Oh My God, It’s Sabotage!
Get in here, we’re starting a movement.
After 50 years of failing utterly to make even a slight dent in the neoliberal exploitation that has been destroying America, some in the Democratic party have decided to say screw it; can’t beat em, join em! Consultants are encouraging Democrats to steer away from the evil, socialist, radical left wing of the party and kick small donors to the curb, in favor of big donors and capitulating to the fascists, hazzah! I assume the conversation went something like this, “Oh no, the gig is up! Americans see that we’re full of shit and don’t actually care about real change. They’re not happy with minor concessions anymore, we can’t even support a war criminal and genocidal maniac for crying out loud! It’s time we abandoned the people entirely and embraced our corporate overlords!”
Don’t get me wrong, groups like Swing Left, Leaders We Deserve, and Justice Democrats have been doing valiant work trying to reform the party and bring in more progressive leaders. I respect their work, but there’s a reason AOC and Sanders sound like lone voices crying in the wilderness instead of the core rallying cry of the left. Which is now apparently too left for our Democratic leadership. Just ask Jeffries who scolded anyone that made a minor effort of resistance to our Supreme Leader during the State of the Union address (fustercluck; that’s the state of the union). Or ask the 10 Democrats who sided with Republicans to censure Al Green for stating that the Orange Tyrant doesn’t have a mandate to end Medicaid (he doesn’t and yes, he’s trying to).
Just ask ol’ Chuck who just chucked us under the bus so that the Muskrat could continue to wreck and steal from our government agencies and our taxes. We are being sabotaged by our own party. To be clear, the Third Way consultants who want Democrats to sell out entirely to the corporate class are essentially Libertarian-lite, but they have ties to several ranking Democrats. Along with party darlings Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, Reps Tom Carper, Chris Coons, Lisa Rochester, and Collin Allred were all “honorary co-chairs” of the organization. Damn, now I’m glad Allred lost to Cruz. We can’t get an honest politician because we keep electing ones made from the same cloth, immersed in the same corrupt organizations.
Look folks, I’ve been here kicking this lame mule in the rump along with you for years. I’ve put my own time, money, and energy into campaigning for Democrats because I thought it was our only hope to stop fascism, only to watch them hand over our nation with hardly a fight. A lame mule don’t walk—no amount of kicking is going to change that. We’ve got to unhitch our wagon from that sucker and either find a good mule or just hike out on foot. Big money—especially dark money—has long been a problem in our political system, but to see the Democrats so willingly embrace it is disheartening to say the least. No, it’s infuriating! Where is the champion of the people? No taxation without representation! Give me liberty or give me death! Prima facie and habeas corpus!
Okay, forget those last two, but you get the point. The Democrats have been sabotaged and corrupted from within. We all saw it happening. Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin are just part of the gang, but AOC and Omar get ostracized. They can’t stand up against AIPAC, because the party doesn’t have their back. Even Tim Walz was muzzled because he sounded too much like Bernie. The writing has been on the wall since at least ol’ Bill. I liked Obama, but he didn’t stand up to Wall Street and the banks or to Russia when it invaded Ukraine. That was after Ukrainians fought with us in Iraq, by the way—that’s just cowardice.
But wait, you say, a third party is non-viable in our “first past the post” two party system… Who told you that? The ones who benefit from maintaining the status quo? You don’t let the oppressor tell you what you’re allowed to do. The only reason it’s never happened, is because no one has ever really tried. The half-hearted third parties we have are weak attempts to steal votes from Democrats or the sovereign citizen madness of the libertarians (who are just corporatists pretending they have morals).
I don’t think both parties are the same—if that were true Republicans wouldn’t be using voter suppression and election interference so much. I appreciate that everything good we’ve accomplished since the Civil Rights era was through the Democrats. But our nation and our world are on the brink of collapse. We don’t have time for weak, two-faced efforts by politicians that want to cater to the rich and still pretend to defend the working class. You can’t have your cake and eat it too; either you’re with us or you’re against us.
So what do we do? How do we bring real change for the first time in decades? Keep it simple, stupid. Two core concepts:
Civic Engagement and Civil Resistance.
