
Pigfucker Multipurpose Trump Tool
Devin “Pigfucker” Nunes was an early adopter of Donald Trump’s unique blend of authoritarianism and kakistocracy, and it’s not hard to understand why; it takes a whole lotta institutional white supremacy to keep men so maliciously mediocre in positions of power.

Der Postmeister Postmaster General
Donald Trump had a problem. A problem called “democracy.” See, he LIKED being President, (well, not the work part, but definitely charging the Secret Service to pee) but those rat-bastard Founding Fathers built all these dumb ol’ “elections” into their dumb ol’ “Constitution,” and smack dab in the middle of an economy you personally wrecked and a pandemic you disastrously mismanaged is nobody’s idea of a great time for a performance review.

Liar Tuck Middling Telefascist
To level with y’all up front, I think Tucker Carlson is the most dangerous man in America. He’s the mouth of American fascism, and Donald Trump’s unofficial Chief Disinformation Dispenser, and, ultimately, a manufacturer of brownshirts.

Reichskommissar Floridaman Death Cult Reality Show Competitor/Actual Fucking Governor
One of Trump’s earliest congressional taint remoras, Ron DeSantis rode a wave of I’m With Stupid first to the Florida GOP’s 2018 gubernatorial nomination, and then, because learning from mistakes is apparently for cucks, to a narrow general election victory.

Wrinkly Gamera Breaker of Senates
There is no greater proof that the Republican base has no goddamn sense than Mitch McConnell’s consistently dismal approval rating from voters of his own party; the man is absolute ghoul, yes, and certainly he projects little folksy warmth, but he puts Ws on the board. Big ones. More than anybody I’ve ever seen.

The Vainglorious MTG Actual Fucking Congresswoman, Heaven Help Us
Take an unusually weak mind, surgically remove evolution’s hard-won capacity to tell fact from fiction, fill the empty spaces with hate, and you’ve got Marjorie Taylor Greene. Drop that mind in the middle of the I-know-we’re-not-supposed-to-dismiss-MAGA-whites-as-racist-hillbillies-but-COME-ON shithole known as the Georgia 14th, and you’ve got the dumbest, most malicious member of the United States Congress, and ascendant American fascism’s loudest, vilest mouth.

Incesto, the Treasonous Clown Freelance Legal Idiot
When Rudy Giuliani, having just chugged a bottle of methamphetamine-laced NyQuil, stumbled onstage to deliver his apocalyptic sermon of fear at the 2016 Republican Nation Convention, you knew something was deeply fucked in this country.

NUMBER TWO
Vice-President
Mike Pence is the Patron Saint of Mediocre White Dudes, and the Roman God of Failing Upwards.
A Democrat in his youth, Pence, like many men of limited intelligence, turned to religious conservatism for the convenience of being able to end arguments by claiming God shares his every fear and prejudice, while forgiving his every shortcoming, how convenient.

POMPEY THE NOT GREAT
Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo is one of those performatively pious fake Christians who loves using his loudly-claimed-but-seldom-followed faith like a cudgel while ignoring every single word of the actual Bible, including “and” and “the.”

UNSEXY REXY
Secretary of State
Over the course of three decades, Rex Tillerson fucked, bribed, and murdered his way to the top of Exxon Mobil, like some sort of jowlsy Eva Peron.

BILIOUS BILL
Attorney General
William Barr actually taught me a valuable lesson. See, I didn’t look too closely at Bill when he was nominated to be Attorney General. After Jeff “Too Racist for the 80’s” Sessions and the masculine toilet guy, honestly, he looked like a nice, refreshing, safe, traditional Republican. An institutionalist who could bring a little much-needed stability.
And then he turned out to be a fascist, and one of the most dangerous enemies of democracy in American history. Whoops. My bad.

MNUCHBAG
Secretary of the Treasury
Steve Mnuchin, like his namesake, the Noise You Make When You’re Dry Heaving After Getting Food Poisoning From Eating Truck Stop Gas Station Roller Hot Pockets on a Road Trip, is deeply unpleasant, and may result in the involuntary voiding of foul-smelling bodily fluids.

THE GENERALS
Secretary of Defense
Chief of Staff
National Security Advisor
Holy shit, there are Generals all over the place these days, aren’t there?
Retired General James Mattis serves as Secretary of Defense. Retired General John Kelly ran Homeland Security for a bit, before becoming the Lead Executive Branch Babysitter, excuse me, Chief of Staff. H.R. McMaster’s the National Security Advisor, and hell, he’s still on active duty.

