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[I have graduated from clickbait headline school See the difference?]
Who, me? A Democrat? You’re kidding. (Flickr Caricature by Donkey/Hotey)
If it makes sense to you, after seeing a riot in Charlottesville staged by gun-toting, swastika-wielding, white-hood-wearing psychopaths, to propose as a remedy the removal of pigeon-stained, previously unnoticed statues from town squares across the country — if you think the country will be much better off once all those statues are gone — you might be a Democrat.
If it seems right to you, after seeing the opposition party blow itself up trying to get rid of Obamacare, after seeing the massive eruption of popular support for Bernie Sanders during 2016, after reading the polls that say most of the people in general, even most of the people in Congress, are ready for single payer health care insurance — if your response to all of this is to propose sticking a few band-aids on the sore spots of Obamacare and to resolutely ignore the prospects for single payer — why, then, you must be a Democrat.
If you live in West Virginia and you believed in your heart that the best way to secure the future of your party and your state was to persuade a morally bankrupt billionaire to run for governor, despite his total lack (as pilots describe catastrophe) of airspeed, altitude and ideas, if you persuaded yourself that because he was rich he could not be an idiot — why, you could be either a Democrat or a Republican.
But if you watched in 2016 as the fear and desperation of the sinking majority of Americans who, feeling the American dream slip forever from their fingers, unleashed a raging bull named Trump into the china shop of American privilege politics, if your belated answer to their agony now is to propose a slightly better deal, with a little more health care, perhaps a dose of job training and — wait there’s more! — the removal of any Confederate statues in your town — if that’s what’s ringing your chimes, Bippy, as you look forward to 2018, why, you are for sure a Democrat.
If you believe the Russians, by spending a tiny fraction of the money Jeb Bush spent, and unleashing a few zillion idiotic fake news stories on Facebook, and revealing the private emails of some dude named Podesta of whom we had never heard before, decisively affected the voting in 2016, robbing Hillary of her rightful coronation and handing the crown instead to Trump (who thought it really was a crown) — if you believe that, you most certainly are a Democrat.
If you believe the future belongs to the politicians who beg the most money from the Masters of the Universe, and who then spend it on pricey consultants who know exactly how the last election was lost, who make TV ads accusing their opponents of crimes that once were unspeakable, who propose forward-looking solutions to problems that do not exist, and actions to address real problems that are not actions at all, but are addressed only to the dead-on-arrival letter office (Confederate statues! That’s it!”) — if you are schooled in these techniques and would not think of changing them, why then you must be a Democrat.
If you think that Trump is the problem — that when he’s gone, in a year, or two or three everything will go back to normal and be all right again, the waters will stop rising, the fires burning, the migrants moving, the deserts spreading, the jobs disappearing — then it’s not clear whether you are a Democrat or not, but it really doesn’t matter.
I saw this tweet on a blog somewhere:
“Black people who were never slaves are fighting white people who were never Nazis over a confederate statue erected by democrats, because democrats can’t stand their own history anymore, and somehow it’s Trump’s fault? Interesting”
Michael Wilhelm
If you are sick and tired of the government caring more for the corporations and not serving the American people, but you keep voting Republican or Democrat you might be an idiot.
Yes. I drank the Democratic Party Kool-Aid for as long as I could, but that came to an end when I was forced to realize that Scott Walker becoming governor of Wisconsin was just as much the fault of the state’s stupid, complacent, and corrupt Democratic Party as it was the Republican Party and the Koch Brothers.
From what I read and learnt about the late Michael Ruppert (bless his departed soul), I seriously think he would have made a genuinely great president for the US and the world would have been a better place had he been given that role.
So what am I, going by what I said in the above? (I always considered myself half a Confucian and half a Buddhist.) I guess it really doesn’t matter anymore, as the above blog concludes, in view of the giant shithole towards which we’re now all sailing merrily…
If you are loudly horrified by the latest news about AGW and those who deny it but continue to fly all over the planet because your work is so important, or to expand your consciousness, or because you get SAD in the northern winter, or because your kids live elsewhere you are certainly a Democrat.
Is increasing income inequality okay during an Obama Administration but not during a Trump or Bush one? You are a Democrat
If you think invading and bombing other countries that are no threat to the U.S. or murdering their citizens via drone missiles is okay under Obama, but not Bush or Trump, you are definitely a Democrat.
Funny, but that’s not what happened in Charlottesville. Removal was already a fait accomplit back in February.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/charlottesville-mayor-changes-position-agrees-confederate-statue-removal-n793931
The Neo-Nazis arrived to protest said removal, giving the Mayor, of course, no option but to follow through. Doing otherwise would give the appearance of giving in to White Supremacists’ demands– and what result from there, do you think?
It was the Neo-Nazis showing up that guaranteed removal in Charlottesville, and elsewhere. Even run-of-the-mill racists want no public affiliation with publicly-avowed Supremacists.
Very much enjoy your blog, but you have misrepresented the facts in Charlottesville.
If you read it again, you will see that I was not representing the facts in Charlottesville, but the reaction to them.