Lies, Damned Lies, and Populism (American Revelation III, Part Six.)

Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a lamentation, O house of Israel. The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise: she is forsaken upon her land; there is none to raise her up.

For thus saith the Lord God; The city that went out by a thousand shall leave an hundred, and that which went forth by an hundred shall leave ten, to the house of Israel. For thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live: ~Amos 5:1-4

I was going to write something different today, but when I came home from running my errands, I found out that Bernie Sanders has now bowed out of the Democratic Primary, leaving Joe Biden the unquestioned presumptive nominee.

You could track the anger and rage of Bernie Bros in the trending hashtags.

At least one of the people that I follow had dozens of people lighting up their feed with Bernie people saying they weren't going to vote. 

Really? This shit again?

I want to share with you a bunch of clips from a campaign ad that I saw yesterday. Former Republican Congressman Paul Broun is running for the House again, trying to reclaim his old seat.

Now, aside from the fact that I'm not clear that this dude understands that other people have their own selves, and families and property, I took  note of some glaring issues with this particular ad.

Again, it's typical Republican. "Fuck you, pay me."

First of all, "Looting hordes from Atlanta" is a racist dog-whistle so obvious that my Schnauzer heard it all the way up here, and I didn't even have the sound on watching the ad.

Second, go ahead, show me where there have ever been any such thing as "Looting hordes" from any American city going out into the country. Go ahead, I'll wait.

First of all, it doesn't happen. Second, absent some outside provocation or situation, violence tends to happen within social groups or within the areas where people live. Generally, if there's a riot, for example, people loot businesses or whatever in their own neighborhoods. 

Your odds of ever getting to shoot some [Racial Expletive Deleted]s from the city in actual self-defense are about like your odds of finding an armed member of the Taliban lying in wait in the meat department at your local Wal-Mart waiting to sell you black tar heroin. It doesn't happen outside of whatever fantasies you beat off to. Not to mention, last I checked, this is America, and we have things like civilization and Police departments. And nobody from the city really wants anything that your stank ass has, anyway.

It's far more likely that people like Paul Broun, if they were able to do things their way, would simply use those kind of racist lies as an excuse to murder any people of color in their own area, or who might travel through it. Do any of us really want to live in the kind of country where any ethnic group is penned up in the city by the prospect of armed mob violence, should they try to travel cross-country overland?

Do we really? Things like that, are why one doesn't enable or vote for racists, or Republican gun nuts...at least not if you have a soul.

Okay, back the truck up here "Tyrannical government from Washington?" First of fucking all, ya'll seem fine with tyranny when it has an (R) next to its name. Second, this is yet another bullshit lie to cover for all the other bullshit lies these people tell themselves. It's more than a little neo-Confederate regionalism and Libertarian horse shit mixed in with some "But da gubmint gives money to THOSE PEOPLE."

I'm serious, if these fucking people had their own nice little White Nationalist Ethno-State they'd be all about "The Government" just like they're all about "The Government" whenever and wherever they think they have total control of it. 

The entire line was "Marxists know that if they tried to impose socialism and place government on the throne of our hearts, they'd have a big fight on their hands." Okay, first of all, for those who don't know their Reformed theology (i.e. Calvinism) this is straight up boilerplate crypto-Calvinist Fundamentalist bullshit. In other words, none of what few actual Marxists there are left in the world is going to have the slightest what he's even fucking talking about. I mean, shit, lots of Fundamentalists and Pentecostals don't even talk this way, it's a very specific frame of reference that was popular in the 1970's and pops up sporadically in that stream of theology.

The only reason I know what it is, is I have a background in this stuff and in the churches I went to we didn't listen to those people, either. You want to end up with an inbox that's dripping green sizzling acidic venom for weeks on end, get into an argument with some Calvinist nut on the internet. These are the people who will bang on about burning LGBT people at the stake on a "Christian" forum, for a month, violate enough terms of service relating to profanity and advocating violence that moderators quit in disgust because management won't let 'em ban the fucker, and then get away with it and do it again, and again, until everybody who'll stand up against it just gives up and leaves.

