The GOP Death Cult: Porno, Threats, and Covid Casualties
You’d think that somebody, somewhere, in the upper echelons of the right would be trying to move the GOP away from violence and keeping the base alive until the 2022 elections.
I suppose it’s written somewhere that if you don’t have any ideas to sell politically, then voters might be attracted to your manliness in words and deeds. Hence the tolerance for chest pounding and the pride in flailing against virus mitigation disproportionately affecting Red districts.
Let’s start with the absurdities of Capitol Hill Republicans.
I’m willing to bet that Missouri Senator Josh Hawley’s wife caught him checking out porn sites and he fell back on the ol’ “I’m doing research” excuse.
Via The Guardian:
Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida, Hawley addressed the issue of “manhood”, which he said was under attack, and called for men to return to traditional masculine roles.
The Donald Trump supporter who notoriously raised a fist in support of a mob outside the US Capitol on 6 January appeared to echo talking points made by the likes of the Proud Boys, a far-right group that opposes feminism and believes men are under attack from liberal elites.
“Can we be surprised that after years of being told that they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness and pornography and video games?” Hawley said.
The trope about dangerous feminizing of America is right up there with race mixing for the right, as are the we-didn’t-mean-it threats of violence. Check him out as he dances around his statements when questioned by a reporter.
https://twitter.com/electMikeHarvey/status/1457769387784429576?s=20
Hawley apparently had no trouble serving as a pass-through for the pacifists at the National Rifle Association. According to a lawsuit filed in the District Court for the District of Columbia, the National Rifle Association and the campaigns of Sen. Josh Hawley and Rep. Matt Rosendale (Montana), allegedly used shell corporations to improperly aid Republican candidates.
Via the Missouri Independent:
The suit alleges two NRA affiliates made up to $35 million in illegal campaign contributions — in the form of coordinated communications efforts — to the GOP Senate campaigns of Hawley, Rosendale, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, as well as Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
It was filed in the District Court for the District of Columbia this week.
The NRA Political Victory Fund, a political action committee, and the NRA Institute for Legislative Action spent millions on supposedly independent political advertising for the six Senate candidates and Trump in the 2014, 2016 and 2018 federal election cycles, according to the suit.
***
Arizona GOP Representative Paul A. Gosar thought it would be funny to share an altered, animated video depicting him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and swinging two swords at President Biden.
Har, har, har, suggested Gosar’s digital director, Jessica Lycos, as social media accounts reacted negatively, “Everyone needs to relax.” Following a groundswell of complaints calling for removal of the video, a Twitter spokesperson announced “public interest notice” had been placed on Gosar’s tweet because it violates the company’s policy against hateful conduct. That meant anybody who wanted to see it simply had to click on the notice.
From the Washington Post:
The congressman will “face no consequences bc @GOPLeader cheers him on with excuses,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, without naming Gosar.
“Fun Monday! Well, back to work bc institutions don’t protect woc,” she said, referring to women of color.
In a follow-up tweet, Ocasio-Cortez listed several times she was accosted or harassed at the Capitol by GOP members of Congress, including Greene and Rep. Ted Yoho (Fla.).
“All at my job,” she tweeted, along with an upside-down smiley face. “[And] nothing ever happens.”
Actually, the GOP leadership did reach out to Gosar, whose sister was all over cable network shows saying the Congressman had mental health issues.
So he issued a statement. Sort of. Notice that he consistently, and presumably deliberately, gets Ocasio-Cortez's name wrong throughout that document. And, of course, it was jam packed with lies.
https://twitter.com/Olivia_Beavers/status/1458205137705578498?s=20
***
The thirteen Republican Congress members who voted for the infrastructure bill this week are facing calls from within the party seeking to penalize them via stripping committee assignments.
In case that’s not enough, the “base” is getting in on the action. Michigan’s GOP Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) shared a threatening voicemail he received after voting for the bipartisan infrastructure bill last week.
Via CNN:
“I hope you die. I hope everybody in your f**king family dies,” while labeling him a “f**king piece of sh*t traitor.”
The congressman said the calls started after his Republican colleague, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, publicly posted the names and phone numbers of Upton and a dozen other GOP House members who voted in support of the bill, calling them "traitors."
