Wanted to share a couple thoughts I have been having lately.
Caring for ourselves and each other is important. Holding onto our core, essential values is important. I ask for your forbearance on what follows, because the way I write comes out as a lecture, and I'm not trying to lecture anybody or hold anybody to task. I just want to remind myself, and remind the people I love, about who we are.
It's difficult because we do face serious, real threats. People all over are gaslighting us, attempting to sow division, but our response to that must not be to divide ourselves.
So let's remind ourselves who we are. We are anybody who is concerned about Donald Trump's words and actions. This includes not just those of us who are speaking up publicly to oppose him, but those of us who remain silent.
Absolutely I feel disgust for anybody who is remaining silent right now. I believe this is a time of the utmost moral imperative, and their behavior is cowardice. I can assure you that they feel differently. I would say they would frame it as "discretion".
What this means is that, unlike Trump supporters, they are open to appeal. How are Trump supporters "appealing" to these people? With threats and bullying, with attempts to coerce them into joining their angry mob.
Now, how are we appealing to these people?
On this issue, there is not necessarily a "we". We are a grass-roots resistance. We do not have a leader, we do not have rules of order or agreements on what is or is not acceptable. I speak only for myself and have only my words to attempt to persuade.
As much anger, as much fear as I am feeling right now, I must consider the source of those feelings. And the source is both our President and the uncounted millions who openly support him, the flying monkeys who will excuse anything regardless of logic or conscience. Every reservation expressed is an opportunity.
And I, personally, see that opportunity not through our history, not through fables of the American dream, but through direct appeal to who we are now. History is a difficult thing for me to invoke with the knowledge of how many people "on the fence" are ahistorical people at best, or openly hypocritical at worst. There's a feeling when one talks about these things of "that was then, this is now". And it's right! For all the past parallels, what we are facing, who we are, is markedly different from what has come before. This is not 1933 Germany. This is 2017 America. We can be informed by the past, but we must not be defined by it.
And so I look at this through the lens of psychiatric language. Some might argue that we do not have the right to diagnose President Trump with mental illness and behave accordingly. I strongly disagree. It is the victims' right to name their abusers. If we do not use the words to their faces, we should acknowledge among ourselves that President Trump is a malignant narcissist, that his vocal supporters are enablers, "flying monkeys" in the jargon. These words are more useful to me, help me to treat such people in the appropriate fashion, than words like "hypocrite" and "fascist".
But these words are still labels, and labels get overused. Once we find words which are powerful our tendency is to apply them to anything and everything we find objectionable. When we do this, we strip the words of their power, we make them meaningless. This is particularly important with words most people still do not know. They will understand these words through their context, so we must use exceptional care with such words.
More important than words, though, is emotion. I've certainly made mistakes here. I've certainly lashed out at people in anger for asking perfectly reasonable questions. But what I try to do is learn from my mistakes, and especially apologize for my mistakes. Apologies are tricky, because in today's world there's a lot of emotional baggage to them. They can be used as a tool of submission, or as a tool of passive aggression. My feeling is that we should work not to apologize unless we have, in word or deed, genuinely wronged someone else, not merely "offended" them. As we continue to speak up and advocate for our interests, we will occasionally do this. An apology, even if sometimes inadequate, is an essential tool for maintaining trust, respect, and common cause. When these qualities are not present there is no use or need for an apology - apologies are a repair tool, not a construction tool.
Perhaps many of us have felt a strange sense of reversal, a feeling that the way we are now behaving is the way the other side behaved last year. Certainly I feel that way. This is in part a conscious decision on my part. After the election, I did question my base assumptions, went through some soul-searching about how this calamity had happened. This conversation was, in the larger sense, never resolved. It's not something we're all in agreement on or all united on. But my conclusion, which I continue to advocate for, was that if we failed, it was not in our policies, not in our values, but in our strategy and tactics. This is also the conclusion of the Indivisible movement.
