“What the shroom-ghost of J.C. says here in Revelations is exactly the problem with Democrats”
I hate Democrats.
✨ This final installment of Hate Read Season 2 is brought to you by the legendary champion of indie media herself, Ruth Ann Harnisch, of the Harnisch Foundation. ✨
I hate Democrats. I know this will make a lot of you mad because I’ve seen Rachel Maddow’s comment section, aka Bluesky. But I’d like to make sure you’re mad about what I am saying, so let me start by clarifying what I’m not saying. I’m not saying I don’t hate Republicans. I hate them almost as much as I hate Democrats, and I hate their social and policy goals more.
I hate Republicans because they’re my political enemies, and in a democracy, politics is the way we make decisions that we would otherwise make by killing each other. Republicans start from the premise that they’d like to make society worse in certain specific ways, and then they do politics so as to advance those deplorable goals. I dislike their goals, and I think most Republicans are genuinely bad people who should die in a fire, but I also understand them. They do politics in a way that makes sense, if you start from their odious premises and have a basic understanding of what politics is for. So I’m not saying “both parties are the saaaame, man,” which is idiotic and also the most common misreading of this opinion. They’re obviously not the same. Republicans want the world to be worse, whereas Democrats merely don’t want it to be better.
I’m also not saying I hate you, if you’re someone who genuinely yearns for positive change and/or for a society where people are free from the crushing terror of medical bankruptcy, free from the sucking void of impending homelessness that yawns beneath all our feet just one bad career move or one case of long COVID away. If you think the whole point of America is to be a place where anyone in the world can come and be safe and free and contribute to their community, but you vote for Democrats because, like, what else are you gonna do? — I’m not talking about you. I personally won’t vote for Democrats anymore (with extremely rare exceptions) but I understand if you make the opposite choice. It’s a valid choice, provided you also hate them.
So why should you and I hate the Democrats? Chapter 3 verses 15 and 16 in the book of Revelations say:
“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”
I’m not a Christian myself, but I do think there’s some good stuff in their book. I wish more of them would read it. Matthew 25:45 is a real banger, for example. What the shroom-ghost of J.C. says here in Revelations is exactly the problem with Democrats. They’re not cold — they don’t want to institute a white apartheid theocracy, so points for that I guess — but they’re also not hot. They’re lukewarm. They want things basically to stay the same. Maybe we could tweak some regulations here or adjust the zoning a bit there, to permit (or prevent) that condo development (depending on whose neighborhood the condo development would be built in). The right wants to change things for the worse, the left wants to change things for the better, and the Democratic Party stands in the middle to wave the flag of mediocrity and resist all change out of fear.
I imagine there are a lot of Democrats reading this, so I’m trying to keep it at about a fifth grade level. In case you’re already lost, let me put it a different way with an example from a book that you probably have seen the movie of. In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the Big Bad was Sauron: Giant all-seeing eye of fire, violent orc/goblin hybrid minions, ecological devastation purely for the fun of it, etc. Standard Republican stuff. He’s obviously evil, he makes no secret of it. If you want to be Team Evil, you join Sauron. It’s simple and straightforward. You don’t gotta hand it to him, but you do have to respect the clarity of purpose.
On the other hand, you’ve got the wizard Saruman the White. He’s supposed to be in charge of the forces fighting Sauron, but he decides that while Sauron is obviously no bueno, some of his ideas are not entirely no bueno, such as the one about one powerful wizard having the magic rings that control everything, provided that powerful wizard is a Good Guy like ol’ Saruman. In theory, Saruman wants Middle Earth to be better. But in practice, he’s the most contemptible piece of shit in the entire trilogy. Sauron may be evil incarnate, but I feel like me and Sauron could both look at Saruman and be like “would you get a load of this fucking guy?”
But this is all pretty vague so far, so let’s get into some specific policy disputes and analyze the electoral and political calculus underpinning them. Lmao just kidding, that sounds like the most boring thing I can imagine. This is a polemic, I’m not trying to convince you. If you disagree, I don’t care. So instead let’s move on to the most common (and wrong) response: if you hate Democrats so much, why don’t you join them? It’s not usually phrased that way — often it’s more like “if you don’t like what the Democratic Party does, why don’t you get involved and change it, smartass?” But it’s the same thing. When I tell people I think Democrats suck, they tell me I should volunteer to spend my free time in stuffy rooms listening to them say their dumb ideas directly at me. No thank you!
In fact, to my shame, I’ve already tried this. I have been an active Democrat in the past, and on both sides of the volunteer / consultant divide, no less. I was a professional Democrat some time ago, working almost exclusively for the most supposedly “progressive” candidates in the party. In the years since, almost every politician I worked for has been convicted of some kind of corruption or misconduct. Most of them have gone to jail. And these are not political hit jobs, they’re well-known public corruption cases that you’ve heard of involving people who were clearly guilty. I’m not saying every leading Democrat is a crook, but every one I worked for was, and I don’t have any reason to think my clients were especially crooked, so draw your own conclusions. I know I have.
I’ve also gotten involved at the local level and participated in the “grassroots.” Have you? It fucking sucks. The most accessible levels of the party are almost entirely powerless, and seem intentionally organized so as to remain that way. You think you’ve seen the narcissism of small differences? Wait until you are stuck in hour three of a committee meeting listening to someone whom you share 90 percent of your politics with but still fantasizing about how good it would feel to watch them get hit by a bus. If you want to meet the worst person in your town who also believes school lunch should be free, join your local Democratic Party.
The purpose of a system is what it does, and the purpose of the Democratic Party is to absorb and dissipate the political energy of the majority of Americans who desperately need positive social change. Democrats themselves are not the problem. We have much bigger problems to solve, but until the Democrats get out of the way, there is absolutely no hope of solving them. The sooner the Democratic Party collapses, the better.
BANGER
But also like, we are so fucked
not wrong, but also not a single solution offered for what to do in a majoritarian voting system where there will only ever be 2 parties