When the American Revolution came to an end after the siege of Yorktown, legend has it that General Cornwallis ordered his band to play an old English ballad called “The world turned upside down” as his army came out in surrender to George Washington. For me and more than half this country, that is the feeling that greeted us on waking Wednesday morning. All that we knew, expected and hoped for had been dashed.
We were disappointed, confused, hurt and angry. Yes, very, very angry.
And then the recriminations began...
Well, I am not looking to blame Berners, or Jill Stein fans, or Clinton supporters, or millennials, or African-Americans, or Latinos, or women, or...
I DO blame all the news networks that gave Trump billions of dollars in free coverage and played softball with him when he was obviously lying. But in the end it was the misogynists, racists, homophobes, xenophobes, dominionists, Klansmen, Birchers, skinheads, and all the stupid haters that voted for Trump because they think he can actually create the pseudo-1950’s he promised. Oh, and those who will profit from them.
The deplorables have now given the Executive Branch to a man that knows only derision, scorn and hate. He will chose a cabinet from the most greedy, unscrupulous and incompetent people in the country. He will have a Senate at his beck and call. He will have the House groveling at his feet and soon a Supreme Court ready to turn back progress.
Donald Trump has made his agenda clear, regardless of whether each of the items is even doable or not and I see no reason to doubt he (as in his new cabal) will try to follow through:
- He will gut Obamacare.
- He will override Roe v Wade.
- He will roll back LGBT rights.
- He will show no respect for the disabled.
- He will increase deportations, if not every single one at least as many as physically possible.
- He will limit individual rights.
- He will disrespect veterans.
- He will attack freedom of speech.
- He will attack freedom of the press.
- He will continue to militarize the police.
- He will dismantle environmental protections and disregard climate change.
- He will solidify the NRA stranglehold.
- He will destroy trade agreements.
- He will de-value military alliances.
- He will embolden enemies.
- He will complete the work Ike warned us about, allowing the military industrial complex unlimited purview.
- He will allow nuclear proliferation.
In short, Trump and his henchmen will do everything they can to roll back the progress of the last hundred years.
And our reaction is to turn on each other? To try and fix blame on other progressives, liberals and plain old sane people because we disagreed on how we should stop him before the election?
We don’t have time for a fruitless attempt to point fingers at the very people who must be our comrades and allies in the coming struggle to keep this nation from destroying itself and the rest of the world.
Instead our energy needs to go in to creating the necessary strategy. And that brings us to the question... what now?
Finding that answer is not something we can do alone. Or just Berners, or Greens, or any of our splinter groups... It is going to take ALL of us, acting as a united front. So how about we start right now by promising the end to the internecine fighting. To accept that that the person who may have voted differently than you also had the best interests of this nation at heart. That there are many ways to go forward and many potential leaders. That progress is not so narrowly defined. That we must focus on commonalities instead of what are miniscule differences. That the goals at the moment are very broadly defined and easily accepted if we can all just get past the stupid bullshit and look at that Berner or Green or socialist or liberal and say: we are in this together and that makes us brothers and sisters in the struggle to come.
Now let’s gird ourselves, bring our talents and capabilities to the fore and work together to minimize the damage and plan for the battles that are surely ahead of us.
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