The End Of The United States And Neoliberalism

This post will lack structure and flow. I don’t care. This nation has a few intelligent people who saw our collapse coming 40 years ago. But as George Carlin often said, garbage in, garbage out. This nation had a tipping point in which the garbage going in became unmanageable long ago.

Kamala Harris put up an impressive hail mary pass. On the night of her one and only debate against Donald Trump, she looked like a clear winner. Had the election been on September 11, she probably would have won. But millions of Americans didn’t even know she had replaced Joe Biden on the Democratic ballot. They just didn’t. In the final two months, she just fizzled out. Trump’s victory, which was assured in June, became assured again. The result was not changed. We didn’t successfully delay GOP autocracy for another 4 years. The autocracy is now coming.

Everyone is about to get crushed. Not just Americans but the whole world.

What a brilliant idea it was to put Donald Trump’s fate in the hands of American men. What a brilliant plan. Nothing could have gone wrong. Men are intelligent, rational adults. They would have simply ended Trump’s career.

Jeesuz Fucking Christ.

Never, ever let the voters decide a damn thing. They are so fucking uneducated and ignorant.

And now, the 32% of eligible voters who cast their vote for Donald Trump deserve every terrible thing that is going to happen to them. Every flood. Every hurricane. Every tornado. Every cancer. Every gunshot. Every accident and mishap. Every disease. Every death. Die soon. All of you.

As I blogged 4 years ago, Joe Biden just felt like a pause in our destruction. In December 2020, I wrote:

The Biden administration is doomed. It hasn’t begun, but it is set for failure.

In November 2020, in a separate post, I wrote:

It would take an effort of colossal proportions to prevent the republic from dying.

But the Biden administration was not a true pause of our GOP minority rule. The Overton window shifted again. The Biden admiration slowly warmed up to the concept of forcibly reducing border crossings. The administration never considered reversing Trump’s toughened stance on Cuba. And most devastatingly, the Biden administration was the first in US history to clearly and explicitly endorse the extermination of Palestinians on occupied lands.

The Democratic party needs to be destroyed, But does fresh progressive talent want to enter politics these days? Nope. We're truly doomed. And you know what, these dark days are going to crush the very people who voted for Trump. The repeal of the ACA, a national abortion ban, and a violent deportation effort is going to crush this nation, its people and its economy. And that's all before a new wave of natural disasters directly related to global heating.

The Democrats have failed us. This nation has drifted left since 2004. Was anyone standing up for trans kids and same sex couples 20 years ago? The Democrats insisted that they drift to the right and market themselves as centrist "adults." That disconnect, and the highly desirable drug of Trump's revenge, sold to millions of men, has put our nation in peril.

It really was that simple. That's all it was. Trump represents a naked attack on the Rule of Law. There was not a single good reason to vote for Donald Trump. He shouldn't be allowed anywhere near political power. He's an old wanna be mob boss from Queens who should be retired, playing golf. But he had to run to prevent going into two Federal trials. To vote for Donald Trump is to support the idea that our republic and society should be burned down.

I am furious, yes. But none of this is surprising. The best analyses of Trump’s triumphant return all draw one inescapable conclusion: neolibralism is indeed dead. Neolibralism had no playbook on how to mitigate the damage caused by a global recession in 2008, or a mildly deadly pandemic in 2020, or the full transformation of the GOP into a autocratic, apocalyptic party in 2021.

Neoliberalism was always a lie, sold to us by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in 1980. A free market regulated by contemporary central bank tools, combined with round after round of tax cuts for the investor class didn’t yield a perfect capitalist world with quality of life gains for all. Worker productivity increased tremendously, but society didn’t become so wealthy that we’d be able to comfortably lower the retirement age, as the most optimistic neoliberals and technology evangelicals claimed in the 1990s. The return of Trump is its final, whimpering death rattle. Now the US empire can end. Now we can become a rotting nation dominated by a single party at the Federal level, like Hungary.

Jack Crosbie over at Discourse Blog summed it up best yesterday. The Democrats offer voters neoliberalism and a vague promise of normalcy. Trump, a household name, offers voters chaos, entertainment, bloodshed and goodies he can’t deliver. They went with the TV guy.

The United States is destabilized. I can’t fully understand an electorate that chose Obama over John McCain just 16 years ago, and then shifted to Trump in 2016 and 2020. What great, shiny object made those same voters switch sides so quickly, with some of them cognizant of what those jarring shifts do to our Federal government and our massive problem of wealth inequality? People don’t know. People don’t care. And now a lot of ignorant people need to die.

Nothing mattered. The weird, violent attempt to stop Biden’s inauguration didn’t matter. Trump’s crimes in and outside of the office of the President didn’t matter. The fascism didn’t matter. Harris’ record-breaking $1 Billion campaign didn’t matter. The changing demographics in the US didn’t matter. And now the United States is dead. It’s finished.

