As GOP House leaders trash as "a stinking pile of crap" a border deal that (unconscionably) gives them most of what they've demanded to "solve" a crisis they in fact have no interest in solving, several dozen witless MAGA nativists - a tad shy of their avowed 700,000 - joined a bedraggled "Take Our Border Back" convoy to the southern border to wave flags, preach hate, hawk merch, get baptized, hear Sarah Palin babble, and decry a migrant "invasion" that, once there, failed to materialize. SAD!

Loopily dubbed "God's Army," the parade of fervid, aggrieved patriots is the latest grim evidence of a rising tide of Christo-fascists who can't seem to abide anyone not like them - gay, trans, poor, Muslim, brown, black especially after one of them got to be president. More recent proof of our ungodly lurch to the right: Last week's National Prayer Breakfast, begun by a theocratic "Fellowship" representing "the most pernicious example of fake Christianity the world has ever seen" and now run by a foundation likely just as hateful, was for the first time held in the Capitol's Statuary Hall, "the heart of our democracy" - a move deemed "very disturbing," and one instigated by creepy Christian Nationalist Mike Johnson, who also just invited televangelist hate pastor Jack Hibbs, a raging, racist bigot who calls trans people "Satanic," to deliver the House opening prayer. In it, he beseeched God to bring "holy fear" to lawmakers for a "coming day of judgment (when) all who have been and are now in authority will answer to God." In brief, heathens, beware.

Meanwhile, the folks who love to selectively quote from a holy text commanding we love our neighbors are now wildly denouncing a border bill pending in the Senate because it doesn't go far enough - maybe machine-gun turrets on the Rio Grande? - to repel an "invasion" of poor brown people fleeing for their lives because, with the economy robust, if they agree to it what can they whine, lie, grandstand and fearmonger about for the election? Their call to #KilltheBill - ie blatant refusal to govern - comes in the face of a bill blasted by rights groups for Stephen-Miller-tinged "poison pill provisions" that would "eviscerate" asylum protections," expel people without due process, throw Dreamers under the bus, grant unbridled executive power to close the border and give them everything they want but a pony. One Dem: "They literally demanded specific policy, got it, and then killed it." With the bill linked to Urkaine aid, another said of their "breathtaking" cynicism, "People will die, today." Still, say a cabal of opportunistic pinheads, the bill is "DEAD on arrival," "an unmitigated disaster," "betrayal," "INSANE."

Speaking of. The much-ballyhooed God's Army was initially heralded as a 700,000-strong "mighty force" of crusaders forging their noble way from Virginia to three border states to halt a pernicious invasion of "millions and millions" of brown-skinned hordes across Sleepy Joe's invitingly, entirely open border in order to steal their jobs, sell their fentanyl, rape their neighbors and otherwise wreak havoc on our pristine white shores. Its leaders were right-wing crackpots and "patriot-world influencers" - conservative radio hosts, homophobic white-nationalist "Mike America" and his "Exiled Patriots," a Mike Flynn ally who promoted it on Alex Jones' and Tucker Carlson - and its rhetoric was apocalyptic. "God’s army is rising up," said one organizer on a planning call. "We all have been chosen for this time." The event was billed as "a biblical, monumental moment (put) together by God" because "we are besieged on all sides by dark forces of evil." "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God," she said per the Book of Revelation. "It is time for the remnant to rise."

According to chats on the right-wing Telegram channel, many peacemakers also felt it was time to start "exterminating” migrants, or at least tracking them down, bounty-hunter style. While organizers insisted the protest would be peaceful, its website called on "all active & retired law enforcement and military," also veterans, along with "mama bears," ranchers, truckers, bikers etc; its ranks included many militia members - they were told their "side arms" were welcome but long guns were not - and rallies would all be held on private property to ensure they could police things as they saw fit. Still, a sense of paranoia ran deep: Many worried the convoy was a federal government "setup" to "entrap" patriots, a “psyop” stacked with trolls and feds and infiltrators, just like Jan. 6, but they assured communicants that instigators would face “the wrath of the Navy SEALs and the Green Berets on the ground." Above all, "People need to pray for discernment about this" - a big ask of a ragtag assemblage of fervid conspiracy theorists, bellicose xenophobes, and pig-ignorant MAGA flunkies, but God knows they tried.

The timing of the convoy was inadvertently auspicious: Before they set out, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, ever intent on keeping out the brown horde, had illegally erected razor wire around the vital Eagle Pass crossing, thus blocking federal Border Patrol access to it. When a migrant woman and two children drowned in the river - reportedly because feds couldn't get to her - and SCOTUS ruled the wire had to go, Texas embarked on a "hold-the-line" battle with the federal government quickly joined by over a dozen rabid, pro-razor-wire GOP governors who started comparing the fascist Abbott to feckin' Gideon's Army. It was all enticing fodder for a self-declared God's Army - aka "the world’s most gullible imbeciles," a MAGA "joke without a punchline," a "comically disorganized and useless parade of con artists and the conned drifting from one apocalyptic grievance to the next" - firing up to sweep in many thousands of trucks to a border where "our language and culture are being destroyed." One........

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