Ada figured out how to open the doors to Mr. A’s office closet and the other night, looking for them, I found them both filed under F for FER CHRISSAKES HOW DID YOU GET IN THERE:
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First Draft
Liberal Politics, Media Criticism & General Mayhem
Author Archives: Allison Hantschel
No Excuses
This new racist is cast as sympathetic, an inevitable byproduct of a culture of white supremacy in the South or a remote homogenous life that has left him ill-prepared for this terrifying new world where people speak Spanish sometimes, or where she’s the only white person in the room. They aren’t heroes. But, the Times and the Post tell us, they’re people with compelling backstories that forced them to be like they are. They were raised to it, or maybe they’re just poor.
It is paternalistic infantilizing nonsense.
Poverty doesn’t make you racist. It’s more that the exhaustion strips you of the ability to dissemble for long, so if you were inclined toward racism already, it shows. A life lived close to tears of sheer fatigue and stress is not one in which you can expend the energy to stop yourself spouting your resentments or wielding your fears as a weapon. The constant dull weight of oppression—and it is oppression—makes you resentful and distrustful. The anger makes hate seem reasonable, and each person must individually decide what to do with that.
It reminds me of the dodge we use with old people, too: Oh, it was a different time, everyone was a sexist creep who couldn’t help but grab ass and yell slurs all the time. You know what? My grandfather was born not long after the turn of the 20th century and he’d have died before he treated a woman with disrespect, any woman at all. I never heard a single racist word out of his mouth, and he worked in a factory. He talked to every single person he ever met like they were royalty until the day he died. Get on out of here with this nonsense.
Yes, customs change and habits change and terminology, especially, changes, and sometimes people have a hard time keeping up but there’s nothing about getting old that makes you a bully if you weren’t one to begin with. There’s nothing about being poor that makes you unkind or selfish. You were that way before, it’s just now your excuses changed is all.
Stop making excuses for my racist neighbors. It is not true that people from where I’m from have no choice but to continue the same deadly cycles of the generations before us, that we are too simple or unsophisticated to tell right from wrong when the choice between them is so astonishingly clear. There is bravery and right in places where we have been told we will not find them, and we are all responsible for our own moral decisions.
Damn right.
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The Center Can’t Hold if You Don’t Know Where It Is
When people say “I’m a centrist” they are basically just jerking off:
It is reasonably clear that Bernie Sanders and his distinct movement (joined on the campaign trail by the new Democratic Socialist megastar from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), had a rough night on Tuesday, when candidates they had backed in person, Michigan gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Kansas congressional aspirant Brent Welder, both lost races many expected them to win, against (respectively) Gretchen Whitmer and Sharice Davids. But were those defeats for “progressivism” or victories for “centrism”? That depends on whom you ask.
Yeah, because we’ve somehow defined “centrist” to mean “reasonable, adult, speaks-in-a-soothing-voice” and divorced it entirely from the policy positions it’s supposed to entail. Most Democratic leaders have no idea where the center of this country actually is because they’re too busy listening to Chuck Todd fervently muttering “both sides, both sides, BOTH SIDES!”
If we define “the center” as a set of policy initiatives favored by the majority of Americans, here’s what we have: legal abortion with some restrictions, marriage equality, economic parity, regulation of health care, restrictions on gun ownership, a smaller military budget, higher minimum wage, and taxes on the wealthiest corporations.
Turns out we already have a party that supports all that.
That’s the Democratic Party. Sorry, but if you’re looking for the center it’s right there.
I know. I know the past 40 years of listening to Limbaugh and his lesser lights scream that the Democratic Party is full of homosexual peace-freaks who want to take your money and give it all to welfare drug addicts in wherever the “inner city” is.
I know you can’t say the word “liberal” without making it sound like you just said “moist,” and I know you’ve spent the past 10 years at dinner parties glaring and adjusting your wizened testes whenever trans rights came up because you were so, so oppressed by political correctness.
I know it makes a lot of people feel squishy to have to side with dastardly liberals, but if you believe what you say you believe, you accept the box you’re sorted into even if you don’t like its color.
Think women are people? You’re over here with us. Think you deserve overtime and Jeff Bezos should pay his taxes? Yup, saved you a seat.
