Every so often someone clearly states a reality that should be obvious but that goes unnoticed because of our self-imposed tunnel vision. Sometimes the protagonist is simply a convenient distraction.
A Facebook friend and activist, Torry, laid it out, I imagine after the barrage of negative stories hitting Trump over the last few days. The fact that he put it on my wall shows a justifiable level of frustration with the current narrative. He posted the following.
It kind of boggles my mind when people frame Trump as the problem. Trump is the tip of the iceberg, a symptom of the problem, a visible manifestation of a much deeper underlying cancer, and not just in our political world, but our very culture, and culture includes everything and everyone. Our entire culture needs to change.
Everything about our popular politics needs to change. Singling out Trump takes our eyes OFF of the problem. Trump becomes no less of a scapegoat than Muslims or undocumented immigrants. You can’t fix a car or heal a human body without a proper analysis of what is wrong. It’s the same thing for a political system.
Just a thought, but have you considered that neither of the two parties are running any presidential candidates that anyone in their right mind would ever want to vote for? They have not yet, so we get a combination of the crazy voters, Nazi symps, dimwit fearful Munchkins, myopic identity politics one-issue-wonders, and pissed off Molotovian protest voters showing out on Election Day = Trump, just because he’s not really a Republican or a Democrat.
The potential for something wonderful to come out of this grand-scale alienation with the status quo is just as great as the current gaping morass of dumbass dysfunction. Keep your eyes on the prize, a new political leadership that reflects the aspirations of most working-class people, the majority, and not Trump, the carnie huckster luring slack-jawed farm boys into his lurid peep show of a presidency.
Please, just walk past this peacock feathered buffoon a.s.a.p…. and spend your time, money, and energy organizing for a progressive coup d’état in the Democratic Party.
While it is clear many won’t get what Torry is saying, many of us do. The battle against the ever-expanding plutocracy must be fought on several fronts. Moreover, activists cannot be self-isolating or self-righteous in their approach. They must tailor the narrative in a manner that reaches more than their audience or immediate sphere of influence. After all, Progressive activists must not live in the same type of echo chamber that parallels that of the Right.
Many Americans see Donald Trump as the problem that must be stamped out. But there are those who see hope in him because they see him as the externality to the current duopoly. The job of the Progressive activist is twofold. Make it clear that Trump is a result of a form of cancer we’ve been afflicted with for decades. And make it clear he is not the solution but a facade over the problem itself. As such, it is important that the resistance keep him in our crosshairs at the same time that we identify the systemic political problem in a manner the masses can understand.