Can the Democratic Party be Saved? - I say, No!

The fact that Hillary Rodman Clinton was even nominated as the presidential candidate, ignoring her garbage, ignoring her negatives, total lack of charisma, corruption, failed policies, and unbelievably poor judgment – and still being astonished lost the election.  Is more than sufficient evidence the Democratic Party has no interest in changing, let alone reforming or even re-connecting with its base. 

But you probably want a bit more than that.

For starters, Charles Schumer, the architect of the Clinton Campaign, the one who said that for every blue-collar Democrat we lose, Clinton would pick up two or three rural moderate Republicans, and just about as big a corporate whore as you could name, was just appointed the Democratic Leader in the Senate. 

But others might point out that Bernie Sanders has just nominated Keith Ellison to be the new chair of the DNC.  Accept so far, the only qualification offered of Ellison for the DNC chair is that he is a “Black Muslim.”  This is the same sort of demographic nonsense that held lose Clinton the election in the first place.  And while there are some words said on how the Democratic Party needs “new blood”, still no voice is given to why that new blood is needed, let alone discussing the corruption that has taken root in the leadership.  And you know who else is backing Ellison?  Charles Schumer!  Picking up a pattern here? 

So what is really at work here isn’t a battle to reform the Democratic Party – but a battle to try and give the leadership a veneer of change by placing certain names (left leadership like Bernie Sanders) in “important positions” of public outreach and communications positions, but with little to no real power to influence, let alone reform the party platform.  In the end, nothing really changes. 

I speak from experience here because Clinton’s defeat was hardly the only time the Democratic underwent a “battle for its soul.”  Similar battles were fought, and even supposedly won when All Gore and John Kerry both lost their battles with the allegedly fascist leadership of the Republicans.  And we are still here despite those victories. 

The problem is that while there is “hope” to reform the party, it’s a fool’s hope deliberately manufactured by the establishment.  Victories are easy to come by.  But once the left has looked away, the victories all fade away into nothing – as if they never happened, not even memory remains.  The establishment has a long game plan in place and have become very adept at re-shaping the narrative.  Just as they have grown skillful in snatching defeat from the evitable jaws of victory, they have become just as adept into reframing that defeat into a triumph of failure. 

Getting progressives into key positions is not enough.  Real progress will only be marked when you manage to get the establishment Democrats removed from their positions of influence. 

But the Democratic Party has become filled with ghosts.  The moment you shine the light of transparency on them, they vanish, disappearing into the forest of lobbyists firms and corporate boardrooms.  And there they wait, snuggled in lucrative contracts and donner retreats.  There they wait until a future administration or political campaign opens up, and they once again fill a post or office.  So simply getting establishment Democrats removed from a post or office is no longer enough. 

And that is the key observation here.  It’s damn hard just getting establishment Democrats evicted from a post, and getting them kicked out of office usually means erecting a Republican in their place.  But how do you remove corrupt Democrats from the rolodex of those who manage to retain influence in the party?  You can’t.  And that is my argument as to why the Democratic Party cannot be saved, and why it will never change.  The moment the pressure relents, the moment Democrats actually do win in the polls, the ghosts return – as if they were never gone – as if they never failed. 

The only way real change will ever be realized is in building a viable third party.  Alas, this is a task easier said than done. 

Will Sanders really be a “thorn” in Clinton’s side?

On October 4^th in the Washington Post, Sanders signaled into an interview his intentions of holding Clinton accountable in office.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sanders-is-prepared-to-be-a-liberal-thorn-in-clintons-side/2016/10/24/aaf6dd88-97eb-11e6-bb29-bf2701dbe0a3_story.html

He and other like-minded Senators were already plotting legislation for $15 federal minimum wage, tuition-free public college, an end to mass-incarcerations, aggressively fight climate change, break-up the to-bit-to-fail banks, and other key liberal agenda items found in the Democratic Platform that he had a hand in crafting.

“I will be vigorously in opposition, and I will make that very clear,” Sanders is quoted as saying.

