Hispanic Fanatic

We grasp at the tattered, frayed fabric of our identity, especially as we get older.

For Gen Xers like me, barreling into middle age and toward antiquity, we take comfort in the fact that nobody was ever more badass, more cynically cool, more “fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me” than us.

Yeah, I told you about my ex-friend who went from out-and-proud progressive to right-wing promoter of racist conspiracy theories. But she must be an aberration, right?

Well, recent surveys have shown that maybe she isn’t.

You see, Biden’s disapproval rating is highest among Gen X, compared to the other generations. Biden also has the highest “strongly disapprove” rating from Gen X.

Many experts believe that the “one-time flannel-wearing, Pearl Jam-listening and Slacker–Singles-watching generation has become much more Republican and conservative than it was in the Obama years.” 

Now, there is much dispute over the definition and measurement of political preferences, generational differences, and survey results.

In fact, some experts insist that “Gen Xers have swung a little more toward the Democratic Party over time.” 

Others say that Boomers are the only generation that is solidly Republican.

In either case, don’t tell me that people just get more conservative as they age. While there is a sliver of truth to that statement, research shows that “political attitudes are remarkably stable over the long term.” The theory that Gen X is voting GOP just because we’re getting older is shaky at best.

So what in the name of 80s glam rock is going on with these survey results?

Well, if there is a Gen X problem for progressives, “it is very likely a white Gen X problem.” Let’s face it. Gen X is less diverse than younger generations. In fact, over 60% of us are white. 

That means I am an ethnic minority within a generational minority. Yes, sometimes I feel like an exotic bird.

In any case, Trumpism is “more likely to resonate with white Gen Xers… than nonwhite individuals.”

My generation’s drift toward MAGA town is a “sustained white Gen X backlash to the social norms and ideals that have been part of our cultural backdrop” since we were kids.

Like me, many of my peers grew up with Sesame Street. But unlike me, they never appreciated the parts where people spoke Spanish.

Now that they are middle-aged, they are pissed off about woke and diversity and, apparently, basic decency.

For example, one Gen Xer told NPR that his preference for Trump stems from how we were “raised where we don’t think there’s anything wrong to say, ‘Is that retarded?’ or ‘Is there a Black guy down the street?’ You know what I’m saying?”

Yes, I know exactly what this man is saying. He is implying that racial paranoia is admirable and that the natural evolution of language and cultural norms is an oppressive force.

Also, the fact that young people frown at our use of the word “retard” means that we Gen Xers have no choice but to vote for a fascist.

Makes perfect sense.

This outrage over new societal standards is prevalent among white Gen Xers, especially men. And as we know, white men of any generation are aggressively right wing. Hey, perhaps the reason so many white Gen X men stormed the Capitol is because the Boomers got winded or had lingering issues from their hip-replacement surgeries.

I have more to say on the disconcerting overlap between Gen X and baby Boomers. But that will wait until next week.

Until then, turn up the Rage Against the Machine and Public Enemy. It might be your last chance.

It’s that time of the electoral season, when journalists, political scientists, psychologists, and experts in every field (up to and including herbology) spend innumerable hours attempting to figure out what motivates voters.

This is a quest that is never focused on progressives. Apparently, we are easy to figure out. Liberals just want to smuggle a billion undocumented immigrants into America, burn down all the churches, perform forceful abortions on every woman, and make all the guys marry each other. It’s that simple.

But Trump voters? Truly they are a mystery of the modern world.

For example, CNN recently profiled Republican primary voters and included this nugget of pure wisdom: “Trump critics who think his supporters are blindly loyal would benefit from some time in the quarry with McIver, or on the boat with Konchek.”

Well, those are fine all-American names. And in the article, McIver and Konchek come across as admirable, hardworking, humble men.

You see, just like Trump fans will never stop supporting him, the mainstream media will never stop insisting that blue-collar dudes who embrace bigotry and fascism are great guys.

Also, the idea that liberals “would benefit from some time” with Trump supporters reinforces the idea that progressives are obligated to get out of our bubbles, get into that quarry or fishing boat, and work hard to empathize with Trump supporters. 

