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Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Turtle Soup

Good profile of Addison McConnell in the New Yorker. The main thing to keep in mind about Moscow Mitch is not that he's the closest thing this country has to a flat-out traitor, nor that he's a soulless piece of shit lamely failing to masquerade as a human being.

No, the real takeaway with McConnell is that he's exactly what Republican voters want and deserve, and the sooner Democrats realize that nobody in that party can be "worked with" anymore, and that they must devote themselves to the goal of treating the Republicans as a hostile entity that must be completely eliminated from every facet of American governance, the better off we'll all be.

The fact that McConnell loathes Trump is not exculpatory, even though it hews closely to the "ends justify the means" expediency of the worst ideologues. In fact, it bonds McConnell to Trump inextricably, as the latter's term propels down the road to disaster and into the scrap-heap of history. Their relationship is not adversarial; it is deeply, grossly symbiotic.

McConnell is at least astute enough to know what sort of a turd Trump really is, a complete failure as a human being and utterly unfit for the office he defiles. McConnell loathes Trump and still does his bidding, obligingly, even cracking jokes at times. Hilarious.

No doubt McConnell tells himself routinely, in order to resist what must be a constant temptation to punch every mirror he passes by, that he is simply a reluctant, realistic observer of the dumpster fire that comprises the crude kleptarchy that now misrules the nation. The fact is that while Addison may not always be the guy holding the matches or the gasoline, he is the prime caretaker of the fire's ability to keep going constantly. He literally could stop all this at any time, and chooses not to.

The thing about these types is that they believe in "legacies" and such, and as he gets nearer to his eighties, no doubt Addison ponders from time to time how he'll be remembered. No doubt his donors and dogsbodies will sing his praises, but any decent person not previously rented by him will spit when they say his name, and envision themselves one day making it out to whatever marbled box Addison finds himself encased in for eternity, and taking a fat greasy dump at the head.

These are people who could have done anything with their privilege and power, but actively chose to dedicate themselves to making their communities and states and country worse places than they were. They will be remembered as such, except only by the rented losers of the industry. And every single person that still votes for scumbags like Addison McConnell, knowing what they really are and just not giving half a shit or thinking it's funny, deserves to burn in hell.

All that said, maybe it's time Democrats took a page from McConnell's playbook and turned it on him. He's ruthless, an evil master of procedure and mechanical process, and completely ready and willing to tear his opponents a new asshole just for the fun of it. The idea that Senate Democrats should continue to be "led" by an insufferable, pusillanimous twerp like Chuck Schumer is no longer acceptable. Time to go LBJ on those fuckers. No mercy.

It's time -- to use the technical jargon -- to fuck shit up. No more ice cream socials. Trump is openly looting and shaking down hospitals during a fucking plague, stealing PPE from medical personnel to auction off to the highest bidder. Maybe some of our elected representatives could look into that? If not now, when; if not them, whom? [extra points for pre-emptive grammar pedantry]

This is, in the strictest Clausewitzian sense, war. It's time to act like it. Get dirty, win back the White House and the Senate, and then set about reclaiming state legislatures, and crush that party of traitors. It's come to that -- either the Republican party ends, or the United States does. That's really all there is to it, and a lot of the reasons for that rest on the narrow, arthritic shoulders of Addison McConnell.

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