Hispanic Fanatic

As any follower of the Q conspiracy will tell you, why accept objective reality when ludicrous theories are so easy to believe?

Americans have always been pretty good at ignoring perfectly obvious answers in favor of convoluted hypotheses. Just look back at 2016, when Trump’s election caused “Americans across the political spectrum” to stammer and rationalize and search “desperately for any alternative explanation… to the one staring them in the face.” This explanation, of course, was that racism helped fuel Trump’s victory.

Back then, Republicans insisted that there was no bigotry within their organization, that rural white people really, truly cared about limited government, and that coded appeals to racism had not occurred for the last half-century.

Some of them still say that. But come on, once you’ve garnered the Daily Stormer’s endorsement, you pretty much know the company that you keep. Can anyone actually deny that the preferred party of white supremacists is the GOP?

Now, before we pile on the conservatives — always fun to do — let’s look at the Democratic Party.

As you know, self-avowed Democratic Socialist and progressive rabble rouser Bernie Sanders has been running roughshod over his fellow contenders for the presidential nomination. According to the Democratic Party establishment, this is Armageddon, Ragnarok, and doomsday all rolled into one.

The party’s leaders are shrieking that a Sanders nomination will be the death of us all, and they are willing to splinter their organization to prevent it. 

Now, I’m not going to start an argument about Sanders’ electability. First, because as our jabbering bigoted president has proven, anybody with money can win an election. Second, because for every poll or opinion piece that says Sanders will be destroyed in November, there is another one that says he will cruise to victory. The truth is that nobody really knows if Sanders would win or not. So let’s just admit that right now.

The point, however, is there is no doubt that the progressives in the nation have just about had it with the scared, centrist, compromise-at-all-costs attitude of the Democratic Party. That shit may have worked in the 1990s, but it had worn out its welcome by the Obama years.

In fact, it is perfectly clear that Obama would have been a more effective president if he had simply abandoned his efforts to reach out to Republicans, many of whom openly despised him, and just rammed through a more aggressive agenda. Instead, Obama tried to play nice, and what he got was Merrick Garland hung out to dry and a conservative movement that is still (still!) trying to destroy the Affordable Care Act. Really, if Obama had just said, “I’m the boss,” half as authoritatively as Trump has, we might have a public option for healthcare and fewer AR-15s in the hands of psychopaths.

I guess we’ll never know.

In any case, moderate Democrats insist that they can win the next election if they just run Hillary Clinton 2.0, but not the actual Hillary because, you know, everybody kind of hated her. More than that, however, they insist that the Democratic Party’s base is all in on that strategy.

Perhaps they missed the news that “Sanders has jumped out to a double-digit national lead in the Democratic presidential contest.”

Or maybe they skipped over the fact that Sanders has “basically tied or won every single primary so far.”

Or perhaps they ignored the idea that Sanders is winning “because he’s promising to transform the way we do things in a country where the actual voting public doesn’t seem to like how things are done.”

The truth is that the Democratic base — the progressives, the young, the racially diverse — are feeling the Bern. Hell, plenty of middle-aged white liberals are down with Sanders.

The Democratic Party’s insistence that, no, its voters are secretly in love with Joe Biden or just need more time to get to know Amy Klobuchar is not based in reality. 

Cramming a moderate down the throat of Democrats — when it has been made massively clear that they do not want this — is beyond arrogant. It is delusional and self-sabotaging. 

Sanders is popular. His supporters are passionate. And nobody is clamoring for Mike Bloomberg to be president except for closeted Republicans.

Democratic leaders are in denial about their base, just as the GOP establishment was in denial about its base in 2016. But in both cases, the rest of us know the truth.

Let’s say your kid punches another kid in the face for no reason. According to the GOP understanding of human psychology, you should respond by taking your child out for ice cream and saying, “I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”

Yes, in this post-impeachment era, our favorite man-child of a chief executive has gone from barely hiding his criminality to openly boasting of his ability to do whatever he wants. He is more or less “doing that Joker dance down the courthouse steps.”

