Liberal Street Fighter

So how does it feel lefties? Once again, you’ve taken that leap of faith, hoped for the best, only to have your hopes dashed. A runaway at the bus station, led by the “nice” man, he buys you a burger with your own money, promises to help, yet here you lay on the cold tile of the dirty bathroom floor, the reverb of the station announcer washing over you as it sinks in that you’re prey, you’ve been punked, you’re turned out and working against your own interests. Too little, too late … what to do?

It was bad, what you were running away from, with little future. Pretty promises echoed through hard hallways. “I’ll look after you,” he promised, “don’t worry. After all, what choice do you have?”

Reid, Schumer, Emmanuel … not to mention the Big Blog Boyos … pimps, turning you out, emptying your pockets, letting you strut when it’s convenient, but always within limits. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you when it really counts!”

Punked, again.
It’s time to walk away. It’s time to realize that your paranoia was justified. It’s time to understand that sometimes patriots have to look far down the road.

The Democratic Party is dead to progressivism. Yes, there are individual office holders we can look upon as allies, but it’s time to remember the lessons of the past. The Dixiecrats live, only now they serve the Corporations rather than the descendents of the plantation owners, but it’s also time to realize that they are the same thing. America, born from a feudal state, has always had elements that longed for feudalism. They are ascendant now, and the Democratic Party serves them.

It’s time to walk away from that dirty bus station bathroom. Leave the pimp behind.

We who believe that the best future, the best world, the best country, rests in an open society, a society where people pursue their own happiness, where diversity and opportunity and equality reign … we are, and always have been, a minority. We know that great creators, neighbors, friends, teachers and students rest within EVERY group of people. That is a rare view. We need to remember that the suffragists, the abolitionists, the humanists, the feminists and dreamers and labor leaders and HOPEFUL were always freaks, always the odd kid who had to run away from home. It’s no fluke that the bluest cities are full of people who RAN, who struck out into the world to create themselves. Americans like to tell themselves that this country respects and supports people like that, but our history shows that we’ve done everything BUT support the iconoclast, the explorer, the creators and artists and scientists and freethinkers. We’re a Know-Nothing nation. Wear their petty scorn as a badge of honor, because you KNOW they’ll be looking to you for what is cool, what to think, what to do in due course.

Embrace your otherness, and quit being suckered. Not another dime, not another millimeter of boot leather … the national Democratic Party is dead to you, whether you care about feminism or civil rights or labor or health care or the environment … it doesn’t matter. Support local leaders. Support national candidates who support your values, but not another penny, not another mile, not another phone call or pixel for the national Party, or even for the national activist groups. They’ve sold you out to the corporations and a highly motivated movement of zealots who worship an imagined nineteenth century.

Remember those who’ve gone before. What we hope to preserve and expand took centuries to obtain. Current events are a setback, but we can join the fight again. It may take the rest of your life, but us creative types KNOW that the process is at least as important as the end product, right? The generation before us sat back on their heels too quickly. Time to go to war again. We’re already in a cold Civil War, as Peter Daou put it. Time to make it hot.

Walk away from the national party. Work locally. Withhold your vote from candidates that are nowhere near your values, and not another dime to these bastards who turn us out then pretend not to know us.

Runaways throughout time have known the power in pooling resources, going underground, working together. Find compatriots of like mind, and do what you can. Whether it’s writing or running a soup kitchen or manning a phone bank, follow your heart. No more modern Dixiecrats. They take us for granted, think we can’t survive without their “protection”. It’s time to prove them wrong. It’ll be a long fight, but lets face it … we have no other choice.