Category: COVID19

Modern Problems: The Paradox Of The MAGA New Right’s COVID19 Media Narrative


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

From what I’m able to glean, the MAGA New Right wants us to believe that COVID19 is just part of modern life now AND they want to attack the Biden Administration for “not doing as well” as the Trump Administration did handling the pandemic.

My reaction to the MAGA New Right’s views on COVID19.

As such, the MAGA New Right is absolutely against mask and vaccine mandates and changing people’s lives in any way to address the lingering COVID19 crisis — and yet also wants to scream bloody murder that Biden hasn’t solve it, which apparently Trump was on his way to doing but for the evil Deep State “stealing” the 2020 election from him.

Now, I have to note that for the time being, this working — and may ultimately work to the extent necessary to flip Congress for the MAGA New Right in 2022. So, in essence, this paradoxical media narrative will be a success.

And, yet, the MAGA New Right has a problem — there is a real risk that the metrics that matter most will start to hurt their political chances. If it becomes clear that something, anything has to be done to mitigate the COVID19 uptick currently happening in Red States, then there might be a frantic too-little, too-late struggle to reverse course in mid stream.

This will be even more the case if some variant pops out that blows past our existing vaccine regimen and throws us back to square one.

But as it stands, Republicans literally would rather have a lot of people die of COVID than miss a chance to “own the libs.” To that extent, the MAGA New Right is a literal personality death cult.

If people like Ron DeSantis have a come-to-Jesus moment about COVID19, it will be so sudden, so unexpected that we will all be left in shock. And, honestly, the only way that will happen is if they see some sort of political advantage — a way to “own the libs,” if you will — by doing so.

Why Unfrozen Caveman Governor Ron DeSantis Is Willfully Killing De Voters


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ron DeSantis

I continue to see a lot of shock and puzzlement on the part of Twitter liberals as to the behavior of putative 2024 Republican presidential nominee, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. But to me, DeSantis’ behavior seems completely logical relative to his goal of being elected president. Here’s why:

Negative Polarization Is Now Absolute
I can’t stress enough how absolute negative polarization is now in the United States, at least from my practical experience. It’s so absolute that the base of the Republican Party would rather people die than accept that COVID19 is a national health crisis. So, in a sense, yes, the MAGA New Right is a personality death cult. The wild thing is that, on an individual basis, the average MAGA New Right person doesn’t see themselves as being racist or misogynistic or any of the things that collective the MAGA New Right obviously is.

2022 (Or 2024) Is A Long Ways Away Politically
DeSantis is calculating that given how popular being an autocrat to “own the libs” is with the base of the Republican Party that he can actively work to kill voters and by the time 2022 (or 2024) rolls around it will all be a lulz. The pandemic will be over and the only thing stopping him from slingshotting himself into the presidency will be the 300 pound sack of shit known as Donald Trump. Lulz!

Autocracy Is Popular
Even though most MAGA people don’t really think in terms of autocracy, they definitely support it. My fear of a white Christian ethno state based on “blood and soil” is their dream — they fully embrace the “cruelty is the point” of Trumplandia. Of course, what will happen is autocracy will arrive and they will be shocked when a family member is murdered in cold blood by ICE or they can’t say what they like freely in a bar. But by that point, it will be too late and they, at least will have “owned the libs” forever.

The National MAGA New Right Electorate
What DeSantis is doing is the political equivalent of finger banging the national MAGA New Right base. They love, love, LOVE all his “lib owning” and autocratic, thuggish behavior that puts him on the national stage. They want MAGA without Trump so everything is strictly a policy debate. If that’s the case, then they win because they can both sides everything or simply shrug and say fuck you, lib.

Twitter Liberals Are Looking At Unfrozen Caveman Governor DeSantis All De Wrong


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Sometimes, I grow very frustrated with Twitter liberals. They went to Harvard and shit and yet relative to what I, a mere hayseed rube Internet crank rando believe, they are completely clueless. A prime example of this is what’s going on with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Ron DeSantis

All his thuggish behavior that is putting the lives of his own electorate in danger is exactly what not just the MAGA New Right base in Florida wants, but the NATIONAL MAGA New Right base wants in the abstract. The more thuggish he is, the better in their eyes.

They want autocracy. They want to “own the libs” no matter what the consequences are. And the more DeSantis’ political fortunes improve because of him being a demonstrable autocratic cocksucker, the more every elected Republican official who sees the next president when they look at themselves in the mirror in the morning will feel obliged to one up him.

