I've got a feeling that political apathy on the left has ultimately far less to do with our political systems and more to do with the collective narrative many on the left live in- that those more powerful than us control our sources of social agency and there's nothing that we can do about it. I think the left needs to figure out how to deal with our understanding of power and how it plays out in the world versus how we make the changes in our own personal, communal, and political lives to "be the change we want to see in the world." We can hold both, I think.
I agree - I think the new left/progressive left has been generated by the same algorithms that generated the new right/alt right.
The nature of algorithmic content seems to always carry the message that "resistance is futile"; given most algorithmic content is inherently reaction-based, not creation-based, this makes sense.
All it ever delivers to us is bad events from the recent, or distant past, none of which we can do anything about. A society full of reactors absent any actual actors is exactly what Yuval Levin discusses above.
What evidence do you have of progressives being politically apathetic or believing resistance is futile? Not only do progressives have a robust analysis of power, they are very active in democratic mechanisms of resistance. Progressives vote. And assemble peacefully to challenge institutional actions they don’t agree with.
Having trouble understanding the progressives are reactive and apathetic take
Very fair Christine, but I welcome the change-up. Shadi also made the right arguments for action and I'm thankful for forces that can modify our trajectory.
Nice post but, wow, Christine, you really drew the lightning. As if you were calling readers names!
Yes, I've felt this sense of being dragged into an election and have experienced the concomitant reaction of wanting to go back under the covers. And, to Yuval Levin's point, I was calling elected officials the past couple of weeks ("my representatives") and wasn't able to detect (through their staffs, of course) that they possessed any sense of agency around the situation. They were all keeping their heads down publicly, perhaps out of a sense that Biden indeed needed "space" to make the right decision, but that's a stance that left this voter wondering whether they had eyes and a pulse.
Then boom. FWIW, I think Kamala will be fine. No one would be questioning her legitimacy if Biden had died. All these calls (I'm looking at you, WaPo!) for an open convention that no other potential candidate is prepared for or has the stomach for strike me as silly. And there is no magical candidate out there who can cover all the cracks in the Democrats' frayed, and now contradictory, coalition. The fallout from October 7 is still out there.
I'm intrigued by the ferocity of the response! That line was not central to the piece!
And I tend to agree that Kamala will be fine. A broader competition to decide who would be the best next candidate would be better, of course, if there were time and the stomach for it, but I simply don't think there is. And should Dems self-destruct by trying to scramble together an open convention to satisfy some naysayers, or should they -- for once -- keep things moving? I think common sense obviously recommends the latter.
Interesting piece. Is it because the rise of Trump has felt* unstoppable perhaps and the Democrats have responded not with their own grass root fight and energy which Trump has stirred up but with a machine led elite process? From both sides our ability to effect change feels muted and we are relegated to the purpose of mere spectators? Perhaps Rousseau was right about voting and his deeper point about not only representatives lack of accountability but our lack of input into the process makes us more distant than we would like to be from politics. Where we are more distant we feel more distant and lose our connection to the thing itself.
I find myself returning to this take on things as I read other articles on the subject. The unprecedented nature of Biden’s withdrawal and Harris’s ascent by general acclamation is generating positive energy in itself. So many people are tired of the lengthy campaign seasons, the inevitability of their narratives, and the powerlessness that we feel in the face of this process that is supposed to give the public a voice. In such an environment, anything that breaks with tradition can feel like a point of hope.
The flip side, of course, is that breaking with tradition can also feel like a disaster. One blogger whom I regularly read actually responded to Biden’s announcement by just posting the entirety of W. H. Auden‘s “September 1, 1939.” Cat Valente’s post today is also instructive in its whiplash between horror and hope: https://open.substack.com/pub/catvalente/p/if-you-think-you-know-how-this-ends
Do Americans want change, or are you afraid of it? It seems like the answer is, both.
I'm a little tired of the racism/misogyny category. It seems like this is over-amplified because we all live online, but every time I hear it, I see a subtle dismissal of legitimate concerns about a candidate, simply because these other obtuse and biased objections exist. I don't have to be anti-woman to know Hillary was going to be awful for America (and that's NOT an endorsement of Trump!) and I don't have to be racist to know that Kamila is an uninspired political hack with little chops in the realm of foreign policy. As an unaffiliated voter, I am willing to be convinced that Kamila deserves my vote, but until then she's Biden 2.0... that's Biden, but with less life support.
