Can Democracy Withstand the Trump Administration Onslaught?

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Democracy. In the West we take it for granted that once established, the power of its values and laws intrinsically protect society from corrupt governments forming and stripping people of their rights. The Donald Trump administration has proven us wrong.

Value systems have always collided. In the West the ugly stuff was protected by legislation and social mores that gave power and freedom of expression to racists, sexists, bigots, homophobes, xenophobes, cultural persecutors, and deprived the targets of a platform if not the right to express their frustration, anger, hurt and outrage and work towards gaining equality. Gradually, though, the underdog in every sector of society has gained power. Those who were open to enlightenment embraced the concept of human rights, and legislated to protect them.

But you can't legislate what people think, what they want, what they read. Laws can't control the racism and bigotry that lurks under the surface, building momentum, lying in wait for an authority figure to grant permission to come out into the open, be vented and acted upon.

Spiteful, mean-spirited, greedy for power, panting for the right to be cruel without facing punishment and consequence.

You can't openly legislate for how those who need protection choose to vote, but you can introduce laws that make it difficult or impossible for them to even get to the polling stations. You can gerrymander districts so that those who can vote to protect decent human values don't, effectively, have a voice. You can use the written media, TV, radio stations, the church, to manipulate minds that are already leaning that way anyway, distorting truth until it's unrecognizable. Exploiting fear of change, fear of dark skins, fear of the other.

You can target those who don't have resources, who, if they could, would vote for representatives whose aim is to enfranchise everybody, create a fair society where equality and equal opportunity are the main principles of every branch of government.

In a so-called free society, even in the strongest democracies, much of the principle of do unto others has to be left to the conscience of the individual. It's constantly evolving for many, as it should. If that many isn't the majority, or the minority gets the power, society has a problem. In the West we're used to seeing corrupt leaders in  countries with no functioning democracy. We're accustomed to watching them destroy economies, commit genocide, imprison, torture and murder opposition to the government, prohibit freedom of speech.

We've believed that America was above that. It had long been the leader of the free world. Free and fair elections, freedom of speech, protection of the press, the importance of equality at least valued by one major political party which had an equal shot at gaining the power to improve society at all levels.

But now? Freedom of the press is under threat, hate crimes are on the rise alarmingly. Truth, equality and equal opportunity are not valued by the government, nor are a clean environment or international co-operation. Greed and destruction prevail in every sector of the administration, out-picturing the mind of its dysfunctional, mentally unstable leader. As for elections, was 2016 free and fair? How is possible that a man who lost the popular vote by close to 3 million votes—more than any president in history—could become president? The point is made ad nauseam that Russian interference did not affect the actual vote tally. That's not accurate; it affected the minds of far left and far right voters very successfully. It's not hard evidence, but lack of evidence doesn't equate in reality to absence of truth.

Liberals tend to believe that the search for enlightenment in every aspect of life is innate to the human race, or at least to the vast majority, that do unto others makes sense to most of us and dictates how we relate to each other.

   

But in our everyday lives, why then are reality shows that thrive on humiliation,  emotional and physical punishment so popular? What about Mad Men? It depicted the sexism, feminism, homophobia, antisemitism and racism of 1960's America. Yet it was widely acclaimed as being the greatest TV show ever. Did the majority watch to be outraged and celebrate that we've moved on? I doubt it. Was it Roman-type lust for watching Christians being thrown to the lions and torn apart? Possibly. Most likely, in the light of the 2016 election result, it was a hankering after an era where social conscience was a dinosaur.

Now a vulgarian who epitomizes that dinosaur is president of what was once unquestioningly the most powerful democracy on the planet.

The biggest mistake we make in the West is believing that democracy automatically delivers what's best for everybody. It doesn't. It doesn't even deliver what's best for the majority, when the voting system has been so eroded that a racist, bigot, con artist, arch manipulator, sexual abuser, ignoramus and compulsive liar can win an election on a minority vote, with the assistance of a foreign power whose primary objective is to undermine western democracies.

The words the American people are bandied about a lot by the current Administration. Which American people would that be? Those who support the government and the President are in the minority. Donald Trump has exploited the fears and lusts of his base and successfully controlled the narrative for them. There's no doubt in reality that he is an abuser who uses whoever he can, tossing them aside like so much detritus when they no longer serve him. Yet they mindlessly endorse his abusive behaviour, his dysfunction as a president, when the policies he pushes threaten their own lives. They believe anything he says, even when he directly contradicts himself. Blind loyalty to an abuser? It's a kind of variation on Stockholm Syndrome.

The liberal press and Democratic politicians have striven valiantly to keep truth alive and democracy functioning, but in the face of Trump's monumental lies and his determination to thwart democracy, everybody is exhausted. 

