I wish to make a complaint.

Prohibition ended in 1933. So why is it illegal for me to buy this gin?

Sure, if I walk into the General Store at Grand Canyon, I can buy it there, but I certainly can’t buy it at Kroger here, nor at any Kroger in the state of Georgia.

Not only that, even though Coweta County finally repealed Prohibition last year — 90 years late — and we are starting to get our first liquor stores now, I can’t buy it there either, nor at any liquor store that I know of.

Why is that?

I’ll tell you why: the Georgia Alcohol Dealers Association. Go read their page. They control what the liquor stores in Georgia can and can not sell. If Thumb Butte Western Sage Gin is not on their list, stores can’t sell it and you can’t buy it.

Not only that, but GADA is determined that you can’t buy it directly from the distillery either. (Go read their page!) The very idea of grocery stores having a liquor section gives them the fantods. PROTECT OUR PACKAGE STORES is their entire raison d’être — consumers be damned.

Why is this? These bottles are filled with legal substances. Why is it illegal for me to buy them? I need answers.

(I must give a tip of the hat to Rep. Matt Brass, who is otherwise a rightwing dinglehopper, for introducing multiple pieces of legislation to free us from all this nonsense.)

Yesterday this person was in line in front of me at the Kroger:

(image blurred for privacy)

His shirt says:

IN 1775 THEY TRIED TO TAKE OUR GUNS

WE SHOT THEM

Very patriot. Much brave.

Yes, you can buy these shirts, although there seems to be some confusion amongst the rabble about their exact precedents.

::sigh::

The American Revolution is not my time period, so I could be out of the loop on the latest historicity on the founding of our nation, but I do not remember the confiscation of weapons as being any part of the effort to break free of England. It was pretty much all about the self-governance thing, No Taxation Without Representation, et al.

If you needed an object lesson in how divorced from reality the right-wing nutjobs are today, here it is. They have concocted a fake national memory and are wearing t-shirts to advertise their deeply held religious beliefs in this fake memory. If I had asked this person to explain how and when “they” tried to “take our guns,” they would have blathered about the Second Amendment but they would not have answered the question. They would not have been able to answer the question.

More than that, they would not have known that they didn’t and couldn’t answer the question.

And here we are.

I, on the other hand, would have told him that perhaps he and his ilk were thinking of Shay’s Rebellion in 1786–7, when lots o’ muskets were confiscated after a group of disgruntled farmers and vets took up arms against the government of Massachusetts. It led semi-directly to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which led to the Bill of Rights, hence and ergo the SECOND AMENDMENT (MAY THE LORD JUST BLESS ITS HOLY NAME AMEN) KENNETH. (To be fair, I think those rebels had some cromulent complaints, unlike our current crop.)

But 1775? Nah. You just made that up, bubba.

Get a grip.

So this was on the Twittermaschine just now (#HoldTheLine was the trending topic), and I just…

Look, I know these people do not have a full command of logical thought, but this is just… I don’t know, velcro that doesn’t stick anymore? Brainworms? Unfortunate result of too much glue-sniffing?

Apparently #HoldTheLine is being used by those brave, brave souls who see mandates for vaccines as what they truly are: SUPPRESSION, KENNETH, OF OUR PRECIOUS BODILY AUTONOMY NOT NOT YOU LADY WHO WANTS AN ABORTION JUST US WITH OUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS.

Free — as we say — dumb.

Let me say up front that the Toronto Star probably shouldn’t have gone with this approach. Even though I agree 100% with the sentiments expressed, it nonetheless seems antagonistic.

However, Mr. Changizi the Unvaccinated’s reaction is stupid. The rest of us are indeed exasperated by the unvaccinated’s refusal to protect themselves and those around them, and yet somehow Mr. Changizi the Unvaccinated sees this as some kind of purge that we are doing to them.

Dude, no. It’s the other thing, the reverse of that. We’re doing everything we can to keep you from catching Covid-19 and dying from it, which is significantly more likely if you are unvaccinated.

He is not alone. Here is one of the responses to his tweet:

“Mass genocides.” “Never again.” Jebus H. Cthulhu. And brave, brave Winston Smith, standing up to Big Brother, who is even as we speak hunting down the unvaxxed in the streets of Toronto and hauling them off to the labor camps and crematoria of Saskatchewan I guess. Nor is he the only one who responded like this. There were dozens of people shaking their little fists in anger against this Holocaust they definitely didn’t make up in their heads.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?

Let me say it again for the hard-of-thinking: WE ARE NOT TRYING TO PURGE YOU IDIOTS. WE’RE TRYING GET RID OF THE VIRUS, and we can’t do that if y’all insist on refusing the vaccine because [reasons]. The more y’all get sick, the more likely it becomes that those of us who are vaccinated will suffer a breakthrough infection. Not only that, but the longer y’all remain unvaccinated, the more likely the virus will use its free access to your precious bodily fluids to mutate into yet another variant. You’re plague dogs.

