There was a time when Democrats were an anarchic mess and the Republicans seemed to be unified, often over even the most stupid issues, and it was like we were confronting a wall of stubborn ignorance. Democrats are still a mess, but it’s nice to see the Republicans crumbling, finally. And they’re doing it all to themselves! It’s not as if Democrats got their act together, it’s more that the other party has become too imbecilic to sustain themselves.

So they have control of the house, and they used that power to oust Kevin McCarthy, ex-speaker of the house, because he had dared to try and compromise and court Democratic votes to prevent a government shutdown. Cool.

The Democrats just stood back and watched the party self-destruct. Awesome.

In the end, Democrats went with the most satisfying option and refused to help McCarthy. Between a united Democratic front and the handful of Republicans who opposed him, McCarthy didn’t have enough votes to keep his position. His speakership is deader than Donald and Melania’s marital relations.

“This is what MAGA has done,” former Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia told MSNBC as the vote was happening. “Matt Gaetz and his merry band of misfits,” Comstock said, are “a destructive force” with no plan for what happens after this.

She then warned that, even if Gaetz is crowing about his victory, this would be “the demise of MAGA.”

What’s hard to believe is all of this is happening because of Matt Gaetz, party boy and accused sex trafficker and pedophile, a man even his own party hates.

By the time Gaetz (R-Fla.) finally made good on his long-standing threats to force a vote to topple McCarthy (R-Calif.), his Republican colleagues were so fed up with him that they wouldn’t let him debate from within their caucus, banishing him to the minority Democratic side of the room.

Gaetz’s successful fight to remove McCarthy from the speakership has cost him in his own conference, lawmakers say. The GOP on Tuesday was considering expelling Gaetz from its caucus. McCarthy, meanwhile, told Republicans he would not seek reelection as speaker after Gaetz pushed him out.

“I’d love to have him out of the conference,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) told reporters Tuesday. “ … He shouldn’t be in the Republican Party.”

I, for one, am looking forward to the spectacle, although it is destructive to getting anything done. There is an end in sight, though.

The MAGA movement is simply unsustainable. It cannot help but destroy everything it touches. Right now, it’s the GOP they’re ripping apart. But eventually, this urge to ruin everything will take out their own movement. (Hopefully sooner rather than later!) Taking out McCarthy, even though he’s been an ass-kissing MAGA loyalist, illustrates this reality.

There are many flavors of fascism, and MAGA is an especially nihilistic one. The right-wing media ecosystem rewards trolling above all else — especially over intra-party unity. In a competition for attention, adoration, and donations from the MAGA base, the quickest and surest route is to become a Joker-like chaos agent. MAGA loves a bad guy because it lets them pretend they’re “rebels” who are “taking on the system.” In reality, they are locusts swarming a field until nothing is left.

When the bones have been picked clean, maybe then something constructive will emerge. Or more likely, Donald Trump will be rooting through the wreckage, scouring it all down to the ground.

Have you heard about the Roman empire meme? It was hot on TikTok recently.

It’s a simple one; women approach the men in their life and ask how often they think about the Roman Empire. Clips of boyfriends, husbands, dads, and brothers who have never stepped foot in Italy casually admitting that they think about the Roman Empire often, even multiple times per day, have gone viral on the video-sharing platform, with female creators often expressing complete bewilderment at the shared obsession.

I had to think about that — I took several history courses on Rome in college, so I have invested some time in the subject, I’ve seen several popular movies with a Roman history themes, I’ve read books by Mary Beard and Colleen McCullough. But I struggled to remember when I last “thought about the Roman empire” — it just isn’t a frequent unprompted consideration. You know it’s all just spiders in my head.

I think it’s more a matter of being primed. It’s the converse of the “try not to think of an elephant” idea — when triggered, you start retroactively reviewing all the times you thought of the subject. Those men are just playing along with something they were asked by a woman, making it a kind of mansplaining exercise.

Although there may be an alternative explanation: maybe all these men are all advocates of the authoritarian “Red Caesar” idea.

For the last three years, parts of the American right have advocated a theory called Caesarism as an authoritarian solution to the claimed collapse of the US republic in conference rooms, podcasts and the house organs of the extreme right, especially those associated with the Claremont Institute thinktank.

Though on the surface this discussion might seem esoteric, experts who track extremism in the US say that due to their influence on the Republican party, the rightwing intellectuals who espouse these ideas about the attractions of autocracy present a profound threat to American democracy.

Their calls for a “red Caesar” are now only growing louder as Donald Trump, whose supporters attempted to violently halt the election of Joe Biden in 2020, has assumed dominant frontrunner status in the 2024 Republican nomination race. Trump, who also faces multiple criminal indictments, has spoken openly of attacking the free press in the US and having little regard for American constitutional norms should he win the White House again.

