Sorry - I edited that because I could just see some tight-assed mod getting all twisted up over it, and I wanted the underlying message to not get deleted, and only saw your response after the fact.

But now that you mention it…

Lindsey Graham can always be counted on to suck up to whichever Republican is currently getting the most headlines.

I suspect this is the future - media outlets publishing milquetoast critiques of overt fascism and blithering insanity.

Like Trump officials are going to start machine-gunning people in the streets and the New Republic is going to publish an article that hesitantly avers that there’s a perception among some that that might be seen to be a bit excessive.

I sincerely have no idea.

The narrative that a leftist couldn’t win is repeated so predictably and so often and by so many people that the whole idea has become sort of detached from reality, and there’s no telling what would happen if it was actually a possibility.

And particularly since the one thing I’d pretty much guarantee is that the concerted efforts on the part of the ruling class to prevent a leftist from running would be as nothing compared to what they’d do and say in order to prevent one from winning.

Broadly, it’s very simple.

Make a list of everyone, ranked in order of personal wealth from most to least.

That’s also a ranking, in order, of winners to losers under Trump.

Though exceptions will of course be made for rich people who piss him off and poor people who suck up to him and can provide something he wants.

Not “now” - I have been for years. Ever since I figured out that the US has no future - that the ruling class is already preparing to put down any opposition (that’s why we have a militarized police force and the largest prison system in the world, and that already, before Trump’s proposed detainment camps that are supposedly going to be built to hold undocumented immigrants, except that the undocumented immigrants are going to be deported, so self-evidently they’re going to hold someone else).

There is no way to make any lasting change in the US. The ruling class is too firmly entrenched and too out of touch, and frankly too fucking insane. They will, and already intend to, go to war to protect their grotesquely destructive privilege, and the nation will not survive that.

So the only hope is that our descendants will build something better out of the rubble we’re going to leave behind.

And again - that was already the case. Trump is just accelerating the process.

We’re in a timeline now in which truth is entirely irrelevant.

Trump supporters are necessarily one of two things - deluded or dishonest. Either they’ve been manipulated into not seeing the plain fact that he’s a corrupt and self-serving autocrat and an existential threat to the US, or they know exactly what he is and just don’t admit it publicly.

In either case, truth and reality count for nothing.

That’s the deal.

Literally.

The most maddening, astonishing and discouraging part of the whole thing, for me, is that that isn’t even really debatable. From any reasonable, purely fact-based and unbiased viewpoint, Israel has been clearly maneuvering for decades now to conquer everything from the river to the sea, and to oppress, displace or kill as many Palestinians as it takes to do it.

The Gaza genocide isn’t an aberration - it’s the direct culmination of decades of very deliberate Israeli policy and strategy. It’s not a coincidence that they had exactly one Prime Minister who advocated for Palestinian statehood and they assassinated him - it’s because Palestinian statehood has never really been an option.

The plain fact is simply that the only reason there’s even any difference of opinion about the matter is that some number of assholes - power-hungry assholes and greedy assholes and hateful assholes and ignorant assholes - have a vested interest in lying about it or at the least promoting the lies that their fellow assholes tell.

I think the clearest indicator of the philosophical and moral bankruptcy of the entire matter is the fact that anyone believes for even a second that Israel has a meaningful opinion on whether or not a Palestinian state can or should exist.

In any sane and rarional world, Israel would not be seen to have the right to make that decision, or even to hold a meaningful opinion on the matter. It should be ENTIRELY a matter to be decided by the Palestinian people.

But this is not a sane or rational world.

So as is generally the case with this sort of story, I find myself wondering if he’s such a monster that they can’t sweep it under the rug or if he just happened to piss off the wrong people.

Sexual assault in the military - like church pedophilia, police brutality and political corruption - is one of those crimes that is deplorably common and almost always ignored. So when they do prosecute someone for it, there has to be something else to it. It can’t just be that he’s thought to be guilty of the crime, since hundreds or even thousands of others are at least as likely guilty of the same crime, and are not even under threat and quite likely never will be. So what’s special about him?

It’s not really relevant to anything, and it’s certainly not as if he should be spared just because so many others are allowed to get away with it (exactly the opposite in fact - each and every single one of them, without exception, should face the full force of the law, and the fact that so many don’t is a prime example of why and how this country is going to shit).

Still though, I find myself wondering, as I often do.

Because people are miserable and desperate and they want to blame someone or something, and bigotry is simple and superficially satisfying.

And because some number of those who actually are to blame for their misery and desperation have self-servingly encouraged them.

By “peace” what they actually mean is “submission.”

Russia’s already getting a return on their investment.

The next year or two is just going to be an orgy of face-eating leopards eating faces.

There was a time when I would’ve sympathized with and supported the Israelis.

But that was 40,000 murders ago.

While the decision to stop publishing the six books was made by Dr. Seuss Enterprises, right-wing outlets like Fox News mischaracterized it as a book ban.

Unsurprisingly, it has actually been Republican-backed laws like Tennessee’s that have resulted in the banning of Dr. Seuss books from schools.

And that’s the way it works pretty much without exception - private individuals and businesses and such make independent decisions and the Republicans scream that they’re being oppressed, then they pass laws in the name of freedom.

Even with as insane as the Republican agenda is, and as deluded as their supporters necessarily must be, that particular aspect of it really stands out to me. It’s just so perfectly Orwellian.

Exactly - that belief is not supported by the evidence

Yet they continue to call for increasingly punitive punishments anyway.

Why?

Certainly there are some who are just parrots (and they might even be the majority), but I don’t think that’s generally the case with those who are out there competing with each other to call for the most egregious possible punishments. I think the parrots tend more to be relatively passive consumers of that content rather than active participants. The ones who are actually in there competing to be the most vindictive are self-evidently more motivated than the passive consumers, and I think that that additional motivation comes from an overt pleasure taken in the suffering of others.

Yes, I’ve noticed that. It’s hard to miss really.

I assume it is, exactly as you say, virtue signaling.

Virtue signaling isn’t just an end in itself. It’s often (generally?) a feedback loop - the person is not just trying to demonstrate that they’re virtuous, but to reassure themselves that the standards upon which they’re measuring their nominal virtue are legitimate.

So calling for ever more draconian punishment is not so much the point - more, the point is to call for draconian punishment, then have somebody else applaud and even amplify that call. That helps to solidify the sense of moral superiority since it’s not just that I believe that I’m morally superior because [X], but other people do as well. We all agree that this is the morally superior position, so we must be right.

But underneath it all, what it really is is just foul, vindictive, hateful assholes who enjoy the thought of people suffering, and try to excuse it with the belief that, by whatever standard, this person deserves it.

Though they’d be the last to admit it, the nominal crime isn’t the point. They just get off on the suffering of others, and the nominal crime is just an excuse.

And since their whole position is a lie - because their real motivation is just a sick pleasure in the suffering of others and their moral posturing is just cover for their loathsomeness - they need constant feedback to convince themselves that they’re in the right. And conveniently enough, there are plenty of other people in the same situation, so they can, and do, reassure each other.

I’ll never stop being cynically amused by the fact that the self-styled American patriots are letting the Russian government tell them how to vote.