Hispanic Fanatic

Perhaps you’ve seen one of those AI-generated images of Trump as a muscular he-man. Frequently, they present our disgraced ex-president as decked out in military gear, or leading a heroic charge of some kind, or just looking all tough and blue-collar.

The caption is usually something like “Liberals are afraid of masculinity.”

Actually, what we’re afraid of is horrible AI-generated art created by insecure bigots who are so oblivious that they don’t recognize their pathetic self-owns.

You see, conservatives have been reduced to creating AI images of their imaginary tough warrior guy—the leader they wished they had—rather than acknowledge that in reality, their hero is an obese golfer who has never even exerted himself. 

What could be sadder than plastering your social media feed with laughably fake images based on your delusional hopes and dreams?

Hey, I dabble with AI images as well. But I don’t insist they represent reality.

For example, here is an image I created based on the prompt “The new superheroes face their toughest challenge.”

OK, that’s damn freaky.

How about we try that same prompt again?

Wait — who are all these Harry Potter-looking dudes, and why are they hanging out with a gun-toting skeleton? 

I have no idea, but it’s pretty cool.

The only thing that’s missing is an AI-generated image of a muscle-bound Joe Biden fighting Nazis with his bare hands.

You know—like in the real world.

By now, you’ve seen the poll that says Trump is leading Biden by 20 points among young voters.

This is, of course, ludicrous. Trump isn’t leading by 20 points in any demographic other than geriatric religious zealots with a penchant for authoritarianism, bigotry, and conspiracy theories.

Aside: watch for the mainstream media’s think pieces on how that demographic could sway the election.

In any case, young voters are not turning to Republicans, and conservatives know it. Why else do you think the GOP wants to raise the voting age and make it harder for Gen Z to vote?

The truth is that “Republicans are losing across the country, even in historically red areas [because] abortion bans, climate denial, gun idolatry, anti-democratic behavior, and extremism has lost them entire generations of Americans.” 

And that is especially true of the younger generation. But it’s not just college kids that are anti-GOP. It’s entire college towns and whole counties.

A recent study revealed that the “growing population in America’s highly educated enclaves has led to huge gains for the Democratic Party.”

For example, my alma mater — the University of Wisconsin-Madison — is located in Dane County, which has such a high percentage of liberal voters that it “has become a Republican-killing Death Star.”

That fact alone is enough to make me shout, “On Wisconsin!”

And my old school is not an outlier, unlike those idiotic polls that Sunday morning commentators are drooling over. You see, research shows that “in state after state, fast-growing, traditionally liberal college counties like Dane are flexing their muscles, generating higher turnout and ever greater Democratic margins.”

One supposes that Republicans might try to reverse this trend by appealing to students and young people. In true GOP fashion, however, they are instead “targeting students’ voting rights, creating additional barriers to voter access, or redrawing maps to dilute or limit the power of college communities.”

Basically, if you can’t beat ‘em, block ‘em.

Republicans are confused about why their demonization of ethnic minorities would bother the most racially diverse generation in American history. They are perplexed over why young people are annoyed that Baby Boomers have hoarded the wealth and now lecture them regularly and vociferously about how ignorant, spoiled, and lazy they are. The GOP is irked that those darned kids aren’t willing to get gunned down in their classrooms in the name of the Second Amendment. Conservatives are flummoxed over why theocracy isn’t popular with people who are the least religious group in the country. MAGA types are befuddled over why Gen Z might be angry about inheriting an unlivable planet and a wrecked democracy.

Yeah, it’s a real puzzler. 

For nearly half a century, Americans have had to endure the phrase “Reaganomics,” which refers to a supposedly brilliant economic system that has the slight flaw of being a total disaster that never worked. Recently, people have been throwing around the term “Bidenomics,” which refers to a governmental philosophy that actually seems to be effective.

But conservatives aren’t happy about lower inflation and record employment, or a much better economy than anything a GOP president has presided over in decades. In fact, they are angry about it.

So Republicans tried doubling down (and tripling, quadrupling, etcetera) on the idea of limited government, which is an empty phrase that means, “Don’t tax rich people.” This approach is not terribly popular with most Americans. And with reason, because this philosophy has led to developments such as lax antitrust laws, which benefit big corporations but cost the typical American household more than $5,000 a year.

Of course, the GOP has never and will never care if their policies are hated. They are now implying, or straight-up insisting, that democracy should be severely limited or even abolished.

And if Republicans now hate democracy and the Constitution, anything is possible. For example, that whole limited-government thing has recently been revealed as the total sham it always was. 