But if we learn from the successes of the other side, we must especially be cautious not to repeat their failures. Because their movement is, in significant measure, a failure. What have they accomplished? They elected a President, a President who is despised by half the people of this country. They have galvanized an opposition which dwarfs their own in scale and in dedication. They have brought this country into a maelstrom of fear and hatred.
And they have done this, chiefly, by attacking, belittling, and demonizing anyone who disagrees with them. The President calls anybody who disagrees with him a bad person, very bad. Nasty women. Bad hombres. We ought to be sure that we are not on the path to doing the same, and to be honest, some of us do seem to be.
We call all Republicans "traitors" because they made this possible. We dismiss them out of hand, we repudiate them, excoriate them, even when they express reservations about Trump's words and actions. In many cases we have reason to do so, because their words are not matching their actions, and we do need to pay attention to this. There are two ways to reconcile this discrepancy - one can change their words, or one can change their actions. Which course are we encouraging?
Too often, I feel, it is the former. When we deal with Republicans, we treat them as though they were bad Democrats. If a Democrat votes to confirm Jeff Sessions, have the right and obligation to be mad as hell, because that person is representing our party. But being a Democrat is not the same thing as being a human.
This is tricky. Because I am a Democrat because of my values, values which are not up for compromise. I do believe, believe strongly, that a Senator, Democrat or Republican, who votes to confirm Jeff Sessions is acting as a bad human being. But the reality is that their first allegiance is to their party.
I know the ideal is that representatives of a particular party in government do not represent that party, but represent all their constituents, but we need to acknowledge that this is not the way it has worked out in practice. Republicans in office bear a greater responsibility to Republicans, and Democrats in office bear a greater responsibility to Democrats.
This is absolutely wrong, absolutely terrible governance, and should not be. It's also not a problem we have the ability to fix right now.
So we need to recognize that what the Republicans need to do is much, much harder than anything we need to do. It's very easy to tell them to put party over country when that's not something we have to do ourselves. If you want evidence of this feel free to fill in with your own historical examples, but like I said, I am not making an argument from history but an argument from human nature.
What this means is that we need to be kinder to Republicans, particularly Republicans who are on the fence, than we are to Democratic leaders. My own Republican representative, Susan Collins, has spoken out against the executive order Trump issued Friday. She has done it by equivocating, by implicitly endorsing points of view I think are terrible, but I wrote her today to thank her, not to call her out on her equivocation. I encouraged her to continue to be strong and to work to uphold our Constitution, not to complain about the interest groups who have bought and paid for her. Republicans right now are being shot by both sides. They're smart enough to know that the most they can expect from us is a temporary truce, but a lot of them are also smart enough to run towards the side that's not shooting at them.
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Lost (The Dance on Sand and Sea)
One of my friends, recently, referred to Indiana and Ohio as "lost". I have to say I agree with her. We have "lost" Indiana for certain, possibly also Ohio, for the foreseeable future.
What does it look like for a state to be "lost"? I can only tell you from my own experience. When I was 17, in my senior year of high school, I moved from New Jersey to Kentucky. I was very immediately struck by the stark and profound differences in my quality of education. Now, the high school in New Jersey was well and truly exceptional, yes, but the school in Louisville that I went to had a reputation for being one of the better public high schools. And there was no comparison. I had six classes, all of which were AP classes, and in five of them it barely mattered if I showed up or not. My "math" class consisted of the teacher standing up there for five minutes and then giving us the rest of the period to do our "homework". They didn't have anybody who could teach me German at my level of proficiency so they sent me in for "independent study", which meant that I went down to the library and spent the whole period goofing around on Usenet. The best you could get was somebody taking attendance. Because the appearance of education was more important than education. Most of my time during that senior year was spent in putting together my "portfolio", which was a bureaucratic requirement obliging me to give the appearance of having a basic education. It was essentially a paperwork exercise.
I did have one teacher who cared, my English teacher. Because of curriculum variances between states, most of what he covered was stuff I had already been taught, but I still learned more from him than I did from any of my other classes, classes where I was covering nominally "novel" material.
