Transformation: Trumps or our own?

I live in a very blue state and everyone I know has been in some stage of shock and mourning since Nov 8, 2016.    For those who say: "Why did this happen?" I think there is not one why, but many. As the leaked DNC emails make fairly clear the Democratic establishment worked actively against Bernie Sanders who was very close to Clinton by the end of the primary and if things had not been biased against him at the beginning of the race would have have been the Democratic nominee. Polls all showed him doing better against Trump than Clinton. I think the reasons for this are important to also understanding why Trump won. Clinton is a neo-liberal like her husband. When Trump would talk about how bad things are in this country Clinton would simply respond that this already is a great country. This to a large extend was a denial of all the people who have been hurt by the ascent of the 1% that started under her husband and greatly accelerated after the crash. When Trump would say NAFTA was a disaster that her husband created she would just defend it; she could not admit that it in fact has caused the loss of millions of American jobs. Sanders however was clear about both those things being problems and did not have any integrity scandals like the other two candidates, thus would have fared better.

Democrats in their terror of Trump and determination to get her elected also could not speak openly and honestly about the failures of the Democratic party. Up till the very end there were 9 to 10% undeclared/undecided voters. What we now know is that a lot of people who also poll as disagreeing with him on many issues, and even disliking him, went into the voting place and voted for him. They could not face a pollster and say "I am going to vote for a bigot and a misogynist" - many of them will not tell their families, but that is what they did. And they did it because things have been bad for the working class and now for the middle class, and they wanted to believe his simplistic claims that he would fix it all.

So we have the DNC manipulating the nomination towards the neo-liberal who cannot stand up well against the fascist who spent a year pumping fear and hatred which studies of fascism show create the environment in which scared people turn towards "strong"(dictatorial) leadership. And then there was the vote suppression which was wide spread and racially aimed (over 800 less polling places than 4 years ago - primarily removed from minority communities). If you have not read Greg Palast's article on how Republican's rigged the election I suggest you read this. http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/40246-focus-the-election-was-stolen-heres-how What is most telling in his article is how applying it to just the swing states could bring Trump a victory. Also in reflection, as a therapist, upon the huge amount of projection he did throughout the election I now find his statement "the election is rigged" to be quite the magicians slight of hand. There is indeed a reason why all those polls were wrong.

So that is 4 answers to why did this happen. It is however critical that people keep site of the fact that Hillary Clinton did win the popular vote (by close to 2 million votes). It is only the historic classism of our founding fathers who did not trust a popular vote by the overly emotional "rabble" that caused them to put the electoral college in place in the first place. (Good news I heard on NPR that there is a way to fix this that does not involve a constitutional amendment - impossible to pass under Republican control. An effort known as TheNational Popular Vote Interstate Compact is an agreement among several U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their respective electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the overall popular vote. Once states totaling 270 electoral votes join the compact--which only requires passing state laws-- then the next presidential election will be determined the the popular vote, not the Electoral College.
As of November 9, 2016, ten states and the District of Columbia have signed the compact, totaling 165 electoral votes. So, we are already over 60% of the way there. See here for more information.) But it is critical for us to remember that even with all the vote suppression and de-enrollment that the majority of voters did not want Trump, and to not think badly of our fellow citizen.  It is critical to remember this for the fight ahead, to remember that the things he is pushing are not what the majority of voters wanted. To remember when we go to fight that their are millions who are with us.

What does it mean? Well as is becoming increasingly clear with each cabinet pick he is almost picking the anti-thesis of what a post means in order to fill it, the climate denier to head the EPA, the drill baby drill person to fill the Sect of Interior, a belligerent person to be the Secretary of state, and a racist to be the chief strategist. So the details are not calming and the 100 day agenda and beyond is to tear down all progress on social justice and environmental issues that have happened since the 70's. So at minimum it means there are a lot of things to fight for.

 But more important still is the very real threat of fascism that this presidency represents. In a few days I will post a longer article about fascism, but for now I will simply say that there was a study done years ago based upon studying common factors in Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. The following is a list of the dozen traits they found common to them:
1. Exuberant Nationalism - use of patriotic symbols everywhere.
2. Enemies Identified - the nation cause if unified against enemies "the other".
3. Rights Disappear - as fear as heightened citizens exchange rights for "protection".
4. Secrecy Demanded - Heightened national security, government process more opaque and questioning of authority is discouraged completely.
5. Military Glorified - Military gets disproportionate share of resources - sharp warning to the citizenry as well as other nations.
6. Corporations Shielded - a segment of the business elite play a key role in the rise of a nationalist leader. The marriage of big money and violence is hallmark. At the same time labor unions are destroyed.
7. Corruption Unchecked - rampant cronyism that is unaccountable.
8. Media Controlled - media controlled by governments or big money. Lies repeated enough times become truth.
9. Rampant Sexism - great way to control half the population. Accompanied by homophobia.
10. Intellectual Bullying - disdain for intellectualism and science.
11. Militarized Police - Obsession with Crime and punishment. Police given virtually unlimited power to snoop on population.
12. Elections Stolen - there is rising public cynicism and distrust of the manipulated elections.
 So I will not comment in this post about this list, but make your own fearless inventory of how you see the situation.

So is everything lost?
NO.  There is a long history of populations rising up non-violently to throw off dictators.  Remember the following.  The Danish people  (including their King) wearing yellow stars to protect the Jews in the population, and later doing work strikes, etc.  The Solidarity movement in Poland throwing off communism, the "people power" Filipino movement that brought down Marcos, and the Singing Revolution of the Estonian people in the late 80's bring down their Soviet occupiers, or the "kitchenware" revolution in Iceland after the economic crash of 2008 where people banking pots and pans in the streets demanding a new election eventually won one.   If you do not know these stories I encourage you to start educating yourselves, because they include a variety of very creative tactics to overcome the fear and control of their current government and bring about a change.

An example of getting creative.  Trump wants to cancel US participation in the already inadequate agreements of the Paris 2015 COP Agreements.   Luckily it will take him 4 years to do that, but the more serious problem is if he does not pay the money the US agreed to pay to help the third world countries transition to lower GHG infrastructures.   This is not what most US citizen's want.   So let us take the power back into our hands.   While the amount owed is in the vicinity of 2 billion dollars....when divided by number of citizens....it actually is a very small amount per citizen.   I actually propose crowd funding it.  I know it sounds crazy, but if those who could doubled or multiplied by 10 their donation to make up for those who did not....it is within reach.   And it sends a very powerful message to the international community that common US citizen's do care about climate and it sends another powerful message to the Trump administration that we will not tolerate this climate denial.

Similarly I believe Faith Communities across America need to come together in Love your Neighbor, or a Love Trumps Hate campaign in which white churches partner with churches of color and Muslim mosques and Jewish synagogues to act as their allies and protectors. We are powerful when we stand together and when stand in our core beliefs.

What this is going to take is all concerned members of the public to take up an issue whether it is the protection of the environment, our civil liberties, union rights, internet neutrality, civil rights, etc and be actively engaged with protecting it.  In terms of climate change it was already debateable whether we had a few more years to divert catastrophe or if it was already too late.  But we certainly cannot afford any Trump roll back for both the US and the world.  So at this point the only way out is forward.  The death of both fascism and neo-liberalism would mean we would finally be free to put in place both the social justice as well as the climate policies that we, the majority have been longing for.    

One thing that is for certain is the US will be completely transformed in the next year.  It will either be transformed by Fascism or by a non-violent reclaiming of this country.  So remember we are the 99%.