Lazy Sunday

The sun is out, the rain is - at least for the moment - gone, and I'm feeling lazy and unwilling to devote myself to anything serious, so since I'm aware of all Internet traditions, here's a cat picture:

These two are outstanding as cats, sleeping constantly until there's an opportunity to be a ginormous pain in the ass. The little gray-and-white one is the house Junior Cat (her name is "Nine" because she was practically feral and living in a storage unit with that number) and she's a mistress of the Dark Cat Arts, waking up at 3am to walk all over my pillow, yowl, and myurp for cat food. I've tried to sleep through her night ramble and it hasn't worked, so I get up and feed the beast and just go back to sleep.

When she's not being a pest she's a very sweet kitty, though, so there's that.

She did NOT enjoy our February ice storm, however. She has a catbox but loves to go outdoors like a natural kitty, so all that cold white wet stuff? Nopenopenope.

 Give her credit, she did try it out.

...and quickly concluded that this white shit was NOT cat-friendly.

That's Life, cat; you gotta take what it hands you.

Like this:

Damn, that's one zesty-ass sandwich!

Other randomeness: the CPAC saga of the Golden Trump is a nice reminder of what I've been talking about lately; that my GOP brothas are just fucking Jim Jones Koolade-cult whackadoodle, but the kicker this morning was reading about some joker named Jahn who got up at the US Soccer annual general meeting, of all places, to rant about how US slavery was actually fairly cool and that most of those uppity Negroes aren't shot by coppers but probably each other and he knows this because he's Cherokee and also a high-speed, low-drag Special Forces sooooopersoldier who can kill you in seven languages.

Now...everybody's entitled to their opinion. Even stupid ones (maybe especially stupid ones...).

But.

And I've talked about this before here, so;

Whipping civilians with your DD 214 is a total dick move that I've been seeing a LOT of.

This "I gave my service to you! And that means you need to respect mah athoriteh!" bullshit  stuff from GIs seems to go hand-in-hand with the cult-of-the-badass/soldiers-are-better-than-you-civilian-pukes thing that we’ve developed over the course of these endless wars fought by a tiny self-selected slice of We the People.

So it wasn’t so much WHAT this joker said. Yeah, lots of people share those opinions, and while I might disagree I’m not gonna dopeslap the guy for blarting them out.

But it’s dragging in his military credentials – stripping his sleeve and showing his scars and saying "These wounds I had on Crispin’s day!" – as if somehow killing foreigners for national interests make his opinion more valid that gets my goat. If you don’t get the whole "protest" thing, fine. But having been shot at in Kunar Province doesn’t make your opinion on the subject any more – or less – valid.

So, as my old platoon sergeant used to tell me; soldier, shut up and soldier.

Oh, well.

Off to do the grocery shopping.

Dancing into the minefield

 Half a million.

500,000.

More Americans dead from COVID-19 than were killed in combat in the three worst wars the nation fought in the 20th Century.

What's the most appalling part of this is how utterly, completely, shockingly pointless all these deaths were. How much we could have done to prevent them, compared to how little we actually did.

The commonsense response to a potentially lethal pathogen is almost childishly simple. Protect yourself. Protect those around you. Don't do stupid things. 

It's really that simple.

If you see the minefield and you don't have to go into the minefield, don't fucking go into the fucking minefield. 

There's no reason we had to kill all those people. Some will have died no matter what we did. But we could have saved probably hundreds of thousands had we followed the simple public health precautions we knew we should have and other polities like Japan and South Korea did.

But instead here we are, with an unconscionably large portion of the U.S. public convinced by their idiotic civic religion that those precautions are some sort of jackbooted oppression. Another, possibly overlapping, portion is going to refuse to be vaccinated. 

I honestly don't know what to say about this other than what the fuck is wrong with you people?

What next 1: Where are we now?

The second acquittal of Donald Trump for his undeniable failure to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States is a painful reminder of where We the People stand at the beginnings of the two hundred forty-fifth year of the American Experiment.

And that...isn't great.

Because We have a series of major issues that We need to either deal with or at least think about dealing with, and in this post I want to lay out those issues, in rough order of criticality. Then, in a series of posts, discuss them, how I think (and hope) we might be able to deal with them, and the obstacles that will have to be overcome in order to do so.

The issues are:

1. Climate change. It's a global, civilization-changing (as in "Long Night of the Anasazi"-type-changing) situation. We solve it, or do our best to solve it, or human civilization - where we live, how we live, whether "we" live - in a century is indescribably different. It's really that simple.

