The following is a long post in a thread on facebook which is at the following post: https://www.facebook.com/erik.backus/posts/10217157757399230.
Returning
to the main thread, on our political situation in the USA. To recap, I offered: “To clarify ‘never trumpers’ didn’t vote for
Trump. Some, like Colin Powell, voted for Hillary. Some, like George HW Bush or
John Kaisich, voted write-in or didn’t vote the Presidential line. The ‘never
trumpers’ weren’t and aren’t enablers. The enablers are those that allegedly
pinched their noses and still voted for him, those aren’t ‘never trumpers’
they’re ‘lesser of evils’ voters as they saw it. I’ll complete this post a bit
later.”
To
which Renie Jay replied: “Erik C. Backus
I know in our friend circle this will be an extremely unpopular opinion, but I
think anyone who didn't vote for Hillary in 16 is an enabler. None of the 3rd
party candidates had a realistic chance of winning. Hell, 1000 votes for
Harambe in NH almost cost Hillary that entire state! 3rd party and write-ins
played right into Trump's hand.
People
who didn't vote for either trump nor Hillary in swing States effectively acted
as bystanders attempting to abstain.
‘If
you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the
oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that
you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.’”
From
which, I began my replies with the following:
Renie
Jay, the key point is swing states, which is where I was going next. Trump won the popular vote contribution to
the election on approximately 80,000 votes in 3 states (Wisconsin, Michigan,
and Ohio), which was reflected in how the electoral college was forced to act
(more on that in a bit). One has to then
delve into how is it that we have such a divide, that such a marginal popular
vote action could ultimately decide the result we had? I'll get into the structural piece (the
Electoral College), but what I am really first getting at is the way the
popular will was swayed in just the right places.
To
that, one cannot but see that we have an ever stronger emerging rural to urban
divide, not too dissimilar to the stratification and "sectionalism"
that existed in the mid-nineteenth century.
Both major parties have capitalized/enhanced this stratification in that
the Dems who were historically supported by labor and working class politics,
in part due to the new democrat movement that was embraced by Clinton, have
lost or weakened that support and have not often delivered for that demographic
as they have focused on cultural liberal issues and turned from protectionism
without actually building a sustainable alternative path to economic prosperity
(traditional liberal new deal government largess has been accurately condemned
as problematic). With regards to the
Repubs, the strong embrace of the traditional southern political culture from
Nixon through Regan to Trump (populist, protectionist, xenophobic, reactionary,
etc.), put them in a position to capture those left behind in rural and working
class centric areas, even as they continue to only offer a mirage of a solution
to their economic ills. They've been
largely lost, and as I articulated prior to the election still holds:
http://backusec.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-trump-phenom-abridged.html. You can blame them all you want as
"enablers" but that doesn't solve any problem, nor will it convince
them of their choice; frankly it'll galvanize them more.
So
the answer, in part the reason this has happened is that the hardening partisanship/stratification,
has hit in enough places that we need to really look at what the real
underlying issues are that would drive a person to make such a tragic choice. And those are largely cultural and
economic.
On
the social front, it’s one thing to celebrate the broadening of rights and
supporting the furtherance of egalitarian efforts to pull people out from the
shadows (e.g. LGBTQ, women, Hispanics, African-Americans, etc.) to allow them
full(er) social equity (which I support), but when it’s done as an assault on
traditional norms writ large, or perceived as such, and includes rhetoric and
actions that are as intolerant towards traditional folks as those that imposed
the former conditions felt by those that were in the shadows, its harmful and
counterproductive. There is a way to
both hold people accountable, not accept backsliding or bigotry, but also not assault
them personally and seek their utter demise.
We
also have to recognize that there are not one-size-fits-all answers for every
community. Yes, we hope to continue to
raise the bar and get ever better at our baseline of tolerance and acceptance,
but there have always been different speeds at which social change has occurred
in different contexts. So long as there
is indeed progress, and we have to always press forward towards equality and
justice, we can’t fault Russell, NY for not having a robust LGBTQ support
system in the same way Boston, MA has one, it’s just not realistic nor is it
healthy in the end to force it upon that community en masse. Rapid social change in society leads to
backlash and potential devastation, the Middle East is a case-in-point in this
regard. We need to emulate an advanced
version of the Jordanian model in terms of pace and methods towards change in
society (not its starting point, of course) and not end up with the Iranian
model that led to the revolution of 1979 or the Whabbi model that has brought
us Al Queada and worse.
So
looking at the social question, the problem is we can’t even talk about a
reasonable way forward, because we continue to trip on purity and litmus tests
on social questions. On abortion, it’s
pro-life without a single exception or it’s pro-choice without inhibition. How about we seek the end of abortion, not by
making it illegal, but by doing all we can to create respectful relationships,
use fact based education, and try perpetrators for their sexual crimes? How about we ensure women have control of
their bodies, not by developing more medical procedures and pharmaceuticals that
seek to reject life at it’s creative point, but by ensuring contraceptives are
available, that we empower women in relationships, and we hold fathers accountable
as full partners in every sense? And how
about we ensure we value life after birth as sacred as life in the womb, we
ensure that religious beliefs that value chastity and responsibility in
relationships aren’t mocked, support adoption more fully as an option, and we
seek to recognize that there remains imperfection in the world and that there
are often horribly bad personal choices people have to make and seek to help
people through those challenges? All of
these, for just this one example, are much harder, they don’t fit into
sound-bites, and we have to contend with one another as neighbors and friends,
not as “us” and “them”. It’s not utopia,
it’s a realization that the more we hurt ourselves, the more we will all
suffer.
