Many people believe that Trump voters are overtly and aggressively racist and sexist seeking to return to the 1950s, or, at the very least, not caring about Trump’s harmful race and gender policies compared to favoring Trump for other reasons. If so, why aren’t they celebrating?
Perhaps avowedly neo nazi groups had ugly parties in their clubs and homes. The Klan may celebrate soon. Individual mini thugs are threatening folks. But what about other Trump voters? Not dozens, not hundreds or thousands, but millions.
Imagine Sanders ran against Trump and won. We would be dancing in the streets and the country would be elated and upbeat. Even mainstream media blaring that Sanders is the antichrist wouldn’t dampen nationwide massive celebrations.
If Trump is riding a movement mainly seeking racist and sexist rollback, his voters should be elated. I haven’t seen that. Also, the anti Trump demonstrations occurring all over the country would have attracted comparably large groups of elated Trump supporters ready to rumble. I haven’t seen that either. Brownshirts are not out dancing or marching.
What if beyond diehards who habitually vote Republican, most Trump voters weren’t voting for vile racism and sexism but against business as usual?
What if Trump won because he got traditional Republican votes, drew in a few more long time racists and sexists than usually vote, and gained his margin of victory in the Rust Belt from white working class voters who four years ago supported Obama but are now so angry at their steady slide into desperation that they preferred to vote for the outsider who at least acknowledged their pain rather than condescendingly dismissing them?
If I could vote for Clinton in a contested state to ward off a greater evil without it meaning that I support and favor what Clinton supports and favors, why couldn’t lots of Trump voters have done something quite similar to ward off what they accurately experience as soul crushing, life denying, community ravaging, business as usual?
Trump’s support was higher the more economically depressed a region was and especially the more susceptible it was to further decline. Trump got a third of Latino voters. Presumably the Latinos weren’t voting for racism. He got 53% of white female voters. Presumably the women weren’t voting for sexism.
I understand peoples’ intense fear and anger and I feel immensely angry and fearful myself, but I think our anger’s focus needs clarification.
Trump will wreck havoc limited only by the opposition we muster to ward it off. His psychic impact on young people hearing from him as their president will seriously bludgeon many young minds. His immigration policies, court appointments, and climate denialism will inflict staggering social and environmental wounds.
Facing Trump and fighting against massive reaction will be vastly less productive than facing Clinton and fighting to win positive gains well beyond what her platform would have been.
Trump being bully in chief is a catastrophe., yes, but this catastrophe didn’t reveal some horrible major new popular slip slide toward fascist values. Such values were in a small minority all along and over the past few decades they have diminished, not enlarged.
Violence against Blacks, women, and gays was not long ago so much an assumed norm of daily life it went publicly unnoticed and unchallenged. Police violence is also not new. Rejecting police violence publicly is what’s new. Likewise for violence against women. But, whether or not you agree that fascistic values have a limited current appeal and have even had a downward recent trajectory, nonetheless horribly dangerous fascistic values could certainly now mushroom, though reasoned activism could also prevent that.
If Pennsylvania had gone for Clinton, with everything else unchanged, and if as a result Clinton had won the election, the angst, fear, and anger in the air today would be absent. More, if we now had President Sanders, elation would dominate. Yet, in both cases we would have the same population with the same views, though a hugely different outcome. The warranted cause of concern is the utterly vile outcome – Trump in power – not incorrect fears that our population has become horribly cruel.
Suppose Joe and Sue voted for Trump. It would be fair to note they weren’t stopped dead in their tracks on the way to doing so by Trump’s racism, sexism, or labor practices. Suppose Jane and Sam voted for Clinton. It would be fair to note that they weren’t stopped dead in their tracks on the way to doing so by Clinton being a war criminal mass murderer.
However we could not sensibly deduce that Jane and Sam wanted to pursue war or batter war victims. To jump to that depressing conclusion would be mean spirited, wrong, and self defeating. Jane and Sam may have merely been voting for Clinton as the lesser evil.
Joe and Sue, out of work or facing unemployment, living in a community that looks and feels like a bombed out remnant of war, lacking health care, and with kids who have little future, and heroin knocking at their door, vote Trump. Why can’t that be Joe and Sue thinking that anything is better than more of the same?
