Concentrate Power for Good, Stop Descending into Wailing.

You don't go to war with the army you want, you go with the army you have. We Liberals have the Democratic Party. Up front it must be noted that the Democratic Party is deeply flawed, at what point you start your analysis informs greatly what shape those flaws take. Pinning down the prevailing ideology of the Democratic Party is also difficult because of the many different perspectives people have when viewing the platform or what candidates/elected officials say and do. I think we can dismiss the "radical socialist leftist" mashup nonsense spewed by Doughfacedonny and all of the republicans. It is likely they don't even know what any of those words mean and are just placeholders for whatever epithet crosses their diseased brains at that moment. Democracy and freedom are hard, the enemies of freedom are ruthless and powerful; don't succumb to wailing about how all is lost if you aren't willing to pitch in.

Neither is it especially helpful to consult one of the many holier-than-thou self-righteous leftists out there who use "neoliberal" as their placeholder of choice. Since every day brings a new republican atrocity, today it comes out that trump withheld military assistance to Ukraine in order to get Paul Manafort out of hot water and smear Joe Biden, it is basically hopeless to try and reason with them. In other words, politicizing foreign policy is the latest realm of republican ratfcking (of course, you'd have to forget about Nixon sabotaging peace talks in Vietnam to get elected, Reagan buttering up the Ayatollah to keep the hostages in Iran to get elected, Bush jr. starting wars of aggression to get reelected, and trump using Russian intelligence to get elected). Not by coincidence it seems is this editorial in the NYTimes written by the authors of How Democracies Die about constitutional hardball by republican authoritarians. Hot take: it's not fear that drives republican hardball, it's hate. The Republican Party could abandon its racism, its authoritarianism, its hatred of science, its embrace of religious fundamentalism, and its mafia-esque mantra of loot everything and burn the place down tomorrow and become a moderate conservative party that does well in most of the world. But as Driftglass likes to say "they can't abandon the monster they made" and have to, like Hitler, keep pedaling the bicycle forward or fall.

No, all of the worthwhile discussion is going on on the left. Which is why it is so disconcerting to read so many articles like this one in CounterPunch:

But this [inauthenticity of "the state-capitalist and corporate-captive Democratic Party"] is nothing remotely new. Yes, Virginia, the Democrats have an authenticity problem, you betchya. The late left Princeton political scientist Sheldon Wolin memorably labeled the Democrats as, get this, “the Inauthentic Opposition” twelve years ago. “Should Democrats somehow be elected,” Wolin prophesied in his book Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton, 2007), they would do nothing to “alter significantly the direction of society” or “substantially revers[e] the drift rightwards. … The timidity of a Democratic Party mesmerized by centrist precepts,” Wolin wrote, “points to the crucial fact that for the poor, minorities, the working class and anti-corporatists there is no opposition party working on their behalf.” The corporatist Democrats would work to “marginalize any possible threat to the corporate allies of the Republicans.”

If I had all the time in the world I could probably not comb through this piece by Paul Street thoroughly to call out all the ways in which is it utterly unhelpful in the present situation. But Mr. Street is just one of the latest in a long line of "wailers" who have been lobbing bombs into responsible efforts to contain the authoritarian menace. Arthur M. Schlesinger jr. coined the term 70 years ago and though the interests wailers represent have changed, the essential idea is that writers for leftist periodicals can snipe Democrats when they fail to live up to the purest ideal of progressivism as embodied by whomever is holding the pen? As I put it eight years ago in the face of the Democratic "shellacking" by apathy:

In The Vital Center Schlesinger made a distinction between doughface progressive "wailers" and radical democratic "doers" in our liberal tradition. The doughface in his conception was "a democratic man with totalitarian principles" who runs from responsibility and freedom, surrendering the chaos of liberty for the protective embrace of communist discipline. In our contemporary situation, voters largely abdicated the responsibility for involvement after electing Barack Obama, and once in he feared actually being responsible for the consequences of big decisions. This explains why to some degree why his cabinet was stocked with doughfaces like geithner and summers, progressive men with banker's principles. It seemed that the entire Democratic governing coalition was held captive by lack of vision and fear. Fear of trying something different, fear of being held responsible for the radical actions necessary to get our society back on track.

Schlesinger's wailer as well, was a liberal Utopian who was afraid of the real world. They simply wanted to criticize but not actually change things, much better to craft the perfect rhetorical flourish to condemn greed, oppression, and the like. Therefore, wailers don't actually want power. Combine this with the decay of intermediate forces, unions, clubs, even party structures and you can see how someone that perhaps started out with principles could become unmoored when faced with that kind of fear. Without intermediate forces to support liberals once in power, or threaten them when they waver it is no wonder they fall prey to special interests.

