Trump & McConnell make me want to puke or worse (sometimes much worse), but there are days when I get sick of all the toplofty moralism on the left. The call-outs, the shaming, the non-negotiable moral demands, the virtue signaling. Including too much of my own.
I'm thinking of founding a new political party, the Selfish Bastard Caucus, also known as the Sumbitch Party. SBC doctrine cheerfully admits that we are all mostly out for ourselves and then takes it from there. It's possible to start from such a premise and still arrive, step by careful step, at a place where the edicts of everyday morality hold up surprisingly well. A place where you understand that torturing children at the border, for instance, is simply not in your best interest, no matter how much the demagogue urges that you need to do it to keep your own kids safe and the Tesla parked in the driveway. No sentiment needed, here: the reason you don't do it is simply that it's stupid. Stupid because, for one thing, you are building up a reservoir of anger that will one day wash back over your own house.
In the same way, a hedge fund manager can figure out that hanging on to every last nickel he "earns," and then buying politicians who give him a free pass on taxes, isn't really all that bright, since a top-heavy, winner-take-all economy is inherently unstable and will collapse one day. He doesn't really need a heart; if he has a brain, that should or can be enough to make him pay his taxes and vote for progressives.
The Sumbitch Party will be sort of like diet soda: the same great politics, but with the virtue left out. And with it, much of the angst.
I'll mail the flyers when I feel like it. Not before.
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