Author: Alan Buddug

I am subscribed to Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters to America” emails. Each email is a great summary of how well-informed, nice, liberal people feel about a particular idea. They also illustrate how liberalism deceives itself and others through:

1. Omitting important facts. I won’t call this “lying through omission” because I believe that, in most cases, liberals just don’t see some important facts as relevant.
2. Plain old obtuseness. When the facts of the situation clearly counter the logic and narrative of liberalism, liberals will typically become blind to the problem. It’s like they glitch out for a second before they move on.

I see this problem with almost every email from Heather Cox Richardson (HCR), and today’s email is no exception. One of the core beliefs of today’s liberal is that “our democratic institutions” (their term, not mine) are inherently leading us toward a better society, and though they might take a while, they are always making progress. They have faith in these supposedly democratic institutions — even when they are clearly failing to deal with extreme threats to democracy and individual freedom.

In contrast, the left’s position is that liberalism leads to fascism.

Today’s HCR email was about the horrible decision that the Arizona Supreme Court made in regard to the validity of the state’s 1864 law making abortion illegal. I say “horrible” not because I think the court made the wrong decision, but rather because of the consequences the decision will have on everyone in that state — especially women. In the court’s words:

A policy matter of this gravity must ultimately be resolved by our citizens through the legislature or the initiative process…. We defer, as we are constitutionally obligated to do, to the legislature’s judgment, which is accountable to, and thus reflects, the mutable will of our citizens.

HCR’s opines that, “…it’s an interesting spin to say that the new policy is protecting the will of the citizens.”

Like most weirdly obtuse omissions from liberals, there’s a lot to unpack despite how little was said. Her position, essentially, is that:

• The will of the people is for abortion to be legal.
• Our democratic institutions would, therefore, naturally allow for abortion to be legal, so that must be what they are doing.
• Republicans, who are defying the will of the people (and in this case are represented by the all-Republican Arizona Supreme Court), have sabotaged and defied our democratic institutions by making abortion illegal.

HCR explains at length various details of why the 1864 law does not really represent people today, and I think everything she says about that is true and interesting.

Tell me, though: How, exactly, is the court supposed to know what the will of the people is? The answer in the Arizona case (as well as in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade) is that the court should look to the law and interpret it. In both cases, when you look to the law, the law supports: A) the position that the federal government has no position (allowing state legislation to take priority), and B) the position that abortion is illegal in Arizona.

The court is certainly not allowed to base their decision on the results of a poll conducted by Associated Press, nor should they, yet this is exactly what HCR implies that the court should do. Does HCR believe that a poll conducted by a private corporation is more indicative of the will of the people than “our democratic institutions”?

I do believe that most people want the law to allow abortion — especially when you frame it in terms of how the law should apply to themselves and the women they have close relationships to, but that is just my opinion.

If our democratic institutions (again, their term) were working democratically, and if, indeed, the people really want abortion to be legal, then both federal law and Arizona state law would say that. The fact that the federal and Arizona legislative processes both failed to make abortion explicitly legal either means that the people don’t want it to be legal or “our democratic institutions” are not very democratic.

In order for “our democratic institutions” to be democratic, the people running them must believe in democracy. In order to end up with people who believe in democracy running your institutions, the people must believe in democracy. However, neither the average Democrat nor the average Republican truly believes in democracy. They both believe in a limited republican version of democracy that protects certain powerful groups against “the mob” (i.e., actual democracy). In the case of the Democrats, with whom HCR sides, they have explicitly said in court that they have no obligation to satisfy the will of Democratic party voters during primaries or even follow their own published rules regarding how Democratic party candidates will be chosen.

The US Constitution was designed specifically to protect “the opulent minority” — wealthy people — and there are multiple firewalls protecting elite power from the opinions of the common citizen. When you are operating in a system that is designed to prevent democracy, it occasionally prevents democracy in a way you don’t like. This system is meant to be a defensive weapon for protection of the wealthy, but like any weapon, it can be pointed at anyone. The Arizona decision proves that not even our bodily autonomy is protected from the whims of the elites who are allowed to control political institutions and disregard the will of the people.

Related: We’re a Republic, Not a Democracy

Related: Why Liberalism Leads to Fascism

Did you know that the left’s entire pretentious world view collapses without the support of capitalist innovation? Well, that’s what they keep saying over at Quora, which is supposed to be an answers website, but is more like a hell-hole of competing propaganda.

My understanding of this idea is that the capitalist is supposedly special because they are the class of people that has the ability to innovate, and then our whole economic system rewards them for innovating. The implication is that this capitalist innovation is what makes the world move forward, so without a capitalist class, the world cannot move forward. Moving forward seems to mean things getting better, especially in terms of technology. Some people also intend this to mean that the world moves forward socially, but most people who are fans of capitalism believe that there’s an apex of human society that we have already reached and that things cannot get any better because humans are naturally awful and irredeemable — but only at the group level. At the individual level, these people believe that everyone can improve.

There’s so much wrong with this that it is hard to know where to start, but let’s start with the capitalists being special because they can innovate. People like to say that necessity is the mother of invention, but that’s not accurate either. Anyone can innovate if they have: 1) Resources, and 2) Time — and really, time is just another resource. The type of innovation that occurs is guided by what the innovator sees as being needed by society. It’s certainly true that capitalists have more opportunity to innovate in the sense that they are not working, so they have lots of time, and they control vast resources, so they have the opportunity to manifest any ideas they might have. However, there’s nothing magically good and unique about the capitalist’s body or mind that makes them more able to innovate.

The idea that certain people are born better at innovating isn’t just incorrect, it’s also a form of eugenics and a manifestation of narcissistic culture. Eugenics is this idea that you should interfere with society to arrange human reproduction so that certain heritable characteristics are increased in the population and others are decreased. If we’re pretending that some people are naturally (i.e., genetically) better at innovating, and that innovating makes you superior, then you want those people to receive more resources with the assumption that their genetic lines will become more numerous and protected from adverse conditions that might destroy the gene line — and that is eugenics, which is the underpinning of pseudo-scientific racism. Narcissistic culture assumes that some people are just better than other people by merely existing even if they don’t really improve the lives of other people. Within a narcissistic culture, each individual will tend to believe that they are one of the naturally better people, so you end up with everyone thinking they are better than everyone else. It’s a world of assholes.

