So...I don't want people to get the wrong idea about me. I'm not harping on the whole VRA being gutted because I'm a racist ###hole. Rather, I just resent the democrats using race as a cudgel to preserve their existing electoral strategy, which works against my own interests. I want the democratic party to be a strong, class based movement toward making material improvements to peoples' lives. The democrats, however, don't want this. They are controlled by wealthy interests who want the democratic party to remain as neutered and useless as possible. And their goal is to ensure that no class based movement can come from it.
That is why the democrats are as they are. After the Reagan revolution, it was taken over by a bunch of ideological centrists who wanted to sell the farm on economic issues. So now we got a system where the republicans gut everything, the democrats half agree with them and compromise everything away. Come election time they encourage their base to temper their expectations and not push for stuff. And they basically build their coalition in such a way it makes a class based movement impossible. Again, it's wealthy suburbanites and racial minorities. They appeal obnoxiously to social issues, and they avoid the economic stuff. This is INTENTIONAL. And its why I've been fighting the democratic party so hard since the 2016 election cycle. because I see through it. I've ALWAYS seen through it.
Initially, the strategy was to try to derail the change. That's why I was okay with Clinton losing in 2016. Because I figured, hey, if we basically punish the dems for pursuing this strategy, maybe we can get a working class party for a change. but no, they just forced more centrists. And since then we've been slow walking ourselves into fascism, where now even I have to begrudgingly support the democratic party to stop authoritarian takeovers of our government from the right. So sadly, my hand is forced too. I don't like it, frankly, I hate it, but I'll still call things as I see them and advocate for progressives in primaries, and we ARE in primary season right now. But yeah, I just wanna let you guys no, I havent gone soft on these people, I just feel more restrained by our current situation and have to play their game for the time being. But that doesnt mean we shouldnt continue trying to oust these guys from the inside via primaries. There is a progressive wave coming, and democrats are unhappy with their leadership, and we need to take advantage of that to push as many progressive candidates as possible.
But back to the topic at hand. I'll go further, on the race baiting thing. Democrats KNOW it's annoying. They KNOW it alienates white people. And they don't care. They want them to vote for Trump. They don't want them part of their coalition. Because, again, if they were, they might join with the minorities in a multiracial working class movement and advocate for real change. if you go back to the inception of this country, and even the colonial days, resentment politics has always kept people in line. Normally, it's a one way thing. The whites are satisfied with their place in the society as long as they get to kick around the minorities. As long as they're not the bottom rung of the social hierarchy, they won't push for better changes. They'll instead direct their attention toward POC. And ever since then, blacks and whites in our society have been mortal enemies. It's a tower of babel like strategy of keeping people confused and fighing amongst themselves over superficial differences rather than uniting for real change.
Even during the New Deal, when the system was forced to offer real concessions, they still employed that strategy. Blacks were intentionally kept out of it and exempt from the policy changes that benefitted everyone else. Which is something the centrist dems of today won't stfu about. DID YOU KNOW THAT THE NEW DEAL COALITION WAS RACIST?! Yes. Because I learned history and am aware of the same meltdown that the south had in the 1960s and 1970s that you are. And again, I don't support those politics. I don't want whites to focus on race. My goal is to get them to stop fixating on it too. But that means stop leaning into it so heavily and obnoxiously. As I see it, Lee Atwater's strategy of moving from "N word N word N word" to "forced bussing" and ultimately welfare queens created a new opportunity for us. Eventually conservative ideology got so divorced from the racial elements, that I honestly believed that younger generations were significantly less racist than their parents. I know I sure was/am. I thought that was the norm. That for us, the dog whistle was no longer really heard, and younger conservatives bought conservatism on its own merits, rather than racial resentment. And when those people start to realize that conservatism doesnt actually do F all for them, we get them to join the democrats, leading to a political revolution, with significant change. And that's why I was so gung ho on Bernie and his "class first" approach. you lean heavily into racial stuff, it just acts like nails on a chalkboard that makes a lot of us...wanna go back to the republicans. I wont because im too smart for that, but your average voter? Someone like me but without my education? Yeah, they're gonna vote for Trump!
