Let's stop being "progressives"
Okay, so you all know by now that the Democratic Party has become Republican Party Two and that there's nothing for "progressives" but vote-shaming between here and November. But that's okay! The "progressives" have a great repertoire of cliches, those great spoonfuls of sugar which will help the Biden-medicine go down. Below, I will discuss these cliches in context:
"Baby steps." "Incrementalism."
Yeah, the "progressives" really love incrementalism, those baby-steps toward the "progressive" utopia of, what? Public relations cliches as spouted by DNC speakers?
The real problem is that we are not progressing -- but that will come up in greater detail below. The past forty years of "incrementalism" has all been backwards, and Joe Biden has had his fingers in most of that. Joe was instrumental in giving us the Crime Bill, the Bankruptcy Bill, the war against Iraq and so on. The only example of forward "incrementalism" the "progressives" have is the ACA, in which insurance-denial for people with preexisting conditions was replaced by either Medicaid (good luck getting providers to accept it) or the "right" (an obligation, reinforced by a mandate penalty) to buy expensive health insurance you can't afford to use. The going-backwards part of it was that it strengthened the position of power of the health insurance companies.
"Pragmatism."
Yeah, historically the Progressives (the ones of the period between 1890 and 1920) arose in the context of American history at the same time as the pragmatists, that great American school of philosophy, was in peak production mode. The Progressives were making political names for themselves at the same time as John Dewey, William James, and Charles Peirce were making names for themselves as philosophers. Here's the main problem in applying pragmatism to today's problems:
- Donald Trump is not going to solve the world's most pressing problems, not even close. It's easy to show this by his present-day performance.
- Joe Biden is not going to solve the world's most pressing problems, not even close. It's easy to show this by his past performance and by the fact that he's old and very unlikely to change.
Knowing those two things, what should we conclude? A REAL pragmatist would conclude that the world's problems are not going to be solved by a Presidential election, but by some other agency. So what are the "progressives" doing going around vote-shaming those of us who won't vote for Biden?
"Don't waste your vote on a third party."
The problem with this cliche is that in real life ALL votes are wasted, and it's been that way for some time now. We've been voting for the last forty years, in which neoliberals have won, the store given away to the Republicans, and carbon dioxide accumulated in Earth's atmosphere. What have we gotten for it? Voting is vastly over-rated.
"We must defeat Trump."
I'm going to cluster all of the "progressive" cliches which have Trump as their object into one ball here, as I've already posted a series of diaries laying out why the whole "progressive" Trump-cliche effort is wasted. I suppose the most important fact laid out in the series is that Joe Biden's sole path to the Presidency is through Donald Trump's political self-destruction and that nothing the "progressives" add to that Trump self-destruct is going to smooth the path for Joe Biden. Trump might indeed destroy his own political chances, thus giving the "progressives" hope, but Joe Biden himself doesn't honestly count as much of a hope for "progressives". It's that Trump will piss everyone off, and thus they'll vote against him. As for Biden, the most honest point of the DNC was in John Kasich's speech when he was telling his fellow Republicans to vote for Joe Biden because "he'll never turn left."
Moreover, we are not being invited to defeat Trump. The campaign to defeat Trump might tell us we have no choice but to vote for their candidate, but they are not actively looking for our votes. They thusly feel free to make their candidate as unattractive to us as he wants to be. We have only seen the beginning of the Biden campaign's shunning of us.
It's not just that we're powerless to defeat Trump through the promotion of Joe Biden, though. What needs to be defeated is not just Trump, but a system which encompasses Trump, Biden, and the elites (in dimensions economic, political, and mass-media) which support them and which make it a commonplace that things will get worse from year to year for most of us.
At any rate, the point of going over all of this dreck is to isolate the problem. The problem is that "progressivism" has been reduced to cliches, having been abandoned by both major parties and not having the integrity to join the Movement for a People's Party. I propose that we stop being "progressives," that we let the term "progressive" languish in the dustbin of history, and that we choose something to be that is more proactive than the term "progressive." "Humanists" (corresponding to "humanism") might work, also having a historical pedigree, but I'll let the alternative to "progressivism" float around a bit until people agree on something.
