Week of 03/06/2017

Conservatives And Their Fixation On MAD Politics
– by David Matthews 2

At the very end of the classic movie “Doctor Strangelove” (spoiler alert), when all of the mechanizations to stop the release of a nuclear bomb in the Soviet Union have failed and the “doomsday weapon” has been unleashed and humanity is doomed to die horrible radioactive deaths, the idea is floated that a small percentage of humanity can in fact be saved by hiding in deep mine shafts.  As the President of the United States and his advisors and generals hash out the details of this hypothetical salvation, the discussion immediately turns to the idea that their counterparts in the Soviet Union could be considering the exact same thing.  They too could be considering how their people could be saved hypothetically in their own mine shafts and how they could have even staged the whole conflict so they would already have their “most important people” in those hypothetical mine shafts so when the threat of lethal radiation from this “doomsday weapon” has passed, they would come out “ahead” and thus be considered “the winners”.  It is then that the general played by George C. Scott stands up and demands that the United States not suffer from a supposed “mine shaft deficit”. 

It was the absolute height of lunacy in the movie, especially after seeing Slim Pickens ride a nuclear bomb to the ground like it was a rodeo bull, and it shows the absolute extent that some people will go to in order to prove their “superiority”.

Sadly, we have been seeing this constantly with the conservatives in America.

Certain conservatives have expressed what can best be considered a Cold War-era Mutual Assured Destruction (or MAD) mindset when it comes to politics.  Everything they do that is considered wrong or unjust or even criminal “has” to be countered by some event that happened in the past by their political counterparts.

Take, for instance, the actions of the GOP legislators in ramming through some of President Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees, including changing the committee rules on a whim to avoid procedural stonewalling by Democrats.  This actually happened for two of Trump’s nominees.  Now if you try to call out those GOP members of Congress on their actions, they and their myrmidons and their cult morons and especially the propagandists in talk radio and Fox News will dig up some obscure incident in the past two hundred years when some Democrat did something similar.  They usually don’t really have to go back very far, and it doesn’t even have to be identical to their own actions, just something for them to justify what they did, as if that automatically makes it right.

“We changed the rules,” they would claim, “but so-and-so went in front of the media back in 2007 and threatened to do the very same thing when they were in charge, so that automatically validates our actions.”

And that’s really what they are trying to accomplish with this tactic.  Validation through negation.  Right and wrong don’t matter to these people.  It never did.  It’s always about what they are allowed to get away with.  It is the typical mindset of a sociopath.

It’s like when a police officer pulls you over for speeding, but then you try to validate it by saying that dozens of other people were driving even faster than you.  In your mind, that “validates” you breaking the law for your own gain.  Other people do it, therefore it’s “right” that you do it too.

Unfortunately, you and I, the ordinary people, don’t have the luxury of telling the police officer or the judge that they can’t sit in judgement of our actions simply because other people do worse things.  Politicians and propagandists, on the other hand, pompously and self-righteously presume that they can do just that.

But what happens when there is no equivalent event or situation to “validate” their actions?

Take, for instance, the political faction known in the media as the “alt-right”.

These are the worst-of-the-worst in the conservative group.  The white supremacists, the bigots, the neo-nazis and skinheads, the extreme theocrats, the militia groups, the flat-earth theorists... These are the people that believe that 9/11 was an inside job, that Barack Obama was born in Kenya instead of Hawaii, that adding fluoride in the drinking water is really a communist plot, that we never went to the moon, and that the aglets on shoelaces are really something sinister.  These are the people that gave us Eric Robert Rudolph, the Christian terrorist responsible for bombing the 1996 Olympic Games and several women’s clinics and one LGBT nightclub.  They gave us Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.  They gave us the Christian terrorists who attacked and killed doctors and nurses all in the name of their anti-abortion cause.  They gave us Clayton Lee Waagoner, who spread the fear of anthrax to women’s clinics in the fall of 2001, and who, despite the claims of then-President George W. Bush that such actions were the definition of terrorism, was never treated as a terrorist.

In other words, these are the true “basket of deplorables” that the conservatives would previously dismiss as being “not one of them”.

So why should we care about them now?

Because these were the people that saw then-candidate Donald Trump as “their” candidate, that were encouraged by Trump’s campaign, and now have representation through now-President Trump’s Rasputin-styled political “advisor”, Steve Bannon, former editor of Breitbart News.  They heard his promises to “drain the swamp” and didn’t even think twice before supporting him.  He was the “ultimate outsider” to them; the non-politician running for a political office.  And Trump would even respond to them, re-tweeting their messages and appearing on their programs.  Sure it would be backtracked and Trump and his people would claim ignorance and Twitter-idiocy, but it would be too little and too late.  The alt-right got the message that this was “their” guy.

All of a sudden, the “alt-right” became the “ultimate right”.  The “outsiders” had an insider in the White House.

