The Game of Minutes

So if American elections are a game of inches (with a huge handicap for republicans of course) but life and death is really on the line, and now that the worst possible outcome is here the Americans who still believe in the rule of law and all that quaint crap are going to have to define small victories down... way down. I say quaint because the only value in America that truly matters is money, who has it, who doesn't, who can use it to get more, and above all who can steal it. It sucks but that is reality. The corollary is cost, all things in life have costs, who pays and who suffers. Every republican tax cut in my lifetime has been theft, every de-regulation, every "free market" decision, and every rent-seeking investment has been about robbing the commons. They are just able to do more damage than Democratic janitor administrations can clean up. But now, it's all over. Doughfacedonny and the American Fascist party owns the government now and every disaster is on them. In this scenario of absolute ruin, every minute will count, every minute republicans can be held up in inflicting their cruelty and malice on the vulnerable is a win. 

Moral clarity in a violent dictatorship is a luxury that is just gone. Pain and suffering are coming, piles upon piles of dead bodies in even the best possible scenario. What gets lost in the shuffle too often is the fact that doughfacedonny is already the greatest American mass murderer in history. Life is dangerous in any case, you only need to spend a few moments in the wilderness to understand that. It was stupidity that caused a great deal of the death last time, holding other aspects constant, it might be stupidity that saves lives this time. Since so many people have trauma-induced amnesia from the pandemic I will recap, doughfacedonny dismantled the pandemic response infrastructure and defunded public health capabilities ahead of Corvid, he then did nothing during the early outbreaks because "it will go away on its own", then the maliciousness began when his administration decided the pandemic was hurting the blue states more and withheld PPE and medical equipment from them. Malice continued when the right wing media, in a disgusting preview of this election, overpowered government and professional organizations advice to prevent the spread. When the shit really hit the fan what happened? Billions to prop up the stock market, billions more in rent-seeking loans in the laughingly named "paycheck protection program" that were promptly forgiven for loyal republican businesses. The trump signed survival checks that so many stupid people cited in voting for him this time, were an afterthought. This is just a few examples off the top of my head.

That was the aftermath of stupidity in a real crisis. Prior to COVID, aside from the massive giveaway to rich people in deficit-ballooning tax cuts, he didn't accomplish much. Oh right, he filled the Supreme Court seat held open by Mitch McConnell and then blackmailed Anthony Kennedy to retire so the so-called swing vote could be firmly captured by a federalist society plant. But it was mostly talk, mean talk for sure, and mostly confined to harming foreigners. I don't mean to make light of family separation, et al. but a word people are going to have to come to grips with in the hell that is coming is "triage". Who are you willing to die for? Who are you willing to be disappeared over? Who are you going to sacrifice for? My only answer is my family and closest friends. My resistance is going to consist of sloth basically, refusing to engage, sandbagging, and dragging ass. I'm too old now to protest, march, I'm not signing useless petitions, and I'm not giving anyone money. Maybe nobody remembers now but in 2016 the shingles of American politics, jill stein, siphoned off a great deal of money that could have actually done some good somewhere into phony recount efforts. Scams and entrapment are going to sprout like mushrooms after a rainstorm, don't get suckered. 

No, what can buy time for the victims is withholding approval, every minute the republicans spend playing grabass is a minute they aren't rounding people up. It's a foregone conclusion that deportation isn't going to happen, you think any of the home countries are going to take millions of their most useless citizens back? They have bigger problems mostly. So the roundups are going to end up in private prisons mostly. We can hope that the quiet quitting phenomenon reaches into the oppression industry. But if doughfacedonny seriously is going to put useless sycophants in charge who can kiss his ass harder than anyone else, managing any kind of mass action is going to be pretty inefficient. Especially if we all remember Tim Snyder's axiom "don't obey in advance". Pretending not to hear or not to understand is a method of resistance that everyone can participate in.

Everyone dies, as Keynes said "in the long run we're all dead". Don't help shorten anyone's life. The longer they have to chase one dissident, the longer the next one gets to live. I have no faith that there will ever be another chance to kick republicans out but if it does it will come through making enough white people uncomfortable when nothing works anymore. 

