Space Marines!

From the WP - emphasis mine - :

"After the announcement, President Trump tweeted, “Space Force all the way!” For months, Trump has been calling a Space Force, a new, free-standing military department, with its own chain of command and uniforms. The White House intends to work with lawmakers in submitting legislation by early next year, a senior Administration official said, with the hopes of standing up the department as early as 2020."

Be still, my heart...

Before you laugh too hard, remember that the last time we had a Republican in the White House nearly as unhinged and probably less criminal that the current occupant we got these:

So I can't wait to see how my tax dollars will be well-spent!

And speaking of tax dollars, Charlie Pierce has a nice little piece that draws a pretty bright line between what the American Right and American Left have on offer.

Speaking for the Right, Laura Ingraham reminds us how scary foreign dark people are;

"In some parts of the country, it does seem like the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don’t like."

This is, let us remember, about an "immigrant crisis" that is not a crisis because it does not exist.

And, as Pierce notes, it probably sounded better in the original Algonquin.

From the Left...well, I'll let Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez speak for herself as a final comment on the relative value of "Spaaaaace Foooooorce!!!!!";

“We write unlimited blank checks for war. We just wrote a $2 trillion check for that GOP tax cut and nobody asked those folks how they are going to pay for it...Why is it that our pockets are only empty when it comes to education and health care for our kids? Why are our pockets only empty when we talk about 100 percent renewable energy that is going to save this planet and allow our children to thrive?...We only have empty pockets when it comes to the morally right things to do. When it comes to tax cuts for billionaires and when it comes to unlimited war, we seem to be able to invent that money very easily."

As we should always recall when the number of people who subscribe to InfoWars is mentioned, We the People includes some very great fools.

Why we can't have nice things

I had an interesting vest-pocket insight into the problems of U.S. politics this morning when a Facebook pal of mine posted a link to an article critical of the Trump Administration's migrant-kiddie-internment policy.

Because the VERY first "comment" was from some dude (an in-law of hers, as it turned out) snarling that "if you don't want your kids taken away, don't break the law!"

This was met (unsurprisingly, since my friend is pretty lefty) with a barrage of "Seriously, dude?" replies. Said dude's defense was that he was all in with lurrrrving him some immigrants, provided they "did it legally".

Said dude was then forcibly reminded that U.S. immigration law, as currently constituted, 1) makes it practically impossible for a simple campesino from the Mexican hinterlands or anywhere else in Latin America to obtain legal residence in the United States, and 2) makes it a misdemeanor to try and enter any other way, so that, in effect, the choice for a poor person from the hemispheric midsection is to be immiserated or imprisoned. That's kind of the language of an abuser; "If you just stop making me mad, honey, you would stop forcing me to hit you..."

Things went downhill from there, with said dude whipping out every chuckleheaded "conservative" Internet meme (Clinton did it too/first, it's The Law, Liberals are Immigrant Cucks, etc, etc...), concluding with the suggestion that imprisoning latino kiddies without their families was not as big a hardship for said kiddies as the hardship suffered by military dependent kiddies whose absent mommies and daddies were fighting for your freedoms, dammit!!!

Finally, after getting hammered for his combination of dopey memes, untruths, strawman arguments, poor analogies, and the sort of "repeating-the-same-idiot-thing-is-the-same-as-rational-argument" style of "debate" you run into in places like Breitbart, or the comment sections of your newspaper all the time, he pulled the original comment and ended the debate.

Which, frankly, is a problem. Because we SHOULD be discussing the issue of the United States and its southern neighbors.

Starting with the premise that the wingnuts aren't entirely wrong.

Oh, don't get me wrong; they ARE wrong, because they aren't actually arguing rationally. They're not really debating the ISSUE, but, rather, shrieking their fears of racial pollution, cultural submergence, the potential loss of white supremacy that are wrapped up in the idea "Press One For English".

But.

The notion that it is not healthy for a republic to have in its midst a significant, indigestible mass of people who are outside the civil contract, who are outside the protection of civil and criminal law, and are locked out of the public square is not ridiculous. It is not good for the people, who are prey to the worse elements of that polity. It is not healthy for the republic, which is forced to make choices and enforce them on a populace that has no voice in making those choices.

It's not even good for the polities those people are fleeing, because it allows those nations to avoid making changes that might help those people want to stay where they are.

But.

Treating this as the problem solely of those people fleeing those places (or seeking a better life here in the U.S.) IS ridiculous. That's my issue with the Trumpkins here. They're trying to take a complex problem with a multivariate and difficult history - including some VERY bad behavior on the part of the United States and its people - and simplify it into making it about the MS-13 rapists with calves like cantaloupes.

If we lived in a United States governed by rational people - left or right - we'd be talking about a sort of "Grand Concert of North America", which would address things as disparate as the impact of American gun and drug laws, the dysfunctional legacies of Spanish colonialism and native Latin American caudilloism, trade and infrastructure relations...even things as arcane as "could a hemispheric solar power initiative create jobs and raise incomes along with addressing the cost of fossil fuel production and importation..?"

IMO the problems with trying to do that here are overwhelmingly in dealing with the Right.

The Left needs to accept that there ARE problems with migration from Latin America. No, just taking a shit-ton of people in from troubled Latin countries doesn't help them, or us. There needs to be SOME rules, and some limits. And there needs to be a reasonable "process" that, if you try and go around it and get caught, puts you out on the mat like the Flintstones' sabertooth cat.

