I got a lie, fat fuckin’ lie ‘bout a law idiots obey
They made it easy, cheaters have their way
You hi di ho, you’re livin’ on your knees
Forget the rule
Oh, oh oh oh, idiots rule
Forget the rule
Oh, oh oh oh, idiots rule
Now there’s a time but I say none like now
Men, there’s a time where idiots are bound
If there’s a pole planted in your back
Then you’re a fixture, you’re no man
Forget the rule
Oh, oh oh oh, idiots rule
Forget the rule
Oh, oh oh oh, idiots rule
C’mon, kiss you, motherfucker
Fuckin’, suckin’, take it
Idiot, idiots rule
Idiot, idiots rule
You idiot, idiots rule, yeah
You know that man you hate?
You look more like him every day
Hi di hos
Too good shoe won’t save your soul, yeah ha
Idiots rule, idiots rule
Idiots rule, oh, yeah
Songwriters, Stephen Andrew Perkins, Perry Farrell, David Michael Navarro, mEric Adam Avery are from Janes Addiction of course and this was written in the early 90s or earlier.
One woman in an interview on television last week was asked a straightforward question, “What do you think happens with the economy, the war, any of that?” She responded with a sentence beginning with “I know nothing about it,” and ending with “but I know that Trump takes care of it.” That’s not a detailed policy critique. That’s a woman stating, with satisfaction, that the man on her television is handling things.
It’s infuriating, but let’s be methodical and explicit about our diagnosis. We have a situation in which our decision-making is irrational, and we have a set of accompanying rationalizations that help us justify why it’s rational. I think it’s worth trying to understand one in light of the other.
Let’s begin with the former, because it seems easier to dissect. There is value in making someone’s identity contingent on a political party, but the more that happens, the more that person is going to interpret anything negative about the party as a statement about their personal dignity. In their heads, “not my party is wrong” is not a concession to objectivity, but a defense of who they are. Therefore, they will accept exponentially more misinformation from their preferred party’s mouthpiece than they would from another source, because they have, in their minds, crossed that threshold of self-betrayal to hear “not their” party’s criticism.
In practice, this means they’re subject to confirmation bias when it comes to what their allies say, and they’re especially inclined to believe in the threat posed by their enemies, and the need to “defend” themselves against them.
We live in a world where everyone has an information source that is not shared by everyone else, and therefore everyone is exposed to a conception of reality that diverges from those who don’t have access to it. The Democrats never go on the GOP driven news shows.
If you believe, as I do, that means there are many people in this country who believe their opponents are existential threats to the country, and that it’s rational for them to use whatever means necessary to prevent the other side from exercising power, you’re not wrong, but those rationalizations are often used to justify actions that have nothing to do with stopping an imminent national disaster. The crisis is a tool, and there isn’t one being used more frequently by either side than the one involving the “withering away of democracy.” Both sides are exploiting the crisis to justify actions neither would otherwise take, and neither has necessarily taken them with any great thought. The problem is that one side lies about the other side being evil, or better yet, they do not lie. They project. If Trump or his people are saying that someone is doing something at all, let alone doing it badly, or if its corrupt, it is because they do it themselves. They do that all of the time. They literally telegraph every move that way, and the Democrats still do not get it.
If Trump or his people are telling the world that something is evil because of what someone else is doing, it is because they are doing it themselves. There has never been a time in recent history when the GOP and Trump have called out something or someone while they themselves were not doing it even worse.
His supporters just go with it, and the reason the GOP and Trump lie all of the time is because they can. Their supporters listen to it. They just do whatever they are told, and the GOP and Trump know it. That’s why they do it.
While Trump’s fans just parrot whatever he says, in essence, he could kill someone on Fifth Avenue and still have a huge following, to paraphrase. He can grab women by the pussy while he lies more than I drink water. I also thought that lying to scare people into voting went out in the early 2000s. I had done a documentary film, along with the music for the film and its soundtrack, that centered on those tactics in like 2011.
It’s honestly gotten worse, and it is because the GOP knows they can do it. That is because, on a good day, Trump supporters are zombies who do whatever he says. Honestly, they are pretty much clueless about how anything works, let alone how to act like thoughtful human beings. That is, in part, why in debates or conversations they tend to fall back on yelling and calling people names, like you heard in the fourth grade. They have nothing to say, so they yell and call people names. Trump acts that way. They are also lazy because they just listen and do whatever they are told to do without doing any due diligence.
That’s not good for America if you have a Trump administration that is so inept at everything it does, which, by the way, it showed a lot the first time around, and he still got voted back into office, basically taking us back four to six years while making hundreds of millions of dollars over the last year and a half. It’s because some of the people who helped elect the guy are clueless, lazy, and do not care enough to even try. That is honestly why the Democrats should have gone on Fox News and other media outlets besides CNN and MSNBC. I am not sure how to get through to people who do not want to try, but you have to dumb it down so much by mentioning things like the price of eggs to get them to realize they are being duped.
