Hispanic Fanatic

So I recently finished watching Kingdom, a Korean television show set in the Middle Ages that features my favorite scenario in any medium:

A full-scale zombie apocalypse.

Really, is there anything cooler than a massive swarm of zombies attacking?

No, there isn’t. I answered for you.

In any case, even though Kingdom rocked, I’m dismayed to realize that, when it comes to Hollywood, you’re more likely to see medieval Korean zombies than contemporary Latinos.

You see, Netflix recently admitted that while it “has made progress adding diverse content created by and starring women, Black and Asian people on its platform in recent years, the streaming service and film studio hasn’t had the same success yet with increasing Latinx representation.”

Just how poorly do Latinos fare on Netflix? Well, the studio would have to quadruple the number of Latino actors in its movies and shows just to match our percentage of the US population. So double it and double it again, and then we’re getting warm.

Netflix’s self-incriminating report came out around the same time that Oscar nominations were announced. The 20 acting nominees represent the most diverse field in Academy Awards history. That’s undeniably great news.

But the odd thing is that this most diverse field ever does not contain a single Latino. As in not one.

In fact, Panamanian-American director Shaka King appears to be the only Latino to have nabbed a major nomination (The Judas and The Black Messiah director was nominated for best picture and best original screenplay).

Unfortunately, this is an old story. For its entire history, Hollywood has had “a major problem greenlighting films and shows made by and starring Latinos,” despite the fact that Hispanics purchase more movie tickets per capita than any other US racial demographic group.

Damn, there are more movies about the Hasidim than there are about Hispanics.

Of course, every now and then, Hollywood will roll out some initiative to discover Latino storytellers (as if we’re hiding and trying to evade capture). But these programs seem to last only a year or two before studio execs mumble, “Well, we tried,” and get back to creating shows about white people in Brooklyn. A sustained effort is necessary, but most likely not coming.

If Netflix is listening, however, I have a great idea for a show about a Latino detective. Call me.

They either stopped right away or they kept going to the end.

Most of them ignored the screaming, and the pleas to stop, and the obvious indications that they were causing enormous pain and needless suffering.

They just kept cranking it up.

I’m talking, of course, about the participants in one of the most infamous psychological studies of all time: The Milgram shock experiment.

In 1961, Dr. Stanley Milgram set up a test in which participants administered electrical shocks to people. The participants were put in front of control panel that had increments of voltage marked — from 15 volts (“slight shock”) to 450 volts (“danger, severe shock”). The test subjects were told to increase the voltage gradually, delivering stronger and stronger jolts to a person hooked up to the machine in another room.

Now, it was an elaborate ruse, in that nobody actually got shocked, but the participants didn’t know that. They couldn’t see the person in the other room, but they heard him yelling and telling them to stop (again, the yelling was fake).

What Milgram found was that despite the screaming, most participants obeyed the researcher’s insistence to keep administering the shocks, and to keep increasing the voltage. Most people just kept inflicting pain, going all the way to the top level (450 volts) simply because they were told to.

Milgram’s experiment is regarded as a milestone in the study of human obedience. His findings — replicated many times in numerous other studies — proved that “people tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as morally right and/or legally based.” The disturbing conclusion is that it’s pretty easy to talk individuals into doing horrible things, and “ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being.

These findings apply to such well-known atrocities such as Nazi Germany, the Rwandan genocide, and the killing fields of Cambodia.

But they also apply to, for example, a wannabe despot who exhorts his followers to attack the US capitol in a deranged bid to overthrow the government. As many of those rioters later admitted, they rampaged through the capitol because Trump told them to. They were “just following orders.”

And where have we heard that excuse before?

In any case, in the aftermath of the riot, 43 Republican Senators continued to just follow orders — continued to display abject obedience — by acquitting a man whom the vast majority of Americans want punished.

The GOP’s compliance is, of course, sadly predictable.

But there is another angle to Milgram’s experiment that is not often discussed, and it has direct relevance to the Republican Party.

You see, not everyone in Milgram’s experiment kept shocking the hell out of people just because they were told to. 

