brainiac conspiracy

Can't Wait For Civil War 2.0

And man, is it gonna be some kind of awesome.

This is why it was such a tactical mistake for the Feds to back down in Nevada last week---because it's only going to embolden the yahoos to engage in further provocations. It's like this: a large plurality---maybe even a majority?---of white men in America are certifiably insane, and one of the characteristics of their derangement is the fetishization of armed insurrection against their own government. These people get off on this fantasy, so best to snuff it out before it gains any momentum, and yes, by force if necessary. In isolation, these people are harmless. Give them a chance to mobilize, however, and we've got a serious problem on our hands. Just trying to be helpful!

---Baron V

Nothing Happens in a Vacuum

Well, the serious persons are assuring us thus morning that a debt deal is a fait accompli and we can all go back to being good little wage slaves and not worry about the global economy cratering. I'll believe it when I see the votes---and will be happy to be proved wrong if it happens!---but whether we are headed for Armageddon or not, it's not a bad idea to reflect on recent history (which we're not terribly good at) to see if we can't learn how we reached this crazy state of affairs. Because the Crazy People Who Nearly Destroyed Everything did not materialize out of thin air when America elected a black guy to lead the country---they're the predictable outcome of a long-running performance-art project that's been orchestrated, and enabled, by some of our nation's most awful human beings. So if this disaster-that-maybe-wasn't ends up as a teachable moment, and the serious persons finally accept the fact that both sides don't always do it, and that there is not an ideological or tactical equivalence between Team Democrat and Team Taliban, then perhaps the events of the past couple of weeks will have worked, long term, to the benefit of the commonweal. I'm not holding my breath on it, though.

---Baron V

When You Stand Up To a Gang of Bullies and Crackpots

You might just find that voters approve.

And to think it only took the grown-ups in the room four and a half years to figure it out.

---Baron V

Yes, They Will Get Crazier

Because they they have no incentive whatsoever to de-crazify themselves. In fact, they have every reason to do the exact opposite, what with respected establishment media outlets unquestioningly channeling their ignorance, and framing their arguments as just another set of informed opinions to be weighed against equally valid "liberal" views instead of labeling them, accurately, as crazy talk. Since we can no longer rely upon an independent news media to act as a responsible filter, and since the serious persons of official Washington seem incapable of acknowledging that roughly half of its members are insane, it will be up to voters to decide whether we shall be governed by the nutjobs---and the blessings of freedom they provide us---or whether our government should be placed in the hands of sober and rational actors. Demographic shifts strongly suggest the latter, of course, but the crazies have a lot of money behind them---and very soon, they will have even more money behind them!---and in a nation that worships money as much as ours, it probably means that they will continue to be accorded all manner of respect by our leading media outlets. Wish I could offer a more optimistic forecast, but considering how "Republicans Question Health Risks of Salmonella" has become a staple of political journalism in this country, it's hard to come to any other conclusion.

---Baron V

21st-Century Secessionists

Don't think it's a huge leap of faith to predict that this is how history will ultimately judge the hillbilly Hayeks---and, like their 19th-Century forbears, there is likely no way to bring their antics to a conclusion until voters stage their own March to The Sea over the course of three or four election cycles. And even then, we know they'll never completely go away because they have, among other things, friends with deep pockets and an extensive media apparatus to gird their loins once they've been consigned to the political wilderness. It's also a good reason why Team Democrat needs to be ready to MINT THE DAMN COIN instead of waiting for them to come to their senses. As history teaches, it ain't gonna happen until it's been beaten out of them. And yes, we know that the President doesn't like to play politics this way, but so far as we know, nether did Abe Lincoln.

---Baron V

It's Not a Question of "If"

But "when."

