Again, the daily news cycle:
The Republican Side and The Democratic Side

Both good takes, both worth watching, but …

Ultimately as irrelevant as McCarthy himself.

Both also the creative produce of the DueDissidence team …
… who additionally have on offer something far more useful.

Jordan Chariton Plea(d)s for End to Progressive ‘In-Fighting’, nineteen minutes of pure gold–not just as political analysis, but in some twisted backhand way, as life advice.

Jordan Chariton is a ‘progressive journalist’. He’s not on the level of a Greenwald or a Taibbi, but he has done some excellent work on under-reported stories like the ‘crisis’ of water in Flint, Michigan, and his work is clearly under-appreciated–I remember him fuming out loud for quite some weeks about not being able to get the attention of Michael Moore, who is from Flint himself.

When Jordan sticks close to reporting the story, he’s a valuable resource to the informed citizenry. But when he reaches for that next Glenn/Matt rung and tries to evolve into a top-shelf Thinker too–the results are mixed, and all too frequently a little cringe-inducing, as is the case in his recent opinion piece.

Keaton Weiss and Russell Dobular of Due Dissidence seem to agree with that opinion, possibly because in their own ways they are budding top-shelf thinkers themselves, in spite of their subscriber count on YT only recently struggling up from the hundreds, into the thousands. They’ve been very helpful to me for quite a while, and I’m going to do my best to tell you how they were again today.

They start out just breaking down the basics of Chariton’s article. It’s another call for peace on Jordan’s part–he’s done it before–a pleading on the one hand to the Kyle Kulinskis and Sam Seders and Cenk Uygurs, a pleading on the other to Jimmy Dore and Hard Lens Media and the Grayzone–to stop bashing each other online. It’s one big old ‘Hey guys can’t we all just get along!? … we want the same things, right?’ …

He’s upset that the heartwarming optimism of 2016 and the first Bernie campaign has descended into a circular firing squad of everyone trying to prove that they are the true heirs of the radical Left, and that those other guys are a bunch of sellouts and fakes on the one side, or ‘grifters’ on the other.

He’s mostly right about that, but his understanding of how and why it happened and continues to happen, while almost nothing else does happen, is a little dim and nearsighted.

He ends with the hope that progressives will redirect all that angry energy into achieving goals we all can agree on, like a Green New Deal, or Medicare For All.

(IS pushing through a ‘green Jobs’ program, or an insurance scheme instead of health care as a human right–are these things a step in the right direction? Sure. Are they the be-all and end-all of a shared progressive vision? Hell no. But lets leave that aside for now.)

Keaton picks up the scalpel, or maybe the machete, first. “Jordan”, he says …

There will be no real Green New Deal. There will be no M4A. Not in your lifetime, and maybe never.

There’s a reason why Bernie 2016 was described as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and that’s because it was.

The opportunity was poisoned from within the blue party, staggered, came back staggering in 2020, got a second dose of the same poison, and died. The poison’s chosen puppet will never allow a real M4A bill, even that half-measure, to arise and be signed. He’ll toss out lesser bogus promises to the blue believers like so many chunks of dead baby pig–student loan debt, anyone? And he will spread the poison to anything that really changes anything. What is the federal minimum wage after two years of total Dem control, Joe? Same as it ever was. I’m paraphrasing, embellishing, running off on rants that deviate from what Keaton really said.

He does say: The railroad workers couldn’t even pry seven sick days out of the Corruption that is Biden America. You think by voting in a dozen more AOCs, you’ll suddenly or even eventually have universal health care? Wake the fuck up.

I ask: How can anyone, in good faith, argue with that self-evident truth?

There’s lots of cohering tangents in the video. Watch for yourself. One tack they didn’t ever take is this: In failure, Bernie did sell out. He votes dependably to wash the military-industrial complex in billions. He doesn’t say the word ‘Yemen’ any more. Smart people run channels pointing this exact kind of shit out in detail. Are you wagging your finger at them for that, Jordan? Are you siding with the people who criticize them for doing it, the incrementalists who pin their hopeful tongues to Bernie’s ass or Alexandria’s latest PR stunt?

Yes, you are.

A call for a cease-fire is a call for people more honest than you to shut up and sit down, and take it.

So fuck you, and No.

***

Keaton drops the mic, the machete, with a thud. Russell picks it up, and gets serious.

Russell says: Coming together with a Cenk or a David Doel is not a worthwhile project.

Because in the end, we’d only be holding our noses to no good purpose.

Then he tells the story that pushed me into writing all this.

One day, Russell says, I was out on the street with a petition in my hand, a petition to get Alexandria Ocasio Cortez on the ballot. I approached a huge hulking guy, six-four, with crazy white hair, wearing a denim jacket, and asked him to sign. This was in the hopeful days, before she even had the chance to sell out.

And verily doth the madman spit back to me:

“Talk to me when you’re ready for a real Revolution, MotherFuckah!“

I swear to god, that wasn’t me.

I swear to you, I am ashamed that that wasn’t me.

***

Deep in the dying light of the dying year, I finally figured out what I’m going to say to the next JW, Mormon, or Moonie that befouls my porch. It goes like this.

“I understand your faith, that it was God who created man.

Understand, that my faith teaches me that it was exactly the opposite.

There’s one other irreconcilable difference between us.

You are spending your precious life coming here, to try and get me to become an apostate to my faith.

I am spending my life without any care in the world, about what unlikely thing YOU have chosen to believe.

Good day.”

***

I wish I was also bold enough to scream truth about Real Revolution to innocent signature workers too. I’m not. I’m condemned to politeness, and conflict-avoidance.

But the crazy man who was–he emboldens me, nevertheless.

I am bolder today than I was before I heard of him, not just bolder in my political convictions, but bolder more generally. My spirit is lifted to the light of the year of our Lord, Two-Zero, Two-Three. What it means yet, no one knows. Hey there, Mister Blue … the rest of the lyric will be written in each passing hour and day.

So thanks, crazy dude. Thank you Keaton, and Russell. Thanks for not lying to me and expecting me to slurp it up like a fucking drone.

I appreciate it.