Hard to believe that just one short year ago, the President of the United States stood amidst the wreckage of his catastrophic pandemic mismanagement, corpses piling higher by the hour, and told us everything would be okay if we all just injected a little bleach into our bodies. 74 million people voted to keep that guy in power. Sleep tight.

There’s nothing more fascinating (or surprising) to discover than a Line Too Vile For Even the Post-Trump GOP to Cross. ‘Tis a rare beast, as the last few years have demonstrated, but I guess the Fuck It We’re Just Nazis Now Caucus proposed by Paul “the Mengele of Dentists” Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Guam was an ivory bridge too far, somehow. Ken freakin’ Buck, after everything he’s silently permitted and even vocally supported, said NO THAT SHIT’S TOO RACIST, and like, ok, thanks, but don’t you just want to hand Ken a bright red marker and ask him to draw out precisely where he imagines this line is? That’s a gerrymander, right there; NC-12 ain’t shit.

How much fuckin’ money is there in the pillows-marketed-via-tribal-hatred game, anyway? Don’t get me wrong, Mike Lindell’s ongoing meltdown is the best show on television, (robbed at the Golden Globes, if you ask me) but between funding Tucker Carlson’s White Power Hour and his very own laughingstock of a social media network, (kindly refrain from taking my deranged, white supremacist god’s name in vain while you’re inciting violence by spreading fascist disinformation, pleez) there can’t be much cash left in the ol’ MyMattress. Shit, maybe he’s trying to burn through his whole fortune so there’s nothing left for the voting machine companies to take.

COVID-19 damn near pried Ted “Pandemic Denier Because Of Course He Is” Nugent’s flaccid, dusty wee-wee out of his cold, dead hands, that was somethin’. Hey, fuck that guy. Moving on:

You can tell a lot about a political party by the problems it identifies as worth solving. Take us, for example, the Biden-era Democrats: we’re not only finally getting the goddamn pandemic under control, but fighting to reduce racial and economic inequality, modernizing infrastructure and creating jobs doing it, taking on climate change and the gun violence epidemic and oh yeah, working to grant long-overdue congressional representation to the American taxpayers in Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, in the boiling pits of raw sewage across the aisle, priorities are a wee bit different. Republicans look out upon the nation they’ve failed so disastrously, and say to themselves, “Y’know who gets a raw deal? Folks who drive automobiles into crowds of peaceful protesters, that’s who!” And so, from Oklahoma to Ron “Fascism Sure is Fun When You’re in Charge” DeSantis’ Florida, state-level wingnuts are passing laws granting immunity to people who RUN OVER HUMAN BEINGS WITH THEIR FUCKING CAR, amidst wider crackdowns on First Amendment rights. For those keeping score at home, vehicular homicide should be legal; Black folks voting shouldn’t.

Between this crap and stand-your-ground laws, notice how conservatives keep hollowing out these special situations where (rich, white) people are legally allowed to commit murder? No wonder they’re mad about the Chauvin verdict.

Speaking of…so, the jury in the Derek Chauvin trial swiftly arrived at the only verdict possible when you’ve got a VIDEO RECORDING of the defendant doing exactly what he’s accused of. I mean, and obviously you don’t need me to tell you this, that video is absolutely fucking undeniable. The whole world has seen it. It is a recording of a deeply disturbed man deliberately crushing the life out of a human being and reveling in his power to do so.

We’re so far beyond reasonable doubt here that reasonable doubt seems like an awkward college goth phase where you painted your nails black and pretended to like Sisters of Mercy. Derek Chauvin is precisely the sort of person society needs to be protected from. And there is no sane way to rationalize his behavior.

But lucky us, we share our country with the largest, dumbest, craziest, shittiest cult in human history, so not only did we quickly encounter that insane rationalization, but we got to watch as it spread like wildfire through the right-wing disinformation ecosystem until it was adopted as gospel by all the dutiful drones who don’t even ask for a spoonful of sugar anymore before swallowing their daily allotment of cow excrement.

