Author: Alan Buddug

I’ve covered this before, but here it is briefly:

This election is fundamentally different from the attempted election theft by the MAGAs in 2020. In 2020, the plan was to have Vice President Mike Pence accept a fraudulent slate of electors from various swing states. Basically, ignoring what the people in that state voted for and instead providing electoral votes for Donald Trump. Pence refused to go along with it, and that’s why the MAGAs wanted to hang him.

The current MAGA group understands what went wrong and their manipulation of the current election is less dependent on a single individual and not dependent on the VP or that particular procedure at all. In this election, the idea is to delay in declaring the winner of several key states so that Kamala Harris can’t reach 270 electoral votes before it is too late. When it becomes too late (per the standard procedure), the election would go to the House of Representatives regardless of what anyone in the federal government does. The MAGAs plan to have control of the House of Representatives at that time, allowing them to choose whoever they want as President.

January 6 is the “too late” point. Any state that has not reported the winner of its electoral votes by then is essentially out of play and its electors basically don’t count. If neither candidate has 270 electoral votes on January 6, it goes to the House of Representatives. MAGAs might further frustrate the process at the state level by refusing to confirm the election of new Democrats in order to keep them from being seated in the House before the January 6 election of the President by the House (they would claim that there were voting or ballot irregularities). For the plan to succeed, it is essential that the Republicans control the House of Representatives on January 6.

The Democrats’ response to this has been, predictably, to demand that people “vote harder”. Their theory is that the new MAGA strategy will not work if Harris wins enough states by a wide margin. However, what is more accurate is that the theft becomes more obvious the greater the margin in those states (and we can hope that makes them chicken out); it does not prohibit the new MAGA strategy from working. It also does not address the next election (which could easily be closer) at all, and it does not reflect the fact that the electoral college itself is anti-democratic and strongly favors more conservative candidates (a Democrat must win the popular vote by several percentages to win the electoral college, whereas a Republican can and often does lose the popular vote but still wins the electoral college).

Related: Electoral College Fast Facts

Tomorrow’s election is the most important American election ever, and that’s why it is more important than ever that you get out and vote! However, if leftists don’t show up and vote for Kamala Harris (as is their duty), or if Trump’s people manipulate the electoral system in a completely legal way to invalidate our votes, then I just want you to know that I will be thinking of you from my new fourth home in Oakville, Ontario on beautiful Lake Ontario which I bought with all the money I’ve made from insider trading.

Please be assured that while Donald Trump is violently rounding up immigrants of color, their US-born children, the LGBTQ community, Jewish people, and any Democrats who are too poor to leave the country, I will be tirelessly fighting for you by posting strongly-worded messages on social media and accepting interviews from anyone who will have me. During this troubling time, it is important that you never resort to violence. Violence is never the answer, even if everyone like you is slowly being snatched off the streets, imprisoned, and systematically murdered.

Now, there are a couple of reasons for that, OK? First off, order is essential. Without order, the economy could be seriously threatened, and we can’t have that. I do care about you — deeply — but I obviously care about the economy more. The line must go up! I’m sure you understand. Second, violence is always wrong (unless the government is doing it), which is why you can never use violence to stop violence.

The key is civility, people. The other side is a mob of rabid nutjobs, but we can’t stoop to their level. We must be civil. That means following the law, but does not preclude destroying Trump and his supporters with a witty insult. Being uncivil by using violence or failing to abide by the law is simply unacceptable. So, if Trump changes the law to make protesting illegal, for example, then we simply can’t protest. That’s just how it is. If Trump makes it illegal for you to exist, well, then there’s only one way to be civil, and you will be missed. Get in a good zinger before you go.

I have a special message to those disgusting maniacs on the left who are refusing to vote for Kamala Harris: You belong to us. You have no choice but to vote against what you believe is right because what you believe is dumb. Ethics and solidarity are for stupid babies. Capitalism is obviously better than any other economic system, and we’re going to keep doing capitalism no matter what you say. Yes, I know it is killing the planet, but you need to just shut up about that. I’m sure Elon Musk will invent some computer thing any minute now that will take care of the problem. And shut up about Palestine, too. Don’t you understand that Israel’s fascist state is a key part of our dominance of the Middle East, which allows us to force the world to pay for oil with US dollars, which in turn makes it possible for you to get 85 flavors of Oreos, huge televisions for cheap, and all the avocados you can eat? You better not fuck with my stock portfolio. If you do, I will not be including any appeals for your well-being in my messaging from Canada. Just kidding, I was never going include you. You serve us, not the other way around, and I have already moved my money to a place where it will be safe.

Rest assured that you do not need to worry about me. That should be a comfort to you while you are being oppressed, tortured, murdered and so forth. Good luck and God bless!

Israel will not survive to its 100 year anniversary. No, that statement is not meant to imply that Palestine will rise up and destroy it, or that some foreign power will destroy it. The fact that Israel cannot survive has nothing to do with Palestinians or any Muslim group for that matter.

The issue at hand is climate change, and the planet’s climate has now reached a tipping point beyond which no one knows what will happen, but experts are certain it will be extremely bad. The moderate camp of climate scientists just released a paper that says (in part):

We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis. For many years, scientists, including a group of more than 15,000, have sounded the alarm… Despite these warnings, we are still moving in the wrong direction; fossil fuel emissions have increased to an all-time high… We are witnessing the grim reality of the forecasts as climate impacts escalate, bringing forth scenes of unprecedented disasters around the world and human and nonhuman suffering. We find ourselves amid an abrupt climate upheaval, a dire situation never before encountered in the annals of human existence. We have now brought the planet into climatic conditions never witnessed by us or our prehistoric relatives…

Specifically, no carbon was absorbed by land-based plants in 2023, but there are other signs that our normal climate system is “collapsing” (i.e., becoming a very alien climate system). To be fair, researchers think that if there are no droughts or wildfires releasing carbon into the atmosphere, the carbon sink could recover — but what are the odds of that? Seriously. With climate change itself creating and exacerbating both droughts and wildfires, why would we think this trend would reverse itself?

