Knights and Barbarians in Feudalist American Politics: California Recall Landslide Edition

 Thankfully, Larry Elder is no Arnold Schwarzenegger. I admit I was sweating the astroturf recall in California probably more than was necessary. These kinds of anti-democratic shenanigans are the worst kind really because the best possible outcome is that nothing changes. We liberals can hope that California Democrats will now reform their recall laws to make it harder for right-wing authoritarians to force the state to waste $300 million and reinforce their big lie about fraud, but more likely they will just go back to complacency about the inevitable demographic destiny about winning without delivering.

While Gavin Newsom is no prize, Jello Biafra once talked about him being prominent in "Democrats for Bush" back in the dubya tyranny, his repulse of the latest republican chevauchee gives me a chance to revisit a hypothesis made after doughfacedonny stole the presidency. Namely, that elected Democrats are knights in feudalist America. Republicans are the barbarians at the gates, who reject civilization and are only interested in the power to dominate and oppress. While those two components are readily apparent in a White hat/Black hat sort of dichotomy, the other layers of feudalism in America line up less neatly but I still think knights and barbarians are a better comparison than cowboys and cattle rustlers or Old West outlaws and lawmen. 

What are the practical effects of Newsom maintaining his seat? The It Can Happen Here Podcast did a fairly good summary of where California is and will continue to be now that the recall is over recently, especially concerning wildfires and other environmental issues. Just having a grown up in charge of state efforts is a start IMO. Not to go back to the Jello well again but he is the foremost California leftist that I know, he summed up the republican desire pretty well in his spoken-word piece "The Last Big Gulp" where republicans (mainly boomers) want to use up everything on their way out to preserve their selfish, decadent lifestyles of consumption and waste, fck everyone else. Elder would have thrown open the spigots and depleted the freshwater supply drastically while taking even modest controls off of developers to turn green spaces into strip malls and McMansions. Efforts to help people would all be channeled into militarized security forces to keep white boomers safe from poor people. As the Talking Post Memo article from the top said, "negative partisanship worked in this election" telling people how awful republicans are and reminding them of how badly republicans govern can do a lot. 

It is a bit like the hypothesis I also have used in the past to say that half of half a loaf is better than a boot stamping on a human face for all eternity. Which, if you paid attention to the destruction wrought by Dubya and doughfacedonny, along with all the teabag and MAGA governors basically speaks for itself. The problem was that Democrats did not take the problem of republican barbarism seriously when they held power. Eight years of Dubya running roughshod over the constitution after stealing the presidency on a technicality and no action on reforming the Electoral College during Obama's administration. They wasted valuable legislating time debating republicans and letting them hang poison pill amendments on the ACA while doing almost nothing to counter the teabagger's racism and mobs at townhalls. Democrats acted during those years like demographic destiny had arrived and they could rest on their laurels... then losing a thousand legislative seats over the next series of elections. 

Still, I one hundred percent prefer Democrats in office over republicans. Despite their flaws Democrats are the only political party in the country, the other being a death cult of human suffering that is so dedicated to the ends of power they will sacrifice their own members to make Joe Biden look bad and simply reject democracy when they are so toxic that no one will vote for them. It would be a catastrophe if the lessons of 2010 disappear down the memory hole and we wake up to a republican congress. Recently I heard leftist activists complain that the Democratic Party is a fundraising machine and little else, which pigeonholes into the comparison I wanted to make about medieval knights. If I could contribute even a little bit to bolstering morale and encouraging Democrats to show up to vote and stay involved by reaching with an imperfect analogy then let's go.

To Be Continued...

