What Happens Next - Lawsuits without Evidence and Stochastic Terrorism

 Studying history and writing about it is so much more straightforward than white-knuckling crisis after crisis and trying to analyze them in real-time. I have read an awful lot of hypotheses about why doughfacedonny won't concede and why his sycophants refuse to admit the obvious, where the meritless lawsuits come in and every trump-appointed government official refusing to cooperate with the transition. Everything from garden variety narcissism, fund-raising, Ed is pretty sure it's all a dry run for a future election with non-braindead republican authoritarians. All these may be true to one degree or another, but what has me defecating diamonds is that the mass chaos and obstruction is about more than gaslighting and money; it's sending signals to the lone-wolf "patriots" out there to start spilling blood for the leader.

This is correct but overlooks that everything happening now and for the past six months to undermine an election outcome is a dry run for doing it for real in the future. https://t.co/AfdKxguTm8

— Mass for Shut-ins (Podcast) (@edburmila) November 10, 2020

Jack Holmes at Esquire put the Driftglassian theory of how much republicans hate this country and hate anyone not on their team or under their control pretty well last week:

The Republican Party is an authoritarian outfit. They do not believe in democracy and, in their actions, they are enemies of democracy. This is a polite way to say "fascist," which freaks people out and shuts down their brains. But it's the same. They believe they should be in power, and if they don't win the support of a majority of citizens—which these days, they usually do by stopping certain citizens from voting and drawing maps where those citizens' votes count for less—then they'll simply try to steal the election. That Donald Trump is lazy, and his plot to do so has been clumsy and telegraphed, does not change the fact that international observers have already issued a report on his behavior this election cycle that reads like an indictment of some tinpot dictator.

 Fascists also do not believe in the rule of law. As Robert Altemeyer pointed out a while ago, authoritarian leaders (social dominators) believe in the law of the jungle, 'if I can take it I will, the rules don't apply to me', and can and will say anything they need to in order to get power and wealth or whatever other shiny things they want. Most are simply not smart enough or powerful enough to get this far. But now Pandora's box is open and the fascist republican base will accept nothing less. So, because doughfacedonny and his sycophants have no shame, don't give a squirt of piss about rules and norms, and spent the last 4 years stacking the courts with as many partisan judges as they could, they will throw every stupid, baseless argument they can at the wall and see if anything will stick.

But the larger point is creating chaos, convincing the brainwashed fascists that the election was illegitimate, and fearmongering to plant the seeds of revenge. The "stab-in-the-back" narrative floating beneath the surface since Vietnam is what at least some of donny's people are trying to stoke. And because the rural republican followers don't get out of their caves very often to see how utterly unpopular trump really is, revenge for having their leader ripped away from them might be marinating within some of the 71 million reprogrammable meatbags. We have already had a ring of fascist "patriots" rounded up for plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan, and maga idiots arrested with guns in their cars. If even one in a million of these republican assholes gets through to commit violence in trump's name they could cause innumerable casualties.

Doughfacedonny is the greatest mass murderer of Americans in history, even now as COVID races through rural, republican areas of the country as well as the cities his administration does nothing. Sure, he's not coughing in people's faces personally, but deliberately acting against even the most basic public health measures ensures that the death toll will continue to rise. Republicans are doing this to their own supporters.. because they hate America and just want as many of us to die as possible. If some good 'ole boys start shooting people in his name, acting on his urgings that is, it is the same thing, this is the definition of stochastic terrorism. As usual I hope beyond hope that I am wrong, but every day that passes with no one throwing a damn net on doughfacedonny and dragging him away is another day for those seeds of revenge to grow. Every day of confusion and doubt is a day where some ammosexual can decide to go out with a flash of glory (from their diseased perspective) and take as many of "them" with him as possible. 

I win means you lose to doughfacedonny, he can't get away with this.

The Democratic Story

 My God this has been frustrating to watch. Yes, I admit it I was disappointed and let down that it wasn't a blowout. I'm pissed that good Americans threw away millions on Senate races in South Carolina and Texas that really didn't have a chance. Also, that Democratic elites lit another giant pile of money on fire trying to fight the wonderturtle, #MoscowMitch himself, with an incredibly flawed candidate who was no one's choice. And of course, the funding and imprimatur of legitimacy to never trumpers and the Lincoln Project. How many seats will these republicans be taking that could have gone to actual liberals on TV? How did some segment of elites stamp get out of jail free cards for those republicans with TV spots, book deals, and laundered reputations?

