Whiskey Fire

The House Is Divided; Can't Stand It

Lithwick is important on the Sessions nomination. He'll be confirmed, because the modern GOP is opposed to letting black people vote, and his whole job today was to not say that out loud, and the whole historical point of the Senate is to drape pomp over bigotry: he didn't say anything egregiously true, so yay a win for him and Bilbo's ghost, and God fuck us all. 

But then there's this:

Whitehouse suggested that lists were already circulating suggesting there might be purges or demotions of certain career appointees in the Justice Department. Whitehouse wondered whether Sessions would have a problem with career lawyers “with secular beliefs,” having in the past criticized department attorneys for being secular. Sessions replied that he has used that language about secular attorneys to differentiate between people who recognize objective “truth” and those who take positions “in which truth is not sufficiently respected.”

Whitehouse replied, with a leading, and perhaps slightly conclusory question: “And a secular person has just as good a claim to understanding the truth as a person who is religious, correct?” At which point Sessions responded, “Well, I’m not sure.” For a few seconds the Senate chamber seemed to go completely silent.

Fucked up, to be sure.

But good.

Let's call the question. Should these United States be a secular democracy, or... this disgusting Trumpenstein nightmare of rapacity, authoritarianism, lying, hypocrisy, nonsense, and graft, all apologized for if one is sufficiently "churched"? 

I keep trying to game out how the US survives as a nation adhering to even vague approximations of liberal democratic norms in, say, my children's lifetimes. Or else the next time I want coffee. Fucked if I can solve that pancake. 

Marinus van der Lubbe, You're on in Five

Among the most predictable events of the next two years is a terrorist, or "terrorist," attack on a Trump property somewhere in the world, perhaps even in America.

The intention behind this attack will be the destruction of American democracy.

It will probably work, too.

If I were evil, that's how I'd play it. 

 

 

Do the Collapse

Everything systemic and substantial and strong seems like it will last forever, until precisely the moment it all goes to shit. This is as true for ice sheets as it is for nation states.

So what would it take for the United States of America to fall apart, for the last trappings of democracy and civil society to shred and give way to anarchy or brute authoritarianism?

Probably not much, at this point.

I'm so old I remember 9/11. We as a nation did not react very well to that bad thing. We had the torture and the dumb wars and the overall lunacy.

In the immediate aftermath though I had a Dark Thought: suppose after the Towers fell and the Pentagon got hit, and etc., small groups of terrorists, you wouldn't need more than a score, did something incredibly easy -- legally bought some AR-15s or some similar shit, and then went around shooting up soft targets like shopping malls, synagogues, churches, main streets, regional airports, train stations, schools, you name it.

That sort of a tactic, I imagined, would have been devastating. The overreaction would have been fierce and overwhelming.

We would have fallen apart.

So surprise! In 2016, it turns out, you didn't need terrorism, you just needed the threat of a lady president for it to all go to shit.

Which is to say, a single act of terrorism on US soil under Trump, and that's all she wrote for the USA. We already don't have such pretty toys as majority rule or checks and balances. Are we as a nation mature enough to endure any external shocks?

Look at the person in the White House, at least part-time. Motherfucker thinks he won a reality show, his advisors are pig-ignorant fascists, there are no institutional checks on these maniacs, and the fucking W Bush administration looks like Weimar.

Oh, and also climate change.

There is no hope. None.

I want to say a little something that's long overdue/ The disrespect to women has got to be through

There are things that break your heart, things you don't see coming, and you can't even explain exactly why your gut got punched. This just makes me sad.

The latest visual manifestation of Trump's America comes from Adam Yauch Park, a playground named for the late Beastie Boy in the neighborhood he grew up in, Brooklyn Heights. On Friday afternoon a few photos surfaced on Twitter showing two swastikas painted on the children's playground equipment, along with the words: "Go Trump."

City Councilman Brad Lander tweeted a photo, adding, “Yet more hatred & anti-Semitism from Trump supporters." Lander says the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force and the Parks Department were on-site immediately, and the equipment will be repainted tonight.

We have reached out to the Beastie Boys and the Parks Department for further comment and will update if we hear back.

There have been a number of swastikas seen around the nation since Donald Trump was elected president, including at the New School earlier this week.

However this story plays out, it just brings home to me that America is sick, the bones of our nation are sick to the marrow.

There is a whole world of shit raining down, and I'll surely swing back soon to fury, but right now give me a day or so for grief.

 

 

It was a look/ That has driven me/ From the parade/ Left me alone/ Stinking and unafraid

Last night MollyI, who has been taking this shite harder than I have, because (1) she is a nicer person than I am, and (2) because she knows from being a highly competent woman getting shafted from jobs for which she is eminently qualified solely because of yahoo sexism, told me that she's worried about going down to DC for the Million Woman March. This is because that protest is scheduled for the day after the inauguration, and "the city will be full of Brownshirts."

She's not so much worried for herself.

Since we raised her right, my step-daughter of course wants to go. She's 26, wants to march with her gay homosexual partner, and is mouthy and feisty and pissed off. Then our daughter, who is 12, wants to go, because she is already mouthy and feisty and pissed off -- because she's in fucking middle school and already every girl her year knows not to put anything on the floor of her locker, because some snotty little boy will ass-grab. And that snotty little boy will get away with it. And Donald Fucking Trump is now president.

The boys want to go because even if they would sooner gargle hot lead than admit it, they love their mom and sisters dearly, and also it would be an Adventure, and also because they are shrewd enough to know they will get fed and might have a day off school.

