Tuesday open thread: Why I'm a normie lib Democrat

Well, you could have knocked me over with a sock when I saw the tweet y'all posted which is the graphic fronting this piece.

In my younger days, I was like SocBo. I was a Chomskyite. A follower of Howard Zinn. An acolyte of Michael Parenti. My radio dial was tuned to 90.7 KPFK Pacifica Radio all day every day. The enemy wasn't Ronald Reagan, or George H. W. Bush. Oh no. The enemy was the "enemy within", so-called "liberals" who maintained the status quo and prevented the glorious revolution, man. I would go to talks, book signings, "events". I was all in for a glorious cleansing.

And then something clicked. I remember one of them saying "Don't trust everything you read." They, of course, meant don't trust what we don't write. But, me being a contrarian, I applied that to their work. But, me being me, I turned my focus to their writing. And I saw much lacking.

Noam Chomsky being an apologist for the Khmer Rouge.

Michael Parenti positing that Caesar's dictatorship was a good thing, even though it led to the autocratic Empire.

Howard Zinn distilling everything to a hatred for the country in which he lived, rather than seeing that the progress we've made was part of that imperfect experiment.

I long ago left the purviews of the radical Left, because I long ago stopped believing in Messiahs.

Bill Clinton wasn't a savior. Neither was Barack Obama. And neither is Joe Biden. They are all imperfect men, doing the best they can. But that's the thing. They're trying. They're trying to move the ball forward, to gain yardage. Nothing is perfect, and nothing will be perfect. If you want perfection, believe in a God, and hope you're right. But here, on this fallen earth? We have ourselves trying to do the best we can. Sometimes we fail. Sometimes we succeed. But we're all we have. And if you place your faith in totalizing ideologies, you will simply be disappointed. 

I've written about utopia before, and how it's a sucker's bet. We can improve. We can be better. But a Star Trek future is hard to achieve. Paradise is guarded by the angel with flaming swords. We disdained paradise. We must make our way in an imperfect world.

Does this mean we can't try to perfect the world? Of course not. That's our remit as human beings. But we have to admit our limitations. We have to acknowledge that our actions will have unintended consequences. And because of that, we have to constantly mend what we mar.

No one has all the answers. And that's what we have to take on. Our heroes are all flawed. We have to do the best we can. And that's utterly human.

This is your open thread.