Notorious USA

Here’s a fun fact:

“Both of the last two Republican presidents — Bush and Trump— have lost the popular vote, and yet each nominated two Supreme Court justices, who have been confirmed by the votes of senators who represent a minority of the American people.” So a fifth member of SCOTUS confirmed in this way will “create a solid majority on the court, which can then unwind the legal framework that a majority of Americans still supports.” 

Wait, did I say, “fun”?

Sorry, I meant to say, “grotesque travesty of logic and a trampling of basic civil rights.”

I get those things confused sometimes.

Yes, the great Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave it her best shot, but she couldn’t quite hold on until January, when a potential President Biden could nominate a replacement who wouldn’t, for example, possess a “deep, deep contempt for the rights of voters” or insist that "it's time for Roe v. Wade to go."

No, that probably would not happen.

Of course, the idea that the death of one octogenarian woman means the collapse of decades of social progress does not, in any way, indicate that America’s political system is a pathetic façade that autocrats can twist and contort at will.

Ok, maybe it does.

You see, the supposed principles of America, and our theoretically strong institutions, are not just a house of cards, but a tower of water-soaked jokers, perched upon a shit-covered dog trying to scratch itself in unpleasant places.

I think you’ll agree that this is indeed a shaky foundation.

And yet many of us have placed our faith in these systems, and in the people who were entrusted with running them. Our reward for this delusion was a parade of Republicans who did everything but slap our naïve faces for believing — even for a slice of a nanosecond — that they would refrain from indulging in a blatant, salivating power grab.

I mean, a few GOP senators offered tortured rationales for their inconsistency — something about this event being different than 2016 — but those reasons quickly devolved into a MC Escher contortion of self-serving nonsense.

However, most Republicans didn’t even bother to reconcile their torpedoing of Merrick Garland then with their embrace of rushing through a confirmation today. 

And many GOP senators flat-out reveled in their hypocrisy. They thought it was just fucking hilarious that Americans would believe they might be men of their word. Just a scream.

So what happens now, when the Republican Party has revealed — for about the 883^rd time — that they don’t really care about democracy, decency, or effective governance?

Well, there’s a lot of talk about the Democrats stacking the court, and indeed, some of them may just be pissed off enough to try it. But come on — we’re talking about the Democratic Party here. Most of their leaders think Joe Biden is too progressive, and that we all have to continue worshipping the white working class, and that making Republicans angry is so upsetting that it’s better to cower in the corner and avoid doing anything too “radical.”

So no, I highly doubt that you will see Democrats re-impeach Trump tomorrow, or ram through four liberal justices in January, or do much of anything beyond pout and ask Middle America to please love them.

But of course, even if there were some way to stop Trump’s third appointment in four years, it would be a stopgap. Because we need to go deeper.

Gentlemen’s agreements about how to run the country don’t work when one side is just fine with fascism, racism, and armed vigilantes in the streets. Lifetime appointments for justices who love theocracy is not a workable idea. Pining our hopes on a 250-year-old document that is impossible to amend is not a productive approach. And hoping that a system engineered to keep rich white men in power will somehow reform itself is not a comforting plan.

If the age of Trump has taught us anything, it is that all options have to be considered. Because the Republicans have figured this out already, and they think it’s cute if you don’t see it that way. 

Yes, it’s simply adorable.

Free Hugs

Last week, I attempted to deal with the nonstop deluge of horrific behavior spewing out of the White House by asking, “Is there something that we progressives can do to make conservatives feel better, so that maybe they won’t, you know, destroy the country and devastate the entire planet?”

After all, we liberals are well-known for blaming ourselves for every monstrous action that right-wingers embrace. And American society is all about excusing conservative aggression and justifying GOP incompetence.

So let’s just run with it. Here are some of the ways in which liberals can make things easier for you conservatives.

First, we don’t want to hurt your feelings by pointing out that Trump is a dangerous moron whose own advisors “hesitated to give him military options, fearing the President might accidentally take the US to war.” Hey, I’m sure that statement has been true about every president.

Of course, we also know that Trump only ran for president as some kind of bizarre branding exercise, and for some unfathomable reason, you bought it. And yes, our sociopathic chief executive possesses the attention span of nine-year-old, has revitalized fascism, and is arguably the most corrupt president in history. But you won’t hear that from us.

Similarly, we will not bring up the fact that if you support Trump, you are more likely to be racist — even though study after study has shown this. No, you can go right on thinking that Black Lives Matter are a bunch of terrorists, even if the FBI has stated that “White supremacist extremists present the most lethal threat” to the country.

Oh, maybe you don’t know about that last item because “top political appointees in the Department of Homeland Security repeatedly instructed career officials to modify intelligence assessments to suit President Donald Trump's agenda by downplaying Russia's efforts to interfere in the US and the threat posed by White supremacists.”