You can say “I’m really more of a centrist” because you want to sound mysterious or smart or differentiate yourself from all those BORING ASS PEOPLE who’ve succumbed to PARTY LABELS and you, of course, are too special to ever be defined by something so pedestrian. You can say you’re a centrist because it’s not cool to be a Republican anymore, but it’s not cool to be a Democrat, either. You can say that you’re a centrist because you want everyone to like you, or you don’t want to have a fight, or you’re genuinely ignorant of everything in politics except what Good Morning America or The View tell you. You can say it all you want.
What you are is a coward. The center of America is squarely within the confines of the Democratic Party which is also, these days, THE LAST LINE OF DEFENSE AGAINST A BUNCH OF ARSONISTS. And you’re gonna pretend you’re too cool to sit at the table? You’re too special? Go to hell, with that.
The center isn’t somewhere between Republicans and Democrats, these days. The moderate position isn’t half a Nazi. The compromises, deals, accommodations, are all being made within the Democratic Party as they try to run this godforsaken gerrymandered mess we call a government. They’re doing all the work and having all the struggles and there’s a left wing and a right wing but they’re all the same party. They’re trying to work while Republicans are in the corner burning ants with a magnifying glass.
So, in the words of our Lord and Savior David Milch, declare or shut the fuck up.
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The One Constant of the Trump Administration
Is that they are all very bad at doing crimes:
Over several months, in speaking with 21 people who know Ross, Forbes uncovered a pattern: many of those who worked directly with him claim that Ross wrongly siphoned or outright stole a few million here and a few million there, huge amounts for most but not necessarily for the commerce secretary. At least if you consider them individually. But all told, these allegations—which sparked lawsuits, reimbursements, and an S.E.C. fine—come to more than $120 million. If even half of the accusations are legitimate, the current United States secretary of commerce could rank among the biggest grifters in American history. . . . Ross “was like a kid in a candy store,” says one of his former employees. “He pilfered it.”
Seriously, I’m offended by how bad they are at this.
It’s one thing to lose one’s country to a skilled operator, who does things with efficiency and even with style.
It’s another to lose it all to a bunch of people so bumbling and befuddled that you hear them defend themselves by saying they were too stupid to know the laws and you think to yourself, “Yeah, that’s plausible.” Like I actually do believe Junior was dumb and met with Russians thinking that it was legal. It’s not a defense, exactly, but it is an explanation: They’re all just idiots.
I can’t believe these people get to run America. Just cannot.
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Want to Save Journalism? Do It Yourselves.
For serious, nobody’s gonna save you:
Even before it was officially announced, The Daily Memphian had become an open secret within an increasingly small coterie of Memphis print journalists.
For the first time in years, high profile reporters were leaving the Commercial Appeal, not because of layoffs, which had become semi-regular events at the Gannett-owned paper.
They were just walking away: food writer Jennifer Biggs, sports columnist Geoff Calkins, popular blogger Chris Herrington. Others followed; the mystery of their departures a source of growing speculation.
They left for a new web-based newsroom now being built from scratch by a nonprofit funded by philanthropists, many of them anonymous. The Daily Memphianwas the result of wealthy citizens’ frustration over the gutting of local news.
And look, I know there’s griping about the philanthropic model, like is it enough, and won’t you then be beholden to donors, etc etc something something ethics-cakes, but this is the conversation currently happening in the for-profit world:
Journalists: We need money. To pay us, and hire photographers, and do research, and travel, and produce stories. We need money to cover the news. Will you give us some money?
Media company owners: How about a redesign?
J: Nope, money.
MCO: We’re re-branding and pivoting to video!
J: Give us some money. Our interns are eating their household pets to survive. Our lights got shut off last week for six hours, on deadline.
MCO: What if we launched a spinoff publication? We’ll call it “WHOOMP THERE IT IS.” The kids love it.
J: MO. NEY.
MCO: You’re always asking for money. You can’t just throw money at a problem.
J: Let’s try it, just once.
MCO: We’ve renamed the company. Your e-mail address now ends in “wheeze.com.”
J: …
MCO: It’s gonna be great.
Faced with THAT, I will take the ethical minefield that is “wealthy citizens” who actually want to fund the news. Because at least they’re not gonna take the money and light it on fire. One hopes.