Autocratic thuggery is now the sweet spot of modern Republican politics. Negative polarization is so absolute, so extreme now within Republican ranks that even the most overheated MAGA New Right fascist rhetoric could very well become policy once a Republican inevitable becomes president again. Then all my “doom shit” won’t look so hysterical.

Anyway, DeSantis knows what he’s doing. At this point, the only issue is if Trump co-ops him or the two of them have a political deathmatch to see who gets to be the first American autocrat.

Of course, 2025 is a long ways away. There are about a dozen other would-be autocrats who are going to fight like hell to get the chance to come to power in 2025 and….just never leave office for any reason. As such, DeSantis doesn’t have a complete lock on being our first true American Autocrat, but he’s definitely at the moment the chief contender.

We are so fucked. So very, very fucked.

I have no ready answers for you. I have no VOX Tik-Tok video spoken in formal Twitter liberal received English. I just have my two eyes and ears and simply “doom shit” logic to use.

We’re going to have to have some sort of United Front or hope we can get the type of radical moderate behavior that happened around the time Lincoln decided to free the slaves. Something gotta give. Something big has to happen, otherwise, DeSantis will become an American Augustus and establish a American Empire.

Unfrozen Caveman Autocrat: DeSantis Is Going To De Win In De 2024 Unless Trump Freaks De Fuck Out


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Way too many people have pinned their hopes on somehow everything magically going back to normal if we can just destroy Trump politically. In a sense, Trump has done all the damage he needs to do. Because he’s such a fucking idiot, he was a transitional figure.

Now that your typical ambitious Republican pol knows the conditions of the New Normal after studying Trump, we have about a dozen would-be autocrats who are chomping at the bit to finally put our undead liberal democracy out of its misery.

The current front runner for America’s Putin is Ron DeSantis. He is EXTREMELY POPULAR with my conservative relatives. Liberals hate DeSantis, so the “own the libs” box is checked. And, I’ve gotten to the point where I struggle to understand why Twitter liberals try to ascribe any logic to MAGA New Right cocksuckers at this point.

White Nationalism has gone mainstream within the Republican Party, as has autocracy and fascism. So…lulz? The historical momentum is now such that there is an open path for DeSantis to be Trump’s successor, become an autocrat through a MAGA Koch Brothers Constitutional Convention and that’s it — he’ll be POTUS for 40 odd years.

Ron DeSantis

As I keep saying, I keep vacillating wildly thinking we’re going to slip peacefully into autocracy and thinking we’re going to have a civil war. If DeSantis is the GOP’s 2024 nominee then we’re definitely going to slip peacefully into autocracy. From what I can tell, he’s proven himself an adept governor — other than killing his electorate by seeing the COVID health crisis exclusively through the lens of partisan politics — and, as such, he could easily shepherd us into autocracy.

There are a few known unknowns, however, most of them deal with a 300 lb sack of shit known as Donald Trump. It would be pretty historically ironic if Trump shived DeSantis politically and so disrupted our now near-inevitable transition into a Russian-style managed democracy that we had a civil war instead.

The thing about DeSantis is if you combine how popular he is with the MAGA New Right base with his likely ability to hoodwink liberal soccer moms in the suburbs — he’s got a winning combination. To the point that he might even be able to win the 2024 election outright, no nullification on the part of a MAGA Congress needed.

It’s easy to imagine DeSantis wins fair-and-square and soon enough enough banks hard right into autocrat land and there will be absolutely nothing we can do about it. That will be it. He’ll start ranting about how we need a Constitutional Convention to “pass a balanced budget amendment” and when it is called up somehow, mysteriously “religious liberty” will be codified in the Constitution and presidents will be elected for seven years, not four.

At the moment, that seems to be our fate. People like me will be murdered in cold political blood by ICE — one way or another — and that will just be America until we get so hot that we all have to move to Canada.

Good luck.

The Tokyo Olympics & The Prospect Of An ‘Omega Variant’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Each time COVID bounces from one person to the next, there’s a chance it might mutate into something along the lines of the virus found in The Stand. It’s an admittedly microscopic chance, but it does exist. Throw into the equation people from all over the world in Tokyo at the moment and it’s easy to imagine a Stephen King-size clusterfuck.

So, it’s at least possible that at some point in the next few months (years?) we’re going to have to go through all of this again because an Omega Variant breezes past all our vaccines and starts killing people not in the thousands, but the millions.

