And Crown Thy Good With Brotherhood

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I Am The Liberal Media!

Can't Stop Won't Stop

This was a lead story in The New York Times today.

The short answer, which is actually rather long, is "No".

This is roughly the 12,258th "think piece" on progressive outsiders winning a few Democratic primaries.  It's nearing the "But Her Emails" saturation point. And these articles tend to come either in one of two flavors.  

First, Dire!Warnings! cursing Democrats for risking dooming us all by not becoming GOP Lite in order to chase the votes of disaffected Republicans.  These articles tend to come from (small wonder) recently-former Republicans whose "advice" to Democrats has always been -- rain or shine -- to keep moving rightward, ever-rightward -- in pursuit of an imaginary Center which is always, somehow, slipping over the horizon.  

Second, there are the breathless articles touting how a few members of the Democratic majority (do the math) are fighting back hard against a small number of progressives with whom they have no intention of sharing even a small corner of the Democrat's Big Tent.  Mind you, they had no fucking problem when it came to sharing our Big Tent with ghouls like Liz Cheney who spent their entire career slandering Democrats in the most monstrous language imaginable...but us New Deal Democrats get nothing but the stink-eye and a boot in the ass from the gatekeepers who own the velvet ropes. 

From The New York  Times, August 6, 2026:

Moderate Democrats Prepare for ‘War’ Against an Ascendant Left

One moderate group says the progressive wins are “deeply troubling” and is planning a $15 million effort against democratic socialism.

The embattled establishment of the Democratic Party searched furiously for a political reset after Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s progressive victory in Michigan handed the party’s long-dominant moderate wing its most painful defeat of the year.

Some strategists urgently pressed to adopt a sharper edge to tap into the fury among Democratic voters that was felling its centrist candidates. Others wanted to attack democratic socialism, undercutting a budding movement now set to have far more than a toehold in the next Congress. Yet another young democratic socialist ousted an incumbent congressman in Detroit on Tuesday.

“We are preparing for the next war that is coming,” said Jonathan Cowan, the president of Third Way, a leading centrist Democratic group, revealing to The New York Times a new $15 million effort between now and 2028 to discredit democratic socialism. 

It will not shock you to learn that Third Way gets its money from Big Pharma, Big Banks, Big Tech as well as outfits such as ExxonMobil and various health insurance companies.  All the usual suspects who would rather see a MAGA flag flying over this country forever than share the Democratic Party with actual progressives.

Now, it is rumored that this “Better Dead than Al-Sayed” gang of Regressives is led by a shadowy figure known only as “David Fucking Brooks”.  And two Fridays ago Mr. Brooks left his Bethesda Maryland compound just long enough to appear on the PBS News Hour where, practically in tears, he said this.

Voters in almost every presidential race, I think, in every one of my lifetime, have always said, who's closer to the center? And they vote for that person. Trump seemed closer to the center than Kamala Harris. Biden seemed closer to the center than Donald Trump.

Donald Trump over the last few years has run away from the center. He is handing this election to the Democrats. All they have to do is sit there and be couch potatoes. They do not have to support Medicare for all so that Republicans can go to them and say, you like your private health insurance? Mr. El-Sayed's going to take that away from you.

That is politically bad news, and that's only one of the issues on which the party is moving further and further away from the center, and therefore…

At which point, Brooks co-panelist, Jonathan Capehart, reached his limit of politely tolerating this old fraud's endless bullshit and interrupted him with:

I mean, I disagree that the Democratic Party writ large is moving far away from the center, and that a few races won by Democratic Socialists or people who identify as progressive, like Dr. El-Sayed, that -- to me, I just don't -- I do not see it that you can put this -- make this blanket argument that the Democratic Party is running far left. 

That was the signal for the host – Amna Nawaz – to do the PBS thing of quickly moving on to the next topic at the slightest sign of conflict.

However, since I do not abide by PBS rules, I will just add that it is a matter of public record that David Brooks has never had any workable definition of "the center" beyond: "What I, David Brooks, happen to think at this moment".  

It is also irrefutably true that he has spent the past quarter-century publicly demonstrating that he knows fuck-all about what "voters" think about anything.

And of course Third Way is not a solo act. They have plenty of fellow travelers who are horrified that a few Democratic candidates have won their primaries in ways that Third Way, LLC does not approve of.  

From The Washington Post, June 3rd, 2026:

Centrist Democrats launch new pledge: ‘We are capitalist, not socialist’

Two Democrats in Congress who flipped Republican-held seats in 2024 are launching a pledge for their party’s candidates they hope will act as a rallying cry for centrists, calling for a “politics of persuasion over purity” and declaring that “we are capitalist, not socialist.”

The pledge is a direct rebuke to the party’s leftward tilt as democratic socialists such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) capture the party’s energy and activism.

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-New York) and Rep. Adam Gray (D-California) said they will unveil the pledge Wednesday afternoon at the center-left conference WelcomeFest, and hope to get candidates up and down the ballot to join them in signing it. 

From Common Dreams, February 9th, 2026:

‘One More Billionaire Front Group’: Centrist Dems Mocked Over New Initiative Led by Corporate Lobbyist

In fact, establishment panic over even mildly social-democratic ideas predates the current cycle by years.

From In These Times, seven years ago,  February 7, 2019:

Why Is the Political Establishment So Afraid of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal?

So, the short answer is "No".

The longer answer -- the reason why the answer is "No" -- is uglier and deeply embarrassing to the legacy media, which is why you will never hear them speak of it.  Because it has to do with what the "Tea Party" actually was.

For several years I bored you all silly with post after post after post about how the Tea Party was not some new, insurgent outsider group who were storming the barricades of the moribund Republican party.  That they were the Republican party: the same ignorant, racist, shoutycrackers Republican base they'd always been, but now that the Bush administration had shit the bed hard enough to crack the Earth's mantle, they needed their own, incredibly inconvenient past to go away so they could get on with the important work of having a full-on, eight-year-long, screaming mental breakdown over the election of a Black man as president.

And they accomplished this by A) Putting on stupid hats, waving Gadsden flags, and swearing that they'd never even heard of George W. Bush and, B) Getting the legacy media to go along with this massive fraud, which the legacy media was only too eager to do, given their own despicable complicity with the various crimes and treasons of the Bush administration.

