Winners & Losers | Are Witches Invading Virginia?

Remember when Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told ICE to “get the fuck out of Minneapolis?” That was awesome.

At the time, I felt kind of uncomfortable at the positive feelings I had for that statement. All social media is built to keep you angry and agitated. If you accidentally land on the X “For You” feed (God help you), you’ll find yourself face-to-face with street fights, videos of muggings, men punching women, shootings, plane crashes, dash-cam footage of car crashes, wild animals mauling tourists.

I could go on. That list is actually the tamest of the bunch (please, please, please take my word for it).

In this political moment, it’s incredibly important — at least in my opinion — to be rational. You have to save your outrage for the truly outrageous, or else it loses all meaning. When the entire internet is conspiring toward making you as mad as possible, this is a real task.

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You only have to look at the anger of the right to know what I’m talking about. They’re pissed as hell that women are playing men’s sports (or is it the other way around?) They were outraged over a bullshit conspiracy theory that teachers were providing litter boxes for children who identified as cats. And have you heard of this guy, Hunter Biden? Don’t even get them started. Also, Benghazi and emails and Obama, and, and, and …!

Anger, anxiety, hatred — these are like viruses looking for a host. I always imagine that bad feelings like anxiety begin not with an object, but with the emotion itself, and then attach to an object to sustain themselves. Nothing made Republicans mad. They are just…mad. Do you believe that if MAGA was shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that children weren’t using litter boxes in schools that their anger would disappear? No. They are angry and they will find a reason for it … somewhere. Anywhere.

On the other hand, anger is a real emotion, and it’s valid. You are allowed to be angry. It’s even better when your anger is well-placed.

The Jacob Frey thing, for me at least, represented the moment when my sadness at the second Trump term turned to righteous anger. I remembered that anger is real, and nobody has to give me permission to feel it. And the anger I felt was good and powerful.

Last week was stupid. It was the dumbest week of the dumbest year of the dumbest decade. You can claim that there were dumber weeks, and I probably won’t disagree. I don’t really care which is the dumbest week. But last week is at least in the running.

It’s gone — to me, at least — from absurd and stupid and you-just-gotta-laugh-because-you’d-cry-otherwise, to fuck these people. I’m so sick of it.

This week’s Loser is a total clown who has failed upward and I’m going to make fun of him, but make no mistake, I feel anger toward this guy. Our Winner is not so much a person as it is an expression of our collective anger in action.

Sadness is lingering and isolating. Anger, my friends, can be productive.

Hung Cao, Loser

Welcome to MAGA Loser Whack-a-Mole. Just when you think you’ve heard it all, a Vietnamese-American who is also a Christian nationalist becomes our acting Secretary of the Navy.

Let me back up.

It turns out we are the middle of conducting one of the most substantial Naval blockades in decades and a hot war in the Middle East, in which our Navy is acting as the tip of the spear. So, of course, last week the Secretary of the Navy was fired. ...