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Liberals are always talking about reaching across the aisle. The metaphor imagines that there is an auditorium (or perhaps the congressional chambers) and that all the Republicans are sitting on the right side of the center aisle and all the Democrats are sitting on the left side of the center aisle. The metaphorical “reaching” is really the “two sides” finding common ground that will allow them to make concessions and reach an agreement on how the United States of America should be governed.

On the surface, reaching across the aisle is a good idea. People getting along is good. People having conflicts that might lead to a civil war is bad. (As long as you ignore the details.)

So what is the common ground between the Republicans and Democrats? And what are some concessions they might make to one another? These are questions we might all want to consider before we seriously consider reaching across the aisle.

Let’s admit first, though, that reaching across the aisle automatically excludes the MAGA extremists on the Republican side, and the pro-democracy, anti-genocide extremists that often end up voting Democrat (i.e., “the left”).

Common Ground

Both sides support unquestioning support of Israel no matter how fascistic and genocidal the Israeli government and, apparently, a majority of Israelis might be. Sure, there are people who vote Democrat or Republican that do not support the Israeli government (e.g., some Republicans are antisemitic but really want the Temple in Jerusalem to be rebuilt, and leftists don’t think the Holocaust justifies the Nakba), but nobody is reaching across the aisle to those folks.

Both sides support the existence of homelessness, starvation, and deprivation of medical care within the richest country on Earth. Democrats believe that capitalism is the best possible system, and thus believe poverty is inevitable, whereas Republicans believe someone else suffering is a desirable outcome.

Both sides support the idea of the United States of America and its institutions, such as the Constitution. “Our institutions” is such an empty value as to be comical were it not for the fact that Democrats and Republicans both swoon over this nebulous idea. We’re talking about a Constitution specifically designed to protect the “opulent minority” (rich people) and allow for the institution of slavery. This is not a document to be fetishized, but rather one we should be criticizing and reforming, as FDR intended with his Economic Bill of Rights. Moreover, there is nothing about the Constitution that would prevent the conversion of the USA to a fully fascist government and society despite what liberals like to pretend.

Both sides support increasing the carbon production of our country. Yes, the Biden administration has made great strides in promoting alternative energy, but at the same time it increased US production of fossil fuels such that the US is now the biggest producer in the world. That increased production will produce more CO2 than the CO2 cuts created by the Biden administration’s “green” policies. As always, the goal of liberal governments is to increase GDP and private profits at any cost. Analysis: Biden-Approved Fossil Fuel Projects Undermine IRA Emissions Cuts

Both sides support a militarized police force, criminalization of poverty, and a privatized prison system that holds the highest percentage of the population of any country on Earth.

Making Concessions

In order to really reach across the aisle, the reacher must be willing to make some concessions. The Republicans never talk about reaching — only Democrats espouse this as a good course of action. In fact, when the Democrats take a step to the right, Republicans respond by also moving a step to the right; that’s been going on since the Obama administration. Or maybe since Bill Clinton.

What concessions could the Democrats make to the Republicans?

The Democrats could offer to privatize Social Security. Social Security is universally loved by normal Americans and universally hated by the wealthy. Republicans like to pretend that if we privatized Social Security, the program would do much better financially, so this is something those vultures might like. In fact, they almost did this in 2011-2012, calling it the Grand Bargain. Fortunately, popular opposition shot it down. It was a great example, though, of how the Democratic party elite are willing to lose on purpose to support the wishes of the donor class — as long as they can get away with it.

The Democrats could offer to end gay marriage, substituting the less offensive “domestic partnership” scenario. They could also end or reduce protections for any and all minority groups, basically legalizing discrimination. While Democrats would never legalize genocide within the borders of the USA, they could certainly agree to defund programs meant to investigate and prosecute hate crimes. They could change the emphasis of various executive branch departments; for example, they could focus the FBI on “finding illegal immigrants” and instruct them to ignore hate-based crimes.

(Believe me — I don’t want to give conservatives ideas, but you people keep trying to make deals with them.)

The Democrats could actively support the Christianity-centric (theocratic) view of the USA that Republicans would like to see re-established, including moving funding for public institutions to church-run institutions, like private religious schools.

The Democrats could agree to end their campaign to provide federal funding for child care for working moms while simultaneously providing bigger tax credits for children, thus forcing mothers out of the workforce. If the numbers were right, this could effectively end feminism as we know it in a single generation. Remember, Republicans don’t really care about being frugal — they only care about promoting their culture and preferred power hierarchy.

Democrats could end their campaign to reform gun laws. They could even allow Class 3 weapons (machine guns, suppressors, short-barreled rifles, etc.) to be sold using the instant background check system instead of the months-long and overly complex current process. If this sounds absurd, consider how adding an electronic fingerprint scanner at each FFL (funded by the US taxpayer, of course) would make the current system seem pointless to the average voter.

Democrats could agree to bomb Iran. This is one of those things the Democratic donor class really wants anyway, so it is very appealing.

Democrats could agree to a rigorous law enforcement campaign to destroy antifa, who are obviously doing something illegal by existing (they’re not).

Democrats could agree to truly shutting down the southern US border in violation of US and international law. Yeah, I know I just said it is illegal, but the Refuge Act of 1980 can be repealed and Americans mostly think they are above international law. This would also be morally deplorable, but Americans definitely don’t care about that.

The right to asylum was enshrined in 1948’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and then again in the Refugee Convention of 1951 and its 1967 Protocol. The United States passed its own federal law in the Refugee Act of 1980, for people who are fleeing persecution on “account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

ACLU

The Democrats could sign on to a bill allowing US police the right to execute anyone on the spot if they believe they have committed a felony.

Am I being hyperbolic? OK, then you tell me — what exactly should Democrats offer to do for the genocidal, hateful lovers of suffering and domination that are the Republican party? Quite literally, no good can come from Republicans getting even a small part of what they want. If you want to make a deal with the Republicans, why not go straight to the Devil instead?

The Other Aisle

If Democrats really wanted to bring the country together and promote policies that would ultimately be popular with nearly all Americans, they would reach across the other aisle — to the left.

The left knows where to find the funding to help people train for new and more rewarding jobs.

The left knows how to get resources to mothers who wish to stay at home with their children as well as mothers who wish to follow a career path.

The left knows how to fully fund Social Security without increasing your taxes.

The left knows how to make small towns thrive.

The left knows how to leave a survivable planet to our children.

The left knows how to build a world where everyone gets along and thrives — except the rich and bigots.

The left knows how to decrease immigration and make it so we no longer require it for our economy to function.

Problem Solved

Another way of looking at it is that as long as we are unwilling to aggravate a tiny minority of ultra-rich assholes, we will not be able to solve the real problems that most Americans face. America’s two-party system is really a debate between two cabals of powerful shit sacks regarding exactly how the average American’s life should be exploited and controlled. The rest of us are being forced to choose between them, but this is like asking the condemned man how he wants to die, and then giving him two gruesome options; it isn’t a meaningful choice, even though it seems rather important in the moment.

In the non-metaphorical real world, this means giving a person two shitty options, and they are left to determine which option is best for them. You can’t ever have financial security, but you get to choose between screwing over some specific minority groups (e.g., women, Black people) and screwing over everyone equally. You can’t have peace, but you can choose which conflicts and genocides to fund. You can’t have a job where you are respected and do meaningful work, but you can choose to make some other group of people have it worse than you do (or not). One side offers nonsense and suffering, the other side offers nothing but I guess having dystopia painted in your favorite color is worth something.

I realize people are going to read this and say something like, “well, communism is bad because…” That’s fine. Whatever bad features you think communism or socialism has, let’s not do those features. Let’s do the other ones instead. You don’t like how Soviet Russia was anti-Christian? Fine. No problem. We don’t have to do that bit. You think communism steals your toothbrush? Fine. I formally propose that we do communism without toothbrush stealing. Easy peasy. Do you think small businesses are all run by the state under socialism? OK, no problem. Under our version, small businesses will be independent of the state — and the banks and the landlords. They won’t even be taxed. Problem solved.

“Far-right influencers claim singer is ‘Pentagon asset’ conspiring to ‘manipulate’ voters after ‘rigged’ Super Bowl favors Chiefs.” (The Guardian)

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Taylor Swift conspiracy theory. If you are not ready to learn the exciting ending, you may want to skip this post until February 11!

