I Just Gave $50 to Ilhan Omar for Congress and Life Among the Latte-Sippers
Got too annoyed with the antisemitism smear: threw her two and a half Benjamins. Throw her something; she’s almost all alone out there. Left her a voicemail, too—figured she’d appreciate a message of support from a J-O-O.
Dan Cohen, journalist, attended AIPAC. OK, so the number of mentions of Omar way outstripped the handful of that actual antisemitic lunatic who killed whole buncha Jews last year, and the majority of that handful of mentions were apparently to equate that maniac with Omar. But I’m the self-hater. I see.
(“OMG, he just posted something from RT! Connect the dots! We're through the looking glass, here, people!”—Rachel Maddow)
(“OMG, he just posted something from RT! Connect the dots! We're through the looking glass, here, people!”—Rachel Maddow)
Hey, you all know me: I’m still working on being a human being. Not advanced enough for these subcategorizations that people make such a fuss about. So, I’m Jewish in Jonathan Miller’s sense of it: normally, it plays no role, but when presented with either (1) an antisemite or (2) an unjust smear of anyone on earth as an antisemite or (3) some idiot claiming to speak for “all Jews,” I’m Jewish. And when center-right and far-right scumbags, donkeyish or elephantine, weaponize antisemitism to destroy progressives and progressive policies, which is what this is all about, I’m Jewy McJewJew.
Additionally, I’m unaccountably outraged when an event that turned half my mother’s family into lampshades and soot is perverted into a tawdry political weapon with which to attack people who want decent social programs and who are trying to save the species from autosuicide. Or to prop up the latest corrupt, far-right regime in Israel. Or to try to make me feel guilty (nice try) about not taking some quasi-fascist ethnonationalist line with “my [Chosen] people” against the dirty Araboushim. When the son of the PM of Israel retweets almost literal Nazi propaganda about (((Soros))) from some Hungarian Nazi prick or has dinner with Gorka, who may literally be a literal Nazi—but people like me are “helping antisemitism.”
Gee, I can’t imagine why that would upset anyone.
Gee, I can’t imagine why that would upset anyone.
I know: the Democrats are leading the charge against Omar. They’ve apparently decided to put all their political eggs in the McCarthyite smears basket.
Not surprising. What else do the Clintonistas have? A good policy record to run on? New ideas? A believable mea culpa, like Brad DeLong’s recent one? A record of recent electoral success? Of anti-Trump strategy and messaging? Gee, Russiagate worked out well, right?
Pray, where is the success promised by these Masters of the Universe, these Adults in the Room, these Hamptons-Vineyard-traipsing, C-level-exec-fellating, windsurf-with-Branson-vacationing, always-triangulating, Republican-lite-and-corporate-money-addicted paragons of political acumen who, alone, have protected the party from the abject failure that would surely emanate from adopting cross-party majoritarian policies and getting behind the single most popular politician in the country, the one who is clearly the choice for the current populist moment even if all you want to do is “just win,” as we’re constantly told these Ivy League, Big-Data-Crunching, Political Sophisticates want to do—above all and to the exclusion of any policy? (Except, of course, any actual Democratic policy.)
Pray, where is the success promised by these Masters of the Universe, these Adults in the Room, these Hamptons-Vineyard-traipsing, C-level-exec-fellating, windsurf-with-Branson-vacationing, always-triangulating, Republican-lite-and-corporate-money-addicted paragons of political acumen who, alone, have protected the party from the abject failure that would surely emanate from adopting cross-party majoritarian policies and getting behind the single most popular politician in the country, the one who is clearly the choice for the current populist moment even if all you want to do is “just win,” as we’re constantly told these Ivy League, Big-Data-Crunching, Political Sophisticates want to do—above all and to the exclusion of any policy? (Except, of course, any actual Democratic policy.)
Don’t get me wrong, if the neoliberal loser wing elevates Beto or his equivalent, I’ll support him against Trump, even though he (she; whoever) would simply be the gain-no-ground, centrist interregnum between Trump and someone smarter, more controlled, and worse. Very likely, especially as the ecosystem continues to tank—which is fascismogenic for reasons too obvious to lay out.
Till then, and only in that specific, lesser-evil-voting, political-triage sense, I’m all in with the prog wing.
Oddly enough—and try this at home, please!—I have literally gotten only two people I know who are non-Sanders Democrats to agree with the following statement, no qualifications: “No matter who the Dem nom is, I will fight like a dog for him or her against Trump.” I can’t get any assent on that from Clintonistas. I say, “Dude: Sanders wins the nom. It’s entirely possible. Do you work hard for him to defeat Trump and for the party, as you told us all to do in 2016, and the vast majority of us did?”
Response:
Let’s hope it’s just because people don’t feel the need to tell lil ol me, which is fine. Other possibilities are not good: Sanders is viciously hated on a level approaching the Russiagate hysteria—he was even beginning to be tarred with the Russophobia brush himself: Putin helped his campaign, etc.
