Someone told me I shouldn't let what's happening in Gaza affect me. But if there's one thing I never want, it's to witness something like this and feel nothing. Above all, I'm a human being, and I want to feel horrified when I witness horror.
There’ll be no humanizing New York Times profile of this boy.
The Empire State Building won’t illuminate for his murdered siblings.
No US politician will condemn his kidnapping, or express an ounce of sympathy for his unfathomable loss.
Why does his grief mean so much less?
Sólo para recordarles que insultaron hasta cansarse a Eugenio Derbez y Gaby Meza (incluso con racismo, clasismo, xenofobia y lesbofobia) por decir que a Selena Gómez no se le entendía nada de tan mal que habla español, incluso Derbez se vio obligado a pedir disculpas por ese berrinchazo horroroso y mentiras no se dijeron.
Y quisiéramos agregar: Para que un/a artista latinoamericano/a tenga la mínima oportunidad de tener un papel en una producción extranjera se le exige un nivel de inglés perfecto y muchísimos han tenido que estudiar y prepararse bastante para lograrlo y entrarle a la muy competitiva y difícil carrera, pero esto fue justificado porque “le echó ganas, hizo lo que pudo con el tiempo que tenía” y así. Qué distinta es la vara.
All the takes are correct and yet they also miss the point.
Yes, it was insane for the Democrats to think they could win by running a soulless candidate, without a shred of progressive policy vision, pursuing endorsements from neocon war-hawks everybody hates, while arming and funding a genocide, and belittling and crushing those who have enough morality to protest it. It is enraging that the Democrats are so smug and blind to this.
But these are all just symptoms. The deeper reality is that liberalism has failed, liberalism is dead, and people urgently need to wake up to this fact and respond accordingly. It is a defunct ideology that cannot offer any meaningful solutions to our social and ecological crises and it must be abandoned.
Democrats have proven over and over again that they cannot accept even *basic* steps like public healthcare, affordable housing, and a public job guarantee - things that would dramatically improve the material, social and political conditions of the working classes. And they cannot accept a public finance strategy that would steer production away from fossil fuels and toward green transition to give us a shot at a liveable future.
Why? Because these things run against the objectives of capital accumulation. And for liberals capital is sacrosanct. They will do whatever it takes to ensure elite accumulation, it is their only consistent commitment. At home, they suppress and demonize progressive and socialist tendencies. Abroad, they engage in endless wars and violence to suppress input prices in the global South and prevent any possibility of sovereign economic development.
The Democrats have done all this purposefully and knowingly, for my whole life, not as some kind of "mistake" but in full consciousness that it is in the interests of capital.
And because liberalism cannot address our crises, and because it crushes socialist alternatives, it inevitably paves the way for right-wing populism. They know this pattern, and yet they risk it every time - this election being only the most recent example. They did it in 2016, when they actively crushed the Sanders campaign and sent Trump to the White House. They do it because ultimately they (and I mean the liberal ruling class here) don't really mind if fascists take power, so long as the latter too ensure the conditions for capital accumulation. They 100% prefer this to the possibility of a socialist alternative.
So, progressives have to face reality. The dream of "converting" the Democratic party is dead. This is now a fact and it must be accepted. The only option is to build a mass-based movement that can reclaim the working classes and mobilize a political vehicle that can integrate disparate progressive struggles into a unified and formidable political force and achieve substantive transformation. This will take real work, actual organizing, but it must be done and that process must begin now.
These days, I often think of my German teacher. As 16-year-olds we learned lots about the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes by reading books, watching films, visiting places of commemoration, and talking to older people who survived or witnessed the atrocities. 1/5