He Said He Would [Politics]

It's really shocking to me how many people on both sides think 47 is not going to do just EXACTLY what he says he's going to do. They just keep thinking THEIR water's edge will be HIS water's edge. And it won't.

Both buyer's-remorse conservatives getting their faces leopard-eaten because they thought they were at the top of the social hierarchy AND the "Stop overreacting" white dudes with surprised Pikachu faces every. single. fucking. time. they are proven wrong about what they condescendingly mansplain/whitesplain/cissplain to marginalized people he can't or won't. They ALL seem to labor under the same assumption. He can't/won't/wouldn't/couldn't do "that."

Actually, he telegraphs every single move.

Exactly. Precisely.

I mean, he lies. So there's that. If his mouth is moving, he's lying. This is a guy who says he's taller than Obama (he's not), insisted that Kansas City is in Kansas (it's in Missouri), and used a sharpie on a National Weather Service infographic because he insisted a hurricane was going to make impactful landfall in Alabama (it wasn't, and didn't). And, of course, he says he hasn't even heard of the playbook literally put forward by all of HIS people for exactly what THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH intends to do to keep liberals from even being a roadblock to oligarchical and bigoted agendas. 

Even though he only mentioned his ignorance of Project 2025 once he found out it was wildly unpopular even on the right, and despite the fact that to even REMOTELY believe that bullshit, you would have to accept that a bunch of trusted advisors and aides surrounding him during his campaign didn't run their GRAND plan past the ONE person that was absolutely integral to its success with so much as a, "This cool with you?" But sure. He never heard of it. Right.

But he IS a liar. That's demonstrably true without even breaking a sweat. He said he'd build a wall and didn't. He says he's got the most beautiful plan for healthcare and doesn't have the first clue where to even begin. He says he won golf tournaments he didn't. That he nearly boarded helicopters he didn't. That he saw things he didn't. That people said things to him who didn't. He lies about not really knowing Michael Cohen. His golf scores. The size of his….inauguration. He breaks promises. He claims he's the smartest person on Earth and makes up people who think so. 

He's just….a liar.

So I can see there being some confusion about what truth even MEANS to a person like this—if he even has enough of a sense of reality to express truth. I can see why someone who hadn't been through four years of Trump might believe he was full of piss and wind. Like maybe nothing he says can be trusted, so why trust his threats against marginalized communities? 

But there are patterns to his "alternative facts." He also floats political ideas as throw away statements and then starts banging on them if he doesn't get pushback. He has the "tells" of a shitty poker player. He uses not-at-all-slick coded language to couch his racism and bigotry, most recently saying DEI when he means non-white or women or disabled or non cishet. 

And it's really clear, after you watch him for a while, who he's about to go after. 

He showed us exactly who he was nine years ago when he was running. He told us who he wanted to hurt. He told us who he hated and who he was pissed off at. He told us how important it was to hurt them. He revealed his racism over and over again. Then for four years he never wavered in being exactly the person he showed us he was. 

They said he would disclose his financial records. They were wrong.
They said he wouldn't go after Roe v. Wade. They were wrong.

They said he wouldn't have a major impact on the Supreme Court. They were wrong. (He got three appointments.

They said the CIA would never "let" him do any REAL damage to national security. They were wrong.

They said he wouldn't give massive tax cuts to the rich. They were wrong.

They said he wouldn't send the military into space. They were wrong.

They said he would take a global pandemic seriously. They were wrong.

They said he wouldn't contest the results of a democratic election. They were wrong.
They said he wouldn't leak secrets to Russia. They were wrong.

They said he wouldn't run the presidency for his personal profit. They were wrong.

They said he COULDN'T politicize the justice department. They were wrong.

They said he couldn't blatantly obstruct the Muller investigation. They were wrong.
They said he wouldn't pardon people who had attacked police and staged an insurrection. They were wrong.
They said he COULDN'T pardon himself. They were wrong (thanks to those three appointments).
They said he wouldn't dangle the Ukraine military aid in exchange for a quid pro quo investigation into his political rivals. They were wrong.
They said someone would stop him if he was found to be guilty of a quid pro quo with Ukraine. They were wrong.
They said he would never openly work with neonazis. They were wrong.

