Triangle Trade

I had a conversation with a co-worker the other night, while I was at work.

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.

Rape-publicans

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. ~Maya Angelou.

I've been following the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation saga over the last week or so, and I'm not going to lie, I've been doing so with an increasing sense of revulsion.

Listen up. This isn't about law, this isn't about policy, hell it's only peripherally about abortion or civil rights...given that even a Kavanaugh confirmation will basically punt the Republican swing-vote on the court back to Roberts. After Anthony Kennedy's performance in recent years, and especially in the course of his retirement, I've grown more and more inclined to view him as just another shitty Republican.

No, this isn't about the law, or a more conservative approach to the law or somehow getting revenge for Watergate by nominating some asshole who thinks Nixon shouldn't have been run out of office. (That's basically most Republicans at this point, anyway.)

No. This is, as with so much about this bullshit ass garbage administration, about using-whatever-to stick up a giant middle finger at the world. Yeah, Republicans will say it's about abortion, and conservatism and law and policy, but what this is really about is throwing up a giant fuck you at the rest of us, even in the face of an angry reality.

They know they're massively unpopular, they know they're going down, if not in this cycle certainly in the next and they know that the last person who's actually going to help them with this mess is Donald Fucking Trump. They know the election is right around the fucking corner, and they've not only decided to broadcast their assholery, they're joyously shouting it in the streets.

The Trump era, if not Trump himself, finally liberates them from the laws of decent behavior political correctness having to act like a fucking human being.

What this is about, at heart, is shitty power games. This isn't about law books, this is about thinking with the dick.

I'm serious. These assholes already know they're unpopular as fuck, facing a motivated, hostile electorate that for once (if not actually Democrat-leaning) is certainly hostile to Republicans and Trump. Like any rapist, facing the possibility that their victim will go to the cops, they don't care. All that's on their mind is right now and the power they can exert in the moment.

I'm using that analogy for a fucking reason.

The basic Republican response to the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, with some honorable exceptions like David French or Rick Wilson, has so far been "What? You've never raped anybody?"

As if rape is some kind of thing that people routinely do to each other, or somehow not a thing at all.

As if women are not actually people, or something.

I'm sorry, but I started out as a conservative and I missed where in the manual it said that rape is acceptable so long as you're a Republican.

This basically takes the whole "could be found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy" thing to the next level on an updraft of pure Republican shitty behavior. Dead girl or live boy no longer matters, because the core Trump Supporters (and some, if not all, opportunistic Republicans) will at this point simply assume that the dead girl or live boy or both were Democratic operatives liberals nuts put there personally by Satan to something something Gazpacho mess with Donald Trump ooga booga.

Yes, our political discourse at least on the Republican side of things really is that fucking stupid. They know...they know...it will be the death of them in the end. They just don't care right now because it feels good and they're making money and they got their tax cut so fuck you, everybody else.

I'd like to say that I have more to add here, but the truth is that I don't.

This kind of stupid cannot be reasoned with.

This kind of stupid can only be outvoted and then told to go fuck itself in the ear once it's voted out.

It's not going to get any better, and they keep telling is that they're craven, and greedy, and stupid, and that they don't give a fuck about anybody who makes less than seven figures.

We can't appeal to their better nature, they simply don't have one.

We can only vote them out, and then keep voting to make sure they never get power back in the first place.

We can't say "What about the future?" Because, since these assholes know they don't have much of one, they think none of the rest of us do either.

The same applies to the soul. These rape-publicans simply don't have one left.

We have to vote them out, period.

So get on it.

Show up.

Make it happen.

If we want a better country we all have to be better citizens.

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.

Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found
T'was blind but now I see

T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear
And Grace, my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed

Through many dangers, toils and snares
We have already come.
T'was grace that brought us safe thus far
And grace will lead us home,~Traditional Christian Hymn, by John Newton

I watched John McCain's D.C. memorial service yesterday morning.

To be quite honest, I found the entire thing to be very emotionally draining. I was moved to tears more than one time, and I didn't vote for the guy. I was deeply impressed by Meghan McCain, powering through her pain for what had to have been an agonizing moment on the world stage, to deliver a stinging rebuke of Trump and Trumpism, which she did, to thunderous applause.