It Really Happened Here

 Like I'm sure all of you, I'm utterly shocked by the results of the election. Shit is about to get really real for many. I'll put aside the collapse in turnout, and the fact that louis dejoy has had years to put fascists in key positions at the post office. Let's focus on the fact that most Americans are exceptionally dumb and gullible, so easily led to the slaughterhouse by an overwhelming propaganda apparatus that I can't even feel sorry for them. 

What happened on Tuesday was by the exact logic that horror movies use to make you root for the masked psychopath with the machete and laugh as the buxom girls run into his arms. Supposedly 45% of Latinos voted for the ridiculous fascist who promised to deport them en masse and has insulted and demonized them with almost every breath. Because the alternative was a half Black, half Indian woman? I keep coming back to how in revolutionary France the peasants were the King's strongest supporters. Why do struggling poor people identify with strongmen? Did they think the Empire was the good guys in Star Wars and those pesky rebels were nothing but effeminate liberals endlessly litigating microaggressions and changing their pronouns? 

Psychology is really hard, mass psychology is harder still. Did all the young people and minorities just forget the chaos of doughfacedonny's first hamfisted run at fucking up the government? Did covid really cause collective amnesia? Have the bots and troll farms so successfully implanted that Russian collusion and interference was a hoax in dumb Americans? I guess it was willful ignorance on my part to not notice that running a woman for president again would not be okay. Every woman I knew or have seen absolutely assured me that they really were going to turn out for Harris, even maga women were going to go behind their husbands', fathers', older brothers', boyfriends' back and vote for her. We have been lulled into the delusion that young people and minorities will bail us out from old white peoples' cruelty. 

I was so excited to think that this was finally going to be the cycle where Democrats stopped appealing to corporate media for their approval. Going back at least to the Gore campaign it has always been Democrats begging the media to do its job and tell people about how terrible republicans are and always have been. Always staying above the fray and playing right into their "gotcha" questions and never crying foul at the blatant and obnoxious double-standards of corporate reporters. Is Noam Chomsky's critique of "journalism" not common knowledge or have we all forgotten? It goes like this; media in America is owned by for-profit companies whose major investors are all very rich men who want the story told in their interest. The rich endow journalism schools and chairs with big money to turn them into sifting and selecting machines to shake out any potential journalist who cannot internalize the values of big money. It is through internalizing the media values of both sides, and democracy must be restrained lest it run off in a leftist direction that journalists are promoted and put in positions of influence. The idea that the political press as an institution is liberal is laughable on its face, despite howls of protest from the right. You don't get in front of the camera or a spot on the Op/Ed page if you are not sufficiently conditioned to write/report on events in the friendliest to wealth way possible.

In 2016 it was when the Bundy assholes got off for their insurrection against grazing fees or whatever it was that I finally realized there was a real problem. This time it was the repetition of misogynistic memes on social media. Endless stories of women with unreasonable demands of men, insisting on their freedom to do as they please while the man pays for everything. Then single moms who say they are ready to settle down with a good man who can provide for her, and the revulsion of taking another man's leftovers from commenters on these stories. Misogyny runs deep in this country, women fighting back took front and center this time but failed to deliver.

And now... it's all over. I can't help but laugh at all the laments of "the next four years are going to be awful but we'll do better in the next election". News flash, that was it. Tuesday was our last chance to save democracy and freedom. There's not going to be a next time. I used to write frequently about this being an occupied nation when doughfacedonny squeaked in through the antiquated electoral college with a huge assist from Russia and the right wing hate machine. What do we have this time? I tuned out after it became obvious that he was going to win and I'm not going to torture myself with election data analysis. Everything he promised is going to happen and it will be basically permanent. Suspicion and paranoia are now the rules we live by in America, you will never be able to speak freely again lest some maga turn you in to the secret police. Rights only exist because someone else is willing to enforce them, at least to believe in them. I know I know, Tim Snyder says the first rule is not to comply in advance. But if you go out into the world now screaming about rights and how bigoted the cops and government are, you're probably going to disappear in the middle of the night. Going by how dictatorships operate in the rest of the world at least. 

I don't know how violent it's going to get but I refuse to make myself a target. I'm going to protect myself and my family first as best I can. I'm old, I'm tired, I'm in poor health and I'm not going to be leading or even participating in any revolution. And I'm sure as hell not sticking my neck out to get pulverized for anyone because we have all failed and we're all on our own. Resistance is a fool's game, the people you think you're helping are not grateful and they will betray you for the tiniest reward.