#can you just not elect this monstrosity to the most powerful political office in the world so I can stop freaking out over TWO political

[nothing-an-iratze-cant-fix]

Honestly, it’s almost worse from the sidelines - we can’t alter it in any way and we have our own total arseholes to experience viscerally day to day but it’s not like we can ignore the possibility of the tangerine having the nuclear codes again.

[anthonybialy]

Political Contempt

I just want everything to suck like it used to do. Wouldn't normal be nice? At the least, we should try to get conditions as close as possible during this aggravatingly pointless existence. If you're on the road to Hell, stop once it feels warm. Confused humans somehow concluded politics are the one ingredient separating us from utopia. America is awful and needs American government to fix it.

Constantly thinking about who the president sure has been healthy. Haven't you noticed how happy everyone seems? No, you shut your whore mouth. Waking up and wondering what monstrosity has been inflicted or praising an elected dope's inherent awesomeness are equally toxic. Both sick approaches play into liberal notions about government being the focal point, which should mortify one side.

Don't forget to limit federal overreach by treating every president like a ghastly oaf who craves seizing your rights. A disturbingly high percentage of Americans think holding politicians accountable stops progress.

Endless fuming about what a demonic force that person from the other party is hasn't stopped the equivalent. Constantly defending a wholly flawed politician is what partisans feel compelled to do because the other faction says everyone else is a cruel jerk. The Sean Hannity approach to the world has made it very logical.

It's easier to remember what team you're on once you've established politicians are on the other one. Getting back to healthily hating everyone in office is the biggest check and balance. Being suspicious of all those who ever won an election especially applies to putrid options whom we nonetheless grudgingly deemed to be marginally less atrocious by comparison. There's quite the difference between giving votes and support.

We shouldn't have to remind anyone that politicians are out to bribe us with what they robbed from us. Expecting someone with a bigger salary to owe everyone else is for class warfare losers. They fight battles nobody wins. Confiscated bucks could be used to pay us as either their own employees or of invested companies. Government needs double funding to maintain drivable roads, so forget people buying from your Etsy shop.

When will shrewd students finally get cheap tuition by law after previous laws made it so costly? The bravest leaders will postpone dealing with crises it initiated just like putting off repayment allows for freewheeling now.

Just try life without active supervision. There's a reason federal minders are terrified of the notion. We might actually enjoy not having awful idiots boss us around. Telling us how racist we are is merely a bonus.

Cynical observers don't have to cross to one side because the other is full of horrific twits. We sure could use more neutral ground where any faction out to run our days is banished all day. Not rallying behind either cult is an option in case anyone felt compelled to align. Chlamydia wants you to believe gonorrhea is the only other option. Stridently binary choices should be left to liberals. That sadly means both parties.

The predictable president adheres to an algorithm that's as dull as it is invasive. Animatronic Joe Biden can be moved straight into Disney's Hall of Presidents. That's one human who's easy to control, especially considering he holds such an allegedly powerful job. Using a confused grandfather to push for mandates that cost freedom as well as trillions is elder abuse. Andrew Cuomo isn't the guilty party this one time.

It's tough to even fathom how we'd return to not having life invaded. We should at least be as unbothered as stupid non-America countries. Such a fanciful dream definitely means not electing a Democrat who's certain to think you're performing incorrectly.

Distaste for hassling sadly means not backing most Republicans. Voters don't have to feel bad about hurting their feelings over rejection; in fact, the unprincipled arrogant dolts deserve scorn. Their greatest strength is not being Democrats. They then then act like them. The party of Quayle wonders why they don't have a semipermanent majority as they copy hideous foes. Spending taxpayer money to bliss may buy votes a few times. But reality and mathematics combine to remain unimpressed.

Free people deserve one option that means we can be harassed slightly less. A delightfully inattentive president who hates Iran and not rich Americans should be more than a wish. Biden is clueless in the wrong way. Hoping the president forgets to bother everyone shouldn't be a term's best-case scenario.

Cutting the budget in half would be a good start. A half-decent leader should be able to explain how prices decrease and wages increase precisely if government doesn't try to make it happen. Let us negotiate amongst ourselves to create magic spells we're told are impossible without federal warlock guidance. A country that rumor holds was designed precisely to function without micromanaging craves it.

Perpetual adolescence is a welcome curse for those who insist upon seeing Washington as a parent. But aspiring adults should want it to be an exhausted mom telling kids to work it out. Anyone into liberty doesn't want to be supervised indefinitely. Treating Americans like children has created a juvenile nation. Sesame Street never taught us to count to 30 trillion.

[uncharted-writer-blog]

Political Suicide

​The President committed suicide yesterday.

​Turns out a handgun and The State of The Union Address don’t mix.

​He put it to his temple. He blew out his brains. One minute he was talking. The next his aides got sprayed with bone fragments and gore.

​Needless to say, everyone is a bit shook up.

​Imagine standing before a planet-sized audience with that kind of confidence. Imagine having the guts to shock the entire world. I wonder if he thought it was funny. I wonder why he thought a public end was necessary.