But that puts the conservatives in a pickle.  How can they defend a group of people that they previously distanced themselves from at every opportunity?

The answer to that is simple: they made up a counterpart that did not previously exist.

Their rationality was easy to comprehend.  If there was a “religious right”, then there “had” to be a “religious left” that they deemed to be just as bad or worse than their own.  If there are conservative extremists, then there had to be liberal extremists that were also just as bad or worse than their own.

So if there is a faction called the “alt-right”, then there “must”.... *must*... be an “alt-left”.  There just has to be one.  Their fragile little minds cannot comprehend a situation where there is no counterpart to rail against.

So, much like those phony Obama birth certificates, they fabricated a counterpart out of thin air.

Now the first thing that the conservatives will say about the “alt-left” is that the people who rail against the alt-right supposedly cannot “define” what makes up the alt-right... even though I just showed you who they are.  This is just Orwellian doublespeak to get to the second part, which is to say that the conservatives that rail against the fictional “alt-left” cannot really tell you what makes up that fictional group.  They just know that “it exists” and that “it” is evil and corrupt and worse than the alt-right ever could be, which, they would tell you “doesn’t exist”.

Again, textbook Orwellian doublespeak. 

I’m sure some of you are wondering why they even bother coming up with something like this.  Well, they have to in order to comply with their MAD fetish, which is the only way they can negate the problem of the alt-right.

Let’s get brutally honest here... the “alt-left” is fiction, not faction.  It is a fictional construct created by the conservatives in order to validate and thus negate having to defend the actions and positions of their own very real extremist groups.  Because if they can get people to admit there is such a thing as an “alt-left”, then they can throw their hands up and say “Oops!  It’s all just politics!  We can’t fix a group that we refuse to acknowledge until the other side first cleans up the fictional group that just we got you to acknowledge!”

And this is why nothing gets done, people!  We have reached that level of lunacy straight out of “Doctor Strangelove” where the political generals are screaming about a “mine shaft deficit” that only exists in their heads while the whole world slowly dies.

The conservatives knew what they were getting into with Trump.  They knew what kinds of factions were supporting him.  And, to borrow from the New Testament (a book that they supposedly cherish more than the Constitution), maybe if they spent more time removing the alt-right plank from their own eyes, they would be in a better position to notice any hypothetical splinters in the eyes of others. 

Week of 02/27/2017

D Is For Dummies
– by David Matthews 2

A couple of weeks ago I posted my argument for what the liberals need to do in order to redeem themselves after the 2016 Farce.  I said something that too many people refuse to hear, namely that the Democratic Party has long outlived its usefulness and it needs to die so that other parties can step up and oppose the Cult of Trump.

The feedback I got from certain Facebook circles was that of disdain.  They agreed that the Democrats have become failures because of “certain factors”... i.e. Russia and Trump... but they weren’t ready to pull the plug on the party.  They still live in the phenomenally delusional bubble that the Democratic Party is the only thing keeping America from tyranny and that all they have to do is just try harder.

And I sorta-kinda expected that.

I want you to think back about 150 years, give or take a couple of them.  Do you really think that the people behind the Whig Party were wanting to pull the trigger on their own dominance?  They were fractured, fragmented into splinter groups over divisive issues like ending slavery.  They even had their own “Tea Party” group called the Know-Nothing Party, and, unlike the 21^st Century version, these guys actually broke away from the Whigs to form their own separate party.  They didn’t just “threaten” to break away because they didn’t think they were being “treated fairly”.  No, they actually did it.  They showed courage instead of whining like today’s pampered entitled red hats.

So can you imagine what was going through the heads of the Whig Party in the middle of the 1850’s?  Imagine being told that a new party was being formed on top of the already-formed Know-Nothings called the Grand Old Party.  If you were a Whig, would you want that to happen?  No, of course not!  They would say they just need one more win, one more victory, and they would be back on top, where they belong.

That’s where the Democrats are right now.  They lost, and they don’t want to accept the reality that they lost in a race that was quite literally hand-picked for their “destiny” candidate.  They would rather blame it on Russia, bad weather, a flat tire, a broken alarm clock, bad traffic, and not on the asinine idea that people would pick the candidate that is the second-worst and think that Hillary Clinton was it.

But I will say this: there are plenty of people in America that do like the Democratic Party and they want it to continue to go on just has it has been.  Unfortunately for the Democrats, all of those people that love the Democratic Party as it is today have the letter “R” affixed to their names, or they’re affiliated with the people with the letter “R” affixed to their names.  They absolutely love the Democratic Party.  They really do!  They don’t want it to go away!  Why should it if their continued ineptitude guarantees a virtual one-party rule for the GOP?

