Trump voters today told me that they voted for him because they have not seen positive change in their own lives. This is not something to dismiss out of hand. Racism and a lack of respect for the constitution are my greatest fears of Trump. But we who have good reason to fear Trump should nonetheless listen more to his supporters and assume less about them. This does not mean that my high school friend who wrote the following was wrong:
“This election did not change America. It revealed America.
“I am not saying every Trump voter voted for him because of his misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and anti-LGBTQ stances. I am saying that those things were not enough for them to NOT vote for him.
“And, that is the truth of America 2016.” -Stephen Houldsworth
Still, there are good reasons – well-voiced by Bernie Sanders – to listen to the cry from working class America of abandonment, loss, and hopelessness. FDR responded with bread and butter to those cries, and so should the progressives of today. How do we achieve this with a Republican government? We should start strategizing now. But continuing to dismiss all Trump voters as racist ignoramuses will not get us there. Some are. The bulk of them are not. Could that same bread and butter be an effective route to regaining the loyalty of ordinary non-college educated voters?
I want their priority to be purging their ranks of the racists, misogynists, and ani-gay bigots, but I will respect their right to have different priorities. Maybe, just maybe, if they come to believe that we genuinely respect them and want to work together to better our commonweal, they will come to see how important it is to marginalize those same bigots. Only then will the social future we thought we were so close to achieving finally come to the same nation that chose President Obama eight years ago to lead us out of the Great Recession.
It’s shameful that anyone has any seriousness about “moving to Canada”. “Oooh…Immigration Canada’s website is down (giggles).” You know? Because too many Americans suck. Okay, coward, you basked in the wonderfulness of a diverse family and great economy, but now that democracy needs people fighting for it, you want to leave? A fair-weather patriot.
Anyone who is threatening to move to Canada, go. Be their problem, and you can come whining back next time the Conservatives are elected there.
To the extent that my wife and I contemplate fleeing, it will not be because “too many Americans suck”. It will instead be because we fear what may happen to us if we stay. Were the refugees who fled East Berlin before the wall went up “fair weather patriots”?
When authorities start rounding up “illegals”, as promised by Mr. Trump multiple times — to the tune of TWELVE MILLION of them — how do you propose that we, a 64 year old man and 56 year old woman, “fight” for democracy? Shall I exercise my 2nd amendment rights and start collecting my arsenal of weapons and ammo?
What is your threshold for deciding whether a refugee is a “fair-weather patriot”? My wife is a legal immigrant. I am an outspoken liberal leftist with a relatively large footprint on the web. I don’t want to go anywhere.
What will YOU do when the authorities start rounding up those millions of “illegals”?
…are like European Conservatives who make many of our Dems look like right-wingers. I saw on Facebook the suggestion that progressives move to swing states.
I’d like to see what he actually tries to do now that he has to take being President seriously. BUT he needs to be watched like a hawk. A lot of people who voted for him seemed to think he didn’t actually mean all the things he said.
We wait, we watch, we’re ready to act. I refuse to say I’ll be obstructionist until I know exactly what I’m obstructing. Encourage people to be ready to support – however they can – the ACLU, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Conservation Law for Foundation, Organizations that support immigrants. I was speaking yesterday to a lawyer who does pro bono work for people seeking asylum, she said that it is burnout work and emotionally exhausting. Encourage other lawyers to do this pro bono work as well, and support them.
And most importantly, be prepared to stand up for people who are being bullied, whether or not you know them, and don’t laugh at racist, misogynist jokes. They are not funny under any circumstances.
My wife and I have had some great phone conversations in the last two days, some of our friends voted for Trump. My roommate claims he didn’t but was really excited to see him beat Hillary. So there’s some fence mending closer to home. We know these people aren’t racists, but they valued their own lives and priorities over the lives and priorities of people of color. Even those they are friends with, or married to (!) and that’s a problem. Having the awkward conversation and yes, the awkward confrontation when need be, is going to be vital.
And yes I am going to donate to those organizations when I can, and we are going to look for more volunteer opportunities in our community. It’s likely I’ll be moving back to Chicago for the next few months, so I’m looking forward to supporting and protecting my wife in person and working to help our community become truly united and committed to inclusion. There’s a lot of hard work to do but in not scared, I’m ready.
It is a hard sell to get people to value other people lives over their own.
