A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆When a elephant dies, all the scavengers arrive to eat the carcass, which makes for quite a show out on the savannah.
This perhaps explains why earlier this week we witnessed the 2nd of what are being referred to as “presidential” primary debates.
It happened like this: a bunch of people who are pretending to run for president congregated to pretend to debate over what they pretended were the issues, while a propaganda network that pretends to be a news channel televised it.
All of this seems an appropriate pageant for the Republican Party, since it is still pretending to be a political party and a participant within our democracy, instead of a fascist confederacy working to demolish and replace it.
All the usual hyenas were there, yapping at each other, jockeying for the best position at the hole ripped in the elephant’s belly.
Mike Pence was there, or at least a milky apparition resembling Mike Pence stumbled onto stage to mumble sour nothings into our ears.
A lot of Republican voters are confused why Mike Pence is running, but nobody so confused, it seems, as Mike Pence.
He brought his neck to the debate, which I consider pandering; it's the only part of him Republican voters have been interested in since around January 5, 2021.
Vivek Ramaswamy made an appearance. He’s the first Apple bitmoji to aspire to be a presidential candidate. Of all scavengers on the dais he’s the one that seems to understands best what’s needed to head a pretend political party; that is, is a total lack of substance or shame.
Also, Ramaswamy wants to end birthright citizenship, which is a sort of curious stance for him to take specifically; yes, it's what white racists want to hear, but if implemented it would exclude him.
It's lucky for him that everything he says is as pretend as these debates.
Pulling the ladder in after you’ve climbed it might appeal to a bunch of anti-immigrant white supremacist descendants of immigrants; however, for white supremacist primary voters, the Republican field presents an, ahem, whiter selection than Ramaswamy offers.
For example, there’s poor Ron DeSantis, who stuck his head into the elephant corpse for a while and poked around ineffectually. DeSantis is the dictator of Florida, a cruel wooden doll who hopes to become a real boy someday, but in those efforts he appears to be going backward.
Florida is a fascist state where gay people and trans people in particular are menaced and harassed and harmed, but also up for mistreatment are teachers and librarians and health care workers and virologists and immunosuppressed people, and so on.
Those who speak the truth about supremacist systems are up for particular condemnation in Florida. Awareness of the truth is a real bugbear for the pretend party, and the suppression of it is what brought DeSantis to prominence in the first place.
One of DeSantis’ recent talking points is the notion that slavery was actually a beneficial thing, which is a strong position to take for a guy whose campaign staff recently put Nazi imagery on official campaign material.
The idea here is that slavery taught enslaved people important work skills, and this self-defeatingly ignorant notion has become a key feature of the new curricula being forced onto Florida schoolteachers these days.
So DeSantis stood on the stage, pretending to run for president, his face auditioning discomfiting expressions as he held his state up as the example of what sort of brisk sunny horror the entire nation might soon become.
And there were others there.
Example: Doug Burgum.
Oh, and Chris Christie was on hand. Almost sad to see a gentleman from a more civilized time, when one did all one’s society-destroying self-serving fuckery behind closed doors and still pretended as if you didn’t really do it.
He's doomed.
These days Republican voters don’t just want to see you eating red meat, they want to see hunks of it still twitching between your teeth, and Christie just doesn’t have the appetite.
The best Christie could manage in that regard was some weak sauce about Donald Trump (who is the actual nominee for the fascist party) being Donald Duck, because he was “ducking” these pretend debates.
Please clap.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, is the hyena who managed to climb all the way into the corpse, and his appetite seems infinite. He’s polling at over 50% in the Republican field, and his numbers go up every time he gets charged with yet another of the crimes that he did in broad daylight.
Trump’s already won the nomination, and he knows it, and so does everyone on that debate stage, and everyone else. So Christie’s jibe about him refusing to take part in the game of make-believe happening on stage was really the only way that any of these candidates could attack him.
They all know that he’s already the nominee, and everything else he stands for—the corruption and crime, the open authoritarianism, the celebration of violence, everything else, even the incompetence—is exactly what makes him so popular.
This is why all these scavengers are pretending. They have nothing, and they know it—nothing but the corpse they’re all eating, pretending it’s still alive.
They can’t offer solutions. They’ve already positioned solutions as the enemy.
They can’t even mention the problems.
What idea do they have that even defines a real problem, much less solves one?
What benefit for society do they celebrate that wasn’t achieved despite their opposition to it?
What solution do they have that doesn’t involve increased punishment, authority, pain, some scapegoating of some group, targeting them for punishment and exclusion, so the real problem can be obscured and forgotten, allowing those with too much already to get even more?
Again, these hyenas have nothing. They’re busy hollowing out the corpse of the party they are pretending they intend to lead, to gain whatever position and advantage they can while the getting is good.
Their hope is that next year, as a country, we’ll all agree to pretend along with them a little further, in numbers that might not be a majority but still might be enough to turn the national body into a new carcass, so that the scavengers have free rein to consume the rest.
They’re hoping we’ll keep pretending.
If we’re pretending, to the extent that we are, we ought to stop.
Full essay: https://armoxon.substack.com/p/the-hyenas-gather
Roknrol@JuliusGoat This is exactly why there won't be any real repercussions.
⚡️ axeshun ⚡️ 
@JuliusGoat actually, if anyone missed it, Christie made a remarkably hard hitting plea for unwavering support of Ukraine and a spot-on analysis of the repercussions if we do not support Ukraine.
LibertyForward1@JuliusGoat "Christie just doesn't have the appetite."
This quite possibly may be the first time this phrase has ever been uttered.
Bombadil Frumblesnatch 🐧@JuliusGoat Brilliant essay.
OtownKim@JuliusGoat I'm a lifetime Floridian from NY. In Orlando it's nothing like this. Even Jacksonville elected a Democrat Mayor. Most of us are so sick of DeathSantis, Red Tide Rick, and little do absolutely nothing Rubio. Yes there are pockets of asshats here in this state like any other MAGAt population. But without Gerrymandered maps none of these domestic terrorists would be in office. Trust when I tell you we are sick of R's overall. The tide will turn. It's already is!
hapbt@JuliusGoat I was surprised to see how much his own state hates him much like trump and New York
NKT@JuliusGoat We have the same happening in the UK with the Prime Minister and Home Secretary - both first generation immigrant's children - trying to out-tough each other and the far right with calls for bans on others like their economic migrant parents!
The difference is, they're actually in charge.
The difference is, they're actually in charge.
Ω 🌍 Gus Posey
Mycotropic@JuliusGoat at least it was very difficult to watch without cable! It's nice that they feel comfortable mutually masturbating to their fantasies! Bloody, hateful and sociopathic as they are I certainly won't be joining in but; good for them sharing the experience with each other!
KatLS@JuliusGoat I love this so much. I read the whole piece (not just the excerpt) to my household.❤️❤️❤️