I have a confession to make: I have flirted with the radical left for quite some time, even after the flameout of Bernie Sanders’ ‘social democrat’ campaign for the Democratic Party nomination. What does that mean? It means I have maintained open communications with supporters of Jill Stein and Gloria la Riva (a wonderful candidate running under the Party for Socialism and Liberation banner). These are candidates and parties that have little use for the standard two-party election hustle and can fairly be said to view Hillary as “just as bad” as Trump. While I cannot speak authoritatively for any, much less all, of these parties, their philosophy can be expressed as a burning conviction that neither of the two major parties is devoted to advancing the interests of the working class. And that only a ‘workers’ party’ can do battle with post-industrial capitalism to produce real gains for workers.
There’s a part of me that agrees with that analysis (hence my flirtation). But I had to draw the line in the past few months as it became clear that the people in my social media feeds supporting the Greens, PSL, the Workers World Party (aka “ANSWER”) actually did view Hillary as just as bad as Trump. No amount of my trying to contrast the mere ‘whiff’ of unsubstantiated scandal around Hillary with the unequivocal 'stench' of blatant bribery by Trump counted for anything with these folk. In their minds, Trump’s willingness to use nuclear weapons was no worse than the ill effects they ascribed to Hillary’s meddling in Central America (Honduras) and the Middle East (Libya). Some went so far as to intimate that Hillary was actually worse than Trump because, while Trump is full of bombast and bluster. Hillary’s policy advocacy had actually resulted in real deaths and real wounds.
Make no mistake, these are people who never agreed with Bernie Sanders either, seeing him as, at best, a toady for death-stage capitalism and imperialism and, at worst, a cynical sheepherder for Clinton, hoping to distract the radical left from its mission to advance the interests of the working class and corral them into support for Clinton.
Now you might think from the foregoing that I actually share some of this critique of Secretary Clinton. You would not be entirely incorrect. I wish Ms. Clinton were a socialist and not a capitalist, because I consider myself a Socialist (and not a Sanders-esque Social Democrat). But that fantasy belongs in the world of make-believe, not in the world of grown ups, where votes have consequences . . . and casualties.
These folks are prepared to treat small acts by Clinton as actually worse than Trump’s threat to deport 11 million workers or register all Muslims residing in the U.S. And so, at a certain point, I had to say “Enough.” If the fact that 94% of Black Americans support Clinton wasn’t enough to convince these nominal supporters of Black Lives Matter that there was and is a qualitative difference between Clinton and Trump, nothing I said was going to convince them either. I have consequently begun to purge them from my lists on Facebook and other social media. I use the word “purge” fully aware of its Stalin-esque connotations. (Oh, by the way, Stalin is the subject of some rather uncriticial admiration\veneration among certain folks in these circles). I had already purged anyone who evinced even the slightest hint of support for Trump and now I’m purging anyone who maintains this moronic idiocy that Clinton and Trump are the same.
When I call them on their seeming support for Trump, they assure me that they have no plans to vote for Trump or Clinton. Telling them that our two-party system means that in battleground states a vote for anyone other than Clinton is in effect a vote for Trump means nothing to them. It breaks my heart, it really does, as these are some well-meaning folks, but they are so blinded by their hatred of capitalism (even while they will grudgingly concede it a vast improvement over feudalism). I am no big fan of capitalism and note that it has been the dominant economic system for only about 400 years, give or take, no more than the blink of an eye in the 100,000 years homo sapiens has been a viable species.
But this election is so important, its outcome so crucial to the more vulnerable among us, that I simply cannot countenance any flirtation with actions or words that might lead to a “President Trump.” The stomach lurches and the mind recoils at the prospect. My erstwhile friends on the alt-Left laughingly dismiss my invocations of 1932 Weimar. There’s no way, they say, that Trump actually could deport those 11 million Latinos or register every Muslim. It’s unconstitutional. It doesn’t seem to matter that I mention that the same ‘devil may care’ attitude animated 1930s Weimar when it came to what Hitler actually could accomplish. And so I must reluctantly bid adieu to my comrades on the alt-Left.
