Old King Coal

It's good to see that at least some of the coal miners that Trump catered to bullshitted in 2016 are seeing the light. Better late than never. Welcome aboard the reality train.

What's important for them to understand is that coal employment has not declined because of inconvenient environmental regulations (as if the people who, you know, live in those areas should either go in pocket to move or wait to die young of cancer), it's because of rapidly dropping EROEI (energy returned on energy invested). Because "mining" is now more blowing tops of mountains and excavating the giant hole, rather than sending hundreds of doughty dwarves and their lanterns and pickaxes and lusty "Heigh-ho" shanties into narrow shafts [giggity]. It's simply not as labor-intensive as it was back in the day, even twenty or thirty years ago. It takes fewer work-hours to produce the same amount of coal. More than twice as many people work for Best Buy than in the entire coal industry.

Fracking and low oil prices took care of the rest of it. Natural gas and oil are simply cheaper per workforce unit to procure. As with most things, once you start looking closer at them, it's not politics, it's math.

That's why it's really important for these folks in Kentucky and West Virginia and Pennsylvania to really think clearly about whom Trump was actually talking to, when he was reaching out to the coal industry. He was not talking to the workers; he was talking to the owners, telling them he would stand aside while they busted their own industry out -- letting them pollute to their hearts' content, take profits, declare bankruptcy, and leave the workers jobless and empty-handed.

What a coincidence that West Virginia's governor, the Pynchonesquely-named Jim Justice, is a billionaire who's profited mightily from Dear Leader's gutted enviro policies, while simultaneously cashing in on "distress" loans that will never be paid back, and screwing over the workers all at the same time. Pretty neat trick. These companies literally ripped these workers off for thousands of dollars each at Christmastime. That's who we're talking about here, people for whom Monty Burns is a rather weak role model. That's who Trump was really talking to when he made his appeals to coal country.

There are always going to be a few who won't get the picture right up to the moment they get pink-slipped and hosed out of their severance pay. I don't what you can tell them or do for them; they have resolved to ignore common sense and a clear pattern of empirical data. They'll die younger than they should, in more pain than they should be, and angry at the climate change "hoax" that took their dream job away.

The path to the Green New Deal -- and to getting coal workers' support for it -- is this:  subsidize the fossil-fuel companies to switch over to manufacturing renewables -- solar panels, windmills and armatures, etc. It will not be easy and it will not be pretty -- oil companies in particular long ago got used to steamrolling their way through things by showering decision-makers with cash and/or women, and then laundering the profits.

But it can be done. These guys may not want to "learn to code," and frankly, even of they did and could, you wouldn't want all of them to do the same thing in the first place. But if you pitched it to them that they could be making the same amount of money working above ground, either in a manufacturing warehouse or outdoors installing, instead of breathing filth in a back-breaking hole and dying before the age of sixty, and leave a cleaner planet for their kids and grandkids, well, they just might listen to that.

The thing they really need to take seriously is that ultimately their "way of life" is not going to be around much longer, again for economic and productivity reasons much more than because of regulations. That's just a fact, and the sooner they start preparing themselves for that eventuality, the better off they'll be. And if not, the outcome will be the same regardless, just on a slightly different schedule.

Debt and Taxes

Great article and interview from Luke O'Brien here that pretty much encapsulates the student-loan debt crisis. You know, if JoeMala are looking to gin up some enthusiasm amongst the youngs, there are worse ways to go about it.

This crisis is multifaceted:  moral, financial, economic, cultural, generational. It is scummy boomer grifters and shareholders siphoning money out of wage-slaves, while simultaneously berating them for not buying houses and starting families, as if they could afford to, as if they would want to continue overpopulating a sweaty, groaning planet that now just veers between state-size wildfires, giant floods, and an ongoing mass extinction.

Here is the thing about Navient and the rest of the student-loan weasels no one ever tells you:  they don't want you to pay off your loans. Ever. Your debt is their equity. That's not polemic, that's how it really is. That's math.

