This is fine, too...

Responding to what seems to have now become a relentless drumfire of "WTF-how-does-this-even-republic?" shit from the Party of Gingrich Roy Edroso, whose opinions I normally respect, says that therein lies a seed of hope:

"I talked the other day about a Wall Street Journal poll that had the right-wingers convinced America had lost its way, at least partly because it showed that a lot of people didn’t share their narrow point of view. Polls are also showing that the wingnut campaign to make normies adopt their swear-word “woke” ain’t working.

And we all saw the recent election results in Chicago and Wisconsin. As with the “red wave” that never came in November 2022, the voters knew something that the wingnuts and trimmers predicting defeat didn’t know — that conservatives are actively and obviously fucking shit up and normal people want no part of them."

To which my response is: yeah, and normal people don't want any part of murderous thieves and criminals, and, yet, it took the Red Army and D-Day and the fucking 8th Air Force to beat down Nazis and Fascisti, and tens of thousands of dead on Okinawa and the smoking ruins of Tokyo to whack Imperial Japan.

When I look around me what I see is:

On the Right, a frothing shitpile of - thanks, Driftglass - bigots and imbeciles enthralled by plutocrats into jamming the 20th Century into the woodchipper for fear that their sprog might just possibly see a Cambodian ladyboy in a cocktail frock.

On the Left, a handful of powerless savants like Sanders trying to prevent that , and

In the middle a bunch of gormless flour sacks who can no more govern themselves than a cat can understand medieval Latin.

Self-government is HARD. 

Fucking hard.

You've got to pay attention. You've gotta read - especially read, since video "news" is not "news", it's "entertainment" and has to be by the design of the medium - and think and then act. You've got to look behind what public figures say. You've got to - and given the history of anti-vaxx I hate to use this term but it is what it is - do the research. You've got to understand history, and politics, and human nature. You have to listen to others, and do more than just suck in what they say but watch what they do, who with, and why.

So I get it. There's probably about a quarter of the human race that can do all that AND make a living AND have a social life, and if push comes to shove it's the "self-governing" thing that gets the push.

But that - now more than ever - is a problem.

Because the Right has figured out that they don't need to win over everyone, or even a majority of someones. If they have enough bigots and imbeciles - and enough people who don't know or understand or care what the bigots and imbeciles are doing - they can run the table.

I don't get the sense that those people in the "middle" are getting better at knowing or understanding or caring. More importantly, if they are, voting like they are. 

Or voting at all.

If they did no Republican would get more than 27 percent - the Dick Cheney crazification value - of the vote. Ever.

But they do.

Often.

And then they do shit like they did in the Tennessee lege, and the public response - outside the dirtbag Left - is "Ho hum. Those whaaaacky Republicans! How about those rascals?"

So no, Roy. This isn't a seed of hope. This isn't fine.

This is how you lose your fucking republic.

So the choice seems pretty simple to me. 

But, then, I'm headed to the fucking camps when the MAGA Regime takes over in 2024, so I got skin in the game.

Interestingly, in his usual Friday blog post Edroso seems to get it. While discussing "Why Republicans lie all the time" he says:

"Contradicting reality makes them feel powerful. They're not gonna pretend to care about what people they despise think because they believe themselves beyond the reach of voter consent. It's up to their enemies to show them they are not."

And there, my friend, is what I've just spent 500 words pointing out:

If you're not willing to whistle up the B-29s, then sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up, because the liars, bigots, and imbeciles have won.

It's really just that simple.