For democracy to function as a force for good in society, truth must be valued. When it's under siege and the minority has power, it spells trouble. It always has. It always will. Ultimately it seems to be true, looking at the big picture, that good triumphs over evil. That's not much consolation to the lives that are destroyed in the process. It's no consolation to the Muslim, Jewish, Latino or African American children who are targeted at school, with the upsurge in hate crimes since Donald Trump's campaigning. Whose lives will never be the same again. It's no consolation to the parents who can't protect them.

It'll be no consolation to any of us if the values that keep society intact are eroded beyond recognition and democracy rendered impotent in the country that is supposed to be leading the free world. 

Goodbye to Dignity in the White House

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President Obama & the First Lady at the 2016 CBC Foundation Awards Dinner

President Obama & First Lady Michelle Obama at CBC Foundation Awards Dinner

It's a daunting prospect, four long years without an American president and first lady who have been a joy in every way and a constant reminder of the true nature of integrity, dignity, compassion, understanding, courage, sanity, coherence, brilliance of mind.

First Lady Michelle Obama spoke to OprahWinfrey in June this year about the next generation of women. When Oprah asked what single piece of advice she could give to young women, Michelle Obama's response, and she included young men, was that "We can never be complacent... The work always continues…We have seen in recent times how quickly things get taken away from us if we aren't vigilant."

Indeed. And that was in June. From then on the nightmare has just gotten darker and darker, as every decent human value has been assaulted by Trump and his cohorts.

Do we even know how to be vigilant enough anymore? Did we ever? Conservatives are very good at vigilance because they're often driven by anger and fear, which are the most powerful motivators to action. Liberals aren't so good at the kind of vigilance that's necessary to stop sociopaths from getting into power. Too often they try to see the best in everybody, which is good as an overarching philosophy, but not if it blinds you to the reality of what people's anger and fear will drive them to. And it's not much of a motivator. Let's all try to get along. If somebody is abusing your child, do you try to get along with them?

Don't sweat the small stuff. People say it a lot, but the small stuff is the early warning signal, it's the hairline crack. Small cracks never go away, they always widen, and if you catch them early, not much damage is done. The more you ignore them, the less sensitive you become to them until you only wake up when your house has collapsed.

Throughout the lead-up to the election, every intelligent person and journalist with a conscience and the capacity to separate media-driven hysteria and fake news from reality was shouting warnings about Trump. But it was too little too late.

Where has everybody been during Obama's terms, where the GOP has done everything it could to obstruct him and not do its job? Where was the liberal media outrage at Obama's unpopularity when he was doing a sterling job despite the obstructions? Where was our outrage at the vicious racism that was directed at him and the First Lady and at the up-swelling of racism and white fear of losing status quo that led to a burgeoning of white supremacist groups?

That's not where it all started, but it's where it could have been stopped. The GOP got away with not doing its job. It got away with the gerrymandering, with targeting minority voters, making it harder for them to vote. Those were some pretty sizable cracks.

It was small step from there to a candidate who would campaign on enabling hatred and assault on human decency in every aspect and encourage Russian interference in a presidential election and was too stupid to understand how that would imperil American democracy. A small step to millions believing fake news and to the main social media platform through which it was disseminated not identifying it until it was too late. The mainstream media didn't identify it either. From there it was easy for an FBI director to 'innocently' release a statement that would sway the election and hand it to a sociopath.  

Yesterday, apropos apparently of Putin's speech to his military leadership that Russia needed to upgrade its nuclear capacity allegedly so that it could penetrate sophisticated defense systems, Trump tweeted that the US needs to increase its nuclear capacity until people come to their senses about nukes. When I saw the news last night my blood ran cold. So best buddies Putin and Trump are in stand-off already.

Two out-of-control narcissists, hungry for control and desperate for affirmation, and both with the power to set off another world war. The alarming thing is that Putin is a terrible man but he's intelligent. The same can't be said of Trump, who is frighteningly gullible and manipulable. 

This is what happens when an over-enabled cheat, obsessive liar, a racist, a sexist and a bigot with an over-sized ego is elected with the help of a partisan FBI director and Russian intervention.

From the Obama Administration to this. Pave paradise and put up a parking lot. Vigilance; we need to upgrade our idea of what it entails. I've seen a huge outpouring of frustration on Twitter and Facebook from people who were vigilant, and who did speak their mind, over and over. Who turned out for the vote. But it was too little too late. Even as a non US citizen, I could have done more. A whole lot more.

Because this isn't just America's problem. It affects all of us. The racist bigot who is about to take over the White House has enabled white supremacy in the US, which has a ripple effect around the world. He will happily screw up international trade agreements and relationships and create massive uncertainty in the global economy. It would thrill him to increase nuclear capacity and give the order to bomb the shit out of a country at three in the morning because somebody in that country told the truth about him, or because he read something on a fake news site, or because he realized that the hair he has left is thin and straggly.