This kind of strident and defiant tone is something we haven’t heard from Sanders sense he ended his primary bid, and indorsed Clinton.  And while he has been dutifully on the campaign trail trying to convince his former followers that one must vote for Clinton – it only to deny Trump the White House, he has still mostly faded from public view and lost a lot of his influence.  So, for hard-core Bernie supporters, Sander’s more defiant posture has been welcome news, some even declaring “Bernie is back!”

I remain unimpressed. 

Don’t get me wrong here.  I welcome any fight for the issues that he lists.  And we need fighters.  With that said, Sander’s while fully arrayed for battle and intensely determined, armed with decades of experience, still stands on the wrong battle field.  What Sanders doesn’t get is that as important his liberal agenda is – the agenda has changed.  The issues now have to deal with the open corruption that WikiLeaks has exposed – not just from within the Clinton campaign, but the entirety of the Democratic Party as well as throughout government as a whole, root and branch and from state to state. 

The evidence is undeniable that the Democratic Primary was rigged for Clinton, and that the media conspiracy to shelter Clinton from her own record signals the rise of a new totalitarian era.  And Clinton’s saber-rattling has suddenly made World War III and a nuclear exchange with Russia and/or China a shockingly real possibility.  Assuming one can even argue that we aren’t already thy deep in the global crises.  And day by day, it’s getting harder to NOT say the FBI hasn’t engaged in an aggressive cover-up in regards to Clinton’s un-encrypted servers.  Even now that the FBI has “re-opened” Clinton’s e-mail investigation, it reeks more of desperate damage control rather than the FBI exiting its responsibility’s.  

These are the issues that Liberal and Progressive activist are confronting today, and Sanders is AOWL on this front.  Indeed, one has to question just how serious Sanders even is with his own agenda.  Trying to aggressively fight climate change – without addressing or even giving voice to the power structure that makes that battle necessary is an exercise in futility.  True, he might be able to do quite a bit in the next few years, but each battle will be hard fought and costly, yet easily undone with the stroke of a pen or fall of a gavel.  Sanders will end up wasting time and previous resources that the left simply cannot afford lose, only to find our-selves in exactly the same position as before.

Part of Sander’s problem is the perverted nature of the situation.  True, if the Democrats retake the Senate, he would be in line for chair position on the Senate Banking Committee and be in a position of significant power.  But this also places the Clinton wing of Democratic party in power over all of the other Senate committees as well.  When faced with corruption, the last thing you want to do is feed it more power.

Sanders is an example of a naïve opposition, one who seems to think that what we are all up against is simply a difference in opinion.  All that is needed to effect change is to get more Democrats elected to office.  But this ignore the reality of the political landscape, and even ends up feeding power to the corrupt system.

It’s become inescapably clear to me that Sanders doesn’t give any credibility in the corruption charges that swirl around Clinton, or the pay-to-play reality that keeps the party infrastructure firmly in the grip of the establishment.  At worst, Sanders patents with Clinton may be wearing thin, but there remains no sign that his intends to call Clinton or other Democrats out on their corruption, instead focusing on “the issues”.  Far from being a thorn in Clinton’s side – this makes him an enabler for further corruption, and an obstacle that the left must overcome in order to build any real momentum. 

The first law of politics: Corruption is persistent and inevitable

I remember back in my grade school civics class, being introduced to the idea of the separation of powers, the American system of government featured three separate branches; the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. I remember the teacher going on at length about the geniuses of the founding fathers in setting up this system. Because if one branch of government was ever to become corrupted or too powerful, the remaining two branches of government could unite and purge the corruption.

That was when I raised my hand and asked a question typical of a child. What would happen if two branches of government became corrupted? I never got an answer. I wasn’t even treated to some bullshit excuse to why this wasn’t even a problem; the teacher just ignored me and moved on to the next question. Much to the bemusement of my peers I might add.

I know the answer to that question. The two corrupted branches would unite to corrupt the third branch.

So when I came of age politically, one of the things I would spend hours doing was to try and come up with a system of government that couldn’t be corrupted. But no mater how clever I thought I was, there was always some means by which my incorruptible system could be corrupted.

