I think the time for recriminations, finger-pointing, division and blame re. “why Hillary lost” needs to stop at least yesterday. With enough blame to go around, we don’t need a circular firing squad; we need to quickly learn from what happened and begin the hard work of reimagining and rebuilding our broken country. Trump’s election stands as both a symptom and product of the deeper ills plaguing the United States.
Trump is a master showman & fraudster – solidly evidenced by his businesses, successful or not – specifically, regarding the KIND of businesses he gravitates toward. He builds big shiny skyscrapers, casinos and hawks steaks, wine, his “university”, clothing line, et cetera… All flashy, status-ey things with his name slapped on them; all of touted to be biggest, the best, and the glitziest; truthfully, the core is hollow and the glitter is just spray paint. We accepted the scam & sham as part of his persona until the 2016 election; he was a kind of national joke, “that’s just Donald Trump.” When he descended the golden, of course, escalator at Trump Tower to his (paid) adoring crowd, he remained a joke, and was treated by the media as a reality TV star, not a real presidential candidate. Then the spray paint & reality got conflated, and here we are, unsure of objective reality vs. spray paint fumes. The run for the presidency legitimized the scam, and people bought it lock, stock & barrel. Welcome to Trumpmerica, the dystopian theme park we can’t leave.
The Bill of Goods chosen for all of us by about 25% (not even the majority vote) of the entire electorate is full of a lot of big, and likely empty, promises. Let’s look at a few of the biggies:
1. Trump promises to “drain the swamp” in Washington.
Interestingly, the cast being chosen to play the principals in the tragicomedy are long-time residents of the swamp… hanging around in varying levels of marginalization, especially in recent years. Now they slither right up to lick their new master’s boots to ensure their parts of the swamp aren’t drained.
2. Trump promises to repeal & replace Obamacare with “something terrific”.
Well, if he means terrific in the archaic sense, “causing terror,” he is probably closer than if is trying to use the modern meaning. While Obamacare isn’t perfect, it’s better than what we didn’t have before, but we know that it will be repealed in short order come 20 January. Replacement details are vague, including elements about Health Savings Accounts and buying insurance across state lines. Beyond that, no plans for transition or implementation are out there. The Republicans have bitched about Obamacare for over 6 years, but have never given us any more than vague generalities – exactly zip, zilch & nada. Sadly those who bought into the scam are most likely to be the hardest hit or simply continue as they were, particularly if they live in a state that didn’t take part in the Medicare expansion.
3. Trump promises to have Mexico pay for the wall he wants to build, and deport all 11 million illegal immigrants.
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said clearly in July that Mexico will not pay for Trump’s estimated $7.8 trillion boondoggle. So, if Mexico won’t pay for it, who will? Will Congressional Republicans agree to it, considering how they prefer to take money from programs for the needy and redistribute it to their corporate masters? They might go along with it if their buddies can have a piece of the pie. It might be a great jobs program, along with hiring all the new deportation/corrections officers for the 11 million they plan on removing or incarcerating, starting 20 January.
4. Trump promises to bring jobs back to the country.
As mentioned above, his wall and deportation program may well be the cornerstone of his plan. Sadly though, his big plans are covered in that same flaky gold spray paint. The manufacturing jobs lost across the Midwest and South since the 1970s have devastated those regions. These very people are those who have hitched their wagon to Trump’s star power. These people have been largely taken for granted by the Democratic Party as a demographic, with no real help offered to help them pivot from the economy of the 1950s to the realities of today. In the meantime, the Republican Party simply disposed of them as just the “cost of doing business.” However, Trump’s slithery cast of characters marching in time with the Corporate Congress isn’t likely to help them. More corporate tax breaks, laissez-faire governance, lax labor laws, will only lead to lower wages, more offshoring of jobs and higher unemployment.
5. Trump promises registration and surveillance of Muslims.
Blatantly unconstitutional (for now), this will be fought in the courts as long and hard as people are able. Again there is the question of cost, and perhaps it’s another part of the shiny new jobs plan.
