Your Holiday Steerage Update For Third Class

 We Had A Good Run 

I've noticed a binary spectrum developing -- with friends; commentors and analysts in the media -- about the arrival of the nazis in January. It's one perspective, or another; there's not much middle ground.

One Perspective: Things won't be as bad as you think. "You got a lot of hyperbole going, there -- and and and and; y'know, that kind of thinking is; well it's just not helpful, that thinking. You're frightening people, you're scaring people. You know that? Scaring them. And no matter how much you hate the Trump people, don't call them nazis. That's an incorrect use of the term -- and why don't you capitalize 'nazi', as a Noun? Thought you knew better. Look: You're being a downer. It's a difficult time; if you can't be supportive, just shut up. Shut up."

The Other Perspective: It is exactly as bad as you think (a group that includes Mary Trump, who is in a position to know whether her uncle is a fascist and dead serious, or not). It's tough, playing Cassandra in a room full of people who want any reason to feel less afraid. And, Things could be even worse than you imagine.

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Now It's Done

So, I'll just say it: The United States of America we know is done. It's over. 

That long, persistent idea of a nation -- the one backed by the Constitution, that we studied in school; chronicled by Ken Burns in so many films; the place where we and our families were born and lived; the nation we volunteered (or were drafted) to serve; the place we counted on to be there every morning when we woke up because, at least here, there were limits. Most of us were Safe.

But, 'Safe' depends upon your race, gender, economics; choices; your place in the pecking order of society: George Floyd was not safe. Matthew Shepard, Jazzlyn Johnson, Pauly Likens were not safe. The children at Sandy Hook were not safe. The children abused by the team doctor at Ohio State, or in Catholic churches across America, were not safe. The families of Flint, Michigan (still) drinking lead-tainted water were not safe.

Even so -- in other societies, other countries, there might be armed troops in the streets; identification checkpoints. The press may be censored, muzzled. Mail and communications, monitored. Warrantless searches or raids on homes; arrest and imprisonment, or worse, for opposing the government. 

But in America, we had a Constitution. Our history rested on being a nation of laws. Until, we weren't.

We've always had crazy politicians -- but they were fringe, cartoonish characters, creeping around in the margins. The people we elected to keep America on an even keel (and stay out of our hair) spouted typical Democratic or Republican nonsense. 

But they would never allow The United States to become unstable and unpredictable, like those dreck countries in Asia or Africa, or dictatorships like Russia or China; North Korea. 

This was the United States of America, for fuck's sake; we're better than that. Until, we weren't. 

49% of people casting a ballot in the election voted for a demagogue. A fascist. He told everyone during the campaign what he would do, and showed everyone (as if the previous nine years weren't already proof) who he is. People voted for him with full knowledge: This is what Trump is. And they did it anyway.

49% of the United States put a gun to our collective head -- grinning a manic grin, shouting MAGA !!! MY LIFE FOR YOUUUUUUU !!!! -- and pulled the trigger.

1/20/25 is a red line in the calendar of history: Where we, Americans, ended. Please take note.

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Pass The Last Of The Schadenfreude, Please

As you sit down with family and friends over the next month -- consider all the others in past history who suspected they were on the edge of catastrophe, collapse; war; oppression; penury; mass suffering, but gathered together anyway: Peasants of Europe before the Hundred Years' or Thirty Years' wars; the Irish before the Famine; the French before financial collapse and Revolution; the Weimar Germans on Christmas Eve and over Hannukah in December, 1932.

And now, We, The People.  Us.  We're on the edge of... we don't know. We only know it will be bad.

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Americans sat down to Thanksgiving on Tuesday, November 20th, in 1941. On the 26th, by proclamation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established it as a national holiday. Eleven days later, Japanese carriers reached their designated positions northwest of the Hawaiian Islands and launched the attack on Pearl Harbor.

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"Trumplandia, 'Tis For Thee"

So, our country, with its long and fabled history, much bad and some good, is finished. That America will not exist after 12:00 Noon on January 20th, 2025. "The United States" will be only a label.

Its new Owners should call it Trumplandia, because it won't stand for anything but the twisted, unquenchable greed and violent misogyny and narcissism which will run our lives from this point forward.

Someone once noted that the American Story is one cliffhanger episode after another. The Great Depression was an example: the worst financial collapse in U.S. history. It could have been the end of our Constitutional Republic -- but, at the last minute, we got FDR. It was the New Deal, and a global war, which lifted America out of it. 

The American story remains: How will they get out of this one? And, What next?

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Leave The Hopeism At Home, Yo

We have never had a dictator become President, not to mention controlling both Houses of Congress and a majority of That Court, before. Never in America have our politics -- our very lives -- been so openly and cynically manipulated by technology. Never have so few arrogant theocrats and technocrats spent billions of dollars so openly, to force their desires on so many.

Democrats, the political Left, will push back. Citizens will fight. It may be possible that this is a four-year, seminal period which America will emerge from battered but wiser, as if struck with a terrible disease and surviving.  It may be that We, The People, endure, fucked over as usual by wealth and power, but that in the end We Get Out Of This One. Maybe. 

We seem to have so much stacked against Us, The People. One thing is true: The shared idea of a nation we've had to carry us this far -- right up to January 20, 2025 -- is going to have to fundamentally change when and if we come out the other side of this. The bullying, the lying and violent greed of the Right needs to be kicked to the curb -- but Neoliberal Happytalk and Hopeism on the Left won't work, either.

When you have this very technocratic, 'Third Way' neoliberal approach, and sprinkle in some anti-corporate, anti-billionaire populism... then you're a rudderless ship. You're not communicating what you are about -- and when you don't have a North Star every single person can point to and say, 'this is what the party is about', then your enemies can portray you as whatever they want.

       --  Hasan Piker, 'Pod Save America'; November 27, 2024

America can't be ruled by a dictatorship -- whether by an individual, or the Proletariat. It isn't the way in our Culture-- as opposed to our Society, which changes more rapidly and dynamically.

Perhaps we need to experience a cruel and vicious politics, to feel unsafe in our own land, in order that We, The People will reject it -- now or ever again. 

Yesterday, they were ruffians / Today, they control our lives /

Tomorrow, they will be the keepers of the public lavatories.

--  Juvenal

Trump and his toadies, the pack of Billionaire tech Bros, do not care about you, or me, or anyone but themselves. America is their social engineering laboratory, now -- and they are literally drunk, gibbering with delight at their power. Americans, as Eeelon said, will "endure hardships". Oh, they can't wait.

I've been rereading various histories of France under the Occupation. I'd recommend it.

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It reminds me of the 1993 film from a Steven King novel, Needful Things: The devil (Max von Sydow) comes to Castle Rock, Maine, opens an antiques / curios shop, and in selling various enchanted items to town residents, sets them murderously against each other. It ends in chaos, flames; madness and death. "Hey," Lucifer tells J. T. Walsh, who calls to confess he's just killed his wife, "These things happen."

There's a scene where von Sydow, his face a manic grin, grips his hands together -- shaking with glee as he literally feeds on the energy of the evil he's set in motion; 'Ave Maria' plays in the background. A few townspeople, including the police chief (Ed Harris), fight back. Castle Rock is ravaged; people are dead, shaken, the damage done; but the devil is finally forced to leave.