About 18% of participants stopped when the indicator reached 150 volts, and the first yelps of pain came from the other room. Of those who went past 150 volts, the vast majority kept going to the end (450 volts).

Basically, people either stop at the first sign of trouble, or they never stop at all.

Similarly, many Republicans who begrudgingly voted for Trump in 2016 bailed on him circa Charlottesville (i.e., when he said there were “very fine people on both sides”), which was arguably the point when his racism could no longer be denied.

But if they stuck with Trump after he insisted that Nazis weren’t so bad? Well, at that point, they were in it to win it (if by “win it” you mean “excuse storming the capitol”).

There is a psychological condition in which we refuse to alter our behavior — even if it is harmful or irrational — if we have emotionally invested in a course of action. In such cases, we go deeper and deeper, because to stop would be admitting that we have wasted our time and been wrong all along. And that’s just too psychologically distressing.

So those conservatives who stuck by Trump past Charlottesville, past the caging of babies, past the botched response to coronavirus, and past the myriad outrages and failures are now at the point that they will justify any abhorrent behavior to rationalize supporting Trump to this point. To disavow him now would be to admit that they have spent the last four years cheering for a corrupt lunatic. And they just can’t have that.

So instead of conservatives coming to their senses, we have the Oregon Republican Party suggesting that the January 6 insurrection was a “false flag” operation by Democrats to discredit Trump. We have the Texas Republican Party openly supporting the QAnonconspiracy theory. We have GOP lawmakers in Ohio proposing an annual state holiday in Trump’s honor. We have Republicans giving a standing ovation to “a woman who trafficked in anti-Semitic and racist conspiracy theories, and questioned whether 9/11 and mass shootings were real events.”

To be sure, many right-wingers feel no distress at supporting Trump and his minions. They adore the man and crave more of his special brand of chaos and madness and hatred.

But for those conservatives who know, on some level, that all this hero worship of an obvious sociopathic incompetent was a severe mistake, but who didn’t get out while they could, well, they can’t stop now. They have to keep twisting the dial to deliver more shocks to the system.

And they will continue to just follow orders.

Just over one year ago, the United States suffered its first known Covid-19 death. At the time, many scientific experts were concerned that a pandemic would erupt, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Those experts were pretty much ignored, in favor of just wishing that the virus would magically go away.

And now here we are, 12 months later, with no pandemic problems whatsoever (as long as we don’t count the 450,000 dead Americans).

Hey, what do those egghead “experts” know, right?

In any case, it’s worth noting that while the coronavirus doesn’t care who it infects, we Americans most certainly do. And our top priority is ensuring that affluent White people do not get sick.

But Covid-19 can devastate entire Latino communities without Americans getting upset about it. We know this is true because that’s exactly what has happened.

Coronavirus hospitalization rates for Latinos are more than quadruple the rate among Whites, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and “in almost every state in the nation, the number of Latinos affected by the disease is higher” than their percentage of the population.

Furthermore, Hispanics get infected at a higher rate than other groups and often suffer worse effects. This is because, for starters, we are more likely to have underlying health issues, and less likely to have health insurance.

But it is also because Latinos often work in jobs that potentially put us at risk. And yes, many of those jobs are on the fabled frontline.

This is especially true among the undocumented. In fact, “more than two-thirds of undocumented immigrant workers have frontline jobs considered ‘essential’ to the U.S. fight against Covid-19.” And nearly one million essential workers are Dreamers protected by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

So if you’re keeping track, Latino immigrants are keeping the country afloat, and putting themselves at enormous risk to do so, in exchange for being demonized, threatened, and blamed for all of the nation’s problems.

Sweet deal, huh?

It would be nice, of course, if the country acknowledged the huge debt that it owes to Latinos. But many Americans are too busy shouting slurs at us, or calling 911 over minor slights, or just cheering on ICE raids. So they haven’t gotten around to writing out the thank-you notes yet.

Maybe they’ll be more grateful during the next pandemic, when no doubt, Latinos will once again be tasked with rescuing a nation that hates them.