Trump being elected was a horrible result, but we should not exaggerate a defeat into a death knell. We should not assume our neighbors are our enemies. This society is, even now, with a right wing thug about to be president, and with parents having to tell their daughters and sons that a racist, sexist, bully is president, and with Trump poised to export humans like unwanted commodities and to roll back climate policies like stacking deck chairs on the Titanic, more left leaning and more eager for substantive change than any time in many decades. I am confident that is what we would all think, only more so, if Sanders had just won, or even Clinton, perhaps, yet either could have happened with only minor change in the mindset of a tiny percentage of voters. Nonetheless, sadly, Trump has the reins of society and is likely hoping to trample everything worthy.
So what happens next?
We could convince ourselves that all is lost. We could deny that Trump’s voters and especially the more than sufficient numbers of them who had earlier voted for Obama, were overwhelmingly mainly rebelling against being impoverished and denigrated. We could then look inward, fearful, and choose self protection and perpetual verbal rejection of half of society. Considerably less insularly, but no less suicidally, we could simply feel too depressed, deflated, and frustrated to transcend malaise and become sustainably active. Either way, however understandable these paths are, however righteous and fine the people traveling them may be, passively accepting Trump’s machinations would pave a path to hell.
Alternatively, we could mourn but also rally and fight against the twist of fate that predictable Democratic Party commitment to system preservation, plus media profit seeking, plus pundit confusion, plus misguided popular voting, plus some tampering too have unleashed. We could oppose Trump’s every, anti woman, anti black, anti Latino, anti Muslim, anti gay, and anti worker gesture and policy. Some will even claim this would lead us right toward fundamental change. No more Democrats, those optimists will say to confuse and coopt us. Hooray, now we can reject reaction and wind up with revolution.
In fact, however, if opposition to Trumpism takes its most likely, natural, and obvious form, its best result will be four years of Trump with many losses but not near as many losses as Trump unchallenged would impose. Then we would get Warren or some other Democrat beating Trump. Society would get back to where it should be now, highly conflicted but with the two opposed sides being side 1, Warren seeking modest important gains while preserving status quo structures, and side 2, movements seeking much deeper gains on the road to fundamental transformation. The price of having Clinton run against Trump rather than Sanders run against Trump would in that case have been our taking up a project that should have occurred now four years from now, with many interim losses and much interim suffering.
Is there a third road? I think there is. We can resist Trumpian reaction which means that much of our rhetoric, slogans, and battles will necessarily pinpoint immediate policies. It will scream no to going forward into the past. But, to travel a third path requires that we not only oppose Trump’s viciousness, vulgarity, and reactionary policies, but also offer positive program even well beyond what Sanders proposed. We will have to take a spontaneous project to prevent negatives and make it also seek positives.
If instead of option three, the tone and tenor of our resistance is only to to protect existing social programs which, had a few percent of voters acted differently, we would now be vigorously trying to transcend, then, after the battles unfold, our efforts will at most have gotten us back to where we were a year ago, only four years from now.
In contrast, if we infuse our resistance to Trump with clear positive values and compelling institutional aims for the future, then perhaps we can turn nightmare into potential. But it will not happen spontaneously just from outrage at Trump. Even now, just days along, look at the writing, the speaking, and the demonstrating, and you will see, I fear, that the natural tendency is to courageously fight reaction while setting aside seeking positive new gains. Without a very conscious effort to do more than ward off the worst, we will soon courageously clamor only to preserve social programs we had hoped to be transcending.
One last observation. To successfully block reaction, much less to unleash positive potentials, our efforts have got to not only combat racism and sexism but also speak with respect and sincerity to Trump’s voters, not as enemies, but as potential allies, not only about the ills of racism and sexism, but also about their plight and pain, and about why Trump has nothing to do with reducing much less eliminating it, as well as about what could turn it around.
The less effective alternative, which I hope no one will explicitly advocate, but which we need to also avoid backing into, is that we ourselves resist while assuming that half the country is lost forever and calling them all manner of names that impede their joining us. That way lies true disaster.