The funny thing, though, is that despite having all this opportunity to innovate in terms of time and resources, capitalists do not innovate more than other people, and when they do innovate, their ideas are just as likely as anyone else’s to be bad or just a rehash of a pre-existing idea. Moreover, most innovation that is attributed to a capitalist was actually performed by someone they employed. Paying someone to innovate is not the same as being an innovator. Sometimes, the capitalist purchases the right to say they innovated something despite someone else having done the innovating (see Elon Musk and his false claim that he founded Tesla). Some of the best innovations of the past hundred years were in fact created by people employed by the government that then passed those ideas on to private companies controlled by capitalists who then took credit for those innovations.

Related: 5 important inventions you didn’t know were NASA spinoffs

Do capitalist innovations (in the sense of any innovation that a capitalist benefits from) improve the world? Most do not — but you don’t remember most of the ones that were flops. Like Lady Gaga Oreos. Remember that? The only reason I remember that one is that it was so outlandishly stupid. Like, what does Lady Gaga taste like, exactly? What is her flavor? I never found out because I didn’t buy them.

What is it that capitalists do?

Most of the time, capitalists do absolutely nothing of value for other people. In most cases, the talent of the capitalist is having a good eye for investment opportunities; i.e., they don’t innovate, but they do notice innovations of others and attach themselves to those projects in a way that helps the project move forward while also making the capitalist even more wealthy. Again, though, being able to identify a good idea is not a talent unique to the capitalist class! Most people have a pretty good idea about which ideas are likely to be popular, they just aren’t sitting on a mountain of cash that they can throw at those potentially-popular ideas. The only reason capitalists are making the decisions about which innovations to support is because they are already wealthy.

This does not address the American ideal of the innovator, though, and those people sometimes exist. What about them? Let’s say you are Randall Peltzer, and you have innovated a handy gizmo for the traveling professional that puts all the tools needed in the bathroom together in a single device. You call it the Bathroom Buddy and it would be a big hit if only you had a million dollars to start production, get some marketing materials out in the public eye, and so forth. What do you do? Well, you go to the bank where a capitalists decides if your innovation is worthy, and if they decide it is, they get a huge chunk of the profits from your innovation. Under capitalism, the capitalist rarely innovates, but always decides which innovations are produced.

Banking is the core of capitalism, and is controlled by capitalists. Even the US Federal Reserve Bank is largely independent of the government, even though it claims to be “accountable” — but remember that the government itself is controlled by capitalists who are legally allowed to bribe politicians (including the Supreme Court). So, the capitalist bribes the government in order to control staffing of the Federal Reserve, which is then independent from the government so that it can best serve the needs of the capitalists without interference from the voters. The whole point of capitalism is that capitalists get to control everything because they control the capital, and the banks themselves are the most important part of that control.

I’ve seen people say that the moment someone mentions banking (and especially global banking), you should ignore them because they’re secretly antisemitic, and then, typically, they also imply that concern about banks is silly. The whole reason why fascists distract you with anti-Jewish conspiracies, though, is to point you away from the real concentrations of power that affect your life. They want to control those concentrations of power, not destroy them. As a result of their lies, either you end up attacking the wrong people, or you start believing that there are no concentrations of power. Either of those outcomes is good from the perspective of the capitalist, who is real, and probably not Jewish.

Let me say it again: Global banking is a real problem. Bankers do take decision-making power away from you and are anti-democratic. There is no single ethnic group that controls banking. Global banking is not a conspiracy because it is happening out in the open and it isn’t as organized as the word “conspiracy” would imply.

Certainly, investing resources in an innovative project does require people to make that resource allocation decision. Resources don’t just allocate themselves. But why should it be capitalists — who are not smarter than other people and who are clearly more selfish than the average person — are the people who make these decisions? Instead, decisions about how to allocate resources should be more democratic. Even if you disagree that resource allocation should be democratized, there’s no justification for why capitalists should be the group that should make those decisions for everyone. Even if you think the market has special properties that allow it to sort out resource allocation, capitalists are not the market; in fact, they are overly powerful (anti-democratic) actors within the market that distort it and a truly free market would be democratic (in a consumerist sense).

Here’s the thing: People who are in favor of capitalism are against democracy. It’s as simple as that. They think people (but not themselves) are stupid and evil, so democracy just can’t work. The con that we have collectively fallen for is called the Virtue of Selfishness, and by that logic, it is the most selfish of us that are the most virtuous and should therefore be in charge. But in fact, putting the worst (most selfish) of us in charge has created a dystopia that is getting worse every day.

I haven’t been able to look into the Biden’s State of the Union speech from last night yet because I find him so annoying, but I was able to watch the GOP response. The GOP response was very funny, and therefore more watchable.

Republicans are strongly criticizing the response speech which was made by a younger Senator, Katie Britt, for being just cringey and awful. That’s interesting because it really embodies exactly the kind of vibe that MAGA has been promoting for years now in a way that I have not seen before. To me, it was perfect, in fact. Britt’s response speech certainly had a disturbing tone from my perspective, yet criticizing her speech really seems equivalent to criticizing the entire MAGA ethos.

But, if you get beyond the spirit and tone of her speech and look at the substantive issues she spoke on, what is left? Katie and her husband are concerned that the next generation will not have the opportunities and freedoms that they had. OK, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats can address either of those things because they are both beholden to ridiculously wealthy elites (just, perhaps, different subsets of those wealthy elites) and Republicans in particular are absolutely uninterested in individual freedom. Rather, Republicans have proven over and over again that they are interested in individual compliance with traditional culture; what they call “freedom” is the freedom to comply or face harsh consequences for going against traditional culture.

“I worry that my children may not get a shot at living their American dreams,” she says. Not “the” American dream, but “their” American dreams. What if their American dreams are gay, Katie? What if their American dreams don’t include having a lot of children?

Side note: My face hurts just watching how much this woman strains her facial muscles.

Britt does the classic right-wing misdirection — after talking about how her children’s American dreams may no longer be attainable, she shifts to the “crisis at the border” implying that this is somehow the cause of the problem rather than the real problem, which is the wealthy leveraging their control of corporations and the government itself to suck all the money (and power) out of normal working people.

