Four pages in - I’ve been super busy and didn’t suffer a strong enough case of opinionitis to take the time to comment. But here’s a summary that is coming into focus from the fog that fits my personal memory of the Great Defund Debacle:

When I first heard the call to “defund the police” I thought, “That’s a stupid thing to say”, but it wasn’t at all clear to me who was saying it. The chatter was almost instantaneous trying to explain that defund meant reduce support for aggressive and punitive policing and reprogramming significant funds to preemptive and treatment oriented actions for non-criminals. Excellent strategy, but ‘defund’ was not a good description.

In my recollection, the source of the ‘defund’ call never became clear, but it was repeated over and over in the press. It was definitely red meat for right-wingers, though, and as we all know, righties love to barbecue.

I also have the vague recollection that “woke” appeared first as a self-description used by Trumpers to elevate themselves above the sleeping masses of ignorant old school Republicans (not to mention the evil liberals who are an even lower life form than John McCain). One day I awoke from night’s sleep and saw that ‘woke’ had replaced ‘elitist’ as the top insult for people who still had some ability to think rationally and who were foolishly seeking polite discussion and debate with others. Very quickly that morphed into a general defamation of all liberalish people, but with a ‘defund’-like meaning that used to only apply to woo-woo Santa Fe style Libs.

Enter James Carville, who loves nothing better than to scrap with idiots in after closing time street fights with the hold my beer and watch this crowd. JC is incensed (rightly, I think) by a couple of words that are being bent and sharpened into nasty little weapons of political warfare, and wants war.

The fundamental problem here is that liberals (in my perception) are more in the camp of the peaceable and reasonable tribe, and not generally very gifted at street fighting, wanton lying, and general sociopathic dalliances. Carville is an outlier, which seems to color his opinion on these matters. He desperately wants to fight fire with fire and is frustrated that his chosen tribe is just not that into it.

The deeper question is, “How do you fight stupid?”

You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.
R. Buckminster Fuller