Orange Man Bad: On Vermin, Grifters and Attention Whores

After a tawdry, turbulent year that hit new depths of political dysfunction - lies, schemes, crypto-fascists in the House of Reps, never mind genocide abroad - we gotta wonder if it can get any worse. Next year, of course, we'll find out. For now, what looms is a party of malignant clowns, thugs and fabulists led by a vengeful, racist, demented crook who's literally becoming Hitler before our eyes. A New Year's wish: May this be "the end of the MAGA polka."

This year, nothing said malfunctioning governance like the marginally-GOP-controlled House, which lurched from a rancorous 15-ballot Speaker's fight and then ignoble eviction of sort-of Speaker McCarthy after just nine lame months to trying to blackmail the US to default on its debt, launching pointless fake inquiries into Hunter Biden's laptop and lap, barely dodging a fistfight on the floor - "You stand your butt up now!" - anointing a feckless Christian Nationalist as their leader, evicting George Santos for being too crooked and inept even for them, and failing to fund anything that needed funding. They did, however, approve a fact-and-evidence free impeachment process against Joe Biden in a desperate effort to appease their pissed-off, infamously-stinky, twice-impeached, 91-felony-count-laden, sexual-assault-liable, millions-in-fraud-lawsuit-pending leader who still insists on declaiming to his likewise loser cult members, "I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged...I am your retribution."

En route, as always, he's still grifting - "It's my fucking money!" - often using his legal troubles to raise money from gullible followers by portraying himself as an innocent victim in an alternate reality where omnipresent enemies like Sleepy Joe, Deranged Jack Smith, Fake News, this guy and other nameless enemies are out to get him. Most recently he's been hawking Christmas merch: Mugshot mugs, shot glasses, tacky sweaters, even a piece of the "priceless" suit he wore for his arraignment - "It was a great suit, believe me" - in exchange for 47 $99 NFTs for $4,653 and (maybe but probably not) a crappy dinner with him at Mar-a-Lago. He's also fundraising off the Colorado Supreme Court ruling kicking him off the presidential ballot just for trying to destroy the country he now wants to run like a dictator” - "Chip in now!" - even though even conservative judges have deemed the decision "a masterful judicial opinion of constitutional law (that) will stand the test of time," also a likely inevitable appeal.

Mostly, though, Orange Man has been morphing into Fascist Man, or per Digby, "He's really going for the Hitler thing." In multiple, much-noted speeches - any press is good press, right? - he's been channeling the racist malevolence of the author of Mein Kampf, even though he claims he hasn't read it or even looked at the pictures so how could he possibly be a Nazi? "I know nothing about Hitler," he's insisted of the most renowned villain in history, which is coincidentally just like he knew nothing about the KKK's David Duke, or QAnon, or the Proud Boys, or Nick Fuentes, or....“I have no idea what Hitler said other than (what) I’ve seen on the news. And that’s a very, entirely different thing than what I’m saying.” As to the oft-repeated claim he kept Hitler's speeches at his bedside: "If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them, says the guy who once boasted "the only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yarmulkes." He is not, he says bravely, "a fan of Hitler's."

Still, he vows to "root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists (that) live like vermin within the confines of our country." He charges immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country...They're pouring into our country from Africa, from Asia." They're "destroying the blood of our country," bringing "disease and crime," "coming from jails, prisons, emptying out insane asylums," we're "going to have to get them out," maybe with a Final Solution? Observers note that, as with Mexican "rapists" - or black men besmirching white womanhood and Jews fouling bloodlines - he's dropped the pretense his concerns are economic. Echoing the key tenets of fascist ideology - purity and hierarchy - they have become existential. All these people, in the fever dream of fascism, are "dangerous in themselves, just by virtue of existing." And (devout) Biden is even targeting Catholics with "undercover spies"! Not even bad world leaders "are as evil and sick as the THUGS we have inside our Country," he shrieks. "MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

And dutifully, dully, his acolytes hedge, lie, dismiss. J.D. Vance on "poisoning the blood": it's about smuggled fentanyl. DeFascist on vermin: "It's not a term I use." Lindsey Graham: "I could care less what language people use as long as we get (the border) right." Tommy Tuberville even wishes he was "tougher...We're being overrun." At Turning Point's recent AmericaFest confab, other accomplices eagerly joined the dystopian fraying of democracy. "Hardcore MAGA" freak Jason Whitlock defended "life before suffrage" in the name of "the natural order that God intended," arguing, "Not everyone has to have a vote." Steve Bannon argued the way to stop bullying is to get kids off social media and "start teaching them the proper use of guns, how to defend themselves." This week, asked what the Civil War was about, Nikki Haley babbled about "how government was going to run, freedoms and what people could and couldn't do," without saying the word "slavery." After backlash, she said the query came from "a Democratic plant."

