The alternative to Trump is scarier! The "Cyrus Effect." And what you can do.

Obsessed with the midterms? Planning to help register folks and then join a Get Out The Vote effort, on election day? Maybe volunteer for a local candidate? Good for you. Then you aren’t an all-talk-no-action lazy bones. What Tom Paine called a “summer soldier.” 

Only dig it, Congress is not the most important show. Your excuse: “how will anything I do matter?” might apply at that level. But the real action is in statehouses, where corrupt GOP secretaries of state deliver the goods with cheat after cheat, while Republican-controlled legislatures gerrymander and close DMV offices, so women and young people can’t get ID.

Look at this map. In green and blue states, the future of America will be decided. Volunteers who help flip a state assembly seat will meet and work closely with the candidate! She’ll know your name. You’ll feel your efforts affecting the balance, day by day. 

A $50 contribution at that level can make a real difference. And you’d learn a lot. Maybe get a friend in high places. Especially Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania… but yes, also Texas, Colorado, Florida. 

If you’re not living near any of the colored states on this map, do you know someone who does? If you do live in those states, how far from a swing assembly district where you could make a difference?

== Don't trade acne for cancer ==

I've repeatedly asserted there are far worse things than Donald Trump. For one thing, almost every member of the “deep state” — or faithful/intelligent civil servants, FBI, Intelligence agencies and military officers — see plainly how dangerous an infantile narcissist controlled by foreign despots can be. They have cauterized around this fellow pretty carefully and Two Scoops currently has less practically-executable power (except the damned judicial appointments) than any president in modern history. But all of that might go away, in the outpouring of national relief, if our current, foul-mouthed schoolyard bully gets replaced by the smoother, more soothing-voiced Mike Pence. Smooth, but in fact vastly more dangerous.

Here’s an op-ed from The New York Times - Mike Pence, Holy Terror -  that lays this down in some terrifying detail. Frank Bruni points out that Pence "adds two ingredients that Trump doesn't genuinely possess: the conviction that he's on a mission from God and a determination to mold the entire nation in the shape of his own faith, a regressive, repressive version of Christianity. Trade Trump for Pence and you go from kleptocracy to theocracy." (Not scared by that? Read Robert Heinlein's prophetic novel Revolt in 2100.)

Mr. Bruni raises the possibility “that Pence could end up in the White House sooner than you think. In addition to the prospect of Trump’s impeachment, there’s the chance that Trump just decides that he has had enough.”

Consider how amplified Trump will be, in such a political martyrdom.  How freed and empowered. The only thing worse could be a Donald Trump who was actually, physically martyred. If that happened - and thousands of fools celebrated in the streets — then we would pass into a time of searing flames.  I pray for his health. Yes - and for several more reasons - I sincerely do.

(Mind you there are lesser versions of the same trap. Say, if Trump gets his “Big Parade,” and a few hundred lefty imbeciles gather along the route to spit on soldiers and vets, the resulting, edited images could drive millions of crewcut fact-people back into a mad GOP they’ve recently been fleeing, in droves.)

But the core element in this article… and in my own missives for a year… has been Mike Pence. He would transform today’s scatterbrained, demoralized, raving-leaky White House into one that is utterly disciplined, close-lipped, and stuffed with Dominionist fanatics eager to use the nuclear button to bring an apocalypse they already pray-for, daily. And I do not exaggerate, even slightly. They do. Pray for an end to human civilization. An end to democracy. An end to all human curiosity, striving, excellence, improvement or ambition. Damnation for 99% of their neighbors. An end to all further generations of children! And an end to the United States of America. Explicitly. They pray for exactly that.  And Mike Pence will be their Nehemiah Scudder, their deliverer on some or all of those promises.

== A Closer Look at Pence ==

A more detailed look at Pence can be found in the soon-to-be-released biography: The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence, by investigative journalists Michael D'Antonio and Peter Eisner, who warn that Pence has become "perhaps the most powerful Christian supremacist America has ever seen."