Democracy, by Leonard Cohen
It’s coming through a hole in the air
From those nights in Tiananmen Square
It’s coming from the feel
That this ain’t exactly real
Or it’s real, but it ain’t exactly there
From the wars against disorder
From the sirens night and day
From the fires of the homeless
From the ashes of the gay
Democracy is coming to the USA
It’s coming through a crack in the wall
On a visionary flood of alcohol
From the staggering account
Of the Sermon on the Mount
Which I don’t pretend to understand at all
It’s coming from the silence
On the dock of the bay,
From the brave, the bold, the battered
Heart of Chevrolet
Democracy is coming to the USA
It’s coming from the sorrow in the street
The holy places where the races meet
From the homicidal bitchin’
That goes down in every kitchen
To determine who will serve and who will eat
From the wells of disappointment
Where the women kneel to pray
For the grace of God in the desert here
And the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the USA
Sail on, sail on
Oh mighty ship of State
To the shores of need
Past the reefs of greed
Through the Squalls of hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on
It’s coming to America first
The cradle of the best and of the worst
It’s here they got the range
And the machinery for change
And it’s here they got the spiritual thirst
It’s here the family’s broken
And it’s here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way
Democracy is coming to the USA
It’s coming from the women and the men
Oh baby, we’ll be making love again
We’ll be going down so deep
The river’s going to weep,
And the mountain’s going to shout Amen
It’s coming like the tidal flood
Beneath the lunar sway
Imperial, mysterious
In amorous array
Democracy is coming to the USA
Sail on, sail on
O mighty ship of State
To the shores of need
Past the reefs of greed
Through the squalls of hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on
I’m sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can’t stand the scene
And I’m neither left or right
I’m just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags
As time cannot decay
I’m junk but I’m still holding up this little wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the USA
To the USA
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate
19 Comments
lished your reward basket industry, you tend to be, of program, faced along with numerous questions, doubts, and even options.One too, and a necessary one at that, is whether to be able to credit charge cards.
Whether you could have your business in a retail outlet or over the internet or blending both, bank plastic are standard these days.Of program, there are still some customers who prefer to pay employing cash or even debit but a lot of people have credit cards and make use of one these days.And, if you assume you do have enough traffic flow by just catering to the non-credit credit card community, you may well be right but you can also be converting off essentially high-valued users, and individuals who could provide you with repeat business.By not really accepting bank plastic, the phrase gets near too about your limitation due to that and it may turn a few would-be potential customers away.
On 1996 per se, credit card payments accounted for 88% on the $1.40 billion lished your reward basket industry, you tend to be, of program, faced along with numerous questions, doubts, and even options.One too, and a necessary one at that, is whether to be able to credit charge cards.
Whether you could have your business in a retail outlet or over the internet or blending both, bank plastic are standard these days.Of program, there are still some customers who prefer to pay employing cash or even debit but a lot of people have credit cards and make use of one these days.And, if you assume you do have enough traffic flow by just catering to the non-credit credit card community, you may well be right but you can also be converting off essentially high-valued users, and individuals who could provide you with repeat business.By not really accepting bank plastic, the phrase gets near too about your limitation due to that and it may turn a few would-be potential customers away.
On 1996 per se, credit card payments accounted for 88% on the $1.40 billion on the internet transaction revenue, according in order to Jupiter Communications, which is usually an electronic business research organisation in Ny.And, their forecast is that card payments will be the cause of over 50% involving revenue throughout payments within the next centuries.
As a result, accepting plastic cards these days is important.It aids you to attract further customers for your business and it does it again in a couple of ways:
1.By financing credibility with your business
It does not take common conception that simply reputable not to mention credible companies accept plastic cards.
three.By supplying a safe buying environment
All internet pages that accept charge card payments need encryption features plus they’re secured.Even further, when generating a purchase on the web via charge card, customers are liable to creditors for only the first $50 in that instance fraud.
Cautious aware though which the fees for accepting charge card payments on-line are higher than in situations when a physical card is present.This can be caused by the nature of Internet transactions:you don’t have customer to sign with the purchase nor can there be a physical card.Any such transaction-“Card Not Present” or “Mail Order/Telephone Order” purchase is listed as higher risk and for that reason has an higher price.But, in the long term, the higher fee is worthwhile it.It can lead to a larger customer base and one that will be more qualified with regard to the finances they are prepared to spend.This could eventually produce higher turnover for you personally.