And speaking of the next viral outbreak, remember in the early days of coronavirus, when many people said that diseases like SARS and bird flu seemed like a test run?

Well, it’s quite possible that SARS and H1N1 were not warnings about Covid-19. It may be that Covid-19 is itself a warning of something much worse to come in the future.

Next time, I wonder if we’ll listen to the experts.

I rarely tweet (unlike our fascistic president).

But I am still able to tweet (unlike our fascistic president).

In any case, the recent riots in Washington DC provoked me to send out tweet after tweet, mostly because it was a good way to corral my thoughts about a full-fledged insurrection going down in real time.

You see, whenever some travesty or grotesque injustice occurs in our frazzled country, I usually focus on one or two key issues and write a lengthy article about it. However, the sight of redneck Nazis bum-rushing the nation’s capital conjured up multiple storylines, all of them grim. So instead of writing 87 separate posts about this right-wing siege on democracy, I will just compile my tweets here, because there is a lot going on.

So here are my tweets, a kind of instant time capsule, starting with the earliest and ending with my most recent missive today. Here we go:

For four years, liberals have been saying Trump was a sociopath who would lead us into chaos and violence. Today, the GOP acted surprised when chaos and violence erupted.

GOP (every day since 2016): “You liberals suffer from Trump Derangement Disorder. Why do you have so much hatred?” GOP (since yesterday): “Holy shit, Trump is a dangerous lunatic. Who possibly could have known?”

If you support a neo-fascist lunatic for 3 years, 11.5 months, you don’t get credit for ducking out for the last two weeks.

Post-Watergate, the GOP was supposedly finished. Post-GW Bush, the GOP was supposedly finished. Post-Trump, the GOP is supposedly finished. Third time’s a charm?

Trump supporters: “It was Antifi! They infiltrated us! The cops held the doors open to draw us in! The deep state planned the whole thing!” Once again, conservatives who shriek about personal responsibility will say anything to avoid personal responsibility.

Has anyone checked with Q about when the mass arrest of child-eating Satanists begins? This is just the last move in Trump’s brilliant 4-D chess match, right? Right?

GOP congressmen: Kids hiding under desks from gunmen is the price of freedom. Same GOP congressmen: Hiding under our desks from an angry mob is unacceptable. Conservative mantra: Nothing is a problem unless it affects me.

In retrospect, calling his hardcore supporters “deplorable” was too kind.

This will be the last time I ask this question: Are you tired of all the winning yet?

“I am deeply regretful” or I got caught up in the moment” are sad excuses from teens who steal cars for joyrides. They are not sufficient explanations from grown men who commit violent treason and get people killed.

GOP: Private businesses can deny service because you’re gay. Also the GOP: Private businesses can’t deny service if you call for violent sedition that gets people killed.

The GOP has finally agreed with progressives that Trump is a wannabe fascist, so now would be a good time to agree that he is also a racist misogynist. Or do you want to keep defending him on that one too?

For 20 years — from invading Iraq to supporting Trump — the GOP has insisted it knew best and that liberals were anti-American fools. After every disaster, the GOP then says, “Oh well, time to move on.”

Conservative conversation: “We look really bad now, guys. How can we distract people?” “We can scream about Big Tech and free speech and censorship.” “Isn’t that a tone-deaf response to a deadly attack on America?” “We got nothing else.” “Fuck it. Start bitching and moaning.”

Trump’s chief objection to the rioters was that they looked “low class” (which they did). Aside from his misplaced priorities, it’s ironic that the people most willing to kill and die for Trump are the last people on Earth he would deign to talk to.

If you voted for Trump for the tax cuts, I hope it was worth it. The rate of inflation on blood money is staggeringly high.

I’ve heard people say that the assault on the capitol defines Trump’s legacy. Only in an administration as horrific as this could a botched response to a pandemic that killed 350k Americans be relegated to the #2 slot.

Surprised that no journalists have tried to justify the abhorrent behavior of Trump supporters by claiming they’re suffering from “economic anxiety” or “being cruelly left behind.” Yeah, that argument aged well.