In the world of professional wrestling, there are a group of wrestlers known as “jobbers”.  They go through all of the training, all of the workouts, and they are considered to be just as essential to the business as the named “talent”.  Some of them even have their own unique ring names and personalities.  But they have no illusions about why they are there.  They are there to make the “talent” look good.  Sometimes they win, but it’s not because of skill.  They win those rare matches against the named “talent” because it is to advance some overall script.  Or sometimes it’s because the “talent” really screwed up and was injured.  But the point is that the “jobbers” know that they are the designated losers.

It’s the same way with the Washington Generals, the basketball team that, until 2015, always faced and usually lost to the Harlem Globetrotters.  Sure it’s a “real” game for the most part, but they’re not there to play the game, never mind to win.  They’re there to make the Globetrotters look good as they put on a show and eventually win the game.  In other words, they’re there to lose.

Well let’s get brutally honest here... that is the Democratic Party today.  They have become the “jobbers” of national politics.  The GOP knows this.  The talk radio propagandists know this.  The cable news propagandists know this.  The various newspaper propagandists know this.  People on the internet know this, and these people believe the stupidest things in the world put before them!

This has been made very true by recent events.  As I mentioned in my previous article, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who was already proven to be a grossly incompetent Speaker of the House, decided that the strategy for getting back majority status would be to simply let the GOP screw up and then the voters would somehow “learn” and vote out enough GOP legislators to give them majority status.

In other words, Pelosi’s political strategy is what most of us do as a financial strategy.  We go buy lottery tickets and then hope to win the jackpot.  She does nothing to help earn the party’s support by the very voters they need, and she just hopes that the GOP screws up enough for her to win the political lottery.  After all, that’s how she got to be Speaker in 2007 and then lost it in 2011.  Why should she change it now?

And then, just two days before this column was posted, the Democratic National Committee decided that the leader of their party would be... a block of wood.

No, seriously, they elected former Labor Secretary Tom Perez as their chairman.  Who, you ask?  Yeah, I know.  I said the same thing.  But apparently he’s the chosen guy from the donor class, the same people that made the Democrats what the Whigs were in the 1850’s and also were the ones that decided that Hillary Clinton should be President in 2016.

But it’s not like the Dems had too many choices.  Many people wanted Congressman Keith Ellison to be the chairman.  But Ellison, the first Muslim to be elected to Congress, was backed by the “Bernie Bros”.  You know, supporters of the “uppity” Senator from Vermont who “dared” to challenge Hillary in last year’s primary battle.  Party bosses and donors do not like having their choices questioned, even when they are in the wrong, so anything Bernie Sanders touches is poison to them.  But, hey, at least the block of wood saw some potential and made Ellison the vice-chairman.  Nice consolation gift.  Thanks for playing, and don’t forget to tip your waiter on the way out because he’s still having to pay for all of the bad decisions made from the Great Recession.

Let’s put it this way, when President Trump congratulated Perez for winning the chairmanship and said that it will mean still more victories for the GOP, you know that the Democratic Party is nothing more than the “jobber” party.  Even the people that were criticizing me on Facebook and claimed that I was off-base for suggesting that the Democratic Party needs to die were saying after the vote that the DNC committed political suicide.  (I won’t hold my breath waiting to hear them say that I was right, of course.  That would be asking too much.)

You want this to change, progressives and liberals?  You’re not going to get it from the Democratic Party any more than the people that wanted change in the 1850’s were going to get it through the Whig Party.  The question that you need to ask yourselves is “What are you going to do about it?” 

Your options are limited with the Democrats.  You know that they’ve failed you and they’ve failed America.  You can’t vote out the Dems in Congress making the bad decisions.  You can only vote out the ones in your district.  You can’t vote out the party bosses.  They’re too well-entrenched and they have the support of the billionaire class.  The only way you can fire them is if you fire the Democratic Party and support another party.

They do exist.  The alternatives - plural - have been there for years.  You’re the only reason why they haven’t already replaced the Democrats.  Not the party bosses.  Not the corporate-owned media.  Not the billionaire class.  Not the courts.  Not Russian hackers or Vlad Putin.  You.  Individually.  This is on your head.  Yours.  Your vote, your choice, your fault.

The people in charge of the Democratic Party believe that you are all mindless dummies that will vote how they tell you to vote.  They will never change what they are doing because they believe you will moronically march to their drum beat.  The GOP expect you to support the Democrats because they believe you are all mindless dummies.  They mock you in their media circles, making fun of your moronic obedience to a party that betrays you and sells you short, knowing that you will go back to that same party in some asinine idea that it’s either that or nothing.

You want to surprise the GOP and the Cult of Trump?  You want to make them scared of what you can do?  Break from the script, break from the “experts”, break from the PAC-paid bosses, and look at those other parties that you previously dismissed.  Don’t wait until 2020.  Call for a new party now, and you’ll either see the Democrats go the way of the Whigs, or you’ll see a party that really is more receptive to you and what you want.  You can either stop being affiliated with the party of “jobbers” or you can continue to validate everything they say about you.

Your call.  What are you going to do about it?