Now, in 1949 there were real communists and fellow travelers trying tenaciously to undermine democracy and the constitution. Schlesinger's book was an exhortation to get the "noncommunist left" together with the "nonfascist right" on issues directly related to the core of the American idea: rule of law, free elections, free press, constitutional rights of individuals, and sovereignty so we can argue as Americans first about what is best for the country. There were never more than a handful of these guys taking marching orders from Moscow and they never came close to taking over an entire political party in this country. But at the time, no one really knew how successful communist subversives could be in hijacking the message. Anthony Burgess used the idea of communist propaganda infiltrating free societies to undermine them in A Clockwork Orange if you can see where I am going with this.

America was inoculated against foreign propaganda during the Cold War enough that McCarthyism was never more than a crude partisan cudgel employed by republicans to political advantage. But students of history know that fear of being labeled "soft on communism" affected the republic in many ways and that crude partisan weapon could mutate into "soft on crime", "soft on terrorism" and now its ridiculous, inbred, spawn of republicans branding every Democrat as a "radical socialist."

So the players have completely changed roles in contemporary America. The noncommunist left was never really in danger of being supplanted by an insurgent authoritarianism. Unlike the nonfascist right that has basically become extinct, supplanted by the laughingly named "conservative movement" that now more or less openly takes orders from Moscow and welcomes foreign interference in America through a social media network that Burgess could never have imagined.

I had a hard time understanding then, why leftist wailers still existed. They seem to exist in a kind of hipster-esque world where "I was into universal healthcare and saving the environment before it was cool". I have no problem with their ideological goals, it's the tactics and "perfect rhetorical flourish" every thinkpiece needs to out-edgy their colleagues and strike awesome savior anti-hero poses that is the problem. No one likes a braggart, and these wailers just look like bullies when they criticize Democrats for being wimps and not serving the causes of du jour progressivism as much as they demand while doing nothing to actively advance those goals. Just sit on the sidelines and avoid responsibility. But at least they are not acting on marching orders from a foreign adversary, and the purity tests did not discourage a whole lot of people from running for office and working hard to get new and better Democrats elected. Beyond personal self-aggrandizement and "building a brand" to "go viral" on the same social media that Russian and domestic right wingers use to undermine legitimate and responsible politics, there never seemed a larger, ulterior motive.

Then I started reading about authoritarianism, and discovered that there is a left-wing variety. Left-wing authoritarians need something to rebel against, in perpetuity. This species of rebel does those things above because they want to be king among the roaming bands of weaker rogues and rebels. You can see the problem with this and why they always come of as so abrasive, no rebel wants to be led. Therefore, you get lots of little atomized cells on the left that agree on probably 90% of a platform but can't seem to work together. And why Schlesinger argued that freedom and democracy often dissipate focus and energy for change, while authoritarian lockstep followers can advance an awful tyrant's lust for power and wealth by concentrating that focus.

Concentrating our energy for reform is the only hope to stave off the descent into madness and tyranny that Doughfacedonny and republicans crave. It is also why the two party system, for all its faults, is still the best way of organizing and concentrating that energy. It has not been this clear since the Civil War that one party is full of bad guys and the other party is the good guys. As DG and BG always say during their podcast "one party wants to expand health care and the other party puts babies in cages". I am suspicious of anyone exhibiting "BernieBro" tendencies and tearing down the one vehicle for focusing energy against authoritarianism without doing anything to defend our freedom. We need to organize and work together to fix the damn army we have, before its too late. Yes, the Democratic Party is a hodge-podge of wimps, has beens, and never weres; what are you doing to fix that?

Normalcy isn't a real word and it definitely won't work

This morning I came across a very interesting conversation within the Democratic family. As Driftglass and Bluegal always like to say, the debates occurring now in Primary season are a family discussion. This is how it always goes during Primary season, there are a thousand or more points of view within the big tent of the Democratic Party and it takes a while to settle things down to just a few. The problem is when these conversations become arguments and the partisans within each group get entrenched and bitter. While the Republicans are almost entirely authoritarian at this point, RWAFs in the base and social dominators in leadership and wannabe leadership, the Democrats are not without authoritarians of the left-wing variety. Whereas right wing authoritarian followers prize conformity and obedience to power along with aggression against any out-groups, left wing authoritarians prize perpetual rebellion and individualism. Bernie bros and Naderites are the classic cases and they did plenty of damage with their purity tests and privilege of saying "let the Republican win, that will show 'em." Obviously it is a scale, there aren't hard and fast delinations marking each group. But each family fight has the potential of setting off LWAs and forming schisms within the party that can ruin elections.

