Blackcap Blog

Published at 17:04 on 23 June 2021

Really, this is simply terrible. There are only two choices: uphold standards, or set precedents that the old standards do not apply anymore, and it appears Garland is choosing the latter option. This will only compound the Democrats’ coming loss in 2022, as it creates yet another reason for left-leaning voters to be cynical and apathetic about electoral politics.

Not much else to say but to repeat two bleak observations I have made before:

1. When the historians of the future write about the USA’s transition to fascism, they will fault the Democrats almost as much (for failing to oppose it) as they do the Republicans (for pursuing it).
2. It’s almost bad enough to make one seriously wonder if the Establishment “left” isn’t all just a deliberate charade to promote right-wing dominance.

Published at 23:14 on 22 June 2021

Earlier I offered one particular reason why the Democrats are likely to lose in 2022. Here are some additional, more general ones:

The political cycle. Remember when I started getting bullish about the Democrats’ chances in 2018? A lot of it was based on the normal political cycle: a party that’s in power tends to lose a big chunk of it during the midterms. It’s been a very persistent trend in American politics for many decades now, and this time that trend is not in the Democrats’ favor.

Redistricting. The Democrats have continued their record of not doing as well at state and local levels as they have at the Federal one. The result is that most states are under Republican control. Republicans have never been shy about using their control of the redistricting process in their favor, and their rhetoric in this direction is getting increasingly bold. They are almost certain to pick up a half-dozen or more seats due to this one reason alone.

Voter suppression. Scores of state laws are being passed to make it disproportionately harder for Democrats to vote. It is reasonable to expect that such laws will bear fruit, particularly because (with a few exceptions, like in Texas), Democrats have generally been afraid to fully confront such tactics. The latter gross political malpractice brings up the final reason…

General incompetence. The post mentioned at the start of this entry was but a specific example of this. Not only won’t Democrats play hardball with legislative maneuvers, they won’t play hardball on the campaign trail, either: they are generally too timid to go negative. It goes beyond an unwillingness to play hardball, however. Democrats tend to labor under the delusion that voters are well-informed, care about the issues, and will automatically reward them for their positions. These assumptions are hilariously wrong, and bear little if any resemblance to the actual reality of the voting public. The Republicans understand this, base their campaigns on simple, repetitive messaging, and as such tend to reap the natural and expected rewards of doing so.

Conclusion. None of this proves the Democrats will do poorly next year, but it sure makes such an outcome likely.

Published at 11:39 on 21 June 2021

No right-wing judge would have the least hesitancy about doing so. In fact, most in a comparable situation would have probably done so already (or very soon).

Only the judges on the Establishment “left” are so totally situationally unaware as to fall for the selfish temptation to serve as many years as possible. This is huge part of why institutions tend to lean right. If one side always brings knives to gun fights, the side that brings guns will tend to win.

It is part of the reason why I couldn’t join the great RBG Admiration and Eulogy Society when she passed away. If she had not selfishly clung to the desire to serve until age ninety (despite not only a cancer diagnosis, but a pancreatic cancer diagnosis), she could have retired during Obama’s second term.

At times, it’s almost bad enough to make one seriously wonder if the Establishment “left” isn’t all just a deliberate charade to promote right-wing dominance.

Published at 16:54 on 20 June 2021

Really, now, this should be Exhibit A in any argument made by an Establishment type of how radicals are needlessly divisive and impractical.

At a time when the country is undergoing a transition to fascism that desperately needs to be interrupted, the DHS wants… not to drag the putschists and discredit them, but to seek common cause with them by demonizing anarchists as well as fascists.

Listen, you fucking morons: Anarchists did not violently invade the Capitol. Anarchists are not phoning in death threats to election officials who won’t ignore the vote totals and declare the fascists the winners no matter what. Fascists are doing those things. The fascist party wants to destroy you. It is not interested in allying with you!

Maybe act a bit more strategically, for once? Listen, I get it: I don’t expect you people to have any love for radical left politics. I don’t expect praise for anarchism from you. But you don’t have to: all you have to do is shut the fuck up about anarchism and focus on fascism. Fascism is Priority No. 1.

Churchill even managed to shut the fuck up about his many disagreements with Stalin and ally with him. Stalin! Surely you can STFU about anarchists, can you not?

Original document here.