The border is a mess, but it isn’t a crisis (Republicans who went down there to try to do something about it in person found this out first-hand) and it wasn’t the “most secure border ever” during the Trump administration. In fact, the Biden administration has been very authoritarian about that border since taking office (to the chagrin of people on the left). Moreover, as I’ve said before, the US economy requires illegal workers to function normally.

The specific things Britt mentions in her speech did not change the security of the border at all. Halting construction is not the same at deconstruction, and the border wall is not effective anyway; but never mind that, Biden actually built more of the border wall! She’s just straight-up lying about that. Announcing plans doesn’t do anything to change the world (it’s a common Democratic party ploy to make their voters think they’re doing something).

Side note: They’re right — she does seem like the drunk mom you ran into in your friend’s kitchen in the middle of the night when you were doing a sleepover in junior high.

I started trying to go over every little detail of her anti-immigrant monologue, but the truth is the whole subject is a distraction from the real issue: the destruction that the global billionaire class is creating in the US, Mexico, and every other country on this planet. If your 70+ year-old relative is having to choose between food and medication, it is the global billionaire class — not the Mexicans — that created this situation. Our dollars do not go as far as they did because of the global billionaire class, not because of immigrants.

Side note: That’s a really cute faucet, Katie. Looks like it might be the Rohl Acqui, which costs over $500. Yikes! If you like that look, Home Depot has some things that are similar (but not exactly the same) for a lot less. FYI.

When she says “the left” (meaning Democrats, who are actually center-right) has coddled criminals and defunded the police, that’s simply not true. There’s nowhere in America where the current funding for police is less than it was before Biden took office. Regarding “coddling criminals” — I can only guess that means releasing them from prison — our American system of institutionalized poverty to benefit the billionaire class does generate a lot of crime, but those who commit serious crimes are staying in prison. It’s only very low-level criminals who are being released back into society.

She claims that small towns as well as big cities are getting more dangerous, but the fact is that small towns are being emptied out by poverty, and overall violent crime has dropped to an extremely low level (probably because those who were most affected by lead exposure became elderly) and has stayed extremely low since 2012. The only way to really get it any lower would be socialism and certainly nothing the Republicans have suggested would decrease violent crime.

She claims that the problem with Biden is that he is “weak” rather than anything about his concrete policy decisions. It’s the standard dominance culture of the right and its standard assumption that if you aren’t promoting and exhibiting dominance culture, you are instead promoting and exhibiting chaos and ruin. There’s no logical thread that makes that assumption work, it’s just an assumption they hold because anything other than traditional culture makes them severely anxious.

Then, she claims that Biden is somehow not keeping his word in terms of foreign policy, which is just plain bunk. Trump is the one who withdrew the US from Afghanistan; Biden just inherited the decision which was already in motion. Nobody is more pro-Israel than Biden, and nobody is more pro-Putin than Trump.

Side note: She’s a bad actor. Her lies should be completely transparent to everyone. Maybe that’s really why Republicans didn’t like her speech.

She apparently wants to go to war with China or at least do a lot of posturing about China. Trump didn’t face foreign policy problems with strength and resolve. He basically offered to blow every dictator out there. Neat how Britt has forgotten that.

It’s true that we are not better off than we were 3 years ago.
It’s true that we are at a crossroads.
It’s true that it doesn’t have to be this way.

The problem, though, is that the Republican party is no more able to do something about it than the Democrats are because both parties are beholden to billionaire donors who get whatever they want. Sure, those billionaires disagree internally about how best to suck the rest of the wealth out of the working class, but they all agree that exsanguinating us is a great idea.

Side note: Katie Britt and her husband have a net worth of between $1 million and $5 million, making her part of the millionaire sycophant class that services and promotes the billionaire class just like a vampire’s bug-eating familiars (per Bram Stoker’s Dracula). Yes, the rest of the US congress is basically the same.

I had to stop watching Britt’s speech at about 13 minutes because the comedy wore off , and then it was just really boring and stupid, but apparently, the Republican party is the party of hard working families and parents. If that were the case, they would support taking some of the money and power away from the lazy billionaire class and putting it back in the pockets of those hard working families. They can’t do that because they serve the global billionaire class just like the Democrats. In fact, they have to strongly oppose anything like that so that the Democrats can pretend to support a more democratic tax system, and then shrug and fail.

Republicans: If you really want to vote for a party that supports hard working families and parents, here you go.

Votes in red or blue states don’t really matter thanks to the anti-democratic electoral college system. Sure, go vote, but it’s only the swing states that really determine the results of a Presidential election. For 2024, those swing states are:

• North Carolina
• Georgia
• Arizona
• Michigan
• Wisconsin
• Pennsylvania

If you’re in one of those swing states, you should fully think through the practical impact of your vote. I’m not saying who you should vote for or even if you should vote — I’m just saying your vote really matters if you live in a swing state, and you should give this decision the attention it deserves.

But for the rest of us (and by “us” I mean the left), there is no reason to play this idiotic electoral college game according to mainstream rules. You can vote for whoever you want because it doesn’t matter. You can vote for a socialist. You can vote for the libertarian. You can vote for your dog. You can vote for yourself. It’s freeing, I think. I do recommend that you show up, though. It’s a lot more powerful to metaphorically write “fuck you” (you could do this literally as a write-in candidate if you want) on the ballot than to just not show up. Not showing up communicates apathy, and they’re fine with apathy.

I’m not 100% sure that I even want Biden to win, but since I’m not in a swing state, I don’t need to think all the way through it. But, if Biden winning is the best thing, then it does seem like it would be really good if Biden won the electoral college but also got very little of the popular vote. Seems like that would accurately communicate to the Democratic party that they need to stop choosing these neoliberal, quite-possibly-fascist candidates if they want to remain relevant.

The flip side of this is that Biden needs to be physically going to those 6 swing states and really kissing the asses of the voters there so he doesn’t pull an HRC and lose the electoral vote. If he loses the electoral vote, it will be his fault for being a terrible candidate — it will not be the voters’ fault for not voting for the terrible candidate.

In terms of who to choose for your protest vote, let me suggest Claudia De la Cruz. She is running with Karina Garcia as her VP as the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) candidates.