We gather to mourn the passing of American greatness, the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice, those that live lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served. He was a great fire who burned bright. In the past few days, my family and I have heard from so many of those Americans who stood in the warmth and light of his fire and found it illuminated what's best about them. We are grateful to them because they're grateful to him. A few have resented that fire for the light it cast upon them for the truth it revealed about their character, but my father never cared what they thought and even that small number still have the opportunity as long as they draw breath to live up to the example of John McCain.

The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again, because America was always great.

It was more than that, though. George W. Bush spoke eloquently, and reminded me all too much of what conservatism once was, and how much it has lost. Hell, even Henry Kissenger came off more as an amusing old man than as some kind of foreign policy titan, kind of like a Vietnam-era version of the old guy from "Up."

I find myself missing these old Republicans. All of them, even the ones I hated, or voted against.

Barack Obama of course, was Barack Obama and god damn but I miss that guy.

We need these people, all of them, even if we don't always or even really like them...because we need examples of class and decency and grace and people with the capability to say things that can uplift us all, because despite...or perhaps even because of...our very often anti-authoritarian, non-hierarchical nature as a people, it's better if the best of us, or at least people who can speak properly, who do not harbor endless insecure fears and who understand the world rise to the top. I don't give a damn if what I'm about to say sounds elitist or snobbish, but there are a lot of people out there...grown ass adults...who in their minds are like little children. They will follow the examples that they see. Fundamentally, these people often don't have much of an internal moral code or sense of right and wrong...they will do what they are permitted to do.

I started out as a conservative, and I quite honestly think that to a degree our society has become too permissive. Now I'm not talking about feminism, LGBT rights, or sexual liberation, or people of color or any of the traditional things conservatives bitch about.

I'm talking about the fact that any old stupid idea people get in their heads is at least given the benefit of the doubt, even if it's a very old idea like racism, that's never benefited anybody but rich people. It's that "Free exchange of ideas" that often makes social media such an abusive shit-hole for so many people. It's the kind of bullshit that leads somebody like Jack Dorsey to refuse to kick Alex Jones off his platform, or to drag his feet in eliminating outright Nazis from the discourse.

It's the fact that personal freedom, at least in a limited sense, has been being used as a club by the Right to beat on the collective freedoms of our society. The right wing basically says [as long as you meet certain implicit conditions i.e. you're a conservative white man] you can do whatever you want. It's kind of like how "State's Rights" is really code for "Hate" and "Laws against brown people." These idiots fundamentally can't concieve of the idea that government can or should be a force for good in the lives of people who make less than seven figures. Therefore, when they talk about their "rights" what they're really talking about is the unwritten conservative-American "right" to be an asshole.

Do you see yet, why these fucking people love Trump so much?

This was a reply to one of my comments on a post by Joe Walsh, as in former Tea Party Congressman Joe Walsh, who was very much the face of the movement for a time and who I really couldn't stand for like, years, but in the era of Trump he's...reasonable and sane, and I can respect him even if he still says something that's nuts now and again. I still often disagree with him, but I can see where he's coming from. Again, this guy was the face of These Fucking People for a few years, and now he damned well makes sense and has firm moral boundaries that have been exceeded by Trump. And this is the kind of stuff people post on his timeline because of it. If there is one thing that I think describes Trumpism over and above everything else, it's the profound lack of gratitude to anyone who's gone before...especially anyone with morals or some line that they were unable to cross somewhere along the way. People like me, for example.

Perhaps that's why I've reached the point where I can tolerate Joe. I remember when I was where he is now, I was that guy roughly about 2007 or so, and well into 2008 before the lines firmed up and I realized that I wasn't...that I couldn't be...on the side I'd spent all of my political life before that moment on. Fundamentally, people like Joe Walsh...or Bill Kristol, or Rick Wilson or even yes, John McCain...are and were fighting to try to save conservatism.

The problem with that, is you gotta want to be saved, and I no longer think these people do.

For one thing, if you've read the Bible, Jesus did not have a funeral, simple or otherwise.

An awful lot of what Christianity has turned into in the last 20 years has been simply a nihilistic veneration of the idea of the end of the world.

I think they want that apocalyptic destruction of American conservatism...of their own side, if not of America or the Earth itself. Why? Because they convinced themselves years ago that it was going to happen.

They've forgotten why. Old men like Chuck Woolery, like Donald Trump, like that old guy at work who talks about how great life was in 1973...they know they're old and they know they're going to die and they can't understand the world as it is...having made no real effort to understand it as it was either. So if they're going to die, why not everybody else, too? I mean, obviously not everybody else is 60+ years old...but when people look at life only through their own eyes and never try to understand anybody else or expand their own perception that's what we have to deal with.

