Endlösung

So tell me, MAGAt.

What is it called when your police and soldiers just take people from their homes, from the streets. and force them into camps where they never leave until they die?

What the fuck is it called? Say it! Say the name. Fucking say it!
 

Sounded better in the original German, didn't it, you fascist fuck?

But you had to have your Orange Fuhrer back and now the rest of us are so fucked, and faster than I ever believed possible.

That Monday's insane presser didn't immediately result in burning buildings and dead policemen dangling from power poles is a vicious indictment of how supine and cowardly We the People have become.

Tonight the White House should be enveloped in flames, the mutilated bodies of Trump and Miller and Melania dangling head-down from the East Portico in the best fascisti traditions. Terrified MAGAts should be hiding in cellars and alleys, barely pausing to tear the gold Trump-head pins off their jackets in their haste to escape the vengeful mobs roaming the Capitol. Margie Greene should be begging to barter anything, everything, to buy mercy from the cold-eyed citizens who just continue dragging her to the nearest wall.

Christ I wish all these fuckers had one throat so I could slit it in one vicious drawing stroke.

I can barely express how insane with rage this fucking Nazi slime makes me. This is as close as I can come, and it's nowhere near close enough. If I had the power these sonsofbitches would be...

But I don't. So all I can do is shake with rage.

If you can keep it...

 

Fun meme.

But the actual reality is less amusing.

I rag on the GQP a lot because...well, they play stupid games for stupid prizes. More plutocracy. More THEocracy. Made-up nonsense about sex and gender. Ignorant prejudice and idiotic things like their anti-vaxx shiny object.

The stuff they want is objectively loathsome for anyone not already in a two-yacht family.

And, frankly, they gyre and gimbel in the most ridiculously fatheaded ways. The contemptible farce they enacted when they hucked this lamebrain into the Speakership was a perfect example.

But.

There's a dark side to their lunacy, and it's that enough other lamebrains in this benighted nation elect them to local, regional, state, and federal office. There they can do a shit-ton of damage to the sane and thoughtful who want nothing so much as for these goofballs to go scrawl their shit-screed on their OWN walls.

Well, the Angry Children's Caucus has taken their pound of flesh, and now the rest of us will have to see how they cook it up for us. As Scott LEmieux says at the link:

"It’s...very plausible that whatever chaos agent eventually ends up getting the job will simply discredit Republicans further and create a more favorable political climate for 2024. On the other hand…there are a lot of ways in which an even more insane and inept Speaker than McCarthy can do material damage to the economy, and that will hang to some degree on Biden. I can’t predict with any confidence how this will play out but there’s a lot of potential dangers here."

 Very much yes.

We're fortunate here in Oregon in that our Republicans are so utterly revolting that anyone within sightlines of "normie" will scurry away from them like they would a rotting carcass (which, come to think of it, is a pretty good metaphor for the Oregon GOP's moral and political flavor...). All they can do is marinate in their rural styes and run from the legislature whenever anything remotely like "legislating" is proposed.

But the federal government is infested with these gomers and their nonsensical, 18th-Century-Articles-of-Confederation-cosplay of what the government of a ginormous complex industrial nation is supposed to do...other than ladle tax monies to rich fucksticks.

And now they're going to compete to see which looney gets to run the People's House.

I can't wait.

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.

Make Idaho Great Again

 The rump polity that is Oregon's GQP has a brilliant new idea: secede from lib'rul commie hippie dope-smoking latte-sippin' Oregon and join the Real America of Idaho.

The plan, if you want to call "something that appeared to me in a vision after a long afternoon stting in the garage and huffing several spray-cans of Rust-Oleum" a "plan", is to take the unpaved portions of Oregon - effectively everything east of the Cascades and south of Eugene and spot-weld it onto Idaho. Oh, a couple of the more deserty bits of northern California are included, too.

Having lived with these people for thirty years now, I won't even try and argue about this. It would be like trying to teach German irregular verbs to a cat. Let me just point out a couple of teensy little issues with this cunning plan.

The parts of Oregon involved are the least populated and poorest parts of the state. At least one of them - I want to say Gilliam County, but it could be any one of the damn dryland parts - tried to dissolve itself some time back because it was so fucking poor it couldn't pay for stuff like courts and roads and tax assessors.

These places can't survive economically without the engine that is Portland and the Willamette Valley. Oh, and you'll notice that these teatards cut out Bend, too, that immigrant-infested Sanctuary City, so as to prevent even the tiniest hint of solvency from intruding on their White American Dream.

I don't know how Boise feels about this, but if I was an Idaho legislator, wingnut or not, I'd be terrified to see these gomers shambling up to my statehouse doors like so many walking brain-dead under a red MAGA ballcap. If they get their wish the whole fucking place would look Kyrgystan in a week or two.

The complaint that these rural chucklefucks have is that they have no voice now in Oregon. And they're right; the Oregon GOP has become so utterly toxic that it retains only a handful of seats in the lower house. The upper house Republicans have enough warm bodies to deny a quorum, which is their only hope of...well, not really "doing anything" but preventing the rest of the Oregon lege from doing anything, which is why every session now they run and hide. They have no "agenda". All they can do is try and fuck up the rest of the system.

And why is that?

Because back in the 90s - I've told you this before - a couple of fucksticks called Don McIntyre and Bill Sizemore formed something called "Oregon Taxpayers United".

Yep. They were the Original Oregon Tax-Revolters.

The managed to con Oregonians to passing something called Ballot Measure 5 in November 1990. It gutted the property tax system, saving Nonna and Poppy a couple of hundred bucks a year and Intel and Flav-R-Pac untold billions.

But they went beyond that.

