Are right and left in agreement to demoralize us?

First a note for book lovers: Across all of January, the Uplift Storm Trilogy (Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore & Heaven's Reach) will be on e-book sale for $3.99. Alas apparently not on Kobo or Barnes & Noble. But a crazy good deal on Amazon. Do you want adventure? With some science and great alien races? I got em here for you! And... oh... what savings!

Now...

== A fanatical cult keeps growing ==

Christopher F. Rufo recently published "America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything," arguing that America has been quietly taken over by the ideological heirs of the 1960s radicals, "disguised in benign-sounding language like diversity, equity and inclusion"

There are so many refutations to this bald-faced blather, but the simplest start with:

Who has benefited? Until the first “Supply Side” bills under Reagan, the U.S. middle and working classes shared in every advance in the American economy. Ever since those successive Supply Side ‘reforms’ - first Reagan's and those of Bush and then Trump - working Americans have fallen ever-further behind the top 1%, but especially the aristocrats and inheritance brats of the top 0.01%.  Wealth disparities skyrocketed to French Revolution levels. That is, until 2021 – when the Biden+Pelosi bills reversed those trends ... a little.

So who ‘took over’ America, judging by those who benefited? Casino mafiosi, hedge lords, carbon princes, murder sheiks, “ex” commissars in the Kremlin and members of an incestuously parasitical CEO caste. 

The 'left’? Puh-lease. Oh, sure, there does exist a far-left wing of ditzy, sanctimony-junky yammerers, bent on trashing their own side's credibility, delighting Foxites who nightly point and cry: "See? ALL liberals are like THAT!!"  A lie, but effective...

...at distracting from the disproportionate outcomes of each side. Like the nearly universal rule that the US economy does better during Democratic administrations.

So let me reiterate that not one positive outcome prediction ever made by Supply Side promoters - re deficits or industrial investment or economic growth - ever came true. Not… one… ever. And I have had standing wager offers on the table for a decade.

If any of the followers of Milton Friedman and that ilk had a sliver of dignity (or manhood) or fealty to scientific method, they would eagerly accept my offer of wagers over that devastating assertion.  They would try to prove me wrong.

But a cult is a cult! “Trump advisers plot aggressive new tax cuts for second White House term.” 

Six thousand years of rule by inheritance brats and high level cheaters never accomplished (combined!) 1% as much as the FDR generation did, by raising up the working class into a prosperous middle class... plus using anti-trust etc to spur fair competition. Adam Smith - who denounced aristocratic cheaters as the main enemies of fair competition - would today be a flaming Democrat.  

Mr. Rufo’s entire movement has been taken over and suborned by those casino mafiosi, hedge lords, carbon princes, murder sheiks and “ex” commissars who own the GOP. And who subsidize his yammers.

== How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement ==

A somewhat less-wrong rightist screed is Fredrik deBoer’s book, “How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement.” The assertion - in this case somewhat defensible - is that liberal movements seem to be driven nowadays more by sanctimony than by achieving actual, pragmatic outcomes for the poor, or oppressed, or for the Earth. Or for posterity.

“Today,” deBoer writes, “left-activist spaces are dominated by the college-educated, many of whom grew up in affluence and have never worked a day at a physically or emotionally demanding job.... For that reason, these spaces prioritize “the immaterial and symbolic” over “the material and the concrete.” 

Above all: sanctimony-driven activism extolls purity of dogma and proper incantations over incremental progress. (Hence ignoring the incredible accomplishments of the Pelosi 2021-2 Congress.) It encourages disdain for the legitimacy of allies who might not adopt – or agree with – every polemical litmus test. And the electoral results are devastating, as attacks on allies weaken the very coalitions that must be broad enough to achieve working power.

Dig it folks. As much as it hurts - the guy is generally correct. Liberalism is bleeding away Hispanics and Blacks and many others who are sick of being told what to believe, by smug patrons who should instead be listening.  

Indeed, you start to see why the Mad/Treasonous right has survived and even flourished, despite their utterly disproved policies and long-expected demographic collapse. 

It also fits and explains the most bizarre-ingrate rightwing trend I have ever seen, a full-court press campaign to discredit the universities that were the topmost investment of the GI Bill generation. The very institutions that actually Made America Great.

