Andrew – Yes,
The Partisan is a beautiful song. My choice of LC song felt relevant not so much to the recent events themselves, but to the discussion about how one should best react to these events: the topic of this thread in other words. The lyric
‘There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn’t’ could summarise the discussion in a nutshell.
My feeling, from across the pond and for what it’s worth, is that Trump is an obnoxious bully driven by pathological narcissism and utterly unfit to be president. He’s uninformed, irrational, misogynistic and a proven liar. I don’t think he’s a fascist; that would credit his unpleasantness with too much ideological purity. I think he’s an insecure, power hungry opportunist who wants to show he can be ‘the best’ at whatever he turns his hand to, including politics, and he decided the way to do this was to appeal to the ugliest, basest form of scapegoating and populism. And goodness, it worked. Somewhere in his dark heart a part of him is probably as surprised as anyone.
But. He was democratically elected. Unlike the protests against the Vietnam war which form the context of Wilbur’s poem, it was the
people who made this decision, not the government.
Of course those who didn’t vote for him are angry; the fact this dangerous fool is going to be your president is a fact that would be funny if it weren’t terrifying. It makes the writing of dystopian satire redundant. But rather than labelling those who did vote for him as racist bigots (I know people here aren’t doing that but many on the left are prone to that knee-jerk response) Democrats/the left/liberals in general should be asking not ‘why he won’, but why they lost. After all, many Obama voters must, statistically, have turned to Trump, so charges of simple racism won’t wash.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/08/politi...ire/index.html
I don’t blame people for protesting, for ‘us v them’ anger and waving ‘not my president’ banners. But when that subsides, then what? Basically, the left needs to get its act together. And as The Democratic Party is the only viable, government-ready representative of the left in the US then they have to give people something passionate and inspiring to believe in, and deliver it in a way that emphasises (forgive me) ‘hope not hate’. But that means
everyone: including people without college degrees, old white guys with slightly old fashioned attitudes to race and gender, people who are scared of Islamic fundamentalism and want a leader who isn’t shy about even using that phrase, people in communities whose industries have been decimated. Imperfect people, in other words, who just voted for Donald Trump. The Democrats chose Clinton over Sanders, it clearly thought the status quo was going to walk this one. It was wrong, wasn’t it?
So – Yes, protest, have an angry moment, exercise your right to dissent. Then calm down, regroup, and start knocking on doors. What’s the alternative?