Hispanic Fanatic

The jargon changes every few years. Over the decades, it’s gone from “bleeding-heart” to “politically correct” to “social justice warrior” to “woke.”

We have no shortage of derogatory terms for people who exhibit compassion toward others.

In contrast, we don’t alter our terminology to describe hardcore right-wingers. The word “sociopath” works just fine.

Of course, there are numerous reasons why conservatives mock those who express concern for others. There is sadism, self-loathing, selfishness, and a few other motivations that don’t begin with the letter S.

But one of the oddest is the bizarre fear of conservatives that any attempt to display basic decency will inevitably lead to widescale cultural weakness and, therefore, societal collapse. Republicans are constantly shrieking that Americans are lazy snowflakes dependent on government handouts, so we need to whip ‘em to keep them tough. In the GOP worldview, businesses that grant paternity leave are turning American men into effeminate wimps and emasculating the entire country in the process.

I’m pretty sure, however, that being too meek is not one of the American populace’s big problems. Look at our political discourse, social interaction, and rate of gun violence.

Does anyone seriously believe that the main issue with Americans is that we are too nice? Really?

But if you insist that keeping one’s nose to grindstone, feet to the fire, and balls to the wall is the only way to ensure Americans behave, you might be interested in a few statistics that show how well that hard-driving philosophy actually works.

For example, red states are less likely to offer government support to their citizens. This keeps their citizens honest and creates a thriving population of happy, prosperous… oh wait.

Red states are pretty much a hellhole when compared to blue states, evidenced by the fact that liberal areas outperform conservative areas in just about every economic or sociological category. 

Even the Republican argument that a red-state existence is better because of the lower cost of living is not entirely accurate. Yes, it is cheaper to live in Mississippi than in Minnesota. But wages are usually lower as well, so it’s at best a tie, or even a slight advantagefor blue states. 

OK, so rugged individualism isn’t such a winner in those cases. 

But surely our approach to healthcare is tops in the world. After all, we don’t have socialized medicine and all the government dependency it fosters, so our citizens must be the healthiest on the planet.

Yeah, you saw that setup coming, didn’t you?

As everyone knows, the United States spends far more on healthcare and gets worse results than every industrialized nation in the world (and several non-industrialized ones), simply because we refuse to accept universal healthcare.

Studies show that just during the pandemic, hundreds of thousands of Americans died because we don’t have a system like Japan, Australia, or Finland.

But don’t worry, because “nationwide, many hospitals have grown wealthy, spending lavishly on advertising, team sponsorships, and even spas, while patients are squeezed by skyrocketing medical prices and rising deductibles.”

Still, at least all those sick, destitute people aren’t dependent on big government.

And speaking of poverty, America stands alone when it comes to our high rate of homelessness. Other industrialized countries have homeless citizens, of course. But those nations, big governments all, don’t just have a lot fewer homeless people. They actually try to solve the problem.

In America, we believe that giving people housing will make them soft, even though research has shown that providing free or inexpensive housing with no strings attached is an effective way to reduce homelessness.

No, we won’t be having any of that commie crap here. We would rather have a half-million Americans live on the street, even while there are “hundreds of thousands of vacant properties owned by city and state governments” that just sit there empty.

But at least we’re tough.

In fact, we’re so tough that we are committing suicide in record numbers. Yes, while the rate of suicide has declined in every industrialized nation, America is the “one high-income country [that] is a particular exception to the downward trend.”

And that’s part of a larger development brought on by “years of widening economic inequality, compounded by the pandemic and political storm and stress.” And this development is that “life expectancies have been falling” for Americans, which is odd for a nation that takes such great pride in being exceptional.

Yes, we can’t even keep our own residents alive, but we’re number one!

Our declining life expectancy has opened “a window on a set of pathologies unique to America among developed countries.”

And a root cause of this pathology is the belief that trying to help one another is wrong. In truth, however, this demented credo is only making us weaker.

OK, I totally meant to write about the fact that CNN asked a racist insurrectionist to hold a campaign rally on their network, and then pathetically justified it by saying progressives, and pretty much every decent American, were crybabies who needed to get out of their silos. But it’s just too sad to pile on a network that scraped the lowest point in its history.

So instead I was going to write about how conservative white guys freak out when they feel one second of discomfort and use that icky sensation to justify murdering people who annoy them, and how they panic when facing a sliver of the constant threats that ethnic minorities, women, and gay people endure every day. But then 50,000 commentators made that exact point.

