Fellow frogs, I know it’s nice n’ cozy here in the boiling water, but do you ever hop out of the pot for a minute, just to take it all in? It happened gradually, day by day, but our status quo got all sorts of fucked up, didn’t it? 31 different flavors of batshit. Weren’t we gonna stop this shit from becoming normalized? 

Like, Donald Trump casually lobbed a death threat at Mitch McConnell, and we couldn’t be bothered to so much as yawn. Death threat wrapped in a racist insult of his wife, in fact, and if Yertle even responded publicly, I haven’t seen it.

Ho hum. This is just life now, I guess. The 45th President of the United States and overwhelming frontrunner for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2024 incites violence so frequently that it barely registers anymore. Just lumbers around his tacky-ass golf resort, stewing in resentment, occasionally recollecting the name of someone he’d like to see killed, and angrily mashing out a half-assed Will No One Rid Me Of This Troublesome Senate Minority Leader post on his failing social media site with those tiny, inadequate fingers of his. Very fun and normal.

Rick Scott, who is alive today solely because of the courage and sacrifice of the hundreds of Capitol Police officers who stood between him and the lynch mob the leader of his party unleashed last January 6th, could not bring himself to even lightly condemn this call to murder, feebly spinning it as merely a matter of an irascible old man’s penchant for teasing nicknames, which, in light of all the MAGA violence we’ve seen, and will surely continue to see in days to come, is absolutely fucking obscene.

“Hey, Senator, death threats sure are an unequivocal evil, to be condemned automatically, under all circumstances, amiright?” “Well now, slow down there, son, don’t put words in m’mouth!” Wait, what? When did the discourse take this merry turn? Did I miss a meeting?

Ted Cruz went a step further, lending the legitimacy and prestige of his office to one of Chaya Raichik’s vile “Libs of TikTok” dogpiles, you know, the ones that’ve led to all those death threats targeting children’s hospitals and doctors. Republicans’re gonna save a whole buncha money on polling and consultants once they realize MORE GAS FOR THE FIRE! MORE! is the only tactic they ever deploy anymore.

I guess I just miss the bipartisan consensus on the inherent undesirability of political violence. We should revisit that, y’know? Or we can just go on pretending that everything’s fine, because Susan Collins hasn’t made the QAnon Shaman her chief of staff…yet.

Incidentally, we see you slinking away, Ben Sasse. Hey, remember how you used to lecture the rest of us about your superior morals, and write whole books about your lofty principles, and then remember how you were tested, and how you failed, spectacularly and comprehensively, every single day of your life, for years? Hmmmmmmm? Well, I’ll remember for both of us.

In the devasting aftermath of Hurricane Ian, Ron DeSantis sprang into action like a man possessed, disrupting relief workers to stage a self-aggrandizing photo op, and railing madly against a pro-hurricane “national regime media” that apparently exists within the confines of his imagination, somewhere between the delusions of grandeur and the tentacle porn. I won’t bore you with sordid details about lives lost or property destroyed, god knows the Governor isn’t interested in any of that, but just on the level of theatre criticism, Operation: Make Ron-Ron Appear Presidential sustained heavy damage, though the Dukakis in Boots look is sure to resonate amongst the MAGA incel base.

Honestly, I can’t even keep up with all the Herschel Walker news anymore; the man is a goddamn whirlwind of hypocrisy, financing abortions and abandoning or abusing whatever kids slip through the cracks, yet still finding time for media appearances that make Tommy Tuberville look like Daniel Webster.   

Now, y’all just completed the grinding, decades-long process of stealing bodily autonomy rights from tens of millions of Americans because you say this shit is murder. The murder of an innocent child, your words, not mine. Your (incessantly-bleated) belief, not mine. So Herschel Walker is a murderer now. That’s how this works. He took out a hit on his own kid. Sent a jaunty little get well card, and went about his regular, daily desecration of every other value you bloviating assclowns profess to hold. Surely he cannot be permitted to hold public office now. Surely.

The actual response from the “religious” right has been a resounding LET’S GET THIS BABY-KILLER TO THE SENATE, of course. Such naked, seething will to power is more honest than Rick Scott’s befuddled stammering, I suppose, but must it be wed to radical kakistocracy as well?

