FIRST WE MUST DECIDE WHICH OF THE ANGELS ARE THE BETTER ANGELS

There was a time within memory when you could find better angels within the two parties. We did not need to agree on policy to acknowledge that their belief was sound. We just did not wish to pass their laws for reasons we felt were sound. This is not one of those times. Our political dysphoria has gotten to the point that one side denies the existence of that dysphoria. Denies the need for scientists, denies the need for vaccines, denies respect to any learning beyond their stupid opinion.

But it's worse than that. Because those lesser angels (I may be a lesser angel, but at least I'm not one of them) are only a response to what is handed down from some ersatz Mt. Olympus,  where all laws are handed down, when democracy is no longer honored. We still have a say in who goes there, so does everyone else. We have worked to achieve that. Not all of us, given recent history, have proven to be thoughtful, not all of us wish to accept that some of those thoughts are thoughtful. Until recently, nobody was crazy enough to express their complete contempt for democracy. Nobody actually would say that he/she was anti-egalitarion and anti-Democratic. Until now. We could have said in earlier times, when we acknowledged democracy's weaknesses, that improvements needed to be  made, or maybe democracy goes too far, or not far enough. But not even the darkest of our angels expressed the wish that we the electorate need to get over our "dictator-phobia", unti recently. The philsopher of this "Dark Enlightenment" goes by the nome de plu-perfect tone-deafness, Mencius Moldbug. His proper name is Curtis Yarbin. He talks that way; with contempt for democracy and wishing to embrace a dictator from his small group of fawning tech billionaires. That does not include us. Maybe, you might say, they were using words artfully. Dark-enlightenment is clearly an effective description of something. Our forefathers, after all, created our democracy from the teachings of the philosophers of Enlightenment. These philosophers of the Dark Enlightenment, Dork Enlightenment, wish to teach the next founding fathers  their dark vision. A dictatorship of the Tech-bros. And not for nothing, what kind of piece of shit philosopher that nobody ever heard of, believes the Enlightenment needs a dimmer switch.

This is where we are. Some of us are afraid of what we are hearing by those people who follow Yarvin, or Ayn Rand, or Opus Dei, or whomever. Some of us chuckle and say " oh, they don't mean it". But some of us know the meanings of words-or look them up, and some of us use words sloppily. Who wants to take that gamble? Let us examine it under the rubric of another philosopher, a recognized Philosopher: Blaze Pascal's famous, Wager. Would it be better to view this carefully-conservatively, and assume that is exactly what they mean, only to find out later that it was a joke that did not land. Or would it not be better to assume that this is  some Dark angel jokesters and laugh at their joke. Laugh until we open our eyes to see some Putinesque oligarchy imposed on us. Are you willing to take that chance?

There is more. We gained Civil Rights, women's rights, what human rights we have, and other rights  in the 60s and 70s by hard work, and by mobilizing. We held sit-ins outside of college buildings, City Hall, and other public places. Yes, we had a sumer of love, but it was not an attack on the nations capitol. We marched over bridges, we shouted from bull-horns, we even held up traffic. After decades of pressure, we won the day in the legislature. We won what little we gained by democratic means. Yes, we were far from peaceful  but we were victims more often than we were aggressors. The darker angels started succeeding in their quest in the 1980s. We were bitterly disapointed! But this too was accomplished through democratic means, we thought. So we resolved to regain what was lost. But recently we have discovered this unholy alliance, wrapped in the holiness of tech geeks, billionaire oligarchs, philosophers no one has ever heard of, and conservative lawyers for whom justice is less important than winning. And this was accomplished by trickery and large caches of, umm, cash. Not just in the legislature, where we would expect bribes to be, but in the courts, red states, and the executive and legislative branches of those red states. They want it to be a federalism (feudalism) where the red states have all of the federal rights.

To meet in some acceptable middle where the darker angels can find comfort, means that we must lose even more of those democratic gains to save the dessicated democracy that remains. Justice wickedly winks while Clarence and Ginny Thomas join their conservative colleagues, wining and dining with Polmeral wine from Bordeux at a billionaire's table.  That seems to me like some Soprano's character saying to a rube that borrowed some money but couldn't come up with the vig, "Dat's a nice democracy there fella, be too bad to lose it". No! We must not do that. I am fine with going back to the rights we had won by 1979. We can revisit those laws, but not with the Heritage Foundation peering over the shoulders of those legislators they elected. Not with Leanard Leo determining what justices should be appointed to the various branches of justice. I do not wish to reward the briber's or tricksters, I wish to prosecute them. We also must establish restraints on what objects of value a Justice could legally accept. A legislator, a president. In short we must go back to when we had those regulations, or the fear that we might. And we must break up the other billionaire groups that have sought over the last fifty years to weaken democracy by stealth and liberal doses of wealth. Who sought to create, in freedoms shadow, an oligarchy. 

I do realize that we on this level are not able to control the society of dark angels. That is the law's purpose. But you must take control of the parties. You must, to use an analogy, throw the money-givers from the temple. To do nothing is to accept it. To appear to accept it makes you complicit. You lose your claim to being a better angel.