Claudia De la Cruz is a mother, popular educator and theologian born in the South Bronx who has spent her life organizing for justice for working people at home and to end U.S. empire abroad. Karina Garcia is a Chicana organizer, popular educator and mother who has spent her entire adult life fighting for the rights of immigrant workers, women and the whole working class.

Go ahead and explore the details if you like; just remember, it isn’t possible for them to win an election in the USA so if you’ve got some small nitpick about their politics, it absolutely does not matter.

Liberals are always talking about reaching across the aisle. The metaphor imagines that there is an auditorium (or perhaps the congressional chambers) and that all the Republicans are sitting on the right side of the center aisle and all the Democrats are sitting on the left side of the center aisle. The metaphorical “reaching” is really the “two sides” finding common ground that will allow them to make concessions and reach an agreement on how the United States of America should be governed.

On the surface, reaching across the aisle is a good idea. People getting along is good. People having conflicts that might lead to a civil war is bad. (As long as you ignore the details.)

So what is the common ground between the Republicans and Democrats? And what are some concessions they might make to one another? These are questions we might all want to consider before we seriously consider reaching across the aisle.

Let’s admit first, though, that reaching across the aisle automatically excludes the MAGA extremists on the Republican side, and the pro-democracy, anti-genocide extremists that often end up voting Democrat (i.e., “the left”).

Common Ground

Both sides support unquestioning support of Israel no matter how fascistic and genocidal the Israeli government and, apparently, a majority of Israelis might be. Sure, there are people who vote Democrat or Republican that do not support the Israeli government (e.g., some Republicans are antisemitic but really want the Temple in Jerusalem to be rebuilt, and leftists don’t think the Holocaust justifies the Nakba), but nobody is reaching across the aisle to those folks.

Both sides support the existence of homelessness, starvation, and deprivation of medical care within the richest country on Earth. Democrats believe that capitalism is the best possible system, and thus believe poverty is inevitable, whereas Republicans believe someone else suffering is a desirable outcome.

Both sides support the idea of the United States of America and its institutions, such as the Constitution. “Our institutions” is such an empty value as to be comical were it not for the fact that Democrats and Republicans both swoon over this nebulous idea. We’re talking about a Constitution specifically designed to protect the “opulent minority” (rich people) and allow for the institution of slavery. This is not a document to be fetishized, but rather one we should be criticizing and reforming, as FDR intended with his Economic Bill of Rights. Moreover, there is nothing about the Constitution that would prevent the conversion of the USA to a fully fascist government and society despite what liberals like to pretend.

Both sides support increasing the carbon production of our country. Yes, the Biden administration has made great strides in promoting alternative energy, but at the same time it increased US production of fossil fuels such that the US is now the biggest producer in the world. That increased production will produce more CO2 than the CO2 cuts created by the Biden administration’s “green” policies. As always, the goal of liberal governments is to increase GDP and private profits at any cost. Analysis: Biden-Approved Fossil Fuel Projects Undermine IRA Emissions Cuts

Both sides support a militarized police force, criminalization of poverty, and a privatized prison system that holds the highest percentage of the population of any country on Earth.

Making Concessions

In order to really reach across the aisle, the reacher must be willing to make some concessions. The Republicans never talk about reaching — only Democrats espouse this as a good course of action. In fact, when the Democrats take a step to the right, Republicans respond by also moving a step to the right; that’s been going on since the Obama administration. Or maybe since Bill Clinton.

What concessions could the Democrats make to the Republicans?

The Democrats could offer to privatize Social Security. Social Security is universally loved by normal Americans and universally hated by the wealthy. Republicans like to pretend that if we privatized Social Security, the program would do much better financially, so this is something those vultures might like. In fact, they almost did this in 2011-2012, calling it the Grand Bargain. Fortunately, popular opposition shot it down. It was a great example, though, of how the Democratic party elite are willing to lose on purpose to support the wishes of the donor class — as long as they can get away with it.

The Democrats could offer to end gay marriage, substituting the less offensive “domestic partnership” scenario. They could also end or reduce protections for any and all minority groups, basically legalizing discrimination. While Democrats would never legalize genocide within the borders of the USA, they could certainly agree to defund programs meant to investigate and prosecute hate crimes. They could change the emphasis of various executive branch departments; for example, they could focus the FBI on “finding illegal immigrants” and instruct them to ignore hate-based crimes.

(Believe me — I don’t want to give conservatives ideas, but you people keep trying to make deals with them.)

The Democrats could actively support the Christianity-centric (theocratic) view of the USA that Republicans would like to see re-established, including moving funding for public institutions to church-run institutions, like private religious schools.

The Democrats could agree to end their campaign to provide federal funding for child care for working moms while simultaneously providing bigger tax credits for children, thus forcing mothers out of the workforce. If the numbers were right, this could effectively end feminism as we know it in a single generation. Remember, Republicans don’t really care about being frugal — they only care about promoting their culture and preferred power hierarchy.

Democrats could end their campaign to reform gun laws. They could even allow Class 3 weapons (machine guns, suppressors, short-barreled rifles, etc.) to be sold using the instant background check system instead of the months-long and overly complex current process. If this sounds absurd, consider how adding an electronic fingerprint scanner at each FFL (funded by the US taxpayer, of course) would make the current system seem pointless to the average voter.

Democrats could agree to bomb Iran. This is one of those things the Democratic donor class really wants anyway, so it is very appealing.

Democrats could agree to a rigorous law enforcement campaign to destroy antifa, who are obviously doing something illegal by existing (they’re not).

Democrats could agree to truly shutting down the southern US border in violation of US and international law. Yeah, I know I just said it is illegal, but the Refuge Act of 1980 can be repealed and Americans mostly think they are above international law. This would also be morally deplorable, but Americans definitely don’t care about that.

The right to asylum was enshrined in 1948’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and then again in the Refugee Convention of 1951 and its 1967 Protocol. The United States passed its own federal law in the Refugee Act of 1980, for people who are fleeing persecution on “account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

ACLU

The Democrats could sign on to a bill allowing US police the right to execute anyone on the spot if they believe they have committed a felony.

Am I being hyperbolic? OK, then you tell me — what exactly should Democrats offer to do for the genocidal, hateful lovers of suffering and domination that are the Republican party? Quite literally, no good can come from Republicans getting even a small part of what they want. If you want to make a deal with the Republicans, why not go straight to the Devil instead?