This is the funniest thing that I’ve seen in quite a while. The idea, apparently, is that the Pentagon (or perhaps just the more general “deep state” or maybe a foreign adversary) is employing this woman, Taylor Swift, as a propaganda asset, and that they will set it up so that the Chiefs win the Superbowl, and then at the climactic end of the game, Swift will address the world from the field and tell everyone to vote for Joe Biden, and everyone will comply because…

Gosh, I’m not sure what the next part is. I feel like the righties just never really come up with a narrative for anything that makes complete sense. They always lose the thread at some point. Here’s a version that is better and also has a lot more flare:

Taylor Swift, a biomorphic AI android engineered by the Red Chinese, has been employed by the CPC-controlled Biden administration to control the next US Presidential election by way of arranging the Chiefs to win so that the Swiftbot can be on the field (with her boyfriend, a cybernetically-enhanced Chinese agent disguised to look like a regular white guy) right after the climactic end of the game, and will use a new experimental hypnosis ray that can travel over normal hi-def TV to mind-control everyone who is watching the game into voting for Joe Biden. (They tried using 5G for mind control, but that just gave everyone COVID!)

Eh? Eh? Yes, I know it is derivative.

If you peel away all the idiocy, there might be something real to the right-wing freakout over Taylor Swift telling the Swifties (fans of Taylor Swift) to vote.

Way back in 2017, right wingers were in love with Taylor Swift, and I think there’s something about the Taylor Swift brand/aesthetic that really gets normal Americans excited in a way that no politician can. I’m not a fan, but I do admit that “Shake It Off” is a real banger (or is it a bop?), and I see nothing wrong with anything she has said in the press.

Let me provide you with some interesting numbers:

In the 2016 election, 65.84 million people voted for HRC and 62.98 voted for Trump. Trump lost the popular vote by a bit (2.86 million), but still ended up winning the electoral college because HRC failed to campaign adequately in swing states. In 2020, more people voted (81.28 million for Biden and 74.22 million for Trump) and this time the spread was enough (7.06 million votes) that Biden won the electoral college.

Taylor Swift fans are 53% of the US adult population, or about 137 million people — more than the total of all the people that voted for Trump and HRC combined in 2016. Basically, Swifties alone can elect anyone they want to the Presidency. Even if Biden loses all of the leftist vote, people who identify as “progressive left” or further left are only about 6% of those qualified to vote, or about 16 million people at the most. Swifties are now very motivated to vote for Biden because the Trumpers are being so shitty to Taylor Swift. Since Swifties are concentrated in the age groups that do not typically vote, this right-wing freakout is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by motivating people to perform the act of voting without affecting their real political views, which are foggy, ill-informed, and fatalistic. “I don’t understand this politics thing and I think it is rigged against us no matter what, but I’m voting against Trump because his people were mean to Taylor.”

In my opinion, the Taylor Swift factor might do a lot more than allow Biden to squeak by — it might make the election a real blowout.

!!! IMPORTANT UPDATE !!!

After finishing this post, I had an important conversation revealing the ending of the righty version of the Taylor Swift tale: She’s “Satanic” … and not just Satanic, but a “Satanic witch” … and not just any Satanic witch, but a clone (I shit you not) of Zeena LaVey, celebrity Satanist and daughter of Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan. So, obviously, she will use the Power of Satan™ to mind control everyone into voting for Joe Biden when she appears on the field at the end of the Chief’s Superbowl win! I can see now why they were holding back on the ending — it’s a real doozy! Personally, I prefer the scifi version of the Taylor Swift story, but I guess a lot of people are still into folk horror (why??).

Maybe that is why righties never seem to have an ending to their narratives — the ending is always tHe PoWeR of sAtaN!!1! which is boring and stupid, so they have to kind of hint at what the ending might be, just like when a movie doesn’t have any budget for the monster, they never really show the full man in the rubber costume, but instead keep showing little bits of it in shadow.

What’s interesting about this take is that the central premise pre-dates the right-wing love affair with Taylor Swift that happened around 2017. I guess they are just really fickle!

I keep seeing, “Nobody wants a civil war,” in online forums. It’s just as naive to think that way as it is to be excited about the prospect of a civil war. Some people do want a civil war, and the benefits and dangers of a civil war vary a lot depending on who you are, and not everyone is capable of fully understanding how civil war would affect them, personally. Moreover, the liberals who are saying that nobody wants a civil war are clearly assuming that the alternative to a civil war is that nothing changes.

The typical conservative is full of bluster. They make a lot of aggressive or even violent statements, but with no real intent to follow through — except they do intend for someone else to follow through. That’s the key. Their words are meant to encourage other people to participate in this hypothetical civil war while they sit back, relax, and watch it unfold on TV.

Yeah, sure, many people would die in a civil war, and things would be very hard for a while, but have you thought about the benefits? I mean the benefits to conservatives, such as no longer having to respect non-conservatives, women becoming chattel, right-wing Christianity becoming the ruling ideology, legal murder for sexual and gender crimes as well as simple trespassing (as long as the offender is not a fellow conservative) and, of course, witchcraft. What about food and fuel shortages? Oh, they’re planning to just take yours since you don’t own any firearms.

On the other side of the argument, what are the consequences of not having a civil war? Anyone who is imagining that nothing changes or that slow progress is inevitable is simply wrong. Anything can happen; the future of politics is not set. If you are a woman, if you are in any way interesting in a gender or sexual sense, if you respect nature or reality or education, if you are not a Christian, if you are the “wrong” kind of Christian, if you are a person of color, the no-civil-war future that conservatives are succeeding at implementing right now is not a place where you would want to be alive. Civil war would certainly be horrific, but less horrific than letting these psychos do what they want, and at least civil war has a possibility of resulting in a better world. Moreover, the death toll of a not-civil-war future could easily be higher than the option with a civil war.

Another thing I’m seeing is self-satisfied liberals chuckling about how the “Gravy Seals” (per internet liberals, this refers to people who like to dress up in military style outfits and tote firearms around, pretending to be cutting edge operatives) will get slaughtered in a civil war. While I appreciate that the US military is the most horrifying destructive force on the planet and that it is nominally commanded by one Joe Biden, I also did not miss the part where most US soldiers are conservatives. Yes, yes, the officer class hates Trump. That’s fine. Are we really going to pretend that the people who actually do the fighting won’t be able to do the fighting without the officers? When they’re told to go slaughter the Gravy Seals, are we sure they’ll just go do that? They’re fully capable of refusing the order or even changing sides. It’s not like the Gravy Seals will need sophisticated tactical strategy from a highly-educated officer class to slaughter unarmed liberals.

“The US military has bombs,” is another popular smug response liberals enjoy. Do you really think the capitalist class is going to let the US government bomb their infrastructure if the “enemy” is Trumpers? Billionaires are not afraid of Trumpism. They’re only willing to destroy their own infrastructure if the target is something truly threatening to capitalist globalism; i.e., the left.

The liberal position is — per usual — that civil war should not happen because it is very inconvenient to them, personally, and therefore it won’t happen. When you have 80 million people jonesing for a civil war, the only reason it doesn’t happen is because something forcefully stopped them; similarly, if you have 80 million people trying to implement a genocidal fascist government, the only reason it doesn’t happen is because something forcefully stopped them. The liberal tactic of following the rules even harder hasn’t worked yet and it isn’t going to start working now. Rules do not stop action — someone must enforce those rules with violence.

The real reason that civil war is unlikely is something I’ve already mentioned: The threat a civil war would present to capital owned by billionaires. Not only could infrastructure be destroyed, but capital could become “stranded” — i.e., not destroyed, but not usable. Since all the power of the billionaire class comes from their ability to profit off capital, a civil war is completely unacceptable to the billionaire class. This is why the Democrats are pulling their punches and letting us steadily inch toward fascism — fascism is and has always been preferable to anything that truly threatens the power of the billionaire class.

When the Supreme Court makes a decision against something that Democratic Party voters want, the Democratic Party shrugs and says there’s nothing they can do. When the Supreme Court makes a decision against something that the Republican Party voters want, the Republicans ignore the decision and do whatever they want, and the Democratic Party shrugs and says there’s nothing they can do.

Does the Supreme Court matter or not?

