Monday, December 28, 2020

Divided by Class and Brains

 

You know, just for emphasis: The portion of the population that is working class but which also has the brain structure that produces "conservatism" is a danger to us. They are a separate danger from the oligarchic capitalists but they also reinforce the danger from that class. The oligarchic capitalists use them for their own purposes. But even on their own they would present a danger to us.

You see, there is some truth to the arguments advanced by more cerebral leftist writers that it is counterproductive to write-off a large portion of possible allies as "deplorable" or "stupid." I've said this myself. Several times. A lot of support for conservative political parties arises out of ignorance. These people can be reached. Many ignorant conservative voters aren't inherently racist, mouth-breathing cretins. The people who voted twice for Obama and then voted for Trump did not see the skin colour of the candidates as particularly relevant. (One could argue - and many screeching, entitled Hillary Clinton supporters have done so - that genitalia was an issue in 2016. There is no doubt that sexism was a factor in Clinton's Electoral College loss. But more important was the disappointment with the Democrats among its traditional supporters beginning in 2010, and continuing on to 2016. When Hillary Clinton arrogantly campaigned on the same pro-Wall Street, pro-"Forever Wars" garbage that Obama had governed by, and ... and, well, when she just did everything that she did that discouraged Democrats from turning out on election day, that was the reason she lost.)

Anyhoooooooooo ... some people who vote for conservative parties can be reached. But the hardcore, ... forget about it. 

Let's look at the quote from John Stuart Mill from a couple of posts ago:

“I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party. I know that I am liable to a retort, and an obvious one enough; and as I do not wish to allow any honorable gentleman the credit of making it, I make it myself. It may be said that if stupidity has a tendency to Conservatism, sciolism, or half-knowledge, has a tendency to Liberalism. Something might be said for that, but it is not at all so clear as the other. There is an uncertainty about sciolists; we cannot count upon them; and therefore they are a less dangerous class. But there is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power”

Let's go into it.

“I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative."

Okay? So, you can have an intelligent person with a larger amygdala (propensity to fight or flight over rational thinking) and a greater habit to focus on threats and to interpret things as threatening. This is the basic argument for conservatism; whereas liberals see most people as "improvable" and they see the possibility of progress if people are free to read, think, say, believe what they want to believe, the more articulate conservatives see collective humanity as dangerous, slaves to beastly appetites and urges. It is dangerous to underestimate the selfishness and stupidity of people. Therefore we need a system that regulates people's behaviour, especially with traditional moral codes, traditional religious beliefs, traditional authority. Traditions are important because obeying them is often second-nature and does not require omnipresent coercion. 

One can believe in this baser view of humanity and still be intelligent. However, as I argued in other posts, being stupid can, by itself, make the world seem threatening. You don't understand how things work. You feel lost. You can tell people are making fun of you or regarding you with contempt. You struggle to figure out how the world works, and, being stupid, you take your cues from the edifice of lies produced by self-serving elites. (You know: "Your country/culture is superior to others. You live in a free society. The police officer is your friend. God is real. The businesman gives you jobs. Professional wrestling is real. Immigrants are a threat.") These are the people who tend to vote for conservative parties.

Obviously, some stupid people are fearless, devil-may-care, air-heads. They laugh at their mistakes and the groans of their co-workers. They never stop trusting people. Why can't we all just get along? These types would be more likely to support non-conservative parties. If they vote at all. If they think about it at all. But most stupid people are going to feel threatened by a world they don't understand and most of them tend to vote right-wing.

"Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party."😊🐱‍🚀

Okay? So, if your party attracts the bulk of the stupid people in the community, then it will be the party of the stupid people (as well as the party for its other members, who I'll get to). And this will be a good thing for that party so far as electoral contests go.

"I know that I am liable to a retort, and an obvious one enough; and as I do not wish to allow any honorable gentleman the credit of making it, I make it myself. It may be said that if stupidity has a tendency to Conservatism, sciolism, or half-knowledge, has a tendency to Liberalism. Something might be said for that, but it is not at all so clear as the other. There is an uncertainty about sciolists; we cannot count upon them; and therefore they are a less dangerous class."

By this, Mill is talking about people who think that they know what they're talking about when they often don't. "Half-knowledge," or superficial knowledge, about subjects that causes them to spew half-correct opinions that often come across as "stupid." But people who are, for the most part, tethered to the ground of reality in their day-to-day existences. Mill says that these people can't be depended on as much as stupid people can be, because they're independent thinkers who are equally, if not more capable of being right rather than wrong. And, as such, they are harder to manipulate against their own best interests.

"But there is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power”

That just about says it all, doesn't it? Stupidity doesn't seem to leave much room for doubt. Stupidity provides a force and conviction that non-conservative movements often don't seem to have. And, when intelligent people (either the genuine conservatives who, again, also see the world as threatening, or cynical, mercenary types for whom the lies of our culture benefit and who work to maintain adherence to those lies) organize stupid people into a political force, they find themselves with a loyal, fervid set of supporters.

Now, there's STUPID. From "stupefy" or "stupefication." To make someone unable to think properly or the state of being unable to think properly. I've been talking about that topic so far and how the state of being stupid can produce the larger amygdala (the brain being plastic and all) because it makes the world a more threatening place. Being stupid can make you conservative.

Then there's the larger amygdala, which, while not precluding the possibility of intelligence, by its nature, inteferes with rational thinking (at least to some degree).  So, again, this sort of person tends to see everything as a threat while also fixating on threats when they're not around. People like this also tend to like the status-quo. They see the potential dangers of social innovations. Even if they acknowledge problems with the status-quo they have developed a familiarity, a comfort with it. If they were intelligent then they might have even been able to navigate it to their own personal benefit. People like this are hostile to newcomers. They see differences as points of conflict, not growth. They believe that society is more dangerous than any empirical investigation would show it to be. Therefore they believe in strong police-states. (Even if they occasionally claim to be defenders of freedom. Think of cowardly imbecile stephen harper's simultaneous attempts to sabotage the Census out of privacy concerns while radically expanding the state's spying powers and the carceral state itself.)

