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This entry is adapted from a Facebook post I made earlier today.
One of the commenters on this "Rising" video sez, "Catering to Biden Republicans may usher in a true third party." Krystal Ball is pretty canny, but does she see the same implications of the Democrats' nationally televised slide to the right? The Biden Republican phenomenon is a continuation of the #NeverTrump Republicans who came to light in 2016. It's related to how MSNBC tends to invite Military-Industrial Complex types on to talk foreign & defense policy, yet seldom invites peace activists to provide contrasting views. I foresee a major realignment in the next decade, more of a flow than a sudden seismic shift. What emerges will depend on whether millions of Democrats stick with the party our of habit or bolt in disgust. It may even strengthen the Libertarian Party while the left unites under the Greens, the People's Party, or a brand new coalition. Scenario
Needless to say, I don't think a dominant Democratic Party is a good thing. It will still be the "reasonable" head of the two-headed War & Wall Street Party, more beholden to mega-donors than to voters or citizen advocates, still OK with drone strikes & deportations & market-based solutions to every crisis that comes along. Krystal and the Greens I have whined here and elsewhere about Krystal Ball's reluctance even to hypothesize about the Green Party or the incipient People's Party as a haven for progressive voters. But look at the group with whom she's hanging out today:
For the most part, I like peoplesparty.org, the redesigned website of the Movement a People's Party, If you navigate to the old domain, forapeoplesparty.org, it redirects you to the new one. Once you get there, you're treated to an au courant, NationBuilder-style layer-cake homepage with a rotating gallery of photos at the top. Some of the photos include founder Nick Brana with a group of fellow MPP ralliers. The rest...well, that's the part I don't like so much.
Even if the many photos that adorn the site are not purchased from istockphoto.com or one of its competitors, they most definitely have the look of stock photos. They consist mostly of well-scrubbed and -coiffed Millennials of various ethnicities, some sitting and smiling or daydreaming or looking with intensity at the camera, some conversing, some doing what looks like work. I'm looking forward to a time when MPP can replace the stock-looking images with actual of People's Party activists in action. Yeah, I've taken another longer-than-usual hiatus from blogging. So much is happening, and I've been busy not commenting on it here. Below, however, I have some observations about recent developments on the local Green front.
This post is completely lacking in links, because I'm not feeling sufficient enthusiasm to find pages to link to. If you want more information about stuff referenced herein, look it up yourself. Just Another Lazy Unemployed Person—Moi? Kinda. Unemployment may give me more time to blog, but it has also knocked me off the routine that I had developed. In my office at the university, I could hammer out chunks of bloggage between and around my various duties. Then I could edit them so they didn't read like something I hammered out between and around said duties. I can do that at home, too, but I'm having trouble adapting to the new circumstances. With domestic business and job hunting to attend to during the day, I also don't consume what had become my regular diet of podcasts and news analysis videos. It's been several weeks since I last listened to a weekly installment of Jeremy Scahill's Intercepted, for example.
Through a somewhat fortuitous set of circumstances, I find myself at work an hour earlier than usual. Suffice to say that the cable is out at home, I woke up at 1 am, I was unable to get back to sleep, and after reading the first chapter of Ray Raphael's A People's History of the American Revolution I had the urge to blog. So instead of seeking out an early-morning coffee hut with dodgy wi-fi, I headed to the office.
Apologies if this entry is a sprawling mess, but it's not easy to keep big-picture observations short and tidy. This past week-plus, instead of posting individual entries on individual news items, I waited until all the items congealed into a gestalt before commenting on them here. The gestalt in question has one of the items at its focal point: all the saber-rattling and other hubbub over Venezuela.
I couldn't resist using that for a headline. (Translation: Sorry, I couldn't think up a cleverer headline than that.) About a week before Election Day, I began earnestly considering transferring (or perhaps expanding) my allegiance into the Movement for a People's Party. I have already signed up to volunteer and should soon receive an organizing packet from the group's membership coordinator. In lieu of a big, momentous announcement of a new direction, this post is my "soft opening." I just hope it works out better than my declaration last summer that I would be working with Lina Hidalgo's campaign and rebooting the county chapter of Move to Amend—neither of which, to my continued bewilderment, actually happened. (This is a great illustration of why I prefer not to make plans.) Of all the progressive post-Bernie spin-offs that I've seen, only MPP has held firm to its doctrine that the Democratic Party is not a friend to Progressives. This is not equal to saying that individual Democratic candidates or voters are all to be painted with the Enemy Brush; however, per MPP, neither corporate party is reformable from within, and neither is not worth our time, money, or labor. Becoming a Brana Bro As if to confirm my lingering suspicions, MPP organizer and spokesperson Nick Brana appeared in a lengthy segment with Jimmy Dore et al Friday, wherein Brana said a lot of things that got me nodding along. Most pertinent of all is this: Whatever joy Democrats and their friends may get from reclaiming a majority in the US House, plus picking up a few governorships, this victory for the Democratic Party and its candidates is not a victory for Progressives, their policies, or indeed for the planet. |
Blogging Sporadically since 2014Here you will find political campaign-related entries, as well as some about my literature, Houston underground arts, peace & justice, urban cycling, soccer, alt-religion, and other topics. Categories
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