re: #74 Ace Rothstein

I would imagine that Santos will be sitting in a prison cell for quite a while after his plea agreement. I’m thinking admission of guilt to most of the charges, all money returned, a $500,000 fine that he won’t have a penny to pay, sentenced to ten years in prison but out in 4.5, and then ten years probation. When he gets out, his new gig on Fox as a congressional analyst will help pay off the hefty fines.

I keep coming back to: he’s too embarrassing.

Many of the current bloc of reactionaries are hustling for both their audience and their patrons—how do you gauge at any moment how sincere Charlie Kirk is when his incentive is millions of dollars for tickling the fancy of a few reactionary rich dudes—but there’s a minimum standard of acceptable performance and George Santos falls under it.

Santos’ crowd work is broad and obvious, his crimes are not really re-constructable as reactionary outrages, his tokenism is of decreasing value as the reaction more openly curates itself as white/straight. He’s a discount Donald Trump with artificial flavoring. He’s not a moral crisis for the reaction, he’s cringe.

He’s probably not going to disappear…you can live well in the conservative griftosphere being a bit player, there’s an audience for an off-brand tin of Vienna Sausage if it reads the script correctly…but the people with money want a better floor show and the people in the halls of politics need to keep the spectacle’s quality tight enough that it’s doesn’t become achingly obvious that they, too, are treating governance like an OnlyFans account.