Trump 2016 – My last Post on Politics for a Long Time

Okay, I put off coming back to this for too long, and then the election happened. So I’ll have to do the cartoons thing next time. And soon, not in a few more months. Maybe this week as well. But there is a ticking time limit of relevance to the immediate, personal emotions everyone is currently feeling and to which I want to speak.

Also, this is the last political post I ever plan to write here. I don’t think I’ll change my thoughts on the final section, and ultimately it’s the only one that matters in the long run.

First, some music to listen to as you skim this: This music makes me happy and calm, and conveys a good bit of what I want to say today.

Right. So. I’m going to put this into a few main points aimed at various people and ideas I’ve seen expressed by them in the last 24 hours.

From the left (and some of the right): “I just don’t understand how this could happen!”

Really? Because I’ve read several very convincing articles, opinion pieces, studies and persuasive arguments for how this could and indeed did happen. Let me offer a few for further interest, because they really were absolutely fascinating to me.

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism – Look, I lean left on most issues, that’s likely clear from how I favored Bernie. But this is a very real, very obvious problem to me. It’s also painfully long, though, so you’ll need some time set aside to get through it. Worth the read, though.

One excerpt in particular points out that in 2008, Obama made a notable observation:

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania,” Obama said, “and, like, a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate, and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter…”

Bernie Sanders commented on Trump’s win yesterday, echoing the sentiment above: “Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media.  People are tired of working longer hours for lower wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not being able to afford a college education for their kids – all while the very rich become much richer.”

These are not right-wing pundits, folks. That right there is President Obama and still-wish-he-was-president Sanders, pinpointing one major reason Trump just won. You know how Pennsylvania was key in his electoral victory? Well… re-read Obama’s line up there. Yeah. Turns out that was more relevant than even he knew. When you talk about how Trump’s followers are ‘poor uneducated hicks’, well, that’s because their jobs left, the government ignored them over both Republican and Democrat terms for decades, and they can’t afford things like education without jobs. How dare they be that way?!

Other pieces with interesting and relevant viewpoints:

Colbert here doesn’t hide that he is mostly liberal, politically. He has good fun and pokes fun at everyone, and generally just tries to make people laugh. This piece isn’t funny, though. It’s thoughtful and painfully accurate. We drank the poison, as a nation. We drank too much. (Just watch the first 5:20 or so, after that the scripted jokes return and eh, no one’s much in the mood for it).

The point is… we lock ourselves in echo chambers on both sides. Anyone who agrees with us, great. Anyone who doesn’t is ignorant/bigoted/selfish/foolish, insert your dismissive adjective of choice here. But you know where that leads? It leads to two parties that can put literally any candidate up for the vote, and still convince large portions of the country that the other side is worse. Policies stop mattering. Issues fade into the background. Stop the echo chamber effect. Stop the poison. Recognize that people you don’t agree with are still mostly just normal people, not ignorant animals nor hateful demons. If we can’t do that, as a nation, do you honestly think things will be better in 2020? Or 2024? Or ever?

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/am-not-my-stereotype-an-open-letter-to-democrats – Straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. If Colbert incisively pinpointed the issue of partisan poison, this guy is exhibit A from an emotional perspective. It’s also the flip-side perspective of the first piece up there at the top, as well as a good look at how people tend to be more complicated than the easy party labels allow.

These are just the first three things I pulled off my list of saved pages, because I found them all in the last two days. But none of this is new – I’ve been reading similar articles for months, trying to understand as events unfolded – and there are many more a quick Google search away if you’re really wondering how this became reality. It didn’t happen out of nowhere, folks. There are reasons, and they are far, far more complicated than just “racism” or “ignorance” or “corruption”.

From the left: “I hate you all, you’re all racists and misogynists, etc”
First – I get it. This is something a lot of people have good reason to be upset over, to fear and dread and rage and cry. The future is uncertain, and minorities have a lot more at risk than the average citizen in America. So… do it. Weep and rage and be furious that the country has gotten to this point. Get it all out while it’s hot and fresh and awful. But don’t let it cripple you. And don’t let it make you bitter and hateful. Refuse to hate. Refuse to let it touch you, fester inside you, and then spread to others from you. It hurts. It sucks. But take a deep breath and carry on to be the damn change you wish to see in the world.

Many bad people voted for Trump, it’s true – like the KKK. Trump himself has demonstrated that he is a bad person by word and deed (though he’s been trying hard to change that image in the last couple days – his acceptance speech was the most sane and reasonable tone he’s had since the campaign began). But not everyone who voted for Trump is a bad person, nor do they all hate gays or blacks or any other minority. To assume so is both obscenely unhelpful to the nation and its people at this point in time, and patently untrue. They had different priorities, yes, and those have likely contributed to negative future effects on groups like those mentioned above, but if you cannot recognize that different, even self-focused, priorities do not an evil person make, you probably are not ready to cope with the real world and all its shades of gray in any fashion.

