- The standard MSM narrative asks whether the Dems have gone too far left. Not as many queries about whether the batshit crazy Repubs who go to white supremacist rallies and want to check the genitals of school kids have maybe gone over the edge of the rightwing cliff. Normalization is complete.
- I have a relative who is a QAnon zombie and Trump supporter, and who was in Washington on January 6th. This person also has a lot of social media vitriol and advice for Joe Biden, most recently concerning Ukraine. (It's odd, though, how Trump's bromance with Putin is never mentioned.) I don't interact with this person, but if I did, it would only be to say that I discount the opinions of traitors. In the same category as Hawley and Cruz.
- It sure seems to me that what I'm hearing from the corporate Dems is that the only way to get past the obstruction of the Manchins and Sinemas (and there are others, believe me) in order to pass good stuff like Build Back Better, is to elect more Democrats to the Senate. And the only way to do that is to make sure we don't run those awful progressives. Instead, we need to run more centrist folks--presumably like Manchin and Sinema. Rinse, repeat. Stop blaming the voters and start getting shit done.
- Too often political issues are reduced to faux-binary choices. Either totally open borders or lock 'em in cages, as if there aren't other possibilities that are more decent and humane. The current crime panic is another case in point. The Ted Cruzes (and now too many Dems) tell us that our choice is between raging crime rates on the one hand, and letting cops shoot an unarmed person once in a while and reinstituting stop-and-frisk. Believe it or not, progressives are not in favor of crime. But this progressive is not in favor of, and will not support, unconstitutional solutions (some of which have dubious effectiveness anyway).
- Lots of book banning going on. If all these kids from conservative (there's a more appropriate adjective that I am choosing not to use here) families need such big safe spaces, we could excuse them when these books are discussed and give them participation trophies. Everyone could be happy.
- It surely seems like the Biden administration is more and more making policy decisions based on minimizing some sort of anticipated "backlash" rather than just doing the right thing. Guess what? If you do the right thing, you're going to get batshit crazy backlash. And if you do the half-right thing, you're also going to get batshit crazy backlash. Just do the right thing. That's what I like about Bernie. No equivocation.
