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Bi(Partisan) Curious

Dusty Leave a comment

Donald Trump is going to turn me into a conservative.

That’s probably not true. But it does feel like I have grown a bit more in tune with conservatives as I understand them – certainly how I idealize them, which I know is about as far away from the truth as are the demonizations of the left that are so popular on the right, that we are babykillers or pedophiles or corrupt Fascist socialists who sell American secrets to China so we can feed that money to Hamas to promote anti-Semitism. But one obvious thing keeps coming up: I have grown much more suspicious of government, and much more frustrated with government inefficiency; and both of those feel conservative-leaning.

I mean, maybe it’s not Trump: maybe it’s because I’m getting older, which supposedly swings people to the right; though to be frank, I’m not getting richer, which I think is the actual reason why people become more conservative as they age. It’s always easy to demand higher taxes on the rich when you aren’t one of them – though it is also true that liberals, masters of NIMBYist virtue signaling, are also fond of raising taxes on other people and not on ourselves. I suspect as well that growing anxiety and paranoia contributes to the stereotypical political changes that come with age; as my own anxiety and paranoia are focused almost exclusively on government and authority, it’s basically driving me closer to socialism – or anarchism, even – rather than the increased fear of crime and of marginalized people which I’ve seen in older people around me.

But I’ll tell you what, I do think there needs to be a rebirth and resurgence of the conservatism that I grew up with (Now THAT makes me sound like an old man), at least the conservatism I think I grew up with; though it would be swell if people would first figure out that trickle-down economics is a lie intended to consolidate wealth and power in the hands of those who already have it and who then espouse trickle-down economics. The economic side is coming along, I think, as Americans may actually be figuring out that the Republicans we elected last year have done somewhere between fuck-all and fuck-you in terms of helping make life more affordable, while they fire thousands of people, reduce useful and vital government services, and cut taxes for the rich, as personified by Elon Musk. (I tell you what, if Musk turns out to be a double-agent for progressives, I will yell “AHA!” Because not a lot of genuine conservatives could have managed to throw as much shit on the GOP as Musk has done. I mean, he’s no Trump, but it still seems too much for it to be coincidence.) But I think the rest of what I imagine as idealized conservative values, like small government, local government, a clear focus on maintaining the rule of law and of the Constitution: that is what I think we actually need. And then, inasmuch as conservatism ever represented the values of independence and personal integrity, “family values,” patriotism and Christianity both in a humble, individual sense, I think people turning back to that would be an incredibly good thing.

Though honestly, it would be best if that happened to the people who are actually supposed to be conservative, namely Republicans, rather than if it happened to me. But I will confess a certain imaginary scenario in which someone like me, and maybe actually me, steps into the void left in the GOP after Donald Trump dies or becomes politically insignificant (and God willing let that happen soon), and helps people to remember that there is nothing particularly wrong with conservatism, that progressive ideas need to be tempered in rational ways, that there is benefit in a marketplace of ideas and a political process that features opposition and negotiation, that a single-minded government is dangerous no matter how right-minded (or left-minded) that government is. That the problem with the current GOP is, first, Donald J. Trump, and second, everything that Trump represents: authoritarianism, white supremacy, anti-intellectualism, hypocrisy and narcissism. Not the essential values of conservatives, which, while I generally don’t agree with them, I don’t think they are at all bad. I think the Republican party returning to those values – maybe a little more modernized than the 1950’s Eisenhower Republicans I’m probably imagining – would be the best thing for our country, barring an actual leftist revolution that swept the entire nation along with it, and I keep looking for someone to carry it out.

Can’t find them. Not in Trump’s GOP.

Can you imagine that, though? If someone charismatic enough to actually get Republicans to listen reminded them of what the party of Lincoln should truly be about? I can’t imagine a change in the politics of this country that would have a more immediate positive impact. Not even the hard pendulum swing to the left which I suspect is coming after this particular round of violent greed is over, because as long as progressives and liberals and Democrats in government are opposed by people who will lie with every breath, spread rumors and character assassination with every press interaction, start pretty literal fistfights over every disagreement, and ignore all political norms (Which, to be clear, are the ESSENCE of conservative sensibility, and there is not a much better indication that the Trump movement is not authentically conservative – other than the obvious abandonment of respect for law and order and police authority, in favor of supporting a multiple felon and the complete discarding of all due process) in order to exploit any opportunity to harm their opponents and increase their own power, government will continue to be too dysfunctional to inspire any long-term support for progressive ideas and movements.

Think of it: if the Democrats as they are currently constituted, headed by people like AOC and Cory Booker, Jamie Raskin and Adam Schiff, and Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom, rather than Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, trying to actually enact Medicare for All, over the objections of Senators Donald Trump Jr. and Marjorie Taylor Greene-Trump (Dunno if she’ll marry one of the Trump boys or get Trump himself to adopt her, but I promise that she’ll be part of the family in the next decade. I am going to put my money on her taking up with The Nazi Cheeto himself after Melania finally divorces him.), who holds a filibuster on the floor of the Senate to accuse every one of the Democrats of supporting Chinese Triads in smuggling Fentanyl into Gaza to make Palestinian super-soldiers who will be unleashed across the southern US border to rape white women in order to bring about a wave of abortions which will then be used to distill that baby brain juice which keeps the Clintons alive.

What are the chances that any progressive/liberal alliance would be able to survive through that kind of inferno of flaming horseshit?

As long as Trumpian MAGA fanatics remain popular, they will ruin all attempts at a functional government. Because that is the larger Trumpian project: the undercutting of a functional federal government and a social power structure that serves the public interest and the general welfare promised in the Constitution, in service of the two main goals of the movement, namely a more lawless society where wealthy people and the white supremacist power structure can have free rein, and a right-wing-media-fed zeitgeist of apocalyptic terror that allows Daddy Trump to claim that only he has the strength and intelligence to save us all from the dangers and threats that surround us.