But that’s all very speculative. It’s just if the COVID pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that when you’re dealing with a virus, all the narrative management in the world isn’t going to save us.

And, yet, it could be I’m over thinking all of this. I’m often wrong. I hope I am this time, too.

America is Careening Towards The Existential Choice of Autocracy Or Civil War In January 2025


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The United States is either just a few years away from descending into full MAGA New Right autocracy or this is a modern antebellum period. Take your pick. You only have those two choices.

Let me state at the beginning that I got a lot — a whole lot — wrong about the Trump Era.

But looking back, most of my errors were miscalculations about what Trump was actually capable of doing. He talked like an autocrat, but he didn’t walk like one. So, I spent all this time thinking up pretty basic autocratic things he could do…and he was just too lazy and stupid to do them. As such, you have a situation where it seemed very easy to me during the 2020 presidential cycle that Trump would steal the election and become an autocrat via a Koch Brothers-inspired Constitutional Convention.

It was a gimme for Trump. All the conditions were there. All the metrics. Everything. All Trump had to do was fire enough people to get someone to indict Joe Biden and have images of him being frog walked at some point leading up to November 2020 and that would be it. What’s more, as late as a few days after the 2020 election, Trump STILL could have stolen the election and he just didn’t have the wherewithal.

So what happened was he panicked. He made a last ditch effort to steal the election by having his angry mob want to “Hang Mike Pence.” But it was always a dumb plan and all it did was give Republicans, on an systemic basis, a heads up as to how to steal future elections.

But back to 2024.

It’s seems a forgone conclusion that in January 2025, either we slip peacefully into some sort of MAGA New Right autocracy because it officially becomes conventional wisdom that the only way a Democrat can become president is if their party controls Congress at the same time or we have a civil war. And my bet is if it happens in 2025, it’s going to be Blue States, not Red States that bounce.

The dead hand of history is on Red States’ side — they have the macro trend momentum — and so when the moment comes and it’s clear we’re going to be an autocracy, there’s a chance that Blue States simply won’t put up with it and we have a civil war.

Of course, there’s one issue I can’t game out: the U.S. Military.

It’s possible that in the end, the military gets over itself and steps in. They depose the MAGA New Right autocrat, form a junta with Jim Mattis at its head and call a Constitutional Convention to fix the problems facing the country. Hopefully, of course, they’ll ensure that it’s not a MAGA dominated convention, but who knows.

All I know is, something’s gotta give. The positions of the two sides are hardening to the point that something’s going to change very soon, within a few years. Things are going to change in a big, historic fashion that a lot of people are simply not prepared to experience.

I can’t predict the future. So I could be wrong — again. But barring something big happening that throws everything out of whack (the LHC is going back online in 2022, so lulz) I just don’t see how we don’t have a pretty massive turning point in American history around January 2025.

De Agony And De Ecstasy Of Ron DeSantis


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If this was the pre-Trump Era, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis would be well on his way to being a run-of-the-mill Republican president. He might even be a tick or two better than idiot George W. Bush.

But this is the POST Trump presidency era, and, as such, things are fucking bonkers. Instead of just a run of the mill Republican president, DeSantis, if elected would be more like an American Augustus — the first autocrat of our new post-democracy America.

Ron DeSantis

All the hysterical, dystopian things I’ve been ranting about would happen during his presidency instead of ding-dong Trump’s. DeSantis is young, competent and not only knows how to weld the levers of power, but also how to be Trump without Trump. And, as such, he’s extremely dangerous.

DeSantis could turn into an American Putin and simply never leave office. There is already a well-organized move afoot to get a Constitutional Convention called and given how its members would be selected — via state legislatures — it’s a gimmie that it would codify MAGA “blood and soil” concepts into the Constitution.

And that would be it.

What’s worse, DeSantis is actively killing his own electorate at the moment by denying science when it comes to COVID19 in an effort to curry favor with those sweet, sweet MAGA base votes. We’ve reached the point where MAGA New Right voters are so absolute in their need to “own the libs” because of their abstract fears over Cancel Culture and Critical Race Theory that they would LITERALLY RATHER DIE than see COVID19 for what it is — a lingering national health crisis.

There is one other potential obstacle to DeSantis getting his opportunity to be the founding autocrat of Trumplandia — a 300 lb tub of lard who thinks HE should be the founding autocrat of Trumplandia. Trump is so fucking deranged and unwilling to let go of either power or the spotlight that it’s very easy to imagine him politically shiving DeSantis so he can run again in 2024.

