the move to overt racism is a heartfelt evil, and yet…

Republicans – and in particular, Trump – are having their asses handed to them on abortion and IVF. Republicans in the Senate just blocked another bill protecting IVF access, because of course they did; everything I’ve always said about their hatred of and control over women and fertility continues to be absolutely true.

Similarly, being the Party of Plague, their plans to appoint plaguemongers to head the FDA, DHHS, NIH, and CDC won’t play well either. But there are political bills to pay, and they will by the gods pay them, no matter who it kills. It’s the only kind of bill Trump does ever pay.

Y’know what else isn’t playing well? The fact that the MAGA influencers and activists that were being paid by the Russian government damn well knew what was going on, or at very, very least, all their handlers did. Not enough people are paying attention to it, but it’s bad, and only getting worse by the day.

(And I do wish people would stop using “alleged” this this, because for fuck’s sake, here’s Margarita Simonyan, the literal head of Russia Today, talking about how they set up these operations on the way out of the US. This is all freely admitted on Russian domestic television. “Alleged” my shiny metal ass. “Confirmed by the organizers.” How’s that?)

But they, really, really don’t want people talking about any of this shit, or any of the other dozens of things which have gone so horribly wrong for them these last several weeks. They particularly don’t want to talk about Taylor Swift endorsing Harris.

So knowing they’ve got to change the subject and desperate for anything to change the topic, they’ve gone all-in on…

Overt white nationalist racism.

And mark the day: on September 17th the “conservative movement” went full-on back to openly-racist-hate “just chant ni**er” mode, with National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry going off about “Haitian ni**ers” on the Megyn Kelly Show, and nobody on camera raising a single word against it.

They’ve gone full in on racist attacks in Congress on people testifying before Congress. I mean that’s Laura Loomer shit right there, and with her hanging out with Cheeto on the regular these days, that’s absolutely not a coincidence.

The top of the ticket have gone in with attacks on legal immigrants if they happen to be Black (and particularly if they happen to be Haitian), dropping the pretence that they are about paper status rather than race, literally declaring them to be not human, to be animals, and creating new-type blood libel against them at the highest levels to generate stochastic terrorism and violence.

In short, straight up Nazi talk and strategy.

I mean, of course they’re all white supremacists. No shit. But you have to go back a bunch of decades to get where openly throwing the N-word around out there wouldn’t get you shut down, and that’s where they’ve gone, and their media’s gone there with them.

And the thing is: all of this is really important, and must be condemned and must be talked about. But imagine how bad their internal numbers have to be for them to decide that going full white nationalist racist will hurt them less than anything else they could say or do right now.

The numbers on everything else are apparently so bad that they’re going with white nationalism as a fucking distraction. Which I don’t like typing because it looks like I am downplaying it and I want to scream holy shit, I am not downplaying it, it is a fucking nightmare… but the way they’re working it tells me how they see it, and they see it as a distraction.

Looking at the last few days, I really do think that’s the strategy part of this. And despite the clusterfuckery that is their campaign and their party, they do still actually have strategy, and are implementing it.

Think about that when you think about where they are, and think about where they wanted to be, and think about where they should be. It shows weakness and desperation, not any kind of strength.

The worst part is, with their fundamentalist base – a base that’s starting to slip – I think they’re right.

With everyone else, well, that’s where we have to prove them wrong. To show that, as Harris says, we will not go back.

Yeah, okay, Lowry’s tried to walk his part back down, saying he misspoke or some shit, but fuck that guy. The recording is at the link, go listen to it yourself if you want. It’s not garbled, he’s not stumbling over another word, It’s clear as a bell. He said exactly what he meant and he’s a goddamn liar when he says he didn’t.

He, and they, have crossed a rubicon, a line into cartoonish and yet horribly real evil, ripping into a vein of cynicism and violence that will kill people, just as much if not moreso than their Party of Plague positions on medicine.

And that’s what they want.

Which brings us to the opportunity.

This is an opportunity. It’s a line-breaking and it’s a moment of weakness, it’s them knowingly and openly admitting they are lying, using their own mouths, and if you have the opportunity, you should use that.

You have to get to any Trumpy friends or family you might have who aren’t actually full-on knowingly fascist. If they’re still pretending to be normal people, I think you have to get them to admit this is actually happening. In my experience, that’s always been the hardest part – to get them to admit that it’s real, that Trump and the GOP mean it, that it’s actually a thing that’s actually going on, no matter how much they want to minimise, to refuse, to de-prioritise, to deflect.

Because normal white people might be racist – because racism permeates our culture – but the overwhelming majority don’t want to admit being racist, and certainly not intentionally and knowingly racist.

That’s still true, even now.

Hopefully you’ve been chipping away at them for a while, day at a time, like I’ve suggested. If you haven’t, now’s still the time to try.

This is where Republicans and MAGA are with six and a half weeks still to go. They’re going asymptotic at this point, too, so Imagine where they’ll be in the final two weeks.

It’s rubber hitting the road time, so get through to anyone you can now. There are a lot of old-line Republicans sounding the alarm this election – unlike the last two – so you’ve got all the old Republicans you can quote that you could possibly want. Use that; that’s literally what those Harris endorsements are for.

It’s hard. But it’s necessary. You’ll likely fail. But you might not.

And it really is for all the marbles.

46 days remain.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.