IF U.S. POLITICS WERE RELATIONSHIP ADVICE
We like to imagine that we’re doing ourselves a favor by simping for our favorite oligarchs…that during societal collapse we improve our own odds of survival by betting on and lining up behind the right members of the ruling class. Sadly this is mistaken. The Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and their billionaire paymasters do not love you. They do not even like you.
U.S. politicians are best understood as abusers. Come on strong, earn your trust, promise to keep you safe, convince you to share your finances and private information in return for your loyal support. Then what do they do? Get into war crimes and corruption. Broken promises. Stalking. Physical and emotional violence towards you, your family, and your ability to stay alive. At the same time they pursue lasting, intimate relationships with the very people they promised they didn’t care about. And if you dare to stop believing their lies, they and their defenders guilt trip you for being disloyal.
The discourse around abuse gives us helpful models to describe how bullies, narcissists, and sexual offenders operate. In response to being held accountable for their behavior, they frequently and predictably resort to a tactic known as DARVO: Deny that harm ever took place. Attack the person they have harmed. Reverse Victim and Oppressor, claiming that they are actually the victim. DARVO is also easily recognized as a tactic of our two political parties, of Zionism, and of any number of other right-wing political programs which lack any cogent moral justification for the harm they inflict.
Denying that the working class is even being harmed is of course Step One of any strategy for holding onto ownership class privilege. There is an entire industry, both “liberal” and “conservative”, that endlessly repeats that “humans have never had it so good” to “technically it’s not a genocide” to “unionizing is a mistake and minimum wage needs to stay where it is” to “Obama’s presidency proves there’s no systemic racism here” to “poverty and slavery have almost been eradicated” to “our generation never had Netflix and avocado toast so the younger generation is nothing but entitled whiners.” Any serious engagement with the facts vaporizes such claims, but that doesn’t stop those with the most to lose from repeating them ad nauseum.
With monotonous regularity abusers will attack you for being too emotional or too sensitive. You’re not. Likewise those with legitimate grievances, questions, and emotions are told again and again by the rich and powerful that they’re "angry" or "negative" or "cynical" or “strident” or “extremist” Social Justice Warriors. Those currently enjoying comfort under the status quo are desperate to fabricate any grounds on which to attack those of us struggling to leave the next generation a livable world. To me the angry, negative, cynical, strident extremist is actually the one who no longer believes in basic human values, and takes revenge on humanity by competing with it, humiliating it, attempting to control it, and ultimately attacking it, physically, emotionally, legally and financially. Such a person is epitomized by U.S. politicians, CEOs, administrators, and media personalities.
Those in power deliberately reverse the roles of victim and oppressor. There is this ridiculous notion that I'm supposed to regard the ruling class as tragic heroes who certainly mean well. I’m asked to feel sad for the president who lies awake at night deciding whether to commit mass murder, and praise them for almost deciding not to go through with it. Their job is stressful and we’re supposed to go easy on them when they feel bad about being serial killers. We’re only supposed to hate the ones who don’t feel bad about being serial killers. Meanwhile we get our heads cracked by both if we question the serial killing itself.
It’s never wrong to point out when you or someone else is being harmed, especially when it’s being done in your name. There is no shame in sharing your story and communicating about solutions. There will always be the less empathetic among us who’ll come back with “You should stick with your current abuser because the harm you’re experiencing with them isn’t as bad as the harm you would experience with a worse abuser,” or, “At least they’re not abusing you, why do you care?” Such people are correctly identified as enablers. It’s easy to see this with romantic relationships, but somehow we’ve been trained to normalize it in politics.
Some behaviors are just so abusive and so sick that there is simply no way to ignore them. It turned out that genocide was one of those things, much to surprise of the Democratic Party, who thought for sure their voters were cynical, apathetic, nihilistic, or uninformed enough not to mind. And apparently the party is still led by deranged deadenders who continue to believe that with enough nagging, Democratic voters will finally decide it was wrong to care about racism and war crimes. There are still Dem cheerleaders who think that it’s forever a bad strategy to express any grievances about their elected officials if they are Democrats, or ever engage in discussion of independent or third party candidates.
Playing dumb is not an apology or a substitute for ending harm. Politicians act stupid on purpose to avoid punishment and to maintain the illusion of a democracy. That doesn't mean we have to do their job for them and volunteer to gaslight ourselves. They know full well what Israel is doing. They know what weapons of mass destruction are for. They know how many people Luigi Mangione killed vs how many United Health kills every week. They know that 3% annual economic growth cannot be permanently maintained without eventually sacrificing billions of this planet’s human beings.
Focus on action, not talk. When an abuser decries evil or expresses sorrow, they are wasting their breath, unless they stop their abuse. A politician needs to be rallying around specific new policies that end the evil and the sorrow. Unless they are actively trying to pass Medicare For All, abolish ICE, or stop the wars and carbon emissions that keep creating so many refugees, saying “our healthcare system is broken” or “our immigration system is broken” is literally worse than saying nothing. It just becomes a tactic for pacifying the public and shutting down their perfectly legitimate demands.