Even the person I call the “worst American,” for having helped to forge today’s cynical confederate cabal, the conservative columnist George Will, has said that Pence had dethroned Trump as “America’s most repulsive public figure.”

So for all of you on the Union side in this phase of the civil war, I have one piece of advice — patience.  Bide your time. I mean, how long can the oligarchs maintain a universal and open war against every single fact-using profession? How long before some democratic politician stumbles into the polemical power of invoking the Greatest Generation and Franklin Roosevelt? 

(Fun fact.  Around 60% of military chaplains are Baptists. Oh, they are in it for the win, long term.)

Stephen Colbert (bless him) and Rebecca Solnit (deep respects) are absolutely wrong about one thing.  Donald Trump is not the disease. He is a symptom. The disease is a cynical oligarchy waging open war upon the American/Western Experiment.  The disease is every single advertiser on Fox. The disease is you, if you buy anything from any advertiser on Fox! And the disease is Kremlin-promoted division in the Union’s great big, wide blue tent.

There are times when you need to buck up and stop whining about symptoms and unite over the long haul to cure the disease.

== The Cyrus Effect redux ==

Polls show that most Republicans are fully aware that their nominee and president is a deeply immoral person. So how do they rationalize continuing to avidly support him? Of course to the oligarchy "It's taxes and sweetheart contracts, stupid." To GOP pols "It's the courts, stupid," hoping to stymie any future reform of election laws or getting money out of politics. Okay, I can understand those evil, but rational motives.

But the rank and file are problematic. "For decades, Republicans, and especially conservative Republicans, insisted that character counted in public life," says Peter Wehner, who served in three previous Republican administrations. "They were particularly vocal about this during the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, arguing against “compartmentalization” — by which they meant overlooking moral turpitude in the Oval Office because you agree with the president’s policy agenda or because the economy is strong. Senator Lindsey Graham, then in the House, went so far as to argue that “impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”

But all that - like suspicion toward Kremlin despots - lies in the past. "A party that once spoke with urgency and apparent conviction about the importance of ethical leadership — fidelity, honesty, honor, decency, good manners, setting a good example — has hitched its wagon to the most thoroughly and comprehensively corrupt individual who has ever been elected president."

One rationalization offered among evangelical Christians is the "Cyrus Effect." The King of Persia who freed the Jews from Babylonian captivity was clearly a pagan, yet also "the instrument of God."  Likewise, the spectacularly un-Christian and dissolute-immoral Donald Trump delights heaven and believers every time he galls all the people they hate, especially city or university or fact-profession elites.

Of course there's a theological answer in the form of a question: "Is Cyrus in heaven?" If he is, for being a sacred instrument, then it means that you can get there without performing the rituals and incantations that fundies claim to be the only route to salvation. If not, then Two Scoops ain't going, either.

==The perfect hypocrisy storm ==

Those claiming that the president's acknowledged immaturity, narcissism and moral turpitude are "irrelevant" should read these op-eds by Mike Pence, back during the MonicaGate Scandal (so charmingly limited in scope.) Pence wrote:

"If you and I fall into bad moral habits, we can harm our families, our employers and our friends. The President of the United States can incinerate the planet. Seriously, the very idea that we ought to have at or less than the same moral demands placed on the Chief Executive that we place on our next door neighbor is ludicrous and dangerous. Throughout our history, we have seen the presidency as the repository of all of our highest hopes and ideals and values. To demand less is to do an injustice to the blood that bought our freedoms."

You can bet that when ... not if... Pence replaces his boss, he will claim there's no hypocrisy! That he had been merely biding his time. And sing hosannas that a decent man is in office! And fools will rush to proclaim relief, unaware that our danger will then multiply a thousand fold.  (See where I urge you all - don't be in such a rush to impeach!)

