Photo by Cliff | CC BY 2.0
For as long as I’ve been involved with progressive political movements, activists and organizers have been trying to reform the Democratic Party with little to no success.
Unfortunately, none of this is new as activists have tried to reform the Democratic Party since the 1960’s, only to see the Dems lurch further and further to the right over the past several decades.
In America, we don’t talk about history. If we do, it’s either a bunch of watered down bullshit, or outright myths and fallacies. That being said, it might be useful to talk to today’s young activists about the dark legacy of the Vietnam War, a war many consider to be the worst international crime of the second half of the 20th century.
According to military historian Nick Turse, over 4 million Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians were killed as a result of Uncle Sam’s limitless aggression in the pursuit of power. Today, Agent Orange continues to ravage not only U.S. veterans, but most importantly the people in Southeast Asia.
In order to understand today’s Democratic Party, progressives and liberals must come to grips with the history of their party. Consequently, we should never forget who got the U.S. into Vietnam in the first place: namely, JFK and LBJ, two Democratic-liberal heroes, of course.
Both JFK and LBJ adhered to Eisenhower’s “Domino Theory,” (which was an extension of George Kennan’s containment policy) the idea that Communism, like a…