National

Cassandra requested that I include the Del DMV's funny photo today. I hope each of you, and all of you, have a happy Thanksgiving today. I hope everyone relaxes with and enjoys their family and friends. If you have any Trump or Stein/Johnson voters in your family, resist the totally natural and acceptable urge to smite them. Come here and share your horror stories, but hopefully those are few and far between.

I hate the term "identity politics." It is a made up word by privileged white conservatives that privileged white liberals mindlessly parrot because Bernie Sanders mindlessly parroted the term because Bernie Sanders wants to solely focus all political discussion on an economic message to the exclusion of a rights message. But since the term is here to stay, when you see the term "identity politics," read it to mean "a politics that combats efforts to deny people fundamental rights because of their identities." Because that is what we Democrats and liberals and progressives do. Remember, we Democrats, we liberals, and we Progressives are supposed to be fighting for the equality, rights and opportunities of ALL OUR CITIZENS. Not just the white ones. Not just the straight ones. Not just the male ones. And guess what, when one party, the Republican Party, actively commits to ending the rights and opportunities of African Americans, Latinos, Gays and Lesbians and women, then "Identity Politics" becomes the mission of our lives. It is a monstrous betrayal for privileged white liberals and progressives, some of whom read and write comments on this blog, to demand we abandon African Americans, women, Latinos, and gays and lesbians just because we lost the white working class vote in one fucking election, or just because some racist whites say so, or just because one Senator wants the party to focus solely on economics and not rights. To these traitors I say a hearty fuck you, and get the fuck out. Join your racist Republican white friends and relatives. We, as Democrats, liberals and progressives, will do both. We will fight for an economic message that wins back the white working class and we will protect and advance the rights of minorities. And with that, Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

I'll be back next Monday, but in the meantime, I'll be giving some serious thought to what I can and should be doing in the next 24 months. The challenges we now face demand some serious consideration, planning, and execution. This lazy dilettante blogger stuff is done. El Som got a ball rolling with operation Carper, and I definitely want to figure out I can best help out that initiative. But there is a lot that needs doing. Whether we are talking about blog activities or off-blog activities, I'll need your help to establish some real goals and start grinding out some progress in the direction of accomplishing those goals. We have some tough times ahead of us and I need to figure out where to apply my energies and my meager talents. Peace.

The Personal Is the Political Is the Psychopathological: The Politics of Contemporary Psychopathological Double-Binds

Midterm Examination

Ms. THODE

November 7, Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment

KEEP YOUR ANSWERS BRIEF AND GENDER NEUTRAL

In David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest, students enrolled in the above-mentioned course were asked, as the midterm examination, to solve a Double-Bind. If on one hand you were a kleptomaniac, pathologically driven to steal everything you could, but on the other you were also a crippling agoraphobic, paralyzed by the fear of ever leaving your home, how could you satisfy these two totally opposing and overwhelming compulsions?

E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—What Democrats owe the country:

However attractive an old-fashioned let’s-pass-good-stuff strategy might seem, the alarming signals emanating from Trump Tower require more than politics as usual. If Democrats do not issue very clear warnings and lay out very bright lines against the most odious and alarming aspects of Trumpism, they will be abdicating their central obligation as the party of opposition. This is not a time for ideological and factional positioning or for focusing on the 2018 elections. Before they even get to infrastructure, Democrats and all other friends of freedom must make clear that if Trump abandons the basic norms of our democracy, all the roads in the world won’t pave over his transgressions.