My related topic was that “all strands of the Right—leading Republicans, the media machine, the reactionary intellectual sphere, the conservative base, the donor class—are openly and aggressively embracing rightwing vigilante violence,” and that the GOP “encourages white militants to use whatever force they please to ‘fight back’ against anything and anyone associated with ‘the Left’ by protecting and glorifying those who have engaged in vigilante violence” in what can only be called the Rittenhouse effect. But that’s pretty much what a lot of people said, so I left it at that.

As such, I moved on to the fact that “masked members of a white supremacist group” marched toward the U.S. Capitol, even while conservatives got all sad that Biden correctly pointed out that white supremacy is the biggest threat this nation faces. But then I found out that members of Congress have staff members who are members of a group that “expresses Holocaust denialism, white supremacy, white nationalism, pretty strong anti-women bigotry [and] a return to 12-century Catholicism.” And I thought, “Who wants to return to the 12^th century? I thought they were obsessed with the 1950s and maybe the Civil War, but this shit goes back even further.”

In any case, that got me thinking about the statistic that “20% of those who sympathize with Christian nationalism agreed they were ‘willing to fight’ to take the nation back to what they incorrectly believe it always was.” And I wondered how that lined up with the stat that “the importance of religion in the lives of Americans is on the decline,” and that we “are becoming increasingly likely to become religiously unaffiliated” or straight-up atheists.

But just then, I found out that Rudy Giuliani has been accused of rape and may have been selling presidential pardons for $2 million a pop, splitting the profits with that other bigoted ex-politician who was just found liable for sexual assault, and I wondered about those conservatives who insist their movement isn’t misogynistic. And related to that, I wondered why they even bother to say they are against corruption, as they support selling pardons, bribing Supreme Court justices, and engaging in comically overt criminal behavior.

However, I realized that Republicans aren’t so good at uncovering crimes. I mean, the people who could never “lock her up” are unable to even keep track of their own informants. How embarrassing.

So I looked to the border, where conservatives insisted that 489 billion immigrants were massing to surge into the country, and I discovered that the “number of migrants at the southern border has dropped 50% since the end of the pandemic restriction known as Title 42 on May 11.” Talk about a letdown.

Perhaps I should have addressed how Republicans are hypocrites, fine with destroying the economy, and how they appear even gleeful about the idea. 

But it’s more important to note how billionaires are secretly using their vast wealth to set up an oligarchy. The problem with that, however, is that it’s too unbelievable—even if it’s the absolute truth.

At last, I settled on the perfect topic, and it is this:

Scientists have analyzed the odds of a massive asteroid (i.e., the size of the rock that wiped out the dinosaurs) hitting the Earth and killing us all. 

The lead scientist, Oscar Fuentes-Muñoz of the University of Colorado, says that such an event is highly unlikely to happen within the next 1,000 years.

So that’s good news, right?

Ha, we’re not falling for that.

Nice try, Fuentes-Muñoz. But we all know that you’re in the pocket of Big Asteroid, and you’re just covering up the plot by deep-space debris to steal our freedoms.

How’s that for a post?

I won’t say that I’ve told you a million times.

But I will say that I’ve told you a thousand times.

Yes, this is my 1,000^th post on this website. It’s a milestone that I could not have predicted in 2008, when I grabbed the domain name, set up the site, and began my ceaseless, unending quest to scream into the void of the internet.

To give you an idea of how long ago I started this site, one of my first posts was about a young upstart named Barack Obama and how he was poised to win the Latino vote decisively.

And thus my track record of always being right began.

OK, maybe I haven’t always been correct, but my batting average is pretty good. Then again, I am often ranting about bigotry, conservative lunacy, and Trump. So it’s fairly easy to be proven right over and over again.

By the way, the all-time most popular of my 1,000 articles is this piece I wrote for the Huffington Post. It’s about the difference between Día de los Muertos and Halloween. I’m not sure why it went semi-viral, but it got shared a lot, and I still see it pop up in October. Hell if I know why it resonated, but if you write 1,000 articles, one of them is bound to hit.

As for my least popular post, well, it’s probably this one.

In any case, I thank you for reading. Whether you’ve perused all 1,000 of my articles, scanned through a couple of dozen, or are reading for the first time, I appreciate it.

