Subverting Norms

Lately I find myself thinking back frequently to a classic Norm Macdonald bit, about a homeless guy who has a dog with him. (Bear in mind that the bit is about thirty years old, and I don't want to hear any politically correct pedantry about othering the houseless or whatever.) The punchline, such as it is, is that Norm figures the dog is probably thinking, You know, I can do this shit on my own, buddy.

That's basically how I feel about the Democratic Party "leadership" much of the time these days. I'll still trudge to the polls and cast my lot with the rest of you schmucks (if we're still allowed, I guess), but I've been building about a hundred feet of fencing and gate around my house, and probably getting another couple guns in the near future to complement my Mossberg and my Sig P226 (maybe a Glock 19 this time). I'm also looking into emigration requirements for places like Scotland and Ireland.

I have no confidence in the Democratic leadership. I see stupid little blurbs like Nancy Pelosi smirking that she refers to Cheetolini as "Mister Make Matters Worse," and am underwhelmed by it. They should be impeaching Bill Barr like six months ago. They should have worked up new articles of impeachment against Trump the day after the last farce was over.

The idea that doing absolutely nothing in the face of open tyranny is somehow better than at least trying and not succeeding in the ultimate outcome, is repulsive for starters.

But doing nothing is also not that difficult. I can do that shit my own, good buddy. What the fuck do I need to pay you for?

Trump has always had a four-step process to everything he does in life, whether it's bankrupting a casino, calling Page Six and bragging about how good he porked that showgirl, or lawn-darting the country and setting its citizens to each others' throats:

1. Lie.
2. Cheat.
3. Steal.
4. Destroy.

That's it. That's the process. It's simple but effective, and why should he change it. It works. It's worked for him for years, because no one ever just lifted their shoe and scraped this fucking dog turd of a human being off the bottom of society's shoe. And now you've got dog shit everywhere, as far as the eye can see.

He could and should have been shut down years ago, but the New York Democrats were happy to hold their noses and cash his checks, and the New York mediots were happy to take his calls and do his PR for free. And so here we are, and nobody who can actually do anything or at least influence anything has the balls to do so.

So in the case of voting by mail, he's been lying about the whole thing for months, right down to how it actually works. Gee, maybe people should step in -- every time -- and correct the lie, and call it for what it is?

Like all marketing, lies work by repetition. That's why he's mostly just doddered around repeating the same bullshit over and over again for years, till the smooth-brained death cult can chant it in their dreamless collective sleep. The usual panel monkeys on the usual shows use the usual colorful phrasing to dance around the word "lie," when all they have to do is say, that's a goddamned lie, he knows it and so do we.

But now he has enough momentum with the lie about mail-in voting, and enough morons believing it, that now he toys with the next part -- muddying the waters just enough to discredit the results, defunding the USPS just enough to cripple their ability to handle the job effectively, and so on.

When that doesn't work, and people (as the current parlance goes) "crawl over broken glass" to do this thing they should have done in 2016 and 2014 and 2010 to prevent all this, he will then simply have his trusty mutt Barr draft up some emergency proclamation postponing or nullifying or whatever his vaunted gut decrees.

And what will anyone do about it? Will Nancy Smash have another smug nickname for His Travesty? Will Barry O have another carefully crafted oratory invoking our better angels?

Better angels? Forty fucking percent of this goddamned country is ecstatic with all of this. Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham could throw white-power hand signals at each other night after night and get two million bastards to tune in consistently. Everyone likes to invoke the old Michael Caine Batman mantra of some people just want to watch the world burn. Yes, they do and they are, and the resolute bulwark against the daily evil is merely to presume that of course we'll be permitted to vote in November.

To which the correct answer is, Yes, probably. But what is your contingency plan if this fucker goes full Mobutu Sese Seko on us? Humor us and just share it with the class, this plan of action in the face of crisis and urgency.

That is where they're failing. There is no backup. They scoff and sneer and harrumph that of course there is no way that this norm could possibly be traduced; why even Lincoln made sure the election was held on time in the middle of the Civil War.

Yeah, but -- and hear me out on this one -- Jesus Fucking Christ, I don't know if you've noticed, but he's not Lincoln. He's a criminal scumbag who's surrounded and insulated himself with like-minded scumbags who will do his bidding, no matter what.

I frequently use the exaggerated epithet "would push their own grandmother into a wood-chipper" to attempt to describe the sort of animal who would do literally anything to achieve their political goal. Well, Stephen Miller's grandmother recently died of the #TrumpPlague. You see him change his fucking rhythm by even a sixteenth of a beat? Me neither.

You think Bill Barr won't sign that fucking emergency memo postponing the election, to keep the "anarchists" from installing Diamond Joe Biden? Fine, then we can agree to disagree.

But just for safety's sake, you should still probably be able to describe what can be done if he does sign that memo, or decide that the election count is unacceptable, or whatever banana-republic bullshit these people have already made clear multiple times that they are completely comfortable with.

So far, I haven't seen any evidence whatsoever that any of the people who actually have the power to affect that -- even in futility -- have taken any measures to do so. Impeach Barr now -- the investigative process alone will at least stall ever-so-slightly his continued attempts to turn this popsicle stand into some Opus Dei freak show. Half of something is always better than nothing.

And for the people in power who choose to just complain and bemoan their lot -- well, I can do that shit on my own, asshole. Now tell me why I should bother voting for you after this debacle, win lose or draw.