OL’ BEAUREGARD The President's Loyal Huntin' Dawg
Attorney General
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, third generation of his family to carry the name of a Confedarate piece of trash and also a second Confederate piece of trash, is living his dream. As Velveeta Goebbels’ Attorney General, he’s turning back the clock to a time when women and minorities knew their place, and mediocre white dudes like himself got to run everything, even if they weren’t especially bright.

ZINKE BOOTZ
Ryan Zinke is like if the crappiest robot in Westworld escaped and jumped into conservative politics. He’s such a cartoon cowboy, I bet his right boot says “Andy” on the bottom.

WIL-BUR, THE GNOME KING
Secretary of Commerce
When a witch’s curse transformed his master into a Beast and his fellow servants into household objects, Wilbur Ross became a decorative garden gnome. Unlike the rest of his compatriots, he ventured out into the world to make his fortune in the realm of shady international finance and money laundering, and when True Love’s Kiss lifted the curse, Wilbur was too far away for the enchantment to reverse, and thus he remains trapped in gnome form forever.

PLAGUEMASTER T
Secretary of Health and Human Services
If the Hippocratic Oath is binding in any sort of spiritual sense, Tom Price is royally fucked, y’all. There is some straight Dante shit awaitin’ him in the afterlife.

DOCTOR NAPTIME
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Dr. Ben Carson is only in politics because he was rude President Obama to his face. At the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast, a traditionally non-political event, Dr. Ben, having been invited as the keynote speaker, decided to use his time to shit on the President and his policies.

THE DEVOSTATOR
Secretary of Education
Betsy DeVos is what happens when bored white ladies have enough money to really fuck shit up. Turns out, if you’re born rich and marry richer, you don’t have to settle for a book club, you can buy yourself a whole cabinet department!

SCOTTY 2 HAUGHTY
Administrator of the EPA
Scott Pruitt, like a lot of boys his age, grew up watching Captain Planet cartoons. Unlike most boys his age, he decided that the various sludge-smog-and-toxic-waste-slinging villains were the role models for him.
Ok, fine. Pruitt is ten years too old to have grown up on Captain Planet, but fuck you, that’s a good opening paragraph. Make your own fucking website, you don’t like it.

PUBIS
Chief of Staff
Nobody wants to be Reince Priebus when they grow up. He’s just so immediately recognizable as a weaselly little tapeworm of a man, y’know?
Reince Priebus is the sort of person who would be played by Brad Dourif in a film.

DARTH WINO
Chief Strategist
Steve Bannon played Bob Ewell in a high school production of To Kill a Mockingbird, and liked it so much he decided to stay in the character for the rest of his life.
A self-described Leninist, and an outspoken populist*, Bannon wants to kidney-punch the administrative state, give it a wedgie, and steal its lunch money.

JAR-JAR
Senior Advisor/Son-in-Law
Jared Kushner was born on third base and thinks he invented baseball.
Jared’s dad, Charles Kushner, went to jail for tax evasion, illegal campaign donations, and, ahem, “witness tampering,” by which I mean he set his brother-in-law up with a hooker (not, I’m sad to report, of the Pissing Russian variety) and recorded their genital-smushing in order to blackmail him.

PRINCESS IVANKA
Daddy’s Little Girl
Ivanka Trump is what happens when you cross Gwyneth Paltrow with Mussolini’s dumbest, laziest aide-de-camp. Watching her try to sell her father’s fascism as some sort of pro-woman lifestyle brand, marketed in the sickliest imaginable shade of pink, has been one of the most bizarre subplots of this nightmare we can’t seem to pinch ourselves out of.

THE EMPRESS MALARIA
First Lady
So, while Melania Trump is perhaps not as shitty as many of the crooks, Nazis, and Nazi crooks who inhabit her dirtbag husband’s world, she manages to impressively shitty in her own right.

HEY, KELLYANNE!
Senior Counsel
Hey, Kellyaaaaaaaaaaaanne!
Hey, Kellyaaaaaaaaaaaanne!
When you worked for Akin, things weren’t simple
Cuz he got caught on tape
With legitimate rape

4-HEDD THE SHITTY WHITE GUY FROM BEYOND THE STARS
Senior Advisor for Policy
Why is it always the shittiest imaginable white dudes who turn out to be white supremacists?
Stephen Miller, who started balding eleven seconds after his conception, has by all accounts been a sack of monkey shit pretty much every single minute of his life.