So, of course there can be intelligent conservatives. And, from time to time, their caution, their respect for time-honoured traditions, etc., ... they can make a positive contribution to any political conversation. However, the next group that I want to deal with might be the most dangerous of all. (They might also be merely the stupid people I just got finished talking about.) These are the conservatives that show up on social media pontificating all sorts of bizarre, convoluted, moronic theories and arguments which utilize considerably more brain-power than you'd imagine a true dullard would be capable of, but which are (as stated) moronic. I dealt with two such individuals; one here, and the other one here. (The latter example, upon reflection, could be considered as being truly stupid, but the diversity and range of his ranting opens me up to the possibility that he might have more capabilities than your average mouth-breathing cretin.)

Anyhow, ... this is just an unpaid blogpost written in boredom and frustration. I'll type more at a later date.



Friday, December 25, 2020

Why is Jason Kenney Pretending that Coronavirus is Real?

 

Listen! COVID-19 is fake! It absolutely doesn't exist! It's just the ordinary flu! Or it's a virus that was concocted in China, by "the Globalists" to destroy Western Civilization, but is simultaneously no more deadly than the seasonal flu! (Or something.)

The point is that you either maintain that COVID-19 is nothing (like the anti-maskers) or you say that it's real, that it's highly contagious, and also MUCH more dangerous than the seasonal flu (like all the public health authorities in all the cities, provinces, states, nations and internationally are saying).

You either say it's all a hoax, or you admit that allowing it to spread unopposed through a country like Canada could lead to 100,000-300,000 deaths (with perhaps a million people surviving with long-term problems with their lungs and hearts), a totally overloaded healthcare system, a shattered economy and any other nasty consequences that you can think of. 

Alberta premier and life-long bachelor Jason Kenney appears to be trying to find a "middle-ground" between these two extremes. A "moderate" position which says that COVID-19 is no big deal but it IS overwhelming Alberta's healthcare system. Lot's of people are dying but Kenney points out that they had "co-morbidities" and therefore we can't blame COVID-19 for everything. It would be nice if everyone practiced basic intelligence and tried to not gather in large crowds, without masks, breathing and spitting all over each other when there's a respiratory virus going around. But mandating masks and lockdowns would violate human rights and Jason Kenney has always been a fanatical defender of individual freedom (aside from all those times when he runs roughshod over them).

What gives? 

COVID-19 has been very good for Jason Kenney. All the noise about the rapid spread of the virus and the pressures on the healthcare system have diverted attention from Kenney's agenda of being a stupid asshole. And, at heart, it's pretty clear that Jason Kenney doesn't really give a fuck if people are dying. Jason Kenney is a stupid, stupid man. He's fucked in the head. ALL of his policies are self-evidently destructive. But because he's a simpering moron, he never really processes it all. There are things he wants to do because long ago he decided (without much thought on the matter) that he wanted to do them. And he lives his whole stupid life that way. And, unfortunately, there are enough OTHER stupid fucks to pay his way and vote for him or cover-up for his frauds and disasters.

I was going to write something about Kenney's cynicism and how those anti-maskers genuinely believe the pandemic is a hoax whereas Kenney isn't so detached from reality as that but he needs to pander to those idiots. But as I got through this little post, the wretchedness of Kenney's whole career (indeed, the miserable shit's entire existence) began to weigh on me and I stopped caring about how capable Kenney might be of grasping the particular realities of COVID-19. He's a less-than-useless blight on the nation and that's about it.



Sunday, December 20, 2020

How to Stop Them?

 

It's 2020-12-17 at 7pm. I'm tired. I ordered a pizza online (I usually call. Like the old man that I am who wants for there to be jobs for people because you need an income to live in this culture.) And I've had good results from these new "auto-fill" things for your name, email, website that some bloggers have for comments. Once you enter the info, all the options show up and you just confirm if they're all right. So, I go to enter my address and phone number for the Contactless Delivery and all this okay-looking info pops up and I figured I must have ordered online before (it's possible). 

But the pizza's almost an hour coming and I go to my email account and see the confirmation email and look and notice that the address and phone number are completely fuckt-up. Like an AREA-CODE of "164."

So I call them up instead and get it all fixed and now I have another 45-minute wait and I've been hungry for a while. (The postal-code would have sent them to a private school a couple of blocks away from the street that I live on and a mile or two from my house.)

So, last time I wrote a blog-post called "How to Stop Them" but now I've put a question mark on the same title because maybe I don't know. Because I'm so tired. (Working some overtime this week.)

I don't know what to say that isn't what I haven't always been saying. There needs to be a recognition that the electoral politics crowd and the super-radicals have to acknowledge each other's importance. We have to realize that our political system is dominated by capitalism and that long-term exposure to it (as a social-democratic politician f'r instance) is damaging. A progressive politician has to establish a line for themselves that they will not cross as the pressure to compromise and conform begins to be applied. This should be communicated publicly so that people who might vote for that person can have some understanding of the degree to which that person will fight for them as a politician.

Then, when the pressures are building and the politician is considering erasing that line and drawing a new one a little farther out from their own sense of morality, the electorate can say: "We voted for the person who said they'll never do that. If you betray us you will be dead to us."

At the same time, the super-radicals have to learn that there's no way in hell that they'll change things with their tiny demonstration, or their massive one-day rallies, or their incoherent, childish calls for "revolution" or their masturbatory outbursts on social media. It doesn't appear that they'll have much effect peacefully or violently. Not without allies with power. And because our economy is dominated by capitalists, most of our power has to be found in politics. Direct action/extra-parliamentary actions/occupations/petitions/letter-writing campaigns/alternative media, etc., etc., they're important. And, furthermore, if the agents of the oligarchy believe they can break their own laws with impunity (including by breaking the lives of activists) we have to acknowledge the validity of violent responses. Oppressors tend not to be swayed by moral persuasion.

We have to learn to speak to ordinary people. We have to develop a clear strategy for what we want to achieve and how we CAN achieve it. Read my blog posts on "Workers as Citizens" for an illustration of this.



Friday, December 11, 2020

How to Stop Them

 

As "progressive" Canadians we're faced with many challenges. (For me, "progressives" range from centre-left Liberals to NDP'rs, to left-Greenies, to socialists, to communists, to anarchist-socialists.) We are living in a society we are opposed to. (In my opinion, left-Liberals are deluded about the nature of this society. They don't believe it is as nasty as it actually is and they labour in the mistaken belief that the shining Liberal Party can be made to understand how abhorrent the unfortunate aberrations from decency are and to do the right thing to rectify the situation.) This is a society that is centered around the capitalist profit-motive and not by any actual moral humanity. Other human beings, the environment, are all secondary to individual profit-maximization.