If this were Colombia or Venezuela acting up to this degree, their leader would be dead. A governor countermanding the US Supreme Court and taking control of a unit of the US military for his own purposes is seditious and can be legally “taken out” (whatever you want that to mean) by “Seal Team 6” or the CIA or some other tool of violence that the US federal government proudly uses to threaten other countries.

The whole situation with immigrants is ridiculous — these are the very people who we need to be here illegally so they can keep our economy going without being paid as much as a legal worker. Rather than being some kind of threat, they are essential workers. The absurdity isn’t important, though; it is the hypocrisy that matters.

The Democrats are made of hypocrisy, and the point of that hypocrisy is to let conservatives win. If the Supreme Court matters, then Greg Abbot must be ended — not necessarily killed, but ended. It’s that simple. If the Supreme Court does not matter — well, there are many different interesting potential implications, such as the dissolution of the United States of America, or just passively allowing the country to slide into fascism. In any case, there is no “rule of law” — there’s only the supremacy of violence. Moreover, it is the Democrats failure to stand up for themselves that made this moment inevitable — Republicans know that Democrats will not fight back, so to win, all they have to do is fight. Why would they not fight under those conditions? They would have to not want to win, which is a weird psychological problem that only Democrats seem to possess.

When they go low, we shrug and let them win.

Democrats

Democrats love to talk about how violence doesn’t work. It’s working great for Republicans right now. I bet it continues to work. Democrats can be defeated — made irrelevant, in fact — by Republicans simply having little temper tantrums, and using those tantrums to just keep moving the standards of normalcy further to the right. Are Democrats too lazy and complacent to stop them or is their opposition to Republicans performative? I’m guessing the latter because the rich have spoken and they simply do not mind the idea of a far-right America; they are completely fine with that.

Related: Scared of another Trump presidency? Billionaires suggest you calm down.

Conservatives have a great many narratives that serve as both an introduction to a far-right (fascist) worldview and as dog whistles for fellow conservatives. Understanding and being able to identify those narratives is an essential starting point to working against fascism and even possibly having productive conversations with people who might be vulnerable to falling down the far-right rabbit hole. Most people, in fact, are vulnerable to these far-right talking points because vulnerability only requires that you are dissatisfied with the world under capitalism and lacking exposure to accurate facts about the world. I say “accurate” facts because many right-wing talking points contain aspects that are technically true, but not accurate because they don’t contain enough information or put the truth in a context that leads to incorrect conclusions.

“The system is bad.”

Conservatives are constantly complaining about “the system”. Like many conservative talking points, this one is a sort of weird parody of a leftist talking point, but with the crucial detail stripped away. Namely: What is the system? The system is capitalism, but conservatives claim to be champions of capitalism, despite constantly complaining about things that are a direct result of capitalism and — especially — capitalist control of politics (which is the natural result of capitalism). They hate capitalist globalism — the pre-eminent form of capitalism — the most. In fact “globalism” is often substituted for “the system” — again, global what? The real answer is global capitalism.

Having eliminated “capitalism” as the name of the system (because conservatives are constantly pretending to be in favor of capitalism), we are left with a bunch of oddly meaningless pseudo-systems, such as: wokism, cultural Marxism, political correctness, etc. None of these are real things; what’s real is liberals trying to create a world where money is the only hierarchy, and trying to tear down other hierarchies that they see as illegitimate. (The left sees the hierarchy of money as illegitimate as well.)

Conservatives hate this because the hierarchy of money is the only currently-existing hierarchy that they do not think is legitimate. I know that seems untrue on its face, but the fact is that they see certain groups as deserving all kinds of power (including money); they don’t see money in-and-of-itself as making you deserving of power. If a non-religious Jewish woman has a lot of money (and thus, power), that’s likely to offend your run-of-the-mill conservative, but a white, Christian man having a lot of money (and thus, power) might seem wonderful to the same person.

Similarly, when their guy is President, they want the office of the President to have unlimited power; when the President is a Democrat, the President has too much power and must be impeached (or worse) immediately. Even the conservative opposition to communism isn’t really about them being opposed to authoritarianism or a government control of the economy (in contrast to capitalists controlling the government), but rather it is because they see it as the wrong people having power. That is essentially why they conflate Democrats (who are capitalists) with communists (who are anti-capitalist) — they see both political groups as empowering the wrong people.

The way this dog whistle works is they talk about how the system is bad, and they list off a lot of problems caused by the system. An audience member who is new to these ideas nods along, and starts to wonder, “What is this system? Who controls this system? How can they be stopped?” and, after a very long wait, the conservative will finally reveal the answer: It’s Jewish people. OK, it isn’t always Jewish people. Sometimes, the answer they give is pedophiles who are also Satanists. In any case, impoverished people of color are portrayed as being the foot soldiers of this Jewish/Satanic/pedophilic conspiracy.

If you can get to someone who is discovering the problems with the system (capitalism) before they get led down the rabbit hole to fascist nonsense, you’ve got a real chance of helping someone see who is actually running the world: A disorganized cabal of obscenely wealthy assholes. I want to emphasize the disorganized part. They simply cannot decide whether the Republican approach or the Democratic approach is better for keeping and strengthening their grip on power, but on most days, most of them are willing to give money to both parties.

“The elites are bad.”

Why yes, yes they are! They are very bad. Who are they, though?

Well, they are not Jewish and they aren’t Satanists. I don’t know if they are pedophiles; maybe. But conservatives are not opposed to pedophilia if their people are doing it. See, for example: Matt Gaetz, Roy Moore, Dennis Hastert, Ruben Verastigua, David Byrd, Donald Trump — the list goes on and on!

In August of 2023, 6 of the top 10 richest people were Jewish — which is to say that 4 were not Jewish. Worldwide, Christians hold the largest share of wealth at 55% and Jewish people only hold 1.1%. There’s a good reason why a small number of Jewish families were able to amass great wealth — Christians used to think they’d go to Hell if they made loans to other Christians, so Jewish people filled that niche. However, if you look at Jewish people overall, they’re just as likely to be victims of the billionaire class as the rest of us (again, they hold less wealth than Christians, Muslims and Hindus).

It is the billionaire class that are the elites. They use the millionaire class (e.g., Congress, CEO’s, corporate and national presidents) to do their bidding. The religious, cultural, or ethnic background of those elites and their lackeys is a distraction from the important feature: Their absurdly massive wealth.

“The strong inevitably dominate the weak.”

This is a fun one, because in this case, liberals and conservatives agree! What’s true is that in the context of a toxic culture where people have been pitted against one another by the system (capitalism), atomized (separated from healthy relationships with one another), and traumatized (abused and forced to participate in abuse), we do observe that the strong inevitably dominate the weak. The idea contains about as much wisdom as saying, “If you knock things over, they fall,” which is to say, none.

The dog whistle part is what comes next, i.e., “The strong inevitably dominate the weak, so you had better be strong so you can dominate.” Dominating other people — and never being submissive — is the great preoccupation of conservativism, and especially conservative men. The reward for being dominant is not ever having to do any actual work — you just embody dominance and other people scurry about trying to figure out how to keep you satisfied.

This, incidentally, describes US foreign policy which, I’ve found, is supported by your average liberal. They believe that the USA must be the global 800-lb gorilla because if we started being fair and supporting democracy in other countries, we would not be able to enjoy the luxuries that are the privilege of empire. What’s funny is that they (the liberals) are correct; that conservatives seem to not get it is really interesting.

Instead, conservatives consistently have a different narrative about US foreign policy:

“We need to pull the troops back to the US to defend America.”

I’m not at all opposed to pulling the troops back — especially since the US is not being meaningfully attacked in any way. We have no business being in most of the foreign countries where we have bases or are executing an armed conflict. But that’s where this narrative gets weird: Defend America from what?

The answer that you’ll eventually get if you wait long enough will be a threat that is either overblown, attributed to the wrong group, or not even real.

Conservatives have decided to be very, very afraid of immigrants coming across the US southern border. They believe that these are almost entirely made up of Mexican cartel members and “foreign adversaries” and that both groups are going to do evil things to good, conservative families. This threat is dramatically overblown. Conservatives latch on to isolated incidences (like a kidnapping or murder attributed to an immigrant) and conclude that we are literally being invaded by the enemy. The truth is that the porosity of the US southern border is necessary so we can get illegal immigrants here to do important work for very little money; this keeps the US economy working properly by making necessities like food affordable. Without a constant flow of migrant workers across our border, the US economy (i.e., capitalism) would collapse. If we truly closed our borders, the price of food would shoot up, and conservatives would blame the US government. Moreover, the average undocumented immigrant is less likely to commit a violent crime than the average American.

