the frog boil

So in the last two weeks, it’s become readily apparent that the post office is being deliberately sabotaged. To what end, who knows – after all, given the demographic that makes the most use of mail-in balloting, it seems as if this administration is sandbagging itself. But that’s not the point, not by a long shot. The point, as it has been for four years, is to flood the zone with shit to create an atmosphere in which you can’t knock down all the offenses. It’s like a hockey game – you can stop 41 shots on goal, but if they took 42, they score. 

The effect of this has been to slow-boil the American concept of democracy. Four years ago, the active sabotage of the post office to manipulate the integrity of mail-in balloting would have been an outrage. Now, after the Muller investigation, the failed impeachment, the constant daily sideshow of self-dealing and corruption and the ongoing politically-motivated incompetence in the face of a pandemic, it almost gets a shrug. Which is the point. Nobody can keep up with the crimes, the violations of political norms and traditions – shit, that orange fucker will probably stand on the White House lawn to accept his re-nomination and people will just let it go.

And now we probably have QAnon coming into the House of Representatives in more than one place, based off the results of the Georgia primaries and the likely outcomes elsewhere. Which means that even if we somehow battle through and win the Presidency, even if by a miracle we get control of both houses of Congress (forget about 60 in the Senate; the filibuster will just have to go and we’ll have to figure out how to live without it), we will still have a rear guard of the most paranoid, most conspiratorial, most batshit loonball insane redneck-gnostic modern Republicans to deal with, aided and abetted by those who think they can profit by exploiting the madness. And they will still have their amen corner on Fox, on OANN, on Sinclair stations, on AM radio and all over social media.

We have to correct our national values system. We have to make all of this Not Okay again. We have to put up the guardrails again with concrete jersey-walls instead of orange barrels. And the Republican Party is going to have to accept that they went wrong, that they poisoned the well, and read the tinfoil hat lunatics out of power and out of the party and live with being a rump faction of the Not Crazy Party, and let that be our political division for a while. Crazy vs Not Crazy.

I mean, the Democrats did their part. They nominated an old white male for President and backed him with a person who makes the dirtbag left see spots and scream. We met halfway. It’s past time for the GOP to do the same and show some fucking contrition and make good on repairing their mistake.

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