Why ‘Unity’ is an Inevitable Lose-Lose
Co-Written by @emilystvvr and Jace Bracelin
For the past twelve months, the shit-rate theater club of American politics has had to watch President-elect Joe Biden weakly cough out a ‘call for unity’ within our country. Just yesterday, President Donald Trump released a statement after his supporters stormed the Capitol building with armed and dangerous force saying the very same thing. This, in a nutshell, is the problem with reconciliation — how are Americans supposed to witness the aftermath of a White House-sanctioned, poorly-planned violent insurrection and assume both sides have the same intentions?
This, of course, infers no endorsement of the Democratic party on my part. As an avid reader of Marx, Kropotkin, and Chomsky, I am the first to point out how many oil lobbyists sit in the breast pocket of Biden’s overpriced suits. But any leftist or progressive who equates the evil of modern-era Republicanism with the DNC has obviously not been paying attention. Although the GOP has been devolving into performance politics since Reagan’s reelection, Trump has ushered in a new, mutated form of dog-whistling that has left the Republican party drowning in an evermore racially-charged pool of voters. These voters, usually devout followers of Q and similar deranged right-wing machinations, dish out threats of civil-war like they’re military flyers at a 4th of July parade; alarming, and meant for anyone who’ll listen. If Democrats let Trumpian Republicans have their way, we’d be sending men and weapons to trenches dug directly into American soil right now. And if Trumpian Republicans let the Democrats have their way, well, we’d be… hearing Mitch McConnell out?
Calls for unity don’t work because one side doesn’t want to unify; they want to dominate. If the magic-mojo of friendship worked on Donald Trump, we wouldn’t've had to sit through three months of attempted election vote racketeering. The non-partisan, ‘across the isle’ brand of politics may have worked for the unfortunate passing of the Patriot Act in 2001, but young voters aren’t seeking centrism from their candidates anymore. Republicans have seemingly picked up on this, so why can’t Joe?
Joe Biden suffers from the same disease that plagues a majority of DNC alums; not actually being left-leaning. What we must realize is that most politicians (Democrat and Republican alike) will choose big business over their electorate base every time. All bills are passed with this notion in mind. Perhaps these environmental restrictions may keep the drinking water safe, but what will car manufacturers say about a cut in their profits? And more importantly, how will corporate funded political campaign stay afloat without the thousands of dollars donated to them by these car manufacturers, if they disapprove of politicians voting in favor and pull all support? This corruption-controlled disease festering within our congress could care less about childish political differences and fights; all it needs to do is make sure the only party still winning at the end of the day is the top 1%. No amount of protest and public dissent will convince your local politician to give up their seat at the big-boy capitalist table. And since both Democrats and Republicans participate in this vile practice, there are virtually no differences between a Democrat and Republican’s fiscal version of Capitalism. So if both parties share the same secret agenda, that leaves only social differences to argue over.
Despite what Tucker Carlson may tell you, American social politics are not moving left right now. The only thing that has changed recently is a gift-wrapped excuse for Republicans to become more and more explicit with their white supremacy and anti-Semitism in the form of our Commander in Chief. So spoilers, but we don’t really have a ‘left’ and a ‘right’ wing party. Instead, we have a ‘milquetoast liberal party’ and an ‘aggressive neo-fascist right’ wing party, both of whom directly benefit from maintaining the corporate rule of capital. Economic policy is not where Democrats and Republicans differ — it all simply depends on how open they’re willing to be with their racism. With the Unity idea, Democrats can now finally just drop the pretenses, shed their performative ‘social justice’ skin, and get to work with any Republican who’ll have them. Unity isn’t a burdened compromise for Democrats, it’s a relief.
This is not to say the Republican idea of working for the ruling class is identical to the Democrat one, though, because it isn’t. Though neither plan truly benefits disenfranchised groups, at least Democrats don’t publicly seek to harm them. Republicans, on the other hand, use BIPOC, Jews, Queer and poor people as scapegoats for their justifications in working with billionaires. Democrats just sweep their corruption all under the rug.
With the now-Democrat controlled Senate, some liberals may think we’re finally free of so-called ‘Republican policy’, but Joe Biden’s victory is not a revolution or an overcoming of oppression. Its a flimsy Band-Aid on a gaping wound that’s bleeding this country dry, and billionaires will still inevitably call the shots. We’ve just gone from Mitch McConnell’s healthcare plan to Mitch McConnell’s healthcare plan with a ‘GIRLBOSS’ sticker slapped on the front. Nothing fundamental will actually ever change, only appearances will.
Young voters recognize this. Millennials and Gen Z have turned out to be the most progressive generations yet and progressive caucuses only grow larger and larger every year. Soon, Democrat ‘moderates’ will be booted to the curb; but until then, what do we do? The answer, is, honestly, a hard one to pin down. It’s not like we can magically invent a popular leftist political party to match the radicalized fervor of Republicans, nor can we just protest the injustice away; this summer’s BLM protests have proven that point for us tenfold. The best we can do is not buy into Joe Biden’s deranged ideals of ‘Unity’, and instead, organize against his true benefactors — billionaires and the rest of the ruling class. Putting pressure on the DNC through grassroots-organized movements, such as the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign for president or leftist coalitions demanding police reform, forces capitalist collusion into the stage lights. The defeat of capitalism cannot come through weak promises of unity from our country’s most corrupt; it needs to come through solidarity of those who are targeted the most by the billionaire agenda; you.
