I've been thinking a lot these days about the hardcore Huckabites. After the Great Default. When the savage terrible reckoning comes down. When they all become the Judas Goats for every single struggling American survivor. About that, and what we do next as we rise up again to fix the messes and then carry on as best we can.
I can picture Mike Huckabee the man gasping awake like he's had a seriously ghastly nightmare.
Only it was not just a bad dream. It actually happened. The glassy-eyed human lemmings from Red Gerrymandia? Well, they all truly did the awful deed. They all dropped their deadman switches in psychotically choreographed unison and jumped off the cliff together dragging the full faith and credit of the American economy with them. All howling the same nonsensical word salady jingoistic bumblefuckery and they communally dropped into the great abyss as one. Destroying billions of dollars in wealth. Crippling the global economy. Scarring the once unquestioned rock-solid reputation and fiscal trustworthiness of the United States of America for years to come. All for Supply-Side Jesus, Mom, Apple Pie, and for the greater Tea Party Glory while taking the US economy down with them as they all politically die screaming on fire.
And then? Well, that was inevitable. The blame. Followed by the pain and punishment.
The Huckabites were all there, in a muddled and scared fuckwitted mob of confusion. But they were not alone. Their masters were all there too. The Koch Brothers. Sheldon Adelson. The Deficit Scolds and Austerity Pimps. They were all in this together. All for one, and one for all.
Then it happened.
The grand architects of the disaster? All of those rich fat bastards who were truly the most morally and ethically and fiscally responsible for the rise of the culture of crisis and for the lingering chaos that came next with it? The ones all standing in a line with their bootlicking bottom drawer brothers in arms?
They all stepped off to the side together. All at once. Like it was all planned. Fuckers.
As Hell Came to Frogtown, it came only for the stupid minions and the faithful stooges.
They got to stand there in peace and watch as all of their useful idiots had to take all that ire and all the blame. Every acrid and fetid dripping ounce of it. And the Masters... the Masters were all shouting too. Faces full of rage. Fingers wagging. Some just waving one finger on each upheld hand. Cursing their most loyal and stridently obedient footmen for costing them money. A lot of money. For believing the bullshit was gospel right up until the conflagration that consumed mountains of money in moments, hours, and then days. You weren't supposed to blow the whole thing up, they scream, you were supposed to get the very big deal, else, back off until the next scheme was put into place to get the very big deal.
That morning, it was that morning when the fateful moment came, that minute that Mike Huckabee finally figured out that he, and his ilk, were just the syringe and not the all-important smack inside of it.
It was only at that moment.
When it was time for the big check writers and mega-donor fund raising machinists to put on a show and help the bewildered and angry survivors go out and break the old syringes to funnel their rage and anger in 'the right direction'.
Before it was time for the drug dealers to go out and all get themselves a new brand of syringe.
And as the price for the disaster, as we rise up as a nation from the ashes and the chaos, brearing scars that may not fade in our lifetimes as a country, to enjoy two, or four, or six years of Democratic gains and relative competence... ah, the bad old Huckabites are gone. Discredited. Scapegoated and blamed. Premature celebration time! Whoo Hoo! They are gone and never coming back! Especially while the old minions Masters are busy planning the rise of the next wave of Movement Conservative minion to be. Yeah! We won! Yeah! Just as the Masters shout Aha! Done! Time for a roll out! And. Meet the new Huckabites, same as the old Huckabites, just don't call them Huckabites.
That Mike Huckabee nightmare is going to come true if we default. But even if we don't, by some last minute and probably short term political miracle, the Hamas wing of the GOP, the Teahadi Jihadi, they are going to wake up one day in an America where the Overclass elite like the Koch Brothers just shrug their shoulders and turn the page on him.
And we are still hosed. All of us.
The truth is, there are are a lot of things that Mike Huckabee, and his thuggish for Supply-Side Jesus American Taliban cave-mates really don't like that also don't cost U.S. billionaires a single dime in tax increases or their big corporations a lone dime in profit. Default was not really the check-writers plan. Oh, they will survive it, and thrive again down the line. Maybe even engineer the next wave of useful idiot populism out of their mess. But the old thugs were just there to thug, and then crawl back to Mayberry when master blew his dog whistle. Not freelance. Not believe they were on to something bigger than their Master's bottom lines. Not to cost the masters billions of their own money. If the U.S.A. defaults on its obligations, the political suicide bombers of America are going to go down on fire. C.C.F.I.C.O.B.F. (Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed.) On fire and in a hail of blame deflecting curses from their underwriters as they get burned at the stake. Or they are going down because they have outlived their political usefulness down the line. Ruined as a brand. Wrecked as useful idiots for Oligarchy. No matter what, someday it will be time. Time to get another syringe. Another legion of living crack vials in semi-human form. The Hamas wing of the GOP, those once-mighty screeching Teahadi Jihadi the laughingstock of history and therefore no longer of use. Gone.