And for the same reasons: Hillary’s Willing Elocutioners have so erased the line between themselves and their Dear Leader of the Holy Resume, Ceiling-Shattering Avatar of the liberal-corporate climber and identity-politics leg-humper-über-alles, that they simply and unquestioningly absorb and then echo the PR handed down to them, the ass-covering PR of the ten thousand or so operatives that helped HRC run the worst campaign in anyone’s memory on top of the decades-long failure of the Always-Triangulate Clintonista mode.
Well, dang—what else can you think when all you read is the NYT and WaPo, and all you watch is CNN and MSNBC?
But neither millstone of history, proximate electoral failure or long-standing policy failure, can be admitted; the only possibility is to find a scapegoat—that is, launch a conspiracy theory—because if HRC’s fans ever actually caught on to how they've been duped, that’d literally be the end of the “centrist” wing of the party. Ergo, turn the PR up to 11 to keep “brand loyalty.” Reduce cognitive dissonance with hysterical jeremiads against Omar, for example. Screw the country, screw the species, screw the party, even—bring the whole temple down because ten thousand scumbag consultant lobbyists, most of whom aren’t even very good at even the PR-bullshit side of politics, don’t want to be forced to spend some of their millions while finding a new gig.
Your heart just automatically goes out to them, doesn't it?
(But I'm the bad Democrat, the bad American, the bad person. I see.
Actually, it's not hard to get; I'll walk you through it:
1. I want actual FDR/LBJ Democratic policies, so I'm a bad Democrat;
2. I want to avoid nuclear war with Russia, so I want better relations, so I'm a bad American; and
3. I want to immediately institute a serious American wing of a global Green New Deal to give us half a chance of not going globally totalitarian or even extinct as the ecosystem gets increasingly fucked, so I'm a bad person.
Not hard to follow that, right? Unfortunately, the joke is this isn't all that exaggerated a joke.)
Let’s hope it’s just because people don’t feel the need to tell lil ol me, which is fine. Other possibilities are not good: Sanders is viciously hated on a level approaching the Russiagate hysteria—he was even beginning to be tarred with the Russophobia brush himself: Putin helped his campaign, etc.
And for the same reasons: Hillary’s Willing Elocutioners have so erased the line between themselves and their Dear Leader of the Holy Resume, Ceiling-Shattering Avatar of the liberal-corporate climber and identity-politics leg-humper-über-alles, that they simply and unquestioningly absorb and then echo the PR handed down to them, the ass-covering PR of the ten thousand or so operatives that helped HRC run the worst campaign in anyone’s memory on top of the decades-long failure of the Always-Triangulate Clintonista mode.
Well, dang—what else can you think when all you read is the NYT and WaPo, and all you watch is CNN and MSNBC?
But neither millstone of history, proximate electoral failure or long-standing policy failure, can be admitted; the only possibility is to find a scapegoat—that is, launch a conspiracy theory—because if HRC’s fans ever actually caught on to how they've been duped, that’d literally be the end of the “centrist” wing of the party. Ergo, turn the PR up to 11 to keep “brand loyalty.” Reduce cognitive dissonance with hysterical jeremiads against Omar, for example. Screw the country, screw the species, screw the party, even—bring the whole temple down because ten thousand scumbag consultant lobbyists, most of whom aren’t even very good at even the PR-bullshit side of politics, don’t want to be forced to spend some of their millions while finding a new gig.
Your heart just automatically goes out to them, doesn't it?
(But I'm the bad Democrat, the bad American, the bad person. I see.
Actually, it's not hard to get; I'll walk you through it:
1. I want actual FDR/LBJ Democratic policies, so I'm a bad Democrat;
2. I want to avoid nuclear war with Russia, so I want better relations, so I'm a bad American; and
3. I want to immediately institute a serious American wing of a global Green New Deal to give us half a chance of not going globally totalitarian or even extinct as the ecosystem gets increasingly fucked, so I'm a bad person.
Not hard to follow that, right? Unfortunately, the joke is this isn't all that exaggerated a joke.)
And yet, the obviously-ass-covering bullshit is, by the way, working—and on people who are extremely well-educated. That might actually be the problem; you don’t just get a good education at latte-sippin' schools, after all. Much unconscious conditioning—as in any subculture. Nothing special.
Example: A question I've never had answered, at all, by an Incrementalist:
Even given how “incremental” versus “fast” is somewhat relative, how, exactly, can we increment our way out of climate disaster, species loss, and so on? How, exactly, is a slow and steady approach correct? You're not a global warming denier; you get science and respect it, and surely you're not against the fact that well-off people like you and me will rightly fund this via taxes disproportionately/progressively...so...I'll wait.
