Dueling Narratives

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone:

Trump made idiots of us all. From the end of primary season onward, I felt sure Trump was en route to ruining, perhaps forever, the Republican Party as a force in modern American life. Now the Republicans are more dominant than ever, and it is the Democratic Party that is shattered and faces an uncertain future.

And they deserve it. The Democratic Party's failure to keep Donald Trump out of the White House in 2016 will go down as one of the all-time examples of insular arrogance. The party not only spent most of the past two years ignoring the warning signs of the Trump rebellion, but vilifying anyone who tried to point them out. It denounced all rumors of its creeping unpopularity as vulgar lies and bullied anyone who dared question its campaign strategy by calling them racists, sexists and agents of Vladimir Putin's Russia.

But the party's willful blindness symbolized a similar arrogance across the American intellectual elite. Trump's election was a true rebellion, directed at anyone perceived to be part of "the establishment." The target group included political leaders, bankers, industrialists, academics, Hollywood actors, and, of course, the media. And we all closed our eyes to what we didn't want to see.

Kurt Eichenwald, Newsweek:

On Friday, I almost assaulted a fan of my work. I was in the Philadelphia International Airport, and a man who recognized me from one of my appearances on a television news show approached. He thanked me for the investigative reporting I had done about Donald Trump before the election, expressed his outrage that the Republican nominee had won and then told me quite gruffly, “Get back to work.” Something about his arrogance struck me, so I asked, “Who did you vote for?”

He replied, “Well, Stein, but—” I interrupted him and said, “You’re lucky it’s illegal for me to punch you in the face.” Then, after telling him to have sex with himself—but with a much cruder term—I turned and walked away.

A certain kind of liberal makes me sick. These people traffic in false equivalencies, always pretending that both nominees are the same, justifying their apathy and not voting or preening about their narcissistic purity as they cast their ballot for a person they know cannot win. I have no problem with anyone who voted for Trump, because they wanted a Trump presidency. I have an enormous problem with anyone who voted for Trump or Stein or Johnson—or who didn’t vote at all—and who now expresses horror about the outcome of this election. If you don’t like the consequences of your own actions, shut the hell up. 

And now, South Park explains the Liberal Elite:

Knowledge, and the ability to demonstrate that knowledge, is considered snobbish. A willingness to take an active (or activist) position on any issue requiring others to change their thinking and/or their behavior is "Elitist" and will not be tolerated by the rubes Real Americans.

"We demand you make it better - at the expense of people who aren't us"

Ah Ha

Charlie Pierce always refers to Reince Priebus as "Obvious Anagram Reince Priebus", and all I could ever got was "Rubes Epic Rein".  That's pretty close, but not quite as satisfying as the one Samantha Bee came up with.

BTW - If you haven't already, start listening for the standard "Know Nothing" signals. There's a really good one from Paul Ryan in this clip at about 2:10 when Sam goes to the CNN bit.  And it continues with Newt saying he's never even heard of The Alt-Right.

We are so fucked.

Today's Chart

It's the Rat-Fucking, stupid.

We All Need A Friend Like Joe

We all need a friend who is as petty as Joe Biden pic.twitter.com/uWHajE90FX

— •The Instigator• (@AmBlujay) November 12, 2016

hat tip = @mellierenee

Time To Revisit

It's aging a bit, but this is a great way to remember that we didn't get here by accident.

Like the man said - shit doesn't just happen. Shit gets done, by somebody to somebody

Paying particular attention to things like:

  Leo Strauss and The Univ of Chicago

  The noble lie

  The charge of False Consciousness

  The Triple Negative and Group B

  A world of moral certainties

  The mobilization of the Religious Right

  The purity efforts of an Algerian chicken farmer

  Political Reality is what the power wants us to believe it is

All that and more!

Some Cartoons

Some Biden Pranks

The Opening Farewell

Presto Change-O Followup

In a post I put up a few days ago, I postulated that rat-fucking played a key role in electing Trump.

I'm not a big fan of Greg Palast - I have to wonder about a guy who wears that 1950s Reporter Costume on a regular basis - but he's managed to do some decent work on occasion and if he's uncovered something worth looking at, I wanna look at it.

