Patterns and tactics that debase our politics (and maybe even yours)

== Again, be passionate... but NOT "mad as hell!" ==

As we embark on a year of political hell in the USA - and therefore the world - I plead with all sides to see how our deepest sickness - deliberately stoked by enemies - is a self-doped high of sanctimony that afflicts ALL partisans, of all kinds! (And yes, including me.)

Please watch my TEDxUCSD talk on “The addictive plague of getting mad as hell.”

That does not mean that all sides are morally or factually the same! You all know that I believe – supported by mountains of proof – that one of the US parties has spiraled into utter insanity, waging all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.

So yes, I am dedicated to the ‘Union” side – nearly always the good side – in this latest phase of the 240 year American Civil war.  

Still, there can be no doubt that many on our side, as well, are poisoned by this mind plague that robs humans of their reason. And it makes for a fractious alliance… the only one with a chance to save the nation, the planet and our children. In other words, we cannot afford this malignancy-addiction.

*(Here's scientific background: Addicted to Self-Righteousness? And my video: Indignation, addiction and hope.)

== Patterns and currents that flow below your favorite - or most-hated - memes ==

First a couple of notes:

A June milestone passed without much notice, the 300^th anniversary of the birth of Adam Smith, arguably as important to our Enlightenment Experiment as even the American revolutionary ringleader, Ben Franklin. See my posting:  Adam Smith - Liberals, you must reclaim him. 

Okay, so can we wean ourselves off carbon? The zero-sum Foxite meme is that Democrats' push for sustainable alternatives must mean more dependence on oil imports. Yes? Um, no? U.S. oil production is forecast to average an all-time high of 12.8 million barrels a day this year and keep growing to 13.1 million in 2024, even as sustainables surge. That means the loser is... OPEC. Indeed, effective energy independence from OPEC happened under Barack Obama.

Still, U.S. fuel market price sways on decisions made at the oil cartel’s machinations. Feeding lie-narratives from Fox etc. that Joe Biden has hampered US production. 

To be clear. I want rapid progress toward zero carbon! (A carbon tax is essential.) Still, today's surge in sustainables like wind and solar ironically depends on a steady supply of reliable transition energy. We do our best and most rapid work not with purity, but momentum and determination.

== Political tactics in play! ==

Most Americans - indeed most Earthers - spent their formative years suckling from the greatest propaganda campaign in history, called Hollywood, yet cannot name the deep reflexes they were taught... like Suspicion of Authority. No, you didn't invent SoA - the main theme in almost every film you ever loved. I talk about that in Vivid Tomorrows. 

But what of the American Empire? Loathed and admired, might it open a path to an end to all empires? In an older essay, I laid out possibilities for how Pax Americana could succeed its way into revered retirement, in favor of the Earth Federation we see so often portrayed in sci fi. See Whatever Comes Next.  

Meanwhile, alas, the troglodyte-right is pitching a "system overhaul" for the U.S. government in a plan called Project 2025, a revealing and horrifying look at what many leading entities on the right have in store for America, should Donald Trump return to the White House. Target #1 is the 140 year Civil Service Act, that transformed the old Spoils System into the corps of professionals that gave us the first (mostly) honest governance in human history.

But that can't be allowed any longer, it seems. After winning the national popular vote only once in 30 years and retaining lots of power only due to cheats like gerrymandering and the Electoral College, today's oligarchy now realizes that all the regular tricks are failing, as ever-more millions get wise to them… 

...and even confederate MAGAs will shrug off the hypnosis when the entire U.S. southeast gets trashed and flooded and malaria'd by climate change. 

Indeed, the casino mafiosi, petro princes, hedge lords, inheritance brats and Kremlin "ex" commissars who own and operate today's GOP share two fears... 

(1) that the sane American majority will reclaim power and calmly limit theirs... or else 

(2) that the populist MAGA trend toward brownshirt-ism will reach the critical point portrayed at the very end of CABARET, when Michael York asks a smug German aristocrat: "So, you still think you can control them?"