Response:
Example: A question I've never had answered, at all, by an Incrementalist:
Even given how “incremental” versus “fast” is somewhat relative, how, exactly, can we increment our way out of climate disaster, species loss, and so on? How, exactly, is a slow and steady approach correct? You're not a global warming denier; you get science and respect it, and surely you're not against the fact that well-off people like you and me will rightly fund this via taxes disproportionately/progressively...so...I'll wait.
Response:
By the way, Dear Readers, if Sanders’ campaign flags, and any other prog’s surges, I dump Sanders and jump on that. He’s not my “friend.” He doesn’t make me “feel good about myself.” He’s smart, on point, and a great politician, as well as having a sane platform, warts and all. But he's not my Daddy, he's not my Dear Leader, and, best of all, by all evidence, he doesn't want to be.
Have you ever seen a politician stop a massive crowd chanting his name during a campaign event—and do so almost angrily—in order to correct them, to educate them in that moment when the holy grail of thought leadership and brand loyalty has been achieved, that it's about all of us, together, or we have no chance? I don't mean lip-service horseshit, either.
Correct: you've never seen it, just as you've never seen a politician not only refuse to use a weapon like Hillary's emails in a debate but also, while in a debate during a brutal campaign, voluntarily and unilaterally disarm by laying down the loaded gun.
“I'm sick and tired of hearing about Hillary's damn emails.”
“Thank you, Bernie.”
Correct: you've never seen it. But he didn't work hard enough for HRC and undermined her.
Well, when you're the equivalent of a Stalinist—or even just a voluntarily self-infantilizing instantiation of a teenaged fan of, say, Leonardo di Caprio—you don't really care much about facts or logic. It's about love, which is, we're told (wrongly), blind.
Not, hilariously if unsurprisingly, love-of-another. It's not Hillary- (or Trump-, or Bernie-, or anyone-) love, really. It's reflected self-love, plus, as Vidal put it, “glory reflected” from the Popular, Powerful Celebrity...who's just like me! It's narcissism...and that's why it's so hard to dislodge. It's not loyalty to Hillary that prevents reflection; it's loyalty to their own egos, their own unquestioned, even unacknowledged, belief in their own unassailable superiority, in all dimensions, to the fucking retarded professional left. I mean, the narcissistic-rage-potential is sky high, and we see it deployed nonstop. Right now, the lightning rod of Russiagate is gone, mostly/sorta. What will take its place? Honest and courageous reflection? Or the search for another scapegoat? Maddow herself, entirely un-uniquely, has built her following the same way: PR bullshit branding corporate garbage. Why stop now? Could she stop now even if she wanted to? Glenn Beck tried that. Worked out well, right?
(The best joke of it all is that the very people who obviously operate on this post-rational plane of nonstop PR-propaganda garbage—junk politics, whatever you want to call it—are the ones who are entirely certain that the assumed-inferior fools in flyover land, who must be dumb as they live in the wrong zip codes, have no interest in policy and just want to operate on this post-rational plane of nonstop PR-propaganda garbage. How's that for a nearly hermetically sealed mental environment? Projection, much?—when it's not utterly conscious business development, mind you. We'd consider Clintonistas to be a cult were it only smaller. Yes, this crap happens on “my side,” too; yes, I bash it just as hard. Examples: deplatforming, “trigger warnings” and safe spaces. And more besides.)
So, these Hillbots should have more empathy for flyover types who have blindly accepted the story that, for example, Christianity now entails denial of global warming. I can't find a difference; can you? In both cases, people's Holy Identities are manipulated to maintain power systems, whether the Republicans or the Democrats, that couldn't give a warm bucket of shit in the middle of town square right after church on Christmas Day about the people it manipulates into support, the people in whom they manufacture consent. But the PR sticks, good and tight, because most people don't have the fucking gonads (or time, or political education, etc.) to look in the mirror and say, “Yeah, that little voice I keep trying to ignore has a point: I think I got punked, which is to say, I punked myself. I shall go and sin no more.” No, as with their Dear Leader, it's far better to n-tuple down, no matter what the cost—to, literally, their own children's lives. Literally. They're the ones who are going to pay, and that's if you don't give a damn about anyone else but you and yours.
To return to actual politics from the dupe-o-genic fever-dream of bespoke-product-shopping/political-consumerism that hard-headed pragmatists encourage, Sanders does actually have a serious movement behind him which is what it’ll take to have a chance of actually getting the necessary programs through, warped as they will inevitably be by the process. Activists in all fifty states and all congressional districts, organized, trained, honed, and ready to go.
How's that for fucking “pragmatic?” The Obama Army, but for deployment in order to get progressive policies through as completely as possible, not for unilateral disarmament, which showed anyone with two working neurons what Obama's priorities actually were. Remember that the Tea Party was thrown together in a panic by Republicans terrified at the prospect of Obama's Army...until Obama surrendered before the first shot was fired.
This is the kind of political genius we need more of? (If the Army stand-down wasn't intentional disarmament to prevent progressive policies from getting through, which is not just my view.)
Who other than Bernie has an infrastructure, a plan, that is aimed at getting a slew of policies through as completely as possible? How many Democratic voters even think about such things?