Before the election, I went to a lecture given in Cape Town by a visiting US professor, a passionate Democrat, unequivocally damning of the GOP and Trump. He said that up until recently his only involvement in politics has been to vote, but it's not enough anymore. It's not enough for any of us.

How did America go from the best to the worst? While we were sleeping. We thought we were awake but we were dreaming. Now we've woken up to a nightmare. What's left to do?

#goodtrouble

— John Lewis (@repjohnlewis) November 11, 2016

A Warning From Time Magazine 2016 Person of the Year

Scrolling through Hillary Clinton's Twitter feed, looking for respite from the relentlessly depressing news, I found the above.

Pretty appropriate, given Trump's latest ranting and raving about China. I don't know what's more irritating; the stupidity of the man or how many people endlessly debate what he's done or said as if he were a sentient being when in fact most of the time there's nobody home. Evidenced by his tweet that he won by a landslide because the elections were rigged and millions voted illegally but he tried to stop the recount instigated by Jill Stein.

Time Magazine named him 2016 Person of the Year, opting for a portrait of Trump in a remarkably similar pose to that of Hitler when he won the dubious honor. The magazine had this to say about their choice: 

"It’s hard to measure the scale of his disruption. This real estate baron and casino owner turned reality-TV star and provocateur—never a day spent in public office, never a debt owed to any interest besides his own—now surveys the smoking ruin of a vast political edifice that once housed parties, pundits, donors, pollsters, all those who did not see him coming or take him seriously. Out of this reckoning, Trump is poised to preside, for better or worse."

William Saletan, writing for Slate, said of Donald Trump that he's "virtually lobotomized".

I agree. I believe that Trump is literally too stupid to understand what an average toddler can. It could explain his avoidance of intelligence briefings.

Trump ran his campaign on emotive issues which needed the intelligence of a pea-brain to see through. He's massively entitled, has a kind of lizard-brain ability to con people, and doesn't care about consequences because he's always been able to slither away from them himself and make other people pay.

Astonishingly, TV anchors, panels, some journalists, are still talking about him as if he's a normal human being, 'giving him a chance'.

You give peace a chance. You don't give a serial predator one. And it's dangerous to interpret Trump's stupidity as meaning he's ultimately harmless. He's not. His need for wealth, power and attention is the craving of an addict. He'll sacrifice the country and feed his supporters what they want to hear so they take the poison he's feeding them. He and his lovely family of mindless, soul-less daddy-clones will make a killing and when the economy tanks and the middle class disappears they'll blame Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Trump won't care. He has already broken all his campaign promises and his fans don't seem to realize it, perhaps because the reporting of it comes from the snobby elitist liberal media.

For the next four years Trump will play Republican politicians off against each other, and capitalize on their desire to have positions of power. He's already doing that. Look how he yanked Mitt Romney's chain, meeting him for dinner and getting together for talks then adding to his list of potentials for the position. As if he understood the first thing about what's needed in a Secretary of State.

Or how to govern, come to think of it. Or how to finish a sentence articulately. How to start it. How to hold a decent conversation. Or how to run a business without breaking laws, screwing decent people's lives up and going spectacularly bankrupt, there's that.

His whole life this nasty piece of work has abused people and manipulated their greed. He's also created chaos around himself so nobody gets power over him. He mindlessly hurls accusations at whomever he feels like whenever he feels like it. He'll try to do the latter with foreign leaders, as he has with China, his latest stunt, of which there are so many it's hard to keep up. He'll destroy international trade agreements that benefit everybody, put his weight behind leaders guilty of horrendous crimes against humanity, incentivize and legitimize white supremacy, sexism, inequality, injustice, bigotry and lies.

America's governing business will be conducted by denizens of the swamp. 2017 will march in a new pre-Civil Rights era. The Administration and the way that the president operates will promote stupidity as an admirable trait and fake news as a mainstream source of information. Progress on climate change will be incinerated. Scorched earth policy will come to have new meaning. 

And truth? The real meaning of it and its importance to how we live our lives is already so frayed at the edges that it wouldn't be a surprise to find in four years time that it's a forgotten concept. In conclusion to their piece about the 2016 person of the year choice, Time had this to say:

"For reminding America that demagoguery feeds on despair and that truth is only as powerful as the trust in those who speak it, for empowering a hidden electorate by mainstreaming its furies and live-streaming its fears, and for framing tomorrow’s political culture by demolishing yesterday’s, Donald Trump is TIME’s 2016 Person of the Year."  

Hardly an accolade. A warning, more like. But we're not so good, as a race, at heeding warnings are we?

