Vote Shaming
I don't have to explain to anyone here about the various versions of intimidation this season trying to beat progressives and other (let's call us) 'skeptical' liberals into voting for Clinton over our objections. "TRUMP!" is bullhorned into our ears, and now, in addition to all the racism and and various other-izing, now we have to listen to an assortment of sexual vulgarities.
I believe the majority of us on this site are in agreement on this: what Trump represents -and who he is- is an extremely dangerous abomination. He must not be handed the keys to the country.
But those of us who supported Bernie worked for a candidate who handily beat Trump in every poll published (Bernie also beat any of the other Republicans who hung on until late in their primary race). If the point were really to keep Trump from being elected, then Bernie as nominee was the way to ensure that result. You still want Trump to not win? Talk to me about putting Bernie on the ballot. As far as I'm concerned, I gave at the office: I have already done my part to keep Trump from putting his name in gilded letters on the front of the White House. I'll be glad to drop what I'm doing and re-take up that level of effort should Bernie be swapped in on the ballots (and yes, I do have a very clear sense of the impracticalities of doing just that... I'm just sayin').
'Where else are we going to go?' they ask. Voting for Jill is pointless, they say - the only way to combat Trump is to stand in front of the on-coming train, vote for Clinton and let it run us over. Voting for Jill is an expression of privilege, they claim, in an effort to rub salt in the opened sores of shame they are attempting to inflict.
For myself, I cannot own what is to come in a second Clinton Administration as I would by being intimidated into giving her my vote. I will not absolve her of the lying and cheating and stealing we saw in the primary and is likely continuing out of sight (thank you, Wikileaks, for bringing so much we guessed about to light).
Some of the folks who have been most vociferous about pressuring progressives to be brought to heel are those who supported Bernie in the primary and have internalized the guilt slung in their direction by those applying whatever pressure they think will work (thank you, Corrupt the Record, for your assiduous 'research' into what will sway the most stubborn holdouts).
It will be our fault, we are told, if Trump ascends the presidency. (No, I supported the candidate who clearly beats Trump in a match-up, it's the fault of those who over-ran the Sanders candidacy to run a candidate whose unfavorability is nearly equal to Trump's.) How will we feel if a potential mini-Hitler is sworn-in?
For me, the only appropriate response to attempts to shame us for our resistance is to ask those who have abandoned ship by jumping into the Clinton sea how will they feel if the following things come to pass under a Clinton presidency, things they will have condoned by casting their vote for her:
How will they feel if the U.S. begins its next war in the first 100 days?
How will they feel if/when Social Security is privatized?
How will they feel when TPP goes into effect?
How will they feel as climate change accelerates as we continue to fail to address it adequately?
How will they feel when Obamacare finally fails (since it's missing the only thing which would have kept it afloat, the public option)?
How will they feel when Clinton invites the R's more formally to limit late-term abortion?
How will they feel if/when Social Security is privatized?
How will they feel when TPP goes into effect?
How will they feel as climate change accelerates as we continue to fail to address it adequately?
How will they feel when Obamacare finally fails (since it's missing the only thing which would have kept it afloat, the public option)?
How will they feel when Clinton invites the R's more formally to limit late-term abortion?
.
One of hallmarks of the Bill Clinton presidency is that he was able to put societal restrictions in place which conservatives only salivated about.
The level of self-dealing/self-justification and (to my mind) sociopathy is so deep for Hillary that she fought tooth and nail to keep from cancelling a paying gig for Bill just days after she was to announce her run for the presidency - she apparently didn't want that morsel of cash to be withheld from her. (I had seen another version of this story earlier, but this is a similar one. Clinton, apparently, was loathe to lose the speaking fee by canceling. Podesta emails, "I recognize the sacrifice and dissapointment (sic) that cancelling will create, but it's a very consequential unforced error and could plague us in stories for months." link
Feel free to help shape the HOW WILL THEY FEEL list below.