Of course they are going to vote to impeach the President, and they are simply waiting to recapture the Senate next year so they can drag the Republic through a full-throated show trial with the Chief Justice presiding. Barring that, they'll stage some symbolic vote in the House as they've done repeatedly with the Affordable Care Act. But it's going to happen, and it has little to do with the President. It has almost everything to do, on the other hand, with the fact that one of the two major political parties in America no longer recognizes the legitimacy of the other party---which is to say, the legitimacy of two-party government. It's like Hamas and the Israelis. This also explains why it was always, and still is, foolish for the President to attempt any kind of compromise with Team Republican. That's because bomb-throwers waging ideological jihad don't do compromise.

This isn't your father's Republican Party. It's not even Ronald Reagan's Republican Party. It's a party of the crazy, by the crazy, and for the crazy. And that's why they'll eventually vote to impeach the President. Because it's crazy, and so are they.

---Baron V

Not a Scandal

We can blame Team Republican all we want for being such nasty little obstructionists, but Team Democrat could have---and still could now---remove the impediment anytime they wanted to with a simply majority vote. You want a real scandal, from my perch in the monkey cage, it's the reality that Senate Democrats have allowed themselves to be ruled by incompetents who keep insisting that the crazy people will stop acting crazy if we only cut another deal with them, only to discover, after the fact, that the crazy people are, well, still crazy. You want to get those presidential appointments confirmed, then do what it takes to confirm the appointments because it's been obvious for years that the bomb-throwers will never declare a truce.

---Baron V

Another Round of Golf Should Take Care of it

I sincerely hope that the President's various outreach campaigns to win the hearts and minds of the crazy people aren't being put on the taxpayer's dime. Basically, they're a total waste of money and time because---in case he hasn't noticed yet---the crazy people are still, well, crazy, and they will always be crazy because it's their pathology. So hey, Mr. President, follow the example of your FaceTwit friends and stop feeding the goddamn trolls. Better yet, spend a little more time telling this guy to do his job.

---Baron V

We Still Have Serious Problems With Unemployment, Health Care, Education, Infrastructure, Income Inequality and Climate Change

But Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi.

Our political culture is not the only thing in Washington that's broken. The people charged with explaining politics and policy to us can no longer distinguish the difference between news and nonsense. Why don't we just dispense with the formalities and proceed to the impeachment vote?

---Baron V

Lies, Lying Liars, Conservative Provocateurs

Remember all the in-depth front-page profiles the Times has run over the years on lefty bloggers like Markos and Digby and Atrios, and liberal broadcasters like Randi Rhodes and Thom Hartmann?

Funny. Neither do I.

Snark aside, it never ceases to amaze how America's Paper of Record lavishes its attentions on a seemingly endless media roster of race-baiters, fabricators, psychotics and conspiracy-mongers---to which we can now add a professional character assassin like Goldfarb---while completely ignoring voices on the other side of the aisle whose public pronouncements might not make for such snappy copy but who are generally, well, not liars or charlatans or serial fabricators. Matter of fact, there was a time when being a liar, charlatan or serial fabricator was sufficient grounds for banishment from all but the most extreme margins of public discourse, but of course, we don't live in those times anymore. Still, it is always useful to remind people like Bill Keller that their media outlets' publishing standards

used to be different. You never heard the late Walter Cronkite taking time on the evening news to "debunk" claims that a proposed mental health clinic in Alaska is actually a dumping ground for right-wing critics of the president's program, or giving the people who made those claims time to explain themselves on the air. The media didn't adjudicate the ever-present underbrush of American paranoia as a set of "conservative claims" to weigh, horse-race-style, against liberal claims. Back then, a more confident media unequivocally labeled the civic outrage represented by such discourse as "extremist"---out of bounds [...]

Good thing our leaders weren't so cowardly in 1964, or we would never have passed a civil rights bill---because of complaints over the provisions in it that would enslave whites.

