Tag Archives: hillary clinton

Weekly Rant: The Unbearable Privilege of Susan Sarandon

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In case you missed it, Susan Sarandon stands by her earlier condemnation of Hillary Clinton. According to Sarandon, if we’d had Hillary elected, we’d be at war, fracking would continue unabated, and we would have had more of the “sneaky” parts of the Obama administration (the deportations, drone strikes, etc.)

Of course, I’m not at all surprised by Sarandon’s stubborn refusal to admit she was wrong (and her selective memory of the Christ Hayes interview, which I was watching in real time). And to some extent I really don’t care what she thinks. She’s really quite amazing as an actress–as her most recent turn as Bette Davis in Feud demonstrates–but I’ve become increasingly disenchanted with the idea that we should look to the stars for inspiration. They’re just people, after all, and thus prone to flaws and mistakes just like anyone else. The danger is that many people follow their lead, and when a powerful progressive voice declines to support a progressive candidate, and even make the specious argument that Trump might hasten the revolution, I get pissed. And not just at Sarandon, either.

For the real rub about her interview is that it speaks of a sentiment that still has a strong pull on the far Left. Those who voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein still refuse to admit that they were mistaken, even though we know that the number of Green Party voters in the key states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan would have decisively tipped the election to Clinton. They still believe that Clinton would have been more dangerous and destructive than Trump, even with mountains of evidence to the contrary (which continue to grow higher each and every day).

What infuriates me the most about Sarandon and those like her, though, is how insulated they are from the results of their “protest” votes. They claim to care about black lives, about the environment, about queer people, about immigrants, about a host of liberal causes. Yet, when they are given the choice between a party that is against all of those things, again and again they spurn it and throw their votes to an unviable third party (the reasons why a third party is unviable will be the subject of another rant). Rather than seek out actual policy proposals that would advance these causes and candidates who could effectively work with other legislators to implement them, those on the far Left would rather hold every candidate up to a purity test that they are destined to fail. Like those on the Right, who fetishize principles (“fetal life,” “the second amendment,” “free enterprise,” “the sanctity of marriage,” and the like”) over people, the Left cares more about purity than about the actual lives of actual people who are affected by their decisions.

This, my friends, is the insidious danger of false equivalence. Once everything is equal, once every candidate is equally flawed, and each party equally corrupt, then it becomes possible to vote your conscience, even if that means throwing everyone else under the bus. Once upon a time we on the Left were the party of getting things done, of hammering out solutions and compromises to move a progressive agenda forward. Now, we’ve become the bomb-throwers, the ones willing to destroy the entire system with absolutely no idea how to replace it. And a lot of my white progressive friends continue to refuse to see how their protest votes actively hurt the very people and causes they claim to care about.

Well, I hope that Sarandon and her ilk are happy with what they have wrought. When the Republican tax plan destroys graduate education; when the revitalized oil, gas, and coal industries destroy the environment; when net neutrality is gutted; when the court system is completely remade in Trump’s image; when white nationalism and white supremacy continue to grow in power with Trump’s tacit encouragement; when the progressive clock is not just rolled back but demolished; when the world trembles before the possibility of nuclear war; remember that we could have had a Clinton presidency. Remember that this didn’t have to happen.

And for the love of all the gods, vote Democrat in 2016.

Though you might not realize it, some of our lives depend on it.

Including mine.

Weekly Rant: Dear Dr. Stein

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Dear Dr. Stein:

I struggled with writing this letter and with whether or not to put it out into the public. Finally, though, I decided that I need to have these thoughts in the public sphere, so that you can know how your decision to deliberately undermine the candidacy of Hillary Clinton has had real consequences for people like me.

This election, American voters ultimately had a choice. This was more than about the two candidates. This was about choosing a flawed but progressive candidate who represented an incremental but steady march to the Left on many issues and a raging, xenophobic, racist know-nothing that proudly assaulted women (to say nothing of his running mate, who has made no secret of his disdain for LGBTQ+ Americans). This was between bringing into power those who would work to protect our country’s most vulnerable citizens, rather than ushering into power a man buoyed by the absolute worst impulses in the American psyche. This was about forward progress against a descent into the worst sort of barbarism.

Once it became clear that the match-up would be between Clinton and Trump, the ethical thing for yourself and the Green Party to do would have been to make a sacrifice–and make no mistake, that’s what it would have been–in order to help rouse and excite the Left for Clinton. Instead, you went out of your way to paint Hillary as the epitome of all that was wrong with politics, and in the process you have helped bring into power this creature known as Trump, as well as his legions of deplorables. You helped to obliterate the Obama legacy and have helped solidify the tide of hatred and danger that threatens to sweep away everything you claim to hold dear.

Already, we have seen the effects of this as social media has exploded with reports of assaults on all of the minorities that Trump has targeted throughout his campaign. People that I know personally have been assaulted by Trump supporters, emboldened by his victory.

And for my part, for the first time since I came out of the closet as a queer man in 2002, I feel afraid to be who I am. I am afraid to be queer, and I can’t help but lay some of the blame at your door.

You and yours could have prevented this, but instead you valued principle and ideological purity over and above the bodies, lives, and well-beings of people of colour, immigrants, Muslims, women, LGBTQ+ people, and countless others. Rather than helping to unite the Left, you continued to sow division, diminishing enthusiasm for Clinton and in the progress throwing many others under the bus for the service of your own ego. You could have encouraged your followers to vote for Clinton, but you didn’t. And this is the result.

