democrats: Victims of Their Own Excess

No, that is not a typo in the title. I have deliberately used the lowercase 'd' because if history has taught us anything, it is that the democratic party is anything BUT democratic. It has evolved into a Managerialist party, the natural course of an entity largely made up of petty tyrants and mental defectives.


A few things right out of the blocks: I am NOT attempting to give the democrats a means by which to recover their former position in American Politics. I am attempting to show you how, in my opinion, the democratic party devolved into the metaphorical drunken, slovenly, clapped-out-trollop-you-wouldn't-fuck-with-a-stolen-penis at the end of the bar at Closing Time.

I don't believe that it is possible for the democrats, at this stage in history, to recover from their largely self-inflicted wounds of the past 25 years, barring some great catastrophe brought about by a timid or rudderless (that is to say, spineless) GOP, which has it's own history of hubris that it seems hell-bent on repeating. So long as the GOP is dominated by personalities like Donald Trump, John McCain, and Paul Ryan, the possibility of a sell-out, a disaster resulting from overreach, or plain stupidity is ever-present.

It's what the GOP does best: implode at the height of it's powers.

Perhaps I'll get around to telling them how they may avoid that predictable outcome next week, but for now I'm concentrating on explaining the present circumstances of the Other Party who doesn't listen to people like me.

That's why it's safe to examine the democrats, because they don't listen to people like me, and even if I should provide a useful insight or two, there is no one on that side of the aisle with enough brains to take any of it to heart.

Because, you know, they're too busy doubling down on asshole to pay attention.

Once upon a time, the American democrat party was a fairly strong coalition of five major constituencies (generalizing). These were:

1. The Farmer
2. The Union Worker
3. The Elderly
4. Women
5. Minorities

And yes, I did put "minorities" last on purpose, and if you find that racist, then go fuck yourself. It was a toss-up as to which group -- Women or Minorities -- was more-useless.

Then I remembered that women at least have the virtue of being a fairly good place to park a boner.

Anyway...

It was fairly easy to present a broad political program to such a small group of constituencies. This is, after all, how managerialism works in electoral politics; the individual ceases to count insofar as s/he can claim status or membership within a voting block. John Smith, individual, is not worth much all on his lonesome: John Smith, Autoworker, African-American, Precarious Homeowner, Diabetic, is a much better target.

The trick is not to appeal to any individual, but to appeal to as many of the disparate voting blocs as possible, and form them into a rough coalition that enables you to pit groups against one another for electoral gain.

So long as the number of target "groups" was small and manageable, the democrats were able to present political programs which garnered enough of the groups into an electoral coalition, while simultaneously not making the party overly offensive -- or even seemingly dangerous -- to the greater mass of people not in one of their targeted groups. In fact, so long as democrats did not totally alienate the greater mass,they could, in theory (and often in practice) "peel" away some of the less-conservative (defined as: NOT a religious bigot with a gun fetish) voters from the GOP from time to time.

And considering the GOP's propensity for periodic eruptions of utter retardation (see: Reagan's Amnesty, Jon McCain's Entitlement Reform that created a New Entitlement and his Campaign Finance Reform that reformed very little, George H.W. Bush's "Read My Lips" bullshit, and G.W. Bush's "Compassionate Conservatism" that greatly expanded the administrative state) peeling away a few votes here and there was often as easy as making fun of the Doofus (ask Gerald Ford, if you can organize a seance, what Chevy Chase did to him).

The democrats learned a very valuable lesson: all you had to do was change retail politics from an ideological-based business to an emotionally-driven, intensely-targeted, marketing-based proposition. If you simply catered to your core "groups" (i.e. The Base), and picked off a few fence-sitting righties and centrists along the way, you won elections.

Winning elections is good when you're a democrat (and yes, the GOP does this, too) because the point of winning them is to be able to dole out the goodies, because this is how one initially acquires power -- by making promises with someone else's money -- and then stays in power -- by delivering in the form of direct subsidy (welfare), legal dispensations (affirmative action), jobs (political appointments), and the (limited) ability to dictate an agenda from the bottom-up, instead of the top-down. democrats (won't even capitalize when they're the first word in a sentence!) are very good at doling out and simultaneously skimming.