I do think that there is real value in conservative ideas and values – at least in real conservative values. It would have been wonderful if the last twenty years had included more genuine attempts to balance the federal budget and reduce the deficit and the debt, particularly in the times of economic growth, so long as it had been done the right way, by raising taxes on the wealthy. You know, the way Eisenhower did it: because asking the wealthy to contribute their fair share would show a respect for individual responsibility, and patriotism in the humble sense that asks everyone to contribute to the betterment of this nation and the people who make it up. (Also, while I’m no expert, I swear that taxing the rich seems pretty dang Christian…) Which value, when taken to a Trumpian extreme, is turned into that your-own-bootstraps nonsense which then justifies – or rather pretends to excuse – cutting Medicaid and food stamps and all of the social safety net, while allowing billionaires to extract all the wealth they could ever want without any return on our investments which made the wealth possible in the first place. I think the progressive desire to create programs that produce positive change is wonderful, but when combined with the liberal/Democratic desire to protect everyone and everything that needs protecting, it leads to levels of red tape and bureaucracy that undercuts the progressive program entirely; and, at least in theory, real conservatives would be useful in tempering or preventing that excess. Take, for example, this: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0uxWGBxJWf2oAB9uyDMoOB?si=407ef6fb2213428a

This episode of Jon Stewart’s wonderful podcast features Ezra Klein, the progressive former MSNBC host, who discusses a program intended to build rural broadband access under President Biden’s infrastructure bill. The program had a fourteen-stage process before a region – state or county or city – could receive grant money, which process produced so much red tape that out of 56 regions that applied for grants to build broadband infrastructure, only 3 had finished that process in the three years between the law being signed in 2021 and the end of infrastructure spending in 2024. And none of those three had actually managed to get the money and build the broadband. Klein goes into agonizing detail – he wrote about this in his most recent book – and shows how all of the delays and all of the red tape are well-meaning, but basically none of it is necessary, and taken as a whole, it was destructive: because no rural broadband was built. Multiply that by every other program Biden’s administration passed, and you can see why the Democrats lost the election: because even their important and genuine accomplishments never actually came to pass in the real world. Klein talks about how Biden planned everything on a six- to ten-year timeline – when elections happen every two or four years.

The best line in the podcast was this: “We are stuck between a party that wants to destroy government, and one that can’t make government work.”

I would argue that conservatives arguing for real conservative values could have counteracted the problems that come with a too-singleminded focus on liberal and progressive values. To be fully transparent, I do think that much of the problem is in the liberal influence on progressive movements, because I think it is liberals and Democrats who insist on political correctness and purity tests and virtue signaling, where progressives are focused on functional efforts to improve people’s lives. Klein talks about that, too, that part of the issue was things like a requirement that the subcontractors hired for the broadband installation represent women and non-white minority-run businesses, which is a great intention to have and a wonderful thing to try to do – but it’s not the point. The point was to build rural broadband (Which, coincidentally, would do a hell of a lot to help a large number of marginalized people; remember that women in rural areas are the ones who can’t find meaningful work opportunities, and also remember that the rural areas of the South are largely not white. Or maybe that’s not so coincidental, but it does show why liberals given total control can sometimes step on their own feet.). It’s this desire, not to achieve real progress, but to be liked, to be good, while working through the process, which makes the left twist itself into knots and get nothing done – though what I am ignoring is the fact that progressive goals and projects are frequently unpopular, because they are expensive and difficult and do not tend to aggrandize benefits in the hands of those who already have privilege, and it requires a spoonful of liberal/Democratic people-pleasing to help the progressive medicine go down… if there’s not going to be an actual leftist revolution, that is.

I don’t really know, at this point, if conservatives really do have that no-nonsense gruff exterior that we think of as people just getting shit done; but that’s what I’m imagining. I just picture a 60-year-old white man (Hey, I’m not stupid enough to think that the GOP will suddenly become multicultural; let’s not go too far into the fantasy) in a committee meeting, who just keeps responding to every liberal feel-good virtue-signaling suggestion with a steady beat of “The goal here is to build rural broadband.” Basically, I think we need people in government who just want to get shit done: not necessarily make sure that everything gets done in exactly the “right” way.

There is an important point to be recognized in the conservative drive to demand people work hard: because while government is necessary to make changes for large groups of people, particularly changes that are not profitable for any other group currently with privilege and power, what it comes down to, always, is people working hard. People in government work hard to make it possible for everybody else to work hard, by trying to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to actually benefit from their hard work. That’s the truth. Take it from me, a government employee who works hard to make other people work hard, so they can benefit from their own hard work. That’s what school is. And I don’t know that liberalism actually pushes people to work hard; within my example of myself and schools, liberals are the ones who get 504 accommodations and IEPs enacted and followed, and who make sure that the curriculum includes social-emotional learning and multicultural perspectives: conservatives are the ones who teach math and science and history. (English teachers are all liberals. With very few exceptions, who are mostly psychopaths.)

In the most simple sense (And I know I’m oversimplifying and basing this on stereotypes; doesn’t make me wrong, though), the recognition in liberal politics of the burdens of social marginalization and intersectional oppression, of mental health struggles and of the value of self-care, promotes a deeply valuable drive for people to take it easy, to relax and take care of themselves. But conservatism does value and push individual hard work, personal responsibility, self-reliance. Not Trumpian pseudo-conservatism, of course, which pushes people to hate everyone who doesn’t have dirt under their fingernails (Daddy Trump, as in all things, excluded, of course) unless the skin of those hands is brown, in which case they should be hated anyway no matter what is under their fingernails; but conservatism tells us that people need to do things themselves, and be responsible for the consequences of their decisions: which allows people to actually make those decisions themselves, without approval by a dozen committees, and then (in theory) holds them responsible for those decisions.

Liberalism is necessary to make sure that conservatives don’t treat people like shit in the name of promoting personal responsibility. (Also to make sure that conservatives in this country don’t go full white supremacist; which would naturally occur, as conservatism by definition is trying to retain and preserve a past system, which in this country means an oppressive racist and sexist system.) Progressives are the ones trying to make the world a better place, rather than trying to retain the status quo. I do not imagine that a United States run by conservatives of any stripe would be the best version of this country. But my God, watching the Democratic party fuck up every single opportunity that we vote for them has worn me the fuck out. The 2024 election broke me. The Republicans are going to lose in the midterms next year, and I am looking forward to that: but I cannot stand to watch Democrats win control of Congress in the coming reaction to Trump, and then do every fucking thing wrong again, so that 2028 swings back to the goddamn Republicans.

But right now, there is another reason. The main reason, the real reason, why I find myself wishing for a renewal of a conservative movement that probably never really existed. It’s not policies, not red tape and bureaucracy, not tax breaks, not cuts to the social safety net. It’s not the next election, not the future of how we see government. It’s none of those things.

I want to find a way to ensure that this country will still exist.

I’m trying not to overreact. I’m trying to see this as just more bullshit from Trump. But, I mean — he fucking sent in troops. Thousands of troops. To LA, to California, under his command, his and that fucking idiot Hegseth. He sent them not because they were needed, not because they were asked for, not because their presence will help: just because he wants to start a fight with the left, with California, with Gavin Newsom personally, who has been criticizing Trump for years, and who is willing to fight him back. Because MAGA wants to have the fight with the left — by which I mean the majority of the population of this country, the ones who don’t want a dictator, who don’t want tyranny, who actually want this to remain a Constitutional Republic, a country under the rule of law. They want to fight all the rest of us. They want to hurt us because they think we have stolen their country and filled it with illegal immigrants and trans people and abortions and fentanyl. They want us to pay for that: and Trump wants to help them do it. Not because he gives a shit about this country or what is happening to it; just because he wants to point his finger and see people die at his command. He wants the full might of the U.S. military to obey him, and destroy those he wants destroyed.