GOP believes punishing Trump to deter future autocrats is overkill. GOP also believes yanking kids out of their mothers’ arms at the border deters illegal crossings, harshly penalizing BLM protesters deters vandalism, and keeping money from unemployed people deters laziness.

The GOP’s argument is that impeaching Trump will make his supporters angry and violent. No, we don’t want to do that. Because to this point, they have all been so calm and reasonable.

For years, this country mythologized Trump supporters. They were “left behind,” unfairly stereotyped, deserved to have their voices heard, etc. Now we hear we can’t punish rioters because Trump supporters might get angry. When do we stop making decisions based on how they feel?

Congressional Democrats have been informed by the House Administration Committee that “the purchase of a bulletproof vest is a reimbursable expense.” This is a perfectly normal sentence that we always hear in functioning democracies.

Some in GOP fear voting to impeach, because they’re afraid Trump supporters will assassinate them. Trying to imagine Democrats having a similar fear about their own base, but it’s absurd. 

GOP afraid psycho mob they created will turn on them. On top of being traitors and cowards, GOP was stupid enough to believe it could control bloodthirsty lunatics:

GOP admits their base consists of homicidal racists. Wait a minute. I thought they were patriots suffering from economic anxiety. Are you implying Trump and his enablers lied to us?

Interesting how liberals are “sheep” when we’re not the ones storming government buildings and committing treason just because one angry guy told us to do it.

Old GOP: “We don’t cut and run. No negotiating with terrorists!” New GOP: “No, we can’t possibly punish the terrorists, or daddy will be angry with us.”

Hey you Republicans, let me ask you a question you hurled at progressives 20 years ago: Why do you want the terrorists to win?

Four impeachments in US presidential history. Trump accounts for half of them by himself. He really is the best at something.

Black Christmas

Just a quick note to say Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas and good riddance to 2020 and pleasant thoughts to you, onward and upward, forever and ever, amen.

Of course, this holiday season is a unique combination of depressing, horrifying, frustrating, disorienting, and disquieting. 

It is also a time of great irony. After all, Republicans have long warned us about a supposed “War on Christmas” that mainly consisted of arguments about the wording on Starbucks cups.

But it is a Republican president who has brought disaster and calamity — American carnage, if you will — to Christmas. For millions of Americans, Christmas is cancelled, because they cannot be in the same room as their loved ones. Or the entire season has become a paranoid dance with death, as we dismiss warnings to not gather together and then act shocked when everyone in our family gets infected.

Christmas has never been so bleak — let alone so dangerous — but the Trump Administration has accomplished it.

They have waged the ultimate War on Christmas.

Happy Holidays, everyone.

In theory, by this time next year we will all be vaccinated against COVID-19. And then we’ll hug and clap hands and laugh about the silly virus.

“That whole killer pandemic thing,” we will chortle. “What was that all about anyway?”

Well, before we banish the coronavirus and the entirety of 2020 into the deep, dark memory hole where we bury all our unpleasant thoughts, let’s take a moment to acknowledge the here and now.

You see, because of the Trump Administration’s unique combination of incompetence, hubris, idiocy, and depraved indifference, we are now at about 14 million Americans infected, with over 270,000 dead. We are seeing higher numbers of death on a daily basis, and soon we will endure the equivalent of “a 9/11 every single day.”

In response, the administration has fluctuated between doing nothing, embracing denialism, promoting quackery, and dismissing the experts, which is “in keeping with their guiding philosophy that there is no problem so great that it cannot be solved by knowing lessa bout it.”

Of course, this is not a recent collapse. Months ago, the administration basically gave up fighting the virus and hoped that “Americans will go numb to the escalating death toll and learn to accept tens of thousands of new cases a day.”

And that’s pretty much what conservatives have done. Hey, over half (52%) of Republicans believe that “the U.S. reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic is overblown,” which is double the percentage of Democrats who think the same thing.