Apparently, the guy flies into a rage if someone tells him a fact that he doesn’t want to hear, and in a maneuver better suited to calming a screaming toddler than advising the most powerful person in the country, his lackeys twist the truth to keep him appeased. Or, in an assessment that we swear we are not making up, “the President prefers to operate without intelligence.”

Yeah, he does that a lot.

In any case, you keep on believing that a doddering septuagenarian with a history of failure and garbled syntax knows far more than the top medical professionals in the world. While we’re at it, go on and forward that conspiratorial video from your high school acquaintance who flunked chemistry and has never left his home state, but who somehow is plugged into the inner workings of a vast cabal of mad scientists.

Above all things, we will not question American exceptionalism. We don’t want to destroy your belief that our country is vastly superior to all others, even if this “too often clashes with its culture of guns, mass incarceration, the death penalty and the war on drugs,” and has left us way behind on multiple quality-of-life measurements.

Woops, I see that I’ve upset you. I apologize, and I definitely will not mention that the border wall with Mexico will never be built. Yes, that endeavor wasted tons of taxpayer money, and did nothing more than provide a front for right-wing con men to steal your money, like you were some kind of fucking rube or something, but…

OK, now you’re crying. Let’s try to make it up to you.

Hey, would you like to vote twice? You know, because you’re so special? The president says it’s fine, so go for it.

And you know what else? We will ask newspapers to avoid endorsing candidates, because it might upset conservatives. There, there.

You know what would really cheer you up? Ending all of that diversity nonsense.

Yes, the president who is incredibly popular with neo-Nazis — a coincidence, we’re sure — “has instructed federal agencies to end racial sensitivity trainings that address topics like white privilege and critical race theory, calling them ‘divisive, anti-American propaganda.’”

And good news for you: It’s not just the feds who are canceling diversity. Companies such as Google have “significantly rolled backtheir diversity and inclusion initiatives in an apparent effort to avoid being perceived as anti-conservative.” 

In fact, some of these companies have “stopped saying the word diversity” altogether, because it’s so very very very controversial — well, at least to you Trump supporters. So we bend over backward to ensure that you’ll never have to hear disturbing facts about racial inequality or have your 1950s thinking challenged in any way.

You see, it’s all about being nicer to you, the hardcore Trump supporter who screams, “Fuck your feelings” and shrieks that progressives are sensitive snowflakes. And that’s when you’re not threatening us with guns, or beating us up to prove that we’re the violent ones. Or just shooting us in the street while the cops watch.

We want to make sure that you feel good about yourselves. Because that’s the most important thing in the goddamn world.

Yup.

A Helpful Guide (Intro)

Look, we understand that these are tough times for you unwavering Trump supporters.

You’ve discovered that you cannot yell, “Support the troops” while waving around a Trump 2020 sign. That’s because your idol made some, shall we say, unfortunate remarks concerning American’s veterans — something about “losers” and “suckers.” To be honest, the fact that the president has complete disdain for everybody except himself (and certain homicidal dictators) cannot be a shocker. Hey, it’s not like military leaders are rushing to deny the story, and even Fox News verified it. Plus, he has more or less said the same thing out loud (and you applauded).

But wait, because it gets worse. Apparently, your beloved president “admitted he knew weeks before the first confirmed US coronavirus death that the virus was dangerous, airborne, highly contagious and ‘more deadly than even your strenuous flus,’ and that he repeatedly played it down publicly.” The result of his little fib — this tiny lie — was that tens of thousands of Americans died. So clearly, your bewildered leader messed up, and your claims that he knew what he was doing are even more pathetic than we realized.

OK, so you’re having some cognitive dissonance right now. How can you support a corrupt dolt who has complete disdain for you and everything you supposedly revere, and whose selfish grandstanding has decimated the country?

Well, fortunately for you, we progressives are here to help. Next week, I’ll list all the ways that liberals are bending over backward to help Trump supporters feel better about themselves.

Consider this an introduction to a field guide. Or a teaser. Or a way for me to admit that I cannot possibly keep up with all the crazy shit coming out of the White House on an hourly basis.

In any case, stay tuned and see you next week.

Dullsville No More

As I may have mentioned, I’m from Wisconsin.

I’ve written before about growing up Latino in an overwhelmingly white state, and living in the most segregated city in America, and attending the flagship university where less than 0.5 % of the student body was Hispanic.

But one thing I never wrote about was Kenosha. And the reason was simple: It’s a boring suburb where nothing interesting ever happens.

Ahem.

As many commentators have pointed out, Kenosha is where a Black man can get shot seven times in the back while a White guy waving an AR-15, who had just killed multiple people, will barely get noticed.

And here I should mention that in my most recent novel, I wrote a scene in which the police tackle an unarmed Latino. Those same cops ignore a nearby white person who is juggling multiple handguns. In that scene, I was going for black comedy mixed with social satire. But clearly, the real world is even more farcical than anything I could imagine.

