On things not changing

How I know we aren’t going to change anything:
 
The able bodied among us haven’t gathered in thousands at the local offices of politicians who are supposed to watching over them and demanded in furious voices.
 
Which is not their fault.
 
They have been told over and over and over again for decades that doing that doesn’t work, and they have seen that when Black folks do it they get blamed and police officers will try to frame those protestors for vandalism so they can call it a riot and a crime.
 
For decades they have been fed a lie that the two parties are the same, that voting won’t make a difference, and they get to see as their votes are rendered useless not by an electoral college (where all the talk is) but by gerrymandering that makes it far worse (and yes, both parties do this).
 
The electoral college doesn’t determine who makes laws, who expands or punishes a court, who has the ability to change shit. All it determines is who is supposed to do the job of being a cop.
 
But it is nice when those who do those things can slide under the glare of the lights.
 
I know we won’t because people keep electing McConnell and Cruz and others who have poured their entire effort into stopping anything from happening. See below.
 
We won’t do anything, and every last one of us deserves the looks we get from those who have survived school shootings and theater shootings and concert shooting s and sports game shootings, the condemnation of us, the vicious fury at us, because we keep saying “but they didn’t do anything”
And they are the people who represent us.
 
Even if we didn’t vote for them, they represent us. Even if they are a different party, they represent us. Even if they say to each of us that they don’t give a fuck or they think we should be shot or beaten or killed or jailed — even then, they represent us.
 
We won’t do anything because we let them get away with it.

Let’s do a thought experiment, shall we? Asked you to see below, so here is below.

So, let’s just say that you are a member of a group of people who do not value things the same way other people do.
 
Let’s say that you really don’t like the idea of public schools and haven’t ever since it was required that less desirable people get allowed in those schools, even if it means transporting them there.
 
Let’s say that someone came up with the idea of taking the ideas of a private school and charging the states for it, and then Working to keep the undesirable ones out while also trying to turn all the schools into these profit and money making centers.
 
Now, let’s say that you also want to keep kids going to some schools, and not learning much so they will be more likely to fall for your cons and your lies and be easier to just make work in factories and warehouses and the little places that make money hand over fist because no one cares about them except as money centers.
 
Let’s say that you set things up so that those same people can be turned into incarcerated people who can be forced to work for even cheaper while also making money.
 
Now, let’s add into that a whole system of pretending to give those who might be worthwhile saving a chance by loaning them the money for an education, but making it impossible to ever pay back.
 
Now, if you are following this so far, let’s say that you are also really big on guns. Guns let people kill each other (not you, you are safe behind the bodies of those people your system has set up as expendable and trained to expend themselves to protect you), and let’s say that there are a lot of people who don’t like you for some reason — maybe because you don’t want women to be able to escape making babies because then how the hell will you have enough people to do the work for cheap?
 
What would you think if someone used those guns to shoot up a public school?
 
You wouldn’t think anything of it. You would be annoyed by all the people who are screaming at you. You would be angry at all the people saying you have blood on your hands when you didn’t tell that guy to do it, you did T give him the gun, you said they could go to these almost private schools (and here you snicker because you know those dead kids weren’t worth it and wouldn’t ever get into a good school), you even said these “charter” schools are safer, less costly.
 
Why should you do anything? Doing it means less money. Hell you have already done everything you can to close the schools by sheer attrition by paying administrative costs that are high and paying teachers as little as possible and then Making the materials as useless as possible.
 
This will create more folks for the incarceration pipeline or the low wage, endless hour grind to make other people money.
 
It isn’t your fault all these bleeding hearts think there is something broken here — they don’t count, they don’t matter, they just want to take away what is yours, what you earned, what you built.
 
They need to get out of the way.
 
They are a problem.
 
Let’s say that this is you.
 
Why are you a Republican?

And, in closing…

Something I don’t think folks quite get, so I’m going to use a rough analogy (very rough) here:
Political parties are like unions that you do not have to pay.
 
Unions work with outside groups, but they don’t let outside groups dictate policy or leadership. Only members get to do that.
 
This is why when you are outside screaming at them, they don’t hear you. You *have no voice* in terms of the party leadership or policy or any of that.
 
Now, you can get people to leave the party. But that actually just makes things worse. Scientifically, that is. This isn’t about pragmatic or practicality — we’re talking politics here, Pragmatic or practical left the building in November of last year.
 
So if you are upset that the party isn’t hearing you, then you need to do something to be heard — and that isn’t going to happen from outside.
 
But…
 
If you start a party, a serious one, that has funding and has a structure and a platform and that appeals to people — well, you might get heard as a “partner” organization that works with the Dem’s to achieve a common goal.
 
But you still won’t be able to change the leadership or policies inside.
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