And that ain’t hyperbole.

The other day I watched the movie version of John le Carre’s The Russia House. I haven’t read all of his novels, but I’ve read most of them, and the premise of The Russia House may be my favorite of all time. If you love your country, sometimes you have to commit treason to save it.

While I have no current plans for treason, this is the grand political end of a tip I once got from a favorite art teacher. “If you are struggling with a piece and there is something in it that is too precious for you to change, it is that thing that is fucking you up. Get rid of it”. It works for paintings and essays and political theories too.

But what does any of this have to do with my bitchy little blog? I keep saying the same thing to people lately “If you love the Democratic Party, the only way to save it is to NOT VOTE FOR IT”. I know, it sounds so wrong. I know, it’s hard to part with such a precious thing as party identity. But it is that refusal to ditch the broken part that keeps us from fixing the whole. It’s not as sexy as giving up the secrets of the Soviet Union’s military lie to the Brits. But you won’t get arrested (yet) for not voting for(or volunteering, or donating to) a legacy party.

The problem can’t be solved by erasing the edges of the existing parties and redrawing them in new places. It takes a dramatic act, the erasure of a precious thing, to effect change. That is how you can “be the change you wish to see in the world”, not by doing the same thing over and over and calling it progress.