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.