You must just chew the bullet concerning incurring the actual charges to setup a merchant account to accept credit bank cards but it is better to run the whole gamut and build everything right to boot.So, just be sure to also start using a real-time authorization and processing service for example CyberCash.
Accept bank plastic and be counted in like a merchant throughout step with the times.
result, accepting plastic cards these days is important.It aids you to attract further customers for your business and it does it again in a couple of ways:
1.By financing credibility with your business
It does not take common conception that simply reputable not to mention credible companies accept plastic cards.
three.By supplying a safe buying environment
All internet pages that accept charge card payments need encryption features plus they’re secured.Even further, when generating a purchase on the web via charge card, customers are liable to creditorsresult, accepting plastic cards these days is important.It aids you to attract further customers for your business and it does it again in a couple of ways:
1.By financing credibility with your business
It does not take common conception that simply reputable not to mention credible companies accept plastic cards.
three.By supplying a safe buying environment
All internet pages that accept charge card payments need encryption features plus they’re secured.Even further, when generating a purchase on the web via charge card, customers are liable to creditors for only the first $50 in that instance fraud.
Cautious aware though which the fees for accepting charge card payments on-line are higher than in situations when a physical card is present.This can be caused by the nature of Internet transactions:you don’t have customer to sign with the purchase nor can there be a physical card.Any such transaction-“Card Not Present” or “Mail Order/Telephone Order” purchase is listed as higher risk and for that reason has an higher price.But, in the long term, the higher fee is worthwhile it.It can lead to a larger customer base and one that will be more qualified with regard to the finances they are prepared to spend.This could eventually produce higher turnover for you personally.
You must just chew the bullet concerning incurring the actual charges to setup a merchant account to accept credit bank cards but it is better to run the whole gamut and build everything right to boot.So, just be sure to also start using a real-time authorization and processing service for example CyberCash.
Accept bank plastic and be counted in like a merchant throughout step with the times.
Just wanted to say that I think this is a hugely useful and important contribution and I totally agree. I came looking to see your postelection reaction and am glad I did. You’ll see I was thinking along similar lines with what I just sent.
Hi Justin, thank you. It is the second post piece, actually, I think – and working on another. Trying…
In opposition to John, I remain convinced that fact-based, reasoned explanations about man-caused climate change are THE lever the left can use to pry open those cracks. Which is why I find it interesting they don’t get a mention in Michael’s piece. I believe this is the fatal hole in Trump’s dike.
Combating the worst effects of climate change requires precisely the radical re-envisioning we advocate and physics assures us it will be front and center in the public’s consciousness going forward. This means that rather than trying to mobilize and put out every Trump brushfire around every reactionary policy, the Left should focus with determination on this fatal flaw in his platform. Corporate elites, the US military and the majority of citizens believe the threat is real. Bernie had cross-over appeal with the issue. Why wouldn’t we exploit that?
‘Always give a rat a way out’
My Irish ‘Abuelo’ grandfather, fought & went on the run for his life, like many others, against the British in Ireland during our war of Independence. Then he experienced what it was like to fight & be fought by his own people in the civil war that followed the impossibly twisted divisive conflicts inherent in the ‘peace’ Treaty forced by the more powerful British Empire at the time.
He suffered prison & hunger strike for his beliefs & after that he used to advise my father & he has me, to ‘Always leave a Rat a way out’. That is certainly true of many of Trump’s misled supporters, who have hopefully just temporarily dis graced themselves & what progressive left strategy should be towards them & overcoming this election.
But for example, how do you oppose racism and come out to support its victims, without naming it and its supporters as racist?
The ‘dangerous disaster’ is the election of Trump and his clear outspoken mandate’s unfortunate reality. Trumps victory is a blow to the progress of all the world also, it is a generalised victory for intolerance, misplaced blame and reversal of human rights everywhere. It is a general victory for pricks by the new king of pricks. I say pricks because it is the blind leadership of urges and ego, not reason and social empathy for others.
Trump’s been elected to deport perhaps 11 million people who live their lives in USA. To open more prisons for the masses of people who will be newly termed criminals. To ‘Wall’ off the USA both legally and physically from the world. While also increasing the expansion of its already supreme gargantuan military around the world, to gleefully increase torture and killing and dealing with those who oppose.