Let’s begin with the most obvious finding from the relevant literature. There’s a reason it’s so obvious, it appears in almost every political science article on the subject. Most voters are what scholars call low-information voters. They don’t know much of anything about national politics. They can’t name the members of Congress, what bills are doing, or what chamber has jurisdiction over which issues. This is true across the board, for both parties, and it’s true for obvious reasons, most people don’t have the time or mental energy to dedicate to policy, and they’re making a rational choice to not waste it. I did not start paying attention until it became easier, and even I make an effort by watching as much of the news as I can take. It is not easy to be on top of what goes on every day. What I do is take it all in and then make my own ultimate decision about it. Writing helps too.
What people do is they substitute thoughts about policy for thoughts about who is saying it, and whether that person is saying things the voter agrees with. That’s not a virtue, obviously, but it is a choice, and it reflects a certain set of values. I am also not speaking about the voters on the GOP that vote based on its wallet. I am talking about the people blindly following this admin. The alternatives available to low-information voters are spending time on policy, which they have chosen not to do, or trusting their preferred party’s talking points and criticizing the other side’s, which they do. Again, the GOP knows it, and the Democrats will not admit it. The closest they got was when Hillary Clinton used the word “deplorable,” which they are, but she probably should have tempered that statement, even though I think there were a lot of loud voices back then that spawned the comment.
I'll say it again. They are deplorable, and they are clueless. You have clueless wonders yelling at people, calling them names, and acting like assholes while they vote people into office who told you to your face, by constantly invoking the name Hunter Biden, that they were going to use the system, rig it, and make a fortune in just a year and a half. He told us that is what they would do. He said it many times before the election. He had his supporters thinking the Bidens were the most corrupt people on Earth over what amounted to blow, a gun, and $3,500.
I am not sure how else to say this sentence, but if they are saying that someone else is using the White House as a way to make money, they are doing just that. Everyone seems clueless. We can go on and on about this topic. And the Democrats are still on their heels in many ways. They allowed this to happen, thinking America would "get it," but by losing the general election and both parties for gods sake, all they can do now is complain because they cannot do anything about it. They lost so badly almost two years ago. What they allowed to happen is honestly hard to do. That is how bad the people are who work in the Democratic Party. They are so bad at their jobs; it is unreal how bad they are. They are also still bad at this because they are just banking on all of Trump's fuckups as the way forward in these midterms.
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health tested this by showing voters statements that were identical, save for who was saying them, and republicans were demonstrably more likely to believe a statement once they believed it was coming from Trump. There’s nothing wrong with believing what you want to hear, but this represents a sort of democratic shortfall. There is no analogous program for democrats, but numerous studies suggest it would find the same efficacy in motivating republican voters to support their preferred candidates.
Anecdotal evidence suggests it’s a widespread phenomenon. I speak from experience when I say that not a single one of my Republican friends has ever expressed any faith in the inherent truth of statements coming from Democratic sources, and I suspect it works the other way around for my Democratic friends. It’s easy, when assessing the popularity of one party over another, to conflate levels of intelligence with levels of political engagement, but numerous studies suggest that it’s actually a measurement of economic and cultural capital. The most economically powerful segment of the voting population tends to be college-educated whites, and they are disproportionately represented among democratic voters. The same segment of the population that is more likely to be able to dedicate time and energy to studying politics. It’s a cultural preference being demonstrated alongside an economic one, and it has little to do with intellectual aptitude.
It’s also worth noting that the people who voted for Trump that are not as disengaged from the political process as I am saying here, and it’s important to distinguish between them. One segment of the republican coalition truly is comprised of low-information voters, but those people are largely being mobilized by a different segment, the more ideologically conservative republicans, who are often educated and politically engaged, to support Trump, who they believe represents their interests. Disengaged democrats are being mobilized by the same process, but they tend to be more moderate. Deliberate ignorance and transactional voting are both tactics in a larger strategy, but they’re not the same, and conflating the two obscures the differences between the tactics employed by each side of the aisle.
There are numerous studies suggesting that the best way to describe the motivations of many republican voters is “transactional.” Numerous polls have shown that they don’t really like what they’re hearing from republicans, that they find much of it ignorant or dishonest, but they still vote for them, if for no other reason than they believe they represent the most preferable economic policy. This reflects a cost-benefit analysis, voters are finding themselves in a position where they have to choose between what they want, and what they like, and they’re making a decision based on which is the most desirable, even if it isn’t wholly satisfactory. The same poll, however, cannot be used to describe democratic voters, who disproportionately hold their party’s candidates in high esteem, and it’s important to distinguish between the two.