This is what it's like living in a "lost state". A "lost state" is more concerned about giving the appearance of success than of success itself. When I lived in Kentucky, when you drove into the state they had a big sign that said "Kentucky - where education pays!" From that I learned that whenever a locality puts up a sign on a particular issue, they are alerting you to a problem they have no idea how to handle. Please do not ever move to a town where the city limits have a sign saying that they do not tolerate domestic violence.
In a "lost state", the cost of living is very low. A very low percentage of people have a college education. Even when they do, jobs for them may or may not exist. I worked for a small company here in Indiana for seven years. For a long time our entire logistics department consisted of people with masters degrees or higher. We didn't really offer anything in the way of benefits, and the pay we offered wasn't very good either, but it was more than enough to get by here. My wife and I probably could even have bought a house here if we wanted.
"Lost states" are politically controlled by Republicans. They gerrymander and stack the deck, but even if the Republicans didn't do this they would easily have local supermajorities, because they not only control the majority of the people but the vast majority of the land. And the politics of these Republicans are the politics of resentment. They blame the cities, think of us as "rootless cosmopolitans", and their policies are specifically designed to weaken and punish us. They are suffering, and we can't help them, so they want us to share their pain.
States that are not "lost" have local resources to help them deal with problems and crises. I lived in Florida for three years, and during that time went through four major hurricanes. The experience quickly became routine, because after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 the state of Florida got very, very serious about mitigating hurricane damage. They strengthened building codes. They put robust emergency procedures in place. You get a bad hurricane and it does a lot of damage. Roofs everywhere are covered with blue tarps. Nobody has power for weeks and business shuts down while everybody sweats. But this is all right, because people are prepared for the emergency, and because the state acts strongly to deal with it.
So when I saw what happened with Katrina, when I saw how people were blaming the federal government for not helping, I saw that the federal government was helping them about as much as they helped Florida. The difference wasn't that FEMA was doing a materially worse job, it was that there was no support and aid on the state level in Louisiana, because Louisiana is a Lost State.
In fact, Lost States rely more on federal aid than a "blue state". They don't have the infrastructure to take care of themselves. Compare that to California, which, Californians will very quickly and saltily note to you, pays out more in federal tax than they receive back in services.
And the Republican representatives for Lost States, one of their strongest and most strongly supported beliefs is to end federal aid, wipe out taxes to fund the government, end public services, except for military services. One has to assume that the leaders, at least, know what they are doing, although if these policies have an end goal more specific than "making America great again" none of these representatives seem ever to have expressed it, and I certainly have no desire to put words in their mouths.
I will say, though, that in America we do see this combination of ethnic self-pride and determination for self-reliance. We see it on Native American lands - what gringos like me sometimes call "Indian reservations". And when I try to imagine what is going to happen to these "lost states", I do think that it is likely to be dogged by many of the same serious long-term problems experienced at present on Native American lands.
What does it look like for a state to be "lost"? I can only tell you from my own experience. When I was 17, in my senior year of high school, I moved from New Jersey to Kentucky. I was very immediately struck by the stark and profound differences in my quality of education. Now, the high school in New Jersey was well and truly exceptional, yes, but the school in Louisville that I went to had a reputation for being one of the better public high schools. And there was no comparison. I had six classes, all of which were AP classes, and in five of them it barely mattered if I showed up or not. My "math" class consisted of the teacher standing up there for five minutes and then giving us the rest of the period to do our "homework". They didn't have anybody who could teach me German at my level of proficiency so they sent me in for "independent study", which meant that I went down to the library and spent the whole period goofing around on Usenet. The best you could get was somebody taking attendance. Because the appearance of education was more important than education. Most of my time during that senior year was spent in putting together my "portfolio", which was a bureaucratic requirement obliging me to give the appearance of having a basic education. It was essentially a paperwork exercise.
I did have one teacher who cared, my English teacher. Because of curriculum variances between states, most of what he covered was stuff I had already been taught, but I still learned more from him than I did from any of my other classes, classes where I was covering nominally "novel" material.
