Fantastic Article About The Politics Of Wrong

How about a woodworking metaphor? One kind of box is joined at the corners by mitre joints. The perfect mitre joint meets with two 45 degree angles coming together to form a 90 degree corner. If you cut the angles a little proud, you can trim away at the extra material until you get a nice clean fit. 

Miter Joint

Trimming the little extra.

If you cut the angles short, there's no easy fix for the gap that results.  

But worse than that, sometimes you cut the joint the exact opposite way. 

D'oh!

The only thing to do then is start over. You can flip and trim all you want, but you'll never get a mitre joint.  

It is 45 degrees, right?

Demonstating this last fact for the last 30 year or so has been the Republican Party. When you fundamentally misunderstand how the world works you advocate for tax cuts for the rich to help the poor. And you hate federal regulations while extolling the virtues of local government. And you're wrong, as Jonathan Chait points out here:

The most concise encapsulation of the dynamite on the right is two sentences that appeared in Rand Paul’s widely ballyhooed opinion piece in Time during the Ferguson protests: “There’s a systemic problem with today’s law enforcement. Not surprisingly, big government has been at the heart of the problem.” ...