In a massive shift, Republicans are no longer “committed to keeping the government weak to stay out of the way of business development.” Instead, they are now determined to create “a strong government that enforces Christian nationalism.” 

To do so, they must abandon their supposed core principles and embrace big government. You might think this would be hypocritical and anathema to conservatives. But it took very little to convince libertarian absolutists to change their “tune on the free market and state power to keep up with the ‘New Right‘ ushered in by Trump and DeSantis.”

That “New Right,” which is a lot like the old right but louder, consists of theocrats who despise “the secular values of democracy—religious freedom, companies that respond to markets without interference by the state, academic freedom, public schools, free speech, equality before the law—[and] want to restore what they consider human virtue by using the state to enforce their values.” 

And that brings us back to Reaganomics, which was never really about the economy. You see, “Since the days of Reagan, Republicans have argued that people who believe that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, protect civil rights, and promote infrastructure are destroying the country by trying to redistribute wealth from hardworking White Americans to undeserving minorities and women.”

During the 1980s and 1990s, all this was said in code. That façade started crumbling in the 21^st century. And today, conservatives have dropped the bullshit and taken their argument “to its logical conclusion: the country has been destroyed by women, Black Americans, Indigenous people, and people of color, who have taken it over and are persecuting” White Americans.

At this point, the GOP is very much the party of big government. And unless you are a White, straight, conservative man, you will not like what that government will do to you.

People are constantly bitching that the world is getting crazier every day.

OK, they may be right.

But the good news is that the world is not getting any more complex. Because at this point in American culture, we all know exactly where we stand.

Is it a surprise that an unrepentant conman, pathological liar, overt bigot, and fledgling dictator would endanger national security, and then complain that he is the one being oppressed? And yet pundits still express shock at this.

Is it an unexpected twist that the followers of this corrupt megalomaniac would enthusiastically support him and dismiss damning evidence that they can see with their own eyes? It should not be, but we have perfectly rational adults who still think this latest grotesquery will somehow convince the Republican Party to abandon their lunatic messiah. I mean, really, who can possibly believe that?

However, perhaps the most straightforward, most uncomplicated aspect of modern politics is the philosophy of the GOP. This principle can be expressed as the following:

Any allegation against a liberal or a Democrat is sufficient to lock ‘em up. There doesn’t need to be a trail, or formal charges, or any evidence at all. Just a deranged conspiracy theory is proof that the liberal should be imprisoned, or even executed.

In contrast, conservatives are allowed to commit whatever crimes they want, including treason and murder. But any attempt to hold them accountable is a witch hunt. It doesn’t matter if there is overwhelming evidence, or formal procedures that were strictly followed. If you try to prosecute a conservative for anything, they have every right to shoot you.

If you don’t believe me, just ask that guy who marches around with a pig’s head on a stick.

He knows the deal.

Let’s say you were a member of a political party that increased the national debt to astronomical levels. And you did this not by investing in the country’s development or funding programs that benefitted Americans. You did this by cutting taxes for rich people who already have more money than they will ever need.

I assume that you would then scream that the other political party has a spending problem. Furthermore, even though the other party has cut the debt more than you ever have — not just recently but over the course of decades — you would threaten to destroy the economy unless they cut it more.

Yes, you would be a Republican.

Now, this level of hypocrisy is not just galling. It’s pathological. It’s also dangerous and potentially catastrophic, but that’s merely a bonus for the GOP.

Conservatives are way into projection — that is, accusing others of behavior that they themselves indulge in.

For example, studies have shown that white people with a high degree of racial resentment are more likely to be Trump supporters. Despite the fact that racist attitudes permeate the GOP, a majority of Republicans still insist that white people are the ones being discriminated against. Yes, white conservatives who despise minorities say it’s actually the minorities who are racist.

Or consider that “all the threats and violence against Pride in stores is exactly what evangelicals think is happening with their wholly imagined ‘War on Christmas.’” No, crowds of atheists are not lighting Christmas trees on fire in stores. 

But conservatives are too busy smashing up Pride displays to acknowledge that.

Even more disturbingly, we all know that conservatives are spending virtually all their time trying to outlaw drag queens, under the guise that men who dress like women will inevitably rape children. But to my knowledge, no drag queen story hour ever ended in child abuse. Plenty of church services have ended that way, however, and it seems like another youth pastor is arrested every week for molesting kids. And of course, the Catholic Church — which is perfectly happy to lecture everyone on morality and “normal” sexual behavior — covered up reports of “hundreds of clergy members who were accused of sexual abuse … of almost 2,000 children who were harmed over seven decades.”

And that’s just in the state of Illinois.

