Hammer and Tongues

As the saying goes: “To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” 

Republican and fellow rightwing hammerheads have been busily banging away at imaginary nails. Take Ronny Jackson, for example. An MD who once claimed that Trump was the paragon of physical fitness, Johnson is now a Member of Congress representing (where else?) Texas. Seeing the Democratic party as a nail head, Johnson brought his tool down mightily: 

Here comes the MEV - the Midterm Election Variant! They NEED a reason to push unsolicited nationwide mail-in ballots. Democrats will do anything to CHEAT during an election . . . ,

he tweeted.*

Somehow this alleged man of science (aren’t doctors supposed to be men of science?) didn’t give a logical explanation of why his claimed bogus COVID variant needed to take a route from South Africa to Europe before being sprung on gullible US voters. Or why it is that non-bogus people are dying from a bogus disease. I wonder in what medical school class one learns to finesse such questions.

¶

This is what people say to me: he doesn’t represent science, he represents Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who did experiments on Jews during the Second World War and in the concentration camps.

Thus, Fox Nation host Lara Logan offering a comparison between Dr. Anthony Fauci and Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.**

Logan’s playing of Whack-a-mole, using her hammer on the pate of the distinguished director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is a very advanced example of weaseldom. Note that she doesn’t say that she herself  is making the comparison; she is allegedly only repeating “what people say to me.” She claims, “People all across the world are saying this.” I haven’t heard that in my part of the world, but, then again, I don’t have much to do with crazies. Apparently, Logan does, but don’t blame her for what she hears and repeats—because, weaselly, she doesn’t dare say it directly.

¶

Tucker Carlson is not a man who is going to be outflanked by the likes of a Lara Logan. He gets out his hammer for Fauci’s noggin and disdains any weaseling. He will own up to his whacking. 

If you haven’t checked in on Tony Fauci lately, you may be a little surprised to discover what he’s become . . . . After two years of being nonstop media adulation, Tony Fauci has morphed into an even shorter version of Benito Mussolini.***

(Whether it is worse to be banged on the head for being a Mengele or a Mussolini, I leave up to you.)

Carlson subtly engages in a cute bit of anti-Italian bigotry here (and, considering his record on immigration, perhaps something of a warning against southern Europeans in general). 

¶

Time, I think, to take away the toolbox from the wingnuts. Though I think someone should first take a monkey wrench and tighten the screws that are loose. 

***

*  https://news.yahoo.com/white-house-doctor-raved-trumps-024430725.html

**  https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/fox-news-lara-logan-compares-015448939.html

***  https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tucker-carlson-makes-unhinged-comparison-123650608.html