The Other Aisle

If Democrats really wanted to bring the country together and promote policies that would ultimately be popular with nearly all Americans, they would reach across the other aisle — to the left.

The left knows where to find the funding to help people train for new and more rewarding jobs.

The left knows how to get resources to mothers who wish to stay at home with their children as well as mothers who wish to follow a career path.

The left knows how to fully fund Social Security without increasing your taxes.

The left knows how to make small towns thrive.

The left knows how to leave a survivable planet to our children.

The left knows how to build a world where everyone gets along and thrives — except the rich and bigots.

The left knows how to decrease immigration and make it so we no longer require it for our economy to function.

Problem Solved

Another way of looking at it is that as long as we are unwilling to aggravate a tiny minority of ultra-rich assholes, we will not be able to solve the real problems that most Americans face. America’s two-party system is really a debate between two cabals of powerful shit sacks regarding exactly how the average American’s life should be exploited and controlled. The rest of us are being forced to choose between them, but this is like asking the condemned man how he wants to die, and then giving him two gruesome options; it isn’t a meaningful choice, even though it seems rather important in the moment.

In the non-metaphorical real world, this means giving a person two shitty options, and they are left to determine which option is best for them. You can’t ever have financial security, but you get to choose between screwing over some specific minority groups (e.g., women, Black people) and screwing over everyone equally. You can’t have peace, but you can choose which conflicts and genocides to fund. You can’t have a job where you are respected and do meaningful work, but you can choose to make some other group of people have it worse than you do (or not). One side offers nonsense and suffering, the other side offers nothing but I guess having dystopia painted in your favorite color is worth something.

I realize people are going to read this and say something like, “well, communism is bad because…” That’s fine. Whatever bad features you think communism or socialism has, let’s not do those features. Let’s do the other ones instead. You don’t like how Soviet Russia was anti-Christian? Fine. No problem. We don’t have to do that bit. You think communism steals your toothbrush? Fine. I formally propose that we do communism without toothbrush stealing. Easy peasy. Do you think small businesses are all run by the state under socialism? OK, no problem. Under our version, small businesses will be independent of the state — and the banks and the landlords. They won’t even be taxed. Problem solved.

“Far-right influencers claim singer is ‘Pentagon asset’ conspiring to ‘manipulate’ voters after ‘rigged’ Super Bowl favors Chiefs.” (The Guardian)

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Taylor Swift conspiracy theory. If you are not ready to learn the exciting ending, you may want to skip this post until February 11!

This is the funniest thing that I’ve seen in quite a while. The idea, apparently, is that the Pentagon (or perhaps just the more general “deep state” or maybe a foreign adversary) is employing this woman, Taylor Swift, as a propaganda asset, and that they will set it up so that the Chiefs win the Superbowl, and then at the climactic end of the game, Swift will address the world from the field and tell everyone to vote for Joe Biden, and everyone will comply because…

Gosh, I’m not sure what the next part is. I feel like the righties just never really come up with a narrative for anything that makes complete sense. They always lose the thread at some point. Here’s a version that is better and also has a lot more flare:

Taylor Swift, a biomorphic AI android engineered by the Red Chinese, has been employed by the CPC-controlled Biden administration to control the next US Presidential election by way of arranging the Chiefs to win so that the Swiftbot can be on the field (with her boyfriend, a cybernetically-enhanced Chinese agent disguised to look like a regular white guy) right after the climactic end of the game, and will use a new experimental hypnosis ray that can travel over normal hi-def TV to mind-control everyone who is watching the game into voting for Joe Biden. (They tried using 5G for mind control, but that just gave everyone COVID!)

Eh? Eh? Yes, I know it is derivative.

If you peel away all the idiocy, there might be something real to the right-wing freakout over Taylor Swift telling the Swifties (fans of Taylor Swift) to vote.

Way back in 2017, right wingers were in love with Taylor Swift, and I think there’s something about the Taylor Swift brand/aesthetic that really gets normal Americans excited in a way that no politician can. I’m not a fan, but I do admit that “Shake It Off” is a real banger (or is it a bop?), and I see nothing wrong with anything she has said in the press.

Let me provide you with some interesting numbers:

In the 2016 election, 65.84 million people voted for HRC and 62.98 voted for Trump. Trump lost the popular vote by a bit (2.86 million), but still ended up winning the electoral college because HRC failed to campaign adequately in swing states. In 2020, more people voted (81.28 million for Biden and 74.22 million for Trump) and this time the spread was enough (7.06 million votes) that Biden won the electoral college.

Taylor Swift fans are 53% of the US adult population, or about 137 million people — more than the total of all the people that voted for Trump and HRC combined in 2016. Basically, Swifties alone can elect anyone they want to the Presidency. Even if Biden loses all of the leftist vote, people who identify as “progressive left” or further left are only about 6% of those qualified to vote, or about 16 million people at the most. Swifties are now very motivated to vote for Biden because the Trumpers are being so shitty to Taylor Swift. Since Swifties are concentrated in the age groups that do not typically vote, this right-wing freakout is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by motivating people to perform the act of voting without affecting their real political views, which are foggy, ill-informed, and fatalistic. “I don’t understand this politics thing and I think it is rigged against us no matter what, but I’m voting against Trump because his people were mean to Taylor.”

In my opinion, the Taylor Swift factor might do a lot more than allow Biden to squeak by — it might make the election a real blowout.

!!! IMPORTANT UPDATE !!!

After finishing this post, I had an important conversation revealing the ending of the righty version of the Taylor Swift tale: She’s “Satanic” … and not just Satanic, but a “Satanic witch” … and not just any Satanic witch, but a clone (I shit you not) of Zeena LaVey, celebrity Satanist and daughter of Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan. So, obviously, she will use the Power of Satan™ to mind control everyone into voting for Joe Biden when she appears on the field at the end of the Chief’s Superbowl win! I can see now why they were holding back on the ending — it’s a real doozy! Personally, I prefer the scifi version of the Taylor Swift story, but I guess a lot of people are still into folk horror (why??).