Throughout their primaries, the standard seemed to be And the Shittiest Among Ye Shall Lead, so the field we’re left with is like a police lineup from a Law & Order: SVU episode about some serial clown rapist. Republican electoral politics in 2022 is a shower drain clogged with white nationalists, insurrectionists, and valor thieves.

And I would dearly love to believe that there are conservative voters in Pennsylvania who’re down with a buffoonishly out-of-touch telequack but not a buffoonishly out-of-touch telequack who tortures and kills dogs, but I fear the terms of the partisan disagreement over what constitutes fitness for office are somewhat broader at this moment in American history.

This rampaging toddlerwad nominated 299 election deniers. Two hundred and ninety-nine. If a political party ran 299 candidates who claimed that ramming half a box of frozen pizza rolls up your ass every Tuesday at 4:45 prevented colon cancer, you’d say they’d gone bonkers, but we’re supposed to accept zealous converts to the Church of Horse Dewormer as reasonable people with valid grievances, instead of what they are, which is manic assholes looking for any excuse to throw the next first punch.

Let’s be honest about the state of the debate, folks. We’re not squabbling over tax rates or environmental regulations right now; the GOP’s lone, momentary nod to anything resembling policy was a brief, off-key, karaoke rendition of a couple of old Newt Gingrich ditties. No, it’s far freakier shit we’re considering nowadays. America’s going through one of those Rule of Law or Nah? phases, and some of the boys she’s bringing home lately have me concerned.

Stop the Steal’s Ali Alexander can barely conceal his lust for violently enforced Christian fascism, whereas Daily Wire weirdo Matt Walsh seems more interested in impregnating 16-year-old girls, but the unifying theme seems to be furious creeps pushing everyone else around, and I certainly see what the furious creeps get out of it, I’m just not sure why they expect the rest of us to acquiesce.

Like, the defense in the January 6th Oath Keepers trial that got underway this week amounts to “so, we expected to receive a magical Go Apeshit, Boys! order from President Crotchrot, and proceeded accordingly, even in the absence of such an order,” which is pure, fascist Calvinball.

But that’s the demand MAGA makes of the world: license to lash out based on whatever dipshit delusion happens to seize hold of your broken brain. “You can’t make me take a vaccine, I decide what science is!” “I took those nuclear secrets because I decided they’re mine!” “I invaded Ukraine because I decided it’s mine!” “We get to violently overturn elections that don’t go our way because pizzagate Ashli Babbitt deep state Hunter Biden’s laptop fUrRY kIDs aRe SHiTtiNg iN bOXeS!!!!”

Society cannot function this way, people. Obviously. Obviously. Maybe if kids were actually shitting in boxes, some jarring corrections would indeed be required, but kids are not shitting in boxes, no matter what the Republican candidate for Minnesota Governor, Dr. (DOCTOR!) Scott Jensen says. And the 2020 election was not stolen. And no one is going to put fentanyl in your shitty kid’s Halloween sack. And sorry, Doug Mastriano, your crusade to rid schools of the scourge of pole dancing has never, for a single passing instant, been necessary.

Your problems don’t deserve solutions, because they’re not real. We can’t spend our precious time, energy, or resources dealing with the made-up shit you maniacs fling at the walls all day. We have enough problems here in the real world, perhaps the largest of which is the embarrassing, culture-wide tantrum you little turds insist upon subjecting the rest of us to, here in the otherwise placid Denny’s of life.

Reality’s been a problem for right-wing shitbirds all over the world. Putin’s losing territory on the ground in Ukraine quicker than he can annex it on paper, and now the bloodthirsty blogger class he cultivated has turned on him, because I guess they don’t read Frankenstein in Russian, either. Still, something about watching Vlad flounder seems to trigger MAGA’s instinctive loser-worship, because they’re circling the wagons around him like he paid to abort his kid or somethin’.

President Biden announced he would pardon a bunch of low-level marijuana offenders, and Tom Cotton got so sad at all the unnecessary suffering that’ll now be avoided that he had to head over to Dr. Oz’s place to torture puppies for a couple hours.

The Deposed Dotard is still hanging onto stolen classified documents, by the way. And he’s suing CNN, which I’m sure will go exactly as well as his previous legal escapades. I would love to’ve made hilarious jokes about these developments, but I plum ran out of time this week, Herschel ran me ragged.

Good lord. By Grabthar’s Hammer, I need a fucking beer.  Well, back into the pot, everybody. Stay safe out there…safe as you can, anyhow.