John McCain never mattered to these fucking people. Hell, once he's out of power or has been overcome by dementia or died of old age, Donald Trump won't matter to most of them either, because all the majority of these fucking people care about is right now, and what makes them feel good about themselves, right now.

They don't like Trump for Trump, they like Trump because he's given them permission to act on their shitty impulses. They think...hope, perhaps...that because we have a president who was the public face of self-promoting rich assholes for 40 years...that maybe they'll get rich. If they don't, well then they'll be mad about that too.

They like Trump because people who know how things work worry about this guy causing the end of America, if not the end of the Earth itself.

This is why we need people with some form of higher values, with some sense of class, to be the public face of our country. Sure, the drunk racist uncle types will bitch about that, but they bitch about everything else too...and since roughly 70% of Americans don't like their overstuffed gilded orange god, well they don't like 70% of their fellow Americans.

That's always who these fucking people have really had a problem with, Americans who weren't like themselves...and the things they really, deep down have shown that they believed in are often the very opposite of what many of their own leaders stood for.

We need higher values because the alternative is apparently robocalls with jungle noises making fun of Black candidates.

I think, as much as John McCain himself often failed to live up to the ideals enunciated by those who eulogized him, in this message he left us, in these last words of this American hero, in the class, dignity, grace and merciless subtle condemnation of those currently in power that he obviously had a hand in assiduously planning...I think we have the key for how to deal with this crap.

At the end of the day, I think it mostly comes down to two words. Two words...that people like Donald Trump will never understand.

Be. Real.

Be real, and vote for something better, because this ain't working.

The Dark And Rolling Sea

We will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation. And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea, yes we can. ~Barack Obama

Yesterday, A couple hours before I started writing this, I watched Joe Biden give the Eulogy for the Arizona memorial service for John McCain at the North Phoenix Baptist Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

We know now that on Saturday, both Barack Obama and George W. Bush will speak at the National Cathedral in the D.C. memorial service.

Over the course of this week I've seen extensive tributes to John McCain from Democrats and some Republicans, from Americans and Vietnamese alike, from the Vietnamese Army jailer who was party to McCain's torture and from the Presidential candidate who defeated him.

That's pretty damned amazing. I've seen people come together to speak of duty, honor and sacrifice in the course of honoring the late Senator from people who never agree on much of anything.

I've thus far seen a pretty politically, racially and even yes, sexually diverse group of people speak up or be tapped to speak up in memory of McCain. There's black Arizona Cardinals football players, gay Republicans, a registered Democrat Latino businessman and non-profit supporter. Barack Obama, George H.W. Bush, Joe Biden, NATO officials, Vietnamese prison officers, There's class, decency and respect all around.

I often feel like conservatism is a series of missed opportunities, an obsession with the next fiscal quarter or polling cycle instead of thinking five or 20 or 30 years ahead. I feel like had this McCain program been followed (sometimes, even by McCain himself when he was alive) then McCain would've been President and Donald Trump would still be just Donald Trump, Private Asshole instead of threatening to take half of our entire political system down with him when he goes down...if such could even be said to be a singular event in a Presidency that's seemed to be in a perpetual state of collapse almost since its beginning.

Oh you set your course for the furthest shores
And you never once looked back
And the flag you flew was a pirate cross
On a field of velvet black
And those landsmen who you but lately knew
Were left stranded on the lea
Don't call on them when the storm clouds rise
On the dark and the rolling sea

You know what I haven't seen? Basic respect toward Senator McCain from the President of the United States, nor from many Republicans. In point of fact this small, mean, petty man and his small, mean, petty followers and the Republicans who've gone along with them for the racism and tax cuts seem offended by talk of duty, honor and service before self.

It seems as if because a Black Democrat said the words hope and change then hope and change became Bad Things, to be avoided at best, and hoarded only for the select few at worst. Of course, by that logic is it any wonder that since the same guy said "Yes, We Can" the entire mantra of the Republican Party for the last decade has been "No We Can't" unless it involves racism, tax cuts for the rich or a war that they specifically want.

Then there's this. I've noticed an odd trend developing in the last couple weeks. The Republicans have a new strategy. "Everybody is out to get you and everything is terrible, so vote for us because it's Tuesday, or something, oh and Hail Dear Leader Trump." Seems like a really weird strategy to me. It seems like an even stranger hill for the Party of Lincoln and Eisenhower and Reagan and The Bushes to die on, but I guess that's just me and I'm really not inspired or even really emotionally moved at all by this mess. 

