Check Your Background, Guns and Yoga

I'm sure you saw that the FBI ran more background gun checks on Black Friday than ever before. How many of those were assault weapons or just _weapons_ that have nothing to do shooting Bambi or turkeys or ducks or some other creature than humans? I grieve as much as I feel the fury, but I would not say more than ever. I would say that it is something I notice, something that I am forced to confront every time I read another story or face the _facts_. We can choose to bring the facts of our collective lives more fully into the conversation, or we can run inside and pretend it's all going to work out for the best.

I long ago understood that I can't spend a moment more looking for peace that is just another bypass, or attach myself to some soporific tripe about how I can go inside, how I need to meditate, how I can be light. If that's what you need to do, I only hope you come out too to read the article about gun sales on Black Friday. For my part, I am meditating with my fury and each day, with news like this, with more grief. I grieve for what could be, for a failing experiment in law and decency, because there are going to be no do overs, no taking back these weapons and what will surely follow. I am not numb to the next time they will be used to kill innocent people. I will not extricate myself from that grief or the fury I feel when the folly, the callow stupidity of it all is _right before our eyes._ We have different values, different opinions, and we are going to have to live with threats of violence that we cannot control and that will not subside.

I plan on feeling +every bit+ of what is human in me, and if that requires an alchemy to endure it, then that must be part of the plan too. For me that alchemy begins in world that still matters to me, in a political experiment that claims humanity and rights are possible. I want to learn every day about folding all of these feelings into a story that lets me live with _all_ of what I feel. Living with myself, that isn't _all_ the yoga I need. I need a yoga that lets me live in a world that confounds and defies credulity, that we cannot fathom but with which we must contend.

And I am not the least bit worried or afraid to feel _more_ of those feelings, especially the grief and anger. I prefer to be drenched in the acidic truth than tell myself that hope is somehow more true, superior, better. Yoga doesn't need to "heal" or make us feel "better." That's something it _can_ do but we forget what more it could do. It can remind us to _engage_ everything we experience, not to give up, and to try every single day to create a way to live with what life presents to us.

I am not particularly hopeful because the evidence tells me otherwise. But I turn to the auspicious, the power to think with feelings in radical affirmation. That affirmation can create the inner conversation that tells me that I _must_ address everything I feel, the _whole_ of it, no matter what comes next. What we become together will depend on how willing, how far we are willing to go to make the world less terrifying than it already is. Let's acknowledge the simple fact that it is _our neighbors_ who are armed, locked, and loaded, and how that makes us all complicit in the danger and fear, just like the villains want us to be. And yes, there are villains. Who do we want to be?

I am not resisting that fear, nor am I willing to deny the danger. I don't have a plan to stop the madness because in America I think it's plain that this train has left the station, and there is only going to be a way to live with this proliferation of the instruments of death. I commend the better angels of our nature, I believe we must believe in them because otherwise there is nothing left to love about this strange, terrifying world that is so full of beauty and wonder too. I take refuge in those who skipped the weekend's background check, folks who too know they must contend with the all of it, armed with open hearts and eyes wide open.

Crime, Punishment, and Choice: Franken, Moore, and the Jury

About Al Franken and the Rest
Opinion is Reasoned Argument, Judgment is Justice

A friend I admire asked me to weigh in on Al Franken, an issue I would prefer to avoid but won't. We live in troubled times because the more we _need_ certainty, the more that need will turn on us. The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is certainty. We need to know right from wrong but we also need to explain as clearly as we can how we have arrived at our judgments. And judge we will.

I'm not even sure that if Moore becomes the duly elected Senator from Alabama, _elected_ by _the people_ of Alabama, that the Senate has the right or the responsibility to expel him. Who decides moral fitness? How? The Senate or the electorate? Moore is a pedophile and serial abuser, and what if he is elected? Is Franken really in that same league? Are these moral equivalents?