Excepting, of course, when they rebleat the latest neoliberal version of: “There's no fucking way anything we [read: “you”] really want will ever pass, so don't try. And when you're not triangulating, which means adopting Republican policies to stay in power (maybe, while doing the other party's mostly-bidding), and you have to do something, if only for appearance's and the base's sake, always ask for nothing right up front, and then be ready to climb down from that, as everyone knows that's how you negotiate. Once you've surrendered, sit back and hope The Party of No will come give you a present out of the goodness of their hearts.” That, they're good at. For some odd reason.
Among the Latte-Sippers (lotus-eaters?) I hear far too much of: “I so scareds of Trump, me can't think; me vote for whoever they tell me; cuz I so scareded of hims!” [Wrings hands.]
These are the rock-solid, never-panic, hard-headed, yada yada types, mind you, not limp-wristed, weak, leftist-utopian fools like me. Who don't get how it all works.
I constantly hear language like, “I like Beto” or “I like X” or “I like Y.” Why? Charisma. Like-ability. Etc.
It's like this:
Typical Prog-hating Democrat: I want the pink one, mommy! No, wait—the blue one, the blue one!
Prog [Overhearing; interjecting.]: But neither product will actually give you what you claim you want, as opposed to this one over here...sorry, don't recall the color, but here are the specs, and, given the functionalities you clearly need—
Typical Prog-hating Democrat: DON'T CONFUSE ME, YOU HATE-FILLED HATER WHO HATES! I SEED HOW YOU HATED POOR, WEAK, DEFENSELESS HILLARY LIKE A HATER, YOU HATER! NOW YOU LIKE ANTISEMITES, TOO! WHAT, BEING A RACIST, SEXIST, MISOGYNIST WASN'T ENOUGH EVIL HATE FOR AN EVIL HATER LIKE YOU, EVIL HATER? [Turns to DCCC, MSNBC, CNN.] MOMMY—I WANTS A BETO DOLL CUZ HE SO DREAMY I LOVES HIMS! HE WILL MAKE ALL BETTER AND GIVE ME COOKIES AND MILKS JUST LIKE SAINT PEACE PRIZE OF THE DIMPLES DID. GEE, I HOPE HIS T-SHIRTS ARE AS COOL. WILL BANKSY MAKE THEM?
“Mommy”: Very good job, my precious little angel! Way to empower yourself by shutting down the hater! They are so uncivil, aren't they?
Well, after all, they just need to hate people like you who dared to believe in a place called Hope, who then had the mindful faith to believe that Hope and Change would automatically emanate from An Unlikely Story With a Funny Name, possibly via the Big Ears, and who also understood that, regardless of any other considerations whatsoever, Saint Hillary of the Holy Resumé (PBUH) was right when she leaned in and declared that it was Her Turn—and damn her massive unpopularity! Anything but utter fealty to Her Turn, which all but closeted misogynists would instantly and unquestioningly adopt, was, as you knew almost instinctively, selfish if not also sexist. It was her fucking turn, after all! That's how democracy works!
Here's even more evidence of how we can count on you to take our outstretched hand and walk together through this adventure. You never even considered worrying about how the very slogan itself was designed to annoy the hell out of the right. Her turn? What, affirmative action for the presidency? For real? You properly saw that it didn't matter that Obama pointedly refused to draw much attention to his non white male-dom when he ran, as that was, you know, sorta obvious without having to draw attention, himself, to it. You get the benefits for free if you shut up about it, and you avoid the extra added derision you'll get, for free, in direct proportion to how much you make it define your candidacy.
I mean, we barely had to try to cover that up from you guys, who I love so much, because we knew that like any good battered spouse who stays in a relationship out of fear, you'd be there to cover up the marks. You don't even need to be told anymore.
When I talk to folks like you, hot sauce in one hand and a beer in the other, just like regular folk, I realize you have the kind of positive-thinking, mindful faith and unquestioning, submissive loyalty we need to properly re-energize the Democratic Party, to continue to coauthor this amazing and incredible journey of nonstop success we've been on, together, since the 1970s. By going right, we've become the 1970s Republican Party, necessarily forcing that party further to the right, when they don't, as they finally did with Trump, fake left in the campaign, triangulating the triangulators, and then govern far-right.
We're almost there; our work is almost done. We know you won't quit on us now, not after everything we've been through together on this journey of hope and change.
And, folks, that's why I'm so super-excited and feel so blessed to be able to say that I just know you'll love the incredible new iCandidate we're rolling out, even though we've only released the Beto version, but which nonetheless has super-awesome, incredibly useful apps preinstalled!