Here's the primary reason: We have stopped progressing. Instead we vote for neoliberal politicians and participate in neoliberal systems because we can't think of anything better. Society, then, has been regressing since 1980, the year of highest per-capita government spending upon college students, which used to be the future of America when that future wasn't just a clusterf*ck. The forthcoming disaster will be far larger than any elite power will be willing to cope with. Instead, the elites will receive direct loans from the Federal Reserve for the sake of gold-plating their social escape-pods while the rest of the world fries in catastrophic heat-waves or gets sick and dies of COVID-19. But that's a side-point -- the main point is that there is no point in being a "progressive" and deeming oneself in favor of "progress" when reality is in regress. Maybe some kind of revolution can make progress possible once again; but the "progressives" are not going to make that revolution, just as in two tries at Bernie Sanders' run for the Presidency they didn't make the political revolution a going thing.
So I submit that it's time we stop being "progressives," abandoning the term altogether, and choose something else to be. Revolutionaries, disaster relief, and nice people should all be candidates for the replacement term. "Liberals" will confuse us with neoliberals. Socialists can't be entirely counted out. "Democratic socialists" would be fine for now.
Comments
Good look Cass
I vote for revolutionary.
If progressive has become distasteful
like lefty and socialist before
then radical or crazy would work
question everything
Radical is good, I adopted that personally in about 66 or 67,
and sometimes still go with proud sixties radical, sixties radical or just radical.
be well and have a good one.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Realists ?
RevoRealists?
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"Liberal" is too important to abandon
Liberalism - the values and vision of the Enlightenment - is precisely what we need right now, and not coincidentsally, precisely what is most under siege.
There is NOTHING "liberal" about the "neoliberals", no more so than the spend-crazy country-destroying "neoconservatives" are "conservative".
I'm sorry, but "people will get confused" is a weak argument at best. Believe me, there IS such thing as "wore it best" - the truth, stubbornly told, can benefit from the mere exposure effect just as surely as a lie. We can be other things, too, but by giving up "liberalism", we are ratifying a lie.
If you want a new word, I will submit "veritatarian": The most important thing of all is knowing what is true. People ARE rational, people ARE learning-machines at heart, and constant confusion is what causes the most suffering and anger of all. People are literally sick and tired of all this "post-Truth" garbage, of emotional force-feeding, of the once-sacred name of "Justice" being lowered to the level of whatever the Lawndale High Fashion Club decides is "in" this month.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
I can't embrace the word liberal any longer, for myself,
because liberals want to reform the system. I no longer think that's possible, at least not on the system's terms. You can't "work within" either of the current parties or "work within" the current state of American politics to change anything except the faces of the managers (Yay, this one's black; Goodie, it's a white woman; Huzzah for the gay guy; Three cheers for the non-English speaker and the dude who isn't Christian).
I like the etymology of liberal and perhaps it could more fruitfully be used to describe policies rather than people?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
This is beyond wonderful.
If you want a new word, I will submit "veritatarian": The most important thing of all is knowing what is true. People ARE rational, people ARE learning-machines at heart, and constant confusion is what causes the most suffering and anger of all. People are literally sick and tired of all this "post-Truth" garbage, of emotional force-feeding, of the once-sacred name of "Justice" being lowered to the level of whatever the Lawndale High Fashion Club decides is "in" this month.
Looking at it from the other direction, I once coined the term "mentirocracy" or "mentirocracia" in Spanish. Mentira is Spanish for lie, and we are living under the rule of lies--a mentirocracy.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I can't argue with a word of this.
I am starting to feel the Dems are trying to see how much shit they can shovel on so called possessives and still get their votes.
"Steal another primary from Bernie and drink his milkshake? Ok, still with us? Hmm, how about if Joe Biden categorically states he's going to work against progressive causes? No, still not enough? Kamala as VP? Voting blue still? What if we give a hard right Republican four times as long as AOC to speak at the convention and explicitly state that Joe will not be pushed left? How's that grab ya?"
As depressing as it is, it's equally fascinating. I don't get it and I never will. I'm not sticking around a party where I'm clearly not wanted.
But I'm especially taken with the idea of "progressing". Aside from having various progressive issues now discussed in polite company, where is any progression? Some people see that as a step, but I just see it as spinning our wheels. So what? I've tried really hard to think of what advances progressives have made since 2016 and I keep coming up empty.
