Bad Does Not Equal Bad

1,000-ish words on False Equivalencies in Politics

Who is an American?

Well, for the vast majority of American history and American was a straight white man, ideally, one who owned property, because remember, property ownership used to be a requirement for voting.

What this means is, even today, that is still the default of who the American Public is, and chances are, if you’re not one of those, you have fewer rights than a gun, your history has been, is, and/or will be criminalized, and the fact your vote counts now is terrifying to people who have always been “Americans”.

The more misanthropic of us like to say things like, “If voting mattered, it would be illegal”, and I want you to hold on to that idea for a second.

You see, America is bad.
I love America, not for what it is, but for what it can be, and for what it tries to be on occasion. Part of this comes from my age, and my youth, and my love of jingoistic entertainment that champions America’s idealized First Principles, and part of it comes from my interest in history… which includes loving the self-mythologizing of out national narrative, not because of its self-justification of our tyranny, but for its aspiration towards better things.

America is bad.
It is a nation built on violence, slavery, conquest, and genocide. When people say America exists on stolen land I always bristle, not because it’s the truth and I don’t want to hear it, but because it’s too cute, and tyo my brain that makes it inaccurate in terms of scope.
We didn’t steal Indigenous land, we waged total war on it. You can steal an artifact and take it to the British Museum, when you kill, imprison, and colonize inhabitants to get them off their land after you move in, that’s not theft, that’s conquest.

Some people think that makes it cool, that it’s just the nature of history, but that’s the belief that might makes right, that violence is the only real moral authority, and while that has been America’s moral reality, it has not been its highest ideals.

America is bad.
Slavery.
That’s it, that’s the whole paragraph and argument, slavery.

America is bad.
It has always been designed as a faux feudalistic system, one made up of states, states controlled by the economic gentry, supported by their lesser land owning peers, come together into a boys club of self-interest more akin to forcing King John to sign the Magna Carta, than any actual open democracy.

America is bad.
But it gets a little better every time it starts to acknowledge that people are people, and that everyone has certain inalienable rights, and one of those rights is the right to participate in democracy.

Do you know who loves to deny people the right to vote? Do you know who loves making your vote not count via gerrymandering, leaning on the Electoral College, and legislating from the courts?

Hold on to that thought for a second.

It doesn’t matter who you are, if you’re the President of the United State of America, you are in charge of an empire of violence, oppression, injustice, and cruelty. You are part of a political entity that kills minorities with impunity, imprisons and enslaves its under-class for private profit, and holds the world hostage with its financial and military policies.

So from that perspective, yes, both sides are the same, and they’re the same because America is still, for now at least, only a faux feudalism, and being a ruler, means you swim in the waters of the ruling class.

Nothing changes that.
Nothing.
Not until America changes.

And the only way that happens is by inclusion, and by working towards our actual first principles, it only happens by being morally at war with ourselves, and that is only sustainable through actual democracy.

That’s why the GOP wants to limit who can vote and what votes count.

Democrats aren’t good, because America isn’t good, but they believe either through self-interest, or though actual ideology, that people should be able yo vote freely, easily, and have those votes count.

GOP appointed Supreme Court Justices are responsible for stopping the 2000 Florida re-count and ensuring Bush Jr became President.

GOP appointed Supreme Court Justices keep limiting gun control access, stripping away reproductive and bodily autonomy, and ruling that campaign donations are protected speech so they shouldn’t have any limits, allowing ultra wealthy conservatives to dumb unlimited money into political campaigns.

Democrats suck.
NAFTA, WTO, crime bills, being sanctimonious know it alls, being gutless and fumbling in face face or existential crisis because ultimately their class and status mean things won’t change much for them, and don’t forget NIMBYism and being complicit with the militarization of the police.
All of those things are bad, and just like the Military Industrial Comoplex informs America’s relationship with Israel, all of those things are features of America.

Just like hypocrisy is. It’s in the bones of this country, and the cost of that hypocrisy has always been all the bones of the violent dead buried under our feet.

So yes, in that regard both sides are the same, because both sides are America.

But Democrats, suck though they may, are also the party that fights for consumer protection, labor unions, affordable healthcare, the social safety net, student loan forgiveness, protection social security, making medicare and medicaid more robust, and enshrining reproductive autonomy, as well as maintaining the separation between church and state.

Oh yeah, and also holding elected officials accountable to the law, and not making them kings.

And while the have a long way to go on vigorous and meaningful protections for trans rights, they’re not the ones trying outlaw trans existence.

For the longest time, if you were an American, a lot of the differences in the party were pretty superficial, but Reagan changed all that with deregulation and union busting.
But still, if you were a white color American, the differences were also largely superficial, until the financial crisis of the late 80s, and the financial crisis in 2008, due to conservative fiscal policy, and approaches.

And in all that time, if you weren’t a straight white man, the differences were always there. Yes, the similarities that came from living in America regardless of who was in charge were always there too, but it wasn’t the GOP that ended Jim Crowe or enshrined Gay Marriage as a right.

If you want to talk about the similarities, fine, that’s easy, America is bad, but it’s capable of getting better, just as surely as it’s capable of getting worse, which it will do with Republicans in office.

I might be a proud Democrat, but I’ve always hated my peer groups, and as much as we suck, with us at least there’s a chance.

Oh shit, also, Republicans are anti-environment, just flat out not on the side of the planet… or your side, or the side of the vast majority of their voters.

And if I haven’t been cynical enough to reach you, I offer you this:

Republicans get right off of feudalism, and Democrats get rich off of expanding the middle class, adn while they’re both getting right, those are really not the same things at all.