So I have to try and temper any remarks because I don't want to fan a spark into a schism or empower LWAs at all. First and foremost, as I have mentioned before, I don't take positions in Primaries because the worst Democrat is always better than the best Republican. We have a pretty good group of competent, experienced candidates with good ideas that will all represent the Party and the non-insane majority of this country well. Joe Biden is the candidate at the heart of this conversation. It starts with Brother Charlie Pierce's column from August 26, arguing that Biden is the "return to normalcy" candidate with great similarity to Warren G. Harding. Rick Perlstein upped the ante by stating:

Ah, our very own James Buchanan: the rocky-steady candidate of experience, promising to bring back all that yummy, yummy normalcy. I'm sure it will all work out swell, just like 1856-60.

Now, both Harding and Buchanan are consistently ranked among the worst presidents this country has had in our history by professional historians. Personally I rank James K. Polk higher in the awfulness chart for waging an aggressive war of conquest against Mexico based on lies that empowered southern slave owners into forcing their demands for more slavery and more oppression onto the rest of the country. Maybe because the parallels with Dubya and Cheney's contempt for the rule of law and empowering the worst people in the country to shit all over democracy are just too strong. In my reading of history, Polk doused the country in gasoline with his splendid little war and gave boxes of matches to authoritarian slave owners. Sure, there was a short interregnum with Whig presidents (Zachary Taylor, hero of the war with Mexico then Fillmore) where the country could have gone in another direction but the same kind of normalcy set in once Franklin Pierce (no relation to Charlie, that I know of) took office. Pierce was a doughface, actually the poster child for doughfaces, who wasn't going to do anything about slavery because he saw the abolitionists as the problem.

There is no going back. WWI changed the country in many, many ways. Though Harding and his successors tried to go back to the federal government doing nothing and retreat from internationalism, the world and much of America did not really cooperate. Similarly, Buchanan just tried to ignore the simmering divisions and violent trends with a lighter touch on the doughface identity. But even an experienced, long-serving politician like Buchanan could not sweep things away by inaction, simply hoping that not making waves could patch things up so we could go back to arguing over tariffs and internal improvements instead of slavery and expansion.

So, no amount of hoping a Joe Biden could patch things up after doughfacedonny goes away will suffice. There is simply no going back. And according to FiveThirtyEight Biden's lead is shrinking, so it's possible that the issue of having to hash out who is right in their comparison won't persist into Primary season. I like and respect both Charlie and Rick, and I'm on board with their basic premise that trying to campaign on the return to normalcy will probably be a disaster. No schism here, if Biden gets the nomination I will obviously vote for him but then immediately go back to organizing and working to defeat authoritarianism. Even if that means watching Diamond Joe lead with his face into republican baseball bats.

Recession Deja Vu all over again

I admit that financial collapse was not my first thought when the Russians helped Doughface Donny steal the election. It was probably fourth or fifth, after the giant tax cuts and deregulation, anti-immigrant punitive cruelty, imprisonment of dissenters at all levels, wars, and the legalization through non-prosecution of white supremacists for acts of terror they regularly commit. But now, just in time for the next election it is as The Onion put it:

Financial Sector Thinks It’s About Ready To Ruin World Again

The first serious inkling I got of recession is this article from Axios dated April 5, 2019 on the decade high number of layoffs over a first quarter of the fiscal year. The economy is always churning jobs around, creating here, destroying there, shuffling rotten and incompetent executives from one golden parachute to another. When the legacy media reports on all the fantastic job growth are they commenting on the net growth, raw numbers of new jobs, the fun trick of turning one full-time family supporting job with benefits into two or more part-time or contract/freelance/on demand ones, or what? You have to dig pretty deep into each report to find out. But unemployment isn't even the biggest contributor to triggering a crisis.

I foolishly neglected to post and comment on the story from NPR that hit the alarm over the Inverted Yield Curve at the time. Looking it up now shows that it was originally posted on March 22 and the professor interviewed for the story said the time to start worrying was when yields remained inverted for 3 months. The inversion caused a drop of 460 points on the DJIA that day, and the Washington Post today has a reassuring article for retirees and boomers nearing retirement to stay in the market or something even though it mentions that the same index dropped 800 points on August 14th. Yes, of course recessions are a regular part of the business cycle, how else do you scare the hell out of everyone and stifle wage growth while keeping workers insecure?