In reality. The OverClass can live with an America where only some things have changed.
Things that don't cost them money, or make them pay more taxes. Or regulate their works.
Where gay people can grudgingly get married. (Fine. Whatever. Buy a lot of stuff.)
Maybe you can even smoke a joint, or two. (Hey, don't get too too crazy hippy!)
But only if you and your gay friends, relatives, or peers can get gay or straight married, or your pothead college buddy gets to spark up on his or her downtime, in a Right-to-Work (or maybe soon-to-be Right-to-Work) state, with no collective bargaining rights and little to no worker or consumer protection. Where their is no consumer protection. No protective regulation of industry. They don't get fired for being gay. No. They get fired for the same reason their straight peers do. They get fired because they want a raise. Or a vacation. Or to from a union. Because they object to wage theft in whatever form it is pushed on them. Where they can buy products with shoddy inspection standards where you can't sue if you get injured for their callous negligence in the service of making as much money as possible. No regulations and No right to sue. No unions.
The Old Huckabites are happy. The Kochs get theirs.
The Old Huckabites are sad. The Kochs get theirs.
The Old Huckabites are angry. The Kochs get theirs.
The Old Hucklabites are dinosaur dead. The Kochs get theirs.
The New Huckabites are in the Petri dish. The Kochs get theirs.
The New Huckabites are ready to go. The Kochs get theirs.
Time to taint the reputation of what is in the syringe, along with the latest syringes.
Let us fight the Teahadi Jihadi. Yes. Let's celebrate when they fall. Yes.
Let's justifiably damn them all to Hell if they default on the nation's obligations.
But let's not forget that the game that created the Teahadi Jihadi was designed to outlive them. No matter what crazy bullshit they did or they do. That their brand is disposable. Even the GOP is ultimately disposable if it comes to that.
Movement Conservatism. The cult of money and greed in the service of Oligarchy.
The only brand that really counts. And it is unscathed because it is not identified, attacked, and blamed along with the stooges and the thug minions who come, rise, and fall when their times as useful are done.
We spend a lot of time as non-Movement Conservatives attacking and occasionally crushing human syringes, and leaving the political heroin trafficked within the disposable human syringes alone. They are just drug, or poison, delivery devices.
Movement Conservatism? That is priceless. The only brand that matters.
The question is... default or no default, catastrophic collapse or slide into irrelevancy, does the gay couple who can someday get married in all 50 states do so in an America where they can do better than their parents did, as well as get married, or do they live in a world where they can be gay, married, and permanent wage slaves and life-long serfs like their straight friends and family members who weren't born rich and connected? Meet the newest shit-kicking wage slaves, not so much different from the old shit-kicking wage slaves?
We need social AND economic progress. Hand in hand. Else we are freer in some areas of our lives especially that don't cost the powerful a single dirty old penny to tolerate, but more enslaved than ever in others in areas that do.
It's not enough to beat, or to survive, the Trials of the Teahadi Jihadi.
Or their engineered disasters and great self-inflicted national calamities.
We have to discredit the ideology that feeds the Right's virtual immortality.
We kill the roots and not the leaves and dandelion flowers up top, or the weeds keep coming back to choke the flowers out of the garden.
They default on the nation's obligations, the current generation of GOP zealots get the lion's share of the blame, we get a small window of opportunity to try and fix a mountain of none-to-easy-or-quick-to-be-solved problems and broken piles of rubble to repair, and suddenly the next fetid wave of GOP populist political terrorist comes in like locusts in maybe four to six years. Tops. Because conservatism is fine as a brand.
That is what I am thinking about as I contemplate the Teahadi taking us into default.
What we do differently as we (possibly) have to rise up from the ruins and the ashes that Koch brothers greed and wealth has wrought to rebuild our great nation. Once again working with the fleetingly temporary window that conservatism induced calamity gives non-Conservatives to try and fix their epic fail messes. We can't let conservatism off the hook. It's how these things keep happening. Even if we dodge a collapse. Stomping the latest syringe into broken bits and wondering why the political heroin still has a good reputation can't carry on.
Or we are all someday free to smoke a joint, or go to our gay friends wedding, or lots of things the old hardcore Huckabites hated and loathed... and then we can all get up together and all go back to all our dead-end no-future jobs, most or all carrying a lifetime of crushing debt we cannot get out from under as the Kochtopus sheds the suckers and chumps of the Evangelical Right the second they are no longer of any use to them and moves on to the next poison delivery device.
A gay married serf, a straight married serf, a single serf, a midnight toking serf, they are all glorious and good for the bottom line. If they are all drowning in debts, have no real protections or rights as tired and overburdened workers, and, as citizens who used to be able to vote freely, can see their rights to vote come and go. It's all good if you are a member of America's political terrorist aristocracy.
If they blow it all to Hell, we really have to fix that as well as we dig ourselves out.