The fact of the matter is that even a partial debt jubilee would inject trillions of dollars of stimulus into the lower levels of a perilously top-heavy economy, where it's needed the most. Leon Cooperman will survive quite well without another billion to add to his pile.

This is something that the Democrats need to understand if they wish to maintain any real viability going forward, much less do any actual good for the regular public. This hoarding Scrooge McDuck economy cannot keep going. The problem with predatory, oligarchic hyper-capitalism is that eventually you run out of other people's money to steal.

Accelerated Decline

Interesting thread here, food for thought. We're not there yet, but we are clearly on that path. Best case scenario -- Biden wins in a landslide, Dems increase lead in House and retake the Senate 55-45 -- it will take at least a decade to undo the damage wrought by these fuckers, and to get a handle on the redneck gangs and their buddies in uniform.

That's best case scenario, that the work will just be starting, and it will be treacherous and uphill the entire way.

I've talked a lot in the past, in my North Korea posts, of how that nation really needs to be deprogrammed, if it is ever to rejoin the community of nations. The US is not quite there, not yet, but again it should be clear that there is enough of a "cult bloc" that has been thoroughly programmed and conditioned, that some form of deprogramming needs to take place.

Since this is really the latest front in an extended plutocratic insurgency, a war of the billionaires on everyone else, it can only be de-escalated by rounding up "our" billionaires and encouraging them to do some effective counter-programming. Again, where are Bloomberg and Steyer and those types, soi-disant limo libs who routinely make empty claims about loving a "free society," yet are strangely silent right now, when their country could really use their help. They could each dump five or ten million into the Senate races in KY, SC, ME, GA, AZ, NC, and more, and not even miss the couch-cushion change. Bloomberg and Steyer each dumped nine figures into their futile primary runs, the former supposedly spending over half a billion.

Well, you got the candidate you wanted, guys. How about you finish what you started and get him across the line securely, with a tailwind of senators that will actually show up for work? Their islands in the sun will only stay above the rising tide for so long, and when it comes down, it's gonna come down on them and their type as well.

That's probably a pipe dream -- despite its constant bleats about freedom and rugged individuality, Americans are some of the most cowed, compliant people on the face of the earth. And with good reason -- who in their right mind would want to get caught up in its medieval for-profit carceral state, just to make some noise at a meaningless, futile street protest?

But at some point, enough people with nothing left to lose will start acting accordingly, Millions are facing eviction in the coming weeks, just in time for winter and a #TrumpPlague resurgence and the actual flu season and, oh yeah, a likely recession or depression.

We could have avoided all this, and for much less money, if the thieves that are lawn-darting the country had just given every household, rich or poor, a $10k check and said, stay home through March and April. We'll re-open May 1st. Enjoy your staycation. Nope, we had to spend $4 trillion bailing out cruise lines and televangelists and Trump groupies, like the Central Asian despotate we are aspiring to become.

So Bloomie and Tommy and their ilk mght want to take stock of the situation, and consider doing the right thing for once, and at least atone for their unconscionable fuckery in the primary.

Suckers and Losers

Everybody has read the article by now, and absolutely nobody is surprised. Maybe it will move the needle a touch, but probably not, which is the real story.

Maybe he's right -- maybe people who are willing to serve and sacrifice for The State, a faceless leviathan that may or may not be there for them in their time of need, have been bamboozled. Maybe the people who continue to support this fucking monster, whose defining trait is open contempt of the very concepts of charity and grace, are also suckers and losers. Maybe the liberals and Democrats, waiting for their elected leaders to do something even performatively and making excuses for why they refuse to, are also suckers.

[Case in point:  Impeach Bill Barr now. He is openly discussing the ways in which he will sow distrust in the election results, and foment civil unrest. He has already lied to Congress multiple times, including at his job interview. It doesn't matter that the Republicon senators are traitors and will acquit him. The investigative process will generate enough evidence that can be use to prosecute Barr if Biden wins. And if Biden loses -- or "loses"? Hope your passport's in good shape.]