I will forgive you, those who voted for you, and those who were persuaded enough by your message that they sat this one out. I’ll forgive you because I have far more in common with you than I do our mutual enemies on the Right. I’ll forgive you because I know that we have to move forward together on a progressive agenda.

But I will never, ever forget what happened this year.

And you shouldn’t either.

Weekly Rant: Why “Bernie or Bust” is Complete and Utter Political Suicide

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Once upon a time, way back in 2003/2004, I was a devout and fanatical devotee of the Cult of Howard Dean. Here was a man, I thought, that represented the true liberal wing of the Democrat Party. This in contrast to the eventual nominee John Kerry, who I felt was far too moderate for my tastes (particularly when it came to the rights of the LGBT community).

Well, we all know how the Dean campaign ended up. The media managed to exploit all of his weaknesses, and his meteoric rise to frontrunner was matched by his equally precipitous fall from favour. As a young and fiery liberal, I was pretty heartbroken, and I considered not voting at all. Yet, in the end, I recognized that a John Kerry, no matter how moderate, was infinitely better than another 4 years of George W. Bush.

Fast forward to 2016, and the chorus of “Bernie or Bust” and its associated hashtag. I can’t shake the feeling that we’ve been here before. This time, though, it seems like there is a very real possibility that the legions of folks who support Bernie Sanders will not come out to vote should he lose the nomination (which seems increasingly likely to happen). Or, worse yet, that they will decide to cast their vote for Trump, in the hope that he will shake up the system to such an extent that the revolution is sure to come (Susan Sarandon suggested as much in an interview with Chris Hayes, though she subsequently attempted to walk that comment back).

You know what? I get it. I really do. I know how intensely frustrating it can be when your candidate, the one who fired you up and inspired you to get into politics, gets taken down by someone else. You can blame the system of course–and with some good reason–but at some point you also have to accept that there are others that didn’t agree with your choice and that you have to compromise with them. And if that means accepting a candidate you don’t necessarily like, it’s worth remembering that that candidate that wins (in this case, Hillary Clinton) is still miles away more progressive than anything produced by the GOP, no matter how iconoclastic they appear.

And you want to know something else? If you, dear voter, decide to either sit out this election or vote for Trump in the hopes that it will lead to a Democratic sweep in 2020, I would remind you of how well that strategy worked in 2000. The parallels aren’t exact, of course, but the fact remains that we ended up with a disastrous 8 years of George W. Bush because of dissatisfaction with Al Gore (among other reasons).

So, while you may be frustrated that Bernie Sanders may in fact lose the nomination, please don’t buy into the Bernie or Bust mythology. Frankly, it appears childish and more than a little petulant, and that is hardly the attitude the Democratic Party wants to take right now, in the age of Trump and others like him.

Instead, let’s gather around the eventual progressive nominee and march forward into what will hopefully be a brighter future.

Weekly Rant: Misogyny Rears Its Ugly Head in the Democratic Primary

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock in the last 48 hours, you’ve probably heard that a Sanders surrogate, by Dr. Paul Song, referred in his opening remarks to “corporate Democratic whores.” Of course, such a comment would be problematic in the best of times, but it is especially so during a campaign in which one of the two leading candidates in the Democratic race has the very real possibility of becoming the first female President of the United States. Fortunately, Sanders did disavow the remark, but it took a rather long time to do it, and that strikes me as especially troubling and, dare I say it, problematic.

I guess I’m not entirely surprised by this course of events. I’ve long suspected that there is a strong edge of misogyny lurking underneath many of those who support Bernie Sanders. This is not to say that everyone who supports him is a misogynist, only that there is a great deal of woman-hating animus motivating the opposition to Hillary. There is something deeply threatening about the idea of a woman, especially this woman, ascending to the nation’s top executive position, so it makes sense that many would leap to the use of words like “whore” to disparage her.

And make no mistake, the use of the word “whore” was deliberate. For all that some might like to make the argument that assuming the word is gendered feminine is the sexist act, we cannot escape the fact that, like so many words in our cultural lexicon, this word carries cultural baggage along with it. To pretend otherwise, or to somehow argue that pointing out that words matter is somehow disingenuous or making a mountain out of a molehill, is a betrayal of the very progressive politics that we all claim to espouse. Progressives, of all people, should know the importance of words and how they carry with them implications and connotations that are deeply embedded in structures of power.

Even more discouraging was the fact that the hashtag #DemocraticWhores began trending on Twitter, unironically. How is it possible that the Democratic Party, the party that has long taken the lead for the rights and dignity of women, would give birth to the use of the word “whore” in the public sphere? Did I somehow blink and miss our conversion to the Donald Trump method of politics? Somehow, legions of Bernie supporters were using the word “whore” as if it were suddenly a word that hadn’t been used to viciously and poisonously denigrate women’s sexuality for centuries. Whatever candidate you support, you should be concerned. This is not acceptable, and you should spread that message as far as possible.

So, what’s to be done? Well, for one thing, both campaigns should begin demanding more accountability from their followers. That’s not likely to come from either of the two candidates, not least because the stakes are so very high for both of them, and they have both gone too far to come back. Perhaps just as importantly, the followers for each candidate are unlikely to be allow them to make too many concessions to the other. The splintering of the Democratic Party has well and truly begun (I think), and we have only ourselves to blame.

The worst thing about this is that people will excuse it all as just another aspect of the dark vortex of American politics. For me, however, that excuse just isn’t good enough. We’re Democrats, progressives, and radicals. We’re the Left, damn it, and I continue to insist that we are better than this. If we are truly invested in a better future for everyone, we can, we must, do better.