Hey, I'm beginning to think Republicans aren't as good at Christmas as they said they were

Merry post-Christmas. Did you have a good holiday? A quiet one? Or were you nearly driven to the point of madness by the howls of the damned, your mind shaken, your grip on reality growing ever more tenuous as ravens of doubt and crows of new suspicions pecked mercilessly at your fingers, the name Epstein burning itself into your very soul, burned as if by one of those woodburning hobby kits that used to be much more popular but now seem much harder to find? No? It was pleasant, you say? Thank goodness.

I always wanted one of those woodburning kits, by the way. I had relatives who had them but for some reason my own parents were iffy on the idea of letting a preteen play with a custom-manufactured ignition source. Also, cars had cigarette lighters back then so if a kid really needed a permanent burn scar all you needed to do was climb into the front seat, press a button, and wait.

But I'm afraid I just don't understand Christmas anymore, which is odd because it was supposed to be saved, a whole lot of people insisted that they saved it, in fact, so we should be seeing the maximal, fully patched and presentable version of Christmas this year. Instead, every present is more expensive. And all the food is more expensive. And Indiana Senate Majority Floor Leader & President of Signature Countertops Chris Garten is posting AI-generated pictures of himself kicking Santa Claus down a flight of steps and beating the holy holiday shit out of him.

"Hang on," you're probably saying. "I was mostly following along through the woodworking part, but you lost me on the Santa and the Republican state lawmaker—"

No, you read it right the first time. As Indiana Senate Majority Floor Leader, a Republican of note and simultaneously the president of Signature Countertops Inc., according to his LinkedIn biography, Chris Garten knows that the true spirit of Christmas is finding Santa and kicking the shit out of him until he flees the state. The inspiration for this imaginary assault appears to be "unfunded mandates," I guess? It's not clear?

Not sure what to make of the break-away stripper sleeves, not sure what to make of any of the rest of it, but inserting a cheering Republican crowd in the background of each of your "I'm beating up Santa" pictures is a statement all on its own.

Yay! Wreck him, Mr. Senator sir! That'll teach St. Jerkface to give toys to children!

Now, you can't run across a post like this and not want to ask why. Of course you're going to ask why, there's no way in hell you're going to get away without your brain demanding to know why. I've got only a handful of theories, which I will now present in order:

1. Cocaine
2. Also cocaine?
3. Still cocaine, but maybe it's blue this time. I don't know much about current cocaine trends, so I'm just guessing here.

After a great worldwide cry of "hey buddy are you okay," Garten didn't exactly clarify things except to reveal that apparently generating imaginary assaults on Santa Claus was something he did to pass time with his children.

A few hours after posting, Garten acknowledged the backlash in a follow-up message where he labeled his critics “snowflakes.”

“Lots of intolerance, swearing, and outrage on display over a few AI pics I had a blast designing with my kids,” Garten said. “Some of you clowns are just insufferable. Hopefully your negativity stays in the comments and not directed at your families.”

Oh. Oh, well when you put it that way it sounds like a wholesome—no, I'm still going to have to go with "cocaine" here. I also think maybe those kids need a wellness check, and probably the sooner the better.

This, then, is what we get when conservatives win dominance over state and country and feel freed to do whatever they like. First they demand to be put in charge of Christmas, and when they think they've gotten that wish they reveal that their idea for sprucing up the season was, hey go figure, performative acts of public violence. It's always performative acts of public violence, why the hell did we expect it'd be different this time around.

Who is this for, though? Who is it meant to appeal to, as he sends these pictures over the internet for a world of strangers to see?

"Daddy," some kid in Indiana is no doubt asking, "why is that man hurting Santa?"

"It's because Santa was trying to give children presents, Billy. He's a socialist and we don't take kindly to that around here."

"I kinda wanted another pencil for Christmas. I was hoping Santa would—"

"You've already got two, you little brat. What the hell would you use a third one for?"

So no, I'm still not clear on what our Republican overlords imagine Christmas to be? It mainly seems to be a holiday for sitting at home with your children while teaching them who needs to be beaten up or deported to a torture prison.

Miller's just pretending at being stupid, right? Or is he watching an old Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra show and seething with rage that America let in Italians a century back and it led to decades of swarthy crooning?

Well, at least Miller's pursuing a more "traditional" Christmas. I doubt the holiday would be complete without somebody's dad getting shitfaced and ranting about the Italians. Families didn't used to boast about it in pro-Nazi chatrooms, though.

And then there's this, of course.

Nothing says "I'm a bitter old man who hates his family and the feeling is mutual" quite like spending Christmas Day alone, angry, and firing off 200 individual social media posts condemning your enemies for existing. It's what Baby Jesus would have done.

GUY CAME HERE TO GIVE ME MYRRH. WHO GIVES MYRRH TO A BABY? WHO THE HELL WANTS MYRRH, DOES HE OWN A MYRRH DEALERSHIP? FEELS LIKE A SCAM TO ME!

We don't need to thumb through The Criminal's posts, they're all the usual stuff. There's one that stands out because it starts out "Merry Christmas to all, including the many Sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein," drifts off to talking about the Radical Left and the Failing New York Times, and lands with a "Enjoy what may be your last Merry Christmas!" That one is a ride.

I just don't know, though. A parade of conservative weirdos have spent decades telling us we're always doing Christmas wrong, and the next year something else is wrong, and the year after that M&Ms aren't sexy enough and Christmas is ruined again, and it just keeps going.

But I don't think that's right. I think these weird, weird men may have been conning us the whole time, because I don't think the spirit of Christmas was ever supposed to be "Hey kids, wouldn't it be neat if I beat the crap out of Santa on the statehouse steps?" I don't think it's supposed to be a day off from work so that you can spend some time at home working up a good angry sweat over Italians stealing jobs meant for American heartthrobs?

Sitting alone, seething about everything that slides across your too-loud television set, wondering why everyone else is avoiding you? Yeah, I guess. That's always been a prominent American subculture and we shouldn't get preachy about it.

The rest of it though, that just doesn't seem right. And I know every one of these assholes is rich enough to get a woodburning kit if they wanted one, so what the hell are they always so angry about.