GOP Pants on Fire

Arthur Hargate
3 min readFeb 18, 2021

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Original art by J.E. Hargate

If you’re a Trumpist Republican politician right now, you seem to be competing to see who in your mind-controlled zombie cult political party can tell the biggest whopper and have the loony Faux News audience believe it. Big Lies of all types have become the rage now within the GOP. (A more apt label for Trumpist Republicans is clearly the RWPP: Racist White People Party.)

Bald-face falsehoods, fibs, disinformation and outright lies from breathtakingly corrupt Republicans go back decades. You’ll surely remember “trickle down” economics, tax cuts for the middle class, Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the climate change hoax, to name just a handful. In the Trump era, El Presidente’ Dear Leader was the master of malapropism, malfeasance and misdirection, and the non-stop parade of conniving charlatans like Rudy Giuliani, Lindsey Graham and Ohio’s “Gym” Jordan kept the BS avalanche coming daily through State Sponsored Faux TV.

So maybe now we shouldn’t be at all surprised by idiot Texas Governor Greg Abbott jumping out on Faux immediately blaming their recent statewide severe weather induced power grid failure on renewable energy, liberal thinking, the Green New Deal and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC.)

Huh?! Exactly.

How about some actual rather than alternative facts? The Green New Deal is an idea and not a thing at this point. AOC is a congressperson from New York and has never had anything to do with the state of Texas energy infrastructure. That energy grid is 87% reliant on fossil fuels and nuclear power, and it failed because Republican administrations in Texas have neglected to invest in its bandwidth and resiliency for decades.

Yes, some windmills froze as the entire state experienced a severe winter storm. So did the bulk of the fossil fuel and nuclear infrastructure, as it had never been sufficiently winterized as experts had advised for decades.

Texas is an epicenter of anti-regulatory zeal, small government dogma and disgust at what Texas Republicans deem to be “socialist” ideas, so they have done their own thing as a state and their power grid has avoided the common sense technical dictates and regulatory standards espoused by Federal experts. Much like well known environmental disasters, we now see a monumental and deadly power disaster precipitated by “states rights” advocates in Texas who think they know better than the conventional wisdom that consistent national safety standards bring.

And climate crisis experts have been telling us for years that our infrastructure is not prepared for the extreme weather we are seeing now due to the changing climate, but let’s face it, tax cuts for the wealthy are an awfully tempting alternative to preventing citizens from suffering if you’re a leader in the unflinchingly greedy GOP.

And make no mistake: extreme winter weather is absolutely a symptom of the climate crisis, so get used to it; as well as biblical rainstorms, horrific hurricanes, gargantuan tornadoes, crippling heat waves and droughts and rising sea levels. We’ve known this climate cataclysm was coming for decades; now it’s here and we are terribly unprepared, thanks in large measure to Republicans who have been telling Big Lies about climate change to their science denying, know nothing, racist lemming fan base for decades.

Worse yet, Republicans have a maniacally Machiavellian plan to continue to hang on to power: deny democracy and the will of the people by suppressing the vote. That’s the only way the GOP can continue to win elections: lie, cheat, steal, gerrymander and make it difficult or impossible for people to vote that don’t happen to be white Christians.

Pretty cynical, nihilistic, fascist claptrap, isn’t it? Well, yes it is, but what do you expect from a party that still loves the heck out of their former Reality TV Star who made his highly successful political debut by pushing the Big Lie that the best United States President in history wasn’t born here?

You can expect Big Lie after Big Lie after Big Lie from Trumpist Republicans, and only vigorous, incessant and unremitting resistance in all legal forms to the monolithic pile of steaming horse manure that comes from the GOP will keep them from realizing their fascist fantasies.

We cannot let these pathological Big Liars retain political power in any capacity. We are all activists now.

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Arthur Hargate
Arthur Hargate

Written by Arthur Hargate

Arthur Hargate is retired after a 40-year management career in the environmental services business. He now writes, plays guitar and is a social activist.

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