There was a huge fentanyl bust on Thursday, the largest in U.S. history. From NBC:

Customs and Border Protection officers said Thursday they discovered 254 pounds of the drug hidden in a floor compartment of a truck loaded with cucumbers. They also found 395 pounds of methamphetamine. CBP valued the fentanyl at $3.5 million and the methamphetamine at $1.1 million. The seizure was more twice the size of the apparent previous record of 118 pounds which was found in a truck stopped by state troopers in Nebraska in 2017. In the latest case, the tractor-trailer was stopped Saturday trying to enter the U.S. through the border checkpoint in Nogales, Arizona.

Before the bullshit really starts to fly, let's point out a number of things. This was a bust at a point of entry. It was a the bust of a truck, not of a Guatemalan migrant, half-dead from thirst, stumbling through the desert. This was a bust based on the evidence first discovered on the scene by a dog. There is nothing about this event that has anything to do with either imaginary caravans of criminal immigrants or a wall.

Nonetheless, the bamboozlement is already underway. The remarkably truthless Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio tweeted out this ball of conflation.

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Largest fentanyl bust in history. Border Patrol seized enough fentanyl to kill 57 MILLION people.



That’s more than the population of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Minnesota, and Iowa. COMBINED.



We have a crisis on our southern border. — Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) January 31, 2019

Nonsense. You want something worthwhile on which to spend $5.7 billion in border-security money? Screw the wall. Hire more dogs.

FREDERIC J. BROWN Getty Images

But that's not the worst exercise in disinformation that's being used to play us all for suckers. In Virginia on Wednesday, Governor Ralph Northam, a physician, said the following in regards to a state bill that would ease Virginia's restrictions on late-term abortions. (The bill didn't pass.) From the Washington Post:

The procedures, he said, are “done in cases where there may be severe deformities. There may be a fetus that’s not viable. So in this particular example, if a mother’s in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

Almost immediately, conservatives barbered Northam's quote—they removed the part in which Northam talked about the prospective fetus's not being viable—and all the flying monkeys went aloft in formation.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) retweeted Northam’s comment and added, “I never thought I would see the day America had government officials who openly support legal infanticide.” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel tweeted that “Dem Gov. Ralph Northam, a pediatrician himself, is defending born-alive abortions.” And DeMint, the former senator from South Carolina who is chairman of the Conservative Partnership Institute, tweeted: “VA Gov Northam is no moderate, this is one of the most vile, radical pro-abortion positions ever put forward. This is evil. He should recant or resign.”

Tom Williams Getty Images

Already, inspired by a similarly mischaracterized bill in New York, very serious scholar and man of civility Ben Sasse has leaped into the fray, reintroducing a bill that, among other things, apparently would require such non-viable fetuses to be kept alive in hospitals until some time in the indefinite future. As part of his civility crusade, in a statement given to America's longest-running journal of white supremacy, Senator Sasse said this about Governor Northam:

“This is morally repugnant. In just a few years, pro-abortion zealots went from ‘safe, legal, and rare’ to ‘keep the newborns comfortable while the doctor debates infanticide...I don’t care what party you’re from — if you can’t say that it’s wrong to leave babies to die after birth, get the hell out of public office.”

Yeah, the panic is getting closer to the surface every day.

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io