Another page I follow "Defeat 'Right to work' in Wisconsin" posted a story that I shared from NBC about the 800 point DJIA drop, "the worst of the year" (let's get used to that phrase shall we?), they included the comment "The economy is overdue for its regular 10-year capitalist crisis, where the rich get richer and working people pay the price". It's basically theater by now, tax cuts unleash a new wave of unproductive capital for ever-more-risky speculation, some kind of bubble builds, crash, the banks and everyone with a lobbyist rushes to the republican government for handouts while blaming workers and the poor, rinse and repeat. This time we get to throw in concentration camps, trade wars, and gun-suckling jackasses unleashing mass murder into the witches' brew of capitalist excess and incompetence.

I added the comment to that post:

I have speculated that the 2008 crisis brought on by the republicans and their corruption didn’t hit early enough for the f#*kin’ boomers to get it through their thick skulls what actually caused them to delay retirement. The media letting republicans off the hook didn’t help either. This time we are strong enough to stop them when the put on funny hats and screech about socialism. #burnthelifeboats

People were all kinds of worried in the first Dubya recession of 2001 after Enron and the fun accounting abuses broke so many boomers' 401ks and caused so many people about to retire to stay on, thus denying young people any chance to get established before the really big goddamn crash in 2007. Collapse is so frequent and severe now that we don't really get to sympathize with people who lost everything. At least no one believes the "end of history" nonsense around Y2K that the rules were now suspended and you can have your cake and eat it too. Lavish yourself with vacations, expensive cars, and such because the market will always go up, you don't have to save much at all for your kids' educations or retirement. HAHAHA, yeah hopefully fewer people in the 21st century are thinking that.

It seems almost fitting that Doughface Donny has run the scandal machine at such a breakneck pace to make it feel like he's been in office for going on 8 years instead of 4. The same WaPo article predicted that the recession will really hit in 2021, just in time for President Warren or Sanders (or whoever, just please not trump) to clean up the mess with Moscow Mitch and every republican traitor screaming for their head while obstructing every proposal to fix this republican recession. I hope I'm wrong, please let me be wrong this time.

Back in July of 2016 when I had this weird little hope that somehow reason and decency would overcome republican and Russian sedition and treason, I wrote a post about "what do you want for Christmas" in the vain hope that a Clinton administration could smash through one big progressive item before Moscow Mitch slammed the door. It seems so quaint now, that maybe we could get a financial transactions tax passed and finally start to dry up some of this speculative capital that sloshes around global markets and always ends up capsizing the economy's boat. If only. If only. We will never know. Just as we will never know how American history would be different if say, Reagan's operatives hadn't convinced the Ayatollah's operatives that they could get a better deal for the American hostages if they were dealing with a Reagan administration. It would possibly have set off an entirely different course if Carter had been re-elected.

First, the tax cuts that were lavished on capital the first time would not have happened, at least not in the way they did. Energy conservation and research on renewables vs. digging for more oil. Perhaps the Fairness Doctrine would not have been abolished and decent society would be spared Limbaugh and hate radio plus the eventual establishment of Roger Ailes GOP TV. Regulations of all sorts that kept guardrails on society and industry would not have been destroyed. Nor would the entire anti-government, anti-politics conservative movement bent on authoritarianism have blossomed from all of Reagan's tall tales from the Oval Office. I know, Carter didn't really deserve reelection. And we can't do anything about how screwed up the past is. How do we use the lessons of the past then, to insulate ourselves as best we can from the coming disaster?

It's still so early, specifics won't come up right away. But, we can tighten our belts and refuse to listen to the mainstream pundits when they scream at us to buy stuff to prop up demand. No, forget it, my extra latte or subscription to something isn't going to save anything. We all need to reevaluate our needs and cut the extraneous stuff. Maybe cancel Netflix and try getting a movie from the public library, find your local farmers' market or cooperative, read a book instead of going to a ball game or a concert, learn to cook, hold off on buying a new car and pay down debt instead. Who knows how awful things are going to get, it may come to getting an extra roommate or boarder. Whatever you can do to limit your exposure and not get caught flat-footed will help. Start small, hopefully little measures here and now will add up when the shit hits the fan.