"We're not as bad as THEY are" is pretty much normally the strategy Democrats have run on in every midterm election since forever, and it doesn't normally work unless the Republicans have really fucked up. Whether the Republicans are trying to use it against the Alt-Right Nazis or Democratic Socialists, it seems like all they should have to do is look across the aisle and ask Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi "Hey, how has this strategy worked for ya'll?"

For fuck's sake, at this point Republicans have fucked shit up so badly that the Democrats are starting to see socialism as a valid option, and young angry white dudes (and Trump personally) are experimenting with Fascism (and in some cases open Nazi shit) while Republicans have basically burned every bridge to the mainland, set all their own values on fire and left them to burn and Republicans now live in fear of getting voted off Trump Island with no recourse by the very guy they decided should be the only vote that matters.

Does any of this seem dysfunctional to you? Hello? Hello? Is this thing even on?

When somebody like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sounds like the sensible one in the room and a freaking Texas politician like Beto O'Rourke can pick up some of her talking points and be ahead of Ted Cruz in the polls last I checked...

Oh I have no need of a chart or creed
You told your waiting crew
For the winds of chance, they will bear us straight
And you spoke as though you knew
So you paid no mind to the warning signs
As you gave your words so free
Don't change your tack when the timbers crack
On the dark and the rolling sea

If the Republicans had held to the values they had 31 years ago when Reagan stood there in Berlin at the Bradenburg Gate and spoke these words, this wouldn't even be possible, much less happening: (And of course, Texas would probably still be a Purple state that bounced back and forth between (D) and (R) every four years or so, but I digress)

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Yes, there was a time when being a Republican meant you were something other than an asshole, or a bigot.

But those days are long past. To be a Republican today is, quite honestly, to have no moral center or values at all other than what feels good right now, what might buy us a few more clicks, or cheers, or minutes in power or squeeze a few more pennies out of the army of dipshits these fucking people have bamboozled into following them. 

A note on terminology: If the use of the word "Dipshit" in this context offends you, too fucking bad and you're probably part of the problem.

Anyway, per Fox Fucking News, we're now down to trying to force non-compliant (Read: non-Trump Supporting) rich people to have to submit to socialism while invoking Bernie Sanders. I guess Trump and his goons...I don't know, sneak out the back door and board a flight to Moscow with the rest of the money?

I'm legit not sure if Tucker (Or Trump) understands how Capitalism actually works and how it functions RE: The Constitution and how our financial and legal systems work, but there's literally no way to put the screws to Amazon without also screwing over Wal-Mart...and you bet that'll make those checks from the Walton family stop coming. You can't have capitalism for only some of us, while making others live under a socialistic system, and Amazon and social media alike SHOULD be (or have been, I guess) considered the Republican wet-dream of a business model.

But no, I guess it all comes down to the fact that at the end of the day, Conservatism in America has been reduced to five words: "What Trump Says It Is."

I'm not sure about you, but that literally doesn't square up with anything that I was taught.

It may not have to, though:

No, seriously, check this out.

I think the snipped Tweets here could safely be referred to as a Demographic Conservapocalypse.

It should be noted that it didn't have to come to this. It never had to come to this. This is what happens when you give your country, or your party, over to insecure, small, mean men whose idea of success is "We're making money."

This is what happens when you trade the quiet leadership of a Dwight Eisenhower or Gerald Ford or even a George H.W. Bush for the bombastic stupidity of a Newt Gingrich. 

This is what happens when you trade the big dreams, leadership qualities, sunny optimism and even woo woo economics of a Ronald Reagan for the small dreams, lack of leadership, fear of damned-well everything and woo woo economics of a Donald Trump.

This is, at the end of the day, where even the hard-nosed shitty Neoconservative pragmatism of a George W. Bush or Richard M. Nixon goes to die. I'm willing to make the argument at this point that the situation is even starting to get away from Trump. We might as well have Fox News for President.

At the end of the day, Republicans are probably going to wish that wasn't the case.

Now the thunder rails in the great mainsails
And the stars desert the skies
And the rigging strains as the hands of rain
Reach down to wash your eyes
And your oarsmen stands with his knife in hand
And his eyes spell mutiny
Don't call my name when your ship goes down
On the dark and the rolling sea. 
~Al Stewart,
On the dark and rolling sea.