It's how complete fucktards like Clintons and Obamas become multi-millionaires in "public service". But, I digress...

However, all this identity bullshit had an unintended consequence, which, frankly, was entirely foreseeable:

When you make such transparent and frank efforts at categorizing people so as to exploit them for votes (and those people are willing to be exploited in return for someone else's cash), it doesn't take long before you get a proliferation of groups.

So, over the years, in addition to the Golden Five listed above, the democrat party added several more identity groups to it's coalition. Here's a partial list, because I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the more-obscure (but plenty vocal) fringe-of-the-fringe groups:

Gays
Illegal Immigrants
The Young
The Disabled
EnvironMENTALists
The Uninsured

And, of course, as the democrats descended further into the sewer (a predictable outcome of exercising power for so long), and placed their electoral fortunes into the hands of the surviving Hippies of the 1960's and '70's, who were very good at saying shit, but not so good at doing it (the entire Baby Boomer generation is like this, IMO) like Clintons, Obamas, Cuomos, Pelosis, Feinsteins, and so forth, and they managed to reabsorb the unreformed Communists and Socialists (the Baby Boomer Role Models) back into the fold, the promises get bolder, they get bigger, and they get more ridiculous.

Because a dog always returns to it's vomit. If "Big" worked this time, next time go "Bigger".

Anyway...

The new power groups behaved just like the previous ones; in return for support, they expected to get whatever it was they were seeking. In the last 25 years, or so, the democrats largely delivered.

But the lesson was learned by the rank-and-file that if identity politics was a good thing, and got you paid, then the bestest thing EVAH would be more identity groups, and so the splintering of the old coalitions began; the fracturing and multiplication of the new ones proceeded at warp speed, so that a broad category like "The Young" has to be broken down by demographics to the finest detail when considering how to pitch a platform. The Hispter, after all, is not likely to be after the same cash or the same privileges as the Indebted College Student or the Legal Pot idiot who lives in Mommy's Basement. The broad category of Illegal Immigrant becomes Balkanized as Mexicans battle Salvadorans who confront Islamics who are arrayed against South Asians who elbow at the trough with Haitians. Even the broad category of The Elderly splits along a generational line as The Greatest Generation clings to life, and the Baby Boomers age and demand Eternal Youth, with the Gen X'ers right behind them, sure to demand to be kept into their decrepitude by the same standards as the previous two generations who took their money.

I mean, fuck, just think of what happened to The Gay Vote, as it went from LGBT to LGBTQ to LGBTIQ, to LGBTIQQLLCOOLJ or whatever the fuck it is now.

Next thing you know, you have 152 constituencies to mollify, all fighting for the same jobs, the same money, the same privileges, and you have to deliver. Your problem is somewhat ameliorated by the facts that union labor is rapidly becoming a relic of the past thanks to automation and global labor markets, and that the small-holding, dirt-poor farmer is an anachronism, since farmers have become some of the wealthiest people in America due to government largess, and the same factors -- automation, access to global labor through a nod-and-a-wink permission of illegal immigration -- has helped turn them into the Robber Barons of old.

But the main problem never goes away: the growing array of constituencies has to be fed something. And sometimes, the supply of "something" starts dwindling.

And this is where the democrats get into trouble.

It is virtually impossible, for a variety of reasons, to stitch together a political program that satisfies all of these disparate groups, does not alienate the majority, that can be done inexpensively or with any sense of equality of distribution, that doesn't make you sound like either an insane fucktard, at the lower end of the spectrum, or a fire-breathing Stalinist, at the other end.

You can't deliver because there's simply too many to placate, much less to spread around, and too much acrimony within the ranks.