Today, I now know that trying to concoct and incorruptible system is a fool’s errand. Such a system is fundamentally impossible. This may seem to be just me stating the obvious, but there are many liberals and progressives out there who toil in futility at this particular mill, including more than a handful of academics who call me to task for such a bold assertion. They note, and not incorrectly so, that I fail to prove this. Some even argue that this is an improvable claim.

The reason why I have confidence in stating there is no such thing as an incorruptible system has to do with real world observation. Even stainless steel will rust can corrode given time and environmental conditions; every machine breaks down, everyone makes mistakes, planes always crash, boats always sink, and rockets always blow-up on the launch pad, despite monumental efforts and astonishing technological progress to combat the inevitability of crashes and other disasters.

I can even point to biology. Life has been on this earth for billion years and still there are pathogens such as bacteria and virus. And if it’s true for biology and technology, is safe to say it’s also true for politics and governance.

So why are many Liberals so hostile to the notion that we can’t create perfect societies? Well, many Liberals tend to invasion utopian societies, and then ask the basic question of what changes are needed to realize at their utopian vision. To say that corruption is both persistent and inevitable is tantamount to saying that there vision is fundamentally impossible. Not all Liberals have this problem with many embracing the idea of a metaphorical utopia, an ideal to strive for, rather than some sort of grand ideological destiny.

The Destiny Liberals also try to make another argument. That if you can’t beat can’t beat corruption – that the whole point of self governance becomes futile. If you can’t win, why bother at all?

Again, look at technology and biology. Humans have always had to deal with viruses, so we have inherited and evolved formidable immune systems that give us a fighting chance. Safety and maintenance protocols in technology may not be able to prevent all disasters, but they do prevent many potential disasters. In the same way, we can never truly beat corruption, but there is any number of things we can do to combat it and minimize its effect.

This is something even the Founding Fathers understood when they came up with the separations of government. They didn’t create an incorruptible system, but a system that could be more effective in combating corruption, or at least as they knew it. The Founding Fathers also left in one more tool, the power to change the constitution. Thus as new challenges would arise, later generations had the power to update and modernize the constitution to contend with new realities, and more importantly answer new forms of corruption.

So what does this have to do with creating better politics?

Well for starters, we can stop pretending we can make an incorruptible system. We can also re-examine our current reforms strategies and see if they are properly hardened against corruption. I argue that the reason why the left has so little to show with grass roots organizing is because Liberals refuse to confront the reality of corruption compromising their own institutions or that the Democratic Party itself has become corrupted, even corrupted beyond the point of rescue.

But political laws like this also help in another way. To bridge what appears to be a vast gulf between the utopian Liberal ideologies we espouse too, and are worth perusing, to the other side involving the practical application of those ideologies in the real world.

Better Politics, Part two: Living in the real world.

In part one, we discussed the need to define common set of ideas for the people to share and communicate. For example, “education reform” basically means more privatization, vouchers, high stakes testing, and braking up the teachers unions. These are the very things most Liberals and Progressives are trying to put a stop to, but end up voting for and supporting any way because – its “education reform” and because there is no alternative to “education reform.”

What we need are properly defined ideas and concepts around which a conversation can revolve, to propose and built our own notion of education reform that includes concepts we believe will actually make public education better. Instead of calling it “school reform”, call it “The Rachael Plan” in order to separate it from the popular rhetoric used by the right, and under-which we can install the polices and agendas built from our collective values as Liberals and Progressives may hold.

In short, we need to do what the Conservative think tanks are already doing.

But this is just step one. For step two, what we need to do next is precisely what Republicans can’t or wont do, and that is properly vet the ideology against reality. This is the reason and evidence part of the equation.

The problem of course is most people are particularly bad at logic, reason, and evidence. Indeed, its been my observation that many Liberals and Progressives simply do not understand skepticism, let alone to be able to apply it in the sort of systematic way one would need to consistently craft policy. And to be fair, skepticism is hard. None of us likes having our cherished beliefs challenged, dismantled, or discredited.

Let’s also be realistic about this too, the sort of research needed to make this happen demands a life time dedication. Something that most of us simply can not offer – for the very simple reason that most of us have already dedicated our lives to other pursuits that are just as important.