Von Sydow's Satan -- Looking Very Much Like Good Ol' Fred Trump

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Shaking with glee at their perceived power: Perhaps this is where Trump and his Orcs are now. It may be possible that this moment, before they've even swaggered into the White House, is the Zenith -- that it all begins to fall apart for them from here. 

There's no way we can avoid what they intend to do. That the seeds of eventual failure are being sowed, now, can be a comforting prospect. Earlier today, I heard Mary Trump telling Molly Jong-Fast, "We'll get through this".  Maybe. 

Lee Miller's photo of a local nazi leader and family, having committed suicide, 1945;

One can only hope this is the future of our Fabled Leaders

We'll see.

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Reprint Heaven Forever: Moby-Dick, Or, One Big Fuckin' Whale

 Hoo Boy The Birthday of Big Marine Mammal Avatar Creators

Moving through life, we find ourselves on occasion in the midst of experience or the presence of a thing which resonates and reminds that something, more than what we think we know or can perceive (if we would just stop and shut up and pay enough attention to see), exists.

Principally, this happens when we're 'out in nature', but it also happens when we encounter some art -- in particular, when it's been created by someone who made deep and illuminating connections and Brought Them Back To Tell Thee. 

I blew it this year and did not remember the anniversary ("Shame over you," said the Whale).  So from August 1st in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 23.

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There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville / Moby-Dick, or, The Whale

Over at the Soul Of America, it's a celebration of Herman Melville's 206th birthday (!), and things of the Sea, and a Whale, and other notables which Herman brought back, To Tell Thee.

I keep considering writing a post from the viewpoint of the Whale just for the potential Yucks (because, god knows, We Need The Yucks Wherever We Can Get Them), but gave it up and settled for the Humorous Image.

I voice The Whale elsewhere on social media. He's thoughtful, makes Pontiac GTO noises in the water (" 'Vroom Vroom', said the Whale") and is honestly amazed at the delusional stalking being done to him by Ahab, "that crazy old genocidal fart."

The best thing about BLCKDGRD's annual post, and the reason I mention it here, is -- Herman tends to be overlooked in a culture whose highest expression is a Taylor Swift remix (I take your bullets, I take your bullets). 

It's good to be reminded that the Whale is still there -- as he reminds us that we are chased by our mortality, the fate we make through our emotion and actions; and that sometimes the Form Of The Destructor is large, albino, and aquatic.

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I was introduced to Melville when I was fourteen -- not through the novel he's most often identified with, but in the short work, "Bartleby The Scrivener" (1853), a classic in its own right. Ishmael's tale was next, and I was, uh, hooked. Later, I wasn't able to read anything by James or Conrad where the voice of the narrator was almost identical to the one conjured up when I encountered first with Melville. 

"Moby Dick: Or, A Whale" is ubiquitous. There is No Whale before He who populates a portion of that book (Yeah, okay; 'Shamu'  and 'Willy' are not the same thing). 

The Whale at least lurks, an unseen presence, in the background of all the on-ship action -- like Death, or Fate, or reruns of Fringe.  As if you might hear the Whale chuckling and snickering in the dark during certain scenes, because the Whale knew what was coming:

" 'What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike.'   

" 'Heh heh heh heh,' " came a deep basso rumble out of the darkness which hid the waters. Ahab started, but did not otherwise acknowledge the presence of that upon which he had focused for so long."

That Big Marine Mammal is archetypal, now.  And, aber natürlich, the moment something makes an appearance on "Family Guy", it's an absolute certainty that, whatever it is, it's now hard-coded into our DNA.

 Herman Left Out The Part Where Whales Prefer Raisin Bran

You Will Not Be Able To Un-See This Travesty

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UND DA IST NOCH IMMER MEHR:  Once I saw this, I could not un-see it, either. It is an actual book. Swear to god.

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UND: WAS IST AUCH SCHON WIEDER LOS? MEHR:  At one point, if you had $39.9K, Jim Morrison's Moby could have been yours.  At that price, you'd think the seller would have provided free shipping -- but, remember: this is Aremica, Land Of The Free and Home Of The Hip.

The Adulation Of Crowds

 Point Of No Return 

Yet Another Long Howl

(Definition) The point in the flight of an aircraft, beyond which remaining fuel stores are insufficient for a return to a known starting point and predictable conditions.

[Trump] voters repeatedly [use] very violent, warlike rhetoric... [from] otherwise normal people, normal Americans... And it’s one person after the next – these aren’t just a few random individuals...

In October [2022 at a Trump rally] outside Mesa, Arizona… a man came up to me; he wouldn’t [speak] on camera … then said, “You seem like a nice guy. But you’re with NBC.” Then he said, “I just want you to know -- the corporate media are going to be among the first to go.” And it took me aback; I didn’t know how to respond; ‘Among the first to go’. 

...When Trump talks about revenge, and retribution – people are listening to him.

--  Vaughn Hilyard, NBC Reporter; “Fast Politics” podcast, 8/17/23 (Paraphrased)

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For a time I stood against the [ship's] rail watching the lights recede on a Europe in which I had spent all fifteen of my adult years... It had been a long time, but they had been happy years, personally, and for all people in Europe they had meaning and had borne hope -- until the war came and the Nazi blight and the hatred and the fraud and the political gangsterism and the murder and the massacre and the incredible intolerance and all the suffering and the starving and cold and the thud of a bomb blowing the people in a house to pieces, the thud of all the bombs blasting man's hope and decency. 

--  William L. Shirer; Returning to America from nazi Germany; "Berlin Diary" (1941)

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While from a Proud Tower in the town / Death looked gigantically down

-- Edgar Allan Poe, "City In The Sea" (1845)

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I want to talk about American society preparing for civil war. I have a gut instinct that something bad is coming; have felt that for some time. I'm not alone in having that premonition.

An extraordinary series of circumstances are in play. It may be avoidable, may not. This is only my opinion; feel free to disagree, but I didn't come lightly or easily to this conclusion. I just can't see a path out of the current circumstances. If you do, please speak up.

 Let me explain how I got here -- and apologies in advance: Brevity is not one of my virtues.

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And Only A Fool Would Say That

In the summer of 2021, Rightist 'anti-government' celebrity Ammon Bundy ran for governor of the state of Idaho. He publicly, falsely, accused a local hospital of participating in a child sex trafficking ring. You may have seen mention of that, and instantly dismissed it -- one more insane, baseless accusation by a Rightwing nutjob. 

The hospital filed a lawsuit for defamation. A jury found Bundy's accusations about the hospital a tissue of lies, as expected, and awarded it $52 million in damages. Bundy ignored the civil action -- to him, America’s judicial system is just part of a corrupt, illegitimate power structure. An Idaho court charged him with contempt, issued an arrest warrant, and Bundy went into hiding. 

A week ago, Bundy was arrested at a dinner for his son's local Idaho high school football team. He was released on August 14th, surprisingly on $10K bail, loudly declaiming, "this is absolutely a political prosecution.”

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That same day, eight hours later, a grand jury in Atlanta, Georgia, handed down the fourth criminal indictment against Donald Trump, and eighteen co-defendants, for running a 'criminal enterprise', conspiring to reverse Georgia's voting results in the 2020 election as part of a broader plot to keep Trump in power.

