Take a Good Look, Progressives

The holidays are over.   We're in to the new year and the countdown of the last days of a sane human being presiding over the United States of America has begun in earnest.    I've noticed some of my progressive friends returning to social media, passing around disgruntled memes and engaging in a little post-election observation.  What I've noticed most about the return of liberals to Facebook and Twitter is that no one is really talking too much about who is responsible for the fact of president-elect Cheeto Jesus.  Let me put it out there for you all:   I lay a good deal of the responsibility at the feet of the legions of progressives who either didn't vote or voted for a third party candidate because they were assured by the mainstream media of a Clinton victory, so they were free to "vote (or not) their conscience" without being afraid that Trump would win. Surprise!

In my humble opinion, the show put on by the progressive "faithful" during the entire election cycle was shameful. They were more than happy to abandon the moral high ground and jump on the vicious, negative, Hillary-bashing bus during the primaries; then they whip out their halos, polish them up and "vote their conscience" in the general election. I call bullshit on that. You can't run with the devil and then go kneel in front of the altar when it suits your fancy.

Prior to this election, Progressives believed they owned the moral high ground. It was a point of pride. Win or lose, they were always better than the ignorant, name-calling, slime-dwelling right-wing sheep. Unfortunately, during this election cycle many frustrated Progressives decided that ugliness was the way to go, since right-wingers obviously have so much success with it. They ran screaming from the high ground, straight into the mud pit, where they ended up shoulder to shoulder with the "enemy," flinging vile shit at one of their own who just didn't happen to be their first choice of Democrat presidential candidate.

I do not lump all progressives who harbored reservations about Clinton with the crazies who viciously tore into her, swallowing and regurgitating every bit of the baseless venom that Republicans had been piling on her for 25 years. I'll wager that raging mob didn't care a fig for any possibly sane reasons not to vote for Hillary Clinton. They wanted Bernie and they were going to help Republicans drag Hillary through the glass-spiked manure to get him.

I am not a registered Democrat.  I'm an independent--for good reason, it appears. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have answers any more. There was a reason many of the founding fathers distrusted and warned against political parties. Just look at the place to which partisan politics have dragged us today.

That said, the system is what it is. I align myself with the "side" that comes closest to sharing my personal ideology, so these days, I generally end up on the Democrat side of most issues. But having grown up in the suburbs of Chicago during the sixties and seventies, I have seen Democrats at their worst; so I have no particular allegiance to that party.

As a card-carrying bleeding heart liberal, I was overjoyed when Bernie Sanders entered the primary. I anticipated his input would drag the conversation away from the center--the political Brigadoon that doesn't really exist--where I knew Hillary Clinton intended to set up residence. There needed to be a major pull to the left , and Sanders could provide it.  And I applauded Sanders when he declared that his would be a "positive campaign, based on the issues."  That was EXACTLY what we needed.  That was how intelligent progressives would challenge each other in a complex and intimidating world.  Negative campaigning never addresses actual issues.

But when the Sanders campaign degenerated to the shitstorm it became, I lost all hope that our nation could be saved, or even that it was worth saving. AND my already very conditional respect for the Democratic party faded to near invisibility. The American people--and progressives particularly--need to take a serious look at the end result of EVERYONE sinking to the level of using the tools of the Dark Side to "win" political contests.

In two weeks, the Dark Lord himself will rise to the presidency of one of the most powerful nations on the planet.  THAT is what we have done to ourselves.  Progressives abandoned their traditional moral stance and dove eagerly into the mud pit.   The result was that they ended up with a damaged candidate--damaged not as much by her personal past as by those who supposedly shared her political ideology turning on her and ripping her to shreds. They got exactly what they wanted this election--NOT Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately, NOT Clinton ended up being Cheeto Jesus. And now we all have to live with that.