Yes, Clinton was also into (the tradition of) funding more military power and use for ‘security’ like Trump and like Trump supported huge rich corporations and less regulation, but she made many commitments, after the social democratic Bernie campaign’s successes to gain his supporters, she could of been held to that to some degree. Trump has been elected to reverse with arrogance and full speed vigor.
I do believe this terrible and shocking election of a contemporary student of Hitler, can be an unavoidable alarm call and catalyst for people everywhere supporting change and recommitting to human empathic values. Many of Trumps temporary supporters and a great many who did not want to vote at all could hopefully be rallied by a better solution if effectively grown and manifested over next 4 years for the election that will be held in 2020 (or before.)
But opposing the newly elected mandate of commander in chief Trump, who’s Republican party has also won the control of senate and congress, who now has all the organs of state at his facility, the police, army and spy agencies who are now sworn to protect his mandate of division. Opposing this will necessitate an unfortunate and outspoken conflict against the nature of his elected goals and therefore conflict with the character of those who continue to support the reversals of resident human rights and identities of people in USA and around the world. There is no polite way of opposing such hatful policies but to name and shame them and with its victims stand against its implementations.
The celebrations for Obama’s election where not celebrations for a mandate of racism and xenophobic deportation and policing of whites. His was not a mandate of division and hate, thats why it could be openly celebrated at the time. The two victories are not either side of a mirror. I understand racism and xenophobes where always there already, but their clear election into open political reality and those policies continued supporters must me opposed, named and shamed. This unfortunately vital conflict should not be wantonly exaggerated or unnecessarily insulting in its opposition, it should seek to gain support from all possible. But opposition by clearly naming a problem is required and can not be avoided, for the sake of those it will harm. I believe hopefully many who supported Trumps platform in all the hype and breakdown of economy will turn away from what they have elected as it is implemented in reality. But that wont be helped if we pretend it is not a wrong and shameful vote and election against our common humanity.
And with hopeful thoughts for the future we must share, I also love and know by heart the song you typed out in full by the beautiful character of dearly departed poet for us all, Leonard Cohen.
All the best Michael!
Antonio,
Hi, I don’t much like the slogan because it starts by assuming you are dealing with rats, which, in fact, if you believe that, they will feel it and you will get nowhere, and also, very often, you will be quite wrong in the assumption – assuming we are talking about broad swaths of the population, that is.
I am NOT saying Trump voters are rats and give them a way out – I guess meaning a way to communicate – I am saying don’t assume they are rats, listen and hear, and then engage. Some may be diehard racist and sexist in servere ways, sure. But even then, if you are going to talk at all, far better to reason than condemn.
I also disagree that you cannot oppose racism and sexism, and classism too, without shaming and naming (even and often wrongly) the non elite purveyors. You want to shame educated powerful wealthy figures with transparently vile views and motives, okay, sometimes that is very valuable to do. But shaming the poor and weak, people living in communities taht have been ripped a part – well, that is doing work Trump would happily pay us to do, for him.
You can fight Trump by criticizing Trump, you can fight policies by criticizing policies, you can fight them even better, by proposing and fighting for better alternatives.
I think dealing with Trump in these regards isn’t much different than dealing with a President Clinton would have been except in the former case we are trying to ward off reaction and in the latter case we would have been trying to win positive gains (or course an immense difference). With clinton we would hopefully have said, look, you promised this and this, do it. You also have other adgenda items we don’t like. Don’t do those. Here is waht we do like, do these. And saying it all loudly, militantly, with coherent reasons aimed precisely at winning more advocates.
If you are saying to oppose mass deportations will irritate those who advocate them, sure. But that is okay. Then debate the issues, make the points, make the demands. But don’t say everyone on the other side is stupid or immoral. In fact, better to assume ignorance of certain facts, or different interpretations, etc.
