A New Political Asshole(s) of the Week Poll

Curmie may be trying out a new feature: a weekly poll of Political Asshole(s) of the Week. No guarantees how long this will last, but the idea is that Curmie will nominate three pols (or collections of pols) each weekend. The only stipulation is that no member of the Trump administration or campaign staff (or Trump lapdog Moscow Mitch) are eligible, as the award would never go to anyone else. And then you, Gentle Readers, will choose the… erm… winner.

To this end, Curmie is pleased to announce that for the voting period immediately past, the winner of the 1st Political Asshole of the Week balloting is St. Louis mayor Lyda Krewson, a Democrat, who won a plurality over Republicans Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Louisiana Congresscritter Mike Johnson, both of whom got votes. Mayor Krewson, you may recall, decided it was a good idea to respond to a question in a Facebook Live briefing by doxxing the citizens who had advocated for defunding the police. Congratulations, Mayor: richly deserved.

(And it should be mentioned here that Governor Abbott actually did the right thing this week: too little, too late, but the right thing.)

Onward to this week’s nominees. Curmie is trying to keep all the nominations from clustering around a single topic. So although there are several worthy candidates under the heading of coronavirus response, he’s limiting the nominations to only two. That leaves out Curmie’s own Congresscritter Louie Gohmert, whose puerile grandstanding this week took the form of refusing to wear a mask until he actually tests positive; the Texas Republican Party, which forges ahead with its state convention in Houston—where ICUs are already past capacity—without even requirements for mask-wearing; and even Texas’s Idiot Brat Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who proclaimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”  Remind me, Dan... where did you go to med school?

Senator Rand Paul: Doesn't like people who know things.

But that still leaves two excellent nominees in the COVID-19 response category. The first is Senator Rand Paul, whose signature line of the week was “It’s important to realize that if society meekly submits to an expert and that expert is wrong, a great deal of harm may occur. We shouldn’t presume that a group of experts somehow knows what's best for everyone.” A lot of people would regard this statement as inherently worthy of derision; Curmie, ever the skeptic, is not among them. It is true: we shouldn’t trust “experts” unquestioningly. But Paul doesn’t want to trust them at all unless, of course, they adhere to his preconceptions. 

The senator, of course, flaunts his MD especially in matters of public health. He’s an ophthalmologist, which means that he knows as much about epidemiology as Curmie, who has a PhD in theatre, knows about Australian theatre: it exists. But what is especially problematic in Paul’s reluctance to listen to actual experts is his alternative: listen instead to the anti-intellectual self-contradictory ravings of POTUS, who seeks to curtail testing because more tests mean more diagnoses, and that means further evidence of what an incompetent buffoon is at the wheel of the ship of state. Oh, and one more thing: optimism. Yes, really. Did anyone else out there just think of a Monty Python routine? Curmie is all in favor of contrarian views… but there has to be some argument, some evidence, some thought process at play. Senator Paul has provided nothing but petulance.

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey: one of many cowards

The second coronavirus-related nominee goes to a host of governors, mostly but not exclusively Republicans, who, to put it bluntly, refuse to do their jobs and protect their citizens. These are the folks who are pushing to open businesses, schools, colleges, etc.; who are unwilling to take the politically unpopular but necessary step of enforcing—not just encouraging, but actually enforcing—safety precautions: masks, social distancing, limitations on the size of gatherings, etc.

Evasions, double-speak, and evocations of “personal responsibility” are the order of the day for these craven hacks. Hell, if Greg Freaking Abbott can finally get it right… OK, here’s the thing: as Mac Parsons is quoted in an excellent editorial by Kyle Whitmore, “government exists to do shitty things to people.” Who, after all, would pay taxes, or pay child support, or drive at a safe speed all the time if all these things were optional? “Personal responsibility” exists, but it has limits. And, sadly, it has been proven in this pandemic to be insufficient at best. There are too many ignorant, stupid, and egoistic folks out there. “It’s my life; I’ll take my chances” is the mating call of the American Asswipe, a species of fauna known for moronic decisions defended by bellowing platitudes. Listen up, you cretinous yahoo, it’s not your health your faux-heroic antics are endangering: it’s mine. And if I die because you’re an arrogant buffoon, I promise you that my ghost will haunt you until the end of time.

These craven governors also try to deflect reasonable criticism by claiming that “enforcement would be too hard.” Alabama’s health officer, Scott Harris, even reports that some members of “law enforcement… had stated publicly they were not going to enforce the order.” Well, that’s easily fixed. Put every single one of those assholes on suspension without pay, and without access to unemployment compensation, until they decide to do their fucking jobs. Sure, there will be a lot of resistance at first, as there was for, say, mandatory seat belts… but have Skip and Buffy spend a night in jail and pay a $250 fine for a first violation and increase the punishment for each subsequent offense. Grumbling won’t go away, but compliance will increase PDQ.

And if it’s the ubiquity of the offenses that’s the problem, then Curmie awaits the announcement that Alabama will cease enforcing laws against underage drinking, possession of small quantities of marijuana, and driving too fast.

These governors are either imbeciles, cowards, or assholes… often more than one of the above.

Senator Rubio: leader of a hypocritical pack

Finally, our third nomination goes to the Republicans in the US Senate. We’ll make Senator Rubio our poster-child, but he has lots of accomplices. A bill that passed the Senate Intelligence Committee because Susan Collins isn’t always a party hack (or because she knew she could flaunt her phony independence because her colleagues in the GOP would prevent obviously useful legislation from actually becoming law) has been stripped of language requiring that presidential campaigns notify the FBI of any offers by foreign agents to influence US elections.

The proposal was clearly a response to the Mueller investigation, which found insufficient evidence to charge anyone on the Trump campaign with criminal conspiracy, but which also concluded that “The Russian government interfered in our election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” In other words, the measure sought to protect the integrity of the nation’s elections.

Nope, can’t have that. The GOP is all about “fair elections” if what that means is that it’s harder for poor people, minorities, or even people concerned about the risk of contracting COVID-19, to vote. To Republican pols, he fact that absentee ballots have been around a long time, and indeed have been employed recently by one Donald J. Trump, or that the verification process for mail-in ballots and absentee ballots is identical, doesn’t mean that we ought to allow everyone to vote that way. But they’ll do backflips to protect the right of foreign governments or their agents to continue their “sweeping and systematic” interference. Hypocrisy and hubris are in a death struggle to see which is the dominant descriptor of the behavior.

So there you have it, Gentle Reader. Cast your vote. Curmie fears we may have to run the risk of foreign interference, however.

[Poll has been removed.]