These are some of Trump’s biggest and baddest promises in the Bill of Goods. One need only look at the Corporate Republican Congress and the swamp dwellers slithering onstage to see what is happening. The corporate elites will enjoy even greater license to influence the halls of power. More of our tax dollars will flow into their pockets, while worthy social service programs will continue to face cuts under the guise of the welfare mother and all the tired old tropes that paint the poor as lazy, unworthy, et cetera. (Read as people of color.) Additionally more of the taxes that are to support the military will flow into the coffers of defense contractors, not service members.
None of this has even touched on the inherent racism, misogyny, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Muslim rhetoric in his campaign. To a one, Trump and his surrogates have united in their message disavowing any of the above. He asserted that African Americans and Hispanic American communities are “living in hell” and vowed to help them (again shiny spray painted words) while saying that known African American communities like Chicago, St. Louis and Philadelphia should be watched for signs of fraud on election day. This isn’t even a dog whistle unless you are denser than dog snot, it’s a fucking flashing red neon sign that says, “Racism Here.” Couple that with his big plans for Muslims… oh boy.
The other flashing red neon sign says “Misogyny Here.” While Trumps claims to be more respectful of women than probably anyone ever, his boasts about being able to grab women by the pussy anytime he wants paints a different picture. When that revelation is followed by 12 women coming forward, his only form of denial is to call them all liars and threaten to sue them.
The racism, misogyny, and hatred of anyone not a white straight male is sort of like the secret menu that everyone knows about on the Bill of Goods. If you voted for Trump out of pure intention, you purchased the whole bill of goods, including the secret menu stuff. Your vote shows that you accept it. You knew it was there, you cannot say you didn’t see it. It was part and parcel of his campaign from day one. You did this, you cannot blame anyone else. You made this choice for the whole country and you have been had. All of us will have to live with the aftermath of your actions, some already are, especially the “others”, minorities, women, LGBTQ folks, non-Christians, et cetera. Thank for caring more about yourself than the country as a whole. Most of us didn’t choose the ticket to Trumpmerica.
Sunday, November 13, 2016
Friday, October 28, 2016
Marshmallow fluff vs. raw broccoli
This election season has been long, hard, and difficult to watch. The cockroaches of racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, etc.(!) have all felt comfortable enough to come out into the light. Mind you, the seeds of this emergence have been planted and carefully nurtured for the last 50 years by one political party in particular. The democrats, however, got complacent and lazy, and did nothing but to weakly yell “s-t-o-p” like a traffic cop on Quaaludes; allowed themselves/choosing to be drug further and further away from their core values in search of votes, especially after Reagan, attempting to regain the votes of the Reagan Democrats.
Additionally, it must be acknowledged that our educational system has been steadily gutted by Republican policies. The emphasis has been on education that will help our youth become cogs in a greater machine, but not necessarily become well-rounded citizens capable of critical thinking. Civics education, in which I got a good grounding, as recently as the 1980s, seems to be all but gone in our schools; my own children seemed woefully uneducated about it in the early 2000s. The “person-on-the-street” interviews in which people are unable to answer very basic questions about our democratic system are funny, but also frightening, especially when you realize these people are going to vote. It’s true that some people just really don’t care, but A LOT of people DO care, but haven’t been given the knowledge or tools that encourage critical thinking. They are more interested in the Dancing With the Stars, Snookie, or the Real Housewives of Schmuck City. Government and civics aren’t shiny or fun, but that knowledge is fundamental to a healthy republic. Education funding has been gutted, standards denigrated, and vouchers & testing raised up as the answers to all the problems, but our schools continue to worsen. Also, teachers bear all the blame (and get no respect) for all that is wrong with the education system; they continue to be loaded down with more and more regulation with little or no increases in pay, and are regarded in many quarters as lazy drains on the system. This has led to a wholesale hollowing out of our education system.