​Sure, he wasn’t that popular, but Presidents never really are anymore. 30% of the country tolerates you, but would have rathered someone else. 50% of the country hates you like you were Satan himself. 6% of the country really couldn’t care less, and 4% of the country still thinks Ronald Reagan is in office.

​His final speech is going to be burned into my psyche until the day I die. Every word was spoken with a harsh calmness that sent shivers down my spine. He spoke softly and slammed us all over the head with a big stick.

​“My fellow Americans...I am not the man you think I am.”

​“You all know that I’m an incompetent fool...that’s the only thing CNN and FOX News can agree upon. You all know that most of what I say is so perfectly processed and prettily-packaged that it barely resembles the truth. You all know that I have failed to accomplish half of my campaign promises and haven’t even made an attempt at the rest.”

​“But what you don’t know is the abject depths I’ve slid to. You don’t have any idea the political greasiness necessary to get to this podium. You have no conception of how much of my soul I’ve given over to the Devil. I’m not the most powerful man in the world. I’m not even a man. I’m a creature made of metal. I’m a machine made of gears and wires that finds the path of least-resistance and steamrolls anyone and anything that keeps me from it. I’m a slimey little beast that hides inside my partisan tank, ruining lives and wrecking careers just so I can hold onto a position that I don’t even want.”

​“I’ve armed rebels to destabilize developing countries, I’ve hired thugs to threaten my rivals, I’ve ordered Middle Eastern drone-strikes just to drop gas prices by two pennies.”

​“My administration paid men and women to incite violence at protests. I personally ordered a man to poison someone on my own cabinet. I paid a hired-gun to kill a foreign leader’s daughter.”

​“My only solace is that I’m not unique. Politicians have been doing this for millennia. Leading is hard. Leading with integrity is impossible. Maybe humanity should never have left their huts and caves. We aren’t cut out for greatness.”

​“Anyways, sorry for interrupting your regularly scheduled programming. I hope you know we control all the networks. You’ll never see the real story in the news, or online, or anywhere, because the real story’s only witnesses are either dead or mechanical monstrosities like me.”

​“Go back to your social media. Play some video-games. Go get drunk, or jack-off to porn, or eat some McDonald’s. That stuff gives you cancer, you know. By the way, we’ve actually had the cure to that since the 1950’s. But whatever. Just keep living and dying, I guess.”

​“Goodnight, ladies and gentlemen. God damn America.”

​And then he did it.

​I wonder if he’d be proud or horrified at all this chaos he’s left behind. People tend to like the status quo of casual disappointment in the government. Now the entire system is in overhaul and demands active attention. The Vice-President resigned. So did the Speaker of the House. Half the country doesn’t even know the name of the new President. All sorts of investigations are underway. Riots have broken out, and now everyone has to ask if the violence is federally funded.

​The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta got attacked this morning. A mob showed up, demanding the cure for cancer. When the police came to put down the fighting half of the boys in blue ended up joining the crowds. I think the National Guard killed some people, but it’s honestly hard to keep track.

​Obviously foreign nations aren’t happy either. There are demands for war-crime trials and reparations. But who do we go after? Who is guilty anyway?

​News channels are assuring their viewers that the government doesn’t really control them. Politicians are swearing they knew nothing of the President’s schemes. There are unconfirmed reports that the Attorney General got on a plane bound for South America.

​It’s odd how one man’s death could have so much impact. It’s crazy how much he mattered. It’s interesting that he will be remembered for centuries as the brutally honest scumbag who shot himself in front of the entire world. Now Hitler has some company.

​Nobody thinks about the man himself. They think of the concept. They focus on the Office of the President of the United States, but I wonder how many people out there care about the human being that pulled the trigger.

​Did he have family? I know there was a First Lady. No kids. I think I remember seeing his Mother on TV during the election. How do they feel about such an admission? How will they live on?

​Maybe they’ll kill themselves too. I’m sure I’ll see it on the news at some point.

​And here I am, relaxing on my couch, watching a personal crisis burn like a fire across the planet. And here I wonder what I should be doing. Should I make a comment on social media? Everyone has. Should I write a blog post? Who would read it? Should I scream in the streets? No one is listening.

​So I sit here. I do not act. I am inconsequential.

​I follow my Commander in Chief’s last order. I go back to my scheduled programming. I eat a cheeseburger and play some videogames. I’ll probably masturbate before bed.

​The world is in chaos, but the individual doesn’t give a fuck.

[sariaghjik]

Let’s not pretend Zuckerberg isn’t up to something, and whatever it is, he shouldn’t be allowed to do it. He’s claimed repeatedly that he’s not interested in making a presidential run, but if he isn’t, his behavior simply makes no sense. Normal, everyday megalomaniacal billionaires might decide to go on a year-long, 50-state tour of America, dropping in on hard-working folks and small business owners, publicly rhapsodizing about the food in every roadside diner they happen to come across. But they probably wouldn’t do it while accompanied by President Obama’s former campaign photographer. Tech giants might be keen to hire some political intelligence. But if it was just smarts Zuckerberg was after, he wouldn’t have snapped up the strategist and in-house pollster who disastrously mismanaged the last election for Hillary Clinton. Our new breed of dorky oligarch micro-messiahs might constantly promote Big Ideas That Could Save World. But they don’t proclaim that the good people of Wilton, Iowa, “share these values around mobility.”