We would like to believe that all those Republicans who said Trump would learn a lesson have, in fact, learned a lesson themselves. And this would be that a president who is supposedly repentant does not, in general, threaten his political opponents, retaliate against witnesses, pull strings for his corrupt cronies, and treat the Department of Justice more like it is the Ministry of Information — all within mere days of surviving impeachment. It just shows (as if there were any doubt) that “the only lesson Trump ever learns is that he gets away with everything.”

Still, we haven’t heard any apologies or admissions of serious misjudgment from top Republicans. Presumably, many of them are too damn embarrassed to acknowledge their weak-willed naivety and degrading capitulation to an orange buffoon.

However, maybe some of them are not embarrassed in the least. In fact, maybe this entire political nightmare isn’t just a case of Republicans putting up with kakistocracy in exchange of tax cuts and conservative judges. Oh, that’s no doubt true for many of them, and it remains a pathetic excuse for coddling a wannabe dictator. But at this point, it appears that a lot of conservatives are not only fine with a failed businessman becoming king of America, but are actively rooting for an authoritarian despot to run roughshod over democracy.

Keep in mind that studies show that almost one-third of Americans display at least some support for ending democracy and instilling either a strongman or converting to outright military rule. Furthermore, “the highest level of openness to authoritarianism came from voters who supported Donald Trump.”

If you paid attention in history class, you know that we developed the U.S. Constitution to protect against monarchies. But many conservatives are rethinking the whole point of that old parched document.

Of course, nobody really thinks the Constitution is perfect. We may love it, warts and all, in the same way that we love our crazy uncles who think the moon landing was faked. Yeah, we try to dwell on the Constitution’s good parts, and not the Electoral College or that thing about three-fifths of a person.

But what’s interesting about modern conservatives is that, despite their bellicose grandstanding about how much they revere the Constitution, they really kind of hate it. They hate the separation of the branches of government, the power of the judiciary, and the dominance of the federal government over the states. They hate the 1st Amendment, the 14^thAmendment, the 17^th Amendment, and… well, all them except the 2nd Amendment. They despise most of the principles the Constitution was founded upon, and most of the specifics that it consists of.

They don’t like it — not at all. Nope.

What these anti-Constitutionalists really want is someone to take charge, to wrestle the whole messiness of American life and condense it into a simple, easily understood system.

The fact that this is impossible deters them not at all.

Life, as we know, is inherently messy and complicated. It’s unruly and complex even if you live on an island with dozens of people. So the idea that a nation of 330 million individuals — consisting of hundreds of different races, religions, values, and sports team fandoms — can somehow be squeezed into a pleasing, conflict-free flow of humanity is absurd, even pathetic.

And yet, social conservatives yearn for “a strong sense of social hierarchy (the notion that everyone has their place) [that] can arguably provide a coherent structure that makes the world seem less chaotic — and theoretically more controllable.”

Meanwhile, all of us progressives come dancing along — talking about radical upheavals to healthcare and other discombobulating changes to the old-fashioned way of doing things — and conservatives promptly freak the fuck out.

In addition, all the ideas that “multiculturalists believe will help people appreciate and thrive in democracy — appreciating difference, talking about difference, displaying and applauding difference — are the very conditions that encourage authoritarians not to heights of tolerance, but to their intolerant extremes.”

Trump’s hardcore supporters don’t want to “appreciate difference” or stop using plastic straws or try Ethiopian food or acknowledge any of your crazy commie ideas. Instead, they want things to never change, especially if they reside within an even mildly privileged class of American society. 

More than anything, they want someone to do all their thinking for them. They want the strongman to make it all ok, and to make it simple, and to make all the complexities go away.

Yes, it’s true that this approach has culminated in “an indifference to the health of U.S. political and judicial systems on the part of the president, and a willingness to destroy trust in institutions that could take decades to recover from his power plays.”

But hey, that’s not their problem.

Now that the chaotic carnival ride of impeachment is over, we can all go back to being calm, rational Americans who are united in our values, priorities, and patriotic love for this great nation.

OK, sometimes the cynicism just writes itself.

In any case, this era of disunity is not ending soon, if ever. But rather than wallow in depression or drive up our collective blood pressure by enumerating the hypocrisy, cowardice, and outright idiocy of the modern conservative movement, let’s look at a less contentious subject.