What’s more likely is that the planet will find a new equilibrium point, but at a much higher temperature and humidity. Under such circumstances, places like Israel (which is part of the area that is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world) will become uninhabitable, probably in the next 5 to 10 years. If you look at the climate change page for Israel on Wikipedia, the data is based on the moderate course outlined by the most recent meeting of the IPCC. We know now, though, that the moderate course is not what is happening; we’re getting something much more extreme.

To be fair, it is true that there are many places in the world that are technically uninhabitable, but people live there anyway. Las Vegas would be the example that readily comes to mind. However, an uninhabitable place can only continue to exist in a meaningful way if resources are sent in from somewhere else. As the planet heats up, climate change will become a global crisis to the extent that every country will be struggling to survive. Moreover, the powers that be will be forced to start deciding which places to maintain, and which places to allow to die.

Israel is currently the country that has received the most aid from the US of any country on earth. Giving them even more would be absurd, and though the baby boomer generation might go along with it, younger Americans are not as enthusiastic about sending enormous sums of money to Israel, specifically. As we in the US also deal with the crisis of climate change, my bet is that Israel is one of the many places we will decide to simply allow to die — though, putting it that way is inaccurate. What we will decide is to save other places (places that are more saveable and less controversial) and people (like our family members and neighbors).

Israel will bake. Nothing will grow. Almost everyone will leave. Those who don’t leave will die.

Given all that, let’s consider the deep absurdity of the Israel-Palestine conflict. If humanity survives at all, that conflict will be remembered as a horrifically gory fight to the death over a piece of land that ultimately holds no value. Imagine if the billions spent on fighting over that stupid little chunk of land had been spent on doing something significant about climate change. None of this is what Zionists want to hear, so they will not hear it.

As you know, Democrats often promote the idea that you should vote for the lesser evil, and while I’m certainly not going to tell you what I think you should do given the immoral nature of the choices available (unless you live in a non-swing state), I do find that argument to be persuasive. The problem, of course, is this:

Those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.

~ Hannah Arendt

And I think that’s the bottom line. I’m old enough that I remember the Obama administration well. I voted for Barack Obama, and I was grateful to have such a polished, intelligent-sounding leader after the years of embarrassing Republican administrations. However, in terms of real progress, Obama came nowhere close to the promise of the marketing campaign that got him elected. He ultimately folded to pressure from the far right, failed to get control of the Supreme Court, implemented a right-wing health policy as his signature legislation, forgot to prosecute the big Wall Street bankers responsible for the financial panic, and killed a bunch of people in foreign wars. This is what Democrats always do, apparently. We (meaning anyone who voted for him) were told (by self-described Democrats) that we were not allowed to criticize him.

We’re in a moment now that is very similar to the pre-Obama moment in the sense that people are desperate for the Harris campaign to win, and are insisting that things will change under Harris. However, it seems like we now understand that things can’t really change under a new Democratic president; they can only get worse more slowly. Moreover, we now understand that the promises of the Democratic Party are essentially lies. Whether the politicians running for election on the Democratic ticket really want the things they are proposing is unclear, but it is no longer reasonable to believe that they believe they can really implement those proposals. We know they’re going to kiss up to conservatives. Self-described Democrats are in on the con.

But still, we prefer that the Democrats win because the Republicans are so much worse. So how is that going? The fact that the Democrats must put their donors before the average voter results in some weird marketing choices — choices that only make sense if you accept that the Democrats ask the donors what they want (or, rather, they are told explicitly before even having to ask), and then have to sell that vision to the average Democratic party voter.