OMG, like, you totally won't believe how they life-hack politics, disrupting it for a new generation! Like, “Bipartisanship,” “Auto-surrender” and “C'mon, Oil's Still Kinda Cool: Just Look At My Rolled-Up Sleeves, Plus I Was in a Punk Band.” After all, we wouldn't want to be too strident or uncivil, God knows, about trying to prevent the end of civilization or possibly even the species itself. Only another cool, tolerant, bipartisan, across-the aisle-reacher, and this one a super-cool former punk rocker who even got a DUI—we're so cool!; don't you want to be cool like us and finally be a part of the in-crowd's it-candidate's campaign?—knows that it's always cool to embrace all kinds of diversity, so that, together, while being cool and embracing diversity, we can all continue to succeed in a way cost-free to anyone.
So, I just want to thank you all for your decades-long, well-rewarded service, especially you in the labor movement. We've fought for you tooth and nail for half a century, but that's not enough: I want to leave you particularly with my thoughts and prayers.
But, getting back to the real heart of the party, it's educated professionals like you who make it all happen and who make it all worthwhile...[Sniffs.] I'm sorry, I'm getting a little emotional...there's a lot of love in this room, despite the one cynical Bro we tased and removed, just like in the old days, under Kerry, when you could get rough with people at rallies....
And so on.
I hear a lot of “kill all primaries,” too. Seriously; I’ve heard it a lot—and only from my little subsegment: well-educated, well-off liberals (I’m to the left of that, of course; but that's my original segment, as it were). Against all evidence: how many Republicans ran in 2016? How vicious was the primary? Who won the general?
Correct, but mere facts don’t penetrate through the Wall of Kale. And kale, apparently, causes a distaste for democracy. I literally know a C-level exec here in Rhode Island who told me that she was against primaries, against democracy, and that the party should just select the nominee. Period. Because she'd been to some state's special election, I forget which, and was annoyed by the “messiness” of it. A seventy-something ex-hippie...but a C-level executive who, like most of us whatever we are, has one hammer and must make all a nail. I mean, why can't we run this “efficiently,” like a business, right? She hates Trump, of course...but isn't too far off from him in some ways, including in hating something called “regulation.” The similarities underneath the screaming shouldn't be at all surprising to anyone with even a passing familiarity with terms like “class,” but will be to the vast many addicted to the reality-TV version of reality they see on TV.
Have you ever seen a politician stop a massive crowd chanting his name during a campaign event—and do so almost angrily—in order to correct them, to educate them in that moment when the holy grail of thought leadership and brand loyalty has been achieved, that it's about all of us, together, or we have no chance? I don't mean lip-service horseshit, either.
Correct: you've never seen it, just as you've never seen a politician not only refuse to use a weapon like Hillary's emails in a debate but also, while in a debate during a brutal campaign, voluntarily and unilaterally disarm by laying down the loaded gun.
“I'm sick and tired of hearing about Hillary's damn emails.”
“Thank you, Bernie.”
Correct: you've never seen it. But he didn't work hard enough for HRC and undermined her.
Well, when you're the equivalent of a Stalinist—or even just a voluntarily self-infantilizing instantiation of a teenaged fan of, say, Leonardo di Caprio—you don't really care much about facts or logic. It's about love, which is, we're told (wrongly), blind.
Not, hilariously if unsurprisingly, love-of-another. It's not Hillary- (or Trump-, or Bernie-, or anyone-) love, really. It's reflected self-love, plus, as Vidal put it, “glory reflected” from the Popular, Powerful Celebrity...who's just like me! It's narcissism...and that's why it's so hard to dislodge. It's not loyalty to Hillary that prevents reflection; it's loyalty to their own egos, their own unquestioned, even unacknowledged, belief in their own unassailable superiority, in all dimensions, to the fucking retarded professional left. I mean, the narcissistic-rage-potential is sky high, and we see it deployed nonstop. Right now, the lightning rod of Russiagate is gone, mostly/sorta. What will take its place? Honest and courageous reflection? Or the search for another scapegoat? Maddow herself, entirely un-uniquely, has built her following the same way: PR bullshit branding corporate garbage. Why stop now? Could she stop now even if she wanted to? Glenn Beck tried that. Worked out well, right?
(The best joke of it all is that the very people who obviously operate on this post-rational plane of nonstop PR-propaganda garbage—junk politics, whatever you want to call it—are the ones who are entirely certain that the assumed-inferior fools in flyover land, who must be dumb as they live in the wrong zip codes, have no interest in policy and just want to operate on this post-rational plane of nonstop PR-propaganda garbage. How's that for a nearly hermetically sealed mental environment? Projection, much?—when it's not utterly conscious business development, mind you. We'd consider Clintonistas to be a cult were it only smaller. Yes, this crap happens on “my side,” too; yes, I bash it just as hard. Examples: deplatforming, “trigger warnings” and safe spaces. And more besides.)
