- OMGreg
- Posts
- Don't Blame the Dog, Blame The Owner
You know when your neighbor’s dog gets loose and ends up at your house? Digging in your flower bed, chewing on your lawn furniture, fighting with your dog? And then the owner rushes over apologetically with a leash and collar? The gate got left open / he ran out the front door / someone forgot to bring him back inside… lots of excuses, you get it.
First time that happens, annoying.
Third time it happens, seems like the dog has some issues.
Tenth time it happens, feels like your neighbor doesn’t really give a s**t about if that gate gets left open or closed, or what happens to your flower bed.
When talking about “Republicans,” it’s really easy to look at this group of 280-ish politicians in Washington like a bad dog. [No, I’m not going to do a metaphor where they tear up equal rights like it’s a flower bed or whatever, I’m not President Bartlett.] Republicans in Congress or the White House intentionally and gleefully do horrible things. In big ways and small, they are fundamentally reshaping America at a level that hasn’t been done in 100 years.
They have used the Justice Department to redefine the Civil Rights Act as a protection for white people from Black people, and are enforcing that in public and private spaces.
The President is tweeting commercials for his own products to enrich himself and his family, and is selling a crypto-coin while running the government that maintains the world reserve currency.
Members of the January 6th insurrection are now being given government jobs.
The Republicans have created a masked, anonymous paramilitary force that, sometimes in opposition to local police, abduct men/women/children even if later having to release them for being the wrong person.
They outsourced people who were not yet even convicted of a crime to a jail that wouldn’t be legal even if they were convicted of a crime, a facility [CECOT] that we now know used torture methods on par with Guantanamo Bay.
Out of admiration, they’ve built their own knock-off jail in Florida where the prime selling point is “If the people abducted from their lives and put here escape, they will be killed by alligators.”
Trump is threatening to use the federal government to find a way to deport an American citizen who won a primary for NYC mayor whose politics he doesn’t like.
The White House completed a $60,000,000 shakedown of CBS News because of a story they didn’t like.
They have passed a budget that nearly every economist agrees balloons the debt, that permanently extends tax cuts for the mega-rich, and throws millions of people off of their healthcare.
Quick aside about the 17 million people kicked off Medicaid. The Republican line is that those 17 million people fall into the bucket of “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Now, you can spend time digging into how many of the mythical “30 year old able-bodied men sitting on their parents’ couch playing video games” exist and decide if there are 17 million of them, but the Republicans do and think they’re sucking up money.
Now if you find the details interesting here, you should go read about this in your own time! Lots to read! But the short version is that Obamacare expanded who could get Medicaid to people making 138% of the Federal Poverty Line. Republicans are rolling that back, saying that the people caught up in that expansion are taking advantage of the system and essentially stealing healthcare.
And for reference, these freeloaders who need to be kicked off health insurance make less than this much money a year:
Single Person: $21,597
Family of 4: $44,367
So the explicit Republican plan, the one that is now going to go into effect as law when Trump signs it tomorrow, is to cut medicare from millions of Americans who are poorer than that.
And (1) evil but (2) don’t they worry those people will vote? Like, with a very specific thing to be mad about that gets them into the ballot box?
Okay, back to the dog / flower bed metaphor. Republican politicians are openly doing all these things (and more) with glee. Sure someone will get themselves a few cable hits by pretending they aren’t voting for a bill, but the Republicans in Washington are in lockstep to get anything they want passed for the next 18 months. (And just look how much they’ve done in 6!)
Here’s the thing — these aren’t sneaky moves. Almost everything on that list up there (save Medicaid) is something bragged about 3 hours a night on Fox News. Whatever media ecosystem you’re in, you’ve heard of Abrego Garcia.
So…. where’s the dog owner?
Where are the voters who put these 280-something people in power to make this happen?
Where are the 77,000,000 people who voted for Republicans last year?
We’ve reached a core truth of the blog, up here with things like Object Permanence and Tweeting Isn’t Doing Something. (Maybe I should make a list.) And it’s probably the most rejected core truth, because people don’t want it to be true or true in their lives.
And this is it: This is what Republican voters voted for.
Oop— I can hear the google searches ripping open for the thinkpiece about how we can’t blame Trump voters if we want them to see the light etc etc etc.
If I decide to leave my gate open, I am telling you (my neighbor) that I don’t give a shit about your flower bed. What happens to your lawn furniture or your dog really doesn’t matter to me, because what I care about is: not having to get up off the couch and go close the gate. So even if the consequences of my actions aren’t exactly what I could predict, they’re in a cone of possible outcomes that I’m pretty much fine with.
This is where people think of their sibling / uncle / father-in-law / coworker who voted Republican, and they start to play mental gymnastics to find a way that core truth… isn’t true. [This is really the same thing that happens when you talk about racism.] And generally the denials go one of a couple ways. (A second bulleted list? Good grief.)
Ignorance: They actually don’t know enough to be complicit, they’re dumb or brainwashed by MAGA or they haven’t gotten enough good information, and if they could just learn the truth they’d actually stop supporting Republicans. (Problem with this one is… these guys have been around for a decade doing stuff like this so if you don’t know after 10 years that’s… willful ignorance.)
Desperation: They’re so poor, so full of economic anxiety, or so scared the woke mob is going to take their beautiful straight son and make him become a transgender swimmer that they felt that had no choice but to vote Republican. (Problem with this one is none of the fears are based in reality if you look at policy outcomes,
Helplessness: They actually really hate all the bad things the Republicans are doing (things they openly campaigned on doing and said they would do) but now that the election is over what can they do? (Problem with this is: literally do anything? Publicly voice displeasure? Call a rep? Vote for someone else next time?)
Things are bad. And they are assuredly going to keep getting worse. If you thought what ICE was doing bad before, they just got $170 billion to do more. The dog’s not just in your yard, the dog has somehow gained opposable thumbs and is using a bazooka to livestream themselves blowing up your garage.
If Republican voters - the ones you know and the ones you don’t - see an issue here we’ll see signs. There certainly are many opportunities to: when this budget hits, when their taxes don’t noticeably go down, when inflation grows, when their neighbor is ganked by ICE. They are the ones who put these people in power, their ability to voice displeasure is baked in. If they need an example just look at the Democratic voting body, who spend about 60% of the time yelling at their reps and 40% of the time yelling at other Democratic voters. Sometimes, it works!
So. Has anything been fixed? No. But maybe…. maybe… the next time you’re hanging with your in-laws, instead of lying to yourself that they hate what ICE is doing just as much as you do, ask them if it’s made them any less likely to keep these people in power.
Sorry this one is ending on a bummer! If you want a thrill of hope uhhhh (opens threadbare sack called “Things That Don’t Make Things Sadder”) oh! If we’re legally allowed to have elections and if the DNC doesn’t manipulate every primary to nominate a 90s era Republican… it’s possible to sweep back through the government with both the public and political willpower to not only undo Project 2025 America, but burn its’ architecture to the ground and do a neo-Reconstruction.
So you’ve got 18 months to get your uncle to want to vote for it.