Early this morning, a man killed at least 50 people in the Orlando gay nightclub Pulse. Most of my liberal friends see this as another example of the problem of guns in the United States. And there’s a vague hope that this time maybe we will do something about it. But I think this is all a sign of just how out of touch all of us are with each other. If two dozen murdered children in Sandy Hook didn’t change things, this certainly won’t. But there’s more here. The shooter’s name is apparently Omar Mateen.

If this had just been some white guy named John Smith who went into Pulse and killed so many people, America would react in the normal way, “This is terrible! Now let’s do nothing!” But a bunch of people getting killed by a Muslim does cause action. It isn’t action that will do any good. But it is action. Suddenly, Donald Trump seems to have made a lot more sense when he said that Muslims shouldn’t be allowed in the country until we “figure this out.” This kind of thinking is the very definition of racism, but it isn’t recognized.

Right now at the Fox News website, the top story is, Breaking News: 50 Murdered, 53 Wounded in Possible Act of Islamic Terror in Orlando Gay Club. There’s no nuance here. It’s “Terrorism!” And everyone knows that death by terrorist is so much worse than death by Christian fundamentalist.

Of course, there is no such thing as death by Christian fundamentalist. When a Christian fundamentalist kills someone, we get little but nuance. And rightly so! Because people who go on killing sprees are messed up in the head. They aren’t rational warriors. (Well, most of the time; the 9/11 attacks were part brain washing and part peer pressure.) But when it comes to Muslims, we get none of that.

Check out this Fox News headline, Florida Nightclub Shooter Apparently Made Threats in the Past; Ex-Wife Claims He Beat Her. Now that strikes me as having some nuance, but the lede doesn’t follow, “The gunman who killed at least 50 people at an Orlando nightclub early Sunday was a licensed security officer who claimed more than once that he had connections to Islamic terror groups, Fox News has learned, as the killer’s ex-wife reportedly said he was unstable and would beat her.”

But reading the whole article, I got the impression that Omar Mateen was mostly just a homophobe. Is that based on his religion? Probably, although most men don’t need a religion to be a homophobes. Mateen’s father said that his son became enraged when he saw two men kissing in Miami. It sounds like a hate crime committed by an unstable Muslim man. But in the end, none of that will matter.

In the weeks and months after this, people will remember vaguely that a Muslim killed a bunch of people. The fact it that his Muslim identification will be taken to be as critical, just as Robert Lewis Dear’s Christian identification is taken to mean nothing at all.

But maybe this is how ISIS defeats us. Because this is the kind of attack (even though almost certainly having nothing directly to do with ISIS) that will make Donald Trump become president. See Paul Bibeau’s Trump Tales Of Terror: Weird Stories about a Hideous Man and His Movement for details.

After ever one of these shootings, my gut reaction is, “Didn’t anyone notice that this person was stockpiling weapons and ammunition?” But I catch myself instantly. Stockpiling weapons and ammunition is so common among the paranoid gun freaks of this country, that it isn’t unusual. It’s just a particularly good day Joe’s Gun and Mass Shooter Emporium.

I have a bone to pick with Robert Reich. He put together a great video, Eight Reasons Why Republicans Must Dump Trump. He’s completely right about everything that is wrong with Donald Trump. And these are indeed eight reasons why normal human beings should not even consider voting for Donald Trump. But they aren’t reasons why the Republican Party should dump Trump. If anything, they are eight reasons why almost none of them would ever even consider dumping him.

Let’s go through the list, because it’s telling:

1. He divides us by race and ethnicity and religion;
2. His incendiary lies are inciting violence across this land, but he excuses them;
3. He bullies, humiliates, and threatens those who dare cross him;
4. He spreads baseless conspiracy theories;
5. His hateful and demeaning attitudes toward women and boastful claims of sexual dominance have been filling the airwaves for years;
6. He believes climate change is not caused by humans, contrary to all scientific proof;
7. He proposes using torture against terrorists, and punishing their families, both in clear violation of international law;
8. He wants to cut taxes on the rich, giving the wealthiest one tenth of one percent an average tax cut of more than $1.3 million each every year.