1. Replacing Biden was a fantastic choice. Biden is clearly no longer up to the task of being President of the United States and another 4 years simply did not make sense. However, the second reason to replace him was because of his crazy, homicidal-sounding, “I am a Zionist” bullshit; my hope was that Harris would just shut the fuck up about Israel and Gaza. The real reason he was replaced is solely because the donors (specifically) were afraid he could not win, and that was solely because of his age-related cognitive issues, not because of any policy positions.
2. Israel and Gaza could cost the Democrats the presidency. I don’t know whether this is one of those cases where Democrats are trying to appeal to a few “moderate” (right wing but not far right) voters at the expense of alienating a greater number of progressive voters, or if instead it is a valid strategy because so many American voters are right wing. It is clear, however, that you cannot get to the right of Republicans on any subject. If supporting the genocide is a good and practical position to take from the perspective of American electoral politics, Republicans will always be able to support it more. In this case, Democrats are saying that the US should support Israel (by giving them billions in weapons) but they need to stop indiscriminately massacring civilians (with those weapons) and the Trump position is that we need to pressure Israel to finish the genocide. The Democrat’s position on Israel and Palestine is a direct result of them trying to do what their donors want while still appealing to the voters. (Regardless of what either party does, Israel is unlikely to make it to 100 years old thanks to climate change.)
3. Kamala’s Glock is a really interesting feature of the Harris campaign. You would think that her owning and apparently carrying around a loaded weapon would turn off the Democrats. However, the Democrats are not anti-gun — they’re just opposed to civilians owning guns. Democrats (meaning people who self-identify as Democrats, not people who begrudgingly vote for Democrats) love the police. When people call Kamala Harris “Kamala the Cop”, Democrats literally see that as a good thing. The “the gun is OK because she’s a cop” angle is readily apparent to both Democrats and Republicans, so I don’t think it will make any difference in the election.
4. Harris recently announced that she would attempt nationwide legalization of recreational marijuana, and I have to say, I was impressed that the Democrats actually chose to embrace that strategy. The fact that marijuana was villainized for so long is a testament to the glacial pace of cultural change and the effectiveness of racist scaremongering. To really do it right, they could release everyone who is in prison on a marijuana-related charge, but the lesser evil strategy means being grateful for the rare case where the lesser evil does something marginally good. Clearly, Democratic Party donors are ready to accept nationwide legalization because otherwise the party would not be promoting this idea. I think we might be looking at nationwide legalization in the next 4 years if the Democrats win, and perhaps eventual nationwide legalization even if they don’t. The only question is whether marijuana legalization will outweigh the Democrats’ terrible position on Israel and Palestine enough for them to win.
5. Democrats continue to tout their economic successes, but they continue to define economic success in ways that don’t really reflect the material conditions of the average voter and are frankly alienating. For example, yes, the stock market line keeps going up, but most voters do not own stock. Similarly, the rate of inflation has dropped dramatically, but prices are still far above what many working class people can afford. Telling people that the economy is great and they should shut up isn’t helping the Democrats’ cause.
6. The best thing about the Democratic Party continues to be that it is not the Republican Party, and the best thing about Kamala Harris continues to be that she is not Trump. The complete insanity and, yes, weirdness of the Republicans makes the normalcy of the Democrats (despite it being a dystopian normalcy) seem delightful, and Harris and Walz’s ability to be coherent, knowledgeable and upbeat makes Trump and Vance seem that much worse in comparison. Being less bad just isn’t a very reliable strategy toward winning a lesser-evil election, though, and it is starting to look like the Republicans will replace Trump with Vance right after Trump takes office (via the 25th Amendment). This magnifies the ambiguity of the “What would a second Trump term look like?” question by making it unclear whether Trump or Vance would actually be the President. Hopefully, Democrats can spin that into anxiety for potential Republican ticket voters rather than allowing them to project their aspirations onto that ambiguity.
7. On that note, the Harris campaign continues to make stupid mistakes by kissing up to right wingers, such as saying that her cabinet would include Republicans. You do not win over consumers by telling them how similar your product is to the competition. You will not make enthusiastic supporters out of those voters who are terrified of the next Republican presidential administration by promising to allow Republicans to influence your administration. The peculiar and self-destructive impulse on the part of Democrats to kiss up to Republicans also seems to have manifested in Tim Walz — who was, for a short time, their greatest asset — having been effectively neutered. I suspect his trouble during the debate with Vance was largely because he had to try to remember all the things he couldn’t say while also remembering the ultimately meaningless double-speak phrases they wanted him to recite.
8. The Democratic Party still does not appear to have a strategy to deal with the obvious plot by MAGAs to steal the election. It feels like being in a bank while some robbers are slowly cutting a hole in the vault with a blowtorch and the bank employees just keep saying, “Oh, yes, it’s very naughty, which is why we all have to set a good example by following all the banking procedures to the letter!” because, you know, the robbers could be future customers, so we don’t want to make them mad. Thanks to the corrupt Supreme Court, Joe Biden has been granted God Mode — he can literally do anything he wants to neutralize this threat — but has so far done nothing except tell people to vote harder and send money. I can only hope that the FBI will arrest everyone who has been plotting this coup on the morning of the election and hold them for 24 hours so they can’t implement their evil plans, but honestly, I don’t think they will do shit.
9. Finally, the Democrats continue to completely ignore the environment. On October 8, the moderate faction of climate scientists (contrasted with the more extreme faction that is more often correct in their predictions) released an article that says, in part: “We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.” They go on to talk about how nothing substantive has been done to forestall this disaster which has resulted in climate warming gasses in the atmosphere continuing to increase even during the Biden administration; despite the fact that the percentage of energy produced by renewables during that time having increased, the absolute amount of fossil fuels burned also increased. The default plan for climate change, which is the Democratic Party’s plan because it is their donor’s plan, is to just let it happen, and allow billions of people to die while they ride out the catastrophe in their luxury bunkers. Those who self-identify as Democrats despite not being part of the party apparatus seem to have a different climate change plan: To just shove their heads so far up their own asses that the have no idea what’s coming.

There it is. Lesser-evilism continues to be a terrifying roller-coaster, like if the Prowler at Worlds of Fun had been hastily re-assembled by a crew of carnival workers on meth the night before you rode it, and they also left out most of the bolts, and have a whole truck full of parts that they just didn’t bother to use. I’ll say something here that should be obvious: Having evil people run your government is a bad idea. You can’t necessarily predict what they will do, but you know it is going to be bad. When lesser-evil people run your government, it isn’t good — it’s still bad.

After resigning from office, Richard Nixon spent nearly 2 years away from public life. He re-emerged when a British journalist named David Frost asked to conduct a lengthy interview with him. The most enduring single statement to emerge from that interview was this:

“Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

That was Nixon’s response to Frost’s question about whether it was acceptable for a US President to do something illegal if it is in the best interest of that nation. I had always assumed that this concept was universally condemned at the time, but as I look around at other Americans and their political opinions now, it seems that a lot of people agree with this kind of thinking. Most notable of late is this unspoken edict:

When Israel does it, it is not a genocide.

I said it was unspoken, but it is spoken in a very specific way:

Israel has a right to defend itself.

Certainly, Israel — and any other nation — has a right to defend itself, but when that phrase is applied to situations where Israel was clearly not “defending” but rather attacking, destroying, invading, conquering, colonizing, burning, raping, dismembering and maintaining an apartheid state in direct opposition to international law, while intentionally committing war crimes, the meaning of the phrase is clearly something more than its literal meaning.

Someone in my family is a little obsessed with video essayist Jacob Gellar, and his video Does Call of Duty Believe in Anything? really digs into the heart of this concept. Call of Duty is a video game where you play as an American soldier, but while a soldier is quite possibly the most political thing a person can be, Call of Duty‘s producers claim that the game is not political. Spoilers for that video are ahead, but I’ve watched that video 3 times now, and I can tell you that knowing the answer does not really spoil the video. (Jacob Gellar’s videos are also available on Nebula, where he’s allowed more creative freedom, so the videos you’ll find there are better versions of the ones he posts to YouTube.)

The answer is that, in a sense, Call of Duty does not believe in anything. In another sense, though, the answer is that Call of Duty believes that “we” are good people, and that whatever good people do is good. If that sounds like a Nixon level of narcissistic subjectivity, that’s because it is. We are the good guys, so when we kill people, it is good; even if we are killing babies with white phosphorous, our actions are the best possible actions. On the other hand when they (the enemy) kill people, it is bad, because they are the bad guys; never mind killing babies — the bad guys must completely submit because any other action is evil. In fact, the only way for the bad guys (who are, by definition, anyone who is not on our side) to be good is to stop existing. Even peacefully protesting “our” violence is unacceptable; even pointing out that it exists is unacceptable.

