One of the architects of the current disaster deplores the terrible blueprints he drew:

Sen. Flake, heading into chamber, tells me the Senate has “hit bottom.”

I ask why so many lawmakers keep using that specific term.

He shrugs and grimaces. “Because it feels like we are at the bottom.”

— Robert Costa (@costareports) October 6, 2018

I’ve written many, many times about the passivity with which we characterize our current political moment. How everyone from congressional pages on up to the Wall Street Journal editorial board talks about our country becoming divided, our politics becoming rancorous, our society growing polarized, ALL THE WHILE FUCKING IGNORING THE PEOPLE WHO DIVIDED AND POLARIZED US AND PROFITED OFF OF IT ALL.

Good God. I know it’s never fun to think of yourself as having been at the mercy of a system you do not control but please take an honest look around and ask yourself who’s gained and kept power in the past decade and who’s made money off that power. Look around you. Who’s divided America? Who got richer off that division?

Someone DID THIS TO US and we’re acting like it’s the weather, like it’s a fucking UFO sighting, like we just have no idea how this could have happened and would you just look at that, Bobby Ray, have you ever seen such a sight?

It’s not like they’ve been keeping it a secret. Lee Atwater laid it out years ago and they’ve been telling us ever since, in louder and louder voices. They know exactly what they’re doing but we’re still out here all Earnest Editorials about The Appearance Of The Thing and The Sacredness of Ideas.

The Supreme Court’s legitimacy depends on most Americans viewing it as above the partisan fray, an institution whose decisions are driven by legal reasoning, not by the justices’ partisan leanings.

Spare me, by the way, the sanctifying of a court that upheld slavery and internment and every abuse of the war on terror, that told women they couldn’t vote and black Americans they were worth 3/5 of all others. This court is full of monsters, and it’s been so before, and we should question its legitimacy all the damn time. It should try to BE legitimate, not just be seen to be. Not that that matters to the fascisti who control it now.

It’s not even that we’re being lied to because they don’t respect us enough to lie anymore. It’s that we’re being told the truth, and we earnestly repeat last decade’s fiction because believing that means we don’t have to hurt or think or work or change.

Flake, up there. Collins, may she rot in hell. Sasse and Corker who were oh, so appalled until women talking appalled them further. They stand up there and pretend to deplore it all, the awful partisanship, counting on us all to believe our lying eyes. Our entire world hangs on their words and their words are empty, and we refuse to name them for what they are.

Frauds and cowards, all. We didn’t just get here. We were taken here, and the moderates drove stick.

A.