Comparing Weimar and the contemporary United States

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. -George Santayana

This quote actually makes more sense in it's original form, nothing about learning from the past, simply remembering is enough. Or is it? Far too often, those who remember the past and study it intensely are ignored by those in power. Even if Mark Twain's aphorism about history rhyming rather than repeating is closer to reality than a simple cycle of growth, destruction, and regrowth in human history, it is st, ill all-too-common to draw the wrong conclusions or simply not see the comparisons. This is why so many mainstream commentators eschew comparisons to nazis when republicans embrace violence, authoritarianism, and insist that every day is Day Zero. Erasing the past is a very high priority for revolutionaries, at least past evidence of your crimes because whataboutism and any perceived misdeeds by your enemies are not just fair game but integral to destroying the legitimacy of the opposition.

Making comparisons in history is fraught with danger, one needs to be an expert on both sides of the comparison and most historians specialize in one area. Are we really in a Weimar period of placid exhaustion between two political and social tragedies? Will remembering the past in Germany and the United States help us to avoid repeating it? And can we possibly educate enough people to care and make a difference? Salon shared this article by Matthew Rozsa today, I must have missed it when it was originally published in June but the content is still entirely relevant so I feel confident in analyzing it now.

If Donald Trump's movement is destined to be America's answer to Nazism, than the Joe Biden administration is currently a rough equivalent of the Weimar Republic — the unstable constitutional democracy that governed Germany before the rise of Adolf Hitler. The comparison is imperfect, but the cautionary tale is still clear. There is an obvious risk that Biden and the narrow Democratic majorities in Congress will fail, and that Trump or a successor will take over and then cement themselves into power for at least the next generation. Every American who wants to avoid this — especially Biden and the leading Democrats in Congress — needs to learn the right lessons from Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.

Rozsa is an historian, his bio says that he is all-but-dissertated for his PhD but does not list his specialization. I have a feeling it is not German history because while he states that it would take at least a medium length academic article to really analyze the similarities between Weimar and the contemporary US, the similarities he presents are not really adequate to make the comparison. I am not a German historian either but have studied it enough to elaborate on these five points.

 1. Both sagas began with an incompetent right-wing ruler. In Germany's case, they had the misfortune of being led by Kaiser Wilhelm II, who has been described as viewing "other people in instrumental terms," as a "compulsive liar" and possessing "a limited understanding of cause and effect." That sounds more than a little bit like Donald Trump, whose administration was plagued with scandal and who failed to effectively manage the COVID-19 pandemic. On both occasions, that ruler was eventually removed from power (through losing both World War I and the German Revolution in the case of the former and losing the 2020 election in the case of the latter).

 A friend of mine is a German historian who specializes in that countries' involvement in the two world wars. He agrees that good 'ol Kaiser Bill II had a lot in common with doughfacedonny, they were both lazy, stupid, bullies with huge chips on their shoulders and were never meant to rule. But this comparison would make trump both the kaiser and hitler, which may or may not play out. American and German history prior to these points really muck up the comparison as well. Germany only became a unified state in 1871 and had no prior experience with republican politics, at least at the chief executive level. Though the German Empire after unification had some resemblance to a federal system of states in a union and elections to the national legislature, the major political party was subject to suppression and persecution by the monarch in a way that isn't true in the United States. Nor did the German press have the freedom to viciously slander and lie in bad faith the way the right wing media does in the US. 

2. Both stories continued because of a Big Lie. Hitler appealed to nationalist sentiments by claiming that Germany had actually won World War I but been betrayed behind the scenes by a conspiracy of socialists and Jews. Trump, who displays narcissistic traits and has spent years telling people that any election he loses is by definition stolen from him, has without evidence or any logical argument insisted that Biden cheated in 2020. Another defeated president might have been dismissed as a pathological sore loser, but Trump's cult of personality is so strong that his Trumper tantrum has now become a defining part of Republicanism.