In this society there are two dominant contenders for power: Liberal (liberal) capitalists and conservatives. Generally speaking, liberal capitalists tend to dominate. Why? Because, for the most part, conservatism is about preserving the status-quo and it's usually the case that the status-quo leaves a lot of people unhappy. 

During the liberal-capitalist "golden-age" from 1945-1972 it was the case that conservatives had been forced by harsh experience and the sheer preponderance of evidence to moderate their views in order to accommodate the new social order and thereby became seen as far more reasonable and acceptable than they are now. That was the era when Eisenhower rejected the "stupid" conservatives who wanted to destroy unions and social security, when Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency, and when Ontario Premier Bill Davis built TV-Ontario and the community college system.

But conservatism also contains the seeds for its eventual degeneration in its grassroots membership. This is something that I think about more and more lately. That self-identified conservatives have different mental wiring from liberals and socialists. For one (and nothing I'm about to say is meant to imply that conservatives can't be good people, especially once you've gained their trust) conservatives have been shown to fixate more on threats than other people. Secondly they have stronger "fight or flight" instincts that can sometimes impede rational thought. 

So, think about people who respond to changes as if they're inevitably threatening. People with a different skin colour/culture moving into the neighbourhood? They might be a threat! They might swamp our culture! Let's push them out! No? Okay! Let's move away from them to a place where more "old-stock" Canadians still dominate!

A progressive will see people living in poverty and think about how to help them. A conservative will respond by thinking that the poor are a dangerous rabble who are trying to rip them off. Social programs only serve to subsidize their bad decisions and their reproduction ("welfare moms").

Now, the following is NOT meant to imply that all conservatives are stupid. But if you think about it, stupid people will have a hard time understanding how the world works. They will also make a lot of mistakes and earn the contempt of many of those around them. If people are constantly sneering at you and you constantly feel lost and adrift, you will be insecure. You will see things as threatening. You will struggle to understand your society to try to fit in and you will feel elated when you do grasp things. You will be told that God the Father watches over the world where men are men and women are women and men earn the money and women are homemakers and baby makers and the police officer is your friend and the businessman gives you jobs and your country is a force for good in the world and etc.

People of normal intelligence absorb all of this and depending upon their mental capacities/frameworks they reject some or all of it, generally with a healthy dose of cynicism. But a conservative will cling to this in desperation and feel threatened by theories that challenge it. Because it is simply beyond them to incorporate critiques based on reality into this worldview. And so they reject these challenges and cling to their delusions.

Everything I'm saying now has already  been said by English liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill over a hundred years ago:

Mill was not, however, all pure reason and moral elevation. In reply to an attack made upon him by Sir John Pakington for calling the Conservative party “the stupid party,” Mill, admitting the phrase to occur in his Representative Government, went on to say, “I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party. I know that I am liable to a retort, and an obvious one enough; and as I do not wish to allow any honorable gentleman the credit of making it, I make it myself. It may be said that if stupidity has a tendency to Conservatism, sciolism, or half-knowledge, has a tendency to Liberalism. Something might be said for that, but it is not at all so clear as the other. There is an uncertainty about sciolists; we cannot count upon them; and therefore they are a less dangerous class. But there is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power” [xxxiii/xxxiv].

Bibliography

Mill, John Stuart. The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill: Ethical, Political and Religious. Marshall Cohen, ed. New York: Modern Library, 1961.

So, what do we do about this? I guess I'll write more tomorrow. Because blogging is a career-killing waste of time.



Thursday, December 10, 2020

Scumbags Galore!

 


Well, gotta give that old Canuck Complacency points! We've all been so smug about not being the USA where Donald Trump created the worst national response to the COVID-19 virus [which isn't true btw. Boris Johnson's UK has a higher per capita infection AND death rate] that we turned our view away from what our own scumbag leaders are doing and now we find ourselves with soaring infection rates and an economy on the skids.

Doug Ford has decided to protect his buddies in the for-profit Long Term Care from the financial consequences of their greed. His party of vermin are pushing legislation preventing the families of loved ones who died in LTC facilities from COVID-19 infection. Under the legislation families have to prove "gross negligence" if their loved ones died in a long-term care facility from COVID-19.  Which is much more difficult to prove. But the statistics show that these greedy bloodsuckers presided over statistics like this:

Meanwhile, in the 28 nursing homes Chartwell owns or operates in Ontario, the COVID-19 infection rate has been 47 per cent higher and the fatality rate 68 per cent higher than the provincial average, according to the Star investigation.

I was going to write more but the effort needed to do a blog post seems like such a waste of time. 

So, just at random: Jason Kenney is also a scumbag.

So is the demented, disgusting Donald Trump. So are his whining, hypocritical, delusional, moronic groupies who are babbling about how the election was stolen from him while ignoring the documented fact that their repulsive hero was openly sabotaging the US Postal Service to suppress the Democratic vote. (Democrats might be brainwashed shills for corporate vermin like Joseph Biden and Nancy Pelosi, but on average they are more intelligent than Republican voters. Democrats recognize that COVID-19 actually exists and therefore preferred to vote by mail in 2020 whereas Republicans were far more willing to expose themselves to the virus by voting in-person so as to make sure that Black people could still be murdered by the police.)

Corporate Democrats trying to blame their disappointing election results on progressives. As if running a four-decade corporate tool and a right-wing cop and trashing progressive proposals at every opportunity and telling the oligarchy that "nothing will fundamentally change" and cheating Bernie Sanders again, ... as if none of that was powerful enough to combat the frenzied lies of Trumpians and corporate propaganda outlets that they were actually in thrall to "socialists" who want Medicare-For-All, a Green New Deal, and for the police to stop murdering Black people with impunity.

Corporations in Canada took the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) and still paid out dividends and bought their own stocks (to boost their share prices). Obviously greedy scum. But what of the imbeciles in the comments section mewling about how some people rely on dividend payments as their only source of income? What do they get out of such sickening behaviour? Who cares? Drag them behind a truck!