Near as I can figure it, and bear with me cuz this is real fuckin’ dumb, the idea is that Chauvin was only convicted because the jury was afraid that if they let him off, Maxine Waters would unleash her legions of antifa/BLM MegaNinjaCyberCommandos to wipe whiteness from the face of the earth for all time, leaving nary an Anne Geddes book behind to bear witness.

Got that? Not “indisputable, indeed inescapable proof everyone has seen with their own two fucking eyes,” but “fear of Maxine Waters.”

See, Waters suggested that protesters would need to be “more confrontational” if the system turned out to be okay with agents of the state murdering minorities in cold blood in broad daylight. And the folks who’ve spent the last few years doing everything in their power to support and enable a pants-shitting nitwit game show host who fancied himself a führer as he incited multiple acts of white supremacist terrorism decided it would be fun n’ profitable to pretend Auntie Maxine was calling for violence.

Ridiculous, right? Sure. But remember, we’re already dealing with people that think convicting Chauvin, aka The Murderer in That Murder Video, was a miscarriage of justice. We’re talking about the Brainwash Me Harder Daddy Trumpist Republican base, which has yet to encounter a lie too big to blindly accept.

Is there any better villain for these losers than Maxine Waters, a seriously powerful, ferociously intelligent Black woman who’s hardly shy about putting subpar white boys like Gym Jordan in their place*? You can see ‘em kinda perk up whenever she cycles back into the Two Minutes Hate, can’t you?

In the way pop musicians don’t feel like they’ve truly made it until they’ve earned a “Weird Al” Yankovic parody, no lie is truly Big until Tucker Carlson vomits it out from his contemptible platform. Unsurprisingly, Fish Stix Hitler is all over this one, because, and forgive me for cutting straight to the subtext, he speaks to, and for, an audience that understands exactly what Chauvin did…and likes it. Wants to see more of it. That’s what the most-watched cable “news” show in America is all about, y’see: normalizing violence as a tool to preserve white supremacy**.

Preposterous as all this is, let it never be said these bastards don’t commit to a bit. The very same asshats who riled up the January 6th lynch mob and voted to give in to its demands actually had the gall to attempt to censure Maxine Waters in the House, based on this flimsy crap. This is what Republican politics is now: tacky, nihilistic propaganda theatre designed to keep stupid white folks perpetually misinformed and enraged. What zany fascist antics will Kevin McCarthy’s feral caucus come up with next? Tune in to see if American democracy survives!

Speaking of the great debate of our time (Institutional White Supremacy or Nah?) the battle over voting rights spilled into a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, pitting Foghorn Dipshit, excuse me, “Senator John Kennedy” against Stacey Abrams, GUESS WHO WON? These dolts spend so much time snug within their media bubble, they truly can no longer even comprehend what the real word actually looks like, here outside Rupert Murdoch’s colon.

Semi-Sentient Truck Stop Restroom Wall Vending Machine Condom Rick Scott has begun making little yipping noises about refusing to raise the debt ceiling without dollar-for-dollar spending cuts, because malicious, Medicare-defrauding oligarchs get to take the global economy hostage in this, our healthy, functioning democracy.

The Senate passed a bill designed to combat the recent surge in anti-AAPI hate crimes, 94-1. The lone dissenter was, of course, Josh “Someday My Reich Will Come” Hawley, who now faces an agonizing, years-long wait for the moment he gets to use this vote to call one of his colleagues “race traitor” from a presidential debate stage.

Ron Johnson opposes the “big push” to get everyone vaccinated, finding it “highly suspicious” that folks’re trying to actually end the goddamn pandemic, because the last 13 months have been so fucking delightful, you see. Personally, I believe a U.S. Senator should represent the people of their state, and not the extremely contagious disease killing said people, but then, I am a bleeding heart libtard cuck.

…and a bleeding heart libtard cuck that really needs beer now. Stay safe out there, my friends, keep the vaccines flowing like wine, and be on the lookout, there may just be a new offering from Resistance Comics on the horizon…

* Most assuredly Gymbo’s kink, it turns out.

** I was gonna say “sleep tight,” but I already used that one. I really do hope you’re sleeping well, though.