Mr. DeSantis Murders His Way to Washington: Capra's Gone Dark (Th'Ferret)
Has anybody given any thought to putting the good folks at Moderna or Pfizer to work on a cure for brain maggots? Cuz it turns out it’s not enough to just create a solution to the biggest public health crisis we’ve seen in decades, there’s whole ’nother step; you have convince millions of misinformed asshats that solving the goddamn problem is even desirable. Because they’re nuts. Anyway, Merry Reinstatement Day, everybody.
(As ever, get this post, all shiny n’ chrome, with nifty nooz links, here: http://showercapblog.com/mr-desantis-murders-his-way-to-washington-capras-gone-dark/)
Now, I’m in Chicago, and things feel pretty safe here. We’ve been a responsible community. Lotta folks’re vaccinated already, everybody’s generally behaving well, complying when they’re told to mask up. And the numbers from Lollapalooza have been encouraging so far, hopefully indicating that with proper precautions and vigilance, we won’t suffer the fate of, say, DeSantistan.
Hope it’s safe where you are. And if it’s not, I hope you’re finding ways to stay safe.
Before we dive into the septic tank that is the week’s news, just a real quick reminder that multiple vaccines exist. And they all work great. So, like so many recent weeks, most of what we’re gonna talk about tonight didn’t need to happen. At all. I didn’t believe Mom when she said television and the internet would rot your brain, but now that I’ve watched weaponized disinformation overcome, on a mass scale, the basic biological instinct for self-preservation…well, she was right about Joni Mitchell, too.
Because we’re in babies-on-ventilators territory now, folks. More children than ever before hospitalized with Covid. Children dying. Between the Delta variant and the Dumbfuck constant, in some parts of this county COUGHCOUGHREDSTATES, conditions are actually worse than they were during the pre-vaccine peaks, back when the bleach guy was in charge.
And yet, in spite of mountains of evidence contradicting their insanity at every turn, this bizarre new American subculture, which sprung up around a reality television personality with bad hair and a brain incapable of comprehending time zones, chooses death.
Chooses it. From a buffet brimming with non-death options. Mask? No thank you, I prefer death. Vaccine? Nope. Just death, please. Maybe a little horse dewormer, if you can spare it.
And so now, yeah, we’re graduating from “dude who believed coronavirus disinformation dies from Covid” stories to “dude who spread coronavirus disinformation dies from Covid” stories, and still the hospitals overflow with the petulantly unvaccinated. Because a whole buncha folks are just irreparably broken and incapable of learning now, I guess.
Like, you watch that footage from Tennessee, from a parking lot following a school board meeting where a temporary mask mandate was instituted, and you see people shamelessly threaten their neighbors with violence over this crazy, 100% fake shit they believe, and you wonder when enough is going to be enough for the propaganda peddlers who pump this sludge into the nation’s weaker minds.
If you’re feeling brave enough to enter a brief staring contest with the abyss, here’s a righteously fucked-up little line from a real news story in the real world:
“One meme claims in the film vaccinations cause humans to turn into zombies, both misrepresenting the plot and the fictional nature of the film.”
“The fuck does THAT mean, Cap, and how can it possibly qualify as news?” Fair question. Well you see, it turns out there are actual living, breathing humans, walking around amongst us, who, when evaluating life or death decisions regarding their own health, have chosen to place more faith in expository science fiction gobbledygook from a Will Smith movie than in the repeatedly confirmed findings of medical experts. Sleep tight.
So yeah. Shouldn’t surprise anybody that we find ourselves revisiting the heady days of “not enough ICU beds to go ‘round.” It’s all so retro. The outlandish hairstyles, the ridiculous fashion fads, the mobile morgues.
Speaking of retro, the week’s “thank God the courts stopped that wannabe autocrat’s murderously insane power grab” story triggered a certain noxious nostalgia, didn’t it? Anyway, I think we can all agree it was weird that Ron DeSantis wanted to force cruise lines to turn their ships into floating coronavirus breeding dens in the first place.
You have to grudgingly give the man credit for perseverance, though; Ron-Ron’s gonna spread Covid-19 to every nook and cranny of his state, even if he has to go door to door, personally distributing Delta-infused brownies.
Demented bastard actually threatened to withhold the salaries of any school officials with the audacity to (checks notes) take measures to inhibit the spread of a highly contagious, potentially lethal disease through their community’s children. Not sure policymaking is your game, Ron.
‘Course, then it turned out he lacked the authority to make good on his playground threats, and he backed down, but that’s DeSantis for ya: behind the preening thug veneer lies the heart of a coward, and a brain containing the approximate mass of a single crouton.
No wonder folks say he’s the next Trump.
With Florida’s hospitals overwhelmed by his I Just Want the Death Cult to Like Me, Ma mismanagement, Ronward was forced to beg the Biden Administration for a couple hundred extra ventilators (remember, folks: three vaccines). But since he possesses a soul composed of the residue left behind by a salted slug, when the cameras showed up, the little turd acted like he never requested any help, because projecting “strength” to America’s burgeoning fascist movement matters more to him than keeping his constituents alive. And to think, it’s been suggested power corrupts.
It’s as though the Matrix has been devising increasingly elaborate tests of character for DeSantis to fail. If you’re searching for some sort of bottom to the man’s depravity…don’t waste your time.
Naturally, Greg Abbott has been pulling all the same shit, achieving all the same results. I feel like we don’t talk enough about how inherently stupid all this is, pursuing policies everyone knows in advance will only make things worse, justified exclusively by widely-debunked lies. Like, what’s the endgame here, fellas? Walk me through it. It’s well-established by now, you simply cannot gaslight a virus, so why the fuck are you still trying?