The Oregon Republicans became teabaggers before there were teabaggers, and Trumpkins before there were Trumpkins. They went all-in on queer-bashing, immigrant-hate, plutocrat-fluffing, open-carry, sovereign-citizen nonsense before going utterly batshit for Trump. They made the Republican brand so utterly toxic that they managed to lose the fat suburban enclaves of Washington County.

When you're too insane to pander to a Beaverton car dealership owner? You're waaaayyyyy too insane.

Yet somehow, they managed it.

Now this is their desperation play; they hope to leave the fleshpots of Sodom and join the arid manly men of rural Idaho in a MAGAt paradise where men really ARE men (and not he-shes in logging drag), God is in His Heaven, and women are barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.

You can see how that would appeal to a 21st Century Oregonian!

Anyway, this nonsense isn't going anywhere just for purely procedural reasons. But the mere fact that these nitwits actually want it tells you something about how utterly desperately looney these people are.

And, as I keep saying; a republic cannot function with this level of insanity. At about 30% of the population the pure noise generated by these crazies will drown out everything else.

We can be a republic.

Or we can be Republicans.

But given their current level of insanity we cannot be both.

Even in our own private Greater Idaho.

Director of National Stupidity

Per Pierce:

"On Monday, Richard Grenell, acting director of the Office of National Intelligence and the U.S. ambassador to Germany, posted a photo of the Bill of Rights on Instagram with a title “Signed Permission Slip to Leave Your House.” Below the post, in the caption, Grenell wrote “Love this!” A reporter tweeted the post after its publishing saying: “Seems the top US intelligence chief ADNI ⁦@RichardGrenell⁩ isn’t a fan of the stay at home orders.” Grenell responded: “‘Seems’ Grenell is a fan of the Constitution to me.”

No.

No. No. No. No. No. Fucking no.

Just no.

Neither the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights constitute a "permission slip" for you to scream "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, or bear nuclear arms, you goddamn stupid fucking chucklefuck.

You don't get to use your "right" to endanger me.

That's why your Ferrari has to follow the speed limit and you can't just bust a cap into the air anytime you want to.

Jesus Fucking Christ. And you're the fucking DNI?

Seriously?

Based on this I'm betting you don't have the actual intelligence to open a jar of mayonnaise unaided, you fucking idiot. This isn't abortion or gun-grabbing or liberalism where you can show up and stand around in a bunch waving your metal dicks at, you numbskull. It's a fucking disease that kills people, you dope, and you get it from other people like...umm...numbskulls standing around in a bunch waving their metal dicks.

It's not so much that I'm furious that I'm being ruled by greedy, careless, plutocratic, God-pestering sonsofbitches.

I am.

But it's the fucking stupid that really chaps my ass.

Ceterum autem censeo GOPinem esse delendam.

United Failed State(s)

The Republican Party no longer even pretends to adhere to, or even respect, republican principles.

It's increasingly clear that:
1) The current GOP - aside from being a fairly open cult of Trumpism - has absolutely no interest in anything but holding on to it's power to further its plutocratic and theocratic and neoimperial creed.
2) The actual demographics suggest that fewer than about 40% of the people in the United States want that.
3) Therefore the GOP must depend on destroying actual republican governance and the means and methods of popular voting.
4) If one faction will not accept political defeat and go into opposition (actual opposition, instead of simply destroying the functions of governance if those functions will not produce the results the opposition wants) then the political mechanism of a republic is broken.
5) Therefore the United States is effectively no longer a functioning republic.
6) And yet, it is not officially something else; it exists in a sort of free-fall, with the notional trappings of republicanism intact but nonfunctional. With no actual working replacement for this nullity the statutory "government" of the United States is not, in fact, "governing" in any way other than as a gimmick to benefit the predatory minority.
7) That is the definition of a failed state.

I cannot imagine anything more depressing than that, other than it's happening in the Plague Year. Which is, in turn, exposing every one of the most vicious aspects of the GOP Project.

And the solution?

How do you reject something that's adored by four of ten of your countrymen? How does that not break the nation?

We are, in fact, in the midst of a Cold Civil War.

And there is no solution...other than even worse options, like turning it into a HOT Civil War...other than reaching some sort of compromise that both sides can live with.

But how do you "compromise" with a faction that will destroy the social, political, and economic fabric of a nation rather than give up low tax rates for the Kardashians, be willing to listen to Drag Queen Story Hour, consider the possibility that someone, somewhere, for some reason may terminate a pregnancy, or accept a national co-existence with the refugee cleaning their swimming pool or the immigrant cleaning chicken at poverty wages?

How do you "compromise" with someone that considers your ideas and ideals not just undesirable but unacceptably toxic and treasonous?

Tell me.

How?

Update 4/10: It's worth noting here that in Wisconsin the "republic" canary just plummeted headfirst off its perch. Despite the fact that something like 60% of the subjects citizens voted some sort of blue the gerrymandering and court-lock ensure that the red faction is now the ruler of America's Dairyland, and the SCOTUS is juuuuust fine with that.

I know it's hard for the Damn U.S. Public to wrap its head around the reality that about two-fifths of their neighbors want a hard-right dictatorship...but that's what they want.

This isn't simple, like the first Civil War was, simply because it's not geographic. The Confederates aren't all bunched up in the southeastern part of the continent. They're all over; here in ORegon they're out in Clackamas County and down outside of Burns. They're scattered about in the hustings of the Tualatin Valley.

There's no way to "win" that war.

And yet...the alternative is to let this band of red-capped jackals devour the Republic to slake their appetite for tax cuts and knuckling the liberals.

And I see no way out other than bloody-handed war.