Skim some of the links in the first part of this post to see more of how this happened and just how little of it had to do with “Rawr, must oppress the minorities” Captain Planet villainy or ignorant bigotry. Those are severe oversimplifications that make it easier to dismiss some unpleasant and complicated realities. Don’t take that easy way out. That’s another part of what got us here in the first place, oversimplifying to dismiss things we don’t like.

From the left: “#NotMyPresident”
Yes, he is. You don’t have to like it. I don’t. Literally, most of America doesn’t. This is factually, objectively true (and would have been for Hillary as well, at least going by favorability polls). But you do have to accept it. That’s how the whole thing works, and it becomes magnitudes more dangerous for everyone if either side fails to respect these lines. Is the electoral college idiotic? YES. Yes it is. But it is still legal and legitimate until dismantled from within the system (a good place to start directing some productive anger, by the by), so it does not matter what the popular vote says. We’ve been through this before fairly recently, friends. This is not news.

Saying this is no different from the widely-condemned comments by Trump about “maybe” not accepting the results if he lost. You can’t have it both ways – for democracy to work, we all have to accept even results we don’t like. Any attempts to the contrary are counterproductive at the least, and bordering on treason if someone should take it any farther than speaking and protesting per the first amendment.

…and yet now there are protests in many major cities and many more college campuses. Some are already doing things like blocking interstate roads, ignoring police directions to stop doing so, and causing moderate amounts of income-and-property damage which is nigh unavoidable whenever large, angry groups gather. Signs like ‘Time to Revolt’ are carried at some of these events, which is where the line from 1st Amendment to danger starts to be uncomfortably crossed.   …Apologies for the swearing meme, mom. If ever it was warranted, this election year is it.

Update (11/10/16) – There are incoming reports of windows being broken, etc. Come on, people, this is what I was just talking about not doing! Be better than this! Don’t become exactly what you feared.

As I said above, do it. Be upset if you’re upset. Be angry, be sad, feel what you feel. But accept that we all have to work within the system or much worse things become possible. It’s a broken system, sure, but if you completely abandon the system the moment it doesn’t go your way, why shouldn’t someone else do the same and declare themselves emperor instead of president? Yeah, that’s not a road any of us want to go down. Play by the rules until the rules change, or lose the very important protections some of those rules provide. Protest to voice your sentiment, but keep it peaceful – and remember that peace includes avoiding things like blocking traffic and vital infrastructure. People have died when such things blocked ambulances and the like. Be passionate, but also be smart about it.

Fair note – it is only a very small subset of left-leaning voters that are participating in this – numbering in the thousands, but that is still a tiny subset. Don’t demonize a whole group for what a tiny part of it does, especially in a nation that prides itself on independence and individuality (this goes for any other group, as well. Hint hint). Note also that Obama and Hillary are both urging acceptance of the results, themselves. They understand the rules.

From the right: Celebration of Trump winning
I haven’t actually heard this one much. Even most conservatives in my circle of interactions don’t like Trump. Few that I know even voted for him, but even those who did aren’t really celebrating the best of what they see as two bad options – mostly voting for supreme court positions and the like, and very unhappy that Trump is their only option that isn’t the opposite side entirely. Once again, this two-party system sure is grand, huh?

But for anyone celebrating his out-of-the-blue win against 98% odds given by most of the polls… remember that he lost the popular vote. Remember that more than half the country, including large portions of his own party, very strongly object to many of the things Trump has said and done (being fair, this was also true of Hillary. Neither had an actual majority of the American people behind them). He has a lot of work ahead of him mending those fences, building new bridges, and convincing the world that he’s not the man he ran his campaign as, if he doesn’t want to be crippled for the whole term – even with Republican control of House and Senate. Remember that the Republican party leadership also didn’t want him. Don’t assume they’ll play along nice and neatly now. He stepped on a lot of fingers this year.

The intra- and inter-party divisiveness didn’t just go away with the election’s end. But frankly, we need to bridge that gap now more than ever. Sitting in our respective corners complaining about the other side being idiots is a large part of what got us into this mess. Repeat after me: People with whom I disagree are not always my enemy. They are not inherently stupid or ignorant. They have different beliefs, perhaps different priorities or concerns or fears, but they are still people. The moment you lose sight of that, you’ve already lost any hope of changing hearts or minds. And that’s on you.

For the many Facebook posts by friends and family I see going by saying things like “There’s no hope.” And expressing moments of terror, anxiety, uncontrolled crying, and the like – what calm, logical reassurance I can gather for myself and offer:
I must mention – as I write this, it has come to light that Trump’s appointment to the head of the EPA is a climate change denier, or more accurately not a “denier” but someone who believes the threat is vastly overblown and of little concern. This is not a promising start, for me or many others. I genuinely hope he carefully considers the rest of his cabinet selections and later Supreme Court appointments.

