Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Black is the color of coffee.
Good seeds.
Looks like the planting season is near. Good time to pick the best seeds. From what I see it’s not clear we recognize them, despite all the evidence we have available to help us sort them out.
Democrats are wondering, yet again, how to please everybody to get their votes. The usual strategy hasn’t worked for decades except when coupled with extraordinary circumstances that provided a skewed picture of the electorate: Obama in 2008 and Biden in 2020. They understand this but the temptation to run against TFG again is showing, even if most likely he won’t be on the ballot (knock on wood).
Since FDR there hasn’t been a strong political vision for America. Although the New Deal remains the one truly revolutionary political ideal responsible for uplifting our society and showing what happens when its citizens are respected and supported, it was quickly stopped on its tracks with the help of both parties as they became more and more dependent on the corporate world, to which the New Deal was nothing but bad news.
Years later, when Truman said “Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people”, he was channeling FDR and pointing out, contrary to the beliefs of many, not that what helped the people was Socialism but that Socialism was the label of choice of those who wouldn’t help them. Because neither FDR nor Truman were socialists: they were social democrats. And THOSE are the good seeds we need.
In the bipolar political climate America has lived in practically all its existence, since the last quarter of the XX century aggravated by the corporate greed that permeated it, it is no small task to embrace a new way forward. In a truly healthy democracy both the existing parties should have been broken into smaller ones by now. Republicans into fiscal conservatives, protectionists, and fascists; Democrats into centrist moderates, globalists, and socialists. Or something else.
No matter the form these smaller parties would take the opportunity to break down the system never presented itself. We are too entangled in the two party ways of our bipolar existence. Multiple personality was never our kind of disorder. Perhaps it should have been. Could, should, would is not going to get us anywhere, but looking back at what worked and what didn’t will. Democrats would be wise to engage in that exercise, for it isn’t an unproductive one.
The “isms” of old provide the hindsight we require when choosing the good seeds, for none are found among them. Setting aside the obvious failures of fascism and communism, capitalism and socialism didn’t take either. In all “isms” there are lessons to be learned and considered into new ideals; some put away, some improved, some adopted. The passage of time considered in all these lessons, for History never really exactly repeats itself.
Whenever I hear Democrats stating they are capitalists, to sway the right, or that they are socialists, to appease the left, I cringe. What they are doing is proving they have no way forward except appealing to old “isms” that bore no lasting fruit. I search my memory for a single Democrat who stood up and proclaimed to be a social democrat consistently and find no recollection of such person ever existing.
Yet that is precisely the kind of person we need to bring in the most people into our fold. “Americans will have an aneurysm trying to explain any word with the construct "social" in it (…)” (@guy_fawkes_news) “When will the proletariat understand that fascism is far more dangerous and destructive than social democracy?” (@connierafferty). Two very pertinent observations that encapsulate our conundrum.
The “social construct” we so desperately need in the XXI century will grow from the seeds of our accumulated knowledge, as it always has. It will require contemporary thinking and understanding, because no new construct is new if our own circumstances are left out of it. I know my views are irreparably biased by my European privileged upbringing, but the notion anything with “social” in it immediately translates to “communism”, and fascism “equals” social democracy, always baffles me.
I know it’s a very steep uphill battle to try and educate the masses on what social democracy is. If only FDR and Truman had the clarity of mind to start that process. They did try, but all they did was unintentionally establish a direct connection between social reform and socialism. One that lives in the American subconscious to this day. And yet FDR was truly a social democrat, and so were his achievements.
Of course, the misleading inclusion of “socialist” as identifier of the Soviet Republic took a lion’s share in the immediate connection Americans make when any social construct veers to the left. Because social democracy is liberal in essence it’s no surprise it falls into the communist/fascist false dichotomy that over the years became a partially unsound equivalence. This is why both far right and far left hate social democracy.
Shouldn’t we expect our representatives to rise to this occasion? Is it too much to ask of them? Shouldn’t they lead by example and pick the good seeds we need to plant in order to save our democracy? Shouldn’t they couple the defense of Education with the role of educators? Every “chip in” text and email I get tells me they are not interested in any of it. Only some glimpses of populism a few seem to embrace because so many voted for TFG after voting for Sanders.
The way forward is hard and it does not include turning the worst basic instincts of the people from one uneducated populism to another. It depends on educating Americans on what social democracy really is. And embrace it once and for all. That is the real fight we must engage in, if we are to save our democracy without a blood bath. There’s still time. Let’s go for it.
Resist & Oppose!