Trump's reaction was the same as Bundy's: the new indictment was a “political prosecution.” The Right-wing echo chamber responded, predictably; one example demanded Red-state, Republican legislatures defy the federal government. They should treat the Biden administration as “an occupying power.”

“If a judge tries to stop you, ignore them,” the pundit said. “Ignore them.”

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Won't You Sign In, Stranger

The shared narrative in these stories is, Government in America is illegitimate. Government has been infiltrated by Leftists -- Woke Democrats, Progressives; Communists; Blacks; Illegal Immigrants; LGBTQ+. All of them, they say, are our enemies.

The political and cultural Right in America do not think of the Left as their fellow citizens. We consider them to be people with whom we strongly disagree -- but still think of them as Americans.  They see us as evil. Some of them believe we are literal Demons. Not even human. Their enemies.

As their enemies, the Right owes us no common dignity or compassion. We need to be dominated or destroyed. There can be, they say, no compromise with evil. 

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Be Part Of The Brotherhood

One of The Last Of The Old Unit asks: Aren't you demonizing the Right?  It's a fair point.

In America, the default Left position in a discussion is, criticize the behavior or the opinion, not the person.  Having a different, even an uncomfortably different political opinion or lifestyle is not the result of something physically or psychologically wrong with them.

Most important, the current American Left doesn't threaten or commit violence to achieve a political outcome or make an ideological point. Historically, America has seen violence from the Left -- but in 2023, in the United States?  No. Anyone claiming it's happening now is a liar and a fool.

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The Right equates holding certain opinions or living certain lifestyles with being brainwashed, corrupted, dangerous; even insane: There's something wrong with the person. 'Woke leftists believe certain things', or 'People are gay because' there's something wrong with them. 

The only way the political and cultural Right in 2023 knows to win an argument is to "own" an opponent -- utterly degrade and dominate them. Unlike the Left, for whom compromise is a win-win, the Right believes win-lose is the only outcome. Compromise is gay. It's weak.

The Right also believes threats of violence, or actual violence, is acceptable. It's part of a testosterone, manly culture. It's why guns. The Right is comfortable with violence -- because their opponent, the enemy, is so fanatical, alien, threatening. We had to. They made us do it.

Talk to the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ask Emmet Till, or Martin Luther King, or Fred Hampton. Ask residents of the Greenwood district of Tulsa in 1921.  Ask George Floyd. Ask Matthew Shepard.

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You Can Try To Run

As for the nazis; well, they're more like pigs than humans, if you think about it... I'm talking about real pigs: pink, overweight. Quite intelligent, certainly smarter than dogs... They do want what they want, and lots of it, and right away, and then when they get it they're happy. Blissful.

 -- Alan Furst, Dark Star (Paraphrased), 1991

We lived through Donald J. Trump for roughly five years. We watched as he blew past every governmental, presidential norm like a schoolyard bully (Yeah? Yeah? So I stole! So I'm fuckin' with ya! Ya gonna do somethin' to me, huh, punk?). 

He claimed the 2020 election had been stolen; that there was "massive voter fraud" (but had no proof, since it was a lie), and tried to strongarm state officials into falsifying the actual vote counts in his favor. He kept highly classified information after leaving office for purposes that are still not clear, obstructed government efforts to retrieve it, then tried to cover up the obstruction. 

Trump's first wife, Ivana, died and was cremated -- yet Trump placed the urn in a heavy, expensive casket, buried it near a tee-off spot on his Bedminster, NJ golf course -- then ignored it; the grave is overgrown and unkempt today; barely recognizable. 

While in the White House, Trump and his children leveraged their positions to make (at least tens of) Millions. The Trumps used the White House, the presidency, America, like a pay toilet they would never have to clean. 

Never has an American President been elected to office and openly, brazenly, engaged in questionable and even criminal conduct for profit, that he would be impeached twice; that he lied, pathologically and outrageously, multiple times each day that he was in office. But, we're not crazy -- all this did happen.  We were here; we all saw it.  And, he is running for the 2024 GOP nomination for President.

It feels like an incredible moment in America; like living in an excruciating horror / comedy film by F.W. Murnau, all Schadenfreudisch humor and razor blades, released at the 'Gloria-Palast' midnight show in Berlin on January 29, 1933. How did we come to be here?

And Trump is still in our faces: Did'ya miss me yet?

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Any World That I'm Welcome To

As background, and quickly: 

The current American Right really began after Reagan's FCC eliminated the Fairness Doctrine in 1984. Right-wing talk radio appeared almost immediately with Rush Limbaugh. He wasn't a William F. Buckley, having a polite dialogue with the Left to win on points; he wanted confrontation. He wanted his audience in a constant state of outrage. He wanted to taunt, insult and bait Liberals, on-air -- to his fan's delight.

"We Are At War With Our Own Government": Limbaugh, January 9, 2010

Limbaugh's program was syndicated in 1988, spawning imitators and competitors; his audience grew exponentially. His syndicators charged advertising rates Limbaugh once described as "confiscatory"; this made Limbaugh rich. He became a political force in the Right-wing world.

That business model was attractive to another Right-wing bully, Rupert Murdoch -- who had already been using it in the UK and Australia. He teamed with Roger Ailes (Nixon's former campaign TV consultant) to tap into the same demographic as Limbaugh, but via cable television. Ailes gave Murdoch an entry to America's political Right-wing world; Fox opened in 1996. Everyone knows what Fox is.

In the early 2000's, digital social media appeared -- Yahoo; Facebook; Google; Twitter -- all designed around users being scored on popularity. With smartphones and mobile apps, in less than a decade Americans were constantly connecting: tweeting, liking (or, not liking) each other; 'sharing' -- new methods to campaign, connect with, organize voters -- and, if not well monitored, to manipulate public opinion.

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When The Razor Boy Comes

There was a fever over the land...  Above all, there was fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow; fear of our neighbors; and fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that can you understand what Hitler meant to us. Because he said to us... "There are devils among us... Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed."

-- Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster); Judgement At Nuremberg (1961)

By 2016, the Republican party was addicted to grievance politics. It was the lever to unify the American Right. Not since Nixon in 1968 had the GOP electorate been so energized -- and, they were angry. No surprise -- Limbaugh and Fox had broadcast an unending river of propaganda for thirty years. An entire generation in America had grown up on a diet of lies, dreaming of revenge. 

The Base believed lies over data-driven fact. They only trusted information spoon-fed by right-wing radio and the Murdochs. Each new 'revelation', every fresh, manufactured outrage was eagerly shared and reinforced in Facebook groups, on Twitter, in private chat rooms. 

The world created by Fox and Limbaugh became more concrete, more 'real' than events in their actual lives. Mainstream news reporting, even scientific fact, was rejected as lies from an illegitimate government and liberal-dominated media.  It was a closed, negative-feedback loop.

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The problem with creating an ever-rising stream of paranoia, outrage, anger; the constant references to an End Times, apocalyptic showdown with the enemies -- is that a time must come when all of it is resolved. If you keep promising a final, Great Cleansing to settle all scores, where the demons are made to pay -- then you have to deliver. All that crazy bullshit you've been talking had better be real. 

It's a classic formula in political revolutions: The leaders are pushed by their mob of supporters to take ever-more radical action -- otherwise, the mob might turn on them. The American Right's political leaders were riding a tiger which they had raised from a cub. And it was hungry. 