The stock market tanking is just an excuse for the top 1% to wreck our lives. Sure, there's all sorts of economic theory behind that statement but that is the result, imaginary speculative markets finally collide with reality and let the layoffs and foreclosures begin! Protecting yourself to the extent you can is first. Reminding your stupid republican relatives that they brought this on themselves is second. And finally, use the means at our disposal, social media, and any comment section to hold the media accountable when they make excuses for the past and all the ways republicans have led us to this point. They cannot let the traitorous republicans off the hook this time or it will be teabags all over again.

Conspiracy or Logic: Part 2

Sorry, for some reason blogger did not want me to type anything past the MSNBC link saying that yeah, the guards were slacking off on the job.

Here's Ed's conclusion from the post:

With all that said, the idea of a high profile inmate on suicide watch committing suicide without intervention is highly suspicious. It makes perfect sense that ears would perk up and that everyone would reflexively question that version of events. I cannot imagine what kind of investigation could be done that would produce a result that would NOT be rejected by a large part of the population, but I hope a more complete version of events emerges. Whatever happened, conspiracy theories about this event will persist until long after this presidency ends.

That, I'd have to say is the point. No investigation would be credibly accepted by the public at large. Let's put up those memes again just for shits and giggles:

 This supposed coalition falls apart once any kind of circumstances arise. I am sure there is crossover between the Bernie Bros who hate Hillary Clinton and the glassy-eyed pizzagate nutjobs but even if everyone still agrees on the result, there will be a million factions form just on the direction of causation, the people protected by the guy's death, and every piece of trivia beyond.

What got me roused enough to actually write about this little, meaningless episode was Josh Marshall's podcast from yesterday, "We're living in the golden age of conspiracy theories." While there were so many subjects discussed on that episode, Epstein's suicide was one of them. I think it is David Taintor who reported that he was taken off of suicide watch at the request of his lawyers, the prison was understaffed, and his cellmate was relocated. These factors combined to produce the conspiracy theories represented in these memes. Pedophilia seems to go with arrogant and undeserved wealth like peanut butter and chocolate in the minds of people who want to sound smart. Doughfacedonny absolutely needs this to be about the Clintons because it is basically public knowledge now that he loves young girls and was probably first in line at Epstein's soirees. So, where some people see unity and bipartisanship in conspiracy theory, I see just a new skirmish in the cold civil war.

Of course it's suspicious that these factors converged and the rich guy everyone loves to hate was found dead but I have to ask; so what? Let's say he was murdered; could you have done anything about it? If it was murder, would you have any other thoughts? What does it actually do to affect our lives and our republic? Murder or suicide, he doesn't testify against his buddies. His victims do not get to confront him, the public does not get to gloat over seeing a rich, entitled asshole who did really bad things in court and suffering. If there was/is a conspiracy to kill Epstein, do you think any conspirators will face justice? If incontrovertible evidence showed up that Doughfacedonny was banging underage girls at Epstein's pleasure palace, do you think it would change anything? No, normal decent people still hate him for everything he has done and what he stands for and his reprogrammable meatbag supporters could not care less. Will it motivate people to show up and vote, donate, work on campaigns? I hope so, but for any politically-inert citizen that decides to pay attention because of it will be cancelled out by the emboldened fascist who will crawl naked over broken glass to defend their god emperor con man in chief. I know this because all the same monsters showed up to vote for Roy Moore in Alabama who commands only a fraction of trump's "charisma" and was all but convicted of being a pedophile.

So, what's the difference? Occam's Razor says that the simplest answer is often the correct one. If speculating on the depths of conspiracy is something you enjoy, go to town. But don't expect anything to come of it. And absolutely do not put any stock in this being some kind of unifying event between liberals and "conservatives" because the latter care only about smearing the former. In the vacuum of evidence that is sure to come, with the same crooks covering up the "conspiracy," republicans will simply invent facts to fit their narrative. If you think this finally wakes them up from decades of self-deception... follow Occam's Razor. Has anything ever prompted conservatives to wake up? No, they can abandon a guy like George Dubya by inventing a tale about him abandoning conservatism and temporarily shrug off the identity of "Republican" by saying they are "constitutional or independent conservatives" and put on funny hats to protest the Kenyan Usurper's socialism, but as soon as the next man on horseback shows up to champion authoritarianism and the republican brand has had a chance to shake off its toxicity they will be right back.

This is the battle, this is the one that matters. Epstein is just a sideshow, trivia, so don't invest too much time and energy on it. There are real conspiracies out there, this particular one doesn't matter.