Well, there. I'm just a little overwhelmed from the insanity and gaslighting and hopelessness of the situation.



Friday, November 13, 2020

Too Stupid Humanity; Part 2(a)

 

I meant to say in my last post about stupid corporate Democrats pretending that they actually believe that progressives/left-wingers almost cost them the presidency and that they are certainly to blame for their disappointing Congressional and Senate showings, ... that centrist Democratic hack propagandists "Driftglass" and "Lawyers, Guns, and Money" have been posting furiously all through the election and its aftermath (as I can see from the self-updating blogroll at "The Galloping Beaver," but that I haven't read a single one of their posts, and hardly any of their titles (except by accident). I don't care what they think because they're stupid hacks whose lies stand in the way of the vital major overhaul necessary to save the USA from fascism and the rest of the world from an eco-pocalypse.

Both of them have the brains to not write shit-headed drivel trashing Bernie Sanders or David Sirota or the Green Party USA. "LGM" especially is an intelligent, sensitive soul. But they have CHOSEN to sacrifice their integrity to this evil nonsense. Gaslighting, shameless motherfuckers.



Thursday, November 12, 2020

Humanity Too Stupid, Nov. 2020, Part II

 

So, last post I talked about the relatively dismal showing of the Democrats against the massively corrupt, incompetent and vile Trump Republicans. Then I spent some time talking about how loathsome and disgusting the Republican base is. I neglected to mention their sickening hypocrisy shrieking about election/voter fraud in this election when their hero Trump had already openly stated that he was sabotaging the US Postal Service's ability to process mail-in ballots. Trump was certain that more of his brain-dead supporters would show up at the polls during a pandemic than would Democratic voters. Because his group are shit-heads. So he wanted to exploit that advantage.

These people truly are disgusting. Nauseating self-pity and hypocrisy. They have two modes: Arrogant bullies or mewling crybabies. Fuck them and fuck their stupid feelings.

But just when I work myself into a paroxysm of rage against these idiots I look and I see the enormity of stupidity coming from the pens of liberals and progressives. The insane clinging to the moronic "Russiagate" conspiracy. The hypocritical whining about Republican voter suppression and dirty tricks right after stealing the primary from Bernie Sanders and getting the Green Party USA knocked off the ballot in several states. The same arrogant, entitled delusion of blaming the Left for the party's poor showings when its the Leftists whose voices are excluded and the party's entire message was to appeal to "moderate" Republicans.

Here's a stupid take from one Damon Linker about how the miserable failure of the pro-war, Wall Street slaves Democratic Party leadership is somehow a crushing of the Left.

Democrats didn't just want to win and govern in the name of a deeply divided nation's fractured sense of the common good. No, they wanted to lead a moral revolution, to transform the country — not only enacting a long list of new policies, but making a series of institutional changes that would entrench their power far into the future. Pack the Supreme Court. Add left-leaning states. Break up others to give the left huge margins in the Senate. Get rid of the Electoral College. Abolish the police. Rewrite the nation's history, with white supremacy and racism placed "at the very center." Ensure "equity" not just in opportunity but in outcomes. Hell, maybe they'd even establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to teach everyone who voted for or supported the 45th president just how evil they really are.

No wonder so many Republicans turned out to vote. Democrats proved to be the most effective GOTV operation for the GOP imaginable.

Linker appears to be confusing random statements from Democratic Party supporters and leftists with the official positions of the Biden campaign. Biden did not run on abolishing the police. The corporatist Dems openly rejected expanding the SCOTUS. There is no party platform to eliminate the Electoral College. As well, he misreads Kamala Harris's ad about equality and equity. It says nothing about equalized outcomes. It specifically talks of giving resources to people suffering from societal disadvantages. And the "Truth & Reconciliation Commission" is just a pipe dream or thought bubble floated by individual commentators. For my part, the sentiment is understandable considering how vile and stupid Trump and his political bowel movement of racist, christo-fascist hypocrites is. But what is Linker saying? That right-wing people don't also besmirch the character and intentions of people on the left? What nonsense!

These were prominent Democrats — progressive politicians, activists, and scholars and prize-winning journalists at leading cultural institutions — talking this way. Joe Biden himself usually did the smart thing and tried to distance himself from the most radical proposals. But in the end it wasn't enough to mollify fears of an ascendant left hell bent on entrenching itself in power and enacting institutional reforms that would enable it to lead a moral, political, and cultural revolution.

Sorry, no. Chris Hayes, Robert Reich, etc., do not set party policy. 

And therein lies a paradox that should be obvious but apparently isn't: Democrats live in a country with a large, passionate opposition. Arrogant talk of demographic inevitabilities and transformative changes to lock Republicans out of power in the name of "democracy" has the effect of inspiring that opposition to unite against them, rendering political success less assured and more tenuous.

The country's demographics are changing. And it's also a fact that the Republicans only win by utilizing inequities in the US electoral system (where votes in sparsely populated rural states count for far more than do votes in states with higher populations such as California and New York), gerrymandering and open voter suppression. Supposedly leftists must resign themselves to this cheating by their opponents, but any talk by leftists of reform or even complaining hurts the tender sensibilities of Trumpian shit-heads and justifies said shit-heads' desire to destroy them?

There will be no court packing. No added states. Nothing from the toxic progressive-fantasy wishlist will come anywhere close to passing. Instead, we will have grinding, obstructive gridlock. Some will demand that Biden push through progressive priorities by executive order. But every time he does — like every incident of urban rioting and looting, every effort to placate the left-wing "Squad" in the House, every micro-targeted identity-politics box-checking display of intersectional moral preening and finger-wagging — the country will move closer to witnessing a conservative backlash that results in Republicans taking control of the House and increasing their margin in the Senate in November 2022, rendering the Biden administration even more fully dead in the water.

As if there's any chance of Biden wanting to placate progressives in Congress! As if the corporatist Democratic leadership has EVER desired to or felt the need to placate its Democratic wing! As if the Democratic leadership hasn't consistently abused its progressive base for decades!

That's the playbook. We saw it in 1994, when Republicans leveraged opposition to Bill Clinton's effort to pass health-care reform into a successful effort to take control of the House for the first time in 40 years. We saw it again in 2010, when Republicans leveraged opposition to Barack Obama's successful push to pass the Affordable Care Act into the largest shift of seats in the House in 62 years (and far bigger than the one Democrats managed two years into the Trump administration in 2018). This time the leverage is likely to come from culture-war conflict, but the Republican strategy will be the same.

