Tag: Posted

I am literally going to copy-paste the entire Salon article because he nailed it, and I will add one more thought: There is no other enlightened path forward. The darkness he sees is the end of America’s democracy. He basically summed up everything I’ve been arguing, except without calling America stupid, which is perhaps the only other missing factor in his analysis. He is right that dumbass Democrats are trapped in no small part because of their own doing and ridiculously grand notions of expecting politics to be fair and the electorate to “come around” which was never going to happen by wishing and hoping for it — and Democrats will have deserved every bit of it! So, they are boxed in and all RepubliKKKlans need do is bide their time for permanent rule when they steal the next, final election in America. Pay particular attention to the emphasized paragraph below. Oh, well! The country is lost and irredeemable at this point. Welcome to stupid America!

We've got a fair number of repentant former Republicans roaming loose on the political landscape these days. They like to tell us that the onetime Party of Lincoln must be thoroughly defeated and destroyed before it can be rebuilt as a respectable, mainstream center-right organization. That's an encouraging team-building exercise, I guess — if we set aside everything about observable reality and play an extended game of Let's Pretend We're Grownups, like a bunch of eight-year-olds trying on Mom and Dad's Clinton-era wardrobe.

Even looking past the question of whether the reconstructed GOP 2.0 these folks imagine would be remotely viable (as to which: ha!), we still have the question of who's going to defeat the exceptionally nasty current version of the Republican Party, and how. These GOP apostates, it's worth noting, were totally OK with cutting taxes for the rich and running up massive deficits on endless, pointless, destructive overseas wars. They find themselves deeply shocked, however, by the party's swerve into overt racism, know-nothingism and borderline fascism, elements of the Republican coalition they believed could be kept in the basement indefinitely.

This call to arms by ex-Reaganites is presumably meant to fire up Democrats, who have been told repeatedly over the past 30 years or more that America's changing demographics were certain to deliver them a permanent majority coalition someday very, very soon. In this less-than-inspiring vision of utopia, benevolent intersectional liberals would govern wisely and forever, while Republicans would be consigned to regional, resentful rump-party status until and unless they gradually became a lot more like Democrats.

As you may have noticed, this keeps on not happening, and at this point the "emerging Democratic majority" is starting to sound like old-time Soviet dogma about true communism being just over the horizon. Yes, Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections — while managing to lose two of those anyway — but for a variety of reasons I don't need to rehearse here have found it impossible to hold or build congressional majorities, or to do much of anything with them when they have them.

More important than any of that, although absolutely related, is how Democrats have responded to the obvious Republican assault on democracy over the last couple of years, in the manner of a truckload of Brookings Institution scholars stuck in cold molasses, determined to consider all sides of the question fairly and not to let anyone accuse them of acting hastily. I'm not suggesting that Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer haven't expressed genuine alarm or said more or less the right things, because they have. But as you have perhaps observed, they haven't leveraged those words into action: They haven't ditched the filibuster or expanded the Supreme Court or passed any of the bills in front of them that are meant to fortify the right to vote, for the love of Jesus Christ.

This isn't a nice thing to say about a bunch of mostly sane and approximately reasonable people, but here's the truth: If you set out to design a left-center political party that was fated to surrender, little by little, to authoritarianism — because of circumstances beyond its control, because of internal indecision and ideological fuzziness, because it faced an entrenched and deranged opposition party, because of whatever — you could hardly do better than the current version of the Democratic Party. (Emphasis added.)

This raises the question of whether the Republicans are the only party that needs to be badly defeated in order to recover a sense of purpose. Don't get me wrong here: It would be far preferable if the Democrats could work out how to win power and then use it effectively. I'm not advocating voting against them out of some contrarian or puritanical impulse, and I'm not even dragging out the old Bernie vs. Hillary generational and ideological conflict for another go-round. (Of course that remains an important source of friction, but it's genuinely not the central issue right now.)

If the current mishmash that is the Democratic Party simply isn't up to the task, if it's imprisoned by its donors and trapped in an old political paradigm while facing the birth of a new one, if it can't summon up the energy or determination to act decisively on behalf of supposedly shared principles, then what the hell is the point? Maybe they're the party that needs to be torn down and rebuilt, especially since the other one is an entirely lost cause.

