Thursday, March 5, 2020

Reflections On Resisting Systems of Evil

It is likely that I will be moved to share
this post again and again.


As one of my friends accurately assessed, we now have a three party political system. I believe that it’s important to highlight the connections that our political systems have with both injustice, violence, and evil AND also with justice, truth, and love.

1. There is the Republican Party that is consumed with supporting the most dangerous president our country has ever had. They talk loudly about supporting the people while in reality they are pushing forward the darkest agendas of their corporate donor friends. They are mired in the ideology of domination and promoting a patriarchal neoliberal predatory capitalist system that is destroying our country, other nations, and the planet. This is the political party that my lifelong conservative grandfather would find totally unrecognizable. Today Donald Trump is the face of the extreme Right Wing of the Republican Party. This political party is complicit with acts of national and global evil.

And there are two parties within the Democratic Party —

2. There are the Neoliberal Democrats and the Wall Street Wing of the Democratic Party. They talk loudly about supporting the interests of the people while in actuality they are consistently fighting for the agendas of their wealthy donor friends. Neoliberal democrats, like their seemingly different republican opponents, are also wedded to the ideology of domination and the patriarchal neoliberal predatory capitalist system that is at the core of greed, suffering, and violence nationally and worldwide — the climate and ecological crises, endless wars and worldwide militarism, crushing poverty and inequality, and all forms of economic, racial, social, and environmental injustice. Today Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg are among the faces of the Neoliberal Wing of the Democratic Party. This political party is complicit with acts of national and global evil.

3. There is the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party. They also are known to call themselves Justice Democrats. Progressive democrats are committed to economic, racial, social, and environmental justice. Their ideology is rooted in justice, truth, compassion, and love and standing in protection of all life. Progressive democrats are committed to dismantling the patriarchal neoliberal predatory capitalist system of great and deadly power and its ideology of domination. They have disconnected themselves from those systems of death and suffering which have for decades had a stranglehold over both the Right Wing Republican Party and the Neoliberal Democratic Party. They refuse all funding tied to Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the fossil fuel industry, the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, the prison industrial complex, the animal agricultural industries, and other wealthy interests — because Progressive Democrats know that on the back of the checks from these wealthy donors is the toxic corporate agenda. Today Bernie Sanders and our movements rooted in Revolutionary Love are the faces of the Progressive Wing of the Democratic Party. Rabbi Michael Lerner would call this the Love and Justice Party — a political party committed to standing up to and resisting all faces of violence and evil AND standing for national and global justice, sustainability, peace, love, and protection and reverence of life.

Through this lens we become empowered to choose wisely what and who it is that we will support, what our deepest values are and how aligned our actions are with our values, and to be empowered to act out of love, truth, wisdom, justice, and consciousness of a highest good for us all.

May we all choose wisely. Everything, absolutely everything, that we love and cherish is stake. The eyes of the children are watching.
— Molly


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