I don't know enough about 1994, but 2010 wasn't about the ACA. Democratic voters were demoralized by the Obama administration's failure to end the wars and rein-in Wall Street even with majorities in the House and the Senate and many of them stayed home. The Democrats did push through the corporate-friendly ACA against Repugnican obstructionism, but that was one of the very few moments when Obama and Pelosi took off the gloves to combat the other side's openly stated policy of rejecting everything Obama proposed. How does Linker propose progressives meet such a toxic attitude from its political opposition? Has he written anything about this? 

But it did. And that should give Democrats serious pause. For four years Donald Trump has proven himself a corrupt, mendacious ignoramus utterly unfit for the position he holds. He's led the nation through a pandemic that has left nearly a quarter million dead, is currently surging unchecked across the country, and has devastated the economy. And yet, the current tally shows him beating his showing from 2016 by 3.7 million votes. Trump may well come up short where it counts, but he still gained ground with the electorate relative to four years ago.

So please, Democrats, look in the mirror and show a little humility. You're not nearly as self-evidently wonderful or widely loved as you'd like to believe. You are not destined to prevail anywhere. You share a country with a large group of people who hate your guts, and who aren't going to submit to your rule or go along with your giddy plans to remake the nation in your image. It's time to start acting like you understand this implacable fact and all it implies about the limits of your power and the parameters of the possible.

American politics is a war of attrition right now. The sooner Democrats learn to live with that fact, the better.

Once again, this is all shit.  The right-wing base turned out because they're racist fuck-faces and whining ignoramuses and deluded Christo-fascist chumps. These stupid fuckers don't play fair. They celebrate their own side's cheating and bullying and whine like spoiled brats at the very idea of receiving the same treatment. Also, the Democratic Party did not campaign on a progressive platform. They courted "moderate Republicans." The Democratic Party has been moving rightward for decades and this suppresses their own voter turnout (combined with Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics).  Progressive policies have the support of majorities of Republican Party supporters. Linker's whole essay is a waste of time.

And here's a CommonDreams article reporting on the centrist fuck-faces in the Democratic Party themselves blaming the Left for their woes.

These stupid fucking asshole corporate Dems!



Friday, November 6, 2020

Humanity is too stupid to survive: November 2020 Edition

 


What a fucking travesty. As of this writing (November 5th, 2020) the election is looking more and more like a narrow victory for Biden. For the Democrats in the legislature it's a disappointment. They still run the House of Representatives (though I've heard their majority has been reduced) and they didn't win the Senate.

Because they're a shit party with shit policies. They spent so much political capital trying to court disaffected Republicans, which by necessity meant shitting on their own progressive base YET AGAIN (and lecturing them on the need for "compromise" while abusing them), only for Trump to strengthen his hold on Republican Party members. The Democratic leadership loves the idea of a "moderate Republican" because that's what they see themselves as. Rich people with a social conscience and liberal social values. Sure, they no likey the taxes that rich people would have to pay for there to be a decent society in the USA where medical bills don't bankrupt people and where there are financial supports for people condemned to live as the "Precariat" in a world of rising food and housing expenses. But aside from that TOTALLY understandable sentiment, they're just fine with embracing diversity and tut-tutting brazen displays of sexism or racism comes naturally to them. Barack Obama described himself as a "moderate Republican from the 1980s."

If only those card-carrying "moderate Republicans" could see just how "moderate" the Democratic Party has become, why, they'd abandon the GOP in droves and leave it to the Kochs and the Sheldon Adelson's and other plutocratic extremists, as well as those deplorable hillbilly, deep-South redneck, inbred imbeciles, and there'd be a true, blessed, Moderate Hegemony ruling the USA in peace and prosperity for decades to come!


Except that's not the case. And gambling that it was the case was just that, ... a gamble. What wouldn't have been a gamble would have been reaching out to the goddamned party's base and mobilizing them and inspiring them with policies that would help them. But again, for the leadership of the Democratic Party (and the bulk of their politicians who are wealthy, with many of them being millionaires) this would require higher taxes on the wealthy and assaults on sources of profit for their corporate benefactors. Which makes advocating for popular policies a non-starter.

But let's not leave the nauseating Republican Party USA and its deplorable voter base off the hook. I haven't spent as much time trashing the Republicans during the past couple of years (I don't think) because I believe that it goes without saying and I've been more interested (when I'm interested at all) in getting my fellow progressives to abandon such waste-of-time fixations as "lesser-evil" voting and capitulation to centrist "pragmatism." But make  no mistake about it: I think Trump is vile. I can't stand the man. He's obviously a victim in some ways from a truly despicable, psychopathic father. But at some point you have to hold people accountable for their actions. Whatever traumas in their past, what they do to other people is part of who they are. Perhaps we shouldn't condemn them entirely, but neither should we completely exculpate them either. So here is my evaluation of Trump ...

Donald Trump is a disgusting imbecile. He's a stupid, stupid man. Vain, selfish, arrogant, entitled, racist, misogynist, rapist, corrupt, stupid and disgusting. I can't stand to (are rarely did) watch his "press conferences." The belligerence. The brazen lies. The nauseating self-pity. I don't know why so many outlets continued to participate in those farces. After all, repeated stories about his lies and scandals simply made people numb. Desensitized. I barely paid attention to these reports. But on the few occasions where I watched snippets of a Trump press conference, I would quickly become angry and disgusted and turn off the video.

Like a lot of idiotic, toxified masculinists, Trump appears to think that the environment is either gay or female. Should we simply abuse the planet that gave us life and tries to sustain it, or should we full-on rape it? It's dangerous. Destructive. Stupid. Inexcusable. And, finally, because it represents his insecurities and rages; pathetic. 

Trump was raised by a nazi. He's a right-wing racist himself. He panders to racists. He strengthens racists. He is the sort of human filth who would gleefully watch innocent people being executed for crimes they didn't commit if he didn't like their skin colour.