It doesn't matter though. Because instead of winning my vote, I get dismissed because I'm a white/hetero/woman-hating (and surely racist) male. That's a HELLUVA way to lose an election.
"We have to look forward, I fear, to a campaign of racism and misogyny unlike any seen before."
I can't let that go by. I support Trump, in SELF-DEFENSE. I have been called racist, as I just was in this piece, more times than I can begin to count. For what? For being my own man and not genuflecting before the God of progressivism?
Trump is sucking minority voters away from the progressive mind-control machine. He did it in 2020, and he's doing it still more in 2024. If I may misquote Shakespeare, "The fault lies not in Trump, my dear progressives, but in ourselves."
Agree with Christine here, I think we have to maintain a clear separation between the motivations of candidates and those who vote for said candidate, since voters are complicated and have any number of motivations for casting their vote the way they do. To take an example from the other side, for people who think Biden has facilitated the genocide of Palestinians, would that mean that anyone who supports (supported) him would also be pro-genocide of Palestinians?
I am not. That doesn't logically follow. If I call Trump old, does that mean that I'm calling all of his supporters old?
But in any case, the line you quote says that we will likely experience "a campaign" of racism and misogyny. I didn't attribute it directly to Trump or even call him a racist personally, although I'm perfectly willing to admit that I expect that a good amount of this negative campaign's substance will flow from him and with his encouragement -- he has made no secret of his low opinion of women and those of other races.
But here's an example of what I meant: I'm already seeing a huge number of memes and suppositions, shared with glee by her opponents, that Kamala has only advanced in her career by performing sexual acts on the older men she has worked with -- which is misogynistic attempt to delegitimize her, is it not? No one is saying that J.D. Vance only got the VP nomination because he performed oral sex on Donald Trump.
There is a lot to not like about Kamala. Consider what you've revealed so far. You condemn Trump for his sexual antics, but sweep Kamala's aside. If you condemn one, then condemn the other. Or not.
And speaking of double standards, why is it that when a man and a woman have consensual sex, the man is a misogynist, and the woman is a victim? I understand how people see Trump as a creep concerning his affairs and statements. But he never raped anyone (No, he did not. Forget the BS. No woman was ever forced to have sex with him). Sometimes two people have sex because they want to have sex. Sometimes they do it as a career move, or for other advantage. Whatever Trump has done, Kamala has done it, too.
And Biden is the racist, for Pete's sake, not Trump. That's a big part of the reason blacks have been bailing on Biden and going to Trump. Do you want to claim they are making a mistake? Wouldn't that make you a racist?
Here's something else to consider, that I just put out:
I'm not sure if you've read or engaged much of Wisdom of Crowds, but the whole point is to "get into the weeds" and engage beyond your personal feelings of defensiveness because some people implied you might hold a racist bias or two.
I get you when it comes to feeling attacked by people on the left. It's not really pleasant to feel like your basic character is in dispute.
And this is coming from a fellow white-dude who is also often irritated at the left, do you feel that you're committing exactly the same sin you accuse people on the left of? Flocking to whatever candidate claims you have no personal responsibility and all your problems are caused by some third party?
My second question, is why the word "racist" carries such an intense reaction from you even when you only find yourself in the proximity of it? Like with any epithet, it's just some asshole's opinion and it will almost certainly never impact you or I in the real world. You don't have to agree with it, but I guess I don't understand this "burrowing" reaction.
Perhaps your sense of the term "racist" is calibrated to where it was 60 years ago, when it was only ever used for the gravest of crimes, like those of the KKK.
The bar, and the relative intensity of the term has lowered significantly since then, to the point that racist no longer implies any specific malice on the part of the accused. Today, "racist" means little more than: "this person is embedded in some greater context/system that produces unbalanced outcomes on a basis of race".
This should be a relief to you, as it seems you have enormous consternation over being personally maligned - the irony is that "racist" implies way less personal fault than it ever did.
I frequently impugn the left for its silly overreaches and stupid choices of hills-to-die-on. I am firmly a pro-capitalist, slightly left-of-center person, but I don't feel an intense need to flock to Trump for safety. Then again, I also don't engage with social media and I fervently avoid algorithmic echo chambers. If you do, it's possible they are heightening your sense of political ostracization.
