How Did We Get Here?
Photo by Samuele Errico Piccarini
Sometimes when you drive in a certain direction for long enough, something amazing happens. You arrive in just the place that you were heading. It is quite an ability to be able to deny the consequences of straight lines, movement and time. Those who speak of such unavoidable destinations earn names like Cassandra and are very unpopular at parties. This seems to be just such a time in history.
Now this will be the last time I give any lengthy discussion as to how I consider we had multiple waypoints to diverge from this path; at some point this becomes navel-gazing. Looking above your own abdomen is now a quite necessary thing, but I do think a quick glance in the rear-view mirror is necessary to avoid repetitive mistakes. This one last time I’m gonna air it out.
We are dealing with the fruition of so many toxic decisions– so many steps along the way that could have been averted. An accumulation of terrible concessions and outright ignoring of evil. If we don’t like where we are at, we do need to consider how long this has all taken and how many times mitigation might have been possible.
There is a lot of liberal level hatred going on right now towards those they feel are to their left—they consider the current administration to be the fault of those individuals due to their perceived inelasticity in regard to issues such as……. genocide. But this has been going on much longer than recent atrocities—there’s been a very long history of reality being pointed out by leftists and being ignored by liberals.
Many on the left were pointing out that the Democratic Party was dangerous, due to their mendacity and hollow promises. The voicing of this concern was not to enhance the reactionary right but to save any shreds that could keep fascism at bay. The concern was that we would land exactly where we are, whether in this election cycle or the next. It could have happened after any neo-liberal administration, and the left was warning of this very salient fact. And it’s not like the left were magically prescient, no—this is what always happens when a party like the Democrats offer no significant push-back to the rhetoric of the right or any improvement in quality-of-life issues for the masses. It’s almost worse that they dangle improvement, but do not deliver. A portion of the masses will accept and embrace darker, ill-advised options when this occurs. For the left to have been pointing this out was like being on a street corner with a sign proclaiming 2+2=4 and receiving pushback from neo-liberal Democrats saying, “I don’t think you understand how numbers work, it’s simply more sophisticated than you can grasp.”
The Democrats dropped promises in regard to quality of life/wage issues—they did not pursue codification of important social issues even in times of democratic supermajorities—they did not add justices to the Supreme Court when this looked like a necessary option given the psychotic make-up of the current court. This type of behavior delivered us to this very dark place in history we now find ourselves staring at.
The executive order zeal that Trump has exhibited shows how it was probably available in some form many times during Democratic administrations as well. The Democrats had the option to come down with quality-of-life decrees. If the orders were popular but rescinded by Republicans then that would have fallen on them. Their popularity would have taken a nosedive, but things of this nature were not attempted. Biden would put out multiple strings attached “debt relief” that was shut down and did nothing but infuriate those who were tricked into thinking they might have a chance at clawing out of debt servitude. Can you imagine if truly New Deal type program attempts were made? Anything! Drop credit card interest rates allowable and say it’s because the bible is against usury. Let the Republicans play with that fire. Of course, the man from Delaware wouldn’t do that, but I say this to illustrate that there were ways to fight back if the Democrats were remotely who they said they were. If the result of executive orders really did improve lives–even the Trump followers would probably stay shut up about them. If you successfully implemented an order that would alleviate the pain from our healthcare system, can you imagine the unmitigated love you’d receive? From everyone? Look at what happened with the UHC shooter. You had sympathetic people on every side of the aisle over that due to the inherent cruelty of the system. All along the way there have been issues that could bind rather than divide this country. The Democrats simply opted to ignore that. You can say they followed the rules…. but they followed “rules” because they didn’t want to materially change life for the vast majority of Americans. Some of the rules they made up for themselves such as– we have the right to pick our candidates without voter input. That’s quite a rule. It’s such a tragedy because I believe even slight course corrections at pivotal moments could still have changed this nation.
When those on the left brought up options that could earn support and help fellow citizens it was considered to be accomplice behavior aiding the reactionary right. Instead of listening and processing the validity of the concerns, the energy of many liberals was to blame all the wrong people, that is to say the ones who were telling the truth. As I’ve said, there were crucial moments there to stop or slow this slide. One example, of course, would have been to allow an organic primary. But the selection of even a milquetoast social democrat type like Sanders was marketed as a bridge too far and most Democrats eventually swallowed that nonsense up. They were told a candidate like that would never be able to win despite the man having much higher favorable among the right than their handpicked neo-liberal candidates. It was considered to be a mark of maturity to simply acquiesce to “this is how things are” and “we can’t do better”. Quite the motivational stuff, that. Yes, every year gets harder, there’s more homelessness, more suicides, more misery, but we are the adults in the room and you are to accept this as your lot in life. Of course, we end up with fascists. That’s the damn formula for it that history has proven time and time again.
Then we move to a point where full-on genocide isn’t even considered to be a deal breaker with Democrats. When a party falls to that depth, it’s very difficult to see how it can play out in any other manner. Even now, you see liberals gloat in regard to those who didn’t vote at all or voted third party because they couldn’t morally support the Democrats. They say, “are you happy now? Trump wants to move everyone out of Gaza!” As in ha, ha– stupid leftists see how much worse it is with Trump than Biden? Now on this I say you couldn’t have Trump and his son-in-law making Gaza real estate plans without the Biden administration “softening the target”. So, I find that to be a disgusting non-starter. Are we really arguing about how much genocide we should allow?
But………here is where we do get the difference in the parties. And that is in the wholesale dismantling of our government infrastructure currently going on. Again, the liberals would blame the left for this situation when in fact this would not be our reality should the Democratic party have allowed for a natural primary in 2016, 2020 (or hell, even a primary at all in 2024). Those on the left were speaking to history, the inevitable allowance for fascism should relief valves and mitigation not be put in place. You don’t have these situations arise in materially comfortable, at ease societies. And no amount of “this naked emperor has clothes on that were free-trade sourced and hand-sewn by minority lesbians” will change the fact that he is indeed, fucking naked.
But alas, we find ourselves “together’ in that we aren’t fine with the future, the neoliberals and the leftists……..what the world is shaping itself to be is of course simply awful in new and adventurous ways. I would say that the path forward can’t be one of ceding to corporate power, to allowing greasy superficial politicians to convince you to accept situations as egregious as genocide. Our future may look quite different—we may end up with localities having much more power than in the past. We are in uncharted territory, but one thing is for certain and that is we cannot allow pretend opposition to corral our better natures or convince us that in the interest of rationality, we need to forego what we know is decent and correct. Because do not forget, these “rational players”, be it Obama, Clinton, Biden..…. Harris—well, look what their fake opposition has done for us. But they are pretty materially comfortable, aren’t they? Someone said we are in the copper stripping era of the national government. It really won’t affect Biden’s deal with his Hollywood agent.
Moving forward, the greasy political class those types spring from need to be consigned to the dustbin of history. They will bring us nothing but continued misery and a large portion of the masses will look to an authoritarian daddy to fix things. We have actual work to get done. Again, this isn’t new—we didn’t invent this situation. The only way to combat hate, selfishness and inhumanity is the exact opposite of all those things, not pretending, posing and sending out 1,000,000 give me money emails from AOC. This will be my last missive in regard to the Democrats because they are “like a candle in the wind—unreliable” –(thank you fictional Dean Lerner for whatever you were talking about when you delivered that unhinged and delicious line). Time to move on and not repeat such idiocy in the future.
