Trump is the party and the party is Trump

 After nearly having a rage-induced stroke last night from the performance of the hideous child installed in the White House by Russia, I would like to reiterate now that my primary interest in politics stems from my absolute hatred of bullies. If, in some crazy bizzaro world, it was the Democrats running around screaming at republicans, threatening violence if they lose, and being brazenly corrupt liars as a matter of policy I would be equally angry at that party. But they aren't. Joe Biden tried to play by the rules, tried to use his time to connect with voters and explain why he would be a good president and why doughfacedonny is not and has not been worthy of the presidency. Trump shouted personal insults at the former Vice President and interrupted him constantly. We all saw the same dumpster fire (h/t Driftglass) from Chris Wallace and the orange usurper, there should be no undecided voters. The battle lines are set in stone now, the only excuse for being undecided now is that you want to vote for the hatred, corruption, and authoritarianism of trump but have a tiny sense of shame. 

It would not surprise me in the least to learn that these trump voters, or republicans as they should be indelibly known as, have some normal people in their lives and cannot openly indulge in fascist renunciations of reason and rejection of everything America has strived to become. Or they are just pathetic attention seekers absolutely committed to voting for doughfacedonny and operating in bad faith.

There was a point last night where trump was hurling insults at Biden about socialist medicine. It was nonsense of course but I thought the Vice President took an interesting position when he stated "I am the Democratic Party". It meant of course that all of the competing ideas and plans for Medicare for All, etc. lie with him now. And was meant to put a dagger in trump's delusions that somehow Biden is "far-left" or that he is "controlled" by the far-left, which he screeched constantly while interrupting the Democratic Candidate. I saw several tweets arguing that Biden should have walked out, but that would have inspired titanic gloating from republicans. As Drew Westen pointed out years ago, to surrender or take the high road and not fight back only cements in place republican domination. Biden telling trump to shut up was the best point of the night because it showed that Joe Biden is not going to roll over and let himself be bullied.

The opposite is also true, Doughfacedonny is the republican party. This is their final iteration, what movement conservatives started in the 1970s with their think tanks and endowing professorships for stripping away civics from American life through unfettered capitalist profit that allowed them to engineer the Reagan insurrection. The final socially-engineered conditioning of (weak) human minds into reflexive right wing authoritarian followers that Newt Gingrich and Roger Ailes dreamed of and brought into reality. The party is trump and trump is the party, a sizable minority that is utterly dependent on fox news and authoritarian propaganda for stimulation, and is completely irredeemable. From the lowest fox news watching zombie that spouts republican talking points at Thanksgiving dinner or among his coworkers, to every republican office holder right up to the president no republican can ever be trusted with power. They have decided, freely, to accept this conditioning, to put party over country, to reject democracy, to laugh at rules and law as a suckers' game, and always, always be on the attack against any dissent.

To quote Driftglass again, this is not the fourth year of the trump administration, it is year forty of the Reagan revolution. And it will never stop on its own, there is no breaking point. Republicans will believe in their divine right to rule until their dying breath. Sure, we can sort of forcibly prevent them from doing more harm but bullies are incurable until they have been bested on their own terms. 

It Can Happen Here --Podcast Review

 I have had the hardest time trying to begin this post. So many clashing ideas it is difficult to concentrate on one angle of the topic. So here goes; you probably have listened to this nine part podcast by Robert Evans on the Second American Civil War called "It Could Happen Here" but even if you haven't yet I am sure you will want to after reading this. At least that is my hope, in dangerous times information is key to being prepared. I have studied the first Civil War, it is one of my historical interests, and after listening to this podcast I went through boxes of books to find my copy of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson that does a great job describing the country before and during the war. While rummaging in the attic I also found The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right by David Neiwert which I think was the first serious work I read on the current crisis of dehumanizing polarization and hateful rhetoric translating into politically-motivated violence. The title of this podcast is an obvious play on Sinclair Lewis' classic It Can't Happen Here. The similarities between authors is instructive, Lewis' wife lived in Fascist Italy and saw the early rumblings in Germany of national socialism and shared what she learned with him. Evans has reported on civil wars, insurrections, insurgencies, and political violence of all shapes around the world.