So if you’re in the GOP, overflowing hospitals and widespread death is no reason to get all excited. This is despite the fact that “only cancer and heart disease will kill more Americans this year” than coronavirus. In fact, the bug has already “killed more than twice as many Americans as either strokes or Alzheimer’s disease, about four times as many as diabetes, and more than eight times as many as either gun violence or vehicle accidents.”

Again, none of that is reason to be concerned — if you’re a Republican.

If you are not, and you actually respect science, you might be interested to know that recent studies verify “what health officials have been telling us for months: Masks do work by significantly slowing the spread of COVID-19.” In fact, there may be up to “a 50% reduction in the spread of COVID-19 in counties that had a mask mandate compared to those without.”

But of course, our disease-ridden president mocked facemasks for months, and provoked the stupidest culture war of all time, apparently because masks weren’t manly or would hurt the economy or something similarly incoherent.

Oh, and speaking of Republicans and their favorite subject — the economy — keep in mind that mask mandates lead to “greater confidence and spending among consumers,” and “are also linked to higher consumer mobility.”

So if conservatives really wanted to rescue the economy, and not just kill grandma in a futile ploy to boost Wall Street, they would be clamoring for everyone to wear a mask. Also, the conservative insistence that lockdowns would destroy the economy looks even more pathetic now, considering that most economists say “the U.S. would be in a better economic position now if lockdowns had been more aggressive at the beginning of the crisis.”

In essence, the Trumpian approach killed more people and made the economy worse — a win-win only if you are a delusional Republican or a cackling demon from the underworld who loves human suffering.

Yes, the virus was always going to be bad, but this level of calamity is the direct result of an infantile, self-obsessed president and his “incessant destruction of reason, evidence and science in the service of his personal whims, conspiratorial mindset and political requirements.”

In future generations, there will be myriad books, documentaries, and feature films about American life during coronavirus. And they will all come to the same conclusion:

It didn’t have to be this bad. 

It’s the little things that make us happy. Like the sound of children laughing, or the taste of ice cream, or the toppling of grotesque statues of treacherous slaveholders that are then dragged through the streets and thrown into rivers or hammered into oblivion. Things like that.

But while we’re all happy that monuments to Confederate generals are being yanked down across America (just a few decades too late), there remain some dicey issues about who should or should not be honored.

Indeed, it’s fair to ask, “What should be done with statues honoring Spanish conquistadors and missionaries, and what do these statues represent for Latinos — whose ancestry includes this Spanish legacy?”

Yes, depending on our DNA, we Latinos are a mixture of both the oppressed and the oppressor. For example, my family is from El Salvador, but our name originated in Spain. This is a common conundrum. The fancy way to express the twisted nature of our heritage is to state that “Latinx people are both the protagonists in historical justice and the progeny of colonization.”

OK, that all sounds deep — and distressing — but this is largely academic, right? Surely, there is not an undercurrent of bigotry and/or self-loathing within Latino culture when it comes to racial issues. Is there?

Well, the truth is that, historically, many Latinos have “embraced white identity versus mixed identity to avoid further discrimination at the hands of white people.” Personally, I’ve known Hispanics who have happily checked the “white” box on the census and not thought twice about it.

The problem with this attitude is that it frequently becomes a conduit to prejudice against black people. Keep in mind that “anti-blackness has deep and complicated roots throughout Latin America, where fair-skinned people are frequently viewed as the ideal and receive better treatment.”

And if you’re thinking that this mindset is just another one of those silly immigrant traditions — like hating dishwashers — you’re wrong. For many Latino families, antipathy toward darker skin has “often carried over to the United States, where some believe that assimilation is the path to equality.” And for the second generation, “assimilation” often means, “becoming white.”

For proof of this phenomenon, just look at our perpetually tongue-tied, rage-filled president, whose hostility toward Latinos and fear of immigrants are so well-known that only the most delusional or partisan can deny it. 

Currently, almost 30% of Latinos plan to vote for the guy who called them “rapists,” and who has spent years building a shoddily constructed wall to keep brown-skinned people out. Yes, more than one out of every four Latinos is a MAGA supporter. That is nearly triple the percentage of his African American support.