But again, what if the dems WANT us to vote for Trump? What if they dont WANT us to join the democrats, because then this whole system of keeping the classes divided stops functioning? As I see it, we could have buried the hatchet of race in this country once and for all had we taken a different direction. Okay, maybe not ONCE AND FOR ALL, but you know, it wouldve continued to be less prevalent. But that would be bad, because then we'd focus on REAL issues. So instead, that "original sin of 2016" I keep complaining about, that whole racialized dynamic where the left leaned into insufferable idpol and the right leaned into white resentment politics, ended up prevailing instead.
It literally happened because a bunch of wealthy people in both parties WANTED us to fight over this. This is the problem with identitarian movements. Eventually, they run their course, the issues get solved, but rather than go away, they gotta create new things to fight about. Feminism has to start making new grievances against men. Black politics has to do the same. And the elites always want us fighting some sort of enemy. That's something I've been reflecting on a lot too lately. The Trump administration got us into this Iran war because the country was turning on him. The epstein scandal was making him look REALLY bad, his movement was imploding, so he's like "LOOK, WAR, YOU HATE BROWN PEOPLE WHO LIVE OVERSEAS, RIGHT? LET'S BOMB BROWN PEOPLE OVERSEAS." Again, these elites always need us to be fighting some enemy. If not some poor group overseas that has nothing to do with our troubles, like Iran, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, then each other. So the democrats hype up the identity politics to a 10. And the republicans do the same. And despite mass anti elite sentiment on both sides, we're too busy fighting each other over BS like "wokeness" to focus on the real material issues impacting our lives. And thus, the motivation of the masses to do something about them remains suppressed. It's a tale as old as time.
Anyway, I admit, I got a chip over my shoulder as a 2016 era "bernie bro" over this obviously. Because I AM a class first guy. I WANT a color blind version of politics. And sure, maybe I'm not for whatever special treatment the weirdo idpol dems want with whatever weird issues they wanna hyper fixate on. BUT, I also am gonna be that guy telling the white middle class dude in the cookie meme, that no, the foreigner is NOT taking your cookie, the wealthy guy is. I'm gonna be working at disarming whatever racial resentment, the white working class has. And as I always say, if they really hate minorities so much they'll continue to vote republican at the expense of their own interests, well, there's the door. I dont genuinely support throwing racial minorities or anyone else under the bus. I just have schadenfreude toward a party that literally rejected people like me as voters because they wanted to use those same voters as a cudgel against me. Or who would use half measures to carve out weird racial exceptions to gerrymandering while not actively working toward ending the practice nationwide, as well as encouraging further changes to the system to improve representation.
Because again, stopping gerrymandering doesnt even go far enough. We need to reform how the house works, either by uncapping the number of representatives, or moving toward proportional representation. We need to eliminate the electoral college and encourage ranked choice voting. That would break the duopoly. And yeah, ultimately, we SHOULD break the duopoly. I oppose trump because i oppose the descent into a one party system like Russia where Trump acts like a dictator like Putin, but I also ain't too happy with a two party system controlled by big monied interests either. I want there to be many parties and many choices. Democrats typically don't. They WANT you to be dependent on them with nowhere else to go, even though they suck. They enjoy being the only game in town. And quite frankly, if we werent at the gates of literal fascism, I'd say, yeah, let them suffer the consequences of driving away their voters. But under the current situation, it's just too dangerous to risk it, so we gotta play their game for now. Even if it sucks and makes my stomach churn.
Anyway, I just wanted to explain the real conflict driven explanations for why the democrats are doing what they're doing. They're not really our friends. They support big business and special interests, and they dont want things to change. And they use all the race stuff explicitly to drive a wedge in a potential working class coalition in order to ensure things remain the same.
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