The Chris Moeller Archives

What the hell comes next?

Booing at the Democratic Convention? An explainer:

What you're seeing is the passion of loyal, quite possibly tireless activists, young and old, reacting to the fact that a system was rigged against them, seemingly and sadly something many of them didn't already know, and they have no outlet for any of that energy now except to cry out in pain, literally in some cases. They're looking at three and a half months of hyped-up election activity with nothing to do.

"Put that energy into Hillary"-- that's an extraordinarily stupid suggestion. The revolution these people see themselves as part of exists as much because of Hillary Clinton as it does Bernie Sanders. It was formed in opposition to her. If you hear a Clinton supporter tell you they are moving to Clinton, that person is actually moving back to Clinton, like Sarah Silverman, who moonlights as a revolutionary but morphs into a patronizing maternal scold when the wind shifts.

It's building a house. No different. Bernie puts the work into a foundation. His workforce is outstanding, eager, energetic, idealistic, joyous. But the lot they're building on has been contaminated. It's not going to work out. It won't be habitable. The exhausted activists were told they were being delusional about their cause being sabotaged, and then Julian Assange revealed that they were being sabotaged by fraud and cronyism. There was never an 'out' to Sanders' strategy. He wasn't going to win the presidency, as a Democrat or as an Independent or a Green. But as an Independent or a Green, he wouldn't have to surrender. He wouldn't be forced to regret, as he inevitably will, the actions he took Monday to throw away his political moment, to fall in line behind fear. The voter's special gift is his or her vote. The politician's is his or her courage. It's the only attribute in the service of American government at any level that has any currency.

What's next for all that energy? Playing dress-up as a progressive Democrat at the state and local level sounds like a strategy no one could argue with, but it's entirely futile. Fat lot of good to build something from "the ground up" when there's no time left at all for, say, climate change. Stick your toe into public service, gang, and you'll see that each lever of government is owned and operated by and in service to corporate power. The corporations have staged a coup. It is over. The state and local level of politics is indeed where the real shit gets done. That's why the corporations came for them first. Public institutions have been destroyed-- welfare for children and families slashed-- by the Clintons, schools defunded and re-segregated, police departments militarized, prisons privatized until they are the new slavery, statehouses sold off representative by representative, and squeezed into gerrymandered districts that protect the corporate investment of the bribe.

As a liberal, you are the useful idiot. You tolerate the corporate elite, criticizing only its worst excesses. You poor sap, you have only one thing they want or need-- your vote, and you huff and puff justifiably over their sick behavior, but then give that vote to them in the end without making any demands. All of your activism, all of your energy, gone to waste. Worse than having done nothing at all.

What's left then if we are to avoid the neo-fascist takeover predicted in Naomi Klein's book "The Shock Doctrine," the shameful tactics of economic destruction that were tried out first "on the road," then came home? It's too late for that as well. It's been done. To you. But we protest. We protest in our actions. We protest in the streets. We protest in online communities. We protest with our ballot. We subvert. We instigate. We expose.

posted by CM @ 10:39 PM