But we will never ask the same of MAGA. They can go right on screaming that all progressives are pedophiles. To ask Republicans to listen to progressives is ludicrous, even insulting, and we certainly can’t be criticizing conservatives.

The gist of the CNN article is that Republicans are not “blindly loyal” to Trump, and they question some of his actions. But as the article makes clear, they go ahead and vote for him anyway. Seriously, every one of the free-thinking conservatives profiled in the article admits that, come November, they will vote for Trump.

Maybe I’m missing something, but that seems pretty damn loyal to me.

For almost a decade now, media outlets have been straining to portray Trump voters’ motivations as more complex than they actually are.

Mountains of data going back years show that the most accurate indicators of Trump support are racial animosity, a yearning for traditional gender roles, and comfort with authoritarianism.

So if you are racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and love dictators, we have the perfect candidate for you.

Of course, not all Trump supporters possess these unsavory characteristics. There are also those who believe, against all logic and data, that the economy does better under Republican presidents. Others have a mortal fear of liberals. And still others, billionaires mostly, stand to benefit from another Trump administration. 

Christian nationalists also love the guy. But so do hard-core conservatives who want to live in a world where nothing changes, ever. These people are the greatest, in that they espouse a made-up legal philosophy, originalism, that insists Americans can carry heavy weaponry that didn’t exist in colonial times even though in just about every other aspect, we should live exactly like Benjamin Franklin did. It doesn’t matter that most Americans don’t want to live in the 1700s, because originalists demand that we do so.

By the way, no other industrialized nation seems to have this hero worship of their leaders from hundreds of years ago. No other developed country says, “Let’s base our laws on the best guess of how our prime minister who’s been dead for 200 years would rule.”

Another aside: Isn’t it odd that conservatives, who shriek that discussions of civil rights are irrelevant because they originated way back in the 1960s, have adopted a motto that clamors for taking America back to the 1950s? And they are straight-up obsessed with Confederate generals from a century before that. It’s all about picking and choosing from the past for these guys.

In any case, media coverage of Trump supporters is invariably fawning or apologetic. This is not a surprise, since the man himself gets more positive spin than most would-be insurrectionists could ever dream of receiving. 

This is because news outlets are constantly striving to “find something that is genuinely suboptimal about the Democratic candidate and dwell on it endlessly to ‘balance’ coverage of the criminal in charge of the GOP.”

The approach works well for Trump and Republican leaders, who want to convince voters that they are “simultaneously just little guys like us — helpless victims of a liberal police state — and strong, powerful father figures who will protect us from the bad guys.”

It’s quite the balancing act.

Many historians believe that Ibn al-Haytham, who lived in present-day Iraq 3,000 years ago, was the world’s first scientist. He invented the pinhole camera, discovered the laws of refraction, and studied natural phenomena such as rainbows and eclipses. 

And if he lived today, he would be the subject of at least two dozen conspiracy theories and get death threats daily on Facebook.

You see, we Americans are not too fond of science. Oh, we take advantage of its benefits and breakthroughs — everything from the internal combustion engine to aspirin to the internet. But we don’t actually like the concept.

And our disdain for smart people in lab coats has gotten worse since the pandemic, which is not a surprise considering that millions of people still believe that both the virus and its vaccine are hoaxes or government plots.

According to a recent survey, the percentage of Americans who say science has a “mostly positive” effect on society is at 57%, down a staggering 16 percentage points since before the pandemic. And 8% of us think science has a “mostly negative” impact on society. I guess those people are Luddites, Amish, or mad scientists who have seen the error of their ways.

Now, as you can guess, trust in science is not the same across the political spectrum. Republicans have “less confidence in scientists and the benefits of science than Democrats.” In fact, fewer than half of Republicans (47%) say science has a mostly positive effect on society. That’s disturbing enough, but consider that back in the pre-pandemic days (if you can even remember them), about 70% of Republicans had a positive view of science.

That’s an enormous drop-off in such a short amount of time. It further illustrates that the Republican Party’s descent into ignorance has been rapid and decisive. These are people who once thought science was admirable, but they have jettisoned their logic and reason to fall into line behind their mad emperor, who despises people smarter than him.

