A funny thing happened on the way creating the GQP’s Dystopian Paradise, they passed state laws and constitutional amendments to pwn the libs and to stop the evil socialists from socialistizing all of the god-fearing right-good red-blooded Amer’cans! Apparently, it is a thing now that Repube politicians who actually hold elected office enact laws, policies, and state constitutional amendments that will nullify the horrid laws and policies of Dumbocrats that will tear down the foundation of America because WE’RE #1! WE’RE #1! WE’RE #1! USA! USA! USA!
Way back when the ACA was giving birth to the “grassroots” movement that came to be known as the Tea Party, some Tea Partiers got elected to office and while high on their own supply wrote state laws and constitutional amendments that made big government telling an individual anything about how to treat their own medical issues unlegal! You know, like gubment telling us that we had to have health insurance or we couldn’t have junk insurance even if we really really wanted it because not having junk insurance violated their sincerely held religious beliefs.
Anti-ACA Laws versus Abortion Bans
Turns out, now that those same Repube office holders what passed THOSE anti-ACA laws to protect us from libel trannies and gubment reach arounds want to outlaw abortions, and some sneaky conniving snake has passed a law or state constitution amendment that says gubment can’t tell individuals what to do for their medical conditions, so now legislating judges are legislating from the bench again by striking down those abortion outlawing laws.
Whut in tarnation?!?! Don’t those ding-dang-dumb Trump-appointed liberal judges know nuthin? Don’t they know that the law only applies to liberal causes and interests? The law can’t stop god’s work, and by god’s work, they mean MAGA priorities.
The libels done tricked us AGAIN! Dayum! When is Donald Gold Trump going to DO something about all this libel madness messin’ up our country?
Anti-Vaccine and Pro-Pandemic Laws
Well, sir, believe it or not, we’re about to repeat history. Those exact same Missouri Repube politicians that enacted the anti-ACA policies and stuff which is now tripping up god’s own work of making sure that the only people who have access to abortions are outlaws and the only people who have access to safe abortions are Republican women, are now enacting laws that will stop all those Dumbocratic gubment reach arounds by making sure we can’t be trannied during another pandemic!
These state geniuses have writed themselves a law using their very own thinking brains to be prepared in advance for the next fake pandemic that they KNOW the libels are going to foist upon us in order to take our guns and force us all into using the bathroom with real live trannies, not just the gubment trannies that make us do stuff — I know it is confusing when you enter the mind of MAGA.
This Missouri law will prevent anyone in the “great” state of Missouri from ever forcing anyone else under any circumstance to do the following:
- Get a #COVID-19 vaccination!
- Take anything that has messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) in it, you know like those #COVID-19 vaccines do.
- Use a treatment or medical procedure that will “edit or alter human deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) or the human genome,” you know like the #COVID-19 vaccines do.
- Place any mechanical or electronic device under the skin, you know like a tracking chip like the #COVID-19 vaccines do.
- Or charge anyone a fine, tax, or other financial penalty because a person don’t want to no way now how have anything to do with gubment trannies and get that George Soros tracking chip embedded in them so the gubment can alter their DNA for their own nefarious purposes.
While watching these MAGA legislatures try to govern is more fun than a barrel of monkeys, we have to wonder what in political psychology is going on here? Hasn’t Ye Olde Blogge been posting about something called Follow-the-Leader Theory of Politics in which constituents just blithely change their beliefs and issues to match those of their favoritest politicians? Hasn’t it been supported by real live empirical facty-type scientific findings?
The Follow-the-Leader Theory of Politics
According to Gabriel Lenz’s analysis of the American National Election Studies only 50% of the sample could match politicians or parties to policy positions and that only 20 to 40% had a stable view on policy, strongly suggesting that the views of low-information voters are as soft and mushy as play dough.
If that’s the case, why are Repube politicians passing such stupid laws as the one in Missouri that ban things that can’t even happen like produce a vaccine that alters the human genome or DNA or embeds a tracking device in our bodies like we all live in some kind Stanley Kubrick science fiction movie or something? Shouldn’t THOSE politicians be able to establish policy positions and their supporters just adopt them? Ain’t that what follow-the-leader theory says? Well, ain’t it?
Like everything else Donald G. Trump, super genius, touches, this theory has turned to shit, too. I swear, he is the man with feculent touch. We should just call him Orange Finger!
Repubes live in upside-down world in every other facet of their existence, why shouldn’t it be true here, too? Instead of the constituents molding themselves to the views of their leaders, their leaders are molding their views to those of their constituents.
You hear them all the time whine and complain that they have to enact these dumb things or at least appear to be trying to or they won’t be re-elected, like the fate of the world depends on them being re-elected to their office of choice.
Instead of Joe “Almost Heaven” Manchin finding a way to lead West Virginia out of poverty and not tie whatever grim future the hardworking souls of the state might have to the dying coal industry, he shrugs helplessly and says “My constituents WANT me to take all that coal industry lobbying money so I can make the remaining coal barons billions, myself millions, and condemn them to living in Cancer Alley, drinking Flint water, paying for Texas utilities, and dying quickly and quietly when they start costing the one percent more than they contribute to their already bloated bottomline. It’s not me. I really want to save the climate and prevent climate change, but if I’m going to be re-elected, I’ve got to do what my constituents want, right?”
Ain’t that the way democracy works? If your constituents want to put out their house fire with gasoline, what choice does old “Almost Heaven” Manchin have but to bring them buckets of gas? That’s democracy right there, right?