Since I wrote a review of It Can't Happen Here as an undergraduate and posted it to this blog 8 years ago, I felt it would be worthwhile to try and review the podcast that explores similar terrain. I have never done this before and trying to write about an audio production is difficult so all I can say is that I will do my best. First, while Evans says that his sympathies lie with the left, he tries to present the "fucked up shit that goes on every day in America" through both sides' interpretations. He does condemn the hypocritical inflammatory bullshit screeched out by that little baby Alex Jones at the 2016 DNC but strangely claims that this was the first time a monstrous demagogue exhorted the Call of Duty cosplayers to violence.  

Anyways, the first episode is titled The Second American Civil War and it is concerned more with facts such as how all Americans are less trustful of the federal government and of each other. That's a fact certainly, but it is asymmetrical. As an historian, I look more to causation than reports of fact, but Evans is an investigative reporter and those facts that I take as a given are what reporters are after. He was also an editor for Cracked magazine, you know the one that doesn't have Alfred E. Newman, so he is also often quite funny despite the heavy subject matter. Reporting is what Evans excels at, providing graphic descriptions of what life in a civil war or insurrection is like from places like Ukraine and Syria. He does an excellent job of translating hardships, deprivations, and the threat of violence from those places to what they would be like in the US. 

He quotes someone as saying "why do we expect that the US would be etched in stone?" That the good life that we have known, or think we know because really it can get worse, will always be there. This is what the baby boomers thought as they rebelled against the New Deal system, that they could cut taxes and stop spending money on education or infrastructure; because it will always be there, and besides I already went to school. The US was born from violence, expanded through violence, fought a bloody protracted civil war already but most people today think that nothing will ever fundamentally change. The lights will always come on when I flip the switch, the water from the faucet will always be clean enough to drink, and the cops will come when I call. One topic Evans does not cover is political entropy, governmental, social, and economic systems need continual investment and cooperation to function. The asymmetrical polarization of politics has broken down the ability of opposing factions to debate in good faith, compromise, or even agree on problems. Consequently, those systems have broken down, the economic reality has gotten much harsher for all but a tiny minority, the rural/urban divide has grown, and toxic demagoguery has twisted freedom of speech into a cudgel to attack anyone who actually wants to invest in institutions. 

All of these breakdowns weaken the protections most of us take for granted. Life can get much uglier.  

Tomorrow Doesn't Matter

 I have been seeing a lot of stories in the last couple days claiming that the republican party is doomed if they ram through a 30 something fascist to steal RBG's seat on the Supreme Court. Dueling editorials in the USA Today typify the latest portent of destruction:

It’s not an exaggeration to say that how her seat gets filled could be as consequential for the continued political health of the republic as the election itself... The issue here isn’t fairness or consistency. It’s consequences. Filling that seat would be the most disastrous thing Republicans could do, not just to the country but to themselves.

 The Great Supreme Court Betrayal would infuriate Republicans and make the fight over Obamacare seem like a pre-pandemic day at the beach. But that’s the nature of these things. Every new [republican] outrage is justified by the previous one and the cycle never ends.

 There is simply no way congressional Democrats are going to smile ruefully at their Republican colleagues and let bygones be bygones. There will be retribution, and that retribution will be expressly calculated to teach Republicans the meaning of powerlessness. It won’t be pretty to watch. It won’t be good for the country. But it will happen, nonetheless.

These words were written by the spokesperson for another electoral rounding error called "republicans for the rule of law" for whom the good old days were when his party was going berserk over the Black Man overwhelmingly elected to the White House. He seems confused about the disaster unleashed by giving republicans any power, as though what has happened to the country as a direct result of republicans having power has been "good". He runs through some scenarios detailed by the "liberal" opposing view editorial that would indeed begin to correct the asymmetrical polarization in America today as "retribution" namely structures that allow for minority rule and minority obstruction in our politics.  Some points from the other side in USA Today include:

 But the fact of minority rule — and the fiction of one person, one vote — can’t last forever.  