There are only two reasons there that are not complete Republican orthodoxy. Number 3 is still largely true of the Republican Party, but party actors aren’t in general so obvious about it. But listen to Michael Savage some time and you will see that this is still at the core of Republican thought. Number 5 is quite true of the Republican Party, but the way that Robert Reich has presented it, it is too specific to Trump. Reich could have just as easily written, “Trump treats women in a demeaning way and tries to control their lives.” Then that too would be Republican orthodoxy.

Robert Reich Wants to Believe

I know what’s going on. Robert Reich still holds out hope that the “reasonable” Republicans will step up and take over the party. But that just isn’t going to happen. Look at what happened to the segregationist Democrats in the 1960s, they ran screaming for the Republican Party. But as the Republican Party has gotten more and more insane, we haven’t seen a huge exodus of Republicans to the Democratic Party. Instead, we’ve just seen more and more extreme claims from the Republicans.

This is why we heard throughout the 1990s that President Clinton wasn’t just a liberal but a “socialist” and even a “communist.” So there’s always a reason why the Republicans don’t change parties. And the real reason is that the Republican Party is still controlled by those bigots who left the Democratic Party because they didn’t think blacks ought to have the right to vote.

What I’m saying is not new. I’ve said it many times before and so have lots of other people. But as time goes on, people lose grasp of the truth. And that truth is that Donald Trump is not an outlier in the Republican Party. Sure, he has his own style. But what he stands for is what the party stands for. Just because Paul Ryan seems more reasonable than Trump doesn’t mean that he is. The truth is that they are very much the same and if they were in power together, they would get along just great.

And Robert Reich understands this. The only reason that Republicans have for dumping Trump is that he is almost certain to lose. Otherwise, there is nothing substantive that the Republicans can complain about when it comes to Donald Trump.

As you probably know, Bernie Sanders met with President Obama yesterday and then gave a press conference where he said he would work with Hillary Clinton to help the Democratic Party defeat Donald Trump. But he also said that he was still going compete in DC’s 14 June primary. And his reason is one that is close to my heart. He said that he thinks that DC should become a state. I’m with him. Puerto Rico should also be a state. But I don’t want to get side tracked. The speech was more or less a concession.

At the press conference, Sanders looked like his old self: rumpled suit, hair flying everywhere. It makes me wonder. Yes, I am very much in agreement with his policies. But is my commitment to Sanders also more personal? I identify with him. My hair is rarely combed. People often mistake me for a homeless person. But I think that substance matters more than style. And Sanders seems to be the same way. (He’s had that luxury since he represents a small state.)

Of course, Sanders also looked unhappy. And I think he’s allowed. I tend to think that he started his campaign much as Howard Dean started his in 2004: to get his issues more attention in the party. And then things really took off — to the point where he had a chance to win the whole thing. He needs a little time to lick his wounds. But as Robert Reich recently put it, “You’ve already succeeded.”

In a sense, Sanders never had a chance. As I have stated countless times, the Democratic Party didn’t like having to choose between Obama and Clinton in 2008 and this was their chance to have their cake and eat it too. But there was something else. The Clintons have deep roots in the African American community. This morning, Paul Krugman noted that Sanders didn’t get minority group inequality “with his exclusive focus on individual inequality.” This indicates more that Krugman didn’t follow Sanders’ campaign, being, as he was, so busy attacking it.

The fact that Hillary Clinton had a huge reservoir of good will in the African American community (And among older Democrats as well!) was not a trick; it was the result of her work in the Democratic Party over the last 40 years. That has to be applauded. This was a great campaign, even with all the anger on both sides. And now we are at the point that we work together to defeat a very frightening foe.

I don’t like revolutions. They don’t tend to work out well. Bernie Sanders didn’t not bring us a revolution. I think he brought something much better: the fear of a revolution in the Democratic Party. My biggest fear with Clinton is that she will “evolve” on the TPP and sign it into law. And that’s why all of us — not just Sanders supporters, but everyone who is in the democratic wing of the Democratic Party — needs to hold to task Clinton and the entire political world.