This is what it's like living in a "lost state". A "lost state" is more concerned about giving the appearance of success than of success itself. When I lived in Kentucky, when you drove into the state they had a big sign that said "Kentucky - where education pays!" From that I learned that whenever a locality puts up a sign on a particular issue, they are alerting you to a problem they have no idea how to handle. Please do not ever move to a town where the city limits have a sign saying that they do not tolerate domestic violence.
In a "lost state", the cost of living is very low. A very low percentage of people have a college education. Even when they do, jobs for them may or may not exist. I worked for a small company here in Indiana for seven years. For a long time our entire logistics department consisted of people with masters degrees or higher. We didn't really offer anything in the way of benefits, and the pay we offered wasn't very good either, but it was more than enough to get by here. My wife and I probably could even have bought a house here if we wanted.
"Lost states" are politically controlled by Republicans. They gerrymander and stack the deck, but even if the Republicans didn't do this they would easily have local supermajorities, because they not only control the majority of the people but the vast majority of the land. And the politics of these Republicans are the politics of resentment. They blame the cities, think of us as "rootless cosmopolitans", and their policies are specifically designed to weaken and punish us. They are suffering, and we can't help them, so they want us to share their pain.
States that are not "lost" have local resources to help them deal with problems and crises. I lived in Florida for three years, and during that time went through four major hurricanes. The experience quickly became routine, because after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 the state of Florida got very, very serious about mitigating hurricane damage. They strengthened building codes. They put robust emergency procedures in place. You get a bad hurricane and it does a lot of damage. Roofs everywhere are covered with blue tarps. Nobody has power for weeks and business shuts down while everybody sweats. But this is all right, because people are prepared for the emergency, and because the state acts strongly to deal with it.
So when I saw what happened with Katrina, when I saw how people were blaming the federal government for not helping, I saw that the federal government was helping them about as much as they helped Florida. The difference wasn't that FEMA was doing a materially worse job, it was that there was no support and aid on the state level in Louisiana, because Louisiana is a Lost State.
In fact, Lost States rely more on federal aid than a "blue state". They don't have the infrastructure to take care of themselves. Compare that to California, which, Californians will very quickly and saltily note to you, pays out more in federal tax than they receive back in services.
And the Republican representatives for Lost States, one of their strongest and most strongly supported beliefs is to end federal aid, wipe out taxes to fund the government, end public services, except for military services. One has to assume that the leaders, at least, know what they are doing, although if these policies have an end goal more specific than "making America great again" none of these representatives seem ever to have expressed it, and I certainly have no desire to put words in their mouths.
I will say, though, that in America we do see this combination of ethnic self-pride and determination for self-reliance. We see it on Native American lands - what gringos like me sometimes call "Indian reservations". And when I try to imagine what is going to happen to these "lost states", I do think that it is likely to be dogged by many of the same serious long-term problems experienced at present on Native American lands.
Sunday, November 13, 2016
An ending.
When I try to set down my thoughts of late I find myself more influenced by the telephone conversations I have had than I am by the discussion occurring on the Internet. A very loose paraphrase of something my brother said to me today. He has been dedicating himself more strongly than I have to challenging oppression for some time now.
"I'm not taking this as hard as you guys are. I'll still be able to do the work I need to do.
"Look, we've both worked really hard for a long time to fuck up our lives, and the system's response to that has been to keep giving us more and more despite that. We're Too White to Fail.
"I'm going to keep taking what they give me and using it to oppose them."
The idea of playing Aaron on behalf of the minorities that straight white men refuse to listen to is a tempting one, even though in the real world I'm the one with a speech impediment. However, I recognize that in general, the people who are most threatened by Donald Trump's ideology don't really want or trust a straight white man to speak for them. They want people to listen to what they have to say. So go do that.
The habits of my old life are creeping back in. As much as I'd like to define myself as someone who used to have a favourite brand of sour cream, I still have a favourite brand of sour cream.
Yet this week has left me forever changed. I am reaching out to more people despite my fear. I am speaking out more strongly in defense of my beliefs. For that matter, my core beliefs and principles have been fundamentally changed by what we've gone through this week.