Conspiracy or Logic? Epstein edition

Jeffrey Epstein's case does not interest me very much I will lead off in saying. I don't really care about the particulars beyond sympathy for his victims and generalized rage against the wealth inequality our system produces that allows predators like him to exist. But like anyone vaguely aware of current events, I heard about his death which brought about a shoulder shrug (tentacles shrug?) and a vain hope that maybe we can get back to news about the daily blows to democracy delivered by republicans. Yeah, sure, that happens right.

Well, no. My social media almost immediately began filling up with conspiracy memes. And mine must not have been the only one because Gin and Tacos posted a very interesting blog called "The Singularity" because seriously, this shit has to stop. Conspiracies do happen, in boardrooms everyday unaccountable elites plot and scheme ways to separate you from your money and time, but to just fall in line with the conspiracy du jour because somebody made a convenient meme about it is just plain bad.

The Epstein thing is fascinating, as perhaps the only current example of an issue where nobody will trust or accept the official view of events irrespective of political beliefs.

People want the world to be more interesting than it is. People want life to be like the movies. That is the basic appeal of conspiracy theories. Plus, speculating is fun. No, seriously. It is. I get it. In this case and as usual, it requires people to assert with a high degree of confidence that they know how something works without really having any idea what they're talking about.

Obviously Epstein's death is extremely suspicious at best. However, a few things need clarifying before we can jump with any reasonable certainty to "omg murder."

In the country that has spectacle and Hollywood big screen excitement practically as a central pillar of its economy, yes it is no surprise that we have gotten to the point of instant and universal conspiracies of epic proportions with every new event. Ed is right on as usual. So, Occam's Razor has to come into play at some point. That would involve everyone letting go, just for a moment, about the fantasies involving Hillary Clinton and pedophiles; so I won't hold my breath.

First of all, the idea that an aged pedophile would kill himself in prison is plausible and given more credence by Epstein's previous suicide attempt (or maybe attempts). In a vacuum, it isn't hard to believe at all that he would commit suicide.

This particular rant was written before many facts came out, namely that he wasn't on suicide watch on that night. Ed was pretty spot on though in saying that no prison is really a panopticon, it's practically impossible to keep watch on anyone continuously.

Yet even under the latter conditions, it's not impossible that this really was suicide. Have you ever met a prison guard? They're like cops, but lazier. It's also not impossible that someone tasked with staring at a bank of monitors for hours on end could let their attention wander. Maybe the people responsible for watching him are just bad at their job. That's not hard to imagine.

Lo and behold:

Republicans lying to pollsters

Have you ever had an itch that you just couldn't find, can't seem to satisfactorily scratch, and it just won't go away? This is the never trumper argument to me. It just irritates, like a pebble in your shoe that you can never seem to get out and every time you stop to try it you just fall further and further behind the race. I don't even know which of these metaphors are more appropriate; the absolute undying pleasure of finally scratching that itch, or the lingering irritation that causes pain long after the pebble (irritant) is removed. We will probably never know. But in this instance, Twitter fits both of them more or less perfectly.

I am lousy at Twitter. Deliberate, considered, and researched comments do not get read and I am not quick enough to stay with a thread. But every now and then I punch a few keys and get a one in there, never a super witty or original comment though. It's just not my medium.

Networking, networking. Somebody posted this Huffpost story about a minority of the minority of conservatives and self-described republicans telling pollsters that they won't vote for Doughfacedonny in 2020. To which Ed from Gin and Tacos (whose Twitter handle is Mass for Shut-ins, after the name of his podcast) replied "Bullshit, these people would drink a gallon of bleach if it meant owning the libs." And thus started a long moralizing scold from someone desperately wanting to believe there is still good in republicans out there somewhere.

The fact that so many self-described conservatives no longer consider themselves republicans (and that trump has surely caused this exodus) is nearly ipso facto evidence that there are more gooduns than you suspect.

— tospik 🌐 🌷 (@tospik) May 2, 2019

Telling (potential) defectors to go fuck themselves isn’t a great recruiting strategy, satisfying as it may be.

