Category Archives: asshole culture

well, fuck, I guess it’s time for another mass murder post.

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I just checked; I’ve written 36 mass murder posts over the last 12 years. Thirty-six. And just to be clear, I’m talking about mass murders — not mass shooting events. Mass shootings are basically unsuccessful mass murders. They’re attempted mass murders, and they’re a lot more common. Also, remember that technically mass murder excludes so-called ‘domestic’ mass killings. You know, like all those cases in which a guy decides to kill his spouse and their kids, and maybe his spouse’s parents. Those aren’t included in the official ‘mass murder’ definition. Also too…gang-related mass killings. They don’t count either.

So I’ve averaged three mass murder posts per year. I’m running out of stuff to say. So I’m just going to cannibalize some of my old blog posts. Here’s part of what I wrote after the 2019 Dayton, Ohio mass murder, which took place about 13 hours after the El Paso, Texas Walmart mass murder.

Who would this guy [Connor Betts] in Dayton be without his AR15? Who would Patrick Crusius be without access to an AK-47? He’d be just another angry young white guy with a dodgy understanding of history and the influence of social forces. Just another inadequate person man who wanted so very desperately to believe he had an important part to play in some imaginary racist redemptive narrative.

Who would Stephen Paddock be? Who would Devin Kelley or James Holmes be? Adam Lanza, Nikolas Cruz, Omar Mateen, Robert Bowers — who would these guys be without easy access to guns and high capacity magazines? Without the guns, they’d be…insignificant. These guys think the guns might make them matter.

Sadly, they’re right. It’s the guns

Guns and high cap magazines, there it is. Connor Betts, the Dayton mass murderer, was killed by a police officer approximately 32 seconds after he started shooting. That’s right, thirty-two SECONDS. Now that’s a seriously rapid police response. But Betts fired 41 rounds in those 32 seconds. In that brief wink of time, he killed ten people and wounded 17 others. In contrast, it took six minutes for police to respond to the El Paso Walmart mass murder. Patrick Crusius, the shooter, had time to kill 23 people, wound another 23, get back in his car and drive away.

I also wrote this:

You want to tell me guns don’t kill people — people kill people? Fuck you. Jumping off buildings doesn’t kill people — deceleration trauma kills people. You want to tell me the majority of gun owners are law-abiding citizens and shouldn’t be punished because some asshole misuses a firearm? Fuck you in the neck, life doesn’t work that way. I’m not going to cook meth, but I still can’t buy Sudafed without a huge amount of fuss because some asshole misuses it. You want to tell me you can also kill people with a knife or a baseball bat? Fuck you, you half-witted ballbag. That’s so damned stupid it doesn’t deserve a response. You want to tell me the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun? Fuck you, fuck your whole family, fuck everybody you know. Texas is jammed with ‘good guys with a gun.’ But Crusius was still able to waltz through the aisles of Walmart shooting folks IN TEXAS, walk out unmolested, get in his car, and start to drive away before police officers stopped him.

Texas is a goddamn Petri dish for gun culture. It’s a shallow transparent dish used to hold growth medium in which firearm lunacy can be cultivated. After the 2018 Santa Fe, Texas high school mass murder (ten dead, thirteen wounded), Governor Greg Abbott created the Texas Safety Commission to look into ways to prevent that sort of mass murder tragedy from happening again. Here’s what Abbott said on releasing the findings of TSC report:

In the aftermath of the horrific shooting in Santa Fe, we had discussions just like what we are having today. Those discussions weren’t just for show and for people to go off into the sunset and do nothing. They led to more than 20 laws being signed by me to make sure that the state of Texas was a better, safer place, including our schools for our children.

That report was issued two days BEFORE the El Paso Walmart mass murder. And those “20 laws” intended to “make sure that the State of Texas was a better, safer place”? They generally loosened existing restrictions about where Texans could carry guns based on the astonishingly stupid theory that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with gun.

This asshole is part of the problem.

If that was true, Texas would be the safest state in the nation. But it’s clearly not true; when Abbott became governor, Texas had around 3000 gun-related deaths per year. Now the state is experiencing around 4600 gun-related deaths. And we’re approaching the one year anniversary of the Uvalde school shooting (21 dead, 17 wounded).

But I have to admit, I was wrong, sort of. For years I’ve been saying it’s the guns. The guns and high capacity magazines. And that’s absolutely true, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough. I’ve omitted one variable in the calculus of mass murder.

It’s the guns, it’s the high cap magazines, and it’s Republicans. Without that last variable, we could fix the first two.

wait…the national what?

