Solidarity and the Fuckery of Identity Politics
By j Starsinger, Sailor Granny
In the spirit of deference to the age of reactionary hysteria, because saying something good about a person doesn’t make you their bitch, I offer this disclaimer...
I am done with this foolish team sport called party politics. I do not like Trump because he is a silly man with poor choices in advisors who was elected by accident. I do not like Biden because he is a slimy creepy lying pony dog soldier. I do not like Bernie because he is a coward and a sell out. I do not approve of Obama’s Wall Street sellout legacy. I did not care for the original village idiot, Bush. I am repulsed by the Clinton’s immorality, deception and obfuscation. I am horrified at Reagan’s initiation of the neocon era. I am perplexed that in a so-called democracy we allow one person to make choices for 300M persons and no one bats an eye as we “elect” another king to be that decision maker on our behalf. Also, Nixon was an awesome dude who started up the EPA, ended school segregation, signed a nuclear arms deal with frikking Russia! I could go on but hopefully that will not be necessary, as you can see that I am for constructive and progressive points of view and actions that help the world be a better place for all it citizens, including the fur, feather and chlorophyll people. So you see, I am into reality, not labels. In my world I see what you do. I hear what you say. Your color and creed are meaningless. What you are is what you do. That is the real meaning of Karma. That said:
The Democrat party is dead. At least what it used to stand for is dead. The party of the people is now a neocon group of wealthy royals who do not give a fig for any working class, underclass people and only a few of the professional class people; because, they have most of the cookies but they desire every crumb. These royals use keywords that were formerly backed by results to keep the lower classes in check. Words and phrases like "work hard" "you will be rewarded for your efforts" "create a level playing field" and "your vote counts" have been rendered into meaningless small mouth noises, in the wake of the current Corprocat giveaway. We can all see that our government is a runaway train. We are having trouble with agreeing how to stop it.
Those mumbled words and phrases are like our currency - vacuous, empty, not backed by anything. There was a time when your word was your bond. Once meaningful words that described real events are now the empty breezes of empire bloviated by powerful royals to hoodwink a trusting populous.
The following is the history of Solidarity from The Labor Commission on Racial and Economic Justice
In the last two decades of the 19th century, more than six million workers were involved in 23,000 strikes. Militia, police, federal troops and Pinkerton detectives often beat and shot strikers, who responded with sabotage, pickets, boycotts and attacks on scabs or strikebreakers. Violent battles were a regular occurrence in the coal fields of Colorado, West Virginia and Pennsylvania between 1900 and 1925; in street car strikes between 1895 and 1929; and in major steel strikes in 1909 and 1910. The Triangle Shirt Waist factory fire killed 146 girls in New York City in 1911, and 30,000 women marched for Bread and Roses in 1912. The scale and scope of industrial action was huge. Outside of California, the army of industrial workers striking and fighting in the early 20th century was predominantly white, although ethnically, religiously and politically diverse. This soon would change.
On this note I come to the main theme of this epistle. Solidarity is fuckery. In this context, Solidarity is a trap. This Blue Solidarity defiles the once noble actions of brave citizens who laid down their lives for a better future. Shame on Blue No Matter Who. The only way to be a better blue is to leave. Demexit.
"Vote blue no matter who," is moral and political suicide. Every time you murder a part of yourself, there is less of you. That is what "Blue Solidarity" tells you to do - to be the lesser you. When you solidly back the enemy, you put the knife in your own back. That is our problem here. Defining the enemy. The Solidarity Myth chips away at your soul from the inside because it forces you to surrender your values. Hold your nose and vote for Joe. This is not edifying, enlightened or promising. I meant to say hope in the previous sentence, but Obama smashed that for us. I can understand why my redneck neighbors are itching for a fight. The funny thing is, the worse things get, the better I understand all those wild-eyed conservatives and their crazy gun culture, mostly.
Do not tell me that the man that graduated 76 out of 85 in his class and then brags that he graduated in the top half, is a honest man. Do not tell me that the man who stole large tracts of speeches from Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock, including the actual gestures made by Kinnock, is a smart man. Do not tell me that the senator from bankster tax haven state, Delaware, is a man of the people. Do not tell me that a man who grabs little girls and holds onto them even when his victims are squirming, is a reasonable man. Do not tell me that a man who has failed out of two previous attempts at this office can fail up to it a third time. Because if you tell me these things I will be forced to accept that you are deceiving yourself in the same ways that Biden does so easily, with a wide and smarmy smile.