2. National interests. What do We the People want our country (or our various governmental agencies) to do? That, in turn, directs a whole bunch of activities like "what do we buy with our taxes" and "how do we deal with ourselves, and how do we deal with others"? And how do we decide what those interests are? Assuming we have a future past the Late Holocene Thermal MAximum, we're going to need to come up with a good way to figure out what's good for Us.

3. The industrial/post-industrial economy. Once we've handled the climate, and decided what the fundamental objectives we should want to work towards...what about the single biggest part of our daily lives; how we make a living?

This takes in a bunch of related problems, individually so big and complex that they each probably demand a post in themselves. 

They include:
2a. Inequity and inequality - let's call this the "the rich/the poor are with us always" problem. Simply put, the question isn't "can extreme inequity and democracy co-exist" because the answer to that is simple; no, they can't. When some people are insanely rich and most are insanely poor, you have a de-facto oligarchy, regardless of the exterior forms. The question really is "how much inequity can we have and still have democracy"? And what can we do about that?
2b. Work. How can you ensure that enough of the citizens in a popular democracy have a life that offers them some sort of meaningful activities to fill their day? Like it or not, we define ourselves largely by what we do, and the loss of paying - decent paying - work has become a big problem. We've forced millions of people into poorly-paying service work or, worse, "gig" jobs that are a sort of indentured servitude. The reason the Founders wanted to restrict the franchise to men of property - not that I'm agreeing that it was a terrific notion, mind - was that they understood that someone who was financially insecure would be politically insecure, as well. That sort of person would be horrifically vulnerable to all sorts of mischief.

Let me add that I'm perfectly willing to entertain suggestions as to additional issues we should be thinking about.

So, to get this over with quickly, here's the Problem With the Right.

1. The Right, in general doesn't really believe, or doesn't want to believe (which comes to the same thing), that things like global heating (or inequity, or lack of decent jobs, or racism...) are really problems. And the reason is the same reason that the Right has no real answers to any of these other problems; because if they did, it would mean that our current mode of social, political, and economic life is part of the problem, and to solve the problem will entail changes to that mode.

It doesn't mean that the changes will be "hurtful" in themselves but they're change. Remember that Bill Buckley said that a true conservative stands athwart history yelling "stop".

But to see the ultimate result of 40 years of nonstop bullshitting you need look no further than the GOP reaction to this week's deep-freeze in Texas.

The failure of the Texas power grid is complex, and much of it is linked to the "market" and the effects of deregulation (a business that spends money for things that happen once a decade is going to be punished by the market, so if government doesn't make it possible for them to spend that money without punishment - i.e., by making EVERYONE spend it so there's no price advantage to skimping - they won't...) as well as a freakishly bad storm that actually froze natural gas lines. The problem suggests that a whole series of political, economic, and technical moves should be made to prevent the recurrance.

But is there anything of that sort of complexity coming from the GQP?

No.

Ted Crux says on Twitter it's Biden, Harris, and AOC's fault. Wingnut Lauren Boebert blames windmills, citing a fake story that uses a faked story that sneaks in 2015 footage from Sweden. Texas governor Abbott is spewing bullshit about the "Green New Deal" which isn't, y'know, an actual thing yet. Fortunately Rush Limbaugh is dead, or you can be sure his mouthy ass would be vomiting some sort of liberal-feminazi crap, too.

It's not affectation. This sort of magical-thinking nonsense has been bred into the GQP bone. It's not that they're faking it. They REALLY don't believe anything but their own nonsense. They're high on their own supply.

2. And, unfortunately, movement conservatism has also become "whatever liberals hate". So if "liberals" are worried about climate change, or inequity, or social justice, or minimum wages, a true "conservative" will automatically reject those things. And, finally, and most intractably,

3. American conservatism has become the unapologetic party of great wealth. Which is not to say that the rest of the American political spectrum isn't eaten up with money - the need for private money in American politics is one of the biggest cancers of the current system - but that only the Right has become unquestioningly, obediently, defiantly the Party of Greed Is Good.

And that is what, ultimately, makes the Right useless for governing.

Because the wealthy don't need government.

Oh, sure, they like to have it around to keep the lights on and the roads repaired. And, when need be, to police the plebs and keep the markets open.

But rich people can buy pretty much everything that the rest of us need government for.

We need it to do everything from pay armies and fleets and built dams and roads and airports to checking the supermarket scales to make sure the grocer isn't cheating us and inspect the chicken ranch to make sure we're not eating rat meat.

