Saturday, January 23, 2021

Fixing 'Murica, Part Two: Salvage and Recovery

 "The people who scream the loudest and most-frequently about racism, are, in fact, the real racists they are warning you about..." -- The Overlord



In Part One we took a look at the Herd of Fucktard that roams the American landscape.

This installment will concentrate on the political issues in play, but will mostly concern itself with a plan for salvaging what's left of American Republicanism, so that it may be rebuilt (we hope).

There is little point in raging against the left, in this regard, because for all intents and purposes the left cannot be fixed. It has hitched its wagons to the runaway team of horses named Critical Race Theory, Socialism, Identity Politics and Fascism. There is nothing remaining for the left to do, now that it believes it has acquired absolute power and moral authority, but to concentrate now on the historically-expected program of purges typical of all "Popular Front" leftist governments since the term "political left" was invented.

For having produced a system of multifarious "identities" (i.e. voting blocs to be bribed in return for a vote), which never seem to grow smaller in numbers but to expand exponentially, it will eventually reach a point where all of the "identities" involved cannot be mollified and in which some will be jettisoned entirely in the name of expediency. So that for every "LGBTQ...." there is a "Dreamer"; for every "Working Poor" there is a "Soccer Mom"; for every "African-American" there is another hyphenated American. The scales can never balance because the effect of leftist government is to a) restrict and reduce economic growth, resulting in a smaller "pie" to be divvied up, and b) to switch priorities according to the needs of orthodoxy and retaining power right this minute.

Not that the right has been angels in this regard, either. For they learned the lesson that identity politics can pay off, as well, and so it was that entire new categories of people and voters entered the political lexicon on the right, too: "Our Military", "First Responders", "Gold Star Families", "Evangelicals", "Small Business Owners", and the ever-popular "Reagan Democrat".

But the primary reasons why the left is ultimately doomed go far beyond the marketing of an ever-increasing number of "deserving" groups; the leftist, herself, is a fucking moonbat. You have to believe this hypothesis on the simple basis of how they speak and behave:

While telling us all about "tolerance", they tend to be the most intolerant people imaginable, and unaware of it.

While telling us "Race doesn't exist" they seem to find racism everywhere.

While instructing us that "gender is a construct used to oppress people" they seem to have no problem fabricating new genders out of whole cloth and using them to execute their own programs of oppression.

They call themselves "Progressives" but are quite good at ignoring real progress -- more people in college than ever, more people in the Middle Class than ever, the victories gained in Civil Rights, Women's Rights, Gay Rights, and so forth -- either none of it matters, it is never enough, or it is willfully ignored because that is what is required at present.

They call themselves Progressives and seem to have great difficulty in remembering what century they're living in,  so that the return of Slavery and Jim Crow are always "just around the corner", the Worker who lives a life of relative comfort with less physical labor, higher wages, more material wealth, better health than his compatriots of 100 years ago is still "exploited" and "oppressed" by evil Robber Barons (as the Liberal goes about exploiting the "Undocumented" landscaper, nanny, pool cleaner, roofer and busboy in the fancy-schmancy Urban Eatery).

That the new Robber Barons are are all "liberals" operating from Mao's playbook seems to have either escaped their notice (because dumbass), or met with their silent approval (because they're full of shit).

So, for a variety of reasons the left has a can't-break date with it's own destruction, and there is no point in trying to reform it. It will continue as a (bowel) movement of the preternaturally stupid, the venally self-interested, the self-selected-and-inbred elitist snobs playing at Evita.

The right is the only viable movement, at the moment, which can be salvaged. Third parties only end up hurting the right, historically, in elections.

The Republican party has a vast array of really bad habits and non-virtues that have to be expunged before it can even think about a meaningful revival and electoral victory that isn't merely the swapping of one bunch of ne'er-do-wells for another bunch of praying ne'er-do-wells. The party learned the wrong lesson from the Trump phenomenon; it wasn't populism that Trump sold to Americans -- it was affinity. For while Trump may be a shitload of things (genius is not one of them, MAGA-heads), the one essential quality he has always had is that he's a guy from Queens. Richer than most, but still a relatable dude with balls, who you would love to have over for coffee and cake on a weekend. He has a quality that mist people of his stature lack in spades -- he tells it like he sees it, in the language of the Average Joe.

