On Feb. 25, the Democratic National Committee chose former Labor Secretary Tom Perez to lead the party into the disarrayed, foggy wilderness of modern American politics.
As the Bernie Sanders-backed candidate Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) was denied the position, the bifurcation of the mainstay liberal party continues.
The DNC is in an impossible situation.
They are pitted against two raging participants, both with heads angry and fierce, who have vastly different visions of the party moving forward.
Questions surrounding how to combat the efforts of President Trump and how to regain what the Democratic party has lost in recent decades, most notably the populace squeezed between the liberal coasts, is stoking the inner frustrations.
Left-ward bound are the progressives, closely aligned with the ‘social justice warrior’ mindset who are diligent activists that have shaped a lot of the dialogue of the past election.
Their strategy is defined by identity politics, safe spaces and trigger warnings.
Their goals are post-national and rabidly unpatriotic.
They have come to dominate what hordes of Americans see as modern day liberalism.
There are hints of anarchic chaos in this camp as well.
When we watched the Berkeley anti-fascist protesters erupt into violence at the very thought of Milo opening his mouth, very few of us imagined the existence of a master plan.
There was no commanding officer directing deployments, only low-level infantry grasping at whatever could become a flaming projectile.
There is, coincidentally, a Trump-like element to their anti-Trump beliefs.
What unites them is the ultimate desire to just burn the whole thing to the ground.
This group aims to wholeheartedly refuse to work with President Trump on anything, as that would be shaking the metaphorical hand of a genocidal, Hitlerian ruler whose only wish is to inflict harm on non-white persons from any and all nations. This strategy won’t go over well in dispatched corners of Trump country.
The progressives on the left are fed up with the Democratic establishment just like the pro-Trump movement is fed up with the Republican establishment.
They did find some success when Sen. Bernie Sanders sounded the horn of economic populism, a core message used by both sides during the campaign cycle.
New DNC chair Tom Perez has an impossibly tough job ahead. Photo Credit: Maryland GovPics/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
As he talked of the harmful trade deals and low wages, millions found him to be speaking their long-awaited mother tongue.
On the other hand, there is the establishment end of the party.
A moderate, less-rebellious brand of liberal politics with the expectation of some compromise with those on the other side.
Tom Perez falls squarely in this camp, as does Hillary Clinton and similar figureheads in Democratic politics.
If there was a section of the Democratic party that was to undergo a serious self-reflection as to why 2016 became the year for the GOP, it would be from this end.
That is a big if, but for disaffected areas that saw promise in Trump, a steadied working-class approach by level-headed Democrats would entice them more than Antifa protests or an extra dose of virtue signaling.
The establishment’s main problem is, well, the fact that they are the establishment.
The big money, shadowy donors, corporatist leanings, the hawkish Democrats who resemble neocons instead of war-weary liberals.
There is the perceived rigging of the 2016 nomination in favor of Clinton over Sanders and the inside baseball we all characterize as a symptom, or possibly the definition, of the Washington machine.
Ultimately, they lack the intoxicant of change – the most potent reason to overlook them in the ballot box.
Upholding the status quo doesn’t feed the hungry masses, it doesn’t put people in the seats, nor does it fire people up to ‘make history’, even if it is to elect the first female President of the United States.
This is why Perez and the DNC have a virtually impossible challenge to overcome.
They must choose one side over the other, and both are undoubtedly flawed.
Can Democrats compete in parking lots like these all over America again? Photo Credit: Jimmy Jim Jim Shabadoo/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
The division won’t naturally melt away.
The progressives can unite the young, the energetic, and the squadrons of protestors at a Trump hotel or a dance-off outside of Vice President Mike Pence’s house.
However, they struggle to connect with ‘fly-over’ country.
The people who are concerned with overspending at Wal-Mart, not the amount of gender identities recognized in the legal code.
To people outside of major cities and college campuses, the progressives are consumed with trivial anger and idealistic revolutions the world has tried over and over again.
The establishment of the Democratic Party can show that they aren’t identical to the social justice warrior type.
If they, for example, promote a pro-business campaign that isn’t completely anti-gun, they could compete in some of these rural areas, places where American flags fly high but Main Street is all but abandoned.