Seriously? "... I don't feel an intense need to flock to Trump for safety." Look up the term 'passive aggressive."
Here's what you said about Christine's statement: "Like with any epithet, it's just some asshole's opinion and it will almost certainly never impact you or I in the real world." I didn't call her and asshole, you did. But I'm sure she won't mind, because people are just so naturally insulting these days, so why worry about it. At least, I think that's what you're trying to say. I can't really tell.
BTW, the KKK was democrat. And no, they didn't all become republicans.
It's good to see my attempt to be understanding and make a bridge with you was immediately set alight by you. You are in some kind of intensely agitated, ultra-defensive state, and are absolutely unpleasant to talk to in your current state.
All you've done in your comments is lash out at others while getting defensive when anyone else speaks to you in any fashion, this is not the signal of a good-faith person who wants a discussion.
First of all, this notion that the "asshole" in my statement was Christine is a fabrication built on your frankly paranoid and self-victimizing reading of the entire context. You think Christine PERSONALLY attacked you because she called out Trump and racists.
I don't read the situation that way, I don't think Christine is PERSONALLY impugning you or specifically calling you a racist. When I say "just because some asshole called you a racist", I'm not talking about Christine, YOU think I am. The "asshole" I'm talking about is a rhetorical placeholder for: "anyone with an opinion you disagree with".
Given Christine liked my comment, I think it's pretty clear she isn't living in a hyper-reactionary world where even a vague implication she's been called a name causes her to fly off the handle.
With regard to the KKK being Democratic, yeah, they were, and literally no Democrat today will deny that.
It's also completely besides the point, because the KKK have not been associated with the Democratic party for some +60 years. I wouldn't have been a Democrat in 1860 - I would have been a Republican, as would virtually all present-day Democrats.
And yes, the KKK DID become Republican, OR they quit politics entirely/splintered off into various third parties. They did not stay in the Democratic party.
Here's a moderate conservative (libertarian) discussing the reality of the ideological transfer from the Democratic party to the Republican party that occured in the 20th century:
It's not some conspiracy, it's objective fact that the ideologies of both parties basically inverted over the last 160 years. The names stuck around, but the modern GOP has nothing in common with the newborn radical party of Lincoln in the 1850s and 1860s, neither does the Democratic party of today.
No, the KKK did NOT move to the republican party. That is a racist LIE. Democrats are desperate to divert people away from the reality that the democratic party was and is the party of institutional racism. It's interesting that you all get so defensive about it. It's interesting that you blame me for being defensive, when all I'm doing is telling the truth. YOU are being defensive about it.
Consider for a moment that what you've been led to believe by the democratic party and democrat teachers is BS. Which party demanded to KEEP slavery prior to the civil war? That's right, the democratic party. Which party was behind the south's secession and led the south in the civil war? That's right, the democratic party. Which party formed the KLKK after the civil war, in order to terrorize the freed slaves into submission? That's right, the democratic party. (They also lynched white republicans). Which party enacted and enforced the Jim Crow laws? That's right, the democratic party. Which party's elected officials stood against MLK? That's right, the democratic party. Which party controls the black ghettoes today? That's right, the democratic party. Which party hired the cops that shoot the black guys in the black ghettos? That's right, the democratic party.
What has Trump got to do with any of this racism? Not a damned thing. What have I got to do with any of this racism? Not a damned thing. What do democrats have to do with this racism? EVERYTHING.
Denial may make you feel better. Transferring your own guilt onto others may make for a great coping device. But it doesn't solve the problem of racism in America.
I don’t know if tired covers it. Every time I read the news, I want to gouge my eyes out with a pencil so I don’t have to see any more of it. Kamala Harris strikes me as nothing more than a pathetic grifter who suddenly won’t be able to get by pretending to do her job any more. Maybe she’ll surprise me or maybe the other guy will be so absurd that she’ll look like a baloney sandwich next to a dog turd.
Politics in 2024 is like being tied to a couch in your living room and forced to watch a 4 year old’s birthday party only the party favors are bazookas and hand grenades.