THE MOOCH
Director of Communications
Oh wow, this new Communications Director looks like a real character, huh?
Where to begin? Ok, Anthony Scaramucci first came to –
Wait, what? Really?

KKKRIS KKKOBACH
White Supremacist Multi-Tool
Kris Kobach is like the protagonist of the white supremacist version of one of those Disney movies where a kid learns to chase his dreams, no matter how big. The kid gets tired of the monotonous grind of burning crosses on just one lawn at a time, and dreams of burning a cross big enough for the whole dang country!
Maybe he has a talking/singing Confederate flag for a sidekick. Named “Bedford.”

“DOC” GORKA
Roving Freelance Fascist
As seen in the famed documentary RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, when the Ark of the Covenant was opened on an uncharted island north of Crete, the burning light that issued thereof reduced the Nazi soldiers present to piles of ash and molten flesh. In time, the rains washed the fascist bio-goo into the island’s sewage system, where it mixed with the shit and piss and used tampons and such, and in time it congealed, took the shape of a man (albeit an unattractive one), slapped on a pair of glasses, and Sebastian Gorka was formed.
We Know How to Beat COVID, and COVID Still Outsmarted Us: Yet Another Week in Hell
Three years of resisting has toughened you up, hasn’t it? After impeachment and COVID and the Bowling Green Massacre, surely you can handle anything. So when you hear about the massive dust plume from the Sahara Desert rolling over the United States, you just throw up your middle fingers, shout “You call that news? COME AT ME, PLUME!” and wait for Don Lemon to get to the good stuff.
Seriously…giant dust cloud? Are you kidding me? An hour of CNN is like a production of The Grapes of Wrath set inside a live volcano. Fuck.
You’d think Government Cheese Goebbels would’ve had his fill of public humiliation after the Million Imaginary Friend March in Tulsa, but he came back to the buffet for seconds with Tuesday’s GOP primaries. In North Carolina, the Turdworm-endorsed candidate lost to a 24-year-old by 30 points, while in Kentucky, Littlefinger’s attempt to excommunicate Rep. Thomas Massie from Congress actually went even worse. Turns out catastrophic, economy-demolishing mismanagement of a deadly pandemic is bad for the ol’ brand, who’da guessed?
Getting back to Tulsa real quick, numerous Shart Campaign staffers who worked the event have now tested positive for COVID-19, and dozens of Secret Service agents have been forced to quarantine in the aftermath of Donnie Two-Scoops’ failed ego trip. Wow, how awesome is that gig these days? “Yeah, I’m supposed to take a bullet for this walking buttpimple who’s trying to destroy everything I’ve ever loved about my country, but hey, at least he exposed me to a disease that may kill me or damage my body for the rest of my life.”
Louie Gohmert successfully defended his Dumbest Man in Congress title, disrupting a House Judiciary hearing by repeatedly banging his ring on the table, like some sort of bumpkin Khrushchev. Naturally, Louie’s petulant little stunt made headlines, drawing massive amounts of attention to the very witness statements he was trying to drown out, which a man with a functioning brain would’ve realized; such considerations don’t seem to occur to the voters of the Texas 1st, however.
One of Sharty McFly’s least qualified judicial appointees (and shudder at that assessment for a moment) ordered Judge Emmet G. Sullivan to dismiss the case against Mike “the Turkish Delight” Flynn, even though everybody agrees Flynn did what he’s accused of, including Flynn himself, who confessed. Twice. There’s some hope for further review, but you have to admit, being able to select federal judges has turned out to be quite a boon for the Trump family crime syndicate.
Senate Democrats blocked Republicans’ bullshit “We’ve Thought About Police Reform and Decided Things’re Pretty Much Fine” bill, while House Dems managed to round up bipartisan support for their own “Hey, How ‘Bout We Actually Do Something About This Shit” version. Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell* experienced a wheezing, dusty turtlegasm for the first time in decades, as his sinister partnership with Baron Golfin von Fatfuk yielded its 200th federal judicial confirmation, and your 200th reason to fart on any smug third party voters you may come across.
Devin Nunes remains winless in the World Cow-Suing Federation, with a judge ruling he can neither sue Twitter nor force it to reveal to him the names behind anonymous bovine accounts dedicated to the righteous cause of mocking his cheap, sweaty, wannabe-fascist ass. I confess, this humiliation of one of Tangerine Idi Amin’s wormiest thugs recharges my batteries with the schadenfreude I need to get through my fucking day. I never said I was nice.
