms, and the world to pretend that the COVID-19 pandemic is just a bad case of the flu. That’s the angle being taken (and proven wrong time and again over the past few months), but the propaganda wing of the Republican Party has its marching orders and those orders are to drive their viewers off a cliff.

Right-wing wraith Laura Ingraham used the first part of her show to attack “the media” for questioning the safety of the country’s top officials’ push to reopen schools. Ingraham, relying on her audience’s inability to connect basic math and logic together, pointed out that 166 children reportedly died in 2019-2020 due to the flu, but only 30 children have died so far from COVID-19. She forgot to mention that schools began closing across the country in March and if they had not, and had children not been by and large quarantined along with their families, maybe that number doesn’t match up—and maybe it’s only July.

From there Ingraham, in her “The War Against Kids” segment, explained that “leftist teachers unions” were punishing children in service of some commie political agenda. Ingraham connected the dots to Black Lives Matter, defunding the police, Medicare for All, stimulus checks for undocumented immigrants, a tax on the rich, and a ban on charter schools. But there was more to come as Ingraham had an expert who could dig even deeper to far more nefarious conspiracies.

Wearing a gold cross around her neck, Ingraham, probably imagining she is fighting off the never-ending stream of vampires she brings onto her show masquerading as “experts,” had former Los Angeles Unified school teacher Rebecca Friedrichs on. If Friedrichs’ name sounds familiar, it might be for her participation in a union-busting case that was brought to the Supreme Court in 2015. The case ended up in a split decision affirming the lower court after Judge Anton Scalia died and the Republican Party refused to consider President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland. This is the expert Ingraham brought on to explain why our children needed to go back to school amidst a pandemic.

After saying how warmed she was by Ingraham’s support of her anti-union verve, Friedrichs explained that the pushback by unions over reopening classrooms is a “smokescreen” for a far more wicked agenda: The unions, and specifically teachers’ unions, “are actually using our schools to sexualize our children and to train them in anti-American ideology.”

Did you read that right? Yes, you did. But how powerful are teachers’ unions? Super-duper powerful, it turns out. According to Friedrichs, this massive indoctrination plan is coordinated with “over 180 organizations” including “the CDC, Planned Parenthood, and Black Lives Matter incorporated.”

Yes. You heard that right. (As an aside, Friedrichs explained that she has been “shouting about this for decades.”) I’m excited to hear about how powerful the teachers’ unions are and hope that this will mean that starting salaries for schoolteachers will soon be six-figure affairs! Unfortunately, these teachers’ unions are less interested in lining their pockets like the Trump administration and more interested in sex! Sexy sexy sexy sex! Let’s not get so hot and bothered that we cannot hear how this conspiracy is connected to not reopening schools.

It turns out, the conspiracy is to force children to only learn online. Because learning online is how they do the sexualization-of-our-children thing.

REBECCA FRIEDRICHS: It is shocking what they're teaching our children online through virtual learning. They are teaching our children to sext, to view pornography. They are hooking them up with online sex experts. So, what they are doing is grooming our children for sexual predators to use them. This is child abuse.

Friedrichs explains that many of these teachers don’t even realize that this is what the unions are doing. Not sure how that works, but there you have it.

SCRUTINIZING THE HIROSHIMA MYTH (A REPOSTING)

Hiroshima After the Bomb 

August 6th marked the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the “Little Boy” atomic bomb on Hiroshima. As has been the case on every anniversary of the bombing, the event has been commemorated by politicians, media sorts, and most Americans as being responsible for ending the war and thus negating the need for an invasion of Japan’s home islands that would have caused enormous losses on both sides. This belief has achieved numinous status in the United States; most Americans accept it as an article of faith. It has become, as historian Christian Appy put it, the most successful legitimizing narrative in American history. There’s only one thing wrong with the Hiroshima narrative: it's not factual. There is perhaps no greater myth in U.S. history than the belief that the atomic bomb was the "winning weapon" that ended World War II. It’s what I call the Hiroshima Myth.

