Nancy Pelosi has had a good run. By any conceivable standard, she has had a sparkling career. As Speaker of the House under Obama it was her that carried home, in just over a year, every major legislative accomplishment the Obama administration was known for, most famously the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. In other timelines less bizarre, one might reasonably have expected such an achievement to be the cornerstone of their legacy. In this one, it’s only half. And by the time it’s all been said and done, it may be much less.
For now, her memory will be inextricably tied to a slob with nary an accomplishment at all, other than having been born rich and a guy who real players could exploit- Donald Trump, the man she just impeached.
Pelosi never wanted this. It wasn’t the plan in the beginning. I know; I have written many articles that were meant to help tamp down talk of impeachment. The most recent was in June- before Ukrainegate broke. The far-left wanted us to destroy ourselves by impeaching post-Mueller Report, of course, but real Democrats were not so eager. Not because Trump was innocent, but because we didn’t have enough evidence to make worthwhile a course of action that could tear apart the country. We knew everyone on the right would go nuts, and they’ve got all the force. We knew Trump would not go peacefully, that on the honor scale he had even less than Richard Nixon- an almost-bottomless pit. I didn’t see a scenario likely to end well, and I still don’t.
But after the Ukrainegate scandal broke, less than six months after Russiagate’s unsatisfying “end”, growing unrest among the people matched the one of unease in the hearts of the Congress. What Trump had done, withholding Congressionally-approved military aid to an ally at war with our bitterest global rival, Russia, in order to gain an advantage on Joe Biden– who will probably be our next President- was so far beyond anything Nixon had ever done that it defied the very comparison as facile.
When we retook the House of Representatives in the Blue Wave last fall, Trump’s corruption was a big reason why. Three hundred million Americans have been dealing with unease about whether or not our president worked for Russia’s, whether he’s insane, whether he’s a Nazi destroying our system. One of the main reasons we Democrats were given the power by the American people to impeach this unfit president after the Blue Wave was just this.
If we didn’t impeach him in the face of lawlessness this extreme, our children would have grown up knowing in America, the law does not exist. Nancy Pelosi, whose responsibility it was to begin the process of removing him from office, will have to bear the burden of these tiring and weighty events. So we’re going to support her. It is our duty and pleasure alike.
One can hope, of course, but I knew it would come to this. There was never a doubt in my mind. Trump is a crook, he’s always been a crook, but he’s not bad at lying about it to people who want to believe him. Republican arguments about how the American people had “vetted” him take no notice of reality or reason. But it wasn’t the same for all Americans. Some people seemed to really believe you could count on Trump’s words to mean something.
As we go forward into the New Year and the new election cycle, one wonders what they are thinking now.
While writing this final article of 2019, this final article of a decade that has changed my life, I enjoyed a rare moment of levity while looking randomly back on another. Remember Kenneth Bone? Yeah, you do. Think red sweaters and town hall debates, second of three of those disturbing 2016 general election season’s clashes of ideas.
Ken Bone — he’s no conformist. He’s the person a divided America needs right now. The man who brought some levity to the ludicrous, some vim to counter the vitriol. The only thing that was making America great again.
As Ramzy Nasrallah put it, “Was so sad and ashamed throughout the entire spectacle but then KEN BONE rose like a Phoenix from America’s ashes and there’s laughter again.”
He was that guy who sounded normal in a place where that word has lost all meaning if indeed it ever had one, and so at that moment, he proudly claimed the Warholian fifteen minutes of proverbial fame because of it.
That night the name of Kenneth Bone was on the tongue of every commentator and coming out of every pen, just as much as the names of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. It was dancing on the keyboards a digital fandango. Nobody could stop, it seemed; it was the Kenneth Bone Experience’s nature to be inherently addictive.
A rapper whose name I no longer remember wrote a verse about it that I find myself thinking about from time to time these days, in “The Ballad Of Ken Bone“, destined for classic status long before the hour of its birth.
Where have you gone, Kenneth Bone? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Darkest of timelines, man. You better believe it.
Going forward into the New Year, hopefully the last of the miserable era to bear Trump’s wicked name, it’s good for us to touch base with our values. Sometimes it feels like all this time spent underground in these trenches and tunnels has changed me forever, not to mention the carnival funhouse outside.
I’m not the only one, either. Anderson Cooper on CNN tonight shared that many people have come forward to share stories about what the years between now and Ken Bone have done to them, and the one universal in these personal anecdotes was this: I’m not the same person I was before.
None of us are, and how could we be? We don’t live in the same country.
This is why we’re getting rid of Donald Trump.
The only person active in American politics today who could have handled this in the masterly fashion we have seen is Nancy Pelosi. Stand with our Speaker, therefore, we say again. The strength she has brought to the meeting, as she told the illegitimate and babyish 45th president, cannot be characterized.
Oh yeah. Jonathan Mann was the name of that rapper; he actually wasn’t a rapper, as rappers do not use guitars, but we’ll forgive him that small misdemeanor. Props, man. Wherever you may be in this strange vast world of ours, we at Millennial Democrats wish you well, and all of our fellow men.
Happy New Year, America. Let us finish this next year.
It’s over and done, folks. Donald Trump has finally been impeached. His wicked plot to attack Joe Biden through his innocent son Hunter, who he felt deserves to be investigated falsely because he was once on the Board of Directors of a Ukrainian power company, has been exposed to ruinous effect, for Trump and the country both.
A commensurate response was called for by our opposition forces, and we gave it to him with both barrels.
Two Articles of Impeachment, one for gross abuse of power and the other for obstructing the Congressional investigation the Democratic House was forced to undertake, have been levied against Donald Trump. He has been duly convicted, and now the trial is heading for the Senate- when the time is right.
Regardless of whether he is dragged out kicking and screaming, neither Trump nor his presidency will ever be the same. Thank the Lord, because America in the Trump Era has been growing tired and stale. We’re going to do him a favor, though, and muck out the stall he has made of the Oval Office. A stagnant swamp is soon to get a freshening, volunteer hours or no, for the day of national justice has finally come.
It’s important to remember that in many ways the fight is just beginning. Okay, great, I can hear somebody saying, joyfully. Trump was a piece of crap and now he’s gone. When can we start helping him pack?
That’s the real question, and it’s something else again. We impeached him, all right. It was a big step, and we did not shirk it when the time came; Democrats have done our best.
But now we’ve got to physically remove him from the White House. That will not prove so simple if we miss our chance at the ballot box.
To vanish an American president by force, we need an Aye vote from two-thirds of a Republican Senate, whose Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has already vowed to kill the process as soon as he lays hand on it.- at Trump’s “marching orders”. That’s why Nancy Pelosi can’t send this over to the Senate. It will instantly die and take with it the American dream.
Since the time of the Founding Fathers, we have governed according to the principle that no one is above the law, that kingship is a bad dream, that all men are created equal. Discarding that is to toss away America itself. Getting rid of the man himself is the smaller point compared to that.
The sheer damage Trump has already done to America’s sense of self-worth is unreasonably huge and absolutely endless.
After Trump took office, we didn’t make two weeks without disaster. It was pandemonium on seven continents thanks to his moronic travel ban. Like the walls of Babylon, peace and order inside airports were judged apocalyptically and destroyed in a single blundering hour. Every port of air travel on the planet got as choked and clotted and clogged as Trump’s obese arteries. Enough is enough; America needs its self-respect back. We’ve had all we can stands, and we can’t stands no more.
In committing to this repugnant and crooked course of action, Trump threw every American value there is off the cliff and under the bus. He has shown no veneration whatsoever toward the most powerful office in the world, no less his own country’s. He used it as a normal man would dirty socks.
The crooked, lying Republicans, whose capacity to tell the truth has committed hara-kiri, are no better whatsoever. Long after they’ve left office, they will be reviled, and their legacy will be bitterly repudiated. Their names will become curses to be hurled at the failures of tomorrow. With a president like this one, who needs kings?
Going forward, a new chapter of battle begins. Our bullets and swords are our words and ideas, meaning we need Original Content! Fresh memes, fresh articles, fresh anything you can dream up. The act of beginning has magic in it, and the world needs that power now more than ever. #ImpeachAndRemove will all at once be hymn, marching tune, and clarion call for Democrats. We’ll be doing all we can to kick some sparks up; see you on the battlefield.
Well, here we go, America! Hold on to your hats. For the day has finally come to aim our biggest cannon at the biggest crook to ever disgrace the presidency. Donald Trump has been an embarrassment and a burden for too long. For years now, we have stood behind the national leadership and help tamp down talk of impeachment as too divisive and too risky. Nancy Pelosi is announcing the formal impeachment inquiry as these words are being written.
We have never been for this before, even though it was clear we had enough to impeach him on before he came to office. It’s because we didn’t just want to wing him, in the terminology of a hunter. If it came to this- and most of us have suspected that it would from the beginning- we wanted to drop him good, and to do it with ammunition made by the man himself. Impeachment is the biggest cannon there is, and we are readying it to fire.
Donald Trump is a crook. He’s always been a crook. It’s all he knows how to be, is a crook. His father was a Klansman and his grandfather a pimp. So this thing with trying to get Ukraine to do something crooked, to threaten to withhold military aid if they would not help him do more crooked things, in this case disgustingly trying to label Joe Biden’s son as corrupt- because he thinks Biden’s going to beat him, as do we- It’s just kind of par for the course, these days.
That is the biggest reason of all why we have for America’s sake to impeach him.
And by the way, Joe Biden just announced that he agrees. Democrats from all across the spectrum, for the first time, progressives and socialists and John K. Delaney and all, are going to unite and get rid of this man.
They talk about the ‘bar having been lowered’ for Trump. Man, just look around you! That bar got blasted out of God’s creation. There IS no more bar! For any of us. The system has broken down, says Susan Rice on CNN. No one disagrees. America has lost touch with a sane reality because of this man, and so has the rest of the world. Children are doing more drugs because of the stress of the era given his name. People are hating their lives.
Truth itself has lost its meaning in this country because of this man. We’re descending into Bolshevism. Our system is looking more and more like one of these new hybrid variants of National Socialism. The teachings of our parents are losing meaning. We can’t let this go on.
He also told us that Trump welcomed another country’s blatant theft of our electoral privacy and expected to benefit from what they did on his behalf at the behest of Vladimir Putin the awful dictator, and to the rest of Earth.
There comes a point to say enough is enough, and we’ve been living inside of it, like the center of a dartboard, since the day he took the oath. We’ve lost our values. It’s been like trying to hold back a flood. We are beset on every level, all the time. Enough of the stirred-up white nationalism; we will never forget how your bull and air of anything-goes chaos stunk up the country and got our sister Heather Heyer killed by Nazis at Charlottesville.
Enough of the sucking up to dictators. We weren’t happy to see John Bolton come, but we also were not happy to see him go, at least not like that, fired on Twitter in your usual moronic style. We do NOT want the Taliban stinking up Camp David, we don’t want any of it. We all have had enough of your schtick since The Apprentice, forget about now. We’ve been following it all since the beginning, and although the list is far from complete, I remember writing about all of it very well.
