I am a progressive.
I am a skeptic.
I am a cynic.
Those three simple sentences probably best describe my approach to politics and my philosophy and practice of life. I describe myself thus being quite aware of the ancient and contemporary connotative and denotative meanings of the words.
The basic idea, I guess, is that I believe that we homo sapiens tend to bitch, whine, and moan our way through and to progress and are susceptible to backsliding or defaulting to the old ways and patterns. But the old ways never last too long, even though the backsliding can and often does come with a price.
But we do progress.
When my meter of political cynicism reads full, I have a habit of reading about the practice of politics in other times and places, especially the practice of politics in ancient Athens and Rome. After all, no matter how toxic contemporary American politics can get, at least American politicians aren’t being run off of cliffs or having their severed head and hands displayed outside the US Capitol (at least not yet). So lately I’ve been reading Cicero’s orations concerning the criminal prosecution of the Roman provincial governor Verres; a catalog of criminal activity that would make Rod Blagojevich blush with envy. But I’ve noticed that recent commentary regarding the apparent attempt of the campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders to reach out to supporters of Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump is breaking DK5 down, as it rightfully should. So I will shelve Cicero’s Iliad-ic catalog of the Sicilian governor’s crimes for the time being and say a thing or two about the scandale du jour.
I truly believe that when you scratch the surface and the spin of the overwhelming majority of politicians (or at least those politicians deemed “successful”), what you find is...a politician that will do almost anything (presumably legal, that is) to get that one extra and possibly decisive vote. Sure, if warranted, some politicians refuse to do some things on occasion (e.g. John McCain in Minnesota with the lady who called Barack Obama an “Arab” in 2008) but, IMO, those exceptions are few.
A brief summary of the issue at hand: There are a number of news reports that Senator Bernie Sanders himself, his campaign, and his field workers are making direct appeals to supporters of Donald Trump and are soliciting the votes of potential Trump supporters for the upcoming Democratic primaries.
Is the Sanders campaign making appeals to Donald Trump voters? Yes. And that goes all the way down to the canvassing scripts used in the field.
Are “Donald Trump supporters” racist and xenophobic? For the most part, yes.
Is the Sanders campaign using racism and xenophobia to appeal to these potential Trump supporters? Of course, not.
There’s equal amounts of ruthlessness and resignation in this latest strategy of the Sanders campaign. Both the ruthlessness and the resignation comes in making the appeal, itself, and in going public with the appeal considering that Senator Sanders’ lagging (though improving) poll numbers with potential racial/ethnic minority voters. Of course, any candidate for office is responsible for putting together a sufficiently large electoral coalition to win, so, simply by the numbers, one can’t blame Sanders for trying.
The issue is that the Democrats already have a “sufficiently large electoral coalition” to win national elections in presidential years. Barack Obama won two national elections rather decisively and the 2016 GOP candidates aren’t even as good as the GOP candidates in 2008 and 2012 (and the GOP candidates in those elections weren’t even good). I will allow that it is quite possible that the precise components of the “Obama coalition” might not be accessible without Barack Obama at the top of the presidential ticket and it is the responsibility of the potential candidate to put together a coalition that can win in November 2016.
At this point, I am unsure that either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders can do that.
But for someone who, by his own choice, has a distinct monetary and resource disadvantage this primary season, it seems (at least to me) to be a foolish waste of time, money, and resources attempting to make distinctions between the “racist” and “non-racist” supporters of Donald Trump. Frankly, I don’t think that Senator Sanders even cares about making that distinction; I think that he simply wants enough votes in this Democratic presidential primary to win the nomination.
Without the Sanders campaign team being able to make that distinction, I don’t want to take the risk of these potential votes and, more significantly, the racist baggage that these votes will inevitably bring to the Democratic Party; hell, we have enough racism within the Democratic Party as it is.
One more thing:
Among the hundreds of comments in this topic, there are a number of comments suggesting that those of us who either think that the Sanders campaign is wrong-headed or are simply plain disgusted by the attempts of the Sanders campaign to “court” Trump voters should, instead, “work with” these voters and help them to realize the errors of their thinking and to help them realize that they are being duped by the oligarchy.
Or some shit like that.
I (and many other commenters and diarists) have said it before and I will repeat it here; many of these voters actually do prioritize racism over economic inequality, for whatever reason. Therefore, Donald Trump (and the Republican Party as a whole) is acting in their best interest, in a way.
Why are those of us who are disgusted with the racism, sexism, and homophobia that emanates from people who watch “news” outlets like Fox News being asked time and again to “work with” these people?
I suppose that there’s the whole “enlightened self-interest” aspect of it. But I also don’t appreciate being lectured about all of this “educating” of racist, sexist, and homophobic people that I’m supposed to do, especially within the context of an election campaign when all that the people who are doing the asking want is a damn vote.
I will also add that it probably is much easier to toss shade at a readily identifiable “other” for almost any reason than it is to toss shade at your mother, father, grandparent, sibling, or maybe even your child. Or someone that looks like them or even lives in their neighborhood.
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Of course, the title of this new weekly column, As I Da*n Well Please, is a homage to George Orwell and his column “As I Please”, which was featured in the socialist-leaning Tribune magazine from 1943 to 1948. I’ve written and rewritten this diary three different times and it’s been in my diary queue for months. Appropriating this title also means that I am, in part, taking on the literary mantle of George Orwell; an author that I have enjoyed reading for decades. Do not read this as an endorsement of every position that Orwell took on political and literary matters. Do read this column as an appreciation of the range of subjects that Orwell discussed in a plain-speaking literary style.
Also read the title of this column as an act of defiance. Repeatedly over the years (my friend Bravenak’s diary being but one example), people tend not to like what minorities seem to say or how we say it. We’re simply too sensitive, deluded, we don’t have enough information, and all other matter of things. It comes from all sides of the political divide.
Like Orwell’s AIP column, I expect that the majority of the topics in this column will be literary matters or about the intersection of literary or political matters. Occasionally, I will veer off in to something frivolous. Maybe you’ll get to know a more about how macabre the mind of a man that was raised, in part, reading various mystery magazines belonging to Mom.
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I love learning new words and seeing old words being used in interesting ways. In Christopher Hitchens’ essay, Jefferson and the Muslim Pirates, I found both:
“But now the curious reader may choose from a freshet of writing on the subject.”
It’s easy to infer from the context, in part, what this sentence means. But what a wonderful word and concept chosen by Mr. Hitchens.
Freshet
(As I Da*n Well Please will appear every Friday around 9-ish.)