Had Trump made the slightest efforts to abide by the political rules and norms of our system, they would have protected him, more than they constrained him.
What's coming for him? That's going to be no one's fault but his own.
Part 2
Friday, March 30, 2018
It's got electrolytes (Part 1.)
Had Trump made the slightest efforts to abide by the political rules and norms of our system, they would have protected him, more than they constrained him.
What's coming for him? That's going to be no one's fault but his own.
Part 2
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Who run Bartertown?
~Coolio, Gangsta's Paradise.
Yesterday, I followed what was going on with the March For Our Lives on social media. Today, I've been paying very close attention to the reactions to it. A lot of people, not the least the kids themselves, have spoken far more eloquently than I could about these issues.
But...
This caught my attention, enough that it pissed me off.
I mean, this shit is pretty fucked up.
These people are saying, disown your kids if your kids think that they should have a right not to get shot.
Some people really do love their guns, or their beliefs about their guns, more than they love their kids. That's fucked up, and I say that as a gun owner and a former conservative Republican.
What they're asking here, is that people choose self, and selfishness...and their guns...over family.
According to the NRA, and various gun nuts, basically it's a dog-eat-dog world out there and all you can do is hope to do horrible things to, and kill, other human beings before they kill you. No reason for this is given, there is no Cassus Belli, no legal basis appears to be cited, that just appears to be their logic.
The absolute truth is that guns won't protect you if that is so. Again, I ask, how do these people have any hope of anything, if they really believe this crap?
According to them, all any of their believers have to look forward to is having their boot on someone else's throat before they die. I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in that kind of world and I never have.
I guess NRA-fever-dream America is kind of like Lethal Weapon, but instead of the noble, if a bit fucked in the head, very anti-racist military veteran/police detective Martin Riggs character...they just used Mel Gibson, straight up, you know, the anti-Semitic, drunken, wife-beating piece of shit far-right Catholic nut actor who avoided military service in Vietnam by moving to Australia and who makes Jesus Torture Porn movies...what happens to the character Roger Murtaugh, the African American military veteran and police detective, and his family (or for that matter, Danny Glover the actual actor and liberal activist) in this scenario is anybody's guess...
Either these people have a very skewed view of modern American life, or they're speaking from such a position of privilege that they feel they can just make shit up about the rest of us and go on with their daily lives and no one will ever call them out on it.
Bitches, ya'll just got called out by 800,000 people in this country...and enough worldwide that over a million people marched.
Those people get it.
Guns don't protect civilization, an engaged citizenry does, speech does, voting does. Yeah, there's always going to be some guns and missiles and shit pointed outward, but the truth is the minute we all start pointing guns at each other, and Americans start shooting each other, it's all over.
Nobody is trying to take guns away from law-abiding, responsible people, we just want the mass shootings to stop. If that requires new laws, or I have to get a license to have my guns and show I'm not a nut, maybe undergo some training, OK. I'm game. It's not like I haven't already been trained on how to use a rifle...
But that's not the point.
If guns and hard-core conservative religiosity and only the people with power having anything was what protected civilization, you'd think Afghanistan and Pakistan and Somalia would be the most civilized places on Earth, but they're obviously not.
These people, the NRA and the Republicans who kowtow to them, they're the death merchants, even...and I would say, far...more than the corporations or the Military-Industrial Complex.
Corporations and especially the M.I.C. require a functioning government and civilization so that somebody can afford their wares, and educate the people who use them, so that they can safely operate the fighter jets and infantry fighting vehicles and tanks and warships and shit, so that they will be there to constantly be upgraded and heavily used in various efforts worldwide, so that they will wear out (and yes, occasionally get destroyed) and then the government will buy more.
This isn't rocket science, people.
Laws change, the corporations will adapt, just like they did when the Brady Bill passed in 1993 or when the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban went into effect. Note that plenty of pre-ban assault weapons remained in circulation, legally, because the Constitution prohibits passing ex post facto (retroactive) laws. Note that that law, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, was named after a Republican. It passed the House and Senate with bipartisan support and was signed by Bill Clinton in 1993 over the objections of the National Rifle Association. I was a gun owner at the time, it didn't bother me in 1994 when the Assault Weapons Ban was passed, and such a thing would not bother me now. I've never given serious thought to owning an assault rifle, and I don't even own a pistol anymore, not that I used it much or did anything other than shoot targets with it when I had one.