So much for innovation. Mark Zuckerberg can send solar-powered drones to beam Facebook-only internet across the global south, but he can’t deviate from the tired folksy script of every other self-important grifter who decided he wanted the power of life and death over every human being on the planet.

There are some very good reasons why Mark Zuckerberg should not be allowed anywhere near the presidency. For a start, he will lose — to Trump or to whatever other monstrosity the Republicans run against him. He can only embody the politics of bland aspiration and imperious technocratic mumblings, alienating the left and inflaming the right. Second, with the entire media basically functioning as a command economy run by Facebook, Zuckerberg in office would constitute a conflict of interests and a potential for corruption so vast it would make any of Trump’s misdeeds look like minor accounting problems. Third, it would entrench the long slow rot of electoral politics, permanently establishing the nuclear codes as the private property of TV clowns and gussied-up motivational speakers. Fourth, he keeps on describing Facebook as a “community” based on “friendship,” rather than what it is — a social utility that occasionally reveals itself as a seething plasm of technologically mediated dislocation. Finally, the tech industry is a hive of inflated egos and reckless self-regard, widening the wealth gap, steadily consigning most of the human population of Earth to the status of surplus flesh, and it must not be let anywhere near political power.

All of these are very good reasons. But they’re not the most pressing or the most urgent. The real reason all Zuckerberg’s dreams of power have to be crushed now before they bear terrible fruit is this: in the 13 years since he first launched Facebook, he never gave us the dislike button.

If you want to know what Zuckerberg would be like as the warlord-in-chief of human history’s most terrifying empire, go to Facebook and look at the seamless nothing where the dislike button ought to be. It’s not just that it’s thoroughly undemocratic. For as long as Facebook has been an inescapable fact of life, its users have been clamoring for the ability to dislike each other’s posts, and Zuckerberg will not give it to them. Instead, we’ve gotten a series of incoherent cosmetic overhauls—groups are now pages, pages now have groups for pages—that nobody asked for and which are met with an immediate hatred that gives way to impotent acceptance.

It says a lot about his style of leadership. He knows what’s best for us, and he’ll do it, and what we think doesn’t really matter. But it’s more fundamental than that. Commenting on his refusal to add the dislike button, Zuckerberg said, “Some people have asked for a dislike button because they want to be able to say, ‘That thing isn’t good.’ That’s not something that we think is good. . . I don’t think there needs to be a voting mechanism on Facebook about whether posts are good or bad. I don’t think that’s socially very valuable or good for the community to help people share the important moments in their lives.”

He wants to deprive people of their ability to say no.

What’s at stake is nothing less than the possibility of negation or distinction. After all, at the core of managerial centrism is an instinctive reluctance to say that anything is good or bad. Zuckerberg’s idea is that Facebook can be a discursive space without conflict, in which people can simply share what they want, and meet a quantifiable reward. Everything starts with zero likes and grows from there: you accrue social currency mollusc-like onto yourself, until you’re encased in a hard shell of likes and shares. Everything finds its inherent value, and a community is formed. It’s a shadowless world of pure positivity. But the ability to oppose is essential for anything approaching a critical activity; it’s only by some kind of negation that thought can wrench itself free from what simply is. Negativity, as Hegel puts it, “is the energy of unconditional thinking.” A world of countable positivity is a world that is, essentially, mute.

More simply, this is not how society or politics really work. They do not form a kind of harmonious totality, where we all start from the same place and reach upward. Politics is a sphere of competing interests, agonisms and class struggle, in which the success of one set of aims always means the defeat of others. The expansion of labor rights means muzzling a powerful class of industrial capitalists; civil rights for ethnic minorities means tearing apart an entrenched system of white supremacy. Politics is struggle. But in the Facebook utopia, struggle is supposed to be impossible. There’s no contestation; instead, what is deemed to be bad is simply canceled out, removed silently and overnight by a team of invisible moderators.

In this context, a lot of Zuckerberg’s weirder pronouncements start to make sense. Earlier this year, he published a long, jargon-choked manifesto titled Building Global Community. He wants the world to be coded like Facebook — and by Facebook — as a community based on connections and commonality. The struggles going on in the world don’t need to be won, they just need to be subsumed through a greater inclusion in this community. It’s padded out by a lot of friendly sounding pap like:

“The purpose of any community is to bring people together to do things we couldn’t do on our own. To do this, we need ways to share new ideas and share enough common understanding to actually work together.”

In the end, it can all be summarized in five words. No dislike button, for anybody.

Of course, Zuckerberg isn’t the first to promote these kind of ideas. The notion that a national or supernational entity forms a cohesive community without internal conflict is as old as politics itself, and everywhere it’s put forward it’s as a mask for horrific acts of exploitation within that community. Zuckerberg is different in that he seems to genuinely believe it. This is why he might be the most dangerous presidential candidate yet. In the same way that the Republican party spent decades churning out paranoia and nonsense for a base of frothing reactionaries until they finally found themselves saddled with a president who actually believes everything he reads on Breitbart, the Democrats might be about to create a monster of their own: someone who mouths all their nonsense about never disliking anything and never saying that anything is bad with absolute conviction, a cherub-cheeked gargoyle of pious equanimity, entranced by his own capacity to bring everyone together, as those who suffer are smashed brutally underfoot. And then he’ll turn his terrifying grin toward us, and say: you might like this.

