Moving Forward

I begin with reflection. Before arguing what to do next, I must first reflect on what has already transpired, no matter how painful and disturbing that may be.

A confession

I have experienced clinical depression before. Real medical depression that descended upon me out of the blue like a matte glass tomb insulating me from the world.

If you have not had this experience allow me to describe what it felt like for me.

The first change was a sense of distance from the world around me. Smells didn’t smell, tastes didn’t taste, funny little things gradually weren’t funny at all. Everything was dull and heavy.

Then there were the physical sensations. An anxious pit in my stomach like that dreaded feeling on the Sunday night after a long vacation as a kid. Only deeper and grittier and more uncomfortable.

There was a loss of coordination and dexterity. Simple tasks made hard.

And sadness. Always sadness. About nothing and for no reason. But real and crippling sadness. My chest felt constricted and heavy all the time. Like that split second feeling right before you burst into tears, only suspended over weeks and months.

My cheeks and mouth were weighed down by gravity into a permanent grimace. My eyes were dull, glassy and lifeless.

And mentally it was only the feeling of hopelessness. Because every perception was filtered through the lens of my illness, there was no apparent way out. No hope. (Even though in reality there was.)

This was years ago now, and there was plenty of hope all around me. Although I was too sick and too insensitive to see it, I had an amazing support structure from my family, particularly my wife.

I sought professional help. I went on a med. And slowly the ice thawed and the old me emerged from the neurological cocoon. Almost as good as new. Perhaps better?

Flashback.

And though this was years ago, I can remember precisely how being depressed felt now, because I felt that way again for the first time on Nov 9th night when it dawned on me that the unthinkable had happened. That Trump had won.

It wasn’t depression but a nasty cocktail of despair, fear, anger and anxiety which formed a damned accurate facsimile of major depression for a day or two.

America had voted to elect a would-be fascist. A narcissist with no shame. An admitted (and corroborated) sexual predator, and a long term con man/snake oil salesman who had sold his gullible voters a phony bill of goods by pushing their dark little buttons of racism, xenophobia, and sexism.

It was not simply an emotional reaction to losing an election, as when Bush beat Gore and Kerry, it was also a realization that the probability of really dark things happening to our country had suddenly become much more likely.

I do not really believe in intrinsic good and evil. I don’t believe that the Germans of Nazi Germany, or the Turks or Rwandans or Serbs or who committed genocide before and after them were special in any way at all, though they were all accomplices to unspeakable and unforgivable acts of evil.

I believe that this horrible tendency for infinite cruelty lies within all of us. None of us are immune.

Sure, we Americans are protected by our relative wealth, our constitution, our rule of law, and our societal norms. These are all blessings.

But people are above all social animals, who are all too easily manipulated by mass movements, and propaganda, and charismatic leaders. And in the end everything is open to interpretation. Even the bill of rights.

And with Trump’s unique appeal, and his complete lack of shame and lack of fidelity to the truth, fascism just became that much more probable right here, right now.

How probable? I don’t honestly know. But I am confident that the best that we can hope for as a nation for the next 4 years is corruption, bluster, and incompetence. Maybe a bit of deficit spending to temporarily boost the economy.

The worst? There are no limits. It is all on the table, with a narcissistic leader such as Trump. A complete loss of personal Liberties? Check. Cruel victimization of minority groups? Check. Needless war?  Check?

What I do know is that we must all start working our hardest to make sure that we do everything in our power to put a check on the possibility of real darkness, and work hard to undo the damage that Trump will likely try to inflict.

But before we get there, what the hell happened?

Autopsy

Here are the facts.

Donald Trump won the election.

Donald Trump will likely end up with 306 electoral votes compared to 232 for Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton received far more popular votes than Donald Trump (she has an unprecidented lead (for an electoral loser) of nearly 2.6 million votes at the time of this writing.

Trump is now our president elect.

How it happened

According to exit polls, in addition to losing the national popular vote by over 2.5 million votes Trump also lost women, every race other than whites, and voters with a college education or higher.

