Defending Our Democracy
Sure it was our so-called democracy in action-- cleverly masquerading as the definition of insanity, live-streamed.
But after two years of rubberstamping our great grandkids into serfdom, what was all the hurry to get it over with? People needed comic relief. And got it, watching failed actors make gorilla faces at each other.
It made great reality TV. You never knew who was going to be nominated next. We think it was nine names in total, but ran out of fingers and toes.
And you could never guess what quaint malword was going to be fished up from the dank tarn of lingua politica and hurled across the chamber.
Malwords Man of the Week
Pasquinade of the Week Award goes to Alabama Congressman Mike Rogers who, as incoming House Armed Services Committee chairman, could use a refresher course in basic firearms use.
Rogers told Daily Mail on Wednesday that the McCarthy opponents were LEGISLATIVE TERRORISTS who have no problem killing the hostage, and promised that any Republican who refused to support McCarthy would be stripped of their committee assignments.
Rogers, a self-described conservative, Christian and father of three, clearly had Rep Matt Gaetz (R-FL) in his sights. But when Gaetz voted “Present” on the fourteenth ballot, Mister Rogers momentarily forgot which end of the barrel he was looking down, and lunged at the LEGISLATIVE TERRORIST whose recalcitrance had just denied him the gavel of dreams for the fourteenth time that week.
Legislative Terrorism Pays Dividends
Clearly this man of faith and sixth generation East Alabamian does not hold up well under pressure. Gaetz does. Giving Malwords Weekly reason to believe that in a few short years, Rogers will be reporting to Gaetz… if he’s even still in Congress.
Before we get to that, shout out to this week's IMAGE SPONSOR, the Andy Warhol of meme artists, and oracle to the growing Army of the Unfukt, PeasantZero. Check out his work at @PeasantZero2022 on Gettr, and give him a follow BEFORE his NFT's fetch more than a single-family home in The Valley!
Another fascinating dynamic was watching Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) stand by her man in a catfight with fellow MAGA priestess Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO). And her late-ballot brokering of phone calls from President Trump to the January Six holdouts-- Gaetz, Rosendale, Boebert, Biggs, Crane, Good.
Eleven months ago, when Greene was stripped by Nancy Pelosi of her committee assignments, McCarthy vowed vengeance. Greene's down-the-line support of McCarthy’s Speaker bid may be a sign that the day of reckoning-- and a plum committee assignment-- is at hand.
And that LEGISLATIVE TERRORISM pays rich dividends
We've Seen It Happen Before
LEGISLATIVE TERRORIST is a coinage by former House Speaker John Boehner to describe fellow Ohio representative Jim Jordan, who as co-founder of the Freedom Caucus and Tea Party firebrand made Boehner's life hell, dooming Boehner's chances of passing signature legislation that would establish his legacy.
That same Jim Jordan nominated former rival (and Boehner acolyte) Kevin McCarthy for House Speaker this past week. And then turned down nomination by Gaetz and The Gang of Twenty, saying there is no chance I become speaker. Even when urged by his many fans to do the right thing like George Washington and heed the call of country to a job he didn't want.
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood
The irony here is almost too thick to slice with a single sentence.
Rogers, a violent do-gooder, defends his mentor Kevin McCarthy, quoting the verbal violence of McCarthy's own mentor-- one of the House's most unremarkable Speakers-- to malword his rival Matt Gaetz, and then seals his fate as a companion volume to unremarkable fellow McCarthy acolyte Steve Scalise, with an attempted act of violence.
Winners and Losers
McCarthy, for all his faults, understands firepower. He wants guns. And while he may not be a fighter, he is an arms dealer. Jordan is a howitzer, and McCarthy knows how to make a deal. And the best deals are always with former rivals, who make far better weapons than long-term friends.
So McCarthy made a gamble back in 2018, by offering his then-rival Jordan a no-strings attached rank on Oversight. The bet has paid off for both men: McCarthy has a loyal hatchet man running Judiciary; Jordan is on trajectory to eclipse Scalise as Number 2 in the House, who for all his teddy-bear qualities has learned little from his near-death experience at the hands of a violent do-gooder.
Wethinks a similar conversation took place between McCarthy and then-young gun MTG last year before Pelosi's public shaming. And from his immediate expression of gratitude for MTG fellow-traveler Gaetz following Victory at the Fifteenth hole, wethinks one is at hand for the Florida congressman.
No kudos for Mike Rogers, by the way. And Boebert better take heed. She may know how to use a gun. But like Rogers she lacks firepower.
So, overall, it was a great week for POLITICAL TERRORISTS. And we are rooting for more.
As for the do-gooders? Welp, they didn’t do much good.
About Malwords
Malwords are keywords weaponized for information warfare. They function within public discourse as intellectual malware, verbal viruses designed to spread quickly for the purposes of a) silencing dissent through control of language, narrative, and speech, b) increasing public tolerance for government-sanctioned atrocity and c) emboldening officials to commit acts of atrocity.
Malword strength is measured by their frequency of appearance in the published body of language (corpus), and expressed in words per million (WPM) linguistic units (words, numbers, symbols, acronyms, etc).
Malword WPM’s typically follow a three-phase lifecycle: Pre-Curve test-markets the new term and puts up the store front; Curve, or Core, is launch phase, characterized by a rapid, exponential liftoff and sudden plunge; Post-Curve is a long, asymptotic tail and is the period in which primary-objective atrocities are implemented.
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Harvey Oxenhorn, is a cybersecurity consultant, founder of Malwords Weekly, and author of the upcoming book, The Atrocity Algorithm, How The Media Became The Enemy of The People. He writes The Five Stages of Unf*ck, Red Pill Journey to January 2.0. , also on Substack. Follow him on Gettr, Gab, and MeWe @HarveyOxenhorn