MAGA Nihilism Is on the Ballot in Georgia
We believe in nothing . . . except God–King Trump.
We believe in nothing, Lebowski. Nothing. And tomorrow we come back and we cut off your Johnson.
–Nihilist #1 in The Big Lebowski
This evening, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue will put the final seditious exclamation point on a re-election campaign in which they promised to be whatever the MAGA hordes demanded they be. No more. No less. Just as God demanded wives submit to their husbands with joy, Loeffler and Perdue have pledged to giddily submit to the whims of Trump and his most crazed fans. They will do so tonight on a MAGA altar, just 24 hours after a tape revealed that Donald Trump was actively plotting to steal the election in their state, pressuring GOP election officials to “find” just enough votes for him to be declared the winner, with Loeffler attending in person and Perdue phoning it in “virtually” from COVID-19 quarantine. One would think that politicians might be hesitant to hold a joint rally with someone so soon after their blatant electoral criminal intent is exposed. Not Loeffler and Perdue. After all, being complicit in the president’s coup was not a challenge to be overcome, it is the central purpose of their entire political project. If Trump demands they slander a fellow Republican who is just doing his job, David and Kelly will slander him. If Trump wishes that they pretend that a long-dead Venezuelan dictator tampered with our democracy, David and Kelly will pretend. If Trump wants Kelly to try to silence the players on her basketball team for speaking up for racial justice, Kelly will try to silence them. If Trump tells them to come on stage and sing “It’s Raining Men” in their undergarments while carrying a Trump Hotels Classic Stick Umbrella, they will ask what color panties he prefers. The message they want voters to get before Tuesday’s runoff election is that they will be stooges for MAGA—and their message is being heard loud and clear.
This weekend when Bret Baier asked Kelly Loeffler whether she would have voted to override President Trump’s veto of legislation that funds our military on the grounds that the bill didn’t do anything to guarantee shitposters’ rights or ensure that racist traitors can have their names on our military bases, Loeffler replied that she had “stood with the president 100 percent of the time.” After being asked several more times about how she would have actually voted, Baier finally stated “I won’t belabor it but that’s not a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ whether you would sustain the veto or not.” Loeffler replied simply, “That’s right.” Loeffler felt no pressure to give Baier an answer because her campaign is not premised on giving answers to things like whether she supports funding the military or whether she would be willing to defund the military so Nazis aren’t suspended from Facebook for a few days. She is running to be Parler-poster-in-chief, not legislator. She is running as not-radical-black-liberal-Raphael-Warnock, not as a person who supports any particular policy. Her campaign is premised on the unalterable fact that Kelly Loeffler will stand with Donald Trump 100 percent of the time, every time.
Meanwhile, on Monday David Perdue was asked about the president’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump pressures him to do whatever it takes to find enough votes to steal the election for Trump. Perdue’s response is not about the integrity of his state’s elections and our nation’s democratic system. Nor does he rise to the defense of Raffensperger, his fellow Georgia Republican, in the face of the president’s malfeasance and threats. Instead Perdue said it was “disgusting” that the phone call was leaked. There was nothing Trump could have said on that call that would have resulted in Perdue answering any other way. Trump could have insulted his wife’s looks and said his father was a murderer. He could have confessed to serial sexual assault. He could have admitted to a blackmail scheme of raping & killing children. He could have told Raffensperger that his mob pals were gonna cut off his johnson with a blowtorch and some pliers and still David Perdue would have found a way to simp for Trump today. He’s with Trump. 100 percent of the time, every time. So while it is true that the fate of the Senate majority is in the balance, and others will try to make this election about policies or appointments or the very fate of market capitalism, the two incumbent senators themselves have told you otherwise. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler care not a whiff about any of that. Anything you project onto them that you hold dear, they will dispatch with in a moment at the caprice of a Trump family member. They believe in nothing but whatever Trump and his supporters tell them to believe. And they want your vote. Say what you like about it, at least it’s an ethos.