My wife told me today that she'd feel better about me when we could have a conversation about something other than politics. Honestly, though, I'm already doing that. I'm back to finding silly and strange things to make me laugh, and I'm laughing harder and longer about them than I did before. I'm listening to music again, eating proper meals again. Inside I still know how much we've all lost, but having not lost myself, I continue to be myself.
Per my introduction, I created this blog to "chronicle my experiences and emotions over a particular period of time". I now believe I have done so.
The last post you see on most blogs is the author insisting they haven't given up. I'm declaring this blog finished, so I'll probably be back.
Stay strong. Stay afraid. Keep being there for the people who need you, and don't compromise your beliefs.
"I'm not taking this as hard as you guys are. I'll still be able to do the work I need to do.
"Look, we've both worked really hard for a long time to fuck up our lives, and the system's response to that has been to keep giving us more and more despite that. We're Too White to Fail.
"I'm going to keep taking what they give me and using it to oppose them."
The idea of playing Aaron on behalf of the minorities that straight white men refuse to listen to is a tempting one, even though in the real world I'm the one with a speech impediment. However, I recognize that in general, the people who are most threatened by Donald Trump's ideology don't really want or trust a straight white man to speak for them. They want people to listen to what they have to say. So go do that.
The habits of my old life are creeping back in. As much as I'd like to define myself as someone who used to have a favourite brand of sour cream, I still have a favourite brand of sour cream.
Yet this week has left me forever changed. I am reaching out to more people despite my fear. I am speaking out more strongly in defense of my beliefs. For that matter, my core beliefs and principles have been fundamentally changed by what we've gone through this week.
My wife told me today that she'd feel better about me when we could have a conversation about something other than politics. Honestly, though, I'm already doing that. I'm back to finding silly and strange things to make me laugh, and I'm laughing harder and longer about them than I did before. I'm listening to music again, eating proper meals again. Inside I still know how much we've all lost, but having not lost myself, I continue to be myself.
Per my introduction, I created this blog to "chronicle my experiences and emotions over a particular period of time". I now believe I have done so.
The last post you see on most blogs is the author insisting they haven't given up. I'm declaring this blog finished, so I'll probably be back.
Stay strong. Stay afraid. Keep being there for the people who need you, and don't compromise your beliefs.
A qualified apology.
More recriminations. More anguish. Some people are throwing around epithets like "collaborationist" and "quisling" against those who only want to talk and to understand. And by "some people" I mean me.
That's not a fair or helpful thing of me to do. We all have to deal with things in our own way. There is no master plan. We are all making this up as we go along, doing the only things we can think to do. For some of us, the only thing we can think to do is to reach out to the people who voted for Trump, to seek to be understood and to understand.
So the first thing I want to do, is I want to apologize, and the second thing I want to do is that I want to explain why I said what I did, even though I was wrong to do so.
I have said in the past that people who voted for Trump are not people that I can, personally, forgive or compromise with. That my first and overriding priority is to protect those who are being threatened by Trump voters, and secondarily to protect the values which Trump voters threaten. I have declared people I know who voted for Trump dead to me.
These are harsh words. I do not say them out of blind hatred. I have searched in my heart for a way to forgive, to trust, to respect Trump voters. And I have not been able to find any way. I do not mean to say that no way exists, but that if someone comes to me seeking reconciliation, I cannot advise them as to how that reconciliation can be effected. I cannot think of anything they can do that would restore my trust or my respect for them.
But these words and beliefs are only the words and beliefs I need. I do not seriously expect everybody to share in them. I do have concerns and fears for those who choose to try and build bridges with Trump voters.
When you talk to somebody who voted for Trump, you are, in all likelihood, talking to someone who simply does not have the moral principles necessary to be a decent and trustworthy human being. They have gone through their entire life without learning these principles from their church, from their school, from their parents, from anybody.
So when you choose to try and help by talking to Trump voters, please understand that you are choosing a very difficult task. It is not enough to simply change their vote in the election- since they are morally rootless, this will not be difficult at all. What you will also need to do is something many others have tried to do, but have not succeeded in: You will need to teach them right from wrong. Stay strong. Do not be discouraged.