First, I will let my partisanship show. We all have a bias. Al Franken has been a beacon of hope in a government that is driven by sycophants, traitors, and criminals--- and that is no excuse for his behavior. But not even his accuser is asking for his head or more from him. I think we’re headed into a place where very stupid antics, inappropriate behavior, and zero tolerance are all being equated. Of course, anyone who recalls SNL Franken remembers that it was not all funny, not by a long shot, and that he would do nearly anything for a joke. And that is a problem too, right?

So instead I ask myself this: does banishment fit the crime? That would be the question I would be assessing if I were judge and jury. So let's keep going.

I am compelled to look at "comparable" cases. It would be easier just to use the same standard for every case and call that "principle." That's a kind of justice I want nothing to do with, not in this case or any. Justice is always judgment and judgment is measured, not blind. So let's look at, say, the president, who not only confessed to sexual assault and was accused by dozens of women after he'd said as much but was elected after his constituents knew precisely that. We can question Trump's moral fitness--- who does not?--- but in comparison to Franken, would it seem fair to you to compare them? To me it would seem disproportionate. So what's fair?

Unfairness, as we learn from the strange story of the Sage Mandavya and a thousand others, is an unavoidable feature of an unfair world. So maybe Franken just gets the whole book, fair or not, thrown right at him. You are either pure or you are not. And that's a good idea? Are we required to destroy everyone who fails? Do we equate every case as the same? Does one size really fit all? Three strikes and you're out? Remember that one in California? You get life for stealing a candy bar because you did two other stupid things? I don't want to live in that world of "justice."

Others too might enter our judgment of Franken, not just Moore, Weinstein, or Trump, all of whom I would regard as serial monsters. And then there is the Catholic Church, which continues to claim authority over moral affairs. So perhaps lesser comparable offenders ---the sort that make confession and contrition---might be treated differently? There's a difference between being truly criminal and offensively stupid. What I resist is seeing everything the same. That reduces everything to the letter of a law that no one can meet. In the fascist state laws are written such that everyone is always in violation, this means the state can destroy you whenever it wants. Do we reduce our social mores to the same kinds of permanent culpability? Both the left and the right have been guilty of that. I hope we are not.

Alabama's "Christian" Cultural War and the Sexual Predator Roy Moore

Roy Moore's behavior today is an extension of the culture wars. His behavior then was yet another example of sanctioned cultural and religious behavior that invited his abuses.

How much have things changed in terms of cultural _values_ in rural Alabama since the '60s, particularly among undereducated Evangelical Christians? No matter how much has changed in _fact_, identity is not constructed merely of facts; it is constructed of feelings, ideas, traditions, and beliefs. Belief writes over fact as a simple matter of confirmation bias that is not only personal but also cultural.

There is such a thing too as cultural confirmation bias, which means that when a group or tribe feels threatened, confronted, challenged, they will as a group act much the way they do as individuals similarly faced with belief versus evidence. They will double down every time their beliefs are disproved or their culture is "threatened."  What white Evangelical Alabamans have seen is their dominance and way of life overwritten by values, ideas, and facts that threaten their choices--- nearly all such criticism being from "outside." Do not underestimate the role of insularity and familiarity to justify any belief or action and never, ever underestimate the disdain, fear, and obloquy that must be attached to others from the outside.

So it's the '60s/'70s (does it even really matter that it's not today?), and very, very few young women go to college. Likely far fewer than today. (Alas some change, some marginal improvement?) Education is closely connected to culture, religion, and change, and now think about Christian bible culture in the American South. Recently, Alabama's percentage of college graduates relative to the population is lower than California's but ten times fewer in numbers. Very few are exposed to much of anything but the local culture, church, family, and, in truth, there are few opportunities to learn the skills of critical thinking that would cause one to question or change. It is a world of belief and custom that views everything that is not itself as "others" who _must not_ be trusted or believed. This is at the heart of how cultural confirmation bias functions. (A few numbers: in 2010 in Alabama, 31.5% graduated college, some 189,000; Califorma the percentage was 37.6% with 1.993 million graduates, and now think of relative populations. Put more glibly, Alabama is no Massacheusetts, Senator.)