They said he respected democracy and wouldn't fire whistleblowers or bar access to the media. They were wrong.

They said they didn't think he would start trade wars that raised the price of everything. They were wrong. 

They said they didn't think he would deport the law-abiding people doing menial jobs that no US citizen wanted to do. They were wrong.

They said they didn't think he'd deport their undocumented spouses. Or the people that voted for him. They were wrong.
They said his party would stop him if he went TOO far and wouldn't enable his most outlandish bullshit.

They. Were. Wrong.

And apparently they aren't yet tired yet of being so utterly completely wrong.

People just keep thinking there's some adult in the room that's going to tell him no. Tell him how unpopular his policies are. Slow his roll. Stand up with arms akimbo and say, "Executive orders can't do that. You have overreached! Stand down, servant of the public. Stand DOWN!!"  There isn't an adult in that room. He's fired them all. He's surrounded himself with lickspittle sycophant flunkies because those are the only people his narcissistic fragile ego can handle. 

His learning curve is hardly Machiavellian, but he will do what he said he would. He has hit some speed bumps because he's comically incompetent. He will need to fire some people who've said no to him…purge some agencies that investigated his allies…. Undermine the power of the judicial branch. Edge congress out of lawmaking. Put his people everywhere..

But he will. He will do what he intends to and there's no restraining force outside of resistance to talk him down. Project 2025. Pull out of treaties. End critical aid to countries ravaged by colonialism. Trash NAFTA. Trade wars. Target the LGBTQ+ community. Assist in the genocide of Gaza. Let the world burn. Start wars. Go for a third term. 

Everything. 

The Bus Doesn't Get You Where You're Going—It Gets You Closer Than You Are Now

The bus doesn't go where we want it to. 

No busses even go along the street where we want to be. We're pissed off that the 34 line has been discontinued, and we know there has been corruption in that decision. Powerful people made sure that the 20 line is the only thing that heads even remotely in that direction because it stops everywhere they want people to be. They say it's because no one wants to go where the 34 goes, but we know a lot of people would take it if it existed. It's really that they don't want people on that street because it would hurt their interests. So we end up on the right end of town but you still have to walk a mile and a half up and over. It sucks. 

But the 117 goes the other way. It puts us on the wrong side of town. If we end up on the 117, we'd have to walk 20 miles just to get back where we were, nevermind make progress towards our destination.

We know working with the bus lines to get the 34 back running won't work. The bus management is corrupt and all about money. We have to generate overwhelming demand. But everyone who wants the 34 running is over at that end of town. You don't want to take the bus at all because it's supporting a corrupt system. The drivers are racist. The stops are exploitative. The bus consumes so much gas that it has to suppress people to keep the price down.

We don't stay where we are and yell at everyone that they are terrible if they don't want the 34, calling them sellouts for taking the bus as far as they can and then making the best of it. We might look askance at people who think the 34 is all we should ever need, but they probably need to be convinced, not treated like enemies. We don't gather up people who want a 34 and complain that there's no 20 and do literally nothing else—that won't change a thing. And we don't wait for a miracle of some minivan to pull up that'll happen to take us just exactly where we want to go--it's not coming; it's NEVER coming. We could start walking from HERE in protest, but it's a lot further, and in this metaphor, we have to take one bus, so if we don't get on the 20, someone's going to PUT US on the 117, and then we'll have to walk 20 miles just to get back to where we started and then further still.

So we take the bus as far as it'll take us and when it drops us off we walk. Or we crawl. Or we show the determination to get where the 34 goes that we claim we had from the beginning. But whatever we do, we roll up our sleeves and do the work from as close as the deeply flawed system that we've GOT will get us to where we want to go. And we work for a world where the busses go further. And maybe there's even a 34 line again. 

I hope you vote. If you don't, I'm not going to agree with you, but at this point, I'll assume you have your reasons that are deeply considered. But I hope you do.

Even if you vote in local or state elections that will affect your lives VERY directly. Even if you hold your nose and vote against the brand of naked overt fascism Trump has promised to bring us. Even if you spend the other 364 days a year deeply involved in parallel infrastructure and leftist anarchy (and you're just doing so to make everything you're trying to achieve a little easier). Even if you're doing it because there's one party that hasn't all but promised to hurt LGBTQ+ folks, immigrants, and even BIPOC who step out of line. Even if it's because only one party will even talk about easing off rampant militarism and mass incarcerations. 