These are authoritarian times, maybe that’s what has some people thinking about tyrants and empires. I don’t see how you can look at Trump and even imagine there’s a Julius Caesar in there — he’s not even a Sulla. Maybe a Vitellius.

Look, this subject got me thinking about the Roman empire. Now you’re all going to think about it, too.

I dare you to not think about the Roman empire.

She had quite a career, and if she’d retired gracefully a few years ago, I’d have nothing but good things to say about her. But she didn’t, so I don’t, and I’ll shut up there.

I’ve been planning my own retirement, so it hits close to home. I’m still fine and I think I’m doing an OK job at my profession, but I think I should make room for new blood before those things aren’t true anymore.

I was not bullied much as a kid, which is surprising given that I was funny-looking, nerdy, and bad at sports. I would have thought I’d be a prime target, but no, I can only think of two incidents.

When I was in middle school, there was a gang of older girls who liked to intercept me as I was walking home from school, and surround me and mockingly tease me — ruffling my hair, telling me I was cute, asking about all my girlfriends, giggling as they made fun of me. It wasn’t your classical kind of bullying, but it hurt just the same, and I would linger by a corner of the school until they’d moved on, or change my route to avoid them. Even today I still feel the sting when anyone compliments me, so don’t. I only mention it for completeness’ sake.

The other incident was in third grade, and better fits the typical mold. There was a huge kid in my class, I’ll call him Huey because he had that kind of physique and was a bit on the dim side, and one day he grabbed me as I was walking home, threw me down, and sat on me and started punching me.

The thing is, Huey wasn’t the bully here — we later got along just fine, in part because I didn’t talk to him or about him. No, the real bully was the principal of the school, Pete Baffaro (his real name, boy did I despise him) who charged over to the grassy lot where I was visibly outclassed, grabbed both of us and hauled us into his office, where he pulled out a wide leather strap and proceed to brutally beat us both to the point I was uncomfortable sitting down for days afterwards.

I learned an important lesson that day. The real bullies weren’t my peers, but the officials who lorded over us and felt they could abuse us with impunity. Ever since, I’ve been deeply mistrustful of the kind of bullying assholes who get on school boards or other elected positions, or who are hired by bigger bullies into positions of power, who just want to control others.

This reminiscence was triggered by an article by AR Moxon, writing about the bullies who want to be elected governor of Missouri. He’s discussing the story of the Republican political candidates who put on a show of using flamethrowers on a pile of boxes, to demonstrate what they’d do to them there woke books if they get elected.

This is nothing new these days, really. Republican office-holders and aspiring office-holders have been burning and shooting all sorts of effigies for years now, indicating the types of things and people they would like to see eliminated in one way or another.

A lot of people are alarmed by this, because they understand that burning and shooting things meant to signify certain people is always the precursor to burning and shooting the signified people.

However, I’m told the difference between burning books meant to signify certain types of people and burning cardboard meant to signify books meant to signify people is a very important distinction.

I agree, actually.

It tells us where the permission levels are right now for our national gang of genocidal bullies, by which I mean the Republican Party.

I look at that photo and I see a bunch of Pete Baffaros, seeing an excuse to batter children in the name of protecting them. Don’t elect them, Missouri. There is no kindness in any of them.

I’m not going to mourn the demise of this organization, though: Project Veritas is dead. Dead, dead, dead.

Project Veritas, the conservative organization founded by James O’Keefe, suspended all operations on Wednesday after another round of layoffs, Mediaite has learned.

According to a letter titled “Reduction in Force” that was sent to Project Veritas staffers by HR director Jennifer Kiyak on Wednesday, the organization is putting all operations on pause amidst severe financial woes.

The rat-faced scumbag who built the organization lie by lie was already out, and is pretending he had nothing to do with the collapse. It was the other guy. Except, of course, that O’Keefe was the one who established the principles of pseudo-journalism and fraud that formed the foundation of Project Veritas.

O’Keefe, a right-wing activist who gained fame and notoriety for his sting operations against liberal groups, launched Project Veritas in 2010. He left the organization earlier this year amid allegations of improper spending of funds on personal luxuries. He was replaced by Giles as CEO, who has overseen the rapid decline of the once well-funded group that has in recent months struggled with layoffs, the resignations of board members, and fundraising struggles.

Earlier this month, Mediaite reported on an internal meeting during which Giles said the organization was “bankrupt.”

Huh. Go anti-woke, go broke, I guess.

I will never understand how someone could emerge from the dismal bowels of the Discovery Institute and be taken seriously, and not laughed off as a clown. But that’s the Chris Rufo story. He just moved off to an even more ludicrous organization, the Republican party of Florida.