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Nothing mattered but Winning, and Owning the Libs. The GOP was driven by a Red Meat community that waited, primed, for a populist demagogue to lead them to that apocalyptic climax with the enemies.

Then they got one.

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A Man Of My Mind Can Do Anything

Donald Trump is the personification, the front man for America's Right wing. He is the reason America is five minutes away from a national crisis it may not survive intact. And he is loving every minute of it.

Some may have dropped out of his base. But the majority of Maga country stands by him. They identify with Trump. They believe charges against him are manufactured. They believe the narrative: It's all a lie, created by our enemies; the illegitimate deep state. Trump, like them, is just another victim. 

The classic example of Trump's relationship with the Base has been QAnon: appearing on the 4chan platform in October 2017, "Q" claimed to be a power structure insider who posted hints and cryptic messages -- the world really was run by a massive global conspiracy, of pedophiles. And all the enemies were in on it. 

Most important: President Trump knew. He had been chosen, by god, to confront this great, mother of all conspiracies, in a climactic battle of good and evil; to bring light and healing and truth. He was just biding his time -- and his True MAGA Followers would join him, play their part. Be ready for orders, the messages said; The Storm Is Coming. Be vigilant; be true. Wait for the word. 

The Faithful wait for the word to this day.

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Trump says openly that when he returns to the presidency, he will destroy the deep state. There's even a plan, 950 pages long, prepared by Koch-funded consultants and Federalist Society lawyers, entitled 'Project 2025'. It is meant to destroy the framework of American Constitutional government. This is a goal of the political and cultural Right.

Trump has no real policy or program to benefit the American people. His top-of-mind consideration is becoming Leader again, so that he can use raw power to support a lavish lifestyle, and extract revenge. He wants to be feared, and loved: The King Of The World. And the MAGA Base loves it. This spring, Trump told CPAC convention-goers, "I am your justice -- I am your retribution." 

Every time he tosses another slur, another insult at the judges and prosecutors bringing him to justice, he's throwing down the gauntlet: Try to put me in jail, he's saying; just try. It's a massive game of Chicken, daring them to incarcerate him -- so his Believers will rise to his defense. They're just waiting for the word.

It's not improbable that triggering an insurrection to topple the American government has passed through Trump's mind. But, who knows. The next 15 months, or less, for Trump is literally about his survival. His decision-making is likely to be affected by that single perspective.

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King Of The World

One way or another, Trump has everything to lose. He either wins the presidency, pardons himself / escapes state charges in Georgia and elsewhere, or he likely goes to prison. 

There are many twists and turns between now and an early November day in 2024. Many things can happen -- but the basic possibilities appear to be:

• Trump dies during GOP primary season (and the world mourns)
• GOP finds another candidate
• << Game Over / Trump >>

• Trump faces incarceration for any reason before / during GOP primaries
• He calls for help from the Maga faithful; they show up, with guns
• (Not good - anyone's guess where this ends)
• [Flynn / Bannon / Prince / 'christian' coup attempt]
• (Not good - anyone's guess where this ends)

• Trump loses the GOP primaries to a challenger
• Challenger wins General Election; pardons Trump
• Challenger executes Project 2025
• <<  Game Over / America >>
• Challenger loses General Election
• [Maga Revolt / Flynn / Bannon / Prince / 'christian' coup attempt]
• (Not good - anyone's guess where this ends)

• Trump wins the primaries; the GOP nominates him
• Faces incarceration for any reason before General Election
• He calls for help from the Maga faithful; they show up, with guns
• (Not good - anyone's guess where this ends)
• [Maga Revolt / Flynn / Bannon / Prince / 'christian' coup attempt]
• (Not good - anyone's guess where this ends)
• Trump loses the General Election
• He contests; Maga faithful protest. Ugly, but gradually recedes
• << Game Over / Trump >>
• Trump's legal escapades end in prison
• << Game Over / Trump >>
• Trump flees; goes into exile (Russia, Hungary)
• << Game Over / Trump >>
• [Maga Revolt / Flynn / Bannon / Prince / 'christian' coup attempt]
• (Not good - anyone's guess where this ends)

• Trump wins the 2024 General Election (lawfully, or not)
• He executes Project 2025
• <<  Game Over / America >>

• Trump wins 2024 General Election but dies before Inauguration
• Trump's VP executes Project 2025
• << Game Over / America >>

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I Fear The Monkey In Your Soul

Once again: The constant promise of a final, Great Cleansing to destroy the enemies and demons that plague America, where they are made to pay (and maybe Jesus will even make a guest appearance with Trump!), keeps the faithful constantly on edge, waiting for The Word.

A Maga Revolt would not be a replay of Fort Sumpter or the Whiskey Rebellion, or even January 6th. It might be a 'patriot militia' taking control of important infrastructure. It could be asymmetric warfare, IEDs, snipers; destruction of power substations; truck bombs, like Oklahoma City. It could go on for a long time.

At some point, an Ammon Bundy-type will appear and declare a portion of some state as 'Sovereign territory', the Republic Of Christ Church, or some such bullshit. Vladimir Putin announces the Russian Federation diplomatically recognizes the new "breakaway republic", offering military assistance and a warning "not to interfere with the progress of democracy". North Korea and Iran follow suit. 

Twenty years ago, these scenarios were laughable. That they're being considered by security analysts and risk consultants today should tell you just how serious our situation is.

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In The Proud Tower, popular historian Barbara Tuchman focused on describing Western culture in the decades leading up to the Great War -- a huge, red line of demarcation that finally separated the generations of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries.

Her story is a chronicle of human folly (one of Tuchman's favorite themes).  Because we know how the story will end, the leitmotif of nostalgia we sense in the background is really the collective despair of survivors who lost everything familiar, an entire frame of reference for living.

But we don't know the next chapters in this story. No one knows how it ends. The majority of people reading this (myself, three other people, and a giant parakeet) will probably be around to find out. But it doesn't prevent any of us, feeling some massive change is coming, from already feeling nostalgic; that we may be about to lose the trusted and safe and familiar.

Many people will say this -- but the election to come will actually determine whether the American Experiment continues, or ends at 11:59:59 AM EST on January 21, 2025. It isn't hyperbole. 

What they don't say is, this election will be just one more battle. Even if the Democrats win, the struggle is far from over. For over thirty years, the American political and cultural Right has been developing a generational project to pack the courts, suppress voting; roll America back.

When we are at a crossroads of climate deterioration, when collaboration and cooperation may be the only things that save us as a species: the only thing the Right can do is plan on how to Own the Libs, to take more for themselves -- and fuck the Peasantry: that's us, by the way.

And to make this work, they are willing to do anything -- sacrifice their honor, their sacred bonds of love and fellowship; the basic tenets of common decency -- for this Trump person. This one truth about our current situation never ceases to amaze me; that they will give it all up... for that.

What happens will depend on how far the Right is willing to go -- how vicious, how violent, how delusional they can be. And on what we're willing to do to stop them.

________________________________

He who writes this book, in which hate is not hidden, was formerly a pacifist...For him no disillusionment was ever greater or more sudden. It struck with such violence, that he thought himself no longer the same man. And yet, as it seems to him in this state of hatred, that his conscience becomes diminished -- he dedicates these pages, with emotion, to the man he used to be.