What the NRA is really against, at this point, is civilization. They seem to feel that civilization does not support their Hard-right political beliefs, so they'd rather bring it all crashing down and shoot it out with the liberals, the people of color, and what's left of the government in the ruins while screaming
As for the people who sling this bullshit? They don't care if the rest of us are shooting each other in the streets, so long as the money keeps rolling in. While their base (and at least one Republican House Rep.) whacks off to Camp of the Saints or the Turner Diaries...the millionaires who run the NRA almost certainly plan on bugging out if the shooting ever actually starts.
See, every hard-right white conservative man in America thinks he's gonna be the hero, or the local warlord.
No, that's not how this works. In that kind of post-Apocalyptic world, do you know who the most powerful people are, really? They're the people down in the sub-levels pushing the levers that make the generators turn, when the big boss, Master Blaster, gets a serious weed up his ass and calls for an embargo. Then he gets on the P.A. system and puts the local warlord in her place...and remember who played that character in Beyond Thunderdome, too. So yeah, civilization, but smaller.
So, Who run Barter-Town?
In such a scenario, you're either going to be part of whatever remains of civilization, or part of a gang of marauders or you're going to be dead or you're somebody's bitch.
...And all that money will be literally worthless.
Get it now? Or do I have to use smaller words?
Also, while I'm at it, I don't think it's an accident or a coincidence that they got a couple of African American dudes to get up there and say this shit. Some people will do anything for money, I guess. It's kind of fucked up that they're basically telling people of color to disown any members of their families who are against mass shootings. That's especially screwed up because family tends to be very important to those people. It's really fucked up that they can get people to turn on their own, to advocate breaking up families, for money.
Remember that, though, the next time some conservative is bitching about the "breakdown of the Black family" or social problems in Black communities.
All families matter, except yours, that's basically what they're saying. All Lives Matter...but some matter more than others do. It's always the same bullshit. "Get in your place, you N-Word."
I don't think it's an accident that one of these people is known by the name of "Killer Mike" either. You see it, don't you?
Just like with people like "Diamond & Silk" they're playing to white conservative stereotypes of African Americans.
So, basically, racism.
Oh, and the pull-quote up above? Gangsta's Paradise? That's the future conservatives want, that right there...but for everybody.
Choose your family, not your guns. In even the absolute worst-case constitutional legislative scenario, you're still going to keep (at bare minimum) most of your guns.
But when you have a problem, or need to borrow some tools or want to have a barbecue, you'll want to still be on good terms with your family...because the NRA sure as hell isn't gonna be there for you, and you can tell 'em I said that.
So choose your family, not your guns. Get to know your neighbors, of Color or otherwise, Immigrant or Native-Born, and yes, regardless of politics or religion, and don't fantasize about shooting them...and most especially don't be like that about kids. Why? Because we're all stronger together and that's what protects civilization.
If civilization has a "liberal bias" that's too damned bad. It's the only game in town, the only one you or the town will survive, anyway.
...And if you think guns and violence should be tied up with religion, you need a new religion.
Tell me why are we so blind to see
That the ones we hurt are you and me?
~Coolio, Gangsta's Paradise.
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
Hewing out of the mountain of hope a stone of despair.
The
days of unlimited immigration are past.
But
those who do come will come because of what they are, and not because
of the land from which they sprung.
When
the earliest settlers poured into a wild continent there was no one
to ask them where they came from. The only question was: Were they
sturdy enough to make the journey, were they strong enough to clear
the land, were they enduring enough to make a home for freedom, and
were they brave enough to die for liberty if it became necessary to
do so?
And
so it has been through all the great and testing moments of American
history. Our history this year we see in Viet-Nam. Men there are
dying--men named Fernandez and Zajac and Zelinko and Mariano and
McCormick.
Neither
the enemy who killed them nor the people whose independence they have
fought to save ever asked them where they or their parents came from.
They were all Americans. It was for free men and for America that
they gave their all, they gave their lives and selves.
By
eliminating that same question as a test for immigration the Congress
proves ourselves worthy of those men and worthy of our own traditions
as a Nation.