In a sense, there is always a war going on. We must constantly fight for the interests of the weak. The powerful never stop fighting for their own interests — they just hire people to do it. Even if Bernie Sanders had become president, we would have to continue to fight. We will continue to argue among ourselves about what the best policies are. But as I found when I tested myself, I side with Bernie Sander 98% of the time and Hillary Clinton 95% of the time. And Donald Trump: 24% of the time.

With Hillary Clinton as president, we will need to apply pressure to her. If Donald Trump becomes president, will with have to fight with all our strength. And we will still lose. So we are all in this together. Kumbaya My Party!

It amazes me to think that only a few years ago, I thought Jonathan Chait was an insightful analyst — even when I disagreed with him. I no longer think that. He’s just sliding along on his reputation at this point. Yesterday, he wrote, How Can Hillary Clinton Win the Bernie Sanders Vote? Always loving the counter-intuitive take, the subtitle is, “By moving to the… right? That’s what the data says.” Oh my! Such shallow thinking.

Chait presented some data that showed that the Sanders holdouts — the ones saying they will never vote for Clinton — are actually more conservative than Hillary Clinton supporters. I have little doubt. It’s been well known that Sanders did best in open primaries. So he was pulling from independents. And his populist message certainly did appeal to conservatives, even though that was not the core of his support. But these are supporters who Clinton is most certainly not going to get — even if she does move to the right as Chait suggests.

At the same time, there is an opportunity cost. Clinton could lose support from the vast majority of Sanders supporters who do now plan to vote for her if she decided to make a sharp right turn. (Of course, she won’t do that. I don’t understand why so many people seem to think that politicians have no actual beliefs — as if they would all join the Nazi Party if it would get them elected.) So no: Clinton can’t win “the Bernie Sanders vote” by moving to the right.

This gets at something that has bugged me for months. Most Sanders supporters are like me: they don’t hate Hillary Clinton; they just like Bernie Sanders more. But despite this, Sanders supporters are painted with a broad brush using obnoxious Twitter trolls as the model. It bugs me especially because I like Hillary Clinton. There aren’t that many Democrats that I would have voted over her. Certainly Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown would top her. But she’s vastly superior to my own Democratic Representative, Mike Thompson.

It was interesting watching the coverage of last night’s primary. My biggest concern about Hillary Clinton is that she seems soft on the TPP. I’m afraid she will “evolve” on the issue. I don’t think there’s a strong probability there. Politicians reflect their times and I don’t think that Bill Clinton would support NAFTA if it came up today. So I’m not too worried. Just the same, listening to Donald Trump talk so forcefully against the TPP last night would have inspired me if I didn’t know he was a pathological liar.

The main thing is that there is no “Bernie Sanders vote.” There are millions of Bernie Sanders voters. And there are millions of Sanders and Clinton voters who want to see the Democratic Party become more liberal. I don’t think that’s true of Jonathan Chait, however. As Eric Loomis likes to point out: Chait thinks that Chait is the most liberal a reasonable person can be. And he clearly thinks the Democratic Party shifting to the left is a bad thing. So he has cause to cheer on Clinton to turn right to appeal to the “Bernie Sanders vote.”

As I write this, it is noon on election day here in California. I have no idea who will win in the presidential primary. It’s pretty close. But here’s the thing: I don’t care. Look: if things were reversed and it were Hillary Clinton saying that she was going to flip super delegates, I’d take that a lot more seriously. But Bernie Sanders (much like me) is an outsider. He’s been his own party for decades. He isn’t going to convince the Democratic Party elites to abandon Hillary Clinton.

And here’s another thing: I wouldn’t want them to. One of my big complaints about the Democratic Party is that it is not very loyal — at least not loyal in the way that the Republican Party is. The Democratic Party pretty much is the Hillary Clinton party. And we Sanders supporters need to do something about that over the next twenty years. Regardless, Bernie Sanders winning California would be cool, but it doesn’t change the election.