At some, we have to take our nascent-ideology and hand it to the scientific and academics. They have to pick our ideas apart and running them through the ringer. And many of our cherished and inspired ideas will not survive scrutiny. Those that do will come with a long list of caveats, conditions, and consequences that still managed to shatter any thoughts of miracles or perfect solutions.

But its the only way to not fall into the same trap as the Republicans have, who are all but slaves to failed ideologies that are counter productive and even self destructive.

Understand that I am also not arguing that scientists and academics should or will get to dictate what we believe about politics or ideologies. For that mater, the first step of defining ideology is not about dictating what we believe ether. Step one is about establishing common ideas to start the conversation. Step two is simply testing those ideas to make certain the are realistic. And yet we still have step four, five, six, seven… and further in order to making a better political landscape.

So what is Science and Academics?

Science is a methodology by which is used to understand the world around us. The scientific process starts with making observations of the world we live in. Step two is to try and draw conclusions from those observations, called a hypothesis. But an important component of all hypothesis is the ability to be falsified – that is a means to prove that the hypothesis is not true. This takes us to step three, attempting to falsify the hypothesis by using some sort of means; mainly experimentation or through predictions.

Step three takes place in a system called “peer review,” where other peers in your field get to look over your work, sift through your data, repeat your experiments, and affirm your predictions. And they will let you know if you have made a mistake.

Any hypothesis that survives falsification through peer review is then integrated into the larger body of knowledge which consists of all the other hypotheses that have been tested before it. This body of knowledge is called the theory.

But even once an idea makes it to theory doesn’t mean its over. Ideas and concepts are tested, over, and over, and over again. In science, nothing is ever amused to be true, it must always be tested and retested. And theories are always being re-examined as new observations or evidence comes to lite.

Over time, as theories are tested repeatedly, and as our body of knowledge grows to slowly map out more and more of the universe, we have a growing confidence that our theories do actually work, and can produce predictable results.

While all scientists are academics, not all academics is necessary science. There are other non-scientific branches of academia; there is philosophy, mathematics, law, history, technology and engineering. However, they all still have their own peer review process where the claims is evaluated against the evidence. The only real difference is non-scientific works tends to be far more subjective, and where falsification is far less conclusive.

Never the less, the non-scientific branches still bring a lot to our reformed political table.

You got science all over my politics!

As the main tittle suggest, this is all about “the real world”. And that means producing something that is real and concrete.

Step one and step two are not actual steps, but an ongoing and long term conversation. Just about any one can participate on the political side, no real credentials are necessary. In fact, the point is to have the main from the street to have a say in the process. However, in practice they will not be “common persons” but citizens who manage to amass some degree of popularity and influence in party. They basically publish opinion pieces, sit in on conferences, man call in talk shows, even perform art or write fiction.

Academics and scientists are inveighed to participate by publishing counter articles offering an academic perspective responding to these opinion pieces or even to other academics on any given subject. In addition to just doing pure education pieces where members can be given speed courses on the what the science really says and how we came to understand it.

But at some point we need to bring in the academics to do a very different task, to collect the conversations and start hammering out some sort of conclusion. This is surprisingly hard work and will take real man-hours to accomplish, and not unpaid interns ether.

And the end of the process, we should end up with a set of publications, a nascent-manifesto if you would, that start to spell out ether the Liberal and Progressive ideologies as well as define some of the policy initiatives that each would advocate.

Also note that I am treating Liberalism and Progressivism separately here, they are still separate ideologies and will come up with different conclusions and agenda goals. However, I seen no reason why a political party needs to be constrained to serving one particular ideology. Heck, I see no reason why Conservatism and Libertarianism couldn’t have their own compartments in the party. In fact, this might be a great way to openly appeal to Conservatism and Libertarianism who currently vote mostly Republican. Don’t forget that they go through their own academic vetting process as well.

However, the nascent-manifesto is still not ready for prime time. What we will have at this point would likely amount to little more than a refined version of thinking out loud. A lot of goals and ideas that while vetted for practicality are still competing. Not all ideas can be carried out.

Still more steps are needed.