As for the term "progressive", I think it's lost it's meaning. I've seen Kamala labeled a progressive, ffs! It's just another buzzword the Dems use to try to sheepdog us into the pen. I don't know what the term should be, but to jump back to the initial point, until progressives, or whatever they end up being called, abandon the Dems, they'll just appropriate whatever new terms anyone comes up with.
Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.
@Dr. John Carpenter All true.
All true.
The final paragraph really drives your points home.
NYCVG
Biden gave us the name “lying dog-faced pony soldier.”
Maybe we should sick with that. Or maybe “gangsta.” Something the Dems won’t touch.
I agree that the Dems seem to be trying to find out how much crap we would put up with. But it might be more than that. They may be cultivating blind loyalty. Or it might be the mad (insane) exercise of power as O’Brian described in Nineteen Eighty-Four. We just need to learn to love Big Brother. Whatever it is, it’s abusive.
"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"
We have been apologizing for ourselves since McGovern lost
"Progressive" itself was a fallback as the Nixon-Reagan paradigm successfully trashed the word liberal which became a synonym for limp wristed weakness on crime and communism. (Homophobic slur implicit and intended.) Carter was neither a liberal nor a progressive, but he was a Democrat and inflation went to double digits while some guy who called himself Ayatollah humiliated Uncle Sam while wearing some sort of medieval costume.
The bad-ass toughness of Reagan was perfect for our decaying social order -- he kicked the ass of, wait for it, Grenada! And he talked shit on TV to the Soviets.
Leftists today tend to forget when and how the Democratic Party started to blend into the GOP. A solid majority of white people, including millions of Reagan Democrats, was convinced by Reaganism that the Democrats had been taken over by far left loonies who want to make nice with murderers and rapists and Communists while giving tax money to lazy bums.
From the perspective of professional political apparatchiks, the Democratic Leadership Council was a fabulous success as Slick Willie got elected and re-elected pushing conservatism with a hint of soul. This presaged the Barack Obama phenomenon in which actual blackness cancels out all questions of policy.
What is so frustrating to liberals or progressives or socialists or whatever the fuck anybody who can think straight ought to be called is that the "conservative" politics of Reagan has been dead as a doornail for at least 20 years now due to demographic evolution -- yet his policies have taken over both parties and then pulled both even further to the right. And the national economic pie is now cut with humongous slices for the rich and ever smaller slices for the rest of us.
I have no favorite term to suggest, but I do agree that we should have a consistent and coherent brand name. It should imply a movement that goes beyond voting because voting is not going to change anything by itself.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
I remember reading something about this awhile back.
Wish I remembered the source. It might come to me later. The author argued that Dem neoliberalism was forged as a dominant trait of the party some time in the Eighties, in Massachusetts. The first big result, it was argued, was the nomination of Michael Dukakis in the 1988 Presidential race.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
DLC spawned it I think, it comes from their origins.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Wherever there are upper-middle class people
who like their neoliberalism slick and technocratic and professional-sounding, it's there that "New Democrats" (I think they once called them that) breed. That was what I found persuasive about the idea of a Massachusetts origin for Dem neoliberalism. Clearly, though, Silicon Valley was another breeding ground.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
you are so correct.
I recently re-read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. My god. The more things change...
Hunter called it then. The Democratic Party is where progressive ideas go to die.
Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.
I'm already there.
I'm using economic populist to describe myself.
To me, as a lover of words, one of the most annoying things about the corporate, neoliberal era has been the violence done to our language, and therefore to our thought, by the corporate media. They have completely trashed the term progressive. It is no longer fit for purpose.
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
Yup. I've taken to
using "agnostic" to describe myself. After all, every agnostic is basically an atheist with commitment issues, according to the humorists. Why not apply it to politics? After all, I really don't believe in any of their gods, but I also really don't want to get shot for saying so...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
economic populist
is good. Everyone believes capitalism is the right way to go, though few of us are capitalists. I think it's because capitalism and democracy have become grafted to each other. No matter what, r or d, capitalism is a given even though it eventually harms most of us.
Kind of like saying "smoking is good for you". Hmmm, that worked for a long time too. In the end the d's will either embrace economic populism (democrats are and have always championed economic populism. We support $12/hr, incrementally, of course), or it will be consigned to farleftysocialistcommunist radicalism. I fully expect it to be one or the other in Chelsea Clintons 2028 campaign.
