The Poolish - Weird People Edition, 18 August 2024

Rittenhouse gets Rittenschooled, and more news

This has been, shall we say, a weird few weeks. The United States election season, after almost completely resigning itself to at least another four years of Donald Trump, has done the tightest U-turn in history after Joe Biden passed the torch to Kamala Harris and the narrative changed from dry and boring to just lampshading how fuckin’ weird these Trump guys are. Team MAGA has never been this hard on the defense, and you have to admit…

The Re-Education of Kyle Rittenhouse

Famous innocent victim of circumstance Kyle Rittenhouse, who rocketed to superstardom in Republican circles after showing up to a riot in self defense and opening defensive fire, is understandably a MAGA hero for his love of guns above all else, and having successfully killed some people with them—i.e. correctly using them for what they were designed to do.

So it was basically inevitable that he was going to vote Trump, right? You know, the leader of the party who showered him with riches and fame.

But Rittenhouse, for the very first time since settling into his new role as a puppet riding the GOP’s arm to the elbow, has been showing some worrying signs of independent thought. He is literally a single issue voter, and that issue is second amendment absolutism, so he’s become disillusioned with Trump who, you know, did a whole bunch of gun bans the last time he was president.

I’m not saying that Rittenhouse was primed up with a little Dutch courage the other night, but it is a fact that he’s just turned 21 and is therefore finally deemed mature enough to handle something as dangerous as a beer. So he got out his phone and did the bravest thing he’s ever done (and I’m including the night that made him famous): He recorded a video for social media announcing he was not going to vote for Trump but was instead going to throw his vote away by writing in Ron Paul as though it’s 2008.

The first thing that Republicans did was look up whether Ron Paul was still alive (surprisingly it seems he is) and the second thing they did was initiate plans to burn down his life and everything in it like a dry cane field.

Rittenhouse’s announcement inevitably set off the same types of people who casually call in bomb threats to children’s hospitals if their Christmas Starbucks cup doesn’t say Jesus on it enough times. Overnight he became a QAnon villain, a Democrat operative, and possibly the Antichrist. It was no longer than ten minutes into the controversy before they started transvestigating him.

It wasn’t even 12 hours after Rittenhouse announced this was his final decision with “no takebacks” before he dropped a wounded apology so wooden that it’s tempting to believe that Elon Musk did an over-the-air update on his Neuralink brain chip.

Rittenhouse assures that his total and abrupt about-face on these impotant issues came after “a series of productive conversations” that I’m sure were all just nuanced reassurances on policy rather than anything involving a dark room, one bright lamp, and two stern looking men reminding him about who made him and who can un-make him.

Birtherism's Back on the Menu, Boys!

Before he was accidentally the president of an entire country, Donald Trump was notably the most public-facing proponent of the so-called “Birtherism” conspiracy theory - i.e. Skepticism to the point of fervent disbelief that the president at the time was born in the country. The birther movement was spearheaded by this person:

…a dentist named Orly Taitz who probably holds the record for the largest number of lawsuits ever filed by a single person and it is merciful that they don’t bring back that punishment where they chop your hands off.

There was simply something about that man, on a visual level, that was distinctly different from each of the 43 people who had held the position previously. Something that might lead people of a certain ideological disposition to doubt his eligibility to be the leader of a country thought to belong rightfully to people with certain other visual features.

Trump and other Republicans thought the smoking gun would appear in Obama’s birth certificate, which they hoped would show that he was born in Kenya or something. When that didn’t go as planned, they said of course silly, because they weren’t looking at the long form birth certificate. The short form certificate was shorter because it was missing the bit that said he was born in Africa. The long form birth certificate stuff was primarily the project of this person:

…who was, at one time, not considered a respectable figure in politics or media, but post 2016, is now considered somewhere around the medium-to-sane level of politics/media batshit.

The racis- I mean the concern of the American people reached such a pitch that the White House decided to release the long form certificate, which also said Obama was born in the American state of Hawaii. So America said fuck it and just gave Trump his job instead.

So a 45th guy was president for a while and everyone agreed he was American, and then a 46th guy was president for a while and everyone agreed he was American, but now we’re headed toward 47 and whoopsie-doodle-coconuts:

…how do we know this person is American??? we ask, for no particular reason.

Donald Trump again can’t be sure. There’s something about her that doesn’t seem American. Some people say she’s Indian, some people say she’s Jamaican… how can she be two thing? The answers may be revealed via an investigation by this person:

…Laura Loomer, a professional engagement farmer and public nuisance who has serious questions about, you guessed it:

…Kamala Harris’ birth certificate!

Interestingly, nobody to my knowledge has ever released whatever certificate it would take to prove that any of these weirdos were born on planet fucking Earth. Someone should get on that.

RFK Jr is the Gift that Keeps On Giving