--  Emile Verhaeren, Belgian Poet; Dedicating a book of his poems to his former self, 1915

________________________________

Across The River And Into The Trees

Don't Say You Didn't See This Coming

Another Long Howl

Depending on which media 'outlets' or polls you follow, the Democratic party will either win, and the American form of democracy will be preserved -- or, the political and cultural Right will win, and that will be the end of The American Experiment.

The Democratic party is the best we've got. Some in the party don't believe its stated policies go far enough to realize a more equitable future; to prepare for the challenges of climate deterioration, and competition with an authoritarian China and Russia. They favor restructuring national priorities, continuing the spirit of The New Deal.

The Republican party claims to be the same GOP that's existed for over 160 years: The party of Lincoln; of fiscal sobriety and small government. That's a lie. It belongs to Trump. 

The GOP is dressed in a Sturmabteilung brownshirt; it struts and marches. The Party says When (not If) it takes back what was rightfully stolen from it, it will impeach Biden, throw out the January 6th Committee and replace it with another to "investigate the radical Democrats". It will Own The Libs, codify law making abortion illegal in all states, and end the farce of Social Security and Medicare.

The Ukrainians will have to get used to being part of Putinland. NATO will just have to get along without us. And at home there will be more god, and less godlessness, in society -- oh, the Party will see to that.

And above it all -- various investigations against him stymied or quashed -- there will be the triumphant return of The Leader in 2024, as he waddles back into the White House, before starting his Revenge Tour of America, basking in the adulation of thousands at his rallies -- as if they were tent-revival meetings for the Cult of Trump.

______________________

Michael Moore says he believes there will be a Blue Tsunami on election day, one that hasn't been detected by the pollsters, just as his prediction of Trump's apotheosis was ignored by the professional pollsters in 2016.  Meanwhile, he complains, Democratic campaigning is tepid, uninspiring, encouraging Democrats "to believe liberals are losers."

It’s very disheartening ... Democratic party consultants are feeding lines that are so lame and weak. They don’t go for the jugular like a Republican would. It doesn’t inspire people... We stand here on the precipice of a very important election and our greatest enemy could be the Democratic party itself.

And, meanwhile, Bill Maher (whose libertarianism I don't particularly like) says correctly that Democracy is on the ballot, and predicts "it's going to lose". 

Ben Franklin said our country was a "Republic, if you can keep it." Well, we can’t, and unless a miracle happens on Tuesday, we didn’t. Democracy is on the ballot, and unfortunately, it’s going to lose. And once it’s gone, it’s gone.

So here's what's going to happen: Republicans are going to take control of Congress, and ... begin impeaching Biden and never stop... it won't matter and it won't make sense -- but Biden will be a crippled duck in 2024 when he goes up against the Trump - Kari Lake ticket.

And even if Trump loses -- it doesn't matter: On Inauguration Day 2025, he's going to show up... and this time he's going to have the army of election deniers behind him that's being elected in... days. 

This really is the crossing-the-Rubicon moment... it's how countries slide into authoritarianism --not with tanks in the streets, but by electing the people who have no intention of giving [up power]...  Hitler was elected. So was Mussolini; Putin; Erdogan; Orban. This is the, 'it can't happen to us" moment that's happening to us, right now.

______________________

A deranged man broke into the home of Nancy Pelosi and attacked her husband with a hammer, demanding, "Where's Nancy?" The man had two hammers, zip-ties, and told police he had committed the break-in and assault because he was "fighting against tyranny".

[He stated his] intention was to find Speaker Pelosi at the home and take her hostage. He planned to have a conversation with her, claiming that if she told him "the truth" he would let her go. If she "lied," in his eyes, he planned to break her kneecaps. He also indicated that he did not expect her to tell the "truth," further suggesting his hope to commit violence during the incident.

Less than an hour after the attack was reported, Rethugs were broadcasting that the man was a male prostitute Paul Pelosi had picked up.  It was a "tryst" gone wrong.  Elon Musk ("world's richest man", bloated Owner of a shiny, newly-acquired toy, Twitter) helped broadcast it under the guise of "free speech", then deleted the post -- but, too late. 

No matter that it was a lie -- the Rethugs amplified and regurgitated it. The Murdochs broadcast it -- and when Fox says something, 40% of American adults automatically snap-to and believe. Marjorie Taylor-Green and Lauren Boebert claimed Pelosi brought the attack on himself. It was his fault -- but the real victims in all this were ... America's patriots; the Trumpist Right.

A few in the GOP condemned "the violence in our culture", then blamed Dems for being "pro-crime" -- again: Pelosi brought that head trauma upon himself.  Some claimed the assailant was part of Antifa. But among most of the Rethug members of Congress, there was silence. No one said a word.

The Thugs couldn't quite bring themselves to say any politically-motivated violence was unacceptable. That there were red lines in American society about politics that couldn't be crossed. They might have, fifteen or twenty years ago. But not in 2022. 

We're going into this election with the Right giving its cult members a clear signal -- political intimidation through violence, even assassination, is the spirit of the future. Attempting to kill the Libs isn't fully permissible, yet -- but the fact that the attack happened, and most Republicans said nothing, should be a massive wake-up call. But it doesn't appear to be. 

_______________________

Within three days, we'll find out whether America's democratic experiment is on its deathbed; whether the country is being delivered further into the hands of narcissistic monsters and child molesters who will make a mockery out of American government. We'll think we've been fucked by a train.

I don't know whether that will happen. But I know History -- particularly the inter-war years in Europe: the rise of Italian fascism; nazism; end of the Weimar Republic and everything that followed. 

The stakes are exactly as described by Maher and others. I am looking at the cards on the table and feeling a cold sense of anticipatory dread: We go this way, we die. Period. It is as clear as anything I've ever felt. Beyond voting, I am helpless to do anything to affect the outcome.

This is how history works at the level of a citizen in a participatory democracy whose future is uncertain.

________________________

Imagine a world without America. We have so many crimes and shortcomings to answer for as a society that many might say, yeah, right; bring it on. Whatever comes must be better than the lies, the greed, the inequality of this faux Democracy we live under. 

But would it really? The vacuum produced by our withdrawing from the world stage would mean other countries will assert their authoritarian leadership. I know some Marxists who say, good; a dose of what the CCP is doing would be a step toward a better world for the greatest number of people.

I disagree, for one reason: Under the CCP or Russian Federation (and theocratic governments, like Iran, or Afghanistan), artists can't create certain images. Writers can't express certain thoughts. Nor can Filmmakers, Playwrights, Musicians.  Any system which says You Cannot is inherently despotic -- and despotic systems are always maintained by the threat of death. 

That threat sits in the shadows of every demand for obedience such systems make on their citizens -- Obey, Or Else. Governments imprisoning and murdering persons for what is in their minds and hearts, for having the ability to express it creatively, is one of the great crimes of this or any other period in history. 

You can argue that a citizen of America is complicit in great crimes; that the 'Obey' is implicit in our system; I won't argue. But it's ironic that such a truth goes hand-in-hand with (even our level of) individual rights and liberties in the United States of America, today, November 6, 2022. 

I'd like to be positive. Maybe America will vote for sanity -- that we'll collectively dodge a bullet, be delivered from the repercussions of slavery, genocide; racism; greed, and lies.

