Dark Wave
John Oliver has a wonderful report on the Trump victory. He says -- absolutely rightly -- that realization of what has happened comes in waves. Then we get distracted by ordinary life for a while, then another wave of horror arrives.
A wave hit me this morning. I had a bad night's sleep and woke early. My defense against reality is (a) science fiction and (b) political analysis. If I try to understand, I am less frightened.
So this is my current theory about what will happen next.
(1) We may struggle through the next 2 to 4 years until the Democrats may come back into power, at least in part, and begin cleaning up the mess. But the Democrats need to change their strategy. Wall Street and identity politics is not a winning combination. We need a party that addresses the needs of the working class and lower middle class. A lot of working class is nonwhite, so we aren't neglecting PoC when we support working people.
(2) We may end up with a one party government, with the Republicans always in control. This would require voter suppression and the indifference of many Americans.
(3) We might end up with a fascist state. My bet would be something more like Italy or Spain than Germany. That's still very bad.
(4) We might end up like the Soviet Union, with the government breaking down and then the country itself breaking apart, while gangsters and party hacks stole everything not nailed down with the advice and help of American economists. Maybe Russian could send advisors over. The plus side is the USSR did not have a civil war, though parts of it have: the Ukraine, for example. The minus side is the death rate went way up and the population actually contracted. That's what happens when your country turns into a failed state overrun with predators.
I'm not even talking about nuclear war or global warming.
A wave hit me this morning. I had a bad night's sleep and woke early. My defense against reality is (a) science fiction and (b) political analysis. If I try to understand, I am less frightened.
So this is my current theory about what will happen next.
(1) We may struggle through the next 2 to 4 years until the Democrats may come back into power, at least in part, and begin cleaning up the mess. But the Democrats need to change their strategy. Wall Street and identity politics is not a winning combination. We need a party that addresses the needs of the working class and lower middle class. A lot of working class is nonwhite, so we aren't neglecting PoC when we support working people.
(2) We may end up with a one party government, with the Republicans always in control. This would require voter suppression and the indifference of many Americans.
(3) We might end up with a fascist state. My bet would be something more like Italy or Spain than Germany. That's still very bad.
(4) We might end up like the Soviet Union, with the government breaking down and then the country itself breaking apart, while gangsters and party hacks stole everything not nailed down with the advice and help of American economists. Maybe Russian could send advisors over. The plus side is the USSR did not have a civil war, though parts of it have: the Ukraine, for example. The minus side is the death rate went way up and the population actually contracted. That's what happens when your country turns into a failed state overrun with predators.
I'm not even talking about nuclear war or global warming.
posted by Eleanor at 10:11 AM
4 Comments:
One thing we know certainly: By the end of 4 years from January there will be no elephants left alive on the planet. Except -- perhaps -- in zoos.
Or rhinos.
Or very very very many other animals. Not to mention trees and many, many, many other things including rivers and oceans.
I think there is an irreconcilable conflict between the intentions of Trump & co. and the obligations of state and local politicians to protect their populations and lands. One way or another, I think we are on the brink of civil war and that the Trump family will run the country as a kleptocracy. Will you, for example, need to be staying in the new DC Trump hotel to get an audience with him? Etc. Things will be run to benefit him rather than the United States and this will result in financial disaster after a few years. If he lasts 8 years, he will be one of the richest men on the planet. He will maintain power by indulging the power fantasies of the movement that brought him to power. That is what the Trump brand is about.
Overhauling the Democratic party will not be adequate to fix this even if our democracy survives long enough to get to the next election. What needs to change is mass incarceration and the stripping of felons of their voting rights along with the widespread use of prison labor. We need to recognize this as a holdover from slavery which, as currently implemented, will continue to prevent the black population from having representation in proportion to the size of their population. Prison labor, widely used by local governments and school districts in my area, is permissible because of a loophole in the 13th amendment, the amendment that ended slavery.
Rearranging the Democrats without that is just wheel spinning.
We know how these things work. See Rafael Trujillo's Dominican Republic, of which all land and economic venues were wholly owned subsidiaries of himself and his family. People disappeared, were tortured, girls who caught his fancy kidnapped and then disposed of when no longer interested.
There was a reason Junot Díaz made one of his subjects in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao the constant drumbeat that the imagination of popular culture entertainments to create a truly evil ruler such as Sauron failed in comparison to the real world historic thing, of which Trujillo was only one. Julia Alvarez's novel In the Time of Butterflies does the same.
In the argument de jour -- should the Dems cooperate on things such as infrastructure funding, maternity leave, etc. -- discussed with others elsewhere, there is this:
Quote from myself --
"Benefits started to flow toward certain segments of the population while at first slowly and slightly but systematically denied to those not perceived as true Germans? Thereby marginalizing the Jewish, Roma, gay, communist, etc. populations more and more extremely.
People who are objecting to the very idea of the Dems cooperating are STILL too afraid to say that name [Hitler's] and the other names.
The people getting the bennies then don't give a damn, close their eyes, to what's happening to the others in the dark, after midnight, on the secret trains.
The slave traders even in the cities such as Baltimore, D.C., Richmond and Charleston, tended to march their coffles to the wharfs for further shipment to the deep south or the endless tramp on the roads -- after midnight, with shackles muffled with rags."
They've got the guns, huge numbers of guns. You cannot negotiate with them, any more than there was negotiation with the fireeaters of slavocracy's secessionists.
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