President Fungus Nubbin & Online Hate Factories Are The Same Shitty Coin
It’s only Wednesday and already two stories have broke that continue to emphasize that our present timeline is a grim butthole that we’re not getting yanked out of any time soon. The situation is particularly bleak for women, which has been the case since the first boner was popped, but never in my life have I seen such blatant and open attacks. Apparently, these she-devils are getting way out of hand by — *checks notes* — existing in pop culture and not wanting to be raped. Yup, pure anarchy.
So let’s get to the most egregious example that naturally involves Donald Trump, the mushroom-dicked Antichrist from which all bullshit flows. During a campaign rally in Mississippi, the goddamn President of the United States very publicly insulted Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, an alleged victim of sexual assault, and the crowd fucking loved it. Even worse, check out the white ladies in the audience eating that shit up.
In an ideal world, a tarred and feathered traffic cone should have waddled past the Rose Garden with a beam up its ass, but that would require Facebook to not hurtle America on a direct course to Idiocracy. So instead, we’re forced to settle with Jeff Flake and Susan Collins politely denouncing Trump’s words while notably refusing to take a stance against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Of course, the true profile in courage was Lindsey Graham. From CNN:
“President Trump went through a factual rendition, and I didn’t like it. I would tell him to knock it off — it’s not helpful,” Graham said at the “Atlantic Festival” in Washington. “But it can be worse, someone could be dead.”
When your only defense is “Hey, nobody got murdered!” maybe don’t fucking talk. But we’re getting off track.
The President of the United States publicly mocked a woman for coming forward with allegations of sexual assault, and his supporters fucking love it.
How goddamn broken are we as a nation that something like that undeniably occurs —It’s right there on video! — and it’s shrugged off by Republicans as no big deal? Donald Trump essentially told every woman in America that no one will believe them if they’re raped, so don’t even bother coming forward unless you want to be humiliated. That should turn anyone’s stomach regardless of party affiliation.
Unfortunately, the response from conservative Republicans has been two flavors of diarrhea. The first is for mothers to hug their male children tight and get angry at the imaginary throngs of women who might ruin their darling angels’ lives by falsely accusing them of rape. You know, because it’s a walking hell for men who have actually admitted to sexual assault.
(Note: This is a second surprise set where Louis CK received “wild applause” and a “warm send-off” less than a year after admitting to masturbating in front of women without their consent.)
The second Republican response is equally as bullshit in my book: “Well, both sides are acting ridiculous.” Come the fuck on.
The Democrats are performing due diligence by making sure a lying, partisan rapist doesn’t sit on the Supreme Court, which is not an unreasonable request. And if you’ll notice, they let Neil Gorsuch’s nomination go through without accusing him of rape because — how do I put this? — he didn’t rape anybody. See how that works?
Meanwhile, instead of abandoning Kavanaugh and picking a nominee that will still gleefully chip away at the pesky rights of women and minorities, Republicans have doubled down by condoning teenage sexual assault as “boys being boys” and making it very clear that they’ll paint rape victims as hysterical liars who should be ignored lest they inconvenience their attackers.
One of those things is a parliamentary procedure to protect the rule of law, and the other is a direct assault on a woman’s right to not be an on-demand sex-hole for men. Only one is goddamn ridiculous. As for why everyday conservatives with wives and daughters would choose the latter without a second thought, Amanda Marcotte and Drew Magary both wrote insightful essays (here and here) that cut to the heart of supporting Kavanaugh: Endorsing rape to own the libs.
Which brings us to The Last Jedi. (Stay with me.)
A day before Trump insulted a rape survivor in front of a receptive Mississippi audience, THR reported on a research paper that connected Russian Twitter bots with online criticism of The Last Jedi. Even I’ll admit that’s a weird-as-shit discovery and probably one of the least consequential things anyone should be worried about right now. Except there’s a direct connection between this level of trolling and Trump’s treatment of Dr. Ford. And that connection is the roaring garbage fire called social media where shitty people can see their backwards-ass thoughts rewarded and weaponized against a world that obviously screwed up by making the lives of non-white males slightly better.
For example, if your reaction to a movie about laser swords is “Gross, why did it have so many girls in it?” never once reproduce, which we both know won’t be a problem. Unfortunately, hating women and minorities is a valuable asset to right wing authoritarianism, so instead of natural selection correctly dooming said hate to an isolated existence, social media has allowed those voices to not only be encouraged, but amplified artificially (Russian bots) and organically (dickheads). This system causes such shit-awful thoughts as “entertainment should only feature straight white people in traditional gender roles,” to somehow become part of The Discourse™ and open to debate, as opposed to a statement that no human being should say out loud in the year 2018 because, seriously, what in the fuck?
Of course, the exact wrong thing to do in this situation is hold your nose up and say smarmy shit like, “Why does everything have to be so divisive?” Actually realize where that divisiveness comes from and what it’s trying to accomplish because one of those goals is to generate a nice, thick apathetic fog where even more bullshit can go down.
So let me break this down very simply: The direct line between Donald Trump and Russian bots propping up criticism towards a Star Wars movie is hate. Hate for women, hate for minorities, hate for any form of progress that moves America even a centimeter past white, Christian, patriarchal norms. And while it’s absolutely true that those problems have always been just below the surface, there’s no denying that something has emboldened Americans to proudly hoist their hate in the light like a goddamn badge of honor. That something is weaponized social media pushing simple minds into the arms of an authoritarian fungal wang. (My man Stonekettle has your required further reading. On information warfare! Not weird dicks.)
How do you combat this horseshit? Well, for starters, stop waiting for this to happen, which was my move.
Sonofabitch.
But, seriously, here’s what you need to do. First and foremost, vote. Don’t sit at home pouting because none of the candidates are handing out free weed and college tuition. And if saying that makes me a centrist cop, or whatever, call me Officer Neolib the Fourth. I don’t care. Second, whenever you see things like #ComicsGate, the shit that went down with The Last Jedi, or the racism spewed at Colin Kaepernick, shout that fuckery down. Don’t roll your eyes about PC culture or feminism “run amok” like the virulent Dirtbag Left who love to parrot the talking point that liberals taking a stand in the culture wars (a.k.a. doing the right thing) is how we got Trump. Fuck that.
No, we got Trump because too many people were complacent and assumed that there’s no way that America is stupid enough to elect an openly racist con man who brags about grabbing women by the pussy. Except, surprise, our friends and family are exactly that dumb thanks to Jesus Hearts Troops And Guns Dot Blue Lives Matter on Facebook informing them that Hillary Clinton sacrifices white babies to Obama who was ISIS the whole time. But now we know how dumb America can be, and we’re not going to stop punching an orange Toad dong out of people’s mouths until we get that raccoon suit.
*rereads last sentence*
Yup, definitely some good-ass words that in no way torpedoed everything I just wrote. I have helped here.
Mike Redmond is the former writer/editor of The Superficial. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and kids who think he’s just some weirdo with a computer. They’re not wrong. (Twitter | Email)