From The Atlantic: "In 2011 and again just ahead of the 2016 election, PRRI asked Americans whether a political leader who committed an immoral act in his or her private life could nonetheless behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public life. In 2011, consistent with the “values voter” brand and the traditional evangelical emphasis on the importance of personal character, only 30 percent of white evangelical Protestants agreed with this statement. But with Trump at the top of the Republican ticket in 2016, 72 percent of white evangelicals said they believed a candidate could build a kind of moral dike between his private and public life." 

In a head-spinning reversal, white evangelicals went from being the least likely to the most likely group to agree that a candidate’s personal immorality has no bearing on his performance in public office.

"Fears about the present and a desire for a lost past, bound together with partisan attachments, ultimately overwhelmed values voters’ convictions. Rather than standing on principle and letting the chips fall where they may, white evangelicals fully embraced a consequentialist ethics that works backward from predetermined political ends, bending or even discarding core principles as needed to achieve a predetermined outcome," writes Robert P. Jones in The Atlantic.

What this cogent article never says is that the predetermined outcome openly and eagerly desired by a large minority of these folks is the fulfillment of prophecy in the gore-drenched Book of Revelation, including death and torture for 99% of their neighbors, an end to all human curiosity or achievement or democracy, no further children born into the world, and an end to the United States of America. 

Truly, you never parsed it that way before? Is there any other way to parse it?

A Time for Colonels and Captains: Part Three

In Parts One and Two of this series, I offered an impudent but reasonable suggestion — that 2018 should be a Year of the Colonels. 

Not in the sense of nasty-tropical-clichéd caudillos! Rather, it's a benignly pragmatic proposal for the Democratic Party -- and or reformers in Republican primaries -- to call up real warriors for this political struggle to determine life-or-death for the great American Experiment. To sift among many thousands of retired Army and Marine Colonels (and Navy Captains, and other former officers and noncoms of spotless record), then recruit scads of them to run in every single 'safe' Republican Congressional and state assembly district, in 2018. 

And yes, this broad front approach will mean leaving the juiciest and ripest swing districts to be contested by Bernites, fine! This is in addition to the vigorous activists, at their left-end of the Big Tent. Civilization needs need every ally we can get.

Last time, we discussed deep, psychological reasons why this is how to reach those aging, bitter, non-college white boomers who were suckered into Trumpism, and thus supporting the very destroyers of the middle class in America. Many — enough — of those pivotal voters can be weaned out of the mad GOP coalition, not by emulating Foxite pandering, but instead by sending them adults! Candidates whose background and demeanor they will respect enough to listen-to.

Indeed, the problem is taken seriously. Former President Barack Obama announced he will be working with Eric Holder, his former Attorney General, on the National Democratic Redistricting Committee to help Democrats reverse their losses in the states. This is urgent, if Democrats hope to have any say in how congressional and legislative district lines are drawn by governors and state legislatures after the next census in 2020.

== Gloomy forecasts ==

Oh, but it won’t be easy. Even if Donald Trump continues his slow motion car crash, so many red-cheats (like gerrymandering and rigged voting machines) and demographic distribution problems hamper the Democrats that even a narrow win might be hard to achieve in 2018. Mara Liasson on NPR said:

“While Republicans are able to turn out their voters every two years, Democrats seem only able to turn out their voters every four. That needs to change. Democrats need to restock their pipeline with candidates for city council, mayor, state legislature and governor — and they need to do it all across the country. It's true that Democratic voters are inefficiently distributed geographically for the purposes of electing members of Congress or the Electoral College.”

Christopher Browning, author of Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers comments: 

“We already have a Congress that is so gerrymandered that it would take a Democratic landslide of 56 or 57 percent to simply get a change in the majority. And we certainly know that the voter repression laws that are likely to creep in between now and 2020 are going to make things worse.”

Aaron Blake in the Washington Post put it bluntly: 

Can Democrats get used to all the losing that lies ahead? "Despite Trump's historically bad image for a new president, the 2018 electoral map is a daunting one for Democrats, with very few good opportunities to win the three Senate seats they need and plenty of tough seats to defend. The GOP also retains its beg advantage on the House map, which would require a huge Democratic wave to sweep Republicans out of power."  

