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.

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.

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.

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.