Let’s discuss citizenship.

Oh shit, that’s a hot one too, isn’t it? 

Well, you’ll be happy to know that I am not talking about immigration, undocumented residents, the 14^th Amendment, Border Patrol atrocities, or xenophobia.

Hey, I’ve talked a lot about all of those things, and I will again. Good times!

But right now I want to draw your attention to a recent article written by Seth Godin, marketing guru and philosophical entrepreneur.

Godin writes the following:

“Citizens aren’t profit-seeking agents who are simply constrained by rules. Citizens behave even if there isn’t a rule about it.”

“Citizens aren’t craven partisans, voting for party over fact. Citizens do the right thing because they can, even if the short-term cost is high.”

“Citizens live by the rule of community: If everyone did what I’m about to do, would it lead to a useful outcome?”

Clearly, Godin is not talking about what defines a citizen legally. He’s trying to grasp the concept of good citizenship. It requires more than being born within an arbitrary border. It requires engagement, bravery, and a concern for the future.

Yes, much of what Godin is saying can be applied to congressional Republicans (especially that “craven partisan” part).

However, the main point is that in certain respects, we’ve been asking the wrong question. 

It should not be, “Who gets to be a citizen?” 

It should be, “Who will be a good citizen?”

Godin’s traits of a good citizen are not exclusive of other definitions, nor are they the final word on the concept. However, the list he provides is pretty damn solid.

We can all be good citizens — not just of America but of Earth — if we focus on the long-term health of our community.

This concept applies to climate change, where we must be willing to accept lifestyle changes so that we don’t, you know, bake the planet into oblivion.

This applies to corporate responsibility, where CEOs don’t screw over their workers and cause lasting economic damage just to make their bonus a little bigger.

This applies to racial demographics, where white people have to acknowledge that the country is diversifying and, rather than fight the inevitable, embrace the benefits that different perspectives bring.

And yes, this implies to politics, where certain individuals shouldn’t kowtow to insanity just to preserve their cushy jobs.

Well, I guess it’s a bit late for that last one. But the basic message remains the same:

Don’t be a selfish jerk.

We’ll let Godin summarize this ideal:

“Sometimes we call citizens heroes, which is a shame, because their actions should be commonplace, not rare. Every successful community, every organization, every family has citizens. It’s the citizens who define the future, because their commitment to the long-term matters.”

“Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over.”

Those are supposedly the last words of Beethoven. But of course, they could also apply to the farcical impeachment proceedings that just concluded. For you pessimists, they could also apply to our country’s existence as a functioning democracy.

Indeed, your social-media feeds are likely clogged with rants from your friends that start with something like “It’s official. We’re living in a dictatorship.” As if this latest travesty made everything “official,” and as if your friends have the authority to decree this (it all sounds a little dictatorial to me).

Still, pundits are wrong to call the impeachment proceedings a circus. A circus is at least entertaining. This shit is just depressing.

We received fresh proof — although none was needed — that the Republican Party is a dead-eyed cult that has succumbed to a lunatic messiah. They will deny easily verified facts (e.g., where is Kansas City?) to avoid offending the mad emperor. They will feverishly applaud Matterhorn-sized lies spewed during the state of the union. They will hem and haw and pretend to deliberate at great length — before falling into line and delivering exactly what the president wants. Hell, a sizeable contingent would be fine if Trump handed Alaska over to the Russians.

Consider that about 75% of the country wanted witnesses at this trial. Yet, about 96% of Republican senators said, “No, we don’t need them.”

Consider also that Republicans have employed dozens of different arguments justifying Trump’s behavior, virtually all of which are nonsense.

And consider that Trump’s lawyers presented a defense that consisted entirely of contradictory, alarming, and idiotic “legal gibberish merely designed to distract and confuse those who tuned into the trial.”

And still, the GOP remains undeterred. They stand by their corrupt, anger-fueled, imaginary-orchestra-conducting president.

In the end, Republicans regret that they have but one country to sell out. 

No, my friends, the comedy is not over. 

But the joke is clearly on us.