So, these Hillbots should have more empathy for flyover types who have blindly accepted the story that, for example, Christianity now entails denial of global warming. I can't find a difference; can you? In both cases, people's Holy Identities are manipulated to maintain power systems, whether the Republicans or the Democrats, that couldn't give a warm bucket of shit in the middle of town square right after church on Christmas Day about the people it manipulates into support, the people in whom they manufacture consent. But the PR sticks, good and tight, because most people don't have the fucking gonads (or time, or political education, etc.) to look in the mirror and say, “Yeah, that little voice I keep trying to ignore has a point: I think I got punked, which is to say, I punked myself. I shall go and sin no more.” No, as with their Dear Leader, it's far better to n-tuple down, no matter what the cost—to, literally, their own children's lives. Literally. They're the ones who are going to pay, and that's if you don't give a damn about anyone else but you and yours.
To return to actual politics from the dupe-o-genic fever-dream of bespoke-product-shopping/political-consumerism that hard-headed pragmatists encourage, Sanders does actually have a serious movement behind him which is what it’ll take to have a chance of actually getting the necessary programs through, warped as they will inevitably be by the process. Activists in all fifty states and all congressional districts, organized, trained, honed, and ready to go.
How's that for fucking “pragmatic?” The Obama Army, but for deployment in order to get progressive policies through as completely as possible, not for unilateral disarmament, which showed anyone with two working neurons what Obama's priorities actually were. Remember that the Tea Party was thrown together in a panic by Republicans terrified at the prospect of Obama's Army...until Obama surrendered before the first shot was fired.
This is the kind of political genius we need more of? (If the Army stand-down wasn't intentional disarmament to prevent progressive policies from getting through, which is not just my view.)
Who other than Bernie has an infrastructure, a plan, that is aimed at getting a slew of policies through as completely as possible? How many Democratic voters even think about such things?
Excepting, of course, when they rebleat the latest neoliberal version of: “There's no fucking way anything we [read: “you”] really want will ever pass, so don't try. And when you're not triangulating, which means adopting Republican policies to stay in power (maybe, while doing the other party's mostly-bidding), and you have to do something, if only for appearance's and the base's sake, always ask for nothing right up front, and then be ready to climb down from that, as everyone knows that's how you negotiate. Once you've surrendered, sit back and hope The Party of No will come give you a present out of the goodness of their hearts.” That, they're good at. For some odd reason.
Among the Latte-Sippers (lotus-eaters?) I hear far too much of: “I so scareds of Trump, me can't think; me vote for whoever they tell me; cuz I so scareded of hims!” [Wrings hands.]
These are the rock-solid, never-panic, hard-headed, yada yada types, mind you, not limp-wristed, weak, leftist-utopian fools like me. Who don't get how it all works.
I constantly hear language like, “I like Beto” or “I like X” or “I like Y.” Why? Charisma. Like-ability. Etc.
It's like this:
Typical Prog-hating Democrat: I want the pink one, mommy! No, wait—the blue one, the blue one!
Prog [Overhearing; interjecting.]: But neither product will actually give you what you claim you want, as opposed to this one over here...sorry, don't recall the color, but here are the specs, and, given the functionalities you clearly need—
Typical Prog-hating Democrat: DON'T CONFUSE ME, YOU HATE-FILLED HATER WHO HATES! I SEED HOW YOU HATED POOR, WEAK, DEFENSELESS HILLARY LIKE A HATER, YOU HATER! NOW YOU LIKE ANTISEMITES, TOO! WHAT, BEING A RACIST, SEXIST, MISOGYNIST WASN'T ENOUGH EVIL HATE FOR AN EVIL HATER LIKE YOU, EVIL HATER? [Turns to DCCC, MSNBC, CNN.] MOMMY—I WANTS A BETO DOLL CUZ HE SO DREAMY I LOVES HIMS! HE WILL MAKE ALL BETTER AND GIVE ME COOKIES AND MILKS JUST LIKE SAINT PEACE PRIZE OF THE DIMPLES DID. GEE, I HOPE HIS T-SHIRTS ARE AS COOL. WILL BANKSY MAKE THEM?
“Mommy”: Very good job, my precious little angel! Way to empower yourself by shutting down the hater! They are so uncivil, aren't they?
Well, after all, they just need to hate people like you who dared to believe in a place called Hope, who then had the mindful faith to believe that Hope and Change would automatically emanate from An Unlikely Story With a Funny Name, possibly via the Big Ears, and who also understood that, regardless of any other considerations whatsoever, Saint Hillary of the Holy Resumé (PBUH) was right when she leaned in and declared that it was Her Turn—and damn her massive unpopularity! Anything but utter fealty to Her Turn, which all but closeted misogynists would instantly and unquestioningly adopt, was, as you knew almost instinctively, selfish if not also sexist. It was her fucking turn, after all! That's how democracy works!
Here's even more evidence of how we can count on you to take our outstretched hand and walk together through this adventure. You never even considered worrying about how the very slogan itself was designed to annoy the hell out of the right. Her turn? What, affirmative action for the presidency? For real? You properly saw that it didn't matter that Obama pointedly refused to draw much attention to his non white male-dom when he ran, as that was, you know, sorta obvious without having to draw attention, himself, to it. You get the benefits for free if you shut up about it, and you avoid the extra added derision you'll get, for free, in direct proportion to how much you make it define your candidacy.