So:

Before a single vote was cast, the election was fixed by GOP and Trump operatives.

Starting in 2013 – just as the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act – a coterie of Trump operatives, under the direction of Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of State, created a system to purge 1.1 million Americans of color from the voter rolls of GOP–controlled states.

The system, called Crosscheck, is detailed in my Rolling Stone report,

“The GOP’s Stealth War on Voters,” 8/24/2016.

Crosscheck in action:

Trump victory margin in Michigan: 13,107

Michigan Crosscheck purge list: 449,922

Trump victory margin in Arizona: 85,257

 Arizona Crosscheck purge list: 270,824

Trump victory margin in North Carolina: 177,008

North Carolina Crosscheck purge list: 589,393

On Tuesday, we saw Crosscheck elect a Republican Senate and as President, Donald Trump. The electoral putsch was aided by nine other methods of attacking the right to vote of Black, Latino and Asian-American voters, methods detailed in my book and film, including “Caging,” “purging,” blocking legitimate registrations, and wrongly shunting millions to “provisional” ballots that will never be counted.

It's shitty, and it's underhanded, and it's dirty, and it's perfectly legal. This is where we are now.

Infestation

Keep Fighting - Maybe

My inclination right now is to tell Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon (eg) - and everybody else who sat on their asses complaining about Hillary instead of chopping the wood and carrying the water - my first inclination is tell y'all to fuck off.

Show the fuck up or shut the fuck up.

I'm nowhere near as calm or as gracious as either Hillary (or Kate pretending to be Hillary).

It may be a while before I'm at all pleasant to be around.  And I'm not begging your indulgence here. I'm not asking anybody for anything - not your patience, not your understanding, nothin'. Ya pays your money and ya takes your chances.

I'll try to suck it up; rub some dirt on it; walk it off and get back in there.  Just know that if you say anything that sounds like "Told-Ya-So" or the fantasy bullshit about Bernie and unicorns and rainbows and free puppies, I'm likely to tell you to take a flying fuck at a rollin' donut.

Large percentages of American voters believe in angels and talking snakes. They think Creationism isn't much different from Evolution. Half or more of the US population can't name the 3 branches of government. 40% can't identify North America on a map. And about a third don't know that the Earth orbits the sun.

They were convinced Hillary would abolish the 2nd amendment, outlaw Christianity and convert the US to Sharia law by importing millions of Muslims from Syria to slaughter her Christian enemies. And just because she could, she'd go ahead and suspend the rest of the Constitution because Presidents don't really need that shit anyway. (I'm not making any of that up, btw - that's all from actual conversations with actual rubes over the last several months - and there's plenty more where that came from)

I think I finally get what driftglass has been saying for quite a while.

Get over the idea that a well-reasoned argument will bring the "conservatives" over to your side. You can tell 'em your Democrat or that other Democrat or this Socialist or that Independent thinks just like they do, and that if they could just listen for a minute, maybe we could make some common cause and blah blah fucking blah.

"Conservatives" have become Informationally Isolated.  Guess what happens when part of a species is totally isolated from the rest of that species? 

In a small simplistic nutshell, here's what it comes down to, Lefties: - You Are The Liberal Elite as far as the rubes are concerned. You can make as much noise as you want. You can stomp and stumble and trash the jungle, but there it is - they believe you're no different from Hillary, so You.Are.The.Liberal.Elite. 

You wanna tell everybody what they can eat and what kinda exercise they hafta do and what cars they can drive and what light bulbs they're allowed to own and on and on and on.

It doesn't matter that you're not trying to dictate anything to them - it doesn't matter that all you wanna do is convince them to give it a shot and see for themselves...what did I just say?!

They don't fucking care what's true - they only care about what they believe

Here's the kicker - as far as I'm concerned, you just handed it all over to them because you were too busy breathing your own farts, and so you didn't show up. 

I'll keep hoping the really shitty parts of this nightmare don't materialize, but now the GOP is one simple-majority vote away from changing the filibuster rule in the Senate - and then the game is fucking over. The Republic dies. And if that's how it works out, then all we're doing right now is arguing over who gets to do what with the corpse.

'Course, I'm sure you'll have a grand old time finally getting your chance to lie down in front of that tank.