Even though it now looks like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to the White House and the Democrats will remain in control of the House of Representatives, somehow, against all common sense and logic more people actually turned out to vote for doughfacedonny than in 2016. This is great news that Democrats will be able to replace all the corrupt fascist pricks currently infesting the executive departments. No more corrupt ideologues will be put on the federal bench, and no more tax giveaways for the rich. But that smug turtle-faced scumbag McConnell will still be running the Senate, even if with a reduced majority. That means no reforms, no budget, no making the rich pay back some of the filthy lucre they have stolen, no really going after foreign and domestic hackers or other enemies of democracy and the rule of law. #MoscowMitch will probably be so emboldened by this that he won't allow votes on any permanent cabinet secretaries or any other executive positions. Gridlock rules, republicans broke the government at so many levels and somehow they gain all the support from public cynicism and dance around like savages when the political press blames "Washington" or "Congress" for that gridlock.

On the latest TPM podcast Josh Marshall criticized liberals who, like myself, are upset that so much money was spent on those Senate races because we have to try, Democrats cannot just cede all those races to fascists. He said we have to spend money in places like Kentucky and the Carolinas to build infrastructure in those places so next time Democrats will be a little more competitive than last time. I'm skeptical, was any of that money spent to actually build infrastructure? Or was it all spent on useless TV ads? Is there anything left behind to base an election campaign on next time? A few months back Ed had a liberal activist from Kentucky on his Mass for Shut-Ins podcast and they spent almost an hour talking about how elite donors buried a progressive candidate for the Democratic nomination for Senate there under an avalanche of money so Amy McGrath could stride in and claim it. I have no personal knowledge of McGrath or the state of politics there but the guest had nothing good to say about her, that she was a trump-supporting Democrat and had no backing of any kind from anyone but somehow they got stuck with her. Let's set aside Progressive or Liberal infrastructure, did McGrath's campaign leave anything behind that is an alternative to republican fascism? 

Instead of setting giant piles of money on fire to run ads on TV, maybe, just maybe, it's time to take those piles to build things. Democratic Party local offices open year round, with paid staff and resources to keep liberal and progressive ideas in the public view. Local media with truth as their focus instead of balance, that's a worthy investment, credentialed reporters able to call liars out for what they are. I think I have mentioned Drew Westen's The Political Brain a few times on this page, but his prescription bears repeating. Politics is a story, humans respond to stories, and when the story is not being told or refreshed regularly people will lose interest or find other political narratives to follow. Democratic Party politics lack this consistent story, there's no baseline narrative, so every 2-4 years we start from scratch and republicans run circles around Democrats in the story because they pound their narrative into their supporters constantly. The worst part of it is that the republican story is not only self-sustaining but highly profitable through fox news, hate radio, right-wing websites because high RWAs will sit and consume their lies along with a healthy dose of ads for dick pills, reverse mortgages, and any other stupid thing they can sell the rubes. 

Democrats have nothing like that. The mainstream, corporate, media and dedicated political press in this country is not on the side of Democrats anywhere regardless of the shrieking on the right. No matter how unpopular they are, no matter how many lies they tell republicans get half of the time to sell the story already laid out by the right wing noise machine for the broader public. So liberals are naïve to think that somehow the networks and NYTimes are going to act as referees. So, the prescription holds that this country needs a partisan liberal media outlet with enough reach to counter the RWNM. It's not even a new idea, newspapers used to be partisan all the time from the revolution until radio and television came along and needed the broadest audience possible to make the capital intensive mass media work at scale. This is still the default liberal mindset, the need to sell ads to the most eyeballs made media drop their bias and actually professionalize journalism. Now, Roger Ailes was an evil man and I hope the torments of hell are making him repent, but he figured out that cable was a different animal and that he could build a niche network catering to a smaller but more loyal and active audience of conservatives. He turned generations of milquetoast old fart conservatives into rabid, authoritarian monsters and donald trump was his finest creation. 

This is a long-winded way of saying that rich liberals need to stop lighting giant piles of money on fire every 2-4 years and instead invest it into a permanent, self-sustaining liberal ideas network that can keep the story going. How to convince someone like Michael Bloomberg or George Soros that this is the way to go is the key to unlocking a real balance in politics. And if the fascists had to fight on an even playing field they lose, and that key could unlock solutions to all the other problems in America.