The really interesting thing about that concept is that it is a principle shared by Democrats and Republicans. When I say “Democrats and Republicans”, I am specifically talking about people who actively claim those labels (e.g., Democrat, Republican, conservative, liberal) and not people who begrudgingly darken the circle next to the name of a Democrat or Republican while actively hating that person.

It isn’t just that Democratic and Republican Americans believe that their soldiers are all good guys, and it isn’t just that they believe any military action the US takes as a whole must be good. Those things are both certainly true, but this halo of goodness extends to many of our allies because those Democrats and Republicans have decided that those people are like us; they are American by proxy. In a way, those Americans see the whole planet as being part of America, and in the context of empire, they’re correct about that in a way. German industrial band Rammstein has a whole song about it (here it is with English subtitles) and they are not pleased. In essence, the White House plays the tune, and the whole world is obliged to dance.

How did the Muslims end up being the enemy? The West started it with their invasions, and then when Islamic nations chose to fight back instead of submit or, better yet, participate, they became the bad guys because, remember, the bad guys are anyone who is opposed to the good guys, and we are the good guys specifically because we are us (and no other reason).

Wilhoit’s Law states that:

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

Unspoken, but strongly implied, within Wilhoit’s Law is that the in-groups are presumed to be good, and the out-groups are presumed to be bad. In-groups are protected and not bound because they are the good guys, and whatever they do is good because they are the good guys. They are also us, but we are obviously the good guys because we are us. In contrast, they (the out-groups) must be bound because whatever they might do would be bad, and, for the same non-reason, they ought not be protected.

When a Republican-style conservative says that we should avoid moral relativism, what they mean is that we must not reject the in-group’s inherent goodness; i.e., we must not start basing morality on an ethical analysis of our actions because then, we would stop being the in-group. This is the thing that both Democrats and Republicans are terrified of: Becoming the out-group.

Democrats and Republicans are both conservatives. The difference between the two comes down to which groups they see as in-groups and out-groups, but they agree on certain groups, including nations such as Britain and, of course, Israel. The difference between conservativism and fascism is that conservativism is the static idea (as described by Wilhoit) whereas fascism is the idea put into action.

The fact that fascism reflects complete unreason is a direct result of how it must rationalize action in service to the central idea of conservativism, that we are good because we are us. My initial example was this idea that, “Israel has the right to defend itself,” which is true, but really means, Israel has the right to do whatever it wants, including stealing people’s homes, murdering children, bombing hospitals, and even killing their own citizens, which is how almost all the civilian deaths on October 7, 2023 occurred according to the Israeli press. “An investigation by Haaretz in July 2024 concluded that the directive had been used on several occasions on that day, starting with a 7:18 a.m. order for the situation at Erez border crossing.”

Consider this:

“White people have the right to defend themselves.”

Again, the literal meaning of that statement is true, but the literal meaning isn’t what matters or even what is intended when someone makes that claim. Let’s try something else.

“Straight people have a right to defend themselves.”

Again, literally true. Perfectly fine when taken literally, but it isn’t meant to be taken literally. It is a dog whistle whose implied meaning is far greater, more complex, and completely sinister. Right-wing gun rights advocates take the idea to the extreme of subjective narcissism:

“I have the right to defend myself.”

It’s certain very true when taken literally, but we know that they mean they believe they have the right to kill anyone that they are afraid of, and that their perceived enemies do not have the right to fight back or even defend themselves.

In stark contrast to Democrats and Republicans, leftists mostly abide by the concept of “critical support” which means that leftists will support the side that is actually good (rather than simply “good because they are us”) and, moreover, intends to embrace criticism of the groups it supports because we all make mistakes. Given enough evidence, the left will reject groups whose actions are, on the balance, bad, but will also support the group being victimized in cases where both sides are bad.

While conservatives claim that it is moral relativism whenever the left criticizes both sides, the truth is that conservativism represents the maximum extent of moral relativism. Normally, moral relativism means that morality varies based on culture; most moral philosophers, liberals, and leftists disagree with moral relativism based on culture but do believe the cultures of others should be respected as much as possible.

Conservative moral relativism is not based on culture; if it were, they would apply the same rules and punishments to their own group that they apply to others. They do not. Take, for example, stealing an election by interfering with the vote count. When the enemy does this, they are evil and should be locked up. When conservatives do it, it’s the right thing to do because they are doing it, and they are good. You may be thinking, well, then how are the Democrats conservative? They accuse the Republicans of being undemocratic, but then either forego a primary process or put their thumb on the scale to make sure their pre-approved candidate wins. I say “thumb” but it is more like a whole hand. While these two kinds of anti-democratic action are different, they are both clearly anti-democratic and I’m really not sure which one is worse — at least with the Republican system, you could potentially end up with a socialist candidate. In fact, about half of the arguments Trump used to win the 2016 were socialist talking points.

Related: Trump as Threat to Democracy

On September 25, 2024, Bill Kristol (a well-known conservative guy) tweeted:

Kamala Harris, Reagan Democrat! https://t.co/NJgyQyJmeT

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) September 25, 2024

First off, I can’t help but mention that “capitalism” and “free markets” are far from the same thing, but what I really want to talk about is how the DNC keeps trying to compete with the GOP for right-wing votes. If you prefer memes to essays, my thoughts are summarized with this:

We’re talking about the USA, so there really aren’t any moderate voters. The Democratic Party is right wing as a group, and the Republican Party is far right as a group; those “moderate” voters are actually right wing voters, and progressives are centrists for the most part. If you believe the Democrats represent the center because they represent the center of American politics, then apparently Hitler was also a centrist because he represented the center of German politics in his time.

The why of the DNC’s strategy is likely two things:

1. It is well-established that the DNC responds to donor money and does not respond to its constituents. They certainly pretend as if they will serve their constituents, but then there is little to no correlation between their actual actions and what their constituents want. On the other hand, the wishes of their wealthy donors are well-reflected in the DNC’s actions. That’s partly because the donor class limits the actions that the DNC can take and partly because both parties are controlled by wealthy individuals, so policy that is beneficial to wealthy people is easier to implement.
2. The individual politicians who have the most control over the DNC’s actions are they, themselves ideologically right-wing, and are able to gatekeep access to power within the DNC, thus preventing any real progressive from steering the direction of the party.