This is true, but the actors are separate. Trump's whining about losing the election has continuity with his whining during the 2016 election and all the way through his "presidency". After Germany surrendered, the Kaiser abdicated and fled to the Netherlands. Trump fled to Florida, and while that state is awful and insane, it is still part of the US. Trump has a lifetime of morally-depraved, narcissistic, and criminal behavior behind him that republicans looked at and decided were messianic traits. Is it worth noting how they came to power? Wilhelm II ascended the throne by birthright, trump squeaked in with an archaic and undemocratic electoral institution by the votes of 70,000 citizens in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Trump's big lie is entirely manufactured and illegitimate, perpetuated by himself and sore loser republicans. Germany's loss in WWI was devastating to the German people, by the end of the war they were starving and then the Versailles treaty was an humiliation imposed by outside forces that hobbled the nascent Weimar regime before it even started. The US was coming out of 8 years of scandal-free administration and relative prosperity when trump snuck in. 

The relevance of history depends so much on where and when you start the story. Rozsa leaves out a pretty significant point by starting with trump's "presidency" and not factoring in Dubya Bush's 8 years of war, lies, economic collapse, and authoritarianism. The impotence of democratic function and republican institutions were clearly evident in America when Dubya snuck into office almost the same way that trump did (the lower case letters are meant to disconnect those terms from our political parties). The big lie used by republicans after 9/11 to get us mired in defeat in Iraq should play a part in this story. The complicity of mainstream corporate media and ease with which trampled on the constitution should also factor into the story. Which should play a role in point 3.

3. Both used their Big Lies to break democratic norms. In Hitler's case, he became a de facto legal dictator shortly after rising to power. Because America has a much longer history of unbroken democratic government than Germany did in 1933, things will be trickier for the Trumpists. In Trump's case, he became the first president to lose an election and refuse to accept the result (there have been 10 previous defeated presidents, and all accepted the voters' verdict), as well as the first to incite an insurrection to stay in power. Trump is now reportedly fueling conspiracy theories that he could still overturn the election; just as significantly, Republicans are using his Big Lie to restrict voting for Democratic-leaning groups throughout the country. Through these methods, they will make it possible for Republicans to steal future elections — presidential and local — through means created to "fix" the problem they manufactured through their Big Lie. No doubt there will be many future Big Lies.

Again, this is true but without the historical context for both countries is so superficial as to be almost meaningless. I don't mean to criticize Rozsa because these are all important ideas to consider but someone like Rick Perlstein would argue that the Big Lie is not necessary for republicans to break and destroy democratic norms, he has chronicled the descent into authoritarianism by republicans from Barry Goldwater in 1964 in a whole series of books. Fifty-six years prior to hitler's seizure of power Germany was a brand new country with few democratic norms to break. We could spend a few medium length academic articles comparing the core of the German Empire, Prussia, to the old South in America but it is sufficient to state that democracy was not what Germany was based on. While voting restrictions and the suppression of Democratic constituencies' ability to vote have really accelerated in the face of trump's Big Lie, they are definitely not new. 

4. Both Hitler and Trump use fascist tactics to win over their supporters. These include appeals to nationalism, vilification of "out" groups and conditioning their followers to use self-expression as a substitute for authentic political self-agency. (It helps when they can create a cult of personality around the leader figure.)

Absolutely. The nationalism to which each tyrant appealed to differs markedly enough to require more explanation though. Hitler's goal of "one nation, one people, one leader" had some bearing on German history and the corrupted phrase "Deutschland uber alles" was originally a rallying cry for revolutionaries in 1848 that wanted a united Germany. Germans had cultural and ethnic similarities and can be identified as one nation. What does it mean to be an American? We have so many cultural and ethnical differences that the only nationalism that can define America is support and belief in the constitution. Trump and his republicans hate the nation that adheres to the crazy idea of democracy, liberalism, pluralism, individual liberty, and the rule of law. As Driftglass always says, "republicans hate this country." Trump and the republicans appeal to a white nationalism that doesn't really exist and is quite nebulous in form.

5. Both may wind up using their legal troubles to create resurrection narratives. Hitler famously served nine months in prison for participating in a failed coup d'état known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Trump may go to prison for anything and everything from his own coup attempt to the numerous financial crimes alleged against him. If he's convicted, he will likely be held up as a martyr; if he doesn't, that fact will be cited as vindication. 

