Perspective
We are not as bad as we could be in terms of our basic needs. While people in many places, past and present, did not and do not have clean water, easy access to public education, health care, homes, clothing, vaccines, banks, museums, parks, electricity, internet access, that is not the case for a majority of us. This is not Haiti, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, North Korea, or any other number of countries who have massive problems. We have problems, but they are fixable and we can survive this. We still have state and local governments that control much of our lives. And there have been some amazing victories in this election. Arizona’s Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio lost. Marijuana initiatives for legalization and medicinal use won. California got huge victories: more money for schools, kept high taxes for the wealthy, mandated officials to mount legal cases to repeal Citizens United, repealed the death penalty, put price limits on prescription drugs, strengthened gun control, expands bi-lingual education, and more! Go California! Also, the Democrats picked up a few seats in the House of Representatives, which gives us momentum for the 2018 mid-term elections.
We survived an ego-maniacal, misogynist Lyndon Johnson, a law and order obsessed Nixon, and an hawkish idiot (Bush). We pushed back against these presidents when we didn’t like them and sometimes it worked. We need to push. And pushing can work, especially when there are so many problems. Consider this – Hillary Clinton would have had a lot of problems to fix. And now Donald Trump has to deal with that. I was really thinking Clinton would do a poor job and only be a one-term president, but can that same logic apply to Trump? I mean, he and his people have no idea how to fix these problems since they helped to create it. He is surrounded by establishment politicians whose policies helped get us into these messes (Newt, Christie, Guliani). Do we really think they are going to tax cut their way into helping people who voted for Trump? That won’t work. So now Trump is stuck with the problems of our infrastructure, ISIS, terrorism, gun violence, segregated schools, student-debt, trade deficits and national debt, health care costs, urban police brutality, contaminated drinking water, prison overcrowding, and anything else that he thinks is terrible. We can watch this idiot try to fix things and fail, because he has no idea what he’s doing, and all his people don’t have any new ideas on how to fix this.
But I’m still really mad.
Anger
I don’t want to be filled with rage, but I am mad. Everytime I’ve been in a rage and done something, it’s been too impulsive and thoughtless, so I need to find a way to redirect my rage into motivation and passion for action. But I need to process my anger first.
I’m mad at Democrats. There are huge problems in poor, white, rural and post-industrial areas of this country, and Democrats had majorities in Congress to help it. Did they? No. Instead of throwing all their passion and weight into the stimulus package, they went for health care, which now seems like a mistake. The stimulus did not do enough for enough people. And then, in 2010, the Democrats lost their majorities because their voter turnout sucks. This is partially because of our election laws that keep people from registering, from staying on the rolls, and from voting, which all hurt Democrats more than Republicans. But an equal problem is that Democrats don’t create policies or at least SOUND like they want policies (see Bernie Sanders) that get non-voters to go out, register, and actually vote. They haven’t inspired them (see Bernie Sanders). Imagine if our dismal 50% or lower voter turnout among groups who already vote democrat were to vote. When young people and people of color don’t come out to vote, it hurts Democrats more than Republicans. How can the party not see this and want to fix it? How is this so hard? Why aren’t you messaging this well enough? Be passionate, be principled, and don’t run to the center!
I didn’t donate to Hillary Clinton because money wasn’t her problem. And since she lost, it confirms my belief that people knew who she was, so she didn't need money for outreach. Sanders actually needed money to get his message out, but it was powerful; Clinton’s message was weak. We should have seen this coming. We all knew she was a weak candidate, but many of us ignored it once Sanders lost the primary. And she’s not weak because of the lefty reasons why I think she’s weak. The Iraq War vote, Libya intervention, Drone Program, and Patriot Act were not reasons why she lost. Those barely made it into the discussion. It’s the fact that she hasn’t been able to sell her policies well since many of them don’t make sense to people who don’t understand nuance. Trade deals? Strong American military? There are pros to these, but people on the left and right can’t see them if you don’t teach them. There’s a winning argument to be made for trade deals (you like cheap tropical fruit and coffee? You like things made with rare earth metals? You like being able to get a job because your company can easily export goods to new markets and have revenue for hiring? Then you’ll like trade deals). There’s a winning argument to be made for a robust American military (we should be using it for humanitarian aid more than air strikes and ground invasions, plus our military is a bulwark against other militaries doing worse). There’s a winning argument to be more for the minimum wage increasing, but how on earth have the democrats not made a better pitch for this? If you’re hurt by our economy, more minimum wage is a direct way that one simple law could improve your life. If the federal minimum wage was raised by 2 dollars, full-time workers would have 80 more dollars a week. After taxes, it’s more like 55. This is really helpful for most Americans, and it’s an easy sell. How have they not done this?
