My first, broad reaction to how this place has been responding to coverage of the fabricated GOP scandals floating around was just an irritated comment, now on the Rec List: Why are you all just reacting to GOP propaganda instead of setting your own agenda? But my remarks were broad and simply meant to shut down the flow of bullshit just for a few moments so we could look at what we're doing rationally. We find that a huge amount of the content being posted here, even by well-respected diarists, bears no discenerable difference from MSM commentary in style or substance beyond coming from a more progressive angle, with all the characteristic lack of priorities, inability to focus on the relevant, adoption of a passive commentator's pose rather than a participant strategist's, flirting with the depraved notion that facts and opinions are equivalent, etc. etc. I don't understand how we keep falling victim to this.
Here is what's going on: The GOP is doing (list of ten million horrific things) to irreparably harm the country, and doing them brazenly in full public view and with obvious, sick pleasure. Even though the media barely covers any of it, it's still taking its toll on the GOP - it seems like every day is a disgrace or a real scandal for them, making them look stupid, criminal, evil, stupidly criminal, criminally stupid, stupidly evil, evilly stupid, criminally evil, and/or evilly criminal: Which they are.
But then out of the thousands upon thousands of different threads of innuendo, propaganda campaigns, enormously expensive taxpayer-funded political fishing expeditions while they plead poverty and tell Americans we have no money for food, they hit upon something they think they can play - at least for a while. Note they don't necessarily believe it's a real scandal, they just believe they can sell it long enough, and keep it running long enough before it falls apart, to score some political points off it. These are noxious, lying, nihilistic criminal vermin infesting our government under the banner of the Republican party.
And now that they're doing this, again, here we are, again, picking apart their lies, again, instead of talking about millions of people out of work, unions crushed, climate change, and GOP actions behind it all. Here we are focused on the minutiae of the minutiae, the trivia of the trivia, rather than articulating our own actions and focusing on the important even when all we're doing is talking. Our failure in this matter is massive. It's okay to to spend a lot or even most of the time talking, but you have to guarantee that the talking is thoughtful and productive - that it aims toward a resolution either of action or understanding that pertains toward such action.
The GOP would rather make up stories about how their coalition of proud tax-evaders and leeches on society has been unfairly treated by the IRS than about all the ways they're screwing us over every day, up to and including criminal ways that deserve criminal indictment, so if we're going to talk, let that be the subject. Let the man be the subject whose family can't afford health care because the GOP is obstructing something that would provide it while they want to complain that their millionaire financiers aren't being toe-sucked by the IRS.
Well, I want consequences for Republicans, and if the government can't provide them, at least they can be provided socially. Here is just one suggestion off the top of my head: A 1 day ban of exile and ostracism from all social or business interaction every time an affluent conservative complains about how poorly society treats them. We will not accept their money, we will not wash their clothes, we will not mow their lawns, we will not let them into our lane, we will not speak to or acknowledge them in any way that our employers do not absolutely force us to, and if we are forced, the job will be done with passionate and vengeful fuckery that stays within the bounds of law while grinding the fact of it directly into their nuts - preferably with a written ticket explaining that you have been issued a citation for being a right-wing piece of shit, and sentenced to 1 day of being treated like you treat the world.
Anyway, that's just one possibility. The point is to stop acting like you live in a conservatives' world, in a conservatives' country. The right in this country are not authorities: They are weirdos who bought an Authority Suit at a surplus store and just started walking around in it telling everyone else what to do. So stop criticizing them like they're authorities - don't criticize them at all. Criticism is for credible people: You criticize people who should know better, and who can be influenced by your opinions. You don't criticize the drunken nutbag who hijacked a speedboat and crashed it into a pool bar - you condemn that. And if it happens over, and over, and over, stop condemning and start stopping the phenomenon, criticizing the real authorities surrounding it who may be derelict or incompetent, and ignoring the idiots who thinks it's a great ole' time to do things like that. Be the authority. No one has to elect you to be authoritative: It's a choice you make that begins with wanting to change things more than you enjoy commenting on them as they are.