This is a speculative point so comparison is problematic. Yes, hitler tried to violently overthrow the government, the fact that he only served nine months should tell us what the lesson is from that event. Brother Charlie Pierce has been using the phrase "looking forward, not back" to describe Democrats' reluctance to prosecute actual crimes. The biggest mistake in my opinion that the Obama administration made was not prosecuting bankers or the Bush criminals because it convinced American authoritarians that they can do whatever they want and get away with it. The insurrectionists on 1/6 were so sure of their impunity that they videoed themselves trashing Congress. Part of the rule of law means that breaking the law must have consequences and thus far there have been none. A couple of people were thrown under the bus for Watergate but Nixon himself was pardoned. A few people went down for Iran-Contra but were easily rehabilitated by the mainstream. And extensive war crimes by the bush thugs went unpunished. If the same goes true for all of the trump thugs and the insurrectionists, it will simply embolden them to try again. Neither I nor Rozsa or anyone else in the mortal world can pressure the Biden administration or Merrick Garland's Justice Department to seek actual justice, but this is where remembering the past would be kind of useful. 

Wall Street Under Siege? About Time

 It is ironic in the most humorous way that Gamestop, the mall videogame retailer, was quite recently ridiculed by many of the same people now conducting an uprising to save it and boost the share price beyond imagining, for the ridiculously low trade-in value of games. But this is kind of the exact flip I was hoping for post-doughface, populist action against brazenly corrupt hedge funds instead of fascist takeovers of the Capitol. 

I am sure by now that everyone is up to speed (and probably more in-the-know than me) on the story. Hedge funds took a huge short position in Gamestop (GME), looking to make a killing by destroying the company. This is an incredible example of how something can be legal and yet corrupt and destructive at the same time. Day traders, that are now called "retail investors" in a twist of understanding what roles are as this makes them sound like marks to be taken by the "institutional investors" i.e. Hedge funds and other predators, with online accounts to trade stocks at home rallied on a subReddit thread called WallStreetBets to buy the stock like crazy and screwing the short sellers. Also of no surprise to readers is what short selling is, borrowing shares from a pension fund or university endowment, etc. that hold extremely long positions and selling them immediately in hopes of buying them back at a later date at a lower price and pocketing the difference. It is betting on failure, a way to make money after the top 1% tank the economy or a wildly mismanaged pandemic throws the economy in chaos.

There are all kinds of laws and regulations concerning stock and other forms of trading, they are selectively enforced and are usually written and regulated by Wall Street executives taking sabbaticals from milking the productive economy and doing their time as "public servants". This is the reason so many Goldman Sachs executives end up as Treasury Secretary and the like. Sure, they want to keep markets fair... for them, but they are throwing a fit when those rules are used by small time investors to make money. 

The last time arrogant financiers crippled the country the response from the left was Occupy Wall Street, a physical takeover of space but no real action. It was met with responses from the Obama Administration about the sanctity of contracts even if they are company killing bonuses for executives that ran it into the ground. As usual, fox news demonized the occupiers and cops did their duty for property and protection of elites. Regardless of how many connections were made, how many organizations gestated due to a bunch of people hanging out in the park, when it was all over how many dollars did the whole episode drain out of Wall Street? Did anyone get their house back because of physical activism? I hate to be a downer because I really appreciated the energy and commitment, but in the end they were all just sitting ducks. Why did we have to start at square one like that? Why did organizing against one of the top priorities of everyone born after 1964, wealth inequality, have to start almost from scratch? Well I guess I gave it away huh?

