Yeah, Now Is the Time to Organize

After seeing the almost all-white insurrectionists attempting a coup at the Capitol building ushered in by bowing and scraping capitol cops (descendants of the Keystone Kops?) it is clear that the organizing of all of the white power and white supremacy groups is justified. Clearly white privileges are being eroded.

Some of the miscreants are even being arrested and put in jail! No matter, Trump will probably pardon them . . . won’t he?

Also clearly, black people asking to be treated the same way as white people infringes upon the rights white people have cherished for oh, so many years. This actually doesn’t affect white privileges at all, but the Totem Pole Principle applies here (The Only Way to Know You are Not on the Bottom of the Pole is to be Standing On Top of Another). Why if blacks were treated the same way as whites, then whites would be treated the same way as blacks, a definite loss of status.

So, white supremacy groups are organizing and growing support. That this is happening at the same time Christian nationalists are doing the same thing is no accident. This is due to the fact that Jesus was white and spoke English as his first language (he wrote his Bible in English after all). Facts do matter!

Of Coyotes and QAnon

After getting over my shock at the insurrection in the Capitol building a week ago, I called for people to pour over any photos and videos to see if they could identify any of the miscreants and get them rounded up by the authorities. Even Republicans believe in personal responsibility.

Little did I know or even think that selfsame miscreants would post their videos and selfies on the Internet. What idiots.

So, I hope this idiots will be rounded up and prosecuted . . . and . . . well the process tends to weed out the idiots. When the more easily identified and prosecuted go down, they are replaced by those with more competence.

I am reminded of coyotes. Coyotes? Yep. Ranchers in the west were tired of losing livestock to coyotes and got a federal bounty put on their heads. Wipe them out, they demanded. And so bounties were placed and guns started blazing away. The net result? As you would expect. The dumbest, less wily coyotes (sorry I couldn’t resist) got killed off first, so the others were harder to find. And whenever pressure like that is applied to a population, it moves. You can now find coyotes in 49 of the 50 states, prior to which they were confined to the western US states. You can even find them in cities, like Boston, and my home city, Chicago.

So, this “insurrection,” as cartoonish as it appears now, will be less so the next time, and less so after that. We are not out of the water yet as we have allowed a large right-wing minority to build up steam right out in the open. Soon they will be far less visible.

Sun Tzu said “that which you oppose you make stronger,” and someone much wiser than I said that “the cost of liberty is eternal vigilance.”

If You See Something . . .

Remember after 9-11, the patriotic thing to say was . . . no, not Freedom Fries, but “If you see something, say something.”

I suspect that those troglodytes who invaded the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday won’t be able to contain themselves and will be posting “selfies” on Instagram and Facebook. If you see such pictures, forward them to the FBI if you would. Every single one of those assholes needs to be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Let’s see … I recognize that guy … and that guy … oh, look a videographer, I wonder if he will post his videos?

I can hardly wait to hear them plead that they didn’t know that what they were doing was wrong, or that they were just following orders, or that if the president recommends it, it is legal. Can’t wait.

I also can’t see Republicans objecting to us wanting those involved to take individual responsibility for their actions. This used to be a pillar of Republican ideology and I suspect they will want to be recapturing some of that from now on.

Lock them up! Lock them up! Lock then up!

Imagine . . .

Take a look at the photos of the goons milling around inside the Capitol building yesterday.

Here’s an example:

Now, imagine if they had been black.

Now you understand one of the pillars of white privilege. If those people had been black they would have been thrown to the ground, knelt upon, or shot or threatened with bayoneted rifles. But, they were white, so the kid gloves were issued to the capitol police.

As one commenter put it “When Black people protest in front of a Target in Minneapolis, police arm themselves for war. When White people storm government buildings they are met with selfies and a meager police force.”

Or as the title of a piece in The Onion put it “D.C. Police Lose Control Of Rioting Trump Supporters After Hundreds Of Officers Called Away To Deal With Black Jaywalker.”

Will Anyone Tell Them?

Will anyone tell the morons who invaded the Capitol building yesterday that they have been played? There are two scenarios for the dupes: one was that there was no serious possibility of any of their actions having an effect on the election and that they were just staging a Noh play for the press and two, the Idiot in Chief actually thought there was a chance it could work and they were manipulated by a total idiot.

Neither scenario is at all flattering to those duped.

So what is it gonna be Not-So-Proud-Boys? Were you duped to put on a play for the news or were you manipulated by a certifiable loon?

Eff Them and the Horse They Rode in On

Every day my email inbox has several fundraising messages about how dire the Senate runoff races are in Georgia. We’re doomed, they claim, unless you pony up a donation! Ow, ow, ow . . . (I hear this in Sam Kinison’s voice). There is a veritable fundraising panic, that if I do not donate today, my lack of effort will doom the Senate and the country to Republican control of the Senate. Ow, Ow, Ow . . . !