Maybe that is why righties never seem to have an ending to their narratives — the ending is always tHe PoWeR of sAtaN!!1! which is boring and stupid, so they have to kind of hint at what the ending might be, just like when a movie doesn’t have any budget for the monster, they never really show the full man in the rubber costume, but instead keep showing little bits of it in shadow.

What’s interesting about this take is that the central premise pre-dates the right-wing love affair with Taylor Swift that happened around 2017. I guess they are just really fickle!

I keep seeing, “Nobody wants a civil war,” in online forums. It’s just as naive to think that way as it is to be excited about the prospect of a civil war. Some people do want a civil war, and the benefits and dangers of a civil war vary a lot depending on who you are, and not everyone is capable of fully understanding how civil war would affect them, personally. Moreover, the liberals who are saying that nobody wants a civil war are clearly assuming that the alternative to a civil war is that nothing changes.

The typical conservative is full of bluster. They make a lot of aggressive or even violent statements, but with no real intent to follow through — except they do intend for someone else to follow through. That’s the key. Their words are meant to encourage other people to participate in this hypothetical civil war while they sit back, relax, and watch it unfold on TV.

Yeah, sure, many people would die in a civil war, and things would be very hard for a while, but have you thought about the benefits? I mean the benefits to conservatives, such as no longer having to respect non-conservatives, women becoming chattel, right-wing Christianity becoming the ruling ideology, legal murder for sexual and gender crimes as well as simple trespassing (as long as the offender is not a fellow conservative) and, of course, witchcraft. What about food and fuel shortages? Oh, they’re planning to just take yours since you don’t own any firearms.

On the other side of the argument, what are the consequences of not having a civil war? Anyone who is imagining that nothing changes or that slow progress is inevitable is simply wrong. Anything can happen; the future of politics is not set. If you are a woman, if you are in any way interesting in a gender or sexual sense, if you respect nature or reality or education, if you are not a Christian, if you are the “wrong” kind of Christian, if you are a person of color, the no-civil-war future that conservatives are succeeding at implementing right now is not a place where you would want to be alive. Civil war would certainly be horrific, but less horrific than letting these psychos do what they want, and at least civil war has a possibility of resulting in a better world. Moreover, the death toll of a not-civil-war future could easily be higher than the option with a civil war.

Another thing I’m seeing is self-satisfied liberals chuckling about how the “Gravy Seals” (per internet liberals, this refers to people who like to dress up in military style outfits and tote firearms around, pretending to be cutting edge operatives) will get slaughtered in a civil war. While I appreciate that the US military is the most horrifying destructive force on the planet and that it is nominally commanded by one Joe Biden, I also did not miss the part where most US soldiers are conservatives. Yes, yes, the officer class hates Trump. That’s fine. Are we really going to pretend that the people who actually do the fighting won’t be able to do the fighting without the officers? When they’re told to go slaughter the Gravy Seals, are we sure they’ll just go do that? They’re fully capable of refusing the order or even changing sides. It’s not like the Gravy Seals will need sophisticated tactical strategy from a highly-educated officer class to slaughter unarmed liberals.

“The US military has bombs,” is another popular smug response liberals enjoy. Do you really think the capitalist class is going to let the US government bomb their infrastructure if the “enemy” is Trumpers? Billionaires are not afraid of Trumpism. They’re only willing to destroy their own infrastructure if the target is something truly threatening to capitalist globalism; i.e., the left.

The liberal position is — per usual — that civil war should not happen because it is very inconvenient to them, personally, and therefore it won’t happen. When you have 80 million people jonesing for a civil war, the only reason it doesn’t happen is because something forcefully stopped them; similarly, if you have 80 million people trying to implement a genocidal fascist government, the only reason it doesn’t happen is because something forcefully stopped them. The liberal tactic of following the rules even harder hasn’t worked yet and it isn’t going to start working now. Rules do not stop action — someone must enforce those rules with violence.

The real reason that civil war is unlikely is something I’ve already mentioned: The threat a civil war would present to capital owned by billionaires. Not only could infrastructure be destroyed, but capital could become “stranded” — i.e., not destroyed, but not usable. Since all the power of the billionaire class comes from their ability to profit off capital, a civil war is completely unacceptable to the billionaire class. This is why the Democrats are pulling their punches and letting us steadily inch toward fascism — fascism is and has always been preferable to anything that truly threatens the power of the billionaire class.

When the Supreme Court makes a decision against something that Democratic Party voters want, the Democratic Party shrugs and says there’s nothing they can do. When the Supreme Court makes a decision against something that the Republican Party voters want, the Republicans ignore the decision and do whatever they want, and the Democratic Party shrugs and says there’s nothing they can do.

Does the Supreme Court matter or not?

If this were Colombia or Venezuela acting up to this degree, their leader would be dead. A governor countermanding the US Supreme Court and taking control of a unit of the US military for his own purposes is seditious and can be legally “taken out” (whatever you want that to mean) by “Seal Team 6” or the CIA or some other tool of violence that the US federal government proudly uses to threaten other countries.

The whole situation with immigrants is ridiculous — these are the very people who we need to be here illegally so they can keep our economy going without being paid as much as a legal worker. Rather than being some kind of threat, they are essential workers. The absurdity isn’t important, though; it is the hypocrisy that matters.

The Democrats are made of hypocrisy, and the point of that hypocrisy is to let conservatives win. If the Supreme Court matters, then Greg Abbot must be ended — not necessarily killed, but ended. It’s that simple. If the Supreme Court does not matter — well, there are many different interesting potential implications, such as the dissolution of the United States of America, or just passively allowing the country to slide into fascism. In any case, there is no “rule of law” — there’s only the supremacy of violence. Moreover, it is the Democrats failure to stand up for themselves that made this moment inevitable — Republicans know that Democrats will not fight back, so to win, all they have to do is fight. Why would they not fight under those conditions? They would have to not want to win, which is a weird psychological problem that only Democrats seem to possess.

When they go low, we shrug and let them win.

Democrats

Democrats love to talk about how violence doesn’t work. It’s working great for Republicans right now. I bet it continues to work. Democrats can be defeated — made irrelevant, in fact — by Republicans simply having little temper tantrums, and using those tantrums to just keep moving the standards of normalcy further to the right. Are Democrats too lazy and complacent to stop them or is their opposition to Republicans performative? I’m guessing the latter because the rich have spoken and they simply do not mind the idea of a far-right America; they are completely fine with that.

