The Righteous Path Of The Righteous Party Of The Righteous Human Beings

 

I hold my friends to higher standards than I do others. That’s why I choose to be around certain people more than others, because I deem them to be more interested in doing the right thing. That’s why I might tell a friend he has had enough to drink and be less likely to tell a stranger at a bar the same thing. If I see a friend making bad choices, I want better for him and will weigh in on what he is doing. I also like to think he will appreciate my input even if he doesn’t agree with it. But even if he doesn’t immediately appreciate my advice, I still feel it is my obligation as a friend to give him my opinion.

I’ve always considered myself a Democrat. I cast my very first vote for Jesse Jackson in the primaries in 1984. I voted for Mondale in the general election that same year. I voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988 and Bill Clinton in 1992. In fact, I have NEVER voted for a Republican candidate for any office even once in my life.

So please take all of that to heart when I offer opinions that are directed at Democratic voters. I want what’s best for you. You and I mostly have the same goals, though we seem to be choosing increasingly different paths in how we pursue them. When I offer an opinion or ask you to explain your behavior, know that it is YOUR values I wish to defend. When I criticize your tactics, it is because they are failing to produce the results both you and I wish to achieve. And if we disagree as to how to achieve those results, well, that is a subject for conversation and not repudiation.

First, I would like to point out that you are currently supporting a candidate who has quite openly announced her intention to continue to support genocide in Gaza. I am going to presume that you and I find this less than ideal and would, in a perfect world, like to stop the indiscriminate killing of children, or at least lessen it. I think that there ARE things the Democratic Party could do to lessen the killing of children. Furthermore, I don’t think the uncritical support of what could legitimately argued to be a genocide is a choice the Democratic Party has to make in order to win the election. In fact, I would argue that the party’s support of genocide is going to cost them more votes than it is going to gain them.

I assume you are a supporter of the Democratic Party because you feel that they are the morally superior party. I also assume you feel yourself to be of a higher moral standard than others because you call yourself a Democrat. If both of my assumptions are true, then I would suggest that a moral party would do whatever it could to put a halt to genocide. That if said political party was not doing all in its power to stop a genocide, it wasn’t really all that moral of a party at all. Furthermore, if the preferred party of a morally righteous human being was not doing all it could to prevent young children from losing their limbs and lives due to an unrestrained bombing campaign, it is incumbent upon any morally righteous person to call them out on it.

I don’t hear people who plan to vote blue calling out the Harris campaign. Voters have the power to make her pay attention. I would go so far as to say you have not merely the power but the responsibility to use it. I would even go so far as to say that the blood of children is on your hands should you choose not to use the power you have to influence your chosen candidate to alter her stance on the ongoing slaughter of innocents. Again, this shouldn’t cost her the election, it would merely move her toward a more morally justifiable position on the Gaza problem and more in line with the general public. There is no downside to this, pragmatically or morally. We need not call those who disagree with you nonpragmatic purists.

You say Donald Trump would be even worse. That may be true, but that is hardly an argument against insisting your preferred candidate take a moral position that would not hurt her politically. Would it not be the pragmatic thing to do to push your candidate toward a position with which the majority of Americans agree? A Gallop poll from March of this year shows that 55% of Americans disagree with “the military action Israel has taken in Gaza.” Surely support for Israel has fallen further given all the atrocities we have witnessed since then, the murdered journalists, the incursion into Lebanon, the increased chances of a war with Iran. Furthermore, 75% of Democrats disagree with what Israel is doing. And yet they are planning on voting for a candidate that has shown no signs that she cares what Democratic voters think.

Or are they going to vote for her? Assuredly some of them are going to regard genocide as a red line. Some will choose not to vote for a Democratic candidate for President for the first time in their lives. How then, is it an effective strategy for Kamala Harris to support Israel without reservation?

It is the stated strategy of Democrats to get their candidate elected and then worry about getting that candidate to embrace the more progressive aspects of the left. This has been the strategy of Democrats for the past 30 years. It has been a spectacular failure. They have asked for nothing from those who claim they want to represent them, and have received exactly that. They have demanded nothing and gotten even worse than the bare minimum they expected. Of all the failed strategies that have ever been concocted, I can think of none that have been less unsuccessful. And yet Democratic voters persist, more avidly supportive of the strategy than ever before.