To some, the prospect is so daunting that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the much-heralded political mind behind Democrats' successful campaign to win the House majority a decade ago, says the idea of retaking majorities in 2018 is pie in the sky.

And if you find this gloom unacceptable, so do I. Wealth disparities and parasitism are approaching the levels of 1789 France and recent political cheating resembles the final days of the Roman Republic. We need a calm, but major electoral reset, or our next worries will be about revolution.

== Inescapable logic ==

In Part One, I compared two strategies the Democrats could take. Traditional politics would have them bracket in on some issues and selected districts, hoping for an anti-Trump revulsion among “swing voters” in order to pick up maybe thirty House seats and a few senators, enough to officially control both chambers. A “victory” like that will be catastrophic, since the inevitable resulting gridlock is exactly what the Republican masters most adore. Having nothing get done, but evading any blame for it!

The alternative is simple — go for broke. March with fortitude into enemy territory. Challenge every red constituency, from Senator and Governor down to state assembly. Send candidates who are simultaneously sane-compassionate and fact-using, while also simpatico with the by-personality conservative voters in those districts, because they, too, are conservative-by-personality. They’re just too smart and sane to be Republicans.

Send to these voting constituencies women and men who — as genius social psychologist George Lakoff urged Hillary Clinton to do — appeal to the “strong father” reflex of red Americans. But a version of strength that is calm, reasonable, tolerant and amenable to science. A version that can be represented by some of our "tough mama" retired officers!

Take advantage of the way an illogical, frothing, anti-fact, Fox’d and drooling-insane rightwing media has spent 25 years screeching hatred at all fact-centered professions. And now this cult is also hating on the most fact-focused profession of all -- the United States Military Officer Corps. 

(Sure, some such retired officers could run in Republican primaries, instead of as Democrats… I have nothing against that ultimate answer to the Tea Party, which might spark the gradual resurrection of a sane American Conservatism. A 21st Century, grownup GOP is not impossible to imagine -- just very, very hard.)

One of you noted: "Apparently, the Republican strategy for defeating conservative Democrats in conservative districts is to smear them as liberal. Which is not a difficult charge to make stick, honesty."  Well, sure.  But it's harder to make it stick on a retired officer, as Doug Applegate showed, in California's 49th. And this year we've seen that it is a hard, ground game... push just another few percentage points and the madness might collapse.

In part one, we looked at the fly in this ointment — that Democratic activists — in their own state of righteous fury — might reject these new allies, instead of embracing them. Steve Bannon and Alex Jones and that whole pack of shills count on a reflexive hostility by liberals toward military folks. If the left is stupid enough to refuse this spectacular gift, then we are truly screwed.

== Not just colonels! ==

Oh, sure, I am oversimplifying! We need all sorts. In Part One I linked to She Should Run — a national organization that works to encourage women and girls of all backgrounds to aspire to public leadership and run for office next to men…   

…and to 314 Action, helping those with backgrounds in science to contend in the political arenas, defending the integrity of science and promote the responsible use of data driven fact based approaches in public policy.  See also the older group, ScienceDebate.org.

Want a really aggressive approach?  A regular commenter on this blog proposed: “Adopt an Elephant.” In this gambit. Each democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives would be randomly assigned the constituents of one of their Republican colleagues. Each foster parent gives these constituents the same love and attention as they would their own. Mail. Phone calls. Commercials. Advocacy. And lots of face time visits to their adopted territory. Just act like you're the real congressman and be a better parent to your foster children than their real “parents.” What’s nice about this is that it isn’t necessarily a joke. The power of empathy forces compromise, even as dogmatism crushes empathy. 