I can make one concession to the opposing view, because it’s reasonable and well-worn. There is a quote frequently attributed to Trump, which appears in People magazine in 1988, which says “Republicans are the dumbest voting bloc in the country.” It’s demonstrably false. Reuters and other fact-checking organizations have dug into it and found no record of the quote ever being said by him. It’s the sort of talking point which, if it were true, would support exactly the sort of argument I initially made here, and, if disproven, would not refute it. It’s the sort of statement that is telling considering those are his people today. You can determine whether People Magazine is telling the truth or whether the denial from Trump is the truth. It was 1988 when he was technically a Democrat.
I think that, when it comes to describing the political leanings of the american public, everyone is wrong in the same way. Nobody is as smart as they think they are, and nobody has as much information as they believe they do. Not even me. This applies doubly to democratic voters, who are demonstrable in their preference for the more ignorant candidates, but it doesn’t detract from the essential equality of their reasoning to that used by republican voters in choosing Trump.
Remember what Grover Norquist during his February 2012 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)? "We don't need a president to tell us what direction to go; we know what direction we want to go... We just need a president to sign this stuff. Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to be president of the United States.
Both sets prefer the least-qualified candidates, and both make choices based on whether a statement is coming from one of their own. The mechanisms of their decision-making may be similar, but those similarities have less to do with intelligence, and more to do with the resources they dedicated to the task. The real mystery is not why everyone votes the way they do, but why it seems, to so many people, to be the case.
The mechanism is worth discussing separately, because I think its implications are the most interesting. A billionaire or a career politician is standing in front of the camera every single day, delivering a speech, and something about it causes people to feel as if they know this person, in the same way one might know a character on a television show. They don’t, not really, but they are forming parasocial relationships, and the effects are similar to those of an in-person interaction. Voters aren’t really meeting their preferred presidential candidate, but they are absorbing every word they hear about their enemies as if it, too, came from a familiar source. They are more persuaded when they hear these things, because they are being fed information in a manner akin to an interpersonal discussion. The most effective speeches are scarcely about the accomplishments of the speaker, they are about the enemies of the audience, and how they intend to hurt them.
I think that’s the point I missed most in my initial draft, and this is the closest I’ve come to capturing an intuition which is difficult for me to describe. It is not helpful to say that “their voters are foolish and mine are fair,” or “they’re all the same,” or “we’re all the same.” We are, in many ways, all the same, but what matters most is that we are not all the same in our ability to distinguish between the ideas and the men who express them, and the ways in which they are connected. The research says, essentially, “don’t confuse the process with the substance,” which is advice I am willing to follow. In other words, how did a guy with a golden toilet get you to believe that he is the savior of the common folk? How do people not see through what he says as an easy lie or deflection unless they simply do not care?
There is one final point worth making before I move on, and it regards the ways in which voters are being taken advantage of. There’s an article I saw this morning, written by an anonymous source inside the Trump administration, which stated “Trump has begun to explore the Defense Production Act as a means to force the reopening of a pipeline currently closed by California’s environmental regulations, effectively declaring them an obstacle to energy security, and sidestepping the will of the people.”
This is exactly the sort of action one would expect from a man whose administration has spent the better part of the last year attempting to re-open mothballed refineries, including one heavily polluted plant in St. Croix which the EPA has previously shut down due to toxic emissions, as a means of securing its own oil supply. It is implied that you know the oil from Venezuala is horrible oil. That type of oil is what they wanted to seep through the Keystone Pipeline. St. Croix’s a multi-year project that fails to address any immediate concerns, but in the meantime the administration is considering using the defense production act to override California’s environmental regulations. The EPA has authority over emissions, but not pipelines, and the administration has chosen the latter, demonstrably weaker option to circumvent the opposition of one state in favor of the oil industry.
There’s a less interesting article I could discuss, but let’s discuss this one. A blizzard recently affected the northeastern United States, and four states. New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island have all applied for federal disaster relief. All of them met the requirements set forth by FEMA, but all of them were denied, two days after six republican-led states received disaster relief with no issue. Since the presidency of George W. Bush, sixty-nine snow requests have been approved by FEMA, sixty-eight of them under the assumption that they cleared the bar for a disaster designation. This year’s four denials are the only exceptions, and the investigations into their misuse of federal funds are ongoing.
The cost to the states denied assistance, across the four of them, is two hundred and twenty-seven million dollars, an amount that will inevitably be passed on to their citizens in the form of higher taxes.
That is the cost of control of the federal government by one party. It is the difference between a blue and red state in the eyes of the federal government. It is the difference between a company receiving a permit to reopen a refinery with known health risks without a single question being asked, or being forced to defend every policy decision made in the wake of a disaster to a skeptical local population.