Trump announced that he was going to deploy the US military to liberal US cities, and conservatives were overjoyed. The supposed threat there is communist gangs (i.e., antifas) and Black people. Neither of those pose any kind of threat to your standard white suburban or rural conservative but they lie awake at night worrying about both. BLM really freaked out conservatives despite their only demand being that police should treat Black people the same as whites; they also opposed specific acts of police abuse against white people, making them more of an anti-police-abuse movement for everyone. Antifa only shows up when people are advocating genocide; clearly, conservatives want to be free to advocate for genocide even while they fear “white genocide”.

Go a little bit deeper into the idea of defending America, and you’ll find a place where there is a vast conspiracy by “elites” (Jewish people?) to institute “communism” (capitalism controlled by the wrong people) by using people of color and antifas as shock troops. Included in this conspiracy is the Mexican government which is enabling the invasion of America by brown people by failing to arrest immigrants, but is also completely impotent in its ability to control drug cartels because the cartels have either killed or employed all the cops. And, you know, obviously, the UN is trying to disarm all the conservatives and make our children gay (this means submissive in conservative English) so they can’t dominate the bad people. Vast conspiracy.

Really, the only conspiracy is capitalism, except that it isn’t a conspiracy because they’re doing everything out in the open. See, for example, Davos.

The important thing is that today’s conservative is not really anti-war, they just have priorities: Regaining control of the fatherland is the first priority; invading France can come later. That was a metaphor — Mexico would be the first foreign nation to invade because of those “foreign adversaries” they keeping sending into the US. After that, we’d be forced to invade Canada because they just won’t give us preferential terms on trade, and we’re all starving because of this mysteriously long drought that has nothing to do with climate.

“America is on the edge of collapse.”

Totally true. But hold on just a sec — Why is America going to collapse?

The conservative answer has nothing to do with the contradictions of capitalism, the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet, or declining food production as a result of pollution (especially climate change). Those things are real. Rather, conservatives have concluded that America will collapse because of cultural degeneracy and submissive character. While they do despise the soft inefficacy of your standard liberal (and so does the left), what they really mean is things like gaiety, transness, feminism, and cooperation. If you aren’t being dominant, straight, cis, patriarchal and competitive, you are being a submissive degenerate. I don’t know how else to put it; that’s the whole thing. They literally see these things as all being part of a single, cohesive, anti-conservative ethos.

And that is why…

“You need to be a warrior.”

They don’t always use “warrior”. Sometimes they say “warlord” or “soldier”. What does it mean to be a warrior?

It’s a meme that is very helpful toward motivating conservatives to dominate local politics, and through local politics, state and national politics. That’s mostly the context in which the “warrior” narrative is used, but it also applies to literally killing your enemies, which conservative pundits are constantly trying to prepare their fellow conservatives to do, mostly by saying that this killing will be necessary because the degenerate enemy will strike first.

The point, then, of being a warrior is to constantly dominate — in every context, in every way, you must dominate. Conservative pundits make it seem natural that you always need to be a warrior by making conservatives believe that they are always under attack.

“There are evil people in society constantly looking for a way to dominate you.”

This is pure projection. By fantasizing about evil people in society constantly looking for a way to dominate others, conservatives justify being the evil people constantly looking for a way to dominate others.

“This is a republic, not a democracy.”

I have a whole post on this one, but the upshot is that conservatives do not like democracy. They prefer that only a small group (white, male, Christian landowners) be allowed to vote. They believe that only that group of people are noble and good enough to be allowed to participate in democracy. This view is strikingly close to Leninism, where only the elite vanguard of communism is allowed to participate in democracy (and control the government); the difference is that Leninism is intended to eventually become a society that works for everyone (except capitalists, obviously), but traditional conservativism is meant to elevate people with the right characteristics (whiteness, maleness, etc.) forever. Trump’s advisor Steve Bannon was a fan of Leninism in terms of strategy.

Some conservatives even take it a step further by promoting the idea that we should return to a form of feudalism with someone like Donald Trump as our new king. (And then they project by saying that the Democrat currently holding the office of President is behaving like a king.) Interestingly, this tendency to claim that rule by an elite aristocracy is better than democracy goes way back to Rome or even before — and is even echoed by the Democratic party which claims to be engaging in a benevolent elitism. Certainly, rule by an elite aristocracy is always better for the elite aristocrats, and, as I’ve mentioned, the problem conservatives have with the US government is that they do not control it; they only hate the elites because they are not the elites.

“America is not a democracy, it is a republic” is bad if the degenerate enemy controls the republic. It is only good when the right people control the republic which is why the wrong people need to be prevented from voting. They literally see a vote from a Black or trans person (as examples) as “illegal” because those are the wrong people to be participating in the republic.

Let’s get back to what is true.

Capitalism is bad.
Billionaires are the enemy.
Cooperation is the cornerstone of a successful society. Domination and submission are characteristics of a troubled society.
The USA should engage in a peaceful and orderly conclusion of its global military and economic empire, and instead use its military power to support true democracy — rule by the people with minority group protections.
America is on the edge of collapse due to the inherent contradictions of capitalism, the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet, and environmental and resource issues caused by pollution (especially climate change) which are all the responsibility of the capitalist class.
America — and the world — must be defended against capitalism.
America is a republic, but it should be a democracy; e.g., we must end the electoral college system.

And most of all:

The rise of fascism in America and the world is a direct result of the failure of global capitalism.

Every time I talk to a Democrat about Republicans, they say something about how, “Republicans always vote against their own interests,” which is interesting because Democrats definitely vote against their own interests.

So, what does it mean to vote against your own interests?

It really depends on what you want, and what you believe to be true.

Do you want financial success?
Do you want individual liberty?
Do you want cultural hegemony?
Do you want your enemies to be destroyed?

Economics

Republican-controlled governments cut taxes in a very specific way: They cut everyone’s taxes, cut programs that benefit the poor and middle class, and then passively allow tax cuts to anyone who is not wealthy to expire. The net result is that the wealthy end up with a lot more money. Wealthy people tend to hold on to additional wealth because they don’t need to spend it, so these tax cuts slow down the economy, which causes an overall downward trend. Many Americans, however, see themselves being on the brink of striking it rich, and so they see these tax cuts as beneficial to them, personally (while I agree that they probably are not about to strike it rich, there’s nothing attractive about that kind of negativity). Moreover, they’ve been taught that any effort by the government to move wealth from the rich to the poor is communism/socialism, and that communism/socialism will destroy the economy (this belief is also popular among Democrats).

Finally, racists believe that the US government uses progressive taxation systems (i.e., where the wealthy pay a higher percentage of taxes than people with less money) as a sneaky means of giving money to ethnic minorities (especially Black people) and taking it away from white people, and anti-Semites believe the same thing, but as a sneaky means of siphoning money away from Christians and giving it to Jewish people and their allies (which does often include Black people according to this conspiracy theory). If you don’t believe that a change in the tax code truly benefits you financially, are you really voting against your own interests if you oppose it?

If you are a racist, an anti-communist, or someone who believes you are about to be rich, voting Republican is not against your financial interests. Keep in mind that these ideas might not occur together in one person; i.e., you could have someone who is anti-communist and believes they are about to be rich, but they are not racist. They’d have to be willing to tolerate racists if they vote Republican, but if you’re living in a conservative community, tolerating racists has been normalized and is required for us all to function under capitalism (e.g., to hold a job) and be on good terms with our families, so you can see where it might not be a deal-killer.

Democrat-controlled governments create more relatively more economic success for the average person because they support progressive taxation — a tax system that charges a person a higher percentage of their income as tax the higher their income. However, they only support this to a point. Democrats would never support a system of taxation that reduced the power of the capitalist class (synonymous with “globalists”). Because progressive taxation allows people with less money to have a little more — even giving some a credit — and because people with less money typically spend that extra money, progressive taxation creates a more healthy economy with more money flowing between people at a higher speed. On the other hand, though, it doesn’t really allow working class people to thrive and even if there’s an issue that is extremely harmful to people, Democrats won’t solve it if it harms the financial position of the very rich.