Just know that I intend to keep going as long as I can.

Of course, the chief difference between today and those naïve days of 2008 is that I can now pepper my posts with random AI-generated images to capture your attention—like this one, which I call “Ethereal Eternal Phantasm Number 3.”

Happy 1,000 indeed.

Thanks again for reading.

What is the scariest three-letter combination in the English language?

I would vote for “GOP.” But maybe it’s “CIA.” Or perhaps you would say “MSG” or “NFL,” or for some emotionally complicated reason, “TLC.”

But if you are an easily triggered Republican, the diabolical combo is “ESG.”

That phrase stands for environmental, social, and governance, and it refers to a set of standards for a corporation’s behavior. Socially conscious investors look at an organization’s ESG initiatives — things like carbon footprint, diversity programs, ethics guidelines, and so on — to gauge if it is a business that they want to work with.

This seems pretty straightforward, and it makes sense that, for example, an environmentalist might not want to invest his money with a corporation that’s destroying the planet.

But where you see a principled stand, conservatives see the hideous creep of wokeness.

ESG has become “a lightning rod for the GOP, as the party turns the investing form into an emblem of left-wing politics.”

Republicans believe that anything that promotes racial diversity or combats climate change must be an insidious communist plot to round up all the white Christians and execute them. So they spew “hysterical rhetoric about ‘wokeness’ in response to everything from school shootings to police violence to the Pentagon budget, all while the party struggles to even define what they think the word means.”

Yes, the people who live for culture wars now believe that their old ally — big business — is a fifth column of social justice warriors who are selling out American values and making it impossible for straight guys to buy their products.

As a result, red states are “passing laws blacklisting state investment funds from doing business” with those companies that they claim are pushing “liberal agendas.”

Conservatives are trying to use “their own market influence to try to steer the larger project of American culture-building back in their direction.”

But it’s not going so well.

You see, despite “the increasing pushback against ESG by Republican politicians, including some potential presidential aspirants, and their fossil-fuel industry donors,” many companies view the “the ESG backlash [to] be a bump in the road” that won’t have a real impact. 

Hell, even some CEOs say the ESG “trend is just going to continue growing.”

There’s a good reason for this, and it’s not because Wall Street suits are secret progressives clamoring for Scandinavian-inspired utopias.

No, it’s because ESG is good business. 

This approach to investing “examines a company’s social or environmental impact precisely because it considers non-financial information useful for determining whether the company would deliver strong investor returns.”

Corporate ESG initiatives are designed to help companies operate more sustainably and to create long-term value for stakeholders. And studies have shown that younger consumers take a company’s ESG policies into account before buying their goods or products. 

So in yet another display of spectacular hypocrisy and backwards thinking, it turns out that conservatives are the ones jeopardizing companies’ returns by demanding everyone adhere to their agenda.

Consider that “muzzling ESG activity is causing financial losses – again, which should be contrary to conservative financial principles.” For example, Texas “banned cities from having their funds managed by companies whose policies restricted investment in fossil fuels and weapons.” Because so many banks left the market, and Texas officials “had fewer choices of investment management,” the law wound up costing the state “between $303 million and $532 million extra in interest.”

Wow — owning the libs is not cheap.

Or consider that many experts believe “failing to consider ESG risks and opportunities would more
likely result in a breach of fiduciary duty,” meaning that company leaders are actually being negligent and sabotaging their organizations if they are anti-ESG.

Finally, keep in mind that companies “that get ‘woke’ aren’t going broke — they’re more profitable than ever.”

Even though conservatives will continue to rant against ESG, and blame business failures on leaders who “may have been distracted by diversity demands,” there is no real evidence for the harmful effects of this approach.

Again, the exact opposite is true.

And that’s why the letters “GOP” are far more terrifying than “ESG” will ever be.

In a few weeks, the US government will end COVID-19 emergency declarations, meaning that the pandemic will officially be over.

Hey, that wasn’t so bad, was it?

You know, aside from the years of death and madness and depression and trauma and societal unraveling, it wasn’t that big of a deal, right?

Ahem.

In any case, the pandemic provoked behavioral changes that we could not have imagined in 2019, like carrying a mask everywhere or washing your hands incessantly or sticking those weird clamp things on your fingers to check your oxygen levels.

Those were called pulse oximeters, by the way, and they were “a crucial tool for tracking the health of COVID-19 patients.”

