By Barbar Kruger (Art Institute) |
Not the crime against him, terrible though it is. David DePape, a man apparently deranged by years of drugs and Republican demonization of Nancy Pelosi, is accused of breaking into her home in San Francisco last Friday, shouting “Where’s Nancy?” — the same words used by the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
In the federal complaint, DePape is quoted saying he was there to break her kneecaps. She was away, so he had to settle with shattering her 82-year-old husband’s skull with a hammer.
Awful. But that isn’t the haunting part. The haunting part is the reaction after. The gales of GOP laughter, mingled with the lies they immediately, reflexively formed to shrug off responsibility for crime. They imagined the home invasion a hookup gone bad; it is San Francisco, after all, wink wink. Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, used his $44 billion megaphone to magnify that lie.
None of this is new. The GOP has settled into a kind of lurid, unashamed performative cruelty. Yet this reaction to the attack against an elderly man in his home adds a new dimension of true horror to their mockery. Nobody thought of Donald Trump Jr. as anything but a leering, entitled idiot. But to see him tweeting photos of hammers, joined in by his father’s typical gauzy speculation about the reality of various slurs and frauds. It was disgusting in a fresh way. And given the six years of moral collapse this country has been experiencing under the grotesque mass of ethical rot represented by Trump and his imitators, that’s really saying something.
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Keep up the great work. Hopefully we still have a free press after the 2024 election.
ReplyDeleteWhat a travesty.
ReplyDeleteGoing on seven-and-a-half years since the collapse began, Mr. S. On Tuesday, June 16, 2015, Orange Julius strolled down those steps and the shit hit the fan. As a liberal Jewish geezer, I haven't a prayer. Neither does America. When the real pogroms finally begin, I hope I get the opportunity to off a few of them, before they finally get me.
ReplyDeleteYes, that old 2nd amendment cuts both ways.
DeleteIf Desantis wins he's already made it difficult to protest in Florida. He most certainly would extend that to the national level.
ReplyDeleteFlorida newspapers are already shying away from criticizing him, fearing they will lose subscribers. The papers that aren't afraid can't get Republicans to comment on decisions they've made.
This guy who runs on a the slogan "Keep Florida Free" has already taken away many freedoms from Floridians and his followers still don't get it.
My first post to any web site was a correction to a claim about Hilary Clintons commodity trading. My seven years at CME made me expert enough to join the conversation. I was immediately vilified, called a liar and worse by that community and summarily dismissed from my new membership. That Blog called itself Free Republic. The Powell/Friedman/Reagan lies about Trickledown were the grandfathers to StoptheSteal and there's little evidence of Truth making a comeback. When a Black man can applaud Holocaust denial, can others deny the Slave Trade?
DeleteWell at this point we are in agreement with Grizz? America doesn't have a chance ? And there will be pogroms? We should weapon up and prepare for civil war?
ReplyDeletePolitical solutions are no longer possible and we should sink to the evel of the deplorable?
Oy! Madonna!
Now, I didn't say that. Violence begets violence, and it'll get worse. How much worse we don't need to debate; all we have to do is wait and we'll find out.
DeleteWe will not have to wait long. 2023 in the Untied Snakes may become like Germany in 1933. If Orangy or Insantis win in '24, protest will be banned and then the wheels fall off, or the trolley comes off the wire, or the bus plunges over the cliff. Call it whatchoowanna. And we become Iran...or Northern Ireland...or Hell.
ReplyDeleteCivil war, blood, fire, death, anarchy, suffering and misery on an unimaginable scale. We may end up longing for the good old days of the Plague, when only a million Americans died...most of them in beds. If a country the size of Spain could lose that many in its own Civil War, then the sky's the limit in America...the land of the freaks and the home of depraved.
I wish I could be an optimist, and not a realist. The future not only looks incredibly bleak, but it also scares the hell out of me. I'm old. Maybe I'll get lucky and die in my sleep.
What good Christian patriot *doesn't* get a hearty chuckle out of an 82-year-old man getting hit in the head with a hammer? Why, it's almost as if some of those folks are deplorable.
ReplyDeleteIt's not like the way things are going aren't plenty bad enough to concern a realist, but I surely hope that our own Cassandra 65 here is getting a bit carried away.
Note that I said it MAY become like 1933...I didn't say it WILL. But Orangy is definitely trying to bring those happy days back. How can you not see what's coming? The announcement, in a few more weeks...after the GOP has kicked the Dems' asses, is just a formality.
DeleteDuring the innocent Bush 43 years, and then in the heyday of the Tea Party, I was routinely laughed at and scoffed at when I predicted a civil war by 2015. Then along came Orange Julius. The laughing stopped. And people far more intelligent and knowledgeable than I am began predicting the same
outcome. Maybe it happens a decade later than I thought it would. Sue me.
If there's one thing I've learned in life, it's that you can't predict the future reliably. I'm of Italian descent like Mr Pelosi. It's probably different being Jewish where paranoia of persecution is more understandable.
ReplyDeleteBeing a ultra liberal doesn't cause me worry like I'll be targeted by white supremacists.
My worst fears as far as political oppression were realized when the "Patriot Act" was made into law and then renewed. Ever read that thing? It didn't take a MORE conservative Supreme Court to screw us out of our constitutional rights. The trumpets are rookies when it comes to that shit.
I've already got firearms. Always did surrounded by people with them.
Doesn't make you any safer against the government. They have an army.
Same reason the white supremacists don't stand a chance in this country. We are safe than you imagine.
It's brown people who need to worry and they do.
I never see them fretting on this blog. And we progressives seem oblivious to their actual oppression. Imagining our own loss of privilege is all we're concerned with.