Friday links! From each according to his abilities edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment
Rick Santorum donates another unit of language to internet culture.

Rick Santorum donates another unit of language to internet culture.

You think it’s his hand that makes this GIF funny, but it’s his facial expressions. Does Rick Santorum understand the awesome contributions he has made to internet culture? Letting us re-coin his name would have been plenty. But last night, he give us a meme we can use to belittle one another on MMA discussion boards for centuries. Richard John “Rick” Santorum walks the history of online discourse a god, remaking the terrain as he goes, yet he thinks he should settle for being president. Yeah, bro, our society needs your leadership skills. Today is Friday, and each of us contributes according to abilities he may not know he has. Won’t you take according to your needs with me?

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Council of Conservative Citizens supports Republicans, not vice versa

By Dan Brooks in Fascism 1 Comment
Leader of the Council of Conservative Citizens Earl Holt III

Leader of the Council of Conservative Citizens Earl Holt III

Before Dylann Storm Roof almost didn’t kill nine black churchgoers but then did it anyway, he read a list of black-on-white murders compiled by the Council of Conservative Citizens. That group developed out of the now-defunct White Citizens’ Councils, and it is still a white primacy organization. It has also donated a lot of money to Republican politicians, including Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz and Scott Walker. The CCC supports the GOP, but not the other way around. Of course, the GOP does oppose affirmative action, and it supports states’ rights and strong limits on immigration and other polices that racists happen to like. But the Republican Party is not racist. It just happens to hold many of the same policy positions as a white primacy organization.

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Santorum possibly working in satire now

By Dan Brooks in Reactionary Populism 1 Comment

I have laughed at this picture so many times that I don’t even need Photoshop to put a dick in it.

Speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington yesterday, Rick Santorum said that conservatives “will never have the elite, smart people on our side.” Don’t worry; he made a face when he said “smart people,” so everyone would understand. Santorum knows that smart people are dumb, and people who oppose his plan to make a series of laws against abortion and gay sex and selling liquor on Sundays “want to tell you what to do.” Quote:

We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side, because they believe they should have the power to tell you what to do.

On first blush, it’s an airtight logical argument. It’s possible there are a couple of holes, though, and they go beyond whether Santorum was being sarcastic, as David Weigel oddly argues. You get that straw man, David Weigel—shake him! Video after the jump.

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Santorum wins two raddest states

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 4 Comments

Lawyers, back me up: if a man is wearing boxing gloves, you can legally hit him in the mouth, right?

Miracle Mike Sebba and I used to amuse ourselves by discussing where and when in world history we would most like to live—Paris in the twenties, Greenwich Village in the fifties, Plato’s Athens, Da Vinci’s Venice. Strangely, Alabama and Mississippi never came up. At no time in recorded history was either of those states any fun. Even under the Cahokia—arguably its peak civilization, and certainly the one that consumed the least Jack-In-the-Box—Mississippi was a terrible place to live. And Alabama in the early sixties was an exciting, historically significant milieu only in context of the shittiness of all previous Alabamas. Both states consistently vie for the lowest literacy rate in the Union. But they were able to put aside their rivalry to agree on one thing: they love Rick Santorum.

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Dammit!

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 3 Comments

I accept that my desire to see Rick Santorum win the Republican nomination is destructive and wrong. American politics is not the Puppy Bowl, and we should not just root for the funniest one. Still, the heart wants what it wants. The heart got really excited last night, when it briefly appeared that Santorum might take Ohio. Then boring, sensible America came charging in, and Romney won every district with an airport. Again, that’s good. Rick Santorum should be kept as far from the presidency as possible, for the same reason you don’t keep the octopus with the Christmas lights. But the ugly part of me—the part that wants the comfort of seeing its nihilistic misanthropy confirmed—was hoping to see the GOP’s most absurd candidate take the country’s most predictive state. I suspect that part of me is also the Santorum constituency.

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