The GOP Knows: It Is Easier To Destroy Than To Build

And apparently, the GOP voters love the destruction of our nation. They are here for it. They turnout and vote for it.

This blog, now in its 17th year, is run by a member of the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati. And in this post, I am repeating what I have said before: that the GOP is burning down our republic and our society. It threatens to sink the entire North American continent as Mexico is already a failed state, overrun by instability and out of control violence. But I am going to approach my argument from a different lens - through history.

First up, we have three US states that have authorized the construction of memorials dedicated to the fetuses that were aborted between 1973 and 2022. The states are Tennessee, Missouri and now Arkansas.

Liberals in the US need to think of these memorials this way: Monuments to fetuses are not about the fetuses. They are memorials that celebrate the taking of liberties away from women. They enshrine dominance over women and their bodies. It’s as if a state had left the Union during the Civil War, kept slavery to this day, and decided to erect a monument to slavery.

What liberals should do is ask themselves this: do you want to live in a country in which women have no liberties in over 20 states? Or 30? Do you want to live in a nation where local governments gloat about taking those freedoms away? What would we call such a nation? I know what I would call it: a failed, autocratic state. Arkansas needs to be removed from the union, or we need to fight like hell to have freedoms restored. But sitting there and doing nothing is NOT an option.

But what just entered my mind reading these stories about the post-Dobbs power grab is that so-called liberals need to fight simply because many many people died winning civil rights over the centuries. And no, I don't mean we won rights fighting wars. Wars can only block the advance of tyranny, not expand freedoms. People died on US soil for these rights. And since the rise of Trump, rights and liberties are being taken away. Reproductive rights. Bodily autonomy. Free speech. The right to bloody live. We liberals are told not to fight - not to stoop to the GOP's level. "We go high" said Michelle Obama, which is a euphemism for "don't get into a street fight." Well if we can't get into a street fight when freedoms are being rolled back, then we can never fight to get them back. And there's no need to bring up Nazi analogies! Freedoms are just being taken away. It happens all over the world and now it is happening here. If we don't fight, we won't live long enough to see those freedoms restored. Simple as that. And by fight, I mean march through the state capitals of red states. Otherwise, we should tell these red states to leave the Union. We can't exist as a nation if women and queer people have rights in one state but are prosecuted in another. Fuck this.

We’re never going to see these rights return to us in our lifetimes. So we might as fight to make lives miserable for the people who took away our liberties. This is no longer a civil debate on what rights people should have is the USA. This is a war.

Frankly, people need to die for taking our rights away. Taking liberties from me and you justifies it. And if you are a registered Democrat and don’t feel the rage I do, then join the GOP, please. Get out my party. You suck, you spineless shits.

It's The 2020s: It's Time To Prepare For Authoritarianism

This is part one of a quick two-part post. It’s about the short term political future of the US in the turbulent, depressing 2020s.

In the years ahead, I will always ask questions about why the Republicans chose to burn this republic down. I get their objective since 1980, which was to make this nation comfortable for the rich and miserable for everyone else. But why the autocracy? Why make it miserable for even the affluent?

What did we affluent, college educated liberals do to deserve a crushing autocracy? We went to a gay wedding a few times? We voted for Obama? We said repeatedly that minorities should be treated with respect? Holy shit we're being given the death sentence, here. What was the infraction? If the infraction can't be explained, then the GOP is more evil and destructive than even I ever imagined.

The GOP has long been the party of the rich. Their mission is still to make the rich richer. But now it is intertwined with winning votes over a fierce and angry backlash to a changing culture. No political party in any democracy can change culture. Human culture is always changing. As Professor Sut Jhally frequently lectures, “culture is always up for grabs.” Once something becomes commonplace in culture, it cannot be forcibly removed from a society.

There is one extreme way to suppress culture, however, and that is to suppress the society. A nation can transform from a democracy to an authoritarian state. An autocracy closes itself off from the rest of the world, while forcing propaganda and ideology onto the people in an effort to tame them and reduce dissent. We see it in North Korea, Belarus, Russia, China and Burma.

Now transforming the US into an autocracy would be a steep hill to climb. The GOP would have difficulty selling authoritarianism at the national level. Some people in this country are intelligent, and would not stand for it. But thanks to the multi-layered setup of our republic, the GOP is having much success taking away freedoms at the local level. States are pushing the boundaries of the 14th Amendment, to see how far they can restrict personal liberties in the name of “protecting children.” Leading a backlash against cultural change is also a tactic to motivate Republicans to vote. And they sure are furious, vocal and motivated.