For the record, in addition to voting for Sanders, I voted for Loretta Sánchez for Senate, Nils Palsson for the House (mostly a vote against Mike Thompson), and Jim Wood for Assembly (he is the only one running). I also voted for local measure AA that (for a change) taxed property owners rather than consumers to clean up the Bay. And I voted against Prop 50, which would take benefits away from state legislators who are suspended because of legal matters. I’m sure that Prop 50 will win by an overwhelming margin because Americans (1) don’t believe people are innocent until proven guilty and (2) don’t believe in democracy. That was all that was on the ballot.

But while running my election day errands, I was listening to NPR. I was really struck by this story, California Republican Lawmaker Explains Why He’s Uncomfortable With Trump. The lawmaker in question is Assemblyman Rocky Chavez. He is a 28-year veteran of the Marines. And he thinks that Trump would be a catastrophe for the nation and the world. But he would never vote for Hilliary Clinton because she is “duplicitous.” And I thought that was really interesting. Here we have Trump who people like Chavez think might start a nuclear war. But that’s equally offset by the fact that Clinton might not always tell the truth.

If the choice for me was between Hitler and Trump, as much as I hate Trump, I would have to go with him. If I said I couldn’t vote for Trump in that case, I would be duplicitous. And you hear this all the time from Republicans: “Trump is totally unacceptable but I have some minor complaint about Clinton that makes her just as bad.” If they would just come out and admit the truth I wouldn’t mind: they won’t vote for Hillary Clinton because she’s a Democrat.

Later, I heard the tail end of a discussion about Silicon Valley. And I heard this line, “…and allows the smartest people to contribute the most.” That certainly sums up what Silicon Valley thinks of itself as: a pure meritocracy where the best rise to the top. Of course, the reality is different. Just look at Carly Fiorina. But more than that, look at the conspiracy that Steve Jobs and other high tech CEOs engaged in to not hire each other’s employees. Have to keep those wages down. Once you’re at the top, pull that ladder away! And now they claim to be for Bernie Sanders on election day?

And finally, Bob Kerrey Says He Won’t Step Down as Chair of New University in Vietnam. I don’t particularly care about the issue and I don’t think that Bob Kerrey is really any worse than any other man in his position. But he mentioned that although the US did some terrible things during the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong were a thousand times worse. And the statement doesn’t raise even the smallest amount of dissent. We are America and therefore when we kill civilians it is just a mistake. The other side, of course, is just evil and loves to kill civilians. This from the country that used almost 400,000 tons of napalm in Vietnam.

But election day is always nice. I like the process. I don’t expect the US empire to be perfect. But that won’t stop me from complaining that it isn’t.

This last week, there are two connected bits of news regarding the national Republican Party that I find really interesting. The first is that Paul Ryan has endorsed Donald Trump. The second is Trump’s stunning comments about US District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel. I know that humans are tribal, but I just don’t see how anyone who is paying even a little attention can stay Republican.

Let’s start with Ryan. Christian Schneider at USA Today called the endorsement a jarring sellout. He seems particularly upset that Ryan laid out certain goals that Trump needed to make progress on in order to get Ryan’s endorsement. Christian asked, “In the 10 days before the endorsement, Trump floated discredited conspiracy theories about former Clinton adviser Vince Foster’s death and attacked the ethnicity of a judge overseeing the Trump University case. Are these what pushed Ryan toward capitulation?”

I don’t know why Schneider is surprised. Remember back when Paul Ryan was deciding whether he would be the Speaker of the House? He made certain demands of the Republican caucus. In particular, he wanted the assurance of its members that they wouldn’t undercut him the way that they had John Boehner. But the caucus members were unwilling to provide this assurance. Ryan took the job anyway.

Ryan’s really the perfect Republican. He’s more than willing to have principles. But if those principles cost him even the smallest amount, they are gone. Power is what matters to Paul Ryan. And there is no upside to standing athwart Trump, yelling, “Stop!” Many commentators have claimed that Ryan will regret his endorsement in six months. But that’s nonsense. The only price that Ryan could pay would be for not supporting Trump. So all Ryan’s talk of “goals” was just his usual political theater — a show for the Villagers who are convinced that he is “thoughtful.”

