@Bisbonian

I just watched a video of a man named Jamarl Thomas (and his running commentary on a recent Jill Stein interview). He calls himself a Progressive, and is definitely NOT a Democrat.

Linkie, por favor?

of a man named Jamarl Thomas (and his running commentary on a recent Jill Stein interview). He calls himself a Progressive, and is definitely NOT a Democrat.

@Song of the lark Twattle, not all taxes go to war and death merchants. Bezos AMZ makes profits for warmongers, your choices are your choices, that is all. Good luck with Bezos USofCare(Not), more in line with what "the millenials" want, I guess. I don't know, around here it is Public/Private for the inhumanity as far as the eye can see. "Alexa send me a sandwich, now!" LOL because why not, who needs housing?

There are millions of others who don't own an internet account plugged directly in to the corporate rentier's shithole matrix, we are trying to survive too. No Bezos, no wars, that's what I say. I'm not down with government granted monopolies, especially the software kind. I live and pay taxes in Northern California in case anyone was wondering. Not much.

Yes! Progressives are Democratic party imperialists. Joe Voter can't tell the difference 'tween a Blue D or a Lib D or a Prog D, so when Jimmy Dore goes off on Democrat pols, he is undermining the whole base, that's what I think. Ha ha! /nelson I love Jimmy, he is a great jagoff comedian, not a politician. I don't "ring the bell" for GOOG though, and won't miss his channel much if it goes off the tube. The tube is TV for millenials, they are addicted like heroin to their media phones and the tripe that spews forth... but I digress.

Stop me before I vote again! Look what the cat just puked up in California:

former Hillary Clinton aide Amanda Renteria confirmed Tuesday she is launching a "grassroots" campaign

Renteria 2018
lol omg lmao
good luck

in the United Sates you are an imperialist.
I was in a thrift shop scouting some books to sell on Amazon. Yes I am a petty running dog capitalist working on new Grub Street, scuttling away amongst the tattered reminents of past reading for my bread and olive oil. Hey I got to eat.
Somehow the clerk a middle aged woman and I started talking about Trump...not uncommon to hear these kinds of conversations here in CA since our president does something worriesome nearly everyday. So she says she's worried that Trump is going to start a war to stay in office. So I look at her and remind her we are at war with no less than 3 countries (really more). The look of remembrance in her eyes was like a reality shock...she sort of had forgotten we've been at war for almost 2 decades. The average American is so overwhelmed with daily crap of living...here a lady who is volunteering her time at the local church thrift...prolly a good person who has forgotten we are at war. Imperialism is so normalized in American life we don't notice it...it too overwhelming to think about Libya or sanctions on Venezuela, or Africom drone bases in the Sahel.
I like the idea of parsing whether progressives are imperialists but really what does it matter? I don't think of myself as an imperialist but part of me knows I am by virtue of my citizenship in this country. American Hegemony is inescapable.

@Song of the lark might you want to list your Amazon shop on the Caucus99 catalogue?

I have worked in thrift shops and it is incredible how much good stuff, very much including worthy books, is simply thrown away, usually by neat freak social climbers. I think bookselling is an honorable occupation, getting books into the hands of readers for reasonable prices.

in the United Sates you are an imperialist.
I was in a thrift shop scouting some books to sell on Amazon. Yes I am a petty running dog capitalist working on new Grub Street, scuttling away amongst the tattered reminents of past reading for my bread and olive oil. Hey I got to eat.
Somehow the clerk a middle aged woman and I started talking about Trump...not uncommon to hear these kinds of conversations here in CA since our president does something worriesome nearly everyday. So she says she's worried that Trump is going to start a war to stay in office. So I look at her and remind her we are at war with no less than 3 countries (really more). The look of remembrance in her eyes was like a reality shock...she sort of had forgotten we've been at war for almost 2 decades. The average American is so overwhelmed with daily crap of living...here a lady who is volunteering her time at the local church thrift...prolly a good person who has forgotten we are at war. Imperialism is so normalized in American life we don't notice it...it too overwhelming to think about Libya or sanctions on Venezuela, or Africom drone bases in the Sahel.
I like the idea of parsing whether progressives are imperialists but really what does it matter? I don't think of myself as an imperialist but part of me knows I am by virtue of my citizenship in this country. American Hegemony is inescapable.

@Alligator Ed That's not what I heard. I heard they were having serious problems with their fundraising. I wonder which is true?