We are indeed living through the stupidest reality in the United Fucking States of Fucking Stupid. God help us survive it.
Put your wallet away, cuz this one is on me! Jus’ grabber your clicker get to clicking!
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Image Attribution
“Upside down” by Brian Smithson (Old Geordie) is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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Categories: Political Psychology
The Psy of Life 
I have naught to add, but wanted to say hello.
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Howdy Ali!
It’s always good to hear from you and know that you are doing reasonably well. You are, aren’t you?
Indulge in the schadenfreude that is Trump’s indicatement. We’ve all earned it.
Huzzah!
Jack
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✌
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Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
Calico Jack – A world turned upside down?
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Well, here’s a perplexing question: If the politicians have to follow the lead of the ignorant and confused MAGA base mob, and FOX “NEWS” has to knowingly lie about almost everything lest they be abandoned by that same mass of viewers who have brought them such astronomical ratings and add income for so long, who’s the egg and who’s the chicken, the politicians or the talking heads? Maybe it is a case for both of Dr. Frankenstein winding up being dominated by the Monster. Or, they found a sleeping tiger, got up on it’s back, grabbed it by the ears, and woke it up, and now, they can’t get off without being eaten.
Is it even possible to white laws and such that will guarantee that a government will always do exactly what you want, and only what you want, and never anything that you don’t want or that you’d rather it didn’t? Can you even trust your favorite authoritarian strong man to get that right?
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Howdy Bob!
I guess this is what the Founding Fathers meant when they worried about mob rule. The confounding thing is that the politicians can’t win a fair election with this base, so to win, they have to rig it in their favor. Fox News can make a profit with them, but it so poisons the discourse that it makes the country impossible to govern as a democracy.
When you legislate by conspiracy theory, you come up with laws banning the impossible like allowing people to opt out of taking a vaccine that will alter their DNA.
Unfortunately, the path that MAGA is on leads to authoritarianism, which once the leader is installed and all checks and balances dismantled, is completely uncontrollable and unaccountable. It reminds me of a meme series that I started back when Trump was first elected about white people complaining when the feds cut back the programs they were relying on like support for coal miners titled, #WhatDidYouExpect?
Huzzah!
Jack
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I saw an article today, I think it was on KOS, about the Repubs in the House trying to figure out what they can cut from the budget without damaging their own base. Considering that Red States get more federal money than they put in, that is a problem for them. They can’t cut the stuff their voters depend on until elections either don’t matter or stop happening.
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Howdy Bob!
This maybe the first time that they ever expressly expressed a concern for their most vulnerable voters. Of course, what they’re really saying is that they’re trying to find a way to hurt PoC without hurting their white constituents. I guess it speaks to their desperate need to hold onto every voter. Since they can’t win a free and fair election even when the base turns out at near 100%, they can’t afford to lose even one.
Fortunately, it is an impossible task. There really is no way that they can cut entitlement spending without hurting white voters. Maybe they’re losing confidence in their racist dog whistles that would equate welfare with Blacks and crime while white folks took home the lion’s share of all of it.
Huzzah!
Jack
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They may have learned something from their inability to repeal Obama Care before it became popular. The dilemma likely has something to do with the drive to attack everything LGBTQ+. It’s not a money issue.
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Of course they may be having trouble coming up with a suitable budget because thinking is hard and this lot isn’t exactly disciplined enough to puzzle through all of the issues concerning the budget. Most of them have based their lives on the simplistic jingoistic rhetoric that has been used for the past fifty years in conservative political circles.
They want to put the Dems in a box so that they reject the Rep budget that has cuts to domestic spending that doesn’t hurt their constituents at least, allowing Reps to run on the old tax and spend accusations. Fortunately, there isn’t enough domestic spending that fits the criteria to make it effective. Any such cuts in a budget of numbering in the hundreds of billions will not move the budget significantly towards being balanced.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Yep, once Social Security and Medicare were taken off the table, and now 40 states have gone with the ACA Medicaid expansion (and are depending on that federal money), there just isn’t that much left. Oh, yes, they want to tighten the work requirements for Food Stamps for applicants who can work, but the vast majority of them already do work (and are White and live in Red states). So, what can they do but scream about possibly trans people with guns.
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Howdy Bob!
All I can say is Mississippi is exposing the Repube racist welfare ploy. When they made TANF into a state block grant program, most of the money stopped being spent on income support in red states, which they’ve made sure that as few people as possible receive it. Outside of the social safety net programs, most federal domestic spending is popular. People like our spending on parks and recreation, police and fire support, the highways, and whatever else we spend on. There really is nothing for them to do other than threaten to default. And, even that is political suicide.
No one has liked the government shutdowns. The public will blame the Repubes for it. It is pure hubris. It’s like watching the runaway steam engine in the silent movie run off of the unfinished bridge into the canyon. There is no saving the Repubes from themselves. The base is so rabid now, they will accept nothing else other than our own destruction.
Huzzah!
Jack
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May they ride the wave of Culture War panic and outrage straight into the cliff.
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I think they are heading that way. Now to see if white Mississippians will punish them for it.
Huzzah!
Jack
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We will see. The odds may be long. After all, Mississippi is still Mississippi. How much has it changed since Nina Simone sang that song?
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Not much, I’d wager, but Mississippi Goddamn seems awfully apt at this point.
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