---Baron V

It's a FrankenParty Now

Seems as though we've heard this narrative (or some variant of it) for the last four or five election cycles: Specifically, that the responsible members of the GOP "establishment" are rushing in to regain control of the sandbox and save the party from the crazy people who Republican voters keep nominating for office. Even if true, however, it's hard to see how it succeeds when the party's core beliefs are, well, crazy. Yes, non-crazy Republicans can sometimes win elections for high office (Romney, Christie), but they are the outliers; after spending five decades cultivating a voter base that firmly believes that a clump of embryonic stem cells is the same thing as a baby, that creationism is as scientifically valid as evolutionary biology, and that Democrats employ a private army of black militants and undocumented immigrants to steal elections, they simply can't execute a volte-face and expect the rubes to follow them unquestioningly. The fixers might do Realpolitik, but that won't play with a group of people who have been taught to embrace the party platform as Holy Writ. I mean, how do you convince your supporters to compromise with Democrats when you've sent the last 50 years claiming that they're the agents of the Antichrist? The Machiavellian pragmatists like Rove and Armey may wring their hands in dismay, but in the end, they'll go wherever the grifting is the most lucrative---and generally, that's the camp that's marketing the most intoxicating snake oil.

---Baron V

Compromising With Crackpothood

At this point in our history, I'll never understand how anyone still believes this shit:

Doesn’t compromise mean setting aside one’s principles? It can, but it need not. The core responsibility of every representative is to support only those initiatives that he or she conscientiously believes will promote the good of the country. During times of deep division, compromise is especially hard: it will require each individual to endorse a package that includes elements that he or she regards as bad public policy. A compromise becomes possible when all parties conclude that despite its defects, it represents an improvement over the status quo and helps solve a pressing problem.

That is the core of the change of new attitude we need among committed partisans of all stripes: it is not unprincipled, but on the contrary honorable, to accept a hard compromise that promotes the national interest and the common good.

If you can tell me how you can compromise with people who believe that a zygote is the same thing as a baby, that the planet is less than 10,000 years old, that global warming is a liberal hoax, that rapists are incapable of impregnating their victims, that Barney Frank and poor black people caused the housing bubble crisis, that public schools are socialist indoctrination camps, that single-payer health care promotes euthanasia, that the solution to mass shootings is to hand every American an AR-15 at birth, and that the President of the United States is a closet Muslim who is conspiring with the United Nations to confiscate all of their guns so he can impose a North Korean-style dictatorship upon them, well, fine, just tell me how it's done and we'll try to cut a deal. There's just one caveat: our current President has been trying to do exactly that for the last two years. It hasn't gone over well.

Honestly, I don't know what it is with these American Unity Theater 3000 types---why they can't bring themselves to acknowledge that one of our major political parties in Washington has gone collectively insane over the last four decades and can never be bargained with rationally as it is currently constituted because it is not being run by rational-thinking people. There is an alternative, of course, and that is for the non-crazy people to ignore the crazy people altogether when formulating policy. No, it would not be "bipartisan"---if bipartisanship means consulting crazy people for bad advice---but it would promote smarter policy. And isn't that what serious persons like Bill Galston want?

---Baron V

Random Thought II

Always hoping that cooler heads prevail, but does anyone else have a sinking feeling that something unconscionable is going to have to happen in this country before the crazy people are shamed/stunned into silence? Not sure what it would be, exactly, but I am guessing something akin to Waco or Oklahoma City, where some militia types seize a government building, or seal off a small town, and start slaughtering the inhabitants for expressly political purposes. Like I said, I hope it never happens, but I'm tending to think that it's only a matter of time before it does. One thing that would certainly help would be for all those "responsible" gun owners out there to start behaving, well, responsibly instead of acting like they're ready to launch a shooting war.

---Baron V

Got an Easy Answer For That

No.

It never ceases to amaze how many members of the pundit class subscribe to the Great Man Theory, i.e., the belief that the tides of history can be magically reversed, and their flow altered, by a single strong leader blessed with singularly clear vision and an iron will. Think Hercules hosing out the Augean stables! In this case, however, no one person---or even a movement---can fix what's wrong with Republicans because the party is like an alcoholic on a three-day bender, refusing to acknowledge that it has a serious problem.

