There has been a lot of criticism of the Democratic party, the left, and the media within the left – but it seems people do everything but demonize the actual fascists. The reason is because it is easy to hit the left – they don’t really holler. But the right – you don’t even have to poke it, just look at it the wrong way, and they will hit without mercy.

The left is deserved of criticism – plenty of it – but at this point, this level of flagellation is indicative of a refusal to look at the over-arching arc of why things may be the way they are, and what the left – and the people on the left – are guilty of. At the same time, I don’t know the solution to get out of it.

Recently, in Jon Stewart and AOC’s interview, Jon makes a comment about how Obamacare is barely help to the working class, but actually hands over even more funds to insurance companies – and how that is a criticism of how the left can’t get anything done. What he fails to mention is that many of the same people who voted in Obama also voted in his opposition in congress, the same people who filibustered and gutted the original Obamacare that was supposed to be a much more radical healthcare reform.

There’s a pattern people have noticed on reddit – that conservatives, after one of Trump’s executive orders or some other stupid thing he does, will criticize it. However, within 24 hours, after the right-wing media cycle gets to them, they all fall in line. How do you fight a huge conglomerate such as the right-wing media propaganda machine? How do you keep people at the place of questioning – of thinking for themselves, before the machine lulls and bullies them back into complacency?

The left canceled and ousted Al Franken for sexual misconduct – a serious charge and something that deserved repudiation and consequence – but failed to replace him with someone just as effective on the left. This isn’t to say that Al Franken’s conduct was right – it wasn’t. However, it is an observation of the conundrum the left is in. We demand perfection from our politicians, and we demand perfection from the people who are on “our side”. Part of it is the fact that activism (a large part of the left) attracts many narcissistic types with large egos, who want the fame and accolades and the virtue signaling that comes with having the “right views”. Another part of it is that many “traditionally” on the left also come from especially traumatized backgrounds – immigrants, poc, women, the disabled, the extremely poor, trans, LGBTQ+ – and so those people tend to be much more easily triggered, and feel a need to defend the safety of their communities.

Many people on the left are now criticizing the Democrats and other left-wing politicians for not being willing to do the same things the right seems to be doing – executive orders, disregard the constitution, filibuster and essentially halt the government, etc. However, I guarantee that if any politician on the left actually dared to do such things, they’d have been thrown to the wolves. We laugh now at the left wanting to “go high while they go low”, but they did that specifically because their constituents demanded that of them. Frankly, it’s hard not to see the left as a bunch of hard-liner critics who want to spend all their time pointing fingers but refuse to reflect on their own conduct, because that’s exactly what they do over and over, and then are astounded when people get tired. I know, because I’ve been guilty of that exact conduct, and have had that conduct thrown at me. I’ve had white LGBTQ+ folks scream at me, a person of color, that I cannot possibly imagine what it feels like to be oppressed or fear for their lives because of discrimination. They expect me to extend compassion to their suffering, to center them because of their traumas, but it doesn’t occur to many of them that they owe me the same.

There’s a reason why it doesn’t surprise me that, since the passing of the civil rights act, the Democrats have never won the white vote. Racism is so ingrained in the foundation of this country that even those who purport to fight against it immediately retreat to their racist reflexes when threatened. Then, they feel the shame, and lash out – again, at the most vulnerable they feel safe lashing out against, the non-white people.

The right is willing to point fingers at the left exclusively without any repudiation of their own politicians as long as those politicians get what they want done – and that’s how they win. The left isn’t satisfied with their politicians getting the things they want done, they also demand that those politicians must do it the “right way”, perfectly. And here’s the thing – if we decide to stop caring how we conduct ourselves, then where does it end? Can we come to a consensus of what’s actually “bad enough” that we’ve gone too far?

This is the rub, the friction of the world. It’s easier and easier for those with means to do bad things without fear of consequence, but the only way to counter those things, it seems, is to be willing to do at least some of those same “bad things”. I don’t have an answer for that except, I guess, what I said in my last post – we have to be willing to be honest, realistic, truthful of how the world is – while also being willing to open space for people to have a pathway back into community if they did something that wronged that community. Compassion is hard when you’re traumatized, burnt out, and scared – but it is still the only way I know out of this.

Democrats – it is time to announce a simple platform. We want to bring the fruit of labor back to the laborers and out of the pockets of the oligarchs. We need to hold accountable those companies that exploit workers by hiring the undocumented and unprotected. If we still have medicare, it needs to be expanded so that everyone has a public option – and then we can show that, in fact, the public option is great and more than competitive against the greedy insurance companies. We fund the research that goes into making the products that companies profit off of.

If shareholders are who the companies care about, then every person who works for a publicly-traded company is entitled to shares upon hiring as those shares are a part of the product they create. We should make laws that guarantee laborers are given a share of the company they labor for – and if they leave the company, those shares are then automatically sold off. There’s probably holes in this idea, but the premise is that laborers (programmers, construction, cashiers, whatever the labor is) should get a share of the bounties of what they produce.

The left is the party of unions, and the left is dedicated to supporting unions and their members. All companies that try to break unions will be penalized.

Etc….etc…etc…