This is "Christian bible" culture: when girls "leave" the sanctity and safety of their parents home--- they are still "at home" during college, if they are permitted to go--- it is to marry and to marry as "virgins."

---Okay, just stay with me here...because _culture_ is not merely what people actually do, it is as much or more the _normative_, the _ought_ that defines values ---facts are not beliefs or values, which reign supreme.--- 

Girls are encouraged to abide by these traditional roles. Men are supposed to establish themselves as providers---this makes them older by definition--- and marry so that their wives will be stay-at-home moms.

Of course, more women in the workplace, more social liberality in every realm, continued economic failure and hardship brought about by the very culture that insists on these changeless roles and now add the function of these coercions and compulsions coupled to religion and its insidious cultural authority. Moore is the sort of predator that is likely not the least bit unusual.  This is because his predation is, at least in part, sanctioned by the culture itself.

One can imagine it common that older men go "courting" younger women and that might not seem all that unseemly---especially if that man has power, position, and respect in the community, he would receive all sorts of license. The rank abuse that is likely pervasive cannot be underestimated. Sexism and patriarchy's power is a cultural fact that is being defended here by Moore's supporters, not questioned. WE might say, how can the parent of a teenager think about allowing a thirty-something man date his daughter, and the answer _culturally_ is not necessarily the same in Alabama as it is where you live. And again, remind yourself of this: how much about Evangelical _belief_ or values have really changed even as culture, politics, and economics change?

They have refused change as far as possible, that being the very definition of their conservatism. They mean _not_ to change and to assert their prerogatives _over_ any culture _but their own_. This is a crucial point: they are aggrieved, fearful, and angry about how their culture is viewed by others. Now just how innocent, unknowing, and captive are young women with few choices and an upbringing based on obedience, deference to religion, and patriarchy? We can think of them as backward and deeply oppressed, lacking in virtually every skill required for a modern world, but that is part of their resentment too.

This is an historical and cultural situation that both conceals and encourages abuse, and what "the Judge," then "Roy Moore, D.A." did was stake his claims from within this form of Southern "Christian" culture. The whole Moore act is about that portrayal and the outsiders here are to blame. It's pretty gross, but it's easy to understand why criticism of him is taken to be criticism of the whole lot of them, especially his Evangelical supporters ---which is the majority culture of white Alabama.

Moore's supporters, who I would claim are still by far the majority of white Evangelicals (and that the vast majority of voters), take these accusations made on him as an affront to their culture, their religion, and themselves. They aren't going to flee him because some liberal Yankees find their behaviors reprehensible. They aren't going to give in one bit, no matter their doubts because cultural confirmation bias will invite them to double down. We can only watch, aghast that such toxic ignorance runs peoples' lives, just as they would expect us to feel about their cause.

The women in this story are victims we must deeply respect for the true courage it has taken to speak. How they will live the rest of their lives in these communities will require even more courage. But the culture that condones and encourages this confirmation bias syndrome is nearly as old as America itself. Expect Moore not to quit, even if Trump equivocates over his fitness for office.

Partisans in Name and Form

We're 10% Rational, the Rest is
Names, Forms, and Ideas

We'd like to think that we arrive at our political convictions, which include ideas about social justice, economics, liberty, and self-determination by having given different viewpoints their due. I'm not discounting that notion entirely: that we humans sometimes try to be rational persons. I suffer from this as a projection, both on myself and, more erroneously, on others.