~Lyndon B. Johnson,
I saw something this morning (part of which is snipped above, that made me so mad that my only possible response was to angrily shake my head and say "Fuck this, I'm going to go play with baby ferrets for an hour." I was getting out of my car in front of the pet store at the time, and decided to take a minute to check my Twitter messages. The flag page is on the actual fucking website of Art Jones, Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives for the Third District of Illinois.
I want to note, here, that I chose the pull-quote for a damn reason. Art Jones, this Nazi motherfucker, is, or at least claims to be, a Vietnam veteran, who says he served in combat. (He also claims to have been a Union member who did manual labor, and an insurance salesman...that last, I'll believe for sure.) Do you know who else served in combat in Vietnam in disproportionate numbers to their percentage of the population? African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans.
I have friends and older relatives who served in that war, some saw combat, some did not. Nearly all were changed or scarred in some fashion, but to narrow it down I'll just mention some people I used to work with. One guy at work, an old Native man named Dave who retired a few years ago, spoke of serving as an Infantryman in the battle of Ia Drang, the first U.S. ground engagement of the war. He was then and is now a member of the local Tribe's warrior society (veteran's group.) Another, an old conservative white dude named Dale who served as a truck driver...almost entirely away from the battlespace...when we were working together one night, he once told me about nearly dying of disease, spending weeks in the hospital. Then there was an old Latino guy named Jesse (who served long enough to retire from the Army in the early 1980's and often still wore his ragged BDU jacket when he came to work) told me about both becoming addicted to drugs and beating the addiction, both while 'over there.' That had to have been a hell of a tour of duty. We spoke often, and occasionally debated about religion and stuff...we disagreed about much, but understood each other in ways that only people who've struggled with addiction can.
I want to state also, that every last one of these three guys attributed their survival to faith and prayer. The first, to both following his Native traditions and to the Catholicism imparted by his own Latino relatives, the second guy was a Fundamentalist Baptist, and the third was an Assembly of God Pentecostal, who nonetheless got along famously with his co-worker, neighbor and regular ride to work, a Vietnamese immigrant named Cao who served as a member of the Republic of Vietnam Navy during the war...and who was himself a devout Buddhist.
The one election I compared notes with all these guys on, briefly, the morning of election day, was 2004.
All four of them, and I, voted for George W. Bush. Yep, that's right, we said we were going to vote Republican.
The only thing in particular that these men, whose cultures and ethnicity and religions were so different, had in common was...diversity.
So what the fuck happened?
You know what else each of these guys had? A great faith in America, in its ideals and in its system. It boggles my mind how most the people I know who were Republicans or war veterans or both...even my own sometimes drunk obnoxious uncle who always stated with the authority of one who was there (and who, having been a Lieutenant in command of a rifle platoon, felt responsible for the deaths of his men and so he drank and smoked himself to death as a result) that Vietnam was a mistake...turned out not to be assholes and Art Jones did.
...And this racist, outright Nazi motherfucker ran unopposed in a Republican primary for Federal office and won because nobody stopped him. There were more flags on his page, with antisemitic, anti-Chinese, homophobic and pro-Palestinian screeds attached to each.
His stated policies include multiple things that should be apostasy even in Trumpian conservatism.
It's a safe Democratic district, he will almost certainly lose but that's not the point.
Jones considers this the height of his "career" anyway. The man is a fucking Nazi with two dedicated pages of antisemitic bullshit on his campaign website. He shouldn't have a political career in the United States of America in the 21st Century.
Yet this is the height of his "career." He's attracted national notice, per my own Twitter feed, but the Republican Party didn't bother to contest his nomination.
Think about that, take as much time as you need. If this is the state of the Republican Party now, where will it be in two years, in ten years, in twenty?
I'm going to throw down a gauntlet here and say that I think not only have the Republicans as a party lost faith in diversity (which they had no problem with in 2004 when the numbers were on their side) but that they've lost faith in religion, and even in America itself.
What makes me say that?
Among other things, this guy right here, Vladimir Motherfucking Putin. I will never for the life of me understand the Conservative love-affair with a Communist, former KGB colonel, current Dictator and very open Kleptocrat, who between him and his friends has stolen so much money that Russia, literally the largest nation on the planet, with 220 million people, has an economy about the size of that of Portugal.
I have seen people who should know better go bug-fuck with Russophilia.
As for people who don't know better, against the advice and all-but-orders and despite ALL CAPS notes saying "DO NOT CONGRATULATE!" Trump called Putin to talk to him and congratulated him on his "Victory" that most astute observers regard as fake.