So, after years of dog-whistle politics by the Republicans, and the Democrats refusing to really fight strongly for their core beliefs, we arrive at where we are today. Combined with a deliberate dumbing down of society, this is a recipe for disaster. People look at their twitter & facebook feeds, shut out the things they don’t want to hear and allow themselves to be spoonfed lies, or absorb them through osmosis. It almost seems that the more outrageous the lie, the more they want to belive it, rather than taking the effort to go out and research the truth… and then even if they find the truth, if it doesn’t fit their views, they will ignore it anyway. I’d like to say that one side does it more than the other, but I mostly have created my own echo chamber too.
The election this year has boiled down to two choices. Most people don’t like the choices that feel forced on us. The Republicans are doing their best to maintain a semblance of unity, but it’s apparent that the chewing gum and baling wire is about ready to give at any time. The Democratic side hasn’t been without its issues. Bernie Sanders enthused a lot of people who wanted real change, who felt like he understood their concerns. But Hillary Clinton won out on the Dem side, and not without a lot of funky finagling that raised some very valid questions. However, like it or not, Hillary became the Democratic nominee, and Bernie Sanders has rallied to the cause and even managed to drag her quite a ways back towards the traditional issues of the left.
Interestingly, Donald Trump tapped a similar type of voter to those who rallied to Sanders, mainly those who have felt left behind by the real but sometimes painfully slow economic recovery since the crash of 2008. So the appeal of both Trump & Sanders is understandable, however their approach is sort of like comparing mini pineapples to hand grenades. Whereas Sanders took a message of equality, increased minimum wage, peace, education, equal pay, and came up with relatively realistic ways to achieve his agenda with a message of building to a better brighter future; Trump has painted a picture of a dark now and darker future, always dragging us back to a past that we need to get back to achieve greatness again, and he has dwelt on blaming the “other”, which in his mind anyone who opposes him or who is not white & male.
Trump is marshmallow fluff, it's fun to eat now but makes you sick later. He’s also a false fronted old building with a beautiful chair gold chair behind a fancy wooden desk inside (in reality, the chair is spray-painted gold and upholstered with cheap polyester velvet & the plywood desk is covered with wood patterned contact paper). He spouts and repeats lies ad nauseum about how he is the only one who can fix things.
Clinton is raw broccoli without cheese sauce or salt, the thing you know you should be eating. She is a stodgy cinder-block building with a beat up wooden straight-backed chair behind an equally beat up wooden desk. Her message encourages people working together to effect change, but she promises no quick fixes.
Sometimes you have to eat the broccoli and take the long term and thousand mile view because it’s the best thing to do.
Additionally, it must be acknowledged that our educational system has been steadily gutted by Republican policies. The emphasis has been on education that will help our youth become cogs in a greater machine, but not necessarily become well-rounded citizens capable of critical thinking. Civics education, in which I got a good grounding, as recently as the 1980s, seems to be all but gone in our schools; my own children seemed woefully uneducated about it in the early 2000s. The “person-on-the-street” interviews in which people are unable to answer very basic questions about our democratic system are funny, but also frightening, especially when you realize these people are going to vote. It’s true that some people just really don’t care, but A LOT of people DO care, but haven’t been given the knowledge or tools that encourage critical thinking. They are more interested in the Dancing With the Stars, Snookie, or the Real Housewives of Schmuck City. Government and civics aren’t shiny or fun, but that knowledge is fundamental to a healthy republic. Education funding has been gutted, standards denigrated, and vouchers & testing raised up as the answers to all the problems, but our schools continue to worsen. Also, teachers bear all the blame (and get no respect) for all that is wrong with the education system; they continue to be loaded down with more and more regulation with little or no increases in pay, and are regarded in many quarters as lazy drains on the system. This has led to a wholesale hollowing out of our education system.
So, after years of dog-whistle politics by the Republicans, and the Democrats refusing to really fight strongly for their core beliefs, we arrive at where we are today. Combined with a deliberate dumbing down of society, this is a recipe for disaster. People look at their twitter & facebook feeds, shut out the things they don’t want to hear and allow themselves to be spoonfed lies, or absorb them through osmosis. It almost seems that the more outrageous the lie, the more they want to belive it, rather than taking the effort to go out and research the truth… and then even if they find the truth, if it doesn’t fit their views, they will ignore it anyway. I’d like to say that one side does it more than the other, but I mostly have created my own echo chamber too.
