DL Open Thread Sunday, October 3, 2021

My theory about why conservatives behave the way they do — they’re inferior and they know it — isn’t original to me. Angie Maxwell, an academic at the University of Arkansas, wrote an entire book about it, “The Indicted South: Public Criticism, Southern Inferiority, and the Politics of Whiteness,” and explained in an interview how that psychology pertains to vaccine resistance:

I argued that the whole experience of white Southerners is this cycle of criticism, then backlash and entrenchment, or changing the rules. This pattern might help us understand the resistance to change, defensiveness, and reflex to turn toward privatization that has dominated white Southern culture in the last 120 years. …

When it comes to the inferiority complex idea, and how that can account for some of this hesitancy and resistance, what I see is a territorial kind of thinking — not among all white Southerners but among a portion that’s maybe not as educated or that lives in super homogenous communities — that resorts to conspiratorial thinking to deal with the COVID issue. This is one of the compensations to an inferiority complex. You change the rules: These people recommending the vaccine don’t know what’s really going on. You’re smarter, you have more information, you have inside information. You’re not the dumb one, they’re the dumb ones. This can be very powerful to a population that feels criticized a lot of the time.

Global warming causes more flood damage every year, and taxpayers are on the hook for much of the bill because the federal government heavily subsidizes flood insurance. Starting this week, though, the rules changed, shifting more of the burden to homeowners. In fact, most homes in flood zones belong to regular folks, not rich ones, prompting worries about the poor suffering for the sins of the rich, but the new rules were designed so that the larger the house, the smaller the subsidy rate.

Dead-eyed South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has bigger problems than people learning she was boned by skeevy subhuman Corey Lewandowski. Like most Republicans, she was so clumsy about enriching herself and her family that she was easily caught pulling strings to get her daughter a real estate appraiser’s license despite her daughter flunking the test, and she forced the head of the agency that denied her to retire. I still haven’t found a single shred of evidence that Noem has any talents whatsoever, making it clear that she was elected because — this was a low bar to clear — she was one of the hottest women in South Dakota.

John Hinckley, who in retrospect tried to do the country a great favor 40 years ago, has been released from custody, his mental illness having been in remission for more than 30 years. It would be wrong, I know, but someone should tell him that Jodie Foster really, really doesn’t like Donald Trump.

The ultimate proof that the Republican Party should be renamed the Whiny Little Bitches Club: Supreme Court “justice” Sam Alito went to conservatism’s favorite Catholic redoubt, Notre Dame University (may their football team suck forever), to whinge about criticism of the blatantly political body’s fascism slant. In my “which SCOTUS justice dies?” competition, Stripsearch Sammy is always at or near the top of the list — there are lots of authoritarian Italian-American shitballs who could replace you, Sammy, whereas they’d have to search high and low for an Uncle Tom to replace Clarence Thomas.

Only the good die young, but you can sometimes ease the truly awful into retirement if they’re old enough: 91-year-old Pat Robertson announced he’s giving up full-time hosting duties on the “religious” TV scam- and hatefest he founded. It’s the end of an era: Robertson’s was like the Model T of faux-religious hatefests, showing others how they could pretend a blatantly political message was “religious” and therefore tax-exempt. Our only satisfaction is knowing that Satan is spending a bundle to build that new Christian Telecasters’ Wing down on Level 9 — he’s finding out that owning the souls of developers and contractors is no sweet deal — and Pat will soon be joining them.

The floor’s yours. Sweep up when you’re done.