“This maybe the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it—that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.”

― Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time

Remember how, after the Nazis used tanks, bombers and submarines in their war of global conquest, the Allies decided not to use tanks or bombers or submarines or any of that stuff because using the weapons of the enemy to defeat the enemy was, y'know, rude and uncivilized?

Yeah.

Me neither.

Remember how, after Eisenhower and friends stomped the shit out of the Nazis, and Naziism was outlawed in Germany and we put the judges who enabled the Nazis on trial and we rewrote the German constitution to put unions on an equal footing with management, Americans were so appalled at his behavior that they sent Eisenhower packing the minute he retired from the military?

Yeah.

Me neither.

So here's my one suggestion for Democrats running for office, past present and future.

Ready?

For fuck's sake stop promising to "unite" the country.

Not only is this is completely impossible, but you look like an idiot when you try because it gives other people -- people who hate you and want to destroy you -- the power force you to fail.

It's like...promising you won't let me shoot my own dick off. Then -- haha! -- I shoot my own dick off just to fucking spite you. Sure, now I'm dickless and bleeding, but no matter. The question the media won't be asking is,"Jesus, man, why did you shoot your own dick off?"

Oh my no.

The only questions the media will be asking over and over again is why you didn't stop me. And if I do get any legacy media play at all, I'll just stand there, dickless, bleeding, pretending to look forlorn, looking into the camera, saying tearfully, "But he promised he wouldn't let this happen! He promised!!!"

Once the trap is sprung you are free to bitch and complain all you want about how this was all a setup, and how they did it deliberately. And guess what? The media will laugh at you as a trifling amature, because of course it was all a setup. Of course it was deliberate. They wanted to destroy you. They made it very, very clear that this was their goal, our loud and in public many times. And by giving your enemies the power to make you break your promise, you hand them the means to do it, while you're forced stand by. Impotent. Powerless to stop it.

Who's dickless now?

So you succumb. Maybe you can salvage this situation and still Unite The People if you just offer compromise after compromise, all in good faith of course. Breaking off bigger and bigger pieces of the promises you made to the people who actually support you, and feeding those pieces to the ghouls who hate you. You try to appeal to their innate sense of decadency. Remind them that we're all here to solve our common problems and serve the American people.

This is madness.

They have no sense of decency, and neither do the bigots and imbeciles who elected them. Their only "common problem" is you, ya' baby-killing commie bastard. And the only thing they want to "serve" is your ass up on a silver platter with a side order of Liberal tears to the shrieking, capering mob of meatheads who voted them into office in the first place.

And the icing on the cake? The more you talk of all the noble plans you have to make their lives better, the louder they'll mock and condemn you as a condescending college soy-boy Death Paneler talking down to the regular folk. Just who the hell do you think you are?

Hey dum-dum, you don't win elections running on hope and joy and a bright shared future. If you're very lucky, that might keep you the voters you've already got. And you also don't win elections by paying the Lincoln Project tens of millions of dollars to cut ads which are nothing but political PornHub for credulous progressives because -- Hell Ya! -- it's finally telling "the people" what a monster Trump is! Duh! Of course he's a monster. Republican voters know he's a monster. That's why they love him. That's why they vote for them.

Because do you know what you never hear Republicans talking about? Our bright, shared future. You don't hear them running their mouths about hope and joy. Fuck no. They talk exclusively about fear and paranoia and enemies. Foreign enemies and the enemies within. About how you and your hordes of foreigner rapists and trannies and smug, sinister college-educated bureaucrats have stolen the future of all right-thinking Murricans, and how they're going to kick some ass, break some heads and take Murrica's future back for all right-thinking Murricans.

If Democrats want to win, they're going to have learn how to scare the living shit out of the millions of stupids who are forever meandering around in the political "center" waiting for someone to tell them what to think. I have some thoughts of the subject for anyone who'd like to pay me an unholy amount of money for my insights, but for now I'd recommend watching Moneyball 10 or 12 times and taking to heart the lessons it teaches.

No Half Measures

Republished with permission from Driftglass.