Oh, the Confederate madness WILL pass away into discredited insipidity, the way it did in most earlier phases of America’s 250 year ongoing Civil War. 

But it would have happened long ago, except for the sanctimony fetishism of our own mad wing.

== Will this too pass? ==

Some things just explain themselves.

Much has been said about the role of fear in propelling our social and political problems. It was much discussed in The Postman, where I projected fear as the last straw that triggered violence and the Great Collapse. Still, hardly anyone – even anthropologists – offer deep perspective on the big tradeoff underlying it all. Closest was Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which I cite here, in Altruistic Horizons: Our tribal natures, the ‘fear effect’ vs. inclusion… and the end of ideologies.”

“Private jets cause 14 times more pollution than commercial flights. But now momentum is building around the world to rein in billionaires and make them pay for the destruction they're causing. Add your name to demand taxing private jets, and share this widely!”  

I would in fact go much farther! There should be a target date for a worldwide convergence to demonstrate at every private jet terminal, with placards shouting Get Back Into First Class! Let’s see them denounce that as ‘commie!’

Of course this is also a result of the apparent determination, by a microencephalic, flattery-lobotomized aristocratic caste, to revive the concept of Class War, that had been thrown in the dustbin by the New Deal reforms. (Engendering a calm and spectacularly productive middle.)   

In their drive (though they seem too dumb to realize it) to resurrect Karl Marx, today’s moronic oligarchs actually seem to believe their best path to restoring feudalism will be to wage all-out war against … nerds! Yes, those geeks who know stuff. Those who daily craft miracles and advances that stand a real chance of saving the world.

Alas, the spoiled, prepper-lord oligarchs have an unexpected ally -- Hollywood -  whose relentless series of downer stories do not have the salutary effects that I described in Vivid Tomorrows: Science Fiction and Hollywood - warnings that can be acted upon and save us all, as 'self-preventing prophecies.  

No, So many of today's movies are despair cult stuff. Take so many recent flicks, like Leave the World Behind, which is all about demolishing all hope or confidence. Attacking even any remaining scintilla of a notion that millions of skilled people might cooperate to save something worth preserving...

...like a civilization that - for all of its flaws - has been very good to us.

The FACT Act and other proposals for the Union side (the D-Party) in this Culture War

Yesterday I gave a talk for the Tech and Internet Caucus of the California Democratic Party.  I've done it before. A few years ago I was asked - as a futurist - to present some 'futuristic legislation.' 

A result was the Fact Act... a proposed bill that'd promote ways - mostly competitive - to restore the status of verifiable facts in American civil and political discourse.  Let there be no doubt. That is the core essence of today's Culture War. (I deem it to be phase 8 of the 250 year American Civil War.) Priority #1 of today's feudalist oligarchy is to discredit every fact-using profession...

...from science, medicine, law, journalism, teaching, civil service all the way to the intel/FBI/military officer corps, a quarter million dedicated women and men who won the Cold War and the War on Terror. Indeed, Foxites push hatred of the very notion that there are things called Facts.  

Creating the Fact Act helped spur me - early in 2020 - to rush out a book filled with agile tactics that might help our paladins in this struggle for America and the Enlightenment Experiment. Polemical Judo offered (still offers) many methods and/or persuasions that could help win hearts and minds and elections!  Alas, not one of those techniques has been tried by any Democratic pol or pundit. 

Except maybe Hakeem Jeffries. I have some hopes for him.

               == On this occasion the topic was... ==

Artificial Intelligence, of course.

Oh, during my time with the CADEM Tech Caucus we touched upon the Climate Crisis, including how my colleague and pal Kim Stanley Robinson has achieved what I failed to do, in Earth - using science fiction to help awaken citizens and civilization to the need for crucial action. In fact, I hear the United Nations is considering establishing an agency to be named after the title of KSR's epic novel The Ministry for the Future!

But yeah. The whole AI thing took up most of our time.

There was some reference to my earlier book about freedom and privacy The Transparent Society... and especially the chapter predicting (in 1997) today's tsunami of faked images and videos. "The End of Photography as Proof of anything at all."