In any case, after the unrest in Kenosha, our oblivious, bloviating president did his part, flying in to order up fraudulent photo-ops, shout over Black leaders, and express sympathy for a homicidal teenager. Really, do you expect anything else from “a sociopathic narcissist running on a platform of fear, intolerance, and authoritarian, conspiratorial doublespeak” at this point in his presidency? I know I certainly don’t.

And speaking of gun-toting, bloodthirsty teenagers, please note that many right-wingers have done more than excuse one of their brethren for the slight transgression of shooting unarmed people. They have actively celebrated him. A Christian website is raising funds for the shooter’s defense, because after all, there’s nothing more Christian than murdering someone in the street.

Now, I’m tempted to pick on my home state for becoming the newest battleground — both literal and figurative — in the ongoing war of right-wing extremism against, well, everybody else. Believe me, I glance at my Facebook feed — which always contains posts from guys I went to high school with — and I wonder, “You were sane once upon a time, so when did you become a terrified, angry suburban apologist for racism and neo-fascism?” Is it a law that growing up White and male in Milwaukee means that you will eventually clamor for the violent demise of liberals? 

But in truth, what happened in Kenosha is happening all across America. Indeed, it has been going on, more or less, for centuries. For example, “the narrative that dangerous Black people are causing violence that White men must suppress for the good of the community serves Trump's election narrative, but it is a trope right out of Reconstruction.”

However, this trend has accelerated and become more visible in recent years because “White fear has become the unalloyed rallying cry” of Trump’s followers, and the GOP has morphed into nothing more than a national “White grievance party." 

So now add in America’s love — fetishization, actually — of guns. And soon, we have the realization of the “long-held fantasy of right-wing militia groups,” which is a “scenario in which they can put their gun collections to use by showing up, unbidden, to 'protect' businesses that in many cases aren't theirs and don't want that service.” 

Armed thugs roaming the streets should alarm Americans. But many of us enthusiastically cheer for these “self-anointed, weapons-bearing so-called enforcers of order” who have no legal authority and “very little stopping them.”

By the way, all 50 states have legal provisions prohibiting private militias from operating outside of governmental authority, “but the statutes are largely unenforced.”

So much for law and order.

We Know All We Need to Know

Listen, we can discuss the Republican National Convention so far, dissecting all the blatant lies, delusional boasts, and vague threats. We can even talk about how some Latinas, unsure if they’re immigrants or not, will wail like soul-hungry demons in praise of white supremacy.

But one thing that we cannot discuss is the GOP agenda. Because there isn’t one. There is only Trump and his kids / minions. As many commenters have noted, there really is no coherent Republican Party anymore. 

Indeed, “for the first time in its 166-year history, the GOP didn't bother to issue a new platform for its national convention.” Instead, Republicans simply reaffirmed their allegiance to their homegrown il duce, effectively saying that “the party supports whatever Donald Trump wants.”

This is problematic, in that Trump strives for nothing except improving his finances and pursuing an insatiable need for adulation.

But that doesn’t mean that Republicans exist only to please Trump… ok, that’s mostly true. However, the GOP still has goals, even if the people executing those priorities — the intellectual leaders of the Republican Party — “are the paranoids, kooks, know-nothings, and bigots who once could be heard only on late-night talk shows.”

For example, conservatives don’t like diversity, immigration, and women having control over their own bodies. All that has been true for a while.

But there are still a few holdovers from the fabled “small-government” movement, who insist that Washington is so corrupt and incompetent that the only solution is to cut services, throw money at billionaires, and hope for the best.

Of course, no White House has tried to do as little as possible as the Trump Administration. So if this limited-government approach was ever “going to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity, it should be now.”

However, I’m pretty sure these are not peaceful or prosperous times.

So how can Republicans persuade Americans that a collapsed economy, horrific pandemic, and unrest in the streets are not the fault of their guy, who has been in charge for almost four years now? 

Well, the GOP often wins “by selling a narrative in which ‘liberals’ are trying to undermine the country by stealing the tax dollars of hardworking Americans — quietly understood to be white men — and redistributing them to lazy people who want handouts, not-so-quietly understood to be people of color and feminist women.”

And that, ultimately, is the guiding light of the modern conservative movement.

You see, Trump “has stripped the veneer from familiar Republican themes concerning social order, values and economic policy.” Most of that was bullshit and just code for racism all along. But even if “they once represented principled ideological arguments, they've now curdled into content-free bludgeons to preserve power for the dwindling ranks of white conservatives in a rapidly diversifying America.”

Once lauded as the party of ideas, the GOP’s sole motivations now consist of pleasing Trump, amassing power for its own sake, and maintaining the privilege of white men. 

No, those are not catchy slogans that resonate with swing voters. But they are all that conservatives have left.