Like I said, I keep hoping - and if there's any chance down the road, I suspect I'll be right back chopping wood and carrying water again, but yeah - not gonna be very pleasant for a while.

Dave Returns

I can't think of a better way to kick it all off.  We always need a heapin' helpin' of  Dave Chapelle. I'm glad he's back.

Today's Tweet

So accurate it hurts and a point/reality that is being missed by so. many. people. pic.twitter.com/C2XbsVKrp1

— Stacey E. Singleton (@staceyNYCDC) November 12, 2016

Presto Change-O

How could the pollsters have gotten it so wrong?

You call a jillion registered voters, and they tell you they're ready to go, and they shake out like: Hillary's up by 5 points or Hillary's up by 8 points or 2 points or whatever.

But then, on the big day, it goes in the shitter and nobody can figure it out - it must be because those Black Voters Under-Performed (and don'tcha just love that kinda language?  "We lost - let's blame the Black People!")

"No, man, it was those stoopid fuckin' Protest Voters!"

"It was because Hillary's a lousy candidate and she failed to connect with blah blah blah - it never woulda happened with Bernie...I told ya so, man".

Fuck that noise.  Fuck all that noise.

Plus FL, NC, PA, and MI
All GOP-dominated, all rat-fucked for the same result
If they let everybody vote, they lose https://t.co/64fbP4H1Td

— Mike Roberts (@eVilleMike) November 10, 2016

How many voters showed up in Florida only to get turned away because of Voter ID or some such?

How many were a little skittish about it in the first place and finally decided just to stay home because they were afraid of being hassled?

Then Virginia (not enough to swing it, but holy fuck did they come close)
Then North Carolina (kind of a toss-up anyway, but she was trending)
Then Pennsylvania - fuck
Then Michigan - fuck
Then Wisconsin - fuck!

I wonder what the arithmetic looks like if you convert the final Polling Numbers for those states into an actual number of votes (X), minus Trump's margin of victory (Y), and compared that difference to the numbers of Registered Voters who turned out, but were denied their right to exercise the franchise.

And what the fuck is up with this apparent rash of No Vote at the top of the ticket?

Where did Kellyanne Conway send Trump in the last coupla weeks of his Scampaign®? 

What the hell was he doing in places that "Hillary had all sewed up"?

The pollsters weren't all that wrong.

There was no massive Bradley Effect.

Plenty of Black and Latin Voters turned out, and Women did their thing for her.

Hillary didn't blow it, and "Those Shitty Little Millennials" didn't blow it for her.

A combination of 
Voter ID Laws 
+ Fewer Polling Stations 
+ Purging Registration Rolls 
+ SCOTUS ruling against The Voting Rights Act
+ Rumors of Fraud and Rigged Elections
+ Threats of intimidation
+ Fliers and Text messages directing people to wrong or non-existent precincts
+ That world-famous Voter Apathy here in USAmerica Inc.
+ etc etc etc
= President-Elect Trump

This looks to me like a perfectly legal rat-fucking of the highest possible order, having been well-targeted and executed down to the last tiny detail - which includes knowing how to play the Electoral College Game.

And it keeps working for as long as voters have to be spoon-fed by the candidates; for as long as we can't be bothered to figure shit out for ourselves; for as long as we insist that we have to be inspired and uplifted by some Great Leader Of The New And Awesomely Stupendous and Tremendous Movement - for as long as we're not willing to hold this system to the standards laid out by the guys who wrote up the original instruction manual for us.  There's some pretty good shit at the end of the first paragraph.

It may sound like I'm being nostalgic; yearning for some golden age that never really existed. I'm not. There may never have been an election that was perfectly Free-n-Fair, and there may never be one. But can't we try to make the next one a bit "more perfect" than the last one? And the one after that?

PS) Hillary got the most votes. A lousy candidate with a bad message and a clunky disconnected style doesn't get the most votes. Don't fucking forget that.

PPS) This is fucked up and complicated - and since it didn't suddenly get all fucked up and complicated yesterday, we're not gonna un-fucking-complicate it by tomorrow.

We got Rat-Fucked, and now we get to wonder if the rubes will ever become aware that the Big Bamboozle is back in full swing.

