The Temptation To Say "It's Over"

 When I say, "we won," I say it with the expectation that I don't have a whole heck of a lot of conservative followers anymore so...

"We won."

I imagine many of you are wondering why that's not all in caps or with a butt-ton of exclamation points or whatever, but I feel the simple period says it best. That's probably because the natural extension of that thought right now is, "It's over."

"We won. It's over."

Except that it's not. Over, that is. It's really just beginning. Which is... exhausting. Because it's been an incredible battle to get to where we are right now at this moment, and where we are is that roughly 20% of the country turned out to vote for a racist fascist with the hopes of keeping him in power. And, possibly as bad as that, around 1/3 of the country couldn't be bothered to show up to vote one way or the other.

Let's see... "Hey, there's a wannabe dictator running for President of your country, would you like to go vote for the other guy?" "Nah, I can't be bothered with that."

Which is to say that more than half of the citizens of the United States are, minimally, perfectly fine with the downfall of democracy in the US.

Anyway...

What we have to look forward to, now, is that over the next couple of months Trump (#formerfakepresident) will be out trying to whip his drones into a frenzy about how the election was stolen from him with the hopes that they will do something, anything, to keep him in power. I guess we'll see how that plays out. Violence is my guess, but I hope I'm wrong.

And that's not even the real fight.
The real fight is that Darth Mitch still holds the Senate in his purple-inflamed fist and is already vowing to, well, keep doing what he's been doing, blocking everything that doesn't support his agenda to subvert the judicial system into a racist conservative perversion that only supports rich white people. The real fight is in, initially, trying to repair all of the damage done by the petulant toddler who's been inhabiting the White House for the last four years.

The really real fight is going to be trying to restore the environment and people still, largely, are not being aware of how critical this is and that, in many ways, maybe most ways, the damage has been done and can't be fixed; all we can do is try to lessen the effects of what's coming.
--For fuck's sake people, an iceberg the size of the state of Delaware has just decided to begin roaming the Atlantic and is expected to bring catastrophe to an environmentally-important species-diverse island.

So, while it would be great to sit back and relax and hold onto the thought of "it's over" as if it's a steaming cup of coffee on a chill morning and it feels oh-so-good on your cold fingers, it's not time for that yet. The real fight is still ahead. The fight to get Biden into office was the fight to get us into the real fight. The fight for the environment. The fight against the racist assholes who support #fakepresident. The fight to reform the criminal justice system into something that's fair for everyone, not just those who are white and/or rich. The fight against ignorance, stupidity, and intolerance.

The fight against "christianity" and the destructive forces of religion in our country. But more on that later.

I guess what I'm saying is this:
Take a breath if you need to. Go dance in the streets some more and ring some more bells (thank you Paris and Berlin, in particular). Be happy in this victory.
But do not think "It's over; we won," because this was just a skirmish, and, really, we barely won it, this which really should have been a no-brainer of a victory. Taking the Senate should have been an easy job, and we're still waiting to see what happens there. We lost seats in the House for no good reason other than the fact that Democrats are horrible at down-ballot voting. Democrats and liberals are not fully invested in what's going on; Republicans and conservatives are. They are bringing this fight as hard as they can and have been doing so for decades.

So dig in. It's not over.

2019: A Year

I don't generally do these year-end kind of things. Not that I haven't done them before... or maybe I haven't? I don't know. I'm not going to go digging back through my posts to find out. I'm pretty sure I haven't done one recently, but I suppose that depends on how you define "recent." But 2019 has been... a year, and I feel like talking about it. Not that I know what I want to say about it, so let's see where this goes.

The last few years have been... tough, to say the least. Mostly, it's the world and the fact that everything is descending into madness and chaos. If you've been around my blog for any length of time, you'll know that I spent 2017 mostly writing political posts. A lot of 2018, too. Not so much in 2019 but not because I didn't want to or don't feel they're important anymore but because they felt redundant or that whatever I was going to write about was no longer exactly relevant by the time I was going to write about it.