The election this year has boiled down to two choices. Most people don’t like the choices that feel forced on us. The Republicans are doing their best to maintain a semblance of unity, but it’s apparent that the chewing gum and baling wire is about ready to give at any time. The Democratic side hasn’t been without its issues. Bernie Sanders enthused a lot of people who wanted real change, who felt like he understood their concerns. But Hillary Clinton won out on the Dem side, and not without a lot of funky finagling that raised some very valid questions. However, like it or not, Hillary became the Democratic nominee, and Bernie Sanders has rallied to the cause and even managed to drag her quite a ways back towards the traditional issues of the left.
Interestingly, Donald Trump tapped a similar type of voter to those who rallied to Sanders, mainly those who have felt left behind by the real but sometimes painfully slow economic recovery since the crash of 2008. So the appeal of both Trump & Sanders is understandable, however their approach is sort of like comparing mini pineapples to hand grenades. Whereas Sanders took a message of equality, increased minimum wage, peace, education, equal pay, and came up with relatively realistic ways to achieve his agenda with a message of building to a better brighter future; Trump has painted a picture of a dark now and darker future, always dragging us back to a past that we need to get back to achieve greatness again, and he has dwelt on blaming the “other”, which in his mind anyone who opposes him or who is not white & male.
Trump is marshmallow fluff, it's fun to eat now but makes you sick later. He’s also a false fronted old building with a beautiful chair gold chair behind a fancy wooden desk inside (in reality, the chair is spray-painted gold and upholstered with cheap polyester velvet & the plywood desk is covered with wood patterned contact paper). He spouts and repeats lies ad nauseum about how he is the only one who can fix things.
Clinton is raw broccoli without cheese sauce or salt, the thing you know you should be eating. She is a stodgy cinder-block building with a beat up wooden straight-backed chair behind an equally beat up wooden desk. Her message encourages people working together to effect change, but she promises no quick fixes.
Sometimes you have to eat the broccoli and take the long term and thousand mile view because it’s the best thing to do.
Saturday, September 17, 2016
two and a half years of post morteming...
It's been an interesting week. I have finally put the bulk of the King Co. experience behind me. I think spending the weekend with Susan, who was there with me and pretty much is the only person who knows and understands completely how bad it really was. That much validation helps alleviate the insidious effects of the personally targeted gaslighting that they practiced with almost surgical precision. I have long had a habit of post mortem-ing events that go wrong to try and have a good understanding of what went wrong, and what I can learn about it.
I have spent far too much time over the last 2.5 years in post-mortem mode... and the only thing is that it really was personal, it is the only thing that even makes sense. Especially considering that I went into that opportunity with a solid 7 year run and an Army Commendation Medal for my year in Texas. For the first time in my life, I don't think I made any glaring mistakes apart from simply being myself. And if there is one thing that I have learned about myself, trying to change to fit in with others doesn't work... I did try to conform... and it didn't work, yet again... Funny that. "It wasn't me, it was them."
So this week has had several unasked for affirmations of my value to people who DO count in my life. It also made it easier for me to cut loose some ties that I was maintaining out of (what I thought was) mutual respect and affection... which were apparently not the case, as I found out via a backdoor source. It's sad but I do not deserve to have so-called friends 2K miles away gossiping away behind my back. So the unfriending shears came out. They don't have anything to gossip about, if they even notice. I could be hurt, but there really isn't a reason, just let it go. We had known diffs, but again, "it isn't me, it's them."
As I get older, I am getting feisty... and my deep seated anger is coming out. It's not uncontrolled, but is being carefully channeled... and I am using it to establish myself in the world. I have spent most of my life sitting down and shutting up. Honestly I am sick of it. I am pretty much single handedly supporting my family plus some other folks, I joined the Army as an officer and had great run with that as well. It also got me to where I am now, as did the King Co disaster. I am glad to be where I am now, and I think the rough journey has made success now even sweeter.
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