Michael, I didnt mean Trump voters are rats for Gods sake! Its an expression about rats & their nature. That if you make a rat think it must fight where it would just as easily like to forget the confrontation it will slip away & you need not fight, thats the wisdom & it can apply to dealing with people to. I think my point was pretty clear and was not really disagreeing with your point and that was clear to. I’m wondering though why its so important after so many white people have voted for mass deportations and more prisons as some kind of ‘protest’ vote we are so worried first for not alienating them when their vote is pretty alienating for the proposed victims of Trumps agenda. Hopefully if Trump does try to deport millions of people, (who whatever the legal situation are in effect by natural lived right USA citizens) Then many in the immigration & other national services may become by their own human conscience refuse to carry out their orders when they become reality, hopefully & with fellow public pressure perhaps. I think the Republicans knew they had become unpopular & by treating Trump as outsider to them they helped him, its certainly gone well for them. To vote for your interests by supporting less rights for other races is immoral, I don’t see howt a voter for Trump could of believed him as been something new for their economic future. And if it was not the rascist cocktail & white supreme fantasy why didn’t poor blacks vote for him and a minority of latinos ect.? I think yes we should not alienate people but it seems the voters for Trumps out and out racist platform are been turned into noble people just looking for a better future. If I was black or latino in USA now I would feel alienated and hurt by that being the urgent primary reaction to the disaster of such a divisive bigoted and mandate becoming the president threatening uncertainty for the future over me, my family & my community, when thing where hard & discriminatory enough already. I heard the same noble poor protest vote idea being used by my politicians who want to make sure to please the new US administration for Irish interests. When you humour a bully the bully smiles and laughs to himself, he doesnt reflect.
On another note I spent the day listening to Leonard Cohen’s albums as I worked today he is good for the heart!
Thanks Michael, good point! I love ZNet, it is a true relief, unravelling the knotted confusions of consequence pulled tight by those who would divide us to conquer. Its good to see the amount of protest so many are making in USA in solidarity with trump’s preposed scapegoats.
Trump played to the existential fears that the USG and the parroting corporate media have planted in the minds of the U.S. population since the US/European invasion of the Soviet Union in 1918.
The international communist conspiracy followed now by the inchoate “War on Terror” is the underlying base upon which proto-fascists like Trump can pile fear of ISIS, Muslims in general, Mexican rapists, drug dealers, job-stealers , job losses in general to globalization and the myriad other appeals to people’s existential fears consistently used by the Trump campaign.
The strategy works because most of the country IS already terrified of existential threats both real and created and like Hitler and Mussolini (hyperbole?) the frightened run to the author of the created fears who simultaneously offers to battle these threats in the most brutal and effective ways by victimizing a subset of the society.
The fears are largely unfounded, invalid or not real but like religious beliefs, also founded on the fear of death , they cannot be overcome with the logic and fact of the most scholarly argument .
Once the electorate has been dumbed-down to not only not look for the truth, but to necessarily avoid it and reject it out of hand because it conflicts with their entire worldview they have created to deal with the created fears , it is relatively simple to maintain those fears by the daily tweaking they are given in the corporate media , the only source of info for a country that psychologically cannot handle the truth.
The truth presented to an electorate that has internalized all the fears based on lies and wild hyperbole over their collective lifetimes , appears to be impossible lies to them.
It is why , you cannot have a debate using historical fact, sound economics , the stuff of normal public debate and expect to change the minds of the fear-driven .
Fear trumps facts .
How can you teach the unteachable , reach the unreachable when they are too terrified to look for rational answers to those fears .
We are vastly outnumbered and cannot ever hope to match the propaganda machines arrayed against morality, logic, mutual aid .
IMO
John,
I think we have to agree to disagree. Very much. But I will ask you this. What is your goal in writing something that says there is no road foward. Not, why do you believe what you wrote, but why write it?
Don’t you hope you are wrong? And if you hope you are wrong, wouldn’t you want other people to pursue paths that might reveal that? And if you would want that, then why write something whose seeming purpose would be to convince them not to.
Michael,
Thank you for responding.
IMO, there is no way to counter the fear factor that drives people to irrational candidates and unworkable solutions to the things they are told to fear .
I am presenting the truth as I see it based on what I’ve learned of cognitive psychology’s Terror Management Theory .
I do not seek to discourage positive political and social interactions and would gladly accept that TMT’s explanation of why we cannot convince those with existential fears of the error of their way might be wrong but the science and research is valid on this point.
At least it seems to be correct and long personal experience trying to use fact as a weapon in many debates/arguments with the fearful have almost always been fruitless.
