Permanent Rebels

One of the purposes of political parties is to consolidate the almost infinite variations of the people's wants and needs for and from self-government. Another is to educate the electorate about competing visions for our collective future and decide on a program that has the broadest possible appeal to their side. Then to persuade as many voters to support that platform. It never works perfectly, certain things can help in the process such as including as many different people in building the party as possible and maintaining trust between leaders and members. We are as far from those as we can possibly be and therefore we have a barely coherent party system. The republicans are busy ripping their party apart with the members supporting Donald Trump while their leaders fret about not being able to control the hideous beast they created. But that is a subject for another time, today it is the disconnect between Hillary Clinton and an unknown percentage of leftist voters.

The percentage may be small, but they are stubborn and they are loud. These #NeverHillary people or whatever they are calling themselves now are so angry now that the Secretary has been cleared by the FBI. They are also angry that their hero has "sold out" and endorsed her. It is almost impossible to distinguish between the vicious smears coming from republicans and the cries from these silly dead enders. There may be a lot of overlap there too, a lot of the people hooked on Ron Paul last time have mysteriously become democratic socialists this time. And there's no shortage of right wing trolls playing at attacking Hillary Clinton from what they believe the left looks like. But the true believers that I know are definitely of the ideologically schizophrenic variety.

Who are these people who are so selfish and insulated from the hurt that He, Trump can and will put on America? In my unit in the Army being an individual was a grave offense and being a selfish one was worse. Yet these #neverhillary people have convinced themselves that echoing right wing talking points loudly is somehow noble and pat each other on the back for their imagined integrity.