I was professionally inculcated, not just trained to be rational. I believe in reason, at least partly because I believe that unless we Americans understand what it means to be "dedicated to a proposition," we stand no chance. Such a proposition may be also impossible and contradictory, fraught with historical fiction and failure, but shouldn't stop us. We all aspire to impossible things, and that's not always a bad thing. Still, I always less regard the 90% of human identity that comes with how we feel about ourselves and each other, and how this drives us to identify with names, groups, tribe. We are principally _partisans_ to the names we prefer, the ones we think are "us" or will keep us with our group. Ideology, conviction, and belief are a distant second to this partisanship.

The power of names and ideas needs a closer look. Are people really "Republican" because they favor tax cuts for the rich, the dismantling of the current healthcare for all program, or "the wall"? Are they "conservative" because they are, or for other reasons? Are "Democrats" really believers in social justice or women's rights? Are they more "liberal" because they harbor different ideas and values? Are their beliefs driving them? Certainly some portion of the issue is wholly present. But what's in a name?

The information age, the power of media is driven by names. We are "yogis," "football fans," "humanists." But methinks we count too much reason and _idea_ in the mix as we go forward identifying with _our_ name. We choose the ones that appear to represent ourselves with respect to _our_ people. Being "Republican" doesn't need an issue, it needs to be the name we think we "like" (think: FB). We are referencing an idea of identity, "a group defined by measures of class, region, religion, race or even just partisanship itself." This creates complexity because we may not actually identity _as_ LGBTQ when we identify _with_. We _feel_ with such persons as our persons. Now we may have indeed _very good reasons_ for finding our "name group" but the name drops we choose make us comfortable, they make us say inside, "I think I'm with them."

Trump has no moral core, no political principles or ideology. His hollowness is filled with nothing but immediate, self-adulation, rage, and unreflective needs that must be fulfilled. But his appeal to some 39% or so seems unmovable and, more importantly, "Republicans" offer upwards of 79% support in most polls. We need not dispute the numbers, they aren't the point. So why? It can't be the ideas, they aren't there. Is it the ideas that are there? Ryanism? Judge Moore? No, it's about the names and words and only last about the issues that make an "us." Trump uses "them" in ways that reinforce that process of choosing one's name. Put an "R" after a candidate it might not matter at all what she or he thinks, says, or does. It's an inoculation, not an idea. It's a way of saying that name is me because I am with my people, not those people.

Democrats have a much harder time creating "Democrat" as an identity word--- or even showing up to vote "for the Democrat". This is because Dems are a far more diverse collection of measures: we cross class, race, region, religion, and lifestyle in ways that Republicans are whiter, more religious _in name_ and _group action_, and less willing to use names that too far from their immediate experiences. But as superficial as it may seem, it's often in the words, in the names, in the identity that comes from saying "I'm 41% of Italian ancestry" even if you learned that from rational evidence of a DNA test.

Names are mythological, not rational. They point to destinations that are associative and interpretive. But like most myths that are meaningful, people don't interpret them as such, they follow them. I mean, they identify with the story as meaningful and the characters as themselves, well, the ones they like. Political identity in America is no less a mythical identity, driven as it is by measures of association with words and symbols (think: flag, kneeling, etc), that tell you "these are my peeps, the peeps I sign on with..."

When we gather soon for Thanksgiving, we may be sitting with family who are ours by some measures but not others ---you are blood, but not politically friendly. What you'll experience is a dissonance not only of ideas and of values but of naming. "My brother the Republican." Yeah, that hurts because there's more in a name than just ideas or beliefs, there's the need to have one. That draws us together or leverages us apart. It's hard to have a middle ground that that isn't just confused, and lordyknows, we don't love complexity either. What's in a name is us, and it's a lot less rational than it is a measure of feeling.

Moral Certainty and the Challenges of Compromise

General Kelly's Moral Turpitude, Trump's Empty Center, and Our Response to Moral Certainty
There is such a thing as irreconcilable differences. There are values that demand taking a stand. We must concede honest differences about values, how we choose to live, and what we can expect of others. What we must do to _live together_ is more complex than what we believe individually; we may face conflicts that challenge us to define our core.