Has our empathy for the willfully unvaccinated who are sick with this pernicious virus worn thin? You better believe it. At least we had empathy to start with, unlike your obvious lack of empathy for those who cannot get vaccinated because of health issues. But do we wish death on you? No. We wish you’d get vaccinated.

And maybe some mental health counseling.

Also too: The Sociopathic Style in American Politics

A local church has on its street bulletin board the message:

“IT’S SIMPLE. GET AMERICA BACK TO GOD!!”

That’s good. Simple is good.

But as H. L. Mencken reminds us, “For every complex problem, there’s a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”

And so I’d like to ask some questions.

What does that mean, exactly, to “get America back to God”? I know where the concept comes from, all those Psalms and Old Testament moanings about Israel “turning away” from Yahweh, wherein Yahweh got testy if the Israelites weren’t paying attention to him 24/7. I suspect this church means the same thing, i.e., make everyone worship exactly as they do — since we haven’t been doing that, God has allowed (or worse, caused) our problems.

What mechanism is the church thinking of, exactly, to “get” us back to God? Public whippings? The stocks? Re-education camps? Blue laws?^[1] The Mildred Layton Committee to Stamp Out Strife and Tribulation?

What problems, exactly, have been caused by America’s not paying attention to God? Are these real problems, like global warming or income disparity? Or are they the imaginary boogeymen that are the usual sources of fear for this church’s amygdalas, like Teh Gays and illegal immigrants and some soaring crime rate that doesn’t exist?

Does this return to God involve increasing freedoms and liberty and prosperity to every American and non-American in our country? Or does it involve repression and hiding and cutting off? Do they want everyone to support each other with love or are they demanding that we all straighten up and fly right?

Do they mean that we should throw our weight behind politicians who are going to vote to provide for the least of these, with policies like socialized medical care and childcare and a livable minimum wage? Or do they want to restrict our tax dollars to those who “deserve” it?

It would be uncivil of me to put words in this church’s mouth, so to speak, but I think the odds are pretty great that what this church means is that this nation has changed in ways that make them uncomfortable. Where before there were tidy boxes for every category — and there were categories — now we have boxes and crates and beanbag chairs and waterbeds, and people keep going from one to the other with shocking ease. Those People act as if they have a seat at the table, and this church wants us to remove those chairs immediately. With prejudice.

In the end, their sanctimonious sign is empty posturing, a static version of the gospel of Luke’s Pharisee in the Temple, smug that they are not as other men are. They might be better off reading Matthew’s reporting.

—————

^[1] Blue laws, for those too young to remember, required local businesses to be closed on Sundays — and yes, this church would be in favor of their return.

I’ve been reading back through this blog and have come to a conclusion: I write really well.  But let that pass. Here’s a thought I had after reading one of my Liberal Rants posts.^[1]

The post is titled Amygdalas. Why is it always amygdalas?, and it’s an explication of a spam email that invites you to click on several links to discover the hideous plots to put Hillary Clinton^[2] into the White House, KENNETH.

Here’s what struck me:

It is true, boys and girls, that there are conspiracy-minded amygdala-based lifeforms on both sides of the aisle — and here I am thinking of Seth Abramson and the small flock of liberals who tweet day after day that the Trump crime family/Matt Gaetz/etc are going to be indicted/arrested ANY DAY NOW NEXT MONTH FOR SURE, KENNETH — but Jebus H. Cthulhu we got nothing to compare to the fevered brains on the right.

Remember Jade Helm?

Sovereign Citizens?

Barack Obama’s birth certificate?

Pizzagate?

Mike Lindell?

QAnon??

Here’s my point: these are all the same thing. It doesn’t matter that none of them were true, that none of them could even be true.^[3] What matters to the amygdala-based lifeforms is that these theories provide the life-giving jolts of fear and anger that their brains need to live.

And let’s face it, half the conspiracy theories that give the amygdala-based lifeforms all the tingles in their pink bits are, if not invented by, at least cynically embraced by the leaders of our conservative movement to keep the amygdala-based lifeforms focused on the sweet, sweet buzz in their brains rather than the facts at hand.

This is what gives us comments like the one posted by some Georgian on Governor Brian Kemp’s Facebook page:

And these frauds with old lucy stole Karen handles seat how many fraud voters did she fly in from Delta state to state and bused in 10 time district to district fraud votes absentee ballot stuffing old abrams still pushing bathhouse barry hussain un aca commercials!

Foaming at the mouth and falling over backwards, indeed.

I don’t have a solution other than to calmly and firmly stamp out this idiocy whenever and wherever it shows up. We’re not going to disabuse the amygdala-based lifeforms; they’re addicted like lab rats and are going to keep pushing that button. But we can at least help others see the danger of addiction.

Further: Lauren Boebert, lost in a cacophony of crazy

—————

^[1] Those posts are particularly tasty.

^[2] aka Satan.

^[3] Comet Ping Pong Pizza, for example, doesn’t even have a basement, a key detail in the conspiracy. At least Seth Abramson, et al., have actual investigations on which to hang their hopes and dreams.