The notion resonates with another suggestion from George Lakoff:  

“If the Dems are going to recover, I think they need to put permanent teams in the areas whether they have reps or not. This is not for campaigning, though they should contest more places. But parties (all of them) need people, agents listening (and helping where it is with the philosophy or plank of the party). What the Dems lost may be due to no one was paying attention because no Democratic Congress person felt need to keep contact. in an area that was not represented by a Dem.”

Of course running against the tumor-like murdochians is one thing, but it is the ideas or memes that make this warped version of American conservativism truly toxic.

== The USMOC Strikes Back ==

I spoke last time about struggles within military culture. And while many, many officers care more about facts and logic and love of a dynamic, scientific nation, there are others, a large minority, who are like Michael Flynn, steeped in fanaticism, proto-feudalism and religious fundamentalism.   

Illustrating this internecine culture war, the new commandant of the U.S. Air Force Academy can expect a rough reception from the surrounding hotbed of radical Christian fundamentalism – Colorado Springs. Indeed, it has long been known, even openly avowed, that such groups try to inveigle and suborn the service’s tradition of non-sectarian and adult secularity. But if any officer can ease the USAFA out of this trap, it will be its new commandant, Brig. Gen. Kristin Goodwin, former B-2 pilot and former commander of the Second Bomber Wing, who arrives soon with her two children and her wife. And yes, I put great faith in the stature, maturity and enlightenment-loyalty of our officer corps. 

In fact, the reds are doing some of our recruitment work for us. Articles like this one – "denouncing the “Deep State” – are trial balloons that test possible justifications. They set the stage for actions against all the knowledge castes, but especially security professionals.

== Final words ==

The brilliant thing about the “colonels gambit” is that there are plenty of these retired officers to seek out, vett, and armtwist into running for office.  Moreover, when a colonel knocks on a red door, the folks within cannot slam it in his or her face.  they will listen, with respect.

Moreover, these folks can run in wide variety.  From crewcut-liberal to Eisenhower conservative, and (yes) even Reagan conservative!  So long as they are willing to sign a very general statement of not-crazy principles, they can be Big Tent Democrats and run in districts that are currently GOP-safe.  Indeed, such districts should be represented by conservative-minded people!  Though ones who are sane.

Those basic principles might be:

Running as a Democrat, I accept and avow that:

- Facts matter. We should find ways to refute lies, from all sides, and let evidence change our minds.

- Science is real. Public policy should pay attention to – even if it doesn’t always follow – the advice of folks who know facts.

- Our children deserve a healthy planet to live in. We can invest in both a clean environment and energy independence, while maintaining a strong economy. Only losers believe in zero-sum games.

- No child should have his or her future harshly limited by race, gender, poverty or class. 

- Schools should be held accountable to high standards of performance, and have the resources to give us an educated generation.

- It’s okay for there to be “winners” in the economy or politics, but not by cheating.

- It is time to sensibly ease our way out of the insanely self-defeating "War on Drugs."

- “Supply Side” experiments in huge tax breaks for the rich have universally failed, leading only to parasites draining the middle class. We will not let them bring back feudalism.

- Government must be open and accountable. Elections must be clear, verifiable and in fair districts.

- Our military must be strong, capable and used responsibly, in carefully considered and adult ways.

Further suggestions are welcome for this list. 
But you know I’m not done.  
Because if you are sending these folks into districts that are conservative by personality, then be prepared to hear some items from the older-saner side of American conservatism. 

For example:

Running as a Democrat, I feel free to differ with other Democrats, and to express my own position on:

- Gun rights. While I do feel there are reasonable ways to reduce gun access by irresponsible people, I fully support gun ownership by American citizens.

- Abortion: people of conscience can disagree over when life begins. But we can all strive to find ways to empower and help women avoid ever facing that decision. Though the decision must be theirs.

- Nuclear power: many “tech-liberals” are parting company with the standard position against this relatively clean and helpful power source.

- Globalization: we need careful analysis how to keep the benefits of world trade, while ensuring that our innovations benefit us and that good jobs stay in America.