But to effect that, you have to show up and you have to vote.

So do it.

Yes, We Can.

Part Four.

Wut R U Wearing, Senator?

Respect for the God-given dignity of every human being, no matter their race, ethnicity or other circumstances of their birth, is the essence of American patriotism. To believe otherwise is to oppose the very idea of America.~John McCain

So, apparently Republicans have decided to blame a dead man for why there was an issue over the White House flag earlier this week.

According to Senator James "Snowball" Inhofe (R-Dumbfuckistan) McCain should have been more "Courteous" to Trump.

Yeah, and I suppose the Senator from Oklahoma also thinks that if women would just dress more modestly they wouldn't get raped, and maybe if those students had guns instead of school books they wouldn't have got shot, or any number of other dumb-shit blame-the-victim conservative excuses for "logic."

I'm sorry, but I've had it with These Fucking People.

John McCain has been in Congress since 1983, a member of the Senate since 1987. He served in the Navy for 20 years before that, and came from a family where all the guys did the same before he did it. Now, I've spent most of the last decade disagreeing with this dude about a variety of topics, but as regards service to his country in general and to the Republican Party in particular, there literally should be no doubt that John McCain was That Guy.

He'd been there and done that in all respects, from the depths of the Hoa Lo Prison in Vietnam to the heights of running for the U.S. Presidency, that guy was there.

How do they treat him? Well, as I've said so many times if you're a Republican you're apparently Persona Non Grata once you're dead.

Presumably out of fear of Trump and Trump's base, Republicans have basically abandoned a plan to rename the Russell Senate Office Building (named for a racist Georgia Democrat) for John McCain.

Apparently, dude is now the subject of thinly repurposed rape rationalizations as regards why Trump is treating him like garbage.

And Lindsey Graham, one of McCain's best friends, goes on Hannity and expresses fangirlish levels of support for Trump, after all this crap?

No, seriously, fuck these fucking people. Not to sound that way but I quite think that Captain Queeg picked about the right time to check out.

I just can't help but feel that the Republican Party...or any sliver of it that I or most of the people I know could recognize...died with him.

And then there's this fucking shit, about which I'll say very little, simply because I think the Twitter blurb says more than I'm willing to without excessive profanity and certainly taking the risk of saying something that's just wrong. But, as I told my younger friend C.J. who I specifically asked about this to the tune of "I'm not that fluent in 'Internet Nerd' despite being one. So, could you translate this shit for me?"

Look, I'm sorry, I came up in a different era and being a conservative at one point did mean that you were (or certainly, could be) more than just a bigot or some freakish internet troll. But starting about a decade ago, it certainly seemed like if you were anything else they didn't want you.

I'm fucking serious. Somewhere inside, 1990's Republican me is looking at this conservative Transgender Internet Fan-fiction Porn shit like "Oh my God, what the hell is that, please make it stop." I'm not sure how much more I can say here without recording myself actually shouting "GET OFF MY LAWN" but I was taught there were certain things that went with conservatism. This isn't it.

Then there's this ridiculous bullshit. Republican candidate Ron DeSantis, running for the Florida governorship, said of his Black Democratic opponent Andrew Gillum "We shouldn't 'monkey this up' by electing Democrats." I'm fucking sorry, but there's a million and one goddamned words he could've used to say the same thing besides one with all the racist connotations of calling a Black person a "Monkey." He knows it, he said it anyway. Fuck that guy and I'd say that to his face. I'm sorry but this is America in 2018, not 1958. Americans in general and Republicans in particular need to stop tolerating this garbage.

The demographics of the country are changing, the electorate is changing, I fully understand that Trumpism sees itself as a last-ditch effort to prevent change, but short of "Massacre everybody besides conservative white people" which is an idea that'd probably not end well for conservative white people...there's  just no way that's going to happen. The changes they fear are already ongoing, have been for some time, and the fact that they're just now seeing it and overreacting should tell you the same thing it told me.

These people are fucking stupid.

There's no two ways about it.

Look, you know what this is? Keep in mind that I was 21 years old before the Internet as we know it was even a thing, and that I lived through all those messy formative stages.

As an old psychology professor of mine once put it "In 1995 the general sentiment regarding the Internet was 'Oh hey, this is cool, I can talk to somebody in Bangladesh and it's not going to cost me anything. Now today, in 1998, one American gets online and starts talking to another one of the opposite sex and the second or third thing they'll ask is 'Wut R U Wearing' misspelling and all."

