LET'S TRY FREEDOM.

Common Dreams regular Richard Eskow, who is regularly a figure of fun here, gets a recent column off to a good start.

People who live under a broken system must be convinced that their leaders, and the system itself, are idols to be worshiped and obeyed.

Idolatry is the worship of anything that’s unworthy of worship. It’s a surrender of the individual conscience to something created by another human being.

Idolatry is the opposite of independence.

Every so often, he toys with embracing freedom, but then the collectivist impulse kicks back in.

I bow to no one when it comes to my criticism of Trump, who represents incipient fascism. But I’ve always disliked the phrase, “Democracy is at stake in this election.” It begins with the obvious question: If the Democrats really believe that, why didn’t they field a stronger candidate? The Republican plan for the next presidency is called “Project 2025.” The Democrats’ plan seems to be the 25th amendment.

And when they say, “Democracy is at stake,” a lot of people are likely to reply, “What democracy?” Democracy is measured by the range of choices it offers, and by its independence from oligarchical control.

American democracy is in crisis on both fronts. Billionaires and dark-money PACs dominate primaries, as well as general elections. The result is stark. Where is the party or candidate who promises to end the genocide in Gaza, provide medical care for all, end poverty, and ensure that everyone who wants to work has a job?

As the world is battered by storms, floods, and fire, where’s the party that stands for bold climate action?

I'm not sure Donald Trump has the powers of concentration to organize a fascist movement, let alone that his coalition is a mix of libertarians and rent-seekers.  As far as the Democrats fielding a stronger candidate, well, the candidates Dickie would consider stronger were those the Party Establishment considered less electable in 2020, and if he's not happy with the rent-seekers not going Full Bernie, maybe it's the Common Dreams message that's unpopular.  Project 2025?  I should get that elaboration together on how the end of Chevron deference might draw its fangs.  Storms, floods, and fire?  Yes, Beryl sent some useful rain our way earlier in the week.  It's going to take a while for the researchers to sort out the role of all that atmospheric water from last year's volcanic eruptions and the equilibrating effects an early-season big storm might have on the air and water circulation as the northern summer winds down.

Dickie is right to call attention to the Democrats and their court intellectuals annoying habits of hectoring, condescending, and deplorable shaming.

To blame voters for their anger and dissatisfaction—whether it’s with their economic conditions, their precarious lives, the epidemic of addiction, or a party’s chosen candidate—is to sacrifice true democracy on the altar of its idolatrous imitation. President Joe Biden’s debate performance wasn’t just the failure of one individual. It was the latest sign of decrepitude in a cracked and dust-covered political idol.

Truth itself becomes elastic when we idolize an individual or a party. We’ve seen it happen in discussions of the economy. Too many Democratic Party supporters, in politics and the media, insist that working people are delusional for believing they’re in economic pain. They cite short-term economic trend lines and ignore the long-term decline and precarity that forms the living experience of most working people.

The resulting economic message—“Things are good, and you numbskulls are too dumb to see it”—isn’t just inaccurate. It also reinforces a sense of condescension that many working people feel when they’re lectured from the mainstream left—the sense that powerful and distant people dismiss what you’ve seen, heard, and believed, because they think they’re smarter than you are.

Well, yes, it's foolish to contend that "a small intellectual elite in a distant capital can plan our lives better than we can plan them ourselves."  Perhaps Dickie's discontents with his side and his world view will lead him to embrace a new birth of freedom.

Everyone has idolatries. I’m still working on mine. Sometimes I cringe at things I’ve written or said in the past. But I’ve come to believe that, as paradoxical as it sounds, the best way to act on my own beliefs is by first challenging them—with the hope that one day I can achieve independence from political idolatry.

It is not the idolatry of specific presidents or specific manifestoes that is the problem.  It is the illogic of collective action.  Bet on emergence.