Despite (or perhaps because of) his role in enabling sexual assaults, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan remains in Congress, where he has become something of a poster child for sweaty conservative yelling in defense of monstrous conservative behavior. And if you think that description is too harsh, I promise you it's the toned-down version.
The coatless wonder has again piped up with A Thing, and again the Thing is the same incoherent gibberish now favored by his nationalist crapsack allies. It is worth using as a launching pad for yet another reminder of just how radical the party has become, and especially how its radicalism is primarily just furious contrarianism to anything a book-learning American says. I'll embed his Thing into the most concise rebuttal I've seen.
Yes, as approximately everyfkingbody in the nation is well aware, vaccination mandates are as American as apple pie, baseball, and (if you’re a particular R-OH) enabling the sexual assault of teenage athletes under the pretense of helping them further their careers. Vaccination mandates are everywhere.
If your child goes to school, vaccinations are mandated so that your child does not spread pestilence and death to every other family in town.
If your child goes to college, vaccinations are mandated again and for the same reasons.
If you want to leave the country, many vaccinations are required—or you're not going to be getting off the plane after your flight.
If you join the military, you will be assembly-line vaccinated against a long string of diseases or be placed outside the front gates and invited to walk home.
Individual employers—most notably, medical providers—can mandate vaccinations as a condition of employment because, again, being a gainfully employed petri dish is not an American right. Letting employers do whatever they want to employees is a patriotic American right—one that Ol' Sweaty vigorously and sweatily supports in seemingly all other contexts.
The Republican version of Americanism has little to do with anything happening on the ground in actual America, past or present. It consists entirely of contrarianism. If the man wearing pancake makeup says that masks are bad, masks are now bad. Suppose a worldwide and deadly new disease emerges requiring massive government response to save lives, but the self-absorbed would-be strongman in charge of that government response believes the disease is a hoax invented to make him look bad. In that case, Jim Jordan will say the disease is a hoax created to make his friends look bad.
Jordan has a lot of things he believes to be American. They consist of a set of opportunistic nothings with no common thread other than Jim Jordan's friends get to do crimes, and Jim Jordan's enemies are "un-American" for asking Jim Jordan's voters to keep themselves safe even when Jim Jordan's voters would much rather be marching around government buildings with weapons demanding that other people be less safe.
If you have any sense of patriotism left, I beg of you, America, treat Jim Jordan like a bag of dirt. Always. Every day. Take special time out of your day to note to someone around you that Jim Jordan, personally, is a grotesque and loathsome and gutless toad of a human being. Do not treat these people with respect. Do not let the media pretend that they are worth respect. Do not let television interviews go by without reminding the interviewers that they sanction people who have made getting away with criminal acts a core plank of the party's platform.
As we speak, Jim Jordan remains the most prominent House supporter of a fellow Republican being investigated for sex crimes—in an investigation whose public components have now thoroughly established the man to have engaged in illegal acts. Jim Jordan continues to support Matt Gaetz for the same reason all Republicans do: They believe Republican-led crimes should be permitted.
This was the sole message of two separate impeachment trials; one put into motion after an attempt at international extortion and another for orchestrating an attack on our democracy itself.
Jim Jordan is the shouting, hoarse voice of Republicanism. Republicans want it that way; Republicans can think of no more fitting figure to be the screaming defense whenever any Republican, anywhere, does something crooked or criminal that requires investigation or possible sanctions.
I don't care that Jim Jordan thinks vaccine requirements are now "un-American." Of course he does. Republicanism has now been forced into that position because treating the pandemic with seriousness would expose, after 600,000 American deaths, the malevolent incompetence of conservative responses. Jim Jordan's only thoughts come from other people. Jim Jordan can't so much as use a toilet by himself unless a more powerful Republican tells him when and where and how, or a Democrat tells him not to.
Jim Jordan's caucus is willing to kill Americans if that's what it takes to pretend that their movement's bumbling, buffoonish mishandling of government has been anything but a fiasco. Don't ignore these people. Despise them. Be on the record as one of the "real" Americans willing to treat these crooked crime-protecting hacks with half the contempt they deserve.