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

If this is the budget deal we get when Republicans control the House, the Senate and the presidency, there’s no point in ever voting for a Republican again.

Not only is there no funding for a wall, but — thanks to the deft negotiating skills of House Speaker Paul Ryan — the bill actually prohibits money from being spent on a wall.

At a CYA press conference on Tuesday, Trump’s ridiculously chipper budget director, Mick Mulvaney, described the bill’s prohibition on building a wall as a MAJOR win. (At least Mulvaney said it in English, unlike his all-Spanish 2014 townhall.)

True, there will be no wall. But the Democrats graciously agreed to allow the administration to fix broken parts of any existing fences on up to 40 miles of our 3,000 mile border.

The other big wins, according to Mulvaney, are:

1) more defense spending, which is fantastic news, because I was worried Boeing and Lockheed Martin CEOs were falling behind Mark Zuckerberg with their gluttonous salaries; and

2) school choice, an obsession of Washington wonks that is hated out in America, where parents move to high-tax towns for the express purpose of avoiding schools full of disaffected urban youth, and the disaffected urban youth don’t want to spend two hours on a bus every day.

But Mulvaney assures us that this monstrosity of a spending bill has set things up beautifully for the next budget negotiation in October.

That has become the GOP’s official motto: “Next time!”

We can never win this time. Instead, Republicans’ idea is always to surrender this time, in hopes that their gentlemanliness will be rewarded by their mortal enemies next time. Then, next time comes, and Republicans again surrender in hopes of currying favor with the Democrats and the media for the next time.

Mulvaney’s most disturbing comment was to say that what upset Trump the most was the Democrats’ “spiking the football” on this deal.

Apparently, Trump’s fine with no wall — and everything else in a bill straight out of George Soros’ dream journal — if only the Democrats hadn’t been so rude as to tell the public about it. When your main complaint is that the other side is gloating too much, maybe you’re not that great a negotiator.

Yeah, sure, it’s only 100 days in, it’s an artificial deadline, the media is dying to say Trump has failed and so on.

Except: Planning for the wall should have begun on Nov. 9, and a spade should have been put into the earth to begin building it the day after Trump’s inauguration. Now, it’s 100 days later, and we still don’t have the whisper of a prospect of a wall.

Moreover, this isn’t one random bill funding Planned Parenthood (which this bill does). This is the budget deal. There won’t be another one like it until next October.

That’s a spectacular failure. Democrats have got to be pinching themselves, thinking, Am I dreaming this?

It’s theoretically possible that Trump could still build a wall, but he’s just massively lengthened the odds of ever prevailing. Sure, you can let the other team build a 20-point lead in first half and still come back to beat them, but it’s a lot easier if you don’t go into halftime 20 points down.

Trump entered the presidency with the only kind of power that matters. He didn’t owe Wall Street a thing. He didn’t owe anyone — not donors, lobbyists nor any political party. What he had was the people, passionately on his side.

But as soon as he got into office, Trump started giving away his miraculous, unprecedented power. Hey, Wall Street! Even though you didn’t give me any money, is it too late to be your friend?

No amount of abandoning his supporters will get Trump anywhere with Wall Street, Hollywood or the media. Their ferocity will simply shift to ridicule.

Admittedly, Trump has the enormous handicap of having to work through congressional Republicans, who are feckless cowards. If Speaker Ryan and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell had been around for Reagan’s firing of the air traffic controllers, they would have been hysterically screaming, No! You can’t do that — the planes will crash!

This isn’t new information. We knew Washington Republicans were useless. That’s why we elected such a comically improbable president as Donald J. Trump.

The deal was that we were getting the Hollywood version of a New York businessman: an uncouth, incurious rube — who would be ruthless in getting whatever he wanted.

In addition to being the only candidate for president in either party taking America’s side on trade, immigration, jobs and crime, what set Trump apart was his promise that we would finally win.

Remember? There would be so much winning, we were going to get “sick and tired of winning,” and beg him, “Please, please, we can’t win anymore. … It’s too much. It’s not fair to everybody else.”

We’re not winning. We’re losing, and we’re losing on the central promise of Trump’s campaign.

How would Trump, the businessman, react if an underling charged with developing a new golf course could never break ground?

What if the subordinate’s progress reports sounded like this: I have given 21 speeches to various chambers of commerce and neighborhood groups, assuring them that there’s going to be a golf course. Everywhere I go, I say, “Don’t worry about it. It’s going to be built!” I have started a commission to study developing a golf course. I have put up a sign saying, “Golf course coming!” And I have caved, and caved, and caved — so now our opponents know what good guys we are.

Trump would fire that employee so fast your head would spin.

We want the ruthless businessman we were promised.

[wandashifflett]

It’s All About November 3

Everything is what it is, and not another thing.” That lapidary observation from the Sermons (1726) of Joseph, Bishop Butler, is one of the most profound philosophical observations I have ever encountered. One of the simplest, too. In nine short words, it introduces a principle of mental hygiene that Marxists, Freudians, Hegelians, astrologers, sociobiologists, and other lovers of mystification ignore at their—or, more to the point, at our—peril.