But the Right...shit, where to start?

You're gonna have to press one for English. Any solution WILL involve migration, and so just like Mrs. Van Schuyler shopping at the Lower East Side in 1899, you're gonna hear Spanish like she heard Italian and Russian and German and Polish and Yiddish. Relax. Just like those Fagolinis and Kropotkins and Drumpfs and Solokowskis and Cohens, the second generation will be bilingual, and the third will be wearing Jordans, talking GenZZ slang, and playing Hong Kong hip-hop way too loud on Friday night

You're gonna have to accept that your Wonder Bread brand of "conservatism" probably won't resonate with those folks. You're gonna have to find another not so fully invested in Being White. Oh, and maybe a trifle less sucking-up-to-the-rich might be nice.

Just sayin'.

A sane conservative America would be willing to go there.

The current "conservative" America will not, because it cannot. It's Trump, in all his insanely vituperative, libtard-hating, social-justice-warrior-cucking, anti-everything-not-seen-at-the-last-NASCAR-race-meeting glory. To change would be to deny its very essence.

So, it's pretty simple, and, no, it doesn't really involve "both sides".

The existing Left needs to think about "immigration" a little deeper.

The existing Right must be Destroyed.

"A Republic, if you can keep it"

We have not.

A tax measure that provides a road map to increased inequality in one of the already-most-unequal industrial democracies and shreds the social safety net woven in the depth of the Depression to prevent a hard turn to fascist or communist revolution, and that is "supported" by, at most, a quarter of the citizens of the affected polity (and that in the midst of a relentless, unashamedly vicious barrage of lies from the ruling party that suggests that at least a portion of that 25% would fall away if they understood how nakedly plutocratic this legislation is) is as close to the definition of "taxation without representation" as I can think of short of a genuine occupation government.

If our political system has devolved to the point where a coterie of neo-Gilded Age fantasists can impose their Sharia Law on three-quarters of the populace, then we have put a wrap on the American Experiment.

In a truly republican nation this would decorate Pennsylvania Avenue with a festive holiday display of heads on pikes.

It has not and will not.

And, as such, we have no one to blame for our failure to keep our own republic but ourselves.

Update 12/6: And a reminder that, as vilely oligarchic as the GOP has become domestically, it, and it's current Chief Executive, are aggressively moronic internationally, as well.

I suspect that the derp behind this reflects the degree to which 1) the Fraudulency Administration is chock-full of people whose understanding of geopolitics ends with the Little Golden Book version of the New American Century, and 2) Trump "foreign policy" is really not about foreign policy but providing red meat for the base. The Right has been jonesing for going all-in on Israel for some time now, but previous administrations (largely with functioning hindbrains, even if as evil as that living inside the carapace of Darth Cheney) punted on the Jerusalem move for the very reasons pointed out in the linked article; it provides no real geopolitical advantage for U.S. interests in return for one more brick in the wall of Arab ire.

I know that several here have taken me to task for being "angry" about all this.

But, frankly, what else is there? I live in Blue Oregon. Outside of helping defenstrate the reptile Walden there is no more I can do to make Oregon a force for the 20th Century in D.C. And yet, here I am, like Smokey the Bear watching these vandals burn the forest of the America I grew up in down around me in hopes that a tangle of Gilded Age weeds will grow in its place. And that briar patch will be what my kids have to grow up in, an America more like the sort of America that drove men into the streets of Homestead to be shot down by formed troops.

I don't want that, and I don't understand how anyone not in the American aristocracy would.

And yet, here we are.

Give me your tired, your poor, but especially your landscapers, maids, and nannies.

Texas state representative Debbie Riddle (R-Buttrump) has a great idea.You remember those scary, dangerous Mexicans sneaking into our country to speak Spanish, collect welfare, and generally de-caucasianize our great land? And remember how Real Americans (like Republicans) want to make sure we Defend our Borders and other valuable things, like our precious bodily fluids?

Well, Debbie wants to make sure that those Meskins don't sneak in here flouridating our water n' stuff, so she's proposing that hiring one of these sneaky invaders is a "state jail felony" under Title 8 of the Texas Penal Code.

Unless...unless...

...the "actor" (person) hiring said beaner did so "for the purpose of obtaining labor or other work to be performed exclusively or primarily at a single-family residence in which the actor resides..."

Texans, rejoice!As our Founders would wish it, your lawns, babies, clean floors, and cooked meals remain Free...and cheap!

Is there a fucking brain cell left in the Republican Party?What the idiot there said: get a brain, morans. Fuck me sideways! Can't anyone here play this game?

Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

"Our national interest is this: We need a beachhead in the Middle East, that is a democratic beachhead, not a party but a form of government. And to me, if we have a democracy in several countries there, it become a beachhead. It also protects us because once that beachhead is established it can move further and further and hopefully free up the people of the middle east. However long we stay is a military decision that should not be shared with the public."

GOP candidate Daniel Webster, September 23, 2010

"Besides, the city was of little or no use towards enabling them to overcome the enemy; and they had lost nothing in losing those who had no longer either money to send them (the soldiers having to find this for themselves), or good counsel, which entitles cities to direct armies."

Thuycidides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 8, circa 420BC