The progressive agenda is in trouble…
First, let’s end a misconception: not all progressives are liberal, and not all liberals are progressive. The last election offers evidence for the latter: HRC’s “liberal message” was “more of the same” and was directed more to certain sectors of our society instead of to all. Too many voters didn’t like this “liberal message,” most of them coming from the sectors HRC neglected. More women voted for Trump than HRC too, so that “first woman president” pseudo-progressive message didn’t resonate that much either. (That first woman president will come when a woman lacking Clinton’s obvious flaws and baggage is nominated.) But fundamentally Clinton’s message wasn’t progressive.
A progressive message has to be one that’s inclusive and works to improve the lives of the majority of Americans, not just the few sectors HRC appealed to. Despite Harry Reid’s shenanigans in the Nevada primary, HRC appealed to a lot fewer union members than her husband, Al Gore, and Barack Obama did. Those so-called liberals, fanatic HRC supporters, ignored the warning signs on the roads through the primaries and the months preceding the general election. HRC found many of her convention delegates in the South where they didn’t matter in the general election (even unpredictable Florida went for Trump, and the starry-eyed attempt to win Arizona, Georgia, and Texas, perhaps spurred on by liberal media giants like the New York Times, was a complete failure), while Bernie Sanders, with a long history of supporting unions (again making Nevada in the primaries an anomaly created by the nefarious Reid) showed that HRC’s assumptions about the rust belt were foolish.
Clinton’s appeal to blacks, Hispanics, and Asians was definitely not 100 percent either, and focusing only on those sectors while excluding others was a huge mistake (there’s a reason they’re called minorities, after all, and many blacks didn’t buy into that “Bill was the first black president” shtick). A progressive wants to include everyone in her or his vision of moving the country forward. In particular, HRC neglected young people. Young blacks often voted for Sanders even while their elders still adhered to the faux liberal paradigm that damaged their economic chances with NAFTA and put many blacks in jail using a biased crime bill—a situation that still exists, mind you. Her ties to Wall Street infuriated many who saw that narrow sector and one-percenters in general as part of the problem, and Clinton Inc as a strong affiliate.
A progressive agenda has to move the country forward, making all Americans’ lives better, not just the one-percenters. HRC’s “liberal message” basically ignored the huge income gap between most of us and the privileged few. The latter can pretty much take care of themselves—they’ve been doing very well since the 1980s—but progressives must show that moving the country forward is in their interests too. Even though some of the privileged call themselves liberals (Mark Cuban and other HRC supporters are in that set of “beautiful people” along with many pop stars), they aren’t progressives because they were happy with the status quo—I’d call them anemic conservatives or faux-liberals.
A true progressive also recognizes there is a place for conservatism, but not HRC’s conservatism. Generally speaking, the nation’s problems are quite complex and “solutions” to one might have negative repercussions elsewhere. A “conservative examination” of all the consequences of a bold and progressive step forward might temper that step or cause us to make a slight detour. One of Obamacare’s greatest failings was to ignore its consequences in a rush to push something through Congress. Good things like coverage of preexisting conditions and children up to 26 who are living at home might be thrown out now because some faux-liberals still caved to the insurance companies and Big Pharma.
In theory, a liberal agenda and libertarian agenda are the same. “Liberal” is often interpreted as people having the right to do anything as long as it doesn’t interfere with other people’s rights; “libertarians” definitely adhere to that same general philosophy. These two sectors implement this democratic meta-principle, so eloquently stated and foolishly undetailed by our Founding Fathers, in radically different ways, of course, but NEITHER CAN LEAD to progressive action. True progressive action must be summarized in few words: make your community, state, country, and the world a better place for ALL human beings, not just a few sectors.
When I resided in Colombia, they used to make the joke that the liberals went to early mass and the conservatives went to late mass, this humor implying that there wasn’t really any difference between those ruling elites. We have what that joke alludes to here in the U.S.—there is no major difference between the ruling elites or the two traditional parties. Your Mark Cubans and George Soroses are as guilty as the Koch brothers in killing a progressive agenda in our country; your Clintons, Schumers, and Wasserman-Schutzes are also just as guilty as your Cruzes and Rubios. Progressives have been squeezed out by liberals and conservatives, both of the latter wanting to continue THEIR status quo, although many conservatives also have a retrograde mentality of wanting to return to the “good old days.”
The world is much too complicated to maintain the status quo or to return to the good old days. We need some true progressives to represent us at all levels—local, state, national, and international. I’m appealing to all liberals and conservatives to become more progressive-minded. Otherwise, our nation needs a strong third party. I’m pessimistic about any of true progress being made on these fronts. Hopefully I’ll be surprised.
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Aristocrats and Assassins. Detective Castilblanco and his wife go on vacation. They both see a wee bit too much of Europe, including a few royals who are kidnapped. Written before the Paris, Brussels, and Nice attacks, I don’t think anyone would say now that this is impossible. Maybe European security agencies should consider it a warning?
And so it goes…
