The Cold Equations

On the occasion of the Iraq War turning to shit right before his eyes, noted Iraq War pimp and hectoring rodent, Tom Friedman, penned this odious column blaming -- surprise! -- Both Sides for the failure of that war, I penned this post suggesting that perhaps The Mustache of Understanding would be better off getting out of the having-opinions-for-money business, and getting into the go-fuck-yourself-with-a-steam-shovel business.  From me, 13 years ago:

[According to Tom Friedman] The Universe is carefully divided into Conservatives – who are wrong – and Liberals – who are somehow, mysteriously and equally wrong all the time and in equal numbers on every issue. And only Captain Obvious, frolicking across the few lonely yards of sand on his Isle of Reasonableness, can see the truth.

It does not matter how many millions of miles the Shining Path Republicans drag the “middle ground” to the Right.

It doesn’t matter that the Party of Lincoln is now infested crotch-to-crown with maggoty Segregationists.

It doesn’t matter that Nixon looks like a fucking Socialist compared to the positions now being advocated by the GOP today.

However far into the Armageddonist Abyss the wingnuts charge, Captain Obvious will dutifully pace off half that distance back towards where the Left (the band formerly know as “Rockefeller Republicans”) happened to be that day, drive his little stake into that shifting ground and declare that THIS is where the treasure of Comity and Reasonableness is buried. And that everyone on either side of his little islet is equally and oppositely wrong.

And then stamp his chubby little feet and whine that No One Is Listening to Him!

That was roughly two years after the launch of Operation Endless Clusterfuck.

Well here we are again, marching inexorably towards the two year anniversary of the election of President Stupid, and pretty much every horrifying consequence Hillary Clinton warned us about is coming true with a vengeance.  Two years after all the media and celebrity assclowns who decided that since Hillary was a mortal lock anyway, it was perfectly safe to play their facile "Disrupt the Status Quo!  End the K'rupt Duopoly!" games well past the fail-safe point found out that there were going to be actual, terrifying consequences to their feckless dilettantism.

Last week it was babies in cages and a hundred less-publicized Republican corruptions and treasons,  This week it was Anthony Kennedy handing Donald Trump his legacy on a silver platter, and another hundred, smaller betrayals of democracy.  Next week it will be something else.

It'll be bad and it will go right on getting worse until at least one lever of actual power is pried out of Republican hands.  And bestriding this whole, bloody, decades-long, racist butcher's bill that Republicans keep running up and the rest of us keep trying to pay down is the sad and irrefutable fact that all of the rubble and ruin that the Republicans are leaving in their wake this time was every bit as  predictable and inevitable as the rubble and ruin the Republicans left in their wake the last time.  From me, 13 years ago:

Now we are falling, out of control.

And pointing out that we are falling because of the lies and delusions of the Administration has nothing to do with whether or not I "want the Bush team to succeed” you contemptible little weed. We are watching the country we passionately love plummet into darkness along the exact trajectory we warned you about, and you think that there is any joy in being right? Any pleasure in seeing your beloved wasted and playing in traffic?

Sorry, Friedman, but no.

Now whatever intentions or dreams or hopes or beliefs we might have had have become irrelevant. Flapping our arms doesn’t matter. Prayer doesn’t matter.

Once in the air, the Cold Equations are all that matter.

Once in the air, my nation became a physics demonstration; an object on a downward arc governed by the Laws of Science that the Republicans hate so very much....

And so, once again, thanks to the Republican party and their quisling enablers, we are in the hellish grip of the Cold Equations.

And although it may seem like cold comfort, what Winston Churchill once said about a different fight against different fascists is still sound advice: If you're going through hell, keep going.

Behold, a Tip Jar!