If you wonder why the modern democratic party seems to ladle out a never-ending stew of victimhood, class warfare, racial animosity, violence (real or implied), threats, double standards, outright lies, all to be paid for by getting-closer-to-complete-dispossession of the productive, this is why. As the turmoil within the party forces the mouthpieces to churn out more promises that never get kept, the angrier the sources of that turmoil tend to get. This, in turn, makes the mouthpieces start looking for scapegoats: the Rich, Republicans, Bitter Clingers, Obstructionists, Racist/Sexist/Homophobes, Christians, White People, The Police, Wall Street, and so on and so forth, because without this ability to force Coalitions of the Dissimilar together just long enough to win an election -- and then to find a way to pay that forced Coalition off -- the democrats are doomed.

Without the ability to deflect the blame for their inability to produce, certain democrats might be dead.

Like an addict, they are hooked on their drug of choice. Division once worked, and now it works too well, and the consequences are spelled out in campus riots, Black Lives Matters, Impeachment proceedings without an underlying crime, criminalization of Free Speech, demonization and Othering, and finally, not even granting their opponents the status of human beings.

As I see it, there are only three possible outcomes to the Left's current dilemma:

1. Those in charge realize what they have wrought, and decide to jettison some of these fringe groups from the Coalition, sacrificing short-term political gain for long-term political viability. I hold out no hope for this solution, as many of the people "in charge" are products of this very system and they know nothing else and can't imagine retail politics being conducted in any other way.

2. The Left fragments into separate parties, the most imaginable being Greens, (Softer) Libertarians, and parties based around gender, race and sex. This spells the end, for all intents and purposes, of anything resembling an organized Left and limits the amount of damage any future Leftist movement may do. While this may be considered a long-term good, it has one considerable drawback: it emboldens some of the dumber elements of the Right.

3. The whole shebang explodes into violence which very quickly escalates until we're approaching something resembling Civil War, and when I say that, I don't mean the Grant and Lee kind, where greater principles are at stake, I mean the Yugoslavia kind where the violence is random, petty, nasty, and leads to greater atrocities like Ethnic Cleansing as "the enemy" comes to be seen as not so much another human being with a different set of ideas and ideals who might be compromised with, but as a disease that has to be eradicated in order for Total Victory to be achieved.

The current, I guess you could call it "logic", of the modern brand of leftist politics is headed in this last direction.

I would just caution you, however, that when it comes to the potential for violence, The Left is generally outgunned, under-funded, handicapped by a lack of intelligence, and dependent upon foot soldiers who would rather whine their way to success than to fight for it.

Because fighting takes actual work, entails personal sacrifice, and engenders risk, three things Modern Lefties have never been particularly good at. Lefties may succor themselves with the romantic, historical examples of "struggle", they may even attempt to emulate them, but the Modern Leftard is too comfortable, too soft, too easily frightened, too cowardly (morally and physically) to make a showing on par with Lenin's Bolsheviks.

If and when the more raucous elements of the Left decide they want to go Full Revolutionary, I can predict with absolute certainty exactly how it will end.

The Minorities will find themselves exposed on the Barricades, as the Feminists find themselves wealthy husbands with no spines (their real goal) and the frat boys disappear for a kegger after they've thrown their Molotovs from the back ranks, and run off. The Antifa scumbags will scatter like roaches when the kitchen light comes on the second someone hits them back.

The Kumbaya White Girls will take their glitter-decorated protest signs home to stew in their menstrual cycles the second some Ghetto Queen puts them in their place, Rosalita the Housekeeper starts screwing their fathers on the QT and demanding child support for the resulting love child, and they begin to realize that not only does no one want or need them there, but that they will get no over-the-top recognition and/or gratitude for it (because they're really insecure dipshits who never developed past 16, mentally), and are more likely to be robbed, raped and beaten than befriended by The Diversity.

The Gays will decide that going back to living a quiet, introspective life seems a better alternative than a world in which the Bible Thumping-shotgun-toting rednecks win, and start to believe that God is on their Side.

The Glorious Revolution will die an ignominious death at the hands of people it considers inferior, because it's own people are of even lesser quality.

Best to reconsider your position than to defend it to the last Non-Binary Transsexual of Color.