So how did Trump win? He inspired an impressive increase in turnout among his base of non college educated white voters and a there was a small under-performance of Clinton’s  base of diverse urban voters.

Despite an increasingly diverse electorate in the country as a whole, Clinton was less successful than Obama in turning out Latino and African-American voters.

Overall relative turnout was flat to down when compared to 2012 despite a larger population.

The demographics that really pushed Trump to win were college educated white men, and non-college educated white men and women.

But I think it is safe to say that none of that would’ve mattered had core Democratic voters turned out as they did in 2008 and 2012.

There are many reasons why Clinton may have failed to turn out her coalition (poor political persuasion, the negative campaign effect, the Comey intervention, Wikileaks, unbalanced press coverage, etc.) but i believe it is undeniable that if she had simply turned out her coalition, as Obama did twice, she would’ve won. And it wouldn’t have been particularly close.

Why it happened

A dominant story-line in the aftermath of the election is that Trump won because of the economic anxiety, and the anti-elitism of the working class.

I don’t buy it.

Although it is clear that Trump’s chief appeal was that he represented himself as a crowbar to be thrown through the windshield of the establishment, it is worth noting that his appeal was not all that convincing to the working class as a whole.

Why do I say this?

According to exit polls Trump lost those with incomes under $50,000 a year by nine points.

He lost those with incomes under $30,000 a year by 11 points.

He lost nonwhite non-college graduates by 55 points.

There was of course one economically challenged group that he did do very well with.

He won with white non-college educated voters by 39%.

Now why would that be?

It is tough to argue that poor white voters have more “economic insecurity” then poor non-white voters. So why did poor non white voters not want to throw a metaphorical crowbar through the windshield of the establishment?

Could it have something to do with the fact that Trump was caught on tape bragging about sexually assaulting women?

Or that he referred to Mexican immigrants as “criminals and rapists?”

Or that he implied that a Muslim gold star mother did not speak about her son’s death because she was not allowed to as a Muslim woman?

Or that he explicitly said that a Mexican American judge was unable to do his job because of his Mexican heritage?

Or that he employed a self proclaimed “alt right” propagandist as his campaign CEO, and was literally endorsed by the KKK?

Isn’t it fairly clear that Trump’s unique appeal to non-college educated white voters was his implicit racism?

If not, to what is one to attribute this disparity of voter preference among white and  non white working class voters?

NB: There is plenty of research supporting this hypothesis that white racial resentment predicted Trump support too.

As an example this article found that racial resentment was as strong a predictor of Trump support as Republican Party ID. (Not true of Romney/McCain supporters.

(It also cites another study which found that racist google searches were one of the strongest predictors of Trump support.)

Why am I angry?

In short, the explicit racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, and and scapegoating nationalism, of Trump’s campaign is why I am angry at Trump voters.

I certainly do not believe that all Trump voters are explicitly racist, but I do believe that each and every Trump voter, at a minimum, saw that that Trump’s campaign was explicitly racist, misogynist, and Xenophobic. It was a campaign straight out of a fascist’s handbook. And at a minimum every single Trump voter saw that Trump had actively and intentionally insulted every demographic other than white men. And then each and every one of his voters decided that frank racism was not disqualifying for the job of president.

In my view, they were simply wrong.

Why anger is not constructive.

But anger at Trump’s voters will get me nowhere. So I’m trying to get beyond my anger and to focus on my next concrete steps. As much as I childishly want to (and do) vent my anger, it would certainly be more strategic for me to choose to be constructive instead.

I know better than to think that I will get anywhere by convincing Trump voters that they were condoning racism by voting for Trump. People don’t respond well to that sort of thing. That would be counterproductive.

Going forward I must choose not to blame Trump voters for Trump’s election, but to blame myself instead.

I did not do enough to get out the voters who share my values of inclusion and fairness.

If the Democrats had simply done as well as in the previous two elections at turning out sympathetic voters, Trump would’ve lost in a landslide.