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A couple of weeks ago, during National Gun Violence Survivors Week, in an act of singular tastelessness, Republican Congressman Andrew Clyde handed out lapel pins in the shape of an AR-15. The fact that the US even has a National Gun Violence Survivors Week is horrific enough without this loathsome, pus-brained fuckwit compounding the horror.

Representative Andrew Clyde (R, Mordor)

Who the fuck is this guy? He’s a millionaire gun store owner who was elected in Georgia’s 9th Congressional district, one of the most MAGA-centric districts in the entire nation. Clyde assumed office three days before the January 6th insurrection. Of course, his first real action in Congress was to vote against certifying the 2020 election results. He was one of twelve House Republicans to vote against honoring the US Capitol Police for their actions during the insurrection. He refused to shake the hand of Officer Michael Fanone (who was dragged out of the Capitol building, beaten and tased by the mob, and suffered both a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury as a result). He described the insurrection as a “normal tourist visit” despite the fact that there are photos of him helping barricade the House chamber door to keep the insurrectionists our and hiding behind an armed security officer. Clyde was one of fourteen Republicans who voted against making Juneteenth a federal holiday and one of only three to vote against the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act.

Andrew Clyde during a normal tourist visit.

In other words, Andrew Clyde is a lying racist asshole.

Of course, he’s not the only one. Barry Moore, the Republican Congressman from Alabama, comes from the same revolting mold. He also took office just before the January 6th insurrection, he also voted against certifying the 2020 election results, he says he has ‘questions’ about the death of Ashlii Babbitt (the MAGA drama queen killed while climbing through a smashed window into the House chamber where members of Congress were escaping the mob), and voted against honoring the Capitol Police officers.

Not to be outMAGAed by Clyde, Moore decided to (and I swear I am NOT MAKING THIS UP) introduce the AR-15 National Gun Act. This bill would make the AR-15 (and Jesus suffering fuck, I can’t believe I’m even writing this) the ‘National Gun of America’.

“If a specific firearm is synonymous to Americana then it would be the AR-15. My bill, the ‘AR-15 National Gun Act,’ would simply write that into law designating that AR-15 style rifles chamber in .556 or .223 as the national gun of the United States. The AR-15 has been a quintessential piece of Americana for over six decades and this bill would recognize its most common configuration as our country’s national gun.”

A a quintessential piece of Americana.

Rep. Barry Moore (R, Bottomless Pit) posing with quintessential pieces of Americana.

You may be wondering, Am I having a stroke? Why do we need a National Gun? And even if there was, in some alternate universe, some rational reason for having a National Gun, why in the popcorn fuck would it be an AR-15, the prom queen rifle of mass murderers everywhere, what what what?. Good question. Here’s Moore’s answer:

“Some pro-second amendment folks, who might not own an AR-15, might think that banning them is no big deal, but just like a camel sticking its nose under a tent, any watering down of rights already guaranteed will enable the anti-second amendment crowd to take away even more rights.”

Surely, any fool can see it’s just like a camel sticking its nose under a tent to water down rights. It’s hard to argue against logic like that. Hell, it’s hard to find logic like that.

This has absolutely no chance to become law, that goes without saying (at least it should go without saying–but the fact that I’m saying it is evidence that we’re living in a massively fucked up society). A few years ago, I’d have dismissed this as just more GOP performative bullshit to ‘own the libs’ but now I’m starting to think some of these rabid fuckwits might actually believe their own bullshit.

I don’t know which is more awful. I’m not sure it matters, because both options are awful down at the cellular level.

This is what the Republican Party has become.

fractally awful

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In a few short days, Republicans will assume control of the House of Representatives. That guarantees the next two years are going to be a colossal shit-show.

It’s going to be fucking awful. Worse, it’s going to be fractally awful. I mean it’s going to be awful in the same way on every scale. Individual GOP members of Congress will be awful, Congressional committees will be awful, the GOP majority in the House itself will be awful, and they’ll all be awful in a self-similar way.

Individual Republican members of Congress will lie. They’ll lie in committee meetings. The GOP led committees will build investigations around those lies. They’ll amplify the lies on GOP-friendly ‘news’ channels. They’ll use the existence of those investigations based on lies as evidence that the lies must be legit (if Congress is investigating it, there MUST be a reason for that investigation). They’ll use those lies and investigations as a mask to distract the public from their policies, many of which actively harm the US and our allies. Traditional news media will report those lies and lie-based investigations as if they’re legitimate Congressional inquiries. When it comes time for the next election, they’ll use those investigations as evidence that they were doing the will of the people.