Rise of the Zombie Voters for Clinton

Rise of the Zombie Voters for Clinton

Now that Hillary Clinton is “officially” the Democratic nominee for president, I am expected to get behind her. If not for the sake of “party unity” than because we must do everything within our power to stop Trump from getting into the White House.

Well, I am neither impressed by Clinton’s qualifications or intimidated by a Trump presidency. This usually causes most Democrat’s heads to explode. Suddenly I’m amoral, a closet neo-conservative, a spoiled child having a tantrum (boy, that’s projection if ever I saw it), I’m the good-German, and anti-America. And all usually said in one breath too.

What is hard to miss about these comments though is the state of total fear that they come from. In the minds of most Democrats, Donald Trump is Hitler. A fascist dictator that can only bring death and destruction.

I do understand where they are coming from. I remember thinking exactly the same thing when W Bush was elected. All of the Hitler hallmarks were there. He stole the election and got away with it. The 9-11 attacks were Bush’s Reichstag Fire which aloud him to consolidate his power and to cow any remaining political resistance. He launched an illegal war on fabricated evidence, instituted massive government surveillance programs, used drones to begin randomly killing civilians, started indefinite detention and brutal torture programs. If that’s not the return of Hitler, its pretty darned close.

But there are two vary important points to keep in mind here. First – we are still here. As bad as the Bush administration was, we still didn’t see the words “The end” role across the screen. While damaged and greatly eroded, Democracy has some how managed to survive.

But there were other predictions I remember thinking as being true that never happened. I remember fearing internment camps where Democrats would be rounded up and ultimately killed as part of some perverted ultimate solution. I even saw pictures of alleged death camps being constructed. I remember being quite certain that he would never stand down once his term expired. Those never happened. And as for 9-11, it turns out that it was exactly what Bush said it was. As some one who used to be a Truther, this was a profound, and difficult revelation to deal with.

And point number two, Bush’s legacy remains the new order, even under the Obama Administration. The illegality of the Iraq War still remains to be excised, and if anything, the doctrine of regime change remains is still in place, Obama dramaticly expanded Bush’s drone program and state surveillance. We know that the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay are still there, still awaiting trial, still awaiting charges, and are to simply assume they are no longer tortured or abused because – well its Obama we are talking about here.

If Bush was the American Hitler, than logic demands that Obama must also be Hitler. That’s why I must be sympathetic to Trump here, he isn’t proposing anything that’s really new, and in most cases are already established Washington doctrine.

If Trump is Hitler, than he can only be the third one in a row. But Trump is not Hitler, and the people who are making the accusation that he is are the ones that need to be confronted.

And Clinton is no saint. Recent revelations have brought to light how deep the collusion was between the Clinton campaign, and the DNC which was supposed to be the neutral arbiter of the primary. The election was basicly stolen for Clinton. Clinton can violate the public trust as Secretary of State and not be held accountable. No, she isn’t the next Hitler ether. But that doesn’t mean I have to get in line with some one who is so blatantly corrupt. And it certainly doesn’t mean I am going to sit down and shut-up.

Voting for the Lesser of Two Evils?

Or VLOT for short, is kind of the default argument of many Clinton apologists, both positive (those who are authentically for our first female president) and negative (those who feel they have no choice but to vote for Clinton as the “lesser evil.”) Yes, even the positive apologists will invoke VLOT, or at least they do once they realize you aren’t already in love with her.

The idea seems simple, its your basic cost/benefit analysis that adds up all the positive and negatives. Once you crunch the numbers, Clinton is the “obvious winner”. So obvious it would seem that one need-not bother crunching the numbers.

The problem is that VLOT is disingenuous. As an argument, its not reinvent so long as you have an option. So why were Sanders voters beaten over the head with it even before Iowa, when Clinton was said to be “inevitable” and Sanders was accused of being the next McGovern? And as for that cost/benefit analysis, the tendency is to ignore Clinton’s negatives and Trumps positives. They do actually exist.