Even if it's just so you don't lose your health care.

Even if you're like me, and the "bus" only gets you vaguely in the direction you want to go on a few issues. 

Because I know what happens if you don't vote. And I would love to tell you it's "nothing." But it isn't nothing. Someone else will decide for you who will govern you. It's a nightmare slide of SCOTUS rulings and overton window that we've been living. And it might not get better, but it can ALWAYS get worse.

But They Won't Care

“BUT his followers won't care!” goes the shout every time we point out some new outrage. Whether it’s a brazen assault on free and fair democratic elections or some latest breathtaking display of naked racism. Even when the reason they followed him (his business acumen) proves to be based on lies.

They won’t care.

I know they won't. They don't.  He's hitting the notes they want him to hit, and they have demonstrated time and time again that they are more morally bankrupt than one of Trump's businesses, and that nothing––not values, not pluralism, not governance, not reputation, not even facts––matters to them more than winning and hurting "the right people." 

They shouted, “fuck your feelings.” And just in case we didn’t understand just exactly what they meant, the minute they were in power, they showed us.

And anyone who might stand against Trump abandoned integrity to make a Faustian deal. They deliberately look away and pretend they can't see what's happening while the GOP stacks the courts, shoves children in concentration camps, milks the wildest and most hurtful conspiracies for cheap political points, rams through tax cuts for the rich, and sabotages healthcare. They are, pragmatically speaking, indistinguishable from a cult. NOTHING will get through to them until they are separated from the cult for a time. 

Yes, I totally understand that he has a mid-70s approval rating in the Republican Party (far from the mid-90s he chronically lies about on Twitter). I understand that they're all having a laugh at how apoplectic he makes the "snowflakes" on the left. Considering that pissing us off and fucking our feelings and triggering us was the closest thing they actually had to a unifying, cohesive ideology in 2016, that's not super surprising. 

I also understand that he overtly manifested the racism, bigotry, and hatred of the poor–– most of which they barely, if ever, concealed––into an avatar who came out and said all the hateful shit they got tired of having to be "so PC" and tiptoe around. It is obvious that––not DESPITE his mob connections, undisclosed finances, and financial fetters to foreign powers but BECAUSE of them––he symbolizes to them that it is better to be absolutely anything (even a tax evading conman obviously wading in criminal corruption) than to not be rich.

We don't share these stories for "them." They have cast themselves as the victims in their own persecuted narrative and think Obamacare is tantamount to concentration camps (while they ignore ACTUAL concentration camps). We don't think we're finally going to hit the proof or the bridge-too-far moral depravity that makes them turn around and say, "Oh holy shit. What have we done?" Most simply do not demonstrate that kind of self-reflection. 

Nothing could be more emblematic of the ongoing and escalating erosion of democracy––first through voter suppression and gerrymandering but now onward and upward to all-but-proven collusion between Russia and his entire staff, collusion with Ukraine that basically even the GOP had to admit totally happened (but just didn’t remove him from office because that would be letting the Democrats win), and now an open and shockingly admitted attack on the USPS to fuck up mail-in ballots…**deep breath**

Okay, you probably forgot where that sentence started since there are so many examples of attacking democracy to list. Let me recap.

Nothing could be more emblematic of the ongoing and escalating erosion of democracy than the GOP's cheerful willingness to ignore–not just ignore even, but to MOCK–a giant and growing body of evidence that Trump will absolutely cheat to win an election. Nothing could be more indicative of their hypocrisy than to spend a decade lauding themselves as fiscally responsible and howling about every penny out of a balanced budget, only to turn around and drop 1.5 trillion on tax breaks for corporations and millionaires in their tax code followed by $500 billion in corporate stimulus for the pandemic––regarding which, Trump assured everyone he would be disregarding any attempt at congressional oversight. Even their patriotism falls apart like wood eaten out by termites. It's little more than a shallow jingoistic facade, a flag draped over discarded veterans, and the seething contempt for the institutions and values (be it law enforcement or democratic pluralism) that they claim to love when the anthem is playing, but turn on like an abusive spouse the minute they're stopped from doing just exactly what they want.