Then I read in a news clip:

“Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock blew past fundraising records, which were set just earlier this year, by raising more than $100 million each in the course of only two months for their races against GOP incumbent Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. And much like Democratic candidates around the country earlier this year, the record hauls came mostly from small-dollar donors, in this case likely animated by a consequential double runoff election that could tip the balance of the Senate toward Democrats.”

“Blew passed fund raising records”? WTF?

So, the Supreme Assholes of the Democratic Party are pleading doom and gloom to garner even more donations when they already have more money than they thought they could use.

Eff them and the horse they rode in on

We need new political parties . . . two of them! The ones we have are beyond repair or help.

Yeah, Right, the Democrats Stole the Election . . . Really?

The Democrats are responsible for orchestrating massive voter fraud? Our Democrats? The ones who couldn’t come up with a better candidate than Joe Biden? Those Democrats?

If there was ever a Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight it is the Democrats and they have been so for a very long time. Don’t take my word for it, take Will Rogers word “I am not a member of any organized political party — I am a Democrat.” . . . in 1935.

Clearly this is a case of psychological projection. People, and I include Republican leaders in that category, tend to project onto others the thoughts and attitudes and deeds of themselves. Stealing the election is clearly something the Trumpsters would have loved to have done, but couldn’t because they are as incompetent as the Democrats, if not even more so.

At least when Trump “won” his election, the Democrats didn’t blame the GOP for stealing the election because no one would believe them capable of something so clever, they blamed the Russians instead. We all know how clever and sneaky those Russkies are.

The Toxicity of American Evangelical Christianity

In my mind, religion has always been about division. We humans have always fundamentally wanted two things: the feeling that we possess special knowledge (“There is something (I know) that you don’t know” is a common childhood taunt.) and the feeling that we are right and “they” are wrong. This has led religion down the path of “we have special knowledge that you don’t have and we are right and you are wrong,” sound familiar? This is why there are tens of thousands of different versions of Christianity, for example.

So, by dividing one “flock” off from the other “flocks” a flock leader can feel “special,” the members of the flock can feel “special” and, well, let the gloating begin. (Bring back the Church lady! Wouldn’t that be Special!)

So, the evangelical Christianity leadership reaction to the results of the recent presidential election is hardly surprising, but in watching the video linked to below, which contains a sampling of such reactions, I see our grand American experiment in democracy circling the drain. Do we need any more evidence that mixing politics and religions is a very, very bad idea? I do not see us coming together with powerful forces like social media and religion creating positive reinforcement for divisive positions.

Is this the beginning of our end? It could very well be, if we don’t shake off these shlockmeisters, making money off of our demise.

PS I support the Holy Koolaid effort through Patreon, but I am not hawking their wares.

Follow-up on the IM Doc COVID Letter

I link to the follow-up article below but note that someone was suspicious as to why the doctor didn’t use his name, and used the moniker “IM Doc” instead (standing for internal medicine doctor). Apparently the author was afraid he might lose his job if he went full on public. Can’t say whether that fear is valid, but since this is a Class Warfare blog, erring on the side of caution seems prudent.

The post is HERE.

Why, Why, Why, Why, Why?

Over and over again people are asking the question why white evangelicals voted for Mr. Trump. This is not a mystery. White people, in toto, voted for Mr. Trump. In fact, since we started keeping track of how people of no color vote, white people have never voted in a majority for a Democrat candidate.

And even this is not a mystery.

Who benefits most from the status quo? Who has the most privileges? Who has the most status? If you didn’t answer “white people” you haven’t been paying attention. Okay, now, which of the two main political parties is more strongly associated with the status quo? Which wants to change things more and which less, the de facto champion of the status quo? If you didn’t come up with the GOP, you haven’t been paying attention. Which party, would you say, is the party of white people?

So, is it a surprise that privileged white people vote for the party that most staunchly defends the status quo?

No.

What is a surprise is that the party that supported our institutions the most (the GOP) and has argued for more personal responsibility the most (the GOP) and blames society’s ills on the victims the most (the GOP) has entirely abandoned the concept of personal responsibility. Lose a court battle? The Deep State was against you; you were cheated! Lose a local election? Voter fraud was the cause; you were cheated! Lose the presidential election by gazillions of votes? We were cheated . . . we didn’t lose . . . we won . . . we’re going to court to fix this immense wrong doing!

Mr. Trump lives by a couple of simple rules. Yes, “if you are not for me, you are against me” is one but another is “I never lose.” If he wins it is because of his brilliance. If he loses, it is because the game was rigged against him or he was cheated. He has shared these rules with many in his GOP base and we can expect them to carry on these lessons into the future.

The future does not look bright, manned by losers who never lose. Playing by the rules is a time-honored practice. So is changing the rules of the game while playing it.