I explained that none of the genius-level folks in this field, most of whom are wringing their hands over 'generative large language models' - or golems - seem ever to refer to human history, the long span of four to six thousand years when our ancestors faced crises with remarkable similarities! Indeed, just consider the three most-widely offered 'formats' that almost all those bright folks assume artificial intelligences will take.

1. That they will be wholly owned and controlled by a few giga institutions: e.g. Google, Microsoft, Beijing, Goldman-Sachs, empowering and exacerbating disparities of power in favor of a few... or...

2. That AI will be amorphous blobs that spread everywhere, copying themselves diversely, ad infinitum... or...

3. That cyber entities will coalesce into a single monolithic, unitary titan, like Colossus or Skynet.

Have you noticed these are almost always the expectations assumed by commentators on AI, whether optimists or pessimists? Hardly anyone points out that these three formats - while seeming contradictory - could happen in parallel!

Moreover, each one represents a mode of mal-governance that was already seen across that long dark litany of horrors called 'history.' 

- Number one is a lot like feudalism, with heavily armed castle lords battling each other for advantage, while crushing the peasants.

- Number two is chaos. Much like when our unprotected peasant ancestors were prey to every kind of predator. 

- And number three? That's despotic rule in a sharp pyramid of power. Absolute monarchy. Tyranny. Nineteen Eighty-Four.

No wonder we're terrified. In our hearts and subconsciouses, we've seen it all before.

Fortunately, those three are not the only possible formats for synthetic beings! There are at least four more... 

...one of which actually offers a way toward a possible 'soft landing' for us old organic types. Though for lack of time, I could only briefly allude to it in my talk to the California Democratic Party.  

But I'll be back here with it. And frequent readers of Contrary Brin - or anything else I have written - will not (I promise) be at all surprised.

 == Other pertinences ==

I also referred to a complaint of mine going back decades, a flaw that hurts our creativity and productivity and the potential of hundreds of thousands of kids(!) A flaw that would be so easy to solve! In fact it could take one meeting of a few folks from Google, Microsoft, Apple and a few others to fix it, almost overnight. What flaw?

It is the shameful lack of something that was widespread and easily available in the 1980s... a set of easy-entry programming languages, cross-available on ANY device, allowing teachers to do something they have not been able to do, for decades. Assign programming as homework. 

See the original complaint and possible solution, here. Why Johnny Can’t Code... and its followup. 

Did any other tech related political matters come up, at CA-DEM?

What about the current 'debt limit crisis'?  

We should be wary of the 'deal' that appears to be taking shape. One sop being thrown to McCarthy appears to be a cut in the budget of the Internal Revenue Service. 

How I object! After infrastructure and climate and reviving US manufacturing and helping poor kids, a top accomplishment of the Pelosi Congress was revitalizing the IRS, so it could modernize, provide better service and go after rich tax cheats. Oligarchs - furious they might be traced to their Cayman cheat holes - ordered the GOP to make slashing the IRS its top priority. So JoBee had better not have let them do more than a symbolic slash.

How much better it would be to take this directly to those voters who actually care about deficits and debt! And show them the plain fact that Democratic Administrations are always more fiscally prudent than Republican ones!  

That's always, always and always! (Step up with wager stakes?) As usual, deficits as a fraction of GDP skyrocketed under Trump... and started plummeting under Biden - as happened under Clinton and Obama. See the figures!

And see the more recent effects on the Federal Deficit by president: 

How can our politicians be so incompetent as to not use something so blatant to eviscerate liars?

         ==Yeah, that's a lot ==

Okay that's most of what we talked about. Is that enough? Plenty?

Anyway I promised links to the assembled activists and here the promise is kept.

Next week I'll get back to more carefully curated postings. Meanwhile... persevere!

The "culture war" underlying civil war

== A Growing Gap ==

The gap between the richest and the poorest U.S. households is now the largest it's been in the past 50 years.  The income gap grew wider in nine states: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Kansas, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Texas and Virginia. “When asked why the rising economic tide has raised some boats more than others, Rodgers lists several factors, including the decline of organized labor and competition for jobs from abroad. He also cites tax policies that favor businesses and higher-income families.” But there are types of inequality. The middle class in California is not in the same collapse seen in many other states. Rather, the disparity rises there because poor folks come to California, and at the other end many people get rich developing actual goods and services that raise up ‘boats.” I wish these statistics parsed out that kind of wealth disparity (which also needs solving!) vs. the gap between parasite professions, inherited wealth, organized crime and cheaters on the one hand and working class folks. That is the much worse disparity that matters and will lead to revolution.

