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Well, we have reached the Midterms. Thus far, I haven’t blogged so much about this important election for reasons of emotional health: which is to say that watching America’s political crisis grind the nation’s progress to a standstill and turn us all against each other is both alarming and depressing! However, the election takes place tomorrow and it is now necessary to endorse candidates. Obviously, you should vote for the Democratic Party and its candidates for all elections on all tickets.
It is unfortunate to issue such a blanket endorsement. In better times, when the affairs of the nation were more ordered (and one of the two parties hadn’t gone completely rotten), it was necessary to assess candidates by their individual merits and positions. Hopefully that time will come again! Alas, right now, the GOP consists of anti-American fascists who are working as hard as possible to neuter and dismantle the United States of America and steal all of its assets to distribute to crooked kleptocrats and oligarchs. Their reasons any voter would want this outcome may be worth exploring later (I believe rich Republicans want to destroy the nation so they can loot it, whereas religious Republicans are unable to see that truth and instead think that treating people cruelly and badly is what Jesus would want). Yet the net result is the same—Democracy destroyed; the country rendered subordinate to Russia and hollowed out.
Americans like to pretend to be smart and cynical, so a lot of voters say “All politicians are crooked” Then these voters don’t vote…or they vote for grandstanding populists who mask graft with home-spun hucksterism. Such a fundamental mistake is understandable (since elucidating what is going on right now involves looking past the clicks-at-any-cost misdirection favored by large media-conglomerates). Also, in recent times, when the parties were very similar, pretending to be cynical so that one could be lazy and not vote was not a particularly grave sin. Yet this election demands voters’ full attention. We are nearing a point of no-return in the Republicans’ long planned doom loop (the mechanism they have used to ratchet a permanent hold of control despite commanding only a minority of votes). Read about the anti-government doom loop here!
The Republican party has not published a political platform. They believe that lies, coercion, rigged districts, and infinite dark money (from unknown payers) will be sufficient to win enough state-houses and gerrymandered house seats to permanently end representative government. They might be right! But before we just believe what they say and give up on self-governance, let’s take a closer look at what they actually want.
The real Republican Platform is horrifying. When you listen to what Republican politicians say, bear in mind that these are their true aims. In the absence of a published list of their agenda, here is an unvarnished list of their objectives and principles based on their words and actions:
- Russia is always right. Vladimir Putin is Emperor of the World and must be obeyed accordingly
- Government by self-determination should be destroyed. Monopolists, oligarchs, and foreign governments should make all of Americans’ choices for us.
- You and your family should be silent indentured servants to these same moneyed interests
- Hypocritical religious extremists should be allowed to dictate what you read, whom you love, and, above all, deny medical treatment to those they disfavor.
- Social Security and Medicare should be abolished and seniors should die in the street
It is not a surprise that the Republicans did not codify this totalitarian evil into a platform (although Greg Abbot tried). What is a surprise is that Republicans have sold anyone on any of these ideas! These corrupt and evil positions run directly counter to the universal ideals of freedom, democracy, and justice which our system was founded on. Once the Christian nationalists realize that banning abortion does not prevent abortion and that Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell are very interested in replacing the safety net with tax tax breaks for billionaires (but care very little for the false pieties of evangelical Christianity), then perhaps the great masses of illiterates who dully stand by as these con-artists destroy the Constitution will be jolted out of their pretend cynicism, but by then it will be too late to retrieve the nation from “Big Lie” adherents who believe that only their party should be legally allowed to win.
It has probably not escaped your attention that I have said a great deal against the Republican/Fascist party and not said as much for the Democrats.
I was underwhelmed by President Obama. His inability to craft political consensus and break the nation out of this political deadlock struck me as being a result of his own political inexperience. I now see that this was exactly how his Republican political enemies wanted things to look. Also President Obama cared about the hostage–I mean nation–and gave up on some of his political aims for the greater good of the country. Obviously it does not matter to Republicans if the nation is destroyed, since that is their intention anyway (after all, it’s much easier to steal from a nation where everything has been ruined and the only remaining law-enforcement agents are proudboys and hollowed-out rent-a-cops). The rule of Solomon the Wise stands against Republicans. They are happy to kill the child just so that they can have control of it (BTW you should click on that link to a previous endorsement which says what I am saying now, but with greater Biblical eloquence and better examples). Nobody should vote for any Republican this year for that alone.
