This is why so many of us on the left have trouble believing Democrats when they say we’re on the same side. If the baseline is a rejection of genocide, and it should be because that is absolutely the bare minimum, then this must be seen as either an implicit or explicit endorsement of genocide.
This right here:
You can read the full article here: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/harris-walz-hold-first-joint-network-tv-interview-cnn-2024-08-29/
It’s not a one issue kind of thing, because genocide is such an atrocity that it should be an immediate nullifier of support. It’s like saying “yeah, he likes to stab joggers in the park while screaming racial epithets, but he’s good with money and he likes my cat” when defending a new boyfriend.
We deserve better than this, and those of us who stand on even the most basic principle have every right to reject genocide as a negotiation point.
This is why leftists talk about the Ratchet Effect. The idea is that the Republican party pushes us further to the right towards fascism, and the Democrats prevent moving back left, while normalizing our new position on the right.
It’s why proposals made by Democrats 60 years ago are seen as pie in the sky unicorn wishes by modern Democrats. They’ve been moved further and further to the right where the US political discourse is whether or not we should imprison immigrants or just send them somewhere outside the US where they might die, and that’s seen as progress.
What’s worse is the cheerleading done to defend it, where people actually get called privileged for saying that this won’t help the oppressed groups, all it does is shift the harm around them like a game of demented musical chairs.
The Ratchet Effect leads to harm relocation, not harm reduction, and the relocated harm is never on the people doing the oppressing, but always the people who have the least power to resist.
This is why Democrats are so often criticized by us, because they’re supposed to be allies of the left. Some of them claim to be on the left, and yet they reject any move to the left and embrace their right wing colleagues in the government.
It needs to stop. We don’t need Republicans, we shouldn’t want Republicans in our government, because they stand for more fascism. There is no such thing as a little fascism as a treat, and if we hadn’t have been shoved so far right over the decades, people would recognize that, but instead they get defensive, and I think that’s because deep down they know, but that change will cost them some of their status quo and privilege, and that scares them.
.Red
