Another month has flown by with your
increasingly distracted hostess being absent from her Whirled for
almost the entire month. It's not that I don't have enough
material on which to muse: to the contrary, the problem is that
there's too much, and (though this isn't really a
problem) there's also the for-pay writing and editing and so
forth that are the first priority. But I'm keeping my dogged and
perhaps irrational commitment to post at least one offering each
month, even if it's a mere stub of a post.
To tell the truth, Scamworld per se hasn't weighed on my mind
over the past few weeks quite as much as matters that are far
more serious, though sometimes related to Scamworld and scammers.
One obvious weighty topic is the May 24, 2022 school shooting/mass murder in Uvalde, a small rural town west of San Antonio. That
gruesome and almost certainly preventable incident, which left 19
elementary school children and two teachers dead, plus more than
a dozen people injured, once again highlighted Texas' status as the proud leader of both gun lunacy and gun-related
deaths in the United States. Talk about
Texas exceptionalism... or Texceptionalism, as the case may be.
Of course, gun-nuttery isn't the only shining example of
Texceptionalism, thanks to regressive republican Texas
politicians and the increasingly crazy and brutal laws they're foisting
on the rest of us.
Naturally, right-wingnuts in Texas and all across
America are blaming everything but guns for Uvalde and
the countless other mass shootings that have dominated the
American news cycle in recent years. Included in the blame game are "wokeness" and "critical race
theory" -- not to mention the LGBQT community, illegal immigration, "the
left," and other rethuglican
bugaboos -- but never, never are guns and those who worship them
to blame.
Despite the recent carnage in Uvalde, the annual NRA (Nazi Republican Armies) convention was
held elsewhere in the state this past
weekend, in my former hometown of Houston. Some of the
rethuglican luminaries who'd been scheduled for in-person
appearances -- e,g., Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant
Governor Dan Patrick, and assorted other scoundrels -- cancelled
their attendance, though Guv'ner Assbutt still
managed to be a presence at the gun orgy.
(In lieu of wheeling his way into the NRA, the guv'ner opted for
another trip to Uvalde, where he was... well... not enthusiastically received.)
On the other hand, loathsome weasel Ted Cruz and
#NeverWasMyPresident Donald John Trump appeared at
GunCon in the (rotting) flesh -- blaming, of course, everything
except guns and the people who cherish them for the horror in
Uvalde. Trump's speech was particularly offensive; after feigning compassion by staging a Hunger
Games-ish sing-song reading/mispronunciation of the Uvalde
victims' names, complete with a gong sound after each name, he
did a little dance. As reprehensible as he is, though, he remains
a hero among the gun loonies, not to mention the hero and de
facto leader of the entire rethuglican party.
To add endless insult to boundless injury -- and
here is where my Whirled's original beat and American politix
converge in an unholy union -- Trump has expanded his grift by hitting the
"motivational" speaker circuit
as part of the "American Freedom Tour," as reported by
Axios earlier this month. It could be argued that he hasn't been off
the speaker circuit since his presidential campaign began in
2015, what with the endless string of fascist pep rallies he has
conducted -- but the
"motivational" gig goes above and beyond the fascist
to-dos.
It can be pretty pricey, for one thing: though tickets for the
riff-raff start at a mere nine bucks for the "Satellite
tier," which apparently grants the lucky ticket holder the
right to watch the program on a TV screen in an overflow room,
"Presidential tier" tickets cost nearly $5,000, and the
promoters won't even list the price for the top "Patriot
tier."
By now I'm far beyond caring about individuals who actually get
grifted by Trump. At this point, anyone stupid or willfully blind
enough to still admire him deserves to be scammed. I do, however,
care about the countless folks who have been, are being, or will
be harmed by the ugly stain of Trumpism, which is far more to
blame for the mass shootings in America than "wokeism"
or "critical race theory." All I can say now, to
eligible voters in the United States, is this: Vote blue in
November and beyond. The Democratic Party is far from perfect,
but the other party is batshit crazy.
I'll be back in June, which is just around the corner. I'd like
to say that I hope it will be a calmer month, but I wouldn't
count on it.