The Democratic Party has an unfortunate tendency to see problems in the world as being entirely America’s fault. They are eager to coddle foreign enemies while censoriously blaming our own diplomats, military, and intelligence agents (and straight middle aged white guys) for all of the world’s troubles. Yet for all of their wonkish idealism and dogmatic identity politics, they keep coming up with policy ideas, and they keep earnestly believing in the rules of democracy. They keep fighting the Russians and Chinese (and all of their downstream villains). They keep trying to make sure that people have enough to eat asnd can go to the doctor and can look after their kids. Most importantly, they want America…and you and your family to succeed. Republicans want you to die so that a billionaire can have all of your stuff. Then they want the world to die from climate change and habitat loss ( I don’t think the Republicans have fully thought this through but have merely embraced mass extinction because it fits with their other choices)
(Also I actually think Biden has done a decent job considering all of the interlocking crises we face…AND considering that the previous guy stacked the deck so that things would be impossible for him, but political operators say not to talk about how well Biden has done, so I guess I won’t).
But you should take Biden’s integrity into consideration and you should take the wholesale moral abomination of the cowardly, lying, traitorous criminal Republican Party into consideration as well when you go to cast what they undoubtedly hope will be the last (or next-to-last) vote you are ever allowed to cast. Republicans hate democracy, they hate nature, they hate your family, and above all, they hate YOU with all of their malice and malignancy. Vote accordingly.
I have more pictures and thoughts about the spring garden…but they will have to wait. Today, alas, we must talk about politics. Since you are looking at the internet, you almost undoubtedly know by now that somebody at the Supreme Court leaked the draft of Samuel Alito’s high-handed opinion striking down Roe vs. Wade. It is a real document. Perhaps the final language will change somewhat, but unless everything changes immediately in some crazy way, abortions will be illegal or effectively illegal in red states by the end of June. It is surprising, but it is also unsurprising (since progressives and moderates have been watching Republicans strategically building towards this outcome for decades).
So far, I have read all sorts of opinions about what this means to the nation, to women, to Republicans, to Democrats, to the legitimacy our worthless kangaroo Supreme Court, to our terrible health-care system, etc. None of these writings have satisfied me, because none of them said what I wanted to hear. Therefore I guess I am stuck writing the essay which I keep looking everywhere for. You will have to judge whether it is true or not. Perhaps you will have to judge whether to make it true, since, in the end of things, that is how politics works.
Ok, here is my thesis: obtaining what they have claimed to want will be a much bigger problem for Republicans than they care to let on. They are like the proverbial dog chasing a van who finally catches it. If abortions are illegal in red states, it will quickly threaten the GOP’s already tenuous political coalition through several ways. First of all, the same religious fundamentalists, scolds, and absolutists who have obsessively made this a single-focus issue will want abortion outlawed everywhere in the nation. Republicans will now have to work towards that goal, unless they want all of those single-issue voters to harumph and stay home. Yet, as women start dying left and right, politics in those same red states will change more quickly and in more unnerving ways than Republicans are ready for.
I suspect that strategy-minded Republicans such as Mitch McConnell never really wanted to see Roe end for exactly this reason. The pro-life zealots were already maximally engaged. This will not create more of them or cause them to show up at the polls in greater numbers. After an odious victory lap, they will either tune out of politics or demand that Republicans do stuff which is even more unpopular. And ending Roe (and its reproductive freedoms)–especially in this draconian way–is quite unpopular with 55-70 percentage of the electorate (depending on how the questions are asked). That number is likely to get much larger as snoozing Democrats and progressives wake up and notice that the United States is quickly becoming a farcical fascist dystopia .