It also shows how paranoia, fear, and distrust are the GOP’s favorite states of being. There is no such thing as a fringe theory in the modern Republican Party. For example, anti-vaxxers used to be pariahs. But now they are conservative leaders.

Now, this should end the debate over whether Republicans are anti-science. Yes, many liberals have made earnest pleas to respect different points of view and not insult conservatives. This is well-meaning nonsense.

Republicans are basically shouting, “We hate science.” There is no ambiguity here.

For example, the Texas Board of Education, which Republicans lead, recently rejected proposed science textbooks for schools because they contained “too much information about the climate crisis.”

In other words, there was too much science in the science textbooks.

The Republican-majority education board also objected to the textbooks because they “included teachings about evolution but not creationism.” As we know, conservatives “have long pushed textbook publishers to present pseudoscientific concepts like ‘intelligent design’ as equivalent to well-established scientific theories.”

But it still takes a startling amount of chutzpah to say, “If you don’t teach my religious hokum alongside your well-established scientific facts, I will ban your textbook, and I’ll tell you straight to your face that this was the main reason.”

Is that anti-science enough for you?

The disdain for science has filtered down through conservative leadership to the general populace. Currently, a plurality of Americans believe that God created humans, with evolution having no role at all.

Denying evolution is not an indicator of a well-educated society that respects science.

Speaking of evolution, the latest scientific tidbit that I have found fascinating is the work of ecologists who studied “the unequal distribution of birds and other species” throughout America. They found that the patterns of birds revealed “the impact of bigoted urban policies adopted decades ago.”

Science can reveal a lot to us. If we don’t kick it to the curb first.

If your favorite phrase is not “Fuck around and find out,” it should be.

This pithy warning marries the vulgar and profound, the practical and the metaphysical. It also covers a dizzying range of human misbehavior.

Drank too much at the party? Invested in a shady start-up? Asked a rude question? Cheated on your spouse?

In all cases, you know what happened next.

In 2016, America elected a president who was euphemistically called a “political neophyte.” More honest observers referred to him as “total nutjob who should not be allowed to even visit the Oval Office as part of a tour group.”

He led the nation into chaos, death, and economic calamity.

We fucked around and found out.

Now, eight years later, millions of Americans want to take another chance on this unrepentant disaster. These voters are either racists, love authoritarianism, or have suffered grievous blows to the head that have caused massive memory loss.

Maybe these people should heed warnings that their preferred candidate is such a threat to democracy that major media outlets are publishing entire issues analyzing all the ways that his election jeopardizes the nation’s continued existence.

On the other side of the political aisle, maybe Democrats should not be so lackadaisical about the votes of young people, African Americans, and Latinos. Maybe party leaders shouldn’t be so chill about polling that shows their candidate is trailing in multiple demographics, and is leading only among middle-aged suburban dentists in blue states. 

For that matter, perhaps the Democratic Party should realize that their last two candidates have been the most hated woman in America and the oldest person to ever run for president, respectively, offering voters the most uninspiring of choices for three straight elections now.

But no, the Democratic Party seems determined to fuck around and find out.

Future generations of Americans, if there are any, will be mystified that so many theoretically rational people saw catastrophe looming on the political horizon and then, rather than fight it, either accepted it with a shrug or enthusiastically embraced the madness.

These young Americans, struggling to rebuild a shattered nation, will ask why we didn’t do more. They will question our intelligence, morality, and sanity. They will beseech us, in tones that alternate between angry and perplexed, why we insisted on fucking around and finding out.

And we will have no answer.

This will be a very special year. Because it will be our last one.

Well, at least it will be our final year as a functioning democracy if a certain bigoted crime boss / cult leader wins the election this November.

Recently, media outlets have caught on to the fact — at long last — that an insane autocrat will be the Republican nominee for president, and he stands a decent chance of becoming the leader of a government that he tried to violently overthrow. 