Consider 2021 — yeah, I know you don't want to, but we don't have much choice. After the election of Joe Biden and the improbable reverse parlay of winning both Senate seats in Georgia — almost entirely thanks to the chaos-agent intervention of Donald J. Trump — liberals and progressives and normies of all descriptions exhaled audibly. We were back to "normal"! The nightmare had passed! Maybe the long-awaited Democratic majority had arrived at last, if only in ass-backward and highly precarious fashion … except nope, nobody believed that for more than a few minutes, considering that the day after the special elections in Georgia was the sixth of January.

I'm not saying that Mitch McConnell wanted to lose the Senate majority (I bet he had some choice words about Trump in private), but no one has ever accused Mitch of not knowing how to play the angles. He quickly understood how to turn the ambiguous results of 2020 to his advantage, and they were undeniably ambiguous: Democrats breezed into that election expecting big wins across the board, but instead lost most of their House majority and fell short in several prominent Senate races, failing to gain seats in Maine, Montana and North Carolina.

While regular people celebrated a victory and the supposed end of the Trump era, Democratic leaders and insiders looked ahead to the 2022 midterms and began to whimper uncontrollably. McConnell could smell the fear, to put it bluntly, and rubbed his hands with Montgomery Burns-like glee. With a 50-50 Senate and Biden's entire legislative agenda hamstrung by the filibuster and the nonsensical or corrupt Ringwraith fantasies of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, he had the Democrats trapped. They knew it and he knew it.

In a display of ruthlessness and cynicism that's impressive even by his standards, McConnell will force all 50 Democratic senators to vote on a budget and on raising the federal debt ceiling, which in quasi-normal times (and even under Trump) was done by bipartisan agreement. This will either force them to crumple and capitulate to whatever it is he wants (short version: more goodies for rich folks) or will create an invented wedge issue Mitch believes he can use to win back both houses of Congress next year. Republicans will pretend to run on fiscal responsibility but will actually run on a bunch of culture-war bullshit and promises to rig all future elections and unquestioned loyalty to a decrepit and defeated leader they all privately think is nuts. I'm sure looking forward to that, aren't you?

If Democrats lose conclusively to those people, then they deserve it. That's a dark path, perhaps darker than any of us wants to contemplate. But I think there's no avoiding this date with destiny, for the Democrats or the Trumpers or our entire so-called democratic experiment. If you see another one, light the way.

From CNN, “The fight over raising the nation’s borrowing limit underscores a reality for Democrats as they are in the midst of their highest stakes moment for President Joe Biden’s sweeping legislative agenda: thrusting a potential default into the mix may have devastating consequences. … Moody’s estimates nearly 6 million jobs would be lost, the unemployment rate would spike back to nearly 9% and stock prices would plummet by one-third, wiping out about $15 trillion in household wealth. … Faith in the US debt — the linchpin of the global financial system — would be tarnished, perhaps irreversibly.” And they also report, “The House of Representatives voted to pass legislation on Tuesday to prevent a government shutdown at the end of the month and suspend the nation’s borrowing limit, setting up a showdown with Republicans who insist Democrats should act alone to stave off a looming debt crisis. The party line vote was 220-211 [of course]. The bill now faces an uphill battle in the Senate. By attaching the debt limit suspension to the must-pass funding bill, Democrats are essentially daring Republicans to vote no and spark a shutdown. It’s not yet clear what Democrats’ plan B would be if the effort to avert a shutdown and suspend the debt limit runs aground in the Senate, as it appears is on track to happen.”

What does all this mean? In short, RepubliKKKlans simply do not care if they destroy America’s full faith and credit and the economy. The past four years (but really longer) have made painstakingly manifest that RepubliKKKlans would rather see America in ruins if they believe it will give them a political advantage. And RepubliKKKlans are correct in their assessment because in America’s infinite stupidity, of course, voters would blame Democrats for trying and failing to avoid debt default more so than RepubliKKKlans, who are intentionally obstructing. Whatever! I give up with the stupid!

