Fake outrage is kind of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s bag, and if you have the sense God gave a Gosar, you might even think he’s good at it. Gaslighting and projection are Republicans’ go-to answers to every controversy these days, and they’re now furiously spinning reality to make it appear as if the current protests outside SCOTUS justices’ homes—and the “appalling” leak of a draft decision ending Roe v. Wade—are the big outrages of the moment. Not the fact that a Supreme Court justice used the rantings of an 18th century witchcraft-believing rape advocate to vaporize 50 years of established legal precedent.
Unsurprisingly, Cruz—the long-sought-after missing link between modern humans and modern beefsteak fungus—is keen to force the issue.
The biggest potential stumbling block for this narrative? The Jan. 6 insurrection, which Cruz once called “a violent terrorist attack on the Capitol,” and which his host for Monday night’s forced birther-fest, Sean Hannity, once seemed to think was kind of a big deal.
Apparently, drawing chalk pictures of coat hangers outside the homes of the handful of Americans who are poised to strip away the reproductive rights of tens of millions of people is beyond the pale, but attempting to violently overthrow the legitimate government of the United States is just a “boys will be boys” trifle.
Sandwiched in between incendiary lies about Democrats really being Marxists and some misleading tripe about so-called “partial birth abortions,” we find this risible nonsense from these two jabronis:
HANNITY: “Now, they’re okay with sending and allowing or approving of people going to the homes and doxxing the homes of these justices. Why the selective moral outrage, and why the silence of people that seemed so outraged over the one riot but ignore the 574 other riots and ignore the doxxing? I’m trying to understand their logic.”
CRUZ: “Well, it’s all politics for them. The ends justify the means, and it’s complete hypocrisy. You see this in the corporate media, you see this among Democrats. On Jan. 6, 2021, you had tens of thousands of people peacefully protesting, and yet the corporate media and Democrats slander them with the made-up term ‘insurrectionists,’ and yet in this instance they are not willing to call off their goons even now, even now as this has the potential to escalate and escalate further.”
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Herein lies the danger inherent in only watching Fox News. Not only do viewers find themselves having spent all that loot from those Magnum: PI reverse mortgages on shitty Franklin Mint Ronnie Reagan swag and Trumpy Bears, they’ve also lost the ability to sort fact from fiction—even when the most relevant fact has been exhaustively documented on videotape.
“On Jan. 6, 2021, you had tens of thousands of people peacefully protesting.”
Oh yeah? Where was that? Because outside the Capitol it looked like Free Bat and Bath Salts Night at Fenway Park.
And while it’s fairly easy to draw a distinction between the current pro-Roe protests and the Jan. 6 insurrection—by helpfully pointing out that no one has tried to hang Brett Kavanaugh or bash in Samuel Alito’s head with a flagpole—there’s also the inconvenient (for Cruz, anyway) fact that abortion rights advocates are protesting something that actually happened rather than nonexistent election theft. This isn’t just another of Donald Trump’s Adderall- and ego-fueled fever dreams: People’s rights actually are being stolen.
But hey, Republicans are going to toss this seven-layer salad against the wall and see what sticks, no matter what progressives do. And they’ll be loud as fuck while they’re doing it. So it falls on us to be louder.
Luckily, we have the truth on our side.
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