I’m so mad at the Republicans. I’m mad that they can’t see all the negative results of this. Trump starts a trade war and suddenly we have fewer raw materials for our manufacturing, so prices for goods goes up and we have inflation plus a massive trade deficit. What happens when the ACA is repealed and suddenly insurance companies go back to raising prices and kicking people off their insurance and now we have the same problems we did in 2006? What do you do then? What happens when you do the same funding cuts for the SEC, FEMA, OSHA, the FDA, and all the other regulatory agencies that led to our horrible infrastructure, workplace safety, disaster preparedness, and housing crash? What do you do then? Your policies made you lose in 2008 and now you’re going back to that? What happens when Trump starts violating 4th amendment rights by searching people’s homes and cars for undocumented immigrants? We get huge lawsuits against the government AND the cheap labor that our agriculture, construction, and service industries rely on decreases. What do you do when people don’t want to fill those jobs unless they get paid minimum wage? And then it causes inflation because prices increase. None of this will help the rural or post-industrial cities who voted for you. The manufacturing jobs aren’t coming back when it makes financial sense to make your product in a country with a minimum wage 10% of what it is in America. How on earth are these guys still peddling the same non-starter policy ideas? I'm so mad at these guys! I've been mad since 2000! It's all been downhill since "fuzzy math" with the party ideology, why haven't they changed?
But this anger doesn’t get me anywhere unless I channel it into something positive. So let’s think about the future.
Hope and Action
Look, there are a lot of reasons to not freak the fuck out. First of all, Trump’s policies can affect a lot of people, but so can the lawyers who sue his administration. Let’s start with some checks and balances - if he tries to implement his campaign promises about searching homes to find immigrants to deport, he’s violating the 4th and 5th amendments. If he tries to ban Muslims, or limit journalists, or shut down protests, he’s violating the 1st and 5th amendments. (see this ACLU article for more detailed explanations). He cannot get Supreme Court nominees through the Senate without the Republicans eliminating the filibuster. He cannot build his stupid wall without violating property rights of people who own land on the border. He cannot use the military for more than 60 days without authorization from Congress.
If he tries to do anything illegal or unconstitutional, this can galvanize the left. In the past hour, I’ve made a recurring monthly donation of $10 to the ACLU, NRDC, Planned Parenthood, Lambda Legal, and the NAACP. All these lobbying, litigation, and activist groups can go on the attack and be vigilant in helping to prevent illegal and unconstitutional policies. There are legal battles to start. And there are ways we can all help prevent people’s rights from being trampled on. We can still push for community policing, state minimum wage increases, expansion of medical marijuana, state income tax increases on the wealthy to fund infrastructure projects – we can do things on our local and state levels.
And there remains the possibility that Trump will actually try to do infrastructure spending like he promised. It would be weird, but imagine Trump wanting a big infrastructure bill and Republicans don’t. So Democrats approach him with one and he supports it and gets some Republicans to support it. Maybe he will try to renegotiate a trade deal and realize he can’t, so he just doesn’t. Maybe he’ll try to get his stupid wall bill through Congress and realize he can’t because lawyers take him to court over the eminent domain claims. Maybe he won’t do anything about LGBTQ rights because he doesn’t care. Maybe he will actually try to close tax loopholes and get that passed so we increase revenue. Maybe he won’t actually try to back out of NATO. Maybe he’ll realize things are more complicated than they really are. Maybe we can hold him to some of his more reasonable claims during the election like Congressional term limits, borrowing money to finance infrastructure, or rescheduling marijuana as a Schedule II drug and expanding access to medical marijuana.
And let’s remember – most of our current problems were caused by policies that happened long before Bush or Trump - the military-industrial complex, war on drugs, Reagan tax cuts, Military Cooperation with Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies Act, the 1994 Crime Bill, the 1996 Welfare Reform Bill, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Commodities and Futures Modernization Act – all this helped create the badness we experienced from 2001-2009 and the problems that the Obama Administration could not change. So the damage that we are looking at right now was not caused by Trump, and as much as he might do, we can fix it.
I need to remember what it was like under Bush. We fought. We protested. We sued. We expanded our satire. We woke up with the "what can I do to undermine this idiot's agenda today" attitude. We learned. We fact-checked (The Daily Show and Al Franken merged fact-checking with comedy). We empowered new media outlets (MSNBC, Media Matters). We created new activism. We did all the things that helped steer the conversation into better waters. And that’s democracy. It’s constant work. Being a citizen means maybe we need to choose fewer TV shows to watch, spend less time posting meaningless or superficial posts on social media that just distract us, and spend less time arguing over things that don’t matter like pop culture and sports. Maybe we should engage more with politics. We need to look inward and figure out how to do more. We need to volunteer to go to other states and register people to vote AND convince them WHY government matters. Barack Obama did a great job explaining why we have government in this interview with Bill Maher. I want to bring that message to people. I want to help spread the truth. We are all light. We are all love. And let us use our light and our love to spread citizenship and civic duty to those who don’t vote. Be the change you want to see in the world. I love you all, and I will help you in this struggle. Let's get to it.