The DNC tries to appeal to right-wing voters even though it is a bad strategy because they are not capable of genuinely appealing to progressives. Sure, they can rhetorically appeal to progressives, but since they can’t take progressive action, they can’t appeal to them genuinely. (I’m emphasizing my point here because I’m sure someone will fail to read and comprehend all the words the first time.)

The DNC switched to Kamala Harris from Joe Biden not because Harris is more progressive, but rather because Biden is completely cooked at this point. Harris is just as right-wing as Biden, which is saying a lot. The choice of Walz was odd because he does seem to be a genuine progressive (i.e., centrist), but we can see from last night’s debate that the DNC has gotten to Tim Walz, and he fell into that same pattern of trying to appeal to right-wing voters and failing specifically because Trump and Vance can easily go further right.

One example from the debate would be the issue of the genocide in Gaza. Walz attempted to appeal to right-wing voters by saying that the US will always support Israel’s right to defend itself. In the meantime, however, the Trump campaign’s position on Gaza is that Israel/USA should “finish the job” meaning finish killing and/or displacing every Palestinian in Gaza so that Israel can proceed with it’s plan to make Gaza into a tourist beach with additional housing for Israeli citizens and a new canal (the Ben Gurion Canal project, first proposed in the 1960’s) that will provide an alternative to the Egypt-control Suez canal. The DNC has sabotaged itself in this by continuing to villainize Palestinians and pretend that the conflict began on October 7, 2023 (Walz himself did this during the first few minutes of last night’s debate); if the Palestinians are the unrepentant, unjustified villains that establishment Democrats say they are, then why would anyone want anything less than their complete and utter eradication as a people?

The next example would be immigration. Walz correctly pointed out that the Democrats have tried to pass hard-line immigration legislation and that the Republicans have (at Trump’s direction) shot down that legislation in order to give them the opportunity to falsely claim that Democrats are soft on immigration. The problem, of course, is that the Democrats have collectively created the impression that they agree that there’s an immigration problem in the sense of people coming into the continental US illegally, but that isn’t the case. In truth, the major issue is that there isn’t enough funding to evaluate applications for asylum, so there’s a huge backlog at the southern border, but when the agreed-upon position is “immigrants bad”, the GOP proposal for mass deportations makes much more sense than what the Democrats (especially Walz during last night’s debate) are saying. I suppose there’s a second issue of finding a legal way to allow non-citizen migrants to do the work required to produce food, but that seems odd given that the current system is working (except for the issue of inadequate pay for farm workers, but I dare you to try to frame it that way to a right-wing voter).

Perhaps the biggest issue with the DNC’s strategy of courting right-wing voters is the issue of empathy. Right-wing voters want vengeance no matter what the issue. Walz’s approach is to empathize with everyone and empathy is antithetical to vengeance. Meanwhile, Trump and Vance seem to have a distinct lack of empathy for everyone and a conspicuous comfort with resentment and hostility. The Trump/Vance attitude is simply more relatable to right-wing voters, and no matter how much anger Walz or Harris expresses, Trump and Vance will always be able to shimmy to the right of them and pick up those right-wing votes.

I do not want Trump to win this election; despite the fact that the Democrats do not represent my views, I agree that Trump is worse. When the DNC switched from Biden to Harris, I was hoping they would at least shut the fuck up about Gaza, but instead they dove right into alienating Muslim voters. I was hoping they would switch to a more “let’s have rules that make sense and enforce them” approach to the border, but they went right ahead with alienating immigrants. This dynamic is the reason why liberal democracies (i.e., anocratic tyrannies of capital) eventually slide into fascism.

Related: Why Liberalism Leads to Fascism

Recently, another Republican voter tried to kill Donald Trump. This one was a Vivek Ramaswamy supporter and one of those “Never Trump” people. That attack, as well as the ongoing problem of mass shootings in the US, has led many people to again contemplate limiting access to firearms. Or at least, that’s how the media is portraying the situation. It does makes a great deal of sense because even though guns don’t kill people by themselves, they do require a person to operate them, so preventing the gun and the bad actor from meeting up would clearly prevent that person from shooting others.

Literally everyone agrees with the idea of trying to prevent the wrong people from possessing firearms, and of course, if a particular person should not possess a gun, it’s even more clear that they should not possess an effective gun (even though we also might not agree on what characteristics an effective gun has). Even the “any person, any gun, any time” people have limits — they just think the wrong people should be executed on the spot. We need to stop pretending that we disagree on this point.

The real question is: Who are the people who should be prohibited from owning firearms?

Conservatives have been very clear for a very long time that they intend to use their firearms for the purpose of gaining total control of America. They have a long list of the wrong people, and have made clear that the wrong people should be sorted into 3 general categories: dead (e.g., liberals), banished (e.g., people with brown skin whose parents were not born in the USA), and completely dis-empowered (e.g., women). To complete that sorting process, they would like to have a monopoly on violence — or at least come close. They are constantly worried that liberals are going to “come for their guns” because that would foil their plan, and also make them vulnerable to the same kind of actions they have planned for others.

Meanwhile, liberals think only “the government” should have a monopoly on violence, but they keep forgetting that the government is made up of individual people, and that most of the agents of violence within that government are c0nservatives. Moreover, they willfully ignore all the times that the government’s agents of violence failed to act (e.g., Uvalde), over-reacted and killed someone (e.g., Mike Brown), or straight up murdered an innocent person (e.g., Breonna Taylor). If we widen our analysis to outside of the USA, we see the US military and its allies and client states committing all sorts of atrocities; most liberals are opposed to those actions, but only after they are historical. When the current genocide is actively happening, liberals are strangely unwilling to call for our government’s agents of violence to be disarmed.

The conservative insistence that a private individual with clear mental health problems and a history of violence should not be prohibited from obtaining a firearm is just as absurd as the liberal insistence that a police or military group should not be prohibited from obtaining firearms despite a history of violence based on bigotry or even active genocide.

