Should someone who voted for Trump in 2016 be reading this you may wish to stop. You more than likely have not read anything except anti Hillary Facebook posts shared from The Federalist Papers, Townhall, Reddit, Breitbart, crazy right wing emails, Tweets and billboards in who knows how long. You most likely have disdain for any news other than Fox. You may claim that you vary your news sources and consider yourself well informed but think...are you? You know that you can't even think about CNN without cringing. It is difficult to understand why when you are faced with facts you discount them. You live in an echo chamber and you are to blame for what could be the end of our democratic system. Are you a bigot? Are you ignorant? Are you a fool? Are you a hypocrite? What are you? If you are a woman are you absolutely out of your mind? Do you have a secret desire to have your pussy grabbed by a man? What is it? I have tried to understand but I cannot. If you have had it rough because of the economy do you really think that this maniacal, autocratic madman is going to care about you. He has bilked millions, to use his hyperbole, of people like you. He sees you as nothing more than a vote. Don't belief it? You will. Four Goldman Sachs henchmen who contributed to the economic collapse and may have been responsible for your misfortune and they will be in this President's cabinet making policy. Do you own stock? Look at the stocks that are going up...big Pharma, banking, energy, any industry that will benefit from deregulation. Think that's a good thing?
This is an outcome that is not like any other. It is not a mandate for Trump, he did not win the popular vote even though he has inferred that he has. His electoral margin is the most narrow since 1976.
Monday, December 12, 2016
Sunday, December 11, 2016
Weary of recipies, kitties, & babies...
The handwriting was on the wall but I did not see it. During the last week of the 2016 election the signs (literally & figuratively) were there but I was just puzzled by them and walked into Tuesday with complete surety that a woman was going to be President. You see, I had been weaned on the Hofstadter/Schlesinger view of our past, honed by the views of Doris Kearns Goodwin, Halberstam, Theodore White, Robert Caro and validated by Woodward-Bernstein, Dan Rather, David Broder, Seymore Hersh, and Charles Kuralt. The commonality was that the United States was on a trajectory of progressive reform. There would be roadblocks along the way but the movement would recover and continue toward political, economic, and social equity. My idealism crashed November 8, 2016 around 6:00 PM when MSNBC began reporting exit poll results...white women with college degrees were voting for Trump! The End. What? Brick wall
This journey to 2016 for me really started on the freezing cold, bright, beautiful day in January 2009 when Barak Hussein Obama was inaugurated President of the United States. My husband and I stood close to the podium to witness the first Black President take the Oath filled with hope. We were sure our country was going to move in a direction that would bring healthcare reform, rules that would correct the abuses of financial institutions, progressive Supreme Court appointments, i.e, reasonable progressive changes. The over the top partisan bickering would subside. We did not know that just down the street a meeting of the Republican leadership was taking place. They were laying out an agenda to thwart anything and everything that the new President would attempt. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-republicans-plan-for-the-new-president/ and https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/26/democrats-gop-plot-obstruct-obama. There are numerous sources regarding this meeting. You can search for yourself if you do not like these). For eight years the plan to obstruct was implemented. After the Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress it was relentless. The uber conservatives who came to Washington especially after their dramatic gains in 2010, were reactionary and outrageous; no compromise, inciting racial fears, stoking the evangelical pro birth fervor, advancing their anti gay, anti intellectual social agenda. Obama's attempt to bring about healthcare reform was ravaged by the Republicans and resulted in flawed legislation with unintended consequences. Economic reforms were weakened and ignored. Judicial appointments left in the lurch. The "Republican Sound Machine" magnified the message with innuendo, falsehood, hate, fear. Even the death of Osama bin Laden was played down, marginalized, and doubted by the purveyors of the message from the Right. The myth of the liberal media was magnified to the point that any information coming from any outlet other than Fox, Limbaugh and company, or Breitbart was rejected. Memes and fabricated "news" became the truth. Actual news, real political and historical knowledge was rejected. Mad as hell
Amid the conservative hubris why were Congressional Democrats not forcefully standing their ground? Frustration with the Party of FDR, JFK, and LBJ grew and added to the 2014 failure to hold on to Senate seats (North Carolina for example with the defeat of Kay Hagan) and make gains in the House. It just got worse and out of the abyss came Donald Trump
By the 2012 Election I was hardened by the egregious behavior of not only the right wing politicians but from the sideline as Donald Trump was hawking the absurd claim that the President of the United States was not born in the United States and was not an American. This smacked of racism but was recognized as truth by a large number of Americans. I saw this as nothing other than naked bigotry and was puzzled by Trump's foray into the political arena.