I mean, we barely had to try to cover that up from you guys, who I love so much, because we knew that like any good battered spouse who stays in a relationship out of fear, you'd be there to cover up the marks. You don't even need to be told anymore.
When I talk to folks like you, hot sauce in one hand and a beer in the other, just like regular folk, I realize you have the kind of positive-thinking, mindful faith and unquestioning, submissive loyalty we need to properly re-energize the Democratic Party, to continue to coauthor this amazing and incredible journey of nonstop success we've been on, together, since the 1970s. By going right, we've become the 1970s Republican Party, necessarily forcing that party further to the right, when they don't, as they finally did with Trump, fake left in the campaign, triangulating the triangulators, and then govern far-right.
We're almost there; our work is almost done. We know you won't quit on us now, not after everything we've been through together on this journey of hope and change.
And, folks, that's why I'm so super-excited and feel so blessed to be able to say that I just know you'll love the incredible new iCandidate we're rolling out, even though we've only released the Beto version, but which nonetheless has super-awesome, incredibly useful apps preinstalled!
OMG, like, you totally won't believe how they life-hack politics, disrupting it for a new generation! Like, “Bipartisanship,” “Auto-surrender” and “C'mon, Oil's Still Kinda Cool: Just Look At My Rolled-Up Sleeves, Plus I Was in a Punk Band.” After all, we wouldn't want to be too strident or uncivil, God knows, about trying to prevent the end of civilization or possibly even the species itself. Only another cool, tolerant, bipartisan, across-the aisle-reacher, and this one a super-cool former punk rocker who even got a DUI—we're so cool!; don't you want to be cool like us and finally be a part of the in-crowd's it-candidate's campaign?—knows that it's always cool to embrace all kinds of diversity, so that, together, while being cool and embracing diversity, we can all continue to succeed in a way cost-free to anyone.
So, I just want to thank you all for your decades-long, well-rewarded service, especially you in the labor movement. We've fought for you tooth and nail for half a century, but that's not enough: I want to leave you particularly with my thoughts and prayers.
But, getting back to the real heart of the party, it's educated professionals like you who make it all happen and who make it all worthwhile...[Sniffs.] I'm sorry, I'm getting a little emotional...there's a lot of love in this room, despite the one cynical Bro we tased and removed, just like in the old days, under Kerry, when you could get rough with people at rallies....
And so on.
I hear a lot of “kill all primaries,” too. Seriously; I’ve heard it a lot—and only from my little subsegment: well-educated, well-off liberals (I’m to the left of that, of course; but that's my original segment, as it were). Against all evidence: how many Republicans ran in 2016? How vicious was the primary? Who won the general?
Correct, but mere facts don’t penetrate through the Wall of Kale. And kale, apparently, causes a distaste for democracy. I literally know a C-level exec here in Rhode Island who told me that she was against primaries, against democracy, and that the party should just select the nominee. Period. Because she'd been to some state's special election, I forget which, and was annoyed by the “messiness” of it. A seventy-something ex-hippie...but a C-level executive who, like most of us whatever we are, has one hammer and must make all a nail. I mean, why can't we run this “efficiently,” like a business, right? She hates Trump, of course...but isn't too far off from him in some ways, including in hating something called “regulation.” The similarities underneath the screaming shouldn't be at all surprising to anyone with even a passing familiarity with terms like “class,” but will be to the vast many addicted to the reality-TV version of reality they see on TV.
This is a man who just said he was born to run for president. Not to be president, to get x, y, and z done for reasons l, m, and n. How fucking boring is that? No, to run for president.
This is post-politics. If forced to, I'll support him or his equivalent. Till I have to, I won't.
Plus, all evidence thus far shows that Beto has far less smarts and oratorical skill than Obama, and far less smarts (at least in the policy sense, agree or not with her) than Hillary. What he apparently does have is a lot of the same base of self-neutered latte-sippers who are so hard-headed and pragmatically practical about their practical, hard-headed pragmatism that they, like Pelosi, scorn attempts like the Green New Deal which are intended to try to, and if properly implemented would, save the fucking country, planet, and species.
The subtle political wizards running the n-dimensional chess game that mere mortals' cannot even begin to opine upon—just sit over there, send a check, and shut the fuck up while the Adults handle it, unless of course your check is big—generally agree that it was right to destroy the Democratic Party in order to save it, no matter what massive, probably determinative, role that had in the inevitable rise of someone like Trump. Since latte-sippers live in up in the clouds, free from ancient, retarded biases like attending to the material and institutional conditions underlying political rhetoric and actual actions, they may not even realize how they helped bring about Trump. After all, pundits exist to thought-lead them into believing that something called “Whiteness” floated down, just all of a sudden and for no discernible reason other than Obama-hatred (some truth to that, but far from all), from the Platonic overworld, where it had been hobnobbing with perfect triangles, Beauty, and the like, and which is now pulling the strings—not unlike Putin, honestly. Same conspiratorial, fuzzy-wuzzy, Ideas-driven idiocy that only the Best and Brightest, who properly reject anything to the left of what could realistically sit at a table with David Brooks to shoot the political shit on PBS, could entertain.
