Morning Message 1.13

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Hey there everyone, welcome to Wednesday and the morning message I’m your unflappably consistent and predictable host John Henry, let’s get right to it.

I want to talk a minute about this thing in Florida with Ron DeSantis ordering migrant refugees to be shipped around the country as political tokens to be used.

Look, it’s real simple: this is f**king disgusting. It is absolutely beyond the pale for anyone to use human beings like this, or even for us to allow it to happen.

I said back in September of last year when DeSantis sent Florida officials to San Antonio, Texas to round up immigrants to be then flown to Massachusetts, all in service of somehow “owning the libs,” that it sounded like kidnapping to me. Apparently the sheriff of Bexar County, Texas agrees as he filed a criminal complaint of “several” counts including both misdemeanor and felony charges of unlawful restraint. (The five felony charges related to the minors who were kidnapped and relocated by Ron DeSantis’ private schutzstaffel.)

The thinking – and I use that word very loosely – here is that since it’s the “libs” who are “inviting” “these people” to Our Great Nation, then the “libs” can take care of them, we’ll just drop ’em off where all the rich “libs” are! That’ll larn ’em hyuk hyuk. And it’s such a problem in Florida that they had to go to San Antonio, Texas to find some brown people to abuse.

Meanwhile they’ve done it again, this time shipping a bunch of people to Sacramento where California governor Gavin Newsom continues making empty, performative threats about it. Fascist lapdog and odious caricature of humanity Alecia Collins (communication director for the Florida Department of Emergency Management) was quoted as sneering, “From left-leaning mayors in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, Colorado, the relocation of those illegally crossing the United States border is not new but suddenly when Florida sends illegal aliens to a sanctuary city it’s false imprisonment and kidnapping.” I could spend another twenty minutes deconstructing all the racist, fascist, classist, bigoted, stupid, malicious dogwhistles in just that sentence, but neither it nor the festering pustule who spewed it merits that level of validation.

We are being governed by five year olds. Ron DeSantis is fascist garbage, and the only two things stopping me from kicking him square in the ass are the law and the fact that I can’t afford to burn a perfectly good pair of shoes afterwards, bury them, then salt the earth to ensure his odious infection of stupidity and malice doesn’t spread.

It’s not just him, either. Trump, McConnell, Christie, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley. The entire Republican Party has gone 100% fascist. They’re not even trying to hide it anymore. They don’t care if you know, because we’ve spent the last half-century shrugging our shoulders and pretending we don’t see it because we don’t want the holidays to be uncomfortable. Even my state rep is a galumphing, gelatinous assembly of empty hostilities and vague handwaving accusations with no substance and no attempt at it.

Meanwhile, humans are being used as political props for sick, malicious pigs like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. All they do is lie through their teeth, say a bunch of angry words and point their marks in a direction, and ride it straight to the bank.

We must stop being afraid to call a fascist a fascist. We have to stop allowing ourselves to be conned into cutting corners and making compromises and “reaching across the aisle” just to shove our hands in a meat grinder.

Enough. The entire Republican presidential field is a sick joke and it can’t possibly be anything but. I don’t see trying to beat Biden from the left as a winning strategy in ’24 – people like stability too much and he’s bringing that – but certainly we can beat fascism from the left, right now.

We start doing that by admitting out loud that’s what we have to do.