UnSat. (Presumed part 1.)

Look, I'm about to read my own people the riot act here, which is, generally speaking, something I haven't had to do that much over the last few years. If you can't handle that, or if you get all soggy and hard to light over harsh language. Here, have a cute picture of a baby ferret and move along.

Soup Sandwich (Noun, occasionally used as a verb) A US military term denoting something extremely useless, poorly executed or seriously goddamned unsatisfactory. Descriptively noting that the subject is about as useless as two hot, wet, soggy pieces of bread that had a ladle full of soup dumped between them. Ex: "That uniform is about as tore up as a soup sandwich."

So, the Iowa caucuses were yesterday.

The fuck, Iowa Democrats? I mean, seriously, THE FUCK?!

Ya'll had one job, and somehow managed to make the Democrats look even more incompetent than the Trump administration, which takes some serious doing these days. Who the fuck got out of bed one morning and decided "I want to look even stupider than these fucking morons," Seriously?

Evidently, the Iowa Democratic Party had some app that was supposed to make it easier for precincts to report polling results and stuff, that was distributed without training the poll workers and volunteers, or testing the system on any level, much less that of an entire state, or even having serious tech professionals go through it and check the goddamned thing for bugs and glitches. I mean, come on, reporting partial results? Did somebody even run the code on this bitch with an appropriate number of variables?

Even these days, anywhere outside of US politics or corporate crony capitalism that level of performance would likely get a whole bunch of these fucking people fired, and they'd deserve it.

But of course, it's actually way the fuck worse than that. A Precinct captain was on hold for an hour, trying to report results to the state party, and when he finally got through they hung up on him. That's bad enough when it's your insurance company. When it's the fate of the country potentially at stake, that's a lot fucking worse, I think.

Oh, and I should add that with zero results counted, Mayor Pete declared himself the winner.

Fuckin' seriously dude?

Even Marianne Williamson was like "Did this just seriously happen?"

If this is the performance of the Democratic Party in a time of national crisis, I wouldn't just plan on Donald Trump being reelected, expect Junior in 2024, Ivanka in 2032, etc. etc. and expect America as anything other than a Third World shit hole dominated by petty corporate satraps to be pretty much over within the next few years.

Here's a pro-tip regarding the American system and the Constitution. There was an implicit requirement that the populace be intelligent enough to operate said system and pay attention enough to elect leaders who actually gave a shit...and more to the point, that the People themselves actually be required to give a shit. One would think that at least the Democrats would believe in Democracy.

Freedom isn't free doesn't just apply to guns, military service or quotes from stupid war movies or Republican speeches. A fair number of people have been quoted saying that "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." That's never been more true than at a time like this.

And it also means showing up and doing the work, getting shit right the first time, and being able to adapt and act on new information and react appropriately when things go sideways...as they inevitably do in some way most of the time.

Because if you don't think the Bernie Bros, not to mention the Trump Supporters, will try to exploit this mess, you haven't been paying attention. Fox News was on this shit basically all night with a singular focus, which is unusual for them.

Add that to the fact that there's an awful lot of Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, beating the drum for Bernie these days and I get the vibe that they're trying to pick their own opposition...this mess will not help with that. The scary part is, judging from some Tweets and videos that I've seen...Bernie is at least making some effort to be the rational actor here. Fuck my life.

I'll do it if I have to, but I don't want to vote for that guy. Yes, the important thing is to stop Trump, but I'm not a fan of replacing one political cult given power with another one, for exactly the same reason as I didn't like it the first time around.

Whether you can see it or not, we are just as we have been, being strung along so that everybody can keep doing what they already want to do, heading toward an election where, if there's enough situations like this, none of the major players will want to accept results they don't like and all will have cover to refuse to accept anything they don't want to. That kind of faction-based breakdown is part of what doomed the old Soviet Union. I mean, how the hell do you think the August Coup was able to be launched, much less nearly succeed?

This is exactly how countries break down, and when nobody trusts the system anymore, they'll tend to go out and get a new one...at least for awhile.

Results like this make me worry about my friends, my potentially vulnerable loved ones and my pets, and frankly ya'll should be worried too.

From what I've heard, the top issue concerning most Iowa Caucus voters is beating Trump. If they get it, why can't the people running the party?

This is, like it or not, a fucking existential issue for the United States of America. Republicans have started reaching the point where they actively want to kill people. What part of "This is a fucking problem" don't you get?

If people on such opposite sides of the spectrum and Alyssa Milano and Joe Walsh can fucking get it and decide to come together to try and stop this ridiculous bullshit, why can't the rest of us?

When an avatar of the 2010 Tea Party wave election like Joe Fucking Walsh can fucking get it...well, what the hell is Bernie's or Joe Biden's or Mayor Pete's excuse?

Back in the day, I was taught that it didn't matter, conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican, we were all supposed to be on the same team, and that team is supposed to be America.

And as bad as Trump himself is, I'm increasingly of the opinion that run of the mill Republicans...in Congress or on the street...are just as bad, if not actually shaping up to be worse.

We're up against a cult here, a cult that wants to dismantle America and sell it off like a chop-shopped car for fun and profit so long as they get to keep a piece for some kind of shitty little banana republic where the only choice in the voter registration form...if you can even get one...is banana republican.

And they're that way with, or without Trump. He just makes it arguably worse and much more inefficient.

But it's a cult either way. Any understanding of this situation that falls short of that is unsatisfactory.

Vote the bastards out. All of them. And if they won't go, kick them out. It's not just the life of your country. It's your life, as well.

Either you believe in civilization or you don't. Either you stand against the fall of night, or you don't. There's no goddamned half measures, and no second chances. We gotta get this shit right.

And what happened in Iowa last night? That ain't it. It's really that fucking simple.