Let’s take a walk down Memory Lane, Donald, shall we? I’m the Ghost of Christmas Past.
You brought Steve Bannon into the National Security Council, Donald, and gave him a look at the classified information of our country. Who could forget you brought Omarosa along, speaking of The Apprentice? When they dragged her out kicking and screaming, she left with a briefcase of data, and she slammed your crooked behind for the pig you were- and are.
I mean, if you’re an American, you don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
You let a Chinese spy go wandering around the Mar-a-Lago, where you sometimes discuss nuclear secrets. That trial is stalled, by the way; they’re calling it an Underwear Blunder. Jesus God.
You refused to close down immigration ports during Hurricane Harvey, the same day you pardoned Joe Arpaio; what a slap in the face. you never made sure the people of Puerto Rico have had clean water, ever since. There’s another flood there now, and all over the newspapers are pictures of thousands of drinking water bottles. In the richest country in the world. Forget about the people of Flint, Michigan; they’re mostly black anyway, right?
Or Native Americans, like the Wampanoags who gave us Thanksgiving, and had their tribal status revoked by Donald Trump right before last year’s Thanksgiving. They don’t like clean water either, apparently. Remember all the protests over the Standing Rock pipeline, because of how bad it was going to screw up the water of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe? I Stand With Standing Rock? That pipeline went through, and no longer in the news often is the story of how they’re going to double it.
It’s all become typical. And that’s revolting. Three years ago, it felt like we were really getting someplace. (Thank you, Bernie or Bust).
None of the things we were fighting for in the Obama era are still getting coverage. We lost every one of those battles the day Trump was elected. It’s too painful to talk about for most of us. Remember the national outcry over police brutality? Where did that go? There have been many Trayvon Martins dead during the Trump era, but there are too many other horrors in the news for the likes of Saheed Vassell to get much coverage, even if the Stephon Clarks get a few days- as do the daily mass shootings like the one at Parkland High School down in Florida.
It has all but ceased to matter because we’re holding on for our dear lives. The greatest hope we had has been Joe Biden, and it still is. But now we’ve got another way going as well, a more direct way, reflective in every way of what a good crook deserves. We needed to wait for something ironclad to come along and tie all these atrocities together, and now it has. We’re pleased to announce that Nancy Pelosi is about to give the people what they want. Here at Millennial Democrats, we rejoice in our hearts that the day has finally come.
Impeach the filthy animal.
Millennial Democrats would like to collectively thank the brave Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who stood tall under terrible pressure and held the line when the tidal wave of corruption worldwide came to swallow him. He stands on the mouth of a chasm now, and our prayers are with him. God has fought beside many brave men who resisted, and he stands with all of us now. We would also like to thank the brave, anonymous, credible whistleblower who has gone the path of Deep Throat, who helped Washington Post reporters take down Richard Nixon, whose spectre raised its ugly head between the shoulders of Roger Stone during the heart of the Russiagate scandal. All the worst people and tendencies in our country have been dancing like devils on the streets, cavorting with indecency on our screens and on our streets. It is time we got our sanity back, and today, we announce we’re going to take it.
When I read that Tulsi Gabbard, of all people, had reviled her fellow 2020 presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) as someone “Not Qualified” to be President of the United States of America, I was disgusted so thoroughly that I was all but beside myself. I couldn’t believe it. You have got to be kidding me. Who are you, Tulsi Gabbard, monstrous traitor and foreign cutout that you *allegedly* are, to use the term “Not Qualified” as regards a career prosecutor and elected Senator like Harris? This is completely unacceptable.
Senator Harris, we are here for you. We’re not endorsing you-or anybody else- yet, but we’re here for you. You are a Democrat.
Here at Millennial Democrats, we haven’t issued an endorsement yet, and we don’t intend to, not for a while. The reason why is the wealth of riches we have in these candidates. All of them are so vastly superior to Trump or Bernie that even to compare them is facile. Our concern is making it unified through what promises to be a chaotic primary. Democratic
We have been there for all of them, too, not to mention every other Democrat. We’ve even stood up for Ilhan Omar and praised Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when she’s done something right, even though they’re socialists. The only reason we ever have for going after another Democrat is being convinced that they’re anything but. That’s Tulsi for you. Back in 2017, we wrote that “Tulsi Gabbard has something for everyone, and all of it is dishonest“.
Well, here’s another lie she’s told. Kamala Harris is completely qualified to hold the office of President, and much more qualified than some, like her or Bernie Sanders. I remember when Bernie said the same thing about Hillary Clinton. Way to display your internalized sexism; not a big surprise considering your father was anti-gay extremist Mike Gabbard.
Researching the tangled tale of Tulsi Gabbard was really somewhat disturbing. Her situation is one of the clearest links we have to the ongoing problem of the far left and the far right converging. Her family hijacked Hawaii’s Democratic Party and runs it using Republican policies. Hardly any of her supporters have anything to do with us. According to one list of major contributors to the Tulsi Gabbard campaign, published by DailyKos in 2012, Democratic donors were actually exceptions on this list. Many of these people have not donated to campaigns other than Mike Gabbard’s Congressional campaign, or Richard Reed’s Senate campaign, both as Republicans. Reed’s Senate campaign was allegedly connected to both the Gabbards’ and to Butler’s religious group.
This all happened because Hawaii’s people and atmosphere are so liberal. It’s a one-party state; no Republican has any hope at all to get elected there. A serious attempt has not been made in years. But the last time someone gave it the old college try, it was Tulsi’s good old Dad.
The Democratic Party has had a long reign in Hawaii. Some of it comes from the popularity of the labor movement there in the 20th century, and the efforts of the Hawaii Democratic Party to push for greater inclusivity of the electoral base have traditionally been venerated. These factors have combined to earn Democrats near-complete control of the state legislature. But such an extended period of dominance has been resulting in increased voter apathy and increased factionalism within the Democratic Party of Hawaii.
This apathy is what led Mike Gabbard to try and challenge Democratic incumbent Ed Case in 2004. The elder Gabbard, known for his virulent anti-gay crusade in the 1990s, was attempting to overturn the status quo and win as a Republican the race to represent Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District. At that time, a reporter for Honolulu Magazine requested an interview on her ties to the Chris Butler cult, her family’s religion, a bizarre offshoot of the Hare Krishnas.
Tulsi got nice and mad, and listen to what she said.
“I smell a skunk,” she emailed back. “It’s clear to me that you’re acting as a conduit for … homosexual extremist supporters of Ed Case!”
We can see this vicious, right-wingesque swipe at Harris is no isolated incident, but part of a long-running pattern. She’s carrying on the legacy of her father, like any dutiful daughter, and his values were utterly conservative, far enough to the right to border on libertarianism.
Libertarianism is a political philosophy that advocates for laissez-faire economic policies in a sense so extreme they believe government should be all but eliminated. It is an offshoot of the abominably racist John Birch Society, which was founded by a Ku Klux Klan member named Fred Koch. He was the father of the infamous Koch Brothers of Koch Industries, Charles and David-the founders of a third party, the Libertarian Party, which is basically a smooth-talking version of the rabid John Birch party line. David was to have been Vice-President if they pulled it off when they first ran in 1980. He spent two million dollars of his own money making the attempt but got crushed.
But they didn’t give up. They’ve been corralling their resources patiently ever since.
The libertarian movement is an interesting case. They have some huge billionaires working with them, like Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News. It’s supposed to be as far right as it gets. So why are so many figures from the radical left caught up with them?
On the Issues, a non-partisan informational website that rates and categorizes lawmakers and candidates describes Tulsi Gabbard as a “Libertarian-Leaning Progressive” based on her voting record.
A similar organization, Progressive Punch.org, provides a searchable database of Congressional voting records, from the perspective of the far left. They gave Bernie Sanders an A, for his lifetime support of progressive causes. Tulsi Gabbard got an F. Basic logic would suggest they would stand in diametric opposition to one another.
Why do they have all the same supporters, then?
One angry supporter of Bernie Sanders wrote the following nonsense on 7/23/17, on a thread discovered on Facebook. Note his dual enthusiasm for both Bernie and Tulsi. and his loathing for moderate Democrats. “No REAL progressive is gonna vote for more of the Clinton style, corporate special interest, Big Bank donor loving, false progressive garbage. Yet…here are the Democrats showing us early on that they haven’t changed. Ready for a repeat of 2016? Personally…I will work to expose and destroy the hopes of any candidate that the DNC tries to ram down our throats again by using Super Delegates and closed Primaries…and any candidate who remained silent against the DNC’s attack on our Democracy by rigging the election against Bernie Sanders. #Sanders/Gabbard2020 #Gabbard/Turner2020 This same man later went on to beg and plead for unity among the former supporters of Sanders- so that they will have greater success in attacking not Republicans, but Democrats. Mentioned at the spearhead of this assault on their fellows in the left, is always one name- Tulsi Gabbard.
Her record shows again and again that is not a Democrat in anything but name, even though so-called progressives love her. She managed to hoodwink Bernie supporters into thinking she is one of them. By resigning from the DNC at the time Bernie or Bust rioted during HRC’s nomination and since has come to embody misguided attacks by so-called progressives on the so-called liberal elite. In point of fact, however, the evidence indicates quite otherwise. Tulsi Gabbard does not vote like a progressive darling. She’s a surfer, which seems to be more important than her voting record. What a mess. This person would be the biggest con in the world if she wasn’t so incompetent. Ever heard her speak? Better than sleeping pills. Snore.
Her voting record, world view, and connections resemble much more closely a resume, tailor-made to be both barely acceptable to the leaders of the Democratic Party, and a perfect Libertarian plant.
Since the 2016 disaster, people worldwide have been paying more attention to world events- which have been pretty awful. Great Britain just got a far-right prime minister, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil is stomping up and down on human rights, and Marine Le Pen of France, who is blatantly Putin-financed, is leading Emmanuel Macron in the polls. Meanwhile, far-left figures like Sanders and parties like Germany’s pro-Putin Die Linke vote on behalf of Russian interests all over Europe. All this has helped a public awareness begin growing toward a reoccurring trend, one reshaping the entire scale of the political spectrum.
The left and the right are becoming the same entity.
This is far from new. History has played this drama out a great many times. The two have often historically converged when a common friend or foe suits both of their needs, and have proven capable of working in effective concert even though they’re involved for different reasons. Lenin’s doctrines specifically advocated for Communists using this technique, and these days they’ve been doing it so long they’ve started to resemble each other. New anti-democracy hybrid systems of totalitarianism may call themselves what they like, of course, be it corporate socialism or state-run capitalism. But in terms of policy and temperament, they are exactly the same.
