Thread by @Shoq

::Clears throat:: May I have your attention for a moment, please?

I want to apprise new followers—and those who haven’t seen me in years—of my take on where we are, and where we might go, before we enter the red zone of this stupid 2.2 year election cycle and non … 1/35

political horse race discourse comes to a dead stop.

To begin, let me first say that I am NOT a “burn it all down” type. But I am a “shut it all down” type. I believe our government is suffering the same fate as our climate at the hands of selfish, super-rich … 2/35

hegemonists who have funded and enabled a viciously ignorant, arrogant, and radical fringe who have used those resources to seize the Republican party, the Senate, and the White House. And I strongly believe that neither voting or elections is going to create … 3/35

reforms fast enough to stop them (while they even can be stopped).

We may score a few wins here and there, but they work for—and with—the people who own most of the battlefields; the media and product production empires on which capitalism depends to feed and … 4/35

shelter (most) us every day.

And these truly terrible people, embodied by anyone still supporting Donald Trump and his reckless cabal of incompetents, are making the Nazis seem quite rational, by contrast. Expecting these myopic racketeers and plunderers to … 5/35

self-reform is a dangerously delusional fantasy that has no historical basis in fact, no matter what TV pundits & historians tell you. (No, this crisis has never happened before, and anyone claiming it has should be shunned.)

Waiting for politicians to heal this … 6/35

spreading cancer is as pointless as waiting for water to flow uphill. These gargoyles like @MarkMeadows, @jim_jordan and @senatemajldr would rather end you and your entire family than negotiate any kind of reasoned and reasonable policy reforms with you. They long … 7/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr ago abandoned any pretense of governing (which is why virtually no substantive governing has gone on in many years). Most of them have so rationalized and fetishized their cliched grievances so totally, that their words and actions are absolutely nonsensical, even … 8/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr to many of their own peers. But greed is a powerful thing and it keeps them stuck on stupid. They got their tax cuts and their judges. But they’re coming for everything else, unless we end them and their deplorable ethos right here and right now, by any means … 9/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr necessary. And we CAN (and should) do that.

But it’s only going to happen when their blood supply is threatened; when we’ve forced their corporate donors to tighten a death-grip around the aorta of the very politicians they’ve spent years nourishing. Only then … 10/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr will they ever relent and do something constructive for all the fools who elected them, and maybe our nation at large. If that’s not clear to you, you’ve been asleep for the past decade (or you’re just another Republican cultist I should be blocking).

What’s the … 11/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr answer, then? To end this stupid pretense of “#resistance” and start fighting them with everything we have in a balls to the wall economic conflagration. One that shouldn’t have to last very long because the enemy isn’t really that strong. We’ve just been very … 12/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr weak, never realizing our power as consumers when organized and acting in unison. Greed is their Achilles heel. It always was.

I maintain that we need an inspired and persistent economic disruption that doesn’t shut the society down completely (that would be … 13/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr dumb). It just slows enough of it down at strategic points to take the easy or excess profits out of daily income steam of massive corporations until their own shareholders force them to take steps to end their tacit and sometimes covert financial or rhetorical … 14/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr support, and help call for an end to this ruinous radicalism and obstructionism that has paralyzed our government and rendered most of its bureaucracy dysfunctional.

Stop the easy money from flowing to our 20 biggest companies, banks, and employers, and … 15/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr ironically, the power of the free market will wash these malignant, anti-social reprobates and misanthropes out to sea. These scoundrels never had a master plan anyway; only fuzzy goals revolving around the preservation of wealth and power. We made it way too … 16/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr easy for them to reach those goals, ever since Ronald Reagan tricked so many into thinking the supply siders were the economic police coming to rescue us from their grandfather’s greed. In fact, they were just a new class of economic muggers in Brioni suits.

And … 17/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr they only persist in making us miserable because we on the American Left have simply assumed politicians would fix this for us, and have done almost nothing on our own to fight back. Sure, groups like Indivisible have done an admirable job on the electoral front, … 18/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr but elections just don’t create sea-changes. In many ways, they create another level of delay or avoidance of them.

Politicians cannot and will not fix this unless we FORCE them to. No Teddy Roosevelt is going to ride up on a white horse and save us. Not this … 19/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr time.

We have to declare war on the people and institutions driving this oppression, just as the founders declared war on the Crown. We have to rise up, make a ruckus, and put our boot on the throats of the stock prices of every company that does not do all that … 20/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr I suggest above, while also demanding that their most owned politicians renounce Fox news and the fever swamp media, and put an end to their ritualized lying and malfeasance. Then, without all that destructive and distracting noise, they can start dancing with the … 21/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr rest of us to a more forward-looking, reform-oriented tune. If and until they do, we will just have to creatively suck more dollars out of them wherever and whenever possible.

Precisely how that can be done (through carefully calibrated acts of disobedience and … 22/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr disruption) is a whole other thread, but just assume for the moment that it’s quite possible if and when enough pivotal “power players” (public figures and celebrities with massive digital reach and influence) decide to join hands and help make it … 23/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr happen.

Greenpeace proved long ago that a very small and motivated group can cause a lot of chaos to corporate planning and profits. And that was before the age of digital everything. It’s way easier now, because corporations have hitched their wagons to the same … 24/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr digital everything. That makes them vulnerable. And those like Amazon that depend on the web completely are actually quite brittle. And what is brittle can break.