More to the point, the country is only getting more diverse, and more urban. Embracing diversity and turning away from racist impulses is not only ethically right, it is strategically correct.

So that must be one place where we focus our energy going forward.

So where do we go from here?

There are two goals that I believe we must have pursue for the next four years.

1. Protect our republic from the real and present danger of fascism, scapegoating, minority victimization, eroded civil liberties, and the loss of cultural norms/rule of law.

And

2. Work to minimize the damage of Trump’s presidency by both working tirelessly against him politically, and making sure that he never wins again.

So what concrete things can do we do next?

1. We can put pressure on our elected representatives to act as a consistent and fierce roadblock to Trump’s agenda.

To start with,

Call your both of our Senators (find their phone number here) and ask them to actively oppose any Supreme Court appointments until Obama’s appointee Merrick Garland is seated on the Supreme Court. Tell them that you support a filibuster if necessary.

Demand that your senators oppose Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. He was not confirmed as a federal Judge by a republican senate because of his history of racism and voter suppression. He would surely not defend minority voting rights or criminal justice reform.

Call them the next day and demand that they oppose Scott Pruitt, a vicious climate change denier, to head the EPA.  This is the ultimate fox guarding the hen house scenario.

Demand that your elected representative look into Trump’s business conflicts of interest, and the potential for corruption caused by his decision to not place his company in a blind trust.

Demand too, that they pursue a thorough investigation into the Russian interference with our election.

Most of all tell your representatives that we will continue to support them as long as they stand in firm opposition to Trump’s unmandated fringe right agenda, and any attempts of  his to abuse power.

Obstruction by any means necessary is what we want from our representatives.

Now is not the time for squishy, apologetic progressivism.

2. We can give our money to good causes.

Now is the time to give as much as we can afford to civil society organizations like the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the NAACP, and the anti-defamation league. These organizations are the foot soldiers in the battle against government abuse and racial victimization.

Planned parenthood will surely come under attack under this unified Republican government, so if women’s health/reproductive rights are a priority for you, as they are to me, please give time or money to them too.

3. We can get more involved politically. (This is really important.)

If you live in Louisiana, call up your local DNC office and volunteer to get out the vote for current candidate Foster Campbell. Winning that race in the Deep South would send an important message to the Republicans that they have an active opposition and should not overstep.  Even if we don’t win, it will set the stage for future wins on GOP turf.

If you don’t live in Louisiana, you can first give money to Foster Campbell’s campaign, then see if there is a contested House of Representatives race near you in 2018 and volunteer to turnout voters for that.

You can call your state representatives and advocate for a vote by mail system, (as we have in Oregon) which has been shown to increase voter turnout.

You can tell your state reps that you support the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact which would effectively give the presidential race to the popular vote winner.

4. You can support good journalism.

Buy a subscription to a real newspaper like The New York Times and the Washington Post (or both) and your local newspaper. The best guard against corruption is a free press.

5. You can protest.

Although I did not participate in protesting the democratic collection of Donald Trump, peaceful protest is going to be a very valuable tool for us going forward.  The counter balanced to authoritarianism is the peaceful expression of free speech at the drop of a hat. Over the next 4 years it will be absolutely crucial that we take to the streets to shine a light on Trump’s inevitable over steps.  A Muslim Registry?  Take to the streets.  Repeal of healthcare coverage for low-income Americans?  Take to the streets. Trump pulls us out of global climate change agreements?  Take to the streets.

6. You can not give up.

Make no mistake, the next four years will be a test for all of us. They will be draining and dispiriting and depressing.

We must not become lazy or cynical. We must not look away and distract ourselves with escapism. Such laziness plays directly into Trump’s hands, (as did our laziness in not getting out the vote in the first place.)

We must patiently chip away at his legitimacy and in so doing take away his power to hurt our fellow Americans, and our political system as a whole.

The above list is merely a starting point. Please add to it with further ideas on how we can actively resist Trumpism.

I will happily amend the article to include your ideas.

What I am sure of is that we must start working together to build a solution to Trump right now.