If you are of sound mind and body, you may wonder how on earth Fox News viewers are so blindered. What Fox does is a remarkable sleight-of-hand, and after you’ve seen it in story after story, you begin to think that maybe perhaps the misdirection could be possibly on purpose. (Click for larger image.)

You will notice that Fox is not reporting on the policies that had President Biden saying mean things about those who don’t follow pandemic protocols. They are reporting only that he said mean things.

Twelve years ago, as Barack Obama became President, I looked back over the eight years of George W. Bush’s rather shoddy performance and mused about where Dante might have placed him in hell. (Now that we’ve had even worse in the White House — a malevolent, venal, corrupt sociopathic narcissist — it’s easy to forget how bad Bush 43 was.)

I came across that blogpost recently and it occurred to me that if anyone were deserving of eternal punishment, it would be Donald J. Trump, and so here we go again!

With Bush, I started at the bottom and worked my way back up, but with Trump, it’s down, down, down we go.^[1]

Circle 1: Limbo

The first circle of Dante’s Inferno is for those who weren’t really sinners per se, but who had the misfortune to be square pegs in the Catholic Church’s round holes: virtuous pagans born before Christ, infants who died before baptism, that kind of thing. There is no place for Donald Trump here.

Circle 2: The Lustful

And here we go. “Grab ‘em by the pussy.” Stormy McDaniels. Backstage at beauty pageants. E. Jean Carroll. Cthulhu only knows with Jeffrey Epstein. If we’ve ever before had a president with such appetites of the flesh, he didn’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses. Trump had no such compunctions. (I will note, for those who didn’t click through to read the Bush piece, that I saw no reason for Bush to go into the Lustful, or the Gluttonous.)

Circle 3: The Gluttonous

Whenever the White House released the results of Trump’s annual physical, the whole world snickered: 6’3”, 244 pounds? Honey, please. Multiple photos of him standing next to men we know to be 6’3” make it clear he’s not that tall, and his diet of fast food is notorious. He’s a pig.

Circle 4: The Avaricious

Where do we begin? He has enriched himself while in the White House by tens of millions of dollars, and he is always looking for the next scam. He has spent the months since the election scamming his followers of their money to “support” his efforts to “reclaim” the election, most of which went straight into his pockets. Where next can he get someone else to build a tower and slap his name on it? (Probably nowhere at this point, since his finances are in shambles.)

There is also the matter of his enriching the 1% with the 2017 tax scam and plunging the budget into more debt than ever before, but that’s more on the Republican party as a whole.

Circle 5: The Wrathful

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I give you the man’s Twitter account. Well, an archive of his account, since Twitter tossed his obese ass off the service finally. He is well-known to rage at anyone who gainsays him; during the final weeks of his administration, White House staff were quoted as saying they simply avoided interacting with him if at all possible — and this included his inner circle.

Circle 6: The Heretical

Dante was more concerned with people like Muhammad or the Epicureans, but Trump’s irreligiousness was stunning in its hypocrisy, particularly since the actual god-botherers bent themselves into Cirque du Soleil gymnastics to overlook it. “Two Deuteronomy.” Not ever having done anything to ask God’s forgiveness for. The whole teargas stunt with the Bible.

Above all, the man’s administration could not have been more opposed to the basic tenets of Christian caritas if it tried — and it tried. The cruelty was the point.

Circle 7: The Violent

Jan. 6.

But even more than the terrorist attack on the Capitol, Trump’s entire modus operandi was that of a mob boss: threats, grudges, retaliations. If you were not absolutely for him, if you were not kissing his ass, then you were against him, and that made you his enemy and his target.

Circle 8: The Fraudulent

Trump University. Trump Foundation. Trump Steaks. Trump Taj Mahal. Trump everything. Over 30,000 lies during his tenure, so many that the fact checkers at the Washington Post threw up their hands and admitted defeat. As Eric Wilson memorably coined, “Everything Trump Touches Dies.”

Circle 9: Traitors

Putin’s bounties on our troops. The refusal to plan for the Covid-19 pandemic, abandoning half a million Americans to their deaths and the working poor to a living hell. Trump’s betrayal of anyone who crossed him. I would also argue that Trump’s Big Lie of the election being fraudulently stolen from him was the ultimate treasonous act: he betrayed this country’s trust in its systems for purely personal benefit. He wanted power — he tried to claim far more power than presidents have (and the Republican Congress did little to stop him) — and he was willing to do anything to get it and to keep it.

Unlike George W. Bush, who got a pass on Lust, Gluttony, and Heresy, Donald J. Trump belongs in every circle but the First Circle, and even that’s damning^[2] since Limbo is for the essentially innocent. In Dante’s plan, your soul passed through the circles of hell to the lowest one for which you were culpable, but for Trump, I think we can go further and split his soul eight different ways so that he is tortured for eternity in all of them.

Hey, look, sir, you got more soul fragments than Voldemort! The greatest ever! Many people are saying… with tears in their eyes.

—————

^[1] I was also more detailed in my examination of the different regions of hell, but better people than I have written entire books on Trump’s crimes, so I’ve kept this short.

^[2] Yes, I see what I did there.