Meanwhile, the leader of the party of Law and Order is currently facing his second indictment and was recently found liable for sexual assault and defamation, which is interesting for a guy whose catchphrase was “lock her up.”

So why do conservatives project so much? Why do they act in reprehensible ways, and then shriek that it is everybody else who committed those horrible acts?

We need a political psychologist to decipher the Freudian rationales. But until then, we will simply have to endure their constant lecturing, and repeated threats, and loud shrieks about the vile behavior of others.

And we will have to wonder exactly what they are trying to hide.

Well, it appears that the United States has narrowly avoided its first-ever debt default, which would have unleashed an economic cataclysm upon the country and thrown us into an instant recession, as well as destroyed what little remains of our international reputation.

It bears repeating that this crisis was entirely manufactured by right-wing zealots who careened from hypocrisy (for their past willingness to drive up the debt) to insanity (for their willingness to torch the economy) to stupidity (for their inability to grasp how the economy actually works).

Now, you might believe it is a little bit of a problem that the world economy was essentially held hostage by a small group of wild-eyed conspiracy mongers, high school dropouts, and statutory rapists.

But remember, we have to respect the GOP as a serious political party.

Please ignore the fact that just 30 years ago, Republican ideas could be broken down in the following manner:

25%—debatable policy point

25%—selfish nonsense that Republicans convinced themselves into believing

25%—dog whistles and grotesque appeals to the lunatic base

25%—the lunatic base

That’s not the best proportion. In my lifetime, the conservative movement has never had a solid foundation of goals that would actually help most Americans. 

But the percentage has gotten even worse over the years. Today, Republican ideas could be broken down in the following manner:

1%—debatable policy point

9%—selfish nonsense that Republicans convinced themselves into believing

30%—dog whistles and grotesque appeals to the lunatic base

60%—the lunatic base

But hey, at least we didn’t default. This time.

What is the scariest three-letter combination in the English language?

I would vote for “GOP.” But maybe it’s “CIA.” Or perhaps you would say “MSG” or “NFL,” or for some emotionally complicated reason, “TLC.”

But if you are an easily triggered Republican, the diabolical combo is “ESG.”

That phrase stands for environmental, social, and governance, and it refers to a set of standards for a corporation’s behavior. Socially conscious investors look at an organization’s ESG initiatives — things like carbon footprint, diversity programs, ethics guidelines, and so on — to gauge if it is a business that they want to work with.

This seems pretty straightforward, and it makes sense that, for example, an environmentalist might not want to invest his money with a corporation that’s destroying the planet.

But where you see a principled stand, conservatives see the hideous creep of wokeness.

ESG has become “a lightning rod for the GOP, as the party turns the investing form into an emblem of left-wing politics.”

Republicans believe that anything that promotes racial diversity or combats climate change must be an insidious communist plot to round up all the white Christians and execute them. So they spew “hysterical rhetoric about ‘wokeness’ in response to everything from school shootings to police violence to the Pentagon budget, all while the party struggles to even define what they think the word means.”

Yes, the people who live for culture wars now believe that their old ally — big business — is a fifth column of social justice warriors who are selling out American values and making it impossible for straight guys to buy their products.

As a result, red states are “passing laws blacklisting state investment funds from doing business” with those companies that they claim are pushing “liberal agendas.”

Conservatives are trying to use “their own market influence to try to steer the larger project of American culture-building back in their direction.”

But it’s not going so well.

You see, despite “the increasing pushback against ESG by Republican politicians, including some potential presidential aspirants, and their fossil-fuel industry donors,” many companies view the “the ESG backlash [to] be a bump in the road” that won’t have a real impact. 

Hell, even some CEOs say the ESG “trend is just going to continue growing.”

There’s a good reason for this, and it’s not because Wall Street suits are secret progressives clamoring for Scandinavian-inspired utopias.

No, it’s because ESG is good business. 

This approach to investing “examines a company’s social or environmental impact precisely because it considers non-financial information useful for determining whether the company would deliver strong investor returns.”

Corporate ESG initiatives are designed to help companies operate more sustainably and to create long-term value for stakeholders. And studies have shown that younger consumers take a company’s ESG policies into account before buying their goods or products. 

So in yet another display of spectacular hypocrisy and backwards thinking, it turns out that conservatives are the ones jeopardizing companies’ returns by demanding everyone adhere to their agenda.

Consider that “muzzling ESG activity is causing financial losses – again, which should be contrary to conservative financial principles.” For example, Texas “banned cities from having their funds managed by companies whose policies restricted investment in fossil fuels and weapons.” Because so many banks left the market, and Texas officials “had fewer choices of investment management,” the law wound up costing the state “between $303 million and $532 million extra in interest.”