A journalist and activist, Rufo is largely responsible for the rise of “critical race theory” as a major concern for the GOP. He has played a crucial role in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s attempt to transform Florida’s universities, spearheading the takeover and transformation of the New College of Florida, a small liberal arts school, as proof of concept for a new right-wing model for higher education.

Rufo has managed all of this before his 40th birthday. And he wants to go bigger: In recent essays, Rufo has argued for conservatives to treat authoritarian Hungary and Richard Nixon as models for a “counterrevolution” against the left.

Great. And here I thought creationism was as low as they could get. But then, this is a familiar story, or conspiracy theory.

Rufo claims that the American system as we know it has been overthrown, subtly and quietly replaced by “a new ideological regime that is inspired by … critical theories and administered through the capture of the bureaucracy.” Rufo’s “counterrevolution” is aimed at reversing this process; taking America back, starting with Florida’s universities.

That’s what John Birchers claimed in the 1960s! The American system then had been taken over by Commies…and now it’s all about the hippies and far-left radicals undermining the American way of life. It’s a great recipe for capturing the minds of paranoid idiots.

Except…Rufo has to make shit up to make that argument at all. And he admits it!

But many of his assertions, like the claim of secret regime change in America, are far less defensible. When pressed in an interview to defend some of his most extreme positions, Rufo ultimately claimed to be writing in “a kind of artful and kind of narrative manner” that does not always admit of literal interpretation. The retreat was necessary given the glaring lack of real-world policy evidence for what he had written and said.

The seemingly credible evidence Rufo presents of radical influence — the mainstreaming of once-radical concepts like “structural racism,” for example — thus ends up undermining his case. When radical language goes mainstream without accompanying radical shifts in policy, that’s not actually evidence of a radical takeover. If anything, it looks like a win for the liberal mainstream, which seemingly has coopted radical ideas and redirected them toward more moderate ends.

Radicals haven’t taken over mainstream America; they’ve been taken over by it.

Now that’s an interesting and defensible thesis: that maybe the ideals of those old-time radicals are popular and persuasive, but they’ve been effectively translated into milder, more pragmatic forms. That I can believe. I can also believe that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, while also seeing that in many ways it neuters the radical agenda.

But the notion that American arms manufacturers have been taken over by radicals is ridiculous. Lockheed Martin builds weapons to maintain the American war machine. It is not owned or controlled in any way by sincere believers in the Third Worldist anti-imperialism of the 1960s radicals; it is using the now-popular terms those radicals once embraced to burnish its own image.

Rufo is getting the direction of influence backward. Radicals are not taking over Lockheed Martin; Lockheed Martin is co-opting radicalism.

That’s how a liberal system works, not by overthrowing everything everywhere all at once, but by pushing progressively for slightly better systems, one step at a time. We need the revolutionaries shouting at the margins to push everyone in the right direction, but face it, it’s the bureaucrats who will implement it. And it’s always been that way!

Historically, liberalism has proven quite capable of assimilating leftist critiques into its own politics. In the 19th and 20th centuries, liberal governments faced significant challenges from socialists who argued that capitalism and private property led to inequality and mass suffering. In response, liberals embraced the welfare state and social democracy: progressive income taxation, redistribution, antitrust regulations, and social services.

Reformist liberals worked to address the concerns raised by socialists within the system. Their goal was to offer the immiserated proletariat alternative hope for a better life within the confines of the liberal democratic capitalist order — simultaneously improving their lives and staving off revolution. The New Deal, which was explicitly pitched as a means of defanging radical passions, is an especially clear American example of this pattern at work.

I mentioned the John Birchers — they hated the New Deal and Roosevelt. Even the slightest tinge of “socialism” would set them off. It’s the same with Rufo and his repellent ilk — they hate things with any hint of progressivism, it doesn’t matter if it empirically improves the lives of citizens, they’re agin’ it.

I do find it odd, though, that everyone writing about him ignores his personal history of anti-science, loony creationism. I also wonder if he ever really believed that nonsense. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just an opportunistic front.

This time of year, what’s at the forefront of my memory is my wife’s birthday, and my kids’ birthdays, which are mostly around this time of year. The thing that most people bring up around now is the ugly memory of 11 September 2001. I shy away from it, because while it was definitely a tragedy with significant loss of life, it was also an excuse, a justification, a starting point for excesses of evil on this country’s part. Also, a trigger for kitsch.

These days it’s perhaps more often utilized in memory of a great tragedy that happened 22 years ago this Monday, back at the dawn of the 21st century, the attacks on 9/11, when our own infrastructure was turned against us in an act of modern horror. So around this time of year, when we hear Never Forget, it’s most likely the attacks of that day being referenced. It’s on posters, and t-shirts, to help you remember. There’s a lawn decoration, I see, in the shape of the Twin Towers, which you can buy at Walmart, in case you think your neighbors might be in danger of forgetting to Never Forget. You can put it on your lawn, and maybe you’ll all remember who your enemies outside your borders are, and if you actually sometimes like to talk as if New York City is an unlivable hellscape full of your enemies inside your borders, maybe you’ll be so busy Never Forget-ing that you’ll forget to remember that you do that, at least until it is time for Halloween lawn decorations.