So Republicans are back to their true play. Either they must comprehensively end representative democracy once and for all and replace it with an autocracy masquerading as a democracy (like Hungary or Turkey) or they will have to eventually face voters, a majority of whom do not like their policies. Republicans have become so wily at avoiding voters and at painting Democrats’ attempts to govern the nation as extremism, that we have lost sight of how deceptively weak and unpopular their fundamental positions are. Now they are running on a platform of raising taxes for working people, destroying Social Security, making healthcare more expensive, AND abolishing reproductive choice for all Americans. The fact that they are doing as well as they are is testament to their astonishing ability to lie and prevaricate, but the truth is slowly creeping up behind them and dawning even on the most misinformed voters.
So the next two elections of 2022 and 2024 will be the GOP’s best chance to use structural advantages to finish off the democracy as a functioning entity. That was already the case, but perhaps today’s leak will remind confused people who had tuned out of politics (dully repeating the Republican line that “all politicians are equally bad“) that they need to turn back in and fight off these ghastly autocrats and religious zealots. Otherwise today’s assault on freedom, dignity, and privacy will neither be the last nor the most jarring.
Like everything else in the year of our Lord 2020, the American election of 2020 was an ugly mess. As I write this, it looks like Joe Biden will probably manage to scratch out a meager victory, however any hope he had of accomplishing anything as president is already comprehensively and utterly ruined. Mitch McConnell’s icy skeletal grip upon the Senate remains, and McConnell will not allow any legislation that would benefit any non-billionaire to ever pass that ghastly house. There will be no new fiscal stimulus, or, if there is, it will be a miserable pretense which really only helps billionaires. There will be no improved medical care system. Indeed, the Supreme Court is almost certain to strike down the ACA in the immediate future, driving tens of millions of citizens out of medical care and into bankruptcy (to say nothing of what those charlatans in robes will do to reproductive rights or gun control rules). The next four years will feature no technological innovations, discoveries, or breakthroughs of any significance (Republicans and their corporate overlords have no interest in such things when the current status quo serves their purposes just fine). There will be no infrastructure deal to rebuild our crumbling nation. Americans will become poorer, sicker, and face greater day-to-day insecurity. The coronavirus will continue to kill us off and keep us separated from each other for the next several years until it burns out on its own (or do you envision folks from Kansas rushing to follow President Biden’s health initiatives?) Our standing in the world will keep on plummeting, as our autocratic foes coerce lesser nations into their thrall. Worst of all, environmental devastation will continue at a breakneck pace. Soon most ecosystems will be irrecoverably degraded and most wild lifeforms will be impossibly rare or outright extinct.
So…was the election a complete disaster? It was not! Getting rid of Donald Trump was the most important thing, and, unless he manages some Robert-Mugabe-style dark contrivance in the immediate future, he will be mercifully gone within a few looooooooong months. I am not looking forward to the cash grabs, parade of pardons, and graceless & dangerous transfer of power which we will witness during those months. However Donald Trump was the biggest threat to representative government in modern U.S history, and staving off such a threat is not nothing!. The fact that 48% of the electorate joyously voted for a white supremacist con man who has looted & preened while a quarter of a million Americans died is discouraging. Yet with Trump out of the picture (in exile, prison, or the grave) his cult of personality will recede and we will be able to look to the future and solve some of the problems which are destroying us.
Except will we really?
I did not write that first paragraph for no reason. I believe everything I said will come to pass. It is the future which Mitch McConnell is building even as I write this. And, as soon as we (non-billionaires) are being crushed beneath it, he will blame it all on Joe Biden. “Government is the problem” McConnell (or his mouthpieces) will say. Just privatize everything and let business cartels write their own rules and there will be no problem! Americans are already figuratively corporate slaves. The terrible years to come are all about making us into literal slaves.
