I’ve been angry and disgusted about a lot of things since Election Day. But over the past few days I’ve been angrier than Jack Nicholson’s character from The Shining to see all these so-called “progressives” come out of the fucking woodwork to crucify Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) for voting against one amendment to a budget reconciliation bill that could have allowed Americans to buy cheaper imported prescription drugs from Canada — even though the amendment wasn’t going to become law. It just so happened that Booker’s vote took place on the same day he took the UNPRECEDENTED step in testifying against Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) during the latter’s confirmation hearing for Attorney General.

For three months now I’ve been hearing people talk about resistance against Donald Trump. Time and again I’ve seen and heard people say that we should not normalize Trump or the putrid cabinet he’s assembling. I keep hearing that resistance would take bold and assertive action and I’ve heard people demand that the Democrats in Congress be at the forefront of the resistance.

Yet when Booker does just that in order to stop Sessions from having the power to set legal policy that will severely harm everyone who isn’t a white, heterosexual, Christian man he gets shat on for voting against a separate amendment that a) wasn’t going to pass b) was non-binding and c) would have undermined some of the drug provisions of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) that the Republicans are hell bent on destroying anyway. I’ve seen several people say that his vote on this one amendment completely invalidated his effort to stop Sessions and by extension resist Trump.

A lot of people have framed it as Booker rejecting Bernie Sanders (I-VT) amendment. Only the amendment was actually the work of Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) — Sanders was only a co-sponsor. Surprise, an old white man is taking all the credit for the work done by a woman. Not to mention that Booker and the other 12 Democratic Senators that voted against Klobuchar’s amendment voted in favor of a very similar amendment proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). Wyden’s amendment covered the same ground as Klobuchar’s, only there were greater safety provisions and fewer strings attached in his amendment than hers, and his amendment was also co-sponsored by Sanders (Wyden’s amendment was not passed either and the 51–47 vote was a direct partisan split). Speaking of Sanders, the man exposes himself as fraud and an absolute hypocrite every time he opens his mouth these days, and his large cult of rabid worshippers are the slimiest and most deceitful pieces of shit on this earth (and the ones most deserving of getting their heads bashed in). Notice that I wrote “cult of rabid worshippers” and NOT “supporters” because his supporters were at least willing to accept that Hillary Clinton won the Dem nomination, support her in the general election, and in many cases did the work necessary to make sure she would be elected.

But the large Bernie Bro/Zealot/Never Hillary cult made it clear that anyone who didn’t worship at the altar of Saint Bernie Sanders wasn’t a “real progressive” and therefore wasn’t worthy of their support unless they cleared an impossibly high bar. And they joined forces with an already established wing of far left purists for whom any Dem politician who rates less than 100% in their purity scale of select issues is a “neoliberal” and therefore justifies them to throw away their votes on crackpot third-party candidates so they can preen to everyone how “radical” or “revolutionary” they supposedly are and to try and shame people who consistently vote Democrat as ignorant and brainwashed sheeple. Yeah, I’m brainwashed for realizing that a system that often requires some level of compromise to move things forward renders 100% ideological purity useless and subsequently voting for whichever candidate in best positioned to effectively advance the issues I care about in a given election is the most prudent option. Yeah, I’m ignorant for realizing that this is a two-party system, no third party is going to magically rise overnight to save us, and the Democratic party is presently the only viable electoral vehicle for effective progressive action in America. Both parties ARE NOT THE SAME. Every politician takes corporate money because that’s the cost of doing business in American politics — even Bernie does — but only ONE Senator stood up to confront his colleague for the rights and safety of all Americans this week, and it WASN’T BERNIE SANDERS, IT WAS CORY BOOKER.

You Bernie Bros aren’t fooling anybody by having one set of standards for Sanders and those who pledge complete allegiance to him (like Tulsi Gabbard and Keith Ellison) and a completely different set of standards for every other Democratic politician — and it’s very clear by now that Sanders himself knows this and loves every bit of it. It’s obvious that it’s just fine for Bernie to have shitty votes on his record (like voting against immigration reform, against closing Gitmo, siding with the Republicans on gun control multiple times, and actively pushed a bill to dump nuclear waste from Vermont and Maine to Sierra Blanca, TX which severely impacted a poor Latinx community) because he’s just “looking out for his constituents in Vermont” but any other Dem who has ONE shitty vote on their record is a “neoliberal corporate shill” who’s “doing the bidding of the 1%”. And I just love how you motherfuckers are happily tearing down Booker for accepting Big Pharma money to fund his 2014 Senate campaign but don’t say jack shit about Sanders taking more than $300,000 from the pharmaceutical industry in 2016 — only two senators accepted more (and neither one was Booker). You don’t say a damn thing about Sanders OWNING STOCK in Pfizer and investing in Novartis. Or the fact that he’s still profiting from the Sierra Blanca toxic waste site and his wife Jane remains part of the commission that oversaw the site. Imagine how much more we would know about Bernie Sanders financial ties if he actually disclosed his personal finances during his 2016 presidential campaign?