While you did not like the Swamp Creatures because they made your life a living Hell, Trump hated them because they were always in his pocket. If they weren't begging for campaign money, they were practicing the time-honored tradition of political behind-the-scenes-handwashing whenever he wanted to build this, that or the other. They clamored to be photographed with him to raise their own public profiles. They wanted the Trump imprimatur that came with an endorsement, knowing all the time they utterly despised him.

 And to him, it was just "the cost of doing business" until he decided he wasn't going to be extorted, anymore.

Which is why they had to kill him, metaphorically-speaking. They certainly pulled out all the stops. I wrote it somewhere (wish I knew where now!) five years ago that if Trump won election, his problem was never going to be with the democratic party -- it was going to be with the professional bureaucracy which is a client of the democratic party.

I was right. I take no joy in saying "I told you so" now, however.

Anyway, the right needs a new direction and to provide the impetus for this reformation it needs a better citizen, as I spoke of in Part One. Right now, we have something on the order of 75 million or so people, the majority of whom are wandering the landscape aimlessly with their thumbs in their asses, because they're not particularly bright nor engaged beyond an emotional level.

If you need an example of what I'm talking about, how many people do you know who proudly (and stupidly) call themselves "Patriots", evoking the spirit of American do-or-die, the image of the rugged individualist, the tough guys on call when shit hits the fan...crying they only got $600 from the latest "Stimulus" bill? Complaining that stupid, scrawny, phone-addicted, soy-eating college kids cosplaying revolutionary are too monolithic a force to be overcome in what is a battle of wills and nerves? Where were all the fucktards taking selfies in their underwear at the Capital when their governors shut down their communities? Complaining about Facebook and Google censoring them and forgetting that life and civilization went on for tens of thousands of years without either of them?

That majority suffers from the same problem the majority of the left suffers from: they expect someone else to do their heavy lifting and thinking for them, and when confronted by an opportunity to do SOMETHING USEFUL AND EFFECTVE instead hands The Other Side exactly the reaction they were hoping to provoke by being obnoxious assholes. They lost the battle of wits and will. In effect, they talked a good game about winning the battle but then either failed to take the field where it mattered, or showed up on the wrong batteground completely disarmed.

So, here's a few ideas of mine on how to...errr...right the Right.

1. The Wrong People are Making the Wrong Decisions:

Specifically, I am referring to how the GOP selects candidates for office all the way down the line. Primarily, the "winner" of any contest is fairly well pre-decided by an unofficial cabal --  not of individuals, but of ideological mindsets.

The candidate that "wins" any contest -- to be followed by defeat better than 50% of the time to a democrat unless his district or office is "safe" due to irregularities in demographics or fortuitous gerrymandering -- is selected by a process of "vetting" by a professional force of shitheads who call themselves "advisors" and "political strategists" who seem to have a talent for neither, and who get paid handsomely for repeating failures.

This cabal consists of three distinct units and one additional unit that blows hot and cold depending on how fat or thin their wallets will get. I call the first the "God-Guns-and-Gays" coalition which consists mainly of people obsessed with a single issue who you wouldn't follow through your own front door. They are monomaniac in their quest to have their peculiar itch scratched by a candidate, and then usually find fault with him, anyway (it's amazing how quickly their former darlings become "RINOS").

The fourth player in all of this is extremely-narrow business interests that we call "The Chamber of Commerce" and their lickspittles the "Free Traders". Each will eagerly sell their country out in a heartbeat and so they  don't really care who the pimp is.

His job is to deliver, and nothing more.

This is Managerialism, not Classical Liberalism. the GOP used to be a Classically-Liberal party, but as I've stated above, it too has become wedded to the identity politics and client-of-government routine invented by the left.

Here's how to lessen their influence:

2. Change the Primary System to Make it More-Competitive:

I'll limit remarks on this one to the presidential arena.

Every four years you get the same thing. A bunch of jackasses, most representing very narrow constituencies, throw their hat in the ring. In 2016, you got 16 of them, most of them convinced they had a chance by some hallucinogenic drugs and lavishly-funded (by other people) piss poor political and tactical advice from a battalion of the professional nitwits I've mentioned above (like Karl Rove).