Regarding thriving: Factually, the bureaucracy associated with doing business — which is fully supported by the Democrats — is severely prejudiced against the truly small business which cannot afford the army of financial bureaucrats and lawyers that big businesses have on staff. This isn’t to say that there shouldn’t be rules, but rather that it would be simple to both simplify the process of compliance and relieve small businesses of the financial burden of compliance. Republicans at least give lip service to the idea of easing the burden of bureaucracy — though, in practice, they really mean deregulation which ends up empowering the rich and harming the working class.

So, if you want to really thrive, if you want the power of the very wealthy (which is based on money) to be curtailed, or if you want issues that are extremely harmful to everyone to be solved even if they threaten the financial position of the very rich, voting Democrat is not in your own interests.

Liberty

Positive Freedom is the freedom to do something, such as the freedom to get an abortion or the freedom to buy a gun. It might included less controversial things, like the freedom to practice your religion, or shave your head. Under our capitalism-based society, positive freedoms are frequently curtailed by your ability to pay.

Negative Freedom is the freedom from restrictions and impediments, which are typical caused by other people. Perhaps they make a law saying you can’t buy a certain thing (like a gun), or perhaps they physically stop you from going to church; these would be restrictions or impediments that would damage your freedom. As with positive freedom, you get more negative freedom under capitalism the more money you have.

Cultural Hegemony is the freedom to force other people to live in a way that allows you both positive or negative freedom. (Apologies to all the Marxists who are mad about that definition.) For example, if I want to live in a Christian society, other people are infringing on my freedom by not being Christians; if I force them to comply with Christianity, I am increasing my own personal freedom by depriving them of theirs. The most common kind of cultural hegemony is just influencing culture to define certain kinds of behavior as deviant, and others as normal. Normal people get all kinds of privileges that deviant people are denied.

The truth is that people usually frame “freedom” in such a way that it makes certain kinds of behavior deviant and others normal; i.e., nearly all discussion of freedom is an attempt at creating cultural hegemony. It’s not surprising, then, that since rich people have the most control in our society, that money is seen as a very normal justification of any and all behavior. We are a democracy, they say, but it is also perfectly natural that rich people can “influence” politicians with great big wheelbarrows full of cash. While pedophilia is reviled by most people, we also see it as normal that wealthy people can get away with it; we don’t like that they get away with it, but we somehow have accepted that it is just the way the world works.

Individual freedom isn’t really a thing that exists. Rather, there is an interplay between my freedom and someone else’s freedom. Even my right to live is balanced against someone else’s right to kill me. That may seem like a silly example, yet there are many situations where cultural norms allow someone to be killed, and a human being is just as dead if you shoot them with a gun or use your economic might to force them into a situation where they starve to death or are exposed to deadly chemicals.

That brings us a little closer to the truth, which is that my freedom should be curtailed if it harms you. The harm of shooting someone, or financially supporting an institution that will then use your money to harm someone (e.g., Chik-fil-A, Hobby Lobby, or the Biden administration with it’s $14.3 billion in support of Israel’s genocide against Palestine) is obvious.

What’s less obvious, but also real, is the harm of cultural degeneration. This phrase is typically used by racists to indicate that their supposedly superior culture is being harmed by the inferior cultures of other people, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Instead, I’m talking about how capitalism commodifies and thus cheapens culture as it systematically assigns everything a dollar value and repackages it for sale. Globalism exposes people to other cultures (which is good) as a side-effect of this commodification, but ultimately destroys meaning and elevates the sensational at the cost of real culture; real culture helps bind people together and give them meaning. Capitalism aims to atomize the individual — make us each completely separate from everyone else — and then make every aspect of our relationships with each other transactional.

The Democratic Party cannot meaningfully speak against the cultural degeneration caused by capitalist globalism because it is on the side of capitalist globalism. The Republican Party, on the other hand, purposefully conflates the cultural degeneration caused by capitalist globalism with the imaginary, nonsensical enemies that it is constantly lying about to its constituents (e.g., saying that “the Jews” are destroying “white culture” even though it is really capitalism commodifying everyone’s culture). Voting for either option is voting against your own interests in terms of cultural degeneration.

Regarding freedom more generally, both Democrats and Republicans are actively harming other people with their lifestyle and imposing their lifestyle on others. I could get down in the weeds and talk about specific “freedoms” but that’s the main point. I will grant you that Republicans are worse about obviously trying to force their way of life on others, as well as being slightly worse about having completely unsubstantiated paranoid delusions about other people forcing their way of life onto Republicans (e.g., no one is going to force you to be gay).

I’m tired of them jamming it down my throat!

Republicans

Genocide

Most people aren’t in favor of genocide, which is why some fascist is always telling people that there’s absolutely no choice but to do genocide. What’s neat, though, is that fascists are never going to tell you to genocide your real enemies because (spoiler alert) they are your real enemies.

But hey, if a fascist has been whispering in your ear, and now you believe that Palestinians, trans people, Black people, Jewish people, atheists or whatever are out to destroy you and must be eliminated, then I guess voting for a Democrat or a Republican is in your interest!

Conclusion

If you are a Democrat and you’re walking around talking about how Republicans are stupid because they vote against their own interests, it is time to stop and reflect on your own errors instead.

How can you say to your brother, `Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Matthew 7: 3-5

There’s a lot of debate online about electric vehicles these days, and like most online debates, it is mostly a combination of outright lies from shills and opinion from people who have no first-hand experience. I have now owned an electric vehicle for more than a year, and I’m happy to pass on my experience to you.

I will not be commenting on the particulars of my specific electric vehicle. As with gasoline-powered vehicles, there is wide variation in build quality and design details with electric vehicles. I’m going to stick to the things that are really about the EV experience, specifically.

First off, fueling my electric car has been much, much cheaper than fueling a gasoline-powered vehicle. Even with gasoline prices being as (subjectively) good as they are right now, recharging my electric car at home is dramatically cheaper. Now, if you don’t have a way to charge an electric car at home, charging would become very inconvenient and I would not recommend that you switch to electric until, perhaps, the Aptera comes out, but even then, it would depend on how you expect to use your vehicle. However, even if you could only use public chargers, you probably wouldn’t spend more on fuel than you do now, and EV’s produce significantly less carbon, stink, and noise than gasoline vehicles.

Electric vehicles are more expensive to buy than gasoline-powered, but the savings I get from charging my car at home made up for that difference before the car was a year old. That includes the cost of buying and setting up a charger in my garage.

In terms of convenience, charging at home is much more convenient than fueling up at a gas station. We usually end up taking a trip about once every two months that requires using a public charger. I prefer that to gassing up once a week at a public gas station (with an important caveat that I’ll cover below). In addition, I’m spending much less time and money on getting my vehicle serviced. Quite literally, the only service for the first 50,000 miles is getting the tires rotated. The most convenient car service is no car service.

The performance of an electric vehicle leaves gasoline vehicles in the dust. Even a budget EV is going to have better acceleration than most sporty gas cars. For example, a Dodge Charger with either the SXT or GT trim has approximately the same 0-60 time as a Chevy Bolt. The launch edition Aptera will have a 0-60 time of 4 seconds, which is faster than a Maserati Ghibli S Q4 and many other high-end sports cars. The 0-60 on the quickest Tesla is 2.3 seconds! The top speed on an EV is typically far enough above the US highway speed limit that it doesn’t matter. When I have to drive my gasoline vehicle to work, it makes me feel sad. It is also less safe because accelerating into traffic is dramatically more difficult with a gasoline vehicle. If you spend enough on a gas car to get decent acceleration, you’re into the financial territory of an EV but with added complication and expense.

Public charging does have a problem, though. If you are making a long drive on a peak travel day, like right around Thanksgiving or Christmas (so the chargers will be busier than usual), and if the weather is cold (which makes charging take a lot longer), then it is going to take a very long time to get charged up at the public charger. It usually takes me a total of about 20 minutes to charge at a public charger, but on a cold, busy day, it has taken as much as 45 minutes when you combine waiting for a charger to be available with the amount of time the actual charge takes. This particular issue might improve as Tesla continues to make their charge network more accessible to other EV’s, but right now it is a real problem. A workaround could be arranging for a charger in a garage at the other end of your journey (i.e., at the house of the relative who hosts holidays for your family), taking your other vehicle for such trips (the average US household has more cars than drivers), or renting a vehicle; none of those are convenient or accessible enough to call a “solution”.