Comments
Black conservative Larry Elder: no such thing as white privilege
With a campaign season like this one, I had almost forgotten Black conservatives even exist. Taken in small doses, perhaps a useful antidote to the pro-Hillary general shutdown of critical thinking on the Left, with attendant failure to question and stand up to the machinations, dogma, and diktat of the DNC.
Black conservatives will put Clinton in office.
The antidote for them, conversely, is in places like Breaking Brown and Black Agenda Report and Orchestrated Pulse, places all secretly despised by Denise Oliver Velez.
'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill
For sure he has a point in saying that the term
"Afro-American" is a scam. Black Americans have very little in common with Africans other than the pigmentation of their skin. Most black Americans have to search for their "African" identity and struggle mightily with it. For African immigrants into this country it takes one or two generations and the loss of any family connections to their AFrican homeland to have kids, who feel more like Black Americans than like Afro-Americans. As a white person I felt lots of cultural differences between Africans and white people of European descent, but way less cultural differences between those and Black Americans. Black Americans have their own identity within the American population as an exploited and oppressed "work force" and its slave history, but that is an American identity, not an African one. The cultural identity of Africans within their own African-based tribal-based slavery among different black tribes is something totally different than the white Europeans creating the slavery of white European-based and American enforced slavery. Very little culture has survived that ordeal, but in music and spirituality it can be found. They come together again in certain religious movements today. At least that is how I feel about it and experienced it. Just my personal opinion.
For other aspects of what he talks about I have to think about it. I don't follow it easily. You have to cut through the "show" effect of what he says as much as you have to do it for rhetoric of "progressive blacks".
Let's be clear here rgarding "European" enslavement of
Africans. It was the British, Spanish and Portugese. There was no Italian, German, Danish, Dutch, Hungarian, Polish, Russian etc enslavement of Africans in America. I'm not sure about the French.
And in North America, the big players were Britain and Spain. So don't condemn all of Europe.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
They all had African empires that were even more evil than
slavery in American south. The Belgian Congo for example. The German, French, Italian African empires were just as ghastly crimes against humanity as the slave trade.
So yes. Almost all of Europe is guilty, excepting places like Ireland, Andorra, Switzerland would be a few of the all handful of exceptions.
that's right /nt
Poland? Russia? Norway?
I'll concede Italy if you want to count Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia.
Germany had colonies in Africa, but I never heard of them engaging in chattel slavery. In any case I never heard of them engaging in the American slave trade, but it's possible.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
"Almost all..."
"Almost all..." and gave examples of the class of exceptions. What more do you want?
Was that really a helpful contribution to the conversation?
sorry, that is just due to my lax wording
Colonial powers in Africa exploited the indigenous population, among them Germany,
Belgium, Netherland etc. The status of those indigenous people in the colonies was at least "slave-like". I am not here to condemn anyone for its history, one of the things I don't think is helpful.
I just tried to say that the slave history inside the US of the African who were sold here in the US into slavery, is different, ie a particular form of US based slavery, from the sort of enslavement you found inside Africa under colonialism or internally between various African tribes. That's why I find the expression African-Americans not that convincing and said that I understand that particular argument.
The Dutch had sugar plantations in the Caribbean
and some historians give them the blame for first replacing indigene slave labor with black African slave labor.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
I have been trying to stop using the term "African American"
for quite some time.
My neighbor, who is from Jamaica, told me he hated that term because of two reasons, one he felt it causes an unnecessary division by saying that there is a difference between African-American and American and two, as he said best (and coincidentally the interviewer in the linked clip brought up the same point from someone else from Jamaica, must be a common theme there?) "I am not African-American, I am Jamaican by birth and American by choice, calling me black is fine, because I am black, but I prefer just regular old American."
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
yep, honest guy, with all the cafe au lait people
around of all sorts of mixtures, it's hard to identify with the term "Afro-American" as it is understood in the US. My son would be an "Afro-American", but I guess he would have had never the idea to identify himself like that, just because he lives in the US. He is black and American by passport, what his feeling of his identity may be, I guess that's up in the air.