So, we know how to contain COVID-19. It’s been figured out. It’s not a fucking secret. It’s right here on the internet, you don’t even need to identify which photographs contain palm trees or streetlights to unlock it, yea, even bots are free to partake of this UNIVERSALLY KNOWN INFORMATION. Stay home when you can. Social distancing otherwise. Wear a fucking mask. Easy. Also, Peasy.
And yet, this fucking disease is treating the United States like we’re the Washington Generals. We just experienced the single-day record for newly-reported cases, MONTHS after we figured out how to contain the little bastard. Florida alone reported almost nine thousand cases today. And again, we know what to do, we’re just not doing it. It’s like the fire department showing up to a burning building and trying to extinguish the blaze by reciting Coleridge at it, WHAT THE LIVING FUCK DID YOU IMAGINE WOULD HAPPEN?
See, now it’s official: watching Sean Hannity can kill you. Not-even-remotely-surprising new studies connect the consumption of wingnut disinformation with increased coronavirus spread, which is measurable now because declaring your tribal allegiance to Trumpism literally means endangering your own life by engaging in medically unsafe behavior. Chuck frickin’ Todd couldn’t both-sides this shit. I mean, we’ve got our share of asshole pundits on the left, but nobody has to conduct formal research into whether exposing oneself to Bill Maher’s insufferable self-regard shortens one’s lifespan.
They’re having so much fun with their coronavirus outbreak down in Arizona that Scottsdale Republican Counciljag Guy Phillips decided he was just the wrinkly old white dude to invoke George Floyd, whining “I can’t breathe” from behind a mask, which he then theatrically removed, to the applause of the assembled shitsacks. Yes Guy, public health officials and basic human decency are essentially crushing your throat for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in asking you to wear a tiny piece of cloth over your face to help slow the spread of a disease that’s killed 127,000 of your countrymen. Incidentally, if you feel oppressed by being asked to do such a small, simple thing for your community, you’re broken. You’re a failed human. Please lock yourself indoors until it’s time for reincarnation.
And STILL the plan, at least as far as Team Treasonweasel is concerned, is to act as though things are not only hunky, but also dory. These fucks are actually shutting down testing sites, even as they lose control of the virus’ spread. I’ve written about this garbage for years now, I am one thoroughly-boiled frog, okay, but I simply cannot wrap my head around the horror of the lethal collision of Hairplug Himmler’s re-election strategy with his criminally negligent coronavirus response; he really and truly, in real fucking life, is pursuing a strategy of denying reality and undermining truthful reporting, in order to project a deadly facsimile of normalcy, to lure folks into the lion’s den to be devoured by an economy rigged to benefit only his billionaire buddies. (Will that fit on a ball cap, I wonder?)
Oh, and the Die Plebs Die Administration decided to use some of the time they aren’t spending combatting the pandemic to petition the Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare, because even with the current, almost-unfathomable COVID numbers, we just aren’t dying off quickly enough for these jerks. And of course, they’ll spin right around and insist they’ll always take care of folks with pre-existing conditions, despite their well-documented attempt to pass a bill that destroyed those very protections, famously thwarted by a single, now-deceased thumb. The Republican electoral strategy hinges largely on tricking people into believing they’re just mean Democrats.
Former Republican Presidential Candidate/Ted Cruz’s Running Mate for the Length of a Ramones Song Carly Fiorina told the world she’s voting for Smilin’ Joe Biden, SEE LISA MURKOWSKI, THAT WASN’T HARD AT ALL. Anyway, welcome to the Resistance, Carly…I guess. The donuts and coffee are really more for like, phone-bankers and door-knockers, so if you wanted to just write a check and leave, that’d be fine.
Tom Cotton imagines America listened to his blithering, hateful, bad-faith rant against D.C. statehood and heard the high-faultin’, mega-principled, finely-tuned rhetoric of a modern-day Cicero, instead of a third-rate Proud Boy Den Mother snarling ONLY WHITE FOLKS GET SENATORS, because Tom Cotton is right around 2% as smart as Tom Cotton thinks he is. He also probably imagines the bit where he explained why the (white) residents of Wyoming are super great Real Americans™️ while the (black) residents of Washington, D.C. are…something else, something lesser, was a deftly subtle dog whistle that nobody picked up on.