Published at 11:19 on 17 June 2021

Earlier I wrote (emphasis added):

The Republic is basically dead already. Most don’t know it yet because the corpse has not started stinking yet, but it is dead. Nobody much believes in (or abides by) its core professed principles, and this goes for the Democrats about as much as it does for the GOP. The lack of any meaningful, substantial outrage over 1/6 proves it.

Many people realize that emphasized point on some level. Many pundits do, too, but refuse to say it aloud because of the fear that it will demoralize left-leaning voters. If I were a prominent pundit, I would have that fear, too. It is only because I am a random nobody with a blog of approximately zero national political import that I feel comfortable saying it.

But whether it is said or not, a non-trivial number of people feel it, and it does not take a whole lot of demoralized voters abstaining to change the outcome in a system where power is as balanced between two parties as ours is.

The remedy, of course, is for the Democrats to grow a pair and start using what power they do have to pursue accountability. Conveniently, this will be an exercise in basic law-and-order which will appeal to Never Trump moderates and conservatives approximately as much as it will appeal to liberals and leftists. The logical effect will be to inspire and energize a Big Tent base of support in the coming elections.

In other words, that which is best for world as a whole is also best for the short-term political fortunes of the Democratic Party. The question is: are enough Democrats capable of realizing this, and escaping the comfort zone of their timeworn battered wife role, always blaming themselves for the fact that the opposition never loves them?

My money is solidly on this particular old dog being unable to learn any new tricks, but I certainly hope I am wrong.

Published at 08:52 on 16 June 2021

Almost three weeks on from the filibuster of the 1/6 commission and there are no signs of the House or the Executive Branch lifting so much as a pinky finger to pursue accountability for instigating the coup attempt.

By any reasonable and objective measure that I can conceive, today’s USA has less commitment to the basic principles of democracy and the rule of law than the Weimar Republic did. Remember, within two days of the Beer Hall Putsch, a putsch that failed to take over a defense ministry because the ministry was so well-defended, the top instigators were in detention awaiting trial. By contrast, it has now been over six months since 1/6, yet nothing.

The Republic is basically dead already. Most don’t know it yet because the corpse has not started stinking yet, but it is dead. Nobody much believes in (or abides by) its core professed principles, and this goes for the Democrats about as much as it does for the GOP. The lack of any meaningful, substantial outrage over 1/6 proves it.

Late last year, I had an estimate that the USA was within a dozen years of completing a transition to an authoritarian fascist state. The lack of meaningful response to 1/6 indicates I was being overoptimistic in that estimate. A far more realistic estimate is that the USA will become fully fascist within five years.

Published at 08:57 on 5 June 2021

Make no mistake, Flynn is a disgusting fascist who did just advocate a fascist coup. If he were still actively serving, he could and should be prosecuted under military law.

But he is retired. Any use of “Gen.” in front of his name has to be followed with “(ret.).” Retired officers are not officers; they are civilians.

There is no evidence that Flynn has any ability to immediately put his coup in motion. As such, what he said lacks the immediacy to pose any real threat of sedition. What he said was noxious, but it still appears to be free speech.

Those who think otherwise should be careful of what they wish for. Prosecuting Flynn will set precedents for prosecuting political speech, and those precedents will soon enough be used by the right against the left.

Deplatforming is, of course, an entirely different matter. Fascists like Flynn deserve all the deplatforming they get. Flynn is free to hold whatever opinions he wants, but other private citizens are free to distance themselves from having anything to do with his opinions. Having an opinion does not entitle anyone to automatic respect or agreement on the part of others.

Published at 23:16 on 31 May 2021

I do not have much good to say about how seriously most Democrats are treating the current situation, but I will give credit where it is due. The Democrats in the Texas Legislature demonstrated a willingness to bring actual guns to gun fights when they walked out at a strategic time and prevented a fascistic vote-suppression measure from being enacted.

When they did so, they rightly announced that this was being done due to the extraordinary nature of what they were opposing, and that such actions would not be suitable to advance the agenda of mere shiny things. The Texas Democrats also tellingly called on President Bidan and other Democrats in Washington to follow their lead.

Whether or not they do may well prove to be decisive in determining if the fascists win.

And yes, protecting voting rights, while not quite as important for those in Washington to pursue as accountability, is still pretty damn important. It is not a distracting shiny thing. I thought I had mentioned this in my earlier post but I had not.

Published at 06:33 on 27 May 2021

The kooks who claimed, contrary to the tiniest shred of evidence, the COVID-19 was deliberately created and released by the Chinese are now trying to crow about being right all along. They were not.