This is why the monopolists are trying so hard to combine the far-right and far-left. They’re stirring up chaos until they see the ladder Petyr Baelish spoke of in Game of Thrones manifest, and then they use it. Nothing too complicated, but they’ve got a lot of ways to get it done. It’s almost like a game of three-card monte; its complexity lies within its simplicity. The monopolists are going to try and use that ladder to guide us off the path of freedom and democracy so that guys like the Kochs can run everything without any governmental restraint at all. That was why libertarianism was conceived of, and although it didn’t catch on right away, it’s got a few heads full of steam now. We are in the middle of watching nothing less than a full-fledged attempt at a Libertarian revival, aimed at the destruction of the newer and more cultured America we enjoyed under Bill Clinton and Obama.
When Trump took office, one of the first things he did was to yank us out of the Paris Accord so big business could get back to work mucking up the lakes and rivers again. That item had been high on the Koch agenda for years. When Scott Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general who had spent his whole career fighting the EPA, was chosen by Trump as the agency’s new head, all concerned had no trouble with interpreting that move. He’d been brought in to gradually dismantle it. Let’s return to the days of starting Lake Erie on fire, what a neat idea, dear boy have a cigar.
It seems clear that clean water for Flint, Michigan is about as likely as the same for Japan’s nuclear power plant post-tsunami. It just isn’t a priority to monopolists.
They want to bring things back to the old way, graft and corruption, and big bosses. Stuff we take for granted, like minimum wages and the eight-hour workday would be gone in a terrible flash. Ever read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle? Great book, but don’t read it on an empty stomach. Work-life was nightmarish for the American workingman back then. That’s what it would be like with no government that could hold big business accountable. That’s why Democrats have to dedicate their lives every single generation to fighting back this growing darkness.
It is also why the far left is getting to be such a tremendous problem. They fight us at every turn for no reason, but very rarely the Republicans. The Squad of freshmen Representatives like Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is comprised of all socialists who voted against caged children getting soap in a bloc just a few short weeks ago. Likewise, Trump is gaining all sorts of mileage by attacking them. Their ability to repulse middle America, in particular, is all but a red flag in the eyes of frenzied bulls. Their radical views are his biggest asset in 2020.
The punk rock anarchist types are clueless about getting taken in. Their protests are undermining their entire value systems, not to mention their future right to stay healthy. They think it’s going to all be dancing through Utopia- the Greek word for “nowhere”. My guess is it would be more like that movie “The Purge”. Without real Democrats to protect them, people too different to blend in would be little more than easy prey. To whose benefit does that end up working for? The monopolists, of course! They’re like a hydra, striking at a million places at once. They’ve got all the money. That’s why they’re able to co-opt so many people in either party- like Tulsi Gabbard.
On the Issues, a non-partisan informational website that rates and categorizes lawmakers and candidates describes Gabbard as a “Libertarian-Leaning Progressive” based on her voting record.
Monopolist sects of the global elite are linking up transnationally and behind the scenes in a previously unheard-of level of cooperation and making their presences known through elected proxies like Tulsi Gabbard.
To pull it off, they’ve got to use a combination of theatrics and money to manipulate the national dialectic, hoping they can eventually fool the people into demanding a third party, likely to be similar to the Viktor Orban’s Hungary “managed democracy” hybrid systems that are taking form everywhere across the world.
In this model minorities and LGBT persons and the poor bear the weight of society, civil rights and freedom are surrendered for illusory stability, and a bigger state than ever has autonomy enough to do anything they want, the way China randomly built huge camps in the desert and locked up a million Uighur Muslims last fall. Likewise, that LGBT activist, Yelena Grigoryva, just got stabbed and strangled in Russia. This is not a game. We have got to wake people up and splash awareness in their faces before it’s too late.
Two-thirds of the world’s states are now no longer democracies, including the United States. according to non-partisan organization the World Freedom Index, and that is very dangerous to everyone. The only thing still holding this neo-fascist tide from sweeping over the whole world like wildfire is the strength even of American democracy’s memory. That’s why they are trying to attack it. The only guardians of it are the centrists of the Democratic Party, which is why all this is happening. Their true enemies are not socialists. They are the liberals.
They are us, Democrats.
This is the likely explanation for why she thought it a good idea to savage one of her fellow Democrats, Kamala Harris, with such a mean and rude assault on her qualifications. It adds acrimony and stress to our already taxed body politic. She’s always doing something to hurt our party. They’ve been talking about running her to hamstring us for years.
Our opinion is that it was more than a mean streak that caused her to resign as DNC junior chairman at the worst possible time for the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party in general. Many different factors were involved, most notably The Wikileaks dump of hacked data from the DNC’s email servers had just happened, and the Bernie or Bust lunatics were rioting in the streets of Philadelphia, over illegally acquired and hacked emails proving that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz resented Bernie’s inability to file out basic FEC forms correctly.
Tulsi said she was resigning in disgust, a double whammy for her. Not only did she get to damage her fellow Democrats, she gained millions of hardcore Bernie or Busters in the process. They think she’s one of them, even though more reputable leftist publications like Jacobin Magazine have also tried convincing them repeatedly. One article of theirs I would was titled “Tulsi Gabbard Is Not Your Friend.” They had no more success than we have.
It’s not that often that the socialists and I can come together on anything, but so far as Tulsi goes we’re riding in the same boxcar.
It could be that Tulsi’s been indoctrinated by Chris Butler, the guy who runs that twisted mutation of Hare Krishnaism cult that you were raised in? The one who now goes by the name Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa? The Butler cult has built a shadowy and global organization that according to some numbers in the tens of thousands, and the Gabbards are its most public and conspicuous members. The Cult Education Forum has more than a hundred pages worth of threads detailing their activities over the years.
We have got her back- just as we’ve got Joe Biden‘s, or Beto O’Rourke‘s, or Al Franken‘s. We’ll stand for any of them other than Tulsi and the Bern, two disingenuous libertarians only in the race to sow dissent and chaos. That sort has always hated people like Kamala Harris because she’s strong and black and female. They did the same thing to Joy Reid, whose defense we also took the torch for. Remember this, Bernie Bots?
We do. And we will never, ever forget it. Progressives, lol. If this is progress, give me the Stone Age back.
According to the lawsuit, filed by lawyers representing Gabbard’s campaign Tulsi Now Inc., Google suspended the Gabbard campaign’s advertising account for several hours during the first Democratic debate. “On June 28, millions of Americans asked Google about Tulsi Gabbard,” the mournful wording went, “and Tulsi sought to answer them. But Google silenced her.”
In response, Google says “automated systems that flag unusual activity on all advertiser accounts — including large spending changes” were to blame for the suspension of Gabbard’s account. Google says their automated systems aim to “prevent fraud and protect our customers.”
“In this case, our system triggered a suspension and the account was reinstated shortly thereafter,” said Google spokeswoman Riva Sciuto. “We are proud to offer ad products that help campaigns connect directly with voters, and we do so without bias toward any party or political ideology.”
Now, who to believe? Analytical tools on Twitter have shown tens of thousands of fake accounts swarming on her handle. This is her M.O. Check out that picture. Every little dot represents another one. It looks like a grand fireworks finale.
“Thousands of inauthentic Twitter accounts emerge when exploring tweets where @TulsiGabbard’s handle appears (large highlighted cluster includes ~20K accounts) cc: @yoyoel @delbius @vijaya” Thanks to @GeoffGoldberg!
This is all a result of the Citizens United ruling allowing the use of dark money in politics. Now private empires like the ones put together by the infamous Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries can spend nine-tenths of a billion dollars to hoodwink and influence us.
The thing about their strategy is, it’s completely common sense. What would you do, if it was your billion dollars, and your goal is to control the nation’s data flow- which is to say, its people? Would you really only support one side, and not try to influence the other? Did not Lenin say, The best way to control the opposition is to lead it yourself? It’s a football strategy, really; pretty basic stuff. They’re playing both the ends against the middle.
This is the libertarian way. Ask Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire owner of Fox News. Or his friend, Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart, and many others too. Sheldon Adelson, Robert Mercer. Richard Mellon Scaife, the mean alcoholic billionaire who funded the Arkansas Project to destroy Bill Clinton’s life for some random reason, they all do this and they’ll continue to as long as it works. It’s a strategy.
That’s what I’d do.
I’ve found myself thinking a lot about the Koch brothers recently, ever since I happened to read that David was unexpectedly, and after all these years, pushed out by his older brother, Charles, notorious eminence grise of the American political scene. It seemed surprising to me, not something I’d expected in any way. These guys should have it all right now. The Tea Party destabilized the Republican Party, and made it ripe for the capture of Trump. Now there’s a radical faction in the Democratic Party, too, an insurgent campaign against the center.
A New Republic article from 2014 called “GOP Death Watch: The Final Days of the Republican Party” pointed out that the big advantage the Democrats had back then was that our radicals had no part in our power structure (radicals should never have any power), whereas the Republican Tea Party was making it too difficult for the old guard, the John McCain style Republicans, to keep any order or unity among themselves.
They were all the way up in Bernie, even his campaign manager Tad Devine. He was Paul Manafort’s lead attache in Ukraine back during the Orange Revolution, and he was the first witness called at Paul Manafort’s trial because he worked for Manafort in Ukraine, as did Rick Gates, the first witness to crack to Robert Mueller.
Catch that. Three of the top strategists opposing Hillary Clinton in 2016 had been doing Vladimir Putin’s bidding in this capacity for longer than a decade.
How much more obvious can you get? It goes without saying, of course, that Putin is the biggest libertarian of them all. He is the head, the rest are the tentacles. Julian Assange of Wikileaks, who dumped the DNC emails, is a libertarian, too. They’re all in on it together! It’s on the front page of every newspaper, every day. Most Americans know this stuff instinctively, deep down in their hearts, along with something else:
Somehow, somewhere, their plans went horribly astray.
The feeling I’m getting from the world right now is that of great and utter tension. It does not have the feeling of being scripted anymore. It’s like it’s taken on a life of its own like an avalanche. They’ve lost control, and only Putin’s got the gambler’s nerve to enjoy it. He knows full well how little of Russia truly takes place under his will or even say-so. They know to shut up and go about their business in that part of the world; no one can take that away from them. Their muteness speaks for all of humanity on this one.
Tulsi Gabbard is not someone to trust, in our opinion. She’s just in it to deal out some cheap shots, leave some permanent, rankling schisms behind her, and run away chortling to plan out her next Tuggle Snuggle, horrid black widow that she is. Truly, she is a worthy successor hamstringer to her master the Bern. Her trolls are uglier than his, and I never thought I’d say that about anyone.
Going forward, it’s important for us to be especially mindful about who we support, and who we don’t support. Real Democrats are loyal and they know how to work with a team. They stay in the sane center, they pay heed to reality and the requirements of the position, and they don’t throw away their advantages by getting hasty. They corral resources, shore up trenches, dig their foxholes deeply and well- and above all, keep their own backyards clean of libertarian fakirs like the Tuggler. Gabbard, you are the one who is unqualified. If you want to throw reviles around, look in the mirror. You’ll see trouble with a surfboard gazing back at you.
The disaster caused by the illegitimate 2016 election has widened like the crack in a dam during the Donald Trump era, and people all over the world are feeling the pressure. A radical tide has swept over the whole planet, attacking like a hydra from all over the political spectrum, and the only thing holding it back is the strength of what has always been the bulwark of democracy on Earth, the United States of America.