This is not about left and right, liberal and conservative. It’s about this asshole sending fucking troops to LA. It’s really just about life and death: life and death of immigrants and marginalized groups in general, life and death of this country and its self-image, life and death of the rule of law and the experiment in democracy that seems, at last, to have failed.

Our President sent troops to LA. Not to enforce the law: to enforce his will. To set off a fight — a fight that people are giving him — so he can escalate the tension until people finally snap, and fight, for real, fight for life and death.

Because Trump wants a war.

If Conservatives, real Conservatives, would help prevent that, then – yeah, I’ll be one.

I am a middle-aged white man, after all.

And whatever else I think of this country, I don’t want America to fall. Not like this.

Whatever it takes.

Upon Further Consideration

Dusty Leave a comment

*Let me give one disclaimer: I use a lot of ways to call someone crazy in this piece. At no time, not even for one second, not in any instance or in any way, am I actually referring to someone with mental illness or neurodivergence. I’m using every form of “crazy” to mean only someone who holds a position or acts in a way that I don’t agree with, and generally that I can’t understand. That’s it. Okay?

Okay. Here we go.

Conservatives are crazy.

charlize theron – foolish watcher

Okay, not ALL of them. And they’re not crazy about everything: taxes and regulations can be onerous, and while society absolutely needs to progress, it needs to do it in a way and at a pace that allows people to grow comfortable with change, which is never easy.

But conservatives created the monstrosity that is President Donald Trump. And before that, they created neoliberal economics, generally known as “trickle-down” economics, which has been devastating people in this country and around the world for the last half-century or more. And they just kept supporting it, that entire time, all facts to the contrary notwithstanding. Libertarians are conservatives, for the most part, and so was Ayn Rand — and between Rand and Trump, I don’t need to say anything else to show that conservatives, broadly speaking, are crazy. A few sandwiches short of a picnic. Daft. Cracked. Meshugge. Bonkers. Non compos mentis. The cheese fell off their cracker a long time ago.

They think that we’re crazy, of course, mostly in how we accept things that seem so obviously counter to what conservatives call common sense — like the existence and worth of trans people, for instance, or like believing the government can do good things and can be trusted (in some ways — we know about the Tuskegee Experiment, too), or thinking that guns are somehow to blame for gun violence — and partly how we are so entirely hypocritical while we accuse them of being the real hypocrites.

I gotta pause on that last one, because — really, y’all, there are some pretty upsetting things that we argue, and never even think about. Like how we argue that guns should be banned in order to reduce gun violence, but that drugs should be legalized in order to reduce drug crime. Abortion and the death penalty is another one: we mock conservatives for being pro-life with fetuses, but very happy to kill people on death row, but somehow we never talk about how we hold exactly the same apparently contradictory positions, just in reverse — we are willing to accept the death of the unborn, while we work to preserve the lives of the worst people imaginable. And that’s not to say that the left is wrong on those issues and the right is right; but it is — I’m going to say disingenuous — that we don’t actually engage with our own apparent hypocrisy while we are simultaneously aghast that the right doesn’t engage with their apparent hypocrisy.

To be clear, since I brought up the examples: the ban on drugs is different from a proposed ban on guns mainly because the users are entirely different. I suppose some gun owners could be characterized as addicts, though I think they wouldn’t enjoy that description; but mainly, drugs create a market for themselves, the members of which have very little chance to refuse to consume the substances. Certainly there are forces that push people to buy and use guns, and certainly those forces would make it impossible to remove all illegal guns from the country, should guns ever be banned here; but they are not the same forces that have made the drug war unwinnable. That’s the essential difference, and the details are worth thinking about and talking about. And with abortion and the death penalty, it is only necessary to point out that “pro-choice” is not and never has been “pro-abortion.” The left does not wish the unborn to die, any more than we wish murderers to die; that is the unknotting of the apparent paradox in our opinions. And I also have to point out that the apparent contradictions in conservative stances can be just as easily explained away: it’s just that they make assumptions that the left doesn’t make, like the idea that innocence makes a child’s life worth more than an adult’s life, or that an armed citizen is the best defense against an armed criminal. Or more simply and more importantly, that God and the Christian faith should be an important part of our political consciousness.

The point is, there are things the left accuses the right of being crazy about, which the right is not at all crazy about, and there are also things that the left thinks which are batshit insane — a whole bunch of people in the Democratic establishment who thought that Hillary Clinton made a better candidate than Bernie Sanders, for instance, and then that Joe Biden also made a better candidate than Bernie: and then that Joe Biden should have ever been a candidate for a second term. Bat. Shit. Insane. And a lot of us swallowed and set our faces right and stood in line. I did.

I have decided that I have been wrong.

I don’t need to rehash the last several elections, though; as I have said several times, Joe Biden was a much better president than I thought he would be, and MUCH better than he gets credit for being, and I don’t know that Bernie could have beat Trump either in 2016 or 2020, and I’m not sure anyone could have beat Trump in 2024. I don’t understand how that could be true, considering all of Trump’s baggage, but the truth seems to be that the economic situation in this country ensured that only a Republican could win in 2024 — and as the primary showed, Trump had ensured that of all the Republicans in this country, only he can be on the top of the ticket.

Because conservatives are crazy.

I’m not going to back off of that, not even with my both-sidesing liberal and conservative positions and arguments: there is no other way to see how the entire right side of the political spectrum in this country has embraced Donald Trump so completely other than as totally nuts; and the way people still — still — STILL!!! accept trickle-down economics as viable even after FIFTY FUCKING YEARS of increasing inequality and the resultant social unrest is proof that those same people are either insane or so utterly drool-fountain stupid that there’s no reason to even talk to them any more, because they can’t understand anything stated in standard English — only things that look or sound like this:

(I would say that conservatives are crazy because they listen to country music — but a lot of country music is good, so that’s not enough to prove that conservatives are crazy. Also, I first heard this song on Dr. Demento in the 80s, so really, who’s the crazier one? The one who listens to country music, or the one who listens to a guy named Demento who also played this?)

I guarantee you nobody in middle America listened to that garbage. I’ve been listening to it since I was in middle school. I think you see my point.