So no, I don't particularly expect they will witness some bit of proof or consequence of their policies and suddenly see reason. They still strongly believe the emperor is wearing full regalia. 

But they're not who I'm talking to. They're not who YOU should be talking to either. They have relinquished their right to reasoned engagement. They have abandoned integrity. They have lost all sense of a moral compass. What they defend is indefensible, even if they don’t claim to be capital-B believers themselves.

They are unreachable. No bridge would ever be sufficient. At least no bridge constructed with so much as a shred of compassion for those on the other side who they’ve taken a twisted delight in hurting and killing and laughing at (calling them “identity politics or social justice warriors”) for having the temerity to point out they are part of a group being treated with state sponsored, systemic, systematic violence. 

No, they’re not who I’m talking to. They are lost and if they're ever coming back, it will be up to factors I cannot control. 

1- Who I am talking to is the  30% of people who COULD vote but are apathetic, and who every poll in the fucking world says lean left. (But who just kind of hate the DNC so much that they sit out civic engagement.) Add a few thousand votes in the right state, and that’s the ball game. [In 2016, the Michigan vote was so close that TWO votes per precinct would have flipped the state. That’s two. One….two. You don’t even have to take off BOTH your gloves to count that high.]

I’m talking to the anti-political machine-rager who might realize that SCOTUS appointments really will have a direct impact on people's lives and rights, expanding them for “religious convictions” and curtailing them for anyone who isn’t a cis, het, white man. I’m talking to those who are (justifiably) incensed that their vote isn't going to fix a system that was built with bigotry baked in, and I’m talking to those who might be convinced that elections still have OTHER consequences––ones that matter. I am talking to folks who don’t realize that unless the revolution is scheduled for the first Tuesday in November, those of us who haven't (yet) been disenfranchised can at least help choose between “politicians who might move the timbre of discourse to the left and make it easier to be a local chapter of a grassroots socialism movement” and “literally fascism that will crack our heads and make survival take most of our time and energy.” I’m talking to everyone who maybe doesn’t realize that even though civic engagement doesn’t always make things better, apathy, always, always, ALWAYS makes things worse. And I’m talking to people to remind them of other avenues to political power and action than MERELY voting––because voting is literally the least we can do.

2- Who I’m talking to is the few of them who aren’t a monolith. Elections are won and lost in swing states sometimes by 1 or 2 points or even less. Peel off one or two out of a HUNDRED from his approval ratings––convince them that maybe there are a few things worse than big scary Democrats running the show for four years––and you don’t need to reach this monolithic “THEY.” 

2.5- Who I am talking to is politicians (especially Senators) of “purple” constituencies who May realize that they are committing political suicide to support him through yet another ridiculous scandal.

3- Who I’m talking to is the people who haven’t realized yet that our silence is choice. Any sort of democratic non-blood-in-the-streets revolution that REALLY restructures our society isn't going to happen because we threw up our hands in the face of a tough election and said, "Whatever...THEY aren't listening." 

Because of course they aren’t.

We speak truth to power. That’s “them.” They are power. They don’t have to listen and they don’t have to care, but it’s still vital that we speak. We don’t have to be persuading them successfully to not let them us silence us (or more accurately, to silence ourselves and each other). We don’t even have to be talking to “them” to be strengthening and fortifying each other, because this is like a millstone, and it would grind us all to powder if not for each other.

4- Perhaps most importantly, I’m talking to us. I’m not even talking to “them.” I’m talking to anyone else who’s been a frog in the pot for too long. We’re talking to each other. We hold each other up and ground each other and remind each OTHER of the outrageousness we’ve been exposed to for four years. We remind each other, so that we don't grow desensitized to suffering. So that we don’t forget that today’s news cycle is built on a hundred other scandals and outrages before it that we are so tired of fighting but that all happened. So that we don’t succumb to the gaslighting that he did nothing wrong, and if he did then we deserved it. We do it to hold ourselves strong so that we don’t give up. Because "what's the point?” is what they want us to say. They want us to give up and let them monkey-throw feces all over every value we have without making such a fuss. 

Who I’m talking to is everyone who needs to be reminded that THIS IS NOT NORMAL. And that we CAN do something about it.