So, yeah, there is this existential gloom that has been getting worse since the election in 2016, and it might be okay if it was just the US, but it's the whole fucking world. People everywhere seem to be hellbent on sending us all to Hell. Or turning the world into Hell, even more than it already is, and even the best politicians, the ones really out there trying to make things better, are not able to stand against the tide of right-wing fundamentalism who want us all to burn.

What, then, to say about 2019? Politically, I mean. I don't really know.
I want to be happy about the impeachment, but it's hard to be. McConnell, the truest evil in Washington, is just going to dismiss everything as quickly as he can, so, really, what is the point to all of this? And it's not that I don't understand this idea of "making a statement," but, from a practical standpoint, it's worthless and difficult for me to feel good about.
And don't even get me started on Britain. They seem even more determined than the US to wreck their country. I mean, voting for fucking Boris? Clown Trump? That's more insane than voting for Trump, and Clown Trump makes fun of Trump! Not that every leader outside of the US doesn't make fun of Trump, but Johnson is demonstrably dumber than Trump -- maybe not his actual intellect (because it's very difficult to be more dumb than someone already dumber than a box of rocks), but the total package of him is just... dumb -- and Britain gave him the victory, anyway. They gave it to someone determined, vocally determined, to destroy Britain at all costs.
I don't understand!!!

Apart from all of the meta-angst, this year has just been... difficult. It has been the year of home and vehicular "disasters," some of which I've written about, like the whole sewage escapade, which was, arguably, the worst of the disasters... other than being without a fully functional refrigerator for something along the line of two months, which I haven't written about, but could also be argued to be the worst bit of 2019, especially considering we mostly lived out of an ice chest for three weeks or so. There were also six new tires, one new battery, three calls to towing companies, and one dead computer. Mine. Again. I'm pretty sure there were some other things, too, but I'm not really feeling the need to dredge down past the things that bubbled up on their own. Oh, yeah, and one fire evacuation. There was that, too.

Needless to say, the year has been... challenging. Which is not to say that there haven't been good things that have happened but, overall, the year has been tough. And, I think, in the future when I look back on 2019, the things that are going to most come to mind are the sewage incident and the refrigerator.

I am, indeed, ready for 2019 to be over.

And, man, I hope 2020 brings better things. Which is not to say that it's not going to have its own foreseeable issues, namely, the election. I can't say how much I am not looking forward to this campaign season. But it is what it is and, hopefully, 2020 will end on a much more positive note, with the GOP losing the White House and the Senate and, maybe even, a lot of them going to jail. I can't wait to see the orange on orange look of the "peach" fake-president.

The State of the... Something

It probably seems as if I've been quiet on the political front lately, but that would just be the blog. Here. It's not that I've wanted to be, I just haven't had time, lately, to construct political posts. They take a lot of work and research and, when everything changes as quickly as it has been, well before I could finish with whatever it was I was writing, it would no longer be exactly relevant.

But this is relevant and, barring Trump's (#fakepresident) resignation or assassination, isn't likely to change soon: We have an Abuser in the White House. A liar. A gaslighter. A destroyer. An anti-Christ (because he certainly is an anti-Christ no matter what you believe about the actual existence or relevance of "Christ" or whether there is or will ever be the Anti-Christ). Someone incapable of any good deed except by accident.

But let's get back to this abuser thing, which is something I've mentioned before, somewhere, but I'm not going to go back and look for it now. However, this current situation with the shutdown of the government over this fucking-wall-shit (which I'm just assuming is still going on, today, on the 29th, as I write this, last week, on the 23rd) is a perfect example of what an abuser in a relationship looks like. And, well, no matter whether you want to be or not, we are all in a relationship with this total piece of shit in the White House.

So, see, jump now to the 28th -- because I wasn't able to finish this piece on the 23rd as I'd intended -- and the shutdown is on hiatus because Trump (#fakepresident) wants to give his fucking speech so fucking bad that he turned the government back on so that he can give it. But not till February 5! LOL Because Nancy (whom he calls... wait for it... Nancy) has his number, and is treating him like the toddler he is.