I am surprised that you have not experienced this seemingly irrational rejection of fact by our amygdala-driven opposition in your long tour of duty on the front lines.
It is my way to seek to be proven wrong in everything I have come to believe and in writing what I did I invite you or anyone not just to disagree with me but to point out where I am wrong factually.
Our big difference is that I believe that capitalism,: the source of the ills of the human race will kill itself by eliminating so many jobs through the globalization that has transpired over the past few decades and now through massive automation which will greatly accelerate once super-human AI comes on the scene as guaranteed by Moore’s Law-even with silicon-based chips that can certainly achieve the 1000 petaflop level at which the human brain operates . This by 2024 because Moore’s Law which is valid and has been for 30 or so years since it was acknowledged as a law and not a theory.
When I say it is not possible to convince the millions who live in terror , it does not give me comfort . It is sad but IMO it is true and truth is paramount.
What gives me the comfort that escapes you for reasons completely understandable ( I’ve had this discussion many, many times ) is that if we can survive for another 15-20 years, capitalism will kill itself by eliminating so much labor to increase and maintain profits that there will not be enough consumers and the government will be unable to support the masses of unemployed .
No paychecks, no consumers .
Unfortunately, you are not alone in not believing how fast this future will arrive, and self-driving cars should give you some idea of what’s coming but
many authors of books that delve into future technologies go into great detail explaining that grasping the exponential rate of technological advances is IMO almost as difficult a task as having Trumpers grasp that their fears are not based in fact .
If I’m wrong on this , so be it .
It is the truth as I see it and presenting it for consideration is all I seek to do.
I’m sorry if it is painful but sugarcoating it wouldn’t be honest .
As leftists we all know the brutal history of capitalism and imperialism and why things are as bad as they are for humankind .
My contention is that these cannot be overcome for a couple of reasons stated previously .
BUT….knowing the past and the grim nature of the present as we on the left all do but not seeing or not looking into that far better future is to miss the bigger picture .
I would urge you to read the book I sent to the office.
Agreed that we shall have to disagree but I sincerely thank you for your thoughts.
B
k
Much has been said about Trump appealing to blue-collar America. All I heard Clinton talk about was the middle-class. But 43% of Americans didn’t vote – who is speaking to and for them?
Not a huge fan of the Cohen. Used to like some stuff. But I must admit, reading Democracy without listening to that voice is refreshing, but nevertheless, disturbing in another way. Is it coming? Is it closer to arriving? And just for the USA? The sentiment is bang on however. Through the cracks. But why are they still just cracks and not caverns? And the Trumpocene may see some of these closed off, plastered over or filled with some poisonous gel that hardens quicker than the tempo of most Cohen songs and is almost impossible to remove. Cohen is dead and the golden age of democracy is still a flicker on the horizon, that you can just see if you squint. And I have heard a rumour that all squinters may be deported. If so, you’re all welcome down here, at Terra Nullius, the Antipodes, where nothing ever happens, I don’t even know who our great and glorious leader’s are, norcreally care, and where there actually is a hole in the air, letting shit through that’s a little less friendly than democracy. Fun times.
The Trumpocene…it’s kinda orange.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have put the lyrics…I clearly didn’t mean that as the substance.
I’m glad you included the lyrics. Just as progressive Christians understand that a Christian is always in a state of “becoming a Christian,” we can say that US democracy is a state of becoming democracy (so far). That’s the irony of Cohen’s words–people tend to say the USA is a democracy, but he reminds us that we’re only (maybe) getting there. And the most important line: “The cradle of the best and of the worst.” We all know about the worst. But the best–that’s the young people of the Civil Rights Movement, today symbolized by MLK, teaching the country and the world what real democracy looks like–inclusive, courageous, nonviolent. So we’ve come a long way…and the struggle never ends.
Yeah, I got that. Thy were cool. I didn’t feel like commenting on the rest. It was self explanatory.
Yes, I agree with Charles’ comment.
If we neglect the economic reasons for voting for Trump, and only focus on his sexist, racist appeal we build a wall against our our potential rust-belt allies. Trump likely won’t really help them, but they can join us in helping themselves and us.
Sound advice, well expressed.