Sending one’s voters to early graves seems, on the surface, dubious as political strategy, but what do I know? It’s as though they’ve replaced the Iowa Straw Poll with competitive corpse-piling. Ted Cruz wants the government’s response to this more-contagious variant of a virus that’s claimed 600,000 American lives already to stay small enough to drown in a bathtub. Unwilling to be out-crazied, Rand Paul urged open defiance of public health mandates, because the only right that truly matters to the modern conservative is the right to behave like an unrepentant bag of rotting dicks, ideally without consequences.
Incidentally, seems the Senate’s fakest doctor was so busy spreading disinformation vile enough to earn a weeklong YouTube suspension that he forgot to mention his wife engaged in a teensy bit of pandemic profiteering during the early days of the crisis he would spend the next year and change diligently exacerbating. Whoopsie.
Anyway, if the pestilence and kakistocracy somehow fail to end human civilization, at least right wingers have a solid fallback plan, as the week’s sobering United Nations climate report reminded us.
Chuck Grassley’s certainly doing his damnedest to force the nation’s newsrooms to discard their prepared obituaries, reverently documenting his decades in public service, in favor of a single line reading, “just one more pimple on a fascist game show host’s ass.” Chuckles, at any point during your disgraceful little speech, did you pause to wonder precisely how your life’s work had led you to that moment, making sad, flimsy excuses for the attempted overthrow of the United States government by a dude who couldn’t figure out how to make money in the casino business?
While Grassley grovels, each week, we learn fresh, new details of President Cornered Rat’s frenzied, lame duck efforts to gnaw his way through the cage made from the U.S. Constitution and the will of the 2020 electorate.
Jeffrey Rosen, Acting Attorney General during the final days of the Turd Reich, testified before the Senate about Hairplug Himmler’s incessant prodding of the boundaries of the rule of law, including a plot to elevate goose-stepping paper-pusher Jeffrey Clark to the AG seat. Clark was willing to execute orders more principled folk refused, which was pretty much the only qualification these dirtbags were seeking at that point. Kept job interviews short, I bet.
Good thing the ol’ transition period wasn’t even longer, right? Shout-out to the Founders for building such a cushy autogolpe window into the back end of the presidential term.
Oof. Y’know, if the MyPillow guy were anybody else, this wouldn’t be fun anymore, it’s like, I dunno…humiliation torture porn? Lucky for us, he’s still a treasonous shitweasel doing all he can to undermine everything that’s good and decent about America, so if the universe wants to keep pelting him with sweet, sweet comeuppance, my capacity to point and laugh at his misfortune will likely prove infinite.
Him n’ Rudy. Kindly continue self-immolating for my viewing pleasure, you evil fucks.
Anyway. Having failed to reinstate his beloved thousand-year Reich this week as promised, Mike went on what can only be termed a self-degradation bender, spending what must’ve been a fuckton of money from a surely-dwindling fortune, to make sure cameras captured every possible moment of his downward spiral. Lindell, whose blood type is “meth,” threw himself a so-called “cyber symposium,” with the apparent purpose of…revealing his claims of voter fraud were bullshit the entire time? Guess they don’t teach expectations management in pillow salesman school.
Oh, and Mike’s attempt to get the courts to throw out Dominion’s defamation lawsuit failed too, so he’s definitely got a few more branches to collide with yet, as he plummets from this tree towards the ironically pillowless ground below.
Dominion’s suits against Giuliani and Sidney “Did I say Kraken I meant crackhead” Powell were also permitted to proceed, and now the voting machine company is going after OAN and Newsmax as well. Heh. Perhaps the only thing that can stop a massive multimedia disinformation apparatus with a democracy-threatening conspiracy theory is a private company armed with America’s corporate-friendly legal system.
I see yet another prominent Republican Party figure has been arrested on child sex trafficking charges. This sort of thing happens a lot. Like, a LOT. Seriously, this is in no way an uncommon occurrence. Oddly, the Everybody I Already Hated Is Also a Pedophile What A Handy Coincidence crowd once again offered nary a condemnation of this latest abuser of children discovered on their own “side.” (Oh, and speaking of Matt Gaetz…ew.)
Just to check in real quick, what’s the Democratic Party up to in the midst of all this fuckery? Oh, not much, just taking a massive bite out of child hunger. Pushing their enormous infrastructure package slowly, steadily through the ol’ sausage-maker. Improving lives. Helping folks. Not, y’know, spreading disease or planting explosives around the pillars of American democracy. In case anybody’s still on the fence.
So, the Kickstarter for Marguerite vs. the Occupation ends this coming Thursday, August 19th, at 8 a.m., which means I’ll finally stop pestering you about my comic book, yes, (though there’s another one coming hot on Marguerite’s heels, if you must know) but also that your window to procure your very own copy of this Nazi-smashing pulp masterpiece is rapidly closing!
http://showercapblog.com/marguerite-vs-the-occupation/
I’ve said it a bunch, but it’s true: it’s you folks who’ve given me the confidence to finally chase this lifelong dream, and I’m endlessly thankful. I do write ‘em for you, y’know; Resistance Comics for a Resistance audience. Hell, after all we’ve been through together these last few years, don’t you feel like living vicariously through a fed-up young woman while she fucks up some Nazis?
I’ve been blessed with some truly stupendous collaborators on this one, and I think we’ve come together to tell a story you’ll legitimately dig; I would be honored n’ humbled to have your support.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/worthcost/marguerite-vs-the-occupation
Either way, keep yourself safe out there; times’re wacky and dangerous and so very, very weird. See you in a week!
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Me and my husband are very lucky, seeing as how many, many of our neighbors are completely vaccinated and using the masks appropriately.
We still go out masked, since we don't have a death wish!
You stay safe too, OK?
