POLITICAL RELATIVITY

During commercials in a set yesterday, the anchorman (a good friend of mine), made a valid point: he claimed that the Democrats, labeled as the left in the US, would be to the right of the Spanish Partido Popular, the right wing party in that European nation. And the anchorman was right. It's all relative and our criteria depend on what we compare to what. Most people used to say that America was a nation with two right wing parties only that one outrighted the other one.

I personally don't have a problem with a strong Democratic Party; actually, I'm convinced it is healthier for our country to have two robust and agile political groups that alternate and "contain" one another; a predominance of one upon the other would inevitably lead to a weaker democracy. The devil, however, is in the fellow travelers the Democrats have chosen. In order to secure votes they have associated with trouble makers, people that put on a mask to attend a "peaceful" rally, and loonies who wave the flag of the former Soviet Union while their leaders try to impeach the president based precisely on his alleged association with a former KGB thug. 

Even more serious, African American elected officials like Maxine Waters waste time her constituents pay for doing the dirty job for the white elite of her party instead of focusing on genuine and tangible improvement of the African American community. The right path for them to follow would be to press the new president to the limit in order to put forth initiatives that instead of entitlement and food stamps, crime and disfranchisement, could finally create opportunities and make a difference in the lives of millions of black Americans. But they do not care about a more educated community since it could imply the end of their political careers.

This explosive mixture of opportunism, manipulation and prefabricated narrative is what makes possible the sordid dichotomy that places the Democratic Party to the right of a European right wing party in theory, but pushes it dangerously to the left of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) for all practical purposes. What honest Democrats fail to surmise is that somewhere along the journey their new fellow travelers will merciless and viciously kick them off the train.