Making it plain: The party and its base have been trending crazier for decades, to the point that now roughly a quarter of the voting-age population is trapped in a kind of manufactured psychosis of voter fraud and death panels and legitimate rape and forced labor camps. No one leader can possibly serve as Therapist-in-Chief to "fix" what's wrong with them. Like drunks in denial, they are going to need to "hit rock bottom" before they ever change their act, and they aren't there yet by a long shot.

---Baron V

Stupid White House Tricks

Unless Team Democrat is going to lay down the law, there is absolutely no point in pursuing this:

Asked specifically what the vice president hoped to hear from the NRA, Carney stressed that the White House "doesn't want to prejudge any recommendations that any stakeholders would present."

Carney said that the meeting was "designed to get input" from stakeholders---a sign that the administration is hoping the gun group will present its own recommendations on preventing gun violence.

You'd think after dealing with the banking and insurance industries, they'd have grasped the futility of seeking solutions to problems from the people who are, well, the source of the problems.

Okay, we can at least daydream and imagine for a moment that the Vice President is going to issue a my-way-or-the-highway edict instructing the crazy people to let their hired gunsels on The Hill know that they need to relent on federal waiting-period legislation ere the President start governing by executive order. But the White House has never governed in any fashion to suggest this is going to happen. For whatever reason, they just don't do strong-arm politics. But it would be nice if they did for a change!

---Baron V

Immigration Reform

It really needs to be a top priority for the next administration. Specifically, they need to figure out a way to grant citizenship rights to as many brown people as quickly as possible, and encourage them to have lots of children. That's because a non-white population majority is the only real chance we have of saving the Republic since the reigning majority seems determined to turn it into Somalia:

On EBay Inc.'s auction website, shoppers have recently bid up gun magazines. The current bid for four Glock handgun magazines, ammunition for one of the guns used at Newtown, is $118.37 compared with $45 on the day before the shooting. The bid for seven Glock magazines hit $201 on Dec. 17 from $71.01 before the massacre.

Gun buyers have flooded other firearms retailers too. The Hyatt Gun Shop in Charlotte, North Carolina, racked up more than $1 million in sales yesterday for the best single-day performance since the store opened in 1959, according to Justin Anderson, director of online sales. At the top of shoppers’ lists was the Bushmaster AR-15, the model of rifle used at Newtown that sells for as much as $4,000 and had almost sold out, he said.

---Baron V

Got an Easy Answer For That

No.

For a change of pace, I spent a couple of hours watching Fox last night, with the awesome Laura Ingraham and the even awesomer Liz Cheney subbing for O'Reilly and Hannity, and the topics they discussed with their guests were, in order of importance, Benghazi, Benghazi and Benghazi. You'd think last week's election had never even happened, and that's why no one is going to be able to "reform" this bunch----because they've erected a firewall between themselves and the outside world, and the only way it's going to change is for the firewall to be smashed to bits by an angry electorate. This will require several more humiliating election cycles for them, to the point where their commercial backers realize the brand isn't profitable to market anymore and decide to cut off the spigot. But "voices of reason" from within won't turn the trick, and the real solution for people like David Frum is not to waste time trying to persuade their wayward brethren of the error of their ways but to leave the fucking party in order to accelerate its decline. Because the sooner it's broken, the sooner it can be rebuilt.

---Baron V

Helping Poor People is Bad for The Economy

Might sound kinda cruel, but I'm having a difficult time trying to figure out why anyone would bother publishing an account like this unless it was to advance the argument that governments shouldn't intervene in the marketplace to keep the basics of everyday life affordable to the lower orders because, well, because the local capitalists job creators want more money for their goods than poor people can afford. Now, shortages (and inflation) can be caused by a variety of factors, and price controls can and do contribute to commodity shortages---it happened here during World War II as government requisitioned stuff like coffee and rubber for military use---but they can also yield positive outcomes, i.e., by preventing mass starvation. But since Chavez has been relentlessly pimped by our media and policy elites to become America's Leading Hemispheric Boogeyman whenever Castro croaks, no government policy of his can contribute anything of social utility:

[W]ith inflation so crippling, many shoppers at those stores said the inconvenience was worth it.