One in a long line.
Socialist, liberal, feminist, progressive...what makes socialist sort of work is that they put it out of commission for so long that it's new to everybody under 40.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I don't like socialist for a couple of reasons.
It's too vague, you always have to argue about what socialism means, where it exists and how to achieve it.
It carries too much baggage, a whole constellation of connotations in the popular imagination. I'm not a Marxist and I don't want to end up defending Bolshevism.
Have you been following this thing between Adolph Reed and the DSA ?
They are now in the process of doing the same thing to socialist that they did to progressive.
There are no systems.
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
How about the name
... Tyrannosaurus Democraticus ...
a Democrat with lots of teeth and bite ... fun to play with... could even swallow up an Obomber.
At least a step by step approach gets you places ...
https://www.euronews.com/live
"Democratic socialists" - we have Socialist Democrats in Germany
... hmmm ... ah no, not true, they were too scared to be Socialist Democrats, so they made it a little 'nicer' in being just 'Social Democrats'. More like chocolate pinkish pussy cookies with little pearls. Sweet, pinkish, not too dark, so something for everyone. try it.
Ok I have to stop this. Otherwise JtC is comeing after me and force feeds me some sour pickles. I am not drunk, just trying to chase away these 'dark thoughts of the DNC convention'.
Peace.
https://www.euronews.com/live
I agree with all you've said here.
There are a couple of particularly weaselly bits of propaganda you didn't go into, but they aren't necessary to understand the whole problem, which you have laid out admirably.
As far as labels go, I really don't want to be a "democratic socialist."That's the same as being a New Deal capitalist, and that might be fine if people were honorable and rational. They're not, which is why I'm no longer a capitalist. It's not possible to make capitalism work without genuine competition and people capable of keeping their word.
Also, the most recent example of democratic socialism foundered on the same rocks on which have foundered every other person who wanted to play nice with the powerful.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
capitalism
"It's not possible to make capitalism work without genuine competition and people capable of keeping their word."
Capitalism might have a chance at working at some "mostly tolerable" level if there were no sociopaths in the world. But that's unlikely to happen anytime soon.
After capitalism vanishes from the planet --
there will be a vast wasteland choked with the bones of those it killed off.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
face it:
anti-capitalists, i.e. Socialists, not DSAs who are at best, reform Capitalists, at worst: Imperialists in sheeps' clothing..
for now: Vote Green: hawkins/walker.
not that what you in this small bubble of the internet decide here will matter much to the greater #ProgressiveDemExiters.
I love Big Brother
but seriously, it's all a con. I find it difficult to believe any of the Dems believes what he or she is saying. It's all some fund raising scam.
Tune in, turn on, drop out, especially the last one. We can't convince them to change. Yes we have concerns. Nothing we say or do will make them act right. We're going to have to wait until it falls apart.
From what I've read of the speeches online
(no television here since 1986) they all sound written by uncredited, well-practiced, well-paid. well-hidden backroom speechwriters. The advertising-bright language used does not match the actual persons' real speech (when it can be found), and it has a finish as glossy as an expensive new nail polish job.
good stuff.
and you've reminded me of a headline this a.m. on msn.com:
'36 things that are worth the money'.
Would this count as one.
We can push Biden to the Left after he is elected. That seems to be gaining popularity. Given what we have seen from the democratic convention so far (among other things), it is pure fantasy to think that any progressives will have any say in the White House or Congress. The democratic party for gawd's sake picked an republican to openly attack AOC is a good indication that progressives will have NO influence.
"Push left after election" is bullshit
It has never worked and it never will.
If they aren't willing to listen in the first place, you can't make 'em do jack squat.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
"We can push Biden to the Left "
I luv this.
Another afternoon turns to evening, as we sit talking here
in a virtual forum we hope will someday, somehow amount to more than just the cyber equivalent of the Chestnut Tree Café …
I liked the “veritatarian” suggestion, bringing the truth aspect to the fore. Why trust anyone who doesn’t trust you and won’t tell you the truth?
