Just an observation on this weird, tragic election cycle. And btw, when you see "dems" and "republicans" the lack of capitalized lettering is intentional.
By the time Bill Clinton became president we were ending 12 year run of nefarious republican drug dealing, union busting and attacks on civil and human rights around the world, not to mention complete capitulation to corporate interests. Since then the dems have been trying to out-republican the republicans, to much "success".
The dem party since Bill C is where progressive hopes and dreams go to die; then in Obama they succeeded beyond their wildest expectations imitating republicans, even while he was being obstructed, even embracing and expanding the wars and war crimes of the Bush/Cheney administration his and the dems' own, when in fact, Obama had every right to impeach his predecessors. By not doing so, he essentially blessed their war crimes and inherited them as his own. He gave confidence to the backwoods and corporate bigots who were probably waiting for the hammer to come down on their leaders.
But no.
Essentially Obama advertised to the republican base that their crimes would not be punished and that they were exceptional. Thus he birthed, coddled and nurtured the eventual right-wing tea party that brought the dems down and led to the DTs... Just in time for the people who were silent during Reagan/Bush Bush Quayle Bush Cheney Admins crimes to suddenly be offended by our misadventures abroad.
Kinda fitting that the dems go down clutching the McCarthy-ite playbook of the 50s, with their own versions of the "Red Scare" on full display this last month, using their contacts in the mainstream media to fabricate fables of Russian hacking when the world knows it was leaks that exposed them. Surreal indeed.
12/20/16
Rashard Zanders is a journalist, teacher and musician dying on the vine in the Twin Cities. He can be reached at 612.361.7185 or at [email protected]