Of course, he could not do this if millions of Americans didn’t think it was a good idea to support a narcissistic lunatic who almost destroyed the country when he was in charge. But it’s not really about the racists, conspiracy nuts, and authoritarian lovers who make up the GOP base.

As everyone knows, this election will be decided by that tiny sliver of undecided voters who are torn between a competent but uninspiring octogenarian and a slightly younger guy who faces 91 felony charges in four different cases and who once suggested that Americans drink bleach.

Yes, it’s a real fucking coin toss. Should they go with the man who dodders a bit or the raging misogynist whom dozens of former staffers, aides, and cabinet members say is a direct threat to democracy?

What’s an undecided voter to do?

Recently, the Washington Post looked at this strange demographic. In their article, they profiled an indecisive voter from my hometown of Milwaukee. The man truly didn’t know who to vote for, but he added that he thinks Trump is “hilarious.”

I must admit, I didn’t know that “hilarious” was a legitimate criterion for electing the leader of the free world. But even if it were, I fail to see the hilarity in a deranged old man who spews nonstop insults, lies, and hatred, interspersed only by delusional boasts about how great he is. It’s not exactly the foundation of a tight five for a solid standup act. But maybe I’m just not in on the joke.

And speaking of jokes, let’s consider the Electoral College.

Be honest. If you were building a country from scratch, would you even consider such a tortuous, bizarre, illogical, antidemocratic mechanism?

This “18th-century system — which is unlike anything used by the United States’ 21st-century democratic peers” is a preposterous contraption that “empowers a sliver of the U.S. population in a diminishing number of battleground states.”

In a nation of 330 million people, presidential elections now come down to “about 400,000 people in three or four states,” resulting in an infuriating farce where “more and more people feel that they don’t have a say.”

It also means that an easily persuaded guy in a battleground state who has no principles, concern for others, or awareness of real-world consequences — but who finds a particular candidate “hilarious” — has far more say than you do about whether or not an aspiring despot takes over the nation and grounds our society into dust.

Yeah, I’m still waiting for the punch line.

Recently, I wrote about the surprisingly large percentage of women and Latinos who want to join the GOP in its crusade against, well, women and Latinos.

To conclude this trilogy of terror, let’s look at people who support Christian nationalism, even though they are not Christian.

Of course, you might say that the Republican Party is not officially a religious organization. However, about two-thirds of the GOP, and virtually all of its leadership, is Christian. So it is fair to say that a certain theology guides the organization. 

And if you doubt this, consider that “more than half of Republicans believe the country should be a strictly Christian nation.” In addition, GOP leaders routinely exclaim that they want to eliminate the separation of church and state, and the Republican speaker of the House boasts of being a Christian warrior.

All that is not terribly welcoming to other religions. In particular, Jews might be alarmed that so many Republican leaders have the unfortunate tendency of hanging out with Nazis.

But the war in Gaza has convinced many Jewish voters that the GOP supports them, even though much of that backing is due to a weird biblical belief of some Christians. It involves Armageddon and forcefully converting Jews (seriously, this is a thing).

Conservatives are eager to bring Jewish voters into the GOP tent. So they have painted campus protests as seething cauldrons of antisemitism, full of Jew-hating young progressives. Of course, some progressives have made this an easy sell by embracing vile, antisemitic nonsense.

So a Jewish person rightfully repulsed at a liberal saying positive things about Hamas is more likely to consider the Republican Party, despite that party’s intention to turn America into one big mega church where everyone worships Jesus or else.

Now, there is another reason why many Republicans profess to love Jews. And that is because many of them hate Muslims even more. This is the party, after all, that wants to ban Muslims from ever setting foot in the country. This is the party that clamors to eviscerate Palestinians and turn Gaza “into a parking lot.”

But even in this case, Republicans will temper their Islamophobia if they can find someone to despise even more. For example, some conservative Muslims “have joined forces with right-wing Christians in a bigoted crusade against gay and trans literature in public schools.”

Yes, the “forces who supported a president who called for a Muslim immigration ban are now, through a shared hostility toward gay and trans people, uniting with local Muslims … to demand the imposition of ignorance.”

It just goes to prove that no matter how much a group is oppressed, many of its members are just fine oppressing others.

