“So you’re voting for Du-taxus?” a woman said to me in 1988. I was a lowly receptionist at a gym called “Women Only,” which was probably later sued out of business. I had to answer the phone with, “We have the way, Women Only, this is Sasha, may I help you?”
I was undoubtedly blurting out this mouthful when the client noticed my Dukakis pin, because why wouldn’t she? I told her yes, I was, though I wasn’t “political” back then, and I had no idea why I was voting for Dukakis. He was a Democrat. Being a Democrat wasn’t something I chose. It was something I was. Some guy I was dating probably handed me the pin and told me to wear it, so I complied.
Understandably annoyed, the woman said, “Figures. You probably never even went to college.” I remember this story all of these years later because it’s still surprising to me that a Republican would insult a Democrat’s lack of education. But it tells you everything you need to know about who had the power back then and who didn’t.
After that, I was determined to cobble together my many city college credits and attend UCLA. I would graduate as a transfer student at the age of 29. I was older than everyone else, but I was the first person in my family to graduate. Now, I was prepared for any sudden encounter with an elitist Republican.
For the brief time I was at UCLA, I stumbled upon a political candidate whose campaign had rolled into town for a rally. The year was 1992, and the candidate was Bill Clinton. He was tall and charismatic. He was charming and could give a great speech.
Somewhere in this crowd is me falling hard for a political candidate, a political movement, and what I believed was the right side of history.
“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.”
― John Steinbeck
I wish I could say I always had the moral clarity of someone like Matt Taibbi or Glenn Greenwald. But for most of my life, I didn’t. I was a devoted Democrat, a good soldier for the Left. I went along with everything, even when I knew it was wrong, even when I knew I was lying, because I had convinced myself that winning meant more than just putting a president in power.
I have been a willing participant in taking us to this desperate moment we now face, where both political parties seem crippled and bottlenecked, but only one of them has turned to corruption to stay in power. Only one of them has blocked any challengers to their preferred candidate. And unfortunately, it’s the one I chose to support.
I supported a party that became corrupt over time, and in supporting them, I became corrupt too. If you’re wondering how seemingly respectable people like Jen Psaki, Rachel Maddow, Rob Reiner, Barbra Streisand, or Stephen King can go along with such obvious corruption of our trusted institutions, that’s why. They are who I used to be.
They believe they are fighting the good fight, taking down the bad guy. But they’re wrong. They’re caught up in something they don’t fully understand because no one will tell them the truth, least of all the legacy press.
The “duopoly,” as we know it, has infected and destroyed American democracy. This has been true for a long time now. Corruption is the last resort when you can’t get voters to turn out, you can’t beat a charismatic Reality-TV star, and you can’t fix what ails the people. Corruption is easy. Just get everyone to agree, silence dissent and no one will be the wiser.
Who’s going to call them out on it? NPR? PBS? The New York Times? The Washington Post? MSNBC? Not a chance. They’re complicit. PBS’s Frontline just did a lengthy segment about the so-called “threat” to so-called “democracy.” But really, it’s a story as old as civilization itself: the powerful refusing to relinquish power.
Just imagine if Frontline told the truth. Imagine if they did real journalism. I learned my lesson when I wrote them and asked why they weren’t covering the story of “cancel culture.” Of course, I never heard back.
They’re nothing more than propaganda for the state now because that is what “vote blue no matter who” really means. It means you are part of a tribe, a movement, a religion, and now, corruption.
Corruption can be the cozy relationship between corporations and politicians. It can be taking bribes from foreign leaders. But it can also be weaponizing our justice system to turn it into something that looks more like a Soviet-Union show trial, the Jim Crow juries, the Oyer in Terminer in Salem, or Nazi Germany.
Corruption can be declaring attacks on your political party as attacks on Democracy. It can force all major Big Tech institutions to do your bidding. It can be deciding that the people of the United States don’t have the power unless they choose the candidate they force upon them.
It can be overt censorship by the state via Big Tech and a lying media that refuses to ask the hard questions because they know they’ll get a call from the White House. It’s a president who is failing on the job but with a media that needs polls to tell the people the truth because they can’t do it themselves.
That we’re now watching a political party attempt to take down their chief rival by fast-tracking legal cases in hopes of a conviction, maybe jail time, because that will finally move the needle for Joe Biden, is terrifying.
Do none of them even ask how we got here? No. They wouldn’t dare because then they would have to start confessing. But the question is, how long can they outrun the truth?
Vote Blue No Matter Who
I became a more radicalized Democrat during Bill Clinton’s two terms as I watched the Republicans wage war - investigations, and eventually, impeachment made people like me see the Right as corrupt, petty, and our sworn enemy.
That was nothing compared to what happened in the 2000 election, as we watched George W. Bush pull in a slim Electoral College victory against Al Gore. It ended with a dramatic climax where the Supreme Court and the state of Florida decided the election.
2000 gave birth to “Vote Blue No Matter Who.” We blamed Ralph Nader for flipping the election to Gore, just as we blamed Jill Stein for flipping the election to Trump.
What I know now that I didn’t know then was that Gore should have won more states than he did. Why wasn’t that the message coming out of that year? Why did we all decide, beyond any doubt, that something bad had been done to us?
Why did we think our job was to find a better way to force ourselves on the disengaged public? It was like an arranged marriage - vote blue no matter who we put in front of you—no matter their flaws, no matter their baggage. You don’t have a choice because you don’t matter.
The party changed after 2000 because we believed we were the chosen people destined to save the planet from global warming. We cast ourselves as the moral and righteous side fighting against the existential crisis that was the Republican Party, the Bush family, and their investments in fossil fuels.
