How did groups of people fight each other before the creation of guns?
Clubs don't count unless they have hair triggers. Spears don't count unless they are semi-automatic. Swords don't count unless you can affix sniper scopes to them. If we are to believe Republican Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, groups of people didn't fight each other before the creation of guns. Any warfare before that was a figment of historians' imagination.
Of course, to believe Johnson, we would have to ignore the evidence taken during the attack on the Capitol. We would have to forget the video showing insurrectionists in full military gear walking through the crowd with their hands on the shoulders of the man in front of them like they had been Krazy Glued there. We would have to discount the video of police officers being attacked with Blue Lives Matter flagpoles. We would have to discount the images of capitol police being beaten with their own shields and batons.
There your eyes go lying again!
I imagine Johnson was very pleased with himself when he made the connection between "armed" and "firearms." "Hee hee," I can hear him cackle to himself, "Let's see the libs get out of this rhetorical trap!" As if hand grenades, napalm or nuclear bombs aren't also arms. As if using whatever weapons came to hand meant the insurrection never happened.
In the basket of deplorables, putting your hands over your ears and saying, "Nyah, nyah! I can't hear you!" isn't a child's evasion, it's a political strategy.
As Conspiracy Theories Go, It's A Good Pineapple Exhaust Manifold
Among its many other charms, the basket of deplorables is a random conspiracy generator. Simply combine two things which don't ordinarily go together, and watch the threats of violence on Facebook fly!
Did you know that Big Seat Belt was behind 9/11? Of course you didn't - it's not true! Or, that Joe Biden pulled American troops out of Afghanistan because of a secret deal he made with George Soros to abort white babies? Never mind that the timetable to pull out of Afghanistan was actually agreed to by previous President Donald Trump, or that there is no deal to abort babies of any colour, or that combining the two makes no rational sense.
Former Trump Security Adviser Michael Flynn, is clearly a firm believer in the random conspiracy generator. In his mind, election steal + COVID hoax = a path for Donald Trump to return to the presidency. As any grade two math teacher could tell you, the correct solution to the equation was actually a null set, but, in the basket of deplorables, they don't go in for none o' that book learnin'...
Mr. Bumble Got Nothing On The Modern Republican Party
When politicians in the real world face a problem, they may bluster and complain, they may obfuscate or try to change the subject, they may even attack their critics. But, it takes a politician who lives in the basket of deplorables to turn a mere problem into a flaming, stinking dumpster fire.
A politician like house minority leader Kevin McCarthy.
Say, the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection asks telecommunications companies to preserve the phone records of people suspected of being involved. No, don't just theorize it: that's what happened.
Now, a normal politician who suspected he was part of the investigation might say, "Oh, you mean the phone calls I made to that President on January 6? Yeah, there were more of them than I originally remembered..." Which McCarthy did; at a minimum, you have to have certain animal cunning to be in a position to preen about becoming the Speaker of the House when your party regains power.
Then, because he fully owns his condo in the basket of deplorables, McCarthy threatened to prosecute any company that complied with Congress' legal request. This is sometimes referred to in the legal profession as an "ass law." As in, he pulled it out of his ass. In the basket of deplorables, ass laws are referred to as "alternate jurisprudence."
Warning companies that they will be punished if they do not do what you want them to is known in the legal profession as "issuing a threat." This is against the law. Of course, in the basket of deplorables, making threats is referred to as "Thursday."
