Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Shift Back

It’s hard to put it in words, because the change taking place for decades in America has been imperceptible in a day to day sense, but what that change has amounted to is everything shifting to the right. The quickest, broadest explanation to me is that Republicans have been a lot more stubborn and strong-willed about what they want to see happen in America, so they have slowly dragged the conversation and accepted beliefs about what is normal and just out of the center and firmly into the right. Bill, Obama, Hillary, they all were more centrist than leftist in politics and practice. The last president to be a true leftist might have been Jimmy Carter or LBJ. What I’m trying to say is that Democrats have lost a lot of ground in this game of tug o war, and I would kindly ask them to pull it back. When you look at a lot of what Hillary campaigned on, the only truly liberal positions she held were cultural ones, and not even all of her cultural ones were that far left. If you look at how she felt about war or the economy or trade all of her positions could actually be considered pretty close to what Republicans used to espouse not that long ago. Democrats occupy the vacated space that Republicans left when they decided to fully embrace the evangelism of extremely far right insane rich people.

By hook or by crook (by the way, y'all better obstruct the shit out every Trump Supreme Court Nominee) I would like to see Democrats shift back to where they used to ideologically reside. Get back to being pro-labor. Unions are a key component of wealth distribution and critical to the survival of the middle class. Get back to fighting the de-regulation of industry, banks, whomever. Corporations need to be held accountable for their practices. I'm still pissed that Obama didn't prosecute a single banker for the economic collapse 10 years ago. Make environmentalism a hill you're willing to die on, not something that you allude to in speeches but then never actually get around to with legislation. If you aid and abet Republicans in their plans to steal America's public lands and sell it off for short term gains in the energy field, you deserve to get trampled by a herd of bison. Then again, I guess that threat will ring hollow soon enough when their is no more protection of Endangered Species. Get back to being the party of the people, not just giving it lip service. Being in bed with Big Pharma and Wall Street is not how you stick up for the little man. The people who want to believe in Democrats and vote for Democrats have been given too little to show that you actually care. This morally repugnant Trump bullshit is your chance to flex some backbone and reset what the Democrats' priorities will be going forward. Because if y’all don’t and decide to go along with this whole cop out garbage, “what’s the point of obstructing, this is how it’s always been, I don’t want to fight them because it takes more effort and sacrifice" the people that have supported you will definitely abandon your path of least resistance sham excuses and find someone else that is willing to step the fuck up and way to the left.