We Need A March Madness

Supposedly, with Trump's apparent misstep on DACA, the entire ice cream fortress has melted away, and Trump is finished. If you've been keeping track at home, that would be the 417th time since January 2015 that we've been assured by the best and brightest minds in media - the munchkin poster children of intellect than which it is impossible to be smaller - that this was so to a metaphysical certitude. Rest assured that until 11:59 on some January 20th three or seven years hence, if fate allows him to live so long, some brainless, breathless mediatard (or twenty such) will solemnly assure us that something Trump did will mean his presidency is now "over", exactly as they will do daily from this day to that one.
Don't you believe it.

Now look at that masthead pic up there.
That is called push ball. There are actual rules, but it resembles nothing so much as political life in a democratic republic. Like this one.

You aren't going to be the one to win it single-handedly. Ever.

But if you're not on the field, what you want doesn't matter. All our lives there have been those who decided not to raise their hand and speak, not to go out for that team or sport, not to take that trip, or make that stand, or utter that thought. We have most of a generation who sees that as being a goal in life: being the person who never stood up for anything.

Well, allow me to say heartily: Fuck That Guy.

It's your life, and no one can live it for you, or choose what you do with it. But choosing not to play is a choice, and one with consequences.

If all you've been doing turns out to be banging your head on a brick wall, well, it always feels so good to stop. But that involves not backing failure, and showing up for something smarter than whatever you've been doing. Not bailing out entirely. Pick your battles, especially where and when, but don't for a second think you can skip them.

But getting back to Push Ball, you do what you can where you are, and if everybody is pushing in the same direction, you beat team after team trying to push in every direction.

Those of us on the right seem to have some trouble pushing in the same direction.

 

Hence my title.

We need to write down the eight/sixteen/thirty-two/whatever ideas and run them head to head against each other, ruthlessly, until we can get down to one that nobody will back down on.

Stick up for the other ones, even your pet cause, and make your displeasure known, but make it an ironclad rule that any attempt to breach Thing Prime will bring down the entire can of whoop @$$ on the offender. And then you'll go after his family.

I don't know what that thing is, or should be.

But somebody somewhere better start running the numbers, and getting a handle on it. And then get everyone, or near enough, to agree that messing with it will make the trespasser wish they were dead, or plead insanity, rather than risk coming within a country mile of it.

Then nail down Thing Two, then Three, and so on, until you've made victory certain, and defeat impossible.

"Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle, but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting.
Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win." - Sun Tzu, The Art Of War 

Otherwise we'll all be hawking our own version of this:

Fun to watch, funnier to mock, but really, truly awful to find out one has head-of-the-table reservations for a 20-foot party sub sh*t sandwich oneself.