"This don't feel like a victory today, bro," Bannon said, observing how Johnson's office had directed all incoming calls to voicemail after voting took place. "When 209 Hakeem Jeffries-loving Democrats vote for something, it just doesn't feel like a victory. I'm not feeling victorious right now. I kind of got this righteous indignation."
And there it is. It's not about governing, it about ensuring that your team is beating the other team. Doesn't matter that the government is avoiding a shutdown and essential government functions will continue to keep people alive, safe, employed, etc, because the other team voted for it, it must be bad.
Also, nobody* loves Jeffries. It's his turn according to the congresswoman whose allies still control all committee assignments and who's still one of the most effective solicitors of the legal bribes they depend on, so the rest just have to go along with it.
It's interesting that it's all about how he "feels", nothing to do with facts, logic, context, or any consideration of the effects on the people who live in the U.S.
All through Trump's presidency I kept telling myself, this is the stress test. The goal is clear, but the system was designed to withstand the blow.
Government is a mess. They're slow as molasses. This is a feature, not a bug. Our government is such a tangled mess, taking it over is way more difficult than just keeping it going.
We do have a few cancers growing within the system. Here's hoping the system works, and eradicates them.
The goal is clear, but the system was designed to withstand the blow.
The system was largely designed over two hundred years ago, and fascism was designed to take advantage of its inadequacies.
The Weimar Republic was modeled after the American government, and fell to the same gridlock and political schisms we are seeing happen today.
The system does not have a way to hamper fascism because fascism is a revolutionary force. The goal isn't to command the current government, but to destroy it and replace it with another.
As I see it, their only real goal is to make the government so dysfunctional that the people will demand a strong man to come and fix it all. And I think most people will say they've been doing a fine job at that.
This is why Trump is threatening to fire all the federal nonpartisan employees. They are the ones doing all the day to day work to keep things going. If he guts that entire structure it'll be total chaos but then he can issue decrees to his loyalists and there won't be a structure to push back against anything illegal, unconstitutional or unethical.
If that comes to pass it'll be a real mess for sure.
I read the article. What the fuck was Bannon trying to spew? Doesn't feel like a victory? It shouldn't feel like shit we're passing a fucken budget to keep our country running. You should be urging yourself not to check your phone so you avoid appearing disinterested. It shouldn't be a WWE match in this bitch. Fuck. Don't grow up kids, there are no adults.
That's the only language they understand. Winning and losing, good and evil, with nothing in between. The common good is irrelevant, the general welfare is irrelevant, and dissenting voices are irrelevant. It's "I get mine and fuck you". Full stop.
The part that I sometimes find the most disturbing is that they seem to think that's exactly how it is for everyone else.
And worse yet, in many ways the general welfare and common good are not irrelevant to them but something they are committed to actively opposing. General welfare and common good tend toward increasing the numbers of sane, secure, less-traumatized, reasonably-educated people who vote for more of the same in a positive feedback loop. And that is hell for anyone who's committed to a race to the bottom in what they perceive as a fundamentally dog-eat-dog world where we are no more than semi-literate primates.
He really didn''t avert a shutdown, he just delayed it a bit. House Republicans failed to pass a rule to consider the Commerce-Justice-Science spending bill.
Vote was 198-223.
When thinking about next year and the prospects for a spending bill, keep in mind that House Republicans cannot pass party-line rules on GOP spending bills.
This means next year Democrats will again be needed since the numbers can't change by rule.
The MAGAts and people like Bannon want to destroy the government. They say "deep state" and "administrative state," but they mean any semblance of government that isn't the fascist dictatorship that they want. Government for them and not for anybody who isn't them. Liberals, Democracts, college professors, feminists, LGBT, immigrants (excluding those who fit their very narrow ideological parameters), etc., all get labeled unpersons and you can guess what happens next. Steve Bannon has reportedly called himself a Leninist. Lenin is responsible the for the deaths of millions of Russians. (Estimates vary.)
It amazes me that this guy scammed MAGA donors out of millions with his fake build the wall scheme, received a presidential pardon for it, and still is seen as a source of authority by conservatives.
It's a win for the American people and for competent government. Small wonder it doesn't feel like a win for the MAGA agents saboteurs. They've proudly declared themselves enemies of competent governance and stability. They are, after all, all domestic terrorists
I'm curious to see how the the Klansmen in Congress will punish Mike Johnson. My money is on newly-discovered "evidence" that Johnson's been cavorting with underage rent boys.
Agreed, but that might be missing the significance of the moment somewhat. It apparently only takes Bannon and a small handful of other unreasonably influential voices on the right to send Congress even further into chaos and dysfunction, making the passing of one current bill a comparatively tiny relief.
And the other small caveat that this is the first time in ages their base has had to deal with a party that ignores them and wants support anyway. Which is just the way things are for the Democrats' base.