Friday, November 11, 2016

To Those Who Voted For The Orange Fascist: It's On You Now. Period

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- by Noah



I'm pretty numb right now. I woke up this morning and I felt like I did when, as a boy, I woke up on the morning of November 23,1963: heartbreak, depression, and wondering what would become of all of us. I live in New York City and the streets are eerily quiet today. The constant cacophony of honking horns is silenced. No one is stopped at the light blasting their choice of music for all the world to hear. Normally, it’s only this quiet during a hellacious blizzard. I haven’t even heard a raised voice.

I worry about what the election of Donald J. Trump says both about and to all of us. Perhaps most of all, I worry about what this election of Trump says to our children. It tells school kids that they can get all the way to the top, not if they study but if they refine their bullying ability, as if bullying wasn’t already a problem in our schools. It tells our boys that assaulting our girls is not just ignored but may be even rewarded. I think of what a picture of an accomplished woman president placed, nicely framed, on the classroom wall would have said about our country and what it would say to our girls.
Don’t waste anytime mourning. Organize!
-Joe Hill
I do know that we need a patriotic resistance movement. I'd like to think that Trump is such a pathological liar that he was lying about everything, but, I know better. I don't see him changing. He is incredibly mentally ill and maladjusted. I do suspect that the most disappointed people in the next couple of years will be those who voted for him. The weight of buyer’s remorse will be immense. The rest of us will have expected the misery. We will all have to live in the consequences. The media has played a supportive role in the rise of Trump (and not just the $2 Billion in free airtime for his Castro/Hitler style ravings) in that his supporters have no idea that he is far more of a crook than they ever imagined HRC to be, and that he has repeatedly failed in his business ventures. They will now have a President-elect on trial for fraud and, possibly, if the case proceeds, rape of a minor. Impeaching him will be hard with a Repug Senate and House. His brand is already suffering. His Toronto hotel closed. The new one in Washington is about to go belly up, but, ironically, his inauguration will buy it time. The way Trump operates, I have little doubt that visiting dignitaries will be told to stay there, and, that somehow, we the taxpayers will pay for their stays. Now he can use his position to enrich himself and his family, which is, most likely, the reason he ran in the first place.

All I can say in Trump’s favor is that, yes, things like NAFTA and CAFTA and similar trade agreements do need to be renegotiated. I recall that the great Thom Hartmann said several years ago now that the party that gets behind that idea and incentivizes the return of industrial jobs to Americans will reap the political success. Unfortunately, there is no doubt that the republicans would give us a structure to go along with it that pays workers slave wages and enriches only the big boss man. I see the return of the company store and the company-owned home. We had a hint of that in what Mitten Romney said about the “wonderful” factories in China; the “wonderful factories in China where Ivanka’s line of shoes is made and where Trump’s line of ties is made.

Funny how the powers that be have removed all mention of Joe Hill from school textbooks. We’ll be needing another Joe Hill more than ever now.



Trump’s supporters called the flawed Hillary Clinton many things. One was "Oligarchist." So what did they do? They voted in an Oligarchist on massive steroids. Even Trump’s New York home is patterend after the Palace of Versailles, right down to the gold filigree chairs he sits in.

Trump’s campaign was a case of "The Cult Of Personality" ruling the day. Personally, I could never have thrown in my lot with the KKK and all of those other White Supremacy groups even if I thought Trump was sane and even if I agreed with him on economic issues. Character should matter, but, all too often, it doesn’t when we decide who goes to Washington. In fact, bad character is often the one true bipartisan thing in our nation’s capitol.



I'm left with two hopes. One is the aforementioned highly unlikely one about him lying so much that he turns out to be the opposite of what he presented to us all. The other is more long term: I see our country's political history as a series of pendulums. The country swings left. Then the country swings right. What happened in the 1920s and the FDR reaction of the 1930s is as good example as any of this. Soup kitchens begat the now endangered Social Security program. The more the pendulum swings one way, the more it often swings back the other way. Trump's followers saw things like gender equality and Obamacare as extreme left things. They even saw the corporatist-centrist President Obama himself as extreme left, and homophobia and race was something that they, unconsciously in some cases, consciously in others, hung their criticisms and nihilistic hatreds on. So, perhaps, in four, or eight years, or maybe twelve, the inevitable reaction will give us the Republican Party's worst nightmare, full blown Socialism, or, at least President Elizabeth Warren. My advice (unwanted) to the Republican Party is: Be careful what you wish for. [NOTE: Bruce has a part II, or an update, coming mañana.]