On
the economic side we need to continue to have an innovative and dynamic economy
to be able to compete on the world stage, turning back to protectionism and
isolationism will undermine, significantly, the general economic growth (even with
the Great Recession we have seen a general upward glidepath world-wide) and
security stability we see in the world (we haven’t seen a major symmetric great
power ground conflict in over 70 years).
But we have yet to fix the fact that there are many left in the wake and
we need to find a way to give them the bright future that has often been
promised them throughout our nation's history.
This really requires a partial re-definition of the American dream which
will continue to hit some resistance until those that have been left behind the
most can see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Neither liberals nor conservatives have even
attempted to really lay down any track to make that possible. So this needs to be the priority, figuring
this out, lest we continue to fail, not only for any party, but as a nation
long term. And we are already seeing the
drag this is on all of us.
I
have spoken to this, we need to encourage trade development as a co-equal path with
collegiate education. We need to
purposefully make investments in communities that have labor pools that have
been left out and left behind. We have
to see this just like we saw the efforts to revitalize the large urban center cities
in the 60s through the 80s which has brought renaissance to the like of NYC,
Washington DC, LA, Chicago, etc. etc. This
is making an investment in rust belt and rural America in a way that is unprecedented,
both in scale and in method. This can’t
be another big New Deal type government program nor can it be a hand-out to companies
in hopes they deliver. It has to be a
strategically engaged development strategy that develops underlying infrastructure
(badly in need of repair and of upgrade), incentivizes and pushes industry
along a path that is sustainable, and creates opportunity for a new generation
of workers. It’s unscrewing the personal
tax code, to ensure that everyone pays their fair share for what they have been
privileged to get out of the economy, protects our long term resources (conserving
them for when we really need them), and unleashes innovation and corporate
action to solve the biggest world-wide problems.
But
no one wants to do this. Dems want to
pile on the success of the megalopolis cities of the coast, enhancing programs,
and assaulting corporations as the enemy.
Repubs want to strip all regulations, cut taxes for even the things we
need, and prove that government can never work.
No one really cares that LeClaire, WI or Flint, MI, and Akron, OH are
atrophying in so many ways (people, infrastructure, housing, employers, and
more) that people are eating rats. Roger
& Me is real, and there is a reason Michael Moore predicted, to his own
sadness, the outcome in 2016 correctly.
People are desperate in these locations, and choosing change, even
despotic, racist, authoritarian, fascist, immoral, repugnant change, is felt by
them to be better than where they are now.
Unless we create change that answers the mail, Trump will be a reality.
I
long ago stopped using the term “GOP” for the Republican party. GOP stands for “Grand Old Party”, deriving
from the “Grand Old Army”, which was a nickname for the Civil War era Army of the
Republic. They are no longer the party
of Lincoln, and any association with the soldiers that stood shoulder to
shoulder to fight against the Confederate Army who defended slavery, is
practically gone. They’ve embraced the
flag of the CSA, its intransigence on race relations, and its long history of fighting
for equity and freedom for all humankind.
I have an “I Like Ike” hat that was given to me and I often wear it, because
gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to have a President more like Ike. Ike was hardly perfect, but he did pass the
first Civil Rights act and he made damn sure that the Nazis got punished for
genocide. And the 1950s were not even
close to perfect, we were still in Korea, segregation was at its high water
mark in the south, and the coming storm of the 1960s was upon us. Ike though, didn’t stop the progress, he
edged it along, he didn’t go along with the British and French on the Suez, but
he made sure we airlifted into Berlin. He
was brave enough to make Rockefeller the first Under-Secretary of Health,
Education and Welfare even if he had to turn to Nixon as his VP (who brought us
the EPA mind you). The hat is a piece of
nostalgia for a party that was, and no longer is.
The
Dems, however, aren’t the party they were.
In some ways they are much better.
They ejected the Dixiecrats and have embraced much of the social justice
agenda. They stopped with their
protectionism, and started to see some parts of corporate America (tech
companies, organic farmers, and so forth) as acceptable to even good. But all the while, they gave up on the working
class and they’ve lost their patriotism.
They’ve ceded liberty to “libertarians” and freedom to the “freedom
caucus” without even a fight. They seem
to have gotten so lost in fighting “the man” that they forgot that they’ve
crippled Uncle Sam with both government largess and a willingness to
perpetually leave behind the farms from which they get fed.
In
the end, I think neither party survives in their current form; we are at the
nexus point of a new party system in the next decade. There will be in the end, two, I think, from
the ashes and flotsam of the present situation.
For some time I have thought that pro-business Dems would leave the
party to join the “establishment” Repubs.
But now, I see that Ron Paul, Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, and Trump are
all conspiring to tear apart the Repubs.
Rather than attack “never trumpers” these are those that you need to
court. They weren’t willing to give
in. But you need to actually embrace
what they see as the needs and adopt some of their solutions. John Kaisich was the one Repub candidate that
you need to listen to. He, or his type
(Ben Sasse, etc), will not win as a Repub on the national stage, but they can
pull enough strings to do one of two things: 1) attempt to take the Repubs back
from Trump (less likely) or 2) Do a Bloomberg one better and try to build an
alternative center right party using neo-liberalism and a worker centric
platform hoping to get enough independents to force the Repubs to come back to
them. This is speculation, but I am
certain things are going to change. This
Fall will bespeak not a win for Dems, that should not be mistaken, it will be a
reaction and rejection of Trump should the House and Senate flip. There is much more to come, and the point is
don’t think that traditional labels mean what they once did.