Now that it is over, I can formally begin my second half century of life and pay less attention to this society and failing nation, which is now clearly dying. The United States is sick. It is very ill. There is no curing it in my lifetime. I suspect by the time I die, sometime past the halfway point of this century, the US will be a failed state. I don’t care about the empire. Empires die. I care about my planet, but no one in power wants to save it.

Whatever happens going forward, it’s going to happen to us. Trump is going to make things happen to my family and my city. It’s all happening and there’s almost nothing that can slow or stop it.

I’m giving myself a list of dos and don’ts.

Do:

Disobey. You are going to destroy my nation. I will not assist.

Resist. I will resist the GOP wherever I can. And no, I am not part of the #resistance.

Organize. I re-joined the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for just $2 per month.

Travel. I am going to travel my ass off until my passport is taken away. I’m not sure when I can reach Svalbard, Greenland, Portugal, Japan or Chile. But Egypt and Spain are on my horizon. I’m going out there to see and do on my travels.

Drink. This pandemic made me and my partner better home cocktail makers. I’m going to continue to develop these skills. I am not going to learn 6-string guitar, as I thought I might. Which leads me to -

Rock out. I am going to listen to even more music. I have two Hi-Fi systems at home. I use them hard. I will continue to discover new music and listen the hell out of music.

Walk. I must walk to stay alive. My partner and I are walking every street and alley in Manhattan. That’s over 700 miles. I could take the whole Trump term to mark every meter of pavement. And aside from this colossal project, I intend to just keep walking and avoid becoming bed ridden. But speaking of bed -

Sleep. Soon, I will make my bedroom darker and upgrade my mattress.. I am going to sleep much better no matter how much the world burns. Burn, world. I am getting my 8 to 10 hours of sleep per night.

Blog. I am renewing this blog as long as I’m alive and able to write. This blog turns 20 later this decade. I wish I had a partner author, but people be busy.

Don’t:

Despair. I actually suffered despair during the Biden years. I just knew, for years, that Trump would return. But now that the apocalypse is here, I will not despair. I will fight and live.

Follow socials. I quit commenting platforms. I reluctantly quit Masdoton. The Fediverse is a good place. But posting there is just speaking into a small void. There aren’t many people there. They all went to BlueSky. And if I went there to share my stupid opinions, it would just be yelling into a larger useless room.

Be a jerk. As a New Yorker, this is tough to drop. I yell at cars that run red lights. But now some of those cars (trucks) might be from out of state and full of guns once the Supreme Court has its way with us.

They're Talking Extrajudicial

The Republicans cry that Democrats are prosecuting them illegally. Therefore, the Republicans argue, they must retaliate with illegal prosecutions AND political violence, just to make that response overwhelming. The Democrats are an enemy of the state, they argue, so they must physically attack this threat. I’d call that projection.

I wonder what Federal and State judges think about this.

In normal times, legal revenge wasn't possible without evidence and the actions of judges. Maybe we should adjust our perception and realize that because no judge would allow a lawmaker to be prosecuted for rightly investigating trump, maybe the "revenge" the fascist Republicans are talking about is physical violence. And by that, I mean extrajudicial violence. "Oh, they are just using violent rhetoric to motivate their base," the media will say. I disagree. The GOP has gone so far down this violent path since 2015, that they are unrecognizable as the party of family values and children. This is not the party that recruited Whitney Houston to sing the national anthem in 1991. This is the party of bloodshed, destabilization and possibly murder. Political assassinations. Pinochet knew he could terrorize Chile by just murdering the right influencers. Same with the GOP? So they have a list? You bet they do.

Iranian Women Care About Their Futures

Iranian women give a damn about freedom and liberty. I can only conclude that the vast majority American women do not.

Roe Is Dead. And So Is The United States.

The mess that the overturn of Roe has caused will last decades. I'm reading opinions that states that ban abortion might sue New York and California for luring thier women to commit "criminal acts" (which we good people call accessing medicine). How can a nation function if medicine in one state is "homicide" in another (Louisiana)?

Texas is going to assemble a challenge to Plyer v. Doe (1982) which could end the requirement for states to provide free education to all children regardless of nationality in grades 1-12, effectively closing all public schools in some states.

States will challenge Loving, Griswold and Obergefell. And soon states will pass laws banning all sex reassignment medicine and procedures.

And then there's the misoprostol pills, the next abortion front. Will states try to ban medications? Will they try to create their own DEA-like agencies? Will they sue drug makers to stop making pills they want to ban? Will they sue the US Postal Service, UPS, FedEx and DHL for allowing banned medications to be sent into their state from outside states or overseas?

What other drugs will more than 20 states want to ban? Hormones? HIV treatments? How about vaccines?

This wouldn't happen, but what would stop this Roberts court from allowing a state to ban alcohol sales? It's a fair analogy because the Court just let states ban a major category of medical care. This isn't a mild difference in laws so some states allow gambling, fireworks and open alcohol containers. This is an extreme legal divide in which legitimate medicine obtained in New York is categorized as a felony by one or more states.