And don’t think it hasn’t been noticed that the people who have been most savagely attacked for failing your purity tests and not worshipping at the altar of Lord Sanders have been people of color and women. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) “betrayed the progressive movement” because she endorsed Hillary Clinton after the primaries were over. Attorney General Loretta Lynch was an “obstructionist pig” because she literally bumped into Bill Clinton at an airport (I actually saw someone call her that on a former friend’s Facebook post about the Justice Department suing Georgia for segregating disabled students, simply because Lynch was pictured). Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) “sold out to the establishment” because he didn’t see Bernie amongst the 250,000 that went to the March on Washington. And then there was the spectacle of Sanders Zealots repeatedly booing, heckling, and shouting over Black, Brown, and women speakers during the first day of the Democratic National Convention — including Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) as he spoke about civil rights, a living wage, voting rights, and equity in education. All because the Democratic party platform did not explicitly oppose the TPP.

Bernie and his cult tried to win Black voters by relentlessly trying to sell them that he “marched with MLK” in the early ’60’s to the point where damn near every photo posted on social media that had a white man with dark hair and glasses within the vicinity of Dr. King was circled as being Bernie Sanders himself. Of course all of them turned out to be fake. Most Black voters were justifiably insulted by the methods his campaign used to get their support, were very turned off by his rabid cult of worshippers, and made Sanders pay dearly for it in losing the Dem nomination by nearly 4 million votes (and 359 pledged delegates) because 75% of Black voters nationwide chose Hillary Clinton over Sanders and 65% of Latinx voters did the same. That really angered his cult, who made it clear that if Sanders didn’t get the nomination then fuck civil rights, fuck gender equality, fuck all of that — it’s all “identity politics” that only the “elites” care about and they don’t matter anyway; only the “economic anxiety” of “real working-class Americans” matters (read: white males easily baited by racist and sexist dog whistles) and the Democrats have to get with the program and win them over in order to start their “progressive revolution”.

So the “Great Progressive Fighter” Bernie Sanders goes on a CNN Town Hall and tell a Democratic party that he refuses to join — unless he runs for president — that they shouldn’t obstruct Donald Trump or his cabinet picks, insists he can find common ground with Trump and won’t commit to voting against Jeff Sessions because he has to “hear what (Sessions) has to say”. The next day, a letter from Coretta Scott King opposing Sessions 1986 nomination of a federal judgeship in Alabama emerged, where she writes:

[I]t is my strongly-held view that the appointment of Jefferson Sessions to the federal bench would irreparably damage the work of my husband, Al Turner, and countless others who risked their lives and freedom over the past twenty years to ensure equal participation in our democratic system.”

Yet the man who tried to win Black voters almost solely on the basis that he “marched with Dr. King” didn’t have a damn thing to say in the wake of that letter. Nothing further to say about Jeff Sessions even though Dr. King’s own wife felt compelled to stop Sessions from becoming federal judge THIRTY YEARS AGO out of the fear he would damage the work that cost her husband’s life and the work she and so many others put their blood, sweat, and tears into. Nothing to say about and no action taken against him even though Sessions was the first member of Congress to endorse Donald Trump. A 76-year-old John Lewis, whose skull was fractured by state troopers in Selma while actually marching with Dr. King, found the time to join Cory Booker in testifying against Sessions, but a 75-year-old Bernie Sanders sat and watched on the sidelines only to later on tweet about a flawed amendment that he gladly took the credit for — even though he didn’t do the work — knowing that his toxic cult would take the bait and use it to unleash holy hell on Booker in an attempt to erase the bold and unprecedented action he took that very day. Just like the way his cult has been gleefully rubbing in everyone’s face since Election Night on how “Bernie would have easily beaten Trump” had he only been given the Dem nomination, conveniently ignoring that he didn’t do a GODDAMN thing to earn it, and saying nothing about how they cheered on Donald Trump for using the exact same talking points vs. Hillary Clinton as Sanders did (particularly the bullshit about her “rigging elections”), all while Bernie stayed on the sidelines and gave little support to Clinton, do very little to rally either his cult or his supporters to get behind her, and was all too happy to promote his book immediately after the election hoping to gather enough momentum to take over a reeling Democratic Party.

I realize that the Far Left doesn’t entirely consist of Bernie Zealots, but the remainder of that wing for the most part are just as awful. For every Angela Davis that has put real work into bringing justice and equity for all people they’re at least 100 others afflicted with oral diarrhea who love to repeatedly shout words like “neoliberalism” and “revolution” so much that they lose whatever weight or meaning they have (I’d be shocked if a quarter of the people who use the word “neoliberal” knows what the word even means or how to use it in its proper context). These grandiose motherfuckers LOVE to do nothing but shit on Democrats who aren’t 100% perfect progressives when they’re in office — which is pretty much everybody — and love to go on and on about how “both sides are the same” and how “we’re fucked either way”. And when a right-wing extremist that would inflict pain and suffering to the most marginalized populations inevitably comes to power, suddenly they want to either complain about how fucked we are, revel in the prospect of the “revolution” that will finally be at hand, or try to wash their hands of their complicity and say “don’t blame me, I voted for (fringe minor party candidate)” and use it to advocate the “necessity” of a third party.

