There’s a certain type of obnoxiously precocious middle schooler who loves to lecture their peers (and everyone else) about things like how the word “decimate” actually only means “1 in 10,'” and how I bet you didn’t know the word’s largest desert is in Antarctica, did you? — the sort of “technically true”-isms that are incredibly annoying but ultimately harmless when issued from a 12-year-old eager to show how smart they are.
And then there’s United States Republican Sen. Mike Lee, of Utah, whose “um, ak-shu-a-lee!!!” shtick isn’t so much an endearing exercise in ephemeral trivia as it is one of the more overt examples of the GOP slide toward fascism in an era already rife with undemocratic Republican power plays.
The shtick in question is Lee’s denial of American democracy, which he insisted on reiterating over and over again Wednesday evening during the vice presidential debate between California Sen. Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence. Continue reading.