Hence, if they regain power in 2024 (and there are tricks in play) they know it could be their last chance to end one-person-one-vote democracy, to crush the civil servants and entrench inheritance-brat feudalism forever. ALL of the ‘reforms’ offered under “Project 2025” have that aim, and to preserve the GOP’s sole political reason for existence.

What reason is that? Why, to protect Supply Side tax grifts for the rich and keep eviscerating the IRS. LOOK at the actual bills passed by the Mike Johnson House - the laziest in 100 years. That truly is all they care about.

Speaking of which - after one of those marvelous Pelosi Bills restored IRS funding, and the crippled agency is back on the job!  “The IRS plans to crack down on 1,600 millionaires to collect millions of dollars in back taxes.”  Striking terror into the core of the cheater aristocracy, a form of anti-feudal revolution that I predicted in Earth.

== Patterns of Democracy ==

Alt sources of wisdom… assuming I am not enough of a wiseguy for you?;-)

Arend Lijphart seems worth looking into. Beginning with his book Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in 36 countries, and going back to his earlier work, Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian & Consensus Government in Twenty-one Countries (1984), Lijphart focused on the broader contrast between majoritarian democracy and consensus democracy.  Somewhat similar to Adam Smith and Arnold Toynbee, Lijphart argues that the main factor in having a viable democracy in a strongly divided society is the spirit of accommodation among the elites of different groups. 

And this is where I step in, with perspective on 6000 years of dullard feudal lords practicing stoopid, zero-sum governance that held us back in 99% of past civilizations. Unsapiently pursuing male-reproductive reflexes (e.g. harem building), their imperative was - and remains - one that Smith and Marx and even Ayn Rand deeply loathed: creating empires to leave to those aforementioned inheritance brats. 

Alas for the oligarch-castes, they cannot succeed in this project (eating the enlightenment goose that laid all their golden eggs) amid a healthy enlightenment society. One that practices actual politics… the open comparison of priorities, goals and means, especially reciprocal accountability and good faith negotiation… all of it guided by fact-professions who provide grounding in objective reality.

In order to restore feudal pyramids of power, today’s worldwide oligarchy must first discredit those fact professions… a campaign that’s already underway! While destroying – as they already have – the practical art of politics.

Let there be no mistake here. Those are the two goals. Forget the details. Destroying enlightenment style politics of the kind described by Liphart – and discrediting all fact professions, from science, teaching, medicine, law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps—Those are the two priorities that can lead to restoration of secure pyramids of inherited power… and to humanity’s extinction. 

== Role Models? ==

Okay, this from Margie Taylor Greene -- now just Marjorie Taylor (look up the differing divorce rates among high Republicans vs Dems!) - is just too rich. No need to even edit! (I suspect there's some compacting edits but you can't beat this!) 

Then there’s the Lauren Boebert hypocrisy. 

Why does no one recite the passage “By their fruits you shall know them?” Seldom mentioned by anyone is the dissonance of getting parenting advice from MTG, Boebert and Sarah Palin, then glancing – even  briefly – at how their own children came out!  You hypocrites dare to preach to us?

== A libertarian who (maybe) actually means it? ==

Here’s an important article, about ways that our Enlightenment Experiment is under fiercely coordinated attack. Sure, by now we all know that. The big surprise is where this thing was published, at an ‘institute’ that long ago became not a promoter of freedom but a shill for oligarchy. Only now we see a serious attempt to tear masks off of the world-lunatics who aim to restore feudalism. Could it be that some, at Cato, are rediscovering their stated mission?

“In an age of widespread concern that liberal democracy is increasingly embattled around the world, the twin attacks on Enlightenment liberalism from the right and the left—and not just from the fringes—represent a worrying trend.”

Okay, sure, there are anti-enlightenment fanatics on all horizons. But these authors have realized what’s abundantly clear. That shrieks from a frippy far-left of woke-ist postmodernists are a much smaller threat... driven by sanctimony addictions, yet still rooted in enlightenment goals… while our meme-enemies on the far-right are massively coordinated, waging all-out attacks against our every pillar, from science, democracy, merit, and accountability… to, yes, any sort of freedom.