Yes, pulse oximeters helped gauge the severity of the illness. They were a sterling example of medical knowledge, technological innovation, and white supremacy.

OK, that last one is an unpleasant addendum. But unfortunately, it is true.

You see, pulse oximeters were often “inaccurate when measuring oxygen levels in people with dark skin tones.”

This is because medical products are often developed using data from “trials that involve primarily white individuals.” As a result, pulse oximeters were designed to work well on white people. For the rest of us, however, not so much.

Experts say “it’s not possible to know how much pulse oximeters have contributed to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on people of color.” But considering Latinos and blacks “experienced higher rates of hospitalization and death from COVID-19 compared to white people,” it was likely a factor.

Of course, the assumption that white is the most common skin color, or even the only skin color, has a long history in America.

Until the 1960s, Crayola crayons had a pinkish hue that was labeled, “flesh.” 

And as we all know, band-aids don’t come in dark brown, which has “long been a point of contention among people of color who have questioned why white skin is the default shade for a range of flesh-toned products, including nude bras and other garments.”

Why, indeed?

But you will be happy to know that the baseline for the human experience is not just white people, but white men specifically.

We’re not just talking about the fact that white men hold over 60% of all elected offices, despite being just 30% of the population.

Or the fact that most films and TV shows focus on a white male protagonist. 

Or that white men are apparently the only group whose opinions matter, and that the rest of us are pretty much at their mercy.

No, I’m talking about air conditioning.

Yes, you heard me correctly.

Back in the 1960s, when air conditioning became common in office buildings, engineers needed a standard to ensure the temperature would be comfortable.

And of course, they based this standard on the preferences of white men in wool suits — the Don Drapers of the era. 

These temperatures “favor the thermal preferences of men,” and are the baseline to this day, which is why women in office settings often feel like they’re freezing.

It’s because they are.

But don’t worry. Those white guys in suits are perfectly comfortable.

It seems that “everything in our society is centered around preserving white male power regardless of white male skill or talent.” And this is not just annoying. It’s also detrimental to our nation.

You see, the “rewarding of white male mediocrity not only limits the drive and imagination of white men; it also requires forced limitations on the success of women and people of color in order to deliver on the promised white male supremacy.”

When everyone just assumes that a certain group should be in charge (i.e., white guys), members of that group don’t have to excel to succeed, while members of other groups struggle, and the culture as a whole stagnates.

In this way, “white male mediocrity harms us all.”

Unfortunately, this situation is unlikely to change any time soon.

But hey, at least the pandemic is over.

My relentless quest to conquer all media channels continues unabated.

Recently, I wrote my first article for Latino Rebels, which is the premier site for Latino-centric news and insights. I hope to write many more for them.

You can read my debut by clicking here.

Or you can look at this really cool picture I created with AI called, “The Conflagration of Dreams.”

It’s your choice.

I’ve been married for many years now, so I am blissfully unaware of the intricacies of the dating scene. But I’ve heard from single friends that it’s a hellish endeavor

Yes, it has to be difficult to go out on date after date, vainly searching for that one person with whom you can laugh, open up, and plot the overthrow of the lizard people who are trying to enslave humanity.

This universal dilemma has provoked fed-up and ostracized conspiracy theorists to set up “their own dedicated dating sites, in response to what they see as their growing incompatibility with mainstream society.”

Hey, just because someone is a raving lunatic who believes Jewish laser beams are targeting patriots doesn’t mean he isn’t looking for love. Come on, after a hard day of ranting on Reddit about liberal pedophiles, guys just want to cuddle with a lucky lady who will agree that Islamic terrorists are poisoning the water supply.

One such dating site asks users “to list which conspiracy theories they consider to be real — such as coronavirus, QAnon, New World Order or prepper ideology.”

Really, that’s a lot of craziness to choose from, and one wonders if the person who picks all of them is considered a real catch.

In any case, the desire of conspiracy theorists to mate only with people who share their belief in chemtrails is understandable. After all, so-called normal people are unwilling to put up with lengthy diatribes about JFK Jr. coming back to life. And as one dating-site owner puts it, “vaccinated people are hardly an option” for true believers.

Conspiracy-oriented dating sites are part of a larger pattern. In America and Europe, “hardline conspiracy groups have set up their own off-grid “education hubs” to pull their children out of mainstream education, while others have launched efforts to set up entire breakaway communities.”