Despite doubts about the necessity to use the bomb expressed by a number of top military and political leaders at the time (and later in their personal reflections), challenges to the traditional Hiroshima narrative by several historians, and declining overall American attraction to nuclear weapons, the Hiroshima Myth remains deeply embedded in the consciousness of the overwhelming majority of Americans. How did it get so embedded? Why didn’t the highly authoritative 1947 U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, which concluded that the Japanese would have surrendered "certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to November 1 1945--even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, the Russians had not entered the war, and no invasion had been planned or contemplated," establish a different narrative?

Were the bombings instrumental in ending the war? Did they avert an invasion of the Japanese homeland and thus save lives? There’s much at stake in the answers to these questions, for if the bomb wasn't necessary to end the war, then its use on Hiroshima and, especially Nagasaki, was wrong, militarily, politically and morally, especially when one considers that these two cities were not vital military targets.

At the risk of being called unpatriotic, un-American, or worse, because the issue still touches raw emotions (Americans don't take kindly to questioning the morality of our country's purposes), I will attempt to refute the Hiroshima Myth. Fortunately I am able to draw upon information that wasn’t available when early histories of the bombings were written. This information includes a declassified paper written by a Joint Chiefs of Staff advisory group in June 1945, the personal accounts of a number of top Japanese leaders, and various bits of documentary evidence uncovered by enterprising historians. These discoveries enable a more accurate picture of bomb’s role in ending the war.

In a previous two-part essay, posted in August of 2015, I argued that Truman’s atomic bomb-use decision was not primarily motivated by a desire to end the war quickly in order to save American lives that would have been lost in a land invasion and that the use of the bomb was not the main factor inducing Japan to surrender.  I also argued in a Part III that our enduring belief in the bomb as “the winning weapon” has had a profound impact on American culture and on how we approach national security.  These essays challenged the prevailing beliefs of the overwhelming majority of Americans.  In the hope of stimulating an ongoing dialogue on the Hiroshima Myth and its implications, I’ve decided to re-post these essays as a single post on this, the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. I will re-post it every August 6.  Critical comments are encouraged.  

JULY 2020 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tx). America’s dumbest congressman is back, and on cue. I nominated the moron last month for an IGGY, not just because he was a COVID-19 denier, has been contemptuous of the dangers of the virus, and has been, as usual, eagerly embracing crackpot theories about how to cure it (what if we, like, douse everything in a fine hydroxychloroquine), but because of his comment that he would not wear a mask unless he got the virus, then “you wouldn’t see me without a mask.” He has also, as usual, been eager to call Democratic measures to contain the virus "Marxism," possibly out of genuine ignorance as to what either Marxism or infectious disease safety measures entail.

Gohmert wasn't wearing a mask for most of the day Tuesday (28^th), when he huddled with other House Republicans to discuss how best to defend Trump Attorney General William Barr during Barr's House Judiciary Committee hearing. He wasn't wearing one when he spoke to Barr outside the hearing room from just a few feet away. Gohmert has now tested positive for COVID-19.

The proud Texan has steadfastly refused to wear a mask while at the Capitol during the pandemic. He has spent ample time on the House floor during votes speaking to aides and lawmakers — without a mask or social distancing.

The moronic one had been scheduled to fly aboard Air Force One with President Trump to Midland, Texas,  where he is fundraising and touring an oil rig. He tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday morning during a pre-flight screening at the White House, a person familiar with the situation told CNN. Because of the positive test, Gohmert is not traveling with the President.

Gohmert’s positive test sent shudders throughout the capitol. So far at least four colleagues and several aides who had contact with him announced they would quarantine. Dozens more aids, reporters, and the attorney general have scrambled to get tested. News that Gohmert had returned to the Capitol to tell his aides in person of his test results (can you expect anything different?) unleashed a firestorm of terror and indignation across the House as everyone from interns to lawmakers scurried to try to retrace Gohmert’s steps.

The partisan divide that has gripped our country has played out in the response of Members to the virus, with Republicans reluctant to wear masks, socially distance, or take other sensible precautions. Perhaps this will change. In light of Gohmert’s irresponsible idiocy, Speaker Pelosi announced that lawmakers and their staff members would be required to wear masks when on the House floor or moving through House office buildings. With Republican lawmakers banned from appearing on the floor, maybe the Congress can get some things done, like providing adequate assistance to small businesses and the unemployed.

How has the country’s dumbest congressman responded to the furor he caused?

