Well friends, things’re more or less exactly the same as when last we met, which is to say, grease-fire-in-the-bath-salts-factory-behind-the-clown-college-level insane. So grab a raincoat and some galoshes, let’s wade through this sewage together, wheeeeeeee!

As a lifelong consumer of genre fiction, I really should be able to process this shit. I’m willing to accept pretty much any given circumstances you drop in my lap. The Coyote paints a tunnel on the wall, the Roadrunner can go through the tunnel, but the Coyote runs face first into unforgiving stone? Makes perfect sense. Gerald Ford gets kidnapped and sent to work in the malaise mines of an alien world ruled by vampiric cantaloupes? Got it. I’m in. Let’s go.   

I’m an old pro at suspending disbelief, is what I’m saying. But the objective, real-life status quo in the United States of America right now…I’m sorry, I simply do not buy it. We finally find a vaccine for the lethal virus that upended every life on the planet for more than a year, but millions of people won’t take the fucking thing because they’ve invested their entire cultural identity in refusing to eat their peas, even when said peas are the only thing standing between them and a painful, lonely death? It’s just not believable.

How do people become this crazy? We could probably gain some insight by investigating the dipshit hydra they look to for leadership. Won’t be pleasant, but let’s do it anyway.

So, at CPAC last weekend, Kristi Noem, whose extremely thirsty play for Trump Cult high priesthood will hopefully remain as comically futile as it is presently, tried to score points on current MAGA golden boy Ron DeSantis, by boasting to the crowd that her coronavirus butcher’s bill was among the longest in the land; since rather than listening to science and taking simple steps to protect her constituents’ lives, she turned South Dakota into the pandemic’s personal playpen.

The same maniac tent revival saw Lauren Boebert stumble around like a zombie that just ate an entire meth den, desperate to frame the life-saving miracle of science that is the coronavirus vaccine as some sort of unwelcome government handout. And somehow, with 600,000 bodies already in the ground, there are still people taking medical advice from this shrieking dolt, while flinging themselves into Pavlovian rage fits at the mere mention of the name “Fauci.”

Further straining the real world’s credibility, DeSantis is actually selling anti-Fauci MERCH, smack dab in the middle of his state’s latest deadly covid surge. The 2024 Republican presidential contenders will not be out-mass-slaughtered, it would seem.

Over at Newsmax, they’ve got hosts openly musing that maybe the whole idea of vaccination is an unnatural abomination against God, which I guess is the sort of thing you have to expect when your business model relies on out-pandering the competition in search of dominance over the lucrative suicidal zealot demographic.

In Tennessee, Republicans successfully ousted the state’s top vaccination official, putting an end to her diabolical reign of Sound Medical Advice, and, emboldened by their neanderthal triumph over the forces of reason, shut down ALL adolescent vaccine outreach, because…fuck, I don’t know, because they’re all in Big Mortician’s pocket? You may observe that it makes no fucking sense to pursue policies that will do nothing but increase disease and death, but this is a legitimately hip trend in conservative politics these days.

Anyway, for any Tennessee parents who may be reading, don’t forget to inject polio directly into your kids’ eyeball before the fall term starts; it’s mandatory for in-person learning now.

What I truly cannot wrap my weary mind around is, like, we know that nearly everybody who’s getting sick and dying right now is unvaccinated, and we also know that the unvaccinated population is rather disproportionately comprised of members of this particular…shall we say, “subculture.”

And I’ve even internalized that it’s so important to y’all to “own the libs” that you’ll accept a pretty damn significant amount of harm to yourself as the price, but the whole point of being vaccinated is that we’re no longer prisoner to your tantrums. We can go places now. It’s fucking great. Ownage is no longer possible, kids. There’s still a smattering of tragically innocent victims, of course, and fuck you for each and every one of them, but it’s pretty much just y’all getting killed now. The practical effect of all this disinformation has been to feed your audience directly into the queue with the captive bolt pistol at the end.

I just think it’s weird they haven’t figured this out yet. I guess by the time a loyal Tucker Carlson watcher finds his way to the ventilator, he’s too preoccupied to write a sternly-worded complaint to Fox management.

Incidentally, the trailer for the next M. Night Shyamalan movie is just a woman in an elevator that gets stuck, slowly realizing she’s trapped in there with Gary Busey in a Don’t Fauci My Florida t-shirt.

Bumbling Senate Republicans keep right on fiddling with the forces that brought a bloodthirsty horde of hate to their very doorstep, for they are unteachable and blinded by greed.

You see Lindsey Graham’s flaccid pledge to defend Homophobe Chicken Incorporated’s honor, to the death if necessary, and you wanna grab him by the shoulders and shake him, demanding, “Do you want lynch mobs? Because this is how you get lynch mobs.”

Ted Cruz put that Ivy League education to use on a cheap, mega-racist switcheroo act, blaming Texas’ coronavirus surge not on the anti-vaxx propagandists who actually caused it, but on, you guessed it: illegal immigrants. Create problems with your own incompetence, blame ‘em on an otherized, indeed dehumanized minority group; you’ve mastered the Nazi playbook, Ted, congratulations. You’re like Luke Skywalker, only with a shitty beard and also evil.