But maybe not.  No one can say we didn't see it coming.

________________________

Reprint Heaven: Nadir

 Bottom Of The Batting Order

(This, from December 20, 2011, almost a decade ago. These were the Things happening, five years before the rise of the waddling, lying grifter. 

(How far you feel we have moved on as a society from the issues reported in 2011 is subjective. But it is the anniversary of the assumption of the waddling liar's unrequited love, Kim Jong Jong-Jong.)

 

This Chart Answers The Musical Question, "What Percentage Of All U.S. Corporate Profits Is Generated By The Financial Sector?" Answer? "Their Satanic Majesties Request", Or 26%.

   

...And This One Tracks Financial 'Industry' Profit As Percentage Of Overall GDP. (Source: Arbor Research, via Big Picture) Tonight at sundown (aside from its being the second night of Hanukkah), the Winter Solstice will begin. This is physically the longest night of the solar year, the Nadir, the lowest point in a cycle of one orbit of the planet around the sun. As a result, you'd expect the kind of mutant freakshow we're seeing these days.

• Republicans Continue Countdown To Self-Detonation: Bob Schaeffer, CBS News Washington correspondent since the Late Cretaceous Period, noted in last night's CBS Evening News that the current (i.e., most recent) impasse in Congress is a result of "both sides trying to undermine each other". On the BBC's American version of the evening news, Clinton-era Labor Secretary Robert Reich (and former BFF prior associate of Citicorp) commented in a segment on the effect to those living on unemployment of having benefits suddenly removed or slashed, "I try hard not to be partisan, but the Republican party seems to be the one" creating the current deadlock. Some Left Blogistan sites (e.g., TPM) report that, as a result of the refusal of the Rethug-dominated House to pass a Senate bill that would extend (by two months) both a Social Security payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits, President Obama's job approval ratings have become more positive. TPM reported 46.6% Approval vs. 48% Disapproval -- "There’s now a lot of evidence that the President’s approval numbers are rising after bottoming out at the end of the summer after the debt deal debacle," Josh Marshall wrote. "But they’re rising toward an almost total polarization.

• "50% for, 50% against. Very little middle ground." 

• Your New Stratoliner: The One Per Cent, And Their Hats One interesting note: Little Rupert's Wall Street Journal, the "Tits 'n Tattle" scandal sheet of Rupert's empire for the financial class, ran an editorial criticizing Republicans for blocking the two-month extension in the House -- and mostly criticizing it as a poor tactic, rather than for the effect it would have on taxpayers and unemployed Americans. Heaven forbid that Little Rupert or Fat Roger would give a damn about the people they treat with such barely-disguised contempt. Rupert, that crafty ol' Aussie, is sending America's Rightist politicians a message: I Am Not Amused. Get Your Shit Together. 

• But as much as he criticizes them, he has to support the Rethugs, and his NewsCorp will have to get behind whichever candidate, drooling, brain-dead and barking, it hoists for president in 2012. So, whatever scribbles are published on the editorial page of the WSJ tabloid don't really matter. Little Rupert is as much a hostage of a self-destructing political party as the Rethugs are hostage to their addictive love for Little Rupert's propaganda. 

•   MEHR: Not that long ago, the House Minority Whip, Stenny Hoyer walked to the floor of the House Of Representatives, and asked the Speaker Pro Temp, Michael Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania (standing in for President Boner), to grant "unanimous consent" for an up-or-down vote on the Senate bill the Rethugs deep-sixed yesterday. House Republicans on the Hill were with Speaker Boner at a photo-op. Meanwhile, as Hoyer made his request to the Speaker's chair on the House floor, Fitzpatrick simply ignored Hoyer and walked away... all broadcast on CSPAN. "As you walk off the floor, Mr. Speaker," Hoyer said to Fitzgerald's back, "You’re walking away, just as so many Republicans have walked away from middle-class tax payers, the unemployed, and very frankly as well from those who will be seeking medical assistance from their doctors — 48 million senior citizens.” In and of itself, business as usual in the United States Congress. But, providing the Democratic party with a telling image of Rethugs who don't give two hoots about The People, and which can be rebroadcast over and over and over? Priceless.

• Global Banking Structure Aims Free Money Nozzle At European Banks: The European Central Bank has loaned a massive 489 billion Euros ($639 billion US) to over five hundred European banks, at one per cent interest, for what the War Criminal Post reported as "an exceptionally long period of three years" in the ongoing attempt to keep the EU from dissolving into a bad fusion between "Apocalypse Now" and "Mr. Hulot Opens A Hedge Fund". It was the biggest infusion of credit by the European Central Bank in the 13-year history of the Euro; in a response I think is best termed 'irrational exuberance', the DJIA rose over 330 points. The ECB's move allows its client banks to borrow money, essentially, for free: 1 Billion Euros borrowed can become loans, and any interest charged on those loans above one per cent is pure profit. The problem is, these loans will act as life support for some financial players whose books are sagging with toxic debts that these ECB credit lines can't repair; the amounts of debt are too huge. It's just another means of postponing the Day O' Reckoning, kicking the can down a road paved with good intentions. But, hey; Little Angela's happy. So, s'all good. Right?

• Rethugs Say, VOTE FOR PLAYER TO BE NAMED LATER! Replicating the internal epic battles within the Rethug, Red-State World (something like Rodan vs. Monster Zero), it appears that Thugs will nominate Mitzy Perry Grand TurtleBear Ru Paul Mitzy Randyman Perry Ru Paul "Somebody Else" as their candidate for president in 2012. No kidding; a poll recently reported by CBS showed Republicans pretty evenly split between three potential candidates, so far: Romney and Gingrich, and "Somebody Else". It's a ringing, star-spangled endorsement of -- well, somebody. A write-in candidate who embodies true, conservative principles, like Lil' Bernie Madoff, or William Stafford, or the Zombified Ronald Wilson Rayguns-ah. The ever-tasteful Alicublog reports that the Special Bus Kidz at RedState are enthusiastically arguing in favor of... a Rick Perry candidacy.

Fellas, there's probably a robot somewhere that would govern in the most consistently conservative fashion -- it wouldn't be hard to program; just get it to yell "More tax breaks for the wealthy!" and "I hates me a faggot!" at intervals, and to fart loudly when France or higher education is mentioned -- but it doesn't mean anything unless you can get people to vote for it. 

 ...Perry makes George W. Bush look like Pericles. Nobody, but nobody, is praying, "Oh Lord, send us someone just like George W. Bush, only stupider." Just the other day... Perry misread Kim Jong Il as "Kim Jong the Second". That's like something out of a Cheech and Chong movie. Most observers... have moved on to wondering if Perry can tie a shoelace without coaching.

I enjoy flailing, particularly when it reinforces stereotypes I have of conservatives as retrograde, Troglodyte morons, beating each other bloody with Wal-Mart shopping bags filled with The Collected Works Of Ronald Rayguns: "They fought so fiercely because the stakes were so small". Keep it up!

• Tubby Twentysomething Becomes New Leader Of Starving, Heavily Armed North Korea: A few days ago, this short, pudgy guy with weird hair and glasses died -- some say on a train: Kim Jong Il, ruler of the upper half of the Korean peninsula and a leader of a totalitarian, repressive state... and was reportedly someone who loved dogs and western porn, and really in his heart was kinda, sort of, a good guy. "The Kim Nobody Knew". His twenty-something son, Kim Jong Fat Boy, short, pudgy, with a very bad haircut who reportedly likes dogs, food and western porn, and in his heart is kind of a good guy, replaced him. 