Just imagine that community. Every town hall would deteriorate into a shouting match about secret symbols and which neighbor is plotting to betray the others to the one-world government. 

In such an environment, can true love last?

I will be on vacation and away from my computer, so I will not publish a new article next week. As such, I am doubling up this week with another post. 

However, I don’t have time to create a new earthshaking diatribe that will alter your perception and shred your preconceived notions. You see, I have to pack my luggage.

Therefore, I yet again called upon artificial intelligence to help me out. Anyone who has read my posts lately knows that I am semi-obsessed with AI, and its potential to propel us forward into an enlightened, technology-enhanced utopia and/or kill us all.

And it’s also great for creating images of, say, a one-armed zombie killer on a rampage.

So I asked AI a sadly relevant question:

“What is the best way to decrease gun violence in a nation?”

Here are its responses:

1. Strengthening gun laws: One of the most effective ways to reduce gun violence is to strengthen gun laws. This could include measures such as universal background checks, waiting periods for gun purchases, and restrictions on the sale of high-capacity magazines and assault weapons. Research has shown that countries with stronger gun laws tend to have lower rates of gun violence.
2. Improving access to mental health care: Many incidents of gun violence are committed by individuals with mental health issues. Improving access to mental health care and addressing the stigma around mental illness can help prevent these incidents.
3. Investing in community-based violence prevention programs: Violence prevention programs that work with at-risk individuals and communities have been shown to be effective in reducing gun violence. These programs can include initiatives such as conflict resolution training, mentorship programs, and job training.
4. Encouraging responsible gun ownership: Encouraging responsible gun ownership can help prevent gun accidents and reduce the likelihood of guns falling into the wrong hands. This could include measures such as safe storage requirements, gun safety education programs, and mandatory gun training and licensing.
5. Addressing systemic issues: Gun violence often occurs in communities that are disproportionately affected by poverty, racism, and other systemic issues. Addressing these underlying issues through measures such as economic and social policies, education, and criminal justice reform can help reduce the root causes of gun violence.

Now, we certainly don’t want to take AI’s pronouncements as infallible insights that we must follow. The factual and ethical flaws with AI’s outputs have been well-documented. 

At the same time, AI is a great tool for synthesizing data. In the case of reducing gun violence, AI presumably looked at studies, research, and case studies of what has worked in other countries.

Also, keep in mind that I didn’t ask a politically loaded question like “How can we overturn the Second Amendment” or “What does effective gun control look like?”

I asked, “What is the best way to decrease gun violence in a nation?” This is a goal that we all supposedly share.

Look again at the suggestions. Nowhere do you see “More guns” or “Loosen gun laws” or “Arm the teachers.”

Unless you want to accuse AI of being a cyber liberal, it appears that the most logical solutions for reducing gun violence are all progressive ideas.

It seems that if you strip away political posturing, fear-based reactions, and crazed conspiracy theories, you get a list of rational solutions that just about every other industrialized nation has adopted. You get ideas that are the very antithesis of Republican talking points.

We can reduce gun violence, which is stratospheric when compared to every other industrialized country, or we can literally shrug and say, “We’re not gonna fix it.”

Yes, it’s too bad that AI can’t eliminate apathy, greed, and cowardice.

But let’s end on a lighter note.

You’ll be happy to know that I also asked AI to rewrite the Gettysburg Address in the style of an AC/DC song from the 1980s. The chorus is where it really gets rocking:

GETTYSBURG! A battle cry for freedom 

GETTYSBURG! A nation’s call to arms 

GETTYSBURG! A sacred ground we defend 

GETTYSBURG! Where heroes live forevermore

Can’t you just hear the crunch of the power chords?

See you in a couple of weeks.

By now, we were supposed to have enjoyed the thrilling spectacle of our mega-corrupt ex-president getting handcuffed and frog-marched off to jail. 

But our former chief executive was once again either factually wrong or bloviating hyperbole when he predicted his arrest. Because nothing happened, beyond rubes handing over their money — yet again — to an unrepentant, cackling conman.

Instead of being fitted for an orange jumpsuit, the guy who once advised Americans to gurgle bleach spent his time displaying totally normal behavior for a major political party’s leading contender for its presidential nomination. He “stood with his hand over his heart” as loudspeakers blared a rendition of the national anthem “sung by a group of inmates that are incarcerated for their role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.”