But hey, kudos to House Dems for passing that D.C. statehood bill! It’s not going anywhere right now, but come Biden Time? Different animal. Anyway, the D.C. statehood train is a train you should get on. The food in the dining car is excellent, and the implications for democracy are even better.
For the second time in a week, courts refused to halt the publication of a book on the dubious legal grounds that it would embarrass the Crook Family Robinshart so piss on the first amendment, piss on it with Russian hookers. Technically it was Fat Q*Bert’s brother who got his ass beat in court this time, but I think we’re still allowed to point and laugh. And unlike the tawdry tome penned by the Genocidal Mustache Symbiotically Attached to John Bolton’s Upper lip, we might actually buy Mary Trump’s book.
Circus Peanut Sydney Greenstreet himself took yet another judicial jackhammer to the scrotum, when a federal appeals court panel reminded him that he’s not allowed to raid congressionally-appropriated military funds at will to pay for his Big Dumb Wall. Try Mexico again, assclown…you’ll probably have to call though, since I doubt they’ll permit travel from our COVID-invested shithole country.
ANYWAY, in other news, it turns out a Russian military intelligence unit did this fun little thing where they paid bounties to Afghan militants to kill American troops.
Hoo boy.
Now, we the public are just finding out about this shit today, but military intelligence has known for months, and President Crotchrot himself was briefed in March. Another fun thing here is how, under normal circumstances, you’d expect the Commander in Chief to do something to protect or avenge our fighting forces, but after 3 years of the Turd Reich, nobody even considers that possibility because the whole world understands the American President is Putin’s personal sock puppet. COOL.
(Need I even mention that Vlad would have been too terrified of Hillary Clinton to pull anything like that shit?)
And that’s the news from, again, and I cannot stress this enough…real life. Do you understand why I drink? Stay away from the ‘rona, my friends. I’ll see you next week. I hope.
*Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell sounds like a shitty sitcom collaboration between C-SPAN and Nick at Nite, doesn’t it?
“Hope and prayers” was literally all Pence had today for a question posed to him during the press briefing as to a plan for minimizing the death toll. We’re paying for this in dollars, in world status, in lives……………. Drink worthy!
I’ve been kicked off FB. I’ve been kicked off Twitter. Usually I would post your blog to both my accounts but alas, I am unable. I love your blog. It perfectly matches my own rage. Please don’t stop.
Not only did asshat KNOW about the Russian spy thing, he tried to bring Putin to this year’s G-7! The other members vetoed it! LOL
If this whole pile of crap wasn’t so serious, it would be frickin’ hilarious!
Thank, again, Cap!
Love the “deftly subtle dog whistle nobody picked up on.” Well said!
Thanks, Cap. Enjoy the weekend and your beer!
Though I’ve read your nickname for Mike Flynn, (Mike “the Turkish Delight” Flynn), a million times I crack up every time. It’s one of my faves.
Republicans could help the world’s environment with one simple task – all of them should immediately crawl into a compost maker and wait for nature to take its course. Something useful would one day result. Does anyone now doubt that drumpf is following Putin’s orders to destroy America? (Other than drumpf-worshippers, those of a sub-80 IQ and supporters of Geoffrey Dahmer, that is).
“Chuck frickin’ Todd couldn’t both-sides this shit.” But Chuckie and Maggie H. and the other tee vee enablers, contribute to the shit of the 125K body count. They help the Maggot Crime Syndicate conceal Plague Corruption that also kills doctors and nurses.
ProPublica has followed the continuing saga of Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Zach Fuentes. Zach probably received secret briefings about the oncoming Plague. Zach used his connections to become a Plague Profiteer. After leaving the White House Zach quickly made a company to supply flawed masks to IHS, the Indian Health Service. His contract was for three or four million dollars to supply a million KN95 Chinese masks that cost a dollar each. Zach charged more than $3 for flawed masks.
Supplying fake protective medical supplies for doctors and nurses during an epidemic, to hospitals treating native Americans, does make Zach a hero to Maggots everywhere. Zach still wants his millions of dollars from IHS of course. But he is just a small time Plague Grifter. A hospital stay caused by this deadly virus, can cost a million dollars. Our privatized medical care makes a “killing” on every COVID-19 hospitalization.