“It’s an enormous help,” said Ana Lozano, 62, a retiree who takes in ironing to supplement her pension, who was waiting outside the Santa Rosalía grocery. “That’s why there’s such a long line.”

---Vitelius

Kinda Like Talking to The Cat

This really get to the heart of what's ailing our politics:

According to a 2009 poll by Public Policy Polling, “52% majority of GOP voters nationally think that ACORN stole the Presidential election for Barack Obama last year, with only 27% granting that he won it legitimately.” Conservative commenters are pointing to the indictment as further proof of rampant voter fraud and more evidence of the need for voter ID laws nationwide.

This also explains why it was a completely inexcusable and pointless waste of time for the President to attempt any good-faith negotiations with the opposition party at any time, for any reason, for as long as he was in office. Because a majority of people in the opposition party no longer believes in the legitimacy of our two-party political system. This is kind of, you know, like a big fucking deal.

This should come as no shock to anyone who's been paying attention to the devolution of Republican Party politics in the Limbaugh Era, or to anyone who figured out what was underpinning all of the myriad Clinton pseudo-scandals the Mighty Wurlitzer farted up throughout the 1990s. It's a natural byproduct of an authoritarian mindset, and it has been many decades in the making. I guess for the long term, the question I have is: How much further to the right do the Democrats continue to shift to placate a gang of crazies who view them as traitors before they marginalize themselves into irrelevance? Or will a future Democratic regime (in the House, Senate or elsewhere) halt the slide and finally jerk the party---and our discourse---sharply back to the left where it belongs? I would have expected this to have happened already, starting in 2009, and I don't think this was an unreasonable expectation, then or now, contrary to what some of the President's backers claim. Frankly, I'll go to my grave believing that Americans didn't elect a liberal black man named Hussein in a landslide so they could watch him dithering away half of his term of office negotiating over tax cuts that voters don't care about, and running interference for financial industries that consumers despise---and that's why there's a Tea Party militia in Washington now. Not because Hussein Obama was guilt of liberal overreach, contra the conventional wisdom, but because he ran away from liberalism at too many opportunities, and hence made himself irrelevant to voters who want their elected officials to stand for something they can identify with, whether or not they agree with him on all the particulars.

Where do we go from here? Given the centrality of High Broderism in official Washington, the only reasonable forecast anyone can make---if nothing substantively changes---is that we wake up 20 or 30 years from now to find we're living under a government that very much resembles, say, the government of Mexico, where they have a Constitution and elections, and term-limited Presidents, and competing political parties, and all the appearances of a democracy, but where the country is basically run by a single dominant political party and the 5,000 families who bankroll them and control virtually every facet of the private-sector economy. Sometimes I think we're more than halfway there already.

Yes, I know the coming change in America's racial and cultural demographics don't seem to favor the crackpots. But the demographics in Mexico never seemed to favor the PRI, either, but they've managed to maintain a near-monopolistic grip on power anyway. But one thing that those of us on the left side of the aisle can do is be willing to work for Democratic candidates---like this guy---who understand what we're up against, and withhold our support from Democrats who don't. We may or may not be able to prevent America from turning into Mexico-with-better-wireless-access, but if we can't, at least we can refuse to become accessories to our political marginalization.

Okay, it's 3:30 on the west coast . . . Is it too early to start drinking yet?

---Vitelius

Reality Check

I've said it before, but you still have to wonder how successful the Occupy movement---in its current form, anyway---will ever be at transforming our politics. Or at least when you consider how many members of the 99 Percent are, well, completely insane.

---Vitelius