Maybe my dad, who fought the Nazis in the Atlantic and the Imperial Japanese in the Pacific, who was literally en route to Japan on a fucking minesweeper when we dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was a sucker for believing that his efforts then were necessary to keep the country he loved from turning into a mass of sweaty, ignorant slobs. Maybe my uncle, who served two tours in Vietnam as a Marine platoon leader and got soaked in Agent Orange, and died hard just a few weeks after his fifty-first birthday twenty years ago, was a sucker for jumping into a fight he was told was right and just. He got there and saw the truth and came back changed, and spent the rest of his life trying to get back what he'd lost. I have a younger cousin who joined the Marines earlier this year, for a CINC who's made it clear that he couldn't care less that the Russians are paying Islamic militants bounties on American military corpses. Sucker!

And on and on. It's a giant, all-encompassing scam, and we've all bought into some aspect or other of it. Remember when a couple of feckless billionaires inserted themselves into the Democratic primary, just long enough to knock Elizabeth Warren outta there? Where's OK Bloomer now that we could use his precious money, not just for Biden but for at least six or eight Senate seats? Where's Tom Steyer and all his bro-gressive happy talk? Yeah, they really care about "their country," but it's a different country than the rest of us live in.

Maybe the folks out in the streets protesting, as well-meaning as they are, might be suckers as well. They think something will "change" from their efforts. Well, you've been doing it all summer, and the only thing that's changed is that the police forces of Portland, Minneapolis, Kenosha, and NYC -- all cities run by liberal Democratic mayors in states run by liberal Democratic governors -- are much more comfortable openly displaying their true sympathies.

They stand aside while roving white supremacist gangs barrel through crowds in their $70k trucks and attack unarmed protesters. They let assault-rifle-toting kids who have just murdered people in the street with a weapon they were not legally allowed to possess just walk on by. They have not stopped killing, beating, kidnapping. They have made their position entirely clear, and no one is even pretending to try to stop them.

Black Lives Matter? Are you fucking kidding? Your life doesn't matter, liberal white protester. As far as the redneck death squads and their good buddies on the PD are concerned, you're not white. They probably won't shoot you seven times in the back, but you never know. They sure as hell won't stop the bearded goon with the riot helmet and the Kevlar Pepe the Frog vest from stomping the shit out of you.

Now that we're in the final sixty days of the electoral race, people are starting to look at the clock, because they're exhausted, demoralized, disheartened. They want it to "be over," but it will never be over. This is just beginning, sorry to say, but as we near the homestretch in this here blog, I am convinced that that will be the crushing minor chord I will end with in a few months.

Getting rid of Trump is -- and really, always was -- only the symbolic part of it. It's real, and it's vital to any semblance of continuity in what passes for elected representation in this flawed experiment. The real challenge, as the Atlantic article lays out so clearly, is in figuring out just how to deal with individuals who are fine with all of it. They have constructed an alternate reality for themselves, one that gives them permission -- hell, makes it their patriotic duty -- to support this thug who so openly disparages military service and sacrifice.

And putatively liberal media outlets make painstakingly multiple efforts over and over again to construct their own alternate reality, one where these people are Real 'murkins, who support monsters out of some well-meaning intent and love for their country. Such articles are not only worthy of every bit of scorn and derision we can muster, they also represent a profound dereliction of journalistic duty.

These people should be portrayed as they truly are -- as people who gladly support all of this, every bit of it. They are lying when they mutter something about "wish he would tweet less" or whatever. They love the tweets. After all, he's doing what they wish they had the platform to do -- tell all them fags and libruls and race-traitors to go fuck themselves. They wish he'd tweet more, that he'd crack down more on all the people they've been taught to hate, conditioned like hamsters in Fox News' Skinner box to pat the metal plate for the daily outrage pellet. I don't know if it's possible to deprogram most of them at this point. I do know that there is no point in trying to engage with them anymore.