You may be tempted to dismiss this as a polling error that sampled far too many right-wing Cuban Americans. But in truth, Latinos for Trump is a very real thing. And his base of Hispanic support has remained fairly consistent for his entire term.

Now, the president’s “relative resilience with Latino voters can be easy to overlook because he is losing these voters by a large margin” (which is certainly good news). However, Trump “is losing them by less than he did in 2016, which is strange at a time when his numbers are otherwise falling.”

It’s beyond strange. It’s fucked upside-down and backward.

So what are the reasons for this embarrassing anomaly? 

Well, we’ve heard that many Latinos don’t “know” Joe Biden, which is odd, considering his name came up once or twice during the Obama years. We’ve also heard that many Hispanics were big fans of Bernie Sanders, and if they can’t feel the Bern, they’re fine voting for the lunatic who advises chugging bleach. And of course, there are those aforementioned right-wing Cuban-Americans and the fact that Latinos are not a monolithic voting bloc.

But none of those reasons ring fully true.

Because, in truth, many Latinos who support Trump are no different than other conservatives. They are so loathe to admit that they were fantastically, astronomically, stupendously wrong that they are willing to burn America down rather than acknowledge reality. 

And many other Hispanics see nothing offensive about Trumpism. For them, white supremacy is only a problem for blacks and dark-skinned immigrants. It’s not an issue for those who have successfully “assimilated.” Right? 

In essence, Trump is for all those Latinos who look at a statue of a conquistador and think, “Yeah, I’m that guy.”

You really have to give a shout-out to the Founding Fathers. Yes, they were hypocritical slave owners who stole land from the Native Americans, and they routinely drank toilet water and thought mastodons roamed the Pacific Northwest. But they still had some pretty good ideas.

For example, they gave us the First Amendment (a definite highlight). And they also gave us the Second Amendment, a bizarrely worded clause that has defied simple interpretation for almost three centuries now, and which makes the United States the only industrialized nation in the world where it’s easier to get an assault rifle than preventative healthcare.

Now you might ask, “What’s so great about that?”

Well, the whole point of the Second Amendment, according to hardcore advocates of gun rights, is that it is bulwark against government tyranny. Americans are constantly told that if it weren’t for citizens packing heat, the U.S. government would herd us all into labor camps at gunpoint… although it’s unclear who would be doing the rounding up, or why, or how rednecks with shotguns could prevent that from happening, or why the citizens of Japan or Great Britain or Canada don’t require this kind of protection.

Yeah, the details are a little fuzzy. But the point is that we have to guard against tyranny. 

Well, I have good news for all those militia types who have spent their lives hoarding AR-15s and shrieking about government oppression.

This is your chance. The tyranny is here.

You see, we now have a president who is in office only through a constitutional fluke and who has never been the American people’s choice. And this president has spent his entire term undermining our democratic norms and using the White House for personal gain. He has sold out to foreign dictators, ignored the murder of our troops, and dismissed any calls for accountability or transparency. And to top it off, his incompetence and hubris in the face of a pandemic has led to needless death and economic turmoil.

Doesn’t all that send a chill down your freedom-lovin’ spine? It should. But ok, maybe you gun-toting patriots out there believe that this is not enough to take up arms against the government. 

Well, how about the fact that, just last week, the president deployed federal law enforcement officers in “unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland and detain protesters”? These government shock troops are “driving up to people, detaining individuals with no explanation about why they are being arrested, and driving off.”

I mean, heavily armed government agents with no ID are grabbing citizens and shoving them into cars, with no respect for law and order. These brazen violations of civil rights “are more reflective of tactics of a government led by a dictator, not from the government of our constitutional democratic republic.”

Come on, all you Clive Bundy clones. There are literally jackbooted thugs marching around Portland! Unarmed moms are putting up more of a fight than you are! What are you waiting for?

OK, maybe I’m a little confused.

You showed up, armed and ready, when governors asked you wear a mask. But you don’t issue a peep when unidentifiable storm troopers are breaking the bones of veterans.