Butler’s chief target was what we now call the selfish theory of human nature—the “strange affection in many people of explaining away all particular affections, and representing the whole of life as nothing but one continued exercise in self-love.” Butler zeros in on the fundamental confusion that nurtures this unflattering view of humanity. It is this: a (deliberate?) confusion between the proposition that we cannot knowingly act except from a desire or interest which is our own, and the proposition that all of our actions are self-interested. 

The first is not only true, it is a necessary truth: it could not be otherwise. The second proposition— that all of our actions are self-interested—far from being self-evidently true, is a scandalous falsehood.  

It is a tautology that any interest we have is an interest of our own: whose else could it be? But the objects of our interest are as varied as the world is wide. 

No doubt much of what we do we do from motives of self-interest. But we might also do things for the sake of flag and country; for the love of a good woman; for the love of God; to discover a new country; to benefit a friend; to harm an enemy; to make a fortune; to spend a fortune. 

“It is not,” Butler notes, “because we love ourselves that we find delight in such and such objects, but because we have particular affections towards them.” How much wandering in mental thickets might have been avoided had Sigmund Freud acquainted himself with Butler’s Sermons?

Not, in truth, that I think it would have saved the world from the nonsense of Freudianism, any more than it would have saved the world from the monstrosity that is Hegel’s dialectic. Motives more powerful than the search for truth stand behind the erection of those mental bureaucracies, and it would be idle to think that mere logical cleanliness would rescue us from the egotism of intellectuals.  

A Monolithic Wall of Noise

I begin with Bishop Butler’s incandescent observation because I am going to say a few words that might seem—but only seem—to contradict them. As we look around at American society today, what do we see? A confusing mélange that seems partly mindless, partly vicious. Our response to the latest Chinese import, the novel coronavirus—what was that? How long will we be in sorting out the petty and sometimes murderous tyrannies enacted by various state governors and other officials? 

And what about the malignant nonsense that is Black Lives Matter? How did that happen? How is it that celebrities, major corporations, and tony schools and colleges experienced simultaneous multiple paroxysms of woke self-abasement because a lowlife career criminal with serious cardiac problems died in police custody? How do you go from an arrest in Minneapolis to the desecration of the Lincoln Memorial, the looting and burning of businesses across the country, and a regime of racially based (and racially biased) communal penance? 

I do not believe I am violating the principle of Bishop Butler’s argument when I say that almost everything happening in our society—all the craziness, all the posturing, all the distracting noise, exaggeration, and downright mendacity—all of it is not about itself but about something else, and that something else is Donald Trump. 

A new, flu-like virus is abroad in the land. The anti-Trump establishment goes to work: How can we blame it on Trump? He shuts down flights from China at the end of January: charge him with being racist and xenophobic. He consults experts. They tell him it is not a serious threat. He goes on television and says that: hysteria! Then he swings into action, mobilizes American manufacturing prowess and turns out more ventilators, protective gear, testing kits, and new therapies than anyone thought possible. The curve flattens. The political weapon that was COVID-19 falters. No problem. Declare a race war!  Smash up the storefronts. Get everybody talking about racism all the time. Ignore the fact that the people overwhelmingly harmed by Black Lives Matter are inner-city blacks. Blame everything on Donald Trump. 

The unremitting, monolithic wall of noise that has been crashing against Donald Trump since election day 2016 has gotten louder and louder, more cacophonous, more furious, more irrational. Everything is what it is, and not another thing. But the one thing that takes precedence over everything now is defeating Trump, which means defeating not only Trump himself but what he stands for—those 63 million voters who put him in office, for starters. 

The Fundamental Choice

But it’s more than that. The forces of anti-Trump hatred comprise not just Democratic aspirants to high office but also, and more significantly, the media (social and otherwise), the spoiled, pajama-boy Left, and—above all, perhaps—the entrenched administrative apparatus of government, the self-engorging bureaucracy of the state whose fundamental allegiance is to the principle of self-perpetuation.  

It is all of that which Donald Trump came to office to sweep clean, like Hercules confronting the Augean stables. The first time around the reaction was a compact of contempt and ridicule, but that was only because Trump could not win. The smartest people in the world—Bill Kristol, Nancy Pelosi, Rachel Maddow—they all knew he couldn’t win. So they didn’t come together in a single caterwauling primal scream to stop him.  

This time they have. And since they control almost all the major megaphones, it can sometimes seem that everyone is against Donald Trump and no one is for him.

It can seem that way, but of course it is not. And that is chiefly for two reasons. First, there are those 63 million voters—perhaps it will be 66 or 68 million this time. Voters whose voices you don’t hear in the pages of the New York Times and whose rigged Google searches and Facebook hot spots somehow leave out of account. They’re sitting at home watching their cities burn, watching monuments to Columbus, to Washington and Thomas Jefferson be defaced or toppled. They see that, and they hear a nonstop litany telling them how racist they are and how evil  America is. 

