This just in: In the book Catch 22, Yossarian, a pilot that is terrified of flying in WWII is told that “So long as the front, represented by a strand of yarn on a board, is below a certain latitude, they will continue to bomb.” So Yossarian gets up in the middle of the night and simply moves the line of yarn. Problem solved.

A couple of days ago, the Texas governor performed a similar miracle. When confronted with the fact that the new anti-abortion law does not allow women that are raped to have abortions, he solved the problem by saying, and I’m not making this up, “Texas will eliminate all rapes in the state.”

I don’t know how he will move this “strand of yard.” Will they castrate every single male of “rape age” in the state? Will they rename rape as “Boys will be boys” or “You know she wanted it” and thus…no more rape.

Republicans do this a lot. It’s sort of like putting on Dorthey’s ruby slippers and then tapping the heals together as you make a wish.

Here are a few examples:

1. We are preparing evidence of voter fraud and you will see it in…2 weeks.
2. When we give billionaires a tax break, the economy will grow 5%
3. Right now we are preparing a tax cut for the middle class (Trump said this, surprising everyone in Congress since they had no idea what he was talking about)
4. Obama will take away your guns.
5. Biden will turn us all into Socialists
6. Climate change is a Chinese hoax
7. A marauding band of women and children are preparing to cross the southern border to take away your jobs and rape your women (it will always be called rape unless a white male does it).
8. Trump won the election…by a lot
9. The pandemic is a hoax…or over…or nearly over…or Bill Gates blah, blah, blah…
10. Aside from the $8 trillion dollars of overspending under Trump, we balanced the budget.
11. We need to die in the sand overseas so that the terrorist won’t come over here and rape.

This list can go on and on.

I often think the Republican position is based on Brandolini’s Law, also know and the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle. It goes like this: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it. In other words, they use very little energy to just make stuff up knowing that the opposition will never have enough energy to set the record straight in every case.

Stated another way: It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled. This is why Faux News is successful.

Republican officials also benefit from voters that grab onto the first thing that they hear that they “want” to be true and will not hear anything beyond that. You could say, “horse de-worming medicine works to cure horse worms” and they will stop hearing anything after “horse de-worming medicine works.”

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim