There is no Tomorrow

As much as I love Brother Charlie Pierce, sometimes his writing is maddening to decipher.

[T]he Republicans are unsure whether or not they want to blow up the filibuster to install Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. (My guess? Boom!) A lot of this ambivalence, I believe, is rooted in their vestigial conscience as a party.

They know what they did to Merrick Garland. They know why they did it to Merrick Garland. At some level, they know how ridiculous their whining about how roughly Gorsuch has been treated sounds to anyone with a short-term memory that extends back to 2015. The longer this stretches out, the more time their vestigial conscience has to work on them.

I had to read that a couple of times before I realized he was talking about the Republicans' "vestigial conscience" and that GOP senators were the "they" in the second paragraph. This vestigial conscience is what I was talking about in the previous post about responsibility, at least in Democrats. The idea that nothing has changed and business can and should be carried on as though the opposition party, now in the terrifying majority, was still operating in good faith. That the previous year of completely stonewalling the constitutional imperative of the sitting president to nominate and have confirmed in a timely manner a Supreme Court Justice.

That is bad faith, we can so we will, conscience and morality play no role. The republican senate majority is based on the rotten boroughs of flyover states that practically no one lives in. No one that would tolerate a Republican with a conscience. My fair weather friend Thomas Frank laid out the strategy, since the Great Depression republicans have built a narrative that they are the outsiders, no matter how much of government they control it is never theirs. Therefore they feel no responsibility to make it work or simply not break it. Just like a public restroom in a slight condition of anomie, successive waves of republicans have shit on the walls and the floor, ripped out toilet paper rolls, graffitied the stalls, broken mirrors, and thrown trash in the urinals. And Democrats have always played the role of volunteer janitor, never able to catch the vandals in the act but always willing to clean up the mess. As though this selfless act will garner goodwill and good faith in the future from people who just don't give a damn.

This is why, when the Democratic Party sent me an email asking for my suggestions I wrote this:

We have entered a completely new era of unified authoritarian rule, you will have to approach every aspect of your job with that in mind. I'm sure that you are aware that Democrats will be completely shut out of governance, and the party will have to act like a shadow government. Do not collaborate in any way with the republicans, resist in the strongest terms any attempt by them to pin blame for their actions and failures on you or our party. It is time to become an unabashed voice for working people of all shapes and sizes. And you must really mean it. The party will be in the wilderness for a long time, there will be no reason for to remain tied to a party that surrenders or compromises our values. The national government is lost, aim lower at local levels. The republicans must fail alone, only when they have inflicted so much pain and suffering on so many people that not even Fox News and breitbart can make excuses for how bad they are can democracy return.

In other words, "you [Democrats] do not own government, stop acting like you are responsible for the vandals". And that was why I was so elated that Brother Charlie Pierce subtitled that article "It's not their responsibility to be the grown-ups while children vandalize the government." What followed was hist description of the way rotten actors in the media goad Democrats to "keep their powder dry" for a battle that really matters. "The only minor flaw in this plan is that it never works." I have written as well that when the Nazis took over Germany, the Social Democrats and others kept waiting for a big provocation to finally push back. It never came. Just as Democrats sighed and keep letting horrible pitches just sail past them without even trying. Bush's tax cuts, the patriot act, torture, Alito...

The time to fight is now! Every day in every way. There is no tomorrow. There is only today. Tomorrow will be tomorrow. But it cannot stand that an illegally elected tyrant who committed treason and is under investigation by the FBI can appoint someone to the Supreme Court in a seat that was stolen itself! Gorsuch should not be on the court, all else follows. If republicans blow up the filibuster, they blow it up. It is on them. Democrats have no obligation to play nice. The fascists want to blow it up anyway. This is not a case of "well, maybe if I don't hit back they will stop hitting me", this is war man and we don't get another chance at democracy. It has to be today! If the Democrats fail to stop Gorsuch from taking Merrick Garland's seat, then they fail but they have to try and get it their best shot. Otherwise there's no point.

Will we survive?

Is it deja vu all over again and again? On the one hand America is experiencing episodes of campus unrest reminiscent of the 1960's. On the other is the xenophobic, nativist unrest that resembles so many outbreaks of anti-immigrant backlash throughout our history, but specifically the Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi tyranny in the 1930's that were unwelcome in the land of the free. Most recently this is due to Syrian refugees seeking a safe haven in the U.S. after terrorists attacked concert-goers and people on the streets of Paris. But there has been fear and loathing every time foreigners are brought up in so-called conservative circles, and blind hatred of immigrants is at the center of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Student activism is another issue that stirs up hatred in right wing authoritarian followers, and that hatred has been full display in light of demonstrations at the University of Missouri, Yale, and now Dartmouth. These two issues are entwined in the great race between anarchy and civilization that human history has been running since the beginning. This moment seems to be the first time in world history though that the forces of anarchy have been so close to vanquishing civilization and destroying the world.

These are not the only two driving issues, but they have become especially poignant in the last week or so. Racial issues have long been at the center of political and social conflict in the United States. Electing and re-electing Barack Obama was supposed to be a new start to how race is treated here. Instead Americans have regressed into a state of greater intolerance and polarization along racial lines. The white, "conservative" backlash started even before Obama was elected and allowed the republican party to easily shed its awful image as the party of dubya. Fox and right-wing radio went into overdrive on race-baiting and the evils of socialism as though all of their deepest fears about those specters were not only real but had already occurred. And the authoritarian, low-information voters ate it up, no further evidence necessary.

Responsibility and Conservatism

In the wake of articles like this from the Guardian and this one from NBC news, it seems like a good idea to pull back and look at the bigger picture. Because while the Democratic leadership seems to fight with the Democratic base and so much gets lost in the day to day chaff of speculation and misinformation the wolves of fascism are inside the nation's hen house. Just because the republicans suffered some momentary setbacks recently does not mean that the resistance has actually won anything. "We" the non-fascist majority, have basically been lucky that this cult that has brainwashed so many into supporting them has turned out to be rather incompetent. The other shoe will drop soon, whether a Reichstag fire event or a breakthrough by governmental or non-governmental investigation into the Russian ties. So in this momentary reprieve there should be strategy meetings going on all over the place. But between whom? For what? What is all of this conflict between the establishment or Democratic leadership and the grassroots? Two ideas need attention: responsibility and conservatism, and they need to be addressed if anything like a coherent message can be presented to the public.

I wish I knew how to be involved in even the basics of finding out who the players are. As I wrote recently, I don't really want to take marching orders from Shaun King but I guess he's actually trying. How much there really is to the schism between the Clinton camp and not Clinton camp that was first Barack Obama's and now Bernie Sanders' is up for interpretation. There isn't room in our system for three parties though. And that is the problem. The American federal government has always been this hodge-podge of formal rules, traditions, shifting coalitions, organic institutions outside of but attached to government; but one thing has always stayed the same, two liberal, capitalist parties. "What?!?" I can already hear the objections and will concede that this is not the case today.

Liberalism as it was originally conceived was rooted in  things: individual rights, limited government, and a freely operating economy. This is what the so-called neoliberalism harkens back to, it was only later that liberalism grew to accommodate industrialism, this was the world of Adam Smith, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill among many others. Conservatism was not a really existing ideology until Edmund Burke articulated a vision in contrast to the French Revolution. The Republican Party began as the left liberal party in America after the gray zone of early Nineteenth Century republicanism gave us the Democrats as champions of slavery. Conservatism is amorphous, but one thing it always has in common is an alignment with power and hierarchy.

The kind of conservatism that exists in America has always been the tenuous connection with responsibility, of maintaining the system of power but also a stable society. America has always been a contradiction and therefore has always had conflict beneath the surface. We have our massive shifts, the revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and minor ones that accompany wars and other depressions. Generally, the party that was in charge leading up to those cataclysmic events and the ideology they espouse is discredited and rejected. Then the forces of reform are supposed to get a turn at bat, sometimes it works out as in the case of the New Deal, and sometimes it fails.

It is now apparent that the Democratic Party has failed, the Clinton administration could not subdue the forces of reaction and neither could the Obama administration. For all of the political turmoil of the Obama years, America itself was actually fairly stable and that is something like progress. At least a kind of truce where you could at least take a breath and get yourself together, now, that is gone too. Every day could bring catastrophe. We, Democrats and independents, had a sense that a grown up was in charge, someone who felt responsible for the nation and society. And the elected Democrats, though their numbers dwindled against the growing polarization and extremism, still seemed like they shared that sense of responsibility to maintain the system and order that was the legacy of the New Deal.

To conserve, if you will, the basic premise that the rich should pay more than the poor in taxes, that work should provide a decent life, that business needs restraint through regulation, that everyone is entitled to an education, that there needs to be a safety net in place for when life gets turned upside down. Though these ideals have been chipped away to almost non-existence under the weight of business power, though the defenders of those ideals have grown weary and sclerotic at the government level, and through the rise of right-wing extremism Democrats have been responsible. Unfortunately responsibility and the desire to conserve tradition and formality also often looks like overly cautious weakness and out-of-touch drifting. Therefore Democrats dithered while George W. Bush and the Republicans launched wars and vandalized government, unable to summon the will to impeach or even investigate all of the illegal and immoral behavior of those awful years. Therefore the old guns who helped Clinton peel away banking regulations in preparation for the limitless future of financial innovation could not bring themselves to face the flood of devastation they collaborated with Wall Street to unleash when called back to duty by Barack Obama. And now the Democratic party leadership could not believe either the depth of depravity and ignorance of the white Republican electorate, which was willing and eager to run into the arms of a con man who pretended to share their hatred of minorities and cosmopolitanism, nor the lengths Republican leadership would go in colluding with Russia and suppressing Democratic voters.

Therefore, to put it bluntly, the Democratic Party is the actual conservative force in America and the Republicans have completely left the reservation of what Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. called "the Vital Center" of of democratic politics for at best reactionary authoritarianism and more likely outright fascism. However the base of the Democratic Party remains liberal and committed to reform and a social democracy. It couldn't hold, partisanship has become too intense and politically aware people are too polarized to view compromise or serving the national interest as anything other than weakness. So Hillary Clinton tried to appeal to the better angels of voters to no avail. People who shouldn't be trusted to play with matches were fascinated by the flamboyant game show host and couldn't wait to vote for him out of sheer nihilism. The Clinton campaign was too calcified in the way things were, or should be, or out of the desire to keep their moral integrity, and whatever else restrains otherwise intelligent, experienced people from doing what needs to be done. I suspect it was an outmoded sense of responsibility to the institutions of our government and nation.

Democrats are forever worried about the response anything they say or do will draw from their enemies. They cannot face the fact that a significant number of people born in this country have completely abdicated their responsibility as citizens to uphold American ideals. That deceit and misinformation are equal to truth and reality. Hillary Clinton was restrained in what she could do and how she could campaign due to this sense of responsibility as much as being the first women to head a major party ticket and the self-censorship professional women all over the country must don to succeed. Whereas the Berniebros and Jill Stein supporters had no such restraint, they felt no responsibility to pragmatism or the really-existing forces that any reasonable leader would have to work with. They were free to snipe responsible Democrats, free to believe and promulgate fantastic conspiracy theories and project any malicious ideas onto Hillary Clinton they wanted. Schlesinger had a name for such individuals who could build utopia in their minds and speak only to each other; "wailers". I recognized Glenn Greenwald as one of these aloof intellectuals a few years ago, his brand of detached from reality ideological purity has only metastasized since then and I definitely do not recommend that the Democratic Party turn over the reins to them but it is time to slaughter some sacred cows.

What does the Democratic Party stand for?

And whose party is it anyway? Since doughfacedonny stole the election with all the help sociopathic partisans and foreigners could provide, Democrats have been yelling at the shadows on the wall over why the hell people went out and voted for the pussy grabber. I entered the fight between establishment and insurgency with utter futility last May when I tried to challenge Cog Dis blogger Jeff Simpson over who owns the definition of progressivism to no avail. I thought I was being pretty reasonable when I stated that our side is a continuous dialogue over what we stand for and that no one individual or faction of the Democratic Party is the sole arbiter of what it means to be progressive. No one picked up on that particular dialogue, which was mostly a continuation of the Bernie or bust selfishness anyway and that I have been fairly clear where I stand. The short version is "defeat the republicans, then we'll fight it out amongst ourselves."

But that answer isn't good enough for a lot of people to my left. I'm still sort of in shock that there are people to my left, I thought it was just a consequence of getting old. But Shaun King is not that much younger than I am, and he is irate with the Democratic Party. Though titled "The Democratic Party doesn't get why it's so unpopular" on his author's page at the New York Daily News, when you click the link it is titled "The Democratic Party seems to have no earthly idea why it is so damn unpopular." King treats the party as a monolith, aloof and out of touch:

A troubling new poll was just released showing that the Democratic Party is significantly less popular than both Donald Trump and Mike Pence. My gut tells me that Democrats will ignore this poll, or blame it on bad polling, and continue down the same course they are currently on: being funded by lobbyists and the 1%, straddling the fence or outright ignoring many of most inspirational issues of the time, and blaming Bernie Sanders for why they aren’t in power right now.

As a general rule the Democratic Party doesn’t listen well and struggles to hear the truth about itself.

After a very unflattering photo of Debbie Wasserman-Schulz with the caption "[p]art of the reason why the Democratic Party is so reviled stems from leaked emails in which former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz appeared to show favortism[sic] to Clinton over Bernie Sanders." King begs "don't call me a 'Bernie Bro'" as he rails against "mainstream" "corporate" Democrats and their "lobbyist-driven agenda". He treats the party as a secretive cabal whipsawing the grassroots with a my way or the highway, you have no where else to go attitude. His issues with Democratic leadership (vaguely) may be valid but his tone combines the worst aspects of white Bernie Bro and aggrieved black power enthusiast. Ed from Gin and Tacos states that "[f]or myriad reasons Shaun King is not the most reliable of commentators" so I'm not alone in viewing him as a legend in his own mind. King's wikipedia page describes him as an activist on social media, whether he really does organize real life events without spending money on it is an open question. I'm not about to study his full biography, it would take too much time to decide whether he is simply in it for himself or sincere.
 
Well, I guess as long as he concentrates on microaggressions, perpetual racial outrages, and attacking the Democratic Party Shaun King is less likely to disappear in the night. Good for him, he's probably making a living wage on his activities to boot. It must bring him great joy to say "I told you so" and repeatedly kick the only institution with a snowball's chance of beating back the psychopaths on the other side while they are down. With friends like this...

No, the mainstream Democrats may never learn, but capitulating to a perpetual rebel probably isn't the answer either. Would King argue that there is no difference between Hillary Clinton and doughface donny? Would he continue to be outraged over the content of her emails instead of the theft in which they were obtained? The basic question is not about blaming Bernie Sanders, but that enough privileged liberals said "nope, not good enough" when asked to stop the doughface, the answer always being "you didn't try hard enough to win me over" and "it will serve you right when trump takes over, maybe then you Democrats won't be such corporate sell-outs."

I hate being in the middle of this. I guess I remain a seamonster without a home, being suspicious of both sides of this argument. There's an old saying about a liberal not being able to take his own side in an argument. I really don't know what to believe anymore.

Sunlight and Fisticuffs

 I doubt I was the only one who fell out of their chair when Alec Baldwin mentioned batshit crazy conspiracy theorist and free speech criminal Alex Jones in his cold open as doughface donny during Saturday Night Live recently. Jones himself was apparently not amused. But instead of doing something decent like quitting his media act, Jones challenged Alec Baldwin to a "bare-knuckle" brawling match where the infamous peddler of un-sourced allegations and outright lies would "break [Baldwin's] jaw in seconds... smash [Baldwin's] nose into a bloody pulp" and assorted other blustering tantrums of juvenile bullying and taunts until finally admitting later that he was "just joking" and "speaking metaphorically." Now, I only realized right before starting to write this that I am almost the same age as this carnival barker/trained geek when I actually took a moment to look at his Wikipedia page, but I gave up making these kind of macho posturings about two decades ago. I also do not have the ear of a sitting president. Satire sure can be effective when elements of truth are a prominent part of it.

Showmen like Alex Jones, whether he believes the shit he shovels into his audience's skulls or not doesn't subtract from the sort of "style" which he presents his fantastic yarns of conspiracy, walk a thin line. He's a big hit in his underground way, kind of punk rockish, but like Driftglass' theory of the "tribe that rubs shit in their hair", once he is dragged into the spotlight, the charisma is revealed to be merely uncivilized drivel. I am still on the fence about whether or not Bill Maher having Milo yippyyapolus on in prime time was a factor in his, Milo's, fall or simply coincidence but trees don't have to die now to print his book. Is there a chance that being name dropped as a muse of doughface donny's insanity on network television will drag Alex Jones into those warm, cleansing rays of sunshine so he can finally sizzle under the ridicule of normal people?

When both Alex and I were mere babes in springtime, another lunatic named Michael Savage got a promotion from merely spilling spittle-flecked ad hominem demonizations of Democrats and liberals on radio, to a show on MSNBC before that cable news network settled on a sort of left-of-center point of view. It wasn't very long before the sunshine banished Savage from the larger audience of cable TV after he let loose a few, shall we say, colorful metaphors. Rush Limbaugh has a similar experience every time they try to put him on TV. The longest-lived cable perch for a hyper-partisan conspiracy theorist was probably Glenn Beck, and even he outlasted his welcome at Fox News of all places.

However, Alex Jones and his particular brand of crazy stays pretty low key. Although his rants are available to just about everyone via YouTube, no network executives are embarrassed when he freaks out about juice boxes making little boys gay or claims that President Obama possessed a weather weapon that could steer tornadoes and hurricanes to republican areas. Bob Cesca of Salon and the Daily Banter has kept a close eye on the insanity of Alex Jones, check out his analysis whydontcha?

Anyway, my money's on Alec Baldwin. But a good ass-kicking out in the open, disinfecting rays of sunlight is exactly what Jones needs to finally get over himself. So, good luck to the best presidential impersonator we've had since Will Ferrell and Dana Carvey!

Challenging the Intellectually Lazy

Doughface Donny is an existential threat to the republic, anyone who doubts that after all the chaos of this administration is part of the problem. Not necessarily evil, but there is a big lie that something called conservatism is the grownup thing to do, and the doughface and all of his cronies call themselves conservatives therefore if we don't show up to vote for them, then those awful liberals might get into power and something, something socialism. There is nothing normal about these times, there is nothing normal about republicans, but that party is made up of a coalition and that is actually normal albeit malicious. The Democratic Party is a coalition as well, one that for a long time was conflicted and often working at cross-purposes. But each plank of that coalition was generally working toward and believed in the betterment of society. The republicans have devolved into a completely anti-American force of chaos and evil.

Doughface Donny is simply the end result thus far. Conservative ideology today is that of small children having a temper tantrum.  If you have small children or the pleasure of being around them this should be self-evident. They want what they want when they want it and will fly into an absolute rage if they don't get it RIGHT NOW! Except instead of a cookie or the 'right' color sippy cup, these large children want white supremacy RIGHT NOW! In kids this can be ridiculous, the impotent flailing and noise that can be ignored in most cases. Kids do not know what is good for them and the same goes with conservatives, most are just stupid but their rage can be more of a problem. There is none of the cute innocence that clothes the inevitable toddler tantrums, the natural response is to walk away because why bother? There is nothing you can do to convince them that they are wrong and stupid. You can't give a fox news zombie a time out when they scream about illegals, and liberals, etc. We have placated them for far too long. The founders of this country were steeped in the Enlightenment and all of the beliefs that came with it, rationalism, progress, the advancement of civilization, and the firm belief that given a chance all people will take the opportunity to better themselves through education.

We now have more than a century of evidence that this is not reality any more than the free market fantasies and race purity peddled to the toddlers by their exploiters. America missed out on the great backwards leap from progress to totalitarianism in the 1930s so we are making up for it today. Education is not enough, the white working class men who turned out in droves to vote for the game show host have probably watched innumerable documentaries on World War II. And for the most part they were part of the generations who benefited from the best public education system we've ever had. The brain is part of our bodies as much as muscles or the immune system, and like those latter components our intellect will atrophy without challenge.

Education is great, and our education system still works despite all the vandalism from the right inflicted on it. Relentless budget-cutting, abuse of teachers by politicians, and teaching to the test enforced by law has nevertheless produced a generation of young voters who still did not fall for the orange con man and his merry band of thieves and vandals. Nor did the majority of non-whites fall for the snake oil bill of goods. African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, naturalized immigrants, and others who are constantly forced to justify their existence to the corporate feudal world order and grumpy white guys were intellectually challenged enough to recognize that their best interests do not lie with fascists.

It seems that all the white republican toddlers learned from those documentaries, and from living under the Cold War threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, is that fascism, national socialism, and communism were bad because they were foreign. Out there, among the out groups that white republicans want to hate anyway and are always trying to ascribe to their political enemies here. Nothing ever challenged them to recognize how precious and fragile democracy and a beneficial social contract are. White, working-class republicans drone on and on about how they want their manufacturing or mining jobs back because they were so great and people could live a decent life on the compensation of those good jobs without ever realizing that those jobs existed prior to the New Deal and they weren't good jobs then. Nothing connects the dots for them that it was government action and unions that made those good jobs. The owners and elites who the WWC side with against government and unions have sold them a bill of goods that somehow shrouds the real culprits. "Those things are socialism!" they cry. And socialism is communism and nazism because they are, and those bad things are out there in foreign lands. Foreign lands are where immigrants come from, therefore they are all bad. If we could just get socialism and immigrants out of my country then those jobs would be good again and I would have hope again.

Who is at fault for not shattering their delusions? Mostly themselves and the leaders in corporate right-wing media, you can't get away from the fact that people have agency and are responsible for their own beliefs. But we all share in the blame, fascism is a virus, once it gets into a body politic it can replicate and expand if allowed to fester. If WWC republicans are intellectually like toddlers but have parental figures who have no responsibility for them, like the right wing media and politicians who simply want to manipulate them, then all of us bear responsibility for the very real and dangerous tantrums that they keep throwing. There have been many other think pieces claiming that donald trump has the attention span and intellectual curiosity of a preschooler but where did that come from? He simply behaved like one his whole life and no one was able to successfully challenge his narcissism and laziness or cruelty, he got away with it every time. You see endless reports from mainstream media now as they interview trump voters about just what the fuck is wrong with them, and it gets right to this, republican trump voters supported him because he is just like them. Trump is free from the constraints that inhibit white working class authoritarian assholes but instead of being embarrassed by identifying with the crass, chauvinistic behavior of their leader, they revel in it.

This applies to so many white republican baby boomers. They voted for Reagan when it was time for them to be "grown-ups" so they could smash and grab everything that their parents built. The authoritarianism that masquerades as conservatism will never fail in their eyes, it can only be failed by leaders not pure enough like George W. Bush, and they will eventually decide that doughface donny has failed them too. "Wait a minute, I thought getting rid of all the immigrants and taking food stamps away from everyone was going to bring back the golden age? Why do I now have to pay even more for health insurance and still can't get a good job?" The only thing to do will be to double down, next time business taxes will have to be slashed even further and we'll have to build labor camps, etc. Bob Altemeyer found in so much of his research on authoritarianism that the followers have belief a mile wide and a thousand denials deep. Therefore reaching out to trump republicans now is beyond pointless, they are irredeemable.

The only thing to do now is overpower them by activating and motivating the half of Americans who remain politically inert. It won't be easy. The easy thing to do would have been to start challenging the Archie Bunker boomers before Fox News brainwashed them. Or hire enough Hillary Clinton type technocratic Democrats through elections to restrain them for us. But we can't go back, the mass of Americans who don't believe in fascism are on their own. Including you and me. And if smart people aren't able to challenge this young generation they will fall prey to demagogues and social dominators they same way that their parents did. Challenge people not yet in the clutches of the right wing machine. Non-authoritarians cannot simply fall back on the Enlightenment thinking that all people naturally want to learn more, understand better, find out things, and make the world a better place because that is simply not human nature. I hate to sound elitist for saying these things but the time for politeness is over, the fascists are in charge now because too many smart people let them fester unchallenged for too long.