— tospik 🌐 🌷 (@tospik) May 2, 2019

So I decided to add two cents:

Yes, because wooing them to abandon their fascist party of bigots and imbeciles has worked so well. #notoneinch

— Tentacles of 🦑 (@TentaclesOfYest) May 2, 2019

In hindsight, I should have prefaced it with "because in 2016 Hillary Clinton's strategy of appealing to these fictional decent republicans had a statistically negligent effect in getting those supposed defectors to actually abandon the great orange god that says what they want to hear and vote for the chick they all hate while depressing actual turnout among actual Democrats and liberals." But no, I tried to stay quick and witty like the cool kids on Twitter. So I got this back:

As I said, they’ve left the GOP en masse since the rise of Trump in spite of the conspicuous *lack* of wooing preached by pricks like you. Imagine how effective a little wooing might be, or at least not openly sneering at the possibility that some of them are decent. 🤔

— tospik 🌐 🌷 (@tospik) May 3, 2019

Where to begin? "Left en masse"? I still see no real evidence for this. Being embarrassed enough to tell a pollster that the guy who "says what he means" and what he means is the racism and authoritarianism that republicans crave that they aren't going to vote for him is just meaningless. You mean you expect me to believe that the people who jumped up and down screaming "trump that bitch!" and spouted a different conspiracy theory about Syrian and Central American refugees each day are going to break their conditioning enough to pull the lever for the Democratic candidate in private and actually be honest about it? Deceit and punching down is etched into republican DNA, and the past simply doesn't exist. Record? What Record? Trump has sort of embarrassed this cohort but to think any amount of kowtowing and compromise will get even one mythical "moderate republican" to defect is the epitome of wishful thinking. There may be crossover from last time, there may not be, but as an active strategy it is a born loser because then it looks like (and basically is) signalling to both base republicans and base Democrats that the candidate has no real principles. Fox News-viewing meat puppets will see it as weakness and pounce. Activist progressive Liberals, the kind who were "Bernie or Bust" last time, will see the Democratic candidate and campaign abandoning them again to chase rainbows and butterflies.

So no, no amount of "wooing" will have the effect you want. You can call me a prick all you want but it doesn't matter how much I sneer, leading with your face and trying to woo any republicans will get you stomped on. Reality and objective facts mean nothing in this post-truth fascist republican party. If there are any decent republicans out there, they will do the right thing (finally) all on their own. And every time I hear a self-proclaimed "never trumper" decide that they get to tell Democrats what they should stand for if they want his vote just reaffirms that authoritarianism is what they want and if you are weak enough to let them take over then there really is no hope.

Republicans; either blue-collar, educated suburbans, rootin' tootin' rednecks, or brahmins have their own party. They can fight it out amongst themselves, the Democratic Party needs to stand for something untainted and uninfluenced by the other side or pearl-clutching centrists. That is why I hashtagged #notoneinch on my tweet, even if my meaning was lost, even if tospik projected what he wanted onto what I wrote, this is a war and we cannot surrender anything to republicans. They simply have to be beaten and removed from office and rendered harmless to damage America anymore.

How to Wreck the Forced Birth Enthusiasts

I have never written a full post about abortion rights before. This is because it is such entry-level bullshit to be against a woman's right to choose, anyone with two functioning brain cells is pro-choice when it matters to them. This is nothing but a way to bully women. Period. But, is there a republican in power anywhere? If the answer is yes then silly shit like abortion bans, punishments, vigilante violence, and restrictions on the right to privacy will continue. My very first professor in college, English, preemptively banned anyone from writing argumentative or persuasive essays on abortion, because as she put it "that's high school stuff." However tired of arguing over abortion decent people are though, the children of darkness keep agitating against women's rights. I came across YA author and frequent victim of right-wing authoritarian aggression Chris Crutcher's persuasive Facebook post this morning and wanted to back him up.

It’s time to weaponize against the batshit crazy abortion legislation coming out of Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Missouri, et al. Those self-righteous old men who average five hours a day, three or four days a week, legislating vicious policy that leaves poverty stricken women, rape and incest victims, as well as love-stricken girls who believe their whiney teenage boyfriends’ promises of everlasting love if they’ll just this one time - and a bunch of times after that - have sex with them; those men are the enemy.

In these past few weeks, the American narrative has become stunningly absurd. And it’s partly our fault, because we’ve allowed the debate to become gradually more idiotic since the early seventies when the Roe V Wade decision came down. [emphasis mine]

Now first I have to clarify that I love Mr. Crutcher's books, even though I don't get to read fiction very often. Mrs. Kraken and I even got to have dinner with him (among others) at a conference reception once. He was one of the coolest people I have met, laughed at my lame jokes, listened to all of us, and told great stories, in short a great guy to know and be around. So I am fully on board with all of his ideas here. My one reservation, and unfortunately it is the central thesis, is how? The only thing right wing authoritarians understand is force and fear of punishment. How do we, the majority of non-fundamentalist zealots, punish or force the angry minority and the republicans who laugh at them while stealing their money and votes? The short answer is we can't. Which is why they are so aggressive at defying common sense and the constitution. The best defense of the absurdity of the authoritarian conception of the "sanctity of life" is a good offense.