It's easy for him, because he's never served anyone or sacrificed anything. He's never had to learn or understand or know anything, because he's rented minions to wipe his ass for him his entire miserable life. But the working-class schmuck that still rolls with all this? That's a harder nut to crack, and I don't know if you even want to waste your time on it. Remember that the largest number of voters is non-voters, and ask yourself why, and if there's a way to reach them.

Are they really lazy and stupid, or do they see the lack of leadership and conviction (to varying degrees, of course) on both sides, and simply say no? There's no excuse for doing that this time around, but again, if the opposition party started playing with a real sense of urgency, instead of always just playing not to lose, they might motivate some of those sideline spectators for once. What's the harm in trying?

Opportunity Costs

Throughout the summer, I've been thinking a great deal about the various opportunities we have managed to collectively squander -- chances to rethink fundamental assumptions about "how" "things" "work" in "society," what all those terms mean for various stakeholders, and how quality-of-life metrics could and should have been improved upon or at least touched in this crisis, but instead, of course, were ignored, scorned, repudiated.

This essay is a nice distillation of that grand -- yet very small, personal, intimate -- idea. What kind of life do we want for ourselves, and for the people we care about? What was our dream, and how has it changed?

Few things sum up the dynamic of brutal end-stage capitalism than a handful of millionaires, hustling away at the behest of billionaires, telling the working-class rubes to get their lazy asses back to work, that an extra $600/month for a few months will turn them irretrievably into lazy slackers. You know, like the Wal-Mart heirs and all their kids.

Wait, you say, Wal-Mart is a corporation. They provide goods and services the free market wants. They earned whatever money they have, and can bequeath it how they see fit.

Fair enough. But Wal-Mart also has always used taxpayer-funded gubmint largesse to fund its lucrative operations. From the long-term tax abatements and incentives to open up in economically depressed areas, to deliberately shorting employee hours so they have to get public assistance for food and health care, the Waltons have always suckled at the teat of Uncle Sucker.

You paid for that two-hundred-foot yacht where the family celebrates New Year's in Sydney Harbor. You paid for the useless grandkid who went to USC and paid a classmate to write all their papers and take their tests for them. You paid for the infrastructure improvements that were necessary just to get the stores built in all those little towns.

Public subsidy, private profit. It's a phrase that crops up a great deal, once you start doing a little digging on where the money comes from, and where it ends up.

There are countless opportunities for a better society that we have always passed on, obviously. But during the #TrumpPlague, three huge ones stand out:

• Education. In a world where information is at everyone's fingertips, we no longer need a century-old indoctrination system we borrowed from the Prussians. Education now is about three valuable things:  knowing what knowledge is useful; knowing where to find it; and hands-on experience. It's more involved than that, but those are the basics. Socialization is fine and valuable, but the toys have already changed the coming generation in ways we oldsters could not have anticipated and cannot turn back. The problem is that from the management end, the education system is really a funnel designed to ensure pliant workers and consumers for our magical hyper-capitalist singularity future, while also keeping the kids properly warehoused so their parents can work. And the higher education system is just a financialized grift, pushing kids into schools to get a piece of paper that they'll be paying for until they're fifty. It's credentialism as much as education or experience. And it's all about to change drastically anyway. Wait and see how many small colleges go broke over the next six to twelve months. But going forward:  what sorts of things do "we" want "our" kids to learn, and how much should they be charged against their futures for the privilege?


• Work. Who are the "essential" people? What specifically do they do that makes them essential? Are they paid accordingly? What role do you as a consumer have in all that? Should you pay a little for meat from your local butcher, or produce from your local grower, before supporting the factory-farm supply chain that coerces people back to dangerous, low-paying jobs? Do we want to "restore" the vaunted American manufacturing base? Well, here's the deal with that:  it cannot happen to scale unless and until we decouple health care access from employment status. That's all there is to it. Next time you're watching your friendly corporate or cable "news" broadcast, no matter which channel, no matter what time of day, watch it for at least a half-hour or an hour, and count how many health care commercials you see. I bet you didn't even notice until you started taking count.


