My immediate thought – well, it’s right here, in many on and offline communities of color, in Labor, in some feminism, in some liberalism. In other words, pretty much where it’s always been – but I guess it has even less of an audible voice than it had in times past if people are having to ask.

There are reasons for this that I’d like to explore (with access to those far more knowledgeable than I, when I am able) – from racism (consciously or unconsciously thinking that primarily the white left counts here – which is sort of true, in the way that banks like to (or used to) only lend money to those who don’t need it) to accomodationist (or just plain embarrassed by the margins, by the “identity groups”) Liberalism/Progressivism, to incessant right-wing rhetoric and more.

I also think one answer to the question of where the activist, political Left is may lie in the reason the question is asked in the first place: this Left, peopled often with those to whom issues are not so much a matter of policy or political strategy but of life or death, are sought out for the express purpose of being a type of foil to the mainstream left. Of having these same imperative issues brought forward so that they can be explicitly and loudly dismissed by the mainstream Left – which serves to make them (the mainstream) look moderate and “sane” – and serves the “far Left” not at all, that I can see. Or little, anyway.

So, I don’t know. Many I know, while not completely disdaining the political process, are not exactly enamored with their place on the dance card that’s been set out for them. Maybe some have decided not to dance to this tune at all.

Organizing within communities quietly and fiercely, using freely available (to some) tools such as the internet to communicate issues and needs – and successes and strategies – across national, political, religious, racial and ethnic lines instead of (or, at times, in addition to) agitating in the streets or the US Congress, may yet bring a better return for the far left in the US, and other places, than all the political theater of being the designated “fringe” can do.

None of this is to say, by the way, that I don’t agree that President Obama should be pushed from the left, or that I wouldn’t love to see a vibrant, activist and active politically relevant (and represented) class opening up huge spaces for Obama (and other politicians), not only pushing him leftward but providing an opening for him to move there – but with seats at the table, not as just more political theater, to be marginalized with little return.

Is this a personal failing I should be working on? Maybe so, but I actually suspect not, considering history.

I am not sure why this was weighing on me this morning but it was, so I thought it best to get it on out.

I can understand principled objection to whomever the Democratic candidate turned out to be. I, myself, declared early in the primary season that I would not vote for Clinton, should she win –I would sit it out, instead, or vote for the Green candidate, Cynthia McKinney. (There is no way to know for sure, but I suspect I would have come around on that by the time election day rolled around and would have made my mark for Clinton, and for history.) So, yeah, I can understand and accept being so disgusted or disappointed with a candidate that you feel you just can’t vote for them, no matter what. It happens.

What I can’t understand, or accept, is individuals with any awareness – and I put self-described feminists, liberals, progressives, general lefties in the “at least minimally aware” group – of the often devastating effects Republican policies have on communities of color, on the poor, on non-monied women, on reproductive justice and rights, on education and a vast array of other issues -

I have just lost trust in anyone who, knowing all these things, felt that the principled remedy for electoral disappointment or angst was to run into the arms of the Right.  I would feel the same had Clinton won the nomination.

Well, wait… let me be a little more accurate here since this is a confession, random and rambling though it may be. Just as I would have little or no trust in the motives of aware men (or women, actually) who ran to the right had the nominee been Clinton, I have little or no trust in the motives of aware white people who ran to the right when the nominee was Obama.  The unaware (or simply don’t care, really believe in the policies, etc) ones already vote Republican, so I don’t care much about them. They never (seriously) claimed to care about Black folks, about people of color in general, the poor, anti-racism, women’s rights, the environment, or much that was important to me, anyway.