Please also keep in mind that you will have to be strong yourself. Your beliefs and your values will be put to the test, and some people who wish to do this may need to spend time building their own character before they are able to be of help this way. If you are the sort of person whose values are focused around one issue, any issue, be it abortion or economic justice, to the exclusion of human rights, you are vulnerable. You need to recognize this.
That's not a fair or helpful thing of me to do. We all have to deal with things in our own way. There is no master plan. We are all making this up as we go along, doing the only things we can think to do. For some of us, the only thing we can think to do is to reach out to the people who voted for Trump, to seek to be understood and to understand.
So the first thing I want to do, is I want to apologize, and the second thing I want to do is that I want to explain why I said what I did, even though I was wrong to do so.
I have said in the past that people who voted for Trump are not people that I can, personally, forgive or compromise with. That my first and overriding priority is to protect those who are being threatened by Trump voters, and secondarily to protect the values which Trump voters threaten. I have declared people I know who voted for Trump dead to me.
These are harsh words. I do not say them out of blind hatred. I have searched in my heart for a way to forgive, to trust, to respect Trump voters. And I have not been able to find any way. I do not mean to say that no way exists, but that if someone comes to me seeking reconciliation, I cannot advise them as to how that reconciliation can be effected. I cannot think of anything they can do that would restore my trust or my respect for them.
But these words and beliefs are only the words and beliefs I need. I do not seriously expect everybody to share in them. I do have concerns and fears for those who choose to try and build bridges with Trump voters.
When you talk to somebody who voted for Trump, you are, in all likelihood, talking to someone who simply does not have the moral principles necessary to be a decent and trustworthy human being. They have gone through their entire life without learning these principles from their church, from their school, from their parents, from anybody.
So when you choose to try and help by talking to Trump voters, please understand that you are choosing a very difficult task. It is not enough to simply change their vote in the election- since they are morally rootless, this will not be difficult at all. What you will also need to do is something many others have tried to do, but have not succeeded in: You will need to teach them right from wrong. Stay strong. Do not be discouraged.
Please also keep in mind that you will have to be strong yourself. Your beliefs and your values will be put to the test, and some people who wish to do this may need to spend time building their own character before they are able to be of help this way. If you are the sort of person whose values are focused around one issue, any issue, be it abortion or economic justice, to the exclusion of human rights, you are vulnerable. You need to recognize this.
Re: the Democratic minority
I don't spend much time thinking about how the Democrats in Congress should respond to this, because I'm not sure they have any more power than I do, and I am more focused on what I should do right now than I am on what I want other people to do on my behalf. Ask not, etc.
But if Keith Ellison is looking for suggestions - and I honestly think he has plenty of really good ideas on his own - here's what I would like to see.
The DNC should create a clear, strong platform, one based on principles and not realpolitik, and Democratic members of Congress should introduce legislation to enact those principles. Affirm human rights protections. Regulate the energy industry. Raise taxes on the rich. Provide relief for the poor and for displaced workers. Repeal Obamacare and enact single-payer. (We can stop defending Obamacare now. Regardless of all of the good things it accomplished, it was corporate welfare for big insurance companies, and that was why it failed.) That none of this legislation will pass is of no relevance. What is important is that we clearly show what we believe and that we are willing to act on it given the opportunity.
But if Keith Ellison is looking for suggestions - and I honestly think he has plenty of really good ideas on his own - here's what I would like to see.
The DNC should create a clear, strong platform, one based on principles and not realpolitik, and Democratic members of Congress should introduce legislation to enact those principles. Affirm human rights protections. Regulate the energy industry. Raise taxes on the rich. Provide relief for the poor and for displaced workers. Repeal Obamacare and enact single-payer. (We can stop defending Obamacare now. Regardless of all of the good things it accomplished, it was corporate welfare for big insurance companies, and that was why it failed.) That none of this legislation will pass is of no relevance. What is important is that we clearly show what we believe and that we are willing to act on it given the opportunity.