No More Speed Limits for Trump (The GOP's Moral Failure)

I learned to drive in Santa Clarita Valley—specifically Canyon Country, its south-easternmost town. These days, you can find it on a map just north of Los Angeles, but back when I lived there, even the main drags had huge swaths of undeveloped land between a peppering of strip malls and housing tracts, and I had to explain it to most people by saying "it's near Magic Mountain." Learning to drive in Canyon Country was a swift lesson in Things Law Enforcement Didn’t Really Care About™.

They didn’t care if you sped on Soledad between Sand Canyon and the McDonald’s unless you were clearly doing over 75.

They would almost never enforce rolling stops except for on Whites Canyon, Soledad, or near this chunk of the town where all three schools were within spitting distance of each other. (You might have to really wind up to hit the middle school.

And if you were on Bouquet Canyon Road or Sierra Highway between Santa Clarita Valley and Palmdale, you could go as fast as you wanted. There was a posted speed limit of 55. But it didn’t matter. They never gave out tickets in the stretch between cities. And everyone KNEW they never gave out tickets. So drive as fast as you want. It may as well have been an autobahn.

Because laws that aren’t enforced don’t really matter. Something can be "technically" illegal, but if it is never enforced, it doesn't matter.

Trump’s acquittal, while absolutely the most predictable thing since Shutter Island, is now a lesson that there is no consequence to a sitting President using their power and authority to withhold congressional foreign aid at gunpoint in order to coerce other nations to interfere in U.S. elections. Further, it is okay for the executive branch to arbitrate whether or not the constitutionally mandated powers of the legislative branch are “valid,” and to completely disregard them if they wish.

Not “okay” of course. Everyone agrees that Trump did something wrong. But there will be no consequences.

It’s piss-obvious what happened. Trump withheld foreign aid from Ukraine in order to get them to announce an investigation into a thoroughly debunked theory in the hopes that the mere hint of impropriety would change his personal political fortunes against a rival he was losing to in the polls. (Naturally the “perfect” phone call the White House was a lie. This President lies. He lies a lot. He lies about shit that has been proven wrong on camera. But why should that stop the party of family values from treating him, from a sociological standard, more like a cult leader than a politician.)  In fact, it was SO obvious what happened that the Republicans essentially had to change their strategy in mid-stream. They had started by claiming it was about a deep and abiding concern for corruption (a claim betrayed by the timing, the conditions put on the money, and not to put too fine a point on it, but the fact is that this administration has yet to meet a corruption it didn’t like), but by the time Bolton was confirming the entire story and that it was actually even more corrupt than the initial investigation revealed, and GOP senators were breaking ranks to get to the truth, suddenly the entire argument shifted to “Okay, okay. What he did was wrong, but doesn’t meet the standard of an impeachable offense.”



Literally “He did it and we all know he did it. And he lied about it repeatedly. And it was wrong….and totally illegal. And he knew it was wrong when he was doing it. But since the Constitution is vague, we can pretend that it wasn’t so bad he should be removed from office.”



Lawyers even said that anything Trump did in an attempt to get reelected wasn’t impeachable because Trump thought it was in the country’s best interest. Give that a moment’s thought if you haven’t already. Have you EVER met a politician who thought that their election was NOT in the best interests of their constituents? This is literally arguing that ANYTHING a sitting President does—bribery, extortion….treason––is all okay so long as it furthers a reelection they “really” believe in.

Republicans have had a little “ends justify the means” problem with what they claim are their moral principles for quite some time now, but that sound you heard was millions of eyes going wide as it is still apparently possible to shock the rest of the country by just coming right out and making it your official defense.

Marco Rubio took it even a step further: ”Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a President from office….”

If you unpack that, it’s basically, “Yeah, Trump broke the law and it was ethically bad enough to remove him, and we probably ought to, but I’ve decided not to." (Curiously, this might be the only stance that wouldn’t be reprehensibly hypocritical should a Democrat turn around and do the same thing in four years.

Of course there was never any doubt that this would happen. The Republican leadership was transparent about how impartial they WEREN’T going to be. When Trump was impeached, Mitch McConnell said he was going to do everything he could to help the President (until he realized those optics really sucked and then got all solemn and promised to do his impartial duty…..which just happened to involve doing everything he could to help the President).

