WatDabney

Actually, that’s been the case for just about exactly 16 years. I watched it happen in real time.

I went through a libertarian phase in the 80s and 90s, mostly because I couldn’t reconcile my anarchist sensibilities with the fact that humanity just isn’t ready to do entirely without authority. I eventually just gave in and shifted to anarchism, since it’s really the only position that’s consistent with my principles, and I just treat it as more of an ideal toward which to strive than an actual immediate goal.

In any event, I knew the libertarian movement of the era. It was more right- than left-wing even then, but it was primarily libertarian, exactly as the term implies - primarily focused just on minimizing political authority.

Then came the Tea Party.

The first Tea Party protests were organized by actual libertarians and were specifically against the Wall Street bailouts in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis that Wall Street had essentially single-handedly caused. And notably, they were against the Bush administration.

But then, shortly after Obama’s victory, with a suspiciously well-timed and widespread boost fron the legacy media reporting on an even more suspiciously well-timed on-air comment by Jim Cramer, the Tea Party was recast into a Republican protest against the left. And it almost immediately transformed from a series of protests against the Wall Street bailouts to a traveling right-wing carnival of hate. (And conveniently enough, the focus on the Wall Street bailouts completely vanished).

While I saw that happen I didn’t recognize the near-immediate Overton Window shift it triggered until I noticed a sudden influx of libertarians on anarchist forums. And they all had the same story - they had abandoned their libertarian forums because they had been taken over by angry, stupid Republicans.

And that became the status quo. The former libertarians mostly settled into their own sub-community of “anarcho-capitalists” and the libertarian movement is now pretty much just angry, stupid Republicans who are only marked out by the fact that they lean more into corporatocracy and militarism than religious fundamentalism and social war.

Unfortunately, there’s likely some truth to that. In spite of the SC fairly consistently destroying the rule of law to rule on Trump’s behalf, if even one time they rule against him, even on just one ruling that’s so vividly obvious that the otherwise wholly corrupt and compromised SC can’t possibly cobble together an excuse to rule in Trump’s favor, that really is likely to touch off more violence quicker than just about anything else.

There is zero chance that there is not going to be fairly significant violence from Trump’s supporters between November and January.

It will happen, absolutely no matter what.

Either he’s going to lose, in which case they’re going to engage in retaliatory and/or insurrectionary violence, or he’s going to win (or be handed the win by the Supreme Court Rubber-stamping Service), in which case they’re going to engage in celebratory, very enthusiastic and likely officially sanctioned violence.

That’s it. At this point, there is no third option. Trump, in his pathological narcissism and complete lack of empathy or sound reason, has fostered an atmosphere of anger and hatred, and it’s not a question of if it will result in violence and murder, but simply of when and of what specifically will touch it off.

Amongst all of the Republican insanity of recent years, the thing that definitely stands out to me the most, as the weirdest, is their slavish subservience to Putin.

I understand it from an extremely cynical point of view, but still, it’s just so weird snd so directly contrary to everything they’ve ever claimed to stand for. It’s hypocrisy and malfeasance and amorality and pathetic subservience all rolled into one and cranked up to 11.

rogue state

noun

1. A state or nation acting outside of the accepted international norms and policies.

Israel is a rogue state.

Well, like, to me, my thing is… a video image is much more powerful and useful than an actual event.

Like back when I used to go out, when I was last out, I was walking down the street and this guy came barrelling out of a bar - fell right in front of me and he had a knife right in his back - landed right on the ground.

And I have no reference to it now. I can’t refer back to it. I can’t press rewind. I can’t put it on pause. I can’t put it on slo-mo and see all the little details.

And the blood, it was all wrong. It didn’t look like blood. The hue was off and I couldn’t adjust the hue. I was seeing it for real, but it just wasn’t right.

• Slacker (1991)

I’m with him 100% on the first bit - at this point, the single most important thing the Dems have to do is stop bickering.

As for the rest, at this point I don’t even much care. I can see arguments both for and against in both directions - either choice is going to involve some risk but either choice can be made to succeed.

So the important thing, and really the ONLY important thing, is to pick one and run with it. Stop with the dilly-dallying and the second-guessing and the bitching and moaning and hand-wringing and make a choice and stick with it, so we can focus ALL of our attention on pounding those fucking fascist traitors’ dicks into the dirt.