Obama won
After the 2012 election It became clear that Hillary Clinton was most likely going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party in 2016. To prepare, the Republican leadership began an unrelenting campaign to discredit Clinton on every front. By the time the 2016 campaign materialized the Right had convinced a large number of Americans that she was a criminal. The groundwork was laid to defeat her. Worried
Out of the underbelly of society emerged a vile and angry man known to most as a reality TV star famous for demeaning people. The purveyor of the birther myth. A "playboy", twice divorced, an adulterer with a lurid past who grotesquely flaunted his dubious wealth. Donald Trump was dismissed by the mainstream press, liberals, many establishment conservatives, and me. He was seen as an outlier by the Republican Party leadership and they felt safe with their growing list of pasty white, pro birth, Christian, basically boring men. Meanwhile the White middle class in the Rust Belt was really pissed off, a mass of fake stories were making the rounds on social media, but few on the left noticed. Me either
A free press is essential to a free society PERIOD Somehow the "press" in this country became more entertainment than information. I cannot recall any significant QUESTIONING of anyone being interviewed to explain what they meant when outrageous claims were made about the President. How exactly is he violating, destroying, ignoring the Constitution? Never asked, never answered. This continued as Hillary Clinton became a criminal who should be thrown in jail...what specifically should she be put in jail for would have been a good question. Frustrated
I have always thought I had a pretty good handle on the political mood of the country. I was sure Trump would go nowhere. There was no way sane people would support him. The Republican Party would certainly reject such an upstart. But the groundwork had been laid for the 2016 upheaval going back to the post WWII period when the national Democratic Party began to show signs of questioning segregation. By 1964 and certainly 1968 and into the 1970's Republicans especially Richard Nixon and Lee Atwater (an excellent article is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy) perfected the Southern Strategy and into the Republican Party came the southern Democrats who refused to acknowledge the end of the Civil War. By the 1990's the Democrats were rid of this element, they had wrapped themselves in the Republican Party. The evangelicals had jumped on board in 1980 when they were convinced that the GOP was going to rid the country of abortion, bring prayer back into schools, make sure marriage remained sacred (except when they wanted a divorce).
Televangelists, the moral majority, talk radio, the systematic organization of the Republican Party (from the school board to the town board, to county commissioner, to state legislator), repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, Fox News, the Internet, the percolating John Birch Society, the Tea Party, all coalesced on social media to render the status quo defunct by 2014. It was ignored by those who assumed they understood.
The Progressive wing of the Democratic Party was fired up, mad and ready for the "corporate" types to step aside by 2014, and out of this came Bernie Sanders. This movement was attractive but I felt it was not realistic. I had always felt Bernie was interesting but President? Maybe not. I still do not think he would have defeated Trump but the left wing is locked and loaded. 2018 will be exciting if we are still here.
The pundits who were sure you could not win without the ground game now look stupid, those of us who were sure the American public could not be ignorant enough to vote for a lying, genital grabbing, windbag now look naive. Many find that they cannot accept the outcome of 2016 but no one is doing anything.
