Tag Archives: Trump

Political Rants

Unite or bust.

I don’t think it would be a surprise to anyone who reads this blog that I am substantially to the left of Bernie Sanders on a whole range of issues. That said, I am overjoyed that he has done as well as he has in the contest for the Democratic nomination. It is unprecedented in my lifetime that such a progressive voice could win a string of primaries and caucuses, and that bodes well for the next generation of voters (if they make it a habit to get to the polls).

One "luxury" we can't afford.What I have to say about the “Bernie or bust” tendency, however, differs from what a lot of people on the hard left are saying these days. Working to defeat Trump by, among other things, supporting Clinton if she’s nominated is simply not that hard a pill to swallow for me – a person for whom a vote for Bernie was a kind of compromise. I want to take a moment to look at some of the main contentions I have heard from Bernie or Busters, none of which (spoiler alert!) I feel has any real merit.

Contention #1: There’s no difference between the two establishment parties. Not true. There may not be a big enough difference, but there is a difference. Anyone who lived through eight years of W. Bush, six of which saw a GOP congress as well, would know that. That small margin is enough to justify the minuscule act of voting.

Contention #2: After Trump comes the revolution. Bullshit. This sounds like it was cooked up by the radical in Zola’s Germinal. It’s a millennial hope with no chance of being realized. Trump in the White House will just mean years of rearguard actions against reactionary policies.

Contention #3: We leftists need to stand up to the Democratic establishment. This argument goes something like this: The Democrats need the left, so we need to demand that they put forward a candidate of the left or withdraw our support from their nominee; otherwise they’ll assume we will just go along to get along. The trouble with this is that (a) it puts too much of a premium on elections  – important as they are, they should only be the smallest part of what we do to move our issues forward, and (b) it’s the kind of thinking that’s done by comfortable white progressives who have less to lose from a Republican presidency than people of color, the poor, LGBT folks, etc.

Face it: these people cannot afford four to eight years of Trump. Neither can the planet – we simply do not have the luxury to allow such a disaster to happen. Standing fast to some purist ideological notion with regard to national elections is like sitting back on the deck of a sinking ship, right next to the life boats. All the more vulnerable people are five decks down, far below the waterline already. We have to make choices with them in mind, not just our own privileged asses.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

And the winner is …

It seems like just yesterday we were staring at a line of 20 or more lunatics vying for the Republican nomination. And now, a few short months later, it’s all over bar the shouting. And there will be shouting, make no mistake. Donald Trump is now the presumptive nominee of the Republican party, as per Reince Priebus, and his two last competitors, “lyin'” Ted Cruz and “non-descript” John Kasich have dropped out of the race. Poor Kasich … he never did well enough even to get a decent Trump nickname. That’s got to hurt.

Trump's secret plan to stop ISIS.Kidding aside, we have a major problem – namely that one of the two people that can possibly become president of the United States is now Donald Trump. With regard to governing policy, foreign or domestic, this man is a monumental ignoramus and a congenital liar. Worse, he engages in these incendiary rants that stoke the flames of hatred and bigotry, recalling a violent past that he often invokes when urging his flock towards toughness. Perhaps most infuriating is the story about General Pershing and the execution bullets dipped in pig’s blood. Trump’s recounting goes something like this: We need to be tough, like in the good old days. Pershing was tough – he both desecrated and executed captured Muslims during the conflict in the Philippines at the turn of the last century. Ergo, we must follow the same standard as Pershing and abandon our squeamish “political correctness”.

Interestingly, none of the news networks appeared to look much closer at his story, nor the context within which it would have occurred. The American takeover of the Philippines was one of the bloodiest colonial conflicts we have ever engaged in. No one seems all that bothered by this. What I hear more about from the mainstream media is how Trump is likely to be “on the left” of Hillary Clinton on trade and on foreign policy. That is a hard circle to square. Yes, Clinton is a virtual neocon on a lot of this stuff and has an enthusiasm for intervention that outstrips that of her husband. But Trump is no pacifist. When he talks about destroying ISIS, it’s pretty clear what he means, and his hostility towards trade deals is conditional and not very principled. The left will have no influence on him whatsoever. But Hillary? That depends on us.

We will be working against the election of Trump this fall – that much is for sure. It’s likely to be a tough slog, but it’s one that must be won. We cannot afford a Trump presidency, and that particularly applies to the more economically insecure among us.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Before the fall.

It’s shaping up to be an election to remember. For one thing, the television coverage is so obsessive you couldn’t ignore it if you tried. But more importantly, I think, the selection is going to be … well … less than optimal, let’s say. All right – downright scary. Had to get that out there. The last group of northeastern states favored the front-runners pretty heavily, and it seems almost inevitable that we will be choosing between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. That situation will set in motion some strange dynamics that will likely cut across the standard notions of what each party stands for. I can picture, for instance, Clinton attacking Trump from the right on some aspects of foreign policy. Hard to predict what the effect of that might be.

The man to beat.The most disconcerting part of this likely scenario is the prospect of living through one, maybe two terms of rule by either an egotistical man-child-billionaire or a corporatist Democrat. Of course, I far prefer the latter, mostly because there is some opportunity to push Clinton from the left, but either way we are likely to see a more bellicose stance towards issues of war and peace. Either way we will be moving to the right of Obama along certain political vectors. And Obama is not even a standard progressive; he is a centrist, and very cautious at that.

What are the options to mitigate this? Same as always. Organize, organize, organize. Bernie Sanders may still be the nominee, but win or lose, he has done a tremendous amount of ground work organizing around core progressive issues – policies he terms socialist but which are much more like liberal FDR Democrat material. Regardless, we need to keep Bernie-ism alive even if Bernie is not the nominee, and that means pulling together on the local level. That’s how you bring these issues to the fore nationally. We’ve got the skeleton of a national organization, and there’s more than a little sinew on the bones. We should keep it marching forward.

I don’t think I have to remind anyone that the Republicans need to be beaten this fall, whoever wins the Democratic nomination. We have to do it to save the Supreme Court and to safeguard the vulnerable. But that doesn’t mean we can’t continue to make demands in a coordinated and effective way. This is the political revolution Bernie Sanders keeps talking about, it seems to me.

luv u,

jp