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.