The only moment that wasn’t utter, farcical Kabuki theater was when three senators broke ranks in wanting to hear from witnesses. Two were whipped back into line, probably with the threat of losing RNC funds (and if you’re slightly conspiratorial, both may have been putting on a “show” that McConnell agreed to ahead of time because they need to be seen as somewhat open-minded in their battleground states). The only holdout (Romney) was uninvited from CPAC. He’s being “punished.”

Republicans with the SLIGHTEST interest in finding the truth, never mind doing their job, are being “punished."

So the message is crystal clear, now Trump knows he can go as fast as he wants.

The legislative branch has essentially said that it’s okay if the President abuses their authority and holds up the funding CONGRESS allocated to fetter it to political favors. They’ve said it’s okay to enlist the aid of foreign countries to interfere in our elections. They’ve said that it’s okay for the President to ignore the separation of powers outlined in the Constitution and “decide” if a given congressional investigation is worth cooperating with. And if that President decides that it’s politically inconvenient or they don’t like where it’s going, they can just tweet “witch hunt” enough and ignore subpoenas en masse.  Far from mere “executive privilege” on a case-by-case basis decided by the courts, it is okay if the President deems something Congress was given the power to do as unimportant, it’s okay to just ignore their authority.



Well….not OKAY, but there won’t be any consequences for it.



Not a raised voice. Not a “Shame on you, Mr. President.” Not a non-binding resolution of censure. Not one finger wagged.

We all know what kind of frenzy we’d be looking at if a President with a “(D)” after their name had done half of this with an opposition Congress. We would be seeing an assiduous understanding of the “DUTY” of Congress, a keen grasp of the separation of powers, and a clear, lucid articulation of how ignoring subpoenas en masse was an irreverent mockery of legislative authority. Republicans bringing fidget spinners into chambers and railing with their grandstanding time that they can’t even GRASP what Democrats are on about is the worst sort of bad-faith partisan hypocrisy imaginable….which might matter if today’s GOP had shame.

Those who are worried about what happens now are not being hyperbolic. It is as bad as they’re worried it is. The Senate GOP closed ranks and sold out the interests of the American people to protect its party leader. In doing so, they were derelict in their duty to protect the legislature from executive attacks on the Constitution and that document's mandated separation of powers ("checks and balances"). They handed the keys to the President to ignore the rule of law because their political fortunes are all linked and among them they don’t have enough vertebra to form a single entire spine.

There are no adults in the room and the temperance we were assured Trump had behind his bluster never manifested.

Will Russia’s help be directly enlisted now? No more games. No more red-faced, flying spittle insistences that there was no collusion. Just a transparent series of strategy meetings in exchange for sanction lifting that no one will even bother to try too hard to hide. What about if Trump just starts granting political favors to Republican US state governors who will promise to close a few key polling stations, scrub some registrations, or pull some strings? (Swing states are won and lost by fractions of a percentage. It wouldn’t take more than one voter out of 200 being affected to make a difference.) What if he agrees to trade deals in exchange for campaign funding? What if he just decides to go with the play that works and suddenly it’s pay to play on US foreign aid? (You want that humanitarian aid that Congress has allocated to you? Pick the Democrat you’re going to be announcing a corruption investigation into.) Every nation could be secretly investigating a different democrat. And what if he decides to skip subverting democracy and goes straight for attacking it. ("I have decided it's in 'the best interests of the country' if we postpone the 2020 election until this contentious time has passed.") It’s not like it’s even terribly difficult to imagine Trump tangled up in any of these scenarios.

And perhaps more to the point, now the President can do any of these things so long as the opposition Senate isn’t anywhere close to a 2/3 majority.

It’s illegal, but it’s not like there’re any REAL consequences.



Trump can go as fast as he wants.

It's Always Okay To Trash The Left

What I've learned from watching US politics closely for 30 years is that the left is always a fair target.

Always.

Whether you ask a Republican, a moderate Democrat, or even a liberal, whatever is to the political left of them is fair game for the worst sort of derision.

The right has to be respected, coddled, the beneficiary of bridges and aisle reaching. Ever wooed. Don't spook them.

