Shameless

Monday morning I made a comment on Twitter.  I believe the Federal Government should get to Alabama and Georgia and help the people whose lives have been destroyed by the spate of tornadoes which devastated the region.  I also made the point we undeniably will be helping many people who, when other regions of the US have experienced natural disasters (like Puerto Rico), were the ones screaming to NOT help those areas, as "THEIR WASTING MY TAXPAYER DOLLARS!"

Some people have called me out of line for making this simple observation, and think I should apologize.  I'm not sorry I said it and I will not back down.  I'm for helping victims of natural disasters, but I'm also for rubbing their hypocrisy in their faces while we do it.  It's the only way we'll teach these people they should be ashamed of their comments and actions, and it might be the only way to save the United States.

This weekend Frank Bruni had an exceptional editorial in the New York Times about how shameless the Trump administration is, and he's absolutely right.  Give it a read:  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/opinion/sunday/trump-cohen-theranos-fraud.html

What Bruni so perfectly points out is how shamelessness is the greatest virtue in any modern day Republican.  For the same people who screamed how President Obama needed to resign after he called Kayne West a "jackass," because [paraphrasing] 'that level of language is beneath the office of the White House,' to now be applauding at how 'presidential' Trump is because at CPAC he called multiple investigations into him "bullsh!t" is a perfect example of how the Right has jettisoned their mortality.  The less shame you have, the higher position you can achieve in the Republican Party.

The GOP and their voters have become an upward focused excuse machine whose sole purpose is to validate Trump, his Administration, and all Republicans, no matter how much they railed against similar but far less egregious behavior in the past, no matter how indefensible the actions and comments which they're defending are.

We are dealing with the most shameless, unapologetic group of people in the history of this country.

Some examples?  I've written numerous times about any Christian who supports Trump.  We now find out via the Cohen testimony there might be additional payouts which Trump used to cover up affairs he's had with other women.  There could be 5 to 10 more Trump mistresses about, beyond the ones we already know about.  There's even a possibility Trump might've paid for a woman to have an abortion.  If it all is proven to be true, Trump's Chrisitan supporters will...PRAISE HIM MORE! Seriously!!!  They will, and talk about how a guy who (by all accounts) doesn't attend or practice any form of Chrisitan worship has been retroactively forgiven by God for his insane amount of inexcusable violations of Christian law.  Then they'll insist how President Obama, a man who wore his Christian faith on his sleeve, was always a fake Christian!

The Trump Administration is full of shameless people, with the king of shamelessness, Trump himself, sitting atop his dumpster fire with a grin on his face.  He's surrounded himself with a cast of characters (Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Felix Sater) who also excel at shameless behavior, incapable of emoting any level of remorse for their disgusting actions.  White House staffers who enter into the Trump fold either leave in haste or embrace the shameless standard.  Think of Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Mick Mulvany, people who at one time seemed to have a soul, but cashed it out the minute they entered into Trump's universe.

Look at how shameless all DC Republicans have become!  They're purposed ignoring the undeniable evidence against Trump which came to light in the Cohen Testimony, maintaining a 'destroy Cohen at all costs' myopic Trump defense.  Senators and Congresspeople who would've HOWLED at President Obama if he tried to declare a National Emergency for some non-emergency reason, or if Obama overruled the intelligence community to get his family members top level security clearances, are silently complacent with Trump's behavior, defending the same actions they would've furiously marched with pitchforks and torches on the White House for only three years ago.

Senator Lindsey Graham claimed he was best buddies with former Senator John McCain only two years ago.  Today, he's silent while his party vilifies McCain's legacy, mocking the former Senator with a hatred and despise the right usually reserves for Hillary Clinton.  Every time John McCain is ruthlessly mocked, Graham's shameless indifference gets harder and harder to watch.

This has trickled down to the state level too!  Former Speaker of the Minnesota House Kurt Daudt and his senior leadership boldfaced lied to the Governor, Congressional Democrats, and likely MN Senate Republicans, promising funding for the SWLRT line was going to be in one of his bills.  When they caught his lie, added the funding back into the bill, and sent it back to the House for approval, he frantically gaveled the House to a close and ran out the door.  He then spent the next few months fighting tooth and nail to kill the transportation project.  This is only one of numerous shameless acts (what about that credit card debt, Kurt) former Speaker Daudt has done, with a smile on his face!

Rep. Cal Bahr definitely called for violence against the Minnesota House Democrats who were writing common sense gun legislation.  He made his threat in the Capitol Rotunda.  There's a live feed video version of it.  It's crystal clear what he was encouraging the crowd to do.  When called out about it, he boldfaced lied about what he said, implying it was everyone else fault for hearing him say what he actually said, not what he wanted them to hear.  The media in Minnesota, relegated to accepting this shamelessness as a Republican virtue, have actually allowed his non-apologetic, lie of an excuse.

And shamelessness has infected the Republican voter as well.  When tornadoes hit North Minneapolis, not only did the Republicans in the MN House and Senate shamelessly ignore a basic function of government, natural disaster emergency relief, they were cheered on by delusional zealots who had created a false reality to vilify the mostly minority victims.  Righto's insisted "when tornadoes hit Rogers and Hugo, we didn't need the government's help!  We pulled ourselves up by our own boot-straps.  THOSE people should do the same thing."  Funny story, when tornadoes impacted Rogers and Hugo, the government sent emergency relief, relief which was gladly accepted by those communities.  The shamelessness of eagerly accepting help from the government, only to say "but your devastated neighborhood shouldn't get help because your community has a lot of minorities who vote Democrat" shows you where a lot of these Righto voters reside.

And what about the local news man who preached about government waste and personal responsibility for decades, now suing the state because he slipped and got hurt on ice at the Capitol, acting as if his past comments don't matter?  If the guy got hurt because of government malfeasance, he should get recourse, but I'm not the one who screamed about people needing to stop expecting the government to take care of them and how people needed to show personal responsibility.  HE WAS!

This gets me back to the tornado tragedy of this weekend.  It's unfortunate, but it takes this level of disaster for these people to realize their shameless ways are wrong.  It's like may of the other cases we've heard about over the last few years:  the family who railed agains Obamacare suddenly having a child with a serious health crisis, having to sell off everything in an attempt to save the child's life, realizing affordable healthcare is a good thing.  The guy who says we should always bend government to help the biggest corporations, realizing the big corporations have polluted his ground water and he has no recourse.  The people getting a far smaller tax refund, or having to pay more, because Trump's tax plan (which was going to give them billions) was a boldface lie.  Watching your 100 year old family farm be sold off to the highest bidder after the unnecessary trade war you encouraged ended up making your crops worthless, costing you your family's legacy.

I hope the people of Alabama and Georgia get the help they need, but there's a very likely chance Trump will say "Sorry, that money is going to my border wall."  It's hard to keep screaming 'Build that Wall' standing in front of your freshly flattened house, as you realize help from the government isn't coming, but considering how shameless some of these poeple are, a few will be chocking back tears as they insist the unnecessary border wall is more important than their well being.

Rubbing their past stances in their faces is the only chance we've got to waking these people up from this shameless cult of Trump.  There are only a handful of times we'll be able to so perfectly point out their lack of shame.  I'm not going to pass this up.

It's for their own good.