The nitwit doesn't care if "his" guy loses, because he's still getting paid, and as the field shakes out, he's probably getting offers from other campaigns.

The system, as currently run, sets three really-stupid beauty contests ahead of the candidate who hopes to survive until Super Tuesday....when NORMAL people vote.

The Iowa Caucuses are basically a popularity contest won by the asshole who provides the most free beer and barbeque to a bunch of Midwestern fucktards who just want to hear that no one will fuck with their corporate welfare (corn subsidies in all their various forms, price controls, guaranteed markets, payments for NOT farming, and government "help" in marketing their produce to foreign markets while erecting trade barriers to competition. All the economic hallmarks of "democratic socialism", by the way). 

I want to say that I have never been to Iowa (nor do I plan to ever do so: when you know that Cedar Rapids is known as "The City of Smells", it is kind of an indication there's not much to recommend it). For all I know, the people of Iowa are very nice folks, welcoming, sophisticated, but it's obvious that their politics probably begins and ends with "gimme!'. 

These are not the Yeoman farmers of American Legend: they're corporations unto themselves disguised as workers of the land.

That the "Caucus" means nothing other than "momentum" for a brace of morons going into the second obsolete contest is just another reason to stop paying that much attention to it all.

I HAVE been to New Hampshire, but only I must admit, because I was on my way to Canada. I have also spent some time, by sheer circumstance and need, but not by choice, in New Hampshire's orbiting shitstain, Vermont, which strikes me --a Native New Yorker -- as being something like Greenwich Village in plaid flannel.

The purpose of New Hampshire's primaries, traditionally, is that this is where we're supposed to find the Blue-Blooded, Rock-Ribbed, Republican ideologues. That is to say, people who don't understand what century they're living in. These are people who one imagines belong either pictured on a package of Pepperidge Farms or in a B-grade slasher movie.

Which brings us to the Third Leg in our constipated Quest to Be Beaten By an Aging Hippie, and that is South Carolina.

I know South Carolina all too well. I used to live across the border in North Carolina, after all, and even before that, I had the experience of the full spectrum of the representative South Carolinian in my professional life in the personages of a pair of transplanted colleagues: one the rustic, African-American farm boy, the other the drunken, genteel descendant of the Old Plantation Patrician Class, the first obsessed with barnyard sexual escapades, and the other with prostitutes.

I shit you not.

The farmboy would often wax poetic during the long hours of the Night Shift, offering cherished memories of carefully-selected watermelons left to warm in the sun to be channeled out later for ease of congress, the chickens to be besmirched by Man, the beloved prize sow, and the mule trained to back into one's erection as one sat upon a fence post.

The inebriated scion of Old Dixie tossing around hooker metaphors with reckless abandon, with such classics as "that girl was as nervous as a whore in church" or "I'm so sick right now I ain't got the strength to pull a greasy string from a whore's ass". There wasn't a pearl of (questionable) homespun wisdom to pass the man's lips that didn't involve at least one reference to a guttersnipe.

Living in Charlotte, it was not uncommon for the nightly newscast to begin with a story about "a South Carolina Man" arrested for molesting his livestock or dogs.

Because North Carolinians need someone to laugh at and look down on, too, you know.

But, I digress...

South Carolina, we're told, is "important" because for all the pious streetwalkers and nubile bovine and equines, it is chock full of religious tomfoolery of a dozen stripes, all culminating with the pilgrimage to Bob Jones University or the act of homage to Franklin Graham which is basically an operation in kissing the rings and feet of the Southern Popes.

If you can't win over the hung-over clod who spends his Sundays jockeying for position in the pews (so as to be seen to be virtuous, of course) and then goes home to drink more beer while watching automobiles make left turns for seven hours in anticipation of a fiery wreck, alternating with thoughts that his own daughters' got a nice ass or that his Rottweiler is looking particularly sexy today, well then God, himself, is against you.

And then the REAL voting takes place on Super Tuesday. By which time the three other other contests and repeated media navel gazing has labelled many a good candidate as unworthy, and the process has winnowed them out....by design.

This needs to change. How about we let some other states vote first and see if it works out differently?

If you protest, I want you to think about this: imagine how 2008 and 2012 might have turned out if Rudy Giuliani or Newt Gingrich had survived the process to take on Obama instead of John McDouchebag and Mitt the Zit?

