John Fetterman Punched Us in the Mouth

On May 10, 2022, I published an article on this page under the headline “John Fetterman Will Punch You in the Mouth!” I meant it as tribute. I called him “what a Democrat used to be,” a man “of the land, against the elite power, for the common good,” and I welcomed him into my invented fraternity of “Big Uglies,” the large, plain, unpressed men who do the country’s heavy carrying. The year before, on my Human Meme podcast, in an episode called “The Great White Bridge as Throughline,” I had floated him as a future Democratic President, with Keisha Lance Bottoms standing as his second. I believed the hoodie. I believed the shorts, the goatee, the 6’8″ frame, the tattooed forearms, the whole costume of the steel-town avenger who, I assured you, “suffers no fools.” Four years later I am here to take it back, in public, at length, because the recantation is owed, and because the autopsy of my error teaches more than the error did.

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John Fetterman Will Punch You in the Mouth!

[[[ UPDATE 05.15.22: John had a stroke the day this article was published! Please feel better soon, my friend, and yes, he’ll still punch you in the mouth from his hospital bed! ]]] John Fetterman is currently Pennsylvania Lt. Governor and he is also running to be a Senator from the same State. Sure, he’s 6’8″ tall. Yes, he doesn’t wear a tie. Of course, he prefers to wear hoodies. Because John Fetterman is tough. John Fetterman is what a Democrat used to be — and must be again: Of the land, against the elite power, for the common good. Now, I realize John Fetterman may not want to punch you in the mouth right now, but I am confident he would if he needed to, and the idea he could punch you if he were threatened into it is just the sort of inherent, but unspoken, return to earth the Democrat party needs in order to deal with the ongoing foolishness, and intimidation of, far Right Wing radicals. John Fetterman suffers no fools. A year ago, in my Human Meme podcast episode — The Great White Bridge as Throughline — I celebrated John Fetterman as a possible future Democratic President, along with the now self-politically immolated former mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms as his second.

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