We know they’ll do this because they’ve said they’ll do it. We know they’ll do it because they’ve done it before. When Republicans controlled the House during the Obama administration, they spent two years investigating the terrorist attack on the State Department’s unfinished diplomatic compound in Benghazi. There were eleven Congressional investigations which held as least thirty-three Congressional hearings, most of which were public.

Each of those investigations published a report. Each report concluded that nobody in the Obama administration officials had acted improperly. Each report concluded that the State Department’s security at the unfinished Benghazi compound was ‘inadequate’. None of the reports acknowledged that the security was inadequate because for two years prior to the attack, House Republicans had reduced the Obama administration’s budget request for improved diplomatic security.

The two-year-long Benghazi investigation was a political stunt. We know it was a political stunt because they basically admitted it. Kevin McCarthy, who was running to be named the Speaker of the House (just as he is now–stupid history repeats itself stupidly) basically admitted it on a Fox News interview. He said:

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”

By the way, three months after the attack on Benghazi left four members of the State Department dead, an attack on the Sandy Hook Elementary School killed six adults and twenty children (six and seven-year-old children). How many special committees did the GOP create? None. How many Congressional hearings did they hold? None. How many investigations did they launch? None.

Congress, the next two years.

That was almost exactly a decade ago, when radical Republicans in Congress were just a fringe element of the GOP. A decade later, that element is no longer the fringe; now they control the entire Republican Party. Ten years ago they ignored the murder of school kids and focused on a political stunt grounded in a legitimate tragedy. Now they’re planning to do the same, but instead of an actual tragedy, they have–and this is so fucking stupid and shameful I’m almost too embarrassed to say it–they have Hunter Biden’s laptop.

I said it was going to be a colossal shit-show. I probably understated the reality. It will almost certainly be a shit-show of Biblical proportions.

don’t shit in the swimming pool

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Okay, here’s an analogy. Twitter is a swimming pool. A large pool, an Olympic-sized pool. It’s privately owned, but open to the public.

People come. Some just want to splash around, some want to swim laps, some just want to hang out poolside, some want to train for a swim meet, some want to cannonball into the pool and make a big splash, some want to practice diving. It’s a big pool, so even if some jackass is playing Nickleback on a bluetooth speaker instead of using headphones, you can move to the other end where it’s less annoying. It’s far from perfect, but you still come because it’s the biggest pool around and all your friends hang out there.

The pool has a few loose rules. You break the rules, you can get your ass booted out of the pool. One of the fundamental rules: Keep Litter Out of the Pool. Nobody wants to swim in a pool that has old candy wrappers and cigarette butts floating around in it.

That’s Old Twitter. New Twitter is different.

New Twitter is owned by a rich, arrogant, bone-ignorant narcissist who thought it would be fun to own his own swimming pool. To save money, he’s fired the concession stand workers, the maintenance workers, and the lifeguards. He also feels some folks who’ve been evicted for littering were treated unfairly. He feels they contribute to the swimming pool community, that perhaps the litter makes swimming more challenging and immediately vital.

So he’s re-invited them back.

Now, feeling vindicated for littering, they’re gleefully shitting in the pool.

And the new owner suggests folks who are reluctant to swim in the pool now aren’t really committed to swimming.

motive is a mystery

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News Media: Bizarre hammer assault on Speaker Pelosi’s husband.
Suspect: I was after Nancy.
News Media: Law enforcement has offered no motive for the attack.
Suspect: I wanted to kill Nancy.
News Media: Police silent on Pelosi attacker’s intentions.
Suspect: Really, I just wanted to kill Nancy. I guess she wasn’t there.
News Media: Did divisive political rhetoric play a part in attack?
Suspect: Everybody on FOX says Nancy is a monster, so I wanted to kill her. You know…with a hammer.
News Media: Pelosi needed brain surgery after hammer attack.
GOP: CA should relax gun laws so Pelosi could have defended himself from hammer-wielding attacker. Dems not tough on crime.
Suspect: I would have used a gun, but this is California and I can’t buy one.
FOX News: Lots of people injured in hammer attacks in CA. Why lib media focused on this one minor assault? Pelosi didn’t even die.
News Media: Unconfirmed report: Pelosi attacker said to be dressed in his underwear.
Suspect: I’m a hammer killer, not a pervert. Fully dressed. In camo.
Elon Musk: An obscure news source that once claimed Hilary Clinton was dead and replaced by a body double says the attack MAY have some kinky gay thing going on.
GOP: After recent DUI arrest, Paul Pelosi engaged in extramarital gay hammer sex party.
News Media: Uh, well, okay, maybe?
Suspect: Look, all I wanted to do was kill Nancy then go monitor voting drop boxes like any other normal patriotic American. I’m a victim of cancel culture.