If some of these positions make me “conservative” in the older sense of Eisenhower and Reagan, then so be it. I am still running as a Democrat! Because, to paraphrase President Reagan… “I did not leave the Republican Party… the Republican Party long ago left me. 

"And then it went, stark, jibbering loco.”

Here is the core question: If a thousand candidates took on crazies in a thousand deep-red districts, would such a pledge make you ready and willing to help? Or are you a litmus-purity fanatic, just like the enemies of freedom?

This is not about "left" vs. "right" (can you even define those lobotomizing clichés?)  It is about decency and ability to recognize that facts actually are things. To couch it in liturgical terms: God made objective reality for us to live in and a planet that feeds us. And hence, who gave hypnotists like Sean Hannity the power to croon: "ignore what's true!"

The crux of it all. With some exceptions, our officers - the heirs of George Marshall - are too practical to ignore facts, and thus, most of them simply cannot be mad elephants. Yes, some of them have crewcuts and erect posture and may even sound like the dad in Leave it to Beaver, or Andy Griffith, so?  If lots of them enter Congress and statehouses they'll negotiate with us again, restoring something called grownup democracy. 

So, let's call up bunches of them and ask their help winning back a nation and civilization of sane, logical, compassionate, forward-looking, mature and fact-using citizens.

All our other problems will be tractable then. Because there's nothing we cannot negotiate -- or accomplish -- together.

== Return to Part 1 of this series.

2018: Will the fact-users strike back? Why we need... colonels.

Out of this year’s sickening political news-maelstrom — with one party seeming inept and the other insane — what keeps hope beating in my chest? The thought that mere ineptitude can sometimes change. Indeed, there are early signs! I’ll get to that. But first, a basic question:

What strategy should reasonable, fact-using Americans take up — politically — across the next two years?  Democrats, the fact-focused professions, people of calm goodwill and their moderate allies must choose. They can do either sumo or judo*. 

Indicators suggest that Democrats, at least, intend to continue going chest-to-chest, grunting and shoving with Republicans across the same-old polemical divides. Angry activists on the Democratic Party’s left demand that the same notions be proclaimed, just a whole lot more forcefully. If so, and assuming that swing voters do grow sick of the Trumpites — (as suggested in trends measured by 538) — then Democrats might “win” the 2018 mid-term elections, retaking the House and even the Senate by thin margins. A small improvement that will nevertheless leave us in perpetual gridlock.

That condition of stalemate has endured since at least 1995, destroying all memory of ancient virtues like “deliberation” or “adult negotiation.” And make no mistake: gridlock has always been the principal aim of Rupert Murdoch and the GOP lords. A narrow Democratic 2018 win will mean crushing defeat for the republic.

If our aim is to leap past gridlock — to end this latest phase of the American Civil War — then far more vigorous methods are called for, resembling judo, not sumo. Use your opponent's momentum against him. Swerve around his expectations.  

While pessimists bemoan that Democrats are mercurial, today's Republican Party is the most tightly disciplined political force in U.S. history — with its “never negotiate” Hastert Rule fiercely enforced by both Fox News and Tea Party activists. Alas, liberals are like cats, impossible to organize. That is, unless you are a miracle-worker, like California’s Jerry Brown.

Indeed, pundits write of a looming civil war within the Democratic Party, between radical (“Bernite”) activists and their old, moderate bêtes noirs, sometimes called Clintonian 'blue dogs.' Others laud the ferocity of Sanders supporters. 

But the real issue is this: can Democrats avoid internal fights and make a broad, united front, taking this campaign deep into Donald Trump’s America?

Vigorous initiatives are underway that aim for a more judo-like approach. She Should Run is one of several national organizations encouraging women and girls of all backgrounds to aspire to public leadership and contend for office.  

And 314 Action is a campaign to recruit scientists - yes, actual scientists, over 400 so far - to run against the most toxic, anti-science legislators. (Here’s how to donate - as little at $3.14 - to electing more folks who actually know stuff.) 