But this is the rub:

MollyI is terrified because she might not be able to protect her kids, if we go.

This is not an unreasonable fear.

Trump rallies are indeed Brownshirty. It is known. Trumpite fanatics are rapacious and currently feel themselves uncorked. This is clear.

And you'd have to be even dumber than a Trumpite Facebook troll to think the police would keep you safe.

On the other hand, well, we went to the Iraq war protests; we knew those would not have any effect, but what was the alternative? Sometimes, as an American, your duty is to stand up and say "no." You can't just stay home. And as Americans, you can't just stay quiet because of the threat of physical intimidation. As soon as THAT happens, well, the trigger on the fascist gun has just been pulled, hasn't it? And if that happens, well, they're coming for you anyhow. 

So there's two sides.

Or not.

If we are in nation where one can very sincerely fear for the physical safety of their 12-year-old daughter as regards taking her along with you to a peaceful political event...

Why, we're fucked already!

Your Favorite Democracy Sucks

Well, fucknobble.

A lot of ink and other fluids have already been spilled over the reasons we now have to put up with this shite, but clearly it is mostly because I got busy with work and stopped updating. Whoopsie sorries all around.

I am not especially surprised at this outcome. Annoyed, sure. Aggrieved. Maybe a tad depressed! But not surprised. See, I've always firmly believed in American Exceptionalism, and here we have that particular concept pretty well frickin' crystallized. Other nations have been led by similar mean-spirited ignoramus angry sexist racist homophobic buffoons, but none of them so far have had the capacity to launch multiple nuclear missiles because someone called him a dickhead on Twitter. Yay us.

I could catalogue the other ways we're fucked, but you know these.

As to who on the Democratic side, or the Left, is to blame, I'm only going to say this once, and then we're going to just let it go.

It was your fault.

You fucker.

It was my fault.

Me fucker.

FUCK ME. This was our job, and whatever it is we tried to do, we fucked it up, even if most Americans broadly agree with us. This is not to say there weren't and aren't major structural obstacles. The Electoral College is a big one. Was this in YOUR top ten list for the last eight years? Wasn't on mine. Black voter suppression? I didn't do enough. The outrageous refusal to even consider a sitting president's Supreme Court nominee? I was kind of mum.

And when I say "we," and "me," I mean YOU TOO, fellow Online Left. And by that I mean my cohort, the community and ethos that was the nascent and then burgeoning and then strong Left Blogosphere during the last Idiot Interregnum. What the fuck happened to us?

Treat that as a Discussion Question for the comments: but here is a rule. The spirit of Whiskey Fire has always been "fuck you," but for this post, start with "fuck me."

If you call yourself a liberal, leftist, whatever -- start your comment with FUCK ME. Like I did, above. This is not about donning a goddamn hairshirt-- it's about what comes next. Feel free to give hell to someone else, but not until you've raised it on yourself.

If you are NOT a liberal, leftist, whatever, well, bite me. You idiots have just made the White House a dumpster; liars of Trump's caliber produce outcomes of Trump's caliber, namely, failure. The past is prelude, and Trump will leave behind a smoking crater and you'll be signing him checks you can't understand. So fuck off. But feel free to comment, who cares.

OK Then

Anthony Kennedy did OK today, but he's still a shithead, and it's galling that this pompous fucknose gets to tell the rest of the country what's what legally.

I trust this is not a controversial assessment.

Ceep Cool with Koolidge

Real Life has intervened for a while so I have not of late been monitoring weirdo sites like Townhall Dotcom. Most of it is boring; all of it is crazy. There is very little new under the nut, but I was charmed to discover this stray goofball champeening, of all fucking personages, Calvin Fucking Coolidge.

And, of course, also Dennis Prager. Because why not.

Anyhow this Townhall someone does offer a very pithy explanation of how True Conservatives, deep down, comprehend concepts like democracy:

The electorate may redefine and change moral and legal constraints but conservatism does not.

My socialist point exactly.

Andrew Cuomo: Let's Make New York More Like Wisconsin

The current big NY political news is of course to do with the Shelly Silver bust.

But fuck that noise.

This morning I was at a union meeting. Our NYSUT rep, who will be at the table for us this year, gave a bleak but accurate assessment of what all this Andrew Cuomo State of the State Speech bullshit actually means: paraphrasing, "he wants to end collective bargaining for public employees, like they did in Wisconsin and Michigan."

The NYSUT response is to the point.

Here is the biggest bit of bullshit in Cuomo's address:

We are going to continue the transformation of our system and reward performance by creating a teacher excellence fund. It is going to be the first statewide teacher performance bonus program that actually rewards performance for teachers and incentivizes teachers who perform well. Teachers who are rated highly effective on their evaluations, which is the highest statewide rank, would be eligible to receive $20,000 as a bonus, in performance pay, which is on average 27% of their salaries. You want teachers who can perform and do perform? Then incentivize performance with a performance bonus and pay them like the professionals they are.

(Apart from the lawsuit...)

On its face, this is incredibly offensive -- and bizarre.

Look.

The people who make the best teachers are quite obviously not the kind of people who are most powerfully motivated by a desire to make more money.

No good teacher tries to teach better specifically in order to earn a cash "bonus."

The very definition of a terrible teacher would be someone flogging kids to get better test scores in order to make more money.

It's really not that complicated.

 

Head Fliplines

OBAMA, KERRY RUIN PARIS FREE-SPEECH DEMO WITH INVASIVE SECURITY DEMANDS

 

(We live in a stupid country.)