Yeeeow! “Apathy and nihilism”? But the 2020 election. Thought Biden and Trump got most votes in history! Biden most popular candidate ever! Why imagine FDR or Lincoln with voting by mail!
“Racism and misogyny” the fall back campaign for those with nothing of their own to offer.
You mention COVID. Biden, promised to end it. Now Biden vaxed, and boosted, gets the very virus he “vowed to quash.”
The left, seems to have an innate inability to see irony.
The fleet of jets on the tarmac at environmental conferences!l
Kamala Harris, a border czar, who never visits the…border let alone alleviates a single problem.
A prosecutor who promoted bail assistance for anarchists. I could go on and on.
Your pessimism is palpable and shared by those like me who feel they have no political home. Although there is a new and younger candidate for President of the United States, the political gamesmanship will go on in the same fashion. Another commentator aptly described this as a monster truck mash. Little subtlety, nothing clever, and certainly no solutions put forth to address serious problems both domestic and especially international. Aspiring to be inspirational? I am afraid that the breath of fresh air you described will turn stale in short order.
Hey, I'm a white boomer tired of hearing racism and misogyny shouted from the rooftops during US election campaigns, too - but it's been going on since Washington was elected. We will get them, in some measure, forever, no matter what. Thousands of years of human evidence is a heavy load to toss off. But, the more they are "national issues," along with other usual suspects like the manipulations of Wall St., unchecked militarism in the name of peace, etc., the better they can be shaved down to manageable subsets of our society, over time If we lock autocratic tendencies back down, whenever they come loose , this evolution will continue. If we don't, it will shrivel and our worst fears and aggressions will rise among us, again - ever latent monsters that they are.
I've got a feeling that political apathy on the left has ultimately far less to do with our political systems and more to do with the collective narrative many on the left live in- that those more powerful than us control our sources of social agency and there's nothing that we can do about it. I think the left needs to figure out how to deal with our understanding of power and how it plays out in the world versus how we make the changes in our own personal, communal, and political lives to "be the change we want to see in the world." We can hold both, I think.
I agree - I think the new left/progressive left has been generated by the same algorithms that generated the new right/alt right.
The nature of algorithmic content seems to always carry the message that "resistance is futile"; given most algorithmic content is inherently reaction-based, not creation-based, this makes sense.
All it ever delivers to us is bad events from the recent, or distant past, none of which we can do anything about. A society full of reactors absent any actual actors is exactly what Yuval Levin discusses above.
What evidence do you have of progressives being politically apathetic or believing resistance is futile? Not only do progressives have a robust analysis of power, they are very active in democratic mechanisms of resistance. Progressives vote. And assemble peacefully to challenge institutional actions they don’t agree with.
Having trouble understanding the progressives are reactive and apathetic take
Very fair Christine, but I welcome the change-up. Shadi also made the right arguments for action and I'm thankful for forces that can modify our trajectory.
Nice post but, wow, Christine, you really drew the lightning. As if you were calling readers names!
Yes, I've felt this sense of being dragged into an election and have experienced the concomitant reaction of wanting to go back under the covers. And, to Yuval Levin's point, I was calling elected officials the past couple of weeks ("my representatives") and wasn't able to detect (through their staffs, of course) that they possessed any sense of agency around the situation. They were all keeping their heads down publicly, perhaps out of a sense that Biden indeed needed "space" to make the right decision, but that's a stance that left this voter wondering whether they had eyes and a pulse.
Then boom. FWIW, I think Kamala will be fine. No one would be questioning her legitimacy if Biden had died. All these calls (I'm looking at you, WaPo!) for an open convention that no other potential candidate is prepared for or has the stomach for strike me as silly. And there is no magical candidate out there who can cover all the cracks in the Democrats' frayed, and now contradictory, coalition. The fallout from October 7 is still out there.
I'm intrigued by the ferocity of the response! That line was not central to the piece!
And I tend to agree that Kamala will be fine. A broader competition to decide who would be the best next candidate would be better, of course, if there were time and the stomach for it, but I simply don't think there is. And should Dems self-destruct by trying to scramble together an open convention to satisfy some naysayers, or should they -- for once -- keep things moving? I think common sense obviously recommends the latter.