But doing that will alienate the anti-capitalist, anti-establishment thread running through the party.
They would lose the progressives to the Jill Stein’s of the world, only to be inevitably shut out of the power structure again.
Choose the progressives, you lose those within the margin of persuasion.
Choose the moderates, and the hatred of the elites may sweep them further away from elected office.
Republicans have factions erupting as well, but with controlling so much power their movement isn’t in the same state as the left.
I’m not a Democrat so I don’t have skin in this game.
However, I can acknowledge that Tom Perez has very little room to work with.
He must walk on the edge of a razor blade.
Every move he makes will infuriate half of his party and embolden the rest.
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in the world. You can write for us.
Photo Credit: Lars Plougmann/flickr (CC by-SA 2.0)
Cover Photo Credit: Kim Love/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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Trump Should Fight To Make Voting Compulsory
By Mac Regan
Democracy is at risk when we fail to fulfill basic citizenship responsibilities.
Consider the evidence.
Approximately 40% of eligible voters didn’t vote in the 2016 President Election. Even fewer voted in the last round of Congressional elections.
Only immigrants receive formal citizenship training and are required to pass a test that the majority of our citizens would fail.
The vast majority of citizens don’t communicate with their Congressional representatives. Most cannot even name their representative.
Read More: Arnold Schwarzenegger Just Made Trump Look Silly
Engaged and informed citizens are a necessary condition for effective democracy.
It’s time for a Bill of Responsibilities to re-establish the requirements of citizenship. During his first 100 days, Trump should form a non-partisan panel of citizens (who would be compensated for their work) to develop a citizen Bill of Responsibilities before the end of 2017.
This panel should, at a minimum, provide four sets of recommendations to the President, Congress, and all citizens, that:
- Require eligible voters to vote in presidential and congressional elections. Other countries do this. We should too.
- Develop common voter rules that will simplify voter registration and voting, provide adequate anti-fraud protections, and unify disparate state by state approaches
- Identify primary and secondary school curricula additions that ensure all high school graduates understand citizen responsibilities, engage early on in policy debates, and develop the critical thinking skills to make informed voting choices.
- Provide a system of rewards and penalties to encourage citizens to fulfill their responsibilities. Citizenship should be earned. This type of citizen-driven project has immense importance. It can be a foundation for increased public trust in the Trump administration (perhaps turning protesters into focused reformers) and serve notice to Congress that “we the people” demand a more representative, inclusive, and accountable democracy. Congressional representatives would oppose these recommendations at their own peril.
However, in a representative democracy, citizens are only half of the equation.
Elected representatives also need to do their jobs.
Congressional approval levels are at their lowest levels in memory.
Most agree it’s time to “drain the swamp.” Trump must demand these game changing reforms:
Get special interest money out of elections and re-elections. In the first 100 days, form a non-partisan citizen task force to develop options to eliminate campaign contributions from businesses, unions, super PACs or any other organization while limiting contributions by individuals. Canada puts strict limits on campaign contributions while providing generous public funding for candidates. We can do the same.
Reduce partisan gerrymandering. Establish state-by-state non-partisan reviews of voting districts and restore fair representation and competitive congressional elections
Redefine the mission of political parties. Parties need to stand for something other than winning elections at any cost. They will better serve our democracy if they develop and articulate realistic, affordable and clearly differentiated platforms.Establish congressional term limits. Ensure congressional accountability. Establish national goals with two-way citizen input. Enact a congressional compensation system to attract talented representatives. Provide market-based compensation to reduce the incentive to take outside money.
A Historic OpportunityPresident Trump has had a rocky start.
However, as someone who has bucked convention throughout his campaign, he is in a unique position to reform a system that is badly out of step with the needs of its citizens.
Empowering citizen-driven, non-partisan reviews of the responsibilities of citizens and elected representatives will be the most viewed reality television of our time.
These debates and ensuing reforms are necessary to the successful evolution of America’s system of constitutional values, democracy and capitalism.
There is much at stake. This is Trump’s (and America’s) opportunity.
Mac Regan is the author of Global Citizen Patriots.
Cover Photo Credit: Tim Evanson/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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What It Is Really Like To Fight Depression And Anxiety In College
For those of you that do not know me, I am sorry because I can tell some rad jokes.