And it worked.  And, as is our eternal fate, the only people willing to straight-up call bullshit on the whole scam were us dirty, disreputable Liberals who no one listens to anyway.

By early 2010, it was absolutely clear to anyone who wasn't a Republican operative or enabler that the "tea party" was emphatically not a spontaneous movement of concerned citizens with no previous political affiliation, but was just one more, GOP-manufactured re-branding scam.  Ed Kilgore wrote about it, as did Max Blumenthal (pay-walled site) and E.J. Dionne. There was also this July, 2010 Gallup poll that concluded:

The Tea Party movement has been the focus of media attention during the past year, and has had some success in getting its preferred candidates nominated or elected in the 2009-2010 election cycle. However, as Gallup has pointed out, those who describe themselves as Tea Party supporters are in many ways indistinguishable from, and largely a subset of, Republican identifiers more generally.

But here's the thing.  There was absolutely no stomach in the Beltway media for reporting the obvious fact that these idiots in tricorner hats were nothing but the same old Republican wingnuts who, as one wag put it in 2009...

Like German soldiers after the fall of Berlin...have stopped running away from the catastrophe they created only long enough to burn their uniforms.

No, no, no!  Definitely could not say that because that would violate the post-Dubya Generally Accepted Beltway Narrative that all problem are caused by "the extremes on Both Sides" and in the middle there is a "vital Center" full of millions of political virgins who had been moved by the noblest of motives to abandon their neutrality and take to the streets.

And to this very day, that lie continues to be one of those "Zombie lies", which everyone sorta knows is nonsense -- like Tax Cuts Pay For Themselves -- but has so completely passed into the realm of myth that the legacy media keeps right on pretending that it was actually true.  

In fact, the Beltway's lockout of the truth was so secure that by 2016 Joe Scarborough could finally come right out and say of course the whole "tea party" thing was bullshit and of course we all knew it  and know with perfect certainty that there would be consequences (h/t Heather at Crooks & Liars)

And that's the longer answer.  The Democrats are not facing their own "Tea Party" moment because There. Was. No. Tea. Party.  There was just the Bush-Off Machine goin' like 60 to rebrand the Republican base.  

What corporate Democrats are facing are ... New Deal Democrats.  People who revere FDR as the man who crushed fascism, and whose programs built the Middle Class, strengthened the union movement and helped insure that old age and poverty weren't a death sentence.   

People who remember that FDR was called a commie by the Republican party and the Republican media every inch of the way.

People who look at the mess the establishment has made of this country and think the Middle Class could used some help, the aged, infirm and poor could use some help, that good health care should be affordable, that unions are a good thing, that robber barons and Republican looters are bleeding us dry and, most importantly, for any of that to happen, fascism in America must be discredited and destroyed, root and branch.  

I Am The Liberal Media!

The Republican Party's Two Sets of Books

As most of you know, on this blog, on our podcast, and on stage and screen, I have long maintained a particular theory about how the Republican Party got itself into this mess. 

They kept two sets of books. 

The first set of books was for the rubes, the bigots and the chucklefucks, who make up the Republican base. And those books were full of absolute nonsense.

Liberals are baby killing, gun-grabbing Commie demons. Trans people are coming for your children. Immigrants are rapists. Tax cuts pay for themselves. The government is always the problem. Whatever scary story or conspiracy theory would keep people angry, frightened, and voting Republican -- that was what went into the first set of books.

And there is no bottom to it. No limit. The Republican base will believe whatever they were told, because the Republican Party spent decades training them to believe it.  But the point of those lies was never really governing. The point was power.

The racism, the conspiracy theories, the fear, the culture-war panic -- those were the keys that unlocked the public treasury. The Republican Party could use Fox News, talk radio, and an entire conservative media ecosystem to push those buttons whenever they needed votes. Then, once they were in power, they could do what they actually wanted to do: deregulate everything, cut taxes for wealthy people, and serve their donors.

That was the first set of books.

Ah, but to keep the country from complete collapse, Republican leadership had to keep a second set of books.  This one contained reality.

That was the book with the spreadsheets and the data and the boring stuff: how economies work, how wars work, how logistics work, how science works, how diseases work. It was the book you actually need if you are trying to run a country.

And for decades, the Republican Party had a strange arrangement. They would loudly scream about all the imaginary horrors from the first set of books to get the base furious enough to elect them, then quietly operate from the second set of books once they were in office.

They would tell their voters that they were going to deport everyone they hated, crush their enemies, restore some imaginary golden age, and punish all the people they had been taught to fear.

Then they would get into office and discover that reality existed. They never delivered the fantasy. They never actually purged the country of all the people they demonized. They never delivered the revenge fantasy they sold their voters.  OMG, they even -- gasp! -- cut deals with those baby killing, gun-grabbing Commie demon Dems!   

And as long as the Republican elites and donors controlled the party, the arrangement sorta worked.

Then along came Trump, and the important thing Trump changed was not the Republican Party's nature. It was that he simply burned the second set of books. Trump decided he didn't need the reality-based ledger anymore. He operated entirely from the first set of books.

He told the base: Yes. I really am going to give you everything you dreamed of. I will punish the people you hate. I will hurt the people you fear. I will break the rules for you. And in exchange, you will let me loot the place.

That was the deal.  And it still is.

The Republican Party had always used fantasy as a political weapon. Trump simply stopped pretending that reality existed at all.  He looked at the spreadsheets, the facts, the experts, the institutions, and basically said: screw it. We don't need any of that.

It was the same kind of thinking that led people throughout history into disasters: don't worry about the details, don't worry about logistics, don't worry about reality.  We can definitely invade the Soviet Union and conquer it in two, three months tops because we're awesome!  We always win because we are awesome!

A triumph of the will, if you will.  And when the Dear Leader lives in that mindspace, facts are no longer an issue.

This was from me in September of 2016 -- years before anything called "Never Trump", and decades before Never Trumpers sloooooly and grudgingly began to accept that the real problem with the Republican party is that it's full of Republicans. 

Once you start to notice that a depressingly large number of our fellow citizens have become reprogrammable Orwellian meat-puppets, the rise of Trump is not hard to understand at all.

And this was the citation from Orwell I was using:

"Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation -- anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those 19th century ideas about the laws of Nature.  We make the laws of Nature."  -- O'Brien, 1984 

And this is how Republicans operate all the time now.  Everywhere.  Except there are still places where reality has a way of forcing itself back into the room.