And their own children, mind you, their own children will suffer for these moral and intellectual self-indulgences; this stubborn refusal to face themselves and reality. The constantly-helicoptered children, mind you, that parents use to preen themselves within view of their peer group, whose acceptance to either this or that overpriced near-diploma-mill (OK, a tad overdone, but still) is the occasion for an earthshaking amount of angst, to say nothing of massive investment of time and money, whereas relatively minor issues like “Will my child have a somewhat democratic polity and ecosystem to live in or will they end up melting into the liquefying asphalt during a nuclear strike or living in some ecological-totalitarian hellscape?” go unaddressed, and, functionally, as unacknowledged in any sense that matters as in actual deniers. Such relatively minor issues would, of course, if faced, lead immediately to: “Jesus H. Christ, we have to get a move on! Which political movement in the country right now, warts and all, has the best plan to prevent these nightmares, and why the fuck am I not investing heavily in it for the most pragmatic fucking reasons the species has ever faced?”
The Punchline:
“But, Doug, you don’t get it. First of all, an Ivy League-level diploma can be wrapped around oneself such that you only get your hair mussed a bit at ground zero. I thought all Ivy Leaguers knew that; that takes care of your nuclear hysteria. [Eye roll.]
“Second of all, and far more importantly, Beto will just sit down with the methane burp, charm it, and, across the table—with sleeves rolled up, of course; perhaps over a beer or two—they’ll just rationally find a way to live together such that no one loses, not even the methane burp.
“I mean, if we’re all mindfully positive enough about sticking with the PR plan, there’s no limit to how much the laws of physics and chemistry can be altered just with good vibes, some kale from Whole Foods, and a thorough vagina steam or enema, depending on gender and/or orificial preference…wouldn’t want to exclude anyone! Is the methane burp male or female—sorry, sorry; didn't mean to efface transgender people! My advance team will find out; Obama is helping to arrange a side meeting at Davos where Methane Burp, casually dressed in quasi-athletic-wear as anyone worth a damn is currently in training for a corporate marathon, can sit down with Beto and, while washing down kale chips and a plate of bespoke yeast with Perrier, find some compromise between total destruction and preventing total destruction while discussing how best to avoid paying taxes via philanthropy.
“Anyway, as a pragmatically hard-headed practitioner of pragmatic practicality, I feel that the only moderate solution is 'some serious destruction,' which should fall on those losers who didn't bother to retrain themselves so that the Clinton-Davos model would work as it should and would have had we some decent human material to work with. Winners like us shouldn't suffer from having a bad ecosystem, too—how would that be just?
“Let the losers who refused to retrain eat carbon in their own shitty atmosphere. Only way they'll learn: tough love, baby. First, bring them to heel. Then, maybe we can talk about me giving up one of my three overseas vacations in order to pay my fair share of taxes, because here is what I really believe:
“Sanders delenda est.”
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“Second of all, and far more importantly, Beto will just sit down with the methane burp, charm it, and, across the table—with sleeves rolled up, of course; perhaps over a beer or two—they’ll just rationally find a way to live together such that no one loses, not even the methane burp.
“I mean, if we’re all mindfully positive enough about sticking with the PR plan, there’s no limit to how much the laws of physics and chemistry can be altered just with good vibes, some kale from Whole Foods, and a thorough vagina steam or enema, depending on gender and/or orificial preference…wouldn’t want to exclude anyone! Is the methane burp male or female—sorry, sorry; didn't mean to efface transgender people! My advance team will find out; Obama is helping to arrange a side meeting at Davos where Methane Burp, casually dressed in quasi-athletic-wear as anyone worth a damn is currently in training for a corporate marathon, can sit down with Beto and, while washing down kale chips and a plate of bespoke yeast with Perrier, find some compromise between total destruction and preventing total destruction while discussing how best to avoid paying taxes via philanthropy.
“Anyway, as a pragmatically hard-headed practitioner of pragmatic practicality, I feel that the only moderate solution is 'some serious destruction,' which should fall on those losers who didn't bother to retrain themselves so that the Clinton-Davos model would work as it should and would have had we some decent human material to work with. Winners like us shouldn't suffer from having a bad ecosystem, too—how would that be just?
“Let the losers who refused to retrain eat carbon in their own shitty atmosphere. Only way they'll learn: tough love, baby. First, bring them to heel. Then, maybe we can talk about me giving up one of my three overseas vacations in order to pay my fair share of taxes, because here is what I really believe:
“Sanders delenda est.”
Donate here.