Why I'm No Longer A Liberal

When I first became politically conscious I identified as a deep-blue dyed in the wool Liberal. I spent all of my teenage years and early 20s defending Democrats from Republicans and defending liberalism from people that, at the time, I saw as contrarians who were only to my left to score cool points. I also spent a good deal of that time as an insufferable smug atheist arguing against organized religion with the same sort of zeal that I argued for Democratic hegemony. I remember driving around town with my girlfriend at 2am on election night 2008 and celebrating in the streets when Obama won. And I remember being so angry and pissed off at people who turned on him so quickly after he took office, who said he was just like every other politician. I remember thinking how unreasonable that was, that he just got in, that politics is complicated, that he was still cleaning up Bush's mess and would need time to implement his agenda.

Cut ahead to the present day and my current view is that Obama is a bloodless dirtbag who should be tried in the Hague and the Democratic party is an institutional barrier to progress and liberation. This shift didn't come from some immature confused place of being seduced by "purity" testing or becoming impatient with progress or getting sucked into a cathartic loop of tearing down rather than building up. It's not a view born of a naïve belief that no one should ever have to compromise to get things done nor from an idealized demand for politics to exist without mess or sacrifice.

It is, in fact, a change born from largely the opposite.

It’s the inevitable result of ongoing education and growth and a continuous humbling of perspective that comes from spending time with people who actually understand and live with the deepest consequences of policy and politics and history, as opposed to deferring to the opinions and perspectives of rich people on TV and in the pages of supposedly respectable propaganda rags like The New York Times (let us not forget they were pivotal in lying the public into supporting the war in Iraq and numerous other violent projects of imperialism).

The thing is, the actual naïve position is to believe that the world works the way it does because “that’s just nature.”

Because “that's just politics.”

Because “that's just the way things are".”

It's a horribly sheltered and confused position to hold; it’s a view that relies on near absolute ignorance of history and an extremely narrow understanding of power and influence. And yet it’s also a very fair and understandable position to hold given the environment many of us live in, an environment where the bulk of what we're exposed to around politics and history is propaganda from those with a vested interest in cultivating a sense that the current structures are inevitable and not only that they can't, but shouldn't, be overcome.

That so many of us, including once myself, believe in these systems - believe in the Democrats, believe in capitalism, believe in the fundamental "goodness" of the United States - should be taken in some sympathy given how little space there is in mainstream thought to acknowledge reality. If we're only ever exposed to the truth in a frame that says the truth is wrong and dangerous, then how are we supposed to learn better? If we're sold anti-communist propaganda and told that the “Radical Left” is trying to destroy the only people capable of doing good - the Democrats - and we're offered the Right as proof of the risk of failure, what are we supposed to do except cling to the only people in power who we're told care about our future?

Obama and Biden and Harris and Clinton are as cruel and callous and opportunistic and occasionally outright sadistic as politicians can be, but to accept and face that, to judge them on their actions not their demeanor, to hold them accountable for their behavior and to view their speech plainly and without accommodation, requires giving up on what we're told is our only remaining avenue for hope. If not them - if they're our enemies, too, if both Democrats and Republicans are a threat to our well being - then what are we supposed to do? It feels hopeless and, in a testament to our drive for hope and the resilience of the human spirit, many people refuse to give in to that. The Democrats MUST be good, Obama MUST be doing his best, Biden MUST be a skilled politician, Clinton MUST be wise and competent, Kamala MUST be inspiring, because if not them, then who? Then what are we left with?

My disdain for the Democratic party is born from this - that they have so effectively sold the public on this lie: that they are the only hope and that rulers, not our communities, should be our guides. They're not our only hope and they’re not who we should be seeking guidance or inspiration or hope from. We have each other. We have our communities. We have something better that we can build when we choose to build it. When we fight for it. Just because it's hard, just because it's risky, just because we're not guaranteed liberation, does not mean there is no liberation to be had. And it certainly doesn’t mean that we should instead give in to the death drive of supplicating ourselves before the corrosive influence of political leaders and wealthy figureheads.

No political party gets to determine what we fight for or what we deserve - We get to decide that for ourselves. A better world is genuinely possible and we don't need to go through the Democrats or Republicans or anyone else to make it. The great evil of this system, of these parties, is that they have so thoroughly sowed their propaganda that most people viscerally recoil from the notion that they have as much agency and power as they actually do. We have been so beaten down, and become so resigned, that to many people it truly feels naïve and starry-eyed to talk about radical politics, to talk about breaking down exploitative and oppressive systems, to talk about taking back the world from those who are destroying it. Fighting for liberation is all history is - it's people taking their own power and organizing and coming together to topple structures and people and systems that no longer serve their communities and the world - and yet we’re told this is fantasy and a delusion we should give up on lest we let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

We’re told this until we relinquish all hope for real liberation or change, instead settling for fighting on behalf of those who promise to do less harm than their opponents.

That things are the way they are now is a testament to the mutability of the world. We're not living in the inevitability of progress or government or culture, we're living in a world sculpted by those who seized power to make it in their image and desires. If they can do it, why can't we?

Well, we can.

But not as long as we look to god kings and politicians to save us. Not as long as we defer to credentials and claims of expertise to the point that we relinquish our own critical capacities and freedom of thought. Not as long as we let ourselves, our families, our friends, and our communities believe we need to support politicians as opposed to politicians supporting us. We can make something better. We have to. We can no longer hold space or tolerate the powerful and wealthy convincing us that we need them or that their moral crimes were somehow in our best interest. Or worse, that we owe them for the atrocities they commit in our names. We can no longer harbor the notion that Obama had to sit on stage in 2015 and drink that glass of water while telling the residents of Flint that the water was safe to drink, knowing all the while how poisonous in still was. That Biden has to keep funding ICE. That the Democrats have to avoid fighting for universal healthcare or climate legislation or open borders or any number of other moral necessities. That the world has to be this way.

We don't have to buy those lies anymore. We never did.