Oh god. $79.95. And the ugly upper-middle class house is a perfect background for it.

OK, AR Moxon mentions all the things we should never forget.

I’ll Never Forget the way the liars who had the steering wheel on that day bragged that they would create their own reality, and then proved it. I’ll Never Forget how proud they were of making us a country that tortures. I’ll Never Forget how lie led to lie led to lie, but never to consequences.

And I’ll Never Forget how the liars who came after—even less scrupulous, even more flagrant—noticed there would be no crime that an authoritarian-facing Presidential power couldn’t survive, no outrage that would not be normalized, no meat too raw for voters who craved bigotry, and pressed that advantage far past our breaking point, so that today we have an openly criminal party speaking and acting against any elections they do not win, and arguing in public and even in court that it isn’t illegal if a president does it, provided the president is an authoritarian.

I think we’d do well to Never Forget that the failure to prevent those attacks did not represent insufficiently aggressive national security, or insufficiently guarded borders, or insufficient domestic policing, or insufficient cruelty in our foreign policy, but rather insufficient attention paid to available information—an intelligence failure, in other words: a failure of awareness, of imagination, of competence. So it strikes me that those who still today insist on ignoring available information risk similarly catastrophic failures of our national intelligence.

Those are the things I already remember when the pretense of martyrdom rolls around every year.

You may have noticed that Tommy Tuberville was holding up military appointments. We now learn what kind of thing he thinks justifies his dilatoriness.

Tuberville responds to the Navy Secretary by saying the Secretary has to get wokeness out of the Navy because “we’ve got people doing poems on aircraft carriers” pic.twitter.com/JiTgCrFb2q

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 6, 2023

Tuberville attempted to defend his monthslong blockade by fighting the culture war on “wokeness.”

“Right now we are so woke in the military, we are losing recruits right and left,” he said. “Secretary [Carlos] Del Toro of the Navy he needs to get to building ships; he needs to get to recruiting; and he needs to get wokeness out of our Navy. We’ve got people doing poems on aircraft carriers over the loudspeaker. It is absolutely insane the direction that we’re headed in our military.”

OH MY GOD. Sailors might hear poetry. Real men don’t read or listen to poetry, or pay any attention to song lyrics. It is not surprising at all that a moron like Tuberville lacks all music or prosody in his brain. Poor man.

Maybe. This outcome of the January 6 insurrection trials gives me hope.

Former Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, described by a judge as “the ultimate leader” who “was motivated by revolutionary zeal” in organizing members of his far-right group to spark the breach of the U.S. Capitol, was sentenced Tuesday to 22 years in prison, the longest sentence yet among the hundreds convicted of disrupting the peaceful transfer of presidential power on Jan. 6, 2021.

Let the punishment match the crime, and I think that’s a good punitive sentence that will discourage others from repeating this escapade. Even better: Tarrio was not one of the stupid goons who smashed windows and pounded on cops and barged into offices — he was a high level officer who stood back, wasn’t even in Washington DC, but incited the stupid goons and fired up the insurrection.

Tarrio, 39, was convicted of seditious conspiracy and obstructing the congressional proceeding meant to confirm the 2020 presidential election as part of a riot that U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly said broke America’s long democratic tradition of peaceful transfers of power. Tarrio was the last of five Proud Boys to be sentenced after all were convicted in May following a 15-week trial.

Tarrio, of Miami, was convicted even though he wasn’t in Washington on Jan. 6. He had been arrested two days earlier for burning a “Black Lives Matter” flag torn down from a D.C. church during an earlier protest in the city following President Donald Trump’s defeat. He was banned from the city as a result.

Who else is now pretending innocence because they didn’t actually swing a stick? Who else was just telling goons to smash things? Maybe that person is going to face a sentence as severe as Tarrio’s. Lock ’em up for a decade or two.

But also, this got me wondering. I don’t know any Proud Boys, have never even met one, and if I did, I’m likely to just turn on my heel and walk away. Do you know any? It’s weird how this tiny, obnoxious fringe group is getting so much attention when what it deserves is revulsion, and how it has been a tiny bit successful in puncturing the stability of the country.

Similarly, who knows a real live Groyper? These are groups with insane, hateful ideologies that have somehow risen high in the popular (or, at least, media) consciousness, and have some strange aversive influence. I mean, seriously, if one of them showed up at a party at my house, they’d get the bum’s rush, and if they wouldn’t leave, I’d be calling the cops. I don’t understand how these people walk in public without getting their shoes spit on constantly.