But they’ve got their guy in charge of it, right now. We’re in trouble. Bad trouble. Readers of this blog will not need to be told.
Lack of cooperation between the various segments of the left not only lost us every branch of government in 2016, which was bad enough. It also left the door open for all kinds of infectious diseases and poisons to wander in. We have staved this off so far because we Democrats have had one big advantage. We have always had a good, solid moderate core in the center of the Party dedicated to its upkeep and maintenance, and so we have achieved strength through our unity even in the two years we had no power. That is being challenged by the beginning of factious, tangled wrangling between supporters of one or the other candidate.
This cannot be allowed.
In many ways, I consider this to be the most important article I’ve ever written. This is a call to every remote reach of the world, a shout out to any and all Democrats on Earth, and it is coming from the gut like nothing I’ve ever felt in my whole life. Every cell in my whole body agonizes for it. Please understand and come to realize.
Democrats must come together. Now.
Unity is our last best hope. Without it, we may very well lose everything. We could be flat on our backs for the rest of our lives, and subsequent generations of our children would be born into something like slavery. For the love of all creation, for the love of the whole human race, and for the love of love itself, help us to keep this 2020 presidential race a good one.
We are not enemies, it’s just the opposite. We are a family. We must become one in spirit and resolve. The requirements of the position demand it. The consequence of failure is defeat.
The 2020 presidential election has taken on an apocalyptic significance. American democracy is at risk of dying. In many ways, Trump himself has proven a bit of a softy, much more bluff than bluster, but his friends are completely vicious and he can’t stand up to them. He is the weakest president we have ever had in terms of foreign affairs.
At this year’s G20 Summit, the third one we’ve had the miserable honor of covering in the Trump era, he joked around with Vladimir Putin of Russia regarding their hacking of our election on his behalf. Putin looked absolutely proud of him, loving almost, as if he were gazing on the form of a beloved pet. “Look at him! Isn’t he a good dog? Look at all the tricks he can perform, right on command!”
Sigh. Trump may indeed be weak, but he has got some very rough customers for friends. We have the resources to fight back. But we are in danger of losing them. We will lose them for a certainty if we don’t stand together.
Here at Millennial Democrats, the choice appears extremely clear and obvious, as obvious as the big blue link above.
We’re going to stand behind them ALL. With everything we’ve got.
Democrats, we have to be ready to support the whole Big Five with equal fervor. We all have to be really careful here because if we mishandle the position in next year’s presidential election, in the four years to come after we will get wiped right off the board. We have nothing except each other, and that has always been enough, especially since we all have had the morbid pleasure of running into Trump and Bernie trolls and Russians and bots. Any of these people would be good at the job and a giant-worlds-away leap better than Trump or the Bern, Russian cutouts that we consider them to be. We’ve been saying this all along. All we have to do is keep walking in a straight line. Forward Together.
We have to embrace and get to know every one of these people, who are good people and worthy ones to the woman and man. We’re going to have our picks, that’s only natural, and that is fine. Just don’t get ugly about it and descend into bitterness and acrimony. Democratic solidarity is the final weapon we have.
Remember when we succeeded in pressuring Trump into reopening the government after the #TrumpShutdown? What a great day that was. Roger Stone got arrested, and as one organism we rejoiced. “Why are they (Democrats) always so loyal?” he bemoaned afterward, tail between legs and licking wounds. We pulled that off because we stuck together.
We have got to preserve that solidarity if we want to continue on our path to victory- and salvation.
The Democratic Party is our only hope. We are carrying the torch for the light of freedom everywhere. It will fall in a day if we give up. We have to remind ourselves of that as many times as it takes. We have got to follow this thing through to the end. In regards to the 2020 election, that means we’ve got to take the part of every one of our Big Five, these familiar dear good leaders who we all have known for years. They are all worthy and capable enough to run the country. We’ll take any of them because we’re tired of the horrible Trump era! We’ve got little kids in dog cages on our Southern Border, and there’s no one who can save them except us. This is a crisis of more than material resources. This is about the country’s soul.
It’s time for some real talk, and I hope everyone hears me. This is only partially about us. Even us millennials- who, I’d like to remind everyone, is no longer the youngest generation of voters- are going to be gone in a few decades and all that will remain of any of us will be the work that we did for the cause.
We are going to be judged by the quality of that work. Future generations will either revere or revile us. In the end, there is no fate but what we make.
Speaking as a private citizen, love for the cause is why I do this. The sheer importance of it is too big to contain with words; I’ll just say it is why I will be here to the end. The cause, per se, is to advocate for the future wellness of the world and human race, including every one of us ourselves. Those are all that matters, and we’re the only ones fighting for them. Once again. We cannot drop the torch.
The cause right now means getting rid of Donald Trump, and that goal alone is where our loyalties lie, not merely in the persons of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar. They have shown up as our leaders, and we are grateful for all of them, but at the end of the day, it’s the good old code of American decency that governs us. We will support those who champion our values, and loyalty ranks high among them, so please do be forewarned. We will fight as hard as we can against those who refuse not to get aggressive.
If for your own reasons you really cannot stand one or all of these candidates, but you still are a good Democrat who perceives how unbelievably critical it is to bring the curtains crashing down on the Trump era next year, if you really want to support just your pick, I get it. No worries.
Just please don’t go on the attack. It’s exactly like our mothers used to tell us, cliche or not. If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all.
The Big Five will remain so until well into the primaries next year, and during the interim, we need to have good things to say for every one of them, even if we’re currently competing. You don’t hate your opponent in chess. You shake hands both before and after the game because your opposition is momentary. You will be united all your life by your mutual love of the craft. We all share the same values, and we all serve the same cause. So in the name of that cause we hold sacred in our hearts, we must now commit to forging ourselves into one.
Every Democrat must stand firm with every other Democrat, and more now than ever before, for the moment of greatest peril is upon us. The reason why is as simple as it is profound.
In order to survive, we have to.
We are living in a political landscape that is currently dissolving, and as it does every day presents new questions, fundamental and human in their nature, some completely new. As they do, we need to separate, observe, and classify them. Dissolution in chemistry means the breaking down of complex compounds into their basic particles. Scientists use this technique as a way to collect feedback and data based on the contents of the issue, and that’s exactly what we have got to do. All of us, not just this or that candidate’s supporters. We have to sort out what kind of a position we are dealing with before we can chart a good strategy, and that is going to take us all.
This is why we need philosophy, as an aside, Republicans like Tomi Lahren who keep cursing it like animals on Twitter, but then again, you already know that. That’s why you’re attacking these programs now at colleges. A University System in Wisconsin recently in the town of Stevens Point became first in the country to eliminate history from the roster of viable degrees. That is a disastrous indicator for the future of our species.
Wisconsin was settled by Germans, a people that produced the philosopher Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, who said history was of the highest importance to a people of high civilization. Like Ronald Reagan, that great man is rolling in his grave to see what his ancestors are up to. He’s at the Headbanger’s Ball down there, and all because you Republicans are inflexible morons. We can count on you for nothing, and we know it.
Republicans of the John McCain mold have gone the way of the dinosaurs; most of those who had honor in 2016 are now Democrats. They have joined our ranks and we thank heaven for them, but for all those to be counted in their number, it seems like Trump has co-opted three more. Again with the hydra analogy. Hercules, at least, ought to be pleased.
It’s on us alone, Democrats. If we forget the past again, we have lost. We cannot drop the torch. We’ll just keep saying that, over and over. We cannot give up, and we cannot drop that torch. Not if the Red Sea should close around us. We have to hold the line no matter what. We’ve got to learn to be that rock in the river. Society itself may have to use us for mooring by the end. We must be ready.
Ethical, strategical, psychological problems are already arising every single day, and they will multiply like flies as this goes forward. Some of these may be completely new, and very difficult. Sometimes we run into a problem which is all three, like a recent one about candidates and what we will or won’t post about them. These questions involve the heart and soul of the Democratic Party itself, and we have to guide it because that’s who we are. Like chess, there are levels of difficulty engaged in the solving of these puzzles, but no matter what they are we have to manage it somehow.
If we do not, we will never defeat Donald Trump.
To us, and us alone falls the unenviable task of holding the center through the biggest moral crisis this country has faced since the Civil War ended. The Trump era has been a continuous disaster, an insult and an assault on. If we don’t find a way to get rid of him next year- if we, in the center, at least- don’t learn the terrible lesson of 2016 and stand together now, we may never stand up again.
Trump will be lawless like never before, he will have nothing to lose, even now he is feuding with the New York attorney general, and why? Because he is facing charges there as soon as he leaves the White House. State charges, which no amount of federal power can deliver you from. That’s a good part of why they didn’t pardon Paul Manafort. We know for certain now that they discussed the possibility of giving him a pardon seriously.
Trump will have every reason to kiss the impediment of our current liberal government system goodbye. Being a third term president would for him be the safest option. He must know this better than anyone. He talks about it all the time.
The monopolist segment of the global elite has been setting us up for this. I truly believe that. They’ve been linking up behind the scenes in increasingly ominous ways; just ask Jamal Khashoggi. From the right and left alike, they are coming for us. Every evidence points to this conclusion, like a giant red arrow of warning. This country hasn’t been a full democracy since 2017 according to the World Freedom Index. In fact, almost the whole world is yellow now, not green or blue. Trump constantly flirts with dictators, and Fox News jokes about his being one. Viktor Orban of Hungary, who was the first to use the new plan of discarding democracy gradually by democratic means, bit by bit, was just invited to speak here and did so this last spring.
What do you suppose he had to say? One doesn’t suppose it was a paraphrase from Braveheart. I doubt anyone said a word for freedom that day. This is not a game.
We know the far-right libertarians have hated the government that can regulate them all along, guys like the Koch Brothers and Vladimir Putin, the latter of which caused a stir just this week about how “liberalism” (meaning democracy) has “outlived its purpose”.
We can’t count on Europe saving us, either, they’re in a death-struggle with the New World Order section of the global elite themselves. Marine Le Pen has been leading Macron in the polls in France, in Germany Angela Merkel- the de facto leader and torchbearer of the free world since Hillary Clinton was robbed in 2016- cannot live forever. Britain is in crisis thanks to Brexit years later with compliments to their very own alt-right chefs.
The alt-right has cooked up a hefty pile for the final third of the states on Earth to still remain (mostly) democratic. Our allies overseas will be lucky to save themselves.
Democrats, we all but stand alone, even now, against a rising tide that threatens to engulf us all in earnest. We are the only ones left who have the power to resist and hold it back. Knowing this in our hearts, as we all do, will we stand as a nation undivided? Will we fight for liberty and justice for all? Or will we close our eyes and play make-believe like children, squabbling like rabble in the moments before our heads go under?
Dictatorships using tenets of both fascism and socialism have supplanted democracy everywhere. It’s us and a few embattled others overseas who are still carrying the torch for the light of truth and freedom.
We simply cannot drop that torch.
