The Rant - The Parties Aren't the Same
There are two kinds of centrists and they both piss me off. The first are the right-wing douches like Carl Benjamin and Dave Rubin, assholes who are too afraid, dishonest, and/or pig-ignorant to realize they're right wing. Benjamin might just be that ignorant, but I'm convinced Rubin is just dishonest.
But it's the other group that's got me pissed off today; the group that says the two parties are the same so there's no point voting.
How fucking blind would you have to be to actually think that?! Setting aside the people who are just avoiding stating their opinions because they're afraid to stand up for their convictions, there are people who actually think this? Unless they're all just scared.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not here to sing the praises of the Democrats; they're beholden to corporate money, they're an entrenched interest run by the upper class... in a word, they're corrupt.
But come on! The Dems at least try! They know that racism, misogyny, and homophobia are wrong even if they're not willing to actually fight them! They at least have a wing of the party that forces them to care a little about people's suffering!
The Republicans though? They're assholes! An alliance of two kinds of villains! They're the KKK on the one hand and naked greed on the other! They're every movie and TV illain for the last 40 years, at least the ones without super powers. Hell, even a few of the ones with powers!
The Republican Party openly wants people to suffer and is actively working to destroy democracy around the globe! Some of them are only in it for profit, but the rest are doing it because of their sincerely held religious belief that some people are naturally inferior and/or evil and must suffer here on Earth before getting shipped off to hell to suffer for the rest of eternity!
The Democrats are terrified of change, they're run by short-sighted clowns who are very comfortable with the status quo and wish all those "identity" people would quit rocking the boat, but at least they recognize that some things are wrong and should probably change!
And there are a lot of really fucked up things that the Republicans do that the Democrats just don't!
Like preventing people from voting! Thuglicans have packed the courts with the sort of ideological assholes even they would accept 30 years ago, activists so naked in their hypocrisy that Bork would blush, and that's why the fascists can get away with purging voter rolls without notice and shutting down polling places in Democratic districts! And they're so goddamn willing to accept a victory, no matter the source, that they've stalled a bill meant to safeguard our elections from foreign interference! And all that's on top of the gerrymandering so frozen that judges are calling them on it! Democrats try, but they've got nothing on Confederates when it comes to gerrymandering.
And Democrats don't staff government with people fundamentally opposed to the duty of their office! No pacifists in the Department of Defense, no vegans overseeing the ranchers, no antivaxxers or "alternative med" quacks in the CDC. But the Thuglicans just can't seem to help it, they've got a whole army of Umbridges in the wings ready to dismantle the oversight that prevents their bullshit. Oil lobbyists in the EPA, fundamentalist home-schooler Devocs in Education, the guy who wants to dismantle Energy (Rick Perry, who didn't even know that Energy manages our nukes) in charge of Energy, and a fucking asbestos lobbyist who's in the process of legalizing fucking asbestos! Dems just don't do this Orwellian shit!
And taxes! Forget what the fascists say, Dems haven't put a new tax in place in decades, but they're not doing the Thuglican shit. They keep cutting taxes, but only for the wealthy! Meanwhile, they have to keep the budget balanced, so they shift the burden to everyone else! That's why the middle class is disappearing and the poor are getting poorer; the rich are paying less and less! The Dems just don't do that!
And they're not goddamn Nazis! How the fuck is anyone blind to this? How the fuck is anyone okay with this?! Every other year, literal actual Nazis keep voting, campaigning, and running as Republicans! I'm not just talking about Trump and his "very fine people"! I'm talking about open, uniformed Nazis on the ballot as Republicans in 2018! I'm talking about Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who framed a journalist for attempted murder and opened actual concentration in the desert! Sheriff Joe Arpaio who was convicted of contempt of court and pardoned by Trump, who went ahead and opened his own concentration camps! FOR CHILDREN.
I'm talking about Nazis in the goddamn White House! Like Steve Bannon, who told the holocaust-denying far-right party in France that "history is on our side", who courted the same alt-right that marched and murdered in Charlottesville, who Trump called "very fine people", the Steve Bannon whose rag of a newspaper likes to bracket some names with little globes so their readers know they're talking about evil, globalist Jeeews.
I'm talking about Donald fucking Trump! The Democrats didn't elect Trump! TWICE. The Democrats aren't supporting him, aren't protecting him, aren't propping up his shit agenda and policies. The Republicans are the ones still showing up at his goddamn rallies, still kissing the ring of that piece of shit racist, misogynist, transphobic, anti-semitic, rapist thief!
The Dems are a conservative, right-wing party, but they're not Republicans, not by a long shot. Anyone who says the two parties are the same is either dangerously ignorant or a pitifully slack-jawed liar. Either way, don't trust them with anything sharp or heavy.
