So, I've been criticizing the democrats for a while. I go after them more than Trump all things considered. But it's necessary being a leftist who is pretty independent in my thinking and whose views are separate from the democrats.
I've been echoing a lot of the sentiments I'm going to discuss here for a long time, but never really in this exact way. Quite frankly, the way a lot of people who follow the democrats and the mainstream media closely are starting to scare me, with Trump taking office. They're scaring me just as much as Trump all things considered, because this is what the opposition to Trump is shaping up to be.
The democrats are whipping people up into a frenzy over Trump. I mean, some of them are really going all out. They're more polarized than I've ever seen, more group thinky than I've seen, and many of them are LITERALLY defending violence. I try to engage in dialogue with some of these people and am called a so called "nazi sympathizer" simply for disagreeing with them or being part of their little hive mind of a cult. They're so buying into this idea that Trump is the apocalypse, that Trump is like Hitler, that Trump is an existential threat to them, that they're behaving more and more radically.
One way in which they do this is political correctness and that whole BS. Once again, let me restate my views, so we are clear. I'm not necessarily opposed to the goals of political correctness. Heck, I'm quite supportive of treating people with respect and like human beings, but the way people are using it is a way to control people. If you aren't giving these particular liberals and their pet causes all of the attention they are, or expressing the proper amount of outrage, or posting as many tweets and facebook statuses about how evil Trump and the alt right are, you're with them or something, apparently. If you think it's bad to hit a nazi because you believe society should act civilly in its debates, you're in league with them. If you're not with them, 100%, you are with the enemy. And they treat you as such. This is NUTS. Look, I shouldn't have to perpetually be in a state of outrage and tweet incessantly about how Joe NeoNazi thinks black people are bad. I really shouldn't. Just like I don't constantly talk about how water is wet. I work with that assumption implicitly, and quite frankly, it's insulting for people to insinuate I support them just because I don't make meaningless symbolic acts of opposition against them. Same with hitting nazis. I don't advocate for that because I'm generally against violence. I oppose the means of revolutionary socialists who want riots to seize the means of production, and I'm against people who think it's okay to hit people for having differing views, no matter how horrible they are. But hey, screw saying this right? Apparently it makes me privileged (yes, actually been called that), apparently it makes me a Nazi sympathizer (been called that too).
This is what pisses me off about the PC movement. It's well meaning, I support the same goals, but this kind of hive mind is quite frankly, dangerous. These people have given up their critical faculties to this mess of emotion, passion, and constant outrage. They're so against Trump, and so against the alt right, and so carried away by passions, that they're attacking people who would otherwise agree with them for not being extreme enough. Geez, and they say we "Bernie Bros" are bad. Look, I just got done bashing Trump and saying everything he's done so far outside of killing the TPP is bad. Okay? That's a pretty strong statement there. I don't approve of Trump or the alt right, or the republicans, I dislike them just as much as the rest of the left does. The difference? I still have my wits about me. I'm not so passionately out of control I start advocating for violence to achieve my goals and say anyone who doesn't think exactly like I do, even if they agree with me 90% of the time, are the bad guys.
The worst thing about this is I get the impression that this is what the democratic establishment wants. Keep in mind guys, the republicans aren't the only problem. The democratic establishment is too. And I get the impression they're pulling the strings here. They don't want people to think critically, they don't want people to have their own agendas, they want people to accept theirs. So what they do is whip everyone up into a frenzy, act like Trump is an existential threat, and get people so riled up in their passions they freaking forget that the democrats are a problem too. Which is what this is really about. The democrats don't want people to focus on them. They don't want people to focus on the bad crap they do. They don't want people to focus on the loss and demand better of them. They just want people to attack Trump, without really having an alternative people can get behind. They're counting on people to be so pissed and outraged against Trump they forget all about the divisions within the party. It's the same crap Clinton tried in the election all over again.
And the worst part is this is costing the left supporters as well and leaving people pissed off and disillusioned with them. Some people, like me, become resentful of both sides. Others (and I've actually seen people do this) get so fed up with the perpetual manufactured outrage and with us or against us mentality that they go on a crusade against these people and join the alt right themselves.
Look, I'm not saying we shouldn't oppose Trump or the alt right. I just condemned Trump's presidency literally 20 minutes ago. I can't stand Trump. He's shaping up to be the worst president in modern American history (I can't say the worst ever, as we had some really bad ones in the 1800s, but likely the worst in our lifetimes). But we need to act peacefully, and we need to act rationally. We need to keep a clear sight on our goals, and not get whipped up by manufactured outrage and the corresponding passions. The democrats are morphing into this angry mob of pure hate and outrage right now, and it's scaring the crap out of me. This outrage has no good end. And when you come down from this high, you will regret how you're acting. This is the same kind of anger and outrage that led to the formation of the tea party and how awful the modern GOP is. It's the same kind of outrage that made the public so receptive to invading Iraq without evidence. This level of anger and outrage is also responsible for many violent revolutions that ended very badly, with the people just as bad off as, if not worse off than they were before.
That being said, people need to calm the fudge down, take a chill pill, and look at this situation rationally. We need an opposition of Trump that's worth fighting for. But the democrats suffering from what some call "Trump derangement syndrome" isn't it. As Caitlin Johnstone said (read the above article I posted), until the democrats cobble together an actual alternative to Trump, they're not really a "resistance", they're just complaining. We need to stand for something different, something better, and we need to push for it thoughtfully, rationally, and peacefully. As I said in my last article, I believe we are witnessing the self destruction of the GOP. But unless we can put forward some solid progressive goals, what comes next won't be much better. Even if rational, we'll go back to the same old oligarchic democratic party...after all, they're the ones getting you so pumped up to begin with. They're trying to keep politics partisan and keep you as focused on "the other" as possible. We need change, not more of the same. Please, look at the big picture. Think this though. Don't act out of radical passion. I feel like the left is going to the "dark side" so to speak when it needs to be the voice of the light, the voice of reason.
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