Republicans have replaced the Rule of Law with the Rule of Because Fuck You, That’s Why
Republicans are pure fucking evil. full stop
I was born in the 1950s. Eisenhower was president. the top tax bracket was 90%.
and I know you kids will find this hard to believe, but mainstream Republicans believed in fairness and democracy and yes, even the rule of law.
no, really. every time I’ve ever tweeted something like this, I get a shitload of people telling me no, Republican were always evil. I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong.
yes, Republicans were racist, misogynistic, homophobic and on and on, but frankly so were the Democrats, and to some degree even more so. the 1950s and 1960s were a shitty time for anyone who wasn’t a straight while male.
my point is that back then, you could have a rational debate with a Republican and at the very least, both of you would be working from the same set of principles and facts.
no more.
six decades have passed and Republicans no longer have principles or policies. they’ve replaced the Rule of Law with the Rule of Because Fuck You, That’s Why.
let’s look at stuff that has happened just in the last week alone.
Tennessee Republicans expel two black Democrats, because fuck you, that’s why
two Tennessee Democrats expelled from the Tennessee House for the crime of being elected while black. oh, that’s not the official reason. the official reason was that they were in a technical violation of House rules of decorum. that’s right, decorum. the party of bludgeoning cops with fire extinguishers is all of a sudden worried about decorum. am I the only one here who smells bullshit?
Republicans expelled Justin Jones and Justin Pearson because they could. because fuck you, that’s why.
Texas judge bans abortion pill, because fuck you, that’s why
conservatives in search of the opposite of justice love Matthew Kacsmaryk, because he’s a right-wing Federalist Society shitiologue who is always happy to ignore facts or precedent or law and rule whichever way they tell him to. wingnuts looking for a predetermined outcome will file suits in his jurisdiction, because they know he’ll do their bidding.
and so Judge Kacsmaryk suspended the approval of mifepristone, an abortion-inducing drug that has been on the market for more than 20 years. not for any scientific reason. not for any medical reason. not even because he has legal standing to make any judgement at all.
Judge Kacsmaryk suspended the approval of mifepristone because fuck you, that’s why.
Clarence Thomas gleefully accepts bribes from a Hitler-loving plutocrat, because fuck you, that’s why
Supreme Court Justices are pretty much above the law. literally. there are no courts above them who can overturn or discipline them.
our founders couldn’t imagine that anyone allowed to rise through the ranks of the US legal system from clerk to lawyer to judge to Justice of the Supreme Court could be dishonorable and corrupt. the system would self-select and prevent the thieves and scoundrels from advancing, they thought.
our founders never met Clarence Thomas. or his insurrectionist spouse Ginni.
it turns out that Clarence has been accepting bribes gifts totalling in the millions of dollars from Harlan Crow, a billionaire who just happens to collect autographed memorabilia from Adolf Hitler.
read that last line over again. wrap your head around it.
this guy also has a garden filled with statues of dictators. and this is the guy who tells Clarence Thomas what to do.
you or I would run screaming from a dictator-worshiping shithead. but not Clarence Thomas.
Clarence Thomas will continue to accept bribes from whoever cares to bribe him, because fuck you, that’s why.
Greg Abbott promises to pardon trigger-happy asshole convicted of premeditated murder, because fuck you, that’s why
Daniel Perry is a nasty piece of work. in 2020, after posting on social media about how much he wanted to shoot protesters, he drove to a Black Lives Matter protest in Austin, ran a red light, got out of his car and started firing his gun, killing Garrett Foster.
a jury of Perry’s peers listened to the testimony. they saw the evidence. and they found Perry guily of premeditated murder.
but that wasn’t good enough for Greg Abbott. in Greg Abbott’s book, Daniel Perry is just aces, because just like Kyle Rittenhouse, Perry killed someone who Republicans don’t like.
and so fuck the law. fuck the evidence. fuck the jury. fuck justice. Greg Abbott is going to pardon Daniel Perry because fuck you, that’s why.
I fear for our country. I don’t have a solution. the last time evil fascists took over a country, we had to have a world war to put an end to it.
Heather “Digby” Parton thinks there’s a backlash to all this fuckery coming and that American voters will swing to the left.
my god, I sure as fuck hope she’s right.
folks, a word on a different subject before I let you go: we’re doing some quarterly fundraising at my other venture, The Smirking Chimp. I’m leery of even mentioning it because if you’re one of the people paying to support my own writing here, you’re already doing god’s work and you’re already doing more than enough to help out. but if you’ve got five dollars that you absolutely wouldn’t miss and you do feel like supporting the Chimp, well, that just makes you twice the hero. the donation link is here, or you can go straight to paypal if you need no further convincing. and if you don’t care to donate, that’s totally cool, too, and we will not speak of this again. in fact, we never had this conversation. thanks for listening and that’s it from me for now.
I sadly concur with your ENTIRE assessment Jeff. One of the fuckwads that chastised the “two Justins” in Tennessee had the audacity to compare what the “Justins” did (speak up about gun violence from the “well” of their House chamber) to the January 6th insurrection. I just watched a police captain in Louisville once again ask for “prayers” right after lamenting that one of his friends was killed and another seriously injured in the shooting that occurred this morning. God forbid one of these assholes ever takes a stand against the gun lobby. Another Substack writer asks in his column if it’s time for the Left to start ‘buying guns’? The Republicans, as repulsive and repugnant as they are, have operated at State and local levels with gerrymandering and election laws that really make it hard for the Dems to maneuver. We must do better....But it’s so hard to combat the DERANGED!
My outrage has been at red hot nuclear levels since these stories broke last week. This is not normal! What is happening with the Republicans is not normal. I have always been liberal but both my parents were your average conservatives who leaned Republican. If they were racist they hid it well since many of their friends were Black. If they were homophobes they hid that well since they had other friends who were out by the time we met them in the 70s. These were not just people they knew. These were people who came over and we went to their homes for get togethers. We were never church people so religion was just something that was out there if you wanted to participate.
Now for the part that doesn't make sense. My dad was from the South. His parents good ole Southern Baptists. Not sure how he escaped the racist gene or the religion gene. And then he had the audacity to go and marry the enemy. Mom was a child in WWII Nazi Germany living in Berlin with a Jewish Grandfather. Kind of living in plain sight kind of thing. But a decade later they met and after a few years got married. But to my American Grandmother she was the enemy. These two people raised 3 liberal kids. How is it that we can not all just accept that nobody is our enemy or to be hated? How do you rid yourself of racist bigoted behavior? Well one way is to be woke. My old generation conservative parents were Woke but we called it Aware.
Todays Republicans would horrify them.