Why do evangelicals support Trump, a man who has bragged about sexual assault, lies perpetually and once admitted he never asks God for forgiveness? Recall the scene where Clintons and Obamas and Bidens and Sunday School teachers Jimmy & Rosalyn Carter all recite the Apostles' Creed largely by memory while the Trumps stand, bored and silent, then leave early. While rich televangelists preach a prosperity/Dominionist gospel that's opposite to Jesus's teachings, they blasphemously extol as "God's Chosen One" a tool of communist and salafist dictators who is the most opposite-to-Jesus human you can find.

“Trump's lack of knowledge of the Bible is also well-known. Nevertheless, many evangelical Christians believe that Trump was chosen by God to usher in a new era, a part of history called the "end times." Read this, if you don’t already know about this monstrously hypocritical and viciously hate-drenched cult, which eagerly supports Israel so that a final war can then ensue in which most Jews will suffer horrible death and eternal damnation… fanatics who pray daily for an end to all democracy, all science, curiosity, human ambition and accomplishment, praying also for events that would end the United States of America. Plus an end to the birth or joy of any new human children. Yes, all of that, explicitly… and Mike Pence avows openly to praying for all of that, daily.  

But back to the question: ‘Why do evangelicals support Trump?” Most fundamentally, it is because he enrages the people they hate most — smartypants, university modernist fact-people plus atheist/agnostics… but  above all those sincere religious folks and Christians who believe in a loving God who is not a viciously sadistic lunatic.

Now let me demur a bit. “Evangelical” is too broad a term and it lumps sincere “red Letter Christians” — those who like Jimmy Carter emphasize  the words of Jesus as printed in red, in many New Testaments, conflating them with the dominionist horrors who emphasize the brutally sadistic Book of Revelation, which is opposite to Jesus’s teachings in every conceivable way. “Fundamentalist works. But the dominionists who want our “stuff” are the true loonies.

== Will resistance turn into rebellion? ==

The 'Reasonable Rebels" by Eve Fairbanks, in The Washington Post, asserts that all of those who claim there is a moderate reasonable right are cloning, almost verbatim, the vernacular of Southern antebellum intellectuals, those proslavery rhetoricians “who talked little of slavery itself. Instead, they anointed themselves the defenders of “reason,” free speech and “civility.” The prevalent line of argument in the antebellum South rested on the supposition that Southerners were simultaneously the keepers of an ancient faith and renegades — made martyrs by their dedication to facts, reason and civil discourse.

“Josiah Nott, a surgeon who laid out the purported science behind black inferiority, held that questions like slavery “should be left open to fair and honest investigation, and made to stand or fall according to the facts.” They claimed that they were the ones who truly had black people’s best interests at heart, thanks to their more realistic understanding of human biology. “No one would be willing to do more for the Negro race than I,” John Wilkes Booth wrote shortly before he assassinated Lincoln.”

“The most important thing to know about them, they held, was that they were not the oppressors. They were the oppressed. They were driven to feelings of isolation and shame purely on the basis of freely held ideas, the right of every thinking man. Rep. Alexander Sims (D-S.C.) claimed that America’s real problem was the way Southerners were made to suffer under “the sneers and fanatic ebullitions of ignorant and wicked pretenders to philanthropy.””  Fairbanks captures the whining tone of persecution that pervaded nearly all Southern writings of the time… and meanwhile she commits a dishonesty of her own, by spreading the tar of that hypocrisy over to sentiments she dislikes, in the modern discourse.

Her parallels with the “reasonable right,” raise interesting questions and I have no problem with poking away at those folks who — nowadays — claim liberals are persecuting them. The problem is that we cannot afford to drive away potential allies in the current fight, even those who have been slow and tepid and unhelpful, till now.

I agree with her far more than I disagree! “One reason slavery was not abolished in America through the political process, as it was in Britain, is that abolitionists were rhetorically straitjacketed by the proposition that they were the hard-liners who sought to curtail freedom. When the Charleston Mercury wrote that it was the “duty” of Northerners to “prove” that they were willing to defend Southerners against “fanatics,” Northern newspapers reprinted the editorial. Northerners, not Southerners, had to watch what they said and strain to compromise so they didn’t confirm the dictatorial notion Southern rhetoricians had implanted in the public mind.”