And perhaps you missed our president’s latest executive order, which is in direct violation of the Constitution? Or maybe you didn’t notice when he implied that he might ignore the results of an election and stay in office illegally?

I mean, all that is Despotism 101. And yet you do nothing.

Do you really want to prove that liberals are right when they say that threatening to fight your own government is paranoid delusion? Do you actually want progressives to point out that despite your tough talk, you are happy to fall into line behind a wannabe fascist prone to Orwellian doublespeak?

If so, maybe you can go ahead now and admit that your problem isn’t “government oppression.” It’s the fear of change, of an evolving country, of people who don’t look like you gaining more respect and power.

So the next time you feel the urge to issue a manifesto or proclaim your supposed principles, do the rest of us a favor.

As you stand there clutching your gun, just consider, for a moment, that nobody believes you. Because it’s all nothing but lies.

To be honest, I’ve been boycotting Goya for years. Not for political reasons, but because their canned salty slop sucks.

Regardless of motive or rationale, however, I appear to be one of those unhinged progressives who want to cancel everyone and everything for the slightest digression.

Yes, as you know, “cancel culture” is the direct heir to “political correctness.” 

Of course, PC was always overblown nonsense — an imaginary threat and convenient scapegoat. Many of the ideas that conservatives labeled as “political correct” were just basic decency. And many of the people who proudly proclaimed that they were “not PC” were just belligerent assholes. And it didn’t help that the individuals shrieking the most about snowflakes and being oversensitive were themselves the most easily triggered Americans alive.

However, right-wing culture warriors are not idiots. They’re dangerous, hate-filled lunatics, but not idiots.

So they have been working hard on replacing the antiquated “political correctness” with the new, hip “cancel culture.” In both cases, it refers to the right of conservatives (usually white men) to say or do whatever they want without the fear of consequences, or even criticism.

But in truth, “the right and the left both cancel; it’s just that today’s right is too weak to do it effectively.”

Indeed, our old friend Ted Cruz recently proved this point by ranting about cancel culture. Cruz mocked all these outraged Latinos who are sickened by the Goya CEO’s grotesque praising of Trump.

This, of course, is the same Ted Cruz who called for people to boycott the NFL when players started taking a knee. But attempting to get Colin Kaepernick fired or shouting for Nike boycotts was apparently not canceling someone.

Aren’t you happy to have that cleared up?

In any case, our scattershot president has railed against cancel culture at times. Naturally, this is hilarious coming from a guy who wants to cancel anything that even mildly displeases him.

But he’s old, so he keeps coming back to the original term: “politically correct.”

And what, exactly, has Trump identified as PC outrages?

Well, he believes that removing the Confederate flag or tearing down Confederate monuments is PC, as is changing the name of the Washington Redskins. And just a few years ago, most Americans agreed with him on both counts. But now, weirdly enough, they do not, which proves that much of what was considered politically correct in the 1990s is now regarded as goddamn common sense. So all that screaming and yelling in defense of antebellum symbolism and racist monikers was totally worth it. I’m sure there are no regrets there — nope.

But the biggest symbol of the insidious reach of political correctness — in the conservative mind, at least —- is the facemask.

No doubt you’ve seen or heard of brave patriots across the nation who shriek about freedom and refuse to wear the mark of the weak-willed lemming (i.e., a facemask). They often seem to do this while spewing insults and threats at minimum-wage workers, or throwing tantrums so crazed that even toddlers might say, “Wow, time out.” But that’s another story.

It’s no surprise that our president long refused to listen to scientists, doctors, epidemiologists, economists, and a majority of the American people by insisting that he would not wear a facemask. Yes, it is the most effective, simplest way to limit the infection rate. And there is no real constitutional issue with asking people to mask up. And no other country in the world has our bizarre, obstinate, illogical, sociopathic opposition to facemasks.

The point is that wearing a mask is something wimpy liberals do, so donning a mask or practicing social distancing is clearly politically correct.

And then this past weekend, Trump finally wore a fucking mask.

