Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/27/gop-senator-tom-cotton-describ.html
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I mean, when your name’s Cotton…
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I just don’t think these people have any sort of rational foresight. It’s kind of like Hitler’s whole crew, bragging about their Thousand Year Reich. You would think there would be a few in the mix that would think to themselves “You know, just on the slim chance this whole thousand year thing doesn’t work out, I might want to moderate my Nazism and hedge my bets…”
You would think by watching people like Cotton that we were never going to have any more elections. When in doubt, double down. What does he really think he will be able to do once this whole Trump bubble bursts?
There’s gonna be a lot of crypto-nazis hitting the want ads and their well-documented ideals are gonna be out of fashion. If you know you are gonna have to fire someone the first time they tweet racist bullshit, and they constantly tweet racist bullshit, will anyone hire them?
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Since his comments are in response to a NYT project, perhaps the nice polite folks at the paper will once again give him space to spew his authoritarian and racist garbage in the name of “balance” and “free speech” (not that they’ll bother to read it before publishing it, of course).
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I wish we could just dismiss him for the stupid, racist asshole that he is.
But the people of Arkansas elected him to the US Senate, so we do have a bit of a situation.
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Man, they get so close to being self-aware, but that last-second veer takes them into the ditch so goddamn hard. See, e.g.
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Let’s all remember that Cotton is both Harvard College and Harvard Law. He’s playing the role of ‘hick rube,’ and doing it very, very well.
In that he’s much like the current occupant of the White House but with 100 more IQ points, he is capable of being very, very dangerous in the years to come. Do not underestimate this particular fucker.
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I’ve heard the argument that in the early days America’s vast acres of cheap and up-for-grabs land made it extremely hard to get anyone to actually work that land: everyone wanted their own plot. Hence: slavery.
Of course there was always the option of paying people more, but if that’s an impossibility in 2020 America it certainly was in 1620 America.
Wage slavery is our modern “necessary evil,” but something tells me Cotton and his ilk would welcome a return to the old necessary evil in a heartbeat.
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A 7th generation Arkansan named Cotton is a little on the nose…the writers room need to take a break, I think.
I wonder if there any enslaved people who can trace their roots back to his family. Though he would trot out the classic slaver’s apology that even being in the underclass in the USA is better than remaining in Africa…
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Slavery, chattel or wage, is the goal…think of how many goods and services are gradually pruned of their labor component. Why are self-driving cars important to the overlords? They want to be carried around but don’t want to pay anyone to do it. Ray Kroc didn’t buy a burger stand from the McDonald brothers…he bought a system of low-labor, high-profit food production that could be operated by anyone who could hear a timer or follow a checklist. And so it goes. The tension is between all the labor-saving devices/processes and the risk of giving us a lot of free time to think about where the profits/surplus value are going. So we have Facebook, et al…
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Student of Elizabeth Warren!
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Cotton picks slaves?
(Special thanks to Yakov Smirnoff)
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It’s just more quiet parts loud. The only part he’s not saying is “And we’d do it all again, in a heartbeat (and/or are doing it again, I gotta imagine Tommy boy is invested in some for-profit prisons)” These assholes also have the gall to hold white-man’s-burden summits on international poverty, arguing that any kind of global labor movement would “rob” poor countries of the rite of passage of being exploited by colonizers, because - dontcha know - that’s the only path to industrialization.
If slavery is necessary to create America, then fuck America, it was damned to failure from the start.
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He and Josh Hawley are two of the most dangerous politicians that the GOP has lined up on their batting roster.
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But as much as they poo-poo it, “Cancel Culture” isn’t going away. They dismiss it, but then they lose all their advertisers, they get kicked out of their organizations.
I can’t see how someone who is doubling down every couple of weeks can have any sort of future. Once the Trump era is over, and it will be over… I don’t see Tom Cotton being elected dog catcher, and how do you hire someone who has said all he has said?
I think they are riding a very limited wave. We will always have racist, fascist assholes, sure, but soon we will go back to the Reagan/Bush style of racist assholery, and the people who have been walking around with their dicks out won’t be palatable assets.
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Exactly - these guys are parroting a line that is so far from what they clearly understand to be facts. They will say ANYTHING to get power. They are evil. It really is scary.
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The warning needs to be repeated and emphasized: This malignant piece of filth Cotton is being pushed as a potential GOP presidential candidate for 2024 or beyond.
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it can’t be “fake news” when it is literally the words that came out of your mouth (or pen).
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