Interesting piece. Is it because the rise of Trump has felt* unstoppable perhaps and the Democrats have responded not with their own grass root fight and energy which Trump has stirred up but with a machine led elite process? From both sides our ability to effect change feels muted and we are relegated to the purpose of mere spectators? Perhaps Rousseau was right about voting and his deeper point about not only representatives lack of accountability but our lack of input into the process makes us more distant than we would like to be from politics. Where we are more distant we feel more distant and lose our connection to the thing itself.
I find myself returning to this take on things as I read other articles on the subject. The unprecedented nature of Biden’s withdrawal and Harris’s ascent by general acclamation is generating positive energy in itself. So many people are tired of the lengthy campaign seasons, the inevitability of their narratives, and the powerlessness that we feel in the face of this process that is supposed to give the public a voice. In such an environment, anything that breaks with tradition can feel like a point of hope.
The flip side, of course, is that breaking with tradition can also feel like a disaster. One blogger whom I regularly read actually responded to Biden’s announcement by just posting the entirety of W. H. Auden‘s “September 1, 1939.” Cat Valente’s post today is also instructive in its whiplash between horror and hope: https://open.substack.com/pub/catvalente/p/if-you-think-you-know-how-this-ends
Do Americans want change, or are you afraid of it? It seems like the answer is, both.
"Both," absolutely.
But isn't being *desirous but also fearful of change* just human nature?
Please give Marianne a look. I hope she cures what ails ya'. It's way past time.
marianne2024.com
Too religious.
Spiritual definitely. But excluding no religions. Welcoming all.
I'm a little tired of the racism/misogyny category. It seems like this is over-amplified because we all live online, but every time I hear it, I see a subtle dismissal of legitimate concerns about a candidate, simply because these other obtuse and biased objections exist. I don't have to be anti-woman to know Hillary was going to be awful for America (and that's NOT an endorsement of Trump!) and I don't have to be racist to know that Kamila is an uninspired political hack with little chops in the realm of foreign policy. As an unaffiliated voter, I am willing to be convinced that Kamila deserves my vote, but until then she's Biden 2.0... that's Biden, but with less life support.
It doesn't matter though. Because instead of winning my vote, I get dismissed because I'm a white/hetero/woman-hating (and surely racist) male. That's a HELLUVA way to lose an election.
"We have to look forward, I fear, to a campaign of racism and misogyny unlike any seen before."
I can't let that go by. I support Trump, in SELF-DEFENSE. I have been called racist, as I just was in this piece, more times than I can begin to count. For what? For being my own man and not genuflecting before the God of progressivism?
Trump is sucking minority voters away from the progressive mind-control machine. He did it in 2020, and he's doing it still more in 2024. If I may misquote Shakespeare, "The fault lies not in Trump, my dear progressives, but in ourselves."
But I didn't call you a racist in this piece? In fact, I didn't call *anyone* a racist in this piece.
Maybe you should have.
I quoted the line.
You do realize, don't you, that when you call Trump a racist, you are calling anyone who supports him a racist.
Agree with Christine here, I think we have to maintain a clear separation between the motivations of candidates and those who vote for said candidate, since voters are complicated and have any number of motivations for casting their vote the way they do. To take an example from the other side, for people who think Biden has facilitated the genocide of Palestinians, would that mean that anyone who supports (supported) him would also be pro-genocide of Palestinians?
I am not. That doesn't logically follow. If I call Trump old, does that mean that I'm calling all of his supporters old?
But in any case, the line you quote says that we will likely experience "a campaign" of racism and misogyny. I didn't attribute it directly to Trump or even call him a racist personally, although I'm perfectly willing to admit that I expect that a good amount of this negative campaign's substance will flow from him and with his encouragement -- he has made no secret of his low opinion of women and those of other races.
But here's an example of what I meant: I'm already seeing a huge number of memes and suppositions, shared with glee by her opponents, that Kamala has only advanced in her career by performing sexual acts on the older men she has worked with -- which is misogynistic attempt to delegitimize her, is it not? No one is saying that J.D. Vance only got the VP nomination because he performed oral sex on Donald Trump.
You're getting into the weeds, here.
There is a lot to not like about Kamala. Consider what you've revealed so far. You condemn Trump for his sexual antics, but sweep Kamala's aside. If you condemn one, then condemn the other. Or not.