We cannot give up now. We have got to stay the course to the end or succumb to a dark and bitter fate. We will be powerless spectators as they do whatever awful things they want. We are going to lose absolutely everything. We tried to warn the Sanders cult of this in 2016 and they did not listen.
If we make that same mistake, we drop the torch.
If the Democratic Party descends into squabbling now, there is no way to prevent this unthinkable horror. Our solidarity is our only hope because superior numbers are the only resource that we have. If we descend into fractiousness and squabbling, we might as well throw that torch in the toilet.
We’ll be lost worse every day. We will not have anything to fight back with. A thug class like the ones the Nazis had will grow strong enough to suppress all of us, and they will do so under the aegis of legality. History has shown us before that the right will stop at nothing to maintain a position such as this once they have got it. There is no way to overstate the case as to how bad it could be.
We really need to think about the Holocaust.
Our numbers are stretched already, thin and sparse, like a Russian grocery store. Every time one of us throws their hands up in frustration and surrenders, the problem gets worse, as do our chances of coming out of this with a country we can all be proud to live in. Make no mistake, either. If democracy falls here, it will fall elsewhere, and within a span of time that is likely to shock us, all that we hold sacred will be gone. It will melt into the night, like the state of East Germany.
Remember when we pressured Trump into reopening the government after the #TrumpShutdown? That was necessary big time and only made possible by those who remained true blue. All of us suffered great stress and anxiety, and many suffered worse. For the sake of an angry whim, and for the longest period in American history we lost five billion dollars.
Coincidentally, five billion was the exact sum we wouldn’t give him to build his moronic wall with.
His pettiness knows no bounds, he’s got the most dangerous friends there are, and he talks like he’s in early-onset dementia. Who knows what he might do given four more years unrestrained? We’ll be giving him a free hand if we all go to war with one another.
Conversely, and objectively speaking, look at all we’ve accomplished in the last two and a half years when we’ve stuck together! Democratic dedication in the age of Trump has accomplished miracles. It’s no small list, especially considering the Republicans were left in control of all three branches of government for four-fifths of that time.
We hit them hard last year with a massive Blue Wave, retaking the House and staving off a net loss in the Senate, even though we had twenty-five mostly red state Senators up for election and they had only eight.
We managed to save the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, with a little bit of help from John McCain. We shook the very earth with our efforts to keep Brett Kavanaugh, alleged molester of women, out of the Supreme Court when Kennedy resigned under corrupt-seeming and payoff-looking circumstances. Had Republican and woman Susan Collins stood with us, we could have kept him out. But she didn’t.
As always, we stood with ourselves alone, arrayed in ragged armor for the battle of speaking truth to power.
We raised awareness about former Alabaman judge Roy Moore‘s awful past as an alleged serial rapist, and kept him out of the Senate, and replaced him with worthy Democrat Doug Jones, the first time any Democrat had held a seat there in several decades- although that raises yet another example. Time passes fast, and Moore is running again and doing just as well as he did before- just like Marine Le Pen, rising in the polls against Macron in France.
We’ll have to hold the line again on all this stuff very soon.
We can’t do that if we don’t observe one critically fundamental rule- Democrats do not attack Democrats. If the partisan fighting over who’s going to be the one in 2020 is allowed to keep intensifying, far too many of us will lose sight of that. We can’t afford it. We have to put out these fires wherever we see them if we want to save the forest.
As an aside, and for the sake of clarification, now seems a good time to remind ourselves that Bernie Sanders has not ever for a minute of his life been a Democrat, which utterly excludes him from this statement. We consider him an adjunct of Putin and Trump; see the link above if you need to know why. Tulsi Gabbard’s a deal-breaker too, for reasons of foreign corruption and cult membership, but we’ll have to cover that another time. Anyone else we will fight for as hard as we can.
It is along these lines that our new strategy was conceived. From this day forward, our mission is simple. To stamp out the fires of bitter faction wherever it rears its ugly head, and not by yelling and blustering, but with reason and kindness and understanding. The sword of truth is forged in debate and whetted by discourse, and dissent is the highest form of patriotism, which means we need to be having these discussions.
They will help us improve the final quality of our platform, a full half of how we’re going win the people back from the ogre Trump. But they’ve got to be debates and not Royal Rumbles. Unlike Fox News, our goal is not to compete with other cable stations, but to find new ways to do good for the people of the world. That always has been and always will be the sole purpose of this organization. It’s right out there on our Home page. Check it out.
If any of you Democrats, our readers out there, should happen to disagree, I encourage and even implore you to write in so that we can begin to talk it out. If you feel like there is something so critical that it’s worth breaking our fellowship over, then hadn’t we better talk it through? In order to begin to find some kind of solution, I need to hear what you guys think the crux of the problem is, and what you think we ought to do about it.
We have to find common ground before it is too late.
We need each other desperately, and that means we need to inspire and uplift each other, regardless of what candidate you’d like to see win the chance to compete in the biggest election in the primary. These candidates and us, their supporters, have got to keep their eye on that 2020 ball to the point where we become an indivisible mass again.
Again, remember the Blue Wave, less than a year ago, when all of us were united and resolved on standing behind whoever won? It was the only light there has been since this thing started, and together we preserved it. Alone we are nothing, but together, we are invincible, and we need to be.
Who else but we Democrats are so determined to carry the torch for health and truth, in the face of these looming new Dark Ages? Who else will lift a hand in staving off the fall of our world order? The others are taking sledgehammers to it, and Russia’s laughing all the way to the Iron Throne.
We would all of us be going into the dark. Together at last.
I’ve been thinking a lot about St. Augustine, the bishop of North Africa’s final Christian community, the Roman town of Hippo. He gave his life in defense of his city, an impossible task that he attempted anyway. His sacrifice has echoed through all generations to come.
Imagine how it must have been in those blasphemous horrid days. The year 400 A.D., Rome falling, disarray descending like an endless blanket of the chaotic, starless night everywhere that any eye can see. In the midst of it all, besieged and cut off on all sides, the small town of Hippo held the last torch that burned on the planet for truth in the hands of St. Augustine, the town bishop, no trained warrior at all. Determination and powerful faith gave his great heart an unshakeable resolution.
In the name of the same cause we all are fighting for, knowing there is no future but what we make, he determined to resist the coming hordes to his last breath, which he did.
Hippo stood before it fell, but fall it did, and in the final fracas Bishop Augustine was killed, murdered in the gutter by that era’s Bernie Bots and MAGA ravishers. But in the end, his victory reigned supreme. He was immortalized by his courage and was christened a saint. His example will stand as an inspiration to the final generations of mankind, and those who stood by him will be remembered and honored for their courage. When the stuff came down they held the line.
For the people of Hippo, the fight was unwinnable from the start, and after the city fell the final torch went out. It was not to be relit in Europe until the eleventh century, and the Dark Ages in between endured for three times the current lifespan of America. But it burned so brightly before the end that God himself must have seen it, and been proud. The story endures as a different kind of fire.
Augustine is a personal hero of mine and I refuse to shame his memory. I will carry that same torch through any storm I have to because that is what is needed. Our situation is far from as dire as unfortunate Hippo’s. At this time we can still win, and we must.
Refusing to give in to vicious cults, made up of sick members of global elites, is engraved in Democratic DNA by this point. We have guarded our gate now for a hundred years, fighting daily for progress and the people. The most vigorous political action has been needed to sustain us on our journey. It will always be needed. An active, informed citizenry must be present if freedom is to survive.
I remember how crushed I was the night of the election when it was read out to all of that HRC had officially been robbed. Distraught and furious, I felt like a wounded animal and lashing out in anger was all I wanted to do But my mentors rescued me from my own worst tendencies. They so fiercely demonstrated to me, in the beginning, their willingness to grimly fight on that my fury had been soon replaced by hope.
They taught me what it means to be a Democrat. Decency, loyalty, and love. Not cruelty and viciousness. Those are the arts of the enemy.
Where I had been floundering in despair, they had been keeping cool, waiting with the patience of hunters for their moment to strike back. Plan B was formed in an instant, and soon I realized there were about sixty-five billion more plans after that, to be rock-souped on a dime when the situation called for it, cooked up by all the Pattons I’d been given as my teachers. They took a lot of time with me.
What heroes. You folks know who you are.
I’m the young guy who’s always hung out with all the older guys (kind of weird, to see myself becoming the older guy myself! Time to grow up!) so baby boomers have always been among my best friends. They come kick it with people of all ages. We all get on well for the most part and we get a lot of work done, together. They’re all old tigers, like General Alfred Joffre of France, who spared his country a defeat in WWI with his cool head and his counterattack. The Miracle of the Marne was brought about by men who are in the same position as us people of every gender.
I thank God for the dear good baby boomer generation, our parents who saved us from the draft, and who showed me the way to the only truth I know: No good Democrat could ever quit at a critical juncture such as this. When we’re needed to answer the call to such a dramatic extent, we show up, just like our parents did before us. They made the Greatest Generation proud. Now it’s our turn to do the same for them.
So long as the United States are united, surrender is out for Democrats- and make no mistake, having no discipline and attacking each other like beasts are the same as surrender or worse. Our souls recoil from the very idea, abomination as it is. We are not going to give over to the same darkness that brought us sadly here.
The 2020 Democratic candidates must become one.
I am counting on you all out there to help me help our leadership to Make America Sane Again. Resisting internecine rivalry is no longer an option, but a survival-based imperative. We have got to start talking to each other, especially those who have already decided on a 2020 pick.
Again, our Big Five at this time are Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar. We have good things to say about every last one. We have got to get together and form a plan, and that means starting a discourse. Please feel free to invite us as mediators. We love all of you. God, I could not mean that more. This is our country and we are all countrymen (forgive the gender reference; countrypersons doesn’t quite have the same ring.)
A discourse works best when there are people involved who are deeply committed to the results. The requirements of the position mean we all have to be both passionate and flexible in regards to their own position. We need every single one of you, and losing you is a tragedy every time. So please, Democrats. Hold the course. We know what the risks in losing are but look at our reward for winning too. Democracy itself might survive because of our efforts. Our torch will keep on burning through this whole mess, because of you personally.
Stand behind all Democrats. If you do exactly this, we’re sure to win. But if they manage to divide us, they will conquer. We’re not about to let that happen.
For country, Party, God by all his great Names and St. Augustine, I am going to be there, and when I go I am going to kick the hell out of the wicked insane opposition and have some fun while doing it. You’ll be with me, and I’ll be with you, and we’ll be two fish of many in an ocean of deep blue.
I believe in my heart that at the finish line, almost all of you will be there with me. We are going to help each other stay calm and to keep all of our heads clear, and together we will hammer out the best way to go with this. In the end, we will have the best available. Trust due process.
During the interim, let’s stick close and tight with everyone. Get in touch with anyone you know who are participating directly in the campaigns of the Big Five. No Bern, who has always been Russian infested, no Gillibrand who stabbed Al Franken in the back, and no Tulsi Gabbard because she’s Tulsi Gabbard. The others are likely to remain obscure. It’s time to start thinning out the herd.
