(lightly adapted from some hastily-scrawled shit in my little red journal–yes, it is literally little and red because I am a self-parody, but I AM aesthetically cohesive)
Melat Kiros won. She won! Dang! I’m often at a loss for words when a Good Thing happens. Misery is a far more effective muse in my writing than elation. Victory? Unheard of (at least since Jokic brought Larry home 3 summers ago).
Frankly, I’m only typing right now because I feel like I should. Don’t have much to say, edifying or otherwise!
Fine.
I mean, her victory is the culmination of a decade of left growth (thanks, Bernie) and a confirmation of a decade-old theory that DeGette is EXACTLY the type of incumbent to challenge. Vindication is nice.
On the other hand, you know what’s taken a beating since the Plaid win (oh yeah, Plaid won largest Senedd party) in May and through yesterday’s contests? My anti-accelerationist thesis. I always discounted it as callous and utilitarian (even if it is, in a dialectical sense, vacuously correct). We don’t NEED for people to suffer and we don’t NEED things to get worse in order to make positive changes.
Well, maybe we do?
Plaid and Kiros are only possible due to the failures of mainstream left* opposition to fascism. While I rejoice in the victories, it’d be folly to pretend that they weren’t made possible by creeping, encroaching fascism. There is a quality of “voting for water because you’re currently on fire” to these wins.
Truthfully, I am made extremely bitter by this fact.
If you’d listened to me (us) in 2012 during Occupy, 2016 and 2020 during Bernie, at ANY other time since Obama’s deficiencies were made plain… maybe you wouldn’t need Rep. Kiros!
Well, now you have her. And putting aside my worrywart tendencies, linking her performance mostly to Dem party failures instead of genuine ideological adherence to or enthusiasm for socialism, one thing that will be true next January: Denver will be represented by my Denver DSA comrade, Melat Kiros.
Hell yeah, fuck yeah.
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