Americans celebrate Thanksgiving in different ways.
For me, the holiday is an opportunity to take a break from writing 1,000-word diatribes against the bumbling neo-fascists straining to turn America into a Christian nationalist white supremacist nation.
Instead, I will post a few of my favorite quotes about this current era of madness and delusion that we are white-knuckling through. Here they are:
Qualified people get fired or leave. Sycophants, stooges, frauds, charlatans, lackeys, lickspittles, bootlickers, and phonies take over. And this prescription is being filled across all of government, making the prognosis for the country’s health, both now and into the future, increasingly bleak.
The blue states pay taxes to the federal government, which redirects them to the red states. Voters in red states take advantage of this redistribution, while claiming … that they are against such a redistribution and that they are being cheated because they do not get enough. Governors of red states … push the logic of the federal system to the limit, treating themselves (not the Constitution or the law and certainly not the taxpayers in blue states) as the final arbiter of what can be done with taxes. This arrangement, when looked at from the outside with a cold eye, can hardly be seen as natural and sustainable.
The true ideologues are the ones who are insisting there is only one way to be a man or a woman, and it’s their way, and we must all comply. They aren’t defending women, who are a vast and varied category unto ourselves. They’re trying desperately to enforce one narrow, particular vision of gender in a world that’s bursting with variety.
“Trump derangement syndrome” is real — but it’s not what they say it is. In an epic case of projection, followers of an infamous deranged criminal accuse their foes of a mental disorder…. The MAGA masses will not be satiated without expansive displays of rage, cruelty, and sadism directed at hated out groups and designated enemies.
—MSNBC
There’s a big chunk of House Republicans who just want to break something. That’s just how some of these folks define governing. It’s how their constituents define success.
—Gordon Gray
Ronald Reagan moved the U.S. closer to the laissez-faire ideal than almost any other country. The conservatives who sold this vision promised it would lead to a new prosperity for all. They were wrong about that, of course. Since 1980, the U.S. has become a grim outlier on many indicators of human well-being.
—The New York Times
Most Republicans, along with many pundits, are pretending that Trump is a normal president. They are ignoring his mental lapses, calls for authoritarianism, grifting, lack of grasp on any sort of policy, and criminality, even as he has hollowed out the once grand Republican Party and threatens American democracy itself. It’s hard to look away from the reality that Republican senators could have stopped this catastrophe at many points in Trump’s term.
Be sure to employ some of these quotes at your holiday dinner with your conservative relatives. I guarantee a rollicking good time. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
