So, I'm going to be honest, as I'm going into September, I'm going into a relative vacation mode. So expect less content for a while. I have other things going on, and will be taking a much needed break.
But I did was to comment briefly on Biden's speech, since everyone has been making such a big deal about it.
Quite frankly, Biden is doing what I've been wanting the democrats to do for years, and what Forward has lost me on as of late. He's calling out the crazies. He's not trying to make nice with them. He's not trying to compromise with them. He's calling them out for being the dangerous nutcases that they are, and labelling them threats to democracy. And we should.
The GOP has been a growing threat for a while. I'm not saying this to be partisan for its own sake, I'm saying this because they've been growing increasingly unhinged in recent decades, and especially in the past 10-15 years. And yeah, Trump LITERALLY tried to overthrow an election. That's not something to take lightly. The GOP has been doing all kinds of relatively anti democratic things in the past decade or so. When the tea party took over congress. They started shutting down the government and holding the government hostage to get their way. They obstructed obama at every turn looking to undermine his legacy. They stole a SCOTUS appointment from him, and the dems did nothing.
The democrats have been in this weird mode of "we need to compromise and be incremental and meet these people half way", and I'm glad the dems are FINALLY learning that you can't play paddycake with these crazies. Donald Trump IS a threat to democracy. His followers are a threat to democracy. I don't say this simply because I don't like Trump, I say this because the dude is a wanna be authoritarian who literally incited a mob to attack the capitol. I say this because his rhetoric has been inflaming the right wing extremist crazies to action. I say this because intimidation and violence are common tactics among his fan base. let's not mince words, these guys are FASCISTS. I'm not saying all conservatives are fascists. I actually think the left misuses the term fascism a lot in the same way the right screams everything they don't like is communism, but at this point, Trump and his supporters have crossed the line into using violence to get their way, and have directly attacked our institutions, both literally and figuratively.
I believe that any party that claims to support democracy needs to do more that they're doing. The democrats need to go beyond just "Trump bad" and take actions to win people over in heart and mind. They need solutions to our problems, and they need to restore peoples' confidence in our quite frankly failing economic system, for example. And forward, well, here's the thing, Yang should know better, because he ran in 2020 on more or less ran on a variation of my ideal platform in an attempt to counter trump and provide an alternative to the mediocre mainstream democrat, and now he's spouting enlightened centrism, getting some aspects of the problem right, but both sidesing things without standing for anything themselves.
I don't really think Biden is a great president. Quite frankly, i think he's mediocre. I don't buy into everything Biden is saying in this speech. Too much homage to the "American Civil Religion" for my tastes. Comes off as a virtue signal to me. But he has a point. We need to protect democracy from all threats, foreign and domestic. And right now the biggest threat to it is domestic, in the form of these crazies on the GOP side. I'm not saying the dems are perfect. Remember them removing the greens from the ballot in PA and wisconsin? But they don't do anything near as brazen as what Trump and the republicans did. At least they support a two party system, the GOP wants a one party system akin to Putin's Russia or something.
Honestly? I hope they hold Trump accountable to the fullest extent of the law for his crimes, and bar him from running for office in 2024. If this means we get Ron Disastrous (DeSantis), so be it. As long as the GOP nominee isn't Trump.
And let's face it, this serves our goals too. Unhappy lefties like me can better stage protests when the alternative to the democrats losing isn't a literal existential threat to democracy. Take Trump off the table and the democrats will lose the biggest leverage they have regarding blue no matter who. Then we can pressure the democrats to actually deliver on policy. And that's how democracy works. Remember, we're undergoing a realignment. it's just a matter of whether we wanna spend the next 40 years dealing with weak democrats constantly playing up the fear of a fascist takeover to keep power, or if we want to make the left take control of the country with good policy, forcing the GOP to come back to reality. The choice is ours. But ultimately, it really depends on whether the democrats seize the moment to build a coalition that wins over the country for the next several decades,or if they fail and let the GOP dominate the overton window...again.
No comments:
Post a Comment