And then there’s Donald Trump. He thinks that Judge Curiel can’t be fair to him because of the judge’s Mexican ancestry. And when given the chance to walk the statement back, Trump went on to claim that a Muslim judge would be unfair to him as well. The truth is that Trump is just the poster boy of privilege, and any time he doesn’t get what he wants, it means that someone is being unfair to him. For most candidates this would be seen as a major gaff. But there is so much exhaustion with Trump that it’s considered about what you would expect.

But people are wrong to mistake this exhaustion for normalization. It’s clear to me that Donald Trump is just the Carl Paladino of presidential politics. You may remember that Paladino ran for governor of New York in 2010 and only managed to get one-third of the vote. In his case, no one was surprised by anything he did. But it didn’t make those things any more acceptable to the voters.

So the Republican Party elites can pretend that everything is okay — just as a dysfunctional family pretends that dad isn’t a drunk. USA Today can report, Paul Ryan Hopes Trump Endorsement a Turning Point in Race. But barring an economic collapse, Trump is going to go down in flames in the general election.

Last Thursday, Josh Barro tweeted out something really offensive. But before I get to it, I just want to note that he needn’t fear that he will lose his job. You see: he’s a conservative. Unless he comes out with the n-word, nothing he says will matter. Remember that Ted Nugent can repeatedly threaten assassination against the president and nothing happens to him. Meanwhile, two liberal writers have lost their jobs in the last two weeks because they weren’t nice enough.

But Josh Barro won’t get fired for taking a strong stand against democracy. Because only liberals are ever held to account for what they believe. And when Josh Barro makes a bold stand in defense of the powerful, well, that just makes him all the more worthy for a promotion. How long will we have to wait until he becomes managing editor of The Washington Post?!

As much as elites have fucked up in the last decade, Trump's nomination makes it obvious that it's worse to let the masses pick.

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) June 3, 2016

It’s interesting how “the masses” are simply the Republican Party in the mind of Josh Barro. And then, let’s look back at this Republican Primary. It’s true that Donald Trump is gauche. But how exactly is he categorically different from anyone else on the Republican Party’s “deep bench”? Barro told us more than he knows when he tweeted this out. Like most conservative elites, what is unacceptable is just a matter of style — never of substance.

But I wouldn’t bring this up at all except that this truly vile tweet led me to find another Josh Barro tweet. This one is equally vile, but it is more interesting in its total lack of self-awareness. It is from two and a half years ago, so at least inconsistency isn’t one of Barro’s sins:

Elites are usually elite for good reason, and tend to have better judgment than the average person. #confessyourunpopularopinion

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) December 4, 2013

In one way, I agree with this — but it is such an obvious thing that it does bear tweeting. A professional plumber (an “elite”) has better judgment about what is causing a toilet to overflow than an average person. But that’s as far as it goes. The problem with people like Josh Barro is that they think “elite” isn’t a situational title. This is why we see successful business people listened to with reverence when they pontificate about the educational system. The truth is that Bill Gates knows quite a lot less about education than the average teacher.

Josh Barro must, at some level, realize this. He is, after all, a reasonably smart guy with a great education and pretty much every intellectual advantage a person can have. But all of this does fold into why Josh Barro is an elite — why he is Senior Editor at Business Insider. And that reason is because he is the son of the very famous (conservative) economist Robert Barro. Do you know where Josh got his bachelor’s degree (In psychology!) from? Harvard. Would it shock you to learn that Robert got his PhD from Harvard?

I’m sure Josh Barro would take offense at this (he has skin as thin as Donald Trump’s), but he’s a royalist. And that makes him a great example for the modern conservative movement. It used to be said that conservatism evolved from Edmund Burke. I think that was true up until about 40 years ago. Since then, the conservative movement has regressed back to Burke. Josh Barro might use different language, but at base, he thinks God wants things the way they are. It’s just that Barro’s God is meritocracy, and his career has nothing to do with having a rich, famous, and powerful father.