The courtroom is one of those places.

Outside the courtroom, operating from the first set of books, Republicans can and do say anything. They can invent stories about reflecting pools, election fraud, conspiracies, whatever. They can feed the base whatever toxic slop they want because nobody is forcing them to prove it.

But eventually somebody crosses the border between fantasy and reality.

That's what happened to Jeanine Pirro.

When she is on television, playing to the audience, she can live in the first set of books. She can repeat whatever bullshit the audience wants to hear.

But when she walks into a courtroom, she has crossed into domain of the second set of books.

Here, there are rules. Here, tangible evidence matters.  In fact, it's pretty much all that matters.   In here there are questions that can't be dodged, wriggled out of, or dismissed with a demeaning insult.  And most importantly, in here there are now consequences for lying.

And once you've crossed the membrane between the domain where Boxwine Pirro spends most of her time, where Doug Burgam and Donald Trump can lie all they want to because, as long as they keep feeding the bigots and imbeciles the lies they want to hear, they are rewarded for lying...

...and the domain of the courtroom, suddenly all the things that worked outside the courtroom don't work anymore.

In here lawyers and judges get to demand that you show actual evidence.   Where are the photographs? Where are the witnesses? Where is the chain of proof ?  In here, Trump regime's lies and bluster  evaporate like fairy gold once the enchantment has been broken.

This stupid Reflecting Pool fuck-up is the Decline and Fall of the Republican Party in microcosm, because reality is the wall Republicans keep slamming into. They have spent decades building a political machine fueled entirely by bullshit from a fantasy universe where nothing has to be proven.  Because the base doesn't want facts.  They hate facts.  They demand the story they were promised -- the toxic slop they now crave like crack, which is why the people who feed them that slop keep getting elected.

But science doesn't work that way.  The law doesn't work that way. Reality doesn't work that way.

We saw it with COVID. The refusal to respect facts and science had real consequences. People died because this administration and its allies chose political fantasy over reality.  And now we see the same pattern in something as small and ridiculous as the reflecting pool fiasco.

Trump made a bet that he could hire one of his mobbed up stooges to slap some paint, declare victory, and everyone would accept the story.  Which is pretty much his same "strategy" in Iran.  When reality pushed back, the response was exactly what it has always been.  Find a scapegoat. Find a boogeyman. Blame somebody else.

For example, from MSNOW:

On questions about depleted munitions, Team Trump struggles to keep its story straight

To recap, the depleted stockpiles aren’t depleted, though they could be better, and everyone should blame Joe Biden.

But eventually you run into the problem that every authoritarian movement runs into.  There are still places where facts matter.  There are still institutions where you cannot simply scream louder than everyone else and reality goes away.

Which is why they keep losing.  The more you force them into arenas where they have to answer questions, produce evidence, and defend their claims, the more exposed they become.

Because their alternative to reality is always the same thing: Scream louder. Blame immigrants. Blame Muslims. Blame liberals. Blame trans kids.  Blame anyone except themselves and their catastrophic decisions and failure.  And the louder they scream, the clearer it becomes that they have nothing else.

Look at the Republican campaign ads flooding the country right now. They have money. They have the machinery. But what do they have to run on?  Trump has wrecked the economy. He has driven up prices. His tariffs have hurt consumers. His foreign policy disasters are piling up.

So what is left?

The first set of books.  Fear. Rage. Racism. Resentment.

Because that is all they have.

It cracks me up with I see headlines from anonymous sources about Republicans getting nervous about Trump hurting their chances in the midterms.  Hey dum-dums, what it is about ""Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer" that you do not understand?  Because that, sure as shit, is what you signed up for.  

Trump is the Republican Party.  Trump is the movement.  You no longer have an independent identity separate from him. You are not partners, or pals, or peers.  You are a tool he can use and discard. You are mere cells in the body of Trumpism.

This is the bargain you accepted when you handed your party over to someone who never cared about the second set of books.  Someone who never cared about reality.  Someone who only cared about the first set of books — the one where every lie is true as long as enough people want to believe it.

 But eventually, reality always comes looking for payback.

And payback is a bitch.  

Professional Left Podcast Episode 1012: A Convo With Matthew Sheffield

“There I was, surrounded by ninjas."  -- Junior Dude.

• 
  

Rare Photo of “Non-Maga Republican” Taken in Its Native Habitat

From Fox News, "reporting" on the Texas Senate race (h/t @airbagmoments.bsky.social for the info):

 ...Most independents (68%) and virtually all Democrats support Talarico (98%), while fewer Republicans are unified behind Paxton (89%).

In part, that’s because one quarter of non-MAGA Republicans back Talarico (24%).

As the saying goes, I was born on a Sunday, but I wasn't born last Sunday.

Ask Me No Questions and I’ll Tell You No Lies

The Moderate Republican, Centrist and Independent's Lament

First they enacted Nixon's racist Southern Strategy
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they welcomed White Conservative Fundamentalists into the party's inner circle
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they embraced Hate Radio, Fox News and the whole Conservative propaganda grievance machine
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they adopted the politics of Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Karl Rove and Lee Atwater
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they cheered on the War in Iraq and used it to demonize all opposition 
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they put on stupid hats, called themselves a "Tea Party" and had an eight-year-long racist primal scream because Democrats elected a black guy
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they put on different stupid hats, called themselves "MAGA," and nominated and elected the King of the Birthers.
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they nominated the King of the Birthers again
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they tried to overthrow the government when the King of the Birthers lost
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they brought him back and elected him again
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then the King of the Birthers looted the treasury, put armed masked goons in the streets to intimidate and murder American citizens, launched a disastrous war for no explicable reason, torched our alliances, and generally fucked this country up almost beyond repair

But somehow none of that is my fault

Because I'm not "political".

Burn The Lifeboats

Situation Rooms, Then and Now

May 1, 2011:  Senior Obama administration officials in the Situation Room waiting for updates on the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound.

July 17, 2025:  Senior Trump administration officials in the Situation Room strategizing (screaming at each other) about how best to cover up Donald Trump's fetish for nipple-abuse and the other hundreds (thousands?) of mentions of Trump in the Epstein Files.    

No Half Measures

Stupid Is The Fire In Which We Burn

Lest you think Trump's manifold acts of corruption, extortion, treason and unhinged racist lunacy are penetrating the MAGA groundwater, let me disabuse you of that notion right now.  

