Splitsville THE EVIL THAT MEN, AND WOMEN, DO

The Bloodied-But-Unbowed Newsletter for Fans of THE SPLIT

It is time—it is past time—for all of us, men and women of good faith, regardless of race, creed, sexual orientation, or the color of our skin, to join hands and proclaim, in one voice, that the Republican Party is an active force for evil in the world. Of course, reactions to this observation will run the gamut, from “Duh” to “So, nu?” to “No shit, Sherlock.” Nonetheless, given the GOP’s behavior this past Tuesday in the Senate, and given everything members of that party have said and done since the end of World War II, it demands re-stating: These evil fucks are evil fucks.

That offers us (conveniently!) another version of Splitsville, by which we define the US as consisting of two different “nations” occupying a single geo-political entity, or border, or whatever. Viz: The world—or at least this country—is populated by two kinds of people: those who realize that the GOP is literally a force for evil, and those who don’t.

Arguably, the latter group is not monolithic. It includes some who disagree with this assessment—who actually like what the party says and does and, for reasons known only themselves, do not consider those sayings and doings to embody evil. To them we say, with our characteristic self-effacing sincerity, “Fuck you.” In contrast, there are others who are simply unaware of what the Republican Party has been up to since the Truman administration. Which, fuck them, too. They’re part of the problem.

We are moved to such remarks by—what else?—the recent Senate approval of the almost-satirically-laughable-in-its-badness budget bill, which is even worse than the already-terrible version of the bill previously passed by the House. Both chambers are under the control of Republicans, which is to say, both chambers are dominated by evil. The key features (which is our way of misspelling “blatant obscenities”) of the bill are well-known, at least by the people who know them. The always-excellent Jennifer Rubin summarizes some of them thus:

Republicans still cannot imagine if they or a loved one:

· Could not get food because their application for food stamps was snarled in red tape designed to kick people off benefits to which they were entitled;

· Could not get preventive care, addiction treatment, nursing home care, or prescription drugs because they have been kicked off Medicaid and priced out of the Affordable Care Act exchanges;

· Could not get to a rural hospital in an emergency after the local one closed;

· Could not find a cancer trial after cuts to the National Institutes of Health;

· Could not get care from Veterans Affairs.

There’s more. Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark writes, “As currently constructed, the BBB [the so called Big, Beautiful Bill—Ed.] would add $2.8 trillion to the national debt by 2035 while cutting Medicaid and Obamacare so deeply that 11.8 million people lose health insurance, and millions more Americans will lose other services they rely on.”

What is the purpose of all these cuts? What can possibly justify denying health insurance (which often means, health care) to millions of people, cutting SNAP payments so people (many of whom are children) starve, and hastening the closure of rural hospitals? You already know. Everybody knows. It’s so millionaires and billionaires can pay less in taxes.

How much less? That’s the funny part. Estimates concerning what the poorest Americans will pay in this revised tax scheme range from an additional $700 to $1,200, whereas what the wealthy will gain in tax savings ranges from $12,000 to $30,000. Which is to say: Even at its lowest figure, the higher taxes they will have to pay will be felt by, and will be painful to, the poorest, while the rich won’t even notice their tax savings. Say you’re one of those unfortunate souls who is only worth one (1) billion dollars. It so happens that 30 grand is to your net worth what three bucks is to someone holding $100K.

CORRECTION: The excellent Tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors quotes the Pod Save America guys reporting this number:

For example, millionaires will receive an additional $75,000 after taxes next year, according to the Tax Policy Center.

So some poor schmuck who’s only worth ten million dollars will realize a tax savings proportionate to what 75 clams would be against 10,000. All so that millions can starve and/or die and/or be sent to concentration camps. (We regret the error.)

But the fun doesn’t stop there. Bear in mind that these cutbacks and closures will, by definition, have their most devastating effects on the poorest states, which are—say it with us now—MAGA country. Yes, Republicans will literally be killing their own constituents. Why?

a) They’re afraid of being primaried and losing their jobs if they displease Trump, somehow not noticing that they’re colluding in the process of making those jobs sadistic (or they do notice, and they think it’s cool). Or they don’t realize that they’re making their jobs irrelevant (because the constituents are dying off).

Or:

b) They don’t really want to kill their constituents, but it has to be done, because the rich just aren’t rich enough. After all, think about it: If you have three houses, what are the implications, other than the fact that you don’t have four?

And we haven’t even mentioned the fact that babies and children in Africa have already died (of starvation, thanks), or the 14 million other people who will likely die over the next five years, now that Trump and DOGE ended USAID; or that the policies of Bobby “Brain Worm” Kennedy, Jr. promise to bring sickness, misery, and death to unvaccinated people from sea to shining, polluted sea; or that Trump’s promotion of fossil fuels can be guaranteed to make the air and water dirtier and more dangerous; or that his curtailment (if not elimination) of FEMA will be sure to raise eyebrows, and death tolls, in states visited by flood, wildfire, earthquake, or hurricane.