Who votes for Trump? The wealthy people with no sense of community who always vote Republican. Ordinary people taken in by the Republican Party's espousal of so-called "traditional values." (These people might not be hateful racists and homophobes.) And, finally, the demographic that is being increasingly pandered to as the party abandons all pretense of caring about the lives of ordinary people: Ignorant and/or stupid racists, dimwits, authoritarians and closet-cases. "Conservatives," studies show, are more fixated on threats and are possessed of strong "fight or flight" instincts that often overwhelms their rational brains. Such people are not necessarily white skinned. You will find racialized minorities who love Donald Trump and women from all sorts of demographics who like Trump, despite his racism and sexism. This is because Trump represents an extremely crude version of the dominant figure in our society. He's a rich white male. Obviously Mitt Romney is also a rich, white male. So are many (most?) US politicians. But Trump is a showman version of it. He's crude/extreme. His "alpha male" presentation is over-the-top and that's why it resonates with certain people. 

What can you say about the bulk of his supporters? They support murderous police racism and only become agitated when they hear that the oppressed people are fighting back. And then they fucking whine about "cities burning" and the "racism" and "violence" of Black Lives Matter. 

They (like their Canadian conservative counterparts) wail about voter fraud against them (which is essentially non-existent) ten seconds after hooting and hollering in their approval for their own sides open, blatant voter suppression tactics. Rank hypocrisy.

They shriek about dangerous "illegal immigrants" when confronted with refugees created by their own nation's rulers. They worry about becoming a minority in their own country because they themselves treat minorities like shit and they project their own disgusting racism on everyone else.

They cling like the idiots they are to their religious delusions and all the constricted moralism that entails. They use their "values" as an excuse to attack women, GLBT people. And then they throw themselves at the feet of a corrupt, sleazy businessman who is a serial rapist and who has publicly stated that he has lusted after his own daughter since she was an adolescent. Why do they do this? Because they're shit-heads.

The last thing I'll say on this post (It's taking to long to say what I wanted to say so I'll do it in installments. And this is all just me getting stuff off my chest.) is that these idiots with their COVID-denialism are disgusting. Blowing away all the froth of their stupid internet theories and arguments, the facts remain that COVID-19 is a real virus. It is far more deadlier than the seasonal flu. It is highly contagious. And disease experts, public health experts, health care workers, etc., ... these people are not all charlatans, Soros-funded tools of "globalists," or "crisis actors."  These right-wing conspiracy theorists would be laughable if the stakes weren't so high. These stupid fuckers can't process that capitalists and domestic surveillance and law ENFORCEMENT institutions are in charge.* Instead they inhabit an Alice in Wonderland society where the gravest threats to freedom are "social justice warriors," climate scientists and, now, public health experts. Everywhere, right-wing people are confronted by conspiracies, being advanced by stealthy, long-term campaigns, to cunningly destroy society from the inside. The traditional family is being undermined. Economic freedom (to exploit and destroy) is being subverted. Individual liberties are being reduced. (By people telling you to self-isolate and wear a mask when outside during a pandemic.)

It's all so self-evidently stupid. And these idiots, parading around without their masks and sneering at the "sheeple" who accept reality, are making the pandemic last longer and spread farther. And Trump, even after openly admitting he downplayed the danger out of a delusional effort to prop-up the economy and who even contracted the virus himself (through his negligent behaviour most likely) is personally responsible for the untimely deaths of at least 110,000 US-Americans. (Canada at 1/10th the USA's population has lost 9,000 people. A poor showing compared to places like South Korea but better than the USA. 9,000 X 10 is 90,000. Trump's stupidity has produced 200,000 deaths. 110,000 more than 90,000.) It's an undeniable catastrophe, but deny it they do. Because these dickheads will deny anything in order to prop-up their preconceived delusions.

I could say more but I won't.

* Strangely, while they worship local police forces, and ICE and DEA agents, many Trumpists have an incoherent relationship with the FBI or the CIA. Some see the latter two organizations as the main players in a Jewish/globalist dominated "deep state" that is opposed to human freedom. Others simultaneously love and loathe them for being cops and for attacking countries like Russia, China, Venezuela, etc. 

Tuesday, November 3, 2020

US-Americans Should Have Focused on Resisting BOTH Candidates

 

Well, yet another interminable US-American election is coming to its climax. And the degree of thinking that's gone into whether it will be Trump or Biden is depressing. BOTH candidates are literal death sentences for civilization and as such both should be regarded as unacceptable. Certainly Trump's insanity, stupidity, sheer awfulness makes Biden the least objectionable of the two of them. But come on man! Biden helped created the incarceration state. He's an enthusiastic imperialist. He's a climate change denier. He wrote the Bankruptcy Bill and the predecessor to the post-911"Patriot Act."

All I'm saying is that if US progressives and the international leftist intelligentsia had spent more time thinking about the inevitable need for resistance to the SYSTEM that vomits up specimens like Biden and Trump than they did whining about Trump's singular menace, humanity would be a lot better off.

Sunday, October 18, 2020

Please Save Us From "Disinformation"!!!

 


The brilliant Caitlin Johnstone eloquently condemns the tendency towards mass censorship on giant online media platforms:

The problem came in when the corporations which were elevated to the top of this new paradigm began collaborating more and more brazenly with ruling power structures, to the point where they’re now just openly working with US government agencies to determine what information to censor. They have every incentive to do this as talk of antitrust cases and reinterpreting Section 230 heats up; they know the odds of their monopolies being torn apart go down the more favorable they make themselves to the government powers that would enforce them.

This is a major, major problem for humanity as a species, because we will never be able to make real changes to the systemic problems which are driving us toward disaster as long as establishment power is controlling our ability to interact with each other.

https://twitter.com/richimedhurst/status/1316920876680564737

Establishment power will keep advancing its own interests at all cost, even if it means pushing us into nuclear war or climate collapse. The only way to end their destructive rule is for a critical mass of the public to rise up and use the power of their numbers to force real change. People will not rise up and use the power of their numbers to force real change as long as they are being successfully propagandized not to by the ruling power establishment. People will continue to be successfully propagandized as long as a critical mass are prevented from viewing ideas and information which contradict establishment-friendly narratives.

