This is what I look like in real life. Photo by Jonathan Ernst. Courtesy of Reuters and Business Insider Deutschland
Throughout the last presidential election campaign, I was verbally abused by a young art historian who was so determined to see Hillary Clinton win the race he attacked everyone who expressed the slightest uncertainties about her sterling character, political record, etc.
He did this to me on countless occasions, despite the fact I had already said I would vote for Clinton to prevent Trump from becoming president.
My ex-art historian friend pursued this social media campaign of abuse right up until election day. Although I tried several times to persuade him that verbally abusing people is not a very good way of making them do anything, he persisted in his vicious attacks on specific doubters like me and people who weren’t crazy about Clinton in general.
I’m not sure where he got his marching orders or whether he got them at all. Our political culture is suffused with violence, abuse, aggression, and stupidity, so it’s possible he set out on his perilous and, ultimately, futile course without any explicit prompting from the obnoxious Clinton campaign and the even more obnoxious Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Whatever the case, I’m already seeing signs the DNC faithful have started abusing doubters well in advance of the primaries, the convention, and the election.
Just today, in fact, one such fanatic labeled me a “Putin-Trump bot” and a “shill for Lyndon Larouche.”
Why did he attack me in this way? Only because I suggested—plausibly, I think—that there is no guarantee that if a Democrat grabbed the White House in January 2021, she or he would move to prosecute Trump.
I think it is likely that, instead, the new president would pardon Trump and only Trump in order to smooth the transition and also receive carte blanche to go after everyone else in Trump’s administration.
Two tenured professors who know for a fact I am neither a “Putin-Trump bot” and “Larouche shill” let this abusive comment stand without comment.
So, if that is how it’s going to be, I am going to make a promise to all of you.
I will not vote for the US Democratic Party in the 2020 US presidential election. They have broken their promises to working-class people, minorities, people of color, and pretty much their entire so-called base for as long as I have been following politics.
What our country needs is not a Democrat in the White House but a lot more democracy. It is clear the two “legal” parties have very odd ideas about democracy. One party has abandoned its conservative and liberal roots in pursuit of fascism. The other party does almost nothing to stop them while rapping the knuckles of the inspiring congresswomen of color who were elected in 2018 and are willing and able to take on a bully like Trump.
In short, if the Democratic Party could run an Ocasio-Cortez/Omar ticket in the 2020 presidential election, I would consider voting for it (and I’m sure millions of other people would, too), but the DNC would never let such a ticket make it onto the ballots even if Rep. Ocasio-Cortez were not too young to run, and Rep. Omar had not been born in another country.
What our country really needs, as an interim step toward real democracy, is a multi-party parliamentary republic without a president. I would argue this form of governance would make the nightmare of the last two and a half years a lot less feasible by diffusing power among parties more narrowly defined by class, ideological, and regional interests.
I don’t encourage anyone else to follow my example. After all, I have it on good authority that I am a Larouchian shill and a Trump-Putin bot.
I would, however, encourage you not to succumb to the “unity at any cost” campaign the DNC will unleash on the nation, using its millions of dupes around the country to viciously attack anyone who wavers from the party line.
When you’re verbally abused by a DNC fanatic, as I was today, explain as calmly as you can that this style of campaigning turns people off and encourages them to stay home rather than vote.
The latest issue of the Economist (July 6, 2019) had an interesting piece summarizing some research done by the newspaper itself. It claimed that, if everyone had voted in 2016, Clinton would have won.
In other words, if the US had mandatory voting like Australia has, for example, passive Clinton supporters would have been more or less forced to vote for her and she would have easily beaten Trump.
The Economist also argued Republicans would have to soften their hardline fascist message to appeal to fence-sitters, who also have a tendency not to vote.
What the article failed to point out is that the real Australia recently returned the governing Liberal-National coalition to power despite the fact all of the polls had predicted victory for the Australian Labor Party.
This means Scott Morrison was returned to his job as the country’s PM, despite the fact he presided belligerently over Australia’s own asylum-seeker concentration camps on Manus Island and Nauru before mounting a leadership challenge and taking over as the Liberal Party chair and, hence, the PM.
Scott Morrison is only slightly less odious than Donald Trump, by the way.
So, mandatory voting is no guarantee of happiness and sunshine in Australia, America or anywhere else.
The DNC is even less inclined to produce happiness and sunshine for ordinary Americans than the Australian Labor Party or even the Australian Liberal Party, not all of whose members are fascist pigs.
Don’t take the DNC’s abuse. I understand the desire to get rid of Trump, but it can’t happen at any price. If the price is Joe Biden, I would place a bet in any establishment willing to take it that he would pardon Trump the day after the inauguration.
If you must vote, then, a) don’t vote for a “compromise” ticket, and b) don’t take abuse from the DNC-inspired unity-at-all-costers.
When someone is willing to rain such mendacious filth on the head of a person he has never met and knows nothing about, this alleged unity is worthless.
All of you are smart and strong enough not to buckle under such pressure.
Who knows? If millions of you made pledges like the one I am making now it might make the DNC sit up and listen. {PUTIN-TRUMP BOT}
The Russian Reader 