Related: Scared of another Trump presidency? Billionaires suggest you calm down.

Conservatives have a great many narratives that serve as both an introduction to a far-right (fascist) worldview and as dog whistles for fellow conservatives. Understanding and being able to identify those narratives is an essential starting point to working against fascism and even possibly having productive conversations with people who might be vulnerable to falling down the far-right rabbit hole. Most people, in fact, are vulnerable to these far-right talking points because vulnerability only requires that you are dissatisfied with the world under capitalism and lacking exposure to accurate facts about the world. I say “accurate” facts because many right-wing talking points contain aspects that are technically true, but not accurate because they don’t contain enough information or put the truth in a context that leads to incorrect conclusions.

“The system is bad.”

Conservatives are constantly complaining about “the system”. Like many conservative talking points, this one is a sort of weird parody of a leftist talking point, but with the crucial detail stripped away. Namely: What is the system? The system is capitalism, but conservatives claim to be champions of capitalism, despite constantly complaining about things that are a direct result of capitalism and — especially — capitalist control of politics (which is the natural result of capitalism). They hate capitalist globalism — the pre-eminent form of capitalism — the most. In fact “globalism” is often substituted for “the system” — again, global what? The real answer is global capitalism.

Having eliminated “capitalism” as the name of the system (because conservatives are constantly pretending to be in favor of capitalism), we are left with a bunch of oddly meaningless pseudo-systems, such as: wokism, cultural Marxism, political correctness, etc. None of these are real things; what’s real is liberals trying to create a world where money is the only hierarchy, and trying to tear down other hierarchies that they see as illegitimate. (The left sees the hierarchy of money as illegitimate as well.)

Conservatives hate this because the hierarchy of money is the only currently-existing hierarchy that they do not think is legitimate. I know that seems untrue on its face, but the fact is that they see certain groups as deserving all kinds of power (including money); they don’t see money in-and-of-itself as making you deserving of power. If a non-religious Jewish woman has a lot of money (and thus, power), that’s likely to offend your run-of-the-mill conservative, but a white, Christian man having a lot of money (and thus, power) might seem wonderful to the same person.

Similarly, when their guy is President, they want the office of the President to have unlimited power; when the President is a Democrat, the President has too much power and must be impeached (or worse) immediately. Even the conservative opposition to communism isn’t really about them being opposed to authoritarianism or a government control of the economy (in contrast to capitalists controlling the government), but rather it is because they see it as the wrong people having power. That is essentially why they conflate Democrats (who are capitalists) with communists (who are anti-capitalist) — they see both political groups as empowering the wrong people.

The way this dog whistle works is they talk about how the system is bad, and they list off a lot of problems caused by the system. An audience member who is new to these ideas nods along, and starts to wonder, “What is this system? Who controls this system? How can they be stopped?” and, after a very long wait, the conservative will finally reveal the answer: It’s Jewish people. OK, it isn’t always Jewish people. Sometimes, the answer they give is pedophiles who are also Satanists. In any case, impoverished people of color are portrayed as being the foot soldiers of this Jewish/Satanic/pedophilic conspiracy.

If you can get to someone who is discovering the problems with the system (capitalism) before they get led down the rabbit hole to fascist nonsense, you’ve got a real chance of helping someone see who is actually running the world: A disorganized cabal of obscenely wealthy assholes. I want to emphasize the disorganized part. They simply cannot decide whether the Republican approach or the Democratic approach is better for keeping and strengthening their grip on power, but on most days, most of them are willing to give money to both parties.

“The elites are bad.”

Why yes, yes they are! They are very bad. Who are they, though?

Well, they are not Jewish and they aren’t Satanists. I don’t know if they are pedophiles; maybe. But conservatives are not opposed to pedophilia if their people are doing it. See, for example: Matt Gaetz, Roy Moore, Dennis Hastert, Ruben Verastigua, David Byrd, Donald Trump — the list goes on and on!

In August of 2023, 6 of the top 10 richest people were Jewish — which is to say that 4 were not Jewish. Worldwide, Christians hold the largest share of wealth at 55% and Jewish people only hold 1.1%. There’s a good reason why a small number of Jewish families were able to amass great wealth — Christians used to think they’d go to Hell if they made loans to other Christians, so Jewish people filled that niche. However, if you look at Jewish people overall, they’re just as likely to be victims of the billionaire class as the rest of us (again, they hold less wealth than Christians, Muslims and Hindus).

It is the billionaire class that are the elites. They use the millionaire class (e.g., Congress, CEO’s, corporate and national presidents) to do their bidding. The religious, cultural, or ethnic background of those elites and their lackeys is a distraction from the important feature: Their absurdly massive wealth.

“The strong inevitably dominate the weak.”

This is a fun one, because in this case, liberals and conservatives agree! What’s true is that in the context of a toxic culture where people have been pitted against one another by the system (capitalism), atomized (separated from healthy relationships with one another), and traumatized (abused and forced to participate in abuse), we do observe that the strong inevitably dominate the weak. The idea contains about as much wisdom as saying, “If you knock things over, they fall,” which is to say, none.

The dog whistle part is what comes next, i.e., “The strong inevitably dominate the weak, so you had better be strong so you can dominate.” Dominating other people — and never being submissive — is the great preoccupation of conservativism, and especially conservative men. The reward for being dominant is not ever having to do any actual work — you just embody dominance and other people scurry about trying to figure out how to keep you satisfied.

This, incidentally, describes US foreign policy which, I’ve found, is supported by your average liberal. They believe that the USA must be the global 800-lb gorilla because if we started being fair and supporting democracy in other countries, we would not be able to enjoy the luxuries that are the privilege of empire. What’s funny is that they (the liberals) are correct; that conservatives seem to not get it is really interesting.

Instead, conservatives consistently have a different narrative about US foreign policy:

“We need to pull the troops back to the US to defend America.”

I’m not at all opposed to pulling the troops back — especially since the US is not being meaningfully attacked in any way. We have no business being in most of the foreign countries where we have bases or are executing an armed conflict. But that’s where this narrative gets weird: Defend America from what?

The answer that you’ll eventually get if you wait long enough will be a threat that is either overblown, attributed to the wrong group, or not even real.

