You wouldn’t seek medical treatment from a guy who proudly told you he wasn’t a doctor. And there’s no way you’d take medical advice from someone who repeatedly displayed zero grasp of basic human biology.
Likewise, you wouldn’t allow just some guy off the street to roof your house. Or fix your clogged pipes. Or work on your car. Or care for your pets. Or even cut your damn grass.
Yet, election after election, we do exactly these things when choosing people to lead the country.
For some reason, experience, intelligence and superior education have become less important in American right-wing politics than proudly not knowing anything about anything and having never ever been here before.
For GOP voters, forget the guy who understands the issues and has a plan, give them “the outsider” — the candidate who hasn’t served a day in office, doesn’t understand how any process works and who rarely, if ever, attempts to explain in detail plans to address real, actual issues.
Such a setup has produced, thanks to this state, such tremendous results as Donald Trump in the White House, Tommy Tuberville in the Senate and Barry Moore in the U.S. House of Representatives. At the state level, it has produced an Alabama Legislature that is routinely befuddled by basic governance and ignorant of the laws to the point that the lawmakers literally have been unable to follow even the ones they’ve written themselves.
And it is costing us. Big time.
Setting aside the everyday toll that we pay for continuing to elect good ol’ boys who’ll maintain the status quo and keep the lib’ruls from dragging everyone in the state kicking and screaming into the 20th century, there’s now the tolls we’re paying for the political games of the doofuses.
A few months back, as I begged you not to vote out Doug Jones in favor of the babbling bag of Trump cliches that is Tommy Tuberville, I warned you that doing so could cost Alabama billions of dollars. Because Tuberville is totally clueless, isn’t well liked and has a penchant for grandstanding and pandering instead of actually working to serve the state.
Turns out, I was way off.
He might end up costing us trillions.
Before even being sworn into office, Tuberville is on the verge of costing us billions. As APR’s Bill Britt reported on Friday, Tuberville’s plan to join Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks — another member of our blithering idiotmen brigade — and his challenge to the presidential election has so enraged Senate Republicans that they are threatening to move Space Force out of Huntsville.
Now, granted, Space Force is a ridiculous waste of taxpayer money for a program that lacks a coherent purpose or plan, but, hey, it’s gotta go somewhere so why not here. It’s not as if our refusal would send the tax dollars back to working people. So, we’ll happily take the billions in money and jobs, and build a Millenium Falcon or make up plans to send Matt Damon to Mars, or whatever a Space Force does.
But Tuberville’s ignorance of the processes, along with his narcissism, is getting in the way of all that.
Even without my warning, this should not come as a surprise to anyone. Tuberville repeatedly told everyone exactly who he was and exactly what his intentions were — to emulate Trump at every turn, to follow Trump into every scandal, to react as Trump would to every situation.
And Alabamians voted overwhelmingly for that, falling once again for “the outsider.” Just as they fell for Trump, another outsider who also has been an unmitigated disaster for this state.
In the span of four years, Trump’s managed to turn Alabama farmers into welfare queens by completely wrecking nearly every trade market and then bailing out farmers — with billions upon billions going to large, industrial farms — with record amounts of subsidies and handouts.
Trump diverted billions more set to be spent on military bases around Alabama and on a ship-building project in Mobile, and sent it instead to pay for his idiotic, non-functioning border wall. You remember, the one Mexico was supposed to pay for.
I guess if you’re gullible enough to believe Mexico was paying for it to begin with, you’ll be gullible enough to believe the wall was more important than decent housing for the men and women who defend the country.
Trump’s trade battles and tariffs have also damaged the auto industry in the state. And earlier this month he attacked funding that would allow the FBI to relocate many of its operations to Huntsville — a project worth billions to Alabama.
But Trump, like Tuberville, is an outsider. Yeah, sure, he’s cost us billions and consistently been an international embarrassment, but then, hey, he isn’t PC. He says what’s on his mind. He’s different. He takes a unique approach.
Which might explain why our heart attack was treated with Tylenol, our clogged pipes are also now cracked, the new shingles leak and our grass is dead.
But it doesn’t explain why y’all keep voting for these yahoos.