And speaking of homophobia, remember that the most recent GOP platform called for a ban on gay marriage. State-level branches of the Republican Party have gone even further, with the Texas GOP declaring that “homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice.”  

But the obvious loathing that the GOP has for homosexuality hasn’t deterred the 17 percent of gay people who voted for Trump in 2020. To them, the fact that Christian nationalists would gladly throw every gay person in jail is not an issue. 

Yes, there is likely a gay Latino Muslim immigrant who appears in drag shows but is an ardent Republican. And he probably lives in a swing state.

So we have ethnic minorities supporting bigots, women supporting misogynists, religious minorities supporting Christian fundamentalists, and gay people supporting homophobes. It is festival of self-delusion.

The conservative vision for America is unabashedly narrow, where white Christians call all the shots.

In fact, the Republican Party “is 68 percent white and Christian in a country that is 42 percent white and Christian.” 

Based on those percentages, conservatives need people to vote against themselves.

That’s the only way they win.

I recently wrote about the women who believe supporting the Republican Party will somehow protect them from the wrath of angry right-wing men.

But now let me discuss an issue closer to home: the rise of the MAGA Latino.

Seriously—what the fuck is wrong with those guys?

Ponder the cognitive dissonance (a phrase that comes up a lot when discussing contemporary politics) that is necessary to justify voting for a man who has repeatedly, gleefully said that he wants to throw anyone who looks like you into a concentration camp. It’s majestic.

Of course, studies have pinpointed three main reasons why someone named Hernandez or Rodriguez would vote for xenophobic bigots.

These include the fact that Latinos still lag in educational achievement, and the diploma gap has become perhaps the chief indicator of whether someone votes Democrat or Republican. Basically, people who go to college are more liberal, and people who stop with high school are more conservative, regardless of race or ethnicity.

Also, male Latinos are more likely to be drawn to GOP misogyny because “if you’re a man in a low-status group, masculinity may become more important to claiming high status.” In essence, a lot of Latino men like the false machismo of Republican blowhards.

Latinas are far less likely to fall for this nonsense, and “like female voters across ethnic categories [they] were repelled by Trump’s disrespect toward women and his bragging about sexual assault.”

Yes, many pundits are still offering “the tortured and narrow analysis that Latino votes for Donald Trump correlate with ‘economic anxiety,’ but reactionary sexual politics and religiosity are usually missing from media commentary on this political shift.” 

The final reason is that many Latinos believe that if they go along with white supremacy, they will soon be allowed into the powerful majority. About a third of Latinos “see themselves as a group similar to European American immigrants who can join the mainstream.” A lot of Latinos think that if Italians and Greeks were eventually considered white, maybe they will be too.

Yes, that’s a sad motivator, but it’s a very real one.

The Republican Party knows this, which is why they employ “language that is designed to trigger racist stereotypes associated with whiteness.” Conservatives are well aware that “this status anxiety is inseparable from this racist hierarchy.” 

And how has appeasing white conservatives worked out for Latinos? Well, the Trump campaign has threatened to create the largest deportation program in history, end birthright citizenship, and install neo-Nazis in positions of power. So they are clearly interested in the needs of the Latino community. 

No, the Republican Party doesn’t care that a record number of immigrants have become citizens, or that young Latinos hate the GOP, or that most Latinos still vote for Democrats.

They know that they just need to chip away at the Latino vote to ensure victory. So they can go right on blaming Latino immigrantsfor mass shootings, shrieking about the “great replacement” theory, hanging out with militant white supremacists, and encouraging white Americans to fear everyone with brown skin.

Because their approach is working. The bigotry and “radicalization of the GOP on the issue of race isn’t sending it down some entirely new, irreversible path of stigma among communities of color.”

They are doing just well enough with Latinos to hang in there. And many Latinos are just fine with MAGA.

Sin vergüenza.

This one goes out to the ladies.

And what do I have to say to 50.5 percent of the American population? Just this:

The GOP hates you. 

