HOW MANY EARS MUST ONE MAN HAVE BEFORE HE CAN HEAR PEOPLE CRY?

Legend has it that the Emperor Caligula planned to make his horse, Incitatus, a Roman Consul.  Today, our very own emperor, Donald I, is sifting through a list of potential replacements for retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.  I don’t know who he’ll pick, but I’m sure a horse would do less harm than his eventual nominee.

Yes, I know – don’t mourn, organize.  Progressives have one job between now and November, and I’m afraid we’re going to blow it. 

Back in April, I wrote about Kevin Williamson, the conservative columnist who argued that because abortion is murder, and murder is a capital crime, the 15 million American women who’ve had abortions should be hanged.  In theory, at least. 

Because I’m a fair-and-balanced, I-report-you-decide kind of guy, I decided to write a comparable post about the progressive equivalents of Williamson, people on the self-righteous Left whose theories have helped get us into this mess.

As luck would have it, just as I was finishing up this post, I looked at a website called Forsetti’s Justice, and found out that “Forsetti,” whoever he or she is, had already said what I wanted to say, better than I could say it.  There’s a link at the end of this post.

TL;DR?  Here’s my version.

The progressives I’m talking about are the ones who spend their time sowing dissension among Democrats and/or voting for third party candidates.  Anyone who voted for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, or who didn’t vote at all, helped elect Donald Trump and helped put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court.  I repeat:  any eligible voter who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton is responsible for Gorsuch as well as Trump’s next nominee, and the awful decisions that will continue to be handed down by SCOTUS.

The Republican agenda boils down to “Screw the kids that ICE abducts and deports to places where they’ll probably be killed.  Screw the people who can’t afford health care – let them die.  Screw the victims of school shootings.  Screw the environment.  Even screw elephants, so nimrods like Don Jr. and Eric can pretend to be big game hunters.  Screw everyone but me and mine.”  Please don’t help elect people like that.

I’m a Democrat.  Not because I think the Democratic Party is perfect or close to it.  On their good days, Democrats are maybe a B+ party.  On their bad days, they’re more like C-.    I’m a Democrat because Democrats are the only viable alternative to Republicans, and Republicans are monsters. 

I’m old enough to remember when reasonable politicians – Dwight Eisenhower, Earl Warren, John Lindsay, Nelson Rockefeller, John Anderson – identified as Republicans.  Those days are gone forever, over a long time ago.  Today’s Republicans are devoid of compassion.  They believe in looking out for number one.  Numbers two through infinity might as well not exist.

Any member of the House who voted to make Paul Ryan Speaker is part of the problem.  Any member of the Senate who voted to make Mitch McConnell Majority Leader is part of the problem.  And that, my friends, was virtually every Republican member of Congress in the House and Senate, respectively.  

Anyone who helped elect Republicans to Congress – either directly, by voting Republican, or indirectly, by doing anything except voting for a Democrat – is part of the problem.  Whether they knew it or not, the effect of their vote was to help rich people and hurt poor people. 

And that leads me to the point of this essay.  Whether they know it or not, Greens and Libertarians are on the side of the monsters.  I’m sure if any Green or Libertarian heard that, they’d be offended by my assessment. They probably thought they were voting for a better set of policy proposals.  But anyone who pays attention knows that the Greens and Libertarians will never get to implement those better policies.  Why?  Because they won’t win elections. 

The practical effect of voting Green or Libertarian in 2016 was to throw the presidency to Donald Trump.  The practical effect of voting Green or Libertarian in the 2018 congressional midterms and/or the 2020 presidential election will be to elect Trump-enabling Republican monsters.  Please don’t do that.

My hope is that the Democrats become more progressive as time passes.  Working to make that happen is a good thing to do.  Advocating on behalf of a more progressive Democrat over a less progressive Democrat during the primary season is also a good thing to do.  But keep it civil, and don’t burn any bridges.  Being a sore loser only helps elect Trump-enabling Republican monsters.  Please don’t do that.

It’s worth remembering that Vladimir Putin’s bot army focused its mischief in 2016 mostly on progressives.  Sadly, progressives, with our penchant for circular firing squads, are easy to manipulate.  If you see a thread on Facebook or Twitter trying to re-litigate the Hillary-Bernie fight, there’s a good chance that it came from a bot, or a deluded human sharing a post that originated with a bot.  Ditto for anyone who argues that there’s no difference between the two parties, or who harps on the deficiencies of (admittedly) fallible Democratic candidates running against Trump-enabling Republicans.  Please don’t fall for that shit in 2018 or 2020.

We’ve seen what Trump-enabling Republicans have been able to do in a year and a half.  If we don’t come to our senses until 2024, it’ll probably be too late. 

I’ll close with three paragraphs from Forsetti’s Justice and then the link to the full article.

“Imagine you are in a room with no windows that has a single ceiling light wired to a single on/off switch.  If you choose to not flick the switch on because your preference is a dimmer switch, you have chosen to be in the dark.  If you choose to jiggle the doorknob in hopes of opening the door to let in light, because you don’t like the binary option of the light switch, you have chosen to be in the dark.  It doesn’t matter how passionate you feel about the type of light switch or the number of options you think should be available.  If you do anything other than actively turn the switch to the on position, you are in the fucking dark and it is completely by your own choice.  You can sit in the dark bitching about how unfair it is you are dark and why the room isn’t wired differently all you want but none of it is going to change the reality that you are in the dark because of your choices.”

“Politics is about power.  It is this fucking simple.  Without it, all of your great, wonderful ideas aren’t worth a damn.  How do you get political power?  By winning elections at the local, state, and federal levels. How do you win elections?  You don’t win them by staying home and not voting.  You don’t win them with “protest votes.”  You don’t win them by voting for third-party candidates who have no chance of winning.  You win elections by voting in every election for the candidate who has the best chance of winning who stands for your values more than the other candidate with the best chance of winning. Period.  Full-fucking-stop.  Any strategy, any thoughts, any opinion about American politics that doesn’t have this as its underlying principle is not only seriously flawed, it is a cancer that needs to be eradicated.”

“Even after pointing all of this out, there are some progressives who are still adamant their strategy is the winning ticket.  They believe that if they allow Republicans to continue to win and fuck the country over enough, at some point, America will reach rock bottom and come on bended knee to them to save it.  Even if this view was true, this would mean the most vulnerable in society will be screwed six ways to Sunday, in order to prove a point.  How many people denied health care is okay?  How much worse can the environment be damaged to where it is justified?  How much wealth is it okay to redistribute upwards in order to justify being a purist?  How many rights is it okay to sacrifice for a mythological outcome?”

http://forsetti.tumblr.com/post/172569094830/on-american-politics-its-all-about-power