3. We Can No Longer Wait for the Old Guard To Die:

Much like the left with it's anchors of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Maxine Waters, Diane Feinstein, Alcee Hastings, Steny Hoyer, Joe Biden and others (all septuagenarians or octogenarians), the right has it's own collection of ancient relics like Mitch McConnell, Pat Roberts, Jim Inhofe, Richard Shelby, and Chuck Grassley.

Of the ten oldest members of the House of Representatives and Senate -- five D's and 5 R's -- the average age is roughly 86 years. This means these people are old enough to remember WORLD WAR TWO, with the average birth year having been 1935 -- in the midst of the Great Depression. Their worldview (assuming they remember to have one) is firmly one of The Past.

The "youngins" in Congress are all veterans of Woodstock, the Haight-Ashbury, Vietnam, and the reckless fucktardity of the 60's and 70's.

So that, on the one hand, we have a bunch of people who don't know where or when they are because of dementia, and on the other, don't know where or when they are because they dropped acid and turned their brains into potato salad.

Of the remainder, the "kids" in Congress are a motley collection of dumbfounded, fake, smugly-ignorant rabble rousers (on the left) and photogenic ideological parrots on the right, and the worst of all is the asshole who believes he or she is entitled to office because they "wore the uniform", and therefore, cannot be questioned or assailed.

(We just got rid of one these insufferable little shits here on Staten Island, Max Rose, who got a Purple Heart merely for getting blown up in his Hummer in a war we've clearly lost, who believes his Silver Star and stint as Nancy Pelosi's attack poodle makes him the prime candidate for Mayor of Sodom-on-the-Hudson. To be fair, Dan Crensahw gives me douchechills, sporting his eyepatch like that Basil guy in the old Brenda Starr comics, who also hasn't done a fucking thing except sell books...a clear sign he's running for President one day).

The skeletons need to be buried, and this new generation of would-be Kennedys and Castros --let's start with AOC --  needs to be put in their place, for they have a quality the Old Timers lack: they understand the pernicious influence -- and uses of -- the Internet to carelessly fling propaganda left-right-and-center, and this makes them dangerous for they are clearly more eager to muscle their way to the trough than their already-sated elderly competition is to keep their place.

We can no longer afford the Old Geezer who still sees the world through the lenses of the Cold War and the Ed Sullivan Show, and we certainly cannot afford the Whippersnappers possessed of awesome media skillz but no fucking brains.

4. We Need A New Message and A New Focus:

Because the old one -- The Other Guy Sucks Harder -- no longer resonates nor suffices. The warnings about the barbarians are no longer effective because the barbarians broke through the gates. While the Old Guys were arguing about guns and where to put a Nativity Scene, whining about the Ten Commandments and clutching at their pearls about Gay Marriage, they managed to lose all the battles and apparently haven't noticed.

The typical response of republicans in this regard (for there have been times when they noticed their defeats) is to simply, and suddenly, jump on board with whatever the Left was demanding TEN YEARS AGO. The most-recent examples of this phenomenon were "a kinder, gentler nation", "No Child Left Behind" and "Compassionate Conservatism" which all had the usual leftist smell on them -- they were catchy slogans, denoting no real program, but evoking an emotional response that was assumed to be understood by the nose-picking Neanderthal in the street.

These were the American Right's versions of Glasnost and Perestroika...until the two-headed Diversity Monster of Obama bin Laden wrecked the joint between September of 2001 and January of 2017. One with airplanes and racial grievance and the other with hot air and even more racial grievance.

Funny how a Bible-thumper from Pennsylvania -- who killed no one -- was characterized as "a bitter clinger to religion and guns" and Middle Eastern terrorists weren't, right?

Even Trump's "Drain the Swamp" motif proved in the end to be beyond both his capacity and capability. The Swamp...literally...swamped...him.

Slogans are nice, but there needs to be a definitive plan of action. In fact, just plain action would be nice, for a change, instead of focus-grouped-check-every-box platitudes which are enacted half-heartedly or long after the horse has taken a dump, the turd sprouted a blossom, then fossilized, the horse running away to be hit by a semi-trailer to become glue and dog food, the turd disintegrating, while the barn door -- which was slammed shut so hard it fell off it's hinges -- eventually was reclaimed by nature and the edifice it served dug up by an archeologist several centuries later.

