He's a black dude, about my age, maybe a little older. We mostly talk about basketball since that was something we both played, or cars, since he works on them as a hobby. The other day I asked him what he thought of our current political mess, and how it seems like Republicans have lost the plot on damned near everything they've ever claimed to stand for and set on fire every value they've ever had for an unholy trinity of racism, tax cuts, and Donald Trump.
I've been saying this for awhile, obviously.
His response? "Slavery. That's what they want, that's the only value they care about. They want to go back to the slavery days."
Now, my dude is a custodian, not a political scientist. He doesn't write position papers, he mops the floor for a living. But he is, of course, African American. So he is of course conscious of and more sensitive to certain things.
I suppose, if my ancestors had come over here with three or four people stuffed into a space that's smaller than one of my ferret cages, I'd be on alert at the slightest hint of racist bullshit too.
It seems like a bad idea for Republicans and these various fascists to arouse similar feelings among women in a general sense, or to antagonize other groups of people of color, but that appears to be what they're doing. After all, it wasn't so long ago that Republicans themselves were opining that they weren't creating angry old white guys fast enough.
Often, in the last 25 years or so, Republicans have relied on a trifecta of homophobia, racism, and misogyny to accomplish their political goals.
It's like the old Triangle Trade, from the slavery days, as my co-worker put it. The Triangle Trade, for those who don't know, was taking people from Africa to be slaves in the Americas, then cotton, sugar and tobacco from the Americas to Europe...and finished goods, guns, and rum to Africa to buy more slaves.
You can plug all manner of things into this, in threes, using Republicans own words...and it still works.
Of course, at the level of my core sample, it's starting to break down. Homophobia is getting to be less of a thing, hell (not that it's much of an improvement) there are gay alt-right Nazis now. Most younger people are less racist, leaving said Nazis marching in ever-smaller groups and often fighting among themselves, and people who are old enough to remember the days of Jim Crow are mostly old, retired and dying off. Misogyny of course, seems to be getting worse...but I wonder if it's just that it's maybe more exposed, now.
As people keep pointing out...and as Trump aide Jason Miller's spiking of a stripper's smoothie with an abortion pill shows...it's not actually abortion that these fucking people don't like, it's women having control over their own bodies that's the real problem as far as most right-wingers are concerned.
I followed the Brett Kavanaugh hearing yesterday, and on social media last night...and honestly, to me it looks like this might be the battle that costs them the war. A Supreme Court justice nominee, ranting like a drunk on the Senate floor?
Multiple rape or attempted rape allegations, as well as at least one of these having happened in a state that has no statute of limitations on that crime? The dude's own friends coming out and saying he was an aggressive drunk?
To me, it kind of looks like even if Republicans win this one, they lose. It seems like a bad idea to do something that shines a light on how right-wingers get made, from prep-school to college level. It seems like an even worse idea to put somebody up who seems to think it's an entitlement, his due somehow, to sexually assault women, or to be a Supreme Court Justice.
It's a little bit over a month to election day, and honestly all this seems a high cost to pay for one more Republican ideologue on the Supreme Court, when Roberts is still present as a swing vote...and this will likely both leave a cloud hanging over the Court that will diminish it, as well as drive up Democratic voter turnout and with just over a month until the midterms elections, there's no time to forget.
In point of fact, there will likely be a dozen ridiculous outrages between now and then.
The whole thing seems like a bad idea, honestly, another poorly-thought-out Trump scam that's going to implode somehow, with unexpected consequences.
It seems like the new Republican trifecta literally has become Male Entitlement, Rape, and Resentment.
Women, or at least the ones who aren't programmed Republican Stepford-Bots, also seem none too amused by this garbage, and appear to be driving both increased voter registration and changes to the Democratic Party platform.
Meanwhile, as Jim Wright put it, Republicans seem intent on fiddling while the world literally burns.
Remember that no social problem exists in America that some rich white jerk-off somewhere doesn't profit from. Perhaps the modern Triangle Trade could better be described as:
Economic, moral or social problem ---> Manipulate or prevent backlash to it ----> PROFIT!
Listen, these fucking people have basically turned into the kind of villains one sees in bad science fiction, cartoons, and maybe the kind of movies that used to be on CineMax after 1 A.M. that have horrible plot lines and worse script-writers but lots of action and some actress who lets her boobs hang out a lot.
If you aren't pissed off enough to vote against that shit, you're part of the problem.
If you need to be "inspired" to vote against drunks raging in the Senate because their Supreme Court nomination got questioned at the last minute, then fuck you.
If we, as a people, don't stand up and fucking well do something about these sick elitist rapist fucks...and mind you the means to do this are provided to us every two years by our own Constitution...then we goddamned well deserve what we get.
Increasingly, I have a feeling this will end in blood and fire. Certainly they will go for their guns if they are defeated politically, regardless of whether or not conservatives (not that they're conservative in any meaningful way anymore, but that's the word) did it to themselves by their own incompetence, regardless of whether they have the judges or not. As Trump himself often demonstrates, even total subservience often isn't good enough.
It's human nature to resist, and not only that but one gets the vibe that even Republicans know their version of America sucks. But of course, they don't seem to know what else to do. As far as I'm concerned, the failure of imagination alone...not to mention the hell that they imagine as their ideal world...is unforgivable.
If they get voted out...as looks likely, but you still have to show up to make it so...that may only be the beginning of what decent people have to do to stand up for what's right.
But we still have to do it.
Vote. Be prepared to do whatever else has to be done. All the guns, rum and shiny glass beads in the world that you get for selling your fellow man out to the rich guys isn't gonna do you one damn bit of good if the land you live on gets burnt up by climate change, and what happens when they come after you?
You don't have to find out. You could vote against them on November 6th and make sure they start the next round worse off. Democrats won a hell of a lot of special elections in 2017. You can make a difference if you just show up.
It's easier on everybody if we deal with these fucking people by the ballot instead of the bullet this time.
So just fucking do it.
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.
~Bob Marley, Redemption Song.
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