No one exploits a catastrophe quite like the “too soon for politics” party.

The Baltimore bridge collapse lays bare the rotting decay that is the Republican Party.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge, once an iconic metal structure spanning the waters which inspired the words of the Star Spangled Banner, now lies twisted and broken, partially submerged in the icy, inky black depths of Patapsco River. It’s once sturdy frame now a tangled mess of steel beams and concrete slabs. Fragments of the bridge jut out eerily above the waterline, a stark reminder of the devastation that has occurred.

Six innocent lives were claimed in that catastrophic collapse. Countless lives were saved by the quick actions of those above. But they were not in time for the six road workers lost in the unthinkable chaos of that fateful early morning.

The remaining sections of the bridge sit at odd angles, their surfaces marred and scarred from the impact. Waves lap against the twisted metal, carrying bits of debris away into the murky, now contaminated depths below. The once bustling thoroughfare now sits silent and still, aside from the sounds of the recovery workers piercing the haunting solitude of the frigid water as it laps gently against remnants of mangled steel.

Witnesses stand in shock and disbelief at the scene before them, the once proud structure now reduced to a shattered shell of its former self. The twisted wreckage serves as a grim reminder of the fragility of human engineering and the often unimaginably cruel whims of fate.

As the waters calm and the last echoes of destruction fade, the twisted remains of the bridge stand as a macabre monument to the chaos and devastation that unfolded there. An otherworldly reminder of the loss and destruction that occurred in a matter of moments.

And what pray tell are Republicans doing in response to this tragedy?

Well, they’re Republicaning of course. Which is one way of saying they’re out-awfulling themselves.

They’ve made it about DEI and wokeness and Joe Biden and Covid lockdowns and vaxxed muppets and chocolate candy characters in comfortable shoes. They’ve even managed to find the time to hurl racist tropes at the city’s mayor. But they’ve never once focused on the victims. On the community. On those who watched it happen, powerless to stop it. Those who made it off just in time, and those who didn’t.

The very same Republicans who, after every single solitary mass shooting say “It’s too soon to talk about politics, we need to focus on the victims” conveniently ignore the victims of tragedies when it suits them.

And if you’re wondering when a tragedy would possibly “suit them”, the answer is any time something bad happens, people suffer and one of their guys didn’t do it. That’s when.

Not only do all those self-identifying “Christians” ignore the human suffering when it doesn’t suit their divisive narratives, they go all-in on every single possible “political” angle they can in order to BLAME their adversaries, in order to fear monger, to stoke hate, and sow doubt.

They seize upon moments such as these. When the public is in collective shock. When we are all navigating the space between concern and confusion. They see an opening and they jump in with both feet, hoping they can cast enough crazy into the minds of a vulnerable public that it is able to take hold, so that the next time and the time after that, the crazy starts to confirm itself.

Antifa perpetrated January 6th, CRT is being taught to kindergartners, DEI is poisoning minds, books and movies groom kids to be gay and transgender or to identify as “furries” so they can make their pee pees in litter boxes because that’s somehow something someone who goes to school to become a school teacher “wants” to do with their time teaching for some reason no one has ever bothered to explain.

Republicans constantly drum crazy into the minds of the American people. The ideas are like parasites, insidiously infiltrating our collective consciousness. The shit they say is irrational and absurd, but because it’s pumped relentlessly into the minds of the masses through a barrage of propaganda and manipulation, it takes root and then it spreads like a virus, one that won’t “disappear with the warmer weather” infecting thoughts and beliefs day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.

Those fuckers use every tool at their disposal to distort reality and warp perception. They bombard us all with an unrelenting stream of misinformation and disinformation, blurring the lines between fact and fiction until the absurd becomes accepted as truth.

Imperceptibly at first and then seemingly all at once, the unthinkable now seems plausible, the irrational now rationalized. Of course the election was stolen. Of course January 6th was peaceful. Of course he said bloodbath in the context of the auto industry.