Last night, my lovely first wife and I finally got around to watching Martha and Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party, and it was pretty much everything everyone said it would be.  But since we were having to stream it via VH1 we had to watch the ads, which is not our wont.

Most of the ads were what you might expect: Axe products, that kind of bro stuff.  But late in the show, there was an ad (which I cannot find online) which floored me.

It was—in style and in content—a campaign ad.  For the Current Republican Administration.

It led with “jobs added in the first month,” which even the most rabid Trumpista cannot think the CRA accomplished (especially given its stunning incompetence in almost every area).  Other stuff, similarly pitched.  I wish I had taken notes, because I can’t remember now.  My jaw was on the floor the entire time.

I thought it was by some organization called makeamericagreatagain.com or something, but here’s a hoot of a thing: if you click on that link, it doesn’t go at all where you think it will go.  makeamericagreat.com just leads to a single page.  greatamericapac.com is a PAC, but doesn’t have the ad on its site.

Anyway, it ended by encouraging us to keep up the pressure so that we could “finish the job.”  It was a campaign ad for people who already won the election.

Is this where we are now?  Is this who we are now?  Our government—We The People—is one big reality show.  With ads, selling us styrofoam opinions and urging us to watch Must See GOP.  The Real White House Staffers.  Survivor: American Cabinet.

I wondered if the ad were part of the White House communications push to subvert American opinion during the run-up to the 100th day mark.  (As always, Wonkette’s take on the story is a delight.)  But since the ad was from a PAC, that would mean the CRA was coordinating with a PAC.  IS THAT EVEN LEGAL, KENNETH?  Actually, I don’t know.  Is it?

Stay classy, America.

(We’re doomed.)

The other day I found myself behind a very large, black pickup truck.  It had all the accoutrements—if one may use the term—one expects from the male of that species, and it was being driven as one might expect it to be driven, i.e., without regard for others.

Plastered across the driver’s side of the back window was this:

::sigh::

This is big bad, no?  We know that the driver has big hairy balls, as indicated by his embrace of the death cult.  He has no reservations about killing.  He will shoot evil-doers.  He will shoot you.

You know what’s coming, right?  You can guess what occupied the center of the rear window, can’t you?

Yep.

I’ve written about this before, 10 years ago, and my point is the same: this is not what the man meant.

When I was a kid, all those mega-movies coming out of Hollywood based on such novels as Ben-Hur or The Robe all portrayed early Christians as practically feeding themselves to the lions.  They were meek.  They offered themselves as sacrifices, as martyrs.  They went to their gruesome (offscreen) deaths with beatific calmness, certain they were going to join Christ in eternal bliss.

It was a good thing, we were told, by both Hollywood and Sunday School, to recognize one’s wormly status and to embrace it.  He was despised and rejected of men; He hid not His face from shame and spitting.  We were to follow His example, were we not? Something something other cheek.

So where does this ultramacho bullshit come from?

We all know the answer: it’s conservative white men for whom everything is about dominance.  Period.  There is nothing in their attitude that is congruent with what they say their religion is; but it is as if they feel they have “perfected” Christ’s message by taking it to some kind of “next level.”^[1] They are more than you in every way: more manlier, more Christianier, certainly more kick-buttier.

I’m not the only one who has noticed.  Here’s a good read from a Christian author.  And of course my favorite liberal evangelical blogger, Slacktivist.

Needless to say, I have no solution.  I know it would take a true Road to Damascus moment for the scales to fall from these men’s eyes, and I’m not in charge of those.  If I had any advice for them, though, it would be, “Mean, prideful, and poisoned is no way to go through life, son.”

For funsies, here are two images I found in a Google search for “Christian truck decals man”:

Oy.

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^[1] Spoiler alert: They’re wrong.

So yesterday the Republican Administration signed a quickie little bill that encapsulates that particular party’s stance on the working person. Here, read the article.

tl;dr: The Obama administration put into place a regulation that says if you have a contract with the federal government, you have to document any labor/wage violations you’ve had for the past three years, the presumption being that if you’re a real dick to your workers, the federal government might want to give our tax dollars to someone who isn’t stealing them from their employees’ paychecks or killing them outright.  Emphasis on might; the rule was not ironclad.

However, even that was too much for our captains of industry, and so they got their employees (aka Congress) to fire up the Congressional Review Act and overturn the regulation.  The CRA is a particularly nasty little piece of procedural fuppery that says a Congress can overturn any regulation within 60 working days (which for our Congress could be nearly an entire year) and then prohibit the re-introduction of that regulation or anything resembling it unless the Congress passes a law doing so.

Here’s the deal: companies can skirt the labor/wage laws with near impunity.  They can require you to work overtime without compensation (another recent CRA triumph); make you work in unsafe conditions; limit your hours so that they don’t have to pay you benefits; etc etc etc—and 99 times out of 100 nothing will be done about it.  The workers affected by these kinds of things are usually low-wage workers without agency.  They can’t stand up to the boss because they can’t afford to lose their jobs.

So the previous administration decided that perhaps the carrot of easy federal money could be supplemented with the stick of lawful compliance.  You’d think that wouldn’t be too much to ask.  You know, follow the law, we give you our Ameros.  Seems simple enough.

What gets to me is why this should even be necessary. Your company screws over its workers?  No Ameros for you.  Period.  You’re breaking the law.

But for the Republican Party, those laws are the problem, and any regulation that seeks to enforce them is a Bad Thing.  If they could overturn the laws themselves, they would, and my advice is to keep your eyes peeled and count the silver.