• Money -- more specifically, wealth inequality. I've used this analogy many times before -- think of the economy as a massive circulatory system, and money is the blood. If you get too much concentrated in a single area, what happens to the body? Why did our elected representatives shovel trillions of dollars at people who were already obscenely wealthy, and will just hoard the money? They literally could have given every household $31k (based on a low-ball estimate of $4 trillion in economic assistance so far), and that money would have poured directly into the real economy. Shit, you could have picked four million people at random and given each of them $1M, as opposed to the equally arbitrary tactic of handing money to people who already had millions or billions. We have been bamboozled to believe that the Dow and the GDP are accurate barometers of the economy. They are not -- they are betting predictors for a handful of whales at the NYSE casino, where the house always wins, and if the shit blows up, well, Joe Sixpack will be forced to help them keep their extra vacation homes. In return, Joe gets his shitty health plan whittled away, and his pension fund ripped off. Same as it ever was.

It's easy to say that the idiots have dragged us all down with their nonsense, and certainly they have, but this has been a long time coming, and from many angles. The bestiary of American idiots is large and varied, from the coal-rolling shock troops heading into the cities (outside agitators) in the hopes of escalating violence and mayhem, to the hapless good-governance liberal dupe who still believes in institutional integrity and the rightness of their principles.

If this country had anything resembling moral leaders or a collective conscience, they would have been calling for Trump's resignation months ago. Instead you have a seedy subculture of hackcess journos pretending to protect the sanctity of the republic with their court stenography, working at the behest of publishers and editors-in-chief who are there explicitly to protect their own role as elite gatekeeper media -- that is, elites talking to each other, and thus setting the tone for "general discourse," but really just trying to make a horserace out of a corrupted process, in order to -- wait for it -- sell you more boner pills and big ol' trucks. Meanwhile, the "serious journos" hang on to the good stuff for their fucking books.

It's all slipping away, right in front of us, thanks to a deliberately engineered plutocratic insurgency decades in the making. The good news is, it's still up to you to some small extent, though this is almost certainly our last best chance to salvage what's left and try to start putting things back together. Ignore the polls, and the vicious, corrupt machinery that churns them out. Ignore the media's cynical spins and gutless hot takes. Remember that if your vote didn't matter, they wouldn't be trying so hard to cheat you out of it.

But you have to show every goddamned time, not just on Super Bowl Sunday. Everything from dog-catcher on up matters. That's how the fuckers got in charge at every level, because they took it seriously. Being a citizen is a job, and if you fail to show up or pay attention or take the right action at the right time, someone else will be more than happy to make those decisions for you.

No more excuses. Put up or shut up; fuck or walk. Make sure you can vote, and then bloody well do it, every time. You wanna make good trouble, that's the best kind.

Epistemic Closure

There's an interesting juxtaposition to be observed between these two articles:  one in the Wall Street Journal, the other in Counterpunch (not that I read Counterpunch, but this turned out to be a somewhat noteworthy one to stumble across).

It takes a tedious corporate appendage like the WSJ to grant op-ed time to an asshole who doesn't even have the good graces to be ashamed of himself for insisting that he "deserves" an exemption from the tariffs he supports. Fuck that guy, and fuck his employees. I don't what kinds of drugs you have to take to even start growing balls that fucking huge, but there are probably side effects. They got what they voted for. I don't see what the problem is.

As for the rural Ohioans caught up in the "shit-life syndrome," as it were, gee I wish I knew what to to tell you, folks. There are a lot of things wrong in this country, but two consistent verities are:  one, public education is not only free but mandatory, twelve years' worth, in fact; two, even dying shit-hole towns have free public libraries.

Get this -- you can walk in, pick out a book that contains information about something that interests you -- maybe even info that increases your skill set and enhances your employability -- and take it home for a couple weeks and read the motherfucker. You can do that over and over again, as many times as you like. Imagine that.