Wow — owning the libs is not cheap.

Or consider that many experts believe “failing to consider ESG risks and opportunities would more
likely result in a breach of fiduciary duty,” meaning that company leaders are actually being negligent and sabotaging their organizations if they are anti-ESG.

Finally, keep in mind that companies “that get ‘woke’ aren’t going broke — they’re more profitable than ever.”

Even though conservatives will continue to rant against ESG, and blame business failures on leaders who “may have been distracted by diversity demands,” there is no real evidence for the harmful effects of this approach.

Again, the exact opposite is true.

And that’s why the letters “GOP” are far more terrifying than “ESG” will ever be.

I will be on vacation and away from my computer, so I will not publish a new article next week. As such, I am doubling up this week with another post. 

However, I don’t have time to create a new earthshaking diatribe that will alter your perception and shred your preconceived notions. You see, I have to pack my luggage.

Therefore, I yet again called upon artificial intelligence to help me out. Anyone who has read my posts lately knows that I am semi-obsessed with AI, and its potential to propel us forward into an enlightened, technology-enhanced utopia and/or kill us all.

And it’s also great for creating images of, say, a one-armed zombie killer on a rampage.

So I asked AI a sadly relevant question:

“What is the best way to decrease gun violence in a nation?”

Here are its responses:

1. Strengthening gun laws: One of the most effective ways to reduce gun violence is to strengthen gun laws. This could include measures such as universal background checks, waiting periods for gun purchases, and restrictions on the sale of high-capacity magazines and assault weapons. Research has shown that countries with stronger gun laws tend to have lower rates of gun violence.
2. Improving access to mental health care: Many incidents of gun violence are committed by individuals with mental health issues. Improving access to mental health care and addressing the stigma around mental illness can help prevent these incidents.
3. Investing in community-based violence prevention programs: Violence prevention programs that work with at-risk individuals and communities have been shown to be effective in reducing gun violence. These programs can include initiatives such as conflict resolution training, mentorship programs, and job training.
4. Encouraging responsible gun ownership: Encouraging responsible gun ownership can help prevent gun accidents and reduce the likelihood of guns falling into the wrong hands. This could include measures such as safe storage requirements, gun safety education programs, and mandatory gun training and licensing.
5. Addressing systemic issues: Gun violence often occurs in communities that are disproportionately affected by poverty, racism, and other systemic issues. Addressing these underlying issues through measures such as economic and social policies, education, and criminal justice reform can help reduce the root causes of gun violence.

Now, we certainly don’t want to take AI’s pronouncements as infallible insights that we must follow. The factual and ethical flaws with AI’s outputs have been well-documented. 

At the same time, AI is a great tool for synthesizing data. In the case of reducing gun violence, AI presumably looked at studies, research, and case studies of what has worked in other countries.

Also, keep in mind that I didn’t ask a politically loaded question like “How can we overturn the Second Amendment” or “What does effective gun control look like?”

I asked, “What is the best way to decrease gun violence in a nation?” This is a goal that we all supposedly share.

Look again at the suggestions. Nowhere do you see “More guns” or “Loosen gun laws” or “Arm the teachers.”

Unless you want to accuse AI of being a cyber liberal, it appears that the most logical solutions for reducing gun violence are all progressive ideas.

It seems that if you strip away political posturing, fear-based reactions, and crazed conspiracy theories, you get a list of rational solutions that just about every other industrialized nation has adopted. You get ideas that are the very antithesis of Republican talking points.

We can reduce gun violence, which is stratospheric when compared to every other industrialized country, or we can literally shrug and say, “We’re not gonna fix it.”

Yes, it’s too bad that AI can’t eliminate apathy, greed, and cowardice.

But let’s end on a lighter note.

You’ll be happy to know that I also asked AI to rewrite the Gettysburg Address in the style of an AC/DC song from the 1980s. The chorus is where it really gets rocking:

GETTYSBURG! A battle cry for freedom 

GETTYSBURG! A nation’s call to arms 

GETTYSBURG! A sacred ground we defend 

GETTYSBURG! Where heroes live forevermore

Can’t you just hear the crunch of the power chords?

See you in a couple of weeks.

By now, we were supposed to have enjoyed the thrilling spectacle of our mega-corrupt ex-president getting handcuffed and frog-marched off to jail. 

But our former chief executive was once again either factually wrong or bloviating hyperbole when he predicted his arrest. Because nothing happened, beyond rubes handing over their money — yet again — to an unrepentant, cackling conman.