Disgraced South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg made a huge bet that there’s absolutely zero chance that karma is real, accusing the very deer, excuse me, the very human being he killed in a hit and run of Suicidally Leaping in Front of His Vehicle, Actually…I dunno, I’ve never faced criminal charges, is there some specific level of brazen indecency that triggers automatic dismissal?

You know that skeevy fuck won’t even resign? Ravnsborg, Gaetz, Taylor Greene, Gosar, Hawley…all Republicans in good standing, but Jason Roe, the Michigan party official who refused to bend the knee to the Emperor of Hemorrhoids and his Big Honkin’ Lie, submitted to ritual excommunication, because honesty is heresy, you see.

Indicted Uber-Lackey Allen Weisselberg has resigned from his many posts within the Turdmaggot Organization, to spend more time with his delusions that his old boss will prove loyal. Don Jr. has allegedly taken over many of Weisselberg’s roles, which’ll be fine, he probably didn’t have any duties that couldn’t be carried out while snorting a trowelful of cocaine hourly.

You know you live in a sane, healthy democracy when you see “Reichstag” trending, and wonder somewhat irritably to yourself, “what, again?” Anyway, it turned out to be in reference to this story about the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs kinda sorta working out a plan to oppose an anticipated coup by the defeated incumbent, oh boy I bet that one’s not in the manual, huh, General Milley? I’m not sure how much I love feeling immense gratitude towards the perhaps too powerful men who cleared the relatively low ethical bar of “refused to facilitate the attempted overthrow of the United States Government by a known idiot,” but I also never anticipated liking so many of Bill Kristol’s tweets.

I’ll admit Ashli Babbitt’s MAGA martyr makeover has been a fascinating bit of world-building; watching the narrative take shape under the malevolently dexterous hands of this docile flock’s many sinister shepherds would be super fun on HBOMAX; here in real life, it’s a little bit more, oh, what’s the word…terrifying?

For example, it was recently decided, with Cult45’s customary complete lack of evidence of any sort, that the officer who shot Babbitt, whose name is being kept secret for obvious reasons coughcoughstochasticterrorism, is a Black man, o what a strange coincidence for this target of a white supremacist rage mob’s homicidal wrath. We’re just cut-and-pasting from the MAGA Scout’s Lynching Handbook at this point, aren’t we?

ANYWAY, Hairplug Himmler added his own nasty spin, fabricating a claim that the officer was, in fact, “head of security” for some nameless Democrat, and what a vicious little ad-lib that is. If you’ll pardon the improv term, that’s some restaurant quality Yes And. “Yeah, some Black guy who worked for….I dunno, maybe Pelosi, maybe Durbin, say, maybe YOUR Congressman…y’know what, you should pay that guy a little visit…”

He truly possesses a dark genius for inciting violent hate. Failed at everything he ever tried, from real estate to pants, but he turned out to have genuine talent in the field of Being American Hitler; shitty bit of luck that such a pitch-black soul landed in a billionaire’s kid, don’tcha think?

With his “some of the stars I produced are actually made of garbage” statement, the Velveeta Vulgarian wandered perilously close to self-awareness, for perhaps the first time in his misspent life. You’d think somebody who spends so much time with the likes of Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Seb Gorka would’ve stumbled across the phrase quite a while back.

The tag certainly fits Matt Gaetz, who apparently hired Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyer to help him out with the sex-trafficking allegations he faces, and boy howdy, this is a rough sentence to discover your name in the middle of, huh, Matthew? How’s life in the last act of GoodFellas, kid?

In contrast to this buffet overflowing with malice, madness, and poop, Democrats celebrated the arrival, in mailboxes across the nation, of their new Child Tax Credit, because we’re the ones that help people instead of giving them diseases. Not that such a joyous occasion stopped Dems from working on their $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, set to become one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in American history.

So the choice facing the electorate is between the crazed cultists demanding the right to die and kill, and the folks handing out money and vaccines. One must grudgingly confess one understands why voter suppression has become so important to these people.

Ok, that’s enough for one week. I gotta pitch the comic book one more time, cuz the Kickstarter launches THIS COMING TUESDAY. Marguerite vs. the Occupation is a nifty little tale of the French Resistance, I think you’ll really enjoy it. Read more about it here, and I’d be honored n’ thankful if you’d sign up on our prelaunch page.

For longtime fans of the blog, I’m offering a reward tier where YOU pick the entries in an all-new, post-Turd Reich ROGUE’S GALLERY on showercapblog.com! Check out the Bannon, Miller, & Gorka links above for examples. You want to see treacherous Congressdopes like Kevin McCarthy? Mendacious media monsters like Sean Hannity? Or regional culture warlords like DeSantis and Noem? You decide! Each entry will contain a graphic and essay in the Shower Cap house style! Tell Mom to buy ya ten!