Those things are free, it should be reiterated. There is also, I'm told, a ton of free info on just about any subject you can think of, on this thing called The Internet. Turns out it's not just for jerking off and playing online slots, there are other uses for this not free but relatively inexpensive entity. Who knew?

Look, I do have some compassion for these people. They are definitely in a bad way. The problems in these small towns get compounded because almost all the smart kids who don't have family businesses to inherit get the fuck out of there as quickly as possible. They head off to college and they never look back. That leaves a serious imbalance of intelligence and talent. So the same handful of relatively successful people in the town just run things for themselves for generations, the losers keep losing, and the vicious cycle gets perpetuated.

This passage is something else, though:

I talked to Trump voters in 2016, and many of them felt that Trump was not a nice person, even a jerk, but their fantasy was that he was one of those rich guys with a big ego who needed to be a hero. Progressives who merely mock this way of thinking rather than create a strategy to deal with it are going to get four more years of Trump.

So let me see if we have this straight -- you make the time to stay informed and engaged on the issues and the candidates, you give a shit about something other than what's right in front of your nose and benefits you, and this is your reward? Being warned over and over again by these fucking op-ed writers that now you must pay attention to the special needs of the opioid-soaked denizens of Slapdick, Ohio? Cater to their goddamned fantasies?

My English is not so good, so let me be certain to phrase this correctly:  Fuck. You. Oh, and fuck them, too. Fuck them especially. You want another four years of winning, have at it, guys. I am not going to read the cultural tea leaves to search for which putatively Democratic candidate has just the right amount of "unconventional" voodoo to placate the fist-shaking codgers of the haunted diners of Pennsyltucky.

It is everyone's job as citizens of a free republic (hurrr) to pay attention and vote accordingly. It is expressly not our job to find a better brand of pro-wrestling kayfabe, in order to soothe the jangled nerves of hapless morons who couldn't be bothered to do the most basic elements of their jobs as citizens. They hate welfare until it's their dipshit kid getting it. They complain about immigrants, even as they need them to build their houses, kill their chickens, clean their hotel rooms, muck out the dairies. Who the fuck do they think is doing all that scut work for them, the fucking Keebler elves?

Again, we're all beyond tired of seeing and hearing this ridonkulous, braying jackass sucking out every molecule of oxygen left in the public life of this dying dinosaur of a nation. I'm pretty sure both of my middle fingers are permanently sprained from flipping off my teevee and computer screens scores of times daily.

The Counterpunch guy is right that one would think that a party supposedly in the pocket of the Hollyweird creative claque would do at least an adequate job of conveying a quick, effective message that maybe, just maybe, the Lyin' King doesn't follow through on his "promises," that they've been suckered yet again, and that maybe the least they could do for their country is either grow the fuck up or just stay home on election day.

But that day is still ten months away, and Dear Leader has provided plenty of fodder for mashups and compilations. Whether our wondrous corporate media will get their shit together as well remains to be seen. Maybe they could start figuring out what their job is, and do it already. I don't think any of us are holding our breath.

The two articles, coming from opposite ends of the economic spectrum, strike similar chords. And the correct response to each is the same:  This is what you wanted. He told you he was going to do all these things, and he's doing them. He's not sneaking anything in on you, he was quite open and upfront about all of this. If you're tired of all the winning, then take that into the voting booth with you. Otherwise, kindly go fuck yourselves. This is what you wanted. This is what you get.

These people seem to think that threatening the rest of us with four more years of Dear Leader is more of a threat to us than it is to them. And while four more years of this destructive, mendacious behavior will no doubt accelerate the fall of the empire, and expose many more millions here and around the world to grievous harm from war, climate change, environmental depredation, disease, and deaths from despair, the fact of the matter is that these people are cutting their own throats, not ours.

(Demographically speaking. I am well aware that there are plenty of folks on the edge who showed up and voted for Butter Emails, and are getting shafted. That sucks. But we are talking in the statistical aggregate here.)