== No longer even pretending ==

In a worrisome trend, many elements of the oligarchy-funded neo-feudalism movement – that I’ve denounced ferociously elsewhere – no longer even try to disguise their intent to end anything like what we call liberty or free speech or open inquiry. 

Styling themselves as scions of Edmund Burke, their screeds display utter ignorance of human history or the past thinkers they claim to ‘quote.’ For example, as the Cato article points out, the "neo-monarchist' morons conflate Hobbes with Locke! While attributing to feudalism virtues that 6000 years of bullying lords always loudly claimed – but never actually displayed – as they preyed-upon and oppressed nearly all of our ancestors.

And here is a profile of more neo-monarchist brats, yattering (while they orbit Peter Thiel) about how a mixture of LouisXIV and czarist Putinism and Galt’s Gulch will (despite 6000 years of insipid-failed feudalism) somehow be vastly better (for uber lords, one imagines) than the scientific enlightenment that indulgently gave the ingrate-parasitic brats absolutely everything they ever had. 

I take solace from the evident fact that these malignant ingrates are also so very, very stoopid. Alas, they can still be dangerous.

Political tactics the Democrats and their sane allies need.

The recent Republican blockage of the new Voting Rights Bill (along with infrastructure and every other need)... and the plausibly acceptable compromise offered by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin... has raised some very important thoughts some of you have seen here, before. But that now seem more redolent and relevant than ever.

----

As I predicted in Polemical Judo, the Foxite-putinists who are ramming through new voter-suppression 'election reform laws' in many states are painting it as the responsible, accountable thing. 

"Why shouldn't voters prove who they are at the polling station?" And we know that at some level there is merit to that raw question. Alas, Democrats are responding in exactly the wrong ways, giving an impression nursed on Fox that "you just want ways to cheat!"

In fact there is a judo answer that demolishes their entire argument. And it is one that not a single democrat pol or pundit has voiced (to my knowledge).

It would devastate. And no one says it.

"You claim that Voter ID would make elections more secure? Fine! Then help poor folks, minorities, divorced women, the homeless and others smoothly and easily get their ID problems cleared up. Lack of clear ID is one of the problems helping to keep many of them poor! Even those born here."

It's called COMPLIANCE ASSISTANCE and hammer the hypocrisy here! Republicans always demand government helps pay big companies to cover costs of complying with new regulations. So remind voters of that largesse for the rich and make clear this big test of GOPper sincerity:

"Did you accompany these onerous new Voter ID rules with appropriations for major efforts to reach out to your state's poorest citizens and HELP THEM GET ID? Expanding DMV offices and hours? Sending door-to-door outreach workers? Actually NOTIFYING voters purged from rolls for missing an election? 

"If so, then maybe you are sincere about your motives."

In fact, all the GOP's aggressive political cheat-bills are accompanied with reductions in compliance aid! DMV office closures in minority communities. Disallowing motor-voter and so on. 

Yeah, you are shrugging now and saying "Sure, we already knew that, Brin." But I am telling you that it matters how it is parsed! This isn't just blaring hypocrisy that can be attacked as such.

 While it sounds dry and legalistic "compliance assistance" is also a powerful legal argument for court cases against these very bills. So powerful that it might corner John Roberts with the 14th Amendment.

Again, this is explained in detail here... And also in Polemical Judo.

Again, the "Manchin Compromise" is totally acceptable! And thus, McConnell and co. will fight it to the end, knowing that if people can vote, their mad-confederate cult will soon be toast. Just 3 provisions - auto-registration via DMV, 15 days early voting, and ending gerrymandering - would restore US democracy! And 'campaign money' is already less a factor in politics than it used to be, so give way on that one as a sop to "moderates."

But much depends on whether Joe B and Joe M are choreographing a way to end the filibuster (or conversion to the old talk-kind) when they can maximally make it it clearly McConnell's fault... 

...or if it's all just a lot of posturing hooey. I won't take bets either way. I've had my hopes for dem cleverness dashed before. But you are just as wrong to assume the negative.