But you don’t, because in my usual inimitable way, I have failed utterly to get to my point. So let me stop screwing around and make it now.

I have for DECADES now thought that conservatives — specific ones, especially the ones in Washington — were crazy because they refused to compromise. Compromise, I hope we all know, is good. Compromise is how people get along, and how things get done. Compromise respects the value of both sides of an issue, both the humanity and the intelligence of people who happen to disagree, which makes it the best possible outcome — two heads are better than one, after all. I have essentially never entered an argument where I was totally unwilling to compromise. Okay, there have been a few online debates, sure — I’ve argued against normalizing pedophilia, and I’m not gonna meet them halfway on that one — but in real life, I have never drawn a line in the sand, put my foot down, in a place I was utterly unwilling to move. I am always willing to compromise, because in every case in my life, I have argued against other rational human beings, who deserve as much consideration as I do; so how could I do any less than be willing to compromise with someone? What on Earth makes me so much better, so much righter, than them that I would not take even a step in their direction? On a larger scale, how can you have a society where people don’t compromise? How do people get along if they can’t agree on at least some elements of their disagreements?

That’s what I thought. And I still think that, because it’s true — you can’t have a society without compromise — but also, that’s a social truth, and a practical idea.

It’s not good politics.

In politics, refusing to compromise is the right thing to do. Compromise is dangerous. And self-defeating.

My point today is this: it is time, and past time, and long past time, that Democrats specifically and the left in general started doing what is actually good politics.

I listened to an episode of Pitchfork Economics — an outstanding podcast which I recommend to everyone; though I would say you probably shouldn’t do the absurd (crazy?) thing I’m doing, which is listening to the entire archive from the beginning, in 2017; it’s a little strange that I have been listening to this podcast for two or three years now, and they still haven’t reached Joe Biden’s election as the 46th President — and they interviewed Professor James Kwak, whose books I now have to read. (One of them is free online! Nice!) But more to the point for this particular writing, in the interview Professor Kwak was talking about the Democratic party, which he both called the most important political party in the world, as the only thing standing in the way of full-on fascism on the part of the Trump GOP (My words, not the professor’s; he said the Dems were the most important party, but was more polite about the rest.) and also described as having drank the Kool-Aid of neoliberalism (Again, my wording) around the time of Bill Clinton’s administration, and thus gave up being the actual party of the people, of labor, of the poor, of progressivism and liberal ideas.

Here, if you are interested. It’s a good interview.

How neoliberalism captured Democrats (with James Kwak)

As I listened, I thought the professor was right: the Democrats have had a critical job especially for the last eight years, because it was up to them to stop us from having President Donald Trump, and for two of the three chances they have had to step up and do that critical task, to preserve the United States, to protect the rule of law and government of the people, by the people, for the people — they failed. Pretty badly, really.

And I thought, Maybe the Democratic party is really bad at this politics thing.

It’s not the first time I’ve had this thought. I listen to another podcast which I’ve talked about frequently before, called UNFTR, UnFucking The Republic. One of the essential claims from that podcast is that the Democratic party is bad at politics, and a bad bulwark against Trump and the rise of fascism; but because they are one of the only two parties with full access and the full machinery to mount and win a national political campaign in this country, the answer is not to create a third party: the answer is to take over the Democratic party, much as the Tea Party and then the MAGA movement have taken over the GOP, from the inside, and then turn the Democratic party into what it should be, but currently is not. Progressive. Successful. A party for the left.

But I’ve never been willing to follow that thought to the end, and to start actually arguing against voting for the compromise candidate — for Hillary Clinton, for Joe Biden, for Kamala Harris; none of whom I supported, all of whom I voted for and encouraged others to vote for.

That’s where I’ve been wrong.

In talking about how conservatives differ from liberals in the U.S., and how conservatives have managed to become so incredibly dominant, Kwak said that there were several things that conservatives had done over the last fifty years which had enabled them to become this unstoppable force that managed to sweep Trump back into the White House despite everything (Again, the interview is now five years old, so Professor Kwak is not actually talking about the current travesty in Washington, but it’s not any different, it comes from the same strategy and worked in the same way): and the main one was that they were willing to stand for their ideology, even if it cost them elections. He said that the right had been putting up more conservative candidates against moderates in primaries even when the more conservative candidate was less likely to win the general election. Which sounded crazy to me — but the result is that the right is seen as dedicated to their beliefs, their ideals, where the left is seen as — wishy washy. Because the left will back a politician who doesn’t represent all of the ideals we ourselves espouse, where the right is not generally willing to do that: you can see it in how the GOP has purged all of the members unwilling to support Trump, like Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney. Their choice to throw every single bit of their support behind Trump is crazy: but the way they do it is impressive. It shows determination, and dedication, and a willingness to sacrifice one’s own preferences or ambitions for what you see as the greater good. And before this, you could see in how the GOP starting in the 80s forced all national politicians on the right to sign Grover Norquist’s oath never to raise taxes, for any reason — which was one reason George H.W. Bush lost his reelection to Bill Clinton. Which, I mean — that’s crazy.

But it got them the right reputation. A reputation that can resist anything, even facts. This is why the right is seen as willing to fight for what they believe — and why the right is seen as more reliable on the issues that they all stand for, like opposing immigration and making the economy work for people. Do they do those things? Not always: but they ALWAYS stand on those principles, and they ALWAYS stand together, and cast out those who are more willing to compromise.

They’re crazy. The shift in the GOP from the conservative party to the party of Trump has been unbelievable to watch: it has felt like a Soviet purge, removing everyone who did not fawn at the feet of the Great Leader. And the rise of Trump has definitely shown the downside of the GOP’s strategy of absolute loyalty to the ideals of the party.

But on the other hand, they fucking win elections. And then gerrymander the districts so they can win every election in the future. Which the Democrats do, too, because our system is deeply corrupt: but the main difference is that, most of the time, in most states, the Democrats DON’T win elections. And it’s partly because the left is more willing to compromise. So we’re seen as wishy washy. Soft. Unreliable. And in worse cases, or as the stakes rise and the rhetoric gets harsher, as hypocrites, and as liars.

And even worse, as corrupt, unreliable politicians who are willing to do whatever it takes to retain power, whether that requires compromise of our apparently most important ideals, or lying about what is at stake in an election, as we argue that Trump is a fascist who signifies the end of this country — and then the second he takes power, FIFTY-EIGHT FUCKING DEMOCRATS VOTE FOR THAT BULLSHIT LAKEN RILEY ACT. Fifty-eight. How many Republicans voted for Biden’s priorities? Or Obama’s? And, I mean, we claim to believe that white men should not be put ahead of, or above of, women or people of color; we chastise the right for their overwhelming whiteness and maleness. And then what do we do?