And just about now, a great chasm is opening up. The choice, they see, is not so much between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. It is between the America they love—that Donald Trump celebrates—and the out-of-control forces of anti-American hatred that, though he does not understand them, Joe Biden manages to blink and nod and gibber around. 

Everything that is happening between now and November 3 is about November 3. But the fundamental choice is not really Donald Trump or Joe Biden. It is civilization and America on one side, anarchy and woke tyranny on the other. The Democrats thought they could ride the tiger to victory. Instead, they will be consumed by the monster they created but could not control.

from Rayfield Review News https://therayfield.com/its-all-about-november-3 from The Ray Field https://therayfieldreview.tumblr.com/post/623457582264254464

[therayfieldreview]

It’s All About November 3

Everything is what it is, and not another thing.” That lapidary observation from the Sermons (1726) of Joseph, Bishop Butler, is one of the most profound philosophical observations I have ever encountered. One of the simplest, too. In nine short words, it introduces a principle of mental hygiene that Marxists, Freudians, Hegelians, astrologers, sociobiologists, and other lovers of mystification ignore at their—or, more to the point, at our—peril.

Butler’s chief target was what we now call the selfish theory of human nature—the “strange affection in many people of explaining away all particular affections, and representing the whole of life as nothing but one continued exercise in self-love.” Butler zeros in on the fundamental confusion that nurtures this unflattering view of humanity. It is this: a (deliberate?) confusion between the proposition that we cannot knowingly act except from a desire or interest which is our own, and the proposition that all of our actions are self-interested. 

The first is not only true, it is a necessary truth: it could not be otherwise. The second proposition— that all of our actions are self-interested—far from being self-evidently true, is a scandalous falsehood.  

It is a tautology that any interest we have is an interest of our own: whose else could it be? But the objects of our interest are as varied as the world is wide. 

No doubt much of what we do we do from motives of self-interest. But we might also do things for the sake of flag and country; for the love of a good woman; for the love of God; to discover a new country; to benefit a friend; to harm an enemy; to make a fortune; to spend a fortune. 

“It is not,” Butler notes, “because we love ourselves that we find delight in such and such objects, but because we have particular affections towards them.” How much wandering in mental thickets might have been avoided had Sigmund Freud acquainted himself with Butler’s Sermons?

Not, in truth, that I think it would have saved the world from the nonsense of Freudianism, any more than it would have saved the world from the monstrosity that is Hegel’s dialectic. Motives more powerful than the search for truth stand behind the erection of those mental bureaucracies, and it would be idle to think that mere logical cleanliness would rescue us from the egotism of intellectuals.  

A Monolithic Wall of Noise

I begin with Bishop Butler’s incandescent observation because I am going to say a few words that might seem—but only seem—to contradict them. As we look around at American society today, what do we see? A confusing mélange that seems partly mindless, partly vicious. Our response to the latest Chinese import, the novel coronavirus—what was that? How long will we be in sorting out the petty and sometimes murderous tyrannies enacted by various state governors and other officials? 

And what about the malignant nonsense that is Black Lives Matter? How did that happen? How is it that celebrities, major corporations, and tony schools and colleges experienced simultaneous multiple paroxysms of woke self-abasement because a lowlife career criminal with serious cardiac problems died in police custody? How do you go from an arrest in Minneapolis to the desecration of the Lincoln Memorial, the looting and burning of businesses across the country, and a regime of racially based (and racially biased) communal penance? 

I do not believe I am violating the principle of Bishop Butler’s argument when I say that almost everything happening in our society—all the craziness, all the posturing, all the distracting noise, exaggeration, and downright mendacity—all of it is not about itself but about something else, and that something else is Donald Trump. 

A new, flu-like virus is abroad in the land. The anti-Trump establishment goes to work: How can we blame it on Trump? He shuts down flights from China at the end of January: charge him with being racist and xenophobic. He consults experts. They tell him it is not a serious threat. He goes on television and says that: hysteria! Then he swings into action, mobilizes American manufacturing prowess and turns out more ventilators, protective gear, testing kits, and new therapies than anyone thought possible. The curve flattens. The political weapon that was COVID-19 falters. No problem. Declare a race war!  Smash up the storefronts. Get everybody talking about racism all the time. Ignore the fact that the people overwhelmingly harmed by Black Lives Matter are inner-city blacks. Blame everything on Donald Trump. 

The unremitting, monolithic wall of noise that has been crashing against Donald Trump since election day 2016 has gotten louder and louder, more cacophonous, more furious, more irrational. Everything is what it is, and not another thing. But the one thing that takes precedence over everything now is defeating Trump, which means defeating not only Trump himself but what he stands for—those 63 million voters who put him in office, for starters. 

The Fundamental Choice

But it’s more than that. The forces of anti-Trump hatred comprise not just Democratic aspirants to high office but also, and more significantly, the media (social and otherwise), the spoiled, pajama-boy Left, and—above all, perhaps—the entrenched administrative apparatus of government, the self-engorging bureaucracy of the state whose fundamental allegiance is to the principle of self-perpetuation.  

