TODAY IN WINGNUT GRIFTS.

Some of my longer-serving readers will remember a project by Bill Whittle called Ejectia. It was yet another online wingnut nest, but pitched by him as something more than a website -- indeed, a "City-State of Virtue" that he intended to build with reader donations. He even had "early test renderings" of the intended result ("Some people would like it to be a collection of Greek buildings in a verdant valley. Some want it on a tropical isle...").

Ejectia of course vaporized,  and Whittle went on to new horizons - and he's still out there grifting, bless him, with the same cutting edge material. But what of the dream of an alternative rightwing universe? One would think that with Trump mutilating America into the human centipede of their dreams, conservatives would have no need of fantasy lands. But hope springs eternal, and if they bought it once they'll buy it again, so here's something called "Respvblica" (the "v" is for "it's like in the gladiator movies, see?"). I learned of it from a pitch letter that began thus:

A NEW NATION DAWNS, VIRTUALLY 

Believing that real estate is not necessary to form a country in our Internet-led world today, innovators, pioneers and entrepreneurs Benjamin Poser and Joshua Resnek announced the start of Respvblica.com, the first, credible virtual nation. At first, it will launch as a news and commentary site, offering some of the sharpest writing about issues people truly care about, or should.

Respvblica is proud to be joined by Keith Ablow, MD, the New York Times bestselling author and psychiatrist who has spent ten years as psychiatry Contributor for the Fox News Network. Keith is available to talk about this new online nation...

Ablow, you may know, is a famous crackpot, the inheritor of the tinfoil crown of Dr. Martin Abend from Fox's prescursor, WNEW-TV. The other guys, who knows; Resnek seems to be a Jews-for-the-GOP sort with a taste for culture war ("Jews claiming shock and horror at some of the things Donald Trump says do not claim shock and horror watching five love making sessions during a popular movie..."). Also, his name appears in some novels by Keith Ablow, probably as an inside joke; Resnek himself writes novels -- the promo for one tells us, "through finely wrought portraits of Iowa and Washington DC of that era and of himself as a lover, as an observer and as a close-up, real time participant in the war protests and the great rallies, he stirringly depicts an American social and political era and reveals the American pastiche in all its violence, emotion and irony." What more could you want (though maybe hold the himself-as-a-lover part)? As for Benjamin Poser, he's a mystery man; maybe he put up the starter money.

From the site's "Become a Citizen" pitch:

We live, after all, in an age of Jihad, when virulent ideas have been promulgated by entities which began without any land mass, but called themselves nations, nonetheless. What if our nation—Respvblica—also were free from the notion that a land mass is essential to nationhood?

Hell of a model, guys.

What if we invited people all over the world to remain citizens of the countries in which they live, while also holding dear their allegiance to a virtual nation that, as we grow, can offer them online learning about liberty, best in class legal representation to assert their rights to free speech and the pursuit of happiness, as well as the power of a growing citizenry to obtain preferred pricing on goods and services, all around the world?

It's like your survivalist treehouse, only cuh-lassy! The price of admission is -- how cute is this -- "$17.76 USD for the first 14 days, then $17.76 USD for each 30 days." That's for starters -- I expect there'll be Platinum Citizenships and such like as soon as it gets going. Something's got to pick up the slack from Respvblica's slow-moving Kickstarter, and it'll have to be you the sucker -- er, citizen!

The site itself, you will be unsurprised to learn, is hot garbage, with a heavy pro-Trump, kill-Palestinians focus. But remember, they're not selling the steak, they're selling the pizzle.