We need to prepare for this as soon as possible. Harden your heart and stiffen your upper lip. Things in America are about to get much worse than they have been for the last 4 years. This will be entirely the fault of the Republicans. It is not even a mistake or miscalculation. It is their plan! Only by carefully explaining this again and again and again will we be able to help voters understand where their misery is truly coming from. Right now voters seem to think it is liberal snowflakes raiding their bank accounts, raising their insurance premiums, and threatening their social security. Perhaps if we can help voters understand who the true villains are (McConnell and his cronies!) we can escape some of the harm which is about to cascade down on us.
Today’s post starts out funny but quickly becomes troubling and: so maybe just read the first part?
As you might have guessed, we start with Jerry Falwell Jr.–not because his current scandal is hilarious (although it really is) but because his affairs illustrates some larger points which we would be wise to think about. Falwell is a rich and powerful evangelical leader who is one of the most prominent members of the “religious right,” an aggressive blend of Christian fundamentalism and far right politics. He has long treated his father’s university as a private fiefdom–a political/moral training camp for creating followers and minting money.
Falwell Jr. has a long history of racist tirades, homophobic stunts, shady business dealings, Covid denialism, and preposterous conspiracy theories, but such things are not entirely unknown among America’s extreme right-wing churchmen. For the last few weeks he has been under a cloud because of strange racy photographs of himself removing his trousers while undressing a lady companion. This week, however, his whole masquerade blew apart when it was incontrovertibly revealed that he liked to watch his wife sleep with other men, most notably a special live-in pool boy named Giancarlo Granda (who may or may not have been extorting the couple), but apparently other business partners and acquaintances as well. When the scandal became undeniable, Falwell Jr. threw his wife under the bus by claiming it was all her fault. He admitted no wrongdoing, pulled the cord of his golden parachute and pocketed 10 million dollars for quitting his job as head of an ultra-conservative Christian university.
As a New York City libertine (albeit a celibate one) I believe that what married couples do in their bedroom with handsome young poolboys, business partners, sundry others, and who knows what sort of costumes, devices, onlookers, animals, religious paraphernalia, super drugs, etc. is entirely their own affair. Yet the outrageous hypocrisy of Jerry Falwell Jr.’s public persona (and the extent to which he has leveraged said public persona for political influence and money) make his discomfiture particularly risible. We probably shouldn’t be so amused: Jerry Falwell Jr. is now ten million dollars richer (ten million dollars which had already been taken from starry-eyed devout kids in exchange for a worthless education and a bunch of lectures about the necessities of abstinence and supporting Trump). Indeed, based on recent evidence, this huge freak is probably turned on by the worldwide derision directed at his private life.
Beyond Falwell himself, this excellent article in Slate, highlights the true significance of this sort of scandal. Jeffrey Guhin (whose ideas I have liberally borrowed here) writes:
In the old theological meaning of the word, scandal isn’t really about what happens to the person who does something wrong. It’s about what happens to everybody else, those left in the scandal’s wake, wondering if there’s anything left to believe. In that sense, Falwell’s scandals are of a piece with Trump’s. Falwell makes people wonder if religion is actually just jerks reciting pieties and making money; Trump makes people wonder the same thing about democracy.
Here is the real problem, acts like Falwell’s diminish our collective faith in other people. That faith is the bedrock of religion (ask the Pontifex Maximus what happened to worship of Jupiter after a few centuries of Caligula, Nero, Caracalla, and Elagabalus). When devout Christians attack liberal professors, Hollywood movie stars, and atheist bloggers for destroying Christianity they are looking at the wrong villains. The emperors of Pagan Rome had their unstoppable legions burn Christians to death in front of vast crowds and it only made Christianity stronger and more popular. Christians who love the power of cruel smug bullies and the promised wealth of the idolatrous prosperity gospel are the real reason Christianity is declining in America. Don’t take it from me, take it from peer-reviewed sociologists who carefully studied people who walked away from the house of Christ.