Since becoming an Atheist, and learning a lot more about the practice of skepticism, I have already become familiar with VLOT under another form; the creationist/evolution debate (assuming you can call it a “debate”). Creationists try to argue that the theory of evolution is flawed because it doesn’t enplane this, that, or the other thing. If evolution is flawed, then Biblical Creationism must be true – as if it wins by default. To put it another way, Creationists attack evolution, then try to smuggle creationism past they very arguments they used to dismantle evolution.

What Creationist fail to understand is that the argument just doesn’t work this way. You can’t take down an entire theory by finding one flaw. Even if you were able to discredit this, that, and the other thing, all you have done is discredit this, that, and the other thing. The theory of evolution is vast however and is made up of tens of thousands of smaller hypothesis.

But even if I was, for the sake of argument, grant the Creationist argument that evolution as being completely discredited. Creationism still needs to prove itself.

VLOT is the same argument. Even if I were to grant that this, that, and the other claim about Trump as being true (and he is defiantly flawed, no disagreement there), you haven’t discredited the entire person or his platform. But instead of systematical going through his platform and dismantling them one by one, the arguments are increasingly becoming hyperbolic and verbose.

And even if one was to discredit Trump completely, Clinton still has her own case to make if she is to have any chance to win my vote. But this will never happen because the whole point of VLOT is to smuggle Clinton past any scrutiny at all. Any attempt to even discuses her character or polices gets shouted down as closet-Trump support.

The Zombi-Voter Apocalypse

Clinton is NOT a well liked or inspiring candidate. And then there is the DNC rigging of the primary, making it appear she is more popular than she is. Many of her supporters are reluctant, even critical, and yet they will still vote for her under VLOT. In their minds, they see that there isn’t much choice because Trump is so clear worse.

Often they have a “we will fix this later” mentality. Some even say that Clinton should and will face a primary challenger in four years, or that this will all go away once we enact clean election laws. We just have “just survive this election” first.

But this is an intellectual trap. We will always have to “just survive this election.” The Republican candidate will always be worse than the Democrat. And there will always be the need for “party unity.”

So at the end of the day, any skepticism about Clinton, or of Democrats in general, is pointless, little more than intellectual masturbation. These voters will always do the “adult” thing, hold their nose and vote the only viable choice, despite any reservations they may have. They become “zombie-voters”.

What is worse is that the Democratic Leadership has latched onto this as a campaign strategy. Your opinion of Clinton, good or bad, is irreverent, so long as you vote for her. And if negative criticism is irreverent, because voters never walk away, there is neither the incentive or need for the Democratic Party to address these concerns. They can put any policy in front of you and you will vote for it.

It’s a doomed strategy. If the party ignores the concerns of its voters, than the disconnect between the voters and the leadership is never addressed and can only grow. It then becomes an endurance test for the voter. With fewer and fewer voters able to hold their nose with each successive election.

But the real damage is in regards to policy. If the opinions of voters do not mater, than nether do the needs of the voters or the issues they face. Not even for the zombie voters themselves. Regardless of the opinions they hold, the necessity of “party unity” will always trump these concerns. What a perfect recipe to get voters to vote against their own self interest.

A candidate such as Clinton is the result of zombie voting. Time and time again, voters were stampeded into VLOT, always voting against the opposition, and never taking stock of what it was that they were voting for. This aloud corruption to take root in the Democratic Party and spread unchecked. This increases the pain voters have to endure to pull the handle for Democrats. And when the pain becomes too much, Republicans role into office.

Slaying the Zombie-Voter

A cording to Hollywood lore, the only way to stop a zombie is to destroy its head. The Zombie-Voter was created when the head was separated from voting one’s consensus, as well as a fear of the opposition. But perhaps the current solution of “letting Trump win” is not an ideal approach. As I said, I am not intimidated by a Trump presidency, so I can not be made to fear Trump and by extension can not be compelled to vote for Clinton. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have concerns. It just means I am not convinced Clinton is the better option.

This is one of the hopes of the Bernie or Bust movement, that a Trump Presidency will brake the back of the establishment’s control over the Democratic Party, finally allowing real candidates to get through the nomination process. But establishment Democrats have managed to survive two terms of W Bush. I fear they will survive a Trump Presidency as well. They would likely draw the wrong lessens, making it even harder for real candidates to participate in elections.