Now, logically, Trump would pick DeSantis as his new veep, paving the way for Trump to put DeSantis in the position of being his autocratic successor. But Trump is a craven idiot who thinks in such a short-term, so it could be we end up with Vice President Michael Flynn instead of Vice President Ron DeSantis.

Anyway, the point is — Trump is such a political history disrupter that he could bend the nature progression of our history simply because he’s self-serving dick head. Or not. Who knows what that guy.

I will note, however, that DeSantis is extremely fucking popular with conservatives in general. But even if everything breaks his way, there are going to be a dozen other would-be autocrats stalking him in an effort to get him to trip up.

And, lastly, don’t forget the real possibility of some sort of civil war should DeSantis win the presidency only via the skullduggery of a MAGA Congress.

Why Is Dr. Fauci Such A Lightening Rod For The MAGA New Right?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Any discussion of how the MAGA New Right has a craven hatred of the otherwise prosaic Dr. Fauci has to address a central issue: deep down inside, Trump craves the validation of liberal elites. It’s what drives him. It eats him away inside so much that he ran for president to force them to take him seriously.

Add to this that Dr. Fauci wouldn’t kotow to Mad King Trump and it was extremely difficult for Trump to fire Dr. Fauci and you have the makings of a battle royal.

Also, even more important to understanding all of this is every moment we’re fighting over Dr. Fauci is a moment we’re not talking about how Trump, personally, caused 600,000 excess COVID19 deaths through his rank incompetence.

As such, it’s a win-win for the MAGA New Right to turn Dr. Fauci into a boogie man. They don’t have much of a winning hand when it comes to COVID19, so they hate on him to such an extent that just the invocation of his name is so loaded as to cause a fight between a progressive and a MAGA New Right person.

If January 6th taught us anything, it’s that it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. So, given how much I love dystopian scenarios, this particular tragedy writes itself.

Should, God forbid, anything happen to the poor man, Republicans will be quiet for about 24 hours with vague statements about “thoughts and prayers.” Then, once they have their talking points figured out, they’ll say this is an issue of mental health and OBVIOUSLY they can’t be held responsible for the tragedy.

Fucking cowards.

You Can’t Make This Shit Up: I Witnessed Facebook Anti-Vaxx Disinformation Dissemination IRL



By Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, there I was, talking to a bartender who in April 2016 would have been equally split between Trump and Bernie, when a guy walked up to him and showed him on his phone what was obviously a Facebook post. The guy said with baited breath that somehow through some sort of nullification process that all the COVID19 vaccines we have were about to no longer have emergency approval.

The person who said this was so absolute in his conviction that this Facebook was factual that it got ME doubting things. So I looked on Twitter to see if this was some sort of breaking news I didn’t know about.

Surprise! Nope.

So, apparently, there is some serious bullshit bouncing around Facebook when it comes to the various COVID19 vaccines. I’ve talked to some of my conservative relatives and it’s an absolute struggle to get them to agree to what is simply a cold hard fact: vaccines safe lives. And when once we are on the same page, they act like they’ve made some sort of horrible concession that they’ll never forgive themselves for.

So, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s very possible that the fall and winter could be something of a crisis AGAIN when it comes to COVID19.

What Did Bob Iger Know About COVID19 & How Did He Know It?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m just being silly witih this one. But it definitely seems as though former Disney CEO Bob Iger somehow, someway knew way, way in advance how badly COVID19 was going to hurt the company’s balance sheet.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock (9241938da) The Walt Disney Company CEO Robert Iger attends a special screening of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” at Alice Tully Hall, in New York NY Special Screening of “Beauty and the Beast”, New York, USA – 13 Mar 2017

Months before anyone in the United States cared about COVI19 — even before it was called COVID19 — Iger just up and bounced while on top at Disney. Just out of the blue. The only reason why any of this matters to me is it gives one some of the metrics for the next time Something Big like COVID19 happens.

If another pandemic (or whatever) begins to brew in some remote part of the world, keep an eye on people like Iger. If they start acting really weird, then batten down the catches, the shit is about to hit the fan. If I was into conspiracy theories — which I’m not — I might suggest there was something spooky about Iger bouncing so abruptly.

I’m fascinated by how our reality is constructed. That’s why people like Trump or macro events like COVID19 lay bare that a lot of our “reality” is bullshit. It exists because The Powers That Be say it does.

Nothing’s right or wrong, but thinking makes it so, as The Bard would tell us.