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Happy Birthday Adrastos!
Adrastos is a relentlessly kind and generous human being who is a great blog partner. And it’s his BIRFDAY so we wish him a happy one!
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This Isn’t About Manners
Bruni interviews a Republican governor in a blue state (Maryland) and listens to him talk about how he doesn’t really feel the need to speak out about anything Trump does other than, you know, the whole “tweeting” thing:
You said, regarding Trump, “I don’t want anything to do with this.” Anything to do with what?
He wasn’t the type of guy who I thought should be president. I didn’t like the tone during the campaign. There were a lot of people running, and I didn’t think he was the most qualified. I didn’t think he was going to win, either.
I’ll say this: One on one, he’s a different person than the persona you see out there. But I don’t like the tweeting. I don’t like the name-calling. The divisiveness really is not good for the country. But he’s not the only one to blame.
In what ways do you think he’s doing the most damage?
I wish he would stop tweeting.
I’ll be the first person to say that the inside of Donald’s head is like the third Port-a-Potty from the main stage on Lollapalooza weekend but that’s not, in and of itself, a disqualification from being president.
If FDR had needed to grab some pussy to win WWII and pass the New Deal I’m sure we could have found some volunteers. Lyndon Johnson’s mouth makes Donald Trump’s sound at home in the Sistine Chapel. John F. Kennedy was putting a dude on the moon while actually inside a Mafia prostitute. We have no IDEA the sorts of things Rutherford B. Hayes got up to.
The tweeting isn’t the problem. The name-calling isn’t the problem. Donald Trump’s issue isn’t that he’s a shitty human being. It’s that he’s a shitty president, corrupt and incompetent in equal measure, and the party that nominated and elected him is being all EWWWW GROSS when he’s not actually veering from their chosen path all that much.
What matters to them, really? Pointless belligerence on the foreign stage, judges who oppose abortion rights, and tax cuts. He’s satisfied all those requirements, like any Republican president would have, so this is all just goddamn dinner theater. Not the good kind. The kind where you gum your boiled beef and watch a former member of the Monkees warble his way through Oliver.
Republican candidates are going to start coming out and trying to challenge Trump for 2020, and they’re going to have to be asked the question none of these garden weasels could answer in 2016: How are you any different?
Because, you know, Ted Cruz might not have been an actual fascist but he certainly would be nominating judges off the same Christianist pecksniff cheat-sheet. John Kasich, that voice of moderation and reason, is actually wandering the wilderness to the right of Trump on abortion, and not just the kind for one’s mistresses. Mitt Romney ran against his own health care program after Obama took it national.
The only thing these personifications of whiskey-dick can offer is the idea that they will be nicer about their regressive, segregationist positions than Trump is. Their conventions will feature “Blue Lives Matter” segments instead of physically humping the flag. They’ll deny women medical care, but won’t call them cunts. They’ll leave insinuations about opponents’ patriotism to their surrogates and think-tank partners, and deny any relationship when questioned.
How refreshing.
The problems we’re having under Trump are not because Trump is weird and gross and probably a rapist, and spends too much time on Twitter. The problems we’re having under Trump are the problems we’ve had under Republican rule in 30 plus states and the federal government: exacerbation of economic inequality and segregation, gerrymandering and vote suppression, encouragement of racism and/or punitive patriotism, contempt for education and labor, I could go on.
Trump disappears tomorrow, and that baloney pony Bruni’s interviewing up there or someone just like him will breathe a sigh of relief, get elected president by yelling the word UNITY a thousand times, and quietly deregulate some more giant banks that foreclosed on widows and orphans. All without a tweet.
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Sunday Catblogging: And Thank You!
You all were amazing with the fundraiser this week, have some Slade toesies.
Every year we try to raise what we need to pay our hosting fees, whatever wear and tear there is on our laptops, sometimes a project or two, and every year I think well, this is it, they’re all gonna tell me to fuck off and they don’t care anymore and it’s time to shut this pop stand down and go do whatever it is people do when they’re not glued to the news.
And every year, every ask, every project, you all come right through. For FOURTEEN YEARS goddamn I am old and we are old and it remains one of the best things in my life, the idea that we do something here that you value.
Thank you. Thank you to every single one of you.
Now, next crisis.