And it's about fucking time, too, that someone stood up to that asshole. Because that's how you deal with a terrorist -- and he is a terrorist -- you don't negotiate. The same as with toddlers. You don't negotiate. And do you know why? Because they are fucking stupid little whiny kids, and you can't negotiate with stupid. You can only set the boundaries and hold firm to them. Any good parent will know what I'm talking about. Sure, the first time or two or three, there will be tantrums but, once the presidential-brat figures out that that wall is real, he'll quit throwing tantrums and just stay on his side. You just wait; if Nancy keeps dealing with diaper-boy this way, he'll start doing whatever she says pretty soon, because he'll know there's no point in pouting or pitching a fit.

But, anyway, back to this abuser stuff...

This whole thing where he shuts down the government over the wall was never over the wall; if he was concerned with the wall, he would have done this sooner. It was all about punishing the Democrats for taking over the House. He wanted to hurt someone over the devastating losses he suffered in November, so he took it out on the only people he could: government employees. And, of course, despite the fact that he said he would take all the responsibility for shutting down the government, as soon as he did it, he tried to gaslight everyone by trying to pin it on the Democrats. Classic Abuser behavior.

It reminds me of when I was a kid and my dad would ask me a question, I would answer, and he would yell at me, "Don't you talk back to me!" then smack me in the face and tell me how it was my fault for "talking back" when all I was doing was answering the question put to me.

So here we are, on a three-week hiatus of the government shutdown before we return to the new normal of the government being shutdown because the Toddler-in-Chief has Putin's arm up his ass and some Russian agent is wearing an ill-fitting McConnell skin-suit.

What's the State of the Union?
Not good, Sir. Not good.

Hanging Chad

I was thinking today about how, sometimes, the course of history seems to bend around seemingly inconsequential moments. Moments that might even seem consequential at the time but only in the way that a kid thinks any given Christmas is consequential but, then, easily forgotten. So the moments, no matter how anticipated they were, fade into inconsequentialness, and we never think of them again even though they turn out to be pivot points of history.

So... here we are on the brink of environmental devastation... the end of life on Earth in its current incarnation... and I was wondering how we got here.

It's not like this was all of a sudden and we couldn't have made plans long ago about how to deal with it. It's been more like a gas gauge in a car, and we've been choosing to bypass all of the gas stations along the freeway telling ourselves we'll be fine even though the gas stations have been fewer and fewer along our drive...

Have you ever driven through west Texas? I have. Granted, it's been a while, but I can't imagine it's changed much. When you drive through west Texas, which is vast, there are signs along the freeway that say things like "Next gas station 48 miles," which may not seem like much, but it's a long way when your gas gauge is riding the empty line.

We're in a car running on fumes and about 20 miles into that 48 mile trip to the next station.

You do the math.

The thing is that the driver of the car has been choosing to drive past gas stations for hundreds of miles. We, as passengers, haven't been paying attention, but the driver has known all along.

See, it's a metaphor.

Scientists and politicians and corporations have known about climate change for decades. It's just the public that hasn't been very aware, and that was all the better for politicians and corporations. Still, with things like acid rain in the 70s and 80s, scientists almost convinced politicians and corporations to do something about the looming threat of environmental catastrophe all the way back in the 80s. Almost. Until corporations really looked into the cost and profit loss of fixing the planet, and they made the decision to fuck the planet and rape it for all it was worth on its way to ruin. By the early 90s, Republicans had us firmly on the path of unnatural disaster and did it gleefully.

But there was still a pivotal moment, a moment that probably seems inconsequential to most of us, right now, but that's only because we're not looking at it through the correct lens.

That moment was Al Gore's loss to Bush for the Presidency in 2000. We could even point, more specifically, to the hanging chad controversy in Florida and the subsequent Supreme Court case that handed the Presidency to Bush in a 5-4 decision. That one moment changed everything and sent us on a path to destruction that we seem unwilling to stop.