They're the ones who are going to suffer the most, and the idea that we're supposed to stand there with sorrowful, empathetic looks and plead with them, No, please don't! is just too much. I don't want them to keep killing themselves, mind you, but I simply don't have the time or inclination to keep futilely trying to talk them out of their tree. For one, I don't negotiate at gunpoint, which is what these quasi-journalistic plaints and threats feels like after a while. I've never done it in real life, and I'm not about to start in the political abstract. That way lies failure and frustration.

But more importantly, the fact of the matter is that the gun is not really pointed at my head to begin with. They're pointing it at themselves, saying Stop or I'll shoot!. Well, okay then, don't let me stop you, hoss. Reminds me of that old Polack joke where the guy comes home and finds his wife in bed with another man. Distraught, ol' Stan grabs a gun from the drawer and holds it to his own head. The wife starts laughing. Stan says, Don't laugh, bitch, you're next!

Look. When in doubt, always keep this in mind:  there are 325 million people in this country. Some of them are idiots. Some of them are assholes. Some are both. That is not a political observation, just the law of averages. Also, as George Carlin said, consider the average American, and remember that by the definition of that word, half of 'em aren't even that smart.

There are never any demands made of them to get their shit together and fly right. It's always, always put upon the people who actually pay attention and give a shit, to compromise and make the supposed move toward the middle, while they get to take yet another step back away, so you have to keep trying to meet them in the new middle.

It's a ridiculously transparent tactic, and I don't know why people keep falling for it. It's bullshit, pure and simple. Maybe they need the old "Lucy with the football" graphic to get the fucking picture already. Or maybe, per Upton Sinclair, they get paid to not understand how it really is.

These constant entreaties to dumb yourself down to their level, to do something stupid or self-destructive to make them feel better about their own stupidity and self-destructiveness -- I have no interest in any of it, any more than I care about people who were stupid enough to get rolled by something as preposterous as "Trump University."

You know? Maybe they need to stop being fucking morons. Maybe life has to snap one off in their asses before they get the message. Maybe they still don't get the message, even after the fact. I don't know what to tell them. I do know that I am going to do everything I can to insulate my own life from the consequences of bad decisions made by dumb, toxic people.

Maybe that's really all any of us can do in the end. I'm not going house-to-house, like some goddamned Jehovah's Witness, trying to convince my neighbors to register to vote and do their damned job as citizens. Life's too short to wipe everyone's ass for them. If they can't be bothered, then I have better things to do, and I'm going to spend that time reinforcing my own ability to withstand their repulsive indifference.

It's a cheap parlor trick designed to look like cogent political strategy, this idea that we have to placate "real 'murkins" in order to win. It is a terrible lie built on an obvious fallacy. It is the attempt to commodify magical thinking and pig-blind stubbornness, things that by their nature cannot be predicted or controlled. This is all because the plutocrats and oligarchs who are gleefully wrecking this country cannot be persuaded to part with even a couple percent off their ill-gotten pelf, for the betterment of the country whose systems and institutions have benefited them enormously.

That's your real problem, right there, not trying to figure out how to second-guess the Cletus vote. The sooner these dopey scriveners get wise to that and get on the same virtual page, the better chance we'll have of getting through this more or less intact. As always, don't count on it.

All Your Base Are Belong to Lulz

The big debate amongst Dems, libs, pwoggies and such like, is how hard the Democratic Party should "reach out" to the white working class (aka WWC, which fittingly sounds like a discount pro-wrestling organization) voter, who obviously went deep into the Clownstick pocket. It's a dilemma whether to "write them off" or "bring them aboard" with the proviso that tolerance is a requirement; in other words, for most it is not really an option to dismiss issues revolving around LGBTQ rights or Muslim bans or what have you.

It's a fair discussion to have, and in fact such dialogues should be had by all factions of all parties on basically a continuous basis. Ideally, that's how you arrive at improvement.