And speaking of double standards, why is it that when a man and a woman have consensual sex, the man is a misogynist, and the woman is a victim? I understand how people see Trump as a creep concerning his affairs and statements. But he never raped anyone (No, he did not. Forget the BS. No woman was ever forced to have sex with him). Sometimes two people have sex because they want to have sex. Sometimes they do it as a career move, or for other advantage. Whatever Trump has done, Kamala has done it, too.
And Biden is the racist, for Pete's sake, not Trump. That's a big part of the reason blacks have been bailing on Biden and going to Trump. Do you want to claim they are making a mistake? Wouldn't that make you a racist?
Here's something else to consider, that I just put out:
https://individualistsunite.substack.com/p/kamala-harris-will-be-president-before
I'm not sure if you've read or engaged much of Wisdom of Crowds, but the whole point is to "get into the weeds" and engage beyond your personal feelings of defensiveness because some people implied you might hold a racist bias or two.
Excuse me?! "...implied you might hold a racist bias or two." You're damned right I've got a problem with that.
You are showing your bigotry, and it ain't pretty.
Exactly. Birds of a feather tend to flock together.
I get you when it comes to feeling attacked by people on the left. It's not really pleasant to feel like your basic character is in dispute.
And this is coming from a fellow white-dude who is also often irritated at the left, do you feel that you're committing exactly the same sin you accuse people on the left of? Flocking to whatever candidate claims you have no personal responsibility and all your problems are caused by some third party?
My second question, is why the word "racist" carries such an intense reaction from you even when you only find yourself in the proximity of it? Like with any epithet, it's just some asshole's opinion and it will almost certainly never impact you or I in the real world. You don't have to agree with it, but I guess I don't understand this "burrowing" reaction.
Perhaps your sense of the term "racist" is calibrated to where it was 60 years ago, when it was only ever used for the gravest of crimes, like those of the KKK.
The bar, and the relative intensity of the term has lowered significantly since then, to the point that racist no longer implies any specific malice on the part of the accused. Today, "racist" means little more than: "this person is embedded in some greater context/system that produces unbalanced outcomes on a basis of race".
This should be a relief to you, as it seems you have enormous consternation over being personally maligned - the irony is that "racist" implies way less personal fault than it ever did.
I frequently impugn the left for its silly overreaches and stupid choices of hills-to-die-on. I am firmly a pro-capitalist, slightly left-of-center person, but I don't feel an intense need to flock to Trump for safety. Then again, I also don't engage with social media and I fervently avoid algorithmic echo chambers. If you do, it's possible they are heightening your sense of political ostracization.
Seriously? "... I don't feel an intense need to flock to Trump for safety." Look up the term 'passive aggressive."
Here's what you said about Christine's statement: "Like with any epithet, it's just some asshole's opinion and it will almost certainly never impact you or I in the real world." I didn't call her and asshole, you did. But I'm sure she won't mind, because people are just so naturally insulting these days, so why worry about it. At least, I think that's what you're trying to say. I can't really tell.
BTW, the KKK was democrat. And no, they didn't all become republicans.
It's good to see my attempt to be understanding and make a bridge with you was immediately set alight by you. You are in some kind of intensely agitated, ultra-defensive state, and are absolutely unpleasant to talk to in your current state.
All you've done in your comments is lash out at others while getting defensive when anyone else speaks to you in any fashion, this is not the signal of a good-faith person who wants a discussion.
First of all, this notion that the "asshole" in my statement was Christine is a fabrication built on your frankly paranoid and self-victimizing reading of the entire context. You think Christine PERSONALLY attacked you because she called out Trump and racists.
I don't read the situation that way, I don't think Christine is PERSONALLY impugning you or specifically calling you a racist. When I say "just because some asshole called you a racist", I'm not talking about Christine, YOU think I am. The "asshole" I'm talking about is a rhetorical placeholder for: "anyone with an opinion you disagree with".
Given Christine liked my comment, I think it's pretty clear she isn't living in a hyper-reactionary world where even a vague implication she's been called a name causes her to fly off the handle.
With regard to the KKK being Democratic, yeah, they were, and literally no Democrat today will deny that.
It's also completely besides the point, because the KKK have not been associated with the Democratic party for some +60 years. I wouldn't have been a Democrat in 1860 - I would have been a Republican, as would virtually all present-day Democrats.