Instead of being fitted for an orange jumpsuit, the guy who once advised Americans to gurgle bleach spent his time displaying totally normal behavior for a major political party’s leading contender for its presidential nomination. He “stood with his hand over his heart” as loudspeakers blared a rendition of the national anthem “sung by a group of inmates that are incarcerated for their role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.”

During the song, “images from the Capitol riot, in which Trump supporters stormed the complex to overturn the 2020 election, played on a screen.” And yes, Trump’s first official 2024 campaign rally was held in Waco, Texas, which is no coincidence because the town is synonymous with either crazed religious cults that abuse children or brave anti-government protesters — depending on your perspective.

In any case, the celebration of insurrection is popular with the GOP, which once insisted that Antifa was behind the January 6 violence but now says there was no violence at all (even though we all saw Trump supporters ransacking the building). I suppose this means there was no Antifa either, but who can keep all those meandering, contradictory, treacherous rationalizations straight anyway?

When they aren’t openly praising violent sedition, Republicans are threatening death and destruction. They are also trying to subvert laws that might prevent lunatics from threatening all that death and destruction in the first place.

Oh, they are also attempting to persuade Americans that a washed-up narcissist who committed multiple felonies when he paid hush money to a porn star is somehow being unjustly persecuted. Yes, if that isn’t a bedrock conservative principle, I don’t know what is.

Of course, Republicans are pretty good at gaslighting, obfuscating, and befuddling their followers. For example, a “far-right projectthat has helped spread Donald Trump’s false claims about voting fraud in 2020, and misinformation about Covid vaccines, is trying to expand its mission.” The organization “pushes disinformation using Christian nationalist messages” and proudly relies upon uneducated, hyper-religious Americans. 

Historians are bemoaning the fact that “for the first time, one of the major political parties displays contempt for learning” and is “dependent for its success on anti-intellectual postures.”

Hey, conservatives can’t even remember that their hero was president in 2020 (i.e., the worst year in recent history). Republicans blame everything horrible that happened during GOP administrations on Biden or Obama, which must be psychologically comforting but is deeply weird.

Eventually, the GOP will fold back in on itself to proclaim every negative event is an uplifting miracle. And millions of conservatives will place their hands over their hearts and sing along to the lies.

We are a couple of months into the reign of the House GOP, and thus far, Republicans have tamed inflation and ended all crime in America.

Ha, not really. But it doesn’t matter, because you probably forgot that this was their whole campaign pitch last year. It was all, “vote Republican, or thugs will murder you and run off with your milk that cost $89 per gallon.”

Once Republicans actually took over the House, however, they “turned to investigations, abortion, threatening the national debt, and trying to defund the Internal Revenue Service rather than dealing with the issues they insisted were vital in 2022: crime and inflation.”

Currently, the GOP is working hard to convince Americans that the January 6 riots weren’t that bad, that trans people are coming to eat everyone’s babies, and that “woke” is a horrific, Lovecraftian monster so terrifying that it literally defies description.

Congressional Republicans spend their days on hearings designed to expose the Deep State’s weaponization of government, only to flop so badly that even fellow conservatives have tuned out on a “slow-moving train wreck” that exposes nothing more alarming than GOP incompetence.

And when Republicans aren’t spreading conspiracy theories or calling their opponents pedophiles, they are looking “backward resolutely and angrily to an imagined past,” completely oblivious and indifferent to the fact that they are “out of step with the majority of Americans on issues like LGBTQ rights, climate change, gun safety, and abortion.”

But hey, don’t go thinking that the GOP will change course, just because their agenda is ludicrous and millions of Americans hate their ideas. Keep in mind that the “oppressiveness and unpopularity of any particular policy has rarely deterred this bunch from pursuing it.”

Republican leaders know that “the MAGA base will ride and die for this right-wing culture war predominantly animated by fear and racial anxiety.” 

Now, on a human level, this grotesque ploy always backfires. After all, the GOP manipulates “white victimhood and rage… to win over — and kill — their own voters.”

But on a political level, it’s a big winner. Rage-filled conservatives continue to vote Republican, even if it is perfectly clear that the only beneficiaries of GOP policies are billionaires and corporations.

Yes, ever since Reagan, the US has “moved toward an economic policy that often allows corporations to behave as they want, based on the theory that the free market will solve any excesses.” But to be blunt, “the results haven’t been very good,” evident by the fact that during that time, “economic growth has slowed, corporate profits have risen faster than wages, income inequality has soared, and living standards have grown slowly.”

But if you try to explain that to a working-class guy living in small town, he will just shout about freedom and critical race theory and gay immigrants.

And he will vote Republican.