As Long As We’re Calling Spades Spades
The illustrious Professor Emeritus Dr. Paul Braterman, who blogs about issues of science and religion in Scotland at Primate’s Progress, commented on my last post:
What passes for the leadership of the (relatively) more left-leaning US party must take its share of the blame. Why should Obamacare ever have been based on the discredited insurance model, when the single-payer, as quick comparison between the US and other countries shows, delivers better results for half the money? And why, in that brief interval between 2008 and 2010 when the Democratic party controlled all America’s political institutions, was nothing done to address the underlying problem of growing technology-driven inequality? Why have the working (or, alas, non-working)people of Michigan, for instance, continuously over the past decade, stopped seeing the Democratic party as speaking for them? None of which is to minimise the imminent horrors, but to describe my view of the kind of agenda necessary to oppose them, both morally and practically.
Which is absolutely true. I’m focused on the Republican side because that’s the one currently turning our country over to an orange dusted Mussolini and a white nationalist who likes being compared to Darth Vader and Satan by his enemies. But then on the other side, there’s this from a facebook friend who recently attended a meeting of local Democrats:
At the state Democratic Party meeting last night, a friend asked my question of leadership: “Why are the Democrats not more vocal and fighting for the truth about Russian involvement in this election and Trump’s obviously racist, homophobic, etc., picks for his cabinet?” (Or something like that.) The response was basically that nobody wants to get painted a sore loser and that the Democratic Party believes in a peaceful transition of power.
Now, do you suppose that the Republican party lives in fear of how they will be perceived by those who don’t support them anyways? I’m going to go out on a limb and guess no.
How much time do you suppose the GOP spent worrying about being seen as sore losers when they were fighting tooth and nail to win the presidency for Bush during the Florida recount in 2000? Probably none.
And I fail to see how fighting to contest election results or speak out forcefully against, say, choosing a white nationalist leader as the president’s closest adviser, is necessarily an impediment to the peaceful transition of power.
And then we wonder why a large segment of the population would rather vote for a turnip than a Democrat. They don’t listen to their constituents who have been agitating for change for years. They won’t fight unless they are forced to. They are in the habit of walking into negotiations with their political opponents, giving them what they want and then asking what they are willing to give them in return. This is not leadership. This is . . . I dunno. Bullshit. A dereliction of duty. Idiotic.
Between putting up a candidate who, rightly or wrongly, was viewed entirely negatively by a sizable number of people and then just retreating into silence after the election, the DNC is destroying itself just as surely as the GOP is with Trump. Obviously the Democratic party is not going to fight for the American people. They’re not going to provide leadership. We the people are going to have to take responsibility for fighting this fight. Yeah, we can try pressuring the DNC (who just ignores us anyways). But mostly opposition to Trump is going to have to come from the ground up and be self-sustaining. These jokers can’t even be counted on for an assist.
Anyways. I am going to continue focusing on Trump and the GOP because we’re in a more dangerous position than most people realize (which I’ll be getting to in a bit today). But please don’t think that means I’m giving the Democrats a pass. They are guilty as hell in their own right for refusing to fight if nothing else.
Pass It On!
#election2016 #politics #democraticparty #gop #currentevents #dnc