But it’s not, in the words of Dolly Parton, “all taking and no giving.” The budget vastly increases funding for our very own Gestapo ICE, gives even more to that epicenter of waste, fraud, and abuse known as the Pentagon, and provides tax breaks to corporations, making it even easier (if such a thing is possible) for them to bribe the Supreme Court justices of their choice.

You will note, with amusement, that their recent policies and behavior violate every single so-called “conservative” principle they have advertised for the past 75 years. These include such greatest hits as:

· Fiscal probity. (The new budget expands the deficit by trillions, hobbles the economy, and puts the government in bed with iffy digital currencies.)

· Family values. (They’re taking food, health insurance, and even health care from families.)

· Respect for law and order. (Trump’s, ICE’s, and even the Supreme Court’s actions have been blatantly lawless.)

· Respect for institutions. (They’re attacking universities, raiding libraries, and crippling the Department of Education.)

· Adherence to the Constitution. (Congress is assisting with its own auto-castration, abandoning its duty to serve as a check on the increasingly-fascistic Executive branch.)

· Good Christian values. (The only person who lies more than Press Secretary and Crucifix-Jewelry Flaunter Karoline Leavitt is her boss, who lies literally every time he speaks.

It kinda makes ya think—that conservatism has always been bullshit, devoid of all principles other than those of self-interest, ambition. and greed, in the opposite order.

In the piece cited above, Jennifer Rubin says, mocking Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski’s rue and dismay over the bill right after her vote enabled its passage, “If you wonder how these people sleep at night, you are not alone.” But we don’t wonder. As we never—or hardly ever—tire of explaining, in order to lose sleep over having done something you fear might be shameful or immoral, you have to have what top neuroscientists call a “conscience.” You have to be capable of empathy and possess a certain kind of fundamental decency. Sadly, ever since Ronald Reagan brought his jellybeans to the White House, those qualities have been systematically bred out of Republicans with the zeal, method, and patience of a university botany department developing a new seedless watermelon.

The result, as embodied by, say, Marco Rubio (and, before him, Lindsey Graham) is there for all to behold: slavish obeisance to Donald Trump, the all-time worst person in American public life, and possibly the worst person anywhere.

During the first Trump maladministration, Adam Serwer at The Atlantic coined the now-famous, inescapable phrase “the cruelty is the point.” You cannot have read the previous 1,000 words and conclude otherwise. That’s why we say “evil.” We mean it, not in the metaphysical sense (we don’t believe in Satan, or in E-vil as an objective force in the world like…you know…The Force), but in the everyday, secular sense. Republicans don’t mean well (the idea that even some of them imagine that they do is laughable). They congratulate each other for causing pain. They are, in Mitchell and Webb’s characterization, the baddies. They are the servants, thugs, advocates, and henchmen of the wealthy. They don’t care who they kill, who they rob, who they kidnap, or who they lie to--and that’s exactly what they like about their jobs.

More than one political observer has expressed bafflement over why the GOP would pass so malevolent and destructive a bill, one that is destined to have so terrible an impact on their own voters it’s being called “political suicide.” That has prompted other political observers to note that it’s only political suicide if there is politics in the future—the kind of free and fair elections (starting next year) that everyone knows the (evil) Republicans are doing everything they can, right now, to subvert. It’s neither overly-dramatic nor hyperbolic to suggest that the future of the US depends on how many people in the second group we spoke of wake up and join the first group in the fight to preserve our democracy.

As this is being written, some hopeful types are mentioning the possibility that the House will somehow block the bill, now that the Senate has handed it over. We’ll believe it when we see it, and if we do see it, we won’t believe it. (And if they do, it will be because the bill isn’t bad enough.)

Ignore the above paragraph. The House just passed the budget bill—the Senate version, which is worse than the House’s version. We look forward, next year, to when the New York Times sends a reporter on a “Cletus safari,” out to a diner in the heartland to interview those proud, conservative Americans about why they like Trump. The diner will be out of business, half the Cletuses will be dead, and the other half will charge the journalist ten bucks per to hear their thoughts on why all this is the fault of immigrants, blacks, “communists,” and Jews.

Until then, we urge you to get it through your thick skulls, as we have gotten it through ours, that these people are evil. It’s not just that they see the world differently; of course they do. Here’s the way their vision differs from ours and, we fervently hope, from yours. They want to transform the world into a place in which we wouldn’t want to live, a place in which we wouldn’t be allowed to live.

They’re the ones who have created this particular lethal—evil—form of Splitsville. Compared to theirs, the one we imagined in our satirical-dystopian-fairytale-comedy-political-thriller, The Split, is…what? Friendly? Peaceful? Humanistic? Optimistic?

We hope the word we’re looking for isn’t “naive.”