Ruthless

We all knew the day was coming, we just didn't know when. The only surprise is that it wasn't, you know, on Election Day or something like that.

Hell, it could have been a week after Election Day, and Moscow Mitch and his little dog Leningrad Lindsey would have bulled through a lame-duck appointment of whatever forty-year-old FedSoc shithead they were instructed to.

The nihilist side of me wants it to happen, wants this whole rotted husk of a nation to find out the hard way what happens not just when Roe is repealed, but voting rights, employee rights, fucking Griswold gets overturned.

As repulsive as the pelf-grubbing Republicons and their moron base and the psychotic billionaires who rent them are, I reserve the greater measure of my contempt for the Democratic voters who couldn't be bothered to show up for the 2010 and 2014 midterms. Forty-one percent turnout in 2010, just over thirty-six percent in 2014.

If you are one of the folks that couldn't be bothered to show up for those votes, but now, now you're concerned, I cordially invite you to go fuck yourself in the neck with a rusty chainsaw. Because you're one of the ones to blame.

Liberals and Democrats talk a good game about "taking action" and all, and inevitably it becomes some lame, meaningless, purely performative street-protest bullshit. People have been protesting all over the country, all summer long, and they have nothing to show for it. Feel free to prove me wrong, show me some tangible outcomes from all that good trouble.

Now, if you want to take some real action and maybe have a sliver of hope to accomplish something, figure out how much money you have to spare, and go here and donate to as many Senate campaigns as you can. I'm going to donate $25-100 to each of the following:

• Sara Gideon (ME)
• Jaime Harrison (SC)
• Mark Kelly (AZ)
• Cal Cunningham (NC)
• Theresa Greenfield (IA)
  
• Steve Bullock (MT)
• Jon Ossoff (GA-1)
  
• Barbara Bollier (KS)
  
• Al Scott (AK)
• Amy McGrath (KY)

I wish I had more to donate. I wish candidates like Abby Broyles (OK) and M.J. Hegar (TX) had more of a fighting chance, because Jim Inhofe and John Cornyn are two of the biggest gaping assholes on the planet, not just in the Senate. But it is, as they say far too often, what it is, and unfortunately it becomes a self-reinforcing dynamic of putting the money where it's going to be most effective -- races that are closer precisely because people have been donating more money to them.

But I think seven or maybe eight of the ten candidates listed above have decent-to-strong chances of winning their respective races, and that's enough to flip the Senate back to a solid Democratic majority. Even five would be enough to do the trick.

And then they have to act, decisively and aggressively, with the fundamental understanding that even in the instance of a blowout victory, this is their last best chance to punish the traitors across the aisle, people who sold out their country for a bag of nickels. No more "norms" or "rules" or polite suggestions about how things should be, but a cold recognition of how they are, what they've become.

Pack the court, blow up the filibuster, ram through as many judges as possible, dig up every punitive procedure you can muster and ram them straight up the GOP's collective poop-chute, no lube, no mercy, no pretenses of collegiality. This is war, and if Democratic leadership is not prepared to lead it and fight it as such, they too can find honest work. Enough dithering and hand-wringing. Fight hard or fuck off already.

Churchill famously said that when you're going through hell, keep going, and so we should and must, if we want to leave anything of value behind for our children and grandchildren. But with that comes, once again, the need to see things for how they really are, rather than how we think they should be. It might be a blowout in the other direction. It might end up close enough to cheat and steal and weasel their way through to an illegitimate victory, but one that nonetheless carries with it the very real trappings of power.

And then you know, without any doubt or uncertainty, how things really are. If there really are enough people who don't care, or can't be bothered to show up -- or there really are as many or more of them than there are of us -- well, now you know.

And you should plan accordingly. Until then, you should expect more of yourselves, more of your fellow citizens, more of the people you send to DC to represent you. No more bullshit, no more excuses.

Give till it hurts. Make sure you can vote, and then show up and do so. Don't worry about the goons and closet-cases with their Dear Leader swag and flapping gums. They can yammer all they want, but they can't physically prevent you from walking through that door and casting your lot.

And then you can at least say you did what you could. And get your documentation in order, because you might find yourself with a sudden need to vacate the Republic of Gilead. Look around you, and see if you can tell yourself that I'm exaggerating even a little bit.