Solidarity once meant gravitas, “I will die for you.” Solidarity required grit and fearless resolve, both solid American values, which is the exact reason that the royal powers use it so freely to promote a cause that will keep us shackled to their whims. Because we didn’t get no good lernin’ in skool. We didn’t learn about the populous movements that brought us to our comfortable post war lives. We didn’t honor those who died at the hands of corporate armies. We didn’t learn that our benevolent forefathers were slave owners and misogynists, though I always noticed when we said, “All men are created equal,” that my neck got a bit out of shape. Like a nervous twitch. A girl twitch. A disinclusion twitch.
Just yesterday one of my redneck neighbors spouted out, “Oh yeah the democrats did… blardy blar, and so on.” I was surprised, not certain if he was including me into his red fold because we have recently been chatting about the yard, or if he was challenging my obvious democrat/hippie look, my wild yard, my funny dress. IDK! That means I don’t know, in young text-talk. I felt détente. And it was good.
His point was that Democrats just did something terrible. Democrats do terrible things every day, but what do the apologists do about it? Apologists apologize. Democrats are not any friendlier to regular people, animals, nature, trees or water than their insufferable Republicat Royals. The Democat/Republicat/Hegemony is a movement made of royal lineages defined by money. They are the courtiers and kings at the top of the corporate pyramid that used to be a place called America. They have killed America and are insisting that we finish the job by mercy suiciding ourselves. Not only do they not give a shit about us, they often shit upon us. “When there is plague, we retire to the country.”
Trump is not the worst thing, nor is he the first worst thing. The worst thing is this slow coup perpetrated by neocon policies instigated since John D. Rockefeller and Mr. Ford, the original car guy. Potus Reagan moved it forward with a plan designed by Charles Koch, which began with McCarthyism in the 50s, perpetuated by Eddy Bernays’ anti-red rhetoric through the new mesmerizing medium called television. Read "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer if you have the courage to look into the eyes of a demon.
Why do these captains of industry tell us that the “Market Economy” has wisdom to guide the country’s ways and means? Because they are the captains of industry and the so-called economy belong to them! It is a closed club and you are not invited, no matter how many times they tell you that you are simply a temporarily embarrassed millionaire (from John Steinbeck).
Words are liars. Words were our bond when we agreed on the meanings, but that agreement is long deceased. Buried under mountains of media cloaks. Piles of heavy cloth have extinguished the fires of word truth. The meaning is not in the noise of it. Meaning is in the act and result of it. Meaning is doing. When a bunch of people are poor and starving on benches in the streets, then we have a cruel society. Call it what it is. Homelessness is not enough. Oops, those people forgot to go home, so they are homeless. Silly people. Let go home! In truth we have many dislocated citizens. Do not allow words to smooth over a false reality. Call it social rape.
We became complacent in the 80s and have continued on the consumer society path blazed by Koch and his ilk, as prescribed by Ford and Rockefeller one hundred years ago. If everyone has a cookie, then there is a free market. If one guy has all the cookies then trade, compromise and sharing cannot exist, even in theory. It's over. Share or die can manifest in several directions, but basically it will return to a small elite hoarding over a mass of serf-y slave wagers, cannon fodder. When profits are gods, the path to wealth is paved with living souls. The difference between words and their meanings becomes more apparent when I say it like it is.
There is a mythological doctrine that insists that a third party vote takes away from either of the two main candidates. This is untrue, because the third party voter will abstain from voting for either one of two horrible options. It is called “to opt out” of voting. Neocons love it when we opt out because it means that their plan is working - the fewer voters the better. As they like to say, “Purge those voter roles!”
It is common opinion that Bernie Sanders could have stepped into the third party and won the day in 2016. There are those who insist he could have done it this year. He had the momentum with thousands of grassroots workers willing to lay down everything they had for him. They drove to other states on their own few dollars; slept in cars; knocked on doors. Instead he bailed on them, promoting in his place, an immoral liar, a two-time loser, his so called friend. Bernie Sanders sold out many thousands of sincere individuals for senate seniority endowed from the top ranking elites of the Democat Royalty, gifting away any leverage that we may have had. Bernie has said that he did not wish to end up like Ralph Nader. Bernie is the worst kind of coward. But it is not easy to stand up to mainstream media's coercive royal hammers tap tap tapping until a person cracks like a piñata horribly abused by rageful ten-year-old boys.
