12 Serious Sunday Thoughts From A Satirist

Real political commentary on this week's news

Photo by Art Lasovsky on Unsplash

[The second half of this article is paywalled. My comedy will continue being free because everyone deserves to laugh at Trump’s fascism, but I plan on writing more occasional serious political commentary and paywalling some of it to encourage those who enjoy my thoughts to become paid subscribers to help fund the time and energy I put into The Halfway Café! 🥰

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1. The Founding Fathers did not imagine the legislative branch they designed would ever be filled with as many lazy, politically opportunist, scaredy-cats brown-nosing the executive branch as the Republican Party has today. On background, many Republicans lament what Trump is doing to America, and then they vote however they think will get them through another day without earning a mean, threatening tweet from Trump that threatens their reelection. Cowards.

2. The reality of American domestic politics right now is that Trump is taking away money from FEMA, Medicaid, and many more programs intended to save or improve our lives in order to build concentration camps to ruin lives, and end quite a few from abuse and neglect.

3. I’m very supportive of Elon Musk’s effort to start a new political party. I think overwhelmingly it will steal votes from the GOP, and let Democrats win, kind of like how Teddy Roosevelt jumping into the 1912 election as a third party candidate allowed Woodrow Wilson to win. I’ll believe Musk actually means to start a real political party when he does it — he really doesn’t deserve any trust whatsoever because, like Trump, he seems eager to lie about anything and everything to impress whatever audience is listening to him at the moment — but I’m pretty sure Elon has done a good job burning his bridges with Democrats and liberals so it will only be gullible, low-information voters and anti-Trump conservatives who flock to whatever campaign he gets off the ground. Democrats should probably even help Musk fund his party because they’re so bad at politics, messaging, and getting attention that their money would almost certainly be more effectively spent helping Musk fan the flames of this feud he has against Trump. It’s kind of like the Japanese people looking up and watching Godzilla fight Mothra… we’re just waiting to see what epic destruction Trump and Musk do to our national security, economy, democracy, and culture.

4. Here’s an idea for democrats: never stop blaming literally every bit of natural disaster damage and every death on Trump. Never shut up about how his budget cuts are wrecking our early preparedness systems, our recovery efforts, and our prevention methods. All these deaths from the flooding in Texas? Start blaming Trump for gutting FEMA and firing all the people who monitor potential natural disasters. Did Trump ever miss an opportunity to blame Biden or Harris for things that had nothing to do with them? Democrats should stop bringing pillows to political gunfights when bad faith Republicans bring bazookas, and accurately accuse the GOP of doing horrific things that immediately lead to Americans’ deaths.

5. The GOP’s SNAP cuts are stupid because programs like food stamps are a successful trickle-up governmental effort. It’s also much closer to a self-sustaining system than Republicans’ tax cuts for the rich that claim to trickle-down, but literally never do. The functionality of food stamps is that poor people need food assistance, and we don’t want them to become beggars on the street grabbing our ankles as we walk past, or to starve and die. So we give them food stamps, and they use that money — all of it — at local grocery stores. This helps those local grocery stores in impoverished areas stay open, which prevents food deserts. The stores are able to pay local employees, which helps the community, who then go buy things at other stores. The grocery store also gets many products delivered, and needs equipment like shelving, carts, printers, scanners, paper bags, refrigerators, freezers, etc., so consider how many other manufacturing, transportation, and logistics companies are involved to keep the grocery store operating. That’s a lot more people employed. Meanwhile, the sales related to all these business transactions pay taxes to the government, which helps afford the food stamps we give to the poor people with kids who would otherwise grow up hungry. What a successful investment!

6. Republicans’ budget is once again proving that the 50+ year adage that Republicans are the fiscally responsible party is the biggest myth is American politics.