The core problem is not moral compromise but rather moral certainty. General Kelly fails to see the difference. Trump has no moral core, which make his certainties as dangerous as his turpitude and volatility.

We should not be surprised by either kind of retreat into the redoubt of certainty; uncertainty is a feature of vulnerability, which is rarely understood to be an asset when the failing center devolves into competing narratives of truth. When facts no longer matter, the standards of argument wither. We must not allow _that_ to happen. This is another reason why Mueller is so very important. The only thing between ourselves and the abyss of falsity is our timorous human reason. But it is on that bare wooden plank we must stand to find truth's value.

To sustain integrity and viability in the pursuit of truth we must concede moral righteous to the processes of evidence and the tests of true character. If we fail to inhabit the seam between evidence and reason, fail to put civility and judgment between compromise and certainty then darkness can only become darker and light becomes falsity, dogma, intransigence.

Fight for facts and side with the powers of reason, the alternative is nothing but assertion and authority, our collective failure. We are better than such failure, and we must stand with those committed to the differences that allow diversity in a world that can withstand the graver dangers of mortal certainty over compromise.

https://goo.gl/xc27cn

The Party of Lincoln is Now the Party of Trump

The Party of Lincoln is Officially the Party of Trump
An Essay in Idealism

For all of his many serious faults and deep complexities, Abraham Lincoln meant to change America, not merely restore the Union. Before 1859 America created self-evident truths that were neither self-evident nor true unless you were white, male, and landed. The facts of American life were grim but for the few because even if one were born white and free, chances are it was also poor and always near-desperation. The struggles of survival have never been far from the surfaces of even those pursuing hard work and betterment ---provided of course they are part of the structures of privilege that hold for them those possibilities. If you were (or rather, are) born outside of the confines of privilege your chances have always been matrices fewer. Before 1859 our original sin--- the America built on slavery and exploitation--- was the most self-evident of truths.

Lincoln's views of slavery are too complex and even shameful but he eventually came to an arc of understanding those original American propositions from a renewed sense of their value. He made two points I think make Gettysburg his best and final principled stand.

First, that we are a nation that is conceived in liberty and dedicated to a proposition. Idealist, yes, and so far yet unrealized but Lincoln explicitly changes the terms of our conception. We must not and cannot be a nation based on the privilege of one race, one language, any religion or ethnicity or gender, or any culture but that which is conceived and dedicated to the proposition. He is implying, without much doubt, that the diversity of Americans must be affirmed in order to permit this renewed dedication, that we are Americans because we are ALL in liberty and dedicated to a proposition.

Second, "It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced." Lincoln looks to the present, to the future, to the living to realize the American claim. I think that _dedication_ would have and indeed must include a reckoning with our original sins and failures, a turn toward the American shadow, not only towards its light. But it is light that Lincoln sees ahead ---and it is shadow we have continued to deny and incorporate into our better angels. The Republican Party was supposed to be that reclamation of ideals and a dedication to those propositions. Like all of the politics of America after Lincoln, it has failed. But now, now the Republican Party is turning itself back, back to 1859.

Before Lincoln the ideals of America were nothing but lies used for privilege and power. Lincoln meant to renew, dedicate, and change that political and social reality into something _American_. Trump means to tell white, especially male America that _it_ is the _real_ America, the true Americans. Not brown people, not immigrants ---and who among us is not? White culture must admit others _only on its terms_ as subordinate and secondary. Trumpism is the New Republican Party, the one that rededicates to the lies of America of 1859.

Ironically, if one looks at the electoral maps before 2016, Trump's Republican Party was in fact the America of 1859. If one looks at Trump's electoral map what we see is the New Republican Party, the one that stretches deeply into the Union States, especially those with rural and suburban white populations. Trump's New Republican Party is the Old South and white culture-supremacist America ---not all of which will admit to the bigotry that is required. Rather, Trump's New Republicanism is culturally white, and that is the key to his success. We are in a culture war and, for the foreseeable future, Trump's white nationalism is winning. What it is certainly doing is redefining the Republican Party. Lincoln is gone. Trump is in.