Individual members of the Democratic party are capable of cutting through that fog in much the same way that Ossoff and Talarico have managed to do, but individual exceptions do not represent systemic change. Winning individual races is good, but what matters is what happens when one controls both chambers of government, and can exert control over the levers of power.
In this spirit, let’s do the math, because it’s important to be precise, the Democratic party needs a net gain of four seats in the Senate in order to reach the magic fifty-one seat majority, thanks to JD Vance’s vice-presidential candidacy.
There are thirty-five Senate seats up for election this cycle, twenty-three of which are being defended by republicans, and twelve by democrats.
Prior to any gains or losses, the democrats will need to win three key races:
Georgia, which they are likely to win.
Michigan, which has an open seat.
New Hampshire, which has an equally precarious balance of power.
Beyond them, there are three toss-up Senate races, in North Carolina, Iowa, and Maine, which are far more desirable for the democratic party to win, assuming they want to reach that magic five-one percent figure.
Should they win all three, however, they will still need one more seat beyond them in order to fully offset the losses they are certain to take elsewhere, and that’s where Texas comes in.
In the 2026 Texas US Senate race, Democratic state representative James Talarico faces off against Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in an unexpectedly tight, competitive contest. The prospect of a Democratic senator from Texas has proven elusive, if not outright impossible, for the last three decades, and recent polling suggests a significant shift in the political winds in the Lone Star State. The Polling ShiftThree separate opinion polls conducted in the last week reflect a surprising jump in the first place for Democratic nominee James Talarico over his Republican opponent, Ken Paxton:
Texas Southern University (TSU): conducted August 4, 2026 – Talarico 47%, Paxton 45%
Fox News: conducted late July 2026 – Talarico 51%, Paxton 48%
Texas Public Opinion Research (TPOR): Talarico 45%, Paxton 40%
Why the Tight Race? Several factors contribute to the unexpectedly close race between Talarico and Paxton:
Intraparty fighting within the GOP and a fractious electorate are to blame for the shift in momentum, with the Texas Senate race seeing the most intensely partisan voting in the state’s history.
In the May 2026 GOP primary runoff, Paxton, the favorite of former President Donald Trump, defeated popular two-term senator John Cornyn, who was also a Trump opponent. Paxton’s victory came with the price of a divided GOP, as his past scandals, including a corruption probe that led to his impeachment and a state Senate vote in 2023 – have turned off many moderate suburban Republicans.
Talarico, a 36-year-old former middle school teacher, won the Democratic nomination in March 2026 after a bruising runoff against fellow Democratic congresswoman Jasmine Crockett of Dallas. Despite serious objections from Black voters after the primary fight, Talarico has managed to unify the party, according to The Texas Tribune :” … he carried 79 percent of the black vote in the November 2026 election.”
A large chunk of the electorate, mostly independent voters and non-college educated, is expected to decide the 2026 Texas Senate race. Talarico’s appeal to this group has enabled him to enjoy overwhelming support among independent voters, 43 percent to Paxton’s 23 percent, according to TPOR.
The issues of greatest concern to voters are also proving decisive. With the economy topping the agenda, Talarico’s emphasis on his business-friendly approach to affordability and cost of living polls strongly against Paxton, who is proving to be far less effective on the issue.
A key matchup to watch for in the 2026 Texas Senate race will involve the debates. Democratic nominee James Talarico has challenged his Republican rival Ken Paxton to three debates, and Paxton’s campaign has agreed to the first one, which will take place in early September 2026. This marks a stark contrast to Paxton’s previous refusal to participate in any debates during the 2023 campaign.
This is an excellent candidate. I doubt he lies. He is into religion, guns, and anything they have thrown at him has not worked. They called him gay in so many words, which, come on, that's a thing? Regardless of that not working, they then tried to refer to him as a freak, giving him the "Talafreako" name, and what did that campaign do? They started selling merchandise.
The math for the House is simpler. Republicans enjoy a five seat majority, and democrats need only a net gain of three seats to take control.
Eighteen House seats are listed by the Cook Political Report as toss-ups, of which nine are in states the presidential candidate won, and fifteen are currently held by republicans who won their districts by less than five points, according to Trump’s vote.
That’s the arithmetic, and it’s not particularly inspiring, but it’s factual.
It is entirely possible, however, that none of this will happen. A number of state legislatures controlled by republicans have made it harder for democrats to win elections, which means the popular vote threshold for victory in these states is higher than it would be in more competitive republicans states, meaning democrats need more popular votes than usual in order to turn them into wins for the party. There are also a number of major donors who have chosen to sit this cycle out entirely, due to fears of retaliation from the federal government for donating to the wrong candidate, including IRS audits, and the national democratic party is in danger of being outspent by the more organized national republican apparatus.