Conservapocalypse

This epic before us is going to be written by the hungry Indian masses, the peasants without land, the exploited workers. It is going to be written by the progressive masses, the honest and brilliant intellectuals, who so greatly abound in our suffering Latin American lands. Struggles of masses and ideas. An epic that will be carried forward by our peoples, mistreated and scorned by imperialism; our people, unreckoned with until today, who are now beginning to shake off their slumber. Imperialism considered us a weak and submissive flock; and now it begins to be terrified of that flock; a gigantic flock of 200 million Latin Americans in whom Yankee monopoly capitalism now sees its gravediggers. ~Che Guevara

Last week, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won a Democratic primary election in New York City, unseating Rep. Joe Crowley by running on a progressive platform, calling for the abolition of Immigration & Customs Enforcement as an agency, and in general by having energy and good ideas and appealing to the sensibilities of the Latino-heavy district she's running to represent. That sounds like a winning strategy, and one that has won both praise and policy quibbles eveb from the smart Republicans that are left...all ten of them.

With the exception of a majority of #NeverTrump conservatives like Bill Kristol and Rick Wilson, and sometimes-sensible holdouts like Tea Party Joe Walsh, and oddly Trump himself...who merely praised Crowley's downfall, conservatives have been shitting themselves inside-out in fear and rage ever since, apparently convinced that hordes of brown socialists are already en route to kick in their doors, take their stuff and convert their daughters into Vegan Lesbian Communists...or something. Look, I'm not going to try to pretend I know or care what these idiots are actually thinking...if you can call it that...I was never that kind of conservative. 

I will say one thing though, Jesus Christ wishes he had the amount of influence over the American Church that Ayn Rand does...and she's dead.

Oops, did I say Ayn Rand? I meant Bill Buckley D.W. Griffith, Joe McCarthy, Robert E. Lee, Oh screw it Donald Trump.

Actually, I'm not the least bit sure what this guy was on about, but it strikes me as odd to say that "Brown immigrants are punishment from God" when an overwhelming majority of said brown immigrants are Christians.

Oh, right, my bad. I keep forgetting that these fools believe that Jesus was White and only White people get to be Saved and... Yeah, you know what? Fuck that guy, I can't even snark that ridiculous "White Jesus" bullshit. I'm sorry dude, but if you believe that other people are "Punishment from God" you're either one selfish bastard or a fucking moron and no amount of quoting the Bible,,,which was all about how we should treat other people...is going to help.

You know, there's a solution to the decline of American conservatism and American Christianity that holds within it the salvation of American conservatism: Immigration. I read a book many years ago that was written by Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention, which stated that the future of Christianity lay in the "Global South" roughly Africa, Latin America, parts of Asia and Oceana. 

Sorry, but it's been my experience that white people just aren't that religious, at least not in the same way as people of color often are, and they use religion for different things. Lots of them are conservative, yes, but to them conservatism means different things as well. If the Evangelicals and the Republicans really wanted to save themselves and their power, instead of following Donald Trump's exclusionary, zero-sum line, they would push hard for immigration reform, in a way that prioritized those Global South countries and they'd treat those people decent when they came here, because if you really look at it, according to logic (as I mentioned regarding the Somali community in Minnesota in a recent post) an immigrant community that encourages capitalism, prioritizes public service (especially if over-represented in the military or the police) and takes care of their own should damned well be a natural constituency for Republicans...if they believed in the things that they say they do. 

If they supported immigration, particularly from Latin America, and African countries like Nigeria and Uganda, the Republicans could ride that wave of mostly-Christian immigration to electoral victory after electoral victory. Sure, they might lose some of their wedge issues, but they'd gain others. They could probably even shed their looming sense of defeatism that eats them from the inside like the garrison of a Maginot Line Ouvrage. Like those French soldiers, the Republicans...the smart ones, anyway...can read a map and they know that the other side can just go around their cleverly constructed defenses.

But no, it's apparently easier to just rant about civil war. I'm not quite sure where Alex Jones is getting that this is something Democrats want when the truth is that it's something Right-wingers have been ranting about for at least a generation, if not longer.