Hard to tell these days. Ironically he even had an African father, like Obama... Weird words with not much meaning. So, Obama is a true African-American, but you remember the talk was about him not being "black" enough. Yeah, fancy, isn't it? Forgettaboutit.
He is a Jamaican-American.
Like Italian-American, Polish-American, Irish-American. I don't think Afro-American or African-American is intended as a slur. I think it was invented by a black group to use instead of various slurs that were common at the time. MLK used "Negro" as I recall, but somehow that became a slur too. I'm happy to call people whatever they want, if only they would agree on what that is. I have no desire to slur anyone's ethnic ancestry. All of our ancestors overcame incredible hardships at one time or another and have contributed to the human race's (positive) heritage.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
nobody, at least not me, said it is a slur, contrary
when it came about to use that term, it was meant to avoid more racially insensitive words for black Americans.
I kinda am not interested to comment in this thread further, because it feels like it gets distorted a bit. Everyone in the US media said "negro" during the early sixties if I am not mistaken and I found old German news clips, where the German used the word "Neger" in otherwise unbiased news reporting. Nobody uses these words today anymore. t stopped by the mid to end sixties and early seventies. I remember it very well, because I had to "teach" some folks to be a little bit more sensitive with their wording. It was considered racially discriminating and so people stopped using it. What's the problem with that? I don't see what there is to discuss.
How will THEY feel?
-When they lose old friends before their time due to "globalization", "Free Trade", slashing the social safety net, maintaining our broken health care system, and being too damned poor themselves to help those old friends?
I spent what should have been my peak earning years looking for work. I helplessly watched an old friend on the far side of the state do a slow crash-and-burn over poor health, a lost job, and no health care. He was only 49. Another friend in his early fifties, with a resume as long as my arm as a cell-tower technician, died homeless and jobless, from a treatable health hit. Voting for another Clinton would be like spitting on their ashes.
NAFTA broke my home state of Michigan. Take the entirety of 911, all the carnage, drop it into the hardest-hit parts of Detroit, and you wouldn't even notice it. Don't talk to me about Russians or Arab terrorists, until they've done as much damage to this country as the Clintons.
-But let's keep adding to your list, shall we?
How will THEY feel when we finally create a war with Russia out of whole cloth, and the body bags start coming home? -Because we haven't had a war with a country that was actually a threat, in a LONG TIME. How will THEY feel when either of the major-party retards decides that there will be no consequences to using nukes first? How will THEY feel when they wake up one fine night, and watch their horizons bloom with nuclear fire? How will they feel when Florida sinks beneath the waves due to un-addressed global warming? How will they feel when we have a second civil war over fresh water because so many aquafers have been poisoned by frakking?
-And instead of trying to guilt-trip them back, why are we being polite to the guilt-trippers? Why not just say "STFU! -I am not voting for a major psychotic criminal!"? I plan to vote for the lady that has only been arrested for peacefully protesting, and spray-painting a political slogan on a bulldozer that was being used to violate the rights and land of Native Americans. Somehow that feels RIGHT to me, rather than privileged.
Do THOSE crimes far overshadow what the major parties have done, like rampant disenfranchisement and fraud? How could I cast MY vote, I repeat, MY vote, for an intelligent doctor, after the fine choice the duopoly have offered us, between a proven WAR CRIMINAL, and a suspected CHILD RAPIST? How could I even THINK of voting for a doctor-lady that doesn't seem the slightest bit psychopathic to me? WHAT THE FUCK AM I THINKING?
Honestly, folks, I hope none of the Clintonistas EVER tries confronting me on this issue IRL, as I will almost certainly blow their eardrums out of the other side of their head using my voice alone. -And then I'd feel bad that they were deaf as well as blind and stupid. Time to get my privileged ass to sleep for a few hours, so I can go do warehouse work again tomorrow; hard physical labor with the minor but ever-present possibility of being mangled or killed by a forklift. -Because I'm privileged.
And because I'm tired: Fuck Brock and his sniveling catamite trolls. Fuck Kos. Fuck all MSM propagandists, and all the rest of the Clinton-Trump crime family's scaly fucking minions. I will make my pointless, soon-to-be-flipped voting gesture as I wish.
"Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes
Hear, hear!
Righteous rant! Well said. +1
Awesome rant!
From a fellow Michigander.
It needs to be said more than once.
"I spent what should have been my peak earning years looking for work. I helplessly watched an old friend on the far side of the state do a slow crash-and-burn over poor health, a lost job, and no health care. He was only 49. Another friend in his early fifties, with a resume as long as my arm as a cell-tower technician, died homeless and jobless, from a treatable health hit. Voting for another Clinton would be like spitting on their ashes. " Not to detract from the rest of your excellent post.
We share your pain in Illinois. And everybody, if you need a water heater, consider a Bradford-White, made in Michigan by UAW union labor instead of Rheem made in Mexico or Richmond made in China. I have no connection to the company other than as a customer. It's work spending $200 more every ten years to be in solidarity with my union brothers (proud member of APWU).
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
right with you.
right with you.
I will not cooperate with them any longer.
"Orwell was an optimist."
right with you.
right with you.
I will not cooperate with them any longer.
"Orwell was an optimist."
Great rant on the casualties of Clintonian Neoliberalism!
You should consider wiring up a full essay on this, and the personal effects of people you know being churned up in the relentless and merciless grinder of unbridled capitalism.
Thanks for sharing.
Folks who wish to delve further into the deep and reverberating damage of the Clinton presidency should have a look at this too:
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
Obamacare isn't going to fail.
Clinton will save it by increasing the mandate penalty so that having a job will become a pointless effort in paying off the insurers before, say, rent or food.
'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill
The thing is, she didn't even beat Sanders in a fair match.
They cheated my candidate then tell me I must support the cheater. Something about that makes me want to say fuck that shit.
There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties.. This...is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.--John Adams
She could not beat Sanders fair and square (or whatever)
that surprised them. And pissed them off.
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
I dunno. The Dem party seemed pretty smug about
their smoothly running machine. Time was, a political machine was seen as abad thing. Now the DNC celebrates running one. WTF happened to the party that prosecuted Watergate investigating dirty campaign trick? They have become the spirit of Tricky Dick.
"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"
In fact, she was doing so poorly
that their cheating had to become more and more transparent, more and more blatant.
We all KNEW it even before the proof emerged.
The primary as run by the DNC was as fair as this boxing match
Daffy Hillary and the DNC referee thought they could treat Bernie like Elmer Fudd.
The big difference compared to real life: in the end, Elmer fights back. And Bernie?
Bernie is Al Gore.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
not so much.
not so much.
not so much.
not so much.
not so much.
not so much.
makes me want to be a kid again /nt
How will we feel if a potential mini-Hitler is sworn-in?
I will feel that I did everything I could to stop her.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
couldn't miss that one!
couldn't miss that one!
couldn't miss that one!
couldn't miss that one!
couldn't miss that one!
couldn't miss that one!
Privilege
This word is so overused by liberals that I doubt they even know the definition of it.
I just reply...yes it is a privilege
To have a principled person on the ballot for whom to vote!because that doesn't often happen, sad to say.
Speaking of people being
Speaking of people being privileged, here's a prime example: a political candidate and her supporters believing (and acting from that belief) that she is unquestionably entitled to the office of president of the United States.
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
Hey, she's already arranged
Hey, she's already arranged to sell out the country to get the Presidency and run it as corporate management, with a military enterprise to gain TPTB any countries not economically captured and nukes to dispose of those capable of standing up to this. How can you just expect her to waste all of that money-grubbing effort?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
I plan to vote with my heart,
and let whatever happens, happen.
Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections
Than people who are most content
I don't have any regrets, they can talk about me plenty when I'm gone
You always said people don't do what they believe in
They just do what's most convenient, then they repent
And I always said, hang on to me, baby, and let's hope that the roof stays on
- B. Dylan
native
Criminalizing the 1st Amendment:
"How do you feel about criminalizing a citizen's first amendment right to public information?"
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
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