Even the far right (until you are pretty far to the left yourself) must never be simply dismissed. EVER. The Far Right deserves a place at the table. It deserves our understanding about what happened. What "traditional values" and “deep-seated anxieties" have led to this? How dare you simply write them off! They are humans too! Bring on the nuance! 

The GOP supporters and leadership have basically decided that it's no biggie for Donald Trump to use the powers of the presidency to run an illegal extortion scheme with Ukrainian aid in an effort to affect the outcome of the 2020 democratic elections. But most people in the middle, including the media, will calmly advance a "both sides" narrative and never be willing to talk about how this is not normal––even for Republicans.

The left, though? Open season. They’re all ridiculous. Socialists. Commies. Social Justice Warriors with their absurd identity politics. Out of their minds. Always okay to lampoon. Simultaneously absurd peace and love hippies with no sense of a dangerous world and violent antifa who clearly skipped tolerance day at liberal school. You can barely even talk about Nazis marching in the streets and plowing cars into their ideological enemies without taking a moment to make sure that everyone knows you are just as upset with those bad actors on the left. The left is always okay to mock.

Of course in parlance, it’s really only the "FAR" left that is acceptable to sneer at, but that is Hillary Clinton depending on who you talk to, and not Sanders or some leftist politician (the likes of which the US actually doesn't have), which is probably part of what's going on here. The "far left" is a moving target that has been deemed okay to make fun of, so it is used by everyone from Breitbart talking about Obama to Pelosi talking about Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Or Joe Biden talking about almost anyone he’s running against (except maybe Buttigieg). It simply becomes the label that is slapped on anyone to the left right before the aspersions start.

Democrats, even deep blue democrats who are self-identified liberals don't have any compunction taking shots at anyone to their left. Left wing pundits are completely fine deciding that the contingent who tried to talk to them about ableism or fatphobia were all from the fringe lunatic wing of moonbat patrol. Liberals don’t demand that the far left get a seat at the table or that we should try to understand what deep-seated anxieties they face. The "far left" gets viciously scorned. In a 4-million popular vote blowout with an electioneering conspiracy by a foreign government (and all but absolutely provable collusion), they'll look to their left and blame identity politics for electing Trump.

The far left even takes shot at the OTHER far lefts that it doesn't get along with. Democratic socialists will try not to get any REAL socialism on them. Social progressives take shots at anti-capitalists. Leftists take shots at neoliberals. (And I'm left wondering if that's not exactly working as intended.) The left doesn't have anything even CLOSE to the kind of knee-jerk, automatic, predictable, overwhelming, finger-wagging response that goes on if conservative positions are dismissed outright as simply being absurd.

The left is okay to just blow off as being "out there." The left is always okay to roll one's eyes at. The left's concerns are always okay to dismiss.

The left is always a fair target.

The Gravity House Effect of U.S. Politics

You know those gravity houses? The kind that tip you one way and your mind technically knows what's going on, but you also sort of adjust to it despite yourself. So even though you know why it is working that way, your brain still tricks you and you kind of freak out when it looks like shit is falling up or rolling uphill.

Yep. I'm going to make a metaphor. About Republican cheating. Because we know it's going on, and we've been dealing with it for decades, but our mind also kind of adjusts to it. And when we lose elections by narrow margins, we kind of don't realize we probably should have won. Or when we win, we kind of don't realize that it should have been a blowout.

If you think about how long the cheating has been going on (at least here in the U.S.), you'll realize that the left has actually been winning the war of ideas for a long time––we're just up against those who feel they have a moral imperative and are perfectly willing to toss every underlying principle of democratic government to maintain a minority rule and get what they want.

About twenty years ago, they started computer-assisted gerrymandering to maintain their control. This creates "safe" districts and dilutes the power of their opponents. Then about thirteen years ago, they started voter ID laws, essentially creating a poll tax. Ostensibly this was because of fraud, but in-person fraud is extremely uncommon and the more common form of it (mail in ballots--though still rare) was left alone because the military uses them and they tend to vote conservative. In some places DMVs were even closed en masse to make getting ID far more difficult. Just a couple of years ago, they ramped up the process of purging voters from registrations. These efforts, of course, are ALWAYS in places with certain "kinds" of voters (and it's not middle-class white folks). They are proposed by, endorsed by, paid for by, campaigned for by, passed by and defended in court by conservatives, and overwhelmingly hurt liberals.