As ghastly as all these people are, an exemplary avatar for the trash heap of today's GOP is serial fabulist, volleyball star, identity thief, money launderer, fake lawmaker and newly expelled Rep. George Santos, who finally proffered colleagues a bar too low and embarrassing to sink to, thus marking, "The Year His Campy Conman Act Ate Capitol Hill." Departing with his usual flair - spitting "To hell with this place" and vowing to take down his drunken, corrupt colleagues - he quickly found an income stream that dwarfs his $174,000 Congressional pittance and should cover legal costs for the 23 federal felony charges he faces. Having upped his initial fee of $75 a pop to $599, the “former Congressional Icon!” is now "living his best life" by reportedly earning up to $80,000 a day making brief personal videos for the B-celebrity messaging platform Cameo. He sends birthday greetings, job congrats, support to a furry coming out, advice to "Screw the haters!" "My road to redemption," he crows, "will be serving the American people!”

There have been prank assignments: John Fetterman paid him to send advice to "Bobby from Jersey," aka indicted Sen. Robert Menendez. "Hey Bobby!" Santos chirped. "These people who want to make you run away - you stand your ground, sir." Jimmy Kimmel's "Will Santos Say It?" features "ridiculous" requests: His "mom" who cloned "her dog Adolf," his legally blind niece who passed her driver's test but then crashed and is in a full body cast, etc. On one hand, you hate to give money to a guy like George Santos," says Kimmel. "But on the other, pretty good chance he has your credit card information already.” With even Matt Gaetz fundraising off Santos' new, often foul-mouthed fame, Charlie Warzel laments a shameless "attention economy" in "the indefatigable American spirit of grift" wherein you can "give that special someone (a) recording of a disgraced Congressman performing for your ironic viewing pleasure." Santos' story - turning meme-like scandal into profit - is "as American as apple pie."

Like Rudy Giuiiani's Masked Singer, Sean Spicer's Dancing With the Stars, or literally everything about a crass, ill-informed, self-serving former host of a TV reality show who stumbled into a toxic presidency whose corrosive effects we're still fighting, Santos perfectly, gruesomely embodies the GOP's cynical degradation of our political landscape. Sharp-tongued comedian Ziwe Fumudoh captured that messy truth when she interviewed Santos - "a jokester and a national joke" - in a cringe-filled, 18-minute conversation offering "confirmation that we are living in a fever dream." Lobbing multiple zingers - "What advice do you have for young diverse people with personality disorders considering a career in politics?" - Fumudoh also exposed Santos' stunning ignorance when it turned out he'd never heard of Harvey Milk or James Baldwin. Still, he got the last, savvy, bitter word. "What could we do to get you to go away?" she asked. "Stop inviting me to your gigs," he quickly retorted. "But you can't. Because people want the content."

Every time we think we've hit bottom in the right-wing devastation wrought on our political discourse these last few long years, it suddenly seems there's a bit further to fall. Dubiously gracingthe AmericaFest stage was also Roseanne Barr, former comedian turned Trump fanatic. "I'm all in for President Trump. I just wanna say that I'm all in," she yelled. "Because I know if I ain't all in, they're going to put my ass in a gulag if he loses...If we don't stop these horrible Communists...Do you hear me? Stalinist! Communist! With a huge helping of Nazi fascist thrown in, plus wanting the caliphate to replace every Christian democracy on Earth. Now. Do you know that?" With puzzled wingnuts falling quiet, she raged on: "We just want the truth about everything that we fought and died and suffered to protect. We want the truth." The truth, wrote one hopeful patriot, is we may at last be seeing the demise of "the MAGA polka....(the) tragic display of stranded MAGA dancers looking for an accordion player." Please let it be.

Update: Thank you Maine. The way life should be.