I’m not going to try to pretend that the left’s view on who shouldn’t be allowed to have guns is perfect, but it is better. There are certainly genuine leftists who who are opposed to guns — but unlike liberals, they are consistent in that opposition because they are opposed to literally everyone having guns. More commonly, though, leftists want to prohibit fascists from having guns. You could expand that to “all violent, immoral people” but leftists generally see things like domestic abuse and bullying as faces of fascism, so that would be redundant.

In essence, the left will not tolerate intolerance, and that means intolerance must not be allowed to be armed. This is not some kind of logical fallacy because fascists have no respect for the general social contract, and thus exist outside of it — they ought not be protected by it. The only people who view fascists as a legitimate part of society are fascist collaborators — which is just another way to say fascists. This might be a shocking framing for both liberals and conservatives since they are both currently engaged in a contest over who can most thoroughly lick the boot of US authoritarianism, but that’s how it is.

Here’s a great example:

Recently in New York City, police pursued a man in the subway who had avoided paying the $2.90 fee. They claim he had a knife, but have been unable to produce a knife that they can connect to the man. They opened fire on the fare-evader hitting him, two innocent bystanders (one hit in the head and in critical condition), and another cop. What should happen is that any cop who fired their weapon in that crowded space loses their ability to possess a firearm for some number of years — at the very least. But what actually happened is that the mayor talked about how brave these hotheaded cops were, and the police have arrested at least 18 people protesting their extremely dangerous actions. Various representatives of the cops and the city are blaming the incident on the “armed perpetrator” but it was the cops who escalated a petty theft to an attempted murder and there is no proof that the fare-evader was armed. NYC has recently upped their spending by $150 million/year in order to reduce fare evasion, which costs them approximately $690 million dollars/year in fares. To put that in perspective, however, they received $5 billion dollars in fares in 2023, so those lost fares are only about 14% and — here’s the kicker — subway fares are a regressive tax. Fare evasion is essentially a way for citizens to naturally reduce the regressive nature of that tax; it’s no different from an impoverished person stealing bread.

Related: Protests erupt after four hurt in New York subway shooting

Related: Cracking down on fare evasion on New York’s subways and buses

Below is the Inrange TV episode on the incident in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

By now you have surely heard at least one Democratic party representative say that Donald Trump is a threat to Democracy, and it might have crossed your mind that many leftists, including me, are constantly saying that the US is not a democracy, but rather a plutocracy (or a plutocratic anocracy). At the same time, though, many people on the left will tell you that the Democratic party is a better option than the Republicans.

Realistically, the threat Donald Trump represents is not a threat to our democracy but rather the threat of regime change within a plutocracy. Right now, the plutocrats are the very wealthy, with each of those plutocrats having more or less power based on their wealth. A second Trump presidency, which would be accompanied by a systemic replacement of leadership in the entire executive branch, would mean that the new plutocrats would be relatively wealthy white evangelical racists. Under a new Trump regime, the portion of today’s plutocrats that stand on the Democratic party side of things would no longer have significant political power; they would no longer be significantly powerful and might very well lose their wealth. While it is true that there are current plutocrats who are not evangelicals but who support Trump (because they think Trump’s extremism is necessary to maintain their power), those people are idiots (e.g., Musk).

A lot of people (including me) are extremely frustrated at this situation. Essentially, there’s no way to vote against fascism. Both the Democrats and Republicans have made it very clear that they represent unyielding domination from their respective plutocrat groups, including ill treatment of immigrants, violent maintenance of the US empire, and genocide. Neither political group has any intention of doing anything about extreme inequality and the economic problems associated with it (like housing and food becoming less and less affordable); sure, they will pretend they will do something (mostly to disparage the competition) but we should all understand by now that they are insincere.

The difference between these two visions of fascist plutocracy is in the details, but they are details that matter, so potentially worth your time in terms of voting.

Immigration

While both parties are against immigration and are currently engaging in a contest over which of them can offer the most dystopian view of how the southern US border should be managed, the Republicans are more likely to engage in cruelty for the sake of cruelty rather than the simple pragmatic cruelty of the Democrats. The Republicans would likely treat many people of color who are legally living in the US (including actual US citizens) as illegal immigrants and deport them.

LGTBQ+ Rights

While the Democrats are willing to allow LGBTQ+ people to have significant civil rights (i.e., to allow them to fully participate in the capitalist hellscape), Republicans have been clear that they intend to commit genocide against LGBTQ+ people in the US. This policy would not only affect the interior of the US, but would undoubtedly be exported to the rest of the US empire, replacing the liberal policy of attempting to coerce foreign governments into supporting LGBTQ+ people. The genocide would include legalizing discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, illegalizing pro-LGBTQ+ information and symbols, systematic institutionalization of LGBTQ+ people, and (especially) intentionally looking the other way when LGBTQ+ people are brutalized or killed (moreso than is currently the case).

Homeless People

While Democrats pretend to support homeless people, in practice, they do not. The most accurate way to represent the Democratic party perspective (in total) on homeless people is that they tolerate them slightly and oppose murdering them. That’s not good, but under a Trump regime, homeless people would be more actively harmed and killed (i.e., law enforcement would actively look the other way when someone decided to kill them and might even participate). Importantly, the percentage of LGBTQ+ people that would become homeless under a Trump regime would be much greater than the current situation. We would expect to see most programs to assist the homeless become illegal, or effectively illegal, under Trump.

Israel/Palestine

Both the Democrats and Republicans strongly support the genocide of the Palestinian people, including sending huge amounts of weapons and ammunition to Israel. Democrats favor a slow genocide that pauses for significant periods of time so that people tend to forget about it. Trump favors finishing off the Palestinians as quickly as possible. While it is true that both sides support genocide, it is also true that the Trump plan is worse. The Trump plan is also much more likely to start World War 3 as it is likely to cause Israel’s Muslim neighbors to lose their patience and feel that they have a duty to attack Israel.