It’s essential to test candidates, whether romantic or political. But the U.S. version is completely backwards and worse than useless. Instead of us making sure a potential leader is honest and has their constituents’ best interests at heart, we have our hazing rituals performed by other members of the ruling class, while we simply observe. This comes in the form of mocking anyone who exhibits discomfort at becoming a war criminal for Israel. Poking and prodding to make sure they agree we need “stronger borders”, that billionaires should not be taxed, and that there shouldn’t be free handouts for starving children. Accusing candidates of immorality if they disagree that “everyone must pay their debts” and that our high interest rates are fair, because capitalism is the best system. Humiliating candidates as wimps if they don’t say that the U.S. military needs to be more lethal. Testing how comfortable candidates are lying on camera.
In a healthy relationship or a healthy democracy, we would praise the things that are done right and criticize the things that are done wrong. There would be no place for hero worship. Those seeking hyperwealth and hyperpower under our system are very likely to be those who learned from an early age to interact with the world by humiliating others. So many of our presidents and CEOs were clearly unpopular in childhood, and these man-children see beating their tormentors at their own game (i.e. becoming investment bankers and genocidal lawmakers) as some kind of delicious revenge. This Freudian drive is rewarded under our current system, which is why the next generation’s survival depends on the creation of a new system that does not reward this and subjects candidates to public testing that weeds out rapists and sociopaths with a chip on their shoulder.
You are now in a relationship with a politico-economic partner who derives value from your anger and sadness, because those things are easier to monetize. Frustration and dissatisfaction make you want to scroll more and to buy more things. Trump making everyone mad is good for the economy. Making the public feel bad about their bodies, their feelings and their needs helps to divert their attention and money towards capitalists. Stoking conflict, war, and genocide generates stupendous profits for the oil, tech, and weapons CEOs who fund our political system. On the other hand, feelings of safety, love and mental and physical wellbeing or equilibrium do not translate as quickly into profit.
Nobody’s perfect but let’s not settle for the literal opposite of what almost every Dem voter, and most independent voters, say they want:
stop arming Israel no new drilling permits and oil industry subsidies no new data centers tax billionaires medicare for all shrink ICE budget shrink Pentagon budget increase education budget cancel student loan debt no concentration camps, family separations or border wall
But this exact list is what billionaires and their puppets say makes one “unelectable”.
When a millionaire goes on a TV station owned by a billionaire, and offers their wisdom regarding “electability,” they are describing whom they — millionaires and billionaires — would vote for. This usually turns out to be Democrats who move to “the middle of the road,” “meet Republicans halfway” and have proven themselves willing to sell out to a corporate donor system. There is no evidence that such candidates actually inspire more enthusiasm among angry swing state voters, and mountains of evidence that what does inspire such voters is the promise of radical change that might allow their children a better chance at survival.
There are plenty of fish in the sea. A common feature of abusive relationships (and of brainwashing and cults) is isolation: limiting exposure to the outside world and to alternative ideas. The goal is to prevent new friendships and exert total control. But you only harm yourself by limiting yourself to two political parties and limiting your sources of information about the world to a tiny handful of corporate news, corporate advertising, and corporate politicians. This is the very class of people that has the most to lose if anything changed.
On the following spectrum of relationship status, where do you see yourself and the Democratic party? Where do you think the Democratic party sees you?
- We're calmly working out a disagreement.
- We're in a fight and saying some things we regret, but staying together.
- We're breaking up, knowing that trying to hash it out any longer will only lead to more disappointment.
- We're doing no contact, or one is ghosting the other.
- We're actively trying to destroy each other's lives.
I think most Democrat voters now see themselves as being somewhere between “working out a disagreement” and “in a fight” with their party. The party on the other hand is well past “ghosting its voters” and into “actively destroying their voters’ lives.” They now cast Newsom, Booker, Emmanuel, and Harris as presidential front-runners. These are not serious candidates, and none of them has any chance of winning. They’re openly hostile to the basic needs of Democratic voters. They’re explicitly pro-ICE, pro-Israel, pro-war and pro-AI. They are against taxing billionaires, against Medicare For All, and against the kind of bold climate policy that scientists have been insisting is necessary for survival. These are spoiler candidates being deployed to defeat the American voter, even if it means more Republican victory.
The average sitting U.S. politician of either corporate party has already made it clear that they are comfortable with mass murder, the erasure of entire ethnicities, and the submerging of entire islands and subcontinents, the permanent prolongation of war, and the collapse of global food systems, if it might enhance corporate profit. If you can be in relationship with such a person, I’m not trying to stop you. I’m saying that if you think that going into the comments and saying vote blue no matter who is going to convince the average American voter, who cannot be in relationship with such a person, to stop sharing their own abuse stories with each other, you are too late.
You are under no obligation to stay loyal to someone who abuses you. In fact you have a solemn duty to save yourself and to warn other potential victims. I will no longer be taking advice on what kind of political engagement is illegal or inappropriate from someone committing or supporting war crimes. I will no longer be engaging in debates with someone who replies to legitimate grievances and questions with denials of harm, attacks, victim-swapping, no serious engagement and no cogent arguments. While it’s noble to personally forgive those who make mistakes and choose to own up to it, when we’re talking about mistakes on the apocalyptic order of magnitude that most U.S. lawmakers and CEOs make, we should definitely not be letting such people anywhere near the levers of power ever again.