Donald Trump's election provoked fear, anger and confusion on the part of his millions of opponents. Worrisome though, was the anger directed against other voters. In a healthy democracy, neighbors, friends and family members will always differ on politics. Arguments become more intense around election time and then die down. Some people, like myself, are news and political junkies and think about politics constantly. Most normal people do not. They may or may not have a basic political leaning, but their awareness rarely extends beyond elections season. Now we hear people unfriending people. I'm not talking about virtual friends on a social media platform. I mean the warm blooded kind you can (and should) reach out and touch.
POLARIZATION
The logic is that because Trump has said and done crude things, voting for him makes one "OK" with his treatment of women or his appeals to racism. I don't think that's true. It's true that racists voted for Trump. But, those aren't the voters I'm talking about. I'm talking about normal people, friends and relatives, that we know and love. These people are the same folks they were on the Monday before the election. To suddenly think they are worthy of ostracism, because of what they did in the voting booth, assumes everyone looks at politics the same. If one starts out believing that all, or most, politicians are corrupt, conniving liars, then how is one so worse than the other? If politicians of both major parties will sell themselves for campaign cash, future employment and political ambition... If, when elected they bail out crooked Wall Street bankers, while leaving millions of ordinary citizens to lose their homes and businesses... If they create two systems of justice, one for the rich and one for the poor... If, when elected, they condone wars their children don't have to fight, the wiretapping of our phones and computers and torture... Is racism and predatory sexism really that much of a leap?
Forgetting, for a moment, the arguments and the specific candidates, is this tenable? Can we allow politics to become so all consuming that we turn against parents, close friends or co-workers? Brother against brother? We did that once in this country. Up where I live, we call it the Civil War. Over 600,000 died.
WHY DID THEY DO IT?
Blaming the voters ignores what happened. The electorate was presented with two major party candidates they didn't like. But voters didn't stay home. They were angry. The country was ready for revolution. The question was whether it would come from the left or the right. The Democratic Party had the chance to offer democratic socialism (though realistically, it would have only been a return to New Deal Democracy) against the Republican Party's potential fascism. In the end, the Democrats insisted on an establishment nominee. That left the Republicans with the revolutionary candidate and the Democrats as the "low energy" campaign, as Trump would put it.
Those who blame Trump voters miss the point. They weren't choosing Trump over Clinton because they like all of what he says and does. And that many people didn't turn out just because they hate Clinton, though most do. They are frustrated. They want to break things, just like one does when they sweep papers off their desk or dishes onto the floor. They were voting against the system. They wanted to change the regime!
That may not be rationale. We may disagree with the logic, but this is what happens when people are not given an outlet for their frustrations, or an honest critique of their situation.
NOW WHAT?
How do we survive the radical, right wing, top down revolution we're about to experience. And revolutionary it will be. Many of us lived through Nixon, whose newly appointed Attorney General, John Mitchell, told the press, "we're going to take this country so far to the right, you won't recognize it". We lived through Reagan, who never heard of a weapons system he didn't think the tax payers shouldn't buy, who made the initial assault on environmental protections and intervened, internationally, on the side of death squads and tropical oligarchs. If George Bush set the Constitution on fire, and Obama left it to smolder, Trump is going to grind the ashes out with his foot. We really won't recognize this place.
So, how to fight back? Well, first, on a national level, we have to see if the Democratic Party can be saved, or is worth saving. It doesn't look good. In democracies all over the world, when a party loses, its leaders resign. Party chairs, prime ministers, losing nominees all disappear. After the Brexit vote, which was not even a parliamentary election with candidates, David Cameron resigned. Leaders take responsibility! Not politicians in this country, and certainly not Democrats in 2016. After failing to take a majority in the Senate, Chuck Shumer moved up to minority leader. After failing, again, to lead the Democrats to victory in the House, Nancy Pelosi was reelected minority leader. After the party lost a national presidential election, the titular heads of the party being Obama and Biden, Joe Biden starts making noise about being the nominee in 2020. The DNC was exposed, over and over, working against Bernie Sanders and for Hillary Clinton. Debbie Wasserman Schultz overturned Obama's rule against lobbyist money and opened the sewer again. After she was exposed working against Sanders, she resigned, to be instantly hired by Clinton's campaign. Her successor, Donna Brazille, was presented to the public as an independent on air analyst, by CNN. She slipped debate questions to Clinton, showing she had neither integrity as a news analyst nor as a member of the party. She is unapologetic. The first candidate to declare for the DNC chair is Keith Ellison, who comes from the actual progressive wing of the party. My guess is the corporate insiders will find a way to keep him out.