At some point, the Democratic Party ceases to be a viable party. It then becomes the true Zombie-voter apocalypses.

One counter strategy might be to separate party officials from those elected into office. Thus the leadership of the party is not contingent of LOTE victories. Of course how to carry out such reforms may be another mater.   

Part 1, what the hell is “Progressive-ism” thing any way?”

When I ask you what is means to be a Progressive, its a safe bet you have a good idea of what it is.

Liberals have a utopian vision of the future. It may be a literal future that Liberals may think we are distend for, or metaphorical utopia, one that man will forever be striving for. Regardless, Liberals take that vision and asks this very basic question, what sort of changes can we make to take us closer to that utopian future?

Of course Conservatives disagree. They say that we have already had a utopian society in the past. It was those damned changes insisted by Liberals that destroyed it. So they ask this basic question, what changes can we undo to return to the utopian societies of the past.

This is where the Libertarian horns in, saying that both Liberals and Conservatives are wrong. There is no such thing as a utopian society because one man’s paradise is always another man’s purgatory. They argue that “paradise” is a profoundly personal idea. So they ask this question, what changes can we make to maximize every one’s freedom and liberty so they can achieve their own personal utopia.

The Progressive however don’t bothers with such metaphysical concepts as utopian societies; future, past, or persona, these are essentially undefinable concepts. So Progressives take the world as it is and as this basic question. What sort of changes can we make that solve today’s problems.

What? You mean to tell me that is not your idea of Progressive-ism? Well obviously your notion of Progressive-ism is completely wrong… bla bla bla… my view is better… bla bla bla… let’s just agree to disagree. This is the point where the conversation usually falls apart to shouting and overall hard feelings.

Actually, it would be something if we ever got to that conversation. Usually when a new organization or caucus is formed, the assembly usually falls apart just trying to figure out what the rules should be – to figure out what the rules should be. Thus never getting around to deciding what “Progressive-ism” actually means.

You may or may not like my definition. Regardless, there are two very important points to keep in mind. First, as well reasoned (or not) that it may be, nearly every self described Progressive out there will have their own definition. So at best all I have done is tossed yet another definition that every one else now needs to sift through. Second, its not actually a complete definition. It’s a perspective that one could use to build a definition, but until one actually digs into the issues a Progressive sees as a problem that needs fixed, and how they intend to fix them, my definition is little more than a word salad. For it to be a definition, it has to be clear and specific.

The whole point of defining something is that so every one understands what that something is. Until that happens, a meaningful conversation about it is fundamentally impossible. This is literally high-school level philosophy where the first step of any debate is to rigorously outline and define the terms to be used. So until every one can agree on a common definition for Progressive-ism, than it as an ideology literally dose not exist, and we might as well be hairless apes yapping and yammering on about what ever hairless great apes get exited about. Which now that I think about it…

This first point is rather hard to overstress. Without a clear and common definition of what Liberalism and Progressive-ism is, it’s literately game over, there is no where to start from, and no where to go from here.

To make maters worse. This seems to be by design. Democrats seem to have a profound aversion to even the concept of defining Liberalism or Progressive-ism. They may talk about the importance of diversity, or argue that a common definition some how leads to authoritarianism. This is usually when I start banging my head on the desk. Of course when a parasitic ideology moves in, such as Neoliberalsim moves in, the very first thing it dose is it destroys definitions, deliberately making it harder to address and discuss issues that were previously resolved.

Even terms such as “left-center-right” are by intention nebulous terms that admit up-front that there are no usable definitions here. They may as well mean “us-surrender-them”

Let me give you an example. Consider “education reform.” “Education” usually means our K through 12, public school system, and “reform” usually means to repair or make better, so it usually means to repair our dysfunctional public school system.

However, when most candidates say they are for “school reform”, what they are truly proposing or supporting involve school consolidation, charter schools, school vouchers, breaking up the teachers unions, letting Creationist write the science and history textbooks, and so called “high stakes testing” where the schools with more issues are systematical defuned. These “reforms” actually make education worse if not the original cause of many of the issues parents and students are facing today.

