Can We PLEASE Not Be So Fucking Weird About All This?

Is that so hard?

War brings out extremes in people: sometimes extreme bravery, sometimes extreme barbary, and often — particularly among those whose lives are in no way actually being affected by any actual violence — extreme fucking weirdness.

I don’t mean the sort of jejune “everyone has posts a picture of the Ukrainian flag on their IG stories, sandwiched between brunch photos and thirst traps” stuff. That’s annoying but it’s not…well, whatever this is:

Michael Knowles @michaeljknowles

I’ll be having *Thousand Island* dressing on my salad from now on, thank you very much.

You see, because Russia is pushing a military convoy into Kyiv right now, Michael here is going to have a shitty salad in solidarity. Do you think he knows that Russian dressing and Thousand Island dressing aren’t the same thing? Do you think he knows that no one over the age of 12 should be putting either of them on a salad to begin with? Now, credit where credit is due, Knowles — a failed actor turned successful conservative shitgibbon — has managed to achieve a rare “sir, this is an Wendy’s” tweet that would actually work quite well at a Wendy’s, and that, I think, is something worth celebrating. I hope his parents print this tweet and stick it to their fridge next to a finger-painted giraffe.

In any case, Knowles hasn’t been the only person gettin’ cringy with it lately.

Jesse Kelly @JesseKellyDC

Just poured myself a white russian. Then dumped it in the sink. Don’t call me a hero. Just doing my part. We’re all in this together.

One of my favorite genres of performative conservative outrage is when MAGA chuds angrily destroy their own property under the misguided assumption that anyone else cares. If Jesse really is just dumping his (pre-mixed?) cocktail down the drain…well.. Okay? Have fun with all that, I suppose?

But it’s not just right-wing peckerwoods, either. As it was with freedom fries and liberty cabbage, people here simply can’t get their heads around the notion that it’s really okay to say the name of other countries! Which is why we’re got restaurants in Texas changing their name from “Russian House” to just “House,” and dilettantes in LA going full-on “Ruthkanda forever” while struggling with a drink menu and “fantasy Ukraine invasion films” being fan-cast, even while the bombs are still falling.

New York Post @nypost

Fans cast Jeremy Renner as Zelensky in fantasy Ukraine invasion film: Too soon? trib.al/sotfnBm

Here’s one trying to make the extremely coherent, not at all grotesquely antisemitic point that Bernie Sanders is somehow less of a Jew than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, because he hasn’t donned a flak jacket and gone to the front lines to repel Vladimir Putin’s attack on Eastern Vermont.

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Look, I get it. War makes people do weird things. That’s understandable and forgivable. But if you’re not actually in a war at the moment, then I am begging you from the bottom of my heart: please, please stop being a fucking moron. And if you can’t do that, then at least bring your chest-thumping machismo posturing to an Applebees happy hour, where it belongs.