His capitulation means that all the bellowing and fury directed at facemasks was complete idiocy on a homicidal level, and that we have lost a chance to make real progress against coronavirus. Or maybe the president just caved to PC pressure and cancel culture because it’s so, you know, all-powerful. Who can tell which is true?

(Hint: It’s the former, not the latter.)

There can be no doubt that the conservative hatred of facemasks has directly lead to the proliferation of Covid-19. Right-wingers despise imaginary enemies — political correctness or cancel culture — more than they fear a lethal virus.

Keep in mind that liberalism in the form of PC, at its very worst, is annoying and self-righteous. But to my knowledge, cancel culture has never killed anyone.

In contrast, hardcore conservatism — whether through intentional attack or misguided hubris — has now killed thousands of people.

Can anyone blame Americans if they want to cancel it?

Good news!

America is once more open for business, with a thriving economy, a healthy populace, and a vibrant culture that is spilling out onto the streets of every city in our bounteous, invincible nation. Nonstop laughter threatens to deafen us. Our happiness and joy is at maximum exhilaration. Truly, these are the best of times.

Wait, you say that you’re looking out your window, and you don’t see any of that?

OK, it’s true that the coronavirus is rampaging anew across the country, with spiking infection rates in multiple states. It’s true also that the federal government has basically given up fighting the virus, and is now urging Americans “to plow headfirst into a deadly crisis that is racking up horrific numbers of dead in an unprecedented abdication of presidential leadership.”

And yes, every industrialized nation in the world is staring at us, collective mouths agog, shocked at our floundering inability to protect our citizens and our apparent zeal for societal suicide.

But those are the only negative things going on, so don’t get all pessimistic.

Oh wait — there is also the fact that our economy is still near Great Depression levels, and the insistence that we needed to reopen our states has only backfired spectacularly, causing more damage than if we had simply behaved like responsible adults instead of spoiled children, and myriad experts predicted that this exact horrific situation would occur.

Sure, if you look at it that way, it’s a little frustrating.

However, it’s not as if the president of the United States ignored a hostile power placing cash bounties on the heads of our nation’s soldiers, possibly leading to the murders of many troops. And then that chief executive, who has exhibited nothing but disdain and contempt for the military that his party supposedly reveres, then lied about being informed of the Russian plot, and followed up by kowtowing (yet again) to a malevolent dictator for his own unknown, incomprehensible reasons.

Well, maybe that kind of, sort of… actually happened. 

But hey, at least everyone is rallying around the need for cultural change. I mean, nobody is still denying that racism is a major crisis, and it’s not as if furious, frazzled white people are panicking that their unquestioned dominance is now actually being questioned, and responding by shrieking and vandalizing and freaking out, even drawing guns on black people over the slightest provocation.

OK, maybe a little.

However, it’s a tribute to the American spirit that our nation’s citizens are still displaying that upbeat, can-to attitude that…

Hmmm, it seems that in truth, Americans have not been this unhappy in at least a half-century. And “an overwhelming 89 percent of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country.”

Well… fuck it. I got nothing.

Except for this little tidbit:

“Black and Latino Americans are significantly more optimistic than they were last year that life will be better for future generations than it is now.” 

Yes, the percentage of African Americans who believe in a brighter tomorrow has doubled over the past year, and the percentage of Hispanics who agree with that sentiment has also increased to the point that white people — specifically white Republicans — are now the least optimistic about the future.

And here you thought Trump was going to make life better for his followers.

In any case, why are African Americans and Latinos cautiously optimistic about the future?

Perhaps it is because Latinos, in particular, tend to maintain positive attitudes. Or maybe it’s because ethnic minorities have a lot of experience dealing with calamity and dark days, so we roll with the horror better than most. Or perhaps it’s because many of us believe that the nation is finally addressing its long-simmering, long-ignored racial issues, with the possibility that real change will finally occur. Or maybe we just figure the country bottomed out when Trump got elected, leading to today’s inevitable quagmire of disaster, and things can only get better from here out.

Regardless of cause or rationality, it’s hope. And it’s about all we have going for us.