The 2018 government shutdown is now over but I’m thankful Democrats like Chuck Schumer got the chance to make announcements that expose just what the Democrats presently are and what they actually stand for. The party that is currently referring to themselves as the “Resistance” is in reality closer to being a movement of submissive obsequious corporatists. What Democrats are to the actual left is the same as what Nickelback is to Rock n’ Roll, nothing but a bland facsimile of something genuine with the primary purpose of selling something.
Democrats talk about compromise and bipartisanship while having no fundamental base of priorities. Who cares about bipartisan anything if what you’re agreeing to is reprehensible. Let’s take what I would call a somewhat important issue that the Democrats didn’t feel worthy of shutting down the government over, I don’t know, let’s say providing more funds to address the impending ecological apocalypse surrounding topics like climate change and species extinction? Perhaps worthy causes to shutdown the government over?
However climate change didn’t even receive lip service from the party ostensibly representing the left. The Democrats adherence to fulfilling the will of corporations over the people is what amounts to a total abandonment of representation of Americans. The people have no voice in America. If you’re into basic human issues, like a habitable planet, human dignity, and you don’t agree with killing babies in senseless warfare overseas then you have no representation in the US government. None.
The Republicans were obviously not going to back anything related to tapping the brakes on unhinged slavery fueled resource extraction that is rapidly destroying all flora and fauna, but the Democrats didn’t make a single whimper on any ecological issue publicly. Much like the presidential debates the Democratic party again showed they actually give zero shits about the natural world.
Part of Schumer’s “Big things” he touted the government could do if Republicans would just play oligarchy cooperatively is raising military spending to the highest level ever. Somehow increasing spending on the military, which is essentially a planetary genocide machine that is the world’s largest polluter doesn’t seem congruent with caring about anything but war profiteering. If enthusiastically raising military spending to the highest level ever is the left, then we know the McResistance are themselves worthy of resisting.
No one stands for peace in our government. No one is anti-murder, and the Democrats are not only silent on the idea of peace, but they tout to anyone who listen how eager they were to increase military spending during the shutdown.
To further show the gutlessness of the Democratic party, in their three day faux mini-revolt Democrats didn’t resolve the DACA issue, they just pushed it a couple weeks down the line. If anything this shutdown was nothing more than a manufactured line of contrived dissent for the Democratic party who didn’t seem to have a real objective in the shutdown, but rather wanted to make a public display to illustrate they have some noticeable difference from the installed gang of bigoted murderous old neoliberals that comprise the US congress.
The Democrats claim to care about people and immigration, but they don’t care. They increase military spending that terrifies and kills thousands of innocent people globally each year, but remember the Democrats care about immigrants. They are complicit with Trump’s wall as Schumer notes in his press release more “big things” the government can get done like “We can protect our southern border”, thus promoting one of the most hideous elements of Trump’s campaign promises. We can already see from the abuse that goes on at the border presently that escalating the situation isn’t going to solve a thing and will likely make a bad situation worse. As Abby Martin highlights in her piece about the Mexican border we are averaging around 200 deaths a year at the border and the policies can only be condoned by a sadist.
In summary, this shutdown was theater of the bizarre, a hackneyed script with lots of bad actors, poor character development, lacking a cogent plot, with nihilistic themes. Two thumbs down.
