Divided and Conquered

Opinion by Arash Azizi

Ask most Americans what DSA stands for and they are unlikely to know the Democratic Socialists of America, the country’s largest leftist organization, with about 92,000 members. But ask about AOC and they are likely to be familiar with DSA’s most famous member: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Bronx-born socialist firebrand known for her fierce advocacy of trade unions, universal medical care, tuition-free university, migrant rights, and pro-environmental policies. So why did DSA’s national leadership recently decide to withdraw its conditional endorsement of her?

For any sane organization, the 34-year-old lawmaker would be a treasured asset. She is principled, politically talented, and able to make national headlines on a regular basis. Her victory in 2018 led to the most significant single-day membership increase in DSA’s history. She has a grassroots background and knows how to talk to ordinary people, but she is also an agile political operator. In the space of a few short years, she rose to the vice ranking position of the House Oversight Committee and made herself a unique place in the Democratic Party.
But Ocasio-Cortez has one important failing in the eyes of DSA’s leaders: She is not sufficiently anti-Israel. As the organization declared its non-endorsement of her, the only rationale it cited was disapproval of her position on Israel.

Democracy is about to die. It has never been a healthy entity since it became the benchmark for new governments in 1789 with America. Over the course of the last two centuries democracy has been slowly but surely corroded into a new form of monarchy with the super-rich invisibly controlling the world. Chaotically, as if the invisible hand of the market were real, but actually just groups of predators fighting over their territory. Like lions and hyenas.

The mechanisms to nullify any actual democratic control of nations are now so well-known and fully developed that voting for a representative will soon become meaningless. We are divided and conquered by any means imaginable. By the best imaginations money can buy.

Three years ago I wrote this and nothing has changed: “A couple years ago on a break I disagreed with a coworker on some political issues and the question he asked, “do you believe in America?… keeps haunting me. I did not realize at that time he was actually inferring I was not really an “American.” I believed we were conversing in good faith as concerned citizens. But now I understand that clearly there was no good faith then and there is none to be found on the right now. Those of us who see through the big lie and see the right working to end democracy face a looming catastrophe. The right has devolved over the last half a decade into a closed culture, a cult, of borderline fascism. They believe in a different America than I and the majority of the population do. The question that follows is which America is going to exist five years from now? Again, there are two contrasting worldviews in direct conflict and our divided nation may actually enter into a civil war over them in the near future. Since the Reagan Revolution the belief system called Neoliberalism has been the operating system of the human species on planet Earth. Money is the god of this world. There is no argument about this…it is the truth. A truth the right has propagandized in an Orwellian fashion into the greatest good when it is of course fundamentally evil. Neoliberals do not recognize any inherent good in telling the truth and lie like the rest of us breathe. The only good, the only sacred activity, is acquiring wealth. It is an absolutely amoral philosophy of Market Fundamentalism deifying profit as the singular holy and all-powerful force. We are now dealing with the consequences of four decades of this satanic religion corrupting society. – Destroying the truth just happens to be the best cover for maintaining obscene wealth. Nobody has the time to vote for progressive taxation when the communists are coming to eat your infant. The masses have been manipulated by the one percent to the point where there is a real danger of a fascist overthrow of the government and where that leads nobody can predict. Reading The Turner Diaries, racists will say a likely outcome of their white nationalist coup will be “The Day Of The Rope.” White grievance is the underlying driver and will spin out of control. Any who doubt this is a possibility should consider the laws being passed by red states blatantly arranging for their coming election results to be thrown out. It is transparently obvious the only way for conservatives to stay in power is to end democracy. Anyone can see it yet nobody knows what to do about it. And when it happens only one avenue will be left. Violence.”