They don’t name supervillains the way they used to. I grew up with a James Bond fanatic father. He had all the movies on well-worn bootlegged VHS tapes. Our favorites were Dr. No, Goldfinger, and You Only Live Twice. Mostly Connery, although Moonraker snuck in there too, since it’s so fun. But it was the Bond villains, so deliciously named, who captured our imaginations. Blofeld, Dr. No, Jaws, Auric Goldfinger, Oddjob. 

Who didn’t wish they had a bowler hat they could fling at an enemy and behead from afar? Mola Ram is a great name for a guy who rips your beating heart out of your chest. Thulsa Doom is just right for a guy who can shoot venomous snakes through you with his bow. Hans Gruber strikes fear in the hearts of anyone who even thinks about stealing his detonators.

Ah, how our villains have changed. They’re not sending their best, folks. When I first heard that the shadow Obama Administration had ordered a panty raid of Mar-a-Lago, on the hunt for Melania’s naughtiest Agent Provocateur lingerie, I admit I was a little worried. But then I saw a photo of one of the terrifying government stooges, and I laughed. Moonraker’s Jaws was terrifying with his metal teeth and hulking frame. This FBI agent was a 300-pound female who had crouched down and was going to struggle mightily to stand back up again. After raiding Melania’s underwear drawer, she raided the nearest Krispy Kreme.

It’s hard to be afraid of our contemporary supervillains. Try as I might, I just can’t be afraid of weenies named “Merrick Garland” and “Chuck Schumer.” Merrick is the first name of the kid who gets his scrawny butt cheeks taped together in the locker room. Although perhaps that is the origin story of our contemporary foes. We are living in a real-life Revenge of the Nerds remake, but these nerds are all grown up and preening behind desks in offices plastered with framed Harvard degrees. How many bullies teased Schumer and called him “Schmuck Choomer”? Is that his origin story? How many times did Merrick Garland, DNC lawyer Marc Elias, or LA District Attorney George Gascón have to get pantsed in middle school to turn them into the malevolent creatures they are today? 

Don’t let their non-threatening looks deceive you. They may not execute their enemies by opening trap doors above tanks filled with ravenous piranhas or slicing them in two with laser beams. Instead, they meticulously plot our slow-motion executions by government paperwork: subpoenas, tax audits, legal arcana, motions to compel. They cackle in their conference rooms, stroking their fluffy white stacks of newly passed laws codifying our impending demise. One wrong move and heavily armed IRS agents will appear at your door “ready to use deadly force,” as the actual job description stated. 

Our supervillains employ armies of “childcare workers” and “educators” who will quietly download their fully compliant operating system into every elementary school student in America. They hide behind values we cherish, like “free speech,” to defend explicit child pornography in school libraries.  

The kid you send to school this month will not be the same kid in June. Rainbow-haired elementary school teachers with CPS on speed dial will greedily eyeball your kindergartener for signs that you don’t accept radical gender theory.  God help you if someone drops a dime on you for using the wrong pronouns. Your children will be bundled into an unmarked van on their way into The System. You won’t see them anyway, since you’re going to be in a windowless IRS interrogation room for 36 straight hours swearing that you don’t remember why you got that $80 via Venmo from your coworker—maybe it was for Fantasy Football, but you didn’t know you had to declare it! 

87,000 new Cobra Kai-R-S agents are ready to send you home in a body bag. Police agencies are prepping to haul you in for questioning over Facebook posts. Sir, did you make an off-color Monkeypox joke on Instagram? The Homophobia Patrol is coming for you!

California has more supervillains than civilians these days. Throw a rock and you’ll hit one. In the Bay Area, State Representative Scott Weiner is doing what he does best: telling his constituents how to hide their monkeypox blisters with Band-Aids so they don’t have to miss the leather orgy parties. He tweeted out a guide to a hardcore gay fetish festival in San Francisco (the cute logo for the event is a cartoon anal douche…sorry, I wish I was kidding) and admonished haters who wanted to stop the fetish festival from taking place. “If people want to have sex, they are going to have sex,” Weiner said. “People will make their own decisions about their own risk levels.” He is now in charge of California’s monkeypox response, which will involve handing out Band-Aids and blindfolds so no one has to ask and no one has to tell anyone at the club if they’ve got pox.