There is a significant difference between what the kooks were claiming, and what the official US government position is, namely: that the Wuhan Institute of Virology might have botched their safety protocols while researching what we now call the COVID-19 virus, thereby letting loose a new disease on the world.

Perhaps this is too subtle for the limited cranial capacity of your average conspiracy kook to comprehend, so let me lay it out the differences explicitly:

1. The virus has absolutely no signature of being genetically engineered by humans. The conpiracy kook theory claims it was. The alternate hypothesis being put forth by the US Government (and myself, and many scientists) does not.
2. The kooks are claiming a laboratory was involved. Us non-kooks are claiming one might have been, and that further investigation is needed to prove or disprove the alternate hypothesis.

It still might have crossed over from animals (probably bats) to humans in an unhygienic wet market. This is still a thoroughly plausible hypothesis. The thing is, a lab leak is also a plausible hypothesis.

Suspiciously, China has been uncooperative in the effort to investigate the alternate hypothesis. Such efforts have been quietly made over the past year, only to encounter stonewalling from the Chinese. So now an alternate tactic of public shaming and confrontation is being pursued.

This has actually been brewing for some time, with increasing numbers of epidemiologists getting increasingly vocal about how the alternate hypothesis really is plausible and has not been refuted. This culminated in an open letter in Science magazine advocating that the time has come to get pushy about thoroughly investigating the alternate hypothesis.

And here we are. But the kooks’ theory is still bullshit.

Published at 23:41 on 24 May 2021

Pick a pet progressive issue: the environment, indigenous rights, tax reform, welfare reform, police reform, prison reform, health care, student debt, LGBT rights, etc.

It doesn’t matter.

At least, it doesn’t matter in comparison to the imperative to hold those who instigated the coup attempt of January 6th accountable.

That the rubes who fell for the instigation are getting prosecuted is irrelevant. There is a near-endless supply of such rubes. More can easily be found, and when the second coup attempt succeeds, the initial batch of rubes can easily be pardoned by His Excellency, President-for-Life Donald Trump.

Make no mistake, there are only two options for the sort of thing that happened on the 6th: hold those responsible accountable, or set a precedent that such a coup is a valid tactic to use as a means of pursuing political power. If those who instigated the coup are not held accountable, there is a lesson in it: it almost worked, and it had no real adverse consequences. Try again, and try harder. It will probably work the next time.

People who instigate un-democratic coups d’etat are people who believe in ruling by force. Force is what they understand. Asking them to be nice and not do it the next time is both pointless and laughably naïve. There must be consequences. Any political order that fails to act in its basic self-preservation is an order that is doomed to fail, and to fail relatively soon.

The United States has already demonstrated itself to be astoundingly weak and timid compared to the Weimar Republic, and the latter is widely faulted for taking the threat posed by the Nazis insufficiently seriously. Within two days of the Beer Hall Putsch — an insurrection in a provincial capital distant from Berlin — the top instigators had been arrested and were facing treason charges. Four months on, and the American Republic has yet to so much lift a pinky finger in any effort to hold the instigators of our coup attempt — one that happened in our national Capitol building — responsible.

The clock is ticking, and time is running out.

If the fascists win — and they are fascists — there will be nothing but bad news for the environment. There will be nothing but bad news for indigenous people, or people of color. There will be nothing but bad news for economic inequality. There will be nothing but bad news for health care. There will be nothing but bad news for LGBT rights.

There will be nothing but bad news and there will be no hope of there being good news for decades. It took Spain nearly forty years to recover the democracy that Franco destroyed. It took Portugal nearly fifty years to recover from the Estado Novo of Salazar and Caetano.

Accountability is key. There is nothing the Democrats could possibly do that is even one-tenth as important as to pursue accountability. If the Senate blocks the formation of a independent commission, the House must create a select committee and investigate it via that means.

Less dramatically, but no less critically, accountability is key for the other crimes of the Trump Regime as well. The illegal misappropriation of funds for the border wall, hiring of unqualified family members, treasonous collusion with hostile foreign powers, corrupt business practices: all must be vigorously investigated, prosecuted, and punished. None must be spared from accountability simply because they are wealthy or powerful.

After all, Trump himself is no aberration. Trump is merely the logical consequence of a more general failure to hold the most powerful accountable. I knew that someone like Trump was coming the moment it became clear to me that the Obama Administration was not going to punish the war crimes of the George W. Bush administration.

If the Democrats fail to pursue accountability, their craven fecklessness will ensure they go down in history as being co-responsible for the inevitable consequences.