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Speaking of the State of Journalism
Bugs Bunny should saw it off the country and let it fall into the sea:
But I’ve evolved. It’s been 11 years since we launched PolitiFact, and I think it’s time to move beyond my beloved meter. I am heading a project at Duke University that is developing ways to automate fact-checking—including new ways to present the conclusions. I think the Truth-O-Meter’s ratings (which now range from True to Pants on Fire) are still effective for many readers. But I have come to realize that in our polarized environment, the meter I invented is not reaching everyone, and not reaching conservatives in particular.
BECAUSE THEY DON’T BELIEVE IN FACTS JESUS CHRIST THEY’RE IN A DEATH CULT OF COURSE A FUCKIN’ TRUTH-O-METER (this was always so goddamn dumb anyway) DOESN’T “REACH” THEM. To reach someone they have to be reaching back, not macing you backwards as they run from the life preserver you’re throwing them.
The stupid ratings system (FOUR PINOCCHIOS! THIS WILL SHOW THEM!) with its stupid cartoon illustrations was always garbage. People smart enough to care where someone’s statements fell on the meter were insulted by the childishness of it, and people who needed the info resented being told their favorite fanboy’s pants were on fire.
This is the journalism headline right now. This is what we’ve all decided collectively to give a shit about. Journalism employment is in the toilet and executive bonuses are through the roof and every time some reporter asks for more money to cover something the entire company gets rebranded to “wheeze.biz” so a consultant can talk about feeding content into a funnel.
But please, do let’s jerk ourselves off about the stupid cartoon names we use to designate politicians lying, because no matter how dumb they are some conservatives will FEEL VERY ATTACKED BY PEOPLE FLAUNTING THEIR INTELLIGENCE AND ABILITY TO KNOW THINGS AND READ WORDS.
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Not Everything Sucks: Iraqi Edition
People will always try to save each other. Always:
‘My 15-year-old son, one of the best students in our province, decided to take up arms and go to battle without informing me or his father. It was a big shock for me. I thought that my son would go to battle and die. For around 20 days I searched for him.’
Fatima al-Bahandly was able to convince tens of other young men to disarm, along with her own son. She is the director of Al Firdaws Society, an NGO founded in 2003 in Basra, Iraq. She works to demobilise and reintegrate young people and children who have been recruited by militias. She has overseen a number of projects in a range of areas, including issues of literacy, conflict resolution, women’s political participation, and violence against women.
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GOOOOOAAAAALLLLLLLL!!!!!!
UPDATE THE THIRD: We did it! Thank you to everyone who contributed. This Sunday look for special Kick-and-cats-blogging in joyful celebration, and we really, really appreciate the ability to keep the lights on around here for another year!
Update II: CRAZYTOWN WE ARE ONLY $400 AWAY FROM OUR GOAL. You guys get a Kick and Catz video if you put this thing away by midnight!
Update: WE ARE HALFWAY TO OUR GOAL AFTER 2 DAYS. You guys are amazing. Thank you all so much. Click here to keep it going!
Hey, the earth is caving in, help us keep the lights on until it does!
Here’s what we’d like to do this year, in addition to covering our hosting fees and getting my laptop a new battery: Continue to deal with the general stupidity of the state of government and chronicle the trash fire that is American journalism. Pay the electric bill. Keep Paul, Della, Slade, Ada and all our other asshole pets in Fancy Feast. Continue Kick’s education by buying poster board for her to spell our protest signs. COVER THE DANG MIDTERMS.
For 14 years (JESUS) we’ve only ever asked once a year for your support. Our goal this year is $1,650. Can you help us get there by next Sunday? I have something special planned if you do.
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Nimble. Agile. Digital First.
These justifications are always such fucking crap:
The whole entire @NYDailyNews social media team was just let go by Tronc. There are no updates to any stories being pushed right now. #transitions
— Candace Amos (@CandaceAmos) July 23, 2018
They have no idea what they’re doing, journalistically, and they have no idea in any other sense besides making the quarterly earnings report look slightly less shitty. That’s as far ahead as TRONC! (see previous examples of fuckery here, here, here, here and here) can manage to think.
Let’s review how we got where we are, shall we?
