The Gettysburg Address was initially panned. It didn't become something until later. Biden's speech was something out of West Wing or The American President. It was an unequivocal signal to the Democratic base. The Washington press corps is having a case of the vapors because they were specifically called out for thirty years of both-sidesing but history is going to be kind to that speech, mark my words. Biden either needed to draw a line in the sand or declare "peace in our time." I find myself recalling more and more the certainty with which Nate Silver et. al. predicted a Hilary Clinton win in 2016 and recognizing that whatever we thought we knew about demographics and popular opinion in 2016, we know a fuckton less, not more. Here's what I know - the people who are upset are generally the ones who got called out. And the people who are upset are being abject pussies about it. It's sound and fury signifying nothing. This is what happens to a bully when you stand up to him - he dissolves like a sugar cube in tea. And the people who have been calling Democrats fascists since fuckin' Newt Gingrich's Contract with America are fanning themselves over the idea that you can't simultaneously be a patriot and an insurrectionist.
Over at The Daily Wire, Bench Appear-o's reaction videos to Biden's speech are his most amazing spectacle of pseudo-intellectualism to date. Won't link, I've linked enough toxic garbage lately. He can't avoid dwelling on the optics for the initial several minutes. He can't play much of the speech. He can't play much more than one sentence at a time, and prefers to jump around non-sequentially so as to optimally suit his narrative. He can't stop himself from making a false equivalence every thirty seconds. He can't take things in the appropriate context and rebut them ideologically. He can't not deliberately misquote and flat-out lie. Ben feels so personally attacked by Biden's warnings of anti-democratic MAGA fascism that a toddler can smell the fear on his breath through YouTube. In summary, "No, ackshually, YOU'RE the fascists!", but devoid of any reasonable argument. Rhetorical delivery, logical fallacies, and traitorous lies are all these people have left. It's funny enough and so easily disprovable that I'm considering shooting an unscripted reaction video to his reaction videos later. Probably won't post. Just practice. Edit: Sooooo I'm watching the Trump rally right now, and I gotta say, these people are far, farrrrr more energized than folks at any of the other rallies Trump has had since leaving office. We're fucked, guys. This won't end well.
Liberals argue to convince. Conservatives argue to assure. "Here's all the stuff that matters" vs. "here's the only thing that matters." There's certainly a flurry of "you don't need to worry about Joe Biden calling you, personally, a fascist because of the color red/because of marines/because of dark brandon/because he's a catholic/because etc" but unless you are part of the "we will say whatever we need to maintain power" crew, it starts getting a little Grimar Wormtonguey. There comes a point where your audience goes "but wait red is the predominant color of CPAC" or "but wait Trump stood in front of marines all the time" or "but wait you've been telling me this man is senile and can't string three words together but that was a complete sentence and it was eloquent". Conservatives won't go "oh holy shit I've been lied to this whole time I must vote blue". They'll go "I'm alone." The whole point of everything Team Biden is doing, everything Team Cheney is doing, everything Rick Wilson and the rest of the twits on Twitter is doing is to strip the MAGAts of influence. The most important part of that process was a bunch of seditious chuckleheads breaking into the capitol as if they had a plan and then milling about. Ashli Babbit getting shot was the culminating moment. Watch it again - keep in mind every single fucking cop there was armed and could have started a fucking bloodbath on the capitol steps. They didn't. The rioters were allowed to make it just so far and then as soon as there was actual threat to life and limb of anybody in politics, double-tap. But she's the only fucking martyr they got. If they were serious? There would have been a pile of corpses that day. You've got nazis with post-apocalyptic ideation who wear body armor to the Diary Queen and the minute one stupid shouty bitch gets it in the face they're Sad Shiba. You can be mad as hell on the Internet. You can be mad as hell surrounded by your friends. You can be mad as hell in the privacy of your own car, screaming at the top of your lungs that there will be blood in the streets if one person so much as fails to signal a lane change between here and Topeka. But being mad as hell where you can get hurt takes conviction that these chucklefucks NEVER had. And where the FUCK do you think they're going to get it now?
Indeed, a fascist's butthurt response was how I found an amazing piece of literature. Remind them: "Facts don't care about your fascist little dicks." I'm so done with Striving For Unity, and I'm happy that Biden's address will at least give license to people who needed it to realize that their rose-tinted attempts at reconciliation have been ruthlessly weaponized against them. Actual violence is for pussies, but it's time we used our words to properly stigmatize white nationalist fuckwads. Regretfully, we might have to co-opt some of their language to be effective (maybe you noticed?). I'm afraid things will get a whole lot worse before they get better. Some of the bullies will back down, agreed, but not enough. "Ohhhhh, ohhhhhhhhh nooooo, he warned that they will threaten political violence and they responded by threatening political violence, Biden should not have done that!". - A coward unfit to work in domestic counterterrorism. Speaking of, did you hear about ya boi Newt, back in the news? And what the hell was this?? I watched that before J6, and I knew he didn't truly believe the words he said about Blackness. Obviously.“I fear he is lighting a fuse that is not going to go well,” one senior Biden counterterrorism official said. “Sadly this is not a united speech but a very divisive one.”
The biggest correction to my worldview due to COVID is that in the before-times, I thought people will generally do the right thing. I now know that people will generally do what they see other people doing. 2016 allowed everyone with antisocial, fascist worldviews to ape the behavior of their leader. January 6 was all about "who is leader." Everything since has been about showing the MAGAts that they are once again leaderless. Our culture has, since Reconstruction, been about defining our politics as chocolate or vanilla. Red or blue. Left or right. Barry Goldwater started the slide towards "right or wrong" but it was arrested for a time by the embarrassment of Nixon. Fast forward to Richard Mellon Scaife and the Endless Quest To Destroy The Clintons and the right fully normalized "right or wrong." Trump took it an extra step - it went from "right or wrong" to "good or evil." The press is still recoiling from Watergate; you gotta give both sides or you're partisan. The Republicans care more about unity than philosophy; a democrat has to be correct to be followed while a Republican who is followed must be correct. It's okay being called evil by your enemies when you have a team. It's quite another when you're all alone. A bunch of MAGAts together will shit on Nancy Pelosi's desk. A lone MAGAt crouched over his phone? History records the Beer Hall Putsch as a failed coup attempt that magnified the legend of Adolf Hitler. History records the Battle of Cable Street as a protest that led to the decline of Oswald Mosely. I think we'll see January 6th as both a failed coup attempt that led to the decline of Donald Trump. More importantly, however, I think we'll see it as the moment the Republican Party corrected from grievance politics. Not completely? Not immediately? But I think they're out of road on this one. If your current platform attracts Laura Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene, you have no future in legislature.
Agree with almost all of that. To beat my dead horse again, perhaps the portside haunches area this time (poor guy [both you and the horse]), they know that they have no future in legislature under the current rules. Hence the coordinated assault on state-level election machinations and laws. And SCOTUS capture. They know how unpopular they are. They know they have no good legislative ideas. Let us hope they'll be cowed like Mosely's crowd, but my god are they still trying anything they can to Hitler it out. It truly is bizarre how closely history rhymes, right? And so sad that all these lessons the collective "us" thought we once learned can be forgotten within just a few generations. Over and over. BTW, Shapiro & co. have already laid the guide rails for the next phase; "Biden actually welcomes political violence from the right, to help him get re-elected". That's some T-Swift "Look What U Made Me Do" bullshit.