In my view, the choice to value my own life and priorities over the lives and priorities of people of color IS racism. This is the fundamental difference that Christopher and I have always had. He includes an element of intention that I reject. I think sexism is the same.
I apply the “duck rule” — if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck, it IS a duck.
Fighting racism has always been a hard sell. That’s why so many of the leader and prophets who have done so have paid with their lives. Racism and sexism die hard.
…I DO at least try to value the lives of others of whatever background at least as much as mine. For me it’s fundamental to my Christian faith and Jesus’s admonition to love our neighbors (very broadly defined) as we love ourselves.
I think I know what you’re saying, but that’s a really clunky way to put it. If that’s not clunky and literally what you mean, that’s WAY too high a bar for racism.
It is only natural for people to put themselves ahead of others, regardless of the color of the others.
Here is the text I responded to:
That text doesn’t say “they valued their own lives priorities of others”.
It explicitly includes the phrase “… of people of color”.
I’m sorry, but that phrase makes it racist, natural or not.
I don’t mean to belabor this, but I think we (writ large) are pulling out the racist label too much. People who struggle always have to put themselves first, because no one else will.
SOME people who do that are racist. Most are not.
I can’t help but observe that the people who most loudly and often complain that “we are pulling out the racist label too much” are overwhelmingly white. I don’t hear that complaint so much from my black or Hispanic friends and neighbors.
I’m happy to discuss race, and I do think it’s A factor. But it’s not THE factor (and I know you didn’t say it was).
Basically … poverty sucks. For everyone who’s poor.
between trying to put yourself first, and trying to put others last.
I think a related dispute is “Black lives matter” versus “All lives matter”.
I like the following analogy offered up sometime in the last two weeks. A person walks into the doctor, and says “Doc, my elbow is just killing me. Can you do something about it?” The doctor proceeds to send the patient through a large battery of tests exercising their entire body, head to toe. The patient says “Doc, why are you putting me through all this? It’s my elbow that hurts.” The doctor responds “All joints matter”. If you want your elbow to stop hurting, isn’t it time to see a different doctor?
In this campaign, the demographic we’re talking about self-identifies as “white working-class men”. The demand they make is that society place their lives and priorities above the lives and priorities of people of color.
Donald Trump, his campaign, his supporters, and the party that nominated him have been LOUDLY doing just that. It is disingenuous to claim “all lives matter” or to say “it’s only natural to put themselves ahead of others”.
It is a demographic defined by race and gender, and one candidate and party pandered to that demographic by attacking and scapegoating those outside it.
You’re extrapolating there. Just saying.
This exchange, from last August, was about gender rather than color. The (implied) demand is the same (emphasis mine):
I see no way to read this comment as supportive of the legislation to end gender-based wage discrimination. The author is complaining because he and men like him will likely pay for ending such discrimination (confirming the reality that men have benefited from that discrimination for years).
In a zero-sum game (which this is), it is true that increased wages for women, caused by making gender-based wage discrimination illegal, will likely be paid for be decreased wages for men.
This male author objects to that.
QED.
…but I’m not at all convinced it has to be a zero-sum game.
The phenomenon this comment complained of — that women will receive increases before men — is a near certainty. That is, after all the point of the law.
The comment is cringe-worthy, that’s why I quoted it.
The nationwide bias against blacks is even more pronounced. In all likelihood, Rudy Giuliani will be our next Attorney General. I suggest that the mostly response of the Donald Trump administration to “Black Lives Matter” is imposition of a nationwide stop-and-frisk policy — that was, after all, Rudy Giuliani’s primary contribution to the black community of New York City. We know that stop-and-frisk didn’t reduce crime in NYC, and it won’t reduce crime nationally. That’s not it’s purpose.
The purpose of stop-and-frisk is to terrrorize blacks.
Then it doesn’t matter how big the pie is.
So last night over dinner with my former wife and daughter we all had a good cry over Hillary’s loss. ( Even though she won the popular vote. Damn the Electoral College.)
And Jen Migliore’s loss for State Representative.
Today, we are resolved to get back into the fight !
THE MAN IN THE ARENA by Teddy Roosevelt
Excerpt from the speech ” Citizenship In A Republic ” delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910.
” It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Now we move forward to campaign for our friend, Dan Benjamin, candidate for Wakefield Board of Selectmen in the April 25, 2017 election.
Onward with strength and honor !
Fred Rich LaRiccia