All You Fascists Can Go Hell

Translator was one of the primary bands on 415 Records, the San Francisco label I ran before going to work for Warner Bros. Eventually Steve Barton, one of the principal songwriters, embarked on a solo career and today he sent me this new song he just released, “All You Fascists Can Go To Hell.” Barton told me that he wrote the song in August 2018. “Trump had been president for a year and a half, he recalls. “Every day had been a barrage of mean-spirited tweets and chaos. I took a look online just now to see if there was a particular event that sparked the song. In early Aug 2018, Sarah Huckabee Sanders had called the press the ‘enemy of the people’ from the White House podium. Maybe that was the straw that pushed a button for me. So much had been happening from the inauguration until then. Stress was high. I just had to get it out.” And it's so damned catchy. Please give it a listen.

Yesterday John Pavlovitz admitted, publicly, proudly, that his agenda is liberal and woke and that he’s “insisting that the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the planet we’re sitting on be protected from degradation—not subjected to it by those of us fortunate enough to be here” while pushing for “a diverse and equitable nation that makes room for more than just white American, Republican Christians who were lucky enough to be born here.” Pavlovitz, a pastor, affirmed that “God is neither white, nor male, nor American, nor Christian— and that God doesn’t specifically bless America, and at the same time “pushing back against Nazis, white supremacists, and racists— whether they’re marching in the streets or marching through Congress [and he was also] demanding that no one have to choose between life-saving care or paying their mortgage.”

This is the kind of thing that has made already deranged and weak-minded Republicans in Congress go into orbit. Yesterday Jamaal Bowman— who I remember before he was in Congress as a kind of nerdy junior high school principal— sent an e-mail to his supporters mentioning that “Marjorie Taylor Greene is a white supremacist. Describing somebody's beliefs— which are clear for everybody to see— isn't ‘like calling a person of color the n word,’ no matter what false equivalencies she might draw. When she took the time in a press conference in front of countless reporters to call me ‘aggressive’ and say she feels ‘threatened’ by a lively, public conversation on the Capitol steps, it was clear that Representative Greene is happy to spread racist, hateful talking points from a podium in the House of Representatives. It's shameful to the state of Georgia and to the whole Congress that a person who trafficks this kind of hate is walking the halls of the Capitol and sitting on committees that are supposed to write our laws… Representative Greene is unfortunately becoming one of the leaders of the Republican Party, and it's a disappointment to Congress and to our country there is no bottom for her hate-fueled ideas, or limit to her rise to power within the GOP. It shows who the GOP are becoming— a party of hate.”

I’ve lost track of how many people Greene has been screeching about impeaching this week… the U.S. Attorney for DC, Matthew Graves, for prosecuting insurrectionists and domestic terrorists, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland… and once again, Joe Biden. She called a press conference yesterday and accused Biden of purposefully failing to fulfill his responsibilities of the presidency by not securing the country’s borders and protecting national security, insisting she would file articles of impeachment against him (again). The clown from Georgia babbled that “It is with the highest amount of solemnity that I announce my intention to introduce articles of impeachment today on the head of this America-last executive branch, that has been working since Jan. 20, 2021, to systematically destroy this country, the president of the United States, Joseph Robinette Biden… His policies, directives and statements surrounding the southern border have violated our laws and destroyed our country. Biden has blatantly violated his constitutional duty, and he is a direct threat to our national security… There’s never any consequences for anyone in the federal government when regular American citizens face consequences all the time, and I’m introducing these articles because this is what people are demanding.”

Ian Sams, White House spokesman: “Is there a bigger example of a shameless sideshow political stunt than a trolling impeachment attack by one of the most extreme MAGA members in Congress over ‘national security’ while she actively demands to defund the FBI and even said she ‘would’ve been armed’ and ‘would have won’ the January 6 insurrection if only she’d been in charge of it?”

At the same time, another MAGAt who would like to compete with Marjorie Traitor Greene for Queen of the Crazies, Anna Paulina Luna, filed a motion to have Adam Schiff expelled from Congress. She claims that the widely discredited Durham Report proves Schiff pushed lies about Trump’s being a Kremlin puppet [which he was and still is]. Congresswoman Lunatica: “He used his position on House Intelligence to push a lie that cost American taxpayers millions of dollars and abused the trust placed in him as Chairman. The Durham Report makes clear that the Russian Collusion was a lie from day one and Schiff knowingly used his position in an attempt to divide our country.”

Schiff responded on MSNBC: “I’m convinced when this dark chapter of our history is written, it will reflect that those Republican members who lacked the courage to stand up to the most unethical president in U.S. history,Donald Trump, consoled themselves by attacking those who did… Durham spends four years trying to prove this deep state conspiracy theory that Trump kept telling his base was going to be proven. The whole thing, of course, was a big bust.”

Rebecca Onion: "Like almost everything Hawley does, the book is an epic disaster. Why did a man who is probably our leading national pipsqueak decide that promoting manliness was his ticket to political power?"