But today I see what Lincoln feared. Nearly daily, I read some new figure appealing to antebellum reasoning. Joining the 'reasonable right' seems to render these figures desirable contributors to center-left media outlets. That’s because, psychologically, the claim to victimhood can function as a veiled threat. It tricks the listener into entering a world where the speaker is the needy one, fragile, requiring the listener to constantly adjust his behavior to cater to the imperiled person.

== Justifications for repressing us “mud-sill” members of the mob ==

Interesting recent research shed light on both ubiquitous surveillance and some mythologies about basic human behavior, like the “bystander effect,” the notion that neighbors or strangers won’t help, during situations of danger or conflict. A 2019 study in Holland showed that bystanders by and large do step in or engage, in order to resolve problems erupting nearby. at a more heroic level,  Rebecca Solnit, in A Paradise Built in Hell, shows that time and again our fellow citizens show pluck and guts in any crisis, as happened on 9/11, when 80 average folks rose up against hijackers aboard flight UA93. 

  

I tried to apply this notion of active citizenship in my novel The Postman, a theme that Kevin Costner successfully conveyed in his film adaptation. For all its many faults, Costner’s film kept true to my core message: that civilization’s miracle will never be preserved – or restored after any breakdown – by some lone hero. Its only chance will be a collective and widespread revival of faith in ourselves.

All of this runs counter to the dangerously toxic mythology spread among the dumber members of today’s elite aristocracies, who are encouraged by sycophants to view themselves as inherently superior to the mob of mere citizens out here, a rationalization for cheating power grabs that boringly goes back thousands of years of failed feudalism.

For years, I’ve described how our ‘culture war’ is not about “left-right’ or religion or any other surface issue. Racism is a major part, plus very different attitudes toward symbolism and feudalism. But the real struggle goes back to 1778 and we are in Phase Eight. I’ve also touted novels that starkly depict our current “civil war” going hot. First Sean Smith’s novel, Tears of Abraham and more recently Craig DiLouie’s Our War. Since the latter novel came out, an impeachment inquiry was launched, and right-wing media and militias have labeled it a soft coup by the Deep State, threatening civil war, while even the president himself indirectly threatened he’d refuse to recognize the results if removed from office. This all mirrors the setup of Di Louie’s novel. Beyond that prescience, Our War  portrays a tragic added factor, use by both sides of child soldiers.

And yes, those chapters on Civil War are in POLEMICAL JUDO. Order now.

== And finally ==

As talk spreads of a new American Civil War, you should compare these modern justification to the “mudsill theory” spread by pre-confederate slave holders.  That there must be, and always has been, a lower class for the upper classes to rest upon. 

The term derives from a mudsill, the lowest threshold that supports the foundation for a building. The theory was first used by South Carolina Senator/Governor James Henry Hammond, a wealthy southern plantation owner, in a Senate speech on March 4, 1858, to justify what he saw as the willingness of the lower classes and the duty of non-whites to perform menial work which enabled the higher classes to move civilization forward. "In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. ... It constitutes the very mudsill of society." Efforts to reduce class or racial inequality, under this theory, inevitably run counter to civilization itself. Northern soldiers fighting in the Western Theater of the Civil War turned this derogatory term into one of self pride, as in "Western Mudsill".

Of course very few of the tech billionaires ascribe to this idiocy. As beneficiaries of Enlightenment Civilization, many of them are too busy, working side by side with middle class engineers, to listen to drivel from flatterers. So it's important that we make a distinction between those who got rich helping creators to deliver goods and services and those who are various forms of parasite, from gambling moguls and mafiosi to petro princes and oil-boyars to Wall Street lampreys and inheritance brats and KGB shills. I'll give this to that Steyer guy. An egomaniac? Maybe. But he is fervent on our side.

Political scandals and more

So, the U.S. midterms proved that the republic isn't dead yet, and has some gumption still. The most important elections many have been at the state level, where voters may have seized  back enough power to end many electoral cheats, like gerrymandering. Not in deep red states, of course, where citizens are fine with every kind of cheating. But democrats are realizing what Obama has preached -- that it's best to reform where possible, then let it dawn on every sane, reasonable and patriotic American that these are all Republican crimes.