Then of course there was the early 2000's and the "Kill Everybody Who Doesn't Understand L33tspeak" phase, which was the birth of the Internet Nihilism that led directly to 4Chan and conservative transgender fan-fiction porn.

After that, came the era that I missed, in which it became cool for stupid white kids to say racist shit, stupid shit, and racist stupid shit online, which led thence to the Alt-Right Nazis, Charlottesville, Idiots with Tiki Torches and the fucking Dilbert Guy being a Fox News contributor.

Look, I wish I could say I had a cure for this shit, but I don't. The best I can offer is that maybe we should start making kids, teenagers and assorted younger internet nerds leave the house every once in awhile or as my Mom put it when I was a kid and she thought I was playing too much Nintendo "Turn that shit off and go outside or something."

There seems to be something about relating to other human beings exclusively through a computer screen that leads a lot of people to become sociopaths, and historically, humanity generates enough of those without electronic assistance...and don't even get me started on the Jacksonville shooting over the weekend.

If you're that into a damn video game that you're willing to kill somebody over it, I can't really help you, but the last thing I think you should have is access to a gun. It takes work and a degree of skill to actually stab somebody to death, even if they're sitting down playing a video game.

I can get pretty into a game, to the point of screaming profanity at it when something goes wrong, but murder has never been on my mind because of it.

I somehow learned not to abandon my friends, even if they died, just because it's politically convenient or some big orange galoot didn't like my friend.

I've never Photoshopped anybody, despite owning an actual copy of the program. I sure as hell have never written politically themed transgender erotica about some dude.

I was taught that racism was wrong, I was taught this by conservatives. Yes, conservatives were a little different back then, but not so much, really. I dare you, go ahead and research Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, or the John Birch Society or Barry Goldwater's 1964 Presidential run...In your guts you know he's nuts!...and you'll see what I mean.

Listen up, America, we need to start doing better. Maybe we can at least manage speaking in complete sentences again?

We have to do something, before this silly bullshit kills us all.

Part Three.

Under the wide and starry sky...

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you ‘grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
    - Requiem, Robert Louis Stevenson

John McCain died last night.

I can't help but feel like the last shreds of the Republican Party as I knew it died with him.

Fair winds and following seas, Captain. What we do in life echoes in eternity.

Fuck you, Senator. Oh, wait, did I say that out loud?

Full disclosure: John McCain was the last Republican presidential candidate I seriously considered voting for. In the end, I couldn't stomach the rise of conspiracy theories, racism, religious extremism (Thanks, Sarah) and various nutty anti-Obama conspiracy theories nor the unwillingness on the part of Republicans to crack down on that crap.

In the end I voted for Obama and I'm glad I did. Why? After having spent the last decade watching the shit-show that is the modern Republican Party unfold I want nothing more to do with that crap.

I spent a couple hours this morning slogging through the feeds of various Fox News personalities to see what the Comment Section was saying. I find it ironic and sad that the people showing John McCain respect are the Democrats, Liberals, #NeverTrump Republicans and not a few Vietnamese people. It's ironic that the people whose ancestors tortured John McCain at the Hoa Lo Prison (The "Hanoi Hilton") for five years after he was shot down and captured are showing McCain more respect than one HELL of a lot of the people who wanted him Sarah Palin to be President of the United States in 2008. I think that's pretty fuckin' sad.

Instead of McCain's old-school Republicanism, this is what we get, Republican candidate Kelli Ward (AKA Chemtrail Kelli) who is running to replace Jeff Flake, accused McCain and family of announcing that he was forgoing further medical care...basically dying...just to derail her senate campaign.

As Rick said: Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Kelli. It bears mentioning, again, that Rick Wilson is a Republican.

This is what the Republican Party has come to, performative evil and stupid shit. Republicanism is now Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort being declared guilty at the same time, one by plea bargain and the other after trial by jury. Republicanism is Duncan Hunter and his wife committing $250,000 dollars worth of campaign fraud and racking up nearly $40,000 in overdraft fees from their bank, being indicted for it, and then blaming the "Deep State" for their own stupidity. Fun fact: Hunter is also trying to throw his wife under the bus now.

I wanted...tried...to post about that this week but I couldn't put anything to a keyboard I felt like publishing. Yes, sometimes the stupid can be that overwhelming.

