The Fake Democratic #Resistance

We’ve had three years of a weak #Resistance movement against the Presidency of Donald Trump, marked by failure, false claims, and a hidden agenda of compliance on the issues that really matter to DC insiders. While the Republicans express publicly their full support of Trump’s agenda of violence, profiteering, and ecological chaos, see how the Democrats vote when it is time to re-up our defense budget. The $738 billion defense budget voted “Yes” on by so many Democrats could build a few renewable energy plants, neighborhoods of affordable family housing, and could also fund a Department of Peace that seeks to uphold diplomacy over militarism.

The failures of the #Resistance, enumerated below, are more than just political embarrassments for the Democrats. These blunders come at the expense of human lives, from Donald Trump’s unopposed support of tyrants like Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Narendra Modi of India, and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil. Under President Trump’s watch, these regimes and others have enacted brutal policies against political opponents, racial and religious minorities, refugees and migrants, journalists, and climate activists under the guise of “national security.” It remains an increasingly growing concern that a similar era is dawning upon American soil. If that isn’t reason enough for people of conscience to run for office to impact change, I don’t know what is.

The #Resistance brought us Russiagate, a McCarthyist scandal that has only further damaged America’s relationship with Russia, a nation with whom we should be cooperating rather than competing. The Democrats, rather than acknowledge the criminality of their National Committee for rigging its primary in favor of Hillary Clinton — who repeatedly has shown no connection to nor a desire to connect with America’s working class — at the expense of Bernie Sanders’ campaign of radical progressive change, chose to concoct a conspiracy theory where the Kremlin swayed the outcome of electoral contests in a number of states that just happened to be hotbeds of working class Rust Belt voters who would never support a candidate whose husband had depleted their jobs 20 years prior. All of this, when it is our Electoral College, not the popular vote, that determines our next President.

The #Resistance brought us a reality show of an impeachment trial over a diplomatic inquiry into a criminal investigation involving the son of former Vice President Joe Biden. That criminal investigation should still take place. This isn’t about pursuing political vendettas, but instead pursuing justice for those who have denied it for the victims of America’s foreign policies since the end of the Cold War. Our financial interference, political meddling, and military actions in other countries’ affairs would warrant action on our part if a competing superpower were to do the same to one of our allies. Julian Assange should not be our top-wanted fugitive, he should be the prosecution’s most sought-after witness in a trial at the International Criminal Court to indict former Presidents and their administrations for crimes against humanity, while also holding accountable their lackeys in the corporate media for propagandizing the mass slaughter of innocents abroad into something for ratings.

The #Resistance brought us the #MeToo movement, which brought to mainstream attention the widespread pattern of sexually abusive men in power from Washington DC to Los Angeles. My anarchist beliefs favor prison abolition by and large, but for those who perpetuate sexual abuse on women and children, the phrase “fire to the prisons” could perhaps only apply after they were locked inside. That said, while #MeToo proved to be a day of reckoning for many, after another rigged primary — more on that later — the National Committee appears ready to coronate a dementia-stricken war criminal who, regardless of the validity of Tara Reade’s claims which I am inclined to believe, is seen on camera groping women and children. Repeatedly. Once accused of it, he laughed it off and even joked about it. My response now remains what it was then: behold your candidate, Democrats.

The #Resistance also brought us a clever primary strategy where Democrats of every stripe flooded the field of contestants, some little more than warm bodies with scripted one-liners in defense of banks (John Delaney, anyone?), Wall Street, or that week’s darling candidate (Beto O’Rourke in particular comes to mind,) others running on singular issues that had been hand-picked from Sanders’ all-encompassing platform, such as Andrew Yang’s proposal for Universal Basic Income (UBI), two fantastic women of color who were wrongly edged out of the debates and singled out for their District Attorney pasts, in the respective cases of Tulsi Gabbard and Kamala Harris, with eventually a half-dozen candidates appearing to make the final stretch. Even Mike Bloomberg decided to get in on the fun, flooding primetime TV this winter with his obnoxious, patronizing, race-baiting ads that did little to hide that he’s simply a camera-shy Trump who has pumped some serious money into Team Blue.

But then they all dropped out…and endorsed latecomer Joe Biden, with several primary winners giving their delegates to the presumed frontrunner. For some reason, I’m reminded of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, where (spoiler alert) there isn’t one killer guilty of thirteen stab wounds, but instead thirteen killers guilty of one stab wound each.