Conservatives lost the country long ago. Yet they already have a Supreme Court majority, and now it looks like they could have one for generations. But they lost the country long ago. 

And liberals helped give it away. 

Where was the Democratic money, where was the Democratic president, where was MSNBC and “Merrick Garland Held Hostage, Night 237” when Mitch McConnell’s Senate refused to consider his nomination throughout the final 10 months of President Barack Obama’s term? Where were the Democratic strategists who could and would play hardball at the same level as McConnell? 

She then states some basic reforms that would help overcome minority rule and force the republicans to adapt or die such as; finally addressing the Constitutional absurdity that accords so much power to stop progress in each senator and the apportionment of senate seats which gives the same power to Wyoming as California. The need to finally get rid of the filibuster and enact anti-corruption laws to replace all of the norms that doughfacedonny has brazenly broken. And whether a President Biden will realize "this asymmetry is not healthy? That it’s destructive to the American political system to have one party that’s passive and rule abiding, and another that’s cold blooded, power hungry and fine with ghastly hypocrisy?" And rightly worries that no outrage will empower and embolden Democratic leadership to finally do something to make republicans pay for what they have done.

Why I titled this post "tomorrow doesn't matter" is that for republicans, it really doesn't. What price did republicans pay for lying the country into war? Or the Great Recession? Or unprecedented obstruction during the Obama administration? Or now with the daily outrages of doughfacedonny and $7 trillion in new national debt and 200,000 and counting dead from a pandemic that could have been prevented?

Exactly. Nothing. I don't even know what punishment could possibly balance the scales of justice for a party that began as anti-slavery and has now fully transformed into the slave power. Electoral defeats do less than nothing when mainstream media never asks republicans uncomfortable questions and instead hold Democrats to an impossibly high standard. Watergate sank Nixon, four years after his term would have ended began Reaganomics. When turn of the millennium pundits declared that demographic shifts meant that the republican party would never again hold the presidency, Bush ratfcked Gore hard enough to let his daddy's supreme court simply install him as president. The incredible energy and work that went into retaking the House in 2006 was undone 4 years later, along with 100s of state legislative seats. And so on. 

The point is that republicans don't give a shit about rules, have no fear of punishment, have no respect for an opposition that never holds them to account. Tomorrow is tomorrow's problem, today we take what we want and shit all over democracy and the rule of law. If they finally steal the supreme court for a generation by ramming through that 30 something fascist, it won't matter how many republicans lose their seats in the election. That is the final prize. 

The Epitomized Deplorable

A republican family member shared this post this morning. It is a dime a dozen example of nearly fact-free propaganda of course, but what motivates the creator to disseminate this kind of crap piqued my interest slightly. After some looking around (I don't think it qualified as research) I have a tentative conclusion, this is the face of the enemy. Mike Macey is a deplorable but he is the epitome of the term, an absolutely indispensable servant of would-be dictators world wide.

Feds Seize 19,888 Fake State Driver Licenses (Made in China) in Chicago O'Hare Airport - ALL Registered to Vote -- ALL Demorats!

Posted by Mike Macey on Wednesday, August 26, 2020

As I scanned through Macey's profile, which in typical boomer fashion is completely public and why I'm not blotting out the name, what struck me was not how devoted he is to republicanism but that he is a volunteer.  Macey seems to take time out of his busy schedule as a travel guide in Colorado to create content for the authoritarian movement. Clicking "share" on a post or story on social media is about the lowest level of political hobbyism you can get but writing a paragraph or two several times a day is a little more involved. 