And to do that, I need us to take a little walk down memory lane.  Specifically, to 14 years ago, before Trump slouched out of the Republican id to swallow the GOP whole.  It was a time during which all your favorite future Never Trumpers were swearing up and down that everything was fine, that the Party of Lincoln had never shone so brightly,  and anyone who suggested otherwise was openly mocked as a crackpot.

While they were busy ignoring what was going on with the base of their own party, this is what your 'umble crackpot scrivener was writing about the state of the Right:

The entire Conservative enterprise is built on delusion and old dynamite, which is why every clock much forever remain stopped at one minute after Reagan's inauguration, every fact must be smothered under the stasis field of Rush Limbaugh roaring, rage-drunk bluster.  It is the sarcophagus of a dead ideology where the walls are now so densely postered and palimpsested with the detritus of Conservatism's lurid, lying history that its denizens cannot find the exit anymore, and its floors are so sticky and pitted with the grue of its savage, tribal, beat-in rituals that no one bothers to even look for the door.

Which is why  no deviation can be permitted, no error can be admitted and no apologies can be allowed.

As I wrote last year, this catastrophe all began as a headlong dive into the best fucking high the Right would ever have ...

Now the bender is over.

Outside, Reality's beating sun is stationed in the treetops, so bright and close to the Earth that it vaporizes shadows inside of pockets and purses, and through the sodden walls of their fragile fastness Conservatives they can feel its slippery photons circling their ideological clubhouse, sniffing the hinges and lintels like wolves, looking for a way in.

This time, there is no trick-or-treat scamper to safety for them in the kindly, Tea Party gloaming: no way to scuttle off to the next wingnut spider hole in a tri-corner hat and tights pretending they'd never even heard of George W. Bush. No, the rotting hulk of the Party of Lincoln has become their crypt, and inside of it there is nothing left for them but to sink forever deeper into the shadows until they become one with the darkness.

And from deep inside their narrow house, you can hear the terrified squeals of Conservatism's pasty, self-righteous, rigidly ignorant, sexually-terrified wingnut child-men trying frantically to spackle up the little holes through which modernity, complexity and reality continue to leak...

The point of pulling this out of the archives is threefold.

First, labor-saving.  Since I've been on this beat for a good long while and since Republican bigotry and depravity are an endless cycle of repetition and escalation, why not borrow from my younger and less emotionally exhausted self?

Second, to show why, for all their professed interest in talking with people whose viewpoints are different than their own, no way no how does any Never Trumper want to talk about which crew was actually right about the Right all along, and which team of esteemed paid professionals absolutely blew it.  

Third, and of more importance, is to put the cast-iron obstinance and denialism of the GOP base in its proper context.  They didn't suddenly get this way yesterday.  They've been this way for decades and, year after year, they've only gotten louder, stupider and more intransigent. They can no longer metabolize reality.  It's poison to them, so, marching under Trump's banner, they make war on it, and only get more berserk with fury the more Reality leaks into their lives.  

So, while irrefutable evidence of Trump's madness and venom rage all around us like a hurricane, and we're shouting at these idiots as loud as we can, "Can you see it now?   Can you see how bad it is now!" -- inside the shuddering hovel of their media bubble, they're busy grabbing anything they can to nail up over the windows to keep the storm at bay.

Two local examples.

First, there is the case of the Illinois Democratic legislator who, this last January, proposed giving local municipalities the authority to charge people a $5 permitting fee in unincorporated areas if they want to have an "open burn", and the flexibility of levy stiff fines if anyone conducts an "open burn" without a permit.  Important fact: this legislation -- which, I'll remind you, was proposed by one lone state congressperson in January and has gone nowhere since -- would in no way affect barbequing in your back yard, or having a cozy little marshmallow-toasting fire in a firepit in your back yard.  

State Rep. Briel: New bill is not targeting your campfire

The local MAGA meatheads went absolutely ballistic.  Jackbooted this and overreach that and the gummit telling you it's gonna slap you with a $100,000 fine if you have a weenie roast with the kids in the yard.  And of course the fact that this legislation would do none of those things was irrelevant to the ginned up firestorm (pun intended) that was whipped up on the Right.  Because all they fucking care about is having something scary and Liberal to shriek about to drown out all the actual catastrophes their Dear Leader is inflicting on this country in their name.

How bad is it?

It's worse than ballroom!

This is the pattern: a minor, local policy proposal becomes, through media amplification, a nationwide moral panic completely detached from reality.  

And remember kids, by the commutative law of MAGA meathead media, what one Democrat does, all Democrats are responsible for.  And if all Democrats everywhere don't stop what they're doing and unanimously denounce whatever ginned up claptrap Fox News is troweling out today, then all Democrats everywhere are guilty!guilty!guilty!

And when you tar the entire party with the slander-brush, don't forget to cram as many magic conjure words into the headline as possible.  For example, this from Murdoch's New York Post checks just about every box.  

Behind today’s radical, Jew-hating Democratic Party is a monster created by Barack Obama

Yes, they forgot to squeeze in Hillary's emails and Benghaaaazi, but I'm pretty sure that's a headline page-limit thing and not some swine of an editor having a mild attack of conscience and thinking, "Nah.  We dare not go that far."

Speaking of playing the hits is a desperate attempt to distract from how comprehensively Trump is fucking them over and what utter, drooling idiots this makes all of them look like, MAGA mouthbreakers are even dragging the already-infinitely-debunked "Clinton Kill List" out of cold storage.  

Because while their soft lizard brains are incapable of processing facts they don't like, they all have fond memories of the lies that made them feel smart.  Of the glory days of beating up on Hillary Clinton.     

Which is why we must...

Burn The Lifeboats

Portrait of the Texas Republican Party

The entire Republican party, really.

Because "MAGA"'s just another word for nothing left to lose.

Burn The Lifeboats

Killing The Steel Man

This month's announcement from Liberal High Command of the new regulations will be of special interest to Liberal podcasters and bloggers:

Henceforth it shall be considered a Class Three Code of Conduct violation to perform Steel Man or Steel Man-adjacent* "debates" in public.    