What I cannot speak to is what life would be like if you had an electric vehicle and a way to charge it in your driveway, but not a garage. I suspect that in very cold weather, this would not work well (due to very low charge speed and snow getting in the vehicle’s charge port), but that is only a suspicion. The fact that a charger and a garage appear to be important accessories for your electric vehicle means that it is likely that electric car ownership will be something that only middle class and wealthy people can really participate in, and that is likely to be harmful in the long run for people with less money. Of course, it would be nice if car ownership were optional in the US, but it is not.

If you are planning to buy an electric vehicle, then the approach to home charging that I recommend is to install a 240 volt outlet in your garage (probably a NEMA 14-50, but shop around for chargers before making a decision on that) rather than trying to hard-wire the charger. Even though the maximum charge speed will be less with a plugged charger, you probably will not need that slightly higher speed, and you’ll gain ease of charger install and replacement. Installing a 240 volt outlet is probably something you should leave to an expert (adding a circuit is dangerous, and wiring for 240 volts is a little more complicated than 120) but if you can do it yourself (or have a friend help), you will save a lot of money. Chargers typically have at least 20 feet of cable, but you’ll want to plan the location of that outlet carefully.

Leftists note a strong historical tendency of liberal democracy to lead to fascism, and the US appears to be undergoing such a transition currently. What is it about a liberal democracy that leads to fascism?

1. Liberal democracies uphold the hierarchy of wealth as a valid hierarchy, in contrast to traditional hierarchies (based on, for example, race, gender, or religion) which they see as invalid.
2. Since the hierarchy of wealth as seen as valid, owners of capital are allowed to amass great power relative to working class people.
3. Once a small minority of people holds massive power over everyone else, they are able to leverage that power to control the democracy itself, making it an anocracy. The correct term for those people is “elites”.
4. This massive power differential between the elites and working class people creates an environment of increasing dissatisfaction among working class people as well as material deprivation regarding necessities like food and housing.

The typical response of the elites to these conditions is to:

1. Deny that there is a problem with material conditions (i.e., the economy). The Democratic Party did this just the other day: They tweeted out the results of a survey that asked respondents about current economic conditions and labeled responses that indicated dissatisfaction with the US economic climate as “wrong”. While their statistics were probably accurate, they were certainly misleading (e.g., there’s been a substantial improvement in the financial position of upper middle class and wealthy people since Biden took office and that drags the median up, even while blue-collar workers are experiencing a worsening crisis). Typically, they will also try to get working class people to compare themselves to citizens of some other nation (typically, a country suffering under the yoke of empire; i.e., conditions caused by our own country’s elites) and make the argument that working class people here are comparatively well-off. Part of this is response involves subtle propaganda, like a piece I saw a while back about a 20-something couple and the trendy-looking apartment they had purchased in New York City (here’s another one I found with a quick googling); without any explanation as to how young people could afford something so expensive, the (intended) implicit message is that young people are doing fine financially even though the typical young American is not. See also: “They are eating avocados.“
2. Deny that there are elites. They will literally laugh at you if you use the word and then go on a bizarre, rambling monologue about democracy, the complexity of the real world, and the rewards of “hard work” while strongly implying that you are a crazed conspiracy theorist. A strategy of the Democrats is to say that they are not elitists, but rather than they believe in doing what “the experts” say (a kind of technocracy); it’s just that the experts always seem to say that the path which benefits the elites is the right one. Meanwhile, the elites are not a conspiracy theory because they aren’t even hiding what they are doing.
3. Provide bread and circuses. The circuses would be entertainment media, and Americans are awash in entertainments, plus the economic relationship between the US and China means that Americans can afford the devices required to receive those entertainments more than they can afford food. The US economy is set up in such a way that tasty but harmful foods are relatively cheap (thus creating a correlation between poverty and obesity), but right now, all food prices are very high. Both of these strategies are at a breaking point because the elites want to provide these metaphorical opiates (and literal ones, too!) but they want the working class to pay for their own subjugation, and working class people are running out of credit and cash. Moreover, trashy food and pointless entertainment does not provide a rewarding, meaningful life and adds to the dissatisfaction of the working class.

Those are not responses from the elites that would improve conditions or even bolster stability. In fact, there’s nothing that would help the situation that the elites are willing to do. For example, they could:

1. Aid working class people in gaining more control over their workplaces and working conditions by, for example, supporting unions.
2. Provide enough pay to working class people to allow them to thrive.
3. Use the massive wealth of the elites to fund projects that benefit all instead of making working class people pay for them and letting the elites pay nothing in taxes.
4. Stop creating environmental conditions that harm working class people.
5. Nationalize industries (like healthcare) that provide a collective benefit in a way that reduces costs and simplifies the process of receiving services (e.g., instead of Obamacare/ACA, which benefited private health insurance companies more than working class people, they could have let anyone buy into Medicare; aka, Medicare for Anyone).

In the case of current-day America, the elites are neoliberals and are best represented by the core of the Democratic Party and the left edge of the Republican Party. Far-right Republicans (i.e., fascists) see opportunity in the failures of the elites, and throw out various non-solutions that further the cause of fascism:

1. They claim that the government itself is the problem, and attempt to flatten progressive taxes (like income tax) by lowering the tax rate on the most wealthy and, through a mostly-hidden sleight of hand, increasing taxes on the middle class (e.g., the Trump tax cuts expired for middle-class people, but did not expire for the very wealthy), while also attempting to increase the amount of government revenue from regressive taxes, like sales tax. When successful, this increases material problems for working class people and provides the elites with even more power.
2. Again, because “government is the problem”, they will attempt to privatize functions of government or sabotage government functions that are working well. For example, Trump put a man who owns a private delivery service in charge of the US postal service, and that man has sabotaged it (Biden did not remove him!). Republicans are always trying to privatize Social Security (a program with nearly universal approval), which would mean putting those funds under the control of private investment bankers. When successful, this strategy takes power away from the government and puts it directly into the hands of the elites, giving them more power (though it sacrifices the plausible deniability of having the government do your dirty work for you).
3. They “invoke acute hatred against some hapless minority groups, treating them as the ‘enemy within’ in a narrative of aggressive hypernationalism, and attribute all the existing social ills of the ‘nation’ to the presence of such groups” (from Neoliberalism and Fascism by Prabhat Patnaik) and then attempt to create legislation that reflects the logic of that narrative (e.g., ending protection of minority groups, or criminalizing the existence of a minority group). All elites, whether fascist or neoliberal, benefit from this ruse in the short term; in the longer term, a frenzy of murder tends to destabilize a nation and can result in a change to the power structure that threatens the power of current elites.

The intent of these fascist responses is to replace legitimate villains and complaints with those that are nonsensical. It is not typically designed to attribute legitimate complaints to nonsensical villains because that risks someone figuring out who the real villains are. So, for example, fascists would prefer something like, “The Jews (nonsensical villain) are instituting Cultural Marxism, which will make your children trans (nonsensical complaint),” rather than, “The Jews (nonsensical villain) are using capitalism to siphon wealth away from working class people (legitimate complaint),” because if you examine who is using capitalism to siphon wealth away from working class people, you would see that it is not any one ethnic group but rather an economic class (the very wealthy) and system (capitalism). So, importantly, the fascist response protects capitalism. Fascists intend to eventually use the power of capitalism in their favor, and they always favor capitalism if their side controls the capital. This is why the essence of fascism is “complete unreason” — the agitation of the people must be fully misdirected toward nonsense to accomplish the fascist’s goals.

