Time to boycott the Democrats
"It's important to remember that Bill Clinton's eight years in power did nothing to reverse, or indeed stall, this neoliberal shift. His strategy was to appeal to middle-class Republicans, not embrace liberal principles of social justice and egalitarianism--hence the drive to dismantle welfare, produce a crime bill that would assuage the white middle class while wreaking havoc on Black families, cheerlead free trade, push through NAFTA and deregulate Wall Street.
Although Hillary Clinton cannot be fully implicated in these disastrous policies, it is good to remember Hillarycare and Travelgate, and acknowledge that her role as First Lady went far beyond White House niceties.
As senator, Clinton famously voted for the Iraq War, one of the most shameful crimes against humanity in modern history. Then, as secretary of state, she led the military campaign in Libya with high-spirited abandon, supported the coup in Honduras and continued to spew retrograde rhetoric about Iran. In terms of domestic policy, too, Clinton is the out-of-touch, corporate-sponsored establishment to Bernie Sanders' grassroots revolution...
But more than that, it's time to boycott the Democratic Party and its apparatchiks. Clinton's blatant condescension, her description of Sanders supporters as "baristas" and disillusioned nobodies "living in their parents' basement" who need a political revolution to reboot their self-worth, and finally her own estimation of "occupying the center-left to the center-right," should be enough grounds for a final divorce.
The Democratic Party doesn't care about liberal concerns. They sabotaged Sanders, their own candidate, because he was not properly aligned with neoliberal values. This is why rather than rally disaffected liberals, they choose to focus on Trump's following. They should not be able to count on our votes, come what may, every four years.
On a more personal note, I have to confess that what scares me as much as Trump's racism and misogyny (I know something about that, I am a woman of color, an immigrant to this country with a Muslim last name) is Clinton's impermeable cult following.
Lesser evilism is one thing but hardcore Clintonism is another. The complete break from reality (couched in inclusive, feminist language), the privileged belief that as long as we recycle our trash and drive fuel-efficient cars, we are going to be okay, and the lack of empathy with the pain we create in the world and at home, astonishes me.
This criminal indifference is embodied by the "Pantsuit Power" flash-mob video for Hillary Clinton. It's a particularly troubling skill to cover up real-life stink with well-choreographed dance and peppy music, and make oneself believe that everything's hunky-dory.
Let's not forget that however reprehensible Trump's words (or life) might be, Hillary Clinton has been responsible for the destruction of entire societies. That's a far more vile obscenity.
Trump hates Black and Brown people, Clinton incinerates them. Trump is a sexual predator, Clinton is an imperialist one, who gets women like Honduran indigenous and environmental rights activist Berta Cáceres exposed to murder. Trump is a scam artist, Clinton is a fraud who profited off of the most vulnerable people in Haiti in the aftermath of a gruesome disaster. Is this the kind of experience third party candidates are supposed to lack?
The thing is, it's not morally viable to prop up the status quo anymore. As to the rest, que sera sera."
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