Divide and Conquer
One of the best ways to win an election is to do what they did in the Nixon era, ratf*cking - sabotage your opponents and win with dirty tricks. As Rick Wilson brags about in his book Running Against the Devil, one of the best ways to do that is to boost a third-party candidate and drive a wedge between the opposition.
Trump used this strategy to divide the Left between angry Bernie supporters and the Hillary/Obama coalition.
I could see Trump’s strategy. I even made a video about it, trying to wake my side up before the election. I kept running around like Chicken Little, telling everyone Trump would win. I knew the history. I knew that Democrats don’t hold third terms like we were attempting. Only Ronald Reagan had done it in 1988 with his Veep. After term limits, no Democrat ever had.
Hillary was a long-shot winner anyway. She was a woman. She was a former First Lady. Trump was going to exploit the fracture between Bernie and Hillary, I kept saying. VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO.
Many of the old videos I made for Hillary Clinton are still up on my old Youtube channel. Here is one of them:
I demonized Bernie supporters. I mocked anyone who thought a revolution was possible. I did all of this because I knew the Democrats could not win with this kind of fracture in the party.
The same thing is playing out now on the Right. If you watch that video, substitute Ron DeSantis for Bernie Sanders, and you’ll see how easy it is to divide and conquer.
I’m guessing Rick Wilson and the Lincoln Project are radicalizing and amplifying disgruntled DeSantis supporters. They have millions to burn and more millions to be made if they can deliver. What won’t they do?
I’m not suggesting Trump voters ignore this potential ratf*cking. By all means, patch that hole, or yes, Biden will win again. Rick Wilson is not here to play. He’s here to win.
But I am saying what the Democrats did to patch the hole after 2016 has taken this country to a far more dangerous place than a Trump win ever could. Every time a phony court case is “decided” by a “jury,” - the E. Jean Carroll farce is the latest one; it’s a reminder of just how far they’ll go, how much power they have, and how many willing participants are out there doing their bidding.
They think this means they’re winning. But when you become that disconnected from reality, you can’t see what’s been right in front of you the whole time.
There’s a reason Al Gore and Hillary Clinton couldn’t close the deal. There’s a reason they had to resort to a billion dollars in dark money, ballot harvesting, and changing last-minute election rules just to drag Biden over the finish line.
Do they really think sticking Americans with a president and a vice president they don’t want for four more years will work out well for them? Yes, because “vote blue no matter who” means you’ll take it and like it.
That Trump is still polling ahead of Biden, after all of their dire warnings, after all of their fake headlines and their phony charges against him, he’s still beating their top guy? And they force a victory for someone who hasn’t earned the people’s vote?
Well, they’re going to have much bigger problems on their hands than losing to Trump.
Corruption Laid Bare
We were never the resistance. We were always the empire. We have prevented anyone from breaking up the monopoly of the two-party system. We have stood by as a weaponized legal system puts on phony show trials to attempt to micromanage so-called “Democracy.”
All of this corruption, exposed to anyone who cares about the truth, has turned me into a Trump supporter. But more than that, I vow to devote what’s left of my life to helping to undo some of the damage I helped cause.
On some level, I knew what I was doing was wrong. But I convinced myself I was serving a higher purpose - climate change, racism. That is the danger here. It isn’t that they see themselves as dirty-dealing cheaters. Would that they were that honest. No, they see themselves as the new Puritans who have a right to claim this country, this internet, this Republic for themselves.
What should make all of us concerned is the desperation they feel in trying to jail Trump BEFORE the election. Why? Because they are afraid he will win. Imagine thinking you had more power than the American people to decide who should and shouldn’t win an election. And then force everyone to go along with it.
.
In Peter Weir’s film Witness, the corruption runs so deep inside the police department that by the end of it, they’ve sent thugs to kill an Amish family to cover it up. Harrison Ford shames them by asking them when is enough enough?
I thought some of them might start to feel as sick as I did watching the Raid on Mar-a-Lago. I thought when there was a coordinated effort by prosecutors to “indict” Trump that, some honest people out there would say, wait a second - how did we go from being mad about the Access Hollywood tape to this?
But every time I thought the Democrats had gone too far, I watched people like Barbra Streisand and Rob Reiner celebrate. How could they be this willing to go along with what is obvious corruption? Because they vote blue no matter who. They are robots by now, good soldiers for their righteous cause.
If I Could Turn Back Time…
If I could meet the naive receptionist working at Women Only with the “Du-Taxus” pin, I would ask her why she supported Dukakis. She would have no answer to that question, trust me. But instead of insulting her, I would say don’t wear anyone’s pin unless you know who they are and what they represent.
I would tell her there will be this thing called the internet and that she’s about to leave real life and spend the rest of her time online. Stay away from Twitter and Facebook, I would tell her. Register as an independent, and make candidates earn your vote. And never “vote blue no matter who.”
I would tell her that she will one day have a beautiful daughter, but never to waste one second arguing politics online when she could be spending time in real life with her daughter, who will one day move out and whom she will miss terribly. Life is too precious to give your time to people who do not deserve it.
My mom was a Ross Perot supporter. I remember mocking her over it. But when I look back on that year, I can’t help but think Perot was the better option. I wonder how different our country would be if we’d been able to take a risk then with an outsider.
I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t matter how you vote. It does matter—especially this year. I am hoping the Democrats are voted out by such a humiliating landslide they never engage in this level of corruption again.
But it would be foolish to shame supporters of RFK, Jr. or Dean Phillips or any other Third Party ticket. If they can win enough votes to humiliate the Democrats? I’m fully on board.
As for me, I live in California. It’s not going to matter how I vote, but I’ve already decided it will be a protest vote, and for that, I must pull the lever for the guy who drives them the most insane. Voting doesn’t have to be noble or virtuous. Sometimes it can just be about revenge.
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Confessions of a Corrupt Liberal