For those of you that know me, I am loud.
You can probably hear me from a mile away, I snort when I laugh, and if I am not laughing, I am probably unintentionally speaking at a loud volume about the latest thing that has me riled up.
So when you look at me, you would not think that I am anything but happy. Some might even say that I radiate sunshine and light up any room I am in.
But I have a confession…
I hate clichés, but I am one; there is more to me than meets the eye.
Every day is a struggle for me. I suffer from clinically diagnosed severe depression and mild anxiety.
While you may think “well everyone can struggle with depression and anxiety,” I urge you to stop that train of thought. Right now. Like 20 minutes ago right now.
This is a deeply personal issue for me, and I have shared select parts of my story with a handful of people, who still do not know every detail of my battle.
My mother did not know how serious the instability of my mental state was, and to this day, my father has no idea.
So, dear reader, take solace in the fact that this article will save you from reading the gruesome details of my self-harm and suicide attempts.
Instead, I am going to take a minute to talk about stress and our choice of language.
I bet that segway was not something expected of this article.
How can stress and language choice be related to mental health?
Helen Harrop/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
Great Question.
I recently posted a status on Facebook that received a good number of likes, but I do not think the less than 200 words I used could accurately describe how much of an effect language choice has.
Some people took the time to question whether or not my claim to be cautious of language was even valid, arguing that every exclamation should be taken seriously.
Any cry for help in the face of struggle is encouraged, and I hope that if someone is truly struggling, they have at least one person in their life that they can open up to, even if me and my Facebook status are not encouraging enough.
I know when I was drowning, it seemed like my problem would not be taken seriously because of the stigma associated with mental health.
I quickly learned that I could get all of the help I needed through the care of many different outlets, such as medication, therapy and meetings of a 12-step program group called “Emotions Anonymous.”
But I know that I am at a stage in my journey with this illness that I am ready to seek help.
For many others, they hide their pain and choose to use different channels to cope.
I know I used to cut; some may drink; others may turn to drugs; or some might choose to focus their attention in their schoolwork to avoiding dealing with the issue at hand.
All of the above being said, sometimes what these individuals may hear can affect their direction on the journey that is mental illness.
One of my sorority sisters said it best: “Language is a weapon!”
Do not believe me and think I am just another millennial urging for political correctness? Fine. Allow me to offer an example of language as a weapon.
There have been multiple instances where based on my aggressive attitude, men have called me a “bitch.”
I know they were not calling me a bitch to compliment me for getting the job done; their choice of language was a direct attempt to hurt me, to discourage me, maybe even to intimidate me.
Something I refuse to accept, but has become an unfortunate part of the student vernacular, are hyperbolic and dramatic exclamations.
“I am going to kill them!” “I am going to drop out!” “I hate school!”, and more negative, “I hate myself,” “My life sucks,” and “I am going to kill myself.”
So my question becomes if society urges individuals to be careful of their use of offensive language like bitch, c**t, n***er, c***k, etc. and we urge caution of the language we use to refer to others, why does a similar encouragement not follow on how we refer to ourselves?
As someone who is an advocate of therapy and medication, I have come to learn that I have certain triggers that can drastically affect my attitude.
Medically speaking, depression and anxiety are classified as mood disorders.
It genuinely does not take much for something to change my mood from happiest person in the world to stuck in bed for 14 hours.
Besides break ups and seeing tools that I used to hurt myself with, one of my biggest triggers is someone exclaiming “I am going to kill myself” or “I hate myself” because I have been in that situation before and these statements remind me of just how hard my battle is.
They often leave me wondering if the effort I have made to get better is even worth it.
Moreover, when I hear them from someone exclaiming them as a solution to resolving their stress, I find myself asking if it would be okay for me to revert to old habits.
Statements like these that students without a genuine comprehension of mental illness make can have a drastic effect on others who are not quite ready to deal with their journey with mental illness.
While some may argue that it is not my place to encourage individuals, especially students under high stress from academics, to be cautious of their use of “common” language, I will argue that it is my expectation of myself to take care of my well-being before anything else.