A "Steel Man" argument is defined as taking an ordinary, stupid, easily-debunked Conservative talking point and saying, "Well, OK, but if my opponent were 100 times smarter and not a liar and a lunatic and a bigot, here's the argument they would have made." then debating that.  This absurd ritual is performed because you're so keen to show everyone how smart and civil and according to Hoyle you are by debating a sane Conservative that you invent one (known in the trade as "Sorkening".) Except that species went extinct a long time ago, so there you are, playing chess in the park against yourself.

What you do in the privacy of your own home is, of course, your own business.  If your kink is "Steel Manning" Ayn Rand or Nick Fuentes behind closed doors, have at it.  

But when you put it out on the street, it becomes public ontological masturbation.  

Stop it.

*(Steel Man-adjacent debates can be identified by the use of phrases like "To be fair..." and "The most generous interpretation..." and "Even if we grant the premise...")

Burn The Lifeboats

The "Don't Say The Quiet Part Out Loud" Rule Is Cancelled For The Duration

However you measure modern political history, the media's unwritten rule of politics during this era has been to allow the Republican party to get away with this bit of legerdemain.  Everyone understood that, starting with the Powell Memo and Nixon's Southern Strategy, the base of the party was going to be comprised largely of bigots and imbeciles -- Archie Bunker chumps who listened to Limbaugh and watched Fox News.  

Ah, but the thin, outer shell of the party would be a candy-coated carapace of respectable front men and women who would not embarrass themselves on "Meet the Press", would know which wine paired with what at Beltway cocktail parties, and wouldn't run screaming into the night for fear choosing the wrong Italian meat for their sammich.  

And for as long as I can remember, it has been the job of the media to pretend that the latter was the Republican party...and, despite being the overwhelming majority within the party -- the mob without which Republicans would never win another election -- it was also the media's corollary job to pretend the former did not exist at all, and to mock anyone who said otherwise as unserious kooks and alarmist crackpots.

That was it.  That was the job.  Denigrate Democrats as out-of-touch snobs, laud Republicans as sensible and sober and, when this gigantic hoax inevitably had a containment breach -- when the crazy got  out of the lab and into the world for all to see -- it was time to double down on the Both Sides Do It lie to calm the public and reassure them that, however bad things looked at the moment, Democrats were somehow worse.

My quote searching kung fu has not been sufficient to locate the exact quote, but I distinctly remember, after Trump won and the MAGA lunacy had kicked the doors entirely off the lab and were (and are) abroad in the land, hearing one or more freshly-former Republican ad men or spokescritters -- maybe Michael Steele,  maybe Stuart Steven, maybe Steve Schmidt, but most likely Rick Wilson --- saying words to the effect that of course they knew wide swaths of the Republican base were bigots and loons, but that was irrelevant.  Not their department. Their job was to get their guy elected, period.  And to do that they needed to fire the base up enough to put shoes on, get out of their La-Z-Boys, and get to the polls, all bug-eyed and furious, on election day.  Then shut them back in the basement or attic until next time.

That's how little thought they gave to the toxic waste they were storing in leaky barrels directly under our democracy.  How little thought they gave to doomsday machine they were building, or to what the consequences would be if containment failed completely.  

And then, one day, Donald Trump showed up, swept right past the respectable front men and women, the handlers, the ad men, the complicit media and told they base they didn't have to be ashamed anymore.  That it was, in fact, a great and glorious thing to shout their racism, misogyny, homophobia and batshit conspiracies from the rooftops.   

He shut the containment down.

And that was all it took for the thin, outer shell of Republican respectability to disintegrate almost overnight.  Shown up as the political equivalent of the "whited sepulchres" of Matthew 23:27 -- 

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.”

-- as the real Republican party emerged fully into the light.

And you'll never guess what?  That real, emergent Republican party looks exactly like the Republican party about which Liberals had been sounding the alarm for decades, and for which we were dismissed as unserious kooks and alarmist crackpots. Which is why we all have op-ed columns in all the major newspaper now, and, when we can get away from our top-rated, well-funded and heavily promoted podcasts, we try to find time between that and our book tours to hop on MSNOW where we are tirelessly congratulated for being right about the Right all along.

Honestly it's too much!  You're embarrassing us!

Meanwhile, back in the real world, we come now to the today's object lesson in containment failure.  

Meet Jeremy Carl.

Who is Jeremy Carl?

Great question!  This is from one dingy wing of the GOP's policy abattoir.  

Jeremy Carl is a Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute, where his primary focus is on immigration, multiculturalism, and nationalism in America.

Prior to joining Claremont, Jeremy worked for a decade as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, serving as a policy advisor to many national political figures. While at Hoover, U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz praised his “mastery of subject matter” and “ability to write comprehensively and with clarity.”

And right now Jeremy Carl is up for an important job in the United States State Department.  But it looks like maybe he won't get that job.  And do you know why?  From The Rolling Stone:

Trump Nominee Crumbles When Pressed on White Nationalist Posts

Jeremy Carl is the president's pick for a top State Department position, but his confirmation prospects aren't looking good.

Donald Trump last summer nominated Jeremy Carl to lead the Bureau of International Organizations. It’s a top position in the State Department, acting as the primary nexus between the U.S. government and several international organizations like the United Nations, and requires Senate confirmation. Carl served in Trump’s first administration and is now a fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank. He’s also a prolific poster with a long history of espousing white nationalism, antisemitism, solidarity with the Jan. 6 rioters, and other extreme viewpoints.

Carl sat before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, which is weighing whether to confirm him to the key diplomatic position the president wants him to hold. Senators pressed Carl on his social media posts. It did not go well.

Here’s one exchange between Carl and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Ct.), for example:

Murphy: “Tell me how you define white identity and what you think has been erased about white identity

Carl: “Certain types of, umm, Anglo, uhh, derived culture that comes from our history…”

Murphy: “Like what?”

Carl: “Umm, let me think about this. Uhhh, you know, senator, I would say if you were to look at the book by one of your Senate colleagues Born Fighting about the sort of Scotch-Irish military culture and certain, you know, pride that went with that, that would be one example. Obviously, you could have sub-elements of that culture. You could have Italians, you could have Irish…”

Murphy: “But you’re now retreating to ethnic identity. You don’t speak about ethnic identity. You speak about white identity. So tell me the values that stitch together white identity, that make it different than Black identity.”

Carl: “I would say the white church is very different than the Black church in terms of its tone and style, on average. Food ways could often be different. Music could be different.”

Murphy: “And those are being erased?”