...And this is what Trump, the democratically-elected avatar of modern Movement Conservatism considers aspirational?
It's no wonder, at this point, that we have an Opioid Crisis and that it seems to affect rural conservative areas more than others. Hell, if I was still a Republican I think I'd be wheeling a keg around with me with the shit hooked up like a hospital I.V. But that's just me and I'm old enough to remember when this kind of crap was inconceivable. If my political party and its leaders were palling around with Putin and selling us out to the fucking Russians, with every day being a constant drumbeat of one dumb-shit scandal after another I'd be downing Vicodin by the handful and washing it down with shitty boxed wine, for sure.
But, functionally, who made this possible? Republican voters, that's who. Much has been made in recent years of the decline in health, income and life expectancy of non-college-educated, often older conservative white people, who have increasingly formed the core of the Republican coalition. But, who did this to them? Who created their declining fortunes and conditions? THEY did, with no small amount of help from the politicians and rich people they supported, who gutted their Unions, outsourced their jobs to other countries, offered them nothing but racism in return and then walked away with a fat roll of flash money, laughing all the way to the bank. You know, I'm just sayin' when a guy from that party is running on giving people jobs?
Color me suspicious, there's got to be a catch.
These people drink more alcohol, eat more bad food, make worse decisions on average, practice more unsafe sex, smoke more cigarettes, and use more pornography than the rest of us do, on average.
...And Trump wants to kill drug dealers, or possibly even users? I wonder if he realizes that a majority of the dealers driving this problem are White and so are most of their customers...and you can bet the doctors over-prescribing the stuff and the corporations that make it won't get in much trouble.
So where is there any hope in all this mess? What's in if for anybody who doesn't already make seven figures? If "Make America Great Again" is such a good thing and is working, then why are so many Americans still dying of drug overdoses and despair?
Trump inverts King's famous statement in his most famous speech, and hews out of the mountain of hope a stone of despair...
And that stone of despair drags his own people down...which he's fine with because it creates more desperate suckers ready to believe his crap.
And people, up to and including Congressional Republicans, keep buying it, not just from Trump but from Republicans...both the congressional and political activist types...as well.
Like I said, Trump is a mirror, but stop looking at him and look at yourselves.
Here's a hint, you can't blame this problem on People of Color.
But they were the ones who came up with a solution...50 years ago...
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exhalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning, "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" ~Martin Luther King Jr.
I'll take that over anything that Art Jones or Donald Trump has on offer.
Freedom, for anybody other than themselves, is the last damned thing they care about or want...and they wonder why drugs and despair claim their followers?
I can tell them why.
Thursday, March 8, 2018
Terrible thing to live in fear...Part Two.
“Terrible thing to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. Knew it all too well. All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won't have to be afraid all the time.” ~Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding, the Shawshank Redemption.
I've been going to write this follow-up to my previous post for awhile now.
But repeatedly, in the last week, things happened to push that deadline back.
First there was the Tariff thing...then the Mueller investigation closing in again...Republicans stalling or watering down anti-child-marriage laws in different states...Richard Spencer's Michigan State appearance...then the Sam Nunberg thing...then the Stormy Daniels thing...and another shooting. Each one of these things could, itself, probably be a blog post of its own.
But, again, my mind goes back to the reason for all this crap. Again, it all comes down to fear.
Take, for example, Tariffs...something that a lot of the business community, a lot of Republicans and even some of Trump's own advisers are very against. While (at least in my lifetime, and that of most of the people who raised me) basically every American President has understood that the United States of America is a nation not defined by the land and its people and founded in antiquity, but instead a modern nation...indeed, the first and for many the ideal of such...both defined by and founded on ideals...ideals we often don't live up to but that we almost always aspire to.
I say almost because, of course, Trump.
Trump has shown that he has a very primitive thought process, I'm not sure if he was always that way or if this is just a result of age and cognitive decline...but it seems pretty evident now. In any case, Trump's conception of America seems to be very much based on some kind of "Blood and Soil" ideal, as if Americans were like the French or the Germans or the Iraqis or the Japanese...an ethnicity defined in many ways by the patch of dirt that they're originally from, rather than an ideal that drew all those people to come here and sign on to it.
That's not how this works, not even close.