I am one of those whom establishment Democrat types often call a purist or an absolutist. And yet I cannot conceive of anyone more purist than one who adheres so utterly to such a failed strategy. Nor can I imagine anyone being more an absolutist than one who insists everyone else support a candidate who has never had popular support, and who is now neck deep in the blood of children whose only crime is inhabiting land which the Zionists want to possess for themselves. I cannot imagine a world in which someone who demands an end to such a situation is labelled a purist.

These are harsh words, I guess. Still, they are written by one who does not see you as an enemy but as a friend who has taken the wrong path. They are harsh words but they are spoken not in hatred but with concern. I get it, there are other issues to consider, but none that you will mention rise to the level of what is happening in Gaza right now. And I do not see it as realistic that a political party that is on the wrong side of genocide is going to be very interested in doing the right thing on the issues you’re most concerned about. Consider their fight to raise the minimum wage as but one example of their desire to fight for you.

Again, however harsh it may appear, my intent is communication, not condemnation. You need us as much as we need you. To consider us as your enemy rather than a concerned friend with whom you need to have a heart to heart chat would be, I feel, a mistake.

It’s Red They Win, Blue You Lose (voting is a sucker’s game)

When the system makes winning impossible, it becomes foolish to play the game. This may sound like an excuse for quitting to many, but it is not. It may sound like nihilism to those who dare not stare directly at the truth, but they are wrong. It is starting over. It is letting go of what does not work in order to try something else. It is abandoning illusion in order to find the truth. It is leaving the comfort that conformity and obedience provide in order to find some solid ground on which to make a stand.

 People wedded to a dysfunctional system will accuse you of refusing to use the impotent instruments of change provided to you by those who would be your masters. In truth, you are coming to the realization that it is time to take charge.

I look at what others point to as a collection of victories and all I see does not amount to a pile of crumbs. Those who are swayed by such scraps are like gambling addicts, remembering every time they left the casino up for the night while ignoring their impending bankruptcy. They are blinded by the blinking lights of the machine that robs them. One more pull of the lever and everything will all be right. One more pull of the lever and all will be right. One more pull…

 This is not cowardice to refuse to go along, it is courage. It is not resignation, it is determination. Determination to take the reins of power from those who shake the nuclear dice. To take the microphone from the propagandists and paid spokespersons and speak the truth and not the party line.

 It is the unavoidable acceptance of facts, knowing that to think otherwise is to engage in self-deception and the abandonment of our responsibilities.

I assure you that once freed from the box they do all their power to keep you in, you will laugh at the idea that you once considered voting for Trump or Harris. You will howl with laughter thinking of how you once put your faith in those who already failed you so many times. That you gave your power to those least qualified to wield it responsibly.

 You will one day look upon such behavior as you now look upon the games you once played as a child. You will one day cringe at the decisions you make now as you cringe at the reckless and irresponsible behavior of your adolescence, grateful that you have survived it. Knowing that it was mere luck that you made it through those days before you realized just how precious life really is. And you will ask yourself “What the hell was I thinking?” And you won’t be able to answer, because you will no longer recognize the foolish person you are now. And you will gaze upon those people you once looked up to and realize just how badly they betrayed you, and what a fool you were to let them get away with it.

There will come a time when you will grow disgusted with playing children’s games, in being led by children. In playing grown up instead of acting like a grown up. There will come a time when you realize it is not a game, and even if it was, no one else has the right to write the rules for you. On that day you will feel good, even with the burden of responsibility resting firmly on your shoulders.

 The story of our time is being written by idiots. By psychopaths drunk with power and terrified of all they cannot dominate. By the morally bankrupt and by emotionally crippled children. Their narrative weaves the thinnest of veils so that you see only half of their evil mixed with illusory good. Their illusions and puppetry can only ever deceive those who wish to be deceived. Those with a critical and honest eye will pierce the wispy thin veil, and an illusion once pierced can never again be mistaken for reality.

 This will be your future. You will be made to see the truth for what it is, whether you desire it or not. Your only choice is whether to gaze upon it as a helpless child or as a grown up ready to act upon what can no longer be denied.