"Ratf**ked?" How to fight back (maybe)

[LearnedHand]

https://open.substack.com/pub/longmemo/p/ratfked-how-to-fight-back-maybe

Long but excellent post by William A Finnegan about what fighting back actually means. He includes really excellent, implementable actions to take over the long term.

Let’s begin here: You don’t win a rigged game by playing it better. You win by making it unplayable.

For the past 15 years, Democrats and progressives have been stuck in a defensive crouch—responding, reacting, rationalizing. Every time the rules changed, they adjusted their expectations. Every time the goalposts moved, they trotted out new moral victories to soften the blow.

It didn’t stop the machinery. It just greased it.

But the hard truth is this: REDMAP wasn’t just a gerrymandering scheme. It was a doctrine. A model of minoritarian rule so airtight, so thoroughly embedded in local, state, and federal systems, that the illusion of democratic process still flickers—while the outcomes are functionally predetermined.

[cilla4progress]

1. Looks good. Will read.

Thanks!

[usonian]

2. And voter suppression.

It probably cost the recent election, it was so intense.

No new ideas here. Jim Crow.

And Merrick was busy arresting nobodys who were all sprung in one day.

That's fighting a sword fight with a soda straw.

But back on point, only progressive states fight gerrymandering. Regressive ones embed it. USSC seems firmly against equal representation. "Because"

🦨🦨🦨🦨🦨🦨

[ultralite001]

3. "If the last 100 days of the 'Trump Regime' have not convinced you of what I have just written,

then either you are an idiot or willfully ignorant."

Damn!!! This is SOOOO good...

"The Republican Party and its supporters are not interested in policy debate or democratic legitimacy. It is not interested in the rule of law or in the preservation of institutions. It is not interested in the founding principles, the Constitution of the United States, or in the preservation of the separation of powers. It’s a movement committed to holding power regardless of public will, driven by a coherent strategic vision: control the levers of government, and the levers will control the people. That is the goal. If you control the power, you will control the people. It is inherently autocratic, rejecting of the founding, and duplicitious. It cloaks itself in patriotism and the flag, but rejects both. It serves only one master, power."

"The “Trump Regime,” is the most refined expression of the impulses and emotions of the Republican/Conservative ideology since Barry Goldwater, untempered by commitments to logic, empathy, or rationality. It is the “id” of Republican ideology without the ego and superego. What is being expressed right now is the basic instinct of what the party believes and feels, untempered by rationality, thought, or reality."

"That is something Democrats have failed to grasp. It’s why for so long Democrats thought, 'Well surely, if we just give people information, they’ll “wake up” and then everyone will see the error of their ways.'”

Worth subscribing...

https://www.thelongmemo.com/p/ratfked-how-to-fight-back-maybe

+

https://www.thelongmemo.com/p/patrimonial-survival-checklist

[LearnedHand]

4. Agree

This is the most cogent discussion of what Dems can do I've seen so far. I love this Substack.

[ultralite001]

5. Damn straight...

This is also brilliant + worth the subscription...

PATRIMONIAL SURVIVAL CHECKLIST
How to Stay Alive, Unseen, and Sane in a System Governed by Loyalty, Not Law
William A. Finnegan
Apr 16, 2025

https://www.thelongmemo.com/p/patrimonial-survival-checklist

[Skittles]

6. excellent assessment