Not Just Any Democrat

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Friday October 31, 2014 · 9:37 AM PDT

2014/10/31 · 09:37

The conundrum for progressive Democrats is: Just when does it become acceptable in the face of a clearly bad candidate to bear the Hobsonâs choice and put being a Democrat first and a progressive second, despite the obnoxiousness of it all? At what level does it justify putting being a Democratic voter ahead of being a progressive one, and just what is the turning point at which voting for a clearly hidebound Democrat in order to supposedly prevent the âgreater evilâ of a Republican being elected becomes highly questionable for a clear progressive to stomach? At what point does the Democratic candidate become so bad that it is hardly acceptable for a progressive to support him/her despite the Republican threat of winning, and at what point is the supposed difference between a clearly regressive Democrat and a Republican become so negligible, so clearly the choice between Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber one simply says, âA plague on both your houses!â and either âvotes oneâs conscienceâ for a third-party candidate with no chance of winning, or sits out the election altogether?

These are hardly academic questions, as we look at the 2014 elections and beyond and see Democratic politicians and possible candidates who clearly pose problems for committed Democrat progressives as well as for those usually Democratic-voting persons whose political conscience and involvement are fueled by support of progressive, economically populist, and socially equitable policies. Consider how we progressives must honestly feel about candidates and candidacies of Democrats such as Andrew Cuomo, Rahm Emmanuel, or Hillary Clinton, not to mention those other Democrats running in 2014 who are making clear lurches toward the center-right and even the right, of whom several are prominent. Here we might recall as relevant the narrow victory of Kshama Sawant of the Socialist Alternative ticket in the Seattle city council race, where she just barely beat out a Democrat. Yet itâs obvious that, now in office, sheâs advocating legislation and supporting policies that progressive Democrats can easily join in supporting and rallying around. Same goes for the fiery, outspoken populist independent Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, an openly-avowed democratic socialist whose recent announcement that heâs considering a Presidential run for 2016 has excited many. Arenât we who usually vote Democratic and consider ourselves progressives far more akin to Kshama Sawant, to Bernie Sanders, or to Cuomoâs Green Party challenger in the upcoming New York election, Howie Hawkins, than we are to many self-proclaimed Democrats, even as we deride ourselves for our âunrealisticâ sympathies?

GeorgeFishDisgruntledLeftist

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Saturday July 26, 2014 · 4:56 PM PDT

2014/07/26 · 16:56

It has to be stated bluntly: Israel’s land and air attacks on Gaza, which began July 8 ostensibly in “self-defense” against Hamas rocket launches into Israel, have clearly gone too far. Israel’s lopsided advantage in military firepower used against the tiny, densely-populated, overwhelmingly civilian Palestinian enclave of Gaza, accompanied with an also lopsided number of Palestinian civilian casualties compared to the number of Israeli civilians killed by Hamas rocket fire, make a mockery of any Israeli pretense of acting solely in self-defense, operating solely because it was provoked by Hamas. Numbers do not lie, and the numbers tell quite another story. According to the New York Times Daily Tally of attacks and death attributable to both sides, as of July 25, 2014, Israel had attacked 3,209 targets in Gaza and killed 856 Palestinians, most of them civilians; by contrast, Hamas had fired 2,233 rockets into Israel, many of them crude, inaccurate and easily intercepted by Israel’s Iron Shield missile intercept system. As a result, only 40 Israeli civilians had been killed by such rockets, and the total number launched as of the 25th were nearly 1,000 fewer than the number of Gaza targets attacked by Israeli forces. Such is not “self-defense” by any reasonable definition of the term.

Nor is the Israeli claim that Hamas is holding the 1.8 million inhabitants of Gaza essentially hostage and using them as “human shields” any more credible than that of “self-defense.” In the one election held to determine the Palestinian government of Gaza, Hamas won, although it was not allowed to govern. Hamas holds Gaza “hostage” because members of Hamas themselves are Gazans, they also live there, same as the non-Hamas population. Essentially they are akin to a guerilla force—and moreover, a guerilla force whose predecessors were financed and encouraged by Israel itself as a religious foil against the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization, PLO, and Israel’s then arch-terrorist of the day, Yasser Arafat. Now the PLO’s successor, the Palestinian Authority, or PA, are the “good guys” to the Israelis, while Hamas has become the arch-terrorist of the current day. As Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery mentioned recently in CounterPunch, “If Hamas did not exist, Israel would have to invent it.”

An update on Palestinian casualties a little before 5:30 P.M. Eastern Standard Time July 26 from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation put the number dead as at least 1,030, mostly civilians. A hundred bodies alone had been pulled from rubble. By contrast, the number of Israeli military deaths was only 42.

GeorgeFishDisgruntledLeftist

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Saturday June 14, 2014 · 2:20 AM PDT

2014/06/14 · 02:20

Tal Fortgang, the Princeton freshman become famous overnight as the “Poster Child of White Privilege” because of his published screed defending his exalted socio-economic status as his natural right due to merit, has brought the issue of privilege vs. just rewards of individual merit once again forcibly into our consciousness, as he has been embraced by conservatives and vilified by liberals/persons of the left as exemplary on both sides of “That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” Even down to Fortgang’s claim that his fortuity to be born of already socio-economically exalted ancestry was somehow even a special merit of his which he earned through hard work himself! Never mind, of course, the recent talk at Princeton’s commencement by a Princeton graduate, Class of 2012, Michael Lewis, where he emphasized that success invariably has a strong element of luck and advantage about it, and that it is a duty of those who are become successful not to feel selfishly entitled to it, but to help others not so fortunate. Lewis’s notable speech provoked an interview with him on PBS that was posted on the web-sharing site Upworthy: http://www.upworthy.com/....

Fortgang took special umbrage at those who’d admonish him to “Check his privilege,” certainly among them being his fellow Princeton classmates. Which is sardonic in itself, as anyone able to attend Princeton in the first place came to be there because of privilege. Princeton is not only an elite, hard-to-get-into school, it is also an expensive one, and unless one attends solely on the basis of full scholarship, well beyond the needs of most families of college-age children to afford. Those at Princeton who admonished Fortgang to “Check his privilege” were able to do so because, same as Fortgang, they were the beneficiaries of socio-economic privilege themselves!

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Not Just Any Democrat

Israel Has Gone Too Far

Blunt Talk on "Privilege"