Wednesday, June 27, 2018

A Pep Talk From Cranky Bear


[Editor's Note: I have been quite busy lately, and so I have decided to hand the reins over to my friend Cranky Bear. Warning: he is a lot less civil than I am. Right now, I think we could use that.]

Hello all, Cranky Bear here, drinking coffee and ready to give you all a taste of my mind.

A lot of you are really upset today. After all, the Supreme Court just decided to kneecap public employee unions, and Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement. Yesterday they affirmed gerrymandering and the ability of crisis pregnancy centers to misrepresent themselves. Shit looks pretty bleak.

This is all coming while the government is still holding immigrant children in cages. Just a couple of weeks before, the dotard despot effectively ripped up the postwar alliance system. He is also waging a trade war that is already costing jobs in this country. We are living in dangerous dark times.

Which is why you fuckers have to get up off of your asses and FIGHT!

Yes this sucks, but translate your fear and concern into action, dammit!

When the other side loses, do they engage in fatalism and hopelessness? No, they go out there and relentlessly keep trying to push their agenda forward. After Obama won the presidency they unleashed the Tea Party. As long as we are chickenshit we will lose because we are up against awful people who will stop at nothing to win. They blocked the Garland nomination, they are suppressing votes, and they are relying on the electoral college to maintain minority rule. They have absolutely no fucking shame about going against the will of the majority because they don't give a shit about democracy.

A lot of this is down to our mistaken belief that history is on our side due to our righteousness. Sorry folks, history doesn't give a shit about morality and nothing is inevitable. The tides of history turn only when people MAKE them turn. And as a student of history, I can assure you that shit has been worse than this before. That's not an invitation to fatalism, that's an invitation to FIGHT!

The lying fuckwits and craven crony capitalists and wacko Christianist theocrats up against us are actually few in number. They derive their power and influence from filthy lucre, and also from a pervasive propaganda machine. The thing is, the level of commitment possessed by your average Limbaugh and Fox devoted chodes is pretty damn limited. They might lose their shit when they see a black athlete daring to protest police violence, but they won't do much about it rather than buy another asinine "blue lives matter sticker."

We are younger than them. We are more devoted than them. We are motived by seizing the future, they are still wedded to maintaining a non-existent past. We can win, but first we have to commit ourselves, we have to organize, and we have to stop fucking around. For liberals this means no more West Wing-inspired insipid bullshit about civility. There's no being civil with people who want to wipe you out. For Leftists this means no more purity test bullshit and especially no more standing on the sidelines and sniping rather than getting your damn hands dirty. For all y'all, remember while you are coming up with excuses to not fight, there are children being held in cages in this country every minute of every day. Your bullshit is pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

If we are going to fight to win we need to commit ourselves to being in the streets, to striking, to talking to our neighbors, to voting, to canvasing, to running for office, and above all to ORGANIZING. The Fox/Limbaugh chodes will vote for Trump no matter what. Their support of his human trafficking and hostage-taking is proof of this. Stop trying to convince these people to change their minds. They are lost. They are not to be convinced, they are to be defeated, and in that fight, no quarter should be given.

We need to get out there and tell people why they need to care. And please, no more of this "when they go low, we go high" horseshit. Fight to win or don't even bother to fucking fight at all. Times are hard and getting harder. Things will get worse before they get better, but they will only get better if we get out there and make it happen. To quote the speech in Mrs Miniver: "this is the people's war, our war! Fight it then! And may God defend the right."

I'll be in the streets on Saturday, I hope to see you there.

Cranky out

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