It is all of that which Donald Trump came to office to sweep clean, like Hercules confronting the Augean stables. The first time around the reaction was a compact of contempt and ridicule, but that was only because Trump could not win. The smartest people in the world—Bill Kristol, Nancy Pelosi, Rachel Maddow—they all knew he couldn’t win. So they didn’t come together in a single caterwauling primal scream to stop him.  

This time they have. And since they control almost all the major megaphones, it can sometimes seem that everyone is against Donald Trump and no one is for him.

It can seem that way, but of course it is not. And that is chiefly for two reasons. First, there are those 63 million voters—perhaps it will be 66 or 68 million this time. Voters whose voices you don’t hear in the pages of the New York Times and whose rigged Google searches and Facebook hot spots somehow leave out of account. They’re sitting at home watching their cities burn, watching monuments to Columbus, to Washington and Thomas Jefferson be defaced or toppled. They see that, and they hear a nonstop litany telling them how racist they are and how evil  America is. 

And just about now, a great chasm is opening up. The choice, they see, is not so much between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. It is between the America they love—that Donald Trump celebrates—and the out-of-control forces of anti-American hatred that, though he does not understand them, Joe Biden manages to blink and nod and gibber around. 

Everything that is happening between now and November 3 is about November 3. But the fundamental choice is not really Donald Trump or Joe Biden. It is civilization and America on one side, anarchy and woke tyranny on the other. The Democrats thought they could ride the tiger to victory. Instead, they will be consumed by the monster they created but could not control.

from Rayfield Review News https://therayfield.com/its-all-about-november-3

[israel-jewish-news]

Healthcare Politics Now Favors the Democrats

By Francis Wilkinson

Thursday, March 9, 2017 at 9:17 pm | י"א אדר תשע"ז

(Bloomberg View) - Not everyone hates House Speaker Paul Ryan’s new health-care bill. Sure, conservative policy wonks, pretty much across the board, hate it. Right-wing agitators like Heritage Action hate it. Donor tax-cut advocates like the Club for Growth hate it. Conservative purists —that courageous breed that eschews tainted compromise with dull reality — hate it.

Naturally, liberals hate it, as do people with serious health problems who depend on reliable health insurance.

Yet a Democratic leadership aide was far less unkind. Asked purely about the bill’s political merits, he said Democrats, policy consequences aside, would be delighted to see Republican House members casting votes in favor of it, which he likened to walking a plank.

Former Democratic strategist Robert Shrum similarly envisions Republicans dropping into the abyss. “If you were cynical, and all you cared about was the political calculus, you’d want this misshapen monstrosity to pass,” he said in a telephone interview. Democratic pollster Paul Maslin emailed: “Probably better for us if it passes. Unfortunately the right wing knows that too and they may kill it for that reason.”

Obamacare repeal was originally supposed to be the first of two tax cuts for the wealthy. Phase I would knock out the tax revenue that funds the Affordable Care Act. In Phase II, Republicans would not only deliver another round of tax cuts to the wealthy, they would have that legislation scored against the revised, more favorable, baseline produced by Phase I. Depletions to the treasury caused by Phase I would make the revenue lost to high-end tax cuts in Phase II appear less onerous.

That may yet come to pass. But the one-two punch depends on Republican leaders rallying support for a bill for which they can’t relate the most basic details: How many people will lose health insurance? How much will their misfortune cost the U.S. Treasury? GOP leaders want to begin moving the legislation before the Congressional Budget Office can finish analyzing it.

If Republicans can’t pass a repeal bill after dozens of symbolic votes against Obamacare, and after years of raging against the law, it not only casts a pall over the joyous act of cutting taxes in Phase II, it raises an existential question about the GOP itself: Beyond tax cuts, what’s it good for?

If the new repeal legislation “goes down in flames,” emailed another Democrat, pollster Anna Greenberg, “it could depress GOP turnout in the midterms.” Either the final bill will please the right-wing purists in the House Freedom Caucus, Greenberg said, in which case some Republicans who support the bill will face primaries from their right, or many Trump voters will lose their health insurance. “Either way,” she said, “nothing good comes from this effort.”

Democratic schadenfreude is not quite the same as Democratic power. The party has been hapless in off-year elections; both 2010 and 2014 were devastating, transferring hundreds of seats in the House, Senate, state legislatures and governor’s offices from Democratic to Republican control. But the election of President Trump has galvanized the liberal grassroots. They have been screaming, Tea-Party-like, at their representatives in town halls across the country. Democrats aren’t just the out party now, which typically gains in midterm elections. Like Republicans circa 2010, they’re the outraged party.

“Democrats are going to crawl across broken glass on their knees to go vote in 2018, if the conditions exist as they do today,” said Democratic Governor Jay Inslee of Washington in an interview Feb. 27 with the Washington Post.

Related

President Trump Backs House Health-Care Plan, Is ‘Open to Negotiations’

Trump Pushes GOP Leaders for Fast Action on Health Care

Trump to GOP, Dems: Start Writing New Health-Care Law

Rand Paul Drafting Health-Care Measure to Replace Obamacare

ANALYSIS: Health Care Battle Could Decide Balance of Power

Democratic fury is not an immediate concern of Speaker Ryan. More pressing is the state of his majority, which is prone to fray at both the extreme and moderate ends. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has a similar problem and, presuming no Democratic support, has only two wayward votes to spare.

