WTF is wrong with these people?

 

The S.O. and I had to make a run to town yesterday. He had car parts to pick up in Houghton so I asked him to drop me at the museum in Baraga. I figured I'd put in a couple hours finishing up cataloging the photos that I'd been scanning and cursing for the last several weeks. It's a fairly tedious process to go from taking a photograph from a stack, scanning it, giving it an identification number (written on the back in something archivally stable, like pencil lead), naming the jpg file on the computer, and then entering data into PastPerfect and into the Word index for archival material. If I were to go full Lillian Gilbreth I could probably break down exactly how many minutes get eaten up by each step (I am now enjoying a brief fantasy of setting up an assembly line of minions, one to place a photo on the scanner, one to remove it, one to label, one to do data entry. . . I can dream) but figure it does take anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour to process one item. It's not fast and, to be completely honest, is boring as hell, which is why I limit my time doing it to just a couple hours at a shot. If boredom kicks in hard enough, I start getting sloppy.

Anyway, the S.O. and I were cruising along idly chatting. I'd mentioned wanting to get a Trump yard sign for the museum's collection before, but the S.O. was of the opinion that once Trump was gone, his memory should be erased. He figured Trump deserved damnatio memoriae, which is what the Romans did to bad rulers: destroy their monuments, melt down the coins with their portraits, deface statues, and basically erase them from history. After the failed coup, though, he was changing his mind. He's now thinking we all need to remember Cheetolini so the country doesn't make that mistake again. Except, of course, it's a little late now for me to go grabbing yard signs from roadsides. Even the one his slightly brain damaged cousin put up is now gone. It was still up last week so I'm kind of wondering if the mob scene at the Capitol was enough to get the dude to accept that, yep, Trump did actually lose. Or at least made him nervous about continuing to advertise his support. . . 

There is, however, still one large sign left along US 41. A local business has been an avid Trump supporter since The Donald descended from the heavens on that golden escalator. That hasn't changed. Right after the election, I'd guesstimate 99 percent of the yard signs for Trump vanished. A few didn't disappear until after all the votes were counted in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, but by mid-November the folks who had put them up accepted reality. 

They're not happy, but they're resigned to stockpiling food and ammo so they're prepared for when the socialists come to confiscate their guns. (I said they're resigned; not that they're fully living in the real world.) They can't understand how anyone could cast a vote for someone as radical as Joe Biden (a dude so thoroughly mainstream and in love with big business that he used to be referred to as the Senator from Citibank, although calling him the Senator from MBNA would have been more accurate). It definitely showed the power of right wing media. The man made it clear during the primary season he did not intend to support the Green New Deal, did not like the idea of Medicare for All, and was really lukewarm about doing anything that might cause heartburn on Wall Street. It would be hilarious to hear RWNJs refer to Biden as a socialist if it wasn't also really sad. I tend to refer to them as "poor, delusional loons." Those of us who actually are socialists and/or Marxists think of Biden as "status quo Joe." Our expectations for him are low; we're just relieved he's sane.

But I'm wandering, as usual. I was talking about the one remaining large Trump sign. Up until a couple days ago it was the standard "Trump Pence 2020." Not anymore. As we approached it, we could see it had been defaced. There was a large black X spray painted on it. My first thought was, wow, someone finally got sick of seeing it and vandalized the eyesore. 

I was wrong. We passed the sign again on the way home. The spray painter didn't X out Trump at all. The big black X covers only Pence. The business owners are still deep into the cult; they're still true believers. They're just pissed at Pence for refusing to cooperate with Trump's insane plan to overturn the election. 

I'm kind of wondering just what kind of weirdness was kicking around Parler and other right wing platforms because when the mob broke into the Capitol quite a few of them were screaming, more or less literally, for Pence's blood. I have a hunch if some of those dudes had found him, he would have suffered the same fate as the Capitol Police officer who was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Either that, or he would have been the first one up on the gallows they built right outside the Capitol.