“What’s good for the goose is also good for the gander.” — Proverb

This is a piece I am dedicating to my conservative friends and family. So, feel free to read from that perspective. Consider this a love letter of sorts. If you are calling this a sham trial I have only one thing to tell you. If you would be screaming for a Democrat to be prosecuted under the same circumstances then you have no leg to stand on and I would politely invite you to shut the hell up. There is a reason why I opened with the proverb I did.

If you don’t believe me then I invite you to consider the drawn out case of John Edwards. I didn’t hear anyone at the time scream political prosecution. I certainly didn’t hear that for Rob Blagojevich was sent to the slammer. Current senator Bob Menedez is in the midst of his own corruption trial. I don’t hear anyone screaming about political sham trials there.

As we sit, the Republican party is being led by a convicted felon. An independent district attorney’s office decided to bring charges. An independent judge presided over the case. Twelve independent citizens listened to the evidence and cross examinations and voted unanimously to convict. It’s time to stop this fantasy of Joe Biden being both a drooling mental deficient and mastermind that controls every Democratically elected district attorney in the country. It cannot be both. You have to choose one. Choose carefully.

The answer is that the second one definitely isn’t true. This has always been Trump induced projection. He wanted to control the justice department. He wanted them to be his own personal attorneys. He strong armed them into doing things they shouldn’t have done. So, he naturally assumes everyone does it. He assumes it because he has no idea how any of this is supposed to work.

Here is my plea. It is not too late. On July 15th we will likely know what the Trump penalty will be when the Republican National Convention is underway. Nominate anyone else. Nikki Haley would appear to be the most logical choice but it could really be anyone at that point. You can cite any reason you like, but the reason should be that you don’t want a felon as your party’s leader.

Since I know this is not likely to happen I have a secondary plea. I know the calendar won’t be your friend here, so you can feel free to do this the Wednesday after the election, but it is time for a Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, or a Jeff Flake to step up and form a new conservative party. Their ideals could be simple and fairly similar to what Republicans used to stand for.

Would Nikki Haley do better than Trump at the polls? My political instincts and training say likely not. The hardcore MAGAs would likely stay home and depress the GOP vote. You may even see some show up and vote for the lower ticket races and leave that spot blank in protest. She would get people worried about Biden’s age and mental acumen that would still vote for him if it were Trump running against him. That’s a hard race to predict for these reasons.

What I will say is that you wouldn’t be poisoning yourself for 2028. You would remain a viable party and if you were able to either silence or shun the rest of MAGA then your party could return to normal and possibly survive. If you don’t do this you become a zombie party if you haven’t become that already. Sure, you take some seats due to gerrymandering and demographic advantages in certain areas of the country, but you cease to be a governing party.

This event is one of those cataclysmic events that turns an entire election on its ear. My personal belief is that Trump will have reverse coattails. He will cost Republicans down ballot races. A Nikki Haley might not. She might not galvanize the forces for a red wave, but she will stave off a blue wave. That might be your best bet and your best hope right now.

What a kick in the Shitzenpantz, huh?

Last week, we visited the Brave Books website to see how DJTJ’s main squeeze, Kimberley Guilfoyle, had published a children’s book.

If anyone has been beset by Brave Books ads on your favorite social media because I urged you to visit their site(s), I am heartily sorry. I also have a similar affliction.

But to make up for it, I have some screenshots of the bottom of Guilfoyle’s ad: the customer reviews.

I did this for 2 reasons:
1) You can see them without having to login to the site and therefore reset the resulting deluge of ads they will send to you, and
2) who knows when the website authors will see the reviews and take them down.

Here they are in order of their appearance on the website.

This last one reads both horizontally and vertically (with apologies to Juanita Jean’s mama).

No one said this couldn’t be fun.

This dichotomy between what conservatives believe and how they act  can be a puzzle sometimes. However, consider what’s at the core of the economic and social thought behind the beliefs. I worked hard. What’s mine is mine and you can’t take what is mine. I need to have the freedom to live my life because my way of life is under assault from all of these other people that have different ways of life. They want to push their way of life onto me. They must be stopped.

This is conservatism in a nutshell. We can rail against the man and I certainly am guilty of that, but what is more bothersome are the sheer number of people willing to carry that water for him. We have Supreme Court justices openly flying stop the steal flags (plural) at their homes (also plural). We have others with spouses that were directly involved in the movement that are still ruling on cases directly involved anyway.

We have Congresspeople and senators gladly pushing wild conspiracy theories and making outlandish statements and pushing policies that would limit our freedom. The problem is that they don’t view it this way. They think they are advancing freedom because they either fundamentally don’t understand the concept or they understand all too well and want to deny that to a group of Americans.

People that are progressive, liberal, leftists, or just caught in the middle want some way to combat all of this. They are looking for a lifeline. A large part of the complaint is that there is just too much. Just imagine the number of news stories that have occurred in the last two weeks that somehow have not made the first page of the major newspapers.

Freedom is a difficult concept. It means allowing people to live lifestyles you would not approve of or want for yourself. In exchange you get to live your life the way you see fit. Harrison Butker can live his life as he sees fit. His wife is free to submit to his will if she is willing to do so. It doesn’t mean than any of us have to do the same thing.

In the same way, anyone in the LGTBQ+ community can live their truth the way they see fit. Conservatives don’t want that. They see freedom differently. Freedom for them means that their lifestyle must be protected and preferred. The others must be suppressed. You can feel free to be gay on your own time, but don’t tell me about it and certainly don’t act on it in public. They believe in freedom if it means agreeing with them. I really don’t think most of the people trumpeting Butker are racist necessarily. They trumpet him and disagreed with Kaepernick because they agree with Butker and disagreed with Kaepernick. It’s really that simple.

The GOP calls themselves the freedom party. The most extreme members of their party call themselves the Freedom Caucus. This election and all future elections rest on this single issue. How do you define freedom? If it means you get to live a conservative lifestyle but others don’t get to live theirs then feel free to vote Republican. Just keep in mind that you are okay as long as no one finds something you do as objectionable. The end game is easy to see here. They will continue to attack people on the fringes and until there is no more fringe. Then, they will attack themselves. There will be one lonely one left and no doubt that dumb son of a bitch will attack the mirror.