“An oysterman who has never held elected office, Mr. Platner has been dogged by controversies since he announced his bid [for Maine Senate seat] last August, including allegations about his past treatment of women, revelations of a tattoo he had that resembled a Nazi symbol and a trove of offensive online posts he made over more than a decade.” — New York Times
Boy, do I feel silly. Until now, I’ve been a passionate supporter of SS-Sturmbannführer Arnold Toht, the Nazi who got his face melted off by the sight of God, in his race for Senator. I believe the people of Maine deserve better than Susan Collins, and so even though I had some misgivings about Toht, I ignored every click and whirr of my moral compass to cheer him on.
Sure, he didn’t have much of a record in government—well, elected government anyway. And it was a little disturbing how his eyeballs were hanging out of their sockets on strings of sinew, swinging and jiggling every time he gave a speech.
And, okay. Yes. There was that one kind of questionable symbol branded onto his flesh. You know what I’m talking about. The engraved headpiece of the Staff of Ra, which was seared into the palm of Toht’s hand. He keeps claiming he got it during his “military service,” and that he “didn’t know what it meant.” I wanted to believe him. After all, who among us hasn’t been young and drunk and accidentally gotten a weird symbol representing service for the Führer permanently etched into their epidermis while in Nepal or Croatia or wherever, and then just kept it for multiple decades?
Then some people, like Marion Ravenwood, went on the record with the news media, saying he liked to brag about his “Staff of Ra mark” and explaining that it held “the secret holy map to the Ark of the Covenant.” This was a really confusing sixteen minutes in my life, you guys. I had to seriously grapple with my values and ask myself, are body modifications of creepy historical symbols only bad when Republicans do it? And I decided the answer was a resounding YES.
So I pushed my moral compass even further down, until I couldn’t sense its movements at all. And I told that little voice that said, “If you can excuse the Melty-Faced Nazi Guy with the Staff of Ra mark, are you really any better than the Republicans?” to shut the hell up. There was an election to win! Party over country, meine schlampen!
When Elizabeth Warren said that Toht’s a fighter who wouldn’t just “nibble around the edges,” I knew exactly what she meant. A guy whose mandible was incinerated into chunks probably wasn’t capable of much nibbling. And look, Democrats are losing male voters, and Warren promised that Toht wouldn’t “wimp out.” After all, what screams tough-to-the-bone masculinity more than a rattling corpse who loves guns? You know who isn’t a feminized ladyboy with a skincare routine? A guy whose face literally liquefied into a puddle of lard faster than a tourist trying to climb Cadillac Mountain in July.
And what better way for the Democrats to win back the white working class than giving a little wink to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which translates to something about white people and working; I’m not sure because the only German I know are swear words.
But. Well. Then the scandals started to drop about Toht. Marion Ravenwood said he trapped her in a room and physically assaulted her. But I decided to keep supporting Toht anyway. After all, Bernie Sanders had endorsed him, and if he didn’t have a problem with the whole SS slash Staff of Ra slash domestic violence business, then who was I to think independently and come to a different conclusion?
But now, one of Toht’s exes says he sexually assaulted her. And all the important moral arbiters of our time, like Hasan Piker and those Pod Save America guys, have decided it’s over for Toht. (It’s Toht-ver? Maybe that could be an episode title? Call me, Jon and Tommy!). And that means I’m not supporting him anymore either. I could never vote for a man accused of rape—it’s not like I’m Susan Collins during a Supreme Court confirmation.
I have to tell you, I am just shocked by all of this. There was nothing in Toht’s personal history aside from his embrace of violent ideologies and history of racist comments and rape apologism to suggest he might be this kind of morally bankrupt person. There’s simply no way any of us could have predicted a Nazi SS guy with his eyeballs dangling out of his sockets and the Staff of Ra broiled into his flesh like grill marks on a meat slab would be such a terrible candidate for Senate.
And don’t worry about all those sitting US Senators who got this one wrong either. It’s not like they have any important responsibilities that require good judgment, like deciding whom to bomb.
If only there had been a red flag or an easily comprehensible indicator that he wasn’t a trustworthy guy. Like some kind of sign, maybe. Something dark and permanent that we all could see.