Hey, I get it. I was no fan of Gore at the time. He seemed like milk toast to me. And I never liked Bubba Clinton (still don't like him, though I'm a huge fan of his wife). Then, when 9/11 happened, I thought how fortunate we were to have Bush instead of Gore. Yeah, I was young and stupid, and, hey, I grew up in the South and still had some of that stupidity running around in my head.

Let's go back and look at that moment, though, that moment that gave us Bush, and wonder what things would be like if Gore, who WON THE POPULAR VOTE (sound familiar?), had become the President instead.

• Gore was (and is) extremely environmentally minded. He would have put us on a path of environmental reconstruction more than a decade before Obama began making the attempts. (Attempts that Trump (#fakepresident) has completely reversed making things worse than ever.)
• Gore would not have involved us in all of the wars that Cheney put us in. Wars motivated by profit and oil, not delivering democracy or freedom to people.
• I'm just gonna go ahead and say that we would not have suffered the financial crash of 2008 if Gore had been in office. Much of what allowed that to happen can be traced specifically to, well, not exactly Bush, because Bush was too stupid, but to Cheney and his people. Profit at all costs and all of that bullshit.
• Trump (#fakepresident) would not be driving our country and the world out into the middle of the desert right now in a car with no fuel.

I'm not saying everything today would be all sunshine and roses if Gore had been President; after all, there would still have been the scum-of-the-Earth Republicans (especially Newt and Mitch) doing all they can to destroy us all. But I do think things would be... better. And we would at least be on a path of environmental protection rather than one of environmental destruction. And, maybe, yes, MAYBE, the Middle East wouldn't hate us quite as much, because I'm pretty sure Gore's response to 9/11 would have been much more measured than the "bomb the shit out of them" approach the Republicans took.

It's all just something to think about. Hindsight and all of that.

It's also something to think about because I believe we're just a few weeks away from another of those pivot points in history. And, yes, we do see this one coming up as consequential, and that's because IT IS. We can't allow the Boomers another win in November. If they consolidate their power with this upcoming election, that will be the end. Authoritarianism will have taken root firmly in American soil, and there will never be another fair election in the United States again. Not without a rebellion. But, more importantly, it will spell the final doom for the Earth.

Sure, you go on and say that I'm being extreme, but, then, you go read the UN climate report and tell me if you still think that. If you do, you're one of the people in the car running on fumes, passing the last gas station while telling yourself, "We'll be okay." We're not gonna "be okay" folks. It's time to turn this thing around and start fixing the damage that's been done.

Voting by Mob Mentality

Okay, so, this is one of those posts where I'm going to be talking some psychology. I'm going to be working from some general principals, and I'm not going to be citing references. That's because I'm not looking up any new information, not that I would probably cite references even if I was. Basically, if you don't trust me to know what I'm talking about, you should do your own research to verify the things I'm going to say. Or even if you do trust me to know what I'm talking about. I frequently do verification research even on people I trust. Heck, I do verification research on myself all the time just to make sure I have the details correct before I actually post something.

Facts matter. Science matters. Stay educated.

Here's an example of why you should research:

Common sense and general accepted practice over the last decade or so says that group efforts results in better work than individual efforts. This is why teams have become such a thing in business and in schools. The problem is that research shows that group tasks result in overall inferior work because the work is dragged down to the level of the least competent member of the group. It's one of those things where you can't go faster than the slowest member of your team. Basically, rather than the work being elevated by the more competent members, the more competent members have to dumb down to operate on a level with the least competent members.

And that goes against conventional wisdom of how these team efforts work, so people keep proponing group efforts over individual efforts because they don't bother to look at the science. So, go ahead, go look at the research and the data, the actual science. Stop listening to conventional "wisdom."

Speaking of humans in groups, one of the principles of psychology and sociology is that people in groups, also, tend to become, let's say, less intelligent as the groups get larger. Groups of any sort tend toward the lowest common denominator. [As a complete aside, this is an important thing to acknowledge when you look at the FACT that Republicans tend to be less intelligent and less educated than Democrats. The lowest common denominator on the Republican side of things is MUCH lower than on the Democrat side of things.] This is how mobs start, because people of lower intelligence are more easily riled up, but, once one gets a few people riled up, it spreads through the group. It is literally like an infection.