@lotlizard we are trusting in a
we are trusting in a failed specie to help us. Homo sapiens are not able to control their emotions in order to settle matters. Not sure why I responded to you. I muzt like the cut of your jib. I may have mispelled that. Other than that, if I wanted to suggest a name, it might be Wobbly.Like the ..........s
yes, but it won't fly,
methinks.
Wobblies are The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a union formed in 1905 in response to the AFL's endorsement of capitalism. colorado history is full of their brave mining strikes!
commies, some call them. ; ) i like the cut of your jib as well.
and the current head of the afl-cio is richard trumka, also the global head (double-dipping) who sits with the lords of capital at conferences, not outside throwing rocks. you may remember that he sold out his members by recommending ObombaDontCare, and were they pissed!
at least the ILWU (the real deal) quit the afl-cio after the debacle at the port of longview in which unions tried to block the unloading of a ship of GMO grain (corn?).
trumka...allowed the scabs to break the strike, or at least snoooooozed thru it. it was so fascinating a moment in labor history, i ended up calling the ILWU to get a few quotes to report.
@wendy davis Utah Phillips turned
Utah Phillips turned me on the wobblies. Mother Jones stood up to the military forces in your state if I am correct. No doubt it wouldnt fly but nothing we come up with will. Hayduke will come back at some point.
i guess what i'd meant
was that as 'one step past progressive' it sho' won't fly. ; ) utah phillips, eh? kewl. radical revolutionary unions. Hayduke lives! but not joe hill...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_yC4ffyGiw]
thanks, tipper.
Wobblies are alive and well and their membership has been
growing of late.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
from where i sit,
there are two major problems with 'veritatarian' as a rebranding of 'progressives'.
i.) the working class won't exactly flock to such academic speak after trying to figure out what the hell it means
ii.) seriously, who can say what the Truth actually IS, unless verifiable facts are part of it. even history is unverifiable, as it belongs to the conquerors. some revisionist history i've admired, though, although i sure wish i'd read howard zinn while i could still read dead tree.
it's a good thing that more alternative websites bringing 'news', especially the reader supported ones. but i'd submit that we all suffer from confirmation bias to greater or extent, and often The Truth is our opinions as to what's True. ProPublica, for instance, helps us out a hella lot.
my apologies to naomi klein, but: capitalism will never be truly fettered again.
i usually describe myself as a radical leftist, alternately socialist, but it seems many on this thread wouldn't find those terms suitable. 'grassroots socialism' is my preferred alternative, though.
we here pay great homage to the suffering of the oppressed black, brown, and indigenous underclass, especially during the vast police state protests. i've gotten to wondering if, and how many, members here are people of color.
any rebranding of 'progressive' needs to encompass justice for all, imo.
I too wondered about that sometimes, but were afraid to ask ...
So here I go ...
I am 'milquetoast white', my son is 'café au lait' and my former sceptically loved one in my life was 'dark brown expresso'. Now the 64 million dollar question: "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most racist of us all"?
Man, even bing or google searches can't give me an 'authoritative answer' to that. Let us screw everybody. That sure will work.
Sigh.
https://www.euronews.com/live
The DNC is withing striking distance of victory
it's so close they can taste it.
We've been conditioned to think of political parties (exactly two in number) as starting from their respective extreme and extending towards the center until they get 51%. The Republicans still try to do that.
The New Democrats have been taking a different path for over 30 years -- they want to be the centrist party. By which they mean that they cut their 51% out of the center, like cutting a dinner-plate size round piece out of the center of the pizza. Leaving 25% on the right where at least they still have a party to cling to, and 25% on the left "where else are they going to go?". Nobody else will be able to win a race.
Once they've pulled Colin Powell, Cindy McCain, and John Kasich into the party they may have finally gone far enough right. They'll win handily without ANY votes from progressives, and they'll probably get 60% or more of them anyway without giving up a thing.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
All of which is based on a total misunderstanding of "center"
The cutting started on the right edge of the "pizza", not the "center". What's going to happen - and has to a large extent happened already - is that the Conservadems will merge with the Republicans and become a Uniparty.
They tried that in the second half of the 19th century, and it almost-worked for 30+ years...until blind fate took a hand.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
ajamu baracka says it right, imo:
@ajamubaraka Aug 17
Can you call the U.S. a democracy when by law it only allows the effective participation of two parties that represent different wings of the white minority capitalist ruling class? Who represents the interests of the majority who are the workers & nationally oppressed?
