Whatever you think of the current administration, it is astonishing that so many Americans who hate the president and the government are willing to sit passively at home, rather than actively resist.
American Resistance
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The TMI Show" talk show. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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From the 2024 presidential campaign one could assume that “many Americans who hate the president and the government” are still yearning for “the world’s most lethal military,” at least as vicious and reckless as ICE, to avoid the utter embarrassment, for example, of the recent sissified operation in Venezuela: mere kidnapping with no invasion nor mass slaughter.
Welp, when you come right down to it, after 40 or so years of the creatures that have run the “left” — as a courtesy I will employ the term despite it being wholly inaccurate as a descriptor for the corporatists who have been in charge of everything to the left of center since about 1980 — I’m done with it.
I’ve watched imbeciles cheer themselves hoarse supporting a president who wouldn’t even put universal health care to a vote despite having a supermajority in the Senate. (Insert all the shopworn “explanations” for why the prior statement isn’t correct. I’m tired of having to explain what a president is supposed to be and what he is supposed to do. If LBJ could get Civil Rights passed, Obama could have gotten us health care.)
Earlier, they rallied to the defense of a philanderer-in-chief who’d had decades of credible accusations of sexually inappropriate behavior levied against him.
Then I watched them all practically wet themselves in an orgy of delight that a senile puppet, who made sure corporations found his home state so friendly for them that they all incorporated there, whose major contribution to American education was to ensure that millions of students couldn’t get out of their student loans, was going to keep Bernie Sanders from winning the democratic nomination (after the utterly amoral dnc rigged the contest against Sanders the first time so that the wife of the aforementioned philanderer could get the nod).
I watched Occupy Wall Street blow through a generational buildup of resentment and anger with meaningless backyard-camping adventures. Thoreau did something similar, but at least he came up with “Walden.” All the OWSers did was show they’d never read “Grapes of Wrath” or studied any of the dirty-tricks manuals that the cops have employed for 100 years to handle such groups.
I saw a similar blow through with the Black Lives Matter protests. To similar results (except that a lot more grifters made bank off of the collective outrage than did with OWS).
And none of that covers the congresscritters on the “left” who were just as crooked as the ones on the right. Try it sometime. Ask a lefty how Nancy Pelosi made so much money. Get ready for one hell of a scolding. Because the only thing you won’t hear is the one thing that you should, “You’re right. She should be investigated. All of them should be. And if they profited off insider information, they should draw very, very long prison sentences. Not four months in Club Fed — years in a regular prison’s gen pop.”
Call me when people are done expressing shock, shock that going to the No More Kings rally didn’t do anything. Call me when the last imbecile is choked to death by having a pink beret rammed down their throat.
Yes, the Democrats are the lesser of two evils. As I see it, because of how our elections are run (e.g., not ranked-choice voting), the best chance to get actual lefties into power is to get good candidates into the Democratic primaries. (And to thwart DNC efforts that prevent that.) Please run for office! Or get your friends to.
Of if you have a better approach to achieving these goals, please share! (But please don’t tell me to withhold support from a Democrat in a general election. Letting the worse of two evils through is too dangerous… hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more deaths and ruined lives.)
We did the LOTE thing for (counts on fingers) since Reagan. We had Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, the semi-autonomous husk of smilin’ Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris.
It’s too long to type out in detail. Two-thirds of these candidates lost. Bill Clinton won. Obama won. Biden won. None of them was more than a smidge away from the center. Compromise, negotiate, be bipartisan. We still don’t have universal health care, but Gitmo’s still open. We’ve lost the entire manufacturing base as a stable form of middle class existence, but the CEOs are making bank!
Voting for the lesser of two evils is simply killing us a little more slowly than having voted the straight Republican ticket. How much more can the average voter lose? I was talking to my mother the other day. She came to the U.S. in 1960. In three years, she had her own business, had bought her own home (with a mortgage). “I worked like a dog,” she told me. “You can’t do it today. Even if you work like a dog.”
I wrote a long, eloquent (I thought) response to you, which simply disappeared when I tried to post it. Basic message: there is no “left” in Congress. Bernie and Ilhan are about as close as it gets, and they’d be centrists in just about any other political system on the planet.
I nominate Rashida Tlaib, the sole Palestinian-American member of congress, for inclusion on the “list” of “left” persons in that august body. While many Democrats (surprisingly!!!) refused to attend the joint session of congress to host Netanyahu, Tlaib did attend. While those in attendance essentially gave a continuous standing ovation to General Genocide, Tlaib sat, holding a two-sided sign with “War Criminal” written on one side and “Guilty of Genocide.” How she remains alive to this day is a profound mystery to me.
“I awoke in anger/So alone and terrified/I put my fingers against the glass/And bowed my head and cried” –Bob Dylan
Sorry, Lee, the lesser of two evils is still evil.
@brother martin Amen! Please run for office or urge your like-minded friends to do that. (But until that happens, when I am given the choice between the greater of two evils and the lesser of two evils, I’m going to support the latter every time.)
Lee, I wrote you a long, thoughtful reply and the site just ate it. I guess I should have copied it before posting, since that’s the second time that’s happened on this post. I have run for office. So have my likeminded friends. We felt like Don Quixote. Sorry to hear you’re willing to support one of the genocide parties. Good luck with that.