Graphic Firing Table

Now.

Then.

These numbnuts are deeply ignorant, profoundly stupid, and utterly incompetent. It's their good luck, and the rest of our misfortunes, that their MAGAt party is even more ignorant and stupid and cares nothing for competence so long as they get the performative spite and malice they crave.

And there is no remedy for them in the Constitutional system. No checks. No balances. Nothing.

The United States is now a Stupid Fascist state in fact, if not in name, and if We the People don't want that, well...history shows the path from autocracy to republicanism is ugly, brutal, and very often futile at least in the short and even medium term. 

The Revolution of 1789 led to military dictatorship by 1800 and decades of ruinous war. The Revolution of 1917 led to partisan dictatorship by 1921 and decades of brutal immiseration. Our own revolution was only prevented from a similar fate by a unique combination of individual probity and isolation from neighboring Great Powers.

So, no. There is no Good Way past this disaster.

The trope of 1776 is that roughly a third of the then-American colonies was Loyalist, a third were rebels, and the remaining third just wanted to keep their heads down. Logistical difficulties, strategic incoherence, and Great Power rivalry with France ensured the rebellion became revolution and overthrow of the ruling order.

We certainly have ruling incoherence and economic difficulty from the fascists.

But we have no Power to come to our aid, and the internal division is even less favorable; the fascists run from about 30% - the true hardcore MAGAts - to 40% and the "heads-down" lumpen herdbeasts are another 30-40%. The police and military will obey The Chief Executive; there is no competing "Garde National" or rebellious militias to opposed regime gunfire with rebel gunfire.

We are, in fact...

 

I honestly have no words of hope or encouragement. I can't figure out a way to overthrow these sonsofbitches short of actual violent rebellion, and history also shows how often that goes badly for the rebels.

The time for phone banking and postcard writing is past.

But I can't stand the idea of simply bending the knee to these people. Is it time for building IEDs? How can that ever work? 

I can only stand, shaking with rage, as my country devolves before my burning eyes.

 

As an addendum to my post below, a reminder: this, I think, is Hamas' goal.

My Bride is right; the latest military action is hopeless militarily. It cannot possibly "win" in the conventional sense. Any more than the airliners of September 2001 could "win" anything.

It can do what those airliners did, and what this photo does; firmly affix the image of a brute with a rifle destroying a helpless innocent family. Making that brute a hissing and a byword for horror.

Over at Nancy Nall's joint I said that, and was called out for cheap-shotting Israeli soldiers.

I replied:

"When you swing a butcher’s cleaver, you should not be surprised when people call you a butcher.

When Israel made the political choice to treat their Arab subjects like the apartheid regime treated its black citizens, it chose the mantle of apartheid.

When Israel goes into Gaza it will have to use the exact same methods the Germans used in Warsaw in 1943 and the Soviets in Berlin in 1945. It makes them neither Nazis nor Communists, but it will make them monsters in the way the SS in Warsaw and the Red Army in Berlin were monsters.

That’s not a cheap shot. That’s war, which, as Bill Sherman reminded us, is all Hell. And urban war, as I remind you, is a specially awful Hell that earns the maker the kind of bloodyhanded mantle that stains for generations.

That, I think, is Hamas’ entire intention. They want to generate a photo as iconic as the infamous one of the German soldiers herding the little kid with his hands up down the Warsaw street. They want the Arab world to associate that with Israel.

Feel free to call it what you like. But if Israel goes ahead with what I’m sure they will, that’s what they risk; becoming not just apartheid Afrikaaners but joining history’s great butchers."

And, thinking on this further, I see no reason to alter so much as a syllable of that reply.

I couldn't sit thru the whole thing, but between what I saw, the transcript, and the analyses I am a bit amazed at how blatantly fascist - as in "right in ol' Schicklgruber's wheelhouse" fascist - a big chunk of last night's State of the Union speech was.

Not the part about the Leader's iron will or fluffing the Party's program; that's just bog-standard political theater, which is all this silly speech ever is, really, and why I usually don't bother to watch or read much about it. It had more chest-beating than usual but, sheesh, Trump, so, yeah.

No, specifically it was the MS-13 horror stories, the part about how the herrnvolk are endangered by a hidden swarm of dusky, violent untermenschen - and nefarious Auslandische foreign powers - and that only the Leader, and the Party - and only by their being hard, hard as Krupp steel (but fair! Fair, mind you, so long as you're not one of the dusky traitors within!) - can save us from their evil.

