Crab Bucket

Crab mentality or crabs in a bucket (also barrel, basket or pot), is a way of thinking best described by the phrase "if I can't have it, neither can you." The metaphor refers to a pattern of behavior noted in crabs when they are trapped in a bucket. While any one crab could easily escape, its effort will be undermined by others, ensuring the group's collective demise


So, I think over the last couple of days I've actually managed to discover that Republicans in general (mostly excepting #NeverTrump Republicans) and Trump Supporters in particular are actually dumber and more selfish than I thought.


Case in point, I guess Willie Nelson is supposedly losing fans over his decision to play at a Beto O'Rourke rally.


Full disclosure, I've been a Willie Nelson fan since cross-country trips in my grandparents motor home (or later, pickup truck and fifth-wheel camper) as a kid. My Grandpa Thompson especially would play the shit out of Willie's "On the road again." It had a way of livening things up while driving south through Indiana on the way to Florida, or across Nebraska on the way from California to Michigan. Just sayin.'


That set of grandparents was basically conservative union Democrats, in particular back in the 1980's when we went on a lot of those trips they would've been considered Reagan Democrats. When I registered to vote in 1991 as an 18-year-old young adult I decided after thinking about it, to register as a Republican, although I'd generally vote a split ticket for a lot of years.


We all knew Willie was a Democrat, as in the not-conservative kind and we didn't care.


See, according to what I was taught things like music are supposed to transcend temporal things like politics.


It's also worth noting that my Grandpa's branch of the family got help from Farm Aid back in the 1980's that kept my great-grandparents family farm in the family for a couple more years, Even though my Grandpa had left Minnesota farm life behind decades before when he went to college in 1941...and ultimately joined the Navy in 1943...to his generation, the last in which such an upbringing could be considered a default American start in life, such things were still important.


And Willie did his damnedest to raise money for Farm Aid.


I saw a post on Twitter in which a Trump Supporter called Willie Nelson "A bitter, angry old man like John McCain."


Now, weed or no weed, Willie always struck me as more mellow than bitter, and given that he was one of the guys who originated and popularized the term "Outlaw country" I rather doubt, as John Scalzi points out above, that Willie Nelson, being an 85 year old man with that kind of reputation, and being somebody who's gone to jail over his use of Marijuana and belief that it should be legalized, gives one trifling SHIT what some conservative moron on Twitter thinks about him.


These people are fans of Donald Trump, not Willie Nelson. Hell I doubt these fucking people ever bothered to care or pay attention to the things Willie stands for, and has stood for forever, openly, loudly, and without care or worry for the consequences.

Yesterday, Rick Scott publicly stood by the various estimates that place the death toll from last year's hurricanes on Puerto Rico at almost 3,000 people. Republican voters...sounding for once almost like Unicorn-hunting far-Left Bernie nuts...said they wouldn't vote for him as a result, and called him "Just another liberal."


Rick Scott is a Republican, and as shady and shitty as the rest of the lot and he's never made any bones about it.


But no, he disagreed with Cheeto Jesus ONE time and all the sudden he's "Just another liberal?"


Help me here.


It seems like conservatism now has been redefined around two things: Support of Donald Trump at all times and in all cases, and more generally a sort of transactional support for Republicans.


Not a word about free markets, global engagement, human dignity, individual liberty, muscular foreign policy or even (and oddly enough) the traditional American exceptionalism. How exactly are these fucking people blood-and-soil American nationalists without believing in American exceptionalism?


Well, I guess you could argue that they make pretty damned good Russian nationalists, but I digress.


As I've said, I know from personal experience you can be a conservative without being a Republican. Hell there used to be liberal Republicans too. Even today, a lot of the younger Democratic-voting people that I know consider me a conservative, though I've voted with them around 90% of the time for a decade now.


At this point, I'm having trouble even figuring out what conservatism stands for, unless it's misogyny and racism specifically, or maybe corporate greed. Even the latter has...almost...fallen by the wayside and even Trump Supporters don't seem to care about Trump's shitty tax cut.


But they sure care about hating on people of color, and talking real stupid about women, don't they?


This is what happens when you divorce politics and religion from compassion, humanity and morality.


Give these people (most of whom identify as Christian) the option...or even a simple lack of leadership that says not to do it...and the first thing they will do with the Cross of Christ is take it and set it on fire.


If you don't think these damn morons have it on their minds to burn people, you have another thing coming. Fair warning: They'll probably start with their fellow conservatives.


Just remember, Republicans: In the Crab-bucket moral universe of Donald Trump, no one gets out alive. Remember that these are the people who think everybody else must secretly be as shitty as they are...because they lack the imagination to understand that anybody else might think differently.


All the little crabs couldn't get along or work together, so they all pulled each other down and ended up as crab cakes. If you don't believe me, go look for yourself. Go on Twitter and check out all the Republican butt-hurt, even (especially) from people like David French (and especially over the adverse reactions to Brett Kavanaugh by everybody who isn't a Republican) who normally knows better.


Go check it out, and vote, vote these fuckers out. We need to stop rewarding partisan assholery and stupidity.


Just empty the damn crab bucket, make these fuckers at least catch new crabs.