• The CIA apparently had no idea that Kim Jong 2 had passed away until it was announced by North Korea's official media (there is no other kind). There immediately commenced massive (and in the last Stalinst, cult-of-personality culture on the planet, we mean massive) shows of public grieving. Thousands gathered publicly to cry and cry and rend their hair and fall weeping on the pavement, each attempting to outdo everyone else to show how sad they are that a totalitarian freak, who wore shoes with three-inch lifts and created policies resulting in starvation of his people and nuclear weapons, was dead. Kim Jong Well went to see his father lying in state, bowed without much expression, then reportedly went for pizza and some XBox action.

There's one other thing about The Winter solstice to keep in mind. This is the last of the old solar year, the bottom of the wheel, the Appogeian, farthest point out in Earth's orbital motion. The planetary pole is tilted back; this is the longest period of darkness in a full turn around the sun. 

 And from midnight tonight, the Days will become incrementally longer, the nights shorter. From this long night we will all enter what I like to think of as The Season Of Rising Light -- from one point of view, the darkness being reduced a degree at a time, each day forward, until the top of the wheel, the Apex, next June. And while waiting for someone to start singing "Here Comes The Sun", in the meantime, we'll still have the unfolding, everlasting clown show to watch.

_________________________________

Auf Nicht Wiedersehen

Ende: Slipping Anchor

"First and foremost, I’m a businessman. My first goal is to attract the largest audience possible so I can charge confiscatory ad rates. I happen to have great entertainment skills, but that enables me to sell airtime.” Then he added -- as if he had to after a rare moment of honesty -- "But in my heart and soul, I know I have become the intellectual engine of the conservative movement."

John McManus, "The Flap Over Limbaugh", New American, April 2009

   

Lard Boy, 70, racist homophobic misogynistic junkie and self-described shill "intellectual engine" for America's Rightist movement, is dead. He was famous for publicly stoking political and racial hatred, spreading lies, and behaving like a high school bully for nearly thirty years. 

He was the most successful hate-monger on radio, after the end of the Fairness Doctrine under Reagan in 1984. Limbaugh used his huge soapbox -- not to build positive connections between people in service of a public good, but to pour permeating, corrosive dialogue into the culture.

Beginning in 1988, Limbaugh helped to shape the audience for Rupert Murdoch's Fox, which debuted in 1996. Lil' Rupert could not have been as successful, quickly, without Limbaugh creating a ready-made market for the hatred and lies the Murdochs push daily.

“You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray [assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]. We miss you, James. Godspeed.”

He mocked people, insulted them, belittled them on air.  And from that soapbox, he lied, or passed along lies pushed by others. He used his position to attack public figures whose politics he disliked (even other conservatives who weren't Toeing the Limbaugh line), which would guarantee they received more hate mail and threats to their personal safety. 

He reveled and took pleasure in being able to affect others in a negative way from the safe remove of a broadcast studio, like the bully he was.

To an African American female caller: "Take that bone out of your nose and call me back”.  To an immigrant:  “You’re a foreigner. You shut your mouth or you get out.”

Limbaugh was vain, morally and ethically crippled. He was a coward. His legacy is utterly negative, without a shred of redeeming behavior. And he was no stranger to flirting with sedition, even secession.

   

This government is governing against its own citizens. This president and his party are governing against us. We are at war with our own President, we are at war with our own government. Limbaugh; January 9, 2010

 

Blimp's End: 'Tucked In With A Spade' ; the obituary in Little Rupert's papers

("Giant Of The Age Passes - And The World Mourns").

He's dead. He was who and what he was. He was responsible for what he did.  I am not unhappy he's gone. If that's upsetting to you, so be it.

---

Is It Possible These Parades Are The Same

 4:58 PM PST (7:58 EST)

We watch the returns as they come in. Is it "liberation"? It is "Triumph Des Willens"?

The conclusion of this night will result in our playing the Second Movement of  Brahms's A German Requiem, or something suitably John Phillips Sousa-like. 

Aus Funf / Acht-und-Dreizig dotcom, where they are being suitably cautious. Let's wait and see!

According to our final presidential forecast, Pennsylvania is the most likely tipping-point state, and a lot of Biden’s chances in the Electoral College hinge on what happens in the Keystone State. He leads Trump there by about 5 points in our polling average, but it’s not as large a margin as Biden might like.

Last week, we gamed out what would happen if Biden lost Pennsylvania but won other Midwestern states like Wisconsin. (...there’s no clear Plan B for Biden.) ...

Unless Trump or Biden has a really good night ... it’s pretty unlikely, though, that either of them will hit the 270 electoral votes needed to win by the end of the night. That doesn’t necessarily mean, though, that we won’t have a pretty good idea of who won. 

It’s all going to come down to how close some of the key battleground races are and whether a representative share of the vote can be reported, which won’t always be possible given the challenges of the pandemic. We’re tracking when we expect results in every state.

Please to keep this in mind as we go forward. 

___________________________

5:33 PM PST (8:33 PM EST)

PBS' Oh-So-Neutral News Hour has a number of political analysts commenting as the results come in -- including Eliana Johnson, 'Editor-In-Chief' of the Washington Free Beacon.

Per The Atlantic, the Beacon's founder "told Politico ... 'Andrew Breitbart pioneered the new approach. His websites were dedicated, impassioned, and broke news. Glenn Beck exposed White House czar Van Jones's radical, 9/11-Truth past. Guerilla journalist James O'Keefe performed sting operations that led to ACORN, Planned Parenthood, and NPR having very bad days. Tucker Carlson's website, The Daily Caller, published excerpts ... which showed liberal writers coordinating their party line.' " 

Why does PBS legitimize a mouthpiece for the kind of lying, bullshit propaganda of an O'Keefe or Carlson? These people are apologists for white supremacists -- the White Supremacist In Chief, primarily. Why feed them; why allow anyone to think 'The Beacon' has as much gravitas as a legitimate new organization? It's like claiming a Kangaroo is an Ostrich.

And, Arkansas projected for Trumpo The Murder Clown. Also, Tom Cotton, racist who self-copulates, is reelected. Of course he is.

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6:35 PM PST (9:35 PM EST)

Early votes continue to come in, and states are being counted and called, as if it was any other national election. Trumpo has said he doesn't intend to claim victory at his Whitey Haus party, but he lies.  In the 'battleground' 'tossup' states like Pennsylvania, Florida; Michigan, Arizona, there is little information.

It seems clear that Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin will be the states which decide this public contest.  However, in looking at Pennsylvania, various county elections commissioners are saying they will not be declaring just an initial wave of vote counts until roughly midnight Eastern time (9:00 PM Pacific time, or two-and-a-half hours away). Another wave of vote tallies will be reported sometime tomorrow morning -- but no final counts.

Colorado called for Biden, along with Maryland and Vermont. A number of pundits are first saying Biden has done well in places, then hedging and saying oh it's very close; so close. Huh.

Eliana Johnson, who hearts James O'Keefe and Glamorous Glenny Beck, chimes in; it's so warm and comforting that a True Trumper who drinks Flavor-Aid straight from the Washtub In Front Of The Pavilion tells us what American voters believe and want.