You don't need a degree in rocket science to put together what is happening. Just because they've rolled out the cheating slowly, so they win by plausible margins and loose from time to time doesn't erase what they're doing. The room is starting to tilt, and even though we can see it, our brain is also starting to adjust to it despite us.

Yesterday Mitch McConnell stood in front of the American people and openly, shamelessly said with his facehole that they won't pass a law to fix election security in order to prevent interference from a foreign geopolitical enemy we KNOW has interfered, is interfering, and will interfere again and who wants the GOP to win. They won't do this because because free and fair democratic elections would give Democrats "political benefit."

Here. Let me translate that for you just in case you didn't catch it over the sound of all the jaws hitting the floor: "Our prior levels of cheating are not cutting it anymore, so we need this outside interference or we're going to lose."

What surprises me, honestly, is not the behavior of the GOP. I became politically aware during Gingrich's "scorched earth," so I pretty much expect them to lie, cheat, and steal for power grabs at any opportunity. They lost any vestige of personal ethical high ground they may have had thirty years ago when they offered up their integrity on the alter of a Faustian deal to win at any cost––it's just taken this long for most of the country to get the memo.

What surprises me is how many liberals and moderates still act like we have a fair democracy. It's not that they don't see it. It's just that their minds have also kind of adjusted to it a little and it sort of looks like votes are "rolling uphill."

Progressive ideas should be kicking ass, but instead we've got minority rule by a party increasingly willing to hide their cheating in plain sight. And instead of treating them like exactly that, we're still hoping they can be convinced of their own moral turpitude and will have a "coming-to-Jesus" moment.

They won't.

They have no shame.

It's time for plan B.

When West Wing Waxed Weakly

I love The West Wing.

It’s got super problematic moments, didactic moralizing, and Sorkin falls into the pitfalls of a lot of his generation that all the radicalism that came before about 1975 was super good shit, but now the DNC needs to chill out and be really luke-warm moderates. But the show is total liberal competency porn, and that’s hard not to love, especially in our current political climate of right wing populism, cruelty, rising fascism, and incompetence. I put it on during the Trump administration and imagine a president who does things that help people, struggles for progressive gains, and uses complete sentences.

But I always had trouble past Season 4 when Sorkin left the show. The writing took a nosedive and the plots became much more embroiled in personal drama (which is easier to write about) than the politics (which requires more finesse). A couple of years back, I finally decided once and for all to finish the whole show’s run, even if it was only the one time. (It was.)

In particular, I remember watching the episode that is basically a staged debate. The entire episode is the debate, and my understanding is that the actors had to actually learn that shit cold because they filmed it like a debate in basically one take in front of a real audience.

That’s pretty cool, but here’s what I remember: in the end they had the "two different theories of government" speech that distills the difference between the left and the right to free markets vs. regulation and lower taxes vs. a bigger safety net.

I've heard this speech before. You've probably heard it too. I've heard it from Mitt Romney and John McCain as well as Obama.

I certainly don't think we were young and innocent back when The West Wing was wrapping up its final season, and the DNC absolutely hasn't expunged its own form of leftist bigotry–even if it more typically is followed by "How is that racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic?" rather than "I'm sorry, but that's just what I think."

But that whole “different theories” thing is the civility politics version of “our differences.” It is the "gentleman's perspective" of politics. It is the idea that just a few small differences in the role of government separate us, and it’s certainly nothing worth losing a friend across the aisle over. It’s this idea that when you leave the purview of those whose taxes might only go up or down by a few percent or who may have to install a new piece of safe or environmental equipment that they wouldn't have bothered with UNLESS there was a law…we’re really mostly the same.

But it’s not true. Once you get past the brandy snifter and monocle argument among white men of "different ideas about the role of government..." it's hard to ignore that conservatives are (and have been for some time) aggressively pursuing legislation that causes direct, measurable harm to folks that have been pushed to the margins of society. And every once in a while, someone forgets the obfuscating party line and just comes out and says it.

I really wish Matt Santos had made THAT point.