A lot of the framing around WallStreetBets has been about millennials clawing into elite boomer terrain. There are a lot of comments about how their generation has been screwed and born to fail. That is part of a much larger discussion, for now it is enough to say that yes, when it comes to wealth and opportunity the boomer generation pulled the ladder up behind them. And this episode of screwing short selling hedge funds is an attempt at revenge. Revenge, sticking it to the man, screwing Wall Street after they ate our generation's seed corn these are all much more concrete motives, and tangible rewards (enough "amateurs" are getting windfalls for their positions that it is a significant transfer of wealth downwards) than Occupy Wall Street's vague "common good" arguments for activism. 

We ended 2020 with an insurrection of fascists rampaging the Capitol and are starting 2021 by punching arrogant hedge funds in the nose and some little guys actually getting some of the filthy lucre. It remains to be seen whether even this much can be maintained, but I like the energy. 

McConnell begs to keep his vile weapon of bullying as minority leader

 The shamelessness never ends:

[#Moscow Mitch McConnell],now the minority leader, is holding up the basic organizing agreement required at the beginning of each new Senate. He’s insisting that Democrats pledge to leave the legislative filibuster intact over the next two years, or else he won’t let the resolution pass — and without it, the Senate’s work won’t get done, and the majority-party Democrats won’t even be able to take over as chairs of Senate committees. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is asking for the same deal that the parties worked out in 2001 under similar circumstances. McConnell hasn’t budged, more than two weeks after Democrats clinched the last of their 50 Senate seats in two special elections in Georgia and two days after the new senators and new Vice President Kamala Harris, the tie-breaker, took office.

The odd thing is that what McConnell is doing is, as Congress scholar Sarah Binder points out, “not a credible commitment.” That is, whatever the Democrats say now — and remember, they are not currently threatening to eliminate the filibuster — it simply won’t be binding on them over the course of the next two years. At the same time, McConnell doesn’t appear to be offering anything in return for the Democrats’ pledge, such as a reciprocal promise to limit use of the filibuster, which gives the minority the power to stop most legislation that can’t command 60 votes. He simply wants Democrats to agree to play by his rules, even if that means passing nothing for the next two years. 

While no one expected the turtle to stop threatening democracy or actually let Democrats govern and clean up his seditious party's incredible, mind-blowing mess of corruption and cruelty, this is a new low. As everyone should remember, #Moscow Mitch used the filibuster as a regular weapon of business during his last tenure as Minority Leader, stymying important measures meant to rescue the economy and the country after Dubya broke it last time. And he was utterly unapologetic and shameless in doing so. He was equally shameless in crushing the Democrats' use of the filibuster when stealing Merrick Garland's seat on the Supreme Court. I believe the Jews call that Chutzpah but I don't think I'm qualified to use that term. 

McConnell should be in a position to demand nothing. With several members of his caucus courting expulsion for supporting and aiding a violent insurrection just over two weeks ago, logic would dictate that you sit down and shut up. But this is the most anti-democratic Senator in modern American history, who despite looking like he can barely push open a door by himself, is used to throwing around incredible power to disrupt, obstruct, and steal anything that furthers the republican agenda.

The framing in this Bloomberg article is important and does seem to indicate a shift, at least in the short term, of how mainstream media are going to react to republican BS. It only took economic collapse, a pandemic, and violent insurrection to get this news outlets off their asses to see the danger in pandering to them but we liberals and Democrats have to support it while we can. Saying "holding up the basic organizing agreement" and "insisting" that the majority bend to his will to leave the vile weapon of slavery and segregation intact is a major change in the way bullying has been written about in recent years. 

Thankfully Chuck Schumer has not caved, calling the demand "unacceptable", so we should be thankful for that. How long before he backslides is anyone's guess. But this episode shows that doughfacedonny may be gone, but the virus of authoritarianism never dies. It will take eternal vigilance to defend democracy. 