OK, maybe that was a little blunt. But it’s not inaccurate. You see, the guys (and it is overwhelmingly guys) who lead the modern conservative movement are not big fans of women.

I’m not just talking about right-wing men taking a sledgehammer to Roe vs. Wade, threatening to execute women who have abortions, and then lying about it. I’m talking about the strong strain of misogyny in the conservative movement.

Yes, I know there are plenty of misogynistic liberals out there, so don’t bother to list them for me. But it is undeniable that the Republican Party is the preferred party for woman-haters. 

Hell, their presumed presidential nominee famously boasts about grabbing women’s genitals, insults women every chance he gets, and was found liable for sexual assault. That’s not a pro-female kind of guy.

That he is the leader of the Republican Party should be sufficient evidence of the GOP’s antipathy toward women. But you should also consider the GOP leaders who have denigrated women, been accused of rape, or pistol-whipped their girlfriends. Really, it’s quite a list.

However, there is more—so much more. Whole books have been written about the conservative attitude toward people with the XX chromosome. In fact, hostility toward women is one of the strongest predictors of Trump support.

Leaders of the conservative movement routinely insist that women “should give up on their careers and become wives and mothers instead.” Hence, the rise of the tradwife.

Now, many of those conservative leaders are women, which is perhaps the most interesting part. We can get our minds around misogynist dudes banding together to oppress women. But why would a woman join their ranks?

Well, some women are either self-loathing, hyper-religious, or too intimidated by men to question their power. Other women somehow believe, consciously or not, that men will protect them (despite the fact that over a third of female murder victims are killed by their male partners, compared to just 6 percent of male murder victims who are killed by their female partners).

Many white women, in particular, embrace racism because it offers them a semblance of power in a misogynistic world. For example, Moms for Liberty is a right-wing shitshow “like many before it that sells conservative women on the idea that they can somehow gain power through embracing submissive gender roles.”

But it is absurd to trust bigots to have your back, a shocking revelation to those conservative women who thought coddling angry men would create a respectful relationship.

It turned out that being linked to Moms for Liberty “hurt Republicans in the midterms,” and as a result, “the GOP cannot drop them fast enough.”

And yet, “most Republican women [are] deaf to the clear lesson here: Complicity will not protect you.”

You see, conservative men will only support women who offer them political cover and help them advance their agenda of male supremacy. 

Also, conservative guys only like women who are hot. 

Yeah, that’s a sexist thing to say. But when it comes to conservatives, it is the truth.

Just about every female conservative leader in recent history has been physically attractive, but none of them have had long careers. This is not a coincidence.

Sarah Palin went from presidential contender to a has-been unable to win a House seat in a Republican state. Nothing changed, except that she was no longer a smokin’ babe.

Conservatives stopped listening to Ann Coulter not because she praised Nazis, but because she aged out. 

And who even knows what happened to former hotties like Michele Bachmann and Susan Molinari? Once the wrinkles piled on, conservative men were done with them.

There is no Republican equivalent of Nancy Pelosi or Elizabeth Warren. The GOP wants only young sexpots who will tell them, “You guys are right. You are so oppressed. And handsome.”

The idea of a congressional Republican woman reaching Mitch McConnell’s age, with her power intact, is absurd.

This is because “activating the lizard brain bigotries of the GOP base works even better in conjunction with titillating their gonads.” Conservative women are “supposed to be sexy but chaste, aggressive but submissive,” creating a “conundrum that can’t be beat.”

The Taylor Greenes and Boeberts of the world “combine the ‘who me?’ innocent-sexy act of a pageant queen with the belligerence of the nastiest troll on Twitter,” only to be dismissed when a younger version comes along. These women will inevitably be “done in by the impossible dilemma of trying to be a female leader in the deeply misogynist world of MAGA.” 

So what can American women, especially liberal women, do in the face of this nonstop hostility from Republican men?

Apparently, they just have to shut up and marry the guys. Seriously—major media outlets have implied that women should ignore right-wing sexism and simply get hitched to guys who ascribe “to an ideology in which [women] are not fully human.”

