First They Came For…

First they came for the Revolution

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Revolution.

Then they came for the Parliamentary Socialism

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Parliamentary Socialism.

Then they came for the Third Party

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Third Party.

Then they came for the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party.

Then they came for the Green Lantern

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Green Lantern.

Then they came for me

but that was cool

because I’m a Democrat.

15 Comments

  1. Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant January 22, 2016 at 11:50 am | #

    “Then they came for me

    but that was cool

    because I’m a Democrat.”

    And how much you wanna bet on the likelihood that “they” will come to get you during a Hillary “Democratic” Administration?

  2. Sandwichman January 22, 2016 at 1:46 pm | #

    First they came for Sister Souljah.

  3. Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant January 22, 2016 at 1:51 pm | #

    True; no need to wait for Democrat Hillary to send “them” after you when her Democrat husband already issued those orders over two decades ago. With Dems like these, who needs Republicans?

    • Sandwichman January 22, 2016 at 3:22 pm | #

      “With Dems like these, who needs Republicans?”

      The Republicans are needed to mop up the angry, alienated residue with a toxic dose of resentment “populism”. You betcha!

  4. Joshua Sellers January 22, 2016 at 2:07 pm | #

    Audentes fortuna iuvat.

  5. KM January 22, 2016 at 3:30 pm | #

    Cue sarcastic reprimand from Brad DeLong in 3, 2, …

  6. Roquentin January 22, 2016 at 4:29 pm | #

    An organization runs like a machine, and the ideas produced serve to allow it to reproduce itself. It is important to think of ideas as produced, in the same way as cans of soup or bottles of beer. The Democratic Party will produce whatever ideas allow it to reproduce the conditions which allow it to continue to exist whether good, bad, or ugly. This is similar to how, say the Communist Party in the People’s Republic of China has next to nothing to do with Marxism or Communism anymore. Even the Democratic Party itself was once the party of the South and all the racism which went along with it after reconstruction. You can think of the ideas such organizations coat themselves in sort of like paint. The ideological paint covers the inner workings of the machine itself.

    The primary mechanism of he Democratic Party is to solicit large donations from big corporate donors and then to transform these donations into mass media barrages which convince certain sectors of the US population to support it. This money is then used by those same major corporate patrons to get the kind of legislation which benefits them and allows them to continue to accumulate capital. There are many secondary mechanisms at work, but one of the biggest is to enrich its politicians before, during, and after they are in office and there are a myriad of ways to do so. I know I’m stating the obvious at this point so I’ll stop.

    Sanders has to win this thing though. He’s the only viable option I can see which doesn’t seem catastrophic for the future of the US.

    • LFC January 23, 2016 at 9:02 am | #

      This comment has too simplistic view of ideology. Ideology is not simply “a coat of paint” covering the “workings of the machine.” Parties can sometimes be influenced by mass movements, as for instance in the case of the influence of the civil rights movement on the Dem party, and that in turn can change the ideas that are ‘produced’. Individual politicians can also change their minds and/or reject the assumptions they grew up with, for a mixture of reasons of self-interest and conviction, a mixture that can sometimes be hard to disentangle into its component parts.

      Another problem with this comment is that the Dem Party really does not speak with one unified voice in public, it does not present one unified face to the world, whereas the Chinese Communist Party does. The CCP conducts its internal struggles behind closed doors, mostly. There is an official party line that must be adhered to. In a multiparty, at least formally democratic system, that’s usu. not the case, at least not in the same way.

      • Roqeuntin January 23, 2016 at 9:25 am | #

        Is it really? It seems pretty clear that LBJ’s eventual endorsement and signing of Civil Rights legislation was something he was forced into, reluctantly felt he had to do, and understood would “lose the South for a generation.” You are right that popular movements can force changes in policy, that’s precisely what happened, but this changes nothing about how the party itself functions. At that point, in 1968, it was necessary for the party to endorse Civil Rights in order for it to continue winning elections, to continue to hold power, and to go on existing. Certain voting blocks had been mobilized by this machine which required such action for their continued support. Furthermore, in an election that same year Nixon swooped in an cleaned up in areas formerly dominated by the Democrats. The apparatus of the Republican party picked up were they left off immediately after they were done.

        Let me make this clear, I’m not bemoaning the nature of political parties as machines as if they never produce anything worthwhile. Sometimes they do. In fact, they couldn’t function at all if they didn’t produce good outcomes. You can’t dupe people into supporting you 100%, and sometimes the changes are real. This in no way changes the forces at work, or the fact that ideas are something produced.

        The fact the CCP struggles behind closed doors has nothing whatsoever to do with the topic at hand. I chose it because I thought the example that the CCP in terms of policy is nothing remotely close to Marxist in 2016, but apparently not. The organizational structure remains intact while the ideas change. That’s all I’m trying to get across.

  7. Glenn January 22, 2016 at 4:48 pm | #

    Democracy is merely a tool, and like any tool, it is put down when no longer useful.

    Because democracy demands respect, it is not to be sullied by rule of the people.

  8. GSTally January 23, 2016 at 10:58 am | #

    LOL!

  9. Leo Casey January 24, 2016 at 12:15 pm | #

    This is a parody, right? It couldn’t have been written by the same person that was so thoughtful about Ta-Nehisi Coates and public intellectuals.

  10. Daniel January 28, 2016 at 9:43 pm | #

    Would Clarence Thomas Sign Dredd Scott?

    • Daniel January 28, 2016 at 10:22 pm | #

      Yes.

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