Marjorie Taylor Greene Picks up the Torch

In a normal year where insurrectionary republicans weren't storming the Capitol and letting their freak flags fly with bloodthirsty bravado, this might be an interesting event, kind of like a sideshow attraction:

Marjorie Taylor Greene says she will introduce impeachment articles against Biden

So freshman congresscritter MTG, who shall be known as the chicken-biting sideshow geek on this page, is going to crassly pick up where the seditious republicans planned to go if Hillary Clinton had been inaugurated. I know, I know, that feels like 128 years have passed since everyone was so sure Clinton would win that no one felt the least compunction about bashing her ferociously to show how tough they were but it really was only 4 years ago. It all seems so quaint that republicans had already lined up a couple years worth of slander and grandstanding investigations for the second Clinton Administration. Since then we've had neo-nazi marches, beer bashes on Capitol Hill to celebrate yanking health insurance from 20 million or more Americans, babies in cages, impeachment, a pandemic raging out of control, economic collapse, and an insurrection. So thank goodness we dodged the bullet of suffering through endless republican grandstanding with investigations *snark*. 

Here however, we have a freshman member of congress who openly espoused the Qanon conspiracy theory (Nazism slightly rebranded), won her seat in a deep-red district in Georgia by virtue of being unopposed, who is now grandstanding on a threat to pass meaningless articles of impeachment on issues already investigated and based on nothing more than conspiracy theories in the first place. And against a man who has not even taken office yet.

“I would like to announce on behalf of the American people, we have to make sure our leaders are held accountable, we cannot have a president of the United States who is willing to abuse the power of the office of the presidency and be easily bought off by foreign governments, foreign Chinese energy companies, Ukrainian energy companies, so on Jan. 21, I will be filing articles of impeachment on Joe Biden,” Greene told Newsmax’s Greg Kelly. 

This really is just "Go Sportsball team Go!" Lots of observers are worried that the next doughface to threaten the nation will be smarter than Donald, but there will be mobs of really dumb ones too. And it looks like the chicken-biting circus geek is angling to be the new queen of the reprogrammable meatbags.  Hat tip to Driftglass for that one, but as he often also says, this is a right-wing monster factory that produces both the meatbag marks and the con artists who manipulate them. Sooner or later they were going to merge, as they did with Doughfacedonny, and produce what Robert Altemeyer termed "double high right wing authoritarians." These people combine the aggression and dogmatism of the followers with the sociopathic narcissism of the leaders to create true believers. Doughfacedonny was famous for being famous because he could stick his face and name into every nook and cranny to sell his fantasy of luxury and quality. While the seeds of his fascism were already apparent when he took out the full page ad calling for the execution of the Central Park Five in 1989, he became hooked on fox news and hate radio the same way your grandparents or uncle Liberty did, he is gullible and loves to have his prejudices reinforced. So by the time he came down the escalator he was able to sell himself to the republican base of racists and imbeciles because he really was one of them.

And that is the impression you get from Marjorie Taylor Greene, this isn't an act, she really is that stupid and gullible to just follow the leader: Democrats impeach Doughfacedonny for inciting insurrection, so a republican moron tries to impeach their enemy over conspiracy theories. Are you ready for another round of vicious, mean-spirited obstruction, grandstanding and lies from the republican party? Because they are already coming. I hope this time it will look less like a threat to be taken seriously and more like the carnival side show that the republicans have always been. 

When republicans attack the US Capitol

Like probably most members of the left of center blogosphere, I am having a devil of a time coming up with the right words to match the emotions of seeing that mob storm the Capitol yesterday. Just about every member of that community of thinkers and writers, most of us locked out of every getting words to appear in a reputable magazine or newspaper, and certainly never going to be interviewed on TV for being right a heck of a lot more often than we are wrong were watching said screen thinking, 'yup I knew something like this was bound to happen'. 

I didn't expect the big push to look like that. Are you kidding? Storming the Capitol? I was listening to NPR coverage of counting the Electoral Collage votes in the joint session through Twitter. First it was a trickle, reporters outside talking about the protestors flocking towards them. The republican grandstanding about Arizona's votes had been getting louder when they switched to watching the maga republicans outside, waving trump flags, start to break through the barricades (they looked like bike racks, were those seriously what police use?), and ooze up the stairs. The footage was so much stranger than the still photos we're seeing now. It was like these call of duty cosplayers and assorted deplorables were moving in slow motion, just little by little getting through the doors, breaking windows, and then slowly shambling through Statuary Hall (between the rope lines too) and then breaking more windows. 

