The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason

by Chapo Trap House

In place of real beliefs, liberals have guilty consciences; in place of politics, they have a Democratic Process to assuage those consciences. This process pits tepid reforms against a deranged and revanchist right wing with no such inclination toward consensus or incrementalism.

If you’re of the millennial generation and even slightly left of center, liberals and the Democratic Party have been the only game in town as long as you’ve been alive. Your parents most likely protested the Vietnam War and supported the civil rights movement, and have been patting themselves on the back ever since. But the litany of bold, progressive legislation liberals always point to is at least thirty years old, and it’s been eroded by both Republican and Democratic governments since. All those great liberal achievements have been systematically dismantled both by the Right—who’ve made such destruction their mission—and Democrats and liberals themselves, who believe they have to “innovate” their ideas and move to the center to win elections.

A cogent recurring theme of this book that’s sadly miss understood by everyone left of Republicans (AKA the large bulk of Americans) is this: to believe that conceding to The Right does anything but empower them is irrational.

Your parents likely considered themselves pretty radical when they were your age. They were known to enjoy “good vibrations,” solid wages backed by union power, a college education that cost a nickel, and the ability to go to the doctor without selling their car to pay for it. But since those days, America has jerked to the right, and so liberals had to do the same in order to win elections and keep the country from moving further right! This is the basic liberal mantra, and it’s fitting that it takes the form of an excuse. Its end result is a political system irrevocably weighted toward the forces of reaction. Coincidentally, by almost every metric, you are poorer and your life is more precarious than your parents’ were at a similar age.

Boomers. Ugh.