I've been listening to this song a lot in recent months. It's one of my absolute favorite songs of the last 35 years. It could not be more appropriate than it is today. Great artists give us timeless art.


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6 Comments:

At 2:56 AM, Anonymous Michael Simmons said...

Thanks Noah.

The downhill slide began in 1980 with Reagan and despite moments of hope -- The Battle Of Seattle, Obama's initial election before we knew what havoc he'd wreak, Occupy Wall Street, Bernie -- it continues to just get worse, culminating in the election of a greedy, narcissistic clown as President Of The United States.

O wherefore art thou, pendulum?

 
At 4:31 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I love the title, Noah. I have been incensed about the "blame game," which points fingers at the Republicans, Democrats and the media (which are surely guilty), but leaves out the people who voted for him. They are deplorable and should be held responsible - they are grown ups, after all. Robert Reich, whom I adore, left them out of his equation. They must be part of the blame game mix and called out for it. Their claims about throwing the bums out will ricochet right back to them - just look at the low lifes being considered for his cabinet and other positions. His voters bear the responsibility, a great deal of it, for focusing on emails as the cause celebrate against Clinton and choosing to ignore the VAST horrors of Trump. There is nothing good about the man, NOthING, and yet they do not see it. OI have little sympathy for them and their white man's cares. If it is really mostly about economics, how STUPID are they to think the Republicans will do better with this than the Democrats? The press equated emails with fascism on the rise. I mean really! Not in the same ball park. We are all in for it. Let's hope the DINOs vote Democratic in Congress to try and obstruct the Republicans and Trump as they bulldoze through democracy, but I would not count on it.

 
At 5:58 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"O wherefore art thou, pendulum?"

Attached to a clock rolling downhill to the right at high speed.

John Puma

 
At 4:05 PM, Blogger jvb2718 said...

Stupid is correct. They've proven it ever since the Rs stopped being the party of Lincoln -- early '20s.

However, I have to cast a lot of shade on the lefty voters who decided a corrupt lying neocon neoliberal fucktard was better than Bernie('s stated principles) during the primary. With a 52-year record like that, from Goldwater to Goldman-Sachs and all, how does a lefty voter for that over Bernie('s progressive vision at the time)? Also factor in all the polling showing, at the time, that $hillbillary would lose to der fuhrer while Bernie would mop the electoral map with him... and you have 10s of millions of COLOSSALLY stupid voters on the left.

I don't think most orange voters were voting "for". I think they were voting "against" the lying corrupt neoliberal neocon fucktard.

I also think that most $hillbillary voters were actually voting anti-orange.

Nothing substantive to vote "for" since 2000... and that ended up being an illusion.

 
At 9:59 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

The universe operates only on the truth. Our science revolution has hooked humanity up to the cosmic reservoir. Politics are based on the incorrect asumption that there is not enough to go around and they decide who gets it. They are not problem solvers.
Once the truth is known, that we are showered with more energy than we can ever spend. Debt must be eliminated as we don't have to pay our beautiful Star Sun back. These are mostly Fullerisms. But truth will win out.

 
At 9:14 AM, Anonymous Erik Lindgren said...

Thanks Noah for sharing your two slivers of optimism after this diabolical election process with tragic results and the realization of where our country is at in Y2K+16. I won't reiterate your synopsis of our maladjusted and despicable President-elect charlatan. HRC was flawed ... as with us all ... but was certainly qualified and stood on the right side of history. I also felt a shard of hope while writing this short little poem on the day after the election:

STAND TALL
Somewhere
there is a young nasty woman
taking it all in
laying the groundwork
unmindful of the glass ceiling
to become our future president.
It will happen.

 

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