The prospect of betraying white working-class voters, many of whom, whether they know it or not, benefit from Obamacare, doesn’t seem to weigh on the GOP congressional leadership. But it might bother the White House. President Trump promised to replace Obamacare with something “terrific.”

“I’m proud to support the replacement plan released by the House of Representatives,” President Trump said Tuesday after meeting with House Republicans at the White House.

But the legislation will hurt millions and transform their health-care subsidies into tax benefits for the richest.

The opinions expressed on this page are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hamodia.

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Health care politics now favors the Democrats

The authors the AHCA would convert tax subsidies for working-class voters into tax benefits for the wealthy. (Photo: Getty Images)

(Bloomberg View) — Not everyone hates Paul Ryan’s new health care bill. Sure, conservative policy wonks, pretty much across the board, hate it. Right-wing agitators like Heritage Action hate it. Donor tax-cut advocates like the Club for Growth hate it. Conservative purists — that courageous breed that eschews tainted compromise with dull reality — hate it.

Naturally, liberals hate it, as do people with serious health problems who depend on reliable health insurance.

Related: GOP ACA change bill may favor commercial health

Yet a Democratic leadership aide was far less unkind. Asked purely about the bill’s political merits, he said Democrats, policy consequences aside, would be delighted to see Republican House members casting votes in favor of it, which he likened to walking a plank.

Former Democratic strategist Robert Shrum similarly envisions Republicans dropping into the abyss. “If you were cynical, and all you cared about was the political calculus, you’d want this misshapen monstrosity to pass,” he said in a telephone interview. Democratic pollster Paul Maslin emailed: “Probably better for us if it passes. Unfortunately the right wing knows that too and they may kill it for that reason.”

“Obamacare repeal” was originally supposed to be the first of two tax cuts for the wealthy. Phase I would knock out the tax revenue that funds Affordable Care Act programs. In Phase II, Republicans would not only deliver another round of tax cuts to the wealthy, they would have that legislation scored against the revised, more favorable, baseline produced by Phase I. Depletions to the treasury caused by Phase I would make the revenue lost to high-end tax cuts in Phase II appear less onerous.

That may yet come to pass. But the one-two punch depends on Republican leaders rallying support for a bill for which they can’t relate the most basic details: How many people will lose health insurance? How much will their misfortune cost the U.S. Treasury? GOP leaders want to begin moving the legislation before the Congressional Budget Office can finish analyzing it.

If Republicans can’t pass an Obamacare budget bill after dozens of symbolic votes against Obamacare, and after years of raging against the law, it not only casts a pall over the joyous act of cutting taxes in Phase II, it raises an existential question about the GOP itself: Beyond tax cuts, what’s it good for?

If the new legislation “goes down in flames,” emailed another Democrat, pollster Anna Greenberg, “it could depress GOP turnout in the midterms.” Either the final bill will please the right-wing purists in the House Freedom Caucus, Greenberg said, in which case some Republicans who support the bill will face primaries from their right, or many Trump voters will lose their health insurance. “Either way,” she said, “nothing good comes from this effort.”

Democratic schadenfreude is not quite the same as Democratic power. The party has been hapless in off-year elections; both 2010 and 2014 were devastating, transferring hundreds of seats in the House, Senate, state legislatures and governor’s offices from Democratic to Republican control. But the election of Trump has galvanized the liberal grassroots. They have been screaming, Tea-Party-like, at their representatives in town halls across the country. Democrats aren’t just the out party now, which typically gains in midterm elections. Like Republicans circa 2010, they’re the outraged party.

“Democrats are going to crawl across broken glass on their knees to go vote in 2018, if the conditions exist as they do today,” said Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington in an interview Feb. 27 with the Washington Post.

Democratic fury is not an immediate concern of Speaker Ryan. More pressing is the state of his majority, which is prone to fray at both the extreme and moderate ends. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has a similar problem and, presuming no Democratic support, has only two wayward votes to spare.

The prospect of betraying white working-class voters, many of whom, whether they know it or not, benefit from Obamacare doesn’t seem to weigh on the GOP congressional leadership. But it might bother the White House. Trump promised to replace Obamacare with something “terrific.”

“I’m proud to support the replacement plan released by the House of Representatives,” Trump said Tuesday after meeting with House Republicans at the White House.

But the legislation will hurt millions and transform their health care subsidies into tax benefits for the richest. Trump may be fine with that in theory but the buck in this administration never stops anywhere near the Oval Office. If the repeal bill ends up looking like a loser — and it’s got a hangdog look already — who thinks Brave Sir Robin of the Round Office will buckle down, take the heat and work to pass it?

Republicans will face hell from their base if they fail to repeal Obamacare. But parts of that base will suffer if the effort succeeds. Perhaps the most fitting coda of this shameless period of American history would be Trump and other Republicans saving lives by killing their own cynical, misbegotten deed.

Francis Wilkinson writes editorials on politics and U.S. domestic policy for Bloomberg View. He was executive editor of the Week. He was previously a national affairs writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist.

Related:

Conservatives pan GOP Obamacare plan as ‘welfare’

Plans received $28 billion in 2016 ACA advance premium aid

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