Should the Left Support Nina Turner?

This too is an irrelevant but nevertheless interesting question. The presenter asking it pretty clearly comes down on the side of a No. Is it for good enough reasons? That’s your mission query, but only if you should decide to accept it, which you will probably decline, and in so doing prove yourself a better spender of time than I am.

I would, however, advise that this is worth the time:

PRIMO RADICAL #259: Robbie Jaeger

Two chubby white male nerds explain in truly exquisite detail why electoralism has inevitably become a dead end.

Unsurprisingly, it’s that most everybody, far down beneath the Nina Turner level, has got a palm out and expects, needs, it to be greased. The power elite are squeezing out their tubes of said grease judiciously, wherever there’s a danger that some alternative candidate, channel, outlet, or individual might actually attempt to effect real change. So nothing changes.

Consider the position of a young idealist for a moment.

She gets into a good school and studies history or pol sci or law. Or anything really. Probably this leaves her pretty deep in debt. Come graduation, the bill comes due and the pressure mounts. Her parents do whatever they can to help, but this means first of all helping her get a great job, and ‘great’ means, they hope, pushing six figures at the least.

Out of whose pocket will the six figures come? That ends up being the crucial question.

The normal answer is: the capitalists. Maybe it’s as morally foul as going to work for a defense contractor, but remember that we did theorize that she’s an idealist. So maybe it’s a ‘non-profit’, largely funded by, er, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. They’re good, right? She’s heard them sponsoring NPR … they’re the ones who “support creative people, effective institutions, and influential networks building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world”.

And just look at their diverse, pretty Board of Directors.

Every single one of them was once just like you, young idealist.

You could become one of them, if you learn to play the game well and right.

Which requires investing your mind, soul, and time into the world as it exists, and accepting the System’s definitions of more just. More ‘verdant’. More peaceful.

And yet. Somehow ..

The six-figure success stories at NPR yammer incessantly about Russian Aggression, and most all of it is complete bullshit.

The six-figure success stories at NPR don’t have a word to say about American Aggression, the single most potent force in shaping the world for eighty years at least.

How many wars, how many coups, how many assassinations, and incidents of regime change, and attempted election-riggings has the Empire engaged in since your grandmother was your age?

Did they teach you, at that serene school, the name of Patrice Lumumba?

Did they teach you who killed John Kennedy, or Malcolm X, or Fred Hampton?

When they dump billions into Raytheon’s pockets for the whole time you’ve been alive, for the purpose of Saving Those Poor Afghani Women, did you buy the logic?

When they do it again in the name of Defending That Brave Ukrainian Democracy, will you buy it then?

If you take the Machine’s six figures, you’ll buy what they want you to buy with it. Upton Sinclair said it all:

“It is difficult to get a (wo)man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was just like you, a few short years ago.

But she grabbed the Machine’s six figures with both hands and she has no intention of letting go.

Yes, she wept on the House floor, with Nancy Pelosi’s finger in her face, as she signed on for yet another evil Machine vote.

She wept, but she voted with Nancy and Satan.

And with each vote there will be fewer tears, and Noble Young Alexandria will proceed along the enriching path until she looks and thinks exactly like her Mama Bear, the woman who in 1996 was waving the flag for Medicare For All.

That’s how Succeeding works here.

In the holy name of a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. Amen, and God Bless America.

Young idealist, I can’t tell you to not take their money. I don’t have the moral standing to insist. I don’t have your bills to pay, and I don’t know how much being able to afford a child, or a house in the Hamptons, means to you.

I can only explain to you what will happen if you do. The decision is yours by divine right.

As you choose, don’t just listen to your parents, or to me. Especially if you’re intending to be politically active, listen to Primo and Robbie Jaeger explain for an hour about how billionaires take a personal interest in corrupting your heart.

May it live forever unstained by their darkness. May you never vote for the ones who have fallen before you.