We nominate and elect Joseph R. Biden.

And then Biden waited until after the election was lost to do a whole heap of things that he should have been willing to do on day one — if he really believed in what he claims to believe. Only at the very end did he hand out the pardons. Only at the end did he warn us about the technocrat oligarchy. Six months before, he was still taking their campaign contributions.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being strategic with the support a politician has, and the public opinion of the things they want to do; that’s necessary. I love the idea of going in and just doing whatever the hell one wants, what one knows is right — but also, that’s how Trump does it. It’s not good strategy.

It’s just why he wins.

But I don’t think Biden did anything wrong, in waiting until the end of this term to, for instance, commute the sentences of people on federal death row. But when the other side is so bold, so forward, so utterly confident in their rightness that they will do whatever they think is right at any time and damn the political consequences — well. The decision to be strategic in any way certainly seems like political manipulation. Not wisdom.

And while I do not want to imitate the right, because they are crazy, I also do not want to continue losing elections to them.

So this is where I think we need to adopt an aspect of their system, of their overall strategy, that works for them.

I want to stop compromising.

Not on everything: but there have to be some issues that the left is not willing to negotiate on, that we are unwilling to accept anything else because we know, down to our blood and bones, that we are right, and the right is wrong. That anyone who disagrees with us is wrong. That we can discuss ways and means, to some extent, and even compromise on that sort of thing — or on the timeline, or the order of specific priorities; the details can almost always be discussed. But the central idea, the heart, the essential concept: that never goes away. It never stops being the ideal, and we never stop fighting for it. For them. Think of the heroes of the left: the leaders of the Civil Rights movement, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.; think of Bernie, whose appeal was based partly on this fact, that he never, ever changed what he was saying about economic inequality and the need to address it. Not in fifty years. THAT. THAT is what we need to do, that is how we need to fight for our central ideals. (It’s why we should have nominated Bernie, but I guess that train has already left the station, huh?)

I have some ideas about what those things should be — five of them coming directly from UNFTR — but I want to think about them some more before I take a stand. Because once I take a stand on these things, I don’t ever want to back down from them. Not ever. Not for any reason, not under any circumstances. Even if it costs us votes in a specific election — because look at what compromising has gotten us. It’s gotten us fucking Trump, and a Republican congress, and a ludicrously “conservative” Supreme Court. We supported the moderate candidate in order to protect the things that mattered most, like the right to choose; and we lost the things that mattered because we lost the elections. And I think this is quite a large part of why. It’s not all of it, this isn’t the only thing we need to do: but I think this is part. I think we need to do this.

Compromise in politics, on the most essential ideas, is a path only to losing. Which protects nothing, not even the compromises we tried to fight for. Look at Obamacare. Do we think that’s going to live through the next four years? John McCain saved it last time. And John McCain is gone, along with everyone else who thought the way he did, on the right. No disrespect to Senator McCain, who was a remarkable man and a man of principles, who died sadly of a terrible disease; but I think we know that if he had lived, he would have been voted out of the GOP for opposing Trump. Just like everyone else who did so, who was willing to compromise with the left. Jeff Flake. Mitt Romney. Liz Cheney. All gone. They all lost. Just like us.

So I think we should stop compromising, and start winning.

Now we need to decide what we will not compromise on. It can’t be everything: but it has to be something. And once we decide, we can’t ever back down. We can’t every compromise, not on these things.

And then there’s this: it makes sense to me not to compromise with the party of Trump. After all — they are crazy.

Abidin’ Biden

Dusty Leave a comment
Joe Biden: The President | The White House

There’s my guy. My buddy Joe. Pretty regular fella — other than the fact that his 81-year-old face has fewer wrinkles than my 49-year-old one, which, sure, fine, lots of people use Botox and plastic surgery and all — but Joe is unquestionably at the stage where his face has been so thoroughly Zambonied that it looks more “plastic” than “young.” But other than a flat plastic face, overly-squinchy eyes, and those too-white-pearly-whites? Very normal man. Reminds me of my dad. Especially when he talks, since most of the time he sounds like he’s kind of running out of breath, unless he is particularly excited.

I have to admit, though, that for a normal man — a regular dude — he’s sure fond of supporting some pretty fucked up things. Like Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Hopefully we can all agree that the ones really responsible for the atrocities and the genocide are Hamas, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war-loving government, both of whom benefit from increased conflict and greater frequency and intensity of atrocity, as it increases their support by radicalizing more of the population; and also creates enough confusion among the smoke and rubble for them to siphon off wealth. I do not for a second believe that my old buddy Joe could put his arm around Bibi’s shoulders, lean in real close, and whisper, “Hey, man, cut the shit, okay?” and get any kind of real result. Netanyahu is never going to stop the war, because when the war stops, so does his political career, as he is epically unpopular now — but when he leaves office, he’ll no longer be able to avoid prosecution for his corruption, which is pervasive and pretty concretely proven everywhere but in that court of law he is avoiding. (Sounds like a certain would-be Fascist dictator in this country, doesn’t it? No wonder they get along.) But on the other hand, even though Ol’ Joe can’t stop the genocide in Gaza, I would very much appreciate not having my country supply the weapons to Israel for their genocide.

And then there’s Joe’s past support for crime bills targeting African-Americans, and a lack of support for abortion access for women, and for clearing Clarence fucking Thomas for the Supreme Court, and his willingness to destroy people’s lives at the southern US border, which he backs partly because he wants to be able to blame the Grand Ol’ (Fascist) Party, the GO(F)P, for their failure to secure the border, undercutting their own main talking point; but also because he’s clearly pretty comfortable with adopting said Fascist party’s framing of the issue as a crisis at the southern border, and the problem being one of too many people trying to live out the American dream and the ideals we claim to stand for, and with the argument that punishing those people as brutally as we can is definitely the best way to handle it.

All of that is garbage. And all of it is Joe Biden.

Plus there’s the simple fact of the man’s titanic goddamn ego, which makes him look in the mirror every morning and say, in all sincerity, “The only man who can be President is you. The only man who can stop Trump is you. You have to run again, Joe. You gotta save the world! All by yourself! LET’S DO THIS!” That’s Joe Biden, too.

But you know what else is Joe Biden?

He’s the most progressive president we’ve had in 75 years — even though he failed to provide Medicare for All or a livable minimum wage or a permanent child tax credit or a Voting Rights Act or a balanced and reasonable Supreme Court.