The demands I’m suggesting can be quite modest. They would be mostly proposed legislation already on … 25/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr the books concerning campaign financing, media consolidation, lobbying, and corruption. Just five key laws, plus a cheap and easy transaction tax on securities could change everything.

The “asks” (a nicer word than demands) would be simple, reasonable, and in most … 26/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr societies, not overly controversial. If pols push them through, we all win. If they oppose them, their campaign donors will pay for their recalcitrance with an ongoing economic chaos that rotates among multiple corporate targets until everyone is sick of the … 27/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr costly warfare and donors relearn the hard way that good government and social stability is a shit-ton more profitable than chaos.

Exactly what we demand is just details. There are many options. That’s just arranging a few bases in the infield and batters in the … 28/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr line-up. The hard part is motivating enough pivotal players to agree on this plan. If they do, we can rewrite the rules of the game (on our terms), get out on the field, and swing for the fences. We collectively insist on the core reforms, without which any real … 29/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr and lasting change will be all but impossible. And that’s the whole ball game.

Once we start winning here, and we’ve neutered the super-villains like @rupertmurdoch and the conniving bagmen like @jimInhofe, we can then lead the world against their backers and … 30/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr @rupertmurdoch @JimInhofe co-conspirators who seem quite determined to murder our one and only planet.

And we all have a very short time on this planet (trust me on that). So we must make a choice.

What we do here and now many well affect the evolution of our civilizations for hundreds, … 31/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr @rupertmurdoch @JimInhofe even thousands of years. Either the greedy, powerful and stupid will rule us all, as Republicans (and global elites) seem perfectly comfortable with, or we stop the train right here and demand paths toward something more equitable for our nation, our planet, and … 32/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr @rupertmurdoch @JimInhofe our species.

For me, it’s not a hard choice. And time is not on our side. Look at the authoritarian baby-steps the Trumpists are already taking. Imagine what the next recession is going to do for them? (And we’re already on the cusp of a bubble that every … 33/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr @rupertmurdoch @JimInhofe economist knows is going to burst. And soon.)

To me, we’re in a go big or go home situation. And there just isn’t much left to go home to. They already own most of it.

So there it is. That’s my take and my outline of a planB. And in just 35 short tweets!

If you … 34/35

@MarkMeadows @Jim_Jordan @senatemajldr @rupertmurdoch @JimInhofe have one, I’m all ears, and if it’s coherent and thoughtful, I’ll be happy to share it.

#PlanB ▶#CreativeCommerceDisruption. 35/35

A senior staffer for a member of Congress DMed me last night and said “I sincerely hope you’re wrong that this is our only way of fixing all this. But I have a foreboding sense that you’re not. Would you believe me if I said my boss said something very similar to … 1/12

https://twitter.com/Shoq/status/1201135582166040576

me, recently?”

“No, I wouldn’t be, actually. Of course, he’d never say it publicly, I’m sure,” I said.

“Well, he’s thinking of resigning, so maybe he will,” he said.

This actually didn’t come as a surprise. My thinking on this was long in coming and didn’t … 2/12

just spring from my ass. Anyone that has studied upheavals and reform movements knows there are only a few paths they can take. But if you’re determined to find nonviolent ones, then there are even fewer scenarios that are even remotely plausible.

My #planB … 3/12

relies on a simple idea; the same one John Start Mill and Robert Owen understood in the 19th century. The rich can be persuaded that social stability is more profitable than chaos.

All we have to do is make a small, super-rich class of greedy people, who spent … 4/12

decades paying for propaganda that taught us that “government is the enemy,” realize that their success has sown the seeds of their own destruction.

But it’s not too late to fix it. A second era of radical reform is not just sensible; the fate of the planet … 5/12

probably depends on it.

Incidentally, I get asked a lot, “What is #planA.”

Free and fair elections. But with our minimal levels of citizen participation (another outcome of their plan to discredit and dismantle government), and the vast power of their media … 6/12

empires to control the narratives and results, I see almost zero chance of that ever mattering until the game board is wiped clean and reset. Consider the cases of Carter, Clinton, and Obama. It seemed we were finally winning. In fact, the enemy used all three … 7/12

of them to get stronger (while actually using them as enablers of their dogma with almost a “second-hand smoke” inhalation of it, as Giridharadas puts it). And most of the good they did was wiped out almost immediately by the Bushes and Trump regimes.

Until … 8/12

reforms take away their goto tools like media consolidation, manipulation, gerrymandering, unlimited campaign financing, and and revolving-door governance, PlanA is just fantasy. One some may still have faith in. I do not. The longer we cling to it, the worse … 9/12

things will get.

Democracy needs a relatively even playing field. Only by digging up the corpse of Ronald Reagan, exposing the monstrous anti-democratic people he represented, and burning it in effigy, the ripping the guts out of the the “both sides” centrist … 10/12

media, can we even begin to repave the American landscape with a just and equitable road to real liberty and true freedom.

You may think my #planB is radical, or even terroristic. I think it’s more likely to work than everyone else’s planA, which is actually what … 11/12

the enemy is hoping for: a continuation of a monumentally profitable status quo. They’re okay with that. 12/12