Lately, racist authoritarian anti-democratic thug Joe Biden's crackhead, corrupt, man-child Hunter dropped off his laptop at a repair shop and then forgot about it. Along with home-made porn, there were also incriminating emails on it. The repair-shop guy turns out to be a Trump fan (and therefore a complete shit-head) and he copies the files and gives them to Rudy Giuliani who gives them to the New York Post. Democrats and other foolish people are screaming that this is all a Russia psy-ops campaign. Rather than an abandoned laptop, Giuliani got the files (the veracity of which the Democrats/Biden/Hunter haven't challenged) from VLADIMIR PUTIN!!! And therefore, reporting on them makes you a "Kremlin idiot." And therefore "Twitter" prevented people from re-tweeting the NYPost link.

For some reason, the last time I was at working on this post I started talking about "hate speech." I don't know why but I'm going to leave it here:

Personally I have always had a problem with criminalizing "hate speech." Leftists (and other anti-racists) have said that it is foolish to defend the rights of racists because they won't defend your rights and freedoms and neither will the authorities. But I respond to that by saying that willfully allowing one of your own rights to be disregarded by the state is self-defeating. Furthermore, "anti-Hate" laws have been used against us. When a rapper makes a song about wanting to kill cops (for their murderous institutional racism) and he's threatened with violating hate-speech laws. Women of colour condemning cases of patriarchal racists are threatened with propagating "hatred" of white males. 

Anyhoo, the right-wing conspiracy community "Q-Anon" has also been de-platformed. Again, to save us from "dis-information." Because it's this "dis-information" that is dividing US-Americans like never before

Sigh. This is part of a long process of trying to marginalize alternative voices and artificially inflate the (already vast) reach of approved media. Remember the moronic, oligarchic mind-control initiative "Prop or Not?" When anyone who didn't see the world the same way as the Democratic Leadership Council was a "useful idiot" for the Kremlin?

One of the core functions of PropOrNot appears to be its compilation of a lengthy blacklist of news and political websites that it smears as peddlers of “Russian propaganda.” Included on this blacklist of supposed propaganda outlets are prominent independent left-wing news sites such as Truthout, Naked Capitalism, Black Agenda Report, Consortium News, and Truthdig.

Also included are popular libertarian hubs such as Zero Hedge, Antiwar.com, and the Ron Paul Institute, along with the hugely influential right-wing website the Drudge Report and the publishing site WikiLeaks. Far-right, virulently anti-Muslim blogs such as Bare Naked Islam are likewise dubbed Kremlin mouthpieces. Basically, everyone who isn’t comfortably within the centrist Hillary Clinton/Jeb Bush spectrum is guilty. On its Twitter account, the group announced a new “plugin” that automatically alerts the user that a visited website has been designated by the group to be a Russian propaganda outlet.

We are not more divided than we've ever been. Many of us are angry because the system has failed us. Not because social media has manipulated our emotions. Which article have I already read? This one? Or this one? Here's a quote from the first one:

The Social Dilemma is right to highlight the power that is at stake here. And when it draws attention, with palpable horror, to the exponential growth in computer processing power, it clearly apprehends that processing power is political power. However, it’s extraordinary that it doesn’t occur to anyone to think of it as class power. For what is being automated most efficiently in the cybernetic offensive on living labor are the imperatives of capital.

The absence of capital from the film’s imagination results in some very strange and telling formulations. We are told that AI runs the world. That “as humans, we’ve almost lost control over these systems.” That a “checkmate on humanity” is afoot. That the machines are “overpowering human nature,” whose operating systems and processing power evolves much more slowly. The only sense in which any of this is true is the sense in which AI is just the programmatic expression of capital.

And here's one from the second one.

Yet this techno-deterministic narrative vastly inflates the capabilities of data capture and algorithms, and, in so doing, blames a whole range of problems on technology that have their root in more fundamental social and economic conditions of modern society. It is important to understand what effects these technologies are having on us, both personally and collectively, but failing to recognize the longer history of these problems and the broader structures that contribute to them will lead us to solutions that don’t actually get to the root causes.

...

What all of this tells us is that reducing growing social problems to new technologies is simply not accurate. Framing the problem in that way makes it seem as though if we create better platforms, our problems will be solved — but if the platforms are responding to the economic incentives of the capitalist system, maybe that should get more scrutiny.

Are we to believe that social polarization is the product of Facebook, and not the fact that income inequality has returned to pre–Great Depression levels (and is likely much worse due to the pandemic)?

Are we to believe that a distrust of elites and politicians is the result of Google’s search results, and not the fact that the political system is unresponsive to the needs of the vast majority of the population, while the government lets industry regulate itself, leading to tragedies like the Boeing 737 MAX?

Fine. T'was the second one that I'd read. Anyhow, the point is that falling for this elite agenda of censorship is going to GET US all KILLED.




Thursday, October 15, 2020

How To Change Things

 

Does voting change anything? Sort of. While all Canadian politicians are incapable of resisting the status-quo, there are differences between them, with some being devotees to it while others attempt timid ameliorations of its worst effects. Consistently voting for the least rabid option ("lesser evilism") does have its benefits, in practice it seems to only encourage a continued slide towards right-wing, klepto-capitalist insanity.

Voting should be much more consequential than it is. What are the material conditions that have rendered our options to be so limited? The answers to that are all over this blog. The decline in profitability due to the increases in competition; financialization; neo-liberalism.

The oligarchy has built a massive propaganda network using money that they extracted from the society they are brainwashing. Psychological manipulation through public relations, advertising and marketing, "pro-business" "think-tanks," propaganda outlets like FOX News; and "grass-roots" travesties like Breitbart, Rebel News, and abuses of religion that fund right-wing and racist websites and organizations.

This whole vast apparatus is necessary because the message that they impart is unpopular due to its proven negative impact on ordinary people's lives and because of its overall stupidity. Leftist viewpoints of economic fairness, responsible individual freedom (not: "It's my god-given right to fire assault rifles on target ranges or to shoot my wife in the head in a fit of rage, and weekly mass-shootings at primary schools should not be used as an excuse to remove this simple pleasure from my list of options.") and ecological sanity are far more popular in a fair contest.

What forces stand in the way of genuine change? Status-quo politicians sure. But look towards their pay-masters. The financial sector. Fossil fuels. Selfish, greedy employers. Authoritarians of all stripes and at all levels of society.

It would help if the Left had a clear vision of what it wants and some sort of coherent narrative for getting from here to there. Delivered in language that ordinary people can understand. But it doesn't.