Looking to the slivers of hope that are left to us – Trump may not be as blatantly out-there as his run seemed to suggest. Certainly, his words since the win have been given as if by a whole different man. One almost rational and unifying in his words and tone, if still often framed in an uncomfortable way – such as promising to protect the LGBTQ community… from (implicitly Muslim) “hateful foreign ideologies” (actually a legitimate concern, but still an uncomfortable way to describe Islam given his past statements about Muslims in general)… and then pausing… and thanking the crowd, as a Republican, for cheering for the idea of protecting that community. It was… unexpected, to say the least. I have a cautious hope that this is the man who will step into that revered office and pick up the weight of a mountain of duty, rather than the absurd, hateful clown that pandered to the worst darknesses inside humanity for months prior. I hope this. I don’t yet believe it, but I hope, and right now we need hope.

Also consider some of the things pre-run Trump said: (imgur post)

In a 1999 (yes, that long ago) self-written opinion piece: “Let’s cut to the chase. Yes, I am considering a run for president. … Unlike candidates from the two major parties, my candidacy would not represent an exercise in career advancement. I am not a political pro trying to top off his resume. I am considering a run only because I am convinced the major parties have lost their way. The Republicans are captives of their right wing. The Democrats are captives of their left wing. I don’t hear anyone speaking for the working men and women in the center.”

In a Larry King interview 8 days later, when asked why he would be leaving the Republican Party if he ran: “I think that nobody is really hitting it right. The Democrats are too far left…. The Republicans are too far right. And I don’t think anybody’s hitting the chord, not the chord that I want to hear, and not the chord that other people want to hear, and I’ve seen it.”

And finally, this doozy of a quote was also from his opinion piece: “The second reason I’m considering a run is Patrick Buchanan. He has the virtue of plain speaking, but he often says stupid things–the latest example being his comments questioning whether the U.S. was right to stop Hitler. His arguments are repugnant. Yet they were initially met by deafening silence from the professional politicians. It took three days for Elizabeth Dole and John McCain to react. This underscores the central problem with contemporary politicians: They are so concerned with winning votes that they cannot even find it in themselves to immediately denounce a man who winks at barbarism.”

If that last quote wasn’t a direct theme of his presidential campaign 16 years later, I don’t know what is. Like, just… wow, the thematic tie-in is so blatant, I suspect he re-read his own article and decided to prove it to the world this year. There may be some truth to the idea that he is still a New York Democrat at heart, and that the entire insane campaign was a masterful show of pandering and divide-and-conquer tactics. The man who gave the acceptance speech yesterday certainly sounded a lot more like the Trump of 16 years ago than 6 months ago.

In short, I don’t like Trump personally, neither what he’s said nor what he’s done. Even if it has been all an act (to be determined), it was a deplorable one that caused real pain and fear, incited real hatred in some people following it. But I do have some small hope that the weight of his new role may change him to be a better man, responsible to all of his nation’s people, not just half. And maybe, somewhere deep down, he still remembers and believes those things too. Let us hope.

A final plea to everyone that reads this, here or shared elsewhere:
If you read nothing else on this page, read this, please. Read it twice. Take it to heart, because it’s way more important than anything else I have written or will write in the future. Read it in the pleading, heartfelt tone in which I mean it.

I don’t care who you voted for, or why you disliked the other option. Be good to each other. What Makes America Great isn’t… and has NEVER been… the government. It’s the people. Whatever laws may pass, whatever changes may come, please, be kind to each other. Find empathy for people different from you – physically and emotionally and philosophically. Find it in yourself to treat them like humans instead of ‘the enemy’. Left or Right, atheist or deist, black or white or anything else… we’ve got to pull together to get our country out of the rut we’ve fallen into. Half of the country won’t manage it. Can’t manage it. If a drowning person can only use one arm and one leg to stay afloat, they’re not going to last much longer. Especially if that arm and leg spend most of their energy keeping the other ones pinned down and ineffectual. We need to rebuild, emotionally before physically. And we need to do it together, America.

Don’t hate. Don’t. Don’t do it, not even once, not even a little. I’m talking to both sides on this. Don’t justify it, don’t let it in, don’t let it harden your heart, don’t let it spread. Don’t rush to unfriend everyone that voted differently to preserve your echo chamber. Do what you can to quench fear and anger and foster hope in their place. Love thy neighbor. Regardless of who they are or what they think politically. Love has to win, or there are no winners at all for us. Take care of those who need it, protect those at risk, comfort those who fear and do not let others suffer if you have it in your power to prevent it. Turn your anger (on the left) into action to make things better, to fix a broken system. Turn your newfound power (on the right) into a tool that benefits the nation as a whole, and heal the deep, bleeding wounds of which we’re almost dying right now. Trump won’t make America great again. Hillary wouldn’t have either. It was never in their power to begin with. It’s in ours.

We have one chance to turn a dark time into light, America. Let’s do it together.

—————–

I cried just a little as I finished writing this. Those that know me know that I don’t do that… pretty much ever. I hope that the ten of you that read this at least understand that this last bit came from the heart in a way little else can. Next time: Childrens’ cartoons. Thank god.

~ by jumiaurum on November 10, 2016.