How to fight Trump, starting right now

Thanks for appreciation.

Wouldn’t assume so.

I am not suggesting the DNC doesn’t have issues, or that HCR is a saint. I am proposing that life happens in shades of grey and that context is key. In this instance the enemy is not HCR or the DNC but Trump and the white supremacist he is allying himself with.

And showing a united front to the enemy, does not in any way suggest that you are unwilling to deal with the issues within. It merely means setting priorities. Which at this moment in time is the most important task, we in the West have.

Why is it not a smart choice to chose a highly qualified Woman? Why is it not smart to chose someone who since 1992, when she first entered the stage of national politics, has been consistently working on women’s and children’s issues? Because a little jewish intellectual (and that is probably the kindest thing Trump would have said about Sanders) from Vermont was destined to defeat a lying white supremacist bully, who seem to embody much of what a certain kind of America admires: being rich, being egocentric, being misogynistic, being hateful to all who are different from you or who dare to challenge you. Please show me the evidence. Six months old polls are not evidence. As we have seen they have the accuracy of reading tea leaves.

Where exactly are you reading the vitriol? Because there is none. There is desperation maybe, but no vitriol.

The people who vote for a candidate like Trump are by definition not socialists. Socialists, like me, believe and work for a welfare system, for accessible healthcare, for high quality education. Socialist believe that you tax the rich to pay for welfare for the poor. Socialist believe that the common good is above your individual interest. Could you, please explain to me how anyone could possibly associate any of these ideas or concepts with Trump or his platform?

Socialism is not just about being angry for being left out, it is first and most importantly, about believing that NO ONE should be left out! Socialism is not about you it is about the community. Socialist work for the common good. They organise, they unionise, they spend their free time not watching TV, but trying to figure out how to make the world a better place for all. Non of these beliefs or actions are evidenced in the voters who put their X next to Trumps name. Socialists fight for under payed workers http://fightfor15.org, the majority of whom are women. When you show me the Trump voters who also stand and demonstrate in front of McDonald’s to fight for $15, I might believe you that their politics is aligned with Socialism.

Have you ever tried to organise people in a school community, or locally, have you ever succeeded in convincing people to go against their own or their children’s interest for the greater good of their community? Because most likely you would have discovered, that if you are incredibly lucky there might be 10% of the people who will be willing to move their little finger, the rest will stay away and wait out, and see and watch, till they know what it is in it for them. When you are winning, they might join.

When you are fighting a demagogue you are fighting against people’s natural tendency not to take risk, you are fighting human nature.

And another thing. All of those people, including Senator Sanders and Glenn Greenwald and everyone lining up, who apparently know, what those Trump voters really want, have encountered and had an insightful conversation with those Trump voters as much as HRC had.

Please don’t tell me that Greenwald has been walking among the pundits at Trump rallies or wondering the high streets of Middle America talking to gay bashing, white christian supremacists, listening to their real hopes for the future–and has somehow magically discovered that all Trump voters really wanted to achieve by putting an X next to his name is a European style socialism at the cost of 40% taxation?

I want a change in the economic system as much as Sanders or Greenwald, I believe and know neo-liberalism to be a defunct, corrupt model, because I studied history, have dedicated my adult life to thinking and working on these issues. But there is no evidence that my thinking is in anyway aligned with those angry white people who voted for Trump. To pretend otherwise is delusional, and comfortable.

I will leave a final thought. Political leaders, people who want to make the world a better place, don’t have to empathies and embrace everyone. They should lead by dismissing certain kind of attitudes and by sidelining certain kind of people. By focusing on their vision, being loud and outspoken about it, not because it’s the view of the masses, but because it is a vision worth fighting for. A vision that will bring out people who didn’t vote, because they didn’t feel there was a vision worth voting for.

American politicians, American politics, needs to focus on the 50% who didn’t vote, not on the 20% who voted for a Hitler incarnate.

I leave you with a video of one of those Trump voters, who should be marginalised and sidelined. She probably needs help, but until she asks for it, you don’t offer empathy you offer dismissal. Don’t forget that Trump rallies were full of such people and they sure are not BernBros.

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You are giving incredible emphasise to a woman’s choice of dress. A woman, who is operating on the most prominent public stage in the world.

I am curious why those people so upset about how much Clinton’s attire costs, didn’t pay attention to Trump’s insanely obscene life style. To me the moment I see the guys interior, I think he is the last person I would want to be President of anything (not even a Banana Republic and that is being rude to Bananas).

It is utterly unclear to me what Clinton’s dressing option would have been. Dress for the most important video of your life in Gap? Or get your Auntie to make you something? What should she have worn. How much should it have cost, so that you do not feel offended?