Republicanism is Donald Trump. That Guy, who responds to someone's death by posting a picture of himself and a creepy greeting-card like statement on Instagram and Twitter. It's also worth noting that while the 43rd President, George W. Bush, and the 44th President, Barack Obama, were specifically asked to deliver eulogies and speak at John McCain's funeral...the 45th, said embodiment of modern Republicanism, was not invited. According to at least one Twitter post by a #QAnon nut that I saw, that means John McCain is a "Hateful Person."

I wouldn't want these motherfuckers represented at my funeral either, nor their leader present. Hell, I've had to correct more than one person's posts about the fire on USS Forrestal, that's how fucked we are. Hint: The person posting the idiotic meme was a Trump Supporter, who from their pic looked old enough to have heard about the fire on the evening news.

If that makes me a "Hateful person" in the eyes of the Q-nuts then so be it. I've never particularly wanted to be liked by stupid people.

Rest in peace, John Sidney McCain III.

The Old Men Shouting At Clouds, Saul Tigh demographic will be poorer for no longer having you in it.

Not that a lot of your fellow Republicans will notice, right now half the Republican Base is on Twitter maligning you as some kind of agent of the "Deep State" or something something gazpacho.

Fuck them.

Part Two.

Fuck you, Tomi Lahren.

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves false teachers, having itching ears. ~2nd Timothy 4:3

So I haven't written much in awhile, mostly because my disgust-meter has lately been overwhelmed by conservatives in general and Fox News and Trump in particular, but I saw this damned near first thing this morning and I've been stewing about it all day. I used to be a conservative, and I've been scratching my head wondering just what the fuck happened? What the fuck is going on with this shit?

Listen here, Tomi. I was taught way back before you were even thought of that if people cared about you they told you the fucking truth. Reality is what it is, truth is what it is and just because something tickles your ears or makes you feel good about yourself that does not make it the truth.

Also, evidently over the weekend Rudy Giuliani said "Truth isn't truth" during a TV interview.

I'm serious as a heart attack when I say this, the road to hell is literally paved with that kind of bullshit.

So, what IS Truth anyway? To use some random examples from my younger years, what is to prevent somebody from claiming that the Bible has no more spiritual relevance than an auto parts manual? What is to prevent people from changing the wording of the Bible to support current "Political Correctness" fads? (No, seriously, this was a big worry for about five people back in the 1990's, although apparently it was perfectly Okay to do just that in the 1600's, just sayin.') What, to use current conservative logic...and no, you don't get to claim that these people are not conservatives. They are what has become of the movement and if you don't like me pointing that out, too bad. This crap could have and should have been stopped years ago if you had acted like you have a spine and stopped just following the fucking crowd and stood up for something more than what was convenient at the time.

Me? I basically got hounded out of conservative Christianity for insisting that gay people and Muslims ought to be treated like human beings, and for resisting the rabid homophobia that characterized conservative Christianity in the first decade of the 21st century. No, seriously, my Mom is bisexual and I have a number of LGBT friends and relatives. I'm not going to throw all those people under the bus for religion.

Also, in the end I got run out of Christianity for standing up against the steady creep of Pentecostalism and the Prosperity Gospel into formerly distinct aspects of Evangelical and Fundamentalist thought. The sad part is, I'm not sure an awful lot of the Evangelicals and Fundamentalists even noticed. In the end, I think a lot of it came down to capitalism, simply because there wasn't much money in not buying into that crap. At this point I think white American Protestantism has been so jacked by money and politics and false doctrines that it probably can't be saved. When it's the Black church, (Occasionally) the Catholics, the mainstream denominations and only the occasional diverse, sane Evangelical or Pentecostal church that I can even recognize as preaching (let alone doing) anything close to what I was taught? And don't get me started on the Fundamentalists...when it took the Southern Baptist Convention a couple days to figure out that it needed to condemn alt-right Nazis I basically gave up any hope there.

Yeah, it's pretty much fucked.

I got run out of conservatism itself because I thought (and had the guts to say) conspiracy theories weren't the hill we should die on, and because I was taught and ultimately still believe racism was wrong and I refused to tolerate that crap. Over the course of 2008 my Republicanism basically died. Sarah Palin being nominated as McCain's vice-Presidential pick was only the last straw. After that I was grudgingly at first, but then more increasingly determined that I was going to hold my nose and vote for Barack Obama.

Best choice I ever made, and I'll cite the Tweet at the top of the page as to why. Fuck you, Tomi Lahren.

