Left Jabs

  I try not to write the word ‘fuck’ too often. This is not from any prudishness or discomfort — I use it regularly in everyday speech — but seeing it in writing quickly gets old and tired. I do use it occasionally for effect, but the effect is usually minimal. In this post, however, I can’t get around it. This one is about the ironic, unintended meanings of the redneck t-shirt slogan “Fuck Around and Find Out.” A masterpiece of trashy thought, trashily expressed, I can’t talk about it without throwing a few F-bombs of my own. And while I suspect most of my readers are familiar with the word, they might not be familiar with the slogan. “Fuck Around and Find Out” is a macho challenge to you wussy liberals whose woke nanny-state ideas don’t comport with the second-amendment values of real Americans. It’s another way of saying, “Don’t fuck with me, I’m white, Christian, straight, and toxically masculine. And if you look at me sideways, I’ll shoot you.” Equal pa...

I was in physical therapy the other day (hamstring, no big deal), when I realized that the vibrant facility I was in, part of a large orthopedic surgery practice, is one of those thousands of healthcare-related businesses that were made possible by the Affordable Care Act. It brought to mind the ongoing fragility — the sheer precariousness — of these businesses, as the bullies ride into town. Obamacare is surely in their sights. We’ve always assumed Trump and his rubber-stamp Congress were still determined to repeal the ACA, but it occurred to me that with Elon Musk and his cyber-vandals screwing around with government computers, repeal is hardly necessary. All they need to do is cut off the funding, which, they would have you believe, is a matter of a few lines of code. If Musk can actually pull that off — and make it stick — it would quickly kill off PT centers like the one now stretching my hamstring, and wreak havoc on the ecosystem of surgery centers, spe...

  L et’s not sugar-coat it. Let’s call it what it is: a coup. It’s not a policy shift, a government shake-up, or a peaceful transfer of power. It’s not something Americans know much about, or are prepared to deal with. We’re witnessing a full-on fascist takeover. It would be right out of the Hitler playbook, except Hitler had nothing like the computer skills and gargantuan financial resources of the “tech bros,” Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. These two immigrants are, quite ironically, riding a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment to launch a hostile takeover of the federal government. It’s hard to know what to do about it, and better minds than mine are now pondering it full-time. But one way to start is to get over this ridiculous notion that Democrats are somehow responsible, or asleep at the switch, or should have seen this coming. A lot of them did indeed see it coming, long ago. Elizabeth Warren, Adam Schiff, Jamie Raskin, and dozens of other elected Democra...

  For me, the biggest shocker of the election was to see just how thoroughly the biggest and wildest MAGA lies have permeated the culture. Large parts of the electorate truly believe Democrats are the spawn of Satan. I mean that literally. There is a rabid religious component to this demonization that is both sickening and frightening. We’re witnessing utterly heinous acts being billed as what God wants, and there are few things scarier than zealots with power. And now they’ve got what they’ve wanted for half a century. This is the return on the right’s massive investment, first in dumbing down the American electorate, then in filling it with multiple layers of elaborate lies, pumped out through a closed media ecosystem that serves their audience a steady dose of alternative reality. Much money and thought has gone into those lies, many of which were repeated so often they replaced the truth. This long-term investment has been far more effective than I, for ...

I t’s hard to overstate the irony contained in the slogan that the Washington Post persists in printing beneath its gothic logo: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” They really ought to change it. Blue Gal, co-host of The Professional Left podcast, suggests “Democracy Died. Oopsie.” Not that the Post is alone in eviscerating our democracy, or in adding to the darkness now descending upon us. The entire legacy media, with few exceptions, is culpable. Consumers of the Post — and the New York Times , and CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, etc. — are supposed to have usable brains, yet it’s amazing how easily they can be manipulated into believing that “both sides” are equally bad. When the Post’s editorial board equates Trump’s pardoning of 1,600 insurrectionist thugs with Biden’s pre-emptive pardoning of public figures in serious danger of a mafia-like vendetta, you know the both-sides narrative has risen to new heights of hypocrisy. The article’s subhead says it all: “In one day, two presidents s...

    It was a terrible night for women, for children, for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants who make this country go. For healthcare, for our climate, for scientists, for justice, for free speech. It was a terrible night for poor people, for the middle class, for seniors who rely on social security, for our allies in Ukraine, for NATO and democracy and decency. It was a terrible night for everyone who voted against him and guess what? It was a bad night for everyone who voted for him, too, you just don’t realize it yet. -       Jimmy Kimmel, November 6, 2024   H ere we are. First full day of Trump’s second reign. I’m guessing a lot of people will be realizing a lot of unpleasant things in the next few days and weeks. So it seems a good time to revisit Jimmy Kimmel’s apt summation, which can serve us, going forward, as a sort of scorecard. We can use it to keep track of just how much of MAGA’s warped ag...