In the late 1990s/early 2000s, media companies bought up newspapers. They then took those newspapers, profitable operations mostly and profitable by double digits, and tried to make them profitable by triple digits.
They did this by cutting the stuff that made them profitable in the first place because that stuff was expensive.
Journalists are not expensive. Journalists are cheap.
First they cut the distribution, or pared it down. They cut out printing popular sections. They cut out delivering on people’s porches, and eventually, to people’s homes. They cut in-house distribution and farmed it out to non-union mouthbreathers who were as likely to throw the paper in the bushes as get it to the customer.
They cut marketing, too, at a time when the housing market was booming and people were moving place to place at accelerated rates, so that you had no idea when you moved into a community what papers was yours.
What else could they combine or cut? Editorial design. Centralize it and put it in the hands of people who wouldn’t notice if a place was misidentified or spelled wrong. Copy editing! Who cares about spelling, anyway? Local opinion coverage, because syndicated columns about how young men need to pull up their pants are obviously more relevant to readers!
Shockingly, these things didn’t magically make the papers more money. In fact, they started bleeding readers, and the advertisers followed. You’ll notice I haven’t talked about THE DASTARDLY INTERNET yet. That’s because while all this was going on the Internet barely existed.
When it finally came to be, and mobile devices brought news to people wherever they were, news organizations were enfeebled, directionless creatures wounded by so many years of mistreatment that they couldn’t take advantage of a new medium even if they wanted to. And let’s be honest, a lot of the people involved didn’t want to take advantage of the Internet. They wanted to take a damn nap, and could you blame them really.
So the flailing began. Let’s be hyperlocal! Let’s have a paywall! Let’s not have a paywall! Let’s have a paywall that can be hacked by a halfway competent barn cat and put nothing behind it but wire copy and comic strips! Let’s do “longform,” whatever the fuck that is. Let’s do Facebook bots!
LET’S RENAME OURSELVES FUCKING TRONC.
When none of that worked because they’d squandered every ounce of goodwill and every drop of brand loyalty built over decades, they started cutting again. And this time there was nothing left to cut but newsroom jobs. So they cut those, and kept cutting, and kept cutting.
That’s where we are right now. None of it has diddly shit to do with the Internet, which some in the industry are just now, 20 fuckin years in, waking up to. All of it has to do with viewing a public goddamn service as just another piggy bank to be smashed when you need change for penny candy.
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Racism. It’s Racism. It’s Always Racism. (Sometimes Abortion, But Mostly Racism.)
At the same time, many have acknowledged the awkwardness of being both self-proclaimed followers of Jesus and the No. 1 champions of a president whose character has been defined not just by alleged infidelity but accusations of sexual harassment, advancing conspiracy theories popular with white supremacists, using language that swaths of Americans find racist, routinely spreading falsehoods and an array of casual cruelties and immoderate behaviors that amount to a roll call of the seven deadly sins.
The predicament has led to all kinds of reactions within the evangelical community, from a gathering of pastors in Illinois described as a “call to self-reflection,” to prayer meetings with Trump in Washington, to hours of cable news reckoning in which Southern Baptists have taken the lead.
There are two reasons for these so-called Christians to vote for Trump:
Racism.
The idea of putting in place a Supreme Court that will outlaw abortion, which isn’t about ending abortion but is about denying it to sluts, which isn’t even about that so much as it’s about performing to your fellow churchgoers that you are moral. Narcissism, basically, then.
That’s it. That’s all this is but let’s have another 5,000 words about how difficult the dilemma these white people face. I mean, come on:
A few leaders have publicly dissented from such views, aware of the Southern Baptist history of whiffing on the big moral questions of the day — such as during the civil rights era, when most pastors either defended segregation or remained silent.
I wonder what the common thread here is?
To her, this was a moral threat far greater than any character flaw Trump might have, as was what she called “the racial divide,” which she believed was getting worse. The evidence was all the black people protesting about the police, and all the talk about the legacy of slavery, which Sheila never believed was as bad as people said it was. “Slaves were valued,” she said. “They got housing. They got fed. They got medical care.”
It’s a mystery.
This story, by the way, is beautiful and compassionate and loving toward the people being quoted, and it’s wonderfully written, and I wish literally any other group of political constituents got this kind of humanizing on a daily basis. I wish the people making truly hard moral choices were lionized the way those failing them are.