But the focus on climate change spending, particularly in the Inflation Reduction Act, is brilliant. The Infrastructure bill was good though not enough — but it was good, no question. The change in tone and the reintegration of the US into the world’s leadership, particularly NATO, was necessary. And his administration has done a good job of making sure the US did not fall into the economic malaise that the rest of the world has fallen into. I don’t like everything about the way they did it, because like always, inflation was brought under control mainly by punishing working and middle class families by raising interest rates to levels high enough to make us stop buying houses, even though the rent is too god-fucking-damn high; and like always, the majority of the GDP gains went to the top 1% so the corporations and Wall Street mavens could keep making campaign contributions to Joe and the Democratic party; but still, unemployment is ridiculously low — and there have been some actual gains to wages set against inflation and the cost of living.

So. Considering all of that, I have a request for all of you.

Vote for him. Vote for my man Joe in November.

I mean, to be clear, the only other realistic option for someone who could actually win is the fucking Fascist. And you — yes you, person who is reading this right now, who has felt enough connection to me that you came here to read this piece that I wrote — you better not vote for the fucking Fascist.

But that’s not the issue here. Right? Millions of cultish fans, and millions of people freaking out over the scourge of Socialism, are going to vote for Trump; but he lost the popular vote in both of his elections, so I expect he will lose again. The issue is whether or not enough of the voters on the margins, the ones who maybe don’t want to vote, who don’t care enough to vote, or who are wavering between the two choices, will swing the battleground states to the right side to win the Electoral College. That’s what the issue is, and what I want to talk about: will the undecided voters decide to go the right way?

It should honestly be pretty simple for every Democrat and progressive: Joe Biden is no progressive — but the progressive movement has made major gains with this administration, and importantly, Smilin’ Joe’s worries about his legacy, and also his genuine and historic support for unions and the working class, mean that he would likely continue to move slightly to the left of center, and might be able to enact and solidify some of the gains made in this first term. Any other president, from the left or the right, would be likely to ignore Biden’s accomplishments and try to create their own: but Biden will try to make sure that Biden’s wins stay in place. And Barack Obama doing exactly that is why we still have the Affordable Care Act despite all the best attempts by the fascists and corporate interests to root it out and remove people’s health insurance. Compared to Medicare for All, the ACA is hot garbage; but it was and is progress. It was and is a good thing. The same goes for Biden’s wins. Even though we’d like to have more of them, it would be useful to make sure what we’ve got, we won’t lose; like any other leftist/progressive idea, once it is in place, people realize it’s probably a good thing — and then they don’t want to get rid of it. Just ask Trump and his Republican congress about the ACA.

So re-electing Biden would make sure that we don’t move backwards. And let me point out how important that is: both Trump and Biden did a whole lot of stuff through executive order; and because those come from one man’s pen, they can be (and were) undone by another man’s (or a woman’s) pen. That fact, and the stark contrast between Trump’s foreign policy (Which is basically this) and every sane President’s desire to remain involved with the world on some kind of good terms, are why so much of the rest of the world is now wary of relying on the US for anything. And while I definitely think it would be better for the US and the world not to have the US in any kind of leadership role, since we have fucked up almost every other country on the planet at one time or another for our own desires or aggrandizement or simple profit, I do think that inconsistency from our policies or our economy has severe negative long-term knock-on effects on the rest of the world. So keeping ourselves in check is the best possible thing for everyone: and for that, a second Biden term, with his focus on maintaining American value around the world and renewing and continuing old policies about connection and cooperation, are the best possible choice.

I understand and agree that just maintaining what we have is not enough. We need to have an actual progressive administration, and more importantly, a progressive congress to go with a progressive executive, so they can name progressive judges, and then we can do some of the things we really need to do. And the more often we are given this kind of bullshit either-or, Lesser-of-Two-Evils choice, the longer we have to delay an actual progressive movement and the accomplishment of simple but necessary things that will save lives, like a livable minimum wage and Medicare for All. But to accomplish that, we need to start at the grass roots: and that’s where progressives suck. Don’t we? Because we won’t fear monger the same way the establishment and especially the Fascists will, we can’t drive the same kind of brand loyalty that only comes with paralyzing fear of the other side. We have to educate. And the political education of the populace relies on one thing: actual policy wins. Actual things being done, by government, to help people. And you know what we need in order to achieve that? More progressives in office, which basically starts with more progressives in the world.

And you know what drives more progressives in office? Anger and frustration with Fascists and with the establishment Democrats who appease them. In the large historical sense, the longer we have to deal with these people in charge, the better our side will do in recruitment and inspiration and drive. You cannot stop the pendulum from swinging: the GO(F)P has done a fantastic job of slowing down the swings for a long time now; but there have been lots and lots of little swings — LGBTQ rights, for instance, even though we’re seeing the violent Fascist reaction to that swing — and the big swing? It’s coming. And it’s going to swing a long way.

And then it will swing back again.

Let me also point out that the reason the GO(F)P has done so well for the last twenty-five years is because they started at the grass roots FIFTY years ago, and built up slowly; and the best news I can say for the future of the progressive movement is that Trump and MAGA have completely torn down the Republican infrastructure that helped put Trump into office. So if we can stay focused, and pay attention and do the work, we can take the country back. For real. I’ll write more about that another time.

And if none of that convinces you? Let me just remind you: the guy on the other team is a fucking Fascist. And no, I won’t tone down that language or that accusation: it is appropriate, and accurate. I will express that in greater detail another time, but I hope everyone reading this is already close to accepting that, if you’re not already there.

So let me sum up.

Biden has done a genuinely good job. He should have done more, but he has done more good than harm — and that’s an important metric for any politician. The first line of the Hippocratic Oath is “Primum non nocere” — first, do no harm. Politicians should all swear the same thing. Actually, we all should. And Biden has done good, for the economy, for the country’s manufacturing and infrastructure, for climate change adaptation, and for the international rules-based world order.

The best criticisms against him are: he has failed to end support for the genocide in Gaza, which is an entirely fair criticism, and the reason why I voted against Biden in my state’s primary, as I want him to recognize that this is an issue; he has tried to meet the GO(F)P in the middle of the aisle, particularly on the border, which shows far too much acceptance of Fascism and, essentially, racism and sexism, which were already issues for Biden as they are for so very many white male Americans; and he has accepted the current framing of issues like the economy, where he has failed to support the real change that would actually achieve his “from the bottom up and the middle out” economic growth.

Oh right — and he’s old.

And he sounds kinda dumb when he talks sometimes.

Those criticisms are bullshit.