Carl: “Well, if you look at the Super Bowl halftime show, which was not in English…”

Murphy: “Our ability to access white churches or white food or white music is being erased?”

Carl then said that mass immigration has “Balkanized” what he described as “common American culture,” that this weakens America and that he won’t apologize for his comments on the issue...

It goes on and on like this, proving that Jeremy Carl is a ball-less poltroon.

Because if he we are real man -- a real MAGA man -- he would've gone so much further.  Shit, even a half-bright skirt like Bondi showed way more gonadal firepower than this sorry excuse for a male.   

If he was any kind man he would've told the committee to go fuck themselves.  Shown them the master race doesn't back down and names will be taken!

He would've told the committee that his white supremacist / Christian nationalist beliefs were entirely in keeping with those of Donald Trump, Stephen Miller and JD Vance.  

He would've told the committee that +77 million patriots had put Donald Trump and his white supremacist ideology back in office so he could cleanse the nation of the scum and degenerates who are standing in the way of our national greatness and Trump's thousand-year Reich.  

He would've told the committee that, if they knew what was good for them -- if they didn't want ICE or worse coming for them and their kids... if they didn't want the DOJ, the FBI and the IRS up their collective asses, and raining indictment down on them -- the committee had fucking well better shut up, bend the knee and do as the Dear Leader commands.  

But no, Jeremy Carl didn't do that.  

So much for MAGA solidarity.  So much for 'WWG1WGA'.  

Scandalous!  Shameful!  And don'tcha just bet this limp dick, soy-boy had a big, fat Soros check burning a hole in his pocket the entire time he was rolling over for this so-called committee.  

I Am The Liberal Media!

Observing MLK, Jr. Day By Judging Republicans by the Content of Their Character.

No Half Measures

Losing Our (Secular) Religion

Note:  Given all the time and effort we put into putting together every episode of the Professional Left podcast, it occurs to me that it is madness just to let our show notes disappear into the ether.  From time to time, why not use all the stuff we'd already researched and structured into a long for audio essay and reuse it for a... long form written essay!  I know.  I can be kind of slow.  

Anyway, the word of the day today is “effective”.  Read it, learn it, use it in a sentence!

So let’s talk about what it means to be “effective”.

First, you gotta figure out what is it you want to accomplish?  So let’s start there, armed with the foreknowledge the place we'll inevitably end up will not be as satisfying as you would like.    But we’ll have some rueful laughs  along the way.

What does "effective" mean?  And as long as we’re doing this, lets also ask what its antonym, “ineffective”. mean?

Here's an example of "ineffective" from 20 years ago.   From The New York Times,  March 31, 2005:

Editor Hit With Pie

William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle, was splattered by a pie thrown by a student during a speech on Tuesday about foreign policy at Earlham College. Members of the audience jeered the student, then applauded as Mr. Kristol wiped the pie from his face and said, "Just let me finish this point."  

The pie incident went on to make headlines in the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, NPR and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Was it satisfying to the person who threw the pie?  Definitely.  Was it satisfying those of us who loathe Kristol?  Sure.  A little bit.

But did pie-ing Bill Kristol 20 years ago slow down the Iraq War or derail his career or undo the 2004 re-election of George W. Bush?  No.  Like Haldeman in the early days of Watergate, when Woodward and Bernstein screwed up, it actually ended up making him more sympathetic to his audience.  

That was ineffective! 

Did you know that Rupert Murdoch got hit in the face with a pie in July 2011?  It's true, and yet Fox News remains. Westboro Baptist Church’s hatemongering scumbag Fred Phelps took one in the face in May, 2003.    Phyllis Schlafly, April 1977.  Tom Friedman, April 2008.  Milton Friedman, October 1998.  Ann Coulter, but she ducked in time.    Bill Buckley.  Anita Bryant. Dozens of others.

You might also remember that on May 17, 2011, Nick Espinosa threw a box of glitter over Gingrich and his wife, Callista, at a book-signing event in Minneapolis.  Espinosa, a gay rights activist, shouted, "Feel the rainbow, Newt! Stop the hate! Stop anti-gay politics!".   And yet, Gingrich abides.  

Remember David Vitter?  The senator from Louisiana who may or may not have had a thing about diapers?

At Netroots Nation there was a movement afoot to send dirty diapers or something to Vitter which got eyerolls from professional comedians, who went on to explain why this was a dumb idea.

Do you remember the consistent refrain from the Mark Rylance character in Bridge of Spies?  Every time Tom Hanks asked him why he wasn't alarmed or afraid he replied, "Would it help?"

Good question.  And if you are interested in saving our democracy, this is the question you should always be asking yourself:  Will what I plan to do help?  Will it be "effective"?  So let's move on to defining what "effective" looks like within the context of what we want to have happen. 

Here's an example of something that worked. That was effective.  The grapefruit ladies of Ireland.

During the Civil Rights movement, in places like Birmingham and Selma, the mere fact of the stark contrast between the protesters' peaceful discipline and the violent, segregationist thugs with police dogs and fire hoses was not enough to force the system to change.  It was the fact that it made the national news.  That people outside the Jim Crow South got an unsparing first-hand look at how the South really was.   This shocked the public and helped build the political pressure needed for the federal government to take action.

The difference between then and now is that thugs with jackboots and tear gas are there because the White House put them there.  The difference between then and now is that the president of the United States is orchestrating and applauding state violence, shopping for a race riot, not trying to stop it.

In our bones we know this is all horribly wrong, because in our bones we know what "fairness" should look like.   It's all over our popular culture.   Jack Reacher.  Justified. The Black List.  Hell, Superman.   Ideally, when we are treated unfairly, we as Americans believe we should have recourse to someone, somewhere who will make it right.  Beat up the bully.  Put the crook in prison.  Some higher authority.  

We're sure most of you remember that, in June of 1963, the segregationist governor of Alabama -- George Wallace -- planted himself in the schoolhouse doorway of the Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama to block  two African American students -- Vivian Malone and James Hood -- from entering 

Malone and Hood had done everything by the book -- signed in early at the courthouse, picked their classes, and filled out their papers. But when it came time to actually walk into Foster Auditorium and finish registering, President John Kennedy's folks knew things could get very ugly very quickly, because Wallace was itching for a confrontation.  He was shopping for a race riot.  So Attorney General Bobby Kennedy basically said, fine, let the asshole put on his little show -- better that he preen for the cameras than spark a riot. The feds kept the students in the car so it wouldn’t turn into some ugly face-off between a segregationist governor and two Black students. They wanted it clear: this was the federal government versus one stubborn governor, not Black versus white.

