A Dad Calls NORAD to Inquire About Santa and Instead Tells Biden to F*** Off

How the hyper politicization of everything makes Rightists feel less dopey about themselves

NORAD, or the North American Aerospace Defense Command, has been providing kids with updates on Santa’s sleigh for 60 years. It is common for presidents and first ladies to take part in the calls which come into the NORAD Santa hotline.

One poor kid’s loser father, a shithead from Oregon, spoke rather gruffly with President Biden and then told him “Let’s go, Brandon,” which among dumber and more vile haters of America means “f*** off, Biden.”

I often try to understand where the abject hatred for our country comes from on the Right? Could it have been propelled by watching one too many spins of the wheel on the “Wheel of Fortune?” Pat Sajak is a huge Trumpist, after all.

Did it come from living vicariously through the heroes of “The Walking Dead?” Surely, many of the traitors on the Right not only think that such a zombie Armageddon is possible but it’s probably the reason the dummies refuse to get vaxxed.

There are obviously reasons many of these people so hate our country and without making this yet another rant about how much I despise these people, I want to dip into the nuances of what I will nicely call their “misunderstandings.”

First of all, I think a lot of the people who fall for these bundles of lies peddled by Fox and other right wing media are just goddamned bored silly. If you happen to be an adherent of right-wing politics and economics, then you are most likely also a victim of those politics — unless wealthy, then you are a beneficiary.

The moment the insanity of Reagan supply-side economics became the driving force for all right wing economic decisions the theories of traditional economics were abandoned. Political considerations took over. It became a political choice by the Right to embolden and enrich the wealthy at the expense of the middle and working classes.

A lot of smart, but also supremely naive and probably racist Republicans, bought into the Kool-Aid moment because they knew that endlessly cutting taxes for the rich would first all of make them really wealthy; and secondly, starve the “beast,” which is the federal government, so there would be no money left for “the minorities and welfare queens.”

Forty years have since passed, twenty-five of them impregnated with the masterfully-produced faux-news-capades of Fox. Two generations of conservatives have now grown up on the lie that gutting taxes for the rich benefits everyone. Also burned into the frailness of their mental state is that anyone not supportive of always enriching the rich is an unpatriotic traitor.

Corporations Became People

Beginning in 1978, a Supreme Court decision said that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend money on state ballot initiatives. That decision then led to the more infamous SCOTUS decision known as Citizens United.

The Supreme Court’s 5–4 First Amendment decision in 2010 that extended to corporations for the first time full rights to spend money as they wish in candidate elections — federal, state and local. The decision reversed a century of legal understanding, unleashed a flood of campaign cash and created a crescendo of controversy that continues to build today (When Did Companies Become People?).

And, in a sense it gave to the powerful corporations all of the same rights that individual citizens have.

Long before but in earnest since, our rights as lowly humans in the United States have slowly been whittled away. While at times it seems we have actually more rights, that is the part of the manipulative games they play to pit us against each other.

With each little chink in the armor, the rights of corporations, their owners, shareholders and proponents have taken full precedence over “we the people;” and, because they are corporations with products like the fake news of Fox, lobbyists, lawyers and politicians in their pockets, they have masterfully convinced a majority of Americans that their individual freedom and rights are somehow tied to the freedoms entitled to corporations.

When multi-billion dollar corporations are expected to pay their fair share, Rightists suddenly become outraged. They align their lives with the corporations which, they are told in their media, are being “maligned” by the socialist ways of the Democrats.

Mythically, a minimum-wage worker in Alabama, employed no more than twenty hours a week and barely able to afford the rent for his trailer, will suddenly become militantly opposed to that corporation paying its fair share. He believes, because he is told, that if the wealthy corporation begins to pay more then “they will come for him next” — the popular mantra on the Right these days.

As a nation of comparatively unhealthy people, compared to the rest of the developed world and some not so developed nations, you would think that most Americans could agree that we need a cheaper way. Instead, rationalizations like “if you get free health care from the government then you we will all become a communist slaves” work beautifully to get the Americans most in need of free health care to be against it.

How can the average person, who can’t afford insurance, and who will never ever consider going to a doctor because of costs, seriously rationalize that free or inexpensive health care is bad? Even though everyone does want it, Rightists have been indoctrinated to think that making it free or cheaper will make American a communist state.

Then again, most of the gorgers of the right wing media aren’t really thinking about much but rather just reacting to the buttons pressed by the cable news. Inundated with perfectly packaged lies that make them think that a refusal to accept free health care is actually somehow saving America from the evils of socialism, their passion for fighting for the conditions that will make their health care even more expensive would make the most die-hard CEO of Big Pharma proud.

Foxified and even in many ways mentally-incapacitated, which I believe hardcore Fox-watchers are, the average sucker/Joe spends his days and nights unknowingly lobbying for the corporations that have systematically eaten away at our freedom. When the wrong of those corporate-crafted views is pointed out, maybe feeling a little dopey and ashamed by their lack of intellectual curiosity, they lash out.

Not All of Them Are Dumb, Though

I was recently astounded by a smart friend. He is someone who reads a lot of history books. He knows what he knows, let’s put it that way. We were talking about the aftermath of January 6th and he grew confused. January 6th ended, he said, on January 7th.

He sees no continued anger or potential for violence. I was overreacting about the potential for something in our future that could be worse than Jan 6, he laughed.

This friend also considers nothing more evil than taxes or unions. The Wall Street Journal is the gospel and The New York Times, and other similar media, he truly believes cause most of the misunderstandings in our nation.

While there is some validity about how the media can be grotesque and carpetbagger-y (they take advantage of the intellectually lazy on both sides of the political divide), he never criticizes Fox. In his world, Fox errs on the side of good values, I guess.

Rightists have no problem completely defecating on everything that has made America what it is. The very reasons we became, in their fascist view, the country that is better than all others are now, one by one, being destroyed and weakened.

Trump ran through a long list of the parts of our country that used to truly make us exceptional, and so positively different from the rest of the world, and he tore, ripped, kicked and beat those things to the point where everything once held dear is now null and void. The cultural bonds have been minced and shredded and hate anyone not worshipping Trump prevails.

The disdain for our past is endemic among rightists. No institution, no battle and no sacrifice is sacred and no past wrong is worth a minute’s worth of reflection.

My friend never before spoke about the media being “fake” and never used the words “well, you never know what’s truth these days,” until Trump appeared on the scene — and then News Corp began to silently embed that narrative into their opinion-based news reporting.

January 6th was atrocious and heinous in so many ways. As a veteran of the Army, it makes me violently angry and I would seriously have no qualms with seeing the organizers of that day tried and hung for their treachery against our nation; and yet, there are tens of millions of the sick, as I have described them above, who saw — and continue to see — nothing wrong with January 6th.

Like my friend said, it was some idiots overreacting but, they are an extreme minority. His angst over that day never, ever even came close to the pain I felt, and feel, to this very day. He, however, like so many on the Right, never served a day in the military. Having heard the gospel of Reagan, he found those values to be the ones worth living for — those values, however, for many revolve solely around the comfort of self — my friend less so as he is a very good family man, friend and has done amazing things professionally.

Most rightists don’t give a shit about their neighbors, America, our honor or much else that requires them to turn off the corporate noise for five minutes and just think, on their own, about what is good and what is bad.

And so, a “loving father,” perhaps with his children listening nearby, calls the president of the United States on the one day, in my opinion, when all of the nonsense and hate should be set aside, Christmas, and rudely dismisses our president.

Maybe omicron will find this dummy and humble him — but very little can change the views of these traitors.