Gaslight! the board game

 

Mental health relies, at the very least, on being able to believe in verifiable reality.  The internet gets a lot of blame for spreading conspiracy theories, satires and sheer gibberish that people find difficult to research, but you could say the same thing about the printing press or the invention of writing itself.  It gets worse when governments, with their overwhelming reach and power, all but absolute in too many places, get involved in the manure spreading.  

One of the most prolific is J.D. Vance, who didn't even sweat when he rolled out his explanation for high housing prices last month:  "We brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes."  If that sounds familiar, it's because he just changed a few words from the chronic right-wing complaint about "illegal immigrants" taking jobs from Americans -- jobs construction firms and farmers found impossible to fill after the ICEstapo roundups began.  If Americans don't want to pick lettuce or work off the books on building sites and in car washes, they sure as hell don't want to live in the housing most undocumented migrants can afford -- trailers, motels, tenement apartments or ramshackle houses shared by multiple single men or even families.  Come on, J.D., you can't be that dumb.  The average house price is over $400,000.  Yours certainly cost more before you moved into government housing.

Vilifying immigrants has become a national pastime and our next specimen certainly is that dumb:  Gentleman farmer and billionaire Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.  He went on Fox News where they've primed viewers over the years to believe practically anything and uncorked this beauty:  "This is the perfect storm, again, something we inherited."  [All problems are inherited.] "Because of the mass immigration a disease...we've been rid of in North America made its way up through South America as these immigrants brought some of their cattle with them...we've had to shut the border to Mexican beef because of this disease called the screw worm."

These immigrants brought some of their cattle with them -- there you are in a small town in Guatemala trying to decide which cow to bring along as you flee gang violence on foot with young children...I dare him to say that to someone with a functioning brain, not Maria Bartiromo.  Or maybe it's gauchos from Argentina with whole herds of diseased cattle, swimming the Rio Grande.  

Scott, Scott, the screw worm is the larval form of this fly.  Flies don't care about borders and walls.  They can fly.  Like other species they're moving north because of climate change, something your lot believe is a "Chinese hoax."  An animal infected with screw worm isn't going anywhere because the pain drives them mad.  What next?  Should we blame immigrants because nobody's buying tickets for the Kennedy Center?

It's easier to blame Ric Grenell, whose only connection to the performing arts is that his husband danced on Broadway twenty years ago.  He just announced this year's Christmas show and boy howdy, is it Christian.  "Noel: Jesus is Born!" takes place at the Opera House on December 17 with Bible readings and music by Charles Billingsley and his Yuletide Orchestra.  (What do they do the rest of the year?)  Also a "live Nativity scene" -- I hope they depict Mary giving birth this year.  With judicious papering and a couple of buses from Baptist churches, they can probably fill the place.  FYI, "Yule" refers to the pagan celebration of the winter solstice and dates from the Neolithic period.

As you can see, ICE got a warm reception as they arrived in Charlotte to punish its "sanctuary city" policy.  One person was arrested while doing yardwork at a church; Governor Josh Stein protested people being grabbed off the streets "based on their skin color."  A US citizen was arrested twice, while entering and then exiting a restaurant, because apparently they all look illegal.  National Guard troops have been withdrawn from Portland and Chicago, now freshly pacified.

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia and Trump has always wanted the Epstein files released so we as a nation can "move on" from the Democrat hoax.  Who knows?  Maybe he got the high sign from Pam that all the nasty stuff about him has fallen into a shredder by accident.  Trouble is, literally thousands of people had been assigned to sort through the evidence, including hardened FBI agents who sometimes needed a break because it was that bad and they have daughters, too.  Senator Chris Murphy has seen enough to call it "the biggest corruption scandal in the history of the country," adding, "Trump is trying to cover up for...a host of powerful and rich people, but he's frankly not that selfless.  He wouldn't be going through all of this...if he wasn't seriously implicated."

Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) told the New York Times he now expects tomorrow's vote to be virtually unanimous.  Will that end the colorful -- literally -- feud between Trump and "Marjorie Taylor Brown"?  Greene does not like the hoax pizza deliveries and pipe bomb threats she has received because this time they're coming from inside the MAGA cult.  "Mark Levin has been calling me a traitor," she pouts.  Maybe he remembers her "Rothschild space lasers" theory.  Maybe he was watching CNN yesterday when Greene said, "I think the right question to ask is, was Jeffrey Epstein working for Israel?  I'm proud to say I don't take money from AIPAC."  You know how touchy some people are.  Anyway, she won't run out of pizza.  Why does MAGA never send calzones or lasagna?

And now it's Greg Goode's turn.  After getting Trump-bombed for not supporting gerrymandering, the Indiana Republican was swatted in an email to the Terre Haute police.  This is a charming tactic where MAGAs send a SWAT team to an enemy's home in the hope that it will lead to violence or death without their having to get off the couch.  I hope the senator likes pizza.

Meanwhile his governor Mike Braun was folding up like a cheap deck chair after "a great call" with Trump, who later explained to a reporter why he was hoarse:  "I was shouting at people because they were stupid about something."  Trump insists that the 2020 census was "rigged."  Who the hell was president then?  Lock him up!

From USA Today:  "It's official.  Medicare costs will eat up much of older Americans' Social Security cost-of-living increase next year."  Sure, piss off the geezers in time for the midterms.  Nice work, Dr. Crudites.

Has someone been sending pizzas to Alexis Wilkins?  Because her boyfriend Kash Patel decided she deserves protection by a team of elite FBI agents who are usually assigned to the Nashville field office's SWAT team.  In a related story, Kamala Harris's Secret Service protection was withdrawn in August.

"I have no idea what they analyzed but whatever they analyzed, they analyzed it well and they said I had as good a result as they've ever seen."  Yes, Trump, trying to explain how he aced his MRI without even knowing what body part was rolled into the scanner.  Trust me, if they stuck your head into that noisy, claustrophobic device, you'd never forget it unless you were totally gorked out.  Of course they told him it was magnificent -- what are they going to say, "There's more plaque than brain"?  By the way, Stable Jenius, the M stands for "magnetic" -- as in "Nobody knows what magnets are."

He broke the machine, didn't he?