This is the obligatory shout-out to the religious fanatics, right here, basically. Want to know what this shit means in real life? Public health policy? Gone, because Abortion, that's why. Hospitals need medications, ventilators and PPE in the middle of a pandemic? Better get one of the brown-skinned nurses to perform a few, er, favors for the nearest billionaire, or something, because fuck you, that's why.

And don't be surprised if they come up with a religious justification for why all the non-moneyed, or non-Republican old people need to die off, too. If they haven't already, I mean.

They've already pretty much factored that into their economic plans.

"Liberty Machines" that's a new one. Here's one that I've been expecting for some years as well. No, the heroes aren't the airmen, marines, sailors and soldiers serving under our flag at home and abroad, it's the Republican politician fake-stalking through the pucker-brush playing fake soldier so he can get fake macho male-inadequacy poster-boys to vote for him in the general election.

Listen, ya'll, fake macho shit, guns, libertarian whack-off fantasies, misogyny, racism and religious fuckery have been part of these people's brand for decades predating Trump.

If you don't vote against Trump, you're enabling exactly that, plus all the ways Trump will make it worse.

As I said awhile back, nothing new under the sun, except of course that the current President and his enablers and sycophants and wealthy-hangers-on will find creative ways to make it worse for everybody.

Voting against Trump, at this point, means voting for Joe Biden.

Because if you think Donald "gets people to take fish tank cleaner" Trump is going to pass Medicare For All or any progressive agenda, you must be on some serious drugs and you have another thing coming. This dude isn't going to do anything but glorify himself and keep stealing, and if y'all Bernie voters really support any of the things you say you do, I cannot for the life of me imagine why any of you would support this crap. Things are not going to get better with Republicans in power, ever. 

Yes, it's going to take work to try to get things that you want, or move the country in a more progressive direction. As even one of the Bulwark's conservative writers pointed out in an article today, in 20 years Bernie could be remembered and revered as the Left's equivalent to Barry Goldwater for all we know.

I'm in favor of that idea for a few reasons.

For much of his time, Goldwater was nuts, electorally he listened to the wrong people and he deservedly got his ass kicked for it by Lyndon Johnson. But later, he got smart.

Pro tip: Later on, Goldwater himself came around to some things that were then very Progressive ideas, like open military service for LGBT people, years before "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and literally decades before it was a mainstream idea among Democrats and eventual public policy.

There is hope, provided you're dealing with a person who is capable of acting in good faith.

You don't have to be straight to shoot straight, that's what he said. Toward the end of his time Barry Goldwater was one of the more liberal Republicans. That came up in a conversation with Bob Dole. People change.

Bernie moved the needle in a progressive direction in one hell of a lot of ways. Hell, there's stuff I never would have supported four or five years ago that I do now because of him...like the idea of a national health care system, for one.

Hell, even a long-shot guy like Andrew Yang kicked the idea of a universal basic income into the mix. If you'd have brought that up in 2008 I would have laughed at it, once I figured out what you were talking about.

And that's not the only thing working its way into the mainstream that I could have never imagined...trans rights, for example. There's a big one.

We're real close to being able to make things better, the part that sucks is, we'll have to do that while also cleaning up after Trump and the Republicans, if we win.

But to actually effect policy changes, you have to win first, and winning first means you have to vote for whoever is on the ticket right now. That means Joe Biden. It flows this way; Somebody like Donald Trump could never have got elected 40, or even 20 years ago (and he ran for President in 2000) but Republicans kept at voting for hard-right assholes even though they couldn't get one for President...until they did. Reagan and the Bushes weren't what the assholes wanted. So they packed Congress full of shitty little assholes like Paul Broun.

And Democrats have AOC, Ilhan, Rashida, and a fairly solid number of centrists and moderates to back them up, and the "Left" still has Bernie. Ya'll still have power, in fact in a cultural sense y'all probably have more electrodes plugged into the national brain-pan than you've ever had before.

But you have to play your cards smart.

That is, don't think Republicans, the people who forced a primary yesterday in the middle of a pandemic, will ever engage with that in good faith.

But Democrats will, even if we sometimes don't like it.

You have to show up and vote for your own side, even if you don't like it.

If you want a better country you have to be better citizens, and you have to win.

When you don't vote, or you vote third party, you let the bad guys win automatically.

Part Five.
Part Seven.