I had to stop everything else I was doing and was glued to the screen, it was so surreal. And, like everyone else watching, I had to ask; where the fck were the cops? It was not long before footage showed up of Capitol police appearing to open the barricades and wave the mob in, cops taking selfies with them, and generally just milling about as these fcking traitors busted into the People's House. Why? I guess Occam's Razor would tell you that the Capitol police in particular are utterly incompetent in the face of republican treachery because believing they were complicit would require a lot of evidence that I don't have. But it would probably only take the suspicion that some of the officers there were in league with the mob to make a lot of others who wanted to do their jobs wary of getting Serpico'ed. On top of the fact that republican mobs are always armed and have little fear of police, but there's no excuse for folding that completely.

And that made the job of Secret Service agents inside the chamber next to impossible. The mob is lucky that only one ambitious true believer was shot when they were pushing up against the barricaded doors. And breaking windows, and breaking into offices, and looting the place. Then outside, the cameras caught a little pagan ritual where the fcking animals were smashing cameras and broadcasting equipment, most of it said "AP" on it. Remember when the tea baggers were lionized in the media for "always cleaning up their trash", good times.

We should probably define what actually took place. Doughfacedonny conscripted the followers that he has been inciting to violence for four years now into a mob. They voluntarily walked to the Capitol, with no promise of compensation for their work on behalf of the wannabe dictator, after listening to him harangue reality and pretend that political violence is somehow a legitimate response to losing an election. So this is stealing an election by insurrection, not a coup d'état, it could be defined as an auto-coup where the dictator dissolves the legislature to consolidate his rule. However far-fetched the conspiracy and sedition seemed to the reality-based community. But republican base voters have nothing left to sell but their cult of violence, cruelty, and suffering. What is amazing is not that they failed ultimately, but that they even got within spitting distance of the floor of Congress in the first place. It is tired to compare republican mobs to demonstrations against injustice that sometimes get out of hand, but yeah, if this was "antifa" or BLM attempting to storm the Capitol... they'd still be sweeping up the eyeballs. Didn't stop the cult from immediately claiming that this was an antifa false flag, republican keyboard warriors are so conditioned at this point that they didn't even need signals from HQ to start the conspiracy theorizing. 

Since the insurrection began there have been a myriad of calls for action, "we need to impeach him!" "we need to do X... this has to happen!" 

And I am sorry as hell if I have ever inflicted this on you. 

I understand now that many of the advocates and activists have only slightly more power to do any of the things that need to be done than my cat has to make me pancakes. 

My goal, before this insurrection made it plain to everyone, was that we don't need to entertain republican "ideas" as legitimate when they clearly aren't. We don't have to act like republican elected officials have any moral authority when they are wholly bankrupt of morals, and we do not have to treat them with respect or deference when they clearly hold us liberals in utter contempt. A big thing to convey is also that the boomers, our elders, are so often full of shit that they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt. Especially republican boomers, they seem to have learned absolutely nothing in their years and we owe them nothing. I have watched many people I know become interested in politics since doughfacedonny stole the election and almost all have been on the Democratic side. Now it seems I have nothing to teach them. This blog is therefore at a crossroads, do I still try to do things as I have always done or should I try to get more serious and take things up a notch?

This insurrection could be a breaking point in the fever, or it could simply be another year zero. When donny is finally dragged out of the White House is the cult going to go underground for a bit, only to reemerge as tea party 2.0. Will the political press let them get away with it again? Will the Biden administration make the same mistakes as the Obama administration and let a whole year get away before actually doing something? Will all the organizing in the last four years fray and fracture again?

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.