The elite response to fascism is very interesting. From a normal, ethical, working-class perspective, fascism is very alarming, but from the perspective of the elites, fascism is a helpful tool toward maintaining control of society. It is the left that is truly terrifying to the elites; only the left denies them a strategy for maintaining minority control of society (the minority in this case is specifically very wealthy people). As a result, the elites respond to fascism by:

1. Going through the motions of opposing fascism without taking any kind of action fitting the scale and velocity of the threat. See, for example, the very slow, by-the-books prosecution of Donald Trump’s many crimes. We all know that the Biden administration controls the CIA and FBI, don’t we? Consider, in contrast, how executive branch institutions have historically come down on the left with speed, precision, and mercilessness. If Trump were a leftist, they would imprison him immediately — partially to induce attacks from his supporters so they could implement open warfare and slaughter the supporters; but he’s a fascist, so they continue to let him make terrorist threats against government officials.
2. Encouraging everyone to adhere to a strict policy of non-violence. (Violence creates chaos that can change power structures, which they explicitly do not want.) See, for example, everything the Democrats say, and the book Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict by Chenoweth and Stephan. Does civil resistance work to change power structures? No. Never. At best, it can only succeed in forcing the existing power structure to change some detail of how it functions, and usually only temporarily.
3. Equating the threat of the left to the threat of fascism. The purpose of this is to shift the balance of public opinion against the left so it never appears to be a solution to the larger problem of liberalism; i.e., if Democrats oppose both, and Republicans only oppose the left, the balance is against the left.
4. Engaging in debate with fascism over the details of their hatred against various hapless minority groups; for example, when the fascists say that trans people are pedophiles who threaten our children and must be destroyed, elites might explain that actually, biological gender is very complicated, and trans people are less likely than cis individuals to do sex crimes. That’s all very nice, but now we are engaging with a fascist which creates the illusion that their ideas are worthy of consideration (rather than an active hallucination).

There are two important results to all these facts:

1. Elites want to support fascism just enough to be beneficial but then put the brakes on it before it turns into an orgy of violence. The coming fascist dictatorship in the US is likely to be horribly oppressive, but might not include widespread extrajudicial murder. It needs to be orderly and relatively “nonviolent” (i.e., with violence that is ultimately directed by elites and their agents [police] and not at elites) to serve their purposes. In addition to the direct benefit to elites of limiting chaos, this kind of control also allows them to continue to villainize any defensive leftist violence (and thus the left itself); such violence is necessarily extralegal and would be punished more than violence initiated by fascists.
2. Is voting for the Democrats really a solution? To anything? It seems like a vote for a Democrat is really just a vote to put off fascism a little bit longer rather than a vote for the opposite of fascism. The opposite of fascism is leftism — a fun fact that most Americans can no longer understand thanks to a decades-long propaganda campaign against, in essence, democracy. Voting for a Democrat is not the same as voting for democracy; what Americans call “left vs. right” is truly not that at all — what they call “left” is a near-fascist neoliberal order, and “right” is a squarely fascist, traditional order. Every time the Democrats have had an opportunity to move the country left, they have paused dramatically and done nothing. The most egregious example would be the 4 months that the Democratic Party had total control of both houses of Congress and the presidency (yes, it was technically only 4 months) but chose to use that advantage to pass the Affordable Care Act, a repackaging of a proposal from the right-wing Heritage Foundation that bolstered private insurance, instead of just letting Americans buy into Medicare at a break-even rate or doing something more substantial, like fixing the tax code or the Constitution. What could the left have done with those 4 months?

The comparison of liberalism to fascism is mostly hyperbole — except when it isn’t. There this saying on the left that liberals are opposed to genocide except for the current genocide and support social movements except the current social movement. In essence, liberalism tends to allow or even encourage things that would otherwise be considered fascism as long as those actions are directed against poor people who threaten the liberal order or worldview, then, later on, they celebrate successful movements and pretend they were always on the right side of history.

For example, the US liberal order needs Israel as a military stronghold to keep oil-rich Arab nations in line, so it will support genocidal actions of the Israeli government up and to the point where those actions might destabilize the region, thus threatening the flow of oil. Their genocidal actions will be justified and minimized, whereas the actions of poorer people that threaten US interests (by threatening Israel) will be condemned and exaggerated.

In the same vein, the US and its allies decided to go to war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1990 because his invasion of Kuwait gave him control of 20% of the world’s oil reserves — not for any other reason. Ultimately, well over a million people died to ostensibly protect the Kuwaiti government — a monarchy. Today, the government of Iraq is a democracy on the surface, but the CPA (the official representatives of western colonial powers that defeated Iraq) has the right to veto any legislation the government produces.

Another example would be how homeless people are treated by major liberal metropolitan areas. The existence of homeless people is prima facie evidence that neoliberalism has failed; though the issue is complex, the much longer explanation ends with: neoliberalism has failed. As a result, homeless people have to be villainized, hidden, and terrorized.

Yet another example is the Democratic Party’s fixation on “creating jobs” and, in particular, their insistence on solving the problem of working people needing to care for their children by proposing that the government pay strangers to take care of our children rather than just giving people who want to be full-time mothers to their own children a salary. The liberal approach converts children from people to be loved and nurtured into future labor resources to be grown up like wheat or rice. They wish to force everyone into the liberal paradigm — where all work becomes a transactional component of capitalism — with the threat of homelessness and starvation for those who refuse to comply or cannot comply. How is that not violence? (It is.)

Finally, we can talk about John Brown, the man who had to oppose both the racist slavers of the south (equivalent to today’s Republicans) and the complacent liberals of the north (equivalent to today’s Democrats). Now, of course, liberals are on the side of freeing the slaves, but at the time, they refused to do anything about it because it was too inconvenient and scary, and gosh, those slavers do make some good points about their property rights and the economy. Plus, they were racist, just less overtly racist than southerners (Lincoln himself saw freed slaves as a problem, and favored deporting them even 4 days before his death). The real abolitionists (like John Brown) were the equivalent of today’s leftists.

“Scratch a liberal and fascist bleeds.”

But — you know — don’t forget to, “Vote blue no matter who.”

Notes

Medicare for Anyone is substantially complicated in this article at HealthInsurance.org, but the article does a nice job of explaining the political situation around health insurance in the US. A simpler solution would be to allow anyone to buy into Medicare at a reasonable rate without any kind of overall subsidy (i.e., this portion of Medicare would not be subsidized as a program, but individual cost would vary according to ability to pay). Then, it would become a contest between government, which lacks the overhead of needing to produce profits to give to shareholders, and private industry, which is supposedly extremely efficient, but really is not. The more people who signed up for Medicare, the more the insurance risk would be spread out, and the cheaper Medicare would become; private insurance would become a historical curiosity from a past, barbaric age. The key here is that Medicare lacks the profit motive, making it inherently less expensive and more oriented toward customer care (rather than producing profits) but that if I’m wrong about that, this solution would allow the private insurance industry to prove itself and continue unabated.

Thanks to Spoonermeme, I recently learned that Columbia’s mayor, Barbara Buffaloe has flown all the way to Dubai to attend the UN’s 28th climate change conference. As Spoonermeme pointed out, Columbia, Missouri is a city that can’t even figure out recycling but it is spending many thousands of dollars to send their mayor to a climate conference. (The flight alone is over 18 hours and costs over $3000.) Certainly, Barbara could stand to get some education regarding climate change; we know she’s seriously lacking because she got on the radio shortly after being elected and bragged about how the city’s sustainability office made no substantive changes to the city during her time running it. However, she is unlikely to receive any schooling from COP28 because the entire affair has been conquered by fossil fuel magnates.

I hate to ever say that conservatives were right, but I’m about to in just a minute.

If you are not familiar with Dubai, it is a city in the United Arab Emirates, which is located between Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. The United Arab Emirates’ oil and natural gas reserves are the world’s sixth and seventh-largest, respectively, but the UAE has also diversified into tourism, with Dubai specifically having become an international tourist destination. People go there to shop. It is a beautiful dystopia based on feeding the insatiable hungers of the world’s richest people.

For years, conservatives have been saying that environmentalism is a cover for globalism, and although they tend to be a tragically misinformed about the details, that is exactly what global elites wanted and with COP28, that dream appears to have bee fulfilled. Let me define a few words, though. The word “globalism” doesn’t mean a global Jewish/Satanic/communist conspiracy. The globalism is global capitalism, and the globalists are the very, very rich who have subverted democracy by decoupling themselves from the rule of nation states. These globalists are completely opposed to communism and while they may play at having deeper ideologies, their real ideology is domination through exorbitant wealth. They certainly use the language of the welfare state to justify their reign, but they never deliver on using the power of government to solve the problems of ordinary citizens.

The president of this year’s COP is Sultan al-Jaber, the chair of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), which pumped 2.7m barrels of oil a day in 2021, with plans to double that by 2027. The science of climate change is quite explicit about the fact that human survival depends on reducing the total output of carbon released immediately, and then going a step further to removing carbon from the atmosphere (a feat that no one currently knows how to accomplish in a way that results in net carbon reduction). In the context of the science, Adnoc’s plan to double production by 2027 is not only absurd but something beyond genocidal.