Corporate Democrats simply will not accept that they drove this train wreck. The party had a candidate that all data showed could beat Trump decisively. They insisted on Clinton over Sanders, and took a chance. It was a bad bet. Even the entire party organization, the celebrity and corporate money and the support of a popular president, she ran a lack lust campaign. On the debate stage, with a worldwide audience, she made her candidacy small. She had Trump on the ropes and then, at the end chews up time criticizing him for insulting a beauty pageant contestant, years earlier. No matter what offense Steven Douglas might have committed outside the debate, I can't imagine Abe Lincoln going off on that tangent.
The FBI director may have intervened in our election, and possibly affected its outcome, but hiding behind him or the Russians doesn't mitigate the responsibility of losing an election to a billionaire con artist. We don't, as of this writing, even know for sure the Russian government had any involvement with the hacks of DNC and other computers and the subsequent publication of Clinton campaign and DNC emails. We do know that those emails revealed reprehensible behavior on the part of the Democratic Party hierarchy, much of against a campaign peopled, and funded, by people like myself. And let's please remember that the CIA is not our most credible source of public information, if one remembers how we got into Iraq. Also, using 'CIA' and 'intervening in a foreign election', in the same sentence, is rich.
OK, beyond national electoral politics, now what? We need to support smaller groups, like the Standing Rock protesters and Black Lives Matters. We need to support local environmental and community organizing groups. We need to support and join unions and make them a fierce and vibrant force, once again. We need to get off media and get in the streets.
Argue and engage, in person, with people with opposing views. Get out of the echo chamber. If we just read and share Huffington Post articles, we miss the opportunity to win over the Fox viewers. We have valid arguments, but they have to be made in terms others understand. When conservative friends or relatives ask why there is support for the mothers of young black men killed by police, but no political fervor, months later, for the families of slain police officers, point out the difference. Beyond the fact that one is killed by an agent of the state and the other in the line of duty, is the issue of justice. The cop killer will be convicted, but the killer cop will be set free.
Speak up and express your displeasure with racist comments, jokes and displays. Tribalism and racism are common, if not natural, human traits. It takes effort and civility to tamp them down. If stoked, you get Rwanda in the '90s.
There were days of demonstrations, across the country, immediately after the election and still much hand wringing. But, we need to conserve our anger and energy. It's easy to be righteous now, when Trump's not yet in office and things are relatively peaceful. When the next really bad terrorist attack happens, that will change. You think we will all stand together and resist? No. Remember 9/11? Did we resist torture? Did we prevent the war, or punish the politicians who voted for it? Did we resist the humiliations at the airport? The surveillance of our communications and travel? Did we insist Bush and Cheney be impeached? Did we insist they be tried after they left office? Did we oppose Obama, when he declared he could order and American citizen killed, by simply declaring that the person is a terrorist? What do you think Trump will do with that power in his hands, if the country is scared silly, like it was in 2001?
What do you think he's going to let the cops do, the next time an African American sniper takes out a bunch of cops like in Dallas? He's already praising Duerte and the death squads, in the Philippines. We have to be ready.
We have to stop blaming voters and Russians and focus on what our own government, and its corporate allies and owners, are doing to us and our fellow citizens. We need to insist the Democratic Party purge its old guard. We need to make sure our schools teach science, logic and reason, even if it means running for the school board ourselves. We need make activism a common place, not something a few others do. We need to suit up, put on our helmets, dampen the bandanas for our faces and lock arms.
