Tulsi Gabbard’s defection from the Dems is okay – but clearly a scam – Reuters

Tulsi Gabbard, former Congresswoman from Hawaii announced tuesday that she had left the Democrats, one of the two main American political parties. According to her, the Democratic Party of today « is now under the total control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by a cowardly awakening, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoking anti-white racism, actively working to undermine our God-given freedoms that are enshrined in our constitution … »

She then criticized the party for its hostility towards people with religious beliefs, against the police, supporters of criminals, in favor of open borders, in agreement with the arming of the national security state for target political opponents and to bring the world closer to nuclear conflict. The former MP and former presidential candidate has since been touring the right-wing media, mainly Fox News.

There’s a lot to unpack in Gabbard’s statements, some of which I believe to be true and some less so. I was involved in Democratic Party politics when I lived in Kentucky. I’ve seen how the National Party engages with what they see as backward people in rural America, and I think their strategy is monumentally stupid. I also experimented with bureaucratic safety nets at the local party level to weaken independent thought and encourage rigid party allegiance and careerism.

Two examples come to mind. The first was in 2016 when I was selected as a state party convention delegate for Senator Bernie Sanders, whom local officials in my party despised. But, unfortunately, those same party officials didn’t even inform me that I was a delegate, meaning I couldn’t vote for Sanders and eventual Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton could score an easy victory. .

This experiment aligned with the blatant party corruption we saw unfold in the primary elections leading up to the 2016 presidential election. It was then that the idea of ​​Russian interference in the election first arose, with Clinton and his supporters taking no responsibility and simply focusing on the source of the leaks. (The party bureaucracy would turn against Sanders again in 2020, even after the restructuring.)

The second example is when I worked on Amy McGrath’s congressional campaign during her bid for Kentucky’s sixth congressional district in 2018. I joined her campaign exclusively to remove the billionaire and former mayor of Lexington (now Kentucky Transportation Secretary) Jim Gray during the primary election. We accomplished that feat, and soon after, the national party, through the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, stepped in.

That’s when things got particularly weird. Senior executives told us to secure all communications if “the Russians” tried to hack us. They informed us that one of our challengers, Geoff Young, might be a Russian spy because he called McGrath, a former marine jet pilot, a CIA plant. Also, someone, allegedly from Russia, was supposed to follow the campaign. I knew enough of their lack of serious opposition research to know that it was all complete nonsense and an obfuscation that parts of our candidate’s mythology didn’t line up, which the press would later reveal. of herself. I left the countryside and the United States shortly after all of this.

I never rose through the ranks of someone like Tulsi Gabbard, becoming a congressman or running for president. But my experiences are largely consistent with his main message that the Democratic Party is not a viable vehicle for change in the country. Instead, it is primarily designed to subvert any serious challenge to the elite’s deadly grip on power and replace symbolic action with substantive progress. I’m smart enough to have discerned this shortly after finishing college.

Moreover, Gabbard is right that the party is warmongering and bringing us closer to nuclear war. Look at what the ruling Democratic Party is doing. It continues to funnel weapons into Ukraine, reducing the chances of effective peace negotiations while Americans suffer unspeakable destitution. Never mind the effect it has on our “allies” in Europe. At the same time, it is the Democratic Party that is leading the charge by sparking a conflict with China over the Taiwan question – evidenced by the latest excursion to Taipei by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Gabbard also points out that Democrats are militarizing the national security state to attack their political opponents. I witnessed it – and she and I are on the same US-sponsored list by the so-called Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation. But, of course, everyone the Democrats don’t like are Russian propagandists, which is a handy excuse to throw around when you’re caught doing unsavory things.

All of this is reason enough to leave the Democratic Party. If you are someone who values ​​organized human life as we know it, voting « blue, whoever » is definitely a strategy you should avoid. But then, many of Gabbard’s points are incredibly tedious and appear to be difficult to secure a career in right-wing media.

For example, his insistence that the Democratic Party is committed to “waking up,” racializing all issues, and anti-white racism. Let’s be clear: there is no anti-white racism in America. There are not any. None. Zero. To suggest that there is is really the height of ignorance.

Also, claiming that people who experience racism do things about race is stupid. Let’s also be clear about another piece of the historical record: Black people did not invent race. White people did. These legal concepts apply to the US Census and laws still in effect today in our country. “White” and “black” are, in this sense, political distinctions intended to categorize and divide people, primarily by granting certain rights to some while taking them away from others.

James Whitman wrote a fascinating book called « Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law », which describes this process and how the Nazi regime even used American race law to create its own, including how to define a Jew. Getting angry at minorities for “doing everything for the race” – a concept chained to them – is the height of historical ignorance. Race is an unfortunate reality of American society created by the powerful.

Gabbard makes similar mistakes on many of his points, including saying Democrats hate the police, want open borders, or hate religious worshipers. This summer, President Joe Biden, a Democrat, called on states to use federal pandemic funds — some $10 billion — to bolster police forces.

Democrats also failed to pass any major immigration reforms that would facilitate a plan claimed by right-wing media outlets like Gabbard’s friend Tucker Carlson to shift demographics in favor of their party. On her first trip to Guatemala, Vice President Kamala Harris said: « Don’t come. Don’t come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our borders.

Overall, the Democratic Party favors religious plurality more than the Republican Party, which is basically just a Trojan horse for Christian supremacy. Conservatives are slamming their ideology on us, as evidenced by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, and they don’t even pretend to hide it.

The former MP’s arguments here appear to be right-wing scaremongering designed to amplify white victimization, which is both non-existent and the required precursor to fascist political leanings. She also loves, as she did when she represented Tucker Carlson on his show during what was an audition, looking back at an idealized past of what our country used to be like. I believe she is positioning herself to have a show on the Fox News network, which carries some serious baggage.