And that’s where “true progressives” who claim to possess the “utmost integrity” elevate complete nutjobs like Jill Stein who panders to anti-vaxxers and 9/11 truthers, and hail Julian Assange as a folk hero even while he’s hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in the UK to avoid extradition for rape charges in Sweden, has ties with white supremacist groups in Australia, and oh yeah, has published stolen information of private citizens and potentially threatens their safety. These are the morons who praise Stein’s VP running mate, Ajamu Baraka, for calling President Obama a “neo-fascist”. Somehow, it was beneath them to vote for Hillary Clinton even when she was the ONLY VIABLE OPTION to prevent a Donald Trump presidency because of her emails, Goldman Sachs speeches, she’s a “war criminal” or whatever. For at least some of these people, Trump’s presidency would finally usher in the long hoped for revolution that will burn everything down and a savior would arise from the ashes to establish and build the perfect utopian society that we’ll all get to experience in our lifetimes (maybe this is what Davis meant when she said that she wasn’t “narcissistic” enough to not vote for Clinton, and too many people had the gall to call Angela Davis a “sellout” for that stance).

This is the end result of a disgusting and unrepentant form of nihilism rooted in the belief that practically everyone is hopelessly corrupt and compromised, that there is no usefulness in trying to change or reform existing systems, leaves very little — if any — room for good people to make mistakes in judgement, ruthlessly purges people for being imperfect, and mandates that the current society must be completely burned down and destroyed by a massive revolt of the people to allow the ideologically pure to gain control and build a utopia for all to prosper. Hence the term nihilistic purity.

It all sounds so romantic until one considers the grim reality that revolutions are often very bloody and painful, that many lives are often lost and many more suffer in the process. Whatever glory to be had in the heroism and martyrdom of the deceased is of little solace to the family and loved ones left behind. The death, destruction, and suffering is the easy part. What’s difficult is building or rebuilding a functional society in its aftermath. A functional society that actually protects those who were marginalized and oppressed in the one that was destroyed and ensures that the legacy of the past does not re-emerge in the society that is being built. A society that hasn’t merely traded an old oppressor for a new one.

I’m sick of this bullshit. I’m sick of seeing hard fought progress and reform won by dogged and determined people being continuously undermined and outright destroyed by petulant, selfish and egotistical narcissists who do absolutely nothing but trash and destroy everything just because they didn’t get everything they wanted in record time or their pet issue(s) didn’t come first. I’m sick of seeing people and organizations (like Cecile Richards and Planned Parenthood) who have doggedly worked and fought for decades to finally get a seat at the table only to be smeared as establishment sellouts just for having a seat at the table. I’m sick of seeing people who insist on being willfully ignorant of basic civics and how government works, stunningly myopic of the bigger picture or the greater good, and outright refuse to even consider coalition building, still being catered to like customers at a high end day spa because they’re the either loudest voices in the room or are adept with or active on social media — even if they’re using it to promote laughingly biased fake news. And I’m sick of seeing these nihilistic purists lecture everyone else on how to fight the power and then turn around to crucify someone who does just that because of a fucking technicality. Which is what Sen. Booker’s vote on the Klobuchar amendment was, a technicality. Saying that does not diminish how serious an issue prescription drug costs are. It doesn’t belittle how important it is to so many Americans for whom affordability is directly tied to quality of life, and for some the difference between life and eventual death.

But all the affordable prescription drugs in the world will not stop Blacks, Latinx, Asians, Native Americans, and Muslims from being beaten and murdered simply for their race or religion. No prescription drug will prevent women from being beaten, assaulted, and raped. No drug will stop lesbians, gays, and transgendered folks from being assaulted and murdered for who they are. And no prescription drug will prevent the abuse and exploitation of immigrants. The safety and security of every American and the institutions that that guide them will be directly under the watch of the Attorney General. Crucifying Cory Booker over a separate and unrelated technicality as he stands up for the liberty of every American is great way to ensure that Donald Trump’s presidency will last for eight years. And unlike so many of these far left nihilist purists, I take absolutely no joy or satisfaction in saying “I told you so” should that come to pass. I’ll be far too worried about myself and my loved ones that are staring at the certainty of pain and brutal oppression that awaits them. Far too concerned about how to survive. And far too angry, bitter, and disgusted with the nihilist purists who fantasize about playing “revolutionary” LARP games at the expense of the safety, welfare, and lives of everyone else to be so damn smug for being “right”.