by C.W. Jegna
Hillary Clinton and her party are bad medicine, dispensed in incrementally fatal doses. The Democratic-leaning public seeks a cure for what ills society, but gets poison, instead. “No sane progressive should associate themselves with a political party that often and dramatically alters their demands to the point where they become indistinguishable from the Republicans.”
Why Progressives Must Leave The Democratic Party
by C.W. Jegna
“Time and time again, progressives go to administer fundamentally sound and valid medicines to the state body, only to have the democratic AI syringe go crazy and wreck havoc upon the people and the earth.”
Imagine if you had just recently been diagnosed as a Type 1 diabetic and were subsequently informed on the proper applications of insulin. The discovery would be an unfortunate challenge from a health and lifestyle perspective, but it is a common and treatable disease. However, what if the syringe, that contained the insulin, had artificial intelligence? Where it could literally change the composition of the insulin into an entirely different substance and you had to pray that the AI syringe would apply the insulin and not alter it in any way? Well, that’s primarily the way the Democratic Party functions and that’s why progressives need to drop it like a bad habit.
If the nation state can be seen as a political consortium -- a body of the people and the political parties as certain vehicles by which the people go about the task of delivering the proper political medicine to the body politic -- then the analogy becomes clearer.
Progressives attempt to use the Democratic Party as a political syringe to administer political medicine for the well being of the state body.
But unlike the manual syringe which allows progressives full control of what is given to the state body, the Democratic Party operates like a syringe with artificial intelligence, sometimes administering the proper dosage, sometimes altering the dosage, sometimes altering the substance altogether and sometimes converting the political medicine into poison.
The Republican Party also operates as an AI syringe -- however, with much less autonomy and unpredictibility as the democratic syringe. For the most part, conservative substances go in the political syringe and conservative substances come out of it.
Viewing the process by which the Democratic AI syringe operates is not a pretty picture, primarily because in many instances, it alters the political medicines to the same exact specifications of the Republican AI syringe.
Progressives attempt to administer 100 units of Universal Healthcare -- but instead, 500 units of Obamacare and massive closing of mental health facilities comes out. The progressives go to inject poverty reduction programs into the state body, but outsourcing, mass incarceration, and wage reduction come out of the Democratic AI syringe. Progressives go to administer ecologically harmonious methods to combat the Anthropocene age, but the Gulf oil holocaust and California methane disaster come out. Time and time again, progressives go to administer fundamentally sound and valid medicines to the state body, only to have the democratic AI syringe go crazy and wreck havoc upon the people and the earth.
“The progressives go to inject poverty reduction programs into the state body, but outsourcing, mass incarceration, and wage reduction come out of the Democratic AI syringe.”
Just as no sane diabetic would continue to use a syringe that had the ability to dramatically alter their insulin, no sane progressive should associate themselves with a political party that often and dramatically alters their demands to the point where they become indistinguishable from the Republicans.
There are those sane, health conscious people, such as Dr. Cornel West and Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., that have ended their use of the Democratic AI syringe (Gaude on the national level at least) for similar reasons. As Cornel West says:
"I was blessed to be put on the committee by Brother Bernie Sanders. We had wonderful deliberations. Brother Elijah Cummings was very fair. He was the chairperson. But we lost TPP. We lost Medicare for all. We lost, of course, Israeli occupation and Israeli settlements included within the platform, keeping track while precious Palestinian brothers and sisters—we were looking to include them within the platform, so at least it was on paper. Now, of course, putting it on paper is different than putting it in practice. A declaration is different from the execution. But we lost over and over again, because the Clinton people lined up and voted against it. That’s why I, of course, abstained, initially, at the move from writing the draft, and then we took it to the platform committee in Orlando. I was also a member of the platform committee. And I had to abstain again, because—even though they didn’t allow for abstention; it was just no or yes. But there’s no way, based on moral grounds, those based on my own moral conscience, that I could support that platform.
“And once my dear brother moved into his endorsement, his strong endorsement of the neoliberal disaster that Sister Hillary represents, there was no way that I could stay with Bernie Sanders any longer, had to break with the two-party system. The duopoly has to come to an end." (1)
Eddie S. Glaude Jr's abandonment of the Democratic AI syringe is no less poignant when he states:
"Nothing...is said when Republicans reject Trump on ideological grounds. Many, like Jeb Bush, argue that Trump isn’t a true conservative, and that they will not vote for him or Clinton. This is seen as reasonable, and pundits rarely question the integrity of those who hold such views. But to
argue something similar about Clinton is immediately dismissed. We are labeled electoral nihilists.
"Democratic values centered on economic and racial justice shape my own politics. I’m not convinced those values shape hers. Nothing Clinton says or intends to do if elected will fundamentally transform the circumstances of the most vulnerable in this country. Like the majority of Democratic politicians these days, she is a corporate Democrat intent on maintaining
the status quo. And I have had enough of all of them.
“We can’t continue to live with the current level of income inequality. Hard working people are working longer hours for less pay. And politicians and their benefactors continue to argue for trade policies that have decimated the working class in this country. We can’t continue to lock up
black and brown people or watch them killed in cold blood by people sworn to protect us or fail to publicly educate all of our children. We can’t continue to bomb people around the world into oblivion."(2)
“Nothing Clinton says or intends to do if elected will fundamentally transform the circumstances of the most vulnerable in this country.”
Dr Cornel West and Eddie S. Glaude, Jr and others, have recognized the Democratic Party AI syringe for what it truly is: A tool by which the oligarchs can, and do use, to disenfranchise and disempower the people.
The Green Party, The Party for Socialism and Liberation, African People’s Socialist Party and other parties are more akin to the manual syringe that contains progressive medicine and goes about delivering progressive medicine: UNALTERED. Unlike the Democratic and Republican parties.
One of the reasons why I personally have my eye on Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka of the Green Party and why I’ve attended APSP meetings and also given media support to those groups along with the PSL is because I know I wouldn’t have to PUSH their candidates on any issues. Because we are so much politically and philosphically aligned with each other.
Just think in the realm of personal relationships, if you constantly had to tell your significant other to do things that they know have to be done: “Honey, Why didn't you pick up the kids after work like usual? Could you please cut the grass today? Honey I need that mortgage money.
What the hell, the electric just got shut off, I thought you paid that bill? You gotta be kidding me, the dog shit on the floor, why didn’t you let him go out?” Know what I mean? When relationships become that high maintenance, it usually means you’re in a bad relationship that needs to be ended. And that you’ve been hanging on to that relationship for all the wrong reasons.
The Democratic Party as political AI syringe, is no different and the behavior of progressives who continue to use such a political vehicle is much deeper than just a bad look. It’s fundamentally unhealthy.
C.W. Jegna is an activist, political analyst, and composer.
NOTES:
1 http://www.democracynow.org/2016/7/18/why_a_member_of_the_democratic
2 http://time.com/4402823/glaude-hillary-clinton/
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