Today’s political reality says to me that it’s time to get behind them all. We need to tell them that they have to become a team. In a perfect world, there would be weekly strategy meetings held with strategists every day until the last day, because all involved would realize that this is only partly about them.
It’s about the cause. What were we saying again, about a torch and maybe not dropping it? That’s likely to be a good decision.
The decision as to who to support in the home stretch would be the same as our own model, to be made by consensus based on pragmatism and data, and all candidates involved would be deeply committed to keeping this match above the belt. They would be doing everything they could to help their supporters realize that any and all of them would be really good. Every single one is worth fighting for, with a full heart and spirit, and helping everyone to keep that goal foremost in mind is what we’re on.
For our part, we’re going to pledge right here and now to fight for all of them, with equal fervor in our hearts. If you will all pledge with us, next year’s victory will be assured, and we can begin the long labor of cleaning up the mess made by the radicals. Going forward, Democrats, please help us spread the word. We want to see a #BlueTeam2020, made up of these five Democrats and everyone else who realizes how needed they are. We are ALL going to take down Donald Trump.
The mess on our southern borders continues to get worse by the day, and nobody has quite known what to do. It came as a big relief to everyone genuinely concerned about the fate of our Southern American neighbors, who have come to us for help, that the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives has passed a bill to give these people some relief.
The House voted 230 to 195, mostly down party lines late Tuesday night to approve a $4.5 billion measure to send humanitarian relief to the southern border, addressing concerns about conditions of detention centers where migrant children are being held.
This whole time we have barely heard or seen a thing. Many have feared the worst. Finally CNN got to go inside, and there’s no doubt that it was about time, but still, no one knows for sure what they’re up to; about all we do know is it doesn’t involve mass graves. We know they’re not ordering mass shootings, but other than that there is very little positive to say.
The following observations were made by Clara Long and Nicole Austin-Hillery, the journalists assigned to the story’s coverage by CNN, but they spoke for us all when they published them.
We have been speaking out urgently, since then, about the devastating and abusive circumstances we’ve found. The Trump administration claims it needs even more detention facilities to address the issue, but policy makers and the public should not be fooled into believing this is the answer.
The situation we found is unacceptable. US Border Patrol is holding many children, including some who are much too young to take care of themselves, in jail-like border facilities for weeks at a time without contact with family members, regular access to showers, clean clothes, toothbrushes, or proper beds. Many are sick. Many, including children as young as 2 or 3, have been separated from adult caretakers without any provisions for their care besides the unrelated older children also being held in detention.
These meathook findings leave little room for equivocation and help to shed critical light on a basic fact of critical importance.
We are dealing with the totally awful here, combined with more than a dash of the hideously absurd, although all of us are used to that by now. It’s Trump, after all.
Among other things, we had to actually have a vote about whether or not these little kids should be able to get soap and toothpaste. In the world’s richest country. What an insult to the history of the world’s remaining superpower.
Republicans are boasting about the worst thing they’ve done since Iraq, but even they and Trump seem mostly miserable. They’re not handling this situation well, but they didn’t create it, either. It’s a problem for us all at this point and a highly complex one. It should be noted that the Senate passed relief legislature as well, so that’s good.
Certainly, medieval solutions such as walls are a laughable measure. These people are coming here because our laws allow them to. Unless that changes, the wall would be nothing but a pointless and ugly disaster. They’re coming in through legal ports anyway. It’s almost like the right is starting to see that a wall’s not going to stop legal asylum seekers, but of course, that is probably a pipe dream. Bipartisan is practically a curse word to the modern right wing Party.
Democrats, as usual, are desperately trying to clean up what we can and keep it from getting any worse. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was the one who put this relief bill together, to the surprise of absolutely no one, and her ability to keep her caucus in order has allowed us to keep things up and running. We even got some Republican votes.
Only one group of people in all of this wide nation’s Democratic Party stood in a bloc to oppose a bill that should have been a no-brainer for any progressive.
How unbelievable is that? This is Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar we’re talking about here. Omar’s father was a Somalian cab driver who was able to get in here only at the cost of great difficulty, and now she is a famous Representative with an important voice to be heard in the Democratic Party. She blew it badly here. We gave her a chance before, and wrote “#WeStandWithIlhan-This Time.”
No way are we sticking up for her now. Not on your life.
At least the moderate core of the Party remains decent. I don’t have a thing to say for the rest. I guess Ilhan Omar can’t be outright proven a terrorist, so there’s that. But she sure does have some awful friends, and by this I mean Bernie Sanders, who she just co-authored a bill with, just as much as the Council of American-Islamic Relations. They’ve been right here to undermine us whenever it has counted all along, and look what it could have led to this time! The sheer physical revulsion I feel towards that vote they made is indescribable. Let no one say that we have not reached out; we have. Over and over again. But they just don’t share our values.
Regretting the need to keep this article about the kids and not the endless evils of the socialists, it’s disappointing from anyone to vote for refusing soap to caged immigrant children. Why was it not possible for Democrats of all stripes to come together and pressure Trump into buying these kids some soap and toothpaste? The guy does not mind at all putting on these displays of pettiness, unreal for the richest country in the world, but we do!
So much for Giving me your tired and poor. Our citizens are mostly the types of people who bought into all that Statue of Liberty stuff about the “huddled masses yearning to break free”. They opened up a Japanese internment camp for one particularly lucky huddled mass. I hate the term “masses” anyway and find it smarmily arrogant and superior. Those are people in there, not chewed and processed cud.
That last is a rather dehumanizing metaphor, which brings us to our next troubling observation. These people are not being discussed in the language of respect we should use when we hear of the plight of other humans, wherever or whoever they may be. They’re being referred to as pests and vermin. This cannot be allowed. We’re on a slippery slope at this point.
This really is Nazi-like, and not in the same overdramatic and irresponsible sense that Ocasio-Cortez used to compare what’s going on right now to the Holocaust. It’s in the sense of negating the basic human value possessed by every human.
Respect and kindness from our fellows ought to be a birthright, possessed by all members of our species. It’s always been unequal, and that sucks enough. But now Trump and the right wing are removing it altogether. The next step really could be mass graves and the death camps, and if it does come down to that we’ll be up against it even worse than ever. We now have these four time bomb socialist candidates to deal with on top of the mountainous pile of our other challenges.
Three Republicans voted in favor of the bill, and just four Democrats opposed the vote — they were all freshmen Democrats, and arguably the highest profile freshmen from the 116th Congress: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley. All four said earlier in the week they would vote against the bill due to its funding of Immigration and Customs (ICE), which they have called for to be abolished.
There they are! The usual suspects, on again about the abolishing of ICE. Is this really the time? Make a speech or something, if you want to make a meaningless gesture. This is the same thing they pulled when Ocasio-Cortez refused to vote to help us re-open the government.
Oh, and those pictures of her showing up like a dynamo on the border today like some kind of a Terminatrix? They weren’t even recent! The shame of it all!
How in God’s holy name are we going to get those kids out of those cages, if we can’t even come together on giving them toothpaste? There’s no end to the outrage we ought to feel! It’s like living in a Nazi cartoon! If only we weren’t so beat up and numb already, from the previous three years of traumas! And let NO one forget, not a single bit of any of it could have been possible except with the help of Bernie Sanders!
That is why people now are getting murdered down there wholesale, in many cases by predator Americans who have gone there to act out their violent fantasies.
Removing from the German public their perception of their Jewish neighbors as humans like themselves proved invaluable to the Nazis when they locked down all of Europe and began to hunt them down and kill them off. It needs to be clearly noted that we’re far from saying they’re doing anything like what the Nazis were doing- yet.
We do not wish at all to trivialize the Holocaust, which dwarfed in proportion by far any other human tragedy. AOC made a big mistake there. She then made it obvious that she’s anti-Israel completely by refusing a visit to Auschwitz with a number of survivors, another big mistake. But just because she’s shrill and hysterical doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a wildly overstated point. The longer this goes on, the more vicious Trump will get, and we all know how he looks up to that savage lot. There’s no telling where it all might end.
Sincere people of all political persuasions should be able to get that we need to take care of children. The fact that we can’t just says it all about the state of the nation today. One thing is for sure, and one alone. The radicals are not helping on either side. The Democrats are the only ones who can, so we need to support each other now more than ever. All old grudges should be piled up like fall leaves and lit afire. The stakes are too high.
Going forward, the plan is clear. We have got to do what it takes to link hands with our people down there on the southern border, and we’ve got to do it now. We want you to give us those kids back, Trump, and a rage is growing in us because you won’t. The Point of No Return is now on your horizon. Turn back now, and you may yet reach the shore. History will revile you anyway, there’s no getting around that anymore, but only as Mussolini, not as Hitler. Take it or leave it.
And give those bars of soap to those dog-caged children!
The special counsel assigned to the investigation of Russia’s interference into our 2016 presidential election, Robert S. Mueller III, has written a letter of protest to the United States Department of Justice, due to the inappropriate handling of the summary of his report as handed to the American people by Attorney General William Barr.
He did it because Barr’s initial letter to Congress about the Russia investigation did not “fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” a Justice Department official said Tuesday. The objection was filed in a letter to Barr on March 27 and is indicative of dissonance between Barr’s prepared whitewashing and the truth. Mueller’s report was 448 pages long, and included handling of questions about potential obstruction of justice by Trump. Barr’s efforts seem like the latest, and most egregious, chapter. But it wasn’t unexpected. Barr’s son-in-law is working for Trump’s legal team directly! How’s that for a conflict of interest?
Barr is testifying tomorrow before the Senate Judiciary Committee and will be handled roughly by Democrats even though the agency is Republican-held. The hearing will revolve around his handling of Mueller’s report, as well as how exactly he reached the ridiculous conclusion that President Trump did not obstruct justice, refuted on every page of the document.
His April 18 news conference trying to paint Trump as a hero is sure to come up also.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. Mueller is not the kind of guy to stick his foot in the tornado that is this entire event without good reason. If he felt Barr had mischaracterized his findings severely enough to warrant such a letter, it is only common sense that we take this thing as seriously as he did.
Barr has blown any claim to credibility he ever had. He must immediately be pressured out of office, televised hearings must be held a la Hillary Clinton’s suggestion, and Mueller must be allowed to testify before the House of Representatives. Only then will the American people ever have the truth on this whole matter, and make no mistake. After all we have lived through, we have earned that. Trump is a crook, and we have always known it. We want the facts complete so that we can raise awareness about them. The path to regaining this country’s sanity lies only through this door.
On April 20th, I asked Barr, “Did Bob Mueller support your conclusion?” His answer was, “I don’t know whether Mueller supported my conclusion.”
We now know Mueller stated his concerns on March 27th, and that Barr totally misled me, the Congress, and the public. He must resign. pic.twitter.com/rod404BbYo
Last week short a day, the long-awaited #MuellerReport came out. Thanks to our crook of an Attorney General, William Barr, it was heavily redacted, almost to the point of being a blatant coverup; actually, we can scratch almost. The Republicans have gone for a very, very huge and gigantic coverup, in fact, if we’d like to borrow language from the man who made all this necessary to begin with-Donald Trump, the illegitimate and babyish forty-fifth president.
