In the aftermath of this election I am afraid of so many things.
I am afraid that my beloved country will move backwards and retreat from the vaunted American respect for minorities, immigrants, the poor and the disenfranchised.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]This election was not democracy in action; it was nascent fascism in action.[/pullquote]
I’m afraid that my country will betray its ideals and give religion a central place in a government whose founding principles included the separation of church and state.
I’m afraid that the environment will be ruined, business will run amok without regulation, and the economy will enter a severe recession or even depression.
And I’m afraid that my party, the Democratic party, will draw the wrong message from the election results.
I’ve been reading a lot about the election as a repudiation of the elites by blue collar workers. Democrats had become out of touch with the suffering of lower middle class white people, suffering that came from the same sources that powered the rise of the elites to their positions of influence and wealth. I don’t disagree with that … but I don’t believe that is why Donald Trump was elected over Hillary Clinton.
Sure, the Democrats had a flawed candidate. Hillary Clinton brought a lot of baggage into the race; she is reflexively distrusted by people who have marinated in 25 years of non-stop Republican hate and lies. And that’s before we add in the misogyny on the part of many voters … but I don’t believe that is why Donald Trump was elected over Hillary Clinton.
Sure, the Democrats had their problems including scandals with Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her replacement Donna Brazile… but I don’t believe that’s why Donald Trump was elected over Hillary Clinton.
If we blame Clinton’s loss on these factors I fear we have missed the central point about this election: only one candidate, Hillary Clinton, was running for President. Donald Trump, in contrast was running for Strongman.
Trump, a serial liar, philanderer, cheater, sexual predator and failed business man was running as a fascist and was elected precisely because he promised, as fascists always do, to make the trains run on time. He will do so, in the time honored tradition of fascists, by seizing control of government, exploiting it to enrich himself and his family, and diverting the masses by sanctioning hate against the traditionally despised.
This was an election like no other. Hillary Clinton didn’t merely face Donald Trump, she faced the combined efforts of Fox News, Breitbart, the unreasoning hatred of Republican lawmakers who have wasted millions of taxpayer dollars trying to smear her, the hacking of her campaign and the release of unflattering private emails, the technical and political might of the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and the political bias of the FBI director who violated protocol to make egregious insinuations that he later was forced to retract.
Those forces were determined to prevent her election by means legal or illegal and they succeeded.
They wanted to elect a demagogue so they could use him to enact an agenda that is both distinctly un-American and profoundly dangerous to American interests. What is that agenda? They, from the alt-right through Putin, want to create chaos and Donald Trump is undoubtedly the chaos candidate.
This was not just another election where two parties faced off against each other. This was a unique election where one party faced off against forces of both internal and external actors who seeks to take America from a shining city on a hill to a cesspool of racism, financial turmoil and diminished international power and influence.
Trying to make sense of this campaign by casting it as the elites against the blue collar workers is not only wrong, but it blinds us to the true forces at work. It’s like blaming the accession of Hitler in Germany on the fact that the other parties didn’t have compelling candidates. Hitler didn’t come to power because of what the opposition did; he came to power because of what he did to engineer his ascent by means legal and illegal.
Trump didn’t come to power because Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate. He has come to power because of what he and his erstwhile allies did, both legal and illegal, to engineer his victory.
And that doesn’t even take into account that the Republicans spent 8 years questioning the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency and refusing to act on his nominations and legislative priorities. The Republicans did it so they could discredit a Democratic president and keep him from helping the very people who voted for Trump. “The government is broken!” Trump voters cry and they’re right, but it was the Republicans who broke it, not the Democrats.
Trump voters claim they don’t want politics as usual; they’ve gotten their wish and I’m afraid they and the rest of us will pay dearly as a result.
We were manipulated into selecting the candidate of the KKK, the American Nazi party, and Vladimir Putin. We have elected evil; we have elected hate; we have elected dirty dealing.
So don’t tell me that Democrats could have won if we had only selected a more popular candidate. Who else but Hillary Clinton could have withstood the abuse, and the lies, and hacking of her campaign and the efforts of Vladimir Putin and still have remained standing, let alone get elected? No one.
So don’t tell me we need to heal or that we need to reach across the aisle or we need to listen to the blue collar workers.
So don’t tell me to calm down because it can’t be all that bad. When you elect an evil, hateful, double-dealing predator as Strongman, you are going to get evil and hate and double-dealing and violation of rights, and the enrichment of the Trump family and their cronies. We just have to hope against hope that we won’t get depression and war to go along with it.
And whatever you do, don’t tell me that we need to accept the results of this election because that’s how democracy works, because this election was NOT democracy in action, it was nascent fascism in action.