Fear is a Man's Best Friend
I have reached the point where I am grateful that I still wake up every morning shaking. I consider it a gift.
For months and months, I prayed for the pain to stop. Now I am praying that it will continue. I need it. I need it as a reminder to tell me what I need to do.
What we need to do is not something that we can program an app to tell us. We can't set an alarm to tell us to protect the rights of the oppressed.
We can tie a string around our finger. We can turn to Mecca five times a day. We can wear a safety pin. I wear a safety pin, but I also wear my fear, which is a safety pin that pierces my skin at all times.
For months and months, I prayed for the pain to stop. Now I am praying that it will continue. I need it. I need it as a reminder to tell me what I need to do.
What we need to do is not something that we can program an app to tell us. We can't set an alarm to tell us to protect the rights of the oppressed.
We can tie a string around our finger. We can turn to Mecca five times a day. We can wear a safety pin. I wear a safety pin, but I also wear my fear, which is a safety pin that pierces my skin at all times.
Is Donald Trump a Typical Republican?
There's this argument that's going on for a while about how to treat Donald Trump. It's a little inside baseball, but I think it's still a meaningful and important question so I want to talk about it a little. To quote a friend on an internet message board I hang out on, it's the question of whether Donald Trump, as a Republican, is an aberration or a culmination.
In other words, when we talk about Donald Trump, do we talk about him as a unique and unprecedented threat to democratic values, or do we the emphasize the many points of continuity between Trumpian politics and the basic operating procedures of the post-Eisenhower Republican party?
Both perspectives are basically valid ones, and each perspective has its advantages and its disadvantages. My feeling is that the "culmination" argument is oriented towards contextualizing and correcting the damage done by Donald Trump's political career to America, and towards working to prevent something similar from occurring again. The perspective is most helpful at a time when Donald Trump himself no longer presents a threat. Now is not that time.
President Donald Trump will be the most dangerous man on the planet, and our overriding duty as dissenters will be to protect anybody he tries to hurt, and beyond that to limit or, if possible, prevent any damage he may attempt to cause.
On election day, Donald Trump was the most widely hated presidential candidate in recorded American history. We should do our utmost to ensure that, when he is inaugurated, he becomes, and remains, the most widely hated president in American history. Nothing he does should be accepted uncritically.
I'm not talking about a smear campaign. I'm not saying every time the guy takes a piss we should all mob up and start loudly telling everybody that that was clearly the WORST LEAK IN AMERICAN HISTORY. I am talking about denying him the patina of assumed goodwill that has, traditionally, come with the office of President. His actions have disqualified him from ever deserving the benefit of the doubt from us.
In other words, when we talk about Donald Trump, do we talk about him as a unique and unprecedented threat to democratic values, or do we the emphasize the many points of continuity between Trumpian politics and the basic operating procedures of the post-Eisenhower Republican party?
Both perspectives are basically valid ones, and each perspective has its advantages and its disadvantages. My feeling is that the "culmination" argument is oriented towards contextualizing and correcting the damage done by Donald Trump's political career to America, and towards working to prevent something similar from occurring again. The perspective is most helpful at a time when Donald Trump himself no longer presents a threat. Now is not that time.
President Donald Trump will be the most dangerous man on the planet, and our overriding duty as dissenters will be to protect anybody he tries to hurt, and beyond that to limit or, if possible, prevent any damage he may attempt to cause.
On election day, Donald Trump was the most widely hated presidential candidate in recorded American history. We should do our utmost to ensure that, when he is inaugurated, he becomes, and remains, the most widely hated president in American history. Nothing he does should be accepted uncritically.
I'm not talking about a smear campaign. I'm not saying every time the guy takes a piss we should all mob up and start loudly telling everybody that that was clearly the WORST LEAK IN AMERICAN HISTORY. I am talking about denying him the patina of assumed goodwill that has, traditionally, come with the office of President. His actions have disqualified him from ever deserving the benefit of the doubt from us.
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