Fuck Civility! 4th of July Edition: Republican Power is Illegitimate in All Three Branches of Government.
Happy 4th of July! Perhaps you have plans to be at a fun BBQ tonight, perhaps you are already at a lake with some friends, tubing and drinking domestic beer. Looking forward to fireworks.
These are all good fun. But all so modern! Relatively recent additions to the holiday’s festivities, coming into fashion only in the 18th or 19th centuries.
This *particular* 4th of July may I suggest adding some traditional elements to your planned activities? For Independence Day 2018 please join me in saying a big fuck you to an unjust, illegitimate government controlled by a party whose power is derived not from the consent of the majority of the governed, but by power itself wielded in the form of consequence free lying, corruption, cruelty, and suppression, all aided and abetted by hostile foreign autocracies — and then beginning a sustained campaign to rid ourselves of their tyrannical grasp for good!
You know, tradition.
I know I know, it isn’t considered ‘civil’ these days to say, loud and proud, that one particular political party, the Republican Party, the one in power in all three branches of government, is only in control of anything through illegitimate means. The modern day media believes it is their job to enforce civility, which they seem to define as making sure there is an equal amount of criticism applied to both parties.
But that’s fucking stupid! The Republican Party has been getting a free pass from the media on their efforts to subvert democracy through massive, widespread voter suppression and disenfranchisement for generations. They. Cannot. Win. Without suppressing votes. That’s not just my read on the situation, that’s theirs too.
Sure, there is some polite pushback from the media, but only if it is coupled with taking very seriously the total bullshit claims of voter fraud that accompany the GOP rollback of fundamental democratic rights. Sure, the annual suppression of hundreds of thousands of votes state by state and millions nationwide is bad, but is it not equally bad that a hypothetical person might vote twice hypothetically?
The media says, with great civility, ‘do we really need this voter ID law?’ Great! Truth to power, we’re on a roll. But then the local Republican establishment picks up a tasty looking stick and says “We’re just positive there is voter fraud over- there” as he pretends to give the stick a mighty throw. The civil, credulous reporters say “well that sure would make a good two-sides story” and dutifully run, civilly, tongue flapping and barking “allegations of voter fraud! allegations of voter fraud!” towards nothing at all. By the time they get back from their perceived obligation, sad, confused, and report that they found nothing — the Republican official is holding a very similar stick (read: it is the same stick) and he’s even more excited about this one as he turns in a different direction and cocks his shoulder for another mighty heave.
That’s the civility of the modern era: watching powerful people do despicable, criminal things, hearing them *admit* they are doing those things for the obvious, corrupt reasons, and then running obediently off in whatever direction they point, chasing whatever bullshit narrative they throw instead of standing ground and saying with breathtaking incivility — fuck your stick. These actions are wrong. You are hurting real people, denying them their rightful voice in our government, so you can maintain power. Why are you afraid of your own constituents having a voice? What did you do to them that you are so afraid what they will use their voice to say?
So on this auspicious occasion open that cooler, crack that ice cold High Life, make the best eye contact you can through you and your friends’ polarized wrap around sunglasses, and shout in unison “if you can only obtain power through suppressing the voices of the governed then I say to you your power is illegitimate and I will fight you to the end! USA!”
Our current President is so illegitimate that Edmund from King Lear is like, “um, not all bastards”.
It took herculean voter suppression efforts in multiple key states (under Republican state governments vying for most-abusive-of-power superlatives like Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin), partisan FBI agents, a vapid, complicit media landscape dumping free air time all over Trump like they were trying to extinguish his flaming pants, and of course a treasonous sellout to at least one foreign autocrat to get a Republican into the White House and he still didn’t win a majority of votes.
Being civil maintains comfort — temporarily. Civility as a response is perfectly suitable if the underlying circumstance can be described as “It’s not my preferred outcome but they won fair and square and we’ll get ’em next year because the rules are fair and we’ll just hustle harder next time!”
This Republican Party isn’t your friendly competitor whose just shown more moxy than you recently. This Republican Party is a corrupt, oppressive force who would just as soon step on your face as look at you. No, they wouldn’t step on your face. That’s an uncivil thing of me to say. They *would* poison your fucking water and cripple an entire generation without a second fucking thought, though. They would uniformly fucking endorse a known pedophile for a US fucking Senate seat, though. They would steal a fucking Supreme Court seat from a legitimately fucking elected President, though, and wait to fill it just in case Putin’s pick got to pick (Oh, Mitch McConnell fucking new all about Trump’s Russian buddies when he did this, he was well fucking apprised), though. Fuck Civility.
Right, the third branch of government. The Courts. The last remaining check on the unbridled abuses of the elected branches of government, right? Not anymore.
There’s already one illegitimate Supreme Court Justice on the bench and they’re ready to pick another. An illegitimate President cannot pick a legitimate Supreme Court Justice. ‘Trump’ and ‘Justice’ don’t belong in the same fucking sentence let alone the consequential lifetime appointment. Additionally, Kennedy’s retirement stinks of it’s own, additional corruptions.
But once their on the bench they’ll be independent, right? Not at all beholden to the corrupt system that placed them in a position of life-long power? Well, newly appointed illegitimate-Justice Gorsuch just cast the deciding vote allowing Texas to keep it’s ultra-racist, gerrymandered map that sets a precedent for massive, race-oriented voter suppression in every state that wants to follow suit.
But maybe that’s just Gorsuch, right? He’s an asshole! Maybe it’s not a deep, systemic failure doomed to repeat with the next Justice, right?
Bush v Gore was the first election I was old enough to vote in. The one where one candidate’s *brother* was the governor of the crucial swing-state, and that brother just happened to preside over massive, statewide malfeasance and fake, astroturfed riots (I forget, was staging a violent uprising and lying that it was a populist revolt ‘uncivil’? Or because Republicans were doing it was that just hardball politics) that ground the vote counting to a halt until the Supreme Court decided to weigh in and effectively appointed the next President. The candidate they chose to favor’s father appointed two of those Justices.
You know who decided to be Mr. Civil about all this? Al Gore. What a civil fucking servant. And I can’t fault him. He wanted to heal the country, and a protracted fight to protest the legitimacy of this action would have been very uncomfortable indeed. What does Civility get you? September 11th and the Iraq War. But it sure was a comfortable 8 months before all that.
Al Gore didn’t know that’s what was going to happen if he gave up the fight and rolled over in the name of civility. I can’t blame him for not knowing what civility really gets you in America today- it gets your water poisoned, your wars preemptively waged and unwinnable, it gets your neo-Nazis emboldened, it gets your courts packed, your election hacked, your democracy attacked, and your Presidency hijacked. Can’t blame Gore for not knowing but can definitely learn from his mistakes. No excuses anymore, now we know.
#RIPcivility
The stakes are sky high. This is no time to tolerate lawlessness, white supremacy, and tyrannical behavior at federal and state levels. Our government is torturing would be immigrants in our name. They are enriching the already rich by taking even more from the already poor. This is it. It’s Independence Day. Enjoy that third hamburger today and let’s get ready to fucking fight for our lives.