Empire

Both the Democrats and Republicans support the continued existence of the American empire, including hostility toward leftist states like North Korea, Cuba, China, and Venezuela as well as Iran (and potentially other Muslim states). A second Trump presidency would shift support for Ukraine to Russia, as well increasing hostility toward other Islamic states. It would also shift a significant portion of US military activity from maintaining the US empire to instead occupying the US itself.

Muslims, Leftists, and People of Color

Democrats are willing to tolerate a diversity of viewpoints as long as the individuals holding those viewpoints do not pose a direct threat to capitalism. In contrast, a second Trump regime would engage in a war domestically against any group that they perceive as a threat, including Muslims, Leftists, and people of color (especially Black Lives Matter and any other group asking for equal protection under the law for people of color). This would consist primarily of selective enforcement of the law as well as new laws specifically criminalizing dissent. Such a war would not usually look like open warfare, but rather just an escalation of the kinds of shenanigans the police already participate in and a more aggressive brushing under the rug (by both cops and the media) of assaults and murders against hated groups.

Climate Change

None of this matters if we are all dead. The Democrats are not taking climate change seriously; it’s as if they either don’t understand the extent of the problem or simply do not care. Their support of environmentalism is much like their support of the left — almost entirely performative and even a bit patronizing. For example, US oil production hit an all-time record under Biden. However, the Republicans intend to destroy existing infrastructure that is working well (e.g., solar power farms, electric vehicle charging stations, windmills) and then double or even triple-down on fossil fuels. They will literally burn shit and waste energy just to “own the libs”. While there’s a possibility that a new Trump presidency would damage the US economy enough that US carbon emissions would decline, there’s a better chance of eventually achieving rational environmental policy with the Democrats.

Conclusion

Do what you want with all this. I’m sure you’re aware of all of it, but I thought it might be helpful to make a short summary. I feel like it helped me. I do want to correct myself, though: In the past, I’ve referred to the Democrats as “center-right” many, many times. I was wrong about that. It is clear that they are fully right wing — just not far right. The Republicans are both further to the right and on a different ideological plane from the Democrats.

On July 28, Heather Cox Richardson wrote:

Just a week ago, it seems, a new America began. I’ve struggled ever since to figure out what the apparent sudden revolution in our politics means.

Meanwhile, I’ve been struggling to figure out why she thought this was a “sudden revolution in our politics” and why she would struggle to understand what it means. She goes on to describe what happened with Biden dropping out and so forth, but doesn’t really address why she’s struggling to understand any of it.

The shock and demoralization caused by the DNC’s selection of Joe Biden as their nominee in 2020 was widespread. I say the DNC selected him because they used a pretty clear strategy to make him the winner of the primary: They had all the other clearly neoliberal candidates drop out while keeping Elizabeth Warren, thus successfully splitting the “progressive” (centrist) vote between Warren and Sanders, and guaranteeing a victory for Biden. Only Michael Bloomberg was a worse candidate than Biden.

As much as I would like voters to be well informed and vote based on their deep understanding of the issues and the candidates, as well as a strong background in political theory and a healthy dose of empathy, the fact of the matter is that most voters are not well-informed — most are misinformed — and they end up basing their votes on intuition. Intuition is a blurry representation of salient facts, so it isn’t complete trash, but it also tends to result in candidates winning due to fairly superficial traits. For example, that’s why taller candidates tend to win elections.

That being said, there are some things that most Americans who are not baby boomers understand:

• Politics are controlled by people with more money and that is harmful to the country as a whole and to people with less money in particular. Who those people are specifically, and how to stop them is a subject of much debate, but suggesting that nothing should fundamentally change is a completely out-of-touch sentiment.
• There’s a point where a person is too old to drive, much less run a country. Most voting-age people have experienced extremely elderly people trying to drive; many of us have been privy to conversations within our families about how to stop grandpa from driving because he is clearly no longer safe, and then how to help him get around town without a car. It’s a real problem rather than an expression of ageism, and we’re all familiar with it. It’s not because of a lack of respect, but rather practical concern.
• Older Americans (e.g., boomers) are not really in touch with modern realities and have a lot of bad ideas. Making fun of boomers is practically a national pastime at this point. Biden is older than that!

And for people who were slightly more well-informed:

• Joe Biden has a long history of conservative political choices (i.e., he’s very old fashioned). While people do certainly change over time, it’s also true that older people tend to revert to earlier ways of thinking. I’m aware of Biden’s record as President; it doesn’t strike me as being particularly “progressive”, but then again, what does that even mean? What does a neoliberal DNC think we should be progressing toward?

Like I said, Joe Biden was the worst candidate the DNC presented to voters at that time, with the exception of Michael Bloomberg. While Biden’s old-fashioned ways may have been very appealing to the donor class and boomers, who are old and relatively rich, it was repulsive to pretty much everyone else. The 2020 election was a contest about which old man you disliked the least. There’s literally a popular song about how much it sucked to have to vote for Joe Biden.

So, given all this, Biden’s presidency has left normal voters (i.e., non-MAGA, moderately informed) in a constant state of anxiety waiting for him to say some weird old-man shit, or forget an important name/word, or fall down….AGAIN. That Democratic party voters (i.e., not “Democrats” but people who typically vote for a Democrat) rebelled after his terrible debate against Trump should not be surprising at all. We were tired of his shit even before he got put on the ballot in 2020.

The idea that Joe Biden was the “most progressive President ever” (per Warmbo and people like him) was based on a combination of pure fantasy and the fact that Biden’s administration was mostly being run by much younger people who at least understood what Democratic party voters wanted Biden to be. It was not based on the reality of Biden or even his personal potential. As I’ve said before, the DNC is not capable (in its post-Reagan incarnation) of producing a candidate for President that progressives, centrists and leftists can get genuinely excited about. This is specifically because the donor class has had absolute control of the decision-making process within the DNC, but the average age of DNC leadership was certainly a secondary factor.

That Democratic party donors saw the writing on the wall in terms of Biden’s lack of ability to beat Trump or serve as the nation’s chief executive should not have been surprising, either. Replacing Biden with Harris, specifically, should not have been surprising. Harris is just another neoliberal. It wasn’t the political upheaval that HCR seems to think it was.

