“Balk the enemy's power; force him to reveal himself."
-- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
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Links:
- Lordy there are tapes. Daily Beast/ABC News
- NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly nails Mike Pompeo to the wall
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2 comments:
What I keep hearing is "The Democrats are just trying to thwart the will of the electorate" and I keep saying "We already did that in 2018, now the Republicans are trying to pretend that election never happened."
One thing about billionaires: they run out of things to spend their money on, so if they can be convinced that saving democracy is a shiny enough bauble that will win them endless good press and personal adulation, some of them may step up.
Problem is, most of them have already punched their ticket for team evil in order to amass that much wealth.
I read a thing on twitter the other day that said something like "You, in the middle class, please remember that you are far closer to homelessness than you will ever be to being a billionaire, so show some class solidarity and at least try to be kind to those who have less than you."
Thank you again for the podcast. The cat still isn't getting along with the neighbor's cat, so we bought him a pretty red and white harness with which to walk him, but between the indignity of the leash and the snow on the ground, he has shown little enthusiasm for it.
He'll eventually get so bored that he'll line up for some multicat IKotW pictures which I can now take with my first-ever smartphone and send along.
-Doug in Oakland
It is really hard to care about impeachment. It's all very dramatic and theatrical, though.
I guess it's a great lesson in game theory and power politics. It's like an equation on a chalkboard. "Democrats control the House, so impeachment begins. Republicans control the Senate, so there will not be a conviction."
As to showing the abject failure of centrist institutions to actually accomplish things, I mean, that's kind of the ongoing lesson. Turtle Man figured out the key. Mobilizing an ideologically-coherent (if insane) party, which completely invalidates the particularly bad joke that is the US Constitution and its system of "checks and balances".
"The Senate has a vested interest in maintaining its own power, as members of that august deliberate body will see themselves as Senators first, and members of a faction second."
"Well what if they do all join a faction and stay loyal to it?"
"Oh, well then yeah, we're completely fucked, the machine breaks instantly."
I mean, impeachment does have the side benefit of being true, but that's immaterial to our politics in 2020. Entirely a historical footnote for future generations. That's presuming capitalism is defeated, and therefore there are future generations.
Got to keep hope alive.
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