Recently, The New York Times published an article in which Satan (oh, I mean, Steve Bannon) is quoted as saying that the media didn't understand the forces that drove Trump into office. I think he's right. The media didn't understand what was happening at the time -- but, then, no one did except, perhaps, Trump and Satan himself (oh, I meant Bannon again) -- and they still don't understand now. However, it came to me the other day, and it was one of those "d'oh!" moments where you have to wonder why you didn't see it sooner, especially since the correct comparisons were being made.

Trump got to office on mob mentality. Seriously, think about every Western you watched as a kid and remember the lynch mob scenes and how the crowd was chanting, "Lock her up! Lock her up!" Oh, that's not what they were chanting? Same thing, though. Trump riled up a mob, formed a posse, and rode out to get himself someone to lynch. And got elected to the highest office in the world on the energy of what amounts to no more than a lynch mob. Only, this time, there is no white hat to step in between the mob and the instigator and talk them down. As if that has ever really been a thing anyway.

The problem with mobs, though, is that they take a lot of energy to keep going. On their own, mobs are short-lived entities that begin to dissipate from the fatigue of the individuals within the mob. In short, it's easy to get a mob all worked up (you can look at Trump's rallies to see that), but they take energy to keep them going. They take somewhat constant agitation.

Trump needs the mob. He needs his posse. His lynch mob. This is not just the energy that keeps him going, that he feeds off of (it is that, too); this is the energy that is keeping him in office. As long as the mob stays riled, the Republicans will fall in line behind Trump and whatever insane thing he is doing. Republicans have come into the realization that to go against Trump is to go against the very people who got them into office, and they can't risk offending those people, because the mob will turn on them just as quickly as it goes after liberals and Democrats.

Because Trump needs the mob, he has to continually agitate them to keep them riled up. This is, at least in part (the rest of it is because he has no impulse control and can't stop his tongue and his fingers from saying whatever stupid thing comes into his head), the reason Trump says and does outrageous things that have no basis in fact or reality, like demanding an investigation into voter fraud. It doesn't matter if the claim is ludicrous, because it keeps his base riled up and mob like. The mob has no logic or thought. It reacts to Trump on emotion and faulty instinct.

What, then, is the answer to the mob issue? How do we get people to slow down and actually apply thought and logic to Trump? [As if most people (and those people in particular) use much thought and logic to begin with.] I don't have a good answer to that. Generally speaking, the way to stop a mob is to let it play itself out, but Trump seems especially good at keeping his base agitated and in play for him. And, honestly, part of that is due to us, those who are standing against Trump. When we react to something Trump has done, like the Muslim travel ban, it serves to foment his followers without much work from him, allowing him to go off and do things like hosting special screenings of Finding Dory [I bet Trump feels a special connection to Dory and her inability to keep anything in her head.] or, you know, put Satan on the National Security Council.

The other thing that can stop a mob is a sudden shock to the system, so to speak, something which instantaneously catches the mobs attention. For that, it's possible that Trump could do our job for us, not that we should count on that.

At any rate, I think it's important to know what you're dealing with and that it's probably pointless to engage with Trump supporters in any kind of rational discussion. You can't reason with a mob. Or with someone in an abusive relationship. It just makes the person defend the abuser, put the person on the same side with the abuser. You have to wait for them to realize they are being abused and be ready to confront it. That's the current state of Trump supporters. Eventually, Trump will do something that will affect each of them personally, then you'll see them get it, get that Trump is a liar and a cheat and has just been using them for his own profit.

Eventually, Trump, already the least liked President a week into his presidency, will have no one left on his side... except Republican politicians (>cough< McConnell >cough cough< Paul Ryan >cough<) whose heads are stuck too far up Trump's ass for them to get away.