The thinking is that the love of a good woman will mellow a MAGA blowhard and make him less antagonistic to the ladies. But of course, “trying to get men who already think women are inferior to listen to their liberal wives is a joke.” And it’s a particularly cruel one.

The truth is that the modern conservative movement depends on misogyny. The GOP requires “that women look and behave a certain way” and submit to male authority.

The only surprising thing is that so many American women are OK with that.

If you have ever wanted to live like a James Bond villain in your own island lair, I have good news for you.

For the low price of several bajillion dollars, you can buy “a maximum security compound in which to ride out the coming plague, solar storm, or electric grid collapse,” whichever apocalyptic event comes first.

OK, maybe you don’t have a spare several million to drop on a high-tech sanctuary from which to survive the “environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down.”

That just means you don’t love your family, because you are sentencing them to death in the inevitable Armageddon headed our way. 

But don’t worry. Because rich people will be just fine.

Yes, our favorite 1 percent of the population — the uber-wealthy — are striving to insulate “themselves from the very real and present dangers” that in many cases, they helped to create. 

Whether they made their money by destroying the environment or fomenting societal upheaval, billionaires are buying bunkers, hoarding resources and even creating private compounds in New Zealand (proving once again that rich oligarchs may praise right-wing enclaves like Hungary, but they actually want to live in a stable, socially liberal country).

These plutocrats are trying to “break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to… escape from the apocalypse of their own making.”

And they can afford it. Since the pandemic, the top 1% “have captured nearly twice as much new wealth as the rest of the world.”

Of course, there are many Americans who hero-worship the rich, and they are perfectly fine with sacrificing themselves if it means that an affluent buffoon will continue to live in luxury even if society collapses.

That sounds like an exaggeration, but witness how many poor Americans continue to vote Republican despite the GOP’s admission that it wants to destroy any semblance of a social safety net, give more money to billionaires, and allow the rich to “exploit the majority so they can accumulate wealth and move society forward as they wish.” 

A large percentage of Americans struggle to pay their bills, but shriek that any effort to make wealthy narcissists contribute more is “class warfare” or “socialism” or just morally offensive.

When it comes to opulent show-offs, Americans love “the wild philistinism and the bullying and the offhand cruelty, the compulsive self-aggrandizement and the giddy vengeful sadism.. all of it so oafishly performed that it could not possibly be mistaken for anything but what it is.”

The GOP knows this. So they have leaned into promoting crass morons born into wealth as avatars of the American Dream. 

Republicans have long insisted that “democracy and unfettered capitalism always traveled together,” but recently they have “ignored the ‘democracy’ part of that equation and continually doubled down on the idea that the American system means that businesses should be able to do whatever they wished,” while insisting that “any oversight must be Soviet-style communism.”

The result is that Republican legislators will gleefully derail bills to provide free breakfast and lunch for school students because they don’t want kids to get dependent on government. Seriously — this is an actual top GOP priority. Hey, for Republicans, hungry children do not even exist.

So if Republicans get their way, and rich people continue to tear the world down while plotting their escapes, what happens years from now, when only the wealthy can afford to survive?

Well, the truth is that islands are more dependent, not less, on society. So that approach won’t work.

Also, underground bunkers have air filters that break down and require strenuous effort to fix. You really think some pampered blue blood can handle that degree of manual labor?

And when it comes to armed compounds, remember that the hired thugs who protect the wealthy are people too. If the economic system has collapsed and money has no value, do you believe rifle-toting mercenaries are going to protect some rich jerk out of kindness and love?

So no, the wealthy will not survive.

There, don’t you feel better now?

It’s a holiday week, so I’m taking a break, unrelated to my frantic surge to finish my manuscript before my publisher bursts through my front door, shouting, “Where the hell is it?”

No, just a holiday pause.

I will be back next week with a full post.

Until then, here is an AI-generated Shakespearean passage that I created with a random prompt:

To challenge the shadows, it doth yearn, without scope to counterattack

Deluged in confusion, verily, ’tis an abyss to be explored

At her very core, I stand, consumed by her exaggeration’s might

Be honest. You thought that was really Shakespeare, didn’t you?

Enjoy the holiday, and see you next week.