They know the ground is shifting...has shifted...right out from under their feet and the gimmick presidency of Donald Trump is only going to hold them up for as long as they don't look down.

When you build your entire edifice on the sinking sand of pure bullshit, the whole thing's going to collapse sooner or later.

No amount of branding or design game is going to fix that.

You can gild that turd all you want, but in the end it's just a gold-plated piece of shit.

You can scream and yell and hyperventilate and wave guns around and sell all the male enhancement pills you want, but it's not going to do any good if what you're doing all that about isn't based on the truth. I remember well the Reagan and G.H.W. Bush eras, and yeah, those guys could bullshit, but they had the sense to understand that there was a truth out there, and to give it some respect because even a good liar has to understand the truth if only to obscure it effectively.

These people can't even come up with lies that I want to believe in, and I'm not alone.

Here's what I want to know:

I keep hearing that this lady, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, is a Bernie Sanders supporter, a Social Democrat (and I've advised a number of Bernie people that I know to just pocket this win and move on, as well as the fact that more "mainstream" Democrats like Beto O' Rourke have picked up some of her messaging and ran with it) and I see that she terrifies the majority of conservatives...not least because structurally they can't do shit about her.These same people are terrified that the Democrats seem to be sliding toward socialism...and many are saying the same things about America in general. They're absolutely losing their shit about it.

But we had a Socialist, or Social Democrat candidate two years ago.

Nobody was this terrified of Bernie Sanders. Hell, I know Republicans personally who crossed party lines to vote for him in the Democratic primary, or who wrote him in, in the general election.

Why are they afraid of her, and not him?

Why do right-wingers suddenly seem to fear hordes of brown socialists when they did not fear hordes of cranky old Jewish guys or pot-smoking hippies or disaffected moderate Republicans in 2015 and 2016?

In my life I've seen Republicans go from demanding that walls be torn down, to demanding that walls be put up. I've seen them go from saying that Colin Powell should be President to saying that Barack Obama should not be. I've seen them get Clarence Thomas confirmed to the Supreme Court to freaking out that Hillary Clinton would nominate Barack Obama to fill his seat if he retired.

The other day, Ron Paul posted this question, "Socialists vs. Trumpists, where are the Libertarians? I responded that all too many of the Libertarians WERE the Alt-right Nazis and the Trumpists, because conservatism and Libertarianism were killed and eaten by racism.

I quite honestly didn't expect much of a response and aside from a few people liking the post I didn't get one. But oh man, did I (and everybody else) get an answer today.

Today, Ron Paul posted this, telling the world exactly why there were no Libertarians who might weigh in on the Socialist vs. Trumpist conflict, because he was right there proving that both Conservatism and Libertarianism had been killed and eaten by racism (and, for that matter anti-semitism) just exactly as I had said a couple of days before. 

Over the last three years I've watched Republicans set every core value they've ever had on fire and leave it in the middle of the road to burn. I've watched the vast majority of Libertarians cease to exist even as a force in conversation, as most have either become Democrats or Trumpists in the intervening time. Over the last few years I've watched Americans fundamentally sort themselves into two camps, almost regardless of whatever legacy labels they may keep wearing, for or against certain things, almost no matter what specific policies they may advocate.

Those things are authoritarianism, racism and sovereignty of our country vs. foreign authoritarians.

I've watched Republicans set their values on fire, fundamentally, for Donald Trump, and for racism.

It's As Charles M. Blow put it today, it's like Trump is their drug dealer, and racism and rage are their drugs.

You know, I'll say one thing for damned sure, at least the Socialists are consistent. 

I don't live in New York City, the Bronx is in fact one of the parts of NYC that I've not been to.

But you know what? If I did live there, she'd have my vote.

Why? 

Democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy, with discrimination against Blacks and outrages by the Ku Klux Klan, or with the persecution that drove scientists like Oppenheimer from their posts, deprived the world for years of the marvelous voice of Paul Robeson, held prisoner in his own country, and sent the Rosenberg's to their deaths against the protests of a shocked world, including the appeals of many governments and of Pope Pius XII. ~Che Guevara

That's why, that right there.

If racism is all that American conservatism really stands for, then it needs to die.

...And I say that as a former Republican.