What would you have advised her, so that she could make people like you happy? Would that have worked for the retirees in Florida? Just wondering.

Edit to add this little gem @ $10,800, from the Family of the People, who understand how the little person feels. And it only covers an inch of her body:

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She was declared Obama’s successor the day after her was elected in November 2008. So those who could vote in the primaries had a choice in the same way people who attend a Giants game at Met Life Stadium have a choice where to park. Some got out of her way, the rest backed her right out of the gate from day one. The media acted like she was a gimme early on while talking about Trump 24/7. Sanders wasn’t interesting enough of a story to cover. Then he started picking up momentum. But she was a terrible “choice” because she was never able to gain support outside the core core Democrats. Disliked is an understatement. Qualified and disliked. “They” thought if Obama and Michelle and Bill and everyone else stumps hard enough and loud enough, those swing voters will finally see just how qualified she is and just how unlikable she isn’t. And it didn’t happen. So maybe she was the perfect candidate on paper but public perception is as important as facts. The only thing anyone did wrong here was the DNC giving her an advantage behind the scenes. Not cool.

I’m not blaming anyone else for how it played out – Hillary was allowed to run if she wanted and the public was allowed to vote for her. Hindsight is 20/20.

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It wasn’t just personality, though.

The Dems have been screwing over the working class ever since Reagan, and Clinton represented the apotheosis of that trend. I’m not surprised that they’re abandoning the party, I’m surprised that they stuck it out this long.

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Yes I was going to add to that. She was the physical representation of the political elite. Any who hated Washington could point to her and say – like her. Terrible combo. The general smugness was the nail in the coffin. There’s a long article on Vox. about smugness is general. Pre election. Long but worth reading.

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The DNC as well as most established Western political parties are in a rot. As are right-wing parties. The GOP surely is in a bigger mess than the DNC, but they have no qualms about using any route to power, see Tea Party. The difference is that while the left hacks itself to death, the right will use any method to clinch power–in any shape or form.

What I am saying is that this is the time to be tactical, not a purist.

No wonder, given the consistent, systematic hate campaign she was subjected to.

  1. In regard to the primary race, Clinton was in the same position in 2008, when she lost, in an equally unexpected race, to Obama. And she got on with it and joined his administration and the whole process seemed to be ok. So it is not clear to me why in 2016 the process was so much different and more rigged against Sanders than against Obama in 2008. But I am not an expert in the DNC or primary races.

  2. What is the evidence that any other candidate would have won against Trump. We are talking about the guy who built an entire political platform on the “birther movement” on spreading the lye that Obama wasn’t born on American soil. Something that Millions of Americans now believe to be a fact. I just don’t see the hard and fast evidence that Sanders, Obama, or anyone would have won against the same populist opponent, given the tactics and methods. The guy bent the rules of the game to unrecognisable distortions. Any opponent had to content with that. Oh, and with the FBI.

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Then why, why are you defending Clinton’s tone deaf choices with this “you must be anti-feminist to speak of her clothes” insinuation? I do not give a damn about her clothes; I give a damn about her oblivious disregard for an electorate which contains many who do. She was running for high office, not attending an art gallery opening. Her tone-deaf hubris helped destroy her bid for the Presidency and the result is going to be immensely harmful to my nation.

Out of control purism is at the core of every ‘rebuttal’ I’ve had to my initial comment, and it is even more damaging long term, than the missteps of yesterday’s candidate. This website is widely read; it’s comments section is accessible to anyone with an internet connection and a modest command of the English language. Sneering, PC one upsmanship here can be seen by anyone. Can be read by all those ‘deplorables’ who are relentless disparaged here. If the utility of this has occurred to me, it has undoubtedly occurred to the occasional operative who wants to keep people angry at the ‘cultural elite’.

A high profile “left wing” website with a comments section that has descended into vituperation, and which is thronged with malicious, supercilious self-styled defenders of ‘progressive purity’… is like gold to them.

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Also the various and former holdings of Hillenbrand.

I don’t understand what point you are trying to make.

Are you suggesting that contributors to bbs and similar need to self-censor in case “deplorables” start driving trollies these sites? There are good reasons why people with certain attitudes are disparaged here. It’s called civilization and human progress, or what is left of them.

If life and the 2016 elections have taught me anything, it is to be more outspoken, clearer, louder and more uncompromising and not to manage my language according to the preferences of some racist, sexist angry people. I am going to try to stay safe, but I am certainly not going to silence myself.

We will have to agree to disagree.

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