“Earlier this week, the president’s personal counsel requested and was given the opportunity to read a final version of the redacted report before it was publicly released,” Barr said.
Unfortunately, by now, this feels like standard operating procedure. There are dangers in becoming desensitized to the corruption emanating from our government’s current operators.
A note from the editor- Millennial Democrats has been all but on hiatus, as I’ve processed this report, which is all but cataclysmic for Trump. Of course, he is claiming it exonerates him; that’s what he does. But five obsessive devourings of the document later, I can now say with a thorough degree of confidence that that report is damning for Donald. Utterly damning. It reads like a recipe for impeachment. The only real question is, what comes next?
The first paragraph of the Report is a few words about rules and regulations. It really begins with the first sentence of the second paragraph, in which Mueller is seen wasting little time.
“The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.”
This we know. Any cyber-activist who was online even in 2015 could tell you there was something going on. By 2016 it was obvious and ugly. People rolled their eyes at us because they didn’t want to believe it.
Now those people are staring down the barrel of 448 pages of evidence, compiled by the best legal minds in all of America, where every form of excellence finds its home.
It later concludes that the Trump Campaign team “expected to benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts”. The Report is arranged into two volumes, the first outlining the actual Russian interference into the 2016 United States Presidential election and the Trump Campaign’s involvement with it, and the second addressing the case for obstruction of justice.
In the end, Mueller’s team seems to have concluded that as Trump is the president, it wasn’t their legal right to charge him as that would be going against Justice Department regulations. This was never going to end with the Oval Office raided and the country’s leader dragged out in handcuffs. No matter how much Trump as a person is repugnant, that would have been devastating for America.
Mueller’s strategy is different.
A very serious set of crimes has been committed here, and no mistake. Mueller is very clear on that point. “First, the Office determined that Russia’s two principal interference operations in the 2016 U.S. presidential election-the social media campaign and the hacking-and-dumping operations violated U.S. criminal law.”
Partisan considerations ought not to have a say in this at all. Russia is our worst enemy, they hate us more than anyone. Only the Republicans don’t want to act like they know it, because they want to pose it as necessary to resist the rising tide of socialism in order to beat us. They have nothing else to hold on to, which has made them desperate. Desperate people do reckless, stupid things. They will not act with honor as the Republican-led Congress of the Nixon era did.
“Our election was corrupted, our democracy assaulted, our sovereignty and security violated. This is the definitive conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report. It documents a serious crime against the American people,” Clinton explained in opening her letter. “The debate about how to respond to Russia’s “sweeping and systematic” attack — and how to hold President Trump accountable for obstructing the investigation and possibly breaking the law — has been reduced to a false choice: immediate impeachment or nothing. History suggests there’s a better way to think about the choices ahead.”
This is an excellent point and even more proof of what we’ve been saying all along- that Hillary’s loss in 2016 was really America’s.
As the Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said a while back, Trump isn’t worth it.
Pelosi’s reasoning is sound, and she is our Speaker of the House. We will follow the national leadership on it because we realize we’ve got to pull together in this time of total crisis. The point is getting rid of him a year early isn’t enough incentive to rip the country apart again as Nixon’s corruption did back during Watergate, and as the Republican-led right wing did when they attacked Bill Clinton for very little. But Speaker Pelosi’s words back then were spoken before the release of the special counsel’s conclusory findings. Things may well be different now, and although it is a big step, it has to be considered seriously.
That report is not only a disaster for Trump. It’s a disaster for America.
The Russians got away with it, and that is sickening. Trump continues to carry out their agenda by continuously slandering the special counsel and us Democrats. He has done nothing to protect us from the Russians, which of course is leaving us open to every other major power in the world as well.
China has been massing on the South China Sea; it is said they may be planning a pre-emptive strike on our bases out there. It was actually the experience of running this website that taught us just how much an enemy we have in the Chinese.
For every attempt to hack in here the Russians have made, the Chinese have made at least ten.
My (possibly) Chinese friend, saying hello to me again. Hi, buddy. Change your ways!This is the IP address of a hacker, purportedly from Beijing, who is always doing his best to get in here. Have at it, pal.
The Chinese have 1.43 billion people living in their country, and every one of them has got the time to try to hack Millennial Democrats, it seems some days. You would not believe the amount of emails I’ve got saved up from my Sucuri plugin, awesome creation that it is. WordPress is great, as are most of the companies they partner with.
The reverse IP trace feature used by the program lets me know where they are from, which is how I ended up doing the research needed to learn Trump has a huge following in China, whose people are contemptuous of anti-Trump resistance. They refer to us in racist fashion as the “white left“, even though the base of the Democratic Party is largely multicultural and far from exclusively white.
What a pain in the neck. The Chinese, no less. This isn’t even their fight, but they’re flooding into the country’s cybernetics all the same, in the absence of a funded cyber-defense force. If you look at it from their point of view, why wouldn’t they? America is on top, and the Chinese can hardly be blamed for wanting to take our place. They sure have more a chance at that then Russia does. Soon other powers will rush to join in too, and it’ll be nothing but chaos on every wired circuit in America. I’ll have pictures like those above from every single corner of the globe.
Every bit of this the fault of Donald Trump, who is still butthurt about his election as totally illegitimate. His juvenile contrarianism has him utterly resistant to facts; he is, after all, a Fox News devotee. He is therefore not in a rush to fix even a single one of his mistakes. So while we’re not advocating a rush to impeachment proceedings, we certainly don’t feel like ruling them out.
I personally would have liked to see a lot more about Bernie Sanders in this report. It was never really about Trump himself. It was about the Russian interference into our election that concerned me most, not just taking down Trump. The Sanders campaign was no less culpable, no less infested, and no less managed by a former employee of Vladimir Putin’s, Tad Devine, who worked for him by proxy under Paul Manafort in Ukraine. He was the first witness called at Paul Manafort’s trial. He should have had his own.
At the end of the day, before we start getting into details, it’s good to keep in mind our long term goal, which is ensuring the welfare of America. This was done for the American people. It was about ensuring the sanctity of our political system. There was more going on here than taking down Trump, although of course, that would have been nice. The guy really is an incompetent crook, which was my original problem with him, but this has gone so far beyond that now that it’s almost beside the point.
In accordance with Hillary’s plan, we’re going to be pushing for the following.
First, we want to see our Congress hold public, televised hearings on the matter, hearings designed to raise public awareness about what happened in 2016 and to fill in the gaps of the Mueller report. During Watergate, just like now, there was an investigation into the matter that found evidence of corruption and cover-ups. The purpose of the hearings is given by the former First Lady below.
“The televised hearings added to the factual record and, crucially, helped the public understand the facts in a way that no dense legal report could. Similar hearings with Mueller, former White House counsel Donald McGahn and other key witnesses could do the same today.” -Hillary Clinton.
Second, we want to substantially increase pressure on Donald Trump and the other Republicans to get busy protecting this country from anything like this being able to happen again. Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump’s recently departed secretary of Homeland Security, tried to prioritize it and was told to not even mention it around Trump. Later she resigned in disgrace before she was fired. This cannot be allowed. We have to be able to expect better from our leaders.
Third, we want to start moving forward together! In terms of the economy, health care, climate change, and every other issue of importance, we Democrats have always had the answers in terms of how to run the country. They’re all right there in the 2016 Democratic Party Presidential Platform. But we have got to get out there and make our case.
“For today’s Democrats, it’s not only possible to move forward on multiple fronts at the same time, it’s essential. The House has already passed sweeping reforms that would strengthen voting rights and crack down on corruption, and now is the time for Democrats to keep their foot on the gas and put pressure on the do-nothing Senate. It’s critical to remind the American people that Democrats are in the solutions business and can walk and chew gum at the same time.” -Hillary Clinton.
We have to get this right, as HRC said. The stakes are too high. Mueller’s report has left lingering questions behind in its wake, and the importance of answering them has not diminished. We have got to find a way to solve these problems, move past this whole disaster, get our country back, and take the proper steps to make sure that nothing like this can ever happen again. Going forward, we can help to do it all by raising awareness. In the upcoming series of articles, we’ll be analyzing thoroughly the Report’s contents. A firm understanding of it will help us find the right way to go on this. In the end, perhaps it will be best to keep it simple.
Sometimes you run up against a situation that is very complicated, in this world of ours. There are many grey areas, many ambiguities, many matters that require clarification. By the time you get done explaining them all, you’ve practically written a book.
But there are also times when you run into something that is simple enough to explain with a single word, or perhaps two- like these words.
NEVER BERNIE.
That could be the end of the article. It genuinely could. I strongly considered publishing then and there, so that no one misses our meaning, but at least a few words of explanation might be helpful. So let’s try this one again.
NEVER BERNIE. Not ever. No matter what, it’s too obvious a setup to plug into. Did you see how Trump’s eyes twinkled the other day? I like Bernie, he said, smiling as big and genuinely as I’ve ever seen. He looked like a man who sees a foregone conclusion looming above him. He looked like Richard Nixon, facing George McGovern.
Yesterday the Bern raised six million dollars fundraising, screamed the enthusiastic Bernie Bots, like young lambs that haven’t seen the knife yet. Isn’t that great?
Great for who?
Of course, he did, was my reply. The Kochs invested nearly nine hundred million dollars into building a political machine so big it consumed the Republican Party. This is how it’s reaping dividends. This is why they needed all their dark money. Now they can fund the opposition themselves without anyone seeing it. “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves,” said the hero of all socialists, Vladimir Lenin of Russia.
Best of all, they can come on here and demoralize us by throwing around those numbers.
Later Wednesday, Trump made his own fund-raising pitch. He sent around a text message to all of his supporters, telling them about the $6 million that “Socialist Bernie” had raised.
“Now I’m calling on you to CRUSH that number,” the message said. For the average political strategist, this may all be rather confusing, but to a pro wrestling fan like Donald Trump, it’s simple as can be. A simple game of Heel vs. Hero.
In professional wrestling, a heel is a wrestler who portrays a villain or a “bad guy” and acts as an antagonist to the heroes- the protagonists, or “good guy” characters. They get in each other’s faces, scream and point and gesticulate wildly, and make a big production out of being each other’s enemies. The adoring audience loves the show, even as their hearts tell them the truth.
It’s all fake.
Hero, heel, and audience. On television, those people look like they’re having fun. It is our opinion that Trump and Bernie supporters are loving this. It’s all about the attention they’re getting. This is all a big game, to them.
You know who it’s not a game to?
Vladimir Putin.
Him, and real Democrats.
While this whole zoo spins a tale that grows more ridiculous by the very hour, the professionals in the locker room of the center are stubbornly holding on to the idea of eventually restoring sanity to our country and stopping the wrestling match short of a full-on civil war, which like a World Championship, you can’t lose by way of disqualification.
You’ve got to get pinned.