COP28 has the bigger carbon footprint than the previous 27 COP conferences owing to the fact that they invited a record 400,000 people to attend, including Columbia’s own fully useless mayor.

With COP28 having been taken over by the pro-fossil-fuel and pro-greed globalists, the heart of meaningful climate action has been conquered. Predictably, COP28 participants have pledged to increase the percentage of energy that comes from renewables without a hard commitment to reducing the production of fossil fuels. This fits perfectly with the track record of globalism which uses renewable energy as a way to facilitate economic growth (and greater profits) rather than as a replacement for carbon-emitting fossil fuels. Even if the ratio of renewables to carbon-based energy reached 99:1, the ratio means nothing if the absolute amount of carbon fuels burned has increased, yet this ratio is all neoliberal governments like the City of Columbia have to brag about, so that’s what they do.

Some governments who are attending COP28 plan to use nuclear power to offset use of coal and other fossil fuels to produce electricity. That’s fine now, but when the larger scheme of globalism falls apart and we no longer have the resources to maintain those reactors, they will become a significant hazard for the future, as will their significant waste materials.

So there we are are. Meaningful climate action has been conquered by capitalist globalism and clowns like Barbara Buffaloe have gone all the way to Dubai, mostly to shop because nothing else of substance is going to happen there.

Links Cited

Dubai is a Parody of the 21st Century (Adam Something; YouTube)

Spoonermeme post about Barbara Buffaloe and COP28 (Spoonermeme; Instagram)

(AUDIO): Columbia Mayor-Elect Barbara Buffaloe appears on 939 the Eagle’s “Wake Up Columbia”

Sultan al-Jaber: A quick guide to the COP28 president (BBC)

Top 5 Reasons Carbon Capture And Storage (CCS) Is Bogus (Peter Hart and Mark Schlosberg; Food and Water Watch)

Cop28 will have the biggest carbon footprint in the event’s history after UAE invited a record 400,000 people to attend (James Reynolds; Daily Mail)

Countries promise clean energy boost at COP28 to push out fossil fuels (Kate Abnett, Valerie Volcovici and David Stanway; Reuters)

What would happen if a nuclear reactor was suddenly abandoned (in a post-apocalyptic scenario)? (Caulley Johnson; Quora)

Long-term nuclear waste storage messages (Wikipedia)

UN warns Earth ‘firmly on track toward an unlivable world’ (Frank Jordans and Seth Borenstein; Associated Press)

Survival of the Richest (Douglas Rushkoff; Medium)

Related: Bidenism and the End of the World

Related: The Washington Post is very worried that American women don’t want to marry Trump supporters by Dartagnan (Daily Kos)

So, as you may have read in the above article, the Washington Post is very worried that American women don’t want to marry Trump supporters. It’s essentially one of neoliberalism’s common anxieties — that something will happen to disrupt or slow down the production of labor resources. Since “the economy” is sacred to the cult of neoliberalism, they naturally conclude that women are just going to have to hold their noses and make babies with misogynists. The Washington Post is perhaps the most neoliberal news source there is, so of course that’s how they see the issue.

But is the problem really with the women who don’t want to be bound to people who hate them? Could it be the men, possibly, that are the problem? I have some questions for the men:

Fellas, is it gay to be clean?
Is it gay to be educated?
Is it gay to like women?

Yes, there’s a crisis of masculinity in America. Unfortunately, those who are most concerned about it have decided to blame all the wrong people and factors.

American men are less educated than women, more likely to become drug or alcohol addicts, less likely to have meaningful relationship, less likely to contribute to society, and more likely to kill themselves — and it is only getting worse. Republicans want to blame “the woke mind virus” and propose that the solution is preventing young people from voting, preventing women from voting, marrying girls off to adult men at the age of 14, defunding public education, and literally killing liberals — among other profoundly evil ideas.

Traditional conservative culture is so vehemently opposed to education — to knowing anything — that it has decided that education itself is feminine, or even “effeminate”; i.e., it is gay to be educated. Since it is OK for women and girls to be effeminate, we’ve ended up in a strange place where boys have been convinced that they should reject education and instead pursue things like sports, video games, and simple, raw aggression because it is more important for them to assert their masculinity through dominance than it is to know anything or to be a useful member of society. Once upon a time, women were barred from attending college, but now that education is gay, they account for 60% of college graduates, and the gap between men and women completing college looks like it will continue to widen.

Women even graduate high school at a higher rate than men in America.

Despite the claims from Republicans that liberalism is turning everyone gay, most people continue to be heterosexuals (functionally speaking). American men are far more likely to be conservative, and the incomes of younger men (those of reproductive age) are trending down relative to women (thanks to education being gay), and as a result, those men often find themselves in an awkward situation where they cannot find a romantic partner who makes less money than them — and having a partner who makes more than them makes them feel submissive. Feeling submissive is the worst feeling a conservative man can have; they see it as, essentially, being gay.

I should clarify a couple of things. First off, yes, American men, generally, still get paid more than American women on average — but men’s wages are trending down while women’s are trending up and that is a direct result of the trend in education. In 16 cities, young women already make more than young men. And yes, 73% of the seats on Congress are held by men — but those are old men — often very, very old men (Who is in charge in this clip of Mitch McConnell?). This crisis of masculinity is one that is concentrated in younger people — and everyone agrees on that point. It seems unlikely that education will cease to be a predictor of salary, and unless that happens, this trend will continue. Second, if you haven’t guessed yet, I’m a leftist and I don’t care what your sexual orientation is as long as you are having a nice time and treating other people with respect. When I’m saying things are “gay” I mean it with the utmost sarcasm and an ample helping of disdain for people who care about the sexual orientation of others.

Now, the next problem is that — if you are a manly, dominant, traditional man — you cannot like things that are feminine… because that would be gay. You’re supposed to want to have sex with women, but also dislike everything about women, because women are feminine. You are also required to dislike women who are not feminine enough because they are violating traditional values and culture.

(If you think you are a conservative man, but you disagree with all this, please look around you at your fellow conservative men, and I think you’ll see what I’m talking about.)

The possibilities for a man like this are very limited. He’s very unlikely to have a job that pays well, and most women will find him to be a risky proposition for a relationship, particularly since he obviously doesn’t like women. If he is one of the ones who literally thinks cleaning themselves is gay, things will be even worse. If he can keep from being homeless, he’s likely to be surviving off someone else’s money — his parents, a friend, or maybe a woman that he likely resents. He’s completely demoralized, and that makes him the perfect target for right-wing propaganda. (As of January of this year, over 7 million men of working age had dropped out of the workforce.)

Since the only kind of woman that a man who hates women can attract is a woman who hates men, the opinion that conservative men have of women continues to drop like a rock while their taste in women becomes more and more absurd. There’s an entire industry now of conservative men interviewing toxic women on social media and telling them that they are are lazy gold diggers and/or worthless because they are not virgins. Do you remember when right wingers were in love with Taylor Swift? The year was 2017. Yeah, she just wasn’t perfect enough, and now it is just 6 years later, and she’s the devil, apparently.

American men are in a downward spiral that will end in either the destruction of the United States as a world economic power or a matriarchy similar to the “Raising Gazorpazorp” episode of Rick and Morty. I’m only exaggerating a little. This situation is 100% the fault of conservative parents, and I do not think there’s a nice way out of it.

Neoliberals, meanwhile, strongly recommend that American women take one for the team in order to keep the economy going. “Both sides” are idiots.

Related: Young women earn more than men in 16 U.S. cities by Emily Peck (Axios) I disagree with Marianne Cooper on the detail of whether this trend will continue as women get older; the trend is that women are also holding more and more leadership positions as well.

Related: States With the Highest Percentage of Female Top Executives by Chris Gilligin (US News and World Report)

Related: Why America Has a Crisis of Masculinity by Derek Thompson, The Ringer, September 2022
‘Of Boys and Men’ author Richard Reeves talks male voting habits, educational success, and what the future of masculinity looks like

Related: The male college crisis is not just in enrollment, but completion by Richard B. Reeves and Ember Smith, The Brookings Institution, October 2021

Related: What’s the Matter with Men? by Andrees Kahloon, The New Yorker, January 2023