This is the same ole, same ole where people love the stupid political party as RepubliKKKlans continue to embrace traitor trump. They! Don’t! F***ing! Care! And, apparently, Americans don’t care either; obviously, Americans want and love the carnage because this is still a country of f***tards who now think traitor trump should be given a second chance. RepubliKKKlans are still the party favored to win the House next year and retain control of the majority of state legislatures. And ruinous governors like Abbott and DeSantis will keep getting reelected because that’s what these people want — it’s what people in states like Texas and Florida love — out of control COVID, anti-masks mandates, people freezing to death as the power grid fails statewide, elimination of constitutional rights, more voter restrictions, conceal and carry without a permit and training.

Sure, dumbass Democrats often and easily evince incompetence, but their intentions mean well in the doing, whereas RepubliKKKlans literally have no problem killing their own constituents and would rather see America’s economic collapse instead of helping Democrats fix the budget and debt crisis — a debt crisis, mind you, that entails money already spent under traitor trump’s administration. Never mind that Democrats have always helped RepubliKKKlans raise the debt limit in the past. Oh, no. Never mind that! Never mind, RepubliKKKlans love to spend money, too. Oh no. Never mind that! It’s always, and only the Democrats who are seen as the drunken unfunded spenders, although RepubliKKKlans spend without paying for it, and tax cuts are not a pay-for solution. No, no. RepubliKKKlans want the dysfunction, and they love the impending crisis, hoping it leads to carnage just as they loved the disastrous reality show that was the traitor trump presidency. Yet, RepubliKKKlans keep getting reelected because this is a m*****f***ing G.D. stupid country of the highest f***ing order. Welcome to stupid America, where morons keep electing the terrorist party. And no one cares! It never ends!

There are several recent articles on SCOTUS worth commentary, all of which are perfect reminders that elections have consequences, but no one cares.

Solan writes, “But today, this bold pillar [speratation of church and state] of American democracy is rotting fast. It is under attack by theocrats, especially those who sit on our Supreme Court. Their recent ruling making it nearly illegal for a woman to get an abortion in Texas is the latest terrifying case in point. … [T]he problem isn’t religion, per se. Rather, it is the kind of religion at play. The kind that a majority of our Supreme Court embraces: a crusading, activist, theocratic religious fundamentalism that prioritizes fealty to a particular conservative interpretation of God’s supposed will over the democratically-sustained rights of American citizens. It’s the lethal mix of religion and politics that our founders sought to restrain. It’s Christian nationalism. … But when [judges] impose that faith on all of us, the wall of separation between church and state is truly undermined. Texans’ rights to bodily autonomy is but the most recent casualty. With this court, it won’t be the last.”

From Politico, “And while the chief justice hasn’t fully lost his hold on the court, what comes next is quickly coming into view. The post-Roberts Court is likely to be unfettered by legalistic norms and eager to advance changes to the law that both embed conservative policy goals and tilt the election system toward the GOP. It’s a combination that poses a real threat to American democracy.”

And then from The Hill, “The Supreme Court’s job approval has sunk to an all-time low, according to new polling taken after the court declined to block a deeply divisive Texas law banning most abortions. Only 37 percent of registered voters said they approve of the court’s handling of its job, with 50 percent expressing disapproval in a survey released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University, which has tracked the Supreme Court’s job approval since 2004.”

What does all this mean? The last pillar — the allegedly impartial pillar — of America’s democracy that literally has the final judgment on all things within the borders of the nation is just another branch — powerful beyond reproach — of the RepubliKKKlan Party, and, like the RepubliKKKlan Party, the vast majority of Americans distrust the venerable legal institution, but fear not — no one cares, least of all SCOTUS! Whatever! If I’ve said it once, then I’ve said it a thousand times: America died the day it elected traitor trump. Everything — everything — since that point stems from the cancer Americans brought upon themselves. SCOTUS is merely the metastasis that ensures the cancer cannot be treated, let alone cured. Elections have consequences, but people are too stupid to understand that, in particular, dumbass Democrats, who think elections only matter every four years when voting for president. So, America’s democracy will die to the applause of the minority, and then comes the rise of American theocracy to the disgust of the majority, but it will all be too late, and no one will care. Welcome to stupid America. Elections have consequences, and the consequences haven’t even begun to be fully realized (or imagined). Get ready, morons! Get ready!