Not Really Hers, But Brilliant Just The Same

Not Liz, But Pru

So, like a lot of people, a few days ago I saw what was said to be a posting from Liz Cheney taking the Democrats to task for inactivity in the face of a serious threat of Fascism. I accepted that it was from the former congresswoman. However, I soon learned that the letter had been misattributed. It had actually been written (and signed) by a Facebook user who goes by the name of PruPru. (It is still not clear who reproduced the letter and claimed it was from Liz Cheney.)

That said, when you read the posting, you have to think it is right on the money. PruPru begs Democrats to stop fund-raising and start fighting. She is dang tired (and aren’t we all?) of getting endless emails and messages begging for $20 here and $15 there, while it seems that the Party Elite is inert, and not confronting Trump in really meaningful ways.

She also has some excellent ideas about what the Democrats could do now, and how they could make the GOP actually squirm.

The letter is well worth reading, and you can see it here: https://www.facebook.com/DrPruLee/posts/pfbid038BY7yThGnhmksswQDbuEauChgPKA8wj5rnBVjZeGeh2kzEEGtFNoxDiQ29YrLfbnl

So, not really from Liz Cheney…

But damn! It makes good reading.

Three cheers to PruPru.

The DSA, Harpers, and a Shame

I subscribe to Harper's Magazine. I’ve read it for years. The most recent issue, however, contained a letter that I found particularly fascinating, and disturbing. It was titled “Left Behind” and was from Maurice Isserman, who identified himself as a professor of history, at Hamilton College.

Professor Isserman was responding to a piece in Harper’s on the failure of the American left to make a real impression on the last election. In particular, Isserman was interested in the failure of the Democratic Socialists of America organization to be anything more than a sideshow in the battle against Trump. He has an excellent perspective on the problem given that he was a founder of the DSA, though he has since left it because of a variety of issues and concerns.

In his letter, though, he notes that the DSA does not support Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both of whom are arguably the most legitimate and certainly the most energetic leaders of the American Left at the moment. In fact, he says in the letter, certain members of the DSA have branded Sanders and AOC as “traitors” for their support of Biden and then Harris. In other words, for not being pure enough in their radicalism. How dare they compromise with reality?

I was startled and disappointed to learn that the DSA had said any such thing. I’m not a member of the organization, but I knew about it in my younger days and vaguely approved of it. Not that I’m a socialist, particularly, but I’m always at least a little bit supportive of any organization that offers an alternative to the fundamentalist Ayn Randism that’s usually foisted on American culture.

But to find that they had fallen so far, so fast, was disappointing. You expect, say, the Green Party of Jill Stein to engage in such antics, but not the DSA. Yet, there they are, being so damn pure and holy and self-righteous that they can’t bother to support the Democrats in general and AOC/Sanders in particular. 

And one does have to wonder how much that kind of attitude on the Left, whether at the DSA or anywhere else, crippled the Biden and then Harris campaigns, and whether it didn’t assist Trump back into the White House. Or, if it didn’t significantly impact the benighted election of 2024, how much it is holding back the Democrats, and Progressives, everywhere.

Simply put, it seems that (once again) the reformers need themselves to be reformed. Until they have learned the art of the possible, the worth of compromise, and the importance of limited victory today so that greater victories may be won tomorrow, they will be useless.

Or, worse, they will give aid and comfort to the enemy. And thus must be considered, in their indirect way, among our enemies themselves. Little Trumps, in other words, or MAGAs in mufti, lacking only the red hats, and the ridiculous yellow flags with snakes. 

Punch Back?

Interesting article in the Nation by Dave Zirin, “Why Democrats Won’t Throw a Real Punch:  Faced with existential threats from the right, the Democratic leadership remains timid; faced with demands for justice from the left, it goes on the attack.”

I am not sure I agree with all of it. Zirin is, I think, too hard on Biden and Obama. But he does make an interesting point: to wit, that the Democratic party establishment has been far more ruthless with progressive fellow Democrats than with Trump, MAGA, and the Right in general. It played harder ball with Bernie, for instance, that it has so far with Musk.