Oh; Madison Carlson in North Carolina, who lied about his military service and turned buying a home with a medical settlement into being a "real estate investor", has been elected to the House of Representatives.  Likewise, Marjorie Taylor Greene -- who hearts QAnon and believes the universe is shaped like a burrito, and that there should be tests for witchcraft by dunking women in ponds, also won in Georgia for a House seat.

Of course they have. If you live in other countries, I don't recommend going to North Carolina or Georgia.

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7:05 PM PST (10:05 PM EST)

Jamie Harrison has been declared to have lost in his bid to unseat "Lady G" Lindsey Graham from his senate seat in South Carolina. Harrison's campaign spent over $50 Million, and had seemed very close in polls for weeks.  We will still have to endure the nasty, waspish bitch that Graham is.

John Cornyn, a complete asshole, will return to the Senate from Texas.  Ah, Texas.  And In Alabama, Democrat Doug Jones is beaten by Republican Tommy Tubberville. 

And, Trumpo The Murder Clown declared the winner in Kansas.  North Carolina, with 88% of the expected vote counted, is 49% Trump, 49% Biden.  

It is announced that 91% of the projected total votes in Florida have been counted -- Trump 51%,  Biden 48%.

In Michigan, with 32% of the votes counted -- 56% Trump, 42% Biden.

In Wisconsin, with 38% of the expected votes -- 51% Trump; Biden 42%.

________________________________

7:50 PM PST (10:50 PM EST)

Not good news:  I am hearing analysts on the major mainstream media outlets (CBS; MSNBC; PBS; ABC) all reporting that their "sources in the Biden campaign" are 'very concerned' about Day-Of vote totals in key states. There does not seem to be a 'Blue Wave' occurring, or anything like it.

The map of the US they're referring to is appearing predominantly Red, at the moment -- states trending for Trump. As many expected, this contest really does seem to hinge on how the voting goes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. Counting all votes in these states will not be accomplished tonight, or even tomorrow.

I am toying with the idea of watching two back-to-back Battlestar Galactica episodes, then going to bed; I have a 6AM meeting and that's just the start of my day.

______________________________

Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Ogg Ogg

9:00 PM PST (Midnight, EST)

The talk from last week, even earlier today, of a Democratic landslide, a repudiation of Trump and Trumpism, hasn't materialized.  Trump is outperforming his 2016 efforts -- meaning more Crackers are voting for him in greater percentages than four years ago -- in key districts of the states he is projected to carry.

ABC News has chose some name personas to act as commentators and analysts -- Chris Christie and Rahm Emanuel, for example.  Christie (who helped prep Trump for his debates with Biden, and was probably infected with Covid by The Leader) says flatly that the Republicans' ground game is better, and that their polling and estimates are based on better methodology than the Democrats'. The more their estimates prove true, the more they will believe they can win: Simple.

Emanuel says well, in states where Trump is leading, there are still Democratic-stronghold areas to be counted and those numbers could tip the scales to Biden -- but while Christie seems confident, Emanuel's reasoning feels hollow. He could still be right, but I sense worry. This night is not unfolding the way the Democrats expected.

One analyst chimed in to say that in Michigan, the current totals showing Trump with a lead will change; she noted the current numbers are only today's in-person-vote totals. No mail-in ballots have been tallied yet, and Democrats traditionally do well with them. While that was a more fact-based assertion than Emanuel's, she didn't seem entirely convinced by her own argument.

Again, everything seems to be coming down to one, or two states. Biden has 192 Electoral Votes at this point (based on estimates, not officially-certified vote totals) to Trump's 118.  It takes 270 to win.

Pennsylvania has some 2.5 million mail-in ballots to count, statewide. In Philadelphia, it was announced by elections commissioners there that they are only processing some 10,000 an hour, and that they were suspending the count until tomorrow morning in that urban county. Partly, a labor issue, but also a recognition that getting the entire state's vote total accounted for will take time.

_______________________________

10:15 PM PST (1:15 AM EST)

Biden appeared in Wilmington, Delaware, and gave a short 'rally-the-troops' speech, saying "we're very confident" that he will win the election, and lauded his supporters for their patience. 

Almost immediately afterwards, Iowa and Florida were called for Trump. Texas has been declared 'likely'. Lindsey Graham, in the spirit of conciliation, accepted his challenger's concession by saying "all the money from New York and California" contributed to the Democrats yielded a "poor return on investment". 

Then, it was announced on PBS that Trump was Tweeting as Biden spoke: 

"We are up BIG but they are trying to STEAL the election. We will never let them do that. Votes cannot be cast after the polls are closed!" 

Yamiche Alcindor, who reported Trump's comment, referred to his comments as "baseless... offered no evidence" and similar to his comments earlier this year that the 'only way they can win is if the election is rigged'.  Trump's staff announced that he, too would speak to the nation soon.

Just can't wait.

____________________________________

11:05 PM PDT (2:05 AM EST, November 4, 2020)

The Mad King will speak from a podium in the East Room of the Whitey Haus, in front of a background of American flags. Trumpo threw a poll-watching party there tonight for some 400 guests, but has not been seen. Apparently he's been meeting with Attorney General Barr and 'economic advisors' -- but Vice-President Pence is not there, which some think is notable. The guests reportedly have not been wearing masks; the media has to depend on a few pool reporters to share information on the soiree, and otherwise have no idea who is attending.

Trumpo keeps everyone waiting. That seems to be a thing with dictators; they never appear on time, because they are in control. You can wait. I'm tuned to CBS, and their reporters and analysts are filling in the time talking about control of the Senate. Wait wait wait.

There are, we are told, "millions of ballots in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that have [still] not been counted" and that elections volunteers are working through the night; a testament to our Democracy.

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11:20 PM PST (2:20 AM EST, November 4, 2020)

Junior, Eric, Ivanka walk in; a theatrical announcement, as if this was a game show, and Trumpo the Murder Clown appears to cheers and "Hail to the Chief".

"... A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise [Trump voters] and we will not stand for it... we were getting ready for a big celebration, and it was just called off! We were set to get outside and celebrate... to support our movement... The returns came in, 'they're never gonna catch us; they can't catch us'... and we don't need all the states; Arizona; we didn't need it, okay..."

He rambles. He claims they are "winning Pennsylvania by a tremendous amount of votes... we're up by 690,000 votes... with 64% of the votes coming in, it's impossible to catch us..."

He goes on. The election "is off... they knew they couldn't win, so they went to court-- did I tell you this Newt, that's what they would do?... all of a sudden things, just stopped. This is a fraud on the American public... and we did win this election... We will go to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop..."

So, he did exactly what he said he wouldn't do (He lied. Big surprise). He's saying votes people cast that have not been counted will be contested as illegal. He spent half the time he spoke listing each state he has (apparently) won; and his message is that he believes he'd already won. 

He said it weeks ago: he has no intention of accepting the election, if not in his favor. He will be asking that all current counting of votes cease, and take it to the Supreme Court, where Amy Barrett is warming up in the bullpen.

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On PBS, some right-wing 'freelance journalist' chides viewers that all will be well, and that he doesn't think anything of how Trump speaks, and that no one takes it seriously. The system will work.

Bullshit.

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