But I wouldn't expend to much energy in trying to win the deplorables over. Take a look at the folks who attended the pro-Clownstick "rally" (there were apparently somewhere between ten and fifty people there, so....) in Jefferson City, MiseryMissouri. Tell me which ones you think are remotely open to being swayed. They were playing The Ballad of the Green Berets while they waddled around the plaza, for fuck's sake.

I mean, think about it. These are obviously people who eke their way through life on a pittance, and here they are voluntarily showing their heartfelt support for a spoiled hectomillionaire who's in hock to the Russian mob and using the office as a profit center for his deals with the Chinese, who wouldn't piss on their heads if they were on fire. Clownstick doesn't give two shits about them, or anyone else besides himself. If they've paid any attention at all to his life history before the scampaign infomercial-rally bullshit, they know this already, whether they admit it or not.

This doesn't mean completely write them off, but it also doesn't mean the Dems should expend too much effort chasing after them. The phrase "come correct" comes to mind, that if Dems approach these folks with respect and understanding, they might get an audience. But it might also be political version of Winter's Bone, where people are the way they are, because that's how they've always been, and they're not interested in learning or changing much of anything.

Despite the innate skepticism many on the left have about the "economic anxiety" bloc, many of the Clownstickers are economically anxious, and in any case, what they really want is to see and hear that more attention is being paid to those issues than to transgendered bathroom use or whatever social justice cause is making the rounds.

This is not to minimize those things at all, but it is a call to look at the aggregate numbers realistically and play the odds accordingly. And the real numbers are in motivating non-voters to get out and vote, but it wouldn't hurt to at least cast a glance in the direction of the deplorables and see if they'll at least listen for two seconds. But it's an uphill struggle convincing low-info voters. Obviously they care very little about empirical facts as much as they need to feel that you will walk your talk.

I sincerely believe that if an agenda of economic justice for all is pursued, the social justice issues will fall into place much more easily. People who have a little more discretionary income and hope for the future do not have time to fixate on who's using which bathroom. And the Democrats are in a fine position to test that theory.

Crybaby

Yes, how dare the media report exactly what I said verbatim -- it's not fair! Waaahhhhh!

Fuck this incompetent motherfucker, and his moron cult followers. It would be poetic justice if the media simply took him at his word, and just stopped covering him altogether, but obviously that's too much to ask. They need him for clickbait as badly as he needs them for a punching bag at his rallies.

You'd think at the very least the reporters would get tired of being penned at the rallies like animals, to endure Drumpf's Two Minutes of Hate and the inevitable spectacle afterward of halfwits waddling by to scream "traitor!" at them and flip them off.

There's still time for these fools to rediscover their personal dignity, and just say fuck it and not go anymore. What might that be like, if the media pen was completely empty? He's going to make shit up and say what he wants to say anyway, but Il Douche is a parasite at heart, with unearned attention and adulation the lifeblood.

Easy Virtue

What Strix said. One of the more confounding sub-phenomena of this benighted year so far is how "transgendered restrooms" became this hill to die on for both diehard socialcons and equally diehard pwoggies. There simply cannot, even in a nation of 320 million people, be that many individuals, be they drag queens or just casual takers of dumps, who are affected by this is any meaningful way.

More to the point, why is it this issue that becomes the cause for Springsteen, Maroon 5, the NBA, et al, to exert economic coercion over a cultural backwater like, say, North Carolina? This is not a terribly meaty ankle; why the sudden communal urge to bite it? Most of these southern shitholes are far worse when it comes to reproductive rights, environmental protection, health care -- you know, things that actually affect more than .01 percent of the population, or whatever the sub-niche is that consists of transgender and cross-dressers.

Don't get me wrong; I support the cause and all. If I'm draining the weasel at Costco and some dude in a dress walks in and uses the urinal next to me, I couldn't care less, so long as they keep to themselves, just like any other user of the public skunk-works. But I can't help but wonder what it would be like if the celebrity boycotters went after something slightly more universally applicable, and I can't help but feel that this is the sort of nonsense that SJWs are particularly adept at ginning up.