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Everything The GOP Says is Crap
The National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) has been following a contingent of lesbian families since they first started to plan to have kids in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Those children are now about 25 years old, and the researchers have confirmed that they’re doing swimmingly.
Compared to their peers who were not raised by same-sex couples, researchers found no significant differences with respect to “adaptive functioning (family, friends, spouse or partner relationships, and educational or job performance), behavioral or emotional problems, scores on mental health diagnostic scales, or the percentage of participants with a score in the borderline or clinical range.”
Maybe next time they come to us and tell us something’s gonna destroy the world and cause a horrific breakdown in traditional values we can suggest they look in the mirror, because I’d vote for any one of these women or their perfectly normal kids over anything Republicans currently have on offer.
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Self taught, self made, bet, self styled
This, pretty much:
The language of “self-made” deeply bothers me because it assumes that individuals do everything by themselves & ignores the support systems, the people, who help us when we succeed or fail.
— 💀Dr. Kelly J. Baker is supposed to be writing💀 (@kelly_j_baker) July 16, 2018
I always feel like at least part of it’s projection, like if you did it all yourself then nobody can take it from you. If you did all this yourself, and you weren’t beholden to any system you didn’t control, then not only do you get to give yourself credit but you get out of fear-jail free. It’s all you, and you know what you can handle, right?
And you want your work to be enough. If you’ve been busting your ass, since high school or before, you want that to have been enough to make you because it was so fucking hard. Even people who have it relatively easy — born white and middle class in America — can still work their comfortable honky asses off and get to middle age thinking goddamn, I hustled this shit hard. Thinking of the ways you benefitted from things — public libraries, good schools, books in your house, parents with the leisure time to take you to plays and museums — seems to diminish that.
It doesn’t have to, though. If you look at the way you were made, the parts you did yourself and the parts other people helped you do, as a model for what you have to give others instead of a list of what others should be denied, it multiplies your work instead of dividing it: Yes, I started on second base, but I made it home, and you’re gonna make it home, too, no matter where you started from.
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How DID the GOP Become the Party of White Supremacy So Fast?
IRWINTON, Ga., Jan. 21— G. Harrold Carswell, President Nixon’s Supreme Court nominee, during a campaign for the Georgia Legislature in 1948, made a speech in which he said that he would always be governed by the “principles of white supremacy.”
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Caucus with the Democrats
Hey, Jeff Flake.
Hey, John McCain.
Hey, Susan Collins. Lisa Murkowski. Ben Motherfucking Sasse.
Hey, Bob Corker, probably. I mean, I haven’t looked, I assume he’s still a disingenuous attention-whoring shitbag like the rest of them.
Hey, all you assholes.
STFU. Get off Twitter. Get off TV. And start making phone calls.
Because until you caucus with the Democrats to stop this bullshit, I don’t want to hear another word out of your cheeto-dusted mouths.
In the early days maybe this shit was cute, this whole “the president of the United States is a traitor I am powerless to stop although I am uniquely empowered to stop him” dodge you’re pulling where you can handle some treason if it comes with abortion bans and guns.
It wasn’t cute to me or anyone else whose life was on the line but I could see where if you were some kind of reality-impaired solipsistic DC douchemook, you found that kind of thing amusing. You got to give important speeches and people clapped.
It hasn’t been cute for some time. The solution to the problem of your overwhelming angst and this country’s ongoing shame is pretty damn simple. In fact, it’s so easy people have already started wondering why you haven’t done it.
Caucus with the Democrats.
Yes, the hated Democratic Party, we of abortion on chipper demand and two-gay-weddings-for-the-price-of-one, we the gun-grabbing black president-electing welfare queens who want to take all your tax dollars and use them to kill cops. The people you’ve been telling your base for years are amoral fifth columnists. Those Democrats. Caucus with us.
Because we may want to put condoms in every happy meal. We may want you to be able to get Plan B at Kwik Trip. We may tell you your “Hillary’s a Cunt” t-shirt is a little bit sexist.
Sometimes we even listen to rap, but motherfucking shit goddamn we are not standing next to someone who attacked this country and saying, basically, “whatevs.”
Yes, that’s a low bar. But you’re #NeverTrump Republicans. Baby steps.