But even if you are not religious, faith in other people’s actions and motivations is also the basis of education, of government, and of the economy (Guhin correctly notes that money is just paper and computer numbers unless we believe in it). Faith in other people is even necessary for evidence-based disciplines like science and medicine (we have seen how much modern medicine helps people if everyone regards doctors as the highly paid stooges of crooked insurance corporations). Tobacco companies realized they could defang earnest anti-smoking studies by pointing to unrelated scientists whose research was funded by corporations and then just saying “everyone is equally bad”! Faith in other people is the bedrock of everything unless you are a lone hunter gatherer (in which case how are you reading this?).
Day after day, I go to Facebook and look with bemused sadness at the posts of relatives and friends who are Trump supporters. Far from feeling that this most un-Christian president’s ostentatious support of Christian values is a grotesque affront, they regard him as someone who “keeps it real”. Trump’s penchant for doing illegal things and then insouciantly shrugging and say “everyone does it” is part of the way he gets away with it. Scandal and disillusion has left smart and caring people as cynics who believe that all politicians are crooked fraudsters. Disillusionment prevents them from discerning which politicians are actually criminals. It is another dark example of the cynical anti-government death spiral Republican leaders seem to be caught in (the enormous danger of turning citizens against the government was also the real thesis of my oh-so-long-ago 2016 endorsement). In the mean time our government (which needs to be doing lots of very complicated things to help our fellow citizens, ensure the nation’s defense, protect the world ecosystem, and secure a worthwhile future ) is left in the hands of ghoulish kleptocrats.
Anyway, all of this talk of outrageous hypocrites who pretend to be supremely holy when they are actually depraved, power-hungry leeches is wearing me out. Let’s tune into the Republican convention and see what Mike Pence has to say.
Commencement at Liberty
Sigh, I guess we had better talk about the American Mid-term election ( I am writing this in 2018 AD, in case the Republicans win everything, and you are reading this in annihilated ruins in a lifeless desert).
Throughout my life, American elections have traditionally been formalistic affairs between two similar parties. Indeed, years ago, in a more innocent (!) time, I proposed that everyone should vote for the non-incumbent party to prevent the ossification and stalemate which were coming to define American politics. Alas! such fantasies are now relics of a distant past: the two parties have diverged very greatly (although the false equivalence of “horse race” style reporting still occludes the true distance between them).
The Democrats concentrate far less than I would like on blue sky research, space exploration, and defense funding (which, ideally, is where our national R&D budget comes from). Additionally the Democrats have not created a compelling narrative for the future and they have petrified national leaders…along with all of the various problems of ego, corruption, and incompetence which occur in politics at a granular level.
I endorse them completely for everything without reservation. Vote Democratic up and down the ticket.
This is not an ordinary election. The Republican Party is changing and metastasizing into something fundamentally un-democratic and truly awful. Looking at their efforts to dismantle government, rob the state, roll back fundamental constitutional protections, and destroy our international alliances, it is perhaps finally time to use the F-word.
Indeed, President Trump is an obvious and self-avowed fascist. He makes no pretenses about it. He openly denounces the press, threatens political opponents, espouses violence, and gleefully supports white supremacists. Additionally he lies endlessly about everything, trusting that his propaganda mouthpieces will concentrate on other stories to feed to his imbecile brownshirt supporters. Based on Occam’s razor, he is most likely operating on orders from Russian superiors (he squandered his family fortune, and then misrepresented his crooked finances to increasingly dodgy investors till all that was left for him was to launder money for Russians). Trump throws everyone under the bus and talks garbage about them…everyone except for Vladimir Putin. Why would that be?
So I am no fan of Trump, however, this year, he is not on the ticket. Instead we must concentrate on the other portions of government which are in play tomorrow. The founders left us a system of checks and balances to constrain the crimes and excesses of unfit executives. These systems do not work if weak, foolish, and pusillanimous legislators refuse to engage the failsafes. This is the situation we are now in. The Republicans in Congress have abdicated all responsibility for the national well-being. They are like the sycophantic senators of the Roman Empire after the Republic fell: they still have the trappings and appurtenances of high office, but all they do is eagerly acquiesce to the whims of Caligula and Nero.