My personal trouble with Bernie, from the very start, has been the sheer unrealisticness surrounding him. His supporters were a shrieking mob; they rioted in the streets when they lost. No way was the zombie apocalypse the Bernie Or Bust crew paid out in Philadelphia that night in July 2016 what the majority of America looks like. His socialist policies were a disaster; Medicare for All alone, as he conceived it, would have had the country $32 trillion dollars. Margaret Thatcher asked this question long ago about socialism- How do you pay for it?
He himself wore that blue clown suit around, like a shambling disaster, and was nearly eighty years old besides. Jesus God.
These were the things I noticed when it all first began. I had no feelings about the guy other than that in the beginning, he was just some random name, like Martin O’ Malley, the other also-ran from that year’s terrible primary. I had serious concerns about his ability to win in a general election, and I didn’t think he had a prayer against Hillary Clinton. But I had no reason to form a particular about him one way or the other until I saw how ugly his supporters were going to get in attacking our candidate, and how little he would do to put that in check.
Conservatives were overjoyed when Bernie entered the race. He gave them just what they’ve been wanting all this time- a just cause to say Democrats are socialists and cast all this as our brand. It was just like how overjoyed they were at this Green New Deal, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to allow a vote on!
He told Jeff Flake last year that he wouldn’t allow a vote on legislation being passed to protect Robert Mueller’s investigation last year on the grounds that it was a waste of time, even though it probably would have actually passed, because it wouldn’t pass the House. He knew for a fact there’s not going to be a Green New Deal getting out of a Republican Senate- and yet, the same guy who was so concerned about minutes on the clock last year allows a vote on it!
Why? Because he wants to see who might actually be dumb enough to sign on.
Whoever does has no political future, especially if Bernie does get his chance to pull a Walter Mondale. He might win Vermont. His movement resembles a bowel. People will never forget the beating he takes.
We at Millennial Democrats would like to say to all of you: Fear not, you guys. The worst that can happen to us politically short of Dachau USA already has. It happened when HRC was robbed. The worst thing now would only be for the neoprogs to get their chance to play McGovern. They’ll get whipped, Russiagate will either spare us part of Donald’s second term or it won’t, and we will go on doing the most good we can for the most people we can until the day when better times finally come.
Besides which, that will never happen anyway. Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, even Elizabeth Warren. Someone will beat him in the primary, even though we don’t know who yet. Our chance will come along, the right leader will arise, and we will have a candidate able to beat Donald Trump. The Blue Wave 2018 was only the prelude for 2020, especially in the Congress.
The most important thing in a good philosophy is the strength it gives you to hold fast to your principles regardless of the temporal situation. It’s like how clouds can’t cover stars for long. I believe we will find a way. We just have to remain determined and United. When it all goes to the dogs for them, they’ll be able to come to us, and we’ll take them back in without a single word of recrimination, save these two alone.
The process by which we look through the past records of our candidates is called vetting, and when it comes to Bernie Sanders the mainstream media has not been doing it. Please give us a hand! Write in to the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and anyone else you can think of, and tell them you want to see Bernie Sanders vetted. They will know what you mean. Just earlier today it came out that he has picked Nina Turner to run his campaign. She went with Stein after him and urged her supporters to do either that or vote for Trump outright. Picking Turner is as clear a sign as you could ever want or ask for that he’s going to run the same old ugly race as he always has. NEVER BERNIE. No matter what.
Hello, world, from Millennial Democrats! We hope it finds you well.
Earlier today, a debate was held between a few of our members, which led to a consensus decision. Some asked if I would clarify the organization’s reasons for refusing to support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as there are certainly many people on the left who, to put it mildly, do not agree with that decision.
First off, it’s important to point out how critical it is that Democrats be able to agree to disagree. We are not socialists, this is not groupthink. Dissent is welcome, even encouraged. Our position is that AOC is part of a faction, a movement, and a base of people who have been a disaster for the Democratic Party, and we fully invite opposition dialogue on the subject. Come armed with facts and not slanders, and we will debate you any time at any place.
Just make sure you know how to be a good loser.
AOC is the latest chapter in an ongoing saga, where the right has done all it can to empower and incite the socialists because they know it will make things harder for us. They want Ocasio-Cortez to be the face of our Party more than anything. She and Bernie are helping them to make of us a Goldstein, in the 1984 scenario. In order to keep the White House next year, Trump has to present an enemy to the public even worse than him, and the spectre of socialism as exhibited by the Justice Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America gives him exactly that.
Ocasio-Cortez plays into this at every turn.
Take the Green New Deal, for example. She proudly tweeted that she and her friends threw it together over the course of a weekend, as though that were a good thing. It’s an unrealistic dreamer’s errand and a wish list, and the price tag on it has all the conservatives licking their chops.
There are those who accuse us of hostility to AOC based on her taking out of Joe Crowley, who undoubtedly was one of our best guys, and who genuinely will be missed. This is not the case, however; we are Democrats, and we support democracy. We bid our condolences and farewells to Joe and moved on. At this time, Millennial Democrats wrote Ocasio-Cortez an article of welcome and sincere congratulation, asking her to reconsider her stance on some things and drop the socialist aspect of her philosophy.
As for the environmental changes proposed as part of the Green New Deal, we fully support those aspects of the bill. Nancy Pelosi made that clear when amending the bill. Her version is the one that mainstream Democrats like Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar have gone on to indicate some support for, not AOC’s.
Former Vice-President Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change science. Our side has been fighting for this since long before AOC, or any other Millennial Democrat was even born. Our opposition to the bill has less than nothing to do with that, although most of us rightly are grateful to and venerate our elders in the baby boomer generation.
We’re not for doing things sloppy. There are very serious legislative flaws in that plan. It was not well crafted, and the crafters were completely ill-prepared. They got in trouble right away because of that FAQ that went around last week, talking about the people “unwilling to work”, et cetera.
At any rate, the problems are much more foundationally serious than an unvetted fact sheet. Expert Mike Pesca weighed in, pointing out very few environmental experts consider the targets laid out in the plan to be attainable in any way. Climate change experts have called for zeroing out emissions in the power sector by 2050, while the Green New Deal proposes doing so by 2030.
On what basis does it maintain the time frame can be accelerated by two-thirds? It does not say.
What Ocasio-Cortez and her friends have actually done is to confuse the issue further, make the true adherents of climate change look bad, and make it harder for the professionals responsible to get the actual progress made, which is the problem with her entire organization, modeled after Bernie Sanders from the start. AOC sadly didn’t just used to work for JD and DSA, she is very much a part of them now, and is in fact their greatest asset.
Because of that fact, she is also the greatest Republican asset, which is one more eerie way in which the interests of the far left and alt-right coincide. Their attacks on her are likely part of their usual cunning political strategy; they know booing her is an easy way to make the left embrace her, which in chess terminology is like eating a poisoned pawn, because of what an insanely atrocious idea signing on behind the original Green New Deal would be.
Why else would Mitch McConnell allow a vote on something he knows will never pass, like the Green New Deal, except to be able to tar and feather anyone who goes for it as a socialist wingnut who gets up at three in the afternoon?
In Ocasio-Cortez, in the few very loud members of our generation that have been hoodwinked into supporting this truly evil and invasive form of government, the Republicans now have a walking personification of all they have been fighting with their money to create: a just accusation that Democrats are socialists, and that to support us is to personally become the vector of socialism. It’s George McGovern all over again.
Meanwhile, the Venezuelan situation provides a vivid example of how big disaster socialism can be. At the end of the SOTU speech, Trump did what he’s going to be doing a lot- pointing to Bernie Sanders in silence, looking horrified, waiting for the people to become so disgusted they can’t take it and vote against their interests. Policy be damned, they will say. Look at that blue clown suit. I would rather burn than have that guy as my president.
The claim that we Democrats are going to turn America into a Venezuelan socialist hellscape looks like something new, but as every reader of this blog will be aware, they’ve been laying the groundwork for it for the last several years. Contrary to Trump’s new narrative, the Democratic Party has never embraced Bernie Sanders. We do share some policies, but he goes too far with them and makes them look ridiculous. Now he’s got AOC there with him, screaming for seventy percent income tax rates on the rich and protesting Nancy Pelosi over climate change.
Wonderful.
We had hoped to like AOC. We wrote good things about her in the beginning, even though she entered all our lives by doing something no Republican could have done in getting rid of Joe Crowley, a twenty-year veteran whose help was sorely needed. We sucked it up and congratulated her, and wished her the best in working with us to create a better future for America.
Since then, however, things have declined sorely and rapidly.
Why did she go protest Nancy Pelosi about climate change, when a bill was already on the table? Why not go protest the Republicans? Who knows, but it’s certainly convenient for them that she didn’t.
Then during the #TrumpShutdown, she also lied about her reasons for going so far as to vote with the Republicans for keeping our government closed, citing “funding for ICE” as the reason why she’d made a “tough, nuanced call” on the issue, even though ICE funding is covered by the Department of Homeland Security, and DHS funding wasn’t even discussed in the bill.
Her reasons for stabbing her own in the back remain totally obscure- and unfortunate.
The future strategy on the part of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Justice Democrats will be to use the popularity of AOC as a springboard of sorts, a mobile platform from which to position themselves to bump off even more good Democrats and spread their insurgency- and the unrealistic platform it brings along with it, so toxic in the extreme to the long term survival of the party.
In short, the whole radical left wing of the party is acting kind of like a handicap does on a racehorce right now by constantly ripping it up, dragging it down, and dampening its enthusiasm, to the ultimate benefit of Donald Trump. Millennial Democrats has been designed and built toward the purpose of countering that strategy and bringing love and life back to the center of our Party. To closely paraphrase what famed Irish poet William Butler Yeats once wrote in his riveting poem The Second Coming, things fall apart, if the center cannot hold.
In closing on the AOC topic, one of our contributors may have said it best of all earlier this evening- par for the course on that person’s batting record.
Believe me, Democrats, we’ve got the best people on the job!
“For me, it is the fact she has voted with the Republican Party against the Democratic Party, and I like Democratic legislators that vote with us and not against us.”
Why is this asking so much out of someone whom we supposedly share an agenda with?
Perhaps it makes the most sense from the standpoint of what Vladimir Lenin once said- “The best way to control the opposition, is to lead it ourselves.” Everything Ocasio-Cortez does makes perfect sense from the standpoint that she’s doing what revolutionary socialism calls for- cooperating with any group around, no matter how terrible their ideology, in order to topple a regime that both sides have found restrictive.
At any rate, this is our position, and I have given it my best. I hope I have argued for it well. Either way, it is not necessary that we all agree on everything; in a big-tent organization such as the Democratic Party, it’s pretty unlikely anyway. All we do ask is that when that is the case, we express our dissenter’s opinion with respect instead of vitriol and that we agree to disagree for the good of the country and the cause. If that’s good enough for you neo-progressives, it’s good enough for us Millennial Democrats. Have a good night, and thank you for taking the time to hear us out!
The falcon can still hear the falconer, at least for tonight.
