As usual, it is not enough to rail against the ills of the world. In addition, we need to point to possible solutions. The following has been suggested to me by a colleague.
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The entire media establishment is shouting at the rooftops that Trump is a demagogue yet Trump's base remains loyal while the left is still fractured and crippled with in-fighting.
Unfortunately many in the establishment left are too wedded to big oil, big pharma and Silicon Valley to advocate for a progressive change, which could include such things as a US$15 minimum wage, single-payer healthcare, debt-free college education at public universities, lower drug costs, a reduction in military spending, some sense of equity for Palestine, a priority for the environment.
You never hear this from the establishment left. It's Trump bad! Trump bad! Trump bad! Ok, we get it, but what are we going to do about it? We had a progressive in Bernie but we sabotaged him (as Wikileaks revealed). Tom Perez was just elected head of the DNC -- he's tied to the corporate world. So now what? I think the left needs to do some serious soul searching or we will continue to lose election after election.
My message to the left: physician, heal thyself! Let's stop with the identity politics and put together a platform we can all rally around. Then we'll have something to challenge Trump with other than name-calling.
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ReplyDeleteHealing ourselves will not mean "stopping" identity politics.
ReplyDeleteTo heal would be to resolve both "identity" and "politics", but certainly not to abandon our pained and chained sisters and brothers just as, or because, the Arc of Moral Courage has arrived at an Intersection.
Meanwhile, with Growth as our Model, we will all die in ecocide. I was thinking the other day of what it would look like to see someone run a campaign for U.S. Congress of even CAN M.P. on a platform of Active Hope that called for recognition of the Great Unraveling and the need for the Great Turning. I saw no possibility.
https://youtu.be/qojnmYJQAxQ
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/88885