Don't Shame Me! - Part the Deux!
So, as just a little follow up to yesterday's Don't Shame Me rant Pt. 1, I'm happy to report that I already see a noticeable difference in the tone and posts in my facebook feed. I also saw a lot of likes and good comments from people I've never seen before, and likes and good comments from people that surprised me (I have a wide political spectrum in my 'friends' collection).
My take away is that much of the support we see for Hillary is indeed very soft support. It's as much despair and resignation as it is "support" ("Maybe being eaten by a lion wouldn't be as bad...?").
The biggest takeaway is that people wanted to know, "But what can we do now?"
Here's what we can do now - movement visibility. Let people know they do NOT need to vote out of fear. Let people know a 3rd party vote is NOT a wasted vote OR a vote for the Greater Evil and it doesn't have to be a vote for a "winner" to matter.
It's a message, sent.
A message that the two-party structure is in decay and marginalizing themselves and they had better stop and think about how badly they want to continue down that path, or include those voices they've worked so hard to exclude, or worse, pretend to listen to. And some of them already are, they were all along, and will continue to fight for us from the inside while we support them by pressing from the outside.
It's a multi-fronted effort for a single shared goal of a progressive restoration of what should be representative government.
Things are happening, though it all looks like chaos right now in the wake of the primaries as the progressive movement, like a Supernova gone critical, fractures into hundreds of smaller independent pieces (WayoftheCats?). But like the planets forming from the cosmic dust and debris left in the wake of a massive explosion, the coalescing is already happening.
You can make a difference, even as a lone voice falling in the woods. You are a match, and the current political world is filled with years of built up dry underbrush.
Sometimes a controlled Bern backfire is the only effective solution.
Play with fire.
Cross-posted from Way of the Bern.
Comments
Undercover Blue at Digby thinks Bernie supporters are delusional
I always used to hold Digby in high esteem but it’s a pretty big deal when now one of her writers takes the position that there was no election fraud and that Bernie Sanders backers just imagined it.
Edited: the Digby blogger wasn’t tristero, it was Undercover Blue.
Russia!!!!
Trump!!!!!
Beware the bullshit factories.
Just like corporate money in politics
Election integrity only mattered when it was the other guy doing it.
"Polls don't tell us how well a candidate is doing; Polls tell us how well the media is doing." ~ Me
Ditto On Digby
Hullabaloo used to be one of my favorite site. Lately Digby is stuck on stupid with all Trump all of the time. Now I just go there to use her blogroll.
Question for Digby and Undercover Blue: Who is more deluded? Berners who refuse to vote for a TPP Global Elitest Warmonger or simpletons who think they can refotm the Democratic Party?
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Invasion of the Bernie Snatchers
Edited: this is a reply to lotlizard.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
Personally, I find "sending a message" a weak argument.
I have no interest in "sending a message" to those who don't want to receive that message.
For me, my vote for Green is to get on about the business of building an alternative to our current oligarchy-based options. My attitude is that when you see a problem, you might as well get to fixing it. There will never be a good time to do so. So now seems like a fine time to get started.
When someone talks about how awful Trump is or about the Supreme Court I remind them that I've heard that argument for every single election in my adult life. There will always be a Trump. There will always be a Supreme Court and a scary congress and whatever other excuses are offered up. If we really want better alternatives, we're going to have to hold the line at some point and this point seems just as good as any other and better than future points because it gets going now.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
For me, its both
I want them to know why they failed and to see my vote going somewhere else, and know why they lost a loyal supporter. But at the same time, I want to make a third party viable with my support, which is the only way they become viable. You can't wait for them to succeed, then support them, as my father was advocating for. Thats like refusing to feed a baby until after it shits, or the proverbial "how do I get experience if no one will hire me?". No, you need to make it happen.
If my motivation was only about hurting Hillary and the DNC or just sending a message of displeasure, I'd just vote Trump. Its impossible, however, for my vote for a truly progressive third party option to not end up sending a message.
enddrugtestingblogspot.com
I have long believed
that a lot of her supporters are voting out of fear and feel subconsciously guilty over this, and their lashing out like that is manifestation of this. I know, I felt it myself in 2012. You know your candidate is not a good one and has done/will do indefensible things, but you're still immersed in the whole tribal dance of "vote for our team no matter what" and the sense of overwhelming existential terror of the other side. So you push, push, push for people to support your side,and when you see anyone voting their conscience and refusing to play the two-card Monte game, you get pissed! They're screwing up your candidates chances to get elected and marginally slow our descent into the lake of crocodiles and just who do they think they are, voting their conscience anyway? Sure, we'd all like to do that, but its just not realistic, and its not worth sinking four feet closer to the croc snap range than just two or three! They're going to ruin everything!
I liken it to closeted gay homophobes. So much indignation and hatred because after all, here he is trying to do the "right" thing and please God by accepting the burden God has charged him with and just marrying a woman even though he likes her brother much better, being told that if he just forces it he will become straight and be happy, and he just gets more miserable and no straighter. And then he has to see all those happy, poositive, open gays in parades,on tv, in politics, increasingly everywhere, abeing themselves and not being miserable, disease-ridden, or otherwise smoted by God, and he gets infuriated. After all his suffering in secret to do the right thing and being miserable,who the hell are they to flout the will of God and somehow not be punished for it? Its not fair! Why do they get to be happy when they're doing everything wrong?
I think something similar is at work with Hillary folk, psychologically. There's just so much anger and hatred and most of all, amazingly convoluted efforts to rationalize and justify themselves as morally superior and outright demonize us, far more than anyone tries to demonize the Repubs.
enddrugtestingblogspot.com