During the song, “images from the Capitol riot, in which Trump supporters stormed the complex to overturn the 2020 election, played on a screen.” And yes, Trump’s first official 2024 campaign rally was held in Waco, Texas, which is no coincidence because the town is synonymous with either crazed religious cults that abuse children or brave anti-government protesters — depending on your perspective.

In any case, the celebration of insurrection is popular with the GOP, which once insisted that Antifa was behind the January 6 violence but now says there was no violence at all (even though we all saw Trump supporters ransacking the building). I suppose this means there was no Antifa either, but who can keep all those meandering, contradictory, treacherous rationalizations straight anyway?

When they aren’t openly praising violent sedition, Republicans are threatening death and destruction. They are also trying to subvert laws that might prevent lunatics from threatening all that death and destruction in the first place.

Oh, they are also attempting to persuade Americans that a washed-up narcissist who committed multiple felonies when he paid hush money to a porn star is somehow being unjustly persecuted. Yes, if that isn’t a bedrock conservative principle, I don’t know what is.

Of course, Republicans are pretty good at gaslighting, obfuscating, and befuddling their followers. For example, a “far-right projectthat has helped spread Donald Trump’s false claims about voting fraud in 2020, and misinformation about Covid vaccines, is trying to expand its mission.” The organization “pushes disinformation using Christian nationalist messages” and proudly relies upon uneducated, hyper-religious Americans. 

Historians are bemoaning the fact that “for the first time, one of the major political parties displays contempt for learning” and is “dependent for its success on anti-intellectual postures.”

Hey, conservatives can’t even remember that their hero was president in 2020 (i.e., the worst year in recent history). Republicans blame everything horrible that happened during GOP administrations on Biden or Obama, which must be psychologically comforting but is deeply weird.

Eventually, the GOP will fold back in on itself to proclaim every negative event is an uplifting miracle. And millions of conservatives will place their hands over their hearts and sing along to the lies.

We are a couple of months into the reign of the House GOP, and thus far, Republicans have tamed inflation and ended all crime in America.

Ha, not really. But it doesn’t matter, because you probably forgot that this was their whole campaign pitch last year. It was all, “vote Republican, or thugs will murder you and run off with your milk that cost $89 per gallon.”

Once Republicans actually took over the House, however, they “turned to investigations, abortion, threatening the national debt, and trying to defund the Internal Revenue Service rather than dealing with the issues they insisted were vital in 2022: crime and inflation.”

Currently, the GOP is working hard to convince Americans that the January 6 riots weren’t that bad, that trans people are coming to eat everyone’s babies, and that “woke” is a horrific, Lovecraftian monster so terrifying that it literally defies description.

Congressional Republicans spend their days on hearings designed to expose the Deep State’s weaponization of government, only to flop so badly that even fellow conservatives have tuned out on a “slow-moving train wreck” that exposes nothing more alarming than GOP incompetence.

And when Republicans aren’t spreading conspiracy theories or calling their opponents pedophiles, they are looking “backward resolutely and angrily to an imagined past,” completely oblivious and indifferent to the fact that they are “out of step with the majority of Americans on issues like LGBTQ rights, climate change, gun safety, and abortion.”

But hey, don’t go thinking that the GOP will change course, just because their agenda is ludicrous and millions of Americans hate their ideas. Keep in mind that the “oppressiveness and unpopularity of any particular policy has rarely deterred this bunch from pursuing it.”

Republican leaders know that “the MAGA base will ride and die for this right-wing culture war predominantly animated by fear and racial anxiety.” 

Now, on a human level, this grotesque ploy always backfires. After all, the GOP manipulates “white victimhood and rage… to win over — and kill — their own voters.”

But on a political level, it’s a big winner. Rage-filled conservatives continue to vote Republican, even if it is perfectly clear that the only beneficiaries of GOP policies are billionaires and corporations.

Yes, ever since Reagan, the US has “moved toward an economic policy that often allows corporations to behave as they want, based on the theory that the free market will solve any excesses.” But to be blunt, “the results haven’t been very good,” evident by the fact that during that time, “economic growth has slowed, corporate profits have risen faster than wages, income inequality has soared, and living standards have grown slowly.”

But if you try to explain that to a working-class guy living in small town, he will just shout about freedom and critical race theory and gay immigrants.

And he will vote Republican.