Conservatism as I was taught it, is based on the idea that a sound view of life rests on revealed Truth and the wisdom of our ancestors. That's basically the same thing Chuck Colson said in a 2011 critique of Ayn Rand. You know, Chuck Colson, none other than Richard Fucking Nixon's personal hatchet-man. Conservatism as I was taught it was based on the idea of "Things as they are." That's not "Things as they were 70 years ago" or "Things if they were the way we wish they would be." It's definitely...most definitely...not based on "What Donald Trump said."

As I put it when I saw this particular Twitter post, which I snipped before I reported and blocked the idiot, "Setting fire to everything conservatives have ever claimed to believe to "Own the libs."

Just what the fuck is that supposed to mean, anyway? These people aren't "Owning" anybody, and I'm not sure where they got the idea that pissing people off was a good thing or would have any other results besides inspiring them to retaliate if it went on long enough, but whatever. Apparently these idiots are hell-bent on looking like fools and absolutely nothing anybody is going to say will change their minds. It seems like a really stupid hill to die on if you ask me. Granted, I'd hardly identify as a "liberal" although I look like a damn socialist compared to these jack offs and I'm damn proud of that. If this is what has become of Conservatism I want no part of it. Punishment? No, seriously? Bitch I'm more annoyed by these motherfuckers than anything else.

Basically, since 2015 when Donald Trump decided to run for President as a Republican, every single fucking performative second-rate loser and his Waifu pillow has signed on to conservatism and Republicanism and apparently, anything I could ever recognize as conservative values got lost in the wash. These people have set every value that I ever associated with conservatism on fire and left it to burn, while grabbing onto every bullshit mistake and every shitty thing that fringe whack-a-nuts and the Hard Right ever tried to push. According to something my friend Aaron sent me awhile back:

SA Forum User Skex: "Republicans desperately want to catch the Democrats in a scandal in revenge for running Nixon out of office. I'm not sure if it's just that Democrats are in general not sociopaths the way that Republicans are or they are just smart enough to not leave gaping paper trails and recordings of their crimes laying around everywhere. But the Republicans because their projection is pathological are convinced that the Democrats are just as crooked as they are and are determined to catch them at something and the fact that they can't they have convinced themselves is because the Democrats have the system in their pockets protecting them because they just can't conceive of the idea that the Democrats might actually have ethics and believe in things like honesty and integrity they just can't wrap their minds around it. The funny (in a very dark sense) part of it all is that they really suck at crime."

Yeah, apparently some people are so determined to "avenge" Nixon that they basically forgot that hey, Richard Nixon may have been an asshole, a crook and a raging paranoid, but he actually did stand for a few things, among other things he's the guy who founded the Environmental Protection Agency and started the process of detente with China and the Soviet Union...as an equal, not as the Russian president's bitch. Honestly, I think these shits are so bad, and Trump is so shitty at being the President, that these motherfuckers may just accidentally rehabilitate Richard Milhouse Fucking Nixon.

At this point, I think it's safe to say that American conservatism is dead. It wasn't the "Left" that killed it either, it was the conservatives themselves. Their murder weapons were convenience and entitlement, petty ethnic hatred and not a small amount of religious woo woo bullshit, either.

But there's one more thing that remains, one more thing that all the rest of us have to do to end this silly bullshit before it ends us, and that is, we have to show up and vote these motherfuckers out.

Show up and vote, before there's giant murals of Trump on the sides of buildings, a government health program that consists of signs that say "Do not poop here," long lines for bread, clean water and toilet paper and mercenary soldiers checking to make sure everyone's Party cards are in order before you can go to the polls like we're in some shitty third world Soviet-allied dictatorship complete with AK-47's and technical trucks in 1986. FUCK THAT.

Show up and fucking vote. If you want a better country, be better citizens, do the work of life, ain't nobody gonna do it for you and anyone (like Trump) who says they will is a fool, a liar, or both.

Republicans literally have become the postmodern fabulists that they spent the 1990's accusing liberals of being.

As an old man who spent the 1990's being a young man who was a Republican at the time...that alone has me starting to hate these motherfuckers and has me damned well planning to head straight to vote right after I get out of work on election day morning.

If you're not planning on some variation of the same, get your priorities straight.

When it really comes down to it, people who say that truth is hate, are people who hate the truth. If you think those people have anything even remotely close to your best interests in mind, you have another thing coming.

Vote these motherfuckers out in November.

I don't know about you but I sure don't want to put up with this horse shit for the rest of my life.