Civil resistance is what you need to pivot to when civic engagement is prevented by the power hungry. Civic engagement movements in the Arab Spring, Serbia, Egypt, Armenia and other places have proven the value of non-violent civil resistance campaigns in mobilizing the electorate. So much so that Russia created the Internet Research Archive to sow disinformation and distrust as a counter-effort. Unfortunately, that effort has been wildly effective, especially in America. (Congrats on winning the Cold War, Russia). The authoritarian shift over the last ten years is a direct response to that success. The power-hungry are pushing back, because they’re afraid of us.
But hold up, I ain’t heard no bell. If our leaders refuse to act, then we replace them. Simple as that. With the 90 million eligible non-voters, as well as nearly half the Republican party and more than half of Democrats that are currently sick of their own political system, we have some 150 million Americans ready and willing to support a political party that actually represents them. Erica Chenoweth’s research shows that non-violent civil resistance movements that mobilized at least 3.5% of the population had a 100% success rate in the past. Read that again. That may be worse now because of the push-back from authoritarians—working off fear-mongering isolationism in response to the climate crisis—but even if that 3.5% threshold doubles, even triples, who cares? We have 50% of the American population just waiting to kick this sucker off. All we need to do is get organized.
So how do you create a movement that represents such a diverse multitude? Keep it simple, stupid. Two core goals:
Establish a free and fair political system for all.
End the neoliberal exploitation of our people and our planet.
Dang near every problem we face today has one of those two fundamental issues at its center. You want a political party that fights for your particular issue that’s near and dear to your heart? Well we can have that if we get things like public funded campaigns, ranked choice voting, voter lead district maps, and voter lead ballot measures. We can ensure our system’s continued integrity with anti-corruption laws and the right to recall all of our representatives. I say “all,” because we already have the right to recall many governors and state law makers. We don’t even need to wait until the next election to get this party started, we could do it right now if we were organized.
As for exploitation, that too could be managed with the leaders gained from Goal #1. We just need to recognize that capitalism is a failed system. If we’re going to continue with it, we need very serious guardrails through government regulation (with actual checks and balances in that government). Don’t let them call you a socialist. A democracy with socialist policies is still a democracy. Besides that, socialism and communism as ideas aren’t evil, they’ve just been used as smokescreens for the power-hungry. The world has never had a true socialist or communist nation, they were just fascism in a hat. Maybe three fascisms in a trench-coat.
Regardless, if you look at issues like poverty, crime, drug abuse, immigration, or just the common pollution of our land, air, water, and food—as well as the social conflicts over all of that—it’s all because of unfettered exploitation by the rich. Monopolies, union busting, rent fixing; it all comes back to that same greed for power-money. (I think of power-money as being inextricably linked, like space-time.) Taxing the rich shouldn’t even be a debate, because they only gained that wealth through our labor. If they want to operate within our shared society, then they have to put in their fair share. We do the work, they pay the taxes. Right now, the working class are doing both. The love of money is the root of all evil, but the love of peace and prosperity for all can unite the people to overcome it.
So we’re not waiting for some hero to emerge any longer. We’re going to kick this movement off ourselves. I’ll be sharing my notes on strategizing non-violent civil resistance efforts from the International Center on Non-Violent Conflict (ICNC) for the general public to use while getting organized. I think things like the upcoming 3-day general strike from May 1st thru 3rd is a great start to get people moving, but we’re going to need more long-term plans.
At the same time, we can start building momentum, funding, and expertise for starting a real People’s Party (working title; I liked “Worker’s Party” but it could be confused with some other groups). We’ll be doing that through paid subscriber only meetings, simply because I want to keep out the trolls and the unserious. I’m not interested in making money off of this, other than maybe a minimal return on the time and effort I put into it, so if I end up with a lot of money from subscriptions, I will put that right back into our efforts with this movement.
If we try and fail, we’ll be no worse off than we are now. I really don’t think that will happen, because I believe the people are ready. However, if it does fail to coalesce, then we can pivot and put whatever resources and momentum we have built into the Justice Democrats. That’s the group responsible for getting AOC and “the squad” elected and their platform is everything that most Americans want to see happen.
We keep saying it, now it’s time to live it out; no one is coming to save us—we have to do this ourselves. The American people are 300 million strong, in a diverse nation that spans the breadth of a continent, from one ocean to another. We have expertise and ingenuity, passion and determination. I won’t hand my children over to fascism and a future of slavery and destruction without fighting until my last breath. I know that many Americans feel the same way, so it’s now or never. Let’s get moving, people.