News Media: Sources say Pelosi lured hammer suspect with offers of twisted gay sex.
Suspect: Wait, what? No.
News Media: GOP claims prosecution of Pelosi hammer attacker is politically motivated.
Suspect: I’m announcing my candidacy for Gov. of Cali, which I’ll win unless the votes are tampered with.
GOP: Vote for us, we’ll hammer Biden and his gay socialist agenda!

EDITORIAL NOTE: Today, 10-31-22, the FBI released an eight page affidavit “for the limited purpose of securing a criminal complaint and arrest warrant” for the asshole who assaulted Paul Pelosi with a hammer. It includes statements made by David DePape outlining his motives for breaking into the Pelosi hom. You can read the affidavit here.

Will this end the wild speculation by Republicans and other conspiracy theory fuckwits?

Nope.

a horrible experience of unbearable length

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A month ago I made the argument that Comrade Trump doesn’t have many actual supporters; instead, he has fans. I wrote:

Trump fans aren’t supporters of Trump’s beliefs (if he has any) or his political or religious ideology (if he has any) or his policies (if he has any); they’re fans of Trump his ownself. They want Trump to win, of course, but the thing about fan loyalty is that it doesn’t require winning.

It’s just a coincidence that I recently stumbled upon a 2009 article by Roger Ebert, the late and much-missed film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. Ebert had written a scathing review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which apparently upset Transformer fans (or maybe Transformer movie fans or fans of somebody in the movie–I don’t know and can’t bring myself to care enough to check). The thing about fans, of course, is that they will immediately go to war with anybody who questions their fandom. And they went to war with Ebert.

The thing about Ebert, on the other hand, is he was always rational, analytical, and really fucking smart. He starting rationally analyzing fandom. He wrote this:

A lot of fans are basically fans of fandom itself. It’s all about them. They have mastered the ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Star Trek’ universes or whatever, but their objects of veneration are useful mainly as a backdrop to their own devotion. Anyone who would camp out in a tent on the sidewalk in order to be the first in line for a movie is more into camping on the sidewalk than movies.

Extreme fandom may serve as a security blanket for the socially inept, who use its extreme structure as a substitute for social skills. If you are Luke Skywalker and she is Princess Leia, you already know what to say to each other, which is so much safer than having to ad-lib it. Your fannish obsession is your beard. If you know absolutely all the triviea about your cubbyhole of pop culture, it save you from having to know anything about anything else. That’s why it’s excruciatingly boring to talk to such people: They’re always asking you questions they know the answer to.

And yeah, that’s spot on. It applies perfectly to Trump fans (who, come to think of it, aren’t that different from Transformer fans — they’re both devoted to something fundamentally ridiculous and tacky). Trump’s fans tend to be not just socially inept, but aggressively and proudly so. Believing in Trump saves them from having to know anything about anything, or from having to retain internally consistent views. If Trump, on a Monday, says Candidate A is a genius but on Wednesday describes him as an idiot, then Candidate A is a genius until, through the power of Trump, he becomes an idiot. It’s that simple.

The difference, of course, between Transformer fans and Trump fans is Trump fans are more willing — even eager, at times — to turn violent against critics of their fandom. I’m talking about violence ranging in scale from a recent incident in which a Trump fan hurled a can of beer at a comedian because she voted for Biden to a few thousand people violently assaulting the Capitol Building in an effort to overturn a legit election.

The risk posed by Transformer fans is that they increase the odds that more shitty movies will get made and inflicted on the public. The risk posed by Trump fans is sporadic irrational large scale violence, the occasional attack on FBI buildings, possible assassination of Trump ‘enemies’, and the potential destruction of representative democracy.

Ebert described Transformers as “a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine.” The four years of the Trump administration could be described in much the same way, only with Trump humping the leg of Vlad Putin.

news cycle

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Herschel Walker: Abortion is bad, wicked, evil and I am against it totally.
Press: Didn’t you pay for your girlfriend to have an abortion?
Walker: That’s a lie. I did NOT pay for that woman’s abortion.
Press: Your ex-girlfriend says you did.
Walker: She’s a liar.
Press: We have the get well card you sent her.
Walker: Okay, I sent her a get well card. She was…you know, sick and all.
Press: We have a copy of the check you sent her to pay for the abortion.
Walker: That check was for medical supplies. Aspirin, hot water bottle, stuff like that.
Press: The memo line on the check says, ‘This is to pay for your abortion’.
Walker: It’s a forgery.
Press: We have video of you dropping her off at the abortion clinic.
Walker: I thought that was a Target. Anybody can make a mistake.
Press: In the audio of the video we can hear you saying, “Bye now, have a nice abortion!”
Walker: Fake news! Women lie!
GOP: We completely support Herschel Walker and are outraged by these scurrilous accusations. It just proves Democrats can’t be trusted.
Press: GOP says Dems can’t be trusted.

