THEY'RE ALL GOING TO CLEAN UP DODGE

Yesterday, Texas governor Greg Abbott was asked why the state's new six-week abortion ban has no exception for pregnancies that result from rape.

“Let’s be clear: rape is a crime,” Abbott said. “And Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets.”

That's the answer to this problem: eliminate rape! Why didn't anyone think of that before? Specifically, why didn't Abbott, who's been governor since January 2015 and was the state's attorney general for the previous twelve years, think of that?

Public officials can make a difference, but they can't eliminate violent crime. Yet the voters who support conservative politicians regularly thrill to the notion that their heroes are macho men who can use force to simply do away with crime, terrorism ... or their political opponents.

This is from a Guardian story about yesterday's demonstrations in Brazil on behalf of President Jair Bolsonaro:

“It’s going to be glorious for our nation. Glorious!” said Evilasio Inácio da Silva, a Bolsonaro-supporting carpenter who had driven for two-and-a-half days by motorbike to reach the demo from his home 1,200 miles away in the north-east.

“My arm’s a bit dead ... But it’s worth it. Because we’re fighting for our freedom,” said Silva, who was wearing a T-shirt depicting Bolsonaro as the Bruce Willis character John McClane from the film Die Hard.

(Emphasis added.)

In America, posters of Donald Trump as Rocky Balboa remain popular on the right, while MAGA cartoonist Ben Garrison depicts Trump as a shirtless athlete whose chest literally repels cannonballs. (The cannonballs represent enemies such as the mainstream media and social justice warriors.)

When a conservative talks the way Abbott talked yesterday, it's plausible to right-wing voters. Conservatives are tough! If they weren't constrained by the law and those damn liberals, they really could clean up Dodge!

They're action movie heroes.




They shoot stuff in campaign ads.




(Joe Manchin also ran an ad like that once.)

It's absurd, but right-wing voters fall for it nearly every time.