I wanted to say something today. Without putting too much work into it. So there you go.

Saturday, October 10, 2020

That Whole Amygdala Thing Again

 Remember this guy?

That's a still from a video taken outside a Trump rally in Phoenix, Arizona in 2016. The big guy's name is Zack Fisher. Some of his tattoos contain symbols that white supremacists use to communicate with each other.

If you pause the video 55 seconds in, you can spot a tattooed number “43” under the arm of the muscular fellow, later identified as Zack Fisher;  this just happens to be a favorite symbol of a small but spirited organization called the Supreme White Alliance. You can probably guess what sort of group it is.

My reason for bringing him up today is to discuss a topic I've been mentioning here recently; which is that we need to stop and ponder the significance of how self-identifying conservatives have apparently been found to have larger amygdala than other people. And the amygdala is the part of the brain that is activated by emotions, such as fear.

When you sense danger is present, your amygdala wants to automatically activate the fight-or-flight response immediately. However, at the same time, your frontal lobes are processing the information to determine if danger really is present and the most logical response to it.

When the threat is mild or moderate, the frontal lobes override the amygdala, and you respond in the most rational, appropriate way. However, when the threat is strong, the amygdala acts quickly. It may overpower the frontal lobes, automatically triggering the fight-or-flight response.

The fight-or-flight response was appropriate for early humans because of threats of physical harm. Today, there are far fewer physical threats, but there are a lot of psychological threats caused by the pressures and stresses of modern life.

When stress makes you feel strong anger, aggression, or fear, the fight-or-flight response is activated. It often results in a sudden, illogical, and irrational overreaction to the situation. You may even regret your reaction later.

This explains a lot of right-wing, or "conservative" behaviour. I don't think that crime is out of control. I'm a left-winger. I'm a socialist. That's how I self-identify. If you call me a "pinko" I'd have to agree with you. So, again, I don't think we need more and more cops and prisons and "hard-time" for convicted criminals. That's just the way I roll. I'm not afraid of alternative sexualities. I'm not worried that I'll succumb to the "gay agenda" because I don't care about this alleged agenda. I'm not afraid of other cultures. I'm interested in them. 

So let me bring back this Zack Fisher character. He's a Trump supporter. He's a white supremacist. He (laughably) feels that only white people can be made fun of in the "libtard"-dominated culture that he believes he's fighting against:

He apparently spends a lot of time thinking about White Chicks, a Wayans Brothers “comedy” from 2004 in which two of the Wayanses play rogue FBI agents who go undercover as, well, white chicks.

People make movies about us and do we get mad? Like White Chicks? If there was a movie called Black Chicks, it would be a huge race thing. … We couldn’t do that, no way, they’d be like, “this is so racist.” And yet they can make a movie making fun of white people.

And what a widely celebrated film it is! Richard Roeper declared it “the worst movie of the year,” while Roger Ebert informed his readers that “it took an act of the will to keep me in the theater.” It’s got a Rotten Tomatoes score of 13%, ranking it lower than Wild Hogs, The Love Guru, and Hot Tub Time Machine 2.

I just wish people could get over what happened back in the day, to Mexico or Blacks. That was back in the past, people don’t get over it and it sucks. I forgive and forget. A lot of people don’t.

Dude, you haven’t even gotten over “White Chicks!”

Again, look at the guy: He's a big, strong, good-looking guy. But (as a "conservative") he probably has a larger "fight-or-flight" section of his brain than regular people and political lefties have. So while he's big enough and strong enough not to feel terrified when he encounters a couple of Latinos coming towards him on the sidewalk in the middle of the day, he probably is mistrustful of them. 

And he spends all day, every day, like this. He's afraid of people who are "different" from him. He's afraid of losing what he imagines is his "culture." Perhaps he was a victim of some childhood trauma. Sufferings in childhood (and, supposedly, sufferings experienced by recent ancestors) can have physical effects on brain structure. So Mr. Fisher might look strong and badass now, but his brain wiring might have been altered by something in his past. (Or, he was just born that way.)

Before continuing on in that vein, I also want to point out that it might be the case that he's also stupid. People of normal intelligence and with greater control over their "fight or flight" instincts learn the rules of the society they've been born into and figure out how to get along fairly easily. Fearful, stupid individuals, ... well, it's a different story with them:

A self-described conservative will (in general) labour mightily to try to understand the world they've been dropped into. This will be tend to be more difficult for them than for normal people because (as I said) conservatives tend to be less intelligent, have less ability to empathize (and thereby read the signals for proper behaviour) and (for whatever reasons) will be more fearful and defensive towards the outside world. Once they have achieved a grasp of the rules of the game they will hold fast to these rules with all their might. Capitalism is the dominant paradigm? Then capitalism it is. No matter what. And everyone who questions or rejects it is an enemy. They've been brought up in a particular religion? Then that religion is the truth and that's the end of the story. (Such devotion can provide a lot of comfort to such people.) And on it goes; they adhere to traditional gender stereotypes and sexual mores. With cultural pursuits, they'll tend to flock in large numbers to things that represent this most crude understanding of the society they live in. Things such as professional wrestling wherein cartoonish representations of gender ideals, the conflict between "good" and "evil," and etc., portray conventional values but with an acknowledgement of the overall stupidity of its fan base.

So you see, to understand the Trump phenomenon, you have to understand the mass psychology of his supporters. They have a shaky grasp of reality. Which is always under threat. They're afraid of new things. The unknown. They see the world as a more threatening place than bleeding-hear leftists see it. So, when there's great social change, they feel threatened. When their simplistic and error-filled philosophies are challenged, it's traumatizing. And when neo-liberal economic policies make life more stressful and competitive, they respond by punching down.

This is the raw material of fascism. Such people are always with us. In the 1960's and 1970's they were doing well enough so that they even tolerated Women's Liberation or Affirmative Action. It takes grim economic conditions to make fascism politically viable. Sadly, liberal dipshits who grovel at the feet of the Democratic Party leadership, or the Liberal Party of Canada, who refuse to see the reality of what their stupid political choices produces will continue to drag us into the abyss. And they will blame occasional cries for sanity and human decency from genuine leftists as being divisive, and deride us for being selfish "purists."