(from October 18, “democratic socialist” Senate candidate Graham Platner and my impressions of the “No Kings” rally in Portland, Maine. live in Maine. I’m surprised that so many people who regard themselves as leftists are supporting Graham Platner, a “pwogwessive” who spent years as a Blackwater mercenary. Haven’t people learnt anything from the fiascos of Bernie, AOC, Fetterman , Cory Booker, and so many others?


ALL Dem candidates are beholden to their donors, consultants, and the party itself but have no accountibility to their voters. People who attempt to buck the system -Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney, are destroyed.
Elections are meaningless. They mainly function as a means of indoctrination and thought control. This is a system where the opposition presidential candidate was tied to a chair in 2016 so she couldn’t debate.Third parties are basically banned in the US.
 
Want to do something meaningful, something to stop the drive to authoritarianism? Work to build a general strike. This is almost the only political activity which is meaningful. A major reason for the ceasefire in Gaza is that mobilizing among the European working classes-workers in Italian ports, the beginnings of a general strike in Spain, scared the elites.
Yes, Trump is scary. The Dems won’t, and can’t do anything to stop him that’s not performative. Cory Booker and Hakim Jeffries’ marathon filibusters had no real demands and accompished nothing. They were designed to accomplish nothing. Chuck Schumer in public bitterly complained about Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”, he could have blocked it in committee but chose not to.
The Dems and Repubs have the same agenda, although the Dems would have preferred a slower approach, to avoid triggering an uprising. Have people already forgotten the deep authoritarianism of 2020-2022?
The purpose of the Dems, especially the “progressives”, is to coopt and marginalize dissent. The reason why we don’t have a national healthcare system, when voters of both parties overwhelmingly support it, isn’t because of the Repubs, its because of the Dems. They have demobilized any real movement for a national healthcare system. Of course, this is the least of their many crimes.
I went to the “No Kings” rally near where I live. 20,000 people, mostly holding hand made signs, all on message, telling each other how much they hated Trump. Very little about the genocide in Gaza (this made the Dems look bad, so it wasn’t an approved talking point)
I had a Palestinian flag and a sign which said “Smash the Duopoly” and “The Dems Won’t Fight Trump” (They’re on the Same Side) I got a few dirty looks, a small number of thumbs up.
 
My feeling from the No Kings raly was a deep feeling of sadness. The Democratic Party has an iron grip on “left” dissident movements and this will prevent any real change. My current thinking is that things will get worse and worse until, probably in the 2040s, China will step in and rebuild areas of America which are still viable.