I’m tired of being reasonable, especially when the other side — which is an existential threat to democracy — is anything but. I have spent whatever balance I had to put faith in norms and processes after the deadly, criminal debacle that was/is the Trump *administration.
Rick Wilson has an epic thread up on Twitter about the need to form the January 6th Commission without GQP support, and do it right. The fuck. Away.
Let’s start with his tweets:
Let that sink in. It’s not as if we don’t know this already — the GQP will do anything to grab hold of power. Anything. They don’t have shame or a conscience or remorse — the Machiavellian norm holds here: to them, the ends (power) justify the means (lies, violence, disenfranchisement, etc.)
”For Kevin and Co, the problem was that it didn’t work the first time.” This is so important. It’s not that any of them (or the vast majority of them) think January 6th was bad. Rather, it’s that it didn’t work and now the element of surprise has been denied them. This last is only true if we learn from our recent (and distant) mistakes, however.
”But our climate plan” or “but our control gun plan [sic]” or “but our daycare plan” isn’t politics. It’s masturbation.” I know we care deeply about policy on our side of things. By all appearances, we believe the policy is the power. We need to keep focusing on policy, moreover, to keep our own voters in the fold. But policy alone isn’t going to get things done in our deeply divided, poised-at-the-edge-of-the-cliff democracy. It just isn’t.
FULL STOP. Stop trying to negotiate with these soul-less, power-grabbing, corrupt, criminal, lying sacks of rat turds. ”THEY SENT PEOPLE TO KILL YOU.” And frankly, they’d do it again — WILL do it again — if they believe they can succeed. Comity, bipartisanship, all of that are the old rules. We keep trying to play a game by those old rules and never acknowledge that the GQP poured gasoline on them, lit a match, and then dropped a nuclear bomb on them just for good measure. We are playing a game that doesn’t exist any longer, and they are playing an entirely different game. It’s high time we change our game and write the rules for that game before these nut jobs rip the board out from under us entirely and we are just standing around in the wreckage wondering what happened.
”They’re conning you.” If it’s one thing we all understand is that they are sacks of shit lying criminal con-people. Why would we think that this isn’t all a part of their con? It’s one thing for them to con their dumbed-down rubes. It’s another entirely if we, aware of their lying, conning activities, allow ourselves to be conned in spite of everything. That’s unforgiveable.
”You need to nationalize the election...” Bingo. I’ve always been a big fan of “all politics are local”. Hell — that’s how we’ve made slow and stead progress here in Virginia, frankly. But that is not the electorate or the elections we are looking at right now. To mobilize people — our voters — we need to embrace the idea that we are waging war on the right side of good v. evil. Because we are.
I think this is so important. We can adopt an initial, fleeting patina of craving bipartisanship, but only do it for the optics. We need to accept that a) bipartisanship isn’t going to happen; b) why would we want bipartisanship when the other side of that equation is evil; and c) elections have consequences — losing the Senate and the White House has consequences. And we can merrily f**king turn around whenever we please (and quickly) and do the right things, not the bipartisan things. When half of a bipartisan relationship is fundamentally evil, then by default, bipartisanship will necessarily NOT lead to doing the right things.
The Manchins and Sinemas of this world are living in a fantasy world — a cynical one at that. Enjoying their small grasp at power of their own, they’re willing to let a farcical “perfect” be the enemy of the good. Those days are gone — they may never come back, who knows — but they aren’t going to come back in the timeframes we need them, and only a resounding 2022 slapback of the GQP has a whiff of a scintilla of a fraction of a hint of getting the GQP back to being the garden variety evil formerly known as the GOP. Manchin and Sinema need to be disciplined — they need cherry committee assignments that give them access to lobbyists, donors and power stripped. I know folks are worried about Manchin flipping parties — and that IS a concern. But he’s holding us all hostage. Literally. And the horde is at the gates. We have to grab our balls and flex our own power muscles, and that starts with our own holdouts and then quickly moves to the GQP.
Looking back on the rise of Hitler — just a simple timeline — is super instructive in terms of framing the risks we now face. Hitler attempted a coup in 1923, and served prison time over it. Hitler clung to the big lie, put his head down, and soldiered on. All around him, the political “power structure” kept thinking that they could find a way through this without abandoning #TheWayThingsAreDone. They maneuvered to install Hitler as Chancellor, convinced that they could control him (sound familiar?). That was in 1933. That was the springboard of Hitler’s rise to power (vastly simplified), and he took full advantage.
Trump tried the same things in a slightly different order. But the one thing he and the GQP know how to do almost innately is lie, propagandize, manipulate and distract. The ruse of “bipartisanship” is part of that playbook — to decry something that isn’t bipartisan as being inherently bad. Yet, I bet you not a single American refused their $1,400 stimulus check because it wasn’t bipartisan, right? It’s a weapon that we’ve been carrying that they have now wrested from our control and they’re getting ready to execute us with it.
GET ON OFFENSE, Democrats. Drag them — and when they’re bloody and begging for mercy, hitch up your panties and drag them a little more. It’s the only language they understand. Start by assembling and starting the January 6th Commission ASAP. Do it with all Democratic votes — but do it. And anything else you think is right? For example — if the GQP (which is evil) opposes something, whisper “bipartisanship” quickly into the wind and then pass that with Democratic votes only as well. Stop playing an old game by a decimated rule book, FFS. Nothing about this is normal, and we’re going to lose what we have if we don’t smarten up, and quickly.