The civil suits will be endless. Lawyers are about to get decades of guaranteed extra cases that shouldn't exist in a functioning nation. We're a failed state. Any one of us could be entangled in a criminal or civil case involving us directly or indirectly. Plus, we're all going to fund our state's lawsuits and defenses. This nation is finished. Will 0.5% of our GDP be simply interstate civil suits clogging up our courts and our lives?

For the average American, the overturn of Roe should be a bigger story than Russia's invasion of Ukraine or even the investigation into Trump’s failed coup in late 2020 and early 2021. And given that Democrats would rather talk about fighting Russia in a proxy war than the looming loss of freedoms at home, it's quite telling how absolutely screwed we all are.

In fact, I think the overturn of Roe is the biggest development in the US since our invasion of Iraq. Easily, I think. One could even argue that the Dobbs decision is the most consequential bad Supreme Court decision since Ferguson (1896).

Red states are assembling agencies to spy on their citizens and to keep tabs on abortion providers in other states. Red states are putting together wish lists of what types of medicine they want to see banned. What's coming is horrifying. And no matter where you live, in any of our 50 states and 5 colonies, your life is going to become more difficult thanks to the overturn of Roe.

My argument is not an easy one to make, I admit. And I can't diminish other major US events in this century. We’ve had two stolen presidential elections (if we count George W. Bush’s 2001 inauguration as a completion of a steal that occurred at the end of the year 2000), a ruling that corporations have rights like people, and a US president who chose a violent transfer of power over a peaceful one. But one could make the case that the overturn of Roe and the failed Trump coup are directly linked. The tyranny of GOP minority rule is evident in both. The attempt to keep Trump in power failed, but the full assault of the 14th Amendment is now on. We're about to live in a nation in which legitimate medicine administered in one state is a felony homicide in another. A nation with that kind of split simply cannot stand. We're a failed state.

The GOP signaled, way back in 1994, that they were going to govern by dismantling our society and removing all liberties and protections for the poor. They were going to inflict pain and suffering for the sake of it. Reagan started it, but didn't say it out loud. Newt said it out loud. By the time we got to Ted Cruz and Trump, they weren't just saying it out loud, but they were using macho and violent marketing to motivate their voters to vote for the destruction of the US.

The GOP project to overturn Roe has been mainly a patient, focused 29 year project, starting with Bush 41’s appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Court in 1991, over objections that he was under-qualified and a serial abuser of power in the workplace. Then his son, Bush 43, appointed John Roberts in 2005 and Samuel Alito in 2006. It is notable that Alito’s confirmation vote was the closest and most controversial since Thomas. The late, great Robert Byrd was one of only two Democrat's to vote in favor of Alito, who went on to be the most bitter and mean spirited Justice in Supreme Court history. Then Donald Trump traded a solid right-wing justice, the late Anton Scalia, with three Justices selected by the Heritage Foundation. The Supreme Court transitioned from a 5-4 center-left majority in 1990 (White, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens, Kennedy) to a 6-3 right wing supermajority (Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett) by 2020. This took incredible effort, hundreds of millions of dollars, and some good fortune as both Bush 43 and Trump failed to win the popular vote in their first presidential elections.

When a minority party is aggressively attacking the majority, and taking their rights away, the majority needs to aggressively to fight back. And in my book, some violence is now justified.

I'm not saying that I am going to conspire to kill Republicans. But if say, an armed left-wing mob stormed the Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, or Nebraska State House and killed every Republican lawmaker they could find, that would be justified at this point, because a small number of Republicans are threatening the lives of millions.

Too violent? Okay, how about long occupations of those statehouses, so legislative business could not be conducted? How about a national strike in which every labor union walked out for 14 days? The damage to the economy would be swift. Hit the old men in charge where it hurts - the markets and the GDP.

In my view, only a violent revolution can save the USA. And since that is not coming, I am casually preparing to flee the USA later in life. I don't want to die in an authoritarian or autocratic regime.

Uncle Tim contributed to this post.

This Is The Final Year Of The USA As A Barely-Functioning State

2022. This is the final year of my nation as a functioning state. Once the Republicans take over the House in 2023, we’re an autocracy.

Neil H. Buchannan is one of the best scholars to make this consistent argument. He says the US is a “dead democracy walking.”

I have no idea if New York City will become a center of resistance to the GOP, or will fall in-line with the GOP as it did after 9/11. I want the former. I fear the latter. American cable news will carry on, because all it really cares about is ratings.

But while we wait for the GOP autocracy to rise, let’s enjoy this final year of freedom and relative stability. And yeah, I say “stability” knowing that we are stuck in the middle of a pandemic that is currently killing 1,700 Americans each day. That’s what I consider to be “stability” these days.

I haven’t really felt national stability since Bill Clinton was acquitted by the Senate in February 1999. While I hate the Senate, it was rational 23 years ago. Now we brace for another impeachment trial in 2023, which will be the GOPs irrational retaliation for two very legitimate impeachments of Donald J. Trump.

Be safe. Halve a plan to adapt if things become seriously unstable. Don’t stop paying attention to what’s happening locally and in DC.

And don’t stop wearing masks. We’re still living in a pandemic.