I do know if Manchin added Compliance Assistance to the Voter ID thing, it would be harder to oppose. And there are ways to end gerrymandering too

== Political miscellany ==

First an announcement-reminder!  My general political essay in four parts - about  the insipid/lobotomizing left-right "axis"- how history betrayed competitive creativity, and what libertarianism might look like, if it ever grew up, is now safely reposted here.

Political Metaphors: Part 1

Political Metaphors: Part 2

Political Metaphors: Part 3

Political Metaphors: Part 4

Re: The Republican Party's open war against every fact-using profession: 

“One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.” 

      ― Hannah Arendt

Yay this!  According to The Washington Post: “Rep. Pressley makes case for postal banking to raise revenue and advance ‘economic justice’.” (You’ll have to scroll down past the deJoy nonsense.)  I lived in the UK and in France, where even the poorest citizens had simple accounts at the Post office, enabling them to save and build credit, customers who commercial banks not only have ignored but actively spurned and drove off, despite their promises in the 1960s, when ‘reforms’ ended postal banking in the US. 

As AOC has said, also championing this reform: This would not only help millions of the poor to uplift themselves, but would decisively be a money maker for the struggling USPS.  And yes. Restoring the US Post Office Bank was one of my 31 consensus goals that ALL democrats could agree on and that should be done together (with a few sane Republicans) ASAP. 

== Favoring the Rich for much too long ==

One, simple chart shows the difference in percent income change between the Trump 2017 "Supply Side IV" tax cut for the rich and the expected effects of the new covid relief bill, both of which cost the Treasury roughly the same. The article goes on to show not percentages but in DOLLARS and shows the uber rich did even spectacularly better under SS-IV.... while sending the economy and main street into hell. 

(Not one prediction ever made by "supply side theory" ever, ever came remotely close to coming true. Ever and bet me on it! Cash awaits.)

So how did Trump's tax cuts compare with the expected coronavirus relief bill? The change in after-tax incomes (including all provisions of the 2017 law) looks like this: 

== Again, can we try some 'judo' tactics, please? ==

I’ve long questioned why no one on the “Union side” of this phase of the American Civil War seems willing to try what would likely be devastating tactics against a treasonous-revived Confederacy and its foreign masters. 

It was the basis of my book: Polemical Judo. There are so many! 

But hot in the news is the flaming hypocrisy of Foxite yammerings about morality. Now there is infamous Putin-mouthpiece, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, apparently caught is spectacular webs of lies and hypocrisy and turpitude. Fox News host Tucker Carlson was angered after Congressman Matt Gaetz attempted to rope him into a scandal involving allegations related to sex trafficking of a minor. 

Every time something like this happens- say that another former 'great guy' 'betrays' Trump, or another gopper is caught molesting children, or committing felonies or yowling incoherently, the Foxite-Putinists spin that it's an individual/unfortunate case! And reliably, good-but-clunky democrats go 'duuuuh' and never, ever answer with statistical proof that stuff like this is actually typical of today's Republican Party. (And my offer of high stakes wagers on this still stands.) 

And so... Here is the 20th installment in a running list of – now 500+! - Republican sexual predators, abusers, and enablers who contribute to rape culture. These are people who abused their power or defended abuse of power, not folks caught in consensual scandals such as being gay, having an affair, or soliciting adult prostitutes.

Again, there are ways to hammer this and a myriad other chinks in the Putinists’ armor. And here's one that could happen tomorrow, at a pen stroke!

Biden's AG Merrick Garland should announce that the Justice Department will defend anyone who violates an NDA, if it results in criminal charges. 

Or else, some decent zillionaire could offer to pay NDA penalties, if revelations have that effect.

And yes, this would edge us toward the real thing America and the world needs. The one thing that would shatter the Oligarchist Cabal.  Biden must declare a Truth Commission that will recommend clemency to the first 20 (or 200) highly placed blackmail victims who step up and turn the tables on their blackmailers.

Some dems will get caught up. But the RATIO will be clear and will make 2022 a cake walk. Nothing short of all of that will even begin to clean up (or 'drain') that swampy town.