Today's Today

Jack Leroy Tueller

On the 11th day of the 11th month at the 11th hour

Every year for 98 years now. We can always hope.

Trump's "Religion"

Kind of an oldie-but-a-goodie today:

But the god-knobbers got in line anyway.

Coupla Quick Memes

A Letter

Aaron Sorkin addresses a few problems in a letter to his daughters.

Sorkin Girls,

Well the world changed late last night in a way I couldn’t protect us from. That’s a terrible feeling for a father. I won’t sugarcoat it—this is truly horrible. It’s hardly the first time my candidate didn’t win (in fact it’s the sixth time) but it is the first time that a thoroughly incompetent pig with dangerous ideas, a serious psychiatric disorder, no knowledge of the world and no curiosity to learn has.

And it wasn’t just Donald Trump who won last night—it was his supporters too. The Klan won last night. White nationalists. Sexists, racists and buffoons. Angry young white men who think rap music and Cinco de Mayo are a threat to their way of life (or are the reason for their way of life) have been given cause to celebrate. Men who have no right to call themselves that and who think that women who aspire to more than looking hot are shrill, ugly, and otherwise worthy of our scorn rather than our admiration struck a blow for misogynistic shitheads everywhere. Hate was given hope. Abject dumbness was glamorized as being “the fresh voice of an outsider” who’s going to “shake things up.” (Did anyone bother to ask how? Is he going to re-arrange the chairs in the Roosevelt Room?) For the next four years, the President of the United States, the same office held by Washington and Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, F.D.R., J.F.K. and Barack Obama, will be held by a man-boy who’ll spend his hours exacting Twitter vengeance against all who criticize him (and those numbers will be legion). We’ve embarrassed ourselves in front of our children and the world.

And the world took no time to react. The Dow futures dropped 700 points overnight. Economists are predicting a deep and prolonged recession. Our NATO allies are in a state of legitimate fear. And speaking of fear, Muslim-Americans, Mexican-Americans and African-Americans are shaking in their shoes. And we’d be right to note that many of Donald Trump’s fans are not fans of Jews. On the other hand, there is a party going on at ISIS headquarters. What wouldn’t we give to trade this small fraction of a man for Richard Nixon right now?

So what do we do?

First of all, we remember that we’re not alone. A hundred million people in America and a billion more around the world feel exactly the same way we do.

Second, we get out of bed. The Trumpsters want to see people like us (Jewish, “coastal elites,” educated, socially progressive, Hollywood…) sobbing and wailing and talking about moving to Canada. I won’t give them that and neither will you. Here’s what we’ll do…

…we’ll fucking fight. (Roxy, there’s a time for this kind of language and it’s now.) We’re not powerless and we’re not voiceless. We don’t have majorities in the House or Senate but we do have representatives there. It’s also good to remember that most members of Trump’s own party feel exactly the same way about him that we do. We make sure that the people we sent to Washington—including Kamala Harris—take our strength with them and never take a day off.

We get involved. We do what we can to fight injustice anywhere we see it—whether it’s writing a check or rolling up our sleeves. Our family is fairly insulated from the effects of a Trump presidency so we fight for the families that aren’t. We fight for a woman to keep her right to choose. We fight for the First Amendment and we fight mostly for equality—not for a guarantee of equal outcomes but for equal opportunities. We stand up.

America didn’t stop being America last night and we didn’t stop being Americans and here’s the thing about Americans: Our darkest days have always—always—been followed by our finest hours.

Roxy, I know my predictions have let you down in the past, but personally, I don’t think this guy can make it a year without committing an impeachable crime. If he does manage to be a douche nozzle without breaking the law for four years, we’ll make it through those four years. And three years from now we’ll fight like hell for our candidate and we’ll win and they’ll lose and this time they’ll lose for good. Honey, it’ll be your first vote.

The battle isn’t over, it’s just begun. Grandpa fought in World War II and when he came home this country handed him an opportunity to make a great life for his family. I will not hand his granddaughter a country shaped by hateful and stupid men. Your tears last night woke me up, and I’ll never go to sleep on you again.

Love,

Dad

Day 1

Day 1 In Trump's America

Samantha Bee

Back up on your hind legs, America.