Eight Weeks a Day
Memo to the Future:
We don’t know what horrors you’ll be seeing — American pandemic deaths just passed a quarter-million here, and what was frozen on our planet is rapidly thawing — but we’d like to tell you about our week.
Remember the United States? The federal republic version, not the warring fascist and socialist versions, each claiming the name? Yeah, still here, this moment, anyway. But it came close!
That was our week, seeing how close it would come to falling apart.
This might surprise you, but before citizens of the Socialist States of America voted for a leader directly, and subjects of the Fascist States vied for adoption under the rules of Dear Leader family succession, we had something called the Electoral College. Started out as a hiring committee (you know that part), quickly became something else, finally settled into a kind of appendix of the body politic, until it burst.
Twice.
And almost a third and final time, except not really, but that’s what last week was about, the not-really-but-maybe part.
If you’ve been reading our Dispatches Into the Unknown, you know we’re something of a civics nerd. Not the grand traditions of civic life — what do you take us for, a flaming centrist? — but the mechanics of it, how shit works. There’s a game to be played, with rules and everything, because if you don’t play the game, you end up with Politics By Other Means, and you people of the future know how that goes.
(By the way: Cascadia? Did that happen? We had a bet riding on it.)
Anyway, the game: Every state got a team, and every team got a handful of votes, and most votes won. Which was how it was looking this time, until the losers tried to claim the teams they lost.
Mind you, you can’t just do that — or couldn’t at the time, we don’t how it’s going for you in the SSA or FSA or Cascadia, although we guess the biggest stash wins the latter. You have to pick off a team’s players. And the losers tried that at first, what became known as the Four Seasons Gambit, and when that failed, they got creative.
Because the winners don’t just get to name their teams. They have to be certified winners, and if you can stop them from getting the Seal of Approval — no, not a circus animal, but you’re forgiven for thinking that — then maybe you can name your own team, the team you wanted in the first place. It’s in the rules!
No, really! We looked it up! We looked up a lot of shit last week. It was like being in grad school again. You don’t walk into seminar without coming armed.
(We mean metaphorically armed, Fascist States. Higher education wasn’t yet conducted by warring factions, it just felt that way.)
Thing is, though, naming your state team wasn’t even the end if it. Because before the team votes were counted, Congress could challenge each team, the result of which might be naming the other team instead, or no team at all, at which point you still might have enough teams on your side to win, or maybe nobody had enough teams.
Nobody knew! That was in the rules too, how it could work both ways, at which point you would need the umpires to decide, which is why buying umpires had already become a national pastime.
And if things made it that far, the final decision would go to the House, where every state got one vote, no matter how many players it had on its team — and no matter how those players got there in the first place. (It’s like school districts: If the star quarterback lives a block away from your school’s boundary, change the boundary.)
Whew! That’s quite a lot to take in, isn’t it! You could spend weeks, months, working out the nuances!
We had, like, four days. Plus thinking about how the fans would react to all this, because it’s a spectator sport, too. Everybody’s watching!
So why didn’t it happen? How did we end up putting off the fall of democracy for another two or four or ten years?
It wasn’t because the losers gave up. It wasn’t because the losers didn’t still want it. In the end, there were just too many teams to flip, is all. It came that close, that close to an effective coup that would have ended the country as we know it.
And next time? Who knows! You’re the future, you tell us.
I’m not really concerned with living in the Pacific States of America, the breakaway states of California, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington that’re violently despised by the middle and southern sections of their former country.
I’m not even particularly worried about our share of the debt, since we instantly became the world’s fourth wealthiest nation.
I am freaked out over all the nukes. I mean, Texas would totally nuke California because someone had a gay marriage.
“PARTY OF LIFE PUSH THE BUTTON!!!”
/Republinazi death cult/
They can’t wait to come back to life and vote for $hitler in 2024 to blow the nation’s brains out:
South Dakota ER nurse tells horrific stories of patients near death — and still denying COVID-19 is real
“The ones that stick out are those who still don’t believe the virus is real. The ones who scream at you for a magic medicine and that Joe Biden is going to ruin the USA. All while gasping for breath on 100% Vapotherm. They tell you there must be another reason they are sick.”
She described patients calling her names and demanding to know why she’s wearing the mask, shield and gowns because “they don’t have COVID because it’s not real.”
“These people really think this isn’t going to happen to them,” she described. “And then they stop yelling at you when they get intubated.
