“Why are we wasting vaccinations on Texas if Texas has decided to join the side of the virus?”

– Keith Olbermann

“Texas—we hear you. You didn’t want to be part of our electrical grid. And now you’ve removed your mask mandate & are allowing large crowds to gather. We hear you! COVID is a hoax! So u don’t need our precious vaccine. We’ll send it to ppl who are saving lives by wearing masks.”

– Michael Moore

It takes a special kind of hubris to denigrate the Republicans as being simple minded, intellect challenged rubes when your blue tribal pundits reduce an entire state to a clear sentient being named “Texas”. A willful entity, Texas walks around and obviously does terrible deeds, wearing ball showing jorts along with ostrich hide cowboy boots. He drinks too much at family gatherings, and often ruins movies by telling you the next advance in the plot. Texas is truly an asshole and we are right and good to hate Texas.

We are also right and good to pretend that false promises of $2000 “will go out the door” if people emerge in a pandemic to turn their red state blue. Wasn’t this supposed to happen right away? Is it really good practice to be shady with people’s money when so many are broke? I don’t think anyone enjoys small print legalese behavior,and will probably file that incident away in their mind as “wow, I’m so glad these smarmy, arrogant bastards asked me to do something for them and they are not producing what they said they would in return. I will definitely turn out again to do them a favor next time they ask.” Even if the Dems get the reduced $1400 out presumably sometime before the next germ out there in some unspoiled wilderness gets released via condo construction—well, they will have still squandered all the good will for largely no decent reason other than a cruel adherence to neo-liberal austerity group-think and a sexually based penchant for Lucy and the football based scenarios.

Then there are those who are following geopolitical events in between their anxiety attacks–they will say “I”m also impressed that rules have been bent to bomb people I don’t know in Syria, but I see that rules can’t be broken to help me be able to afford even 75% of an average rental in my state via minimum wage increase—but at least I have the knowledge that someone has been bombed.” So there’s that.

The only thing holding back Democrats right now from making improvements in the lives of Americans is Democrats.

This behavior and attitude will be the reason that states who gravitate overall in their voting patterns towards Republicans will overwhelmingly go back to them in the midterms, barring a come to Jesus moment of empathy from the Democratic party and subsequent action. Joe Biden, racial jungle/smell the hair shockingly has not proven to be an FDR New Dealer. He is nothing but a placeholder for corporate interests, ensuring the military industrial complex continues, and that the United States continues to be a force for Empire and destruction in the world. He wasn’t Trump; that was his only selling point. I think Trump would like to have been a dictator along the lines of a Hitler or a Stalin but just didn’t have the chops for it. The next guy just might. Trump basically had no skills other than getting toilets gold plated and losing money. At least Saddam Hussein wrote a romatic novel (thank you Behind the Bastards podcast: “Saddam Hussein: Erotic Novelist”-I seriously can’t recommend that podcast enough if you want to know the ridiculous but true in the historical bastard world). I think Trump will be too boring to do an adequate podcast on–his derangement isn’t even fascinating, just…..sad.

But back to the topic at hand….. residents of states like Texas hear an arrogance and total disregard for them as individuals in these comments—-they have been bundled into a simple minded moronic entity and even full-on monsters like Ted Cruz can get a leg up if they master the art of mocking the “liberal elite” who say such things. Cruz holds contempt for the populace too, probably in a much greater concentration, but he knows how to work his mockery and bizarrely, despite his ivy league background, can come off as more approachable than these pundits. Basically you don’t insult large swaths of people you need for votes—looking at you Hillary Clinton. How brilliant she must feel coming up with such icy insults as she spends her time not being president. The Republicans can insult away because often they don’t need the people they are hurling insults at.

This extreme generalization seems like a first step in pretty much every social ill, all the way from annoying sexism to full on genocide. It’s the dip your toes in not thinking critically. It is addictive and soothing to simplify in a world of complexity, but two things can be true at once or even 29 million things can be true at once. This is how otherwise kind people make decisions of cruelty—this generalization crutch. The moment you start bunching everyone in a group together because your mind can’t see the myriad souls, you are on a very dangerous path. The fact that Democrats ostensibly want to win the next midterms and the next presidential election shows just how addictive and alluring it is to bundle people together in an easy to digest blob. Doing so will likely cost elections, but yet they still do it because it feels so good to be better than someone, and it feels really good if that someone is a created unified entity. Texas: It’s Like a Whole Other Obnoxious Person (to dislike).

It seems very sad to have to point out that large groups of people do not deserve to die through not being provided with immunizations because of their state’s overall vote . And  those who are poor and struggling should not be manipulated and lied to—they should actually be given rapid assistance so we can have some semblance of decency and a reason to exist. And perhaps gerrymandered areas that voted Republican (and even ones that weren’t gerrymandered) don’t deserve to freeze to death. But this teaching is exactly what the kind and empathetic, believe the science party pundits seems to require at this time. And that’s also just……sad.