GOP: It’s possible Mr. Walker at one point in his otherwise exemplary life thought abortion might be okay under certain circumstances, but now he realizes he was wrong and all abortion is murder, so leave him alone.
Press: Exemplary life? He put a gun to his wife’s head and threatened to kill her.
GOP: A candidate’s domestic life isn’t the issue. The issue is pedophiles teaching CRT to grade school students.
Press: Walker used to play Russian roulette.
GOP: The Republican party cares about mental health rehabilitation. The past is the past.
Press: We’ve just received video of Herschel Walker paying to abort endangered baby eagles.
GOP: There’s no law against aborting baby eagles. Stick to the real issues that are important to American families. Inflation, the price of gas, trans girls winning medals in high school sports, Democrat crossdressers in girls bathrooms selling fetanyl.
Press: GOP says Dems killing teen girls.
Tucker Carlson: Are there are videos of Hunter Biden dressed in a frilly Lolita skirt taking bribes and cocaine from Chinese agents in the girl’s bathroom of a Catholic grade school? I’m just asking questions. Next up, Herschel Walker discusses how to arm yourself to protect your family from baby eagles.

blood in the streets

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“If there’s a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information…there’ll be riots in the street.”

That was Senator Lindsey Olin Graham of South Carolina. But I’ve been seeing and hearing that sort of idiotic bullshit a lot lately–on the news and in real life. There was a guy at the gym last week–a living caricature of a Trump supporter; overweight and angry, loud and obnoxious–saying much the same thing. He said he was so angry he was “about ready to take up arms.” About ready. Not actually ready to take up arms, but just about ready.

Putting aside the fact that this guy would have probably collapsed in a puddle of his own urine if he’d had to run across the street, there’s the question of whom he’d take up arms against. In his rant, he mentioned Uncle Joe Biden, Antifa, the DeepStateFBI (yes, it was all one word) and communists. Maybe he meant to take up arms against all of them? Or maybe he thinks they’re all the same group? I don’t know. It was an unhinged, unfocused, unorganized rant.

Is this blood-in-the-streets scenario something we really need to fret about? Well, yes and no. I mean, the 1/6 insurrection is evidence that there are a lot of angry Trumpistas who are willing to use violence to get their way. So yeah, that’s a real concern.

But that anger had focus. Misdirected focus built on lies, true–but there was a focal point. The Capitol Building. Comrade Trump pointed them at the Capitol. It’s entirely possible (assuming Trump gets indicted–and I think he will–and goes to trial–and I’m not so sure about that) that a Trumpista mob would assault the courthouse.

He could riot for maybe half a street.

But as for widespread rioting in the streets? Naw, probably not. Sure, there’ll be pro-Trump protests and some of those will likely turn violent. But the problem with the sort of conspiratorial free-floating rage we see from so many Trumpistas is that it’s undirected. Like the fuckwit at the gym, they’re intensely angry at some vague, nebulous Biden/Antifa/DeepState/commie Bogeyman that doesn’t exist. It’s easy to sustain that sort of anger, but hard to sustain any sort of direct action against vapor. You can’t punch smoke.

But you can punch fascists. If holding Trump accountable for his crimes leads to violence in the streets, then so be it. I’d much rather it didn’t happen, but if it does then it does. It’s a price we may have to pay to resist fascism.

EDITORIAL NOTES: 1) I don’t advocate punching anybody, even if they’re fascists. But if you find yourself on the street and there’s a fascist in front of you doing or saying fascist stuff, DO NOT punch him (it’ll almost certainly be a guy) in the head; heads are mostly bone and you could hurt your hand. Punch him someplace soft. 2) When I described the Trumpista at the gym as being “overweight and angry” and said he’d likely collapse “in a puddle of his own urine if he’d had to run across the street,” it wasn’t to denigrate fat people. There are fat people who are in really good shape. I’m just describing those armchair warriors who sit around drinking cheap-ass beer and eating bags of Doritos and fantasize about being tough. I probably am denigrating cheap-ass beer, though. Sue me.