People like Trump and his supporters fear and hate the rest of the world.
But even more, they fear you and me, Americans of any color, creed, political philosophy or race who think differently...they fear us because deep down they know there's more of us and we're right.
Ideals are hard, Living up to ideals is hard. Rule of Law is difficult, in that the Law then constrains everybody, not just the people you don't like. So yeah, slogans on hats, cheering crowds and bloodthirsty mobs...that's easy. Crapping all over everything is even easier.
"Conservatism" in the era of Trump isn't conservatism, it's simply Nihilism driven by fear and hate.
In any case, Trump has convinced himself that, rather than being the fulcrum of the current global economy and society...somehow America eats last at the table of nations in his mind, instead of being the super-power that we are. Somehow all those other countries are getting one over on us or something something gazpacho. Trump clearly doesn't understand how NATO, the United Nations, and various international treaties even work.
So fear, and ignorance, combined with incompetence and utter lack of curiosity. The current Republican program could be summed up like this:
I don't want to do anything, and I don't want you to do anything either, and God forbid that anybody else come here and want to do anything.
I don't know, and neither do you...and I don't want you to be able to look stuff up or learn anything so that you do know something because then you might contradict what I want to do.
See, if you don't know anything, then you can believe whatever you want.
And yes, it really is all about Me.
...Ironically, people then wonder why these motherfuckers are a bunch of incompetent, money-grubbing shits who can't get much of anything done and who've formed the most scandal-plagued administration in living memory.
But, of course, These Fucking People put up with it...just like they put up with Congressional corruption, because of cynicism, greed, racism or simply the idea (however half-baked it is) that they'll somehow get something out of it...and because of fear. Fear of change, fear of difference, fear of the Other, you name it and chances are there's a right-winger somewhere out there who is afraid of it.
That's all they've got, really. That's who these people are. They don't have the courage to lead...nor even to take the most basic responsibility for their shitty beliefs. Never mind that if they chose to lead...they would probably find at least some other people who agree with them. It's like I said about Trump, if he'd made a half-ass effort towards even a George W. Bush level of competence and at least gave the appearance of caring what people outside of his core voter base thought...he'd probably be able to hold off the inevitable until at least the second half of his second term, maybe even his last year with some intelligent damage control. With even a small amount of effort and a semi-competent team, Trump could've been regarded as a good President whether he deserved such a title or not.
Kind of like Bush, nowadays, in retrospect.
Of course even Republicans (like myself at the time) who were paying attention saw the problems that were going on well before that, but not very many people listen to people like me.
A lot of people saw the problem with Trump years before he was even elected.
But these people, the older ones of whom idolize the 1950's because they were kids then and life was easier and they didn't have to be afraid or think about much...they see Trump as some kind of ideal, because he's old, rich, and white and true to their Calvinistic beliefs (and many of these people don't actually know anything about those beliefs or even realize they have them) they think Trump is righteous because he's rich and all those Other people must somehow be lying...or something.
I saw something the other night, that said that many Evangelicals are confident that Trump will bring about the End Times. Wouldn't that make Trump the Anti-Christ?
It says in the Bible that no man knows the day or the hour of the coming of Jesus Christ. To believe that your generation (and the Baby Boomers were, so far as I know, the first generation to believe this) will be that "Last Generation" is the height of hubris.
The Truth is...that these people would rather blow up the world than share it with all the people that they don't like...which is pretty much everybody including themselves.
See, this kind of thinking is a trap.
We're effectively talking about people who'd rather implicitly support grown-ass adult men fucking 13-year old girls (because let's face it, who else would want to marry a child besides a pedophile) than risk losing a single vote in Congress or the States. They obviously learned not a damned thing from Roy Moore getting his ass handed to him in Alabama.
We're talking about people who'd rather have Americans slaughtering each other in the streets by gun violence than face up to their own bullshit on that particular subject...and again, I say that as a gun owner.
We're talking about people who'd rather sell this country out to the Russians...who'd rather lose their own country...than lose whatever little bit of control or power or status that they think they individually have or are entitled to. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
These people would rather burn down civilization, democracy, education and our various national institutions one by one because (as they see it) all those things are against them.
These people would rather shoot down their neighbors...even, in many cases, the conservative ones...than live with the rest of us.
It never occurs to them that there's more of the rest of us than there are of them and that we have plenty of guns too.