The fluffing of the Party's program did have some extra GOP lies how they're not selling the country to their rich pals, but, whatever.

But the stuff about America Awake! to the danger of The Eternal Immigrant was such a pure, uncut Steven Miller hommage to the Fuhrer, vintage Adolf whine in a new orange bottle, that I wonder how many people missed that.

Perhaps we've gotten so used to these speeches promising fierce resistance to the Terrorist Foes that we didn't notice how this one slipped into genuine Silvershirt "domestic-enemies-abound!" territory. Another own-goal for the Phony War On Terror. Thanks loads, guys.

Whooda thunk that when it came fascism would neither be wrapped in a flag nor carrying a cross but in the form of a bloated orange real estate grifter, wrapped in a badly tailored but expensive suit and too-long tie, and carrying a Big Mac. Say what you will about the original Nazis, at least they were snappy dressers.

I'm not sure whether I'm more pissed off that the cousin-marryin' hillbillies foisted these downmarket fascists on me, or at how goddamn downmarket the fascists are. Steve Bannon? Seriously? Dude always looks like he's coming down off a three-day cheap-vodka-and-Red Bull bender. Hell, how embarrassing is it that even his Leader, our orange fuhrer, looks like a divorced car salesman shopping for laxative suppositories at WalMart?

Even our Nazis are low-rent.

Sheesh.

Look, I know you have the attention span of a housefly, but try to follow along, K? I'll keep it as simple as you are.

Here's what Americans do to Nazis:
That's pretty clear, isn't it?

It used to be a bar that you had to clear to get elected here in this goddamn country; don't be a Nazi, don't be a commie. Sadly, you could be racist, sexist, and xenophobic as all hell, but you at least had to clear that low bar.

So.

As the fucking President of the United States, here's what it's your job to do.

You put your ginormous orange gob in front of the teevee cameras and say this:

"Don't be a Nazi. Fuck "alt-right" and "white pride"; that shit's being a Nazi. Don't be a Nazi. Don't talk like a Nazi. Don't act like a Nazi. Don't hang out with Nazis. Nazis are evil. We killed shitloads of Nazis, there was a whole war and everything. If you talk like and act like and hang out with Nazis you are fucking evil. As your President, I hate Nazi scum and everything they stand for and I recommend you do, too."

See? Wasn't that easy?

But you won't say that.

Ever.

Because you can't. Because you know these Nazi shitpokes are your shitpokes, the ones who elected you, the only ones who still have your back after eight months of solid derp, the ones think you're doing such a great job, the very best job. Because you're a worthless goddamn orange oxygen-thief who should never have been trusted with anything more important than the menu choices at the Trump Tower grill.

But I'm leaving this here in hopes that somehow the Wizard figures out how to give you a heart, a brain, and some courage enough for you to act like a president of, y'know, the United Fucking States...

Lemme know when that happens.
I won't be holding my breath.

Before our recent return to domestic comb-over authoritarian blowhard populist demagogues in the form of a certain thick-fingered-vulgarian-who-shall-not-be-named the last serious attempt by white people outside Louisiana to create a Pure and True Aryan Nation took place in, of all places, southern California at a place called Murphy's Ranch.
This thing was, supposedly, going to be the SoCal Berghof for the American Leaders of the Aryan race back in the day. Maybe. The story isn't exactly clear:

"...(LA) county records say a Jessie M. Murphy purchased the property in 1933...(however) there is no other record of her, and no one in the area ever saw her. The name Murphy Ranch, however, stuck.

Norman Stephens was an engineer with silver mining interests in Colorado, and apparently financed the operation. His wife, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, had a strong belief in metaphysical phenomena, and apparently fell under the spell of (a mysterious but persuasive German named Herr) Schmidt, who claimed to have supernatural powers.

Schmidt convinced the Stephenses that once Europe collapsed and Germany emerged victorious in the war, anarchy would break out across the country, and law and order would break down. His plan was to create a command center in which the National Socialist community would wait out the war. They could then emerge from their mountain retreat and impose order on society."

Needless to say, this plan had...ummmm...a few flaws.


But pieces of this California Alpenfestung remain, and you can wander through them today. It sounds like a fairly surreal experience, even for southern California.

In Oregon, I'm afraid, our homegrown fascists are both less imaginative and a lot less photogenic.