Conservatives have decided to be very, very afraid of immigrants coming across the US southern border. They believe that these are almost entirely made up of Mexican cartel members and “foreign adversaries” and that both groups are going to do evil things to good, conservative families. This threat is dramatically overblown. Conservatives latch on to isolated incidences (like a kidnapping or murder attributed to an immigrant) and conclude that we are literally being invaded by the enemy. The truth is that the porosity of the US southern border is necessary so we can get illegal immigrants here to do important work for very little money; this keeps the US economy working properly by making necessities like food affordable. Without a constant flow of migrant workers across our border, the US economy (i.e., capitalism) would collapse. If we truly closed our borders, the price of food would shoot up, and conservatives would blame the US government. Moreover, the average undocumented immigrant is less likely to commit a violent crime than the average American.

Trump announced that he was going to deploy the US military to liberal US cities, and conservatives were overjoyed. The supposed threat there is communist gangs (i.e., antifas) and Black people. Neither of those pose any kind of threat to your standard white suburban or rural conservative but they lie awake at night worrying about both. BLM really freaked out conservatives despite their only demand being that police should treat Black people the same as whites; they also opposed specific acts of police abuse against white people, making them more of an anti-police-abuse movement for everyone. Antifa only shows up when people are advocating genocide; clearly, conservatives want to be free to advocate for genocide even while they fear “white genocide”.

Go a little bit deeper into the idea of defending America, and you’ll find a place where there is a vast conspiracy by “elites” (Jewish people?) to institute “communism” (capitalism controlled by the wrong people) by using people of color and antifas as shock troops. Included in this conspiracy is the Mexican government which is enabling the invasion of America by brown people by failing to arrest immigrants, but is also completely impotent in its ability to control drug cartels because the cartels have either killed or employed all the cops. And, you know, obviously, the UN is trying to disarm all the conservatives and make our children gay (this means submissive in conservative English) so they can’t dominate the bad people. Vast conspiracy.

Really, the only conspiracy is capitalism, except that it isn’t a conspiracy because they’re doing everything out in the open. See, for example, Davos.

The important thing is that today’s conservative is not really anti-war, they just have priorities: Regaining control of the fatherland is the first priority; invading France can come later. That was a metaphor — Mexico would be the first foreign nation to invade because of those “foreign adversaries” they keeping sending into the US. After that, we’d be forced to invade Canada because they just won’t give us preferential terms on trade, and we’re all starving because of this mysteriously long drought that has nothing to do with climate.

“America is on the edge of collapse.”

Totally true. But hold on just a sec — Why is America going to collapse?

The conservative answer has nothing to do with the contradictions of capitalism, the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet, or declining food production as a result of pollution (especially climate change). Those things are real. Rather, conservatives have concluded that America will collapse because of cultural degeneracy and submissive character. While they do despise the soft inefficacy of your standard liberal (and so does the left), what they really mean is things like gaiety, transness, feminism, and cooperation. If you aren’t being dominant, straight, cis, patriarchal and competitive, you are being a submissive degenerate. I don’t know how else to put it; that’s the whole thing. They literally see these things as all being part of a single, cohesive, anti-conservative ethos.

And that is why…

“You need to be a warrior.”

They don’t always use “warrior”. Sometimes they say “warlord” or “soldier”. What does it mean to be a warrior?

It’s a meme that is very helpful toward motivating conservatives to dominate local politics, and through local politics, state and national politics. That’s mostly the context in which the “warrior” narrative is used, but it also applies to literally killing your enemies, which conservative pundits are constantly trying to prepare their fellow conservatives to do, mostly by saying that this killing will be necessary because the degenerate enemy will strike first.

The point, then, of being a warrior is to constantly dominate — in every context, in every way, you must dominate. Conservative pundits make it seem natural that you always need to be a warrior by making conservatives believe that they are always under attack.

“There are evil people in society constantly looking for a way to dominate you.”

This is pure projection. By fantasizing about evil people in society constantly looking for a way to dominate others, conservatives justify being the evil people constantly looking for a way to dominate others.

“This is a republic, not a democracy.”

I have a whole post on this one, but the upshot is that conservatives do not like democracy. They prefer that only a small group (white, male, Christian landowners) be allowed to vote. They believe that only that group of people are noble and good enough to be allowed to participate in democracy. This view is strikingly close to Leninism, where only the elite vanguard of communism is allowed to participate in democracy (and control the government); the difference is that Leninism is intended to eventually become a society that works for everyone (except capitalists, obviously), but traditional conservativism is meant to elevate people with the right characteristics (whiteness, maleness, etc.) forever. Trump’s advisor Steve Bannon was a fan of Leninism in terms of strategy.

Some conservatives even take it a step further by promoting the idea that we should return to a form of feudalism with someone like Donald Trump as our new king. (And then they project by saying that the Democrat currently holding the office of President is behaving like a king.) Interestingly, this tendency to claim that rule by an elite aristocracy is better than democracy goes way back to Rome or even before — and is even echoed by the Democratic party which claims to be engaging in a benevolent elitism. Certainly, rule by an elite aristocracy is always better for the elite aristocrats, and, as I’ve mentioned, the problem conservatives have with the US government is that they do not control it; they only hate the elites because they are not the elites.

“America is not a democracy, it is a republic” is bad if the degenerate enemy controls the republic. It is only good when the right people control the republic which is why the wrong people need to be prevented from voting. They literally see a vote from a Black or trans person (as examples) as “illegal” because those are the wrong people to be participating in the republic.

Let’s get back to what is true.

Capitalism is bad.
Billionaires are the enemy.
Cooperation is the cornerstone of a successful society. Domination and submission are characteristics of a troubled society.
The USA should engage in a peaceful and orderly conclusion of its global military and economic empire, and instead use its military power to support true democracy — rule by the people with minority group protections.
America is on the edge of collapse due to the inherent contradictions of capitalism, the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet, and environmental and resource issues caused by pollution (especially climate change) which are all the responsibility of the capitalist class.
America — and the world — must be defended against capitalism.
America is a republic, but it should be a democracy; e.g., we must end the electoral college system.

And most of all:

The rise of fascism in America and the world is a direct result of the failure of global capitalism.