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. 

Religious and polysyllabic justifications for treason

== He's at it again ==

The Worst Man in America - and among its most relentless traitors - is at it again, blaming the collapse of American conservatism on "vulgarians," rather than a 30 year campaign to hijack and lobotomize the entire movement -- financed by the very same oligarchs to whom George F. Will has given decades of devoted service. This gifted savanarola has concocted rationalizations for sapient Americans to remain loyal to a movement that long ago left them to become a cult, waging open warfare against every fact-using profession, starting with science, journalism, teaching, medicine -- but including now the entire civil service, law professionals, the FBI, the intelligence services and the United States Military Officer Corps... all of them dismissed as "deep state" conspirators against freedom.

Add them to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which barely survived an attempt on July 26 to slash its budget almost in half, abolishing the CBO's Budget Analysis Division,  in revenge for their effrontery -- actually crunching the numbers on GOP proposed legislation.

Throw in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the EPA, NOAA, The Centers for Disease Control and even the National Institutes on Health, on a growing alt-right Enemies List -- fated to join in extinction the long killed Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). All declared to be deep-state, partisan liars, because they dare - now and then - to let experts murmur "that's not really true" at fanatical-delusional manifestos of an American right that George F. Will helped to turn insane.

Oh but Mr. Will only points at the surface symptoms.
"Today, conservatism is soiled by scowling primitives whose irritable gestures lack mental ingredients. America needs a reminder of conservatism before vulgarians hijacked it, and a hint of how it became susceptible to hijacking."

A hint of how it became susceptible to hijacking? A hint, sir? I'll give you a "hint," you horrid little hypocrite, George F. Will!   You are the hijacker. The "vulgarians" are your creation. Monster.

Proto-feudalism fever tries periodically to destroy the American experiment. The common thread of his sickness... from 1778's southern tories to Calhoun in 1830, to Jeff Davis in 1861, to the Klan and robber barons, to the 1930s fascists, to today... is one thing. "Give power back to the feudal lords!" That's why they push the never-once-right-ever Laffer-incantations of Supply Side Voodoo which have had three effects, skyrocketing debt, slowed growth and vast enrichment of the aristocracy at our expense.

This round of the recurring cycle - this attempted oligarchic putsch - is a big 'un, guys. They are afroth and will destroy everything if we let them.

== Religious justifications for hate ==

Dominionists preach that those they define as non-Christian are "condemned," and that includes all but a few hundred thousand true-believers. These elect won't just get eternal bliss (while 99% of their neighbors and fellow citizens writhe in endless torment). The latest cult catechism is that in this world - soon - true believers will get everyone else’s stuff. Our homes and property, and cars and TVs and bank accounts. Yippee.

Let's be clear, since no one else seems willing to. Those who prefer the Book of Revelation - over the kind and generous actual words of Jesus - pray not only for their neighbors' damnation, but also for an end to all democracy, freedom, argument, ambition, science, independent human thought… and for an imminent end of the United States of America. 

Now read about the latest anti-Christ (literally) polemic from the mad right… that the poor deserve poverty, yes, including children. Dominionism is core to the GOP wing best represented by Vice President Mike Pence. That's one reason why -- please -- think twice before rushing to impeachment.

Fortunately we have allies. Such as those who can see the obvious... that the bearded, beaded, pacifist-socialist Nazarene would despise “camels” who are obsessed with taking other folks' stuff.  Camels who will never fit through a needle into heaven.

Another ally? Pope Francis, who is assertively taking a stand against Steve Bannon's ilk. This article signed by a Jesuit and a liberal Protestant together is in La Civiltà Cattolica - a very old Jesuit magazine - and it's obvious that the article expresses the views of the pope, criticizing the "Ecumenism of hate" -- the joining together fundamentalist evangelicals and integralist Catholics. There is a careful decryption of "Religion, political Manichaeism and a cult of the apocalypse", not to mention critique of the Dominionists' raving 'prosperity gospel.'

== Swerving to Healthcare and the "drained" swamp == 

From The Atlantic: "With Democrats accusing the administration of sabotaging the health law, two GOP committee chairmen urge the president to continue payments to insurers that could shore up the insurance market."  

Having failed to pass their own health care bills, despite having 7 years to prepare, now Trump and his allies are talking about "letting Obamacare explode." But with a problem that Obamacare is only exploding in red states.  It is only failing where the political caste has sabotaged it.

To be clear: (1) All Obamacare needs, in order to work fine, is an upping of the Individual Mandate penalty, encouraging young people to buy health insurance.  All of the insurance companies say that would work, almost overnight. It won't happen.

But the biggest hypocrisy is (2) the GOP won't admit that all major aspects of Obamacare were their OWN DAMN PLAN.  The GOP platform since 1995 and the model for Romneycare and Trump supported the heck out of it... till Dennis "friend to boys" Hastert made it Republican religion to never credit Obama or a democrat with anything, even making their own damn plan come true.

Want irony? All Trump has to do is swivel and declare victory! "We tricked the democrats into supporting our own plan!"  Then make it work and kill that as an issue for 2018. Judo.

For the record? Most dems never liked the ACA! A majority in the DP would prefer Canadian style health. The ACA was an attempt to lure the GOP into negotiating by giving them their own damn plan.  It didn't work. As soon as Obama touched it, their own damn plan suddenly had cooooooties.

== Miscellany ==

How the swamp is drained!  Attempting at first to keep it secret, theTrump White House granted more ethics waivers – letting lobbyists jump directly into regulating their own industries – than any three other administrations, combined.

When President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement, he acted in concert with 22 Republican senators, who collectively receive $10,694,284 in contributions from the coal and oil industries.  

== Historical Perspective ==

What Churchill and Orwell had in common: Churchill & Orwell were both savagely critical of the gloom-sayers of their own parties: right and left. "At a time not unlike today — when people were wondering whether democracy was sustainable, when a lot of people thought you needed authoritarian rule, either from the right or the left — Orwell and Churchill, from their very different perspectives, come together on a key point: We don't have to have authoritarian government."

This author shows how the conservative Churchill was deeply critical of oligarchy and the leftist Orwell despised communist fanaticism. Another key point, he says, is that they were "both willing to say, 'No, my side is wrong on this.' "

Both believed - along with Adam Smith and the American Founders and Lincoln and FDR and so on, that moderate, negotiated reform and steady progress could overcome the crises precipitated by insatiable fools at all extremes. And history shows they were right.

Hence the propaganda by  insatiable fools at all extremes, aimed at demolishing moderate, fact-using professions and mature argument. NPR Reporter Steven Inskeep stands up against this campaign, and the 200 year: "agreement that objective reality exists, that people of goodwill can perceive it, and that other people will change their views when presented with the facts of the matter."