Smiling in a video recorded in his Capitol Hill office, he declared he has probably gotten the “Wuhan virus” because he had started wearing a mask over the past week or two—not despite it. So, if you want to avoid getting COVID-19, get rid of your mask. Thanks, Louie.

If there is any justice in this sordid affair, perhaps Republican coronavirus deniers will come down with the disease. Wouldn’t it be something if the president got sick?

JUNE 2020 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Rep. Nino Vitale (R-Ohio). Vitale doesn’t think Americans should be required to wear masks because it would be violation of their “freedom.” In his words:

“I will not wear a mask . . . quite frankly, everyone else’s freedom ends at the tip of my nose. You’re not going to tell me what to do.”

Rep. Vitale’s notion of freedom is not grounded in responsibility, reason, and virtue. What Vitale advocates is not a mature construct of freedom, but a raw manifestation of license. It is not traditional “rugged individualism,” but hyper-individualism—in my view, bordering on sociopathy.

Although I have seen no surveys, I strongly believe that the brand of hyper-individualism we find in the COVID-19 anti-restriction protests emerges from the “far right” of the political spectrum—specifically from the Trumpers. These people confuse freedom with license, the throwing off of all responsibility. It is a carte blanche to do as we feel. As such it is incompatible with the communitarian principle that has coexisted in dynamic tension with individualism in America since the very founding of our republic.

This tension which has been one of the great strengths of our culture and government, ensuring that a person does not have the right to shout “fire” in a crowded theater or that people of ability are not forced to give to others according to their needs.

Donald Trump and his fellow GOP faithful have scant affinity with our communitarian traditions. Their callous lack of empathy for human suffering and their aversion to anything that promotes the general welfare have reached extremes not seen since the Gilded Age. What’s wrong with shouting fire in a theater? People should be smart enough to know when there’s real danger.

Hyper-individualism is incompatible with virtue and is destroying our community.

MAY 2020 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Senator Tom Cotton. The abject failure of Republicanism—you cannot call it conservatism at this point, whatever that term once meant is null and void now—can be seen in nearly every detail of this nation's failed pandemic response. Scientists and public health experts ignored, or demeaned; institutional planning efforts shunned in favor of the partisan instincts of a seemingly unending list of designated incompetents; everything from testing to messaging in absolute shambles.

And so, we get travel bans, long after the virus has already travelled. We get attempts to rebrand the virus the "China virus", to give the party's ignorant yahoos something to focus their ire on while Dear Leader upturns actual government response efforts to focus instead on supplying lupus medication somebody somewhere heard good things about or muse about how maybe we should try to get the healing power of sunlight involved here, but put it inside people somehow.

That brings us to Sen. Tom Cotton, one of innumerable poster children for Republican Party decay, a man who would have to go to college for the next ten years to elevate himself anywhere near dumb as a post territory. Posts are useful. You can hang a sign from a post. You can hang a sign warning, for example, to beware the raging idiot lurking just behind the post. You cannot hang a sign from Tom Cotton. He wouldn't stand for it. It's the one goddamn thing in life he might turn out to be good at, and yet he refuses.

On Fox News this morning, actual Republican Senator Tom Cotton was not able to provide many ideas on how to make the Donald Trump Memorial Coronavirus Pandemic Response suck ever so slightly less. He was, however, eager to froth that what we really need to do around here is ban Chinese students who come to America from learning about science.

Because, you see, the "Chinese Communist Party" wants to be "the country that claims credit" for finding an eventual vaccine for the virus, and so are looking to steal that vaccine from us, if we develop it first. That plot includes science-minded Chinese Communist students, who are coming to America to "steal our property" and "design weapons and other devices that can be used against the American people."

"So, I think we need to take a very hard look at the visas we give Chinese nationals to come to the U.S. to study, especially at the postgraduate level, in advanced scientific and technological fields," says the still-unsigned Tom Cotton.

"You know, if Chinese students want to come here and study Shakespeare and the Federalist Papers, that's what they need to learn from America. They don't need to learn quantum computing and artificial intelligence from America.”

The Federalist Papers? I’ll bet 90% of Republicans don’t know what they are. Maybe the learning should start at home. Tom Cotton? He’s the front-runner to be the GOP presidential nominee in 2024. Perfect!