I'm a Tom Joad democrat, a prison reform democrat, an anti-poverty democrat and a pro-justice democrat - so the party left me a long time ago...and they never looked back as they went chasing after the fat checkbook crowd. The few indisputably good things the party has done, such as the war on poverty and support for the civil rights movement, recede into the distant past as a brave new world emerges in which we are left to wonder just what IS the difference between neocons and neolibs, and whether democrats bombing the world in an unending war orgy is any better than repubs doing the exact same thing. The Military Industrial Complex is an evil piece of work and the same can be said about anyone who supports it. All the fear mongering, hate and bullshit in the world cannot change that simple fact.
Democrats (not all of them of course, but enough of them) enabled the Bush administration in some of the worst crimes against humanity in modern history: the illegal invasion of Iraq, the shameful atrocities at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo and elsewhere, kidnappings, torture, murders, assassinations, double-taps such as that shown in the Chelsea Manning video and on and on.
Every single one of the thousands of Americans who stooped to the torture of their fellow human beings got a pass, except the guy who reported it. He (John Kiriakou), and only he, went to prison.
These crimes are well documented. Even though the CIA illegally and outrageously destroyed video evidence and have told a million shameless lies to try to cover it up – everybody knows what they did – what WE did. Everybody knows that the United States stooped to the lowest and most disgusting forms of human behavior - that we committed outrageous crimes against humanity. And that we stand in denial and have done absolutely nothing to atone for it. It is obvious to everyone that we are utterly without honor or human decency.
These crimes will never be forgotten and pretending like they never happened is an insult to the whole world – and a shameful doubling-down on our complicity. We correct these wrongs or we own them.
The outrageous failure to prosecute the criminals in the Bush administration is a stain on democracy and makes the USA, as a whole, and both parties in particular, complicit in the Bush administration's crimes. And if we in the rank and file of either party put up with this horrendously low standard of behavior, we're complicit too.
My judgment is especially harsh for the Democratic Party because the whole world looked to them for justice and were denied. Justice is what we owed the world. JUSTICE!
The prospect of a Republican freak out is no excuse for Democrats not pursuing justice. We're always crowing about what a great nation we are – but we can't even manage to bring our own worst and most public in-your-face criminals to justice.
This is not political, it's criminal. They stole trillions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury and lied us into invading what they knew damned well was the wrong country costing hundreds of thousands of lives, creating untold human misery and creating ISIS and a global jihad. And they did it on purpose so they could have their precious forever war and a Military Industrial Complex wet dream. And they only got away with it because the Democratic Party enabled them, aided and abetted them and then let them slide. All for filthy lucre. What could be more shameful?
There is no moral high ground left for us, we've pissed it all away. We stand before the world naked in our hypocrisy. Torturers, thieves, bullies, murderers - not exactly the legacy most of us hoped for.
In the long list of people, things or entities that have let us down over the past couple of decades, the Democratic Party is, sadly, right up there with the best of them. And if we as dems don't face it, we'll never change anything for the better.
Unpunished thieves and war criminals are still an albatross around our nation's neck. Ask your candidate what they are going to do about that.