The plot thickens as Zach had to use a Chinese company, CCTC Service Inc. to provide the KN95 masks. CCTC is a fake company with a fake Delaware address and a fake phone number. That is enough for the FDA to declare there is “probable cause to believe CCTC is a fictitious corporation.” So Zach used a fictitious company, for his fraud. Apparently he is just one of many fraudsters using CCTC. “The U.S.-based agent originally listed for two of the Chinese companies from which Fuentes procured masks, CCTC Service Inc., is named as the representative for nearly 1,600 devices listed with the FDA this year.”
The mysterious “agent” CCTC does seem to continue to operate in the US. Does that mean, besides Zach, there are 1599 other maggot murderers using an epidemic, to make a profit as they kill more of us?
Whoo hoo, damn Cap I loved this chronicle cuz it filled me with the righteous anger that was sitting right below the surface of my skull. I hate these motherfuckers. I feel like performing a witch’s spell to send them all straight to hell. And for the asswipes that are profiting off of dead Americans to reach another circle of hell especially for shits like these to not only be roasted in a hell forever but for them to also condemn their families for generations to the absolute cold of the outer limits of the galaxy for ever and ever. And add anybody to that for trying to tank healthcare in the middle of a pandemic. Then the drag-his-ass-cheeks-over-the-carpet president who lies every time his lungs expand should eat his own shit stained undies that have been boiled in piss and spit on by the staff he treats like garbage.
But, you know, that isn’t very nice. But I don’t care. The whole fucking bunch are diseased and have forgotten everything about the offices that they hold and the Constitution and the people they are supposed to work for and keep safe.
I absolutely love the “Turd Reich” too…..brilliant !
Forecast for the tweets of prez treasonous pervert any time soon: “The reports of Russia paying bounties to Afghans to kill Americans was made to President Obama, not me and he’s the one who failed to act.” Drumpf-worshippers everywhere will believe this.
The “Turd Reich.” Is this new? Cap, you inventive wordmonger, you caught me offguard but grateful. I plan to steal that.
Attached is my recent Letter to Editor for a small paper in Fayetteville Arkansas
Not sure if it’ll be published. Use anything you care to. Hope the musical links will give some readers smiles.
(Obviously I couldn’t use expletives as you do so skillfully.)
Billions of dollars and millions of lives were lost in the WWII effort from 1940 to 1945 to defeat fascism, a form of political cancer that turns democratic governments into murderous autocracies. Fascism comes in on little rat feet (apology to Mr. Sandberg) but unlike fog it won’t move on naturally.
Fascism, like cellular cancer, results from corruption of the laws and cultural norms just as the corruption of DNA in a single cell in your body may explode into a deadly tumor if antibodies fail to stop it.
The current US fascistic cancer is stage-4 since our antibodies (FBI, IRS, DOJ-IG, SDNY, and House Democratic oversight) have been criminalized by Trump’s lickspittle senators, and an Opus-Dei Attorney-General, William Barr, whose writings show his ideals for governance resemble the Spanish Inquisition.
To cure this diseased state (and Covid-19) we must see how we got it by clarifying differences between reasonable humans and unreasonable ones. Most important: How do we get more of the reasonable ones?
Spoiler alert: It involves education: The real stuff, not Trump U or DeVos Bible School for The Rapture.
First a full disclosure: I am the sole heir of great-grand-parents Zalmon Richards and Mary Frances Mather a family line that combines some of the most reasonable and some of most unreasonable people in US history. Zalmon was an esteemed educator and founding president of National Teachers Assoc. (now NEA) and multiple colleges. Zalmon was a graduate of Williams College as was his only son and my grandfather, George Mather Richards, a brilliant writer/illustrator of US history. His mother Mary was also a fine teacher but had an unreasonable uncle, Cotton Mather, who politicized witchcraft in order to murder Quakers.
So, I know a thing or two ‘cause I’ve seen a thing or two. But, by siding with reason, I became the first theorist in Arkansas to gain American Physical Society DAMOP fellowship for new theory high quantum atoms and molecules. APS takes reason very seriously. And, no, this thing called science is not a hoax!