@ajamubaraka Aug 17
Sheepdog Bernie Sanders will cap off his sheepdogging duties tonight. No Medicare for All, no reduction in military spending, no defunding the police, no universal free childcare, no elimination of student debt - nothing - but the people are supposed to shut up & vote Blue.
@ajamubaraka Aug 18
I am so glad that so many young people are not falling for democrat talking points. Democrats pretend they want to save Post Office but in 2006 they supported legislation that put Post Office in debt & resulted in laying off of 65,000 workers a disproportionately Black & Brown.
@ajamubaraka 9h
We should thank the DNC for the history lesson they are providing for the people. Many of us thought racism & white supremacy was a fundamental element of U.S. society & a core "American value." But now we understand that Trump created it & introduced it in 2017. Thanks liberals.
@ajamubaraka Aug 19
When the indigenous were militarily defeated & surrounded by U.S. settlers they had to fly the flag of their enemy to demonstrate their non-combative status before they could engage in certain rituals. I thought about that as AOC spoke with the flag of her colonizer behind her.
Ajamu Baraka rocks.
No idea where it goes from there, though.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
he's the real deal,
no doubt about it. ; ) in your OP you'd written:
At any rate, the point of going over all of this dreck is to isolate the problem. The problem is that "progressivism" has been reduced to cliches, having been abandoned by both major parties and not having the integrity to join the Movement for a People's Party.
are you all having the discussion about 'progressive' rebranding?
you've made it fairly clear that you're supporting them, and have said that the Greens have long since shown themselves to irrelevant (or close to that). i've voted Green the last 4 cycles, and proudly for ajamu baraka last time (post election, jill stein actually became a russia-gater, meh).
the Uniparty (esp. the Ds) make it almost impossible for greens to petition their ways onto a state ballot, but hawkins/walker will be on a hella lotta state ballots soon. rather than write in 'cornell west', bernie sanders', and do on...would you consider it a breach of integrity to vote for them?
they know they won't win (as i do), as does the female Libertarian candidate, but if for no other reason than to end a loud message to the Uniparty?
(by anthony freda)
I'lll be voting for them
But I don't think it's a good idea when you've got another chunk of the public that says "we deserve political representation" to tell them "no you must join the Green Party." Right now you've got two parties that represent rich people and that enact multiple hostage situations every four years.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
we seem to be talking past
each other. for One, i'm not making any demands on anyone to join the Greens (i'm not even registered as one, just as 'unaffiliated'. two, t'want I who'd written '...and not having the integrity to join the Movement for a People's Party.
three, are you talking among one another about a 'progressive' rebranding?
and four, yes, both parties represent the rich, but in slightly different ways. each party seems to represent one form or another of Deep State, sometimes cooperating, sometimes not.
but the Democrats are the party of the CIA (all cut-outs available) and are most useful in helping depose actual social leaders in our back yard, with the help of thug pompeo, as well). the D team often appropriates more bucks for the pentagon that DT even asks for! this last one, almost all Rs voted against it, only 12 Ds had. kewl, eh?
but in the end, i'd rather the US did it like the Swiss: elected cabinet members who take turns being Prez for a year (although i don't recall the particulars). theirs is also a direct democracy, FWIW. and their post offices are also banks, public transportation is easy and cheap, as is WiFi there.
but amerikan presidents have too much power over 4 years in any event. and this #ShitHoleNation is far too large in so many directions that it might should be balkanized into 5 or 6 affinty groups. yeah, right.
My point was this --
You have a certain public out there that can't stand the two parties, and does not want to join the Green Party. Those are the "progressives," or they would be the "progressives" if the idea of being "progressive" didn't stink so badly at this time. The Greens, if I understand them correctly, have (after their multiple mishaps, most notably in nominating David Cobb in 2004) made the leap to endorsing ecosocialism. Since the Green Party doesn't like putting up online statements, here's the one I found from the Green Party of Colorado.
With the Democratic Party becoming Republican Party Two, there needs to be a space for "progressives" who want a big tent party. That party would be the party the Movement for a People's Party would set up if they had something more than stragglers, which is what the movement is at this time. We could do better than to shove such people back into the Democrats.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
i will accept your
position and point, and yield.