They can buy their own armies, police, build their own roads and power plants. Sure, it's nice for them when they don't have to. But if they had to choose between taxation and buying those things?

They'll take "low taxes", thanks.

So what happens is that the “left” wants to and needs the various levels of government to function. Which means that they can’t go full boogaloo the way the GQP can and does, while the “right” doesn't believe it really needs government to function (except in the grossest sense of “not a howling wilderness of all against all”) because the wealthy that are the core constituency of the Right can buy the things they need without resorting to collective action.

So the logical direction for the wealthy donors who actually matter to the GQP is to continue to stoke the crazy, knowing that what it will do is effectively prevent the various governments from acting in the public interest by reining in oligarchy by regulation and taxation.

(I should add my personal opinion that if they were less loathsome the ultimate fate of the GQP rank-and-file – to become soylent green for the plutocracy – would be pitiable. Because they ARE loathsome, a vile congeries of hatred and stupidity, they are merely pitiful).

So there's really no hope for any sort of useful activity from the Right. It will continue to become a rats-nest of lunacy and anger. It will continue to do everything it can to stymie anything that attempts to "change" the way we live now - unless it's to move to more plutocracy, more theocracy, more open white-supremacy - regardless of how dangerous that inertia may be in even the medium term.

No, if the problems we face are to be solved, We - we, the non-wingnut segment of the U.S. public - are going to have to solve them.

And that's what we're going to talk about, beginning with "the weather".

(Next: Everyone talks of the weather. No one does anything about it!)

The clouds return

 

 Today the United States Senate voted that Donald Trump did not do what he very visibly and obviously did between late October 2020 and early January 2021; betray his oath of office as President to faithfully execute the law and support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

To me this has the feel of the point in watching one of those historical dramatizations where the characters have come to a decision you know is going to end badly. The conspirators have chosen to go ahead with the plot that you know will end in betrayals, prosecutions, hangings, and beheadings. The commander has made a decision you know is based on bad intelligence, or is because of his hubris or pure stubbornness, that will result in the deaths of thousands of his own troops.

It was years ago that I wrote a whole series of posts comparing my nation today with the Rome of classical times, noting that we seem insistent on repeating many of the same foolish mistakes the Romans of that period did, and with much the same likely result - the end of functional democracy and the establishment of permanent minority rule.

I've been pretty merciless in castigating American "conservatives" (who are, by the way, in no sense "conservative" but are radical reactionaries) for being the driving force behind this and, as this vote shows, they still are.

(What this also proves, in a way I didn't begin to anticipate before the past year, is the extent to which the GOP has become the American Party of KimIlSungism-KimJongIlism. Turns out that we aren't even dignified with the bad examples of Rome. We're fucking North Korea with Pizza Huts and Chevy dealerships.)

So.

Now what?

When I talked about how impossible it is to "talk" to Republicans now it turns out that it's not because they're some sort of rigid ideologues. As far as I can tell the current Republican orthodoxy consists of a bizarre farrago of culture-war nonsense ("cancel culture", "wokeism", anti-"nanny state"-ism, and "personal freedom" that seems to largely consist of violent rejection of common sense like reducing stupid firearm-related behavior and public health precautions during a pandemic) with pure delusion about finance (stuff like "trickle-down economics", the Laffer Curve, taxation-as-theft...that sort of thing).

But the real break-point appears to be that the GOP is now the Party of Kim Trump Q, a personality cult, overrun with bizarre conspiracies and paranoia, devoted to owning the libs even if the cost is its own misery and impoverishment.

There's no hope there.

But what about the rest of the US political world?

The Democratic Party - the only remaining party that the US has allowed itself - has been a willing accomplice in our neo-Roman imperial foolishness. It has either acquiesced, or encouraged, the increasing inequity of wealth in our return to the Gilded Age.

It has been willing to go along with the hollowing out of the American economy, shoving millions of people into precarious "gig" jobs and helped "business" to close out by downsizing, automating, and offshoring the sort of living-wage/good-benefit/stable-pension jobs that helped create the white middle class after WW2. 

It has blinked at, or encouraged, foolish imperial wars.

It has been unwilling or unable to challenge our headlong plunge towards the Late Holocene Thermal Maximum.

But - given today's proof that the entire GOP has gone full juche and the utter desolation of actual sane political ideas in the American Right - if there IS to be a hope of avoiding a collapse-of-the-Republic-fate it will have to come from what passes for the "Left" in US politics.

Can it? And, if so, how?

So that's what we're going to talk about after this.

But you'll have to give me a moment or two. Right now I'm too depressed at what today says about the State of our Union.