He’s old. Granted. So why does he need to be young? Because only young people understand the needs of young people? Are we really that wedded to identity politics, that we believe that nobody can understand the needs of a group to which he doesn’t belong? That nobody can be sympathetic to those needs, and supportive of them? How different are those needs, really? Do we actually think there’s that much of a gap between the basic human needs of someone who is 8 and someone who is 80, when both people are human beings? Both love their family, both want to be safe and healthy, both love cheese and naps; must we have an 8-year-old president in order for 8-year-olds to live good lives? And if not: why do we need a 40-year-old President? Or a 50, 60, 70-year-old President?

He doesn’t speak well. And? Why does he need to speak well when he can get other people to deliver complicated policy platform announcements, or to handle press conferences with the piranhas of the press corps? Do we really need Joe Biden to inspire us with his soaring rhetoric? Or could we maybe read a book, listen to a poem, watch a Rage Against the Machine concert video, and get our inspiration from those? If we have a President who needs the help of other people to run his administration, then maybe we get something more like, I dunno, a representative Republic serving democratically. Instead of a strongman who handles everything himself, and who can and might want to build a cult of personality.

Whatever else you say about Old Joe, he is not going to build a cult of personality. None of us can stand his personality. No: he will build a team of smart and capable and driven people, who will help to fill in the gaps where he doesn’t have the best strengths. One of the best things about Biden is that he realizes who he is and what he can do (Other than his enormous ego, but clearly that is a prerequisite for an American politician), and he looks to others for help. He stood behind Barack Obama completely. That says a lot. I am also, despite my criticisms of his past shitty positions, genuinely impressed with his ability to recognize when he might be wrong, and to listen to others with better ideas. The fact that he is not the same man with the same ideas he had fifty years ago? That’s a good thing.

Look. Seriously. The President doesn’t need to be young. The President doesn’t need to be strong. The President doesn’t need to be a good speaker. We like all those things in our politicians, as we like them in all of our celebrities: but the reality is that the President is a politician and a leader. And that doesn’t require strength in a physical, youthful sense. It requires determination and drive: and Biden has those. Even if he needs to take a nap every day (And don’t pretend we wouldn’t all support a President who mandated a daily nap), he gets up and still has the same absolute convictions about the right things: the goodness of America, the desire to help people, the opposition to cruelty and violence. Right? You can’t miss those things when you talk about Biden. That same ego I was mocking earlier actually shows his strength in this area: he believes he is right, and a lot of the time, in a lot of ways, he is.

Let me also note: if our President is strong-willed, so strong that nobody could stop him or oppose him or stand in his way — how do we not end up with a dictator? Hell, we almost got a dictator with the last guy, and he only thinks he is strong and commanding. Someone who actually is? There’s a real risk there. And there’s only a benefit in that if we think that this country is actually carried by one guy.

It is not. The strength of this country is not in the leadership. It is not in the White House. It is not in our politicians, at all: they are all — or almost all — weak people. Weak morals, weak wills, and a lot of weak minds, especially in the GO(F)P.

We are the strength of this country. We are smarter, stronger, braver, wiser, kinder, and better in every way than our political leaders. As we should be: because we are the ones who run this country. We are.

When we abdicate those roles and those responsibilities, when we elect politicians intending for them to carry the load for us, to do our thinking for us, to do everything for us so that we need to do nothing for ourselves — we get exactly what we want. We get controlled. We get exploited. We get screwed: because we put people in power over us, people who want to screw us, and we hand them the tools to do it.

Joe Biden, whatever else he is — old, weak, stumbling, mumbling, moderate, somewhat racist, somewhat sexist — he is not looking to screw us. He just wants to help.

So let him.

Vote for him.

My man.

Joe Biden 'not sure' he would seek re-election if Trump were not running

On the Sixth Day of Blogging, Just Dusty Blogged for Me . . .

Dusty 1 Comment

A political post; his specialtyyyyy!

Here’s the truth: we all know what’s coming.

The Republicans are coming.

It’s like watching a storm coming in: the clouds roll out across the sky like a cloth unfurling; first they are white, then grey, then black. The color leaches out of the world. The wind turns cold and biting, and then the first drops arrive: if it is a summer storm, then the big, fat splashes are refreshing, though the tang of ozone in the air is alarming.

But I don’t think this is a summer storm. It feels like winter. Those drops are cold. We are shivering.

When the storm hits in winter, it brings quiet. The wind may howl, but after it goes, everything is still. Frozen. Asleep, or dead.

That’s what I think this feels like. Like the storm is coming, and we need to get into shelter, and cover everything. Anything left out will freeze solid, will turn black, will die. We have to cover ourselves, we have to batten down the hatches. And ride it out.

But hang on: winter storms don’t kill everything. Yes, there will be some death: the EPA seems doomed, and Obamacare will be lobotomized, dissected, cut down into pieces too small to sustain itself any longer. Maybe the Department of Education, too, since the nominee for Education Secretary is against public education. Irrevocable harm will be done to the environment as new oil leases are sold, new mining contracts offered, coal dug and burned at will. Internationally, the day of the strong man is on the rise: the new administration will be a friend to Putin, and Netanyahu, and probably Assad and a dozen others who hold an iron grip with their right hand. America will no longer be the defender of freedom around the world. But then, we haven’t actually been that for a long time: we have defended our interests, and little else. That will continue, to the joy of the exceptionalists. Surely we will no longer fight against genocide or oppression: pity is the most delicate flower, and will be the first to freeze.

But not everything will freeze. It will get deathly cold, but our shelters run deep, and are well-protected. And though the storm will be bad, it will not last long. That’s the truth: it will not last long. At some point, perhaps in four years, perhaps in only two when the new Congress is elected, the storm will break, and the skies will clear.

Then we will have to see if there is another storm behind this one. It is possible, you know. This storm may last eight years. If it does, we’re going to have a lot of frostbite.

But think of this. No party has won three elections in a row since Bush followed Reagan. Before that, not since Truman followed Roosevelt. Twice in almost a century have we had a Democratic president after a Democrat, or a Republican after a Republican – Johnson following Kennedy and Ford following Nixon notwithstanding, for obvious reasons. Which means that things will change. The storm will end. Believe it.

Here’s what we hope for, between now and then.

Hope that the storm does some good. Storms do, you know. They wash things clean, they break away dead branches and scour away debris. I am a progressive, and I believe in the power of government to do good things; but the truth is that our government has a lot of debris stuck in its branches. And some dead branches, I think. It is entirely possible that, even while it harms and breaks good things, the storm will also clear away some of the bad. We have to hope so. Maybe there will be some positive effects.