Today, however, they announced that Kamala Harris’s Vice Presidential candidate will be Tim Walz, the progressive governor of Minnesota and that is very surprising. I had assumed that she/they would choose Shapiro or someone similarly neoliberal. The only way I can make sense of the DNC doing the right thing with the VP pick is to blame it on the fact that they are terrified of Trump, and they’ve finally realized that leaning to the right doesn’t pay off, so they have decided to make an attempt to appeal to younger and further left voters. From the perspective of wealthy people, Walz is a particularly bad candidate; for example, he once said, “Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values. One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.” He’s right, but you aren’t supposed to say that where the rich people might hear you.

Usually, the Vice President candidate is chosen to placate powerful people; I say “placate” because the VP is not expected to actually do anything. The choice of Walz (ostensibly by Harris, but surely as part of a long discussion with DNC leadership) suggests either that the DNC is now considering younger and more left voters as a legitimate political force that must be addressed more seriously, or that Harris, in particular, has hidden depths of ethical rationality. I’m not ready to get optimistic about this — Harris and Walz are both technically boomers after all and they are DNC approved — but there’s reason to suggest the country could get back on track after the fiasco that started in 2016.

That note of slight optimism should not be interpreted to suggest that we will avoid political violence after the election. The odds of political violence from the far-right are extremely high, and we’re likely to see a lot of it regardless of how the election turns out. A Trump win will embolden them, but a Harris win will enrage and terrify them. There is no way out of political violence at this point. The important questions are: “How much violence will there be?”, “Who will be the targets of violence?” and “Will municipal, state and federal law enforcement counter that violence, or facilitate it?”

Related: How Bad Will Political Violence in the U.S. Get? (Bruce Hoffman, ForeignPolicy.com)

I’m also not suggesting that the DNC is going to become leftist or even centrist in a timely fashion. The DNC should not be trusted with our money. As I mentioned previously, creating a separation between the DNC and political donations from working class people would be extremely beneficial toward democratizing the DNC and moving US politics closer to the center.

Joe Biden has declined the Democratic Party nomination, and Kamala Harris is now the presumptive nominee. That’s a good thing, but if voters are hoping for a Democrat who is willing to address the Zionist genocide happening in Gaza, Harris is not it. In fact, there’s no such thing as a potential Democratic Party nominee for President that would oppose the genocide in Gaza because the party is controlled by neoliberals, and neoliberals hate Islam.

I should be a little bit more precise, though. Neoliberalism doesn’t have an opinion on any religion, but it does insist that every religion be subservient to the neoliberal (i.e., capitalist) order, and it hates any kind of organizing that opposes that order, including religious organizing. That’s part of why there are now some conservatives and fascists who are questioning the dominance of capital in society. It’s not that they want liberty in the same way the left does, but rather because they want a form of neofeudalism that has a far-right version of Christianity at its center. People call them “the American Taliban” for that very reason. Neoliberalism is inherently opposed to any order that puts capitalism in service to another ideology because that would end the dominance of the capitalist class over society.

Neoliberalism — like all right-wing ideologies — needs an outside threat that it can use as an excuse for its bad behavior. That threat is always exaggerated and fictionalized to the point of being a cartoonish version of the real threat, even though it is based on a kernel of truth. Once the soviet block had been effectively defeated, neoliberalism looked around for a new threat to focus on, and that threat was Islamic theocracy. It’s not like they’d been ignoring Islamic theocracy before that — it just wasn’t the focal point. In fact, they were willing to use Islamic theocracy to organize people against the Soviet Union and they called militant Muslims “freedom fighters” in that context. They gave them money and weapons to help defeat the soviets. Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were both supported by the US.

In addition to neoliberalism’s need for an enemy to use as an excuse for bad behavior, there is also a more directly practical need for anti-Islamic propaganda — that is, to provide an excuse for Israel. Israel is more than just a cog in the right-wing Christian narrative that prevents them from having to deal with the inevitability of death. It is also, essentially, a huge western military base within striking distance of more than 67% of the world’s oil. That oil is the reason why neoliberalism’s bad behavior is seen as necessary by neoliberals. Joe Biden famously said that if Israel didn’t exist, the US would have to invent it; this is why.

Dominance of oil-producing nations isn’t just important for the direct reason of access to the oil. Secondarily, oil companies, which control US politics to the extent that they have veto power over essentially any legislation, are the ones who actually get access to the oil, and they need that access for their very existence. Third, but no less important, is the problem of the petrodollar. The Nixon administration decoupled the value of the US dollar from the value of gold and instead negotiated with OPEC (and the Saudis in particular) to make the US dollar the standard currency for buying and selling oil, which forces non-US nations to hold US dollars, and that props up the value of the US dollar and, in turn, the US economy. In short, Americans get a dramatic economic benefit from all those children and other innocent people the Zionists have been murdering since the Nakba (1948).

Neoliberals would frame their demand that all religions be subservient to the capitalist order quite differently. They would probably say that they want religious groups to embrace freedom, and what they offer certainly does include religious freedom. However, under capitalism, only the capitalist really has a true opportunity for a reasonable level of freedom. Everyone else is free to either provide a benefit to the capitalist class or die. If Islam is not willing to provide a benefit to the capitalist class, it must die — or, more precisely, that version of Islam must die and be replaced with an Islam that is subservient to capital.

The left’s support for Islam is complicated, but is based on the fact that Islam is being victimized by capitalism; i.e., it is more about the left being anti-capitalist than pro-Islam. However, the left also appreciates that there is a wide range of belief and action within Islam, and that all people should be free to retain their culture, practice their religion, own personal property, and exist. Genocide is wrong and should be opposed regardless of who the two sides of the genocide are. To truly respect freedom of the individual, you must respect the right of individuals to make choices that you think are wrong as long as they don’t hurt anyone. In fact, the left has a hard time registering a choice as “wrong” if it doesn’t harm other people; the right hates that and calls it “moral relativism”. The right wing spends a lot of time manufacturing harms that might hypothetically be caused by behaviors that they don’t like, but that both seem harmless on first glance and prove to be harmless upon closer inspection.