So there’s Wallace, literally standing in a schoolhouse door, putting on his show for the press. Deputy AG Katzenbach steps up with marshals and tells him to move. Wallace filibusters with some bullshit about states rights, so Katzenbach calls President Kennedy, and that's when Kennedy finally lost his patience and federalized the Alabama National Guard. 

Hours later, a Guard general ordered Wallace to move.  Wallace rants a bit more, then steps aside. And then, without fanfare, Malone and Hood walk in and register.

Wallace was the racist thug.  Malone and Hood were the victims.  And President Kennedy was the higher authority which could be appealed to for justice.  

In the here-and-now, you may have noticed that there is now a whole cottage industry of centrist goofs and social media complainers who spend day and night carping that Democrats are not fighting hard enough, or doing enough, or swearing enough.  But when you push against that even a little bit and ask what, specifically, should Democrats be doing.  

Remember the word of the day?  "Effective".

What should Democrats be doing that will be effective?  No answer.  You get a lot of handwaving about stuff that is never going to happen or is structurally impossible without a Democrat in the White House and a supermajority in the Senate.  Something something Citizens United or Fairness Doctrine or pack the Supreme Court or DC statehood.  They just know that, damnit, somebody oughta do something!  

Because in the here-and-now, what we have lost, possibly forever, is a deeply ingrained, American sense that out there, somewhere, there should be some corrective mechanism to which we can appeal for justice.  

But thanks to all the millions of Republican voters who voted for this, and the millions more who stayed home or pissed away their vote because voting for the smart black lady would have made them feel icky,  the fascists who are now in charge are in the process of smashing those corrective mechanisms or are turning them against the rest of us

Because now, thanks to decades of work and billions of dollars spent building a relentless Conservative propaganda machine, the whole Wallace-in-the-schoolhouse-door dynamic is backwards.  

Now the racist thug is in the White House, and runs the Congress and the Supreme Court by proxy.  Now state power -- a federalized national guard and the United States military -- is in the hands of monsters because Republican voters wanted it that way.  Now the innocent victims are ... anybody Trump and Stephen Miller want to harass and destroy.   Parents snatched off the street.  Innocent kids, zip-tied and dragged off naked in the middle of the night.  FBI agents fired for honoring George Floyd.  James Comey being indicted for ... nothing.  

Now the schoolhouse doors are the cities of Portland, Los Angeles and Chicago, where brave citizens are working hard to try to find ways to block the fascists who Republicans have put in power.    

In case you didn't know it, this dynamic where the whole idea of the Apocalypse and the End Times originally came from.  

Hong tight because we're going to take a quick jump back in time almost 2,200 years. During the 160 BC's.  For centuries, the foundation of most Jewish thought rested on the biblical idea that if Israel obeyed God's covenant, God would bless them in this world with peace, land, and prosperity.  

And while the American Dream elides the presence of God in that equation, the ideals behind it are remarkably similar: if you work hard and play by the rules, you will succeed and prosper.  

In 200 BC, the Seleucids beat the Egyptians at the Battle of Panium and took control of Judea, and for 40 years or so things went along fairly smoothly.   Then under the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, things took a hard right turn.  

Antiochus IV decided to make it his mission to suppress and destroy Jewish religious practices.  He installed a pagan altar on the sacred altar of the Jerusalem Temple and slaughtered pigs there as an intentional insult to the God of Israel.  Circumcision, Sabbath observance, and Torah study were all outlawed.   Mothers who circumcised their sons were executed, sometimes with their infants killed alongside them. Possession of Torah scrolls became a capital offense. These weren’t political laws—they were aimed at erasing Jewish identity.

This all led to what became known as the Maccabean Revolt, which radically reshaped Jewish thought because it wasn’t just a national uprising.  It was an existential crisis.  A spiritual crisis.

Under Seleucid persecutions, the most righteous and faithful suffered the worst precisely because they were righteous and faithful.  So where was God's covenant in all of this?  What happens when God’s people do everything right and are made to suffer for it?

And because these deeply religious people could not give up on the idea that God existed, that God was just and God honored his contract they ... invented the idea of the End of History.  That at some point in the future God would intervene in history and clean all this shit up.  God became like the divine cable installer: please be in your homes obeying the law between the hours of Right Now and Forever, and eventually God’ll show up and get you all straightened out.  

The Jewish sects that you might be familiar with that grew out of this belief in the End Times were the Pharisees -- with whom Jesus has a huge beef in the New Testament -- and the Essenes, who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.  As part of their End Times theology, they invented the ideas of the resurrection of the dead, the coming of a Messiah, and the divine judgment of the wicked.  

And psychologically we are right about where the Maccabees were before they took up arms against the Seleucids.  

We might still pray, but as a practical matter we don't look to God to save our democracy: our democracy has always rested uneasily on the foundation of "Vox populi, vox Dei".  The voice of the people is the voice of God.  And the voice of the people has deserted us, which is why this is a spiritual crisis and not just a political one.   

What are we to do with the fact that, on three separate occasions, nearly half the people who bothered to show up for elections voted for Donald Trump?  That the first time it wasn't a fluke?  That our neighbors and colleagues are now actively siding against democracy, and have knowingly put the instruments of government into the hands of fascists and sadists, and lunatics?  That many of those institutions that we supposed would protect us, are run by cowards and bean counters for whom protecting their corporate mergers is much more important than protecting democracy.  

And very much as it was in 167 BC under the Seleucids, so it is right now under the Trump regime: those who are the most vocal in speaking up for democracy and defending our constitution are some of those who are targeted most aggressively by the regime.   

This is White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt

From The ACLU, October 15, 2025:

...on September 25, President Donald Trump issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-7) called “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” essentially adding them to an ever-growing list of what he calls the “enemy within.”

Civil society nonprofits and activists thus join segments of academia, the legal profession, public health professionals and scientists, and so many others President Trump sees as his political opponents and critics.

From The Hill:

A typical academic year for Mark Bray, an assistant teaching professor of history at Rutgers University, turned into a nightmare after President Trump signed an executive order to designate antifa as a terrorist group. 

