the Karen With KarenCash edition

NF, One L
​Issue #2

1. Although "lots of people are saying" that every single American still self-identified as MAGA at this late date is as dumb as a rock, I generally dispute that, as I do believe there is a great difference between intellect and factual deficit. Also, rocks are simply a more dense compression of atoms than flesh, often in pretty colors and without the bad attitude or need for weekly therapy. So, while we are more neurally complex than our rock friends, on the whole are less useful as shelter construction or tossing pointy versions of ourselves at enemies.

2. All matter is identical, all matter is interconnected, matter is differentiated by the perception or action of other matter in relation to itself. So, everything's everything. Also, the universe is simultaneous. There is no forward or backward narrative. It is all happening just as it has always happened just as it always will happen.

3. In case you're wondering, the only thing I microdose is John Coltrane.

4. Still, in terms of MAGA policy, you have to be as delusional as a bag of hammers to support (let alone define the meaning of) tariffs as good for anyone except Chinese manufacturers who American manufacturers (offshore labor) and American politicians (any donation is a good donation) have allowed American consumers to become dependent upon, mainly for cheap, instantly obsolete, landfill-ready crap. As a culture we haven't really grasped that a demand for inexpensiveness in all things is in itself an expense, and manufacturing jobs will never return to America by blaming their loss on particular politicians we dislike, they will return when we embrace the idea that paying more for something of local quality is not only patriotic, but economically astute.

5. I like things that are extremely well-made, from cars to audio equipment to guitars to garbage disposals. I am fascinated by design and construction techniques. I marvel at genius innovation and production. It is one of the things that we, as Americans, really are great at. "Paying more" is a self-defeating concept. You should pay exactly "what it costs" to acquire something that reliably and cleverly does exactly "what it purports to." Anything else is garbage, which is to say currently on sale at Target.

6. Hey, Remember when The Grifter anointed dumb-as-a-rock Betsy DeVos (Everyone's Favorite Amway Heiress) as Secretary Of Education, despite having zero experience either as a min-wage secretary or working in education in any capacity? Not a coincidence.

7. Paying a reasonable effective tax rate is necessary, regardless of income. Running a country is expensive, yo. Bitching about where your taxes go is a beloved American pastime, but in actuality absurd. The government will spend what it spends regardless of your distaste for Welfare Queens (coined by Ronald Reagan, btw, way back when he ran for president in 1976 and was trounced by the mighty conservative juggernaut of Gerald Ford and Bob Dole. Hey, opportunistic race-baiting didn't start with Haitians in Ohio eating JD Vance's pet ferret!) Your tax money mostly goes to servicing the many trillions of dollars of our debt held by China and Japan. If you're worried that your personal payroll taxes are funding libtard NPR, they're not, so relax and put the game back on. You know where else your taxes mostly go? The huge empty hole into which the ultra wealthy (The Grifter, proudly) shovels little or no coin, hiding their incomes in offshore accounts next to the offshore labor they pay peanuts to, and then complain about the dwindling American manufacturing base.

8. You do not get to support Donald Trump à la carte for all the things you may like about him and ignore everything else. It’s cowardly, weak-minded, selfish, and exhaustively ignorant. If you are a member of MAGA, you're exactly the same enabling sucker who denounced Russians under Stalin, Italians under Mussolini, Chileans under Pinochet, or Ugandans under Amin, having waved the perfumed hanky of Democracy under their noses in a superior fashion all your life, king of the "Why did they let it happen?" crowd. Donald Trump is president of the United States because he sells Papal Indulgences (at the price of his supporter's morality) to embrace easy, simplistic, often incoherent and regularly false answers to nuanced and difficult questions.
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9. Nuance and complexity are almost always the only required tools to refute any given theology, especially the ones that pretend not to be political in origin.
Next Week: What We Talk About When We Talk About Marco Rubio.