Oh Democrat, Where Art Thou?

A better future starts with realizing it's in our hands

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The assassination of Charlie Kirk has unleashed something unholy on the right. In the wake of this event, the empowered right wing has finally let out their barely contained desire to do anything and everything possible to crush the liberals and the left once and for all. A heap of the contradictions of a capitalism that has been inching towards collapse for decades have finally sharpened and the pointy end is aimed at us all. The last 8 months of this presidency have accelerated a collapse timeline that was all but written during the second Red Scare. Late night hosts are getting removed from television for mild jokes about Kirk, people are losing their jobs, the administration is even threatening to deny visas to potential immigrants based on their public social media posts about the man. The utter absurdity of course being that the people that constitute the most violent faction of the American society are the ones clutching pearls and crying foul over anyone who does less than lionize a man who made a career of spreading hate. A man who called the civil rights amendment a mistake and believed that we should bring back public executions. A man who felt that flying with a black pilot would be less safe and that it was preposterous that a black woman could be qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. It is not even enough to say nothing, mourning will be compulsory. Just make sure you never quote his actual words. Wouldn’t want to do that.

While this extreme lurch forward to true authoritarian fascism seems to be happening all around us, one might ask “where are the liberals? Where is the opposition?”. The leaders of the Democratic party, true to form, have been all but silent on these direct attacks on our constitutional rights. In fact, Hakeem Jeffries whipped votes in the House for a resolution that honored the “life and legacy” of Charlie Kirk and 95 Democrats voted along. The liberal “thought leaders” are just as bad. Ezra Klein wrote a gushing essay for the New York Times that declared that Kirk practiced politics “the right way” and whitewashed his history as if he was merely a man who sought to debate his beliefs in the marketplace of ideas and not the man who helped bus people to the Jan 6 insurrection. Schumer and Jeffries could barely muster a strongly worded letter when Jimmy Kimmel was suspended from his late night spot for a joke the Trump admin didn’t like at the behest of the Trump-appointed FCC chair. If you haven’t noticed, there is no resistance to be found. There is no constituted body with the will and the numbers to stop this. It’s full steam ahead for fascism and nothing will stand it its way.

Just yesterday Neera Tanden of the Center For American Progress (who was given a makework job in the Biden administration and once famously wrote about extorting Libya for money because of their vast oil reserves) commented on yet another Ezra Klein coal post essay that suggested that the Democrats could win a coalition to defeat fascism by recruiting anti-abortion candidates. That’s right, we have to defeat fascism by supporting fascist policies. First it was the immigrants, then the transgender people, now it’s women writ large. Shocking to no one, the party that stands for nothing has no sacred cows. Anyone’s rights could be on the chopping block next if it means the insulated political actors who have gotten very wealthy trading on our futures get to keep doing so. The only thing, it seems, that is off the table for Democrats is doing literally anything that materially helps the people of this country. Even as we watch immigrants get disappeared into black sites, even as we watch random boats of fisherman get illegally bombed in the Caribbean, even as we watch a full scale takeover of the airwaves by the fascists, even as our own people are threatened and jailed and coerced, the Democratic Party is still too addicted to their corporatism and backroom dealing to even contend with the present reality and offer a compelling alternative.

The ‘moral center’ of the Democratic consultant class

If you are a Marxist, none of this should surprise you. There are troves of books of Marxist theory that explains exactly how capitalism leads to fascism and how liberals serve as its handmaiden. Still, whether you predicted it or not, living through it is another thing entirely. The sheer lack of so much as a survival instinct by bourgeois liberal institutions is alarming. The ease at which these people throw out all of their professed values and tend towards appeasement is unsettling. “It was always going to end up here” is truly an insufficient balm for the horror of watching it unfold.

In 2016 and 2020, the main pitch from the Democratic Party was along the lines of “we won’t address your material conditions, your economic stress, your financial ruin, but hey we promise to protect the girls and the gays. We promise to protect multicultural democracy. You can count on that”. In 2024 Harris ran a campaign that threw at least some of this out, promising to out-Trump Trump on the border and promising the “most lethal military" in the world while holding steadfastly to their commitment to genocide. In 2025 its women’s rights on the chopping block too, as they also capitulate to anti-trans hysteria. The pitch went from “we’ll at least protect you on social issues” to “ok no we won’t but we will manage your obliteration more responsibly”. Needless to say this message won’t win. And that is in the very unlikely scenario that elections remain free and fair (as imperfect as that was in a managed democracy).

The unfortunate truth is that the Marxists were right and the liberals won’t save us. While so many seem to be sleepwalking their way through the fourth reich, the worst of the calamity has not even happened yet - but it has been written. The actions being taken right now cast a long and horrifying shadow and the darkness is coming for us all. The worst thing we could do right now is continue to entrust the people that got us here to get us out. They have neither the tools nor the will nor the mere inclination to do so. They would sell their grandma for a bump in their stock value and they are not going to save you. The Marxists were right and that also means the Marxists are right about the way out. The only thing capable of successfully pulling us back from the brink is the organization of the working class. We are the ones who grease the wheels of capital, we are the ones who can shut shit down. They can’t have or do or be any of this without our willing submission, without our consent by silence, without our contribution to the machine. It can’t run on billionaires and CEOs alone. It takes us to keep it lurching forward and we are the ones who can make it stop running at all, but only if we are willing and ready.

The painful reality is that there is no “one weird trick” that undoes this. It’s the long and boring and tedious slog of turning a fully zero-class-conscious society into one where people know what their class interests are and who the enemy is. A president AOC can’t fix this, a slow takeover of our rotted institutions via elections can’t fix it. It’s still a person by person step by step process that should’ve started 50 years ago but at the very least must start now. There’s not even a guarantee that it’s not already too late, but we must try. After all, it’s this or oblivion. Step one is to stop getting distracted by the political efforts that are doomed to fail. The electoralism when elections are likely ending as we know them. The legal challenges when the law is meaningless. This is war. We’ve always been at war but only the capitalist class knew it. It’s up to us to realize that the war has already started and it’s time to take up our arms and fight or die on our knees.