Soon after the order, conservative activists targeted Bray, who wrote “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” and he began to receive death threats. Once his home address was posted online, he knew it was time to act. 

With the support of Rutgers, Bray and his family fled to Spain, where he will remain at least through the end of the school year as he fights what he calls false allegations regarding his beliefs and work... 

The further irony is that, on an emotional level, the source of their anger is very similar to ours.  MAGA meatheads believe the system has failed them, and from their point of view, it has.  We also believe the system has failed us, and from our point of view, it also has.  Each side believes their government has failed to deliver what they wanted it to do, and what they thought they had been voting for, for decades.  

The problem is, our goals are diametrically opposed to one another.    

Broadly speaking, we want clean air and clean water for everybody.  Good, safe schools for everybody.   Enough to eat for everybody.  Affordable health care for everybody.  Affordable housing for everybody.  A decent standard of living for everybody.  We want women to have control over their own bodies.  

We want all the things, and all of that horrifies MAGA.   

Modernity and change terrify them and have left a lot of them confused and angry, because they want the 1950s back.  They firmly believe their straight, white, conservative, Christian, male privilege was stolen from them by George Soros and us dirty, commie Liberals, and they want it back by any means necessary.

Which is why they are immune to Democrat persuasion.  Because while Democrats keep trying to talk about policies which would materially improve the lives of the working class and the poor -- as flawed and imperfect as Democrats may be -- demagogues on the right, who never gave a shit about the poor or the working class, continue offering their base something much more emotionally satisfying.  

Scapegoats!  

Back in 1981, when Reagan told his supporters that their government was the problem, the Republican Party had already begun its long march down the road to Donald Trump.  To the Republican base, Reagan offered up black and brown people as the scapegoats for all their fears and troubles.  

43 years later, when Democrats were proposing to help the poor and the working class by doing what used to be bipartisan things like extending the child tax credit, and more progressive things like offering serious, detailed plans to lower the cost of housing,  Republicans countered with this.

Trump: Can you imagine you're a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, Jimmy, I love you so much. Go have a good day in school and your son comes back with a brutal operation. pic.twitter.com/ChmwpavFAH

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 7, 2024

And this:

As you can hear, the propaganda is the same.  It’s just gotten so much stupider, because the Republican base has gotten so much stupider.  

The Republican base don’t see themselves as villains, and they never will.  They see themselves as patriots, who have been cruelly forced by decadent Liberal culture to endure gay and interracial couples on commercials for Tide or Cheerios --

-- or just knowing that out there, somewhere, there is a thing called “Ru Paul’s Drag Race”.

From their point of view, our mere existence and our insistence on diversity and tolerance and treating people humanely might as well be Antiochus IV defiling the temple.  Monstrous!  Intolerable!  And, most importantly, the mystical reason why their lives suck. 

Over and over again, they have been told that we -- you and  I -- hijacked their American dream, drowned it in soy milk, wrapped it in a Rainbow Flag, and buried it in Benghazi, while Obama and Hillary and Kamala and Joe Biden and George Soros watched it all on closed-circuit TV and laughed and laughed.  Solar panels and windmills are the graven images of our blasphemous modern god, and Trump is the anointed one who will smash them.  So through the power of “Vox Populi”, they have raised up their own god based on a new covenant:  a promise to smite their enemies and make Liberals cry

The problem is that the Right has a 40-year propaganda head-start on us, which is why we’re stuck in this kind of asymmetrical warfare.  Where, through the power of massive fascist propaganda, Fox News can just make up a story about how “The Entire Democratic Party Is Giving Away YOUR Health Care to lazy bums and illegals who are also stealing your job!!!” and have it turn into something which Democrats are obliged to carefully debunk over and over again.  

It’s the same with the ICE goons who are terrorizing American cities.  All the violence and criminality and thuggery is on one side, but let one person coldcock some anonymous masked brownshirt beating up a kid and everyone knows, through the power of massive fascist propaganda,  within the hour the headline from the White House all the way down to your MAGA neighbor will be “Out of control Antifa terrorists attack innocent police trying to protect your Freedom and your grade school son’s junk”

To repeat, this is not a Trump problem or a Mike Johnson problem, this is a voter problem.  A Vox Populi problem.

Through lies and conspiracies and direct appeals to racism, homophobia, xenophobia and some good, old fashioned bribery, Republicans convinced enough people to hate the imaginary Democratic boogeyman under their bed enough to install a dictator in the White House.  Twice.   And so, with appeals to God not an option, and appeals to the government a lost cause since, at last, Reagan is right – the government is the problem – the only alternative left is an appeal to the people.  

So, back to the word “effective”

No Kings marches are a good start since it clearly scares the hell out of the Trump regime.  October 18, 2025 was too big to ignore, which is the point.  Record numbers.  Millions of peaceful, loud patriots in the streets.  Catnip for the media.  And the next one will probably be even bigger.

And those patriots in frog and unicorn costumes are also using an excellent strategy.  No one is hitting anyone in the face with a pie.  Instead, the ICE goons and their paymasters are being made to look ridiculous.  

And the devil cannot abide laughter.  As Thomas More said, the devil…that proud spirit…  "cannot endure to be mocked". 

Also kudos to Nancy Pelosi for wheeling around and going straight after the blond whore from My Pillow TV.  Here’s a pro-tip:  do not meet any MAGA person on the ground of their choosing.  Do not accept any premises of their arguments.  Instead, be like Nancy.  Tell them to shut up and, for good measure, call them liars and whores.

Also be prepared to deal with the reality that, at some point, some decent citizen may very well find themselves so shocked and indignant at the way some ICE thug is treating a child or a senior citizen or a pregnant woman that they will rise in defense of them against Trump’s gestapo and kick the that ICE goon's ass.  

Be prepared for the fact that some "allies" have so completely internalized the asymmetry of this war that they take it as gospel that all Democrats at all times, everywhere must never lose their cool no matter how brutally they’re provoked.  They believe this so strongly that they’ll be pissed off at the citizen who aggressively got between the fascist in the mask and the person the fascist was clubbing,  because now Trump has an excuse to escalate.  

I don’t buy that.  If none of Trump's dickless Cossacks are ever coldcocked by a righteous citizen… then fascist propagandists will just make some shit up, just like they’re making up reasons to murder people on the high seas.  

But for now, enjoy the fact that we are many --

-- and we are being heard.

I Am The Liberal Media

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