Category: Opinion

Hot Wheels

One of the tempests in the congressional teapot this month has been the uproar over Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-Dallas) calling Governor Greg Abbott “Hot Wheels”. Abbott, of course, is a wheelchair user after a tree fell on him. It’s not the first time he’s been mocked for his disability; back in the summer of 2020, two Empower Texans staffers were caught making fun of him on a podcast that was accidentally published before it was edited.

Crockett is one of the new breed of aggressive Democrats who go after Republicans hard. For folks under about 45, there has been no time in which most prominent GOP politicians haven’t been mustache-twirling villains trying openly to destroy their political opponents and the federal government. Young Democrats and leftists see no point in playing nice with people who, in their lived experience, never play nice with them. And a lot of Democrats and left-leaning voters, sometimes including me, eat that red meat up.

It’s not like Abbott would have avoided knifing Crockett (politically) before this incident. And it’s not like Abbott hasn’t swallowed his pride and sucked right back up to the Wilks and Dunn machine in the years since their flunkies said worse about him than Crockett did. And it’s not like Republicans, including President Trump, haven’t made meaner fun of disabled folks before.

I have mixed feelings about what Crockett said: I’m not in a wheelchair and I doubt I will be in the near term, but I’ve been aware I might need one since I was in high school. If it were me, I’d laugh it off, but I’m not a Republican politician. I also despise Abbott precisely because of his policies toward his fellow disabled people; he’s been throwing us under the bus for a long time. Also he hates DEI, which includes benefits for disabled folks like him.

But it’s disingenuous for Crockett to say she didn’t think of his disability and his wheelchair when calling him “Hot Wheels”. She’s not wrong that Abbott’s a hypocrite. The MAGAts slamming her are hypocrites too, but their freedom to do what the little people can’t is part of their worldview. And even though she’s a member of the House of Representatives, the fact that Crockett is a Black woman makes her a little person in the eyes of MAGA.

The apology, or whatever she might say about calling Abbott “Hot Wheels”, isn’t for them. It’s for people like me, who would like to think our Democratic politicians are both more honest and a little better people than the worst Republicans.

Sources:

That Simple

I managed to get COVID this year after almost five years of avoiding it through a lot of care, isolation, and masking (though less of that as time has gone on). My spouse brought it home from a mandatory work trip and I’ve been flat on my back for a while now. As a chronically ill person, though, I have found one advantage to being flat on my back: it’s remarkably clarifying.

What I figured out this week while I was flat on my back is that you can figure out what’s going on by reading the headlines. The new administration is flooding the zone with crap, so there’s a lot of news, but you don’t need to analyze it that deeply. There’s no twelve-dimensional chess. Occam’s razor will serve you just fine.

Trump really just wanted to avoid going to jail, and now that he’s dodged that for at least four years, he wants to make money and lash out at his perceived enemies. You don’t need to look for more than that. Also, if he’s not making sense, it’s probably because he doesn’t know what he’s doing or suffering from the effects of age and/or illness.

Vance really is a hand-picked tool of Peter Thiel, with all the policy interests that entails. Yes, that’s pretty scary, considering Trump is really that old and not in great shape.

The Project 2025 people really meant what they said about what they were going to do to American society. And unless they do something to piss off Trump, he’s going to let them do it because he doesn’t care about governing (see: making money, avoiding jail, and lashing out at perceived enemies).

Musk really did a Nazi salute. It doesn’t matter whether it’s because he’s a Nazi or, as I suspect, he’s a 4Chan-style troll who thinks it’s funny. The man is the heir of an apartheid South African emerald mine shareholder who bought a bunch of tech companies. He’s the stereotype of a James Bond villain. Assume he’s operating in bad faith and move on.

The biggest problem for the Project 2025 guys and Musk is going to be when they want different things and Trump has to decide. Trump doesn’t really give a shit so his rulings will have no rhyme or reason other than what fulfills his own agenda and beyond that, whim and flattery.

And your MAGA neighbors, especially if you live in a suburb, exurb, or rural area? If they’re that kind of Jesus-y, the kind that says preaching mercy to the downtrodden and frightened should get you deported, they have no idea what’s coming. They think that in the hierarchical society that Project 2025 leans toward, they will be big fishes in small ponds, who get to decide the exceptions to the harsh rules. They’re overestimating their importance. Your local poobahs are not wielding the Shirley exception in the Project 2025 regime.

(They’ve also drastically underestimated the number of things in their own lives the federal government funds, things that executive orders and DOGE will bring to a standstill, but that’s a whole nother discussion.)

This particular line of thought is brought to you by the confirmation of Pete Hegseth, a drunk and a rapist and so on whom Trump hired because Trump liked how he looked on TV. And by the shady way that Senators Collins, Murkowski, and McConnell were let off the hook for voting against him this one time because Republicans knew the Vice President would break the tie. Senator Ernst was whipped into line, and I’m waiting for the moment when Collins and Murkowski either lose their free pass or get primaried for too many wrong votes.

That’s how it is now. It really is that simple.