Thus, if I find that there are individuals affecting that state of well-being, I have an obligation to urge them to be more considerate and cautious of how they refer to themselves, for the sake of others.
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in the world. You can write for us.
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Trump’s Constant Lying Is What Autocrats Do
By Christopher F. Arndt
First there was the birther theory, which Trump continued to champion in 2011 even after President Obama’s long-form birth certificate was shown to the world.
Then we heard statements like “Nobody really knows if climate change is real;” and, more recently, “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”
These are, of course, but a few of the countless lies Trump has uttered over the years, over the course of this past election cycle and since entering the White House.
To these we can now add the claim that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign – one that smacks all the more clearly of dishonesty now that House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes has stated that he will not disclose his sources.
Our President’s unprecedented lying has many utterly baffled, as does the fact that Trump supporters often accept these lies.
For example, 74% of Republican voters think it’s at least “somewhat likely” that Donald Trump’s offices were wiretapped during the campaign.
Both the dishonesty and the continued belief by Trump supporters in “alternative facts” can be understood in the context of changes within the conservative movement that have come to the fore over the past fifteen years.
A scene from the Las Vegas skyline. Photo Credit: João Martinho/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
Under normal conditions, a politician fibs to exaggerate the appeal of a program they support or to undermine an opponent’s position.
But they generally try to avoid obvious falsehoods.
Some of Trump’s lies follow this pattern, but most of his lies are different.
They are intentionally brazen.
In this way, they are a show of power, demonstrating the acquiescence of others to his will and the comparative impotence of those who stand by facts and against his word.
In short, Trump’s lies have an autocratic twist. Matt Steinglass, the current European editor for the Economist, captured this dynamic well in a 2009 piece on why Iran’s Ahmadinejad insisted on showing an implausibly large vote margin for his election victory.
This piece is dismayingly relevant now and worth quoting at length:
“[B]ullies often find it more effective to force people to acquiesce in an obvious lie than in a plausible fiction. Check out the ludicrous charges in the Stalin show trials: children’s book writers in Leningrad confessing to being Japanese spies, and so forth. When you make people accept a plausible fiction, you’re just winning that one issue. But when you make them accept a lie which everyone knows is a lie, you’re destroying their integrity, destroying their will to describe the world as they see it, rather than as you tell them it is. It’s the bully on the playground holding the weaker kid’s arm and slapping his cheek with it, saying “Why are you hitting yourself?” Like Vaclav Havel’s grocer hanging “Workers of the world, unite!” in his shop window, once a person has acquiesced to something they do not believe, and which everyone knows they do not believe, they become complicit in their own oppression.”
In essence, Trump is making Republican leaders – who know he is lying – complicit in their own oppression.
To be clear, we’ve seen some independence on the part of Republicans like John McCain.
But not a lot.
And, most recently, it appears that Devin Nunes is simply bending to Trump’s will.
This fealty to authority over facts runs directly against the beating heart of liberal democracy.
Why, then, does Trump get away with it?
The brief answer is that the American Right has been moving in this direction for more than a decade.
The movement has coalesced around an older, “monarchical” conservatism.
This movement is best understood as a temperament and a set of tendencies opposing change rather than a set of principles.
It runs counter to the enlightenment liberalism that forms the basis of our Constitution.
In my book, The Right’s Road to Serfdom: The Danger of Conservatism Unbound From Hayek to Trump, I map out characteristics of this “conservative temperament” including:
- Viewing a leader’s personality and its force above process, institutions and the rule of law.
- An ease with diminishing the value of facts to support the right leader.
- A preference for absolute certainty regarding both policy and a leader’s style. This requires black and white simplicity in the way both are presented.
Understanding conservatism as such explains the appeal of Trump on the Right and the embrace of blatant falsehoods.
So far, the firing of Michael Flynn was an exception.
On the Right, there have been no real consequences to Trump’s blatant – and disgraceful – lying or that of his inner circle.
Which brings us back to autocracy, defined by Merriam Webster as “government in which one person possesses unlimited power.”
Christopher Arndt is author of The Right’s Road to Serfdom: The Danger of Conservatism Unbound From Hayek to Trump.
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in the world. You can write for us.
Cover Photo Credit: Isabelle Blanchemain/ Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
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