Vote them out. They all must go. Vote against the Republicans in congress, even if they once allocated a highway in your district 27 years ago, or served in the Air National Guard, or went to the same school back in the fifties. Unless you are a billionaire, they care nothing about you and are only looking for ways to take away everything you have. First they will take away your healthcare and then your property and then they will squeeze you dry for their robber-baron friends.
After Mitch McConnell’s successful theft of a Supreme Court seat, and the recent elevation of abusive and unfit apparatchiks to the Supreme Court, there will be no succor from an illegitimate Supreme Court. If congress does not immediately push back against the rot in the White House, elections will most likely not be free in 2020. This may be the only chance for voters to prevent tyrrany from breaking the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy–maybe for a generation…or maybe forever.
This is a pretty grim picture. I did not paint it. You can see it by looking out the window or picking up any international newspaper. I suppose we all crafted it together by letting monopolies pour money into Washington and by pursuing our own short-term self-interest (and by letting fear get the better of us). Historians know that democracies are fragile. Our democracy is in real peril from within, perhaps for the first time since FDR assumed the mantle of life dictator. Indeed this might be the most extreme challenge to our institutions since the Gilded Age or the Civil War. There is only one way to fix democracies. So vote! And drag every registered voter you can find to the polls. If you love Trump and think he is America’s radiant savior, vote! (and maybe check in with the neurologist). If you are like me, uneasy with the Democrats, but appalled by the treasonous perfidy of he Republicans, then vote! Let us throw the GOP out of power so it can rediscover bygone virtues in the wilderness. We will work on fixing the many many things that need fixed (and on crafting a new paradigm that better suits the changed times) once the house is not on fire.
On this day, March 22nd in 1871, William Woods Holden was the first governor in the United States to be impeached and removed from office. His story is a reminder of what happens when pure partisan rancor becomes the norm in unhappy eras of American politics.
Before the American Civil War, Holden was a newspaper publisher who tried (unsuccessfully) to steer North Carolina on a Whiggish course towards peace. Additionally, he politically opposed the Confederate government during the war, and so, after the rebellion was finally crushed, Andrew Johnson appointed William Woods Holden as provisional governor of North Carolina. He lost the special gubernatorial election of 1865, but was returned to power at the head of the Republican ticket in 1868. Unlike other southern governors, Holden instituted aggressive policies to curtail the Ku Klux Klan. In 1870 he called out the state militia to crack down on the Klan which had assassinated a republican state legislator and lynched a black policeman. The governor declared martial law in two counties and temporarily suspended the writ of habeas corpus for certain suspected Klan members.
This upheaval became known as the Kirk-Holden war and it resulted in a severe political backlash during November of 1870 (1870 was an election year). The North Carolina election that year was marred by vote tampering, voter suppression, and outright violence, and the Republicans lost their legislative majority (back in those days, the Democrats were the party of bigotry, intolerance, oppression, and cruelty).
After the election, William Woods Holden was impeached and removed from office in in a vote which hewed exactly to party lines. The Democrats took full control of North Carolina and moved the state away from the Reconstruction-era civil rights reforms championed by Holden (who went into self-exile in Washington DC, where he again worked on a newspaper). However, history is a long, strange affair and William Woods Holden was fully pardoned and exonerated by unanimous vote of the North Carolina state legislature…in 2011.
I wanted a clear break from the previous week’s posts about dreams and nightmares…but here in the United States of America today is the 2014 midterm election—so we haven’t escaped nightmares yet. With the adroitness of a deer frozen in the headlights, Ferrebeekeeper has refrained from endorsing any candidates until the last minute. Since Americans are now headed to the polls (or have already voted) it may now be too late to make a meaningful difference–which sounds like the essence of American democracy right now anyway.
Before I suggest how citizens should vote, let’s quickly examine the two national parties.