This is a lecture by Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow", about the disenfranchisement of felons under the penal system since the 1980s.
This is a lecture by Angela Davis, about the Prison-Industrial Complex, a system of profit begun under the United States, but only massively expanded in recent years and now being exported around the globe.
This is a lecture by Tim Wise, in which he mentions that this system developed following 1965. Prior to 1965, the prison system was 2/3rds white, and afterward 2/3rds black. This was not an accident.
This is the documentary "Slavery by Another Name", also a book, by Douglas A Blackmon, detailing how the system of slavery mutated radically after the Civil War. It became far more horrifying and far more profitable.
These are not separate institutions. Slavery began as the bondage of non-Christians in the 17th century. It rapidly evolved into a racist system, the permanent bondage of blacks. The Civil War was followed by Reconstruction, a period in which the North occupied the South, and white Southerners responded with a hostile terrorist insurgency, the likes of which has only been seen every time the United States has tried to occupy foreign soil and impose justice and democracy on an unwilling, hateful, fundamentalist people.
Following the failure of Reconstruction, permanent chattel slavery became more horrible as once valuable private property (black slaves) became cheap public property. The Tragedy of the Commons was played out in the most inhumane fashion imaginable, as people were kidnapped off the streets, hired for pennies, and worked to death for dollars. Profits abounded to white people all around, and black Americans kept in terror and subjugation. Those who were not worked to death in the most horrible slavery were kept in a more gentle slavery, unable to leave or change jobs without employer permission, and subject to the threat of imprisonment and slavery if, at any time, they were unable to provide proof of employment.
Blackmon is incorrect to say that the system ended with the Civil War. "Arrest the closest nigger" persisted into the mid-sixties, when it was used to radically transform the prison population of the United States. As Wise pointed out, the demographics of the prison system reversed in the aftermath of Civil Rights. People of color were forced into a cycle of imprisonment and poverty from which there was no escape, which cycle exists today.
The so-called War on Drugs was begun under President Nixon as part of his Southern Strategy in the 70s. It was a many-pronged approach to winning the votes of fearful, racist, white voters in the South. Without much subtlety, the Republican Party promised to round up "them" and get them off the streets. When crack appeared in the 80s, the Reagan Presidency saw it as a blessing from God and began a massive propaganda campaign, flooding the airwaves with messages about crack addicts and crack babies.
It is no accident that, to this day, mandatory minimums are higher for crack cocaine than for powder cocaine. It is no accident that 90% of those targeted by New York City's infamous Stop and Frisk program are people of color, even though white people are at least as likely to carry, use, and sell drugs. It is no accident that 80% of routine traffic stops are people of color, even though white people are 80% of drivers.
The War on Drugs is a lie. It's the War on Blacks. The war on the Brown. This is a system that has been put in place to subjugate, imprison, to terrorize those who frighten the residents of Leave-it-to-Beaverville. Americans of African decent, of hispanic decent, of native decent. Native Americans have more people imprisoned per capita than any other population in the US. And once you've been imprisoned, you cannot leave.
Once you have been convicted of a felony, you're unemployable. You can't even work at McDonalds. Any employer who does hire you holds a palpable threat over your head. You can be fired at any time, or accused at any time of a crime and no court will ever be on your side.
Once you have been convicted of a felony, you're homeless. It is legal to discriminate on the basis of conviction. A felon must beg for housing from anyone with a room to spare, and no one is obliged to give it to him.
Once you have been convicted of a felony, you're starving. Unemployed and homeless, felons are ineligible for food stamps.
Unemployed, unhoused, unfed, what can a felon do? What desperate choice? You're not rejected by the system, you're a victim of the system. Once convicted you are forever caught in a trap made all the worse by the fact that you are expected to pay of thousands of dollars in fines and fees. You're expected to pay rent for your time in prison. And you're expected to work while in prison.
Is it any wonder that privatized American prisons are traded on the New York Stock Exchange? Is it any wonder that this system of abuse and exploitation is being exported around the world?
Is there any hope?
Angela Davis argues movingly for the elimination of the prison system, and she tells you to reject the question, "What will you replace it with?" What would you have replaced slavery with?
There are those who need to be removed from society for being a danger to others. Rapists, murderers, unrepentant psychopaths. But our penal system is not the answer to that question. Our penal system is designed, and always has been, to create, sustain, and control a slave caste, a caste composed primarily of people of color. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued on New Year's Day, 1863; 150 years ago, but slavery never died.
We need a new call for abolition. We need a new birth of freedom. We need an end to this Peculiar Institution, 400 years in the making.