It helps to see how reason-based discovery of knowledge, starting in the Enlightenment period following the Middle Ages, led Thomas Paine and others to begin the “American Experiment” that overthrew autocracy. The Key was education by the Seven Liberal Arts: The Trivium: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, and The Quadrivium: Algebra, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music. These lib-arts grew into countless ways to reason and invent. So we live in AC comfort traveling by GPS while listening by cell-phone to music of centuries past(or gravity waves from black holes!) “Liberal” means liberation from superstition, illness, poverty, and slavery that liberal democracies promise. But now we see that for too many people those promises have seemed incomplete, too long coming, and too difficult to keep.
And, that’s the catch! Developing reason is difficult. Homo Sapiens (The naked ape.) is the only animal with peculiar lobes that (after 10-30 years of education) might actually perform useful reasoning. At first a child uses its rat-and-lizard-brain (mammalian and reptilian lobes of our lower limbic system inherited from evolutionary ancestors) to make its heart beat and organs function. Most animals become functional just 30 or so minutes after birth, but a functional human takes 30 years (plus 6 more to seek presidency.)
In short: We humans are all born fascists.
Animals (or humans lacking education) can be very clever (Brits say, “Clever-by-half”). But without serious education, reason is likely to be corrupted. Then Seven Liberal Arts default to The Seven Deadly Sins consisting of an animal-like Quadrivium (Greed, Envy, Lust, Gluttony) leading to the Trivium (Pride, Wrath, Sloth). Success by quadrivium may lead briefly to Pride but inevitably to Wrath (anger) and Sloth (depression) as inevitable cultural corruption ensues.
Thomas Jefferson noted that a population so lacking education will at some point become ungovernable. Domination by lower limbic rat or reptile brains causes child-like animal behavior. Just as animals form herds and packs with a single leader quickly chosen, so do brat-brained human cults pick out a single “Dear-Leader” for a fascist autocracy. Out the window go reason, grammar, logic, science and laws. (“Libtard” stuff) In come greed, envy, lust, etc. in the current US brat-rule by chaos, disease and murder. Welcome to our reenactment of the “Lord of the Flies” by Nobelist author William Golding.
The “American experiment” built laws based on logic and evidence-based reason starting with simple Golden Rule logic: I like fair treatment, you are a similar being, ergo, you must be teated similarly. But, reason may be corrupted if a lower limbic rat-brain screams, “Aaa-aack! Wrong color! Mistreat! Kill!” Racism or slavery is animal-like response and unreasonable as well as horrifically unsustainable. Does “America Great Again” mean antebellum plantations with well regulated 2nd-amendment slave patrols? Quite likely, given that Trump’s dear father was arrested at a DC Klan rally wearing a cone shaped hood over a two-dollar nightie.
Lower-limbic-dominance is characterized by vituperative hatred of reason, truth, or evidence-based logic. Example: Martin Luther reacts to Copernican reason and evidence that Earth isn’t center of universe by writing, “DieVerfluchteHureVernunft!” (“That damned whore, Reason!” in Lies of Jews (1433)) So goes a fierce inter-cranial Battle-of-the-Bulge known as cognitive dissonance wherein deep seated beliefs run into stark realities. If the latter are rejected the former take hold as “alternative facts” or “truthiness.”
Fascist hatred of logic and science includes hatred of liberal democratic law. Fascists use law as a weapon to punish reasonable “straight-arrows” while pardoning their corrupt partners in crime. So now we live in an execrable Late-Bully-Roman-Empire of TrumpenBarr after rat-brain dominated senators behaved like brat-brained brats in Trump’s impeachment trial in order to hide damning evidence of his criminality.
Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton seems dominated by even lower-limbic reptile-brains (of a Cottonmouth). His venomous NYTimes article led to an op-ed revolt and a resignation. His claim that BLM protestors be given “no quarter” by the US 101st Airborne Division is stunningly dangerous. So, suppose 101st flies in and mows down hundreds. What then? Hose off the blood and extract gold fillings?
It’s still not too late to stop such Neo-Nazism. Just Vote-Him-Away! That’s in a Roy-Zimmerman online choral piece “The Liar Tweets Tonight.” Sometimes the 7th Liberal Art (Music) beats prose. If you’re reasonable it will give you a smile. So will “Wasting Away in Mara-lago-ville” by Don Caron and “Cheeto-Christ Stupid Czar” by Randy Rainbow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkU1ob_lHCw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iryL4n07790
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW2SEpWWqXM
Bill Harter
wh*****@ua**.edu