With their abject obeisance to big business and (pretend?) love for the most inane and inhuman strictures of religious fundamentalism, Republicans are deeply troubling. It does not help that they are unapologetically hostile to minorities, women, immigrants, atheists, polytheists, Muslims, young people, spotted owls, South Americans, sick people, children, scientists, non-scientists, science fiction enthusiasts, artists, Asians, unemployed people, employed people, homosexuals, van owners, poor people, people with unruly hair, city dwellers, intellectuals, small business people, circus clowns, florists, manatees, et cetera. Despite these problems, I have usually swallowed my gorge and voted for the inhumane Republicans in general elections. I do so because they stand for robust national defense and for funding science & technology R&D. These two issues constitute 90% of what matters to me in politics—and, if you studied history at all, you would feel the same way. However contemporary Republicans have abandoned these values. In their rush to defund government and hand power to big business cartels, they are slashing research funding—a huge and inexcusable error. Republicans assert that the market will take care of science research. Anyone who has any experience of today’s market knows that it will only provide costly service contracts, addictive medicines, plastic rubbish, and consumer debt. Government is necessary for the truly important things.
Although they pretend otherwise, the Democrats are similarly in the pocket of special interest groups. They enjoy passing endless hard-to-follow laws which curtail productivity and destroy small businesses (and therefore favor big business). In their haste to pander to individual rights and interests the Democrats abandon the all-important larger good. Although the Democrats claim the mantle of environmentalism, a close examination of their policies reveal little that would really help the environment—or anybody other than their cronies. Democrats do not currently stand for scientific innovation at any cost, nor for muscular intervention in the wider world, but rather favor an attitude of “let’s solve our problems at home first.” This attitude is dangerous, since our problems at home are never going to be solved (particularly by nanny-like moralizing laws). Without continuous scientific innovation, the vast problems which humankind is creating will destroy us. Without a large scary military, the Pax Americana will founder and today’s globalized world will fall to chaos (or become thrall to Chinese exploitation schemes). The minutiae of identity politics will matter little in such a scenario.
The obvious alternative to these two unappealing choices would be to vote in some third party candidates, but, because America’s political duopoly holds such vast power, this is more-or-less impossible. Additionally, although it seems unlikely, the third party candidates are even less impressive than the lickspittles, hypocrites, and malingerers fronted by the GOP and the Democrats. Argh!
If all choices are problematic (or outright awful) what is a good-hearted voter supposed to do?
My proposal is completely impossible (which is why I have not bandied it about until 2:00 PM on Election Day)—but it has the benefit of being extremely appealing to everyone other than incumbents and professional politicians.
Red America and Blue America are too deeply entrenched. It is an artificial distinction built by professional politicians. Let’s upend that. Everywhere with a Bible-thumping Republican basking like a lizard in a gerrymandered safe district should elect the place-holder Democrat. Likewise, here in the blue heart of Brooklyn we could throw out the crooked machine Democrat and vote in the unknown Republican. My congresswoman is an anti-defense Democrat who has no knowledge of history or science. Her only position is that the government should lavish more money on entitlements for lazy unemployed people like me. The Republicans haven’t even bothered to contest this district: her only opposition is some unknown mouth-breather from the “conservative” party. Let’s elect that guy! My parents in rural Ohio have a lunatic tea-party congressman who told my mother “women’s opinions don’t matter.” They should elect the anti-establishment Democrat. Working together, we could reverse the red and blue polarity of the country!
What!?
I know this sounds crazy, but hear me out. Most of the sacrificial Democrats in red districts or Republicans in blue districts (who have no electoral chance whatsoever) are not actually that far from the core values of their district. We would have legislative houses filled with socially liberal Republicans and fiscally conservative Democrats. Many would be political outsiders and all would owe their seats to a mass joke by the voting populace. If Idaho was represented by traditionally minded Democrats and New York City was represented by minority Republicans (cough, I mean “conservatives) perhaps these new legislators could work together and pass some much-needed political reforms before K street bought them up too.
Or we could just keep muddling through with divided government strongly influenced by special interests…like always
ferrebeekeeper 