Again, as Donald Trump continues to sully the GOP brand, hopes rise. Democrats need to win 24 seats to retake the House, a challenge that appeared insurmountable months ago but seems less so with each passing day. “Even Senior House Republicans Are at Risk in 2018,” read a headline in the Cook Political Report, a sign of how serious Republican woes are becoming.

But let me reply, yet again, that such a narrow win will only be a slightly-different colored calamity for the Republic, and for civilization.  Instead of 24 seats, the aim should be 124! Plus toppling Breitbart-parroting fanatics from at least half of the state assemblies and governorships where they now govern so execrably.

== How to win such a broad-front campaign? ==

Consider that:

1- The right's coalition depends on many forms of cheating, from gerrymandering and voter suppression all the way to highly suspect voting machines that are deliberately made impossible to audit. (And recent tales of Russian meddling in such machines only raise more suspicion.) But it is worth noting that these methods, though effective, are brittle. One Supreme Court decision could send the edifice crashing. 

Even better, if just ten million sane-sincere American conservatives can be drawn out of the Republican tent, then GOP demographics - already fragile - will collapse. Those sane, decent, intelligent conservative neighbors already know their traditional "side" has gone mad. Desperate to justify continued loyalty, they stay glued to Fox News, gulping down anecdotes about screaming Berkeley protesters while murmuring the mantra spread by Sean Hannity and George F. Will: 

"Liberals are even worse! Liberals are even worse! Yeah, that’s the ticket. Liberals are even worse!”

Sorry, Bernie-bros, those ten million desperately-needed sane conservatives won’t be wooed out of that carnival show by shouting progressive nostrums at them.

They might be swayed by meeting democrats who share some of their values -- the healthier ones -- while coaxing them to put aside toxic memes. 

Hold that thought.

2- Only fools seek the death of American Conservatism -- rather than salvation from its current bedlam. It can happen! Before they passed away, both Barry Goldwater and Billy Graham recanted the excuses they had made for earlier bigotry. Adaptability, in the face of evidence, used to be an American hallmark — and yes, a feature of grownup conservatives. 

We must make clear that folks like Adam Smith, Dwight Eisenhower and indeed Ronald Reagan would be welcome at the negotiating table, so long as they argue with facts, not lies. 

Some conservative intellectuals are finally making the hard choice between love of nation+civilization, on the one hand, versus a party that’s gone insane. David Brooks and Jennifer Rubin are among the former, while the Worst American — George Will — continues moaning that Trumpism betrays, rather than reifies, the trends that Will himself helped propel. The former should be welcomed. As for the latter —

— sharp polemical stakes must stab the undead-elephant that hijacked U.S. conservatism. For example: why did the recent Republican National Convention mention only one prominent GOP leader between Reagan and Ryan? No governor, president or senator — so ashamed are they of their record at governance.

And democrats, absurdly, never once mentioned that.

3- Confront a bald fact: of the 238 House seats now held by Republicans, and several thousand in state assemblies, only a few dozen are "swing", or conceivably accessible by a liberal politician. In those thirty or so teetering districts, activists are welcome to put forward their beloved Bernie or Elizabeth or Maxine-types, go for it! 

But the rest of those districts are represented by conservatives because that is the temperament of the district’s voting majority. 

Sure, let’s fight for impartial districting and to demolish other cheats. Still, if a district is inherently conservative, then send in sane, logical, fact-loving and grownup conservatives to challenge the (mostly) loony, illogical, science-hating and flaming-immature incumbents!  Why should that be objectionable? Moreover, let’s stop waiting for local conservatives to generate their own primary challengers to alt-right maniacs. Take this fight to the general.

Try a thought experiment: Suppose the democratic candidate in a reddish district supports a woman's access to full health care and wants background checks on gun sales; in that case, does it really matter if he also likes country music and goes target shooting? 