The only answer is to organize and vote republicans out. Every single one. Whatever tactics are necessary to keep pro-women's rights Americans involved, organized, and voting against republicans is justified. Because, no matter how many times the bans, intravaginal ultrasounds, intimidation of women, and financial hardships they impose on women are struck down by the courts, it doesn't hurt the rednecks out there in the least. It's only their tax money that gets wasted, not the legislator's. So as long as these authoritarian spectacles keep the meatheads energized they will keep at it. Heaping shame upon the rednecks will not work if they can simply tune you out. You have to risk arguments and stop being polite when uncle liberty goes on a rant at family gatherings. They have to be challenged, they have to suffer ostracism and the laughter of others before they will stop openly spouting the nonsense.

We let the debate become about the sanctity of life. We let the debate become about some random time when the sperm-egg union becomes a human life. We let the debate become “what-if” morality banter. (What if the aborted fetus was destined to be a Mozart? Or an Einstein? A Katherine Johnson, or an Alice Walker? Yeah, well what if that fetus was destined to be a Charles Manson, or an Eric Harris? Maybe a Lizzie Bordon. There are a hell of a lot more of THOSE humans trolling the planet than that other kind.)

Let’s get real here. There is nothing sacred human life, in the abstract. Humans lives become sacred when they’re treated that way and when they in-turn treat others that way. How many of you “moral” Christians would leave Adolf Fetus Hitler to grow and nurture in the womb if you knew the shitstorm HE would eventually kick into play? You think if Nancy Lanza had had access to a time machine, she wouldn’t have whipped back twenty years and nine months and sucked that murderous little shit Adam out of her womb before he could blow her away, then drive to Sandy Hook Elementary to slaughter 20 five and six-year-olds along with six adults who were trying to protect them?

And again, Mr. Righteous Christian Politician, before you decide you want to give any doctor who performs an abortion, 99 years, you might want to consider that the entity YOU sometimes “worship” for up to an hour or so a week - whom you believe to be a HE (understandably) and IN WHOSE IMAGE YOU CLAIM TO BE CREATED – happens to be, among other things, the most prolific abortionist on the planet. And HE takes babies at random; wanted and unwanted.

All excellent points. If this was an issue of reason and logic Mr. Crutcher would be taking a well-deserved victory lap. I wish every pro-forced birth meathead had to read this before his car would start or before he could punch in to work.

I say all that only to piss you off and get your attention. You guys need to discover the difference between righteous and self-righteous. TO THE PERSON every one of you assholes who crows and votes “right to life” are anti-abortion right up until your daughter gets pregnant by some laid-back dope-smoking ne’er-do-well - or some guy who isn’t white - and you’re afraid you’ll have to explain to your like-minded friends at a dinner party or political fund-raiser how your control-freaky bullshit didn’t pan out and your little girl turned into such a big disappointment, or a whore. Suddenly, a quick trip to the clinic takes care of your embarrassment and you can go back to being the asshole who believes in “life” right up until it actually happens.

Or maybe you’re just Pennsylvania Congressman Tim Murphy. Oops. 

Burn. Sick Burn.

 So my side is taking back the basic premise; we’re making the debate simple and easy:

Question: In the democracy that is the United States of America, who should decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy?
Answer: The woman who is pregnant.

Question: At what point does she need to decide?
Answer: Whenever.

Question: What regions in America should be free of abortion clinics?
Answer: Any that are completely underwater or in the immediate path of a wildfire.

Question: What should American men and women who are fiercely against abortion do?
Answer: Don’t get one.

The money shot. Turn it around. Make them convince you. Never let any of their bullshit fallacious assumptions stand unchallenged. And vote. Stop putting effort into convincing these logic-impervious that they are wrong. They simply are wrong. Ignore them or destroy them, but there's no point in wasting time trying to persuade them.

I am sure that professional wordsmith that he is, Mr. Crutcher pounded this message out in one or two deep breaths. Good thing too, as much as we need ammunition to fight the authoritarians, we also need his work writing stories that help young adults deal with life. Very few writers are talented enough to make a difference in someone's life and we are lucky Mr. Crutcher uses all of his gifts in service of the light side.