In point of fact, there's such a failure of imagination going on here that a lot of these people think that everybody else is just as cynical and fucked in the head as they are.
That's where they come up with terms like "Virtue signaling." It never crosses their minds to think that somebody else might actually, legitimately believe something.
You know, sometimes when everybody has a problem with you...it's you that's the problem, not everybody else. Just sayin.'
Hell, these damn fools seem perfectly willing to light themselves on fire for Donald Trump, of all fucking people. But then, these are people who call being decent to other human beings "Crazy" and who call tax cuts for people who already have too much money good government policy.
Do you know what happened in the 1950's which is the last time the United States of America allowed itself to go down the rabbit hole of all this right-wing stupidity? (Also, be aware that in a number of cases the mentors or parents of current Republicans were front and center leading that crap.)
In 1957 the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik 1 satellite, leading to the Space Race, a major part of the greater Cold War.
We literally spend the next decade catching up, because we had allowed ourselves to be gulled and taken our eye off the ball due to fear. Because of that, we had to face down a major national threat and rediscover the guts, grit and intelligence that we'd let ourselves get sidetracked from.
That is the cost of fear.
Think about that, take all the time that you need.
But there is another way...
We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win. ~John F. Kennedy.
Thursday, March 1, 2018
Terrible thing to live in fear...Part One.
I keep saying things are going to change. As the fallout from the Florida school shooting continues to spread, I sense a change in the air.
Certainly, the other side seems to be in a lot more of a Panic! mode than they have been before, but maybe that's because the kids who survived this shooting are speaking up. Maybe it's because the kids themselves are from a diverse, upscale area so they're harder to dismiss. Maybe it's because conservatives are being such pricks to kids (who got shot at) in full public view...hell, maybe it's just because the kids have thus far demonstrated good character and moral courage. I don't know what the answer is, but something seems to be different this time.
This is the guy who's responsible for the Republicans flipping the House in 2010, and this is how they repay him? He sure as hell didn't deserve this kind of treatment. Right now, I can't imagine why any immigrant (of any race) let alone any person of Color would want to be a Republican, honestly.
Case in point: The fucking President compared immigrants to snakes? I'm sorry, I understand the urge to play to one's base, but for fuck's sake you cannot alienate everybody else and expect that you're not going to be due for a shellacking at the polls the next time there's an election. The Republicans seem to be damned well determined to set a land speed record for how far and how fast they can alienate everybody who isn't a complete asshole. It's like these people are hearing from the Evil Elder Gods of the Lovecraft mythos but think they're hearing the voice of God...and it's no wonder they're coming off as so unhinged that they're losing their own voters.
The truth, of course, is far more mundane: As I've said before, I think these motherfuckers know they're on their way out...so they intend to try and steal as much money as they can on the way out the door. They're just being so obvious and stupid about it, that there's probably going to be consequences. Business and politics alike depend on a lot of unwritten understandings in order to function. One's Word has to be good, everything about Trump flies in the face of that. Americans, and for that matter the rest of the world, have to have confidence that the Man Behind The Curtain knows what he's doing...or things become unstable. Now we don't have that, or at least no one does who has a brain in their head and is paying attention.
For fuck's sake, last night on Twitter I saw Rick Wilson, a Republican media guy and strategist with (as he describes them) broadly Libertarian leanings, arguing in favor of a Universal Basic Income in order for people to be able to make a living as automation takes over various jobs...and in turn, for caps on things like rent in order to prevent that money from just being transferred immediately into the pockets of landlords and such. Now, that makes perfect sense to me, even if it does seem a bit Leftist of a way to deal with these problems, I sure can't think of anything better.
Of course, this will require cultural and social change, and I like Rick's idea of making sure we have all the bases covered and speak about this like adults is probably a good idea.
...And of course, that's the rub. Today's right-wingers would rather burn down the world than deal with cultural and social change, even as their own leadership makes ham-handed attempts at social engineering and causes massive social change through stupidity.
Here's the thing, those people are already a minority, and I think white people in a more general sense will become one faster than most people currently think. Why? Bad eating habits, depression, drug use, guns, suicide, the Opioid epidemic and the Trump administration's stubborn refusal to do anything about it in any kind of competent manner whatever.