He argues that there are a number of reasons for this, but perhaps most of all it is because on some level the Democrats support and identify with the wealthy and the powerful who now control the GOP. They would, perhaps, cheerfully support the Techbros and the billionaires if only they were donating to Blue rather than Red candidates.

As I say, I don’t know if I agree with that. But it is something to think about. And, whether his thesis is right or wrong, Zirin is definitely correct when he suggests that Democrats need to start fighting back. And that we need to do it now.

Or we may never have a chance to do so ever again. 

Tim Walz's church...and its enemies.

I was appalled to discover that Tim Walz’s church has come under attack by the Right. It seems that he is associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), which is a perfectly normal, mainstream, Protestant church. 

But not according to the Right and MAGAheads everywhere. One “conservative” publication went so far as to say that ELCA is “a Trainwreck of Heresy and Blasphemy” -- this, I think, mostly because the ELCA talks about things like feeding the hungry and healing the sick.

There is no little irony in this. We have here enemies of Walz, that goodly man, unable to attack the man himself, and instead pillorying his Church for the crime of actually practicing what Jesus taught.

References:

Tim Walz’s Lutheran Church is a Trainwreck of Heresy and Blasphemy, Protestia,  https://protestia.com/2024/08/07/vice-president-pick-tim-walzs-lutheran-church-is-a-trainwreck-of-heresy-and-blasphemy/#google_vignette

“Political Attacks on Walz’s Church? Good Grief,” Brian Kaylor, Word&Way, August 8, 2024. https://wordandway.org/2024/08/08/political-attacks-on-walzs-church-good-grief/

“Attacks on Tim Walz’s Lutheran Denomination are Undermined by Reality — I Mean, Is ELCA Even Exciting Enough for Controversy?” By Daniel Schultz, Religious Dispatches, August 13, 2024, https://religiondispatches.org/attacks-on-tim-walzs-lutheran-denomination-are-undermined-by-reality-i-mean-is-elca-even-exciting-enough-for-controversy/

 

Nancy Pelosi...if only you were joking

Okay, is it just me, or is this really scary?

Apparently, newly returned House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was on Face The Nation the other day. And, also apparently, she indicated that she saw no reason for the Democratic Party to do anything differently. She is quoted, at least in the transcript, as saying, “Well, I don’t think that people want a new direction.”

In a word, whoa.

We are sitting here after one of the greatest defeats in our history as a party and a movement, with an out-and-out fascist about to take over the government, with a solidly red House and Senate, with a Supreme Court that is certain to be packed with hyperconservative fanatics...and she doesn’t feel some sense of urgency? Some sense of a need for change?

And, about those people who “don’t want a new direction.” She says this after millions of voters supported Bernie Sanders. Voters who are still fuming about what they saw as a rigged primary? She doesn’t include such people in her calculations? She chooses to ignore them? So, she saying, in other words, that those “people who don’t want a new direction,” are the people she knows, and who therefore matter.  The rest of us...we don’t.

I am at a loss to explain this remarkable, almost chilling quote of hers. But a friend of mine, Rick, may have come up with the proper interpretation of her position. I posted an article about Pelosi’s quote to Facebook with the despairing comment, “Oh, F*cking H*ll.” And Rick replied with something sage. He quoted Harry Reid, a man of considerable wisdom, and then noted that Pelosi, and the scores of DNC mandarins like her, have no particular reason to want change...or to see or hear those who do.

After all, Rick went on, they... Pelosi and her tribe...will not lose their jobs. They will not lose their health care. They will be warm in winter and air conditioned in summer. They will remain members of the American power elite. Even under Trump.

And so, he concluded, they really don’t have much motivation to do anything different. Or even, particularly, to oppose Trump.

Is my friend right? Well, it would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?

Which is a terrifying thing, indeed.