The Self-Loathing Party

Passed over for a leadership role on the House Appropriations Committee: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appears with Capitol Hill reporters to answer their questions. Recall that Ocasio-Cortez defeated former Rep. Jo Crowley, House Democratic Caucus Chair (D., N.Y.) in 2018. She is now serving her third term. Photo courtesy of The New York Times.

‘Politics as usual’ is sinking the opportunity to serve the future as the opposition.

Note: This article was updated, December 31, to reflect ongoing developments with the deficit funding deadline.

Moving “to the center” in order to get “things done,” is self-defeating. Celebrating that “democracy works,” (1) while ceding access to expanding social benefit and community is not democracy, it’s serving elites. It’s self-loathing.

This is not normal.

No ‘individual’ is to blame for this course. (2) Yet, all are to blame for avoiding a course of action. (3) One reads of ‘extremism’ entering politics. Though this observation may seem accurate at the time of utterance, it is not a political strategy. It has no future.

It does not affirm the people’s will.

Outrage is missing. If one operates from a vacuum of power, one sustains the vacuum. If one advocates, engages, represents, one seizes power and fills the vacuum. However, one is told, this posture is self-destructive, career threatening. No, it’s opposing tyranny, it’s self-affirming.

It’s showing up.

Remember the energy behind the voter fallout during the passage of the Affordable Care Act? Reeling from misinformation about the act — eg. “death squads” — registered Republican…