This journey to 2016 for me really started on the freezing cold, bright, beautiful day in January 2009 when Barak Hussein Obama was inaugurated President of the United States. My husband and I stood close to the podium to witness the first Black President take the Oath filled with hope. We were sure our country was going to move in a direction that would bring healthcare reform, rules that would correct the abuses of financial institutions, progressive Supreme Court appointments, i.e, reasonable progressive changes. The over the top partisan bickering would subside. We did not know that just down the street a meeting of the Republican leadership was taking place. They were laying out an agenda to thwart anything and everything that the new President would attempt. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-republicans-plan-for-the-new-president/ and https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/26/democrats-gop-plot-obstruct-obama. There are numerous sources regarding this meeting. You can search for yourself if you do not like these). For eight years the plan to obstruct was implemented. After the Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress it was relentless. The uber conservatives who came to Washington especially after their dramatic gains in 2010, were reactionary and outrageous; no compromise, inciting racial fears, stoking the evangelical pro birth fervor, advancing their anti gay, anti intellectual social agenda. Obama's attempt to bring about healthcare reform was ravaged by the Republicans and resulted in flawed legislation with unintended consequences. Economic reforms were weakened and ignored. Judicial appointments left in the lurch. The "Republican Sound Machine" magnified the message with innuendo, falsehood, hate, fear. Even the death of Osama bin Laden was played down, marginalized, and doubted by the purveyors of the message from the Right. The myth of the liberal media was magnified to the point that any information coming from any outlet other than Fox, Limbaugh and company, or Breitbart was rejected. Memes and fabricated "news" became the truth. Actual news, real political and historical knowledge was rejected. Mad as hell
Amid the conservative hubris why were Congressional Democrats not forcefully standing their ground? Frustration with the Party of FDR, JFK, and LBJ grew and added to the 2014 failure to hold on to Senate seats (North Carolina for example with the defeat of Kay Hagan) and make gains in the House. It just got worse and out of the abyss came Donald Trump
By the 2012 Election I was hardened by the egregious behavior of not only the right wing politicians but from the sideline as Donald Trump was hawking the absurd claim that the President of the United States was not born in the United States and was not an American. This smacked of racism but was recognized as truth by a large number of Americans. I saw this as nothing other than naked bigotry and was puzzled by Trump's foray into the political arena.
Obama won
After the 2012 election It became clear that Hillary Clinton was most likely going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party in 2016. To prepare, the Republican leadership began an unrelenting campaign to discredit Clinton on every front. By the time the 2016 campaign materialized the Right had convinced a large number of Americans that she was a criminal. The groundwork was laid to defeat her. Worried
Out of the underbelly of society emerged a vile and angry man known to most as a reality TV star famous for demeaning people. The purveyor of the birther myth. A "playboy", twice divorced, an adulterer with a lurid past who grotesquely flaunted his dubious wealth. Donald Trump was dismissed by the mainstream press, liberals, many establishment conservatives, and me. He was seen as an outlier by the Republican Party leadership and they felt safe with their growing list of pasty white, pro birth, Christian, basically boring men. Meanwhile the White middle class in the Rust Belt was really pissed off, a mass of fake stories were making the rounds on social media, but few on the left noticed. Me either
A free press is essential to a free society PERIOD Somehow the "press" in this country became more entertainment than information. I cannot recall any significant QUESTIONING of anyone being interviewed to explain what they meant when outrageous claims were made about the President. How exactly is he violating, destroying, ignoring the Constitution? Never asked, never answered. This continued as Hillary Clinton became a criminal who should be thrown in jail...what specifically should she be put in jail for would have been a good question. Frustrated
I have always thought I had a pretty good handle on the political mood of the country. I was sure Trump would go nowhere. There was no way sane people would support him. The Republican Party would certainly reject such an upstart. But the groundwork had been laid for the 2016 upheaval going back to the post WWII period when the national Democratic Party began to show signs of questioning segregation. By 1964 and certainly 1968 and into the 1970's Republicans especially Richard Nixon and Lee Atwater (an excellent article is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy) perfected the Southern Strategy and into the Republican Party came the southern Democrats who refused to acknowledge the end of the Civil War. By the 1990's the Democrats were rid of this element, they had wrapped themselves in the Republican Party. The evangelicals had jumped on board in 1980 when they were convinced that the GOP was going to rid the country of abortion, bring prayer back into schools, make sure marriage remained sacred (except when they wanted a divorce).
Televangelists, the moral majority, talk radio, the systematic organization of the Republican Party (from the school board to the town board, to county commissioner, to state legislator), repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, Fox News, the Internet, the percolating John Birch Society, the Tea Party, all coalesced on social media to render the status quo defunct by 2014. It was ignored by those who assumed they understood.
The Progressive wing of the Democratic Party was fired up, mad and ready for the "corporate" types to step aside by 2014, and out of this came Bernie Sanders. This movement was attractive but I felt it was not realistic. I had always felt Bernie was interesting but President? Maybe not. I still do not think he would have defeated Trump but the left wing is locked and loaded. 2018 will be exciting if we are still here.
The pundits who were sure you could not win without the ground game now look stupid, those of us who were sure the American public could not be ignorant enough to vote for a lying, genital grabbing, windbag now look naive. Many find that they cannot accept the outcome of 2016 but no one is doing anything.
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