It mustn't stop there. Over a few weeks, I’ll be offering my own proposals for how the transformed U.S. House of Representatives might act in important and effective ways, even without bills passing in the Senate or surviving presidential vetoes. 

One such endeavor – holding investigative hearings – is the talk of the nation. The prospect apparently has Donald Trump so depressed that he may go back to his one, reliable drug high, sanctimony rallies! (Why wouldn’t he? The taxpayer carries much of the expense.)


== Do this one the instant you are all sworn in ==

What is the number one priority I urge upon the new House of Representatives? 

Repeal the 2001 War Powers Resolution.

Passed in the panicky aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, separate resolutions in the House and Senate effectively abrogated the Congressional power over declaring war, giving the presidency carte blanche -- without even a time limit -- to order troops and attacks anywhere he chooses. 

By a simple majority in the House alone, that blank check can be canceled, with a coda stating clearly that Congress retains its Constitutional authority over declared and undeclared war. 

Moreover, given current circumstances in a dizzy-unstable White House, it would be irresponsible not to do this the very first day the new Congress opens session.


== States rights means letting some of them act sane ==

There are a number of hot-button topics on which states and the federal government don’t see eye to eye. Immigration, climate change, marijuana legalization, and health insurance are just a few. It’s no wonder that a July 2018 Gallup poll found that a record-high 77% of Americans believe the nation is divided. Even more shocking… a June 2018 Rasmussen poll showed 31% of Americans think a civil war will break out in the United States within the next five years.  

Given that Washington has been taken by dark forces, many states want more autonomy from the federal government. 

Now still just at the rumor stage, but: “Behind the scenes, 13 states are pushing through laws designed to undermine the federal government’s monopoly on issuing money…  Before President Lincoln banned the practice in 1863, states had issued more than 8,000 different types of money.  "The new currency would be digital, blockchain-based and grounded upon municipal bonds that offer real collateral. In other words, more secure than federal greenbacks."

== Killing one more advantage of the West ==

Elsewhere I pointed at one thing that helped the west to win the Cold War. Our adversaries had the advantages of a closed society, hampering information-gathering by our operatives, while theirs could roam the West openly. KGB spycraft was (and remains) often better than ours; we’ve learned the hard way how skilled they are. 

(I believe blackmail is the top method currently being used to suborn many of our leaders. There are dozens of reasons.)

One thing equalized intelligence gathering across the Cold War. Defectors. Frequently, we’d get spontaneous offers from highly placed adversary factotums, who supplied sudden waves of revelation, helping us survive. 

In return all we had to do was provide three things 
(1) safety, 
(2) decent prospects, and 
(3) the moral high ground.

Look at that list and see how all three have been targeted by Vladimir Putin’s New KGB, now in service not to an idealistic-if-mad socialism, but to a mafia oligarchy coated with a veneer of rabid-nationalism. 

Above all, VP wants it known that defectors to the west will be hunted down. The thuggish “we don’t care if you know we're doing it” blatancy of recent assassinations has been deliberate. 

“We will find you!” is the message.  

As for the moral high ground?  Well, Putin has one well-placed agent who is demolishing U.S. stature, almost single handed.

== Political scandals and more ==

Crum, has anyone tabulated sex scandals of politicians by political party? 

Start with divorce rates, that should be easy to do just from Wikipedia entries. Divorce used to be anathema among conservatives. Now, my back-of-the-envelope tracking suggests the rate is at least double among GOP politicians than Democratic ones. And an infinitely larger (literally) ratio between GOP vs DP presidents or presidential nominees. If this can be shown, it might sway some (alas, not most) “values voters.”

(Ah, irony. The party that once thought gambling to be immoral now is owned by casino moguls, and shrugs off signs of gambling addiction in its supreme court nominee. And there are many other reversals.)

Okay, to be fair let's now throw in regular, adult-consensual infidelity and things briefly seem a bit more even… certainly Bill Clinton was no role model, nor was Eliot Spitzer, or Mark Sanford, Gary Hart etc… though I’ll still bet on a GOP edge, since that much-higher divorce rate probably had cause. 

