I thought signature collection was supposed to have started by now

Joe Biden has dementia.

The economy has recovered from the shutdowns.

Trump didn't send the army in to shoot black protestors.

Barr has the receipts when it comes to Obama spying on Trump.

Flynn has the receipts when it comes to Obama laundering money to terrorists through Iran.

Hillary Clinton is an alcoholic who can't make it through a warm September day without collapsing and being chucked into a van like a side of beef.

Bill Clinton has ties to Epstein, who did not kill himself. (And Bill's vegan diet has left him feeble and weak.)

The Old Guard Democrats are finished. And the New Guard believes things that will turn every low-information middle class voter in the country against them.

The Left is setting its (purple) hair on fire in the hopes of burning down the house that is America. Won't work.

Victory favors the side having the most fun. In 2008, that was Obama. Right now, it's us, baby.

Rally on, pedes, rally on.

There is a dividing line in American society that explains pretty much everything we’ve seen over the past few months. Maybe even years. No, it’s not race. Nor is it urban vs. rural, soy vs. test, or workers vs. loafers, though those things are all correlated with the real issue.

The real issue is ego. More specifically, protection of one’s own ego. You see, people need to be able to look in the mirror and convince themselves that they’re a good person.

There are a number of different stories people tell themselves about why that’s true.

A small group of people are pure, unfettered libertarians who believe that the pursuit of money is the root of all good. They are a good person because they make lots of money. These people are the head of the snake of the uniparty, but hey, if society is going to have sociopaths, better to develop those people into CEOs and not generalissimos.

A large but shrinking group of people tell themselves that they’re a good person because of their religion. These people mostly just want to raise a family, maybe grow a small business, give back a little to the community, and do the right thing the way that they were raised to do. There are those who can do it without the religious component, but not without the culture that a religious society provides.

There are a few true believers who tell themselves they’re a good person because of their politics. On the left and the right. We have some of them on this site.

There are true believers in other areas, too. The type of people who start charities (though it doesn’t count if they’ve already made a billion dollars) or have impactful jobs that they love and want to do until the day they die. They have a “life’s work” that they derive both pleasure and meaning from.

You can probably think of a half-dozen other ways that certain groups of people get their ego fix, but arguably the biggest group, and certainly the fastest-growing, is what we might call the new middle class. They work corporate jobs, watch Netflix, drink wine or beer, have credit card debt. They probably grew up going to church, but they don’t really believe in it, and they don’t go, and they don’t take their kids. They know they’re good people, but it’s hard for them to articulate why. When they see a post on social media articulating some leftist nonsense, they latch on and share it, because hey, anyone on the other side is a bigot, and bigots are bad people, so if I’m against them I’m a good person, right. So they’re willing to go along with whatever the trendy social justice fad of the month is, but they haven’t thought deeply about it and don’t actually believe it. The only thing they really believe in is recycling.

Seriously, there’s nothing that the middle-to-upper class loves more than recycling. It’s the one true sacrament of modern consumerist culture.

That last group are the real swing voters. In the short term, you can get them to vote red when they fear for their safety, or when they suspect that the blue side will jack their taxes way up so they won’t be able to afford that kitchen renovation, or in niche situations where they have a daughter who doesn’t place in the city track meet because the top three finishers were girls who were born as boys. Some of them will vote red because their friends and neighbors do. But if those friends and neighbors switch, so will they. (See: 2008)

But in the long term, the true, central challenge in this country is how to get this group, which will quickly become mainstream middle America if it hasn’t already, plugged into something more meaningful than buying shit that makes them temporarily happy. It’s not their career, and for the most part it’s not their spoiled-ass kids, either. Patriotism plugged that hole for awhile after 9/11. Now it’s just lots of HGTV.

I don’t know what the answer is, but that’s the real fight that we’re in, and it goes well beyond politics, and the real bitch of it is that I myself and most of my friends and family and probably a good number of the people on this site are a part of that last group, too. Politics is downstream of culture. But what the hell is upstream?

SO-CALLED “TEAM SCIENCE”:

• Take the word of experts in white garments as holy writ
• Shame their friends and neighbors into conforming
• Fight against the will of the Evil One (Trump)
• Believe that only strict obedience will cause the plague to pass them by
• Scared by the unknown and motivated by fear of death

AS OPPOSED TO RELIGIOUS NUTJOB RIGHT-WINGERS:

• Express a healthy degree of skepticism at what experts say
• Insist on letting people live their lives as they see fit
• Understand there are no real consequences from “sinning” (not wearing a mask)
• Seek out new and different sources of data
• Think it’s creepy when everyone repeats the same thing over and over

There have been almost 300,000 abortions in the US since the beginning of this year. That's over four times the number of COVID deaths. This is clearly a major public health crisis. Therefore I am calling on our nation's governors to lock down all Planned Parenthoods until we "bend the curve" down to zero. (Fear not, any abortionists who are put out of work can receive enhanced unemployment benefits.)

Maybe in several months we'll let PP reopen, but we'll maintain strict social distancing standards such that the baby and the scissors have to remain at least six feet apart at all times.

Surely they'll be OK if governors start using their authority to close down Planned Parenthoods.