(There's also the combination of the Opioid crisis and a lot of unsafe sexual behaviors threatening to bring AIDS back, but I digress. Does anybody trust guys like Ben Carson or Mike Pence to deal with that?)
It's not just a general lack of competence or of willingness to take effective action...it's that they lack the power that simply having the courage of their convictions would provide. These people become almost ridiculously angry whenever they are even questioned...and not only they, but their voters, appear to be genuinely afraid of opposing views or of having to defend what they're doing or why they're doing it.
Meanwhile, their voter base...egged on by FOX News, the internet and talk radio...just gets angrier and even less coherent with time. At one point, this anger was good for them...but now all indications are that it's past the point where anger translates effectively into action and starting to lose energy...which is not helped by Trump's reversals on gun control issues in the last couple of days.
What's worse is, due to anger over Trump and his policies there's a lot of energy on the other side, which Republicans dismiss as a hoax or choose to believe that the tax cuts will save them. (Mind you, this is a tax cut widely seen as a giveaway to the rich, that was less popular than G.H.W. Bush and Clinton tax hikes)
Our government, and the Republican Party, are whistling past the graveyard on a lot of things right now, not least the fact that in the last couple days of February, it got warm enough that my roommate and I had fans on and the windows open. That old 1950's attitude of "If we don't talk about this, it will go away" is horse shit. I knew that 30 years ago. Leaving a problem unaddressed, or making a choice not to deal with it, or simply not making a choice at all is still making a choice.
In the face of that, there have been a total of 38 Special Election losses by Republicans to Democrats over the last year. Hope Hicks just quit, other people are apparently considering it. The Mueller investigation appears to be kicking into high gear and it looks like Roger Stone could easily be charged for being Trump's direct envoy to Wikileaks...itself a Russian GRU asset.
So, Yesterday, Trump was attacking Jeff Sessions on Twitter. A number of people, including Jerry Falwell Jr. piled on:
I'd legit not be surprised at this point if there was a sign in the Oval Office that said "The beatings will continue until morale improves."
I hate Jeff Sessions, I think he's a racist jerk. But when he clapped back with a statement saying he would continue to discharge his duties in accordance with the Constitution and the Law, I fired off a Tweet in his defense anyway. At least he seems to understand, as far as this matter is concerned, what his job is.
Let's take a look at this a bit. Jeff Sessions, unlike many Alabama Republicans (including Roy Moore) is that rare bird in his age group that's always been a Republican. He's also always basically had the same outlook, more or less presaging today's often-racist Republican party by literally decades. He's lost some major opportunities including a Federal judgeship because of this. Fuck, it hurts to say this but Jeff Sessions should absolutely be regarded as Trumpist royalty. Jefferson Fucking Beauregard Sessions should damned well be considered the prophetic voice crying out in the wilderness, the John the Baptist of Trumpism, if you will.
But this is how they treat him? Because he does his damned job, like he knows he's supposed to and indeed, by his profession legally bound to as well.
That's gotta hurt.
I don't care, like I said, I hate Jeff Sessions and everything he stands for. Eat shit and die, motherfucker.
But you know who should care? Republicans, from Mitch McConnell and Speaker Ryan all the way down to the lowliest West Virginia coal miner who voted for this silly bullshit.
If Trump will throw Jeff Sessions under the bus despite Sessions unflagging support since 2015, he will throw anybody under the bus...just like he's throwing the NRA under the bus since yesterday.
Why did he do it? Fear.
...And remember, anyone could be targeted by Trump and become the target of his mob.
Trump, being a con artist, lives in constant fear that people will catch on. Trump fears the Department of Justice, he fears Jeff Sessions enough to attack him on Twitter instead of calling him in the office, getting in his face and saying what's up. Trump fears being found out as a con man and despite (or perhaps even because of) his best efforts...that's exactly what's happening. All these Republicans? They fear the mob that Trump has whipped up...even as, increasingly, the Democrats do not.
Republicans fear change, the Democrats, education, LGBT people, people of Color, etc. but even more, they fear each other. The House Rep. or the Senator fears the mob, and fears Trump. Trump and his mob in turn fear and hate the Congressional Republicans. Hell, Republicans fear and hate themselves, and each other.
You know who isn't afraid? Those kids from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
You know who isn't afraid anymore? Democratic voters and politicians.
This will not end well...for Republicans.
Part Two.