Laws have been passed banning reproductive health clinics within a certain distance of schools. Tennessee will enact a law this July banning any public performance that includes a performer in drag that is vaguely close to children, which is technically everywhere. The next logical step would be for states or localities to ban public Pride events, because they always include men in drag and well as transgender people. This angle of attack -to force queer people out of public life under the boilerplate justification of preventing children from seeing them- is catching on like wildfire, and will eventually be brought before the Federal courts, which are packed with right-wing judges.

The US has been in a measurable state of decline since 1973. The empire is in decline. The prestige of the US is ruined. But most important is what’s happening at the granular, individual level. Liberty and freedom are now under attack by the minority political party. The GOP has decided that it would rather burn down what’s left of the republic than share it with everyone equally in a society that is based on freedom and respect.

The 14th Amendment is under attack. That means that authoritarianism is coming. How will you live with it in the coming decades? Will you fight back? Will you go underground? What is the plan?

Now The Democratic Party's Failure Is Complete

All I have done since 1992 is vote for Democrats, and yet the nation is becoming unstable and liberties are being taken away.

"Roe is under attack. The DNC needs your cash before midnight to meet its fundraising goal and protect our liberties!" That’s not an exact quote, but that's the shit I have seen in my USPS inbox and email inbox for the last 30 years.

My response has always been: “I voted for you. Now shut the fuck up and deliver while there’s time.”

The last best chance the Democrats had to delivering came in 2009. And we know how that went.

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For the last five years, one of the constant things i have heard from the Democrats is that they are the decent party. They are respectful. They are polite. They go high. They are grammatically correct. They are so intimidated and threatened by the violent right wing, that they stopped writing policy and protecting fundamental liberties.

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The Democrats have been successfully bullied by the GOP minority. And here we are.

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The Democrats have had the White House and Congress twice since Roe (also the year of my birth) and they failed to codify it into Federal law. Simply asking the Democrats to have a unified platform was just being unfair and demanding. Shame on those New York City Democrats who could see the overturn of Roe coming from 30 years away.

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Simply put, as is the theme of this blog, we are fucked. We have entered the late phase of the republic in which rights are being taken away. The right wing will be coming for our birth control, same sex marriage and freedom to travel out of state next. The 14th Amendment has been broken and the liberties made possibly by that amendment are now under attack.

Thanks Bill. Thanks Barack. Thanks Joe and Joe. Thank you. For nothing.

The NSA Can't Stop. Won't Stop.

The NSA Is Storing Tons of Data From U.S Citizens and Non-Targets. Fortunately for our government, our citizens will never get mad nor demand accountability. This summer, Germany has expressed more outrage than anyone in the US ever could.

Bloomberg and Kelly Leave NYC Wealthier, Probably Hated

Almost all at taxpayer expense of course.

The whole 2004 RNC ordeal ruined New York for me. It proved to me that this town is not for us little people. It isn't even for progressives or dissenters. It's an imperialist, millionaire's playground.

To my fellow New Yorkers, I say, learn your history. This was the only major city not to kick out the British during the American Revolution. That explains a lot right there. So did Ed Koch's sucking up to the GOP in the run up to that convention.

Bloomberg and Kelly have cost this town countless millions of dollars, while systematically trashing the Constitution. And the Bloomberg penalty for all this criminal stupidity? Three consecutive electoral victories as mayor of America's largest city.

Bloomberg spent over $600 Million on his three mayorial campaigns, but leaves office at least four times richer than when he first ran for office. He knew where the biggest ROI was: himself. The rich get richer, right?

Meanwhile, Bloomy's pit bull gets his big reward. 

However, he has asked our city for $1.5M a year for protection. Who hates Ray Kelly so much?

The Most Secretive Presidency Since Nixon

Books will be written about this. I firmly expect Glenn Greenwald to be among those to write one of the best books. But I will say just this.

The Obama administration's record on civil liberties is the worst since the sixties and seventies, when the Johnson and Nixon crowds let loose the Feds on anti-war activists.

Obama is, allegedly, a constitutional law professor. Despite that, he appointed Eric Holder as Attorney General, a man who has refused to enforce the anti-fraud laws against the Wall Street bankers who nearly destroyed our economy. At the same time, Holder, presumably under orders from the executive branch, has employed the full weight of the Justice Department against whistleblowers who seek to reveal the crimes of the high and mighty.

Obama has a lot of supporters who have either no idea how secretive his administration is, or choose to ignore that fact. In addition, millions of Americans also choose to ignore that Obama has expanded the "War On Terror," by launching a secret drone war, and has made it a permanent fixture in our nation's foreign policy. That's not a theory; top administration officials have confirmed it.

Obama deserves the AP phone records scandal, and probably many others.