Just watch as the Democrat party devours AOC too. She is already voting their way. You can't be in the party without the party getting all over you. Once coated, it trickles into the mouth and nose, inflaming the soul and then you are lost to their ways.
Old-fashioned minds experience the word Democrat with old-fashioned picnics and values from 1950. We were good then. We beat an evildoer. We worked together as a nation to overcome horror and restore kindness and fairness back onto the world stage. That was then. The differences between Ike’s republicans and Adlai Stevenson’s democrats were minor. Ironically the current differences are also minor. So what has changed to create this vast inequality of wealth in our country? In those days money and effort had value. We traded a day’s work for a dollar. But now, work doesn’t pay. Digital dollars are bandied about by men who never sweat, handed back and forth from one elite hand to another, in a circle of royals who believe that only they are entitled to the world’s resources.
Political cartoons of bygone eras show that politics has always been united in a Baptism of graft. Political parties are the husband and wife, once at odds, now united in a cause to enrich their own household, the neighbors be damned. Vote blue, red or purple, it makes no difference because they are the same married duopoly that stick up for each other because they want to maintain their property values. Look at our hero Obama. His policies upheld the marriage and now he is rich enough to buy a mansion with 40 acres on Martha's Vineyard.
Jimmy Carter is the only righteous politician in history. And don’t get in my face with wrong stuff that happened under his watch, because that dude gets up with a hammer in his hand and sweats in a tee shirt building houses. And in his old age he forswore Christianity because he realized that it’s misogynistic to have one male god and no lady god. He’s mensch.
America is a one Party country, just like Russia and China with their fake congress and senates, so when they start in with Russiagate or Chinagate, ask why, what, where, when and how, and for god's sake please stop drinking that addictive sugar-laced koolade.
I will not hold my nose to perpetuate a sick failing empire. This is the worst kind of identity politics here in Modernia. I didn't fully understand what was meant by that term until now. When I first heard someone talk about the far left, I was stunned. What? How can you be too kind or too democratic? After all I am a bleeding heart liberal and proud of it, for a long time. We are at a moment of truth where the stupid left and the cruel right are pretending to have nothing in common while they are in the sack, getting it on. I honestly cannot subscribe, succumb, or numb my integrity to vote for anyone simply because of a label pinned to a lapel. Each one of the current labels is the other side of fuckery.
Blame is our enemy. Blame creates backlash. Blame is cowardly. Blame is fear's child. It is counter productive to vilify anyone; to spew hatred; to throw epithets at Trump or any of his crew. Hate breeds fear and blame breeds retaliation. There is no escape from the circle of hate. And please do not bring up that tyrant trope and make me defend fucking Hitler.
Stop it because you embarrass us. This reminds me of simple natives one-upping each other’s wrongs with murder and cannibalism. Trump is a deer in the headlights. Feasting on his carcass is easy. He is obviously incompetent. You do not show strength by beating the weak. We could have handled him differently, but we shot of rounds of derision and hate his way so he responded in defense, as you would. We built ugly naked statues and puppets to humiliate him. I laughed too.
And yes, he is pretentious, transparent. We knew he was thin skinned and vindictive, so why so gleefully poke the bear? We knew that humiliation is bad for an egoist, so why did we choose to shoot ourselves in the left foot, to the point of sabotage? Again, IDK. Anyone would defend himself when attacked in that way. The judgmental left drove him into the arms of the cruel right while the royals clapped their hands in glee. We lost sight of the brass ring. We allowed the royals to have fun at the commoners’ expense. If we, as thinking individuals do not get our emotional reactions out of the way, this is over. It may be too late already.
Harry Truman said it all. “If you get rich in politics then you are a crook.” They are all crooks, except Jimmy Carter. The system is crooked. Do not expect to breathe full breaths while wearing a corset. The system is misnamed. It is not duopoly. It is Monopoly. The right hand and the left hand are connected to the same monster. Use the right words.