Built on nostalgia, forgetfulness, denial of the shadow of America's tragic past, rooted in old time religion and a real rejection of modernity, its life-blood is resentment, anger, and, above all, fear. This New Republican Party will purge Mitch McConnell and the "establishment" not because these men are less willing to serve the rich and exploit the poor but because the test of Americanism must be loyalty to the leader of the 1859 forms of white cultural domination.

Welcome to Trump's America. They will rule until the majority of America decides to vote and figures out how to change the hearts and minds of the Former Party of Lincoln. America has not forgotten the Party of Lincoln, it has never become it. And Trumpism has now made that perfectly clear. What more we can become will depend upon our dedication and if we believe in the propositions that were supposed to guide us.

Just Another Day in October in the Age of Trump

October 23rd, 2017
This morning's sutras:
@profdbrk
General Kelly changed job descriptions this past week: from adult day-care shift supervisor to enabler. We become the company we keep.
@rajanaka
Courage is not virtue. Courage is the requisite to be virtuous.

October 24th 2017

Rubber Meet Road
Reaganism and the New Republican Party

"Establishment" Republican means Reaganism but the New Republican Party, the hostile take over by Aggrieved Nativists led by Trump, is well underway. So what's really the difference when it comes to policy? Does it matter?

IF Republicans--- Establishment and Nativists alike---can get it together to pass their enormous tax cut for the wealthy and corporations they will have indeed embraced an important feature of Reaganism. In truth, one of its most destructive and harmful features. Trump will sign it. Dupes everywhere will applaud and win nothing. A society entirely ruled by the interests of the 1% will need only scream Benghazi in some or another form and laugh all the way to the bank.

We will have to wait for another Democratic presidency and Congress to fix the ensuing catastrophe ---only to be thwarted by the next Republicans who will again balloon the debt for sake of the rich and force Democrats to raise taxes athinggain. It's dèjá vu all over again, as the great Yogi once put it. Do note that Reaganism also embraced the worst depredations of the environment, attacked education, sought to undermine Social Security and every bit of the social safety net, rejected civil rights and women's rights, and set the stage for _everything_ that is Trumpist racist nativism. So why now the enmity between Trump and the "Establishment"?

The über-wealthy who own the Republican Party need the _emotional fuel_ of Reaganism because Reagan/Conservative policies are in fact quite unpopular. As much as rich Republicans hate taxes, rural whites like their Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and don't just want to be left alone with their guns and religion when they need other peoples' money just to survive. What is at stake then are their votes. To win them, Trump knows he has to protect their religious bigotries from liberal secularism, appeal to their every fear of others, especially minorities and immigrants, stoke their resentment of economic stagnation by blaming it on "elites," and make sure there is a scapegoat liberal to blame for everything else. What's different about Trumpism is that resentment, aggrievement, fear, and bigotry are all Reaganism has left that is _actually popular_ among the rural white base. What we will get as the new Republican Party Post-Flake-McCain-Corker is the same disaster of Reaganomics coupled with the christian white nativism that wears its grievance on its sleeve in the form of flag, theocracy, and authoritarian law and order.


October 24th 2017
@profdbrk
If Flake and Corker believe Trump unfit for office will they call for the application of the 25th Amendment from fellow Republicans?
@rajanaka
Integrity is a contest of virtue that tests our ability to place truth above self-interest.



October 24th 2017
The "Morally Treasonous"
aka "Your Neighbors"

Flake has a 93% lifetime rating with the American Conservative Union and a 96% lifetime score with the Club for Growth. Corker's is above 80% with both the ACU and Club for Growth. These Republican Senators are not sane, decent, principled politicians. They are the tools of the extreme Right. So why is it that both would be losers in their Party's primary? Their warnings about Trumpism have been met with silence by their Republican colleagues who dare not speak up. Bannon talks about taking their scalp but where do they differ in votes and policy?