You caucus with us, and this all stops. Tomorrow. Today. You caucus with us and the Senate shuts down. The unchecked madness comes to an end. You hold hearings. You draft censure resolutions and you vote for every single goddamn one.
You impeach everyone you have to impeach until you find someone untainted by this disaster even if it’s Bill Clinton’s last fucking tailor. That guy gets to be president before anyone Putin’s nasty withered fingers touched.
Oh, your base will howl? Fuck ’em. Your state voted for Trump? Fuck them too. You didn’t swear an oath under your state flag with your hand on the legal code of Nebraska — or whatever the fuck — to serve your constituents.
You swore it under the Stars and Stripes with your hand on that Bible you like to say is so important to you. You swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America.
You won’t be able to work once your mouthbreathing Hills-Have-Eyes-casting-call voters drum you out for this? TOO FUCKING BAD. You don’t get to make bank on MSNBC deploring the president and wink at the human detritus as you float above them on some kind of whiskey-tango life raft made of four meth lab couches zip-tied together.
You stand for what you stand for all the time, so until you actually stand for it, and caucus with the Democrats, you can keep your sternly worded statements and your oh-so-weary denials. You can shove them in the dark hole where you put things you don’t want to think about, like immigrant children, Merrick Garland, your humanity, and the entire basic motherfucking concept of the Land of the Free.
Schmucks.
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Stop Expecting Shame To Do the Job Votes Will
By the framework of politics pre-Bush administration, most of this would have ended somewhere around “lock her up” or the pussy-grabbing tape or on day one where he called Mexicans rapists so the fact that it hasn’t should really tell you something:
I continue to not get why liberals talk about the Garland seat theft as if it’s anything they will ever shame Republicans for. McConnell openly brags about it being his proudest achievement. When you go “well what about Garland?” Right-wingers respond “heh. Yeah.”
— August J. Pollak (@AugustJPollak) July 10, 2018
There is no shame anymore. That was the real Bush doctrine. A woman named Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Bush’s bullshit war, asked to meet with the president and when he refused she parked herself outside his dumb fake ranch and said she was gonna sit there until he came to meet her.
He never did, and now he’s our lovely “even Bush wasn’t this bad” uncle who goes on talk shows and talks nicely about his paintings and we’re all nostalgic about him. Fuck him. We are where we are because he figured out that once in office, he could do whatever he wanted no matter how low his approval ratings got.
That’s it. That’s the whole damn secret. He killed Washington shame dead, and no scandal would force him out. Whole war is a lie? Ignored warnings about 9/11? Let hundreds of people die and drown because ya can’t be bothered during a hurricane and besides, government sucks? NONE OF THAT had to matter unless he thought it mattered and he didn’t.
There were thousands of people in the streets against him. I was one of them. And he didn’t care.
He didn’t have to. He was in office. So what if his approval ratings were bad? There’s no law that says if you dip below 40 percent you gotta call an election. There’s no law that says you have to answer questions from the press if they’re not kissing your ass.
If Congress is on your side, or cowed and weak, there’s no law requiring you to answer to anyone. Bush explicitly argued in court that the executive didn’t have to answer to the judiciary. In 2003. They’ve been setting things up this way for a long, long time.
And yet we keep expecting shame to reassert itself. Kids in cages: Anybody gonna quit over that? Nah. They don’t have to. Trump’s approval worse than Nixon’s? So what? We keep posting videos and repeating the very obvious facts that they have subverted our democracy and stole two presidencies and two Supreme Court seats and saying THIS IS A SCANDAL and they know. They’re not ashamed of themselves. They have no reason to be.
The only thing that matters is voting them out, from the state house to Congress. No shame will do the job the votes will. No shame will do the job unemployment will.
A.
Not Everything Sucks
Those of you moaning that nothing will ever change? Read this before you tape your pieholes shut:
Love is a lawyer tirelessly devoted to an immigrant sector most in need of legal aid: the rural one. In 2014, she launched the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, which serves immigrant families where there is traditionally no legal aid. Love and her team of three other lawyers go out to the people—via a roaming RV office, community center, and church pop-ups, and by organizing community leaders.
The whole thing is amazing. We are saving one another every single day, and always will.
A.