Try this: honesty.

Here's what we're up against -- huge debt, fascism, censorship, a splintered polity. The Constitution has been shredded in the name of an "equity" which is proving to be very unequal, indeed. Our public discourse is dominated by Big Tech, both as a method of communication and by its propensity to act as the World's Hall Monitor, a job no one asked them to do, and a self-inflicted responsibility it took upon itself because apparently writing "_______ is not responsible for content posted by users" in the TOS was somehow too difficult. The Administrative State is far too involved in the everyday minutiae of public life. Privacy no longer exists. Rights are routinely flouted and laws are selectively enforced, and written by non-elected people who simply expect them to be rubberstamped by whichever side they paid the most. The streets are full of rioting losers whose only purpose is to make civilized life impossible for anyone they don't like.

Trump whiffed on all of this, preferring instead to fight petty battles over personalities and insults, real or imagined...because guy from Queens.

He was two Middle Fingers to the Left's singular Middle Finger.

How'd that work out for us?

5. We need New Mouthpieces and Media Outlets:

The Right fails mainly because it's methods of communication are old fashioned and aimed at an older generation. About the only effective right-wing media operation is Talk Radio, and mostly because it has a captive audience and tells it what they want to hear during the morning and evening commute. It has no means of reaching the odd ear, eyeball or mind the rest of the day and it is happy not to.

We live in a world of instant communication. In part, this is why the left is more-successful in the communications battle because it has grasped this fact, and it has natural allies in television, the internet, and Hollywood who understand the importance of The Narrative, The Visual, The Symbolic, and the Lie of Omission (or even outright censorship) and how the ability to make use of these on a moment's notice is the difference between the Lie turning on the afterburners and spreading halfway round the world in seconds and minutes, while Truth waits for the bus that is always late.

You would think that with all that Republican money floating around, someone would have used it to buy up media outlets and built alternatives to Twitter, Facebook and Google. Playing catch-up means Parler gets de-platformed, the New York Post has it's articles squelched, and 50 talking heads on ABCCBSNBCMSNBCCNN flash their bullshit to the world before FoxNews even decides which blond ditz gets to read it off the teleprompter.

And the Messengers leave much to be desired, too.

National Review is tired and boring. It is written by ideological frat boys. It has never recovered after losing or forcing out Florence King, Dinesh D'Souza and Mark Steyn, among others. Rich Lowry is to informed political discourse what Andrew Cuomo is to good nursing home management. Jonah Goldberg still writes good stuff (he at least makes cogent arguments and it can be awfully funny), but it is often tinged with the condescending snark applied to the Redneck which he used to apply to the Highbrow, at least to me. He's gotten preachy in his old age.

Ann Coulter's fifteen minutes should have expired a long time ago. the old "liberals are funny" shtick was once good, but once you've written 258 books on the subject, it's played out. The looks are fading, too. Ann used to be hot: now she looks like an ancient beach towel -- threadbare, faded, starting to fray at the edges.

Sean Hannity is simply the Energizer Bunny of partisanship. It used to be Alan Colmes who was the clueless ideologue who would defend puppy rape if a democrat did it, but without his former sidekick Sean seems to have picked up the fallen flag. Whatever he tells you today is often made inoperative the following week, and he just goes right on with it, as if nothing has happened. It doesn't help that the "new blood" at the top of the corporate coven decided to lean left in the effort to remain on the guest lists of all the tony cocktail parties.

Don't get me started on Mark Levin or Dan Bongino. One is akin to Baghdad Bob waving a copy of the Constitution like it was the Koran and the other an oilier version of Tony Robbins (Parler, before it was shut down was simply a conduit for the same old Conservative, Inc. bullshit -- little but links to Hannity, Coulter, et. al. because they needed yet one more outlet to sell coffee mugs and cheap ballpoint pens.

Of course, this is all my personal opinion -- your mileage may vary.

2 comments:

Ozborn said...

Interesting. One quibble - Pat Roberts is gone, replaced by Roger Marshall, who understood his constituents' will enough to vote against the electors even after the unplanned recess.

Matthew Noto said...

Thank you for the correction.

That should have been easy enough for me to verify before I wrote it.

I feel like Brian Stetzer, now.