Trump has no policy, instead Trump is a "movement" that requires the sycophantic loyalty that Flake described today as "morally treasonable." Do we need to describe the essentials of that movement or can we accept that it means "supporting Trump"? The politics of resentment? Let's go with the "supporting Trump" because then we don't have to describe these people morally bankrupt bigots. But it is precisely this morally treasonable behavior that explains why Flake and Corker cannot win their safe Republican seats. This behavior is not merely Trump's behavior ---and this is the crucial fact. Such "moral treason" belongs to the 80% of Republicans who strongly support Trump according to the new Gallup Poll.

62 million voted for Trump. 80% of those voters are 49.6 million Americans participating in Trump's moral treason.

These are, without a doubt, the majority of voters in both Arizona and Tennessee. The new Republican Senators come 2019 will offer loyalty to Trump. Think of it this way: there are about 323 million Americans, and Trump's voters are 99% white. There are about 196.3 million white Americans-- not voters, Americans--- and as we noted nearly every single Republican voter is white. Let's leave aside how many of the 196.3 million white Americans are not Republicans or voters. 49.6 million of 196.3 million is about one out of every four white Americans. Let that sink in a little: one out of every four white Americans support Flake's description of "moral treason."



October 25th 2017
The Fever and the Disease

Flake said, "“I think that this fever will break. I don't know that it'll break by next year.” No, it will not. Trump is not a singularity, he is not an anomaly or merely the cause of the white entitlement grievance that is now the New Republican Party. Trump is _result_ of Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Bush because each of them wooed and accommodated, adapted and included the worst of America into their Party.

When their own propaganda machines appeared in Rush and Fox, et.al., they used these tools to cosset the anger, fear, and resentment that defines the ethos of the base. Trump may be an aberrant for his absence of conscience, shameless narcissism, but he is neither inconsistent nor a breach from the past. He is the consequence, the result, the consummation.

America's fever has multiple causes but all of them can be traced to two _kinds_ of facts---change and stagnation. The changes that President Obama represented were made out to be the embodiment of evil that whites could recognize as a threat to their narrow visions of life and privilege. The stagnation that Republican policies in particular have wrought ---endless war of choice, economic immobility, wealth inequality, science rejection---provide the the complement.

Flake was right yesterday when he said he had no chance to win in AZ. I cannot say this enough: Flake's diagnosis of character and immorality may have made him quit but it was his enabling, participation, and continuing ideology that made his political bed.

"Conservatism" in America is a disease wrought of fear, anger, entitlement, privilege, and _history_. The fever is just now raging but the disease is America's long failure to address its causes: bigotry, racism, sexism, economic inequality, privilege, and primal fear, all coddled and nurtured by conservatives.

Democrats have clearly played their part, especially when it comes to the needs of corporations and empire sustainability. We are in a permanent state of war around the world and no one, much less Democrats, will really talk about why. We are living at the whims of big money, corporate usury, Wall Street's dictates ---and no one has the power to stop them. No, not even Bernie, or especially not Bernie. It's capitalism's consequences mingled with the consequences of change and stagnation, fear and need, the lack of any better system familiar to our history.

Conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes is finally, _finally_ catching on. Look at his interview with Jonathan Chait in NY Magazine for the clarity of his own failure and his enabling recognized. He calls it a "relief" to be out of the conservative bubble because, well, it's a fever that is merely a symptom of the disease. What they fear will change leaves them stagnant; what makes them stagnant is the change they refuse to embrace. It's primal, it's real, and it's not a fever that will break anytime soon. Trump is ascendent, not over. Hang in there, grab an aspirin, don't give up.  The disease may be  here to stay but we must break the fever.