The post above has been shared 63,000 times at the time of writing. It is a relatively simple formula, take an event, plug it into the authoritarian talking points, and release it into the wild. This story was reported by fox news, go figure, with just a hint that these fake licenses might possibly be used to illegally vote by mail and volunteer fanatics like Mike picked it up and ran with it. So if there are 63,000 reprogrammable meatbags at the base of this pyramid and fox news at the top, in the middle are the slightly sentient volunteer fanatics who tune and twist the talking points of the day and reinforce the prejudices of those meatbags. 

Republicans have been running this low-level insurgency campaign against mail-in voting for months now, it usually takes the form of "if you can do X, then you can vote in person" which is a derivative of "you need a driver's license to do X,Y, and Z so why shouldn't you need one to vote." The funny thing is that the first comment on Macey's post was the Snopes.com post reporting that yes, Chinese made fake IDs have been seized all year long totaling 19,888 but finding no evidence that these could be used to vote illegally. And that was shouted down as "fake news" by several replies. 

The onus is on the one making the assertion to provide evidence, not the other way around. This is the difference between intelligent people and reprogrammable meatbags. The polarization between the two, and the latter is why we have a problem, is the biggest threat to democracy. While the next level of the pyramid all the way up to fox news monetizes the propaganda that they throw out to the meatbags, the system is dependent on that last layer before the bottom to humanize the lies and dress up assertions as facts not to be questioned. That is why Mike Macey is the epitomized deplorable, his pro bono work supporting authoritarianism is essential to manufacturing consent from the mass of people who would otherwise be politically inert. 

One example of taking assertions that support right wing prejudices and manufacturing them into facts is found here:

The socialist forces are so busy making noise with propaganda and spreading violence that they have no idea MAGA is 150 million strong now. We are everywhere! 😎🇺🇸

Posted by Mike Macey on Monday, September 7, 2020

What do you think Mike would say if you ask him to define "socialism"? Propaganda in the right-wing authoritarian follower's mind is that which does not support my world view, and violence is the pain in the authoritarian's fist after a democrat viciously hurled their face into it. I have no doubt that the deplorables are everywhere (Mike is a Missouri native, they spread) but where would a number like 150 million come from? Well, researchers of authoritarian followers such as Robert Altemeyer have found that high RWAFs want more than anything to be normal or average. So, instead of changing their views to actually be more like normal, average Americans the epitomized deplorable simply invents a majority of magas so as to relieve the anxiety RWAFs feel. 

The other half of the term deplorable for republicans is irredeemable, they will never change. No matter how much you try to work with them, no matter how much you nurse them along to meet perfectly normal democrats and try to find common ground. The moment you walk away a guy like Mike will be back in front of fox news in five minutes to find the comfortable blanket of hate that sustains him. So don't waste time on the committed deplorable, they are like the pigeon that shits on the checkerboard and struts around like it won, and nothing will change that.

Fair Tax For Illinois (Vote Yes)

 Last week I received an unsolicited text message from someone or some group asking me to take a survey on the proposed Fair Tax amendment to the Illinois constitution that will be on the ballot this fall. The text of the amendment is as follows:

Proposed Amendment to the 1970 Illinois Constitution

Explanation of Amendment

The proposed amendment grants the State authority to impose higher income tax rates on higher income levels, which is how the federal government and a majority of other states do it. The amendment would remove the portion of the Revenue Article of the Illinois Constitution that is sometimes referred to as the “flat tax,” that requires all taxes on income to be at the same rate. The amendment does not itself change tax rates. It gives the State the ability to impose higher tax rates on those with higher income levels and lower tax rates on those with middle or lower income levels. You are asked to decide whether the proposed amendment should become a part of the Illinois Constitution.

But this was not stated in the survey, which was kind of shadowy now that I think about it. I'm not going to say it was a push poll but they had me watch exactly one ad in favor of taxing millionaires, and four against. What this amendment would actually do is create a progressive income tax, but the vast majority of Americans do not know what this means. My old nemesis in Wisconsin, the DJ, looked like a deer caught in the headlights when I challenged him to explain what progressive taxation was. This was a guy who knew a vast amount of political trivia (without any deep understanding of it, beyond what right-wing media told him) but the best he could come up with after that blank stare was "it's something Democrats do to take more of your money." The derp was strong with him that day.