Reflecting on threats made by fans of Donald Trump against Upton and the violent fantasy aimed at Rep. Ocasio-Cortez posted to Twitter, CNN's John Avlon criticized the GOP for sitting by and letting threats of violence become de rigueur.
Focusing on Gosar and attention-seeking Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA), Avlon explained, "We talk a lot about how the Republican Party has become dangerously extreme."
Adding Republican Sen. Ted Cruz's threats of Texas secession to the mix -- while also joking that leaving the union would cripple Cruz's attempt to become president -- Avlon slammed the current state of the GOP.
"Any one of these insane incitements might be dismissed as crazy person says crazy thing," he stated. "But taken together, and reports from a single 24-hour period, and you can see why we have a problem here. The nuts are being normalized to the point where it can seem like part of the scenery. The GOP needs to take responsibility. There is no room for false equivalency here; the steady stream of incitement translates to things like a poll showing 30 percent of Republicans believe that violence might be needed to save the United States."
Threatening public officials is no big deal in Trumpanista circles.
As a recent investigation by Reuters into threats made to election officials around the country shows, there’s virtually no downside to using a phone to threaten somebody’s life. The news organization was able to identify nine individuals who’d made dozens of threats in various states.
Police agencies often failed to investigate complaints about the threats, even when the caller’s numbers were easily identified. Why? I’ll bet the Trumpanista ethic (or lack thereof) had something to do with it.
***
The widespread refusal of people living in districts to get vaccinated has led to a steadily increasing gap in COVID’s death toll between red and blue America growing faster over the past month than at any previous point.
In October, 25 out of every 100,000 residents of heavily Trump counties died from COVID, more than three times higher than the rate in heavily Biden counties (7.8 per 100,000). October was the fifth consecutive month that the percentage gap between the death rates in Trump counties and Biden counties widened.
From the New York Times:
Some conservative writers have tried to claim that the gap may stem from regional differences in weather or age, but those arguments fall apart under scrutiny. (If weather or age were a major reason, the pattern would have begun to appear last year.) The true explanation is straightforward: The vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing severe COVID, and almost 40% of Republican adults remain unvaccinated, compared with about 10% of Democratic adults.
Charles Gaba, a Democratic health care analyst, has pointed out that the gap is also evident at finer gradations of political analysis: Counties where Trump received at least 70% of the vote have an even higher average COVID death toll than counties where Trump won at least 60%.
The front page story in the Union-Tribune/LA Times didn’t include data about the partisan divide. But if you think about it for a moment, it’s obvious:
Of California’s five regions as defined by the state Department of Public Health, the San Joaquin Valley has the worst COVID-19 hospitalization rate, with 25 COVID-19 hospitalizations for every 100,000 residents; followed by rural Northern California, which has a rate of 16; and the Greater Sacramento area, with a rate of 14.
The statewide rate is 9, and the two most populous regions have rates below that: Southern California’s rate is 8, while the Bay Area’s is 4. Some experts believe it’s a sign of concern when COVID-19 hospitalization rates are 5 or greater for every 100,000 residents.
Within Southern California’s most populated areas, the Inland Empire has the worst COVID-19 hospitalization rates, with San Bernardino and Riverside counties reporting respective rates of 14 and 11. San Diego County is reporting 9; Orange County, 7; Los Angeles County, 6; and Ventura County, 4.
Since mid-October, COVID-19 hospitalizations have risen by more than 27 percent in both San Bernardino and Fresno counties; while in Riverside County, numbers are up by 21 percent over the last two weeks.
The rampant misinformation making the rounds on Facebook and now in evangelical congregations is killing voters the GOP thinks they’ll need.
I’ll close with this observation from Kos:
My favorite analogy is this one: there are 45,000 commercial flights every single day. If survival rate was 99.8%, that means that 90 of them could crash on any given day.If those were the odds of flying, would you get on a plane? I sure as heck wouldn’t!
Hey folks! Be sure to like/follow Words & Deeds on Facebook. If you’d like to have each post mailed to you check out the simple subscription form and the right side of the front page.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com