And yes, the KKK DID become Republican, OR they quit politics entirely/splintered off into various third parties. They did not stay in the Democratic party.
Here's a moderate conservative (libertarian) discussing the reality of the ideological transfer from the Democratic party to the Republican party that occured in the 20th century:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvcYjG0Sq1I
It's not some conspiracy, it's objective fact that the ideologies of both parties basically inverted over the last 160 years. The names stuck around, but the modern GOP has nothing in common with the newborn radical party of Lincoln in the 1850s and 1860s, neither does the Democratic party of today.
No, the KKK did NOT move to the republican party. That is a racist LIE. Democrats are desperate to divert people away from the reality that the democratic party was and is the party of institutional racism. It's interesting that you all get so defensive about it. It's interesting that you blame me for being defensive, when all I'm doing is telling the truth. YOU are being defensive about it.
Consider for a moment that what you've been led to believe by the democratic party and democrat teachers is BS. Which party demanded to KEEP slavery prior to the civil war? That's right, the democratic party. Which party was behind the south's secession and led the south in the civil war? That's right, the democratic party. Which party formed the KLKK after the civil war, in order to terrorize the freed slaves into submission? That's right, the democratic party. (They also lynched white republicans). Which party enacted and enforced the Jim Crow laws? That's right, the democratic party. Which party's elected officials stood against MLK? That's right, the democratic party. Which party controls the black ghettoes today? That's right, the democratic party. Which party hired the cops that shoot the black guys in the black ghettos? That's right, the democratic party.
What has Trump got to do with any of this racism? Not a damned thing. What have I got to do with any of this racism? Not a damned thing. What do democrats have to do with this racism? EVERYTHING.
Denial may make you feel better. Transferring your own guilt onto others may make for a great coping device. But it doesn't solve the problem of racism in America.
I don’t know if tired covers it. Every time I read the news, I want to gouge my eyes out with a pencil so I don’t have to see any more of it. Kamala Harris strikes me as nothing more than a pathetic grifter who suddenly won’t be able to get by pretending to do her job any more. Maybe she’ll surprise me or maybe the other guy will be so absurd that she’ll look like a baloney sandwich next to a dog turd.
Politics in 2024 is like being tied to a couch in your living room and forced to watch a 4 year old’s birthday party only the party favors are bazookas and hand grenades.
Yeeeow! “Apathy and nihilism”? But the 2020 election. Thought Biden and Trump got most votes in history! Biden most popular candidate ever! Why imagine FDR or Lincoln with voting by mail!
“Racism and misogyny” the fall back campaign for those with nothing of their own to offer.
You mention COVID. Biden, promised to end it. Now Biden vaxed, and boosted, gets the very virus he “vowed to quash.”
The left, seems to have an innate inability to see irony.
The fleet of jets on the tarmac at environmental conferences!l
Kamala Harris, a border czar, who never visits the…border let alone alleviates a single problem.
A prosecutor who promoted bail assistance for anarchists. I could go on and on.
This is why we all need to have her back and put all the racist, misogynistic bullying on blast.
Your pessimism is palpable and shared by those like me who feel they have no political home. Although there is a new and younger candidate for President of the United States, the political gamesmanship will go on in the same fashion. Another commentator aptly described this as a monster truck mash. Little subtlety, nothing clever, and certainly no solutions put forth to address serious problems both domestic and especially international. Aspiring to be inspirational? I am afraid that the breath of fresh air you described will turn stale in short order.
Hey, I'm a white boomer tired of hearing racism and misogyny shouted from the rooftops during US election campaigns, too - but it's been going on since Washington was elected. We will get them, in some measure, forever, no matter what. Thousands of years of human evidence is a heavy load to toss off. But, the more they are "national issues," along with other usual suspects like the manipulations of Wall St., unchecked militarism in the name of peace, etc., the better they can be shaved down to manageable subsets of our society, over time If we lock autocratic tendencies back down, whenever they come loose , this evolution will continue. If we don't, it will shrivel and our worst fears and aggressions will rise among us, again - ever latent monsters that they are.
Public discourse in MSM is a policy free zone. Your apathy stems from that.
I don't support killer Kamala because she is a pig who will continue bidens genocide of Palestine
Winning hearts and minds right here folks