So to find out what a candidate really believes, you need to dig deeper, requiring information that most voters do not have access too. But even dismantling a candidates real position is not much help.

So, what’s the alternative. Really, this is a real question, what’s the alternative to “education reform?” There are proposal out there, I have seen them. But if the average voter doesn’t have access to these plans, they may as well not exist. And if they don’t exist, then how can voters put pressure on candidates to support policy’s that actually address the issues found in education?

And to make mater worse, just simply having alternatives out there is not enough. You have to build a popular consensuses behind a specific set of ideas to gain any traction. This is where a shared ideology comes in. An ideology is a necessary starting point for generating and vetting ideas. For education reform, an ideology helps to paint a common picture of what public education should look like and the things it needs to be able to accomplish. This helps to suggest common reforms that members of the ideology can get behind.

This must be the first function of a political party. To help foster one or more common political ideologies that its members can subscribe to, and in turn use to define there relationship with the political party itself. The political party must provide the space and frequencies over which the people can build and discus these common ideologies and harness it to solve real problems. Without it, the people literally have nothing to work with.

The Photo was taken by Rob Speed

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rspeed/3737705985

Building a better political party

Building a better political party

One, have the ability to define, author, publish, defend, and maintain a “Progressive agenda.” To do so while adhering to strict academic standards. And to do so beyond the influence of corrupting agents such as the Democratic Party.

Two, have the ability to communicate this platform with the general population and higher academia. The ability to internalize valid feedback and criticism of the platform. This information needs to be processed and submitted for the purpose of further maintaining and refining the platform.

Three, have the ability author “legislative ready” bills for local, state, and federal governments to consider, and have resources made available to promote and defend said legislation at public hearings. This will also include “run ready” platforms which candidates and politicians can adopt.

Four, have the ability to grade, endorse, reject, and constructively criticize both candidates and legislative agendas for compliance or opposition to said platform, and to do so in an objective and systematic manner. And to publish these findings.

And five, have the ability to strategize, recruit, harness, and rapidly mobilize the general public (volunteers) for public activism and demonstrations to best advance the responsibilities of the previous four initiatives.

Yesterday, I posted these five ideas as justification for why I wasn’t impressed with Bernie Sanders new “alternative organization.” Several people liked them and asked me to expand on them so that they might bring them to Sanders or even the Green Party Convention.

While this blog is brand new, this is something that I have been developing and writing about for years, so there is a lot for me to talk about.

It all starts from a very simple question, can the Democratic Party be saved? Regardless of your answer, it still comes down to the very basic question of just what it is a political party does, and how to get what ever it does done in the real world. What are the nuts and bolts, how to the gears mesh, and where the stupid handle is. It turns out there isn’t really an answer.

Oh there are plenty of experts with very well researched books out there on the subject, giving brilliant and insightful step by step instruction on hop to build or reform a political party from the ground up. Fat better research than this humble blogger could ever manage to be sure. All of which may give the reader that the question, while perhaps not simple, is well understood. That is until you pick up a second expert officer and his well researched book. Then you find out they aren’t any where close to each other.

So I need to be honest here. At best, all I can do is throw yet another set of ideas onto the pile. And there should be no illusions that any thing offered here will be the final world. But I do offer a perspective you don’t normally see from the experts.

One, this is from the field. Taken from my days of being an activist and working with the Wichita chapter of Democracy for America, and later as a simple blogger.

Two, this is back to basics. Part of learning the nuts and bolts is first figuring out what nuts and bolts are, and how they are supposed to work together. I am hardly an expert here, but I have been exposed to basic scientific and philosophical principles that aren’t usually considered, let alone applied.

And three, dealing with an imperfect world populated by imperfect people. Astonishingly, of all the marital I have read on the subject, most reformers seem to assume that we live in a utopia where we don’t have to worry about corruption and stupidity. And where everything always goes according to plan. In the real world – NOTHING ever goes according to plan, no mater how much experience and expertise you have. Competent people expect problems and learn how to modify and change on the fly. And more importantly, accept when they are wrong and learn from there mistakes.

With all of that said, lets get started.