Written by Igor Goldkind
Left is right and right isn’t right enough anymore in this
tipsy-turvy political looking-glass world we’ve passed into after
Obama’s 8-year hiatus. Of all the damage the present occupier of
the Whitehouse has reeked upon our nation, the one arguably positive
benefit we’ve reaped from his bull-in-China’s-shop comportment
since his selection by the Electoral College, is the complete and
total destruction of the Americas political spectrum.
On both wings: firstly the empowerment of the radical, racist right once referred to as the ‘alt-right’ and since their successful infiltration of the GOP are now just referred to as the right or the extreme right. The term “Rino” (Republican in name only) has already had a devastating impact on the tense political balance our country has maintained since our Civil War, over 150 years of political tradition. The traditional moderate right, the liberal Republicans epitomized by McCain and Flake have suddenly found that Trump’s Blitzkrieg on our political system has trapped them behind Liberal lines.
But it isn’t just the right that’s become irrelevant by virtue of the rising of popularity of extremists, white supremacists and neo-fascist apologists (like Stephen Bannon), the left has also suffered a crisis of identity and relevance. The bitter divisions generated first by the manipulated and largely duped antagonism against Hillary Clinton (at one time defined as a moderate Democrat) and the refusal of the supporters of Bernie Sanders to follow his lead and throw their support behind Hillary when the Democratic primaries had passed. The ‘faux-left’s’ refusal to yield their personal preferences to strategy, created just as severe an impact as Trump did and was one of the chief causes of the Democratic loss. Too many self-righteous progressives and self-described liberals abandoned ship and voted for Jill Stein, the Libertarian ticket or even abstained from voting altogether, for which there really is never any excuse.
On both wings: firstly the empowerment of the radical, racist right once referred to as the ‘alt-right’ and since their successful infiltration of the GOP are now just referred to as the right or the extreme right. The term “Rino” (Republican in name only) has already had a devastating impact on the tense political balance our country has maintained since our Civil War, over 150 years of political tradition. The traditional moderate right, the liberal Republicans epitomized by McCain and Flake have suddenly found that Trump’s Blitzkrieg on our political system has trapped them behind Liberal lines.
But it isn’t just the right that’s become irrelevant by virtue of the rising of popularity of extremists, white supremacists and neo-fascist apologists (like Stephen Bannon), the left has also suffered a crisis of identity and relevance. The bitter divisions generated first by the manipulated and largely duped antagonism against Hillary Clinton (at one time defined as a moderate Democrat) and the refusal of the supporters of Bernie Sanders to follow his lead and throw their support behind Hillary when the Democratic primaries had passed. The ‘faux-left’s’ refusal to yield their personal preferences to strategy, created just as severe an impact as Trump did and was one of the chief causes of the Democratic loss. Too many self-righteous progressives and self-described liberals abandoned ship and voted for Jill Stein, the Libertarian ticket or even abstained from voting altogether, for which there really is never any excuse.
Hey, you can’t complain unless you vote.
Political contests are trivialized when you place personality
before policy. I voted for Hillary Clinton, not because I liked her;
I’m never going to meet her, live next door to her or sleep with
her, so why do I have to like her? I voted for her policies which
although not the clear white light of perfection, were a helluva lot
better than the GOP's platform which began with where it is now and
will end: an accommodation of Putin’s Kremlin and a chorus of dog
whistles to the despicable racists, religious fanatics and
science-botherers who were duped by Russian propaganda into voting
for him.
Trump has successfully broken our political wings, both left and right. For us to really further a resistance to the autocratic tyranny that is Trump’s objective, we’re going to have to replace the ideological spectrum that Trump has shattered with one that is more responsive and more accurately reflects the actual disposition of American voters. The only question remaining is if it is all possible that inadvertently Trump has done us all a favour? You know, the kind of favour G/d granted us at Sodom and Gomorrah?
Historically, the difference between American left and the American right is that leftist ideology has always worked within the framework and the implicit intent of the US Constitution. Really, you say? Yes, really. Check it out. Re-read your Thomas Paine, your Thomas Jefferson and the first drafts of the U.S. Constitution before it was altered by the Southern slave states. Did you know that the original draft of the U.S. Constitution has an amendment written by Paine and Jefferson that would have abolished the slave trade and freed all the African slaves? Imagine what kind of America we would be now if slavery had been abolished a hundred years earlier? Thomas Paine also argued for a minimum universal wage so that no one would have to face starvation and homelessness as the poor did in England.
Trump has successfully broken our political wings, both left and right. For us to really further a resistance to the autocratic tyranny that is Trump’s objective, we’re going to have to replace the ideological spectrum that Trump has shattered with one that is more responsive and more accurately reflects the actual disposition of American voters. The only question remaining is if it is all possible that inadvertently Trump has done us all a favour? You know, the kind of favour G/d granted us at Sodom and Gomorrah?
Historically, the difference between American left and the American right is that leftist ideology has always worked within the framework and the implicit intent of the US Constitution. Really, you say? Yes, really. Check it out. Re-read your Thomas Paine, your Thomas Jefferson and the first drafts of the U.S. Constitution before it was altered by the Southern slave states. Did you know that the original draft of the U.S. Constitution has an amendment written by Paine and Jefferson that would have abolished the slave trade and freed all the African slaves? Imagine what kind of America we would be now if slavery had been abolished a hundred years earlier? Thomas Paine also argued for a minimum universal wage so that no one would have to face starvation and homelessness as the poor did in England.
What the extreme right, Libertarians and the occasional
Conservative are adamantly blind to is that America was the first
nation on the face of the planet to throw the notions of divine rule
by king or bishop into the ashcan of history. If you believe in that
great revolution then you are a progressive thinker, doer and
citizen. The framers of the Constitution were all “social justice
warriors”; if they hadn't been they wouldn't have bothered fighting
a revolution in the first place. Our democratic state is based not on
faith but the rule of reason and justice, the intellectual
inheritance of the French and Scottish Enlightenment. You can see
that in our laws, our Constitution and our balancing of powers.
Even the extreme left, the Wobblies, Communists, Anarchists and
Radical Socialists have never stood opposed to the founding tenets of
the American Constitution. In fact, what they have always fought for
is more: more freedom (to protest and say what they want), more
representation, more and stronger unions, more liberty, more reform,
more of everything apart from injustice, racial discrimination or the
rule of capital and privilege.
Continued at Part 2 of 3
Continued at Part 2 of 3
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