If a populist swell rises up in 2018 --
one whose ranks are increased by many first-time young voters -- you can be
absolutely sure that the craven brains behind the kidnapped-GOP will do
everything in their power to steer that populist wave away from the DNC and
toward 3rd party candidates.
THIS WILL BE THE DEFINING BATTLE AT THE
END OF AMERICAN EMPIRE.
We survive if the DNC successfully
embraces the populist uprising against fascism and corruption, incompetence and
inhumanity.
We do not survive if the GOP fools even
a few hundred thousand of them in key places to imagine -- ludicrously -- that
the GOP (a veritable existential threat to the human species, soon to invite
massive global coordination against our trade, nuclear and environmental
policies, as well as a damning force for plutocracy and the death knell for
Constitutional democracy) and the Democrats are "the same."
The GOP's task is made much easier by
how very easily the disenchanted leftist skeptics fell prey to this damning
logic before.
The DNC must do more than they did in
2016. I said at the time that HRC needed to invite Sanders to run with her --
and even that may not have been enough as many Sanders supporters (we don't
know how many were Russian bots) appeared to think like radical rightists who
are quick to call Republicans with a conscience RINOs, and freaked out about
Sanders supporting Hillary over Trump -- the only rational and ethical course
of action available to anyone in his position.
Righteous indignation and passion have
their place, even more so when those in control of government threaten to tear
children from the arms of their mothers, when corporations are let loose to
destroy the air we breathe and the water we drink, when environmental and
nuclear proliferation treaties are abandoned with narcissistic caprice.
BUT unbridled passion -- the kind we see
on the radical right (1/3 of Americans, shockingly) and the radical left
(perhaps 1/10 of us) -- the sort that cannot stop to reason, learn something
new, COMPROMISE -- will kill us all.
Those of us who have not yet descended
into the primordial ooze of American ignorance -- fueled by blinding anger --
must remember Yeats.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot
hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and
everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
THE BEST LACK ALL CONVICTION; WHILE THE
WORST
ARE FULL OF PASSIONATE INTENSITY.
Compromise between the DNC and the populist
uprising against the evils of Trumpism must happen or we are all lost. Set
aside your passions long enough to think through what must be done. The GOP
will be fueling divisions on the left from now through the elections.
Stand together. Don't be fooled. Don't
be a fool. There is too much at stake.