The key for us – for all of us – is going to be objectivity. We must be dispassionate, and we must be rational. Reasonable people can agree, can compromise, and what was most noticeably absent from this last election was reason — and therefore agreement, and therefore compromise. To keep the weather metaphor: some people like cold weather, like storms, like the rain; other people prefer warm sunshine. But only unreasonable people claim that there is nothing good about cold, that only warm sunshine can ever be acceptable; only unreasonable people claim to hate it when the sky clears and the sun comes out, at least once in a while. Reasonable people realize that Arizona summers are too freaking hot, that New England winters are too freaking cold, that the Pacific Northwest is too overcast and rainy, and the Southeast is too muggy.

We have to be reasonable. If the Republican control of the government leads to some good things, leads to some reductions in unnecessary regulations (and there are such), leads to some reversal of government overreach and invasion into private lives (and there is such), then we must be happy that good things are happening. We must not make the same mistake that unreasonable people have made when they have claimed that, for instance, President Obama has been bad for the economy. Or that the First Family has been an embarrassment to the country. Hate Obamacare all you want, but the economy has turned around since the recession. (And I say Fie to anyone who claims that the economy would have grown faster had the president for the last eight years been Republican. Fie. Prove it. Show me where economic predictions have ever been reliable. If a simple cause and effect were provably true, the argument would be over. It ain’t. So fie.) The Obama family are a model of dignity and grace.

So let’s not make the same mistake. Let us be reasonable. Let us take the long view and see: if a thing is broken or taken away, was that thing actually necessary? Perhaps not. Perhaps when Obamacare is destroyed by the storm, we will come out of our shelters when the sky clears and build something even better.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, when Miss Maudie’s house burns down during the winter freeze, she simply says this:

Miss Maudie looked around, and the shadow of her old grin crossed her face. ‘Always wanted a smaller house, Jem Finch. Gives me more yard. Just think, I’ll have more room for my azaleas now!’ 

‘You ain’t grievin’, Miss Maudie?’ I asked, surprised. Atticus said her house was nearly all she had. 

‘Grieving, child? Why, I hated that old cow barn. Thought of settin’ fire to it a hundred times myself, except they’d lock me up.’

‘But—’ 

‘Don’t you worry about me, Jean Louise Finch. There are ways of doing things you don’t know about. Why, I’ll build me a little house and take me a couple of roomers and – gracious, I’ll have the finest yard in Alabama. Those Bellingraths’ll look plain puny when I get started!’

There are ways of doing things. That’s how we have to see this. Like the burning down of an old house. It’s dangerous and damaging – and we have to try to fight the fire, and we have to try to save what we can from its flames – but we have to remember that after the storm, after the fire, life goes on. And maybe the new day will dawn even brighter. Anything that is destroyed that shouldn’t be, we can rebuild. Maybe we can even make it better.

Now: that is me being reasonable, because we should be, about Republican control of government. Republicans are not fools, and are not evil; though I think political parties are harmful to this country, it is certainly true that two parties are necessary, that one party alone, even my party, would be doomed. I think of when Frodo offers the One Ring to Galadriel, and she refuses it because she would become a queen, awesome and terrible — “All will worship me and despair,” she says, as she’s imagining it. Gandalf turns it down, too, for the same reason: nobody can use it safely, even if they mean to do good. The federal government is, in some ways, the Ring. The key to using it safely is in numbers: no one person can hold it for too long; no person can go it alone. Frodo never makes it to Mt. Doom without Samwise. Realize that, while we seem to have handed the Ring to Denethor, the madman on the throne of Gondor, it wouldn’t be any better if we hung on to it ourselves: we’d go mad like Frodo does, and decide to keep the Ring for ourselves. That is a fate to be feared no less because progressives have, I think, the right idea. I may write more about this another time.

For now, let’s talk about the other part of the winter storm scene from To Kill a Mockingbird: let’s talk about the Morphodite.

You remember the Morphodite, right? The snowman that Jem and Scout build, that is actually only a coating of clean snow over a big ball of mud? Right. Jem turns him into a caricature of their loud, obnoxious neighbor Mr. Avery, but at Atticus’s request, he changes it into a more innocent imitation of Miss Maudie, dressing it with her sun hat and hedge clippers. She, of course, takes it as an insult (though she doesn’t mind too much) and names it a morphodite, meaning a thing that changes its shape. The Morphodite melts in the heat of the burning house, and Scout and Jem have to clean up the muddy, filthy, sticky mess.

I think we all know what I’m talking about. I don’t, in theory, have a problem with the Republican party taking control of the government — though I am extremely nervous that, after they push through a conservative Justice for the Supreme Court, they will control all three branches of the Federal government — but we’re not just talking about conservatives or Republicans, are we? We’re talking about this guy:

You know — the Morphodite. See? Clean and white on the outside, nothing but sticky brown nastiness underneath. (And I’m not making a racial reference here, just using the symbolism of white snow=purity, and mud=shit=corruption.)

So here’s the thing with the Morphodite. He was picked largely as an alternative to a lot of bad choices, mostly (but not solely) on the Republican side. I still believe, absolutely, that he entered the race solely to increase his name recognition and give himself a veneer of patriotism; maybe to make some political connections he could use to his advantage for his business. I think nobody was more shocked than he when he started winning, and that state of shock continued all the way through the final victory. I mean, he’s been unprepared the whole way; it’s no less true now. And he’s filling his cabinet with people who are likely to support him and his ideas personally, with their own selfish interests in mind, rather than people who are civic-minded, or who will likely consider what is best for the American people before considering what is best for themselves. Just like him.

The man’s a narcissist, that much is clear. He acts like a spoiled child: and he seems happiest when he breaks things and gets attention, which he then turns into more attention as he mocks the people who chastise him for breaking things. He thrives on attention. It is why he entered the race, why he ran so hard and why he has acted the way he has since his election.

So what do you do with a spoiled child who acts out for attention?

You ignore him. Don’t give him the satisfaction. Don’t give him what he wants, because it is the only thing he wants, and he doesn’t care in the least if it is good attention or bad attention. All he wants is for people to talk about him.

So stop. Stop using his name. Fortunately there are a thousand alternatives, from John Oliver’s call to make Donald Drumpf again, to the various versions of orange-themed insults that plaster the internet. Any of those are fine; he wants to see his name, his actual name. I think he prefers The D_____, actually, though clearly the last name, associated with the business, is the #1 priority. But there are so many others, too: Rump. Dump. Chump. Chimp! Lump, Slump, Gump, Hump (Wait — not that one. Too close to home.), Bump, Thump, Clump. So many possibilities, and not a one of them will give him what he wants.

If you feel a call to protest, please do. But address your concerns to the part of the government that is actually still a government. And when the reality TV guy comes on stage — change the channel. Or better yet, just turn him off.

Let him melt back into a puddle of goo. Then we can have a couple of kids rake him up and throw him away.