If she's compassionate and not paranoid about "dreamers" who came to this country as children, and wants to ease us out of the insane War on Drugs, can you put up with her support for a strong military that is stuck in fewer overseas quagmires? 

If the candidate we put up for a GOP 'safe' seat respects science and journalism and teaching and medicine and thinks we should save the planet for our kids, will you forgive his crewcut and erect posture?

Note: in the recent Montana congressional by-election, democratic candidate Rob Quist combined good-old-boy styles with science-support and appreciation for civil rights. He was outspent 5 to 1 by Republican Greg Gianforte, and still came closer to winning than any Democrat in decades. And this despite both candidates sporting some questionable baggage. Observers are calling this GOP win a screaming danger sign for the Republican Party.

Which brings up our concluding point:

4- Colonels. What we need is lots and lots of retired U.S. Army and Marine colonels and U.S. Navy captains. There are thousands of them out there. A great many are offended and fed up with the Republican Party's current insanity, its open warfare against every single fact-centered profession, its deceit, betrayals and utterly perfect record of bad governance.  

The thing to remember about senior military officers is that they notice facts and outcomes! They have to. Like the way Russia is building 12 new naval and marine bases ringing the fast-melting Arctic Sea, with blatant intent to make it theirs. Climate denialism is a clear and present danger to the United States of America.  

And so is the Republican Party - in its current (mad) incarnation. More and more military folk can see this.

== We’ve seen this can work ==

In my own congressional district, California's 49th, the infamous right winger Darrell Issa just had the scare of his political life, when retired U.S. Marine Colonel Doug Applegate took him on, in a contest that ran so close we didn't know the results for a month. And this happened despite Issa (the richest man in Congress, it is said) waging a scurrilous media tsunami of misleading advertising. 

How did Doug do it? By bringing his mix of liberal and moderate positions before this largely conservative constituency with both calm logic and the stern mien of a senior officer. A marine with a ramrod spine, he got attention from Republican voters who had never before, in their lives, actually listened to a Democrat.

Can this near miracle be enhanced and amplified, across the nation? Will Democrats be able to recruit great numbers of retired officers, many of whom spent large swathes of lifespan as Republicans?

Here we have allies, not just in Donald Trump, who seems bent on offending the U.S. military officer corps, but the entire confederate madness that has hijacked the American right. For example, he U.S. military led the way in American desegregation and it sees no benefit, only great harm, coming from a spuming rise of bigotry. 

Senior officers know that our power derives in large part from scientific advancement, in which America has been the leader. And hence, the mad right’s all-out assault on science is an existential threat. Moreover they know that the right’s latest, paranoid rhetorical salvo — attacking a so-called “Deep State” of conniving officers and civil servants — is aimed directly at them.  

Next time, in Part Two, I’ll discuss the basic, psychological, social and political reasons why this approach is the best way to take the fight far beyond normal “swing” districts, boldly invading the very heart of a madness that has hijacked both American conservatism and the country that we love.

Recruitment of retired officers should start right away, if not yesterday, if not last year! These men and women swore to defend our country against foreign enemies. 

It’s time to call them back into service against the domestic variety — those who would blind and bind our mighty, brilliant, scientific nation and use hot needles of radical dogma to lobotomize the last, best hope of humankind.

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Continue to Part II

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Addendum:
 Stephen Colbert's riff of mature solidarity - after the DC shootings - was moving and apropos. It was also an ultimate geek-out,  when he said: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"  ...   a line penned by Isaac Asimov, in the novel Foundation. (It's an aphorism spoken by the first mayor of Terminus, Salvor Hardin.) 

Stephen must have known that it will puzzle a majority of his viewers. Yet, he stuck to applying the wisdom of his true tribe. This nod to science fictional wisdom proves, yet again, he is 'one of us.' An American above all. But also a citizen of wonder.

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* See  an earlier judo proposal I made, for short straw Democrats to exploit - rather than exacerbate - Donald Trump's character flaws.