Now, my Dad, old school union Democrat that he is, explained to me when I was young "the more you make, the more they take" and something about brackets. This is essentially true but doesn't do much to understand it's importance. Since 1981 the United States has had an explosion of income and wealth inequality, a major factor of this polarization is from republicans messing with tax laws. That year, Ronnie Raygun cajoled Congress into cutting the top bracket so much as to make the tax rates almost flat. There was a economic theory (funded by rich assholes at think tanks and universities) at the time that the country was suffering from a lack of investment capital available to take advantage of new technologies and methods of production. Cutting taxes on the rich would free up capital for this investment. The concurrent theory of this investment causing revenue to rise and the final iteration of  deficits "starving the beast" and shrinking government were later rationalizations to appease mainstream media and non-rich republicans. Wealth and income stratification was the main reason for a graduated income tax in the first place and it did manage to keep a ceiling on just how much the rich could steal for themselves to the detriment of everyone else and the public infrastructure. When that ceiling was removed it had the predictable consequence of returning society to gilded age levels of inequality that have gotten worse every year. And every year, the arguments to keep letting the rich get richer become more stale, there may have been a modicum of plausibility to the original supply-side argument but the main thing those tax cuts that republicans keep passing have done is allow rich people to buy the government, not invest in job creation.

Illinois has a lot of taxes, because of the flat income tax rate the state needed other revenue streams to try and keep up that public infrastructure. So we have a high sales tax, user fees on everything, tolls, and so on that are often extremely regressive meaning that those taxes fall disproportionately on working people. Other states are able to spread out the burden of local taxes by generating a larger proportion of revenue from higher income taxes on the rich. The myth is that people down state pay more to provide welfare for people in Chicago but of course the opposite is true, the rural people are subsidized by the Chicago metro area. But this is not a city vs. country issue, it's a rich vs. working class issue. Higher brackets on the selfish rich would mean they have less money to buy politicians that they have always said were corrupt, and fund right-wing think tanks like Illinois Policy (institute, foundation? they must have rebranded). I'm pretty sure that was the source of the survey I took, the language was fairly neutral but took the "would you like to pay more in taxes" line that you would expect from an organization that exists solely to protect and expand the power and wealth of rich people.

All that aside, here's something you can say to your republican family member.

Which is more competitive, Major League Baseball or the NFL? Yes, but why is the NFL more competitive and therefore more interesting? It is because the league takes steps to avoid the "Yankees problem" with the salary cap, draft ordering, and schedule weighting. There are 32 teams but only one championship, so instead of having the richest team win every year, the league makes dynasties harder to build. The winning team has to pay more to keep it's superstar players so the salary cap makes it impossible to keep them all. The last place finisher gets to pick the best players in each round of the college draft, and the Superb owl winner has to play harder teams the next year. That makes it more fair and more interesting to watch. This is the same thing that progressive tax brackets do, it takes money to make money they say, but a flat tax means you have to pay more than the rich guys. And the rich guys get to use that extra money that isn't being taxed to buy more investments and make more money off of them, meaning they get richer. If you had more of your income you could do some of that. And when rich guys have more money they speculate in the stock market, that leads to crashes. They also buy up property to drive up values, forcing people out of neighborhoods or making it hard for regular people to move to good neighborhoods with good schools, roads without potholes, etc. If the playing field was more level, all those neighborhoods would be better, your life would be better.

It's a start anyway. Feel free to let me know if you have any better arguments. Obviously someone glued to fox news all day isn't going to listen but not every republican has allowed themselves to be brainwashed to zombiehood. You can try the proposed tax calculator here. Anyone reading this post probably already agrees that the biggest obstacle to progress is the massive inequality in this country. All other problems flow from the fact that the rich have too much money and power, and working people have too little. Progressive taxation won't solve the problem by itself but is a start.