YOU’RE NOT IN HIGH SCHOOL ANYMORE

King of the hill and capture the flag. Dodgeball and team sports. When will these boys grow up? This isn’t a schoolyard brawl. Maybe you could get away with that nonsense in debate club, but you’re not in high school anymore. I should probably mention that I am writing this while listening to the last day of the Senate Impeachment Trial of Donald John Trump, former President of the United States. I am amazed at how this spectacle, intended as remedy to the constant chaos created (incited) by the former President, exists as a continuation of that very chaos. When will the distraction end?

A few closing notes for snake oil salesman, his legal team and the Senators supporting/condoning his nonsense: are you aware how pathetic you look demanding a fair hearing in a legal system that is stacked against everyone but you? Such an impressive display of righteous indignation, raising your voice and pointing fingers in a chamber where civility and speech is quite literally protected under law; the sergeant-in-arms opening each session with a command for others in the chamber to keep silent under pain of imprisonment. Please tell us again how your speech rights are being violated? Maybe we could hear you better if you took off your CENSORED mask. Deference and respect are not owed to you simply because you’ve never been punished for being a bully.

But bullying really is all you got, isn’t it? Attacking the “other side” for their critique of your client’s actions, doesn’t qualify as a defense of your client’s actions. Your old boys network may conflate critique of its minority viewpoints with the suppression of actual minority viewpoints, but simply espousing a position most Americans disagree with doesn’t make you a victim of oppression.

Your hierarchy, your patriarchy, is minority rule by design; stop acting like your anti-democratic crusade is some sort of noble calling. You lost the election not because you are suddenly in the minority, but because the majority finally stopped believing your bullshit 50/50 polarization narrative. Pack it in, time for you to go home.

And once and for all, for the love of god, stop deflecting the United States is a democracy by saying that we are a republic. Like China? The entire world knows that we are a democracy, the beacon of democracy. Watching the war hawks suddenly pretend (admit?) that we have always been on the side of bullies, strong men, tin-pot-dictators? That is some serious doublethink.

If we can’t get clear on what the basic ideological underpinning of our society (our government) actually is, then what does support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic actually mean? Stoking chaos while claiming the mantle of law-and-order may seem like good strategy, until your own supporters slip the noose around your neck.

Inciter-In-Chief’s lackey lawyers played a nine minute video of Democrats saying that they will, that we must, fight-fight-FIGHT! I must admit my own amusement at this boy who cried wolf strategy. If anything, the video just demonstrates how meaningless that word has become in political discourse. But this entire line of defense is a sucker punch. Purveyors of violence will always want to solve disputes with violence. They are counting on your outrage, your justifiable anger, to sucker you into a conflict that they have planned in advance. A few points to remember before stepping into their ring.

There is money to be made, and lots of it. The weapons industry profits directly from chaos and fear and our continued devotion to the violent resolution of those conditions. Violence breeds violence, cha-ching. Their solution to guns is, not surprisingly, more guns! More tanks, more planes, more nukes… As long as we keep dropping more than half our government’s discretionary spending (your tax dollars) into the military machine, these government gun runners will keep telling us there’s no money for anything else we need. And that brings me to the second point.

An absence of actual policy has Republicans defaulting to ever more totalitarian means of control. Their escalating attacks on progressive policy and politicians provide cover for a complete lack of action. Continued submission to snake oil salesman’s spectacle is their only option, lest their complacency and ineptitude be laid bare. And this brings me to my final point.

The 50/50 polarization narrative has allowed Democrats to run campaigns based on little more than reactionary response to Republican attacks. So called free market champions have launched campaign after campaign for decades now, crowdtesting our tolerance for anti-democratic power grabs at all levels of government. Time and again the DNC has shown they would rather sit out the fight than side with people’s movements that could potentially usurp their authority. Centrist triangulation in the face of these brazen power grabs isn’t so much complacency as it is complicity. Put simply, popular movements have the power to overcome Republican obstruction, but Democrats need someone to run against.

Listen up DNC: that time is over. It is no longer enough to tacitly oppose a Republican party bereft of ideas. They have weaponized their desperation, turning it into justification for further acts of violence. If the DNC wants to remain relevant, it will need to actually support people’s movements to overcome Republican obstruction once and for all.

Here’s the thing, the “fight-fight-FIGHT!” narrative needs to be retired. Republicans own that narrative, and it should be abundantly clear that they are no longer using those words rhetorically. Democrats must develop new narratives that appeal to common aspiration, rather than adversarial conflict. This will require the centrist Democratic leadership to unilaterally stop obstructing progressive policy for the sake of private political gain. Four years of “resistance” – let’s give representation a try. Stop focusing on what we don’t want – start moving toward what we do.

“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” – David Graeber