Trump at 100
Well,
we’ve reached the end of 100 days of Trump, and I think we can say we’ve
learned four things for sure:
1.
He’s a liar
2.
He’s stupid
3.
He’s a big, fat, compulsive liar
4.
He’s really f****** stupid.
That said: what do we do now?
While
we might fantasize about impeachment, I don’t think it is going to happen. Even if it did, does the notion of Pence,
Ryan, and McConnell running the government make you sleep any better? I think we have to face the reality that our
democracy is broken. The courts and the
intelligence agencies are holding up for now, but it’s only been a 100 days and
they already look battered. If we’re
going to rebuild our democratic institutions, we have to be ready to take some
radical steps.
One of
the things I think we have to work to replace is the two- party system. One of the parties has decided that democracy
isn’t as important as power and has done everything in their power to destroy
the process of democracy – which is really all democracy ever is. The Republicans have destroyed the Supreme
Court’s non-political cover, turned the Senate into the House and declared war
on everything that isn’t old, white, male and rich. If the Republicans no longer believe in the
system, then an oppositional party is futile.
Between gerrymandering districts and restricting the right to vote, they
can continue this tyranny of the minority over the majority for the foreseeable
future – which is no way to run a democracy.
The
Democrats aren’t much better. The
Clinton dynasty turned earnest Yale educated hippies into Wall Street/Davos
class millionaires, selling influence wherever they could find a buyer. Even the sainted Big O is now raking in
$400.000 speaker fees after never prosecuting even one of the bankers who took
us to the brink of disaster. It’s easy
to blame Citizens United for all the evils of money in politics, but the fact
is that our fixation on two parties all but makes it inevitable that money will
dominate. Poor Bernie could never
compete with the forces that big party politics always has lurking in the
shadows.
Rather
than pinning our hopes on another compromise candidate in 2020, isn’t it time
to recognize that most of us aren’t really represented by this system. The Democratic elites will pick one their own
when the time comes. We will be regaled
with stories about how they lead can drives for a girl scout troop made up of
Syrian refugees who swam across the ocean to freedom – meanwhile, they’ll be
selling us down the river in the board rooms of America. Democrats talk about new generations of
candidates, but they will never come as long as they have to be Ivy League grads.
If
we’re going to usher in a new era of democracy we need new democratic
institutions. We need a multi-party
system that will allow the real issues people care about to be articulated and
acted upon, and an environment that allows the organic leaders of those
movements to rise to leadership. BLM
shouldn’t have to hope that the Democrats ‘get it.’ LGBTQ causes shouldn’t have to go to the back
of the line while we litigate the ‘real’ issues of the day. Women’s issues should have their own
platform. One big mush of a party fails
everyone. We need a vigorous
debate. We will agree on some things and
disagree about others. We will form
different coalitions over different issues.
It will be messy, but it will be democratic – it will have a process.
100
days in things look pretty bleak. But
Trump is merely the worst person a flawed system could produce. In some fundamental ways, he isn’t that
different – he’s just the sad clown at the end of the parade.
I think the recent French elections have shown us that even in a more healthy democracy with multiple parties vying for presidency, so long as (as you so clearly highlighted) the game is largely controlled by big established parties with entrenched power we will always be sidelined, the mass of people that is. France after a long embattled election was left with The Cookie (Macron) of the socialist democratic party and La pen of the National Front Party. But much like our recent elections the people of France were only left choosing between the neofacist/nationalist equivilant of our Trump (if we only add more nationalism and eat more fated goose liver all our nations problems will be resolved) and the neolibral corporatist democrat...basically the equivalent of Hillary.
ReplyDeleteI believe in fact it is the the Neolibralists that can be blamed more so than even the Republicans for the horrible shape this world is in today. It is their agenda that has ever more finacialized the global economy, enslaved entire nations in debt (and their people along with it) and propelled all the creation of wealth to the very top of the pyramid. I am ever more convinced that the actions of our government are even more nefarious than one could stomach or believe. What were once considered flaky conspiracy theories are ever more being acknowledge as reality with the proliferation of the internet and non-corporate media, wikileaks etc. Quite literally we are ruled by over lords that are the epitome of misanthropic and psychopathic. What limit is there to greed and the love of money and power in these times by the ruling elight? It is disgusting.
I think that so much of our discussions about these vary issues are mere tweaks and augmentations that wont ultimately address the core issues. I think that the history of social revolution shows that various societies over the centuries have changed this and that, passing laws new decrees, what have you...until there is the realization that no amount of tweaking the system will address the major issues facing societies, that it isn't until the masses fully realized this and completely dismantled the system in its entirety that real revolutionary change happened; from Slavery to Feudalism for example, or Feudalism to Capitalism for that matter, from slavery to wage slave...these were fundamental changes to a system. I believe at its core what our civilization will have to confront, or we will watch our ecology and survival as a species on this planet come to an end, is the system of Capitalism. No amount of tweaking this or that is going to stave off doom under this system. Carl Marx argued that the reason egalitarianism was never fully established is because democracy was not ever implemented at the work place. That the corporate capitalist structure was never properly dismantled and shrugged off, this top down hierarchical tyranny that all major corporations are structured under. A hand full of executives and board members making the decisions for the many with little to no say from the actual mass of working people who produce their profits and products.
I think that all the various struggles need to fiercely debate and vie for prominence among each other but ultimately come to the conclusion that it is challenging this system and our relation to the means of production that is the banner we all must fight under. In essence our future depends on fighting for a more ethical economy and system of production and distribution of wealth.