I remember the Democratic Party

                I grew up in a trade unionist family in a union town.  It used to be a Democratic stronghold.  Genesee County went heavily for Trump in the last election.  When I went to visit my father before the election, Trump signs were everywhere – big Trump signs. 

                In the shambles of the election, I’m left contemplating how the party of my father and my neighbors became the enemy of the people who live there now.  Flint and Genesee County have been heading down this road for a long time.  GM has pretty much abandoned “vehicle city’ for cheaper wages.  Only the truck plant on Bishop and Van Slyke still cranks out vehicles.  ‘Buick City’  is an empty field.  The rest is filled with the blight of a city with no real hope for a future.  The racism and segregation that were always there have a meaner tone to them now that the economic miracle is over.  The school systems were never meant to produce anything but shop rats, and they can’t even do that anymore. They voted for a man who wouldn’t even let them on his property, let alone understand or share their suffering.

                There a plenty of ways to explain the election.  Maybe it was as simple as the fact that the director of the KGB – I mean FBI – intervened in an unprecedented way.  Maybe the crony-capitalism and wall street coziness finally caught up with the Clintons.  There was certainly a heavy dose of misogyny and rejection of Obama in the mix.  It doesn’t really matter now.  All that really matters now is to understand where we are and what we have to do next.  We are at the end of politics as we’ve known them, at the end of a liberal democracy that dominated world affairs.  We find ourselves in the last, gallant (recognize irony when you see it) rise of the Confederacy.   We are in the last, desperate days of a white, male dominated narrative about the world that is determined to resist what is next.  We are at the last failed attempt by the Baby Boomers to make a better world.

                I suppose it was naïve to think we would ever reach the end of that narrative without at least one last plunge into darkness.  It seems inevitable that Trump and the insane clown posse (apologies to the band) that he surrounds himself with would try one last time to restore order to world that was slipping out of their control and understanding.  That world still awaits, but like all new orders it will have to fought for.  The answer to Trump is not policy or programs – the answer to Trump is a movement.  The polite political discourse of the past will not unseat what the Republican party has become, and it will not stop what they intend to do next.   Only a movement will do that.  The Republicans have chosen their path.  They haven’t really been interested in democracy for a long time.  They want power.  Power to make other people stop making them uncomfortable .  Power to stop the creation of a democracy that is inclusive and fair.  Power to make the most brutal form of capitalism triumph over democracy.  They haven’t been trying to ‘govern’ for a while – no compromise, no Supreme Court nominee.  Now they are ready to rule.

                We need to be ready for that fight, and if, like me, you’re a  Baby Boomer, you need to understand it is not really your fight.  There are things we can do, and there are things we know that will help, but this fight belongs to the Millennials (insert your favorite joke about them living in their parent’s basement here).   We had our shot.  It this is going to have the force and the energy it is going to take to turn the page on the failed narrative of white, male privilege, then they have to do it.  The movement has to be younger, more feminist, and more diverse in every conceivable way.  They have to find their own leaders, write their own progressive demands and be ready to fight for them.  If they are resolute and believe in their cause they will prevail.  They have to – the arch of history and age is on their side. But nothing is promised or guaranteed .  As Raymond Williams said in The Long Revolution, the next step can never just be assumed.

                I am optimistic.  I think the stakes are clear and there are too many of us to ever go back.  That doesn’t mean it will be easy or pretty.  But if the narrative is going to change, then let it be with a bang and not a whimper.