Item One: New Mexico
Republicans: Watch out America! They’re coming for your guns!
Democrats and most of the media: Ha! Ha! Ha! There they go again, those paranoid mega-mooga-MAGA GOP idiots! All we want is commonsense gun control!
That’s the way it goes—or the way it went until the Democratic governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, tore up the script.
Competition for the title of Dumbest Politician in America is fierce, but Lujan Grisham has definitely raised the bar. Last week, she took it into her head to issue an executive order suspending both the Second Amendment and state laws governing the possession and carrying of firearms in two New Mexico counties for thirty days—because, you know, “gun violence” constitutes a public health emergency. Violators are subject to confiscation of their guns and a $5,000 fine.
In and of itself, the public health case against guns is monumentally stupid: on a par with the claim that “systemic racism” and “climate change” are public health emergencies. But that observation only scratches the surface of Lujan Grisham’s idiocy. Announcing her decision, she admitted (1) that she had no authority to do so, (2) that she was violating her oath of office, but (3) that constitutional rights and the rule of law were subordinate to her opinion. As an afterthought, the Governor also conceded that her order would do nothing to curb gun violence.
The reaction to Lujan Grisham’s high-handed action was immediate and overwhelmingly negative. The sheriff of one of the two counties affected first opined that the Governor’s order was problematic, then announced that he would not enforce it. The mayor of Albuquerque and his chief of police followed suit. The attorney general of New Mexico, a fellow Democrat, informed Lujan Grisham that his office would not defend her order against the lawsuits certain to be brought against it. “I do not believe it passes constitutional muster,” he said in a letter to the Governor.
The day after Lujan Grisham announced her executive order, gun owners staged a protest demonstration in an Albuquerque park. Many were carrying guns. No arrests were made, no guns were confiscated, no fines were levied.
Even the gun control lobby has denounced Lujan Grisham’s action. Anti-gun activists instantly recognized that she was playing into the hands of the opposition by ratifying its charge that Democrats and progressives are plotting to grab the guns of law-abiding Americans—which, of course, they are. How could she have so careless to say the quiet part out loud?! So now it’s those mega-mooga-MAGA Republicans who are going Ha! Ha! Ha!
Item Two: Virginia
In politics there’s hard money and dark money. And now, thanks to Virginia Democrat Susanna Gibson, there’s also naked money.
Gibson is a candidate for the House of Delegates in the upcoming state election. Currently the Republicans command a slim majority in the lower chamber of the Virginia General Assembly, and she’s running in a newly drawn, very competitive district where the outcome may well determine which party controls the House next year. The Democrats had high hopes for Gibson, whose resume made her seem a formidable candidate: young, personally attractive, married mother of two, nurse practitioner.
You may have noticed my use of the past tense in the above sentence. This is because of an additional item that only recently was added to her resume. It seems that Susanna Gibson, RN, and her husband have a second job as “content producers” on a pornographic livestream website, “Chaturbate,” where they go by the name of—get this—HotWifeExperience. The couple has nearly 6,000 followers on the site. They landed this gig after Gibson announced her candidacy, and there are indications that she’s using the filthy lucre earned thereby to help finance her campaign.
Sure, The Trump-Stormy Daniels story was scandalous— but at least he never costarred with her on Pornhub!
Gibson has denounced the leak that brought her secondary career to light, calling it “an invasion of privacy.” Are you kidding, Susanna? Are you serious? Working in the porn industry is just about the least private thing a girl can do! And running for political office while working in the porn industry is just about the stupidest thing anyone can do! It’s certainly no place for a married mother of two, especially if she has political aspirations.
I suppose there may be a few fourth-wave feminists out there who will, ahem, come to your defense. But most people are going to conclude that you asked for this. They may also conclude that a person with such spectacularly poor judgement has no business serving in the Virginia House of Delegates.
But Susanna Gibson takes no responsibility for the scandal that has engulfed her and her family: It’s all the fault of those mega-mooga-MAGA Republicans! “There’s no line they won’t cross to silence women when they speak up,” she declared. Perhaps so. But can you really blame them when you yourself drew the line, labeled it MY DEMOCRATIC OPPONENT IS A PORNSTAR! and invited them to step over it?
It was a pleasure to read well-organized writing.
If I might add a few thoughts (not to saddle you or your Substack page with my personal perspectives --- so, to emphasize, a reader should not impute my thought other than to me): it is difficult for me to overlook the impact of female emotivism (and the follower behavior of supplicant-male politicians) on the direction of government and the society that it and corporations mold by usurpation.
Women are well suited to creating an abusive state because they act in clandestine, back-door ways behind the shield of bureaucracy, without which they would have no power. Women thrive in pushing the boundaries of government power beyond the legal limits until a policy is de facto established. This is also the way of Communists and, worse, Democrats and corporate anarchotyrannists.
It is not that women are much less or more intelligent than men. But it has to do with deeper modes of organizing biological effort, in coordination with men, in raising families. I am hardly breaking any new ground here.
Men lead. Women elevated to powerful positions generally can only connive, disrupt, pout or nag until they get what they think they want in turning the totality of a nation -- and international affairs -- into a nursery --- doing enormous damage in their wake if acquiesced to.
I guess there's no limit to the stupidity.