We are culpable

It is long past time to tolerate excuses

I wish there was another way.

In 2024, the institutionalized false dichotomy in the United States, usually called the “two-party system,” yields two candidates who both favor genocide in Gaza. This genocide is underwritten, funded, and armed by the U.S. government, reducing Israel in effect to an agent of the U.S. in committing this genocide.

Kamala Harris’ defenders point to a range of issues that they allege the Democrats are “better” on, but the Democrats have time and again squandered opportunities to codify Roe v. Wade, raise the minimum wage, reform white supremacist gangsters (usually called “police”), ensure health care for all, and ameliorate social injustice in multiple forms. If not for the genocide, we could say they disappoint.

The Democrats offer endless excuses. They blame the Republicans, but do Republicans blame Democrats as they push this country ever farther to the right? Do Republicans reciprocate so-called “bipartisanship” in any way?

In the effort to pass a “social infrastructure” bill, many fingers were pointed at the likes of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, but these senators merely expose the moral corruption of a party that tolerated them until they left anyway. Somehow, we are nonetheless to treat the Democrats as committed to progress in a system that now yields only regress.

Genocide stands on top of the list of human rights violations. That our repetitive votes for the “lesser evil” yield this evil, shows the folly of arguing that “the other guy is worse.” This is a system that can no longer stand. It must be overthrown by any means necessary.

I do not say this lightly. But our collective inaction renders us all culpable in that genocide while we fail even to solve longstanding issues of social injustice. It is inexcusable. We must rebel.