“Not my job.”
“Nothing we can do.”
“Not our role.”
“Shit happens.”

These four statements are the total and complete strategy of the New Trumplican Party regarding public policy that protects the citizens they represent.  Politicians in the Trumplican party seek office for one reason and one reason only, and that is to grab, and then keep power.  There is no thought given to public policy that helps anyone (except for themselves and their patrons).  The public policy initiatives they pursue are purely cynical, designed to keep their gerrymandered base wrapped around the axle and ready to explode at any minute.  Their ENTIRE strategy is to keep their alternate dimension dark, dangerous, unstable, unhappy, and increasingly fearful.  That’s it, period, the end.

The key feature of this strategy, which I call The Dodge, is to do nothing to prevent massive tragedies, then heap blame on strawmen to deflect responsibility for their own negligence.  The most advantageous feature of this strategy is that nothing bad ever sticks to them.  From statewide power outages to mass shootings in schools, The Dodge allows those in charge of governing to brush those off to “free market” principles or “god given constitutional rights.”  “There’s nothing we can do because constitutional freedoms won’t let us,” is the rote answer to all gun violence.  The “free market” is also a common excuse; here’s one –  “healthcare must be free market.”  This Dodge allows insurance companies to overprice and deny health coverage to millions of Americans.  Another good one is, “We won’t talk about immigration reform until the border is 100% sealed and there are zero border crossings.”  Since “sealing the border” is impossible, they have the excuse to never have to do anything.

Abbott is masterful at The Dodge.  He paid no political price for his incompetence and corruption with both ERCOT and the PUC that caused the massive power outages that cost hundreds of billions of dollars to the economy and cost as many as 700 Texans’ lives.  “Free market” was his excuse as well as bald faced lying by blaming wind turbines for the outage.  He also did it during the pandemic, providing zero support for closed businesses to protect people from the spread, and then using economic deprivation as an excuse to open the economy far too early, even overruling local government officials actually trying to protect people.  After causing thousands of unnecessary deaths, Abbott then blamed the CDC, the WHO, China, Anthony Fauci, Peter Hotez, Lina Hidalgo, and other “liberals” to cynically gain political advantage using illness and deaths that he caused as a weapon.

We’re not surprised when shitbags like Abbott, Patrick, Cruz, Cornyn, McCarthy, and many others use The Dodge to avoid accountability for their own corruption.  However, the most shocking and disgusting abusers of The Dodge are the six SCOTUS judges that now say that the Court has no role to play in reining in massive extreme gerrymandering, protecting voting rights, stopping unlimited buying of elections by billionaires, preventing massive pollution enabled by their rollback of EPA regulations, stopping the rewriting of the Second Amendment to create a right for idiots to carry and use assault weapons in public, and protecting women’s right to equal protection under Roe v. Wade.

These politicians (I’m including SCOTUS justices in that description) use The Dodge to deflect all responsibility for their own incompetence and profound corruption.  And it works.  By continually piling on boogeyman after boogeyman they can blame everyone and everything for problems they create or fail to solve.  Such boogeymen include(d) gays, ACORN, those who “hate the troops”, immigrants, China, gays, “gun grabbers”, “welfare queens”, gangs, gays, drug cartels, old people, “radical Democrats”, gays, “voter fraud”, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, transgender kids, drag performers, gays, and, last but not least, wokeness.  Oh, and gays.

By creating these boogeymen, these politicians accomplish their key goal which is gaining and staying in power by avoiding accountability.  They couldn’t care less if you live or die.  The textbook examples of this callousness is their disregard of human lives taken my massive gun violence and their willingness to sacrifice the old and sick for the economy during the pandemic.  If you doubt any of this conclusion, I invite you to listen to Rep. Burchett (T) Tennessee:

’nuff said.