I just figured it out. The DNC is doing terribly. The money is getting funnelled into the DCCC and the DSCC. OTOH, I wonder where that money is coming from. How much is coming from the big money donors, and do these changes simply indicate that the big money has decided that the DNC's image is tarnished beyond repair?

Although completely agree with your essay, especially about the common conflation of Democrats (large D) with progressives is so ubiquitous that the distinction is really lost on most of the country. With Fox Spews of course, it's easy to understand why they consider anybody to the left of Dubya as a "lefty", or even commie-pinko bastids. The Muddy Slime Media considers anybody to the left of Hillary as lefties, and this is the diet most people are fed--if they even bother to watch the news.

The more radical progressives (perhaps what's being called the progressive left), relatively speaking, complain about the "corporate" or "establishment" democrats but they still support the party by donating to and voting for progressive democratic party politicians.

This, quite sadly is true. I was shocked to learn that the disgraced Demonratic party has raised almost as much money as the Repugnants since December 2017. When will the so-called Dem base wake up--the Demonratic Party is not their friend? Just proves money can't buy everything--for instance: Sanity.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

marxist-socialists (not the DSA capitalist reformers)and i voted for pink ajamu baraka! (srsly)

‘Venezuela: Revenge of the Mad-Dog Empire’ by Ajamu Baraka, February 20th, 2018, dissident voice a few snippets:

"In every part of the world, the United States is engaged in maniacal, criminal assaults on democracy, basic human decency and common sense. From its support for armed jihadists groups in Syria and its illegal occupation of that nation, transferring heavy military equipment to its puppet regime in Ukraine, supporting unending war in Afghanistan, to the military invasion of Africa, the commitment to maintaining U.S. global dominance has moved war and militarism to the center of U.S. strategy.

But nowhere is U.S. criminality more apparent and unrelenting than right here in the Americas where the Pan-European project was born in 1492. That was the year “Europe” was born, emerging from its relative cultural backwardness using with terrifying efficiency the only advantage it had over the more civilized people of the region—armor protection and steel weapons—to slaughter the people, take the land and begin the 500-hundred-year nightmare the people of the world have suffered ever since.

Today, the barbarism of the Pan-European project continues under the tutelage of what history will record—if humanity survives—as the most violent, racist, oppressive human experience ever to have emerged in the short span of human existence on Earth: The United States of America.

After centuries experiencing the horrors of genocide, slavery, military dictatorships, environmental destruction, and neoliberal exploitation, the people of Latin America began to slowly extract themselves from the clutches of the hegemon from the North. Social movements and peoples undeterred by coups, structural adjustment and death squads started to take back their history in Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, and the rest of the continent. Venezuela has led the way, proclaiming the dawn of a 21st century socialism that would create the new society and the new human in the process."

"The moves by the Trump administration represent an ominous re-introduction of the worst imperialist excesses of the late 20th century, where violent coups were the preferred response to any threats to the rule of capital and U.S. imperialist control. Yet, what is even more ominous about the situation unfolding in Venezuela is that unlike a few decades ago, when there was a vocal and active radical and left opposition to U.S. imperialism, the left and many radicals in the U.S. are in open class collaboration with imperialism.

The left in the United States and Western Europe has completely abandoned any idea of solidarity with global South’s revolutionary projects. A bizarre example of the reactionary nature of the European left was the European Parliament awarding the Sakharov Freedom Prize to the Venezuelan “opposition,” a group that has openly attacked journalists and burned alive two dozen people of primarily Black or dark complexions who they assumed were probably government supporters because they were poor and black. Clearly for the representatives in the European Union’s only democratic body, the integrity of the press and “Black lives” really don’t matter!"

and yes, the labels and self-labels are not linear, impossible to parse, but do lead to #Fakeleft, 'anti-imperialist except assad, gadaffi, milocevic, etc.'

Like many independents, I joined the Democratic Party to vote for Sanders in the primary, but then Sanders was an independent that only joined the Democratic party to run for President. I wouldn't vote for Sanders now that he's shown the extent of his loyalty to the Democratic party.

To me, the word "progressive" has to do with its historical associations with anti-corruption movements.

On the other hand, I believe that, as with the word "left," the Democratic party has now effectively absorbed the term, in the sense that most people would use it the way you are. Eventually, they will absorb all terms that connote resistance, with the possible exception of the word "socialist," which is synonymous in America with "the devil."