Of course, getting to decide for yourself what health risks you’re willing to take applies only to Men Who Have Sex With Men in the Leather Dungeon. It doesn’t apply to parents who are tired of Covid restrictions in schools. Their poor kids are still at the mercy of yet another California supervillain.

Barbara Ferrer is the LA County director of the health department and the highest paid government employee in the entire state at over $500,000 a year. She’s a preternaturally calm, sharp-faced harpy with a fright wig of white hair. She certainly looks the part. She imposed mask mandates on children in schools for two years, based on her claims of “science.” But it turns out her entire “scientific” rationale for the mandate came from a CDC study written by….her daughter. When accused, Babs blubbered, “I have no interest or ability to control any of my family members’ work since they don’t work for me or at this department at all. So there’s no conflict of interest here at all.” Guess we can close the books on that one!

The one contemporary supervillain who genuinely terrifies me is the only one with a great villain name. Chase Strangio is a mustachioed, very petite transgender man and the ACLU’s fiercest bulldog. Chase spends a lot of time filing—and winning—lawsuits against schools in red states with dangerous transphobic policies like not allowing people with penises into the girls’ showers. Strangio even got Kirsti Noem to cave on transgender sports. 

If you say “Chase Strangio” three times out loud, a process server arrives at your door that instant. Do not taunt Chase Strangio!

Our supervillains are highly paid white-collar professionals. They went to all the best schools, know all the best people. Who the hell do you know? What school did you go to? You think you have any rights? They just rewrote your “rights” and are about to read you your Miranda warning. 

You are in their way. They will not stop until you are silenced, canceled, Gulag-ed, your children sterilized and miseducated, your grown daughters forgoing marriage for a life of unpaid sex work, your business audited, your finances crushed, your children’s college funds looted, and your last dime shaken from your pockets and sent to “Ukraine” to be laundered and deposited safely in a supervillain’s Swiss bank account.

How did the party of peace, love, acceptance, and “no hate” come to be sworn to the destruction of anyone who disagrees with them? Is this just your brain on elite education, or is there something poisonous in the Pellegrino? (Cue the Church Lady: could it be….Satan?)

Here is the difference between us and them: they may hate me, but I don’t hate them. Not even Scott Weiner. I think they are wrong, craven, and misguided, and in some cases, yes, totally evil. But I don’t wish them harm. (Although for their safety, they should stay 50 yards away from places where my children congregate.)

Instead of hating them back, I pray for them. I pray for their conversion, and for their souls not to burn in hell. After all, I was once like them. I sneered at the flyover people. I laughed at their struggles from my snug and cozy coastal privilege, and so did all my white collar Ivy League friends. I have seen their visceral hate from the other side, and it is beyond what you can imagine. 

The truth is they really do wish for our death, dismemberment, destruction, and suffering. They eagerly anticipate the day when you and I are rounded up for the crime of not being more like our captors. “Inclusivity” ends when you refuse, at bayonet point, to comply with their demands. 

Meanwhile, their concept of morality is propping up a senior citizen pumped full of lord-knows-what so he can continue working as their front man, prodding him to continue the charade they are pulling on us despite what is clearly exhaustion on his part. Kick that old horse one too many times and he’ll take a dive right into the dirt. 

Shirley Bassey tried to warn us about these bad guys. 

A spider’s touch,

Such a cold finger 

Beckons you to enter his web of sin,

But don’t go in!

They make up the rules as they see fit, and you’re going to find it impossible to keep up. My advice is to laugh in their faces. Mock them, and make it hurt. In the end, what can they do to us? If we’re going down, at least we can go down knowing we never gave in to their depraved and sadistic lust for domination. 

Although, hang on—maybe that’s our problem. Maybe we need to study their villainous ways! Maybe the only way to win is to…become more like them. Peachy Strangio—hey, I like the sound of that. I’m not sure I can grow a mustache, but I’ll try.

Because right now, they’re winning. Undisputed King of All Supervillains, Grease Lord Gavin Newsom, he of the Vecna gravelly voice and Chiclet teeth, is likely to be installed as president in the near future. 

He’s more like a Stuporvillain, but he’ll do.