It’s like a fucking horror movie that never ends. There’s no credits that roll. You just go back and do it all over again.”
@¡Andrew!: I almost ran with that — I have the tweet thread bookmarked — but there’s sooooooo much to say about it, and I didn’t have it in me this week.
Mass psychosis is what it is. Mass fucking psychosis. And we’re stuck with them whatever Trump does.
@nojo:
Do you think those of us on the Left Coast will have to fly over Canada in order to avoid getting shot down while crossing Tr666pistani airspace when we visit our allies in the Atlantic States of America?
P.S. We’re not going to be stuck with them much longer given the upcoming vertical death rates. And we haven’t even made it through the holidays yet. The only question is how many good people the death cult takes with them.
@¡Andrew!: I’d wait a few years for the anti-aircraft batteries to fall into disrepair.
@nojo: We’d welcome Arizona, so that Colorado and New Mexico could join us : )
Arizona would have to vow to take their medication though. Trust but verify.
@¡Andrew!: I hold Oregon Birthright Citizenship, so no personal worries, so long as I don’t have to pull a Donner Pass getting back.
I’m going to wait at least another month until we have more accurate election data to determine a more specific analysis, however based on what we’ve seen so far:
1) Voters just hated Tr666p specifically and wanted to defenestrate him. This would explain the ticket-splitting that gave Biden the White House, while allowing Republinazis a shot at retaining control of the Senate;
2) White voters vote for white racists, period, no matter how incompetent, deranged, and self-destructive they are. $hitler actually increased his margins with white women by grabbing their pussies. (PUUUUUUKE!!! And fuck you, white men and white women traitors);
3) The polls were so far off due to the embarrassment factor. The marginal difference between the years-long polls and the actual results is due to white voters knowing that voting for $hitler was morally wrong and an abomination that would destroy the country, but they were too embarrassed to tell that to pollsters and did it anyway out of spite and racist hatred.
Thank the FSM that we have these fearless, courageous women leading us out of this living nightmare: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pramila Jayapal, Ilhan Omar, Katie Porter, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and Elizabeth Warren. They are our guiding lights to the future, and I will always remember their bravery.
Well! That’s been sitting in purgatory a few years!
I’ve realized that the Tr666p regime’s obstruction of the transition is irrelevant. Their national damage will continue until they are physically removed in January. Biden is bringing in a team of experts, some are major power players with over four decades of DC experience.
There is nothing that the Tr666pnazi trash could tell them that would be remotely useful or intelligent. It would be like screaming monkeys hopping up and down while trying to explain quantum computing. They all will be purged and hopefully charged for their non-stop treasonous criminality, incompetence, and abuse of the American people.
@ nojo: Nice! Well done : )
@¡Andrew!: And so much faster without the ads! Which haven’t paid out in years.
They need to upload Utubes and FaceFuck streams of all the raging MAGAts hurling obscenities at the hospital staff and screaming dumFux Nooz-Tr666p lies about the HOAX, until a futile breathing tube gets shoved down their throats but they croak anyway cause it’s too late.
“It’s like a fucking horror movie that never ends. There’s no credits that roll. You just go back and do it all over again.”
Maybe then the asshole-morons will finally Get It.
FLYINGCHAINSAW • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! Sen. sENEMA has a career ahead of her in giving designer psychedelic enemas to trust-fund…
MANCHUCANDIDATE • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! @¡Andrew!: She thought three's company. Nope.
¡ANDREW! • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! Gawd hates SIN, specifically Kyrsten SINema.
¡ANDREW! • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! So long, Senatard Glitter-trash. I hope she knows how much everyone H8s her :0)
¡ANDREW! • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! The racist kleptocratic MSM is really gonna have to crank up the bread and circuses now that their…
FLYINGCHAINSAW • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! @¡Andrew!: Ted Kazinski Sec of Interior Only the DEAD are extreme enough to serve in DONNIE…
¡ANDREW! • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! @FlyingChainSaw: Department of Health & Human Services: Charles Manson Defense Secretary:…
FLYINGCHAINSAW • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! @¡Andrew!: Right, the administration's all star line up: Pres: Trump VP: Ted Kaczynski…
FLYINGCHAINSAW • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! @FlyingChainSaw: Actually, FDLE would be the first to admit it. The state banks on it with 'sue me…
¡ANDREW! • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! I cannot wait for the Republinazi MAGAt trash to DEMAND that $hitler be allowed to be president…