Indeed, a modifying factor ought to be whether the wife stays with him for a decade or more afterwards – isn’t she the best judge of redemption, after all? 

Further along the scale is kinky weirdostuff like Anthony Weiner -- obviously kinda sick  -- but that arguably didn’t damage anyone. Dems are probably competitive there! But hey, which party gets rid of its non-harmful weirdos?  Maybe too eagerly and stupidly, as in the case of Al Franken.

But where thing gets overwhelming is at the far end of the spectrum – the noxious, horrible pervert-predator end. There, the Grand Old Party appears to have a near monopoly, from Dennis Friend-to-Boys Hastert, a boy-buggerer who they made top Republican and Speaker of the House, whose “Hastert Rule” deliberately destroyed negotiation as an American political process, to Roy Moore and – well, you all know recent examples.

Only now –the very same day‼ -- there’s this fine fellow…  

… and this one. Yipe! I’ve never seen anything like it. (To be clear, this one is not about sexual deviancy, that we know of. But… criminy. I mean click on this political ad!) Where is Ronan Farrow when we need him? He could get an assistant to tabulate this in a day and a half.

== Beware of the worst clichés ==

Check out Peter Singer’s upcoming book  LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media -- how social media has changed politics and war.

From Evonomics, another proved case where oligarchic assertions are diametrically opposite to true: “They Go Together: Freedom, Prosperity, and Big Government.” 

Demonstrablly and absolutely provably. Countries with larger government sectors tend to have more personal freedom. 

Yes, it is a religious principle among our rightist and libertarian friends that “government” civil servants are the proper and only target for their Suspicion of Authority reflexes. But in fact, Adam Smith – who is studied and admired more at the liberal Evonomics site than anywhere else – recommended civil servants and regulatory laws to even the playing field that was always – always – spoiled in the past by feudal lords and other cheating oligarchs.  It is no accident that the Greatest Generation of Americans set up many regs and services… and as a direct result, flat-fair-open entrepreneurial capitalism became more healthy than at any time in the history of our species.

== Finally, be wary of "splitters and our own loonies ==

You think the Putin-Fox-mafia war against the Western Enlightenment only aims to rile up the anti-fact mad-right? Intel-analyses show that at least 20% of Moscow originating troll incitements are aimed at sparking dogmatic rage on the left, and that is sure to rise now. 

A good share of the "splitter" memes surging across the web, pouring hate at "DLC sellouts" and "Republican-lite Clinton-moderates" is coming from Kremlin basements. THINK before you give in to these sanctimony highs. Are we the pragmatic, fact-loving reformers? Or what?

The aim of all this is to get us to repeat the mistakes of 93-94 and 2009-2010, when two years of frenzied concentration on healthcare led to 14 years and then 8 years in the wilderness, helpless to do anything about the mad-treasonous GOP's central agenda: cheating. The only way they could hold onto power. 

Think. What are the "moderates" asking for? For example, in Nancy Pelosi's top priority bill, HR1? To ignore health care and immigration reform and all that? Or simply to stop the cheating, first! The voter-suppression, the gerrymandering and dirty tricks and secret PAC money and incredible open war against every fact profession. If we get rid of those, won't it be easier for you to then move on to your other priorities? Seriously!

Which makes sense? Use our current big coalition to fight the Kremlin-Fox war against fact and reason from destroying U.S. democracy? Or immediately split the coalition, drive millions back into the GOP and repeat the utter failures of 1993-4 and 2009-10? Kremlin trolls want that! Again, at least 20% of the unattributed memes that you see, demanding leftist purity, come right out of a Moscow basement.

Look, I want many of the things you want! I want expanded Medicare moving toward single payer! I want DACA kids fully and swiftly citizened. I want consumer protections etc. But reform comes first! Because if we end the cheating the mad-right will collapse. End the gerrymandering and secret-money PACs and take measures to restore American respect for the fact-professions and actual facts! If we deliver that, then you will get many of the things you want via a forgotten thing called "politics."

Don’t let yourself be bullied by such loons. Adult calm and willingness to negotiate only exists in one party, now. Don’t let it be wrecked here, too. Which leads us to: The Perfect Rant about PC.