I’ve marched, protested, been beaten and arrested--all for the right to vote. Friends of mine gave their lives. Honor their sacrifice. Vote. pic.twitter.com/1lYp99RaOe

— John Lewis (@repjohnlewis) November 3, 2016

Missing Hillary Clinton and Mourning the Lost Opportunity

I think I'm never going to get over it, that Hillary Clinton lost to a bigot, a fraud, a man of whom the worst description you can think of wouldn't be strong or comprehensive enough. I miss everything about her and her campaign with Tim Kaine. I miss how I felt, believing that my values would be protected, that the world would be moving forward, with the US taking a stand against bigotry, racism, injustice, inequality and sexism at a time when the far right is gaining momentum everywhere.

Taking a stand for coherence, the importance of truth and unity. I saw #StrongerTogether in continual action through a wide spectrum of communities, across race, gender and economic status. I saw people caring, outraged at the same things that assault me.

I saw tremendous triumph through adversity in Hillary Clinton herself, and I saw how many people liked, admired, and loved her. And I had faith that Barack Obama's incredible legacy would live on, that he and Michelle Obama would be honored for the dignity, grace, wisdom and sheer exuberance they've brought to the White House. 

There was everything to look forward to. The US going from strength to strength, a bastion against the far-right that's gaining ground everywhere.

I looked forward to opening up the New York Times every day for breakfast, and also reading the New Yorker, Politico, Mother Jones, Salon, Vanity Fair, Washington Post, Huffpost as the transition took place, and then as the next four years unfolded. I even hoped that inroads would be made into GOP power in Congress and that Obama's pick for the Supreme Court would go through. I knew Hillary Clinton would be in for a tough fight against Republicans but I had faith that she'd prevail, as Obama has.

I craved an end to the mindless, relentless exposure of a stupid man. I never found him entertaining, I couldn't stand him from the minute I first saw him years ago on his horrible reality show. He's a nasty piece of work through and through. Revolting to look at, revolting inside and out. How I looked forward to the day he was out of the limelight. Gone!

I saw Oprah interview Maya Angelou once, and ask if the pain of her child's death had gotten any easier with time. Maya said why would I want it to? I could relate to that. I gave my beautiful son up for adoption when I was in my twenties and it was the hardest and most awful thing I've ever done. The most painful, definitely. I don't want to let go of the pain. Why would I? So I can feel better? I wouldn't be feeling better, I'd be numb.

This isn't like that, of course. Nothing will ever be like that. But there are some things that are similar. I don't want to move on. I don't want to try and find some good in what's happened. Because there is nothing good. I revile the man who won, and the means by which he did. My intelligence and my soul are assaulted every day by him, as he turns America into a banana republic.

I mourn Hillary Clinton's loss and what it means for the Obamas, for the President's legacy. For the world, for my world. As I said, I don't see myself feeling any better any time soon.

The Obamas Fought White Identity Crisis. Now It's Hillary Clinton's Turn To Do It.

Everything awful that can possibly have been said about Hillary Clinton has been said. Every sinister interpretation about her actions has been made. Every conspiracy theory has been elaborated on and substantiated by exactly nothing factual. Millions of dollars from tax-payers and wealthy Republicans have been spent trying to dig up facts that don't exist, trying to turn lies into truth. Her whole life in public office has been characterized by this battle. Notably absent has been a public willingness to penetrate the myths and their origins. Hillary met with conservative resistance in 1979, when Bill Clinton was elected Governor of Arkansas. She was interviewed on In Focus and asked if she felt comfortable in her new position, if it could be called a position, to which her response was,

"Well I do think it's a position and I do feel comfortable, but there's still a lot to learn and a lot to be done that we're just becoming acquainted with" so she couldn't really comment too much yet. When the host asked if it worried her that she didn't exactly fit the profile expected of First Ladies, she said, "No. I assess everybody by who they are, not by how they look." She might as well have added "And not by the things that are said of them," but she had no way of knowing what was in store for her.

No way of knowing that a huge sector of America was still unprepared for a woman who had the audacity to be intelligent, courageous, and outspoken.

It's been a long journey for Hillary Clinton from then to now. She was very openhearted in those days, not afraid to speak her mind. She didn't change because she became somehow untrustworthy and corrupt, or gain a reputation for being unlikeable because it was the truth about her, but because she encountered a savagery she hadn't known existed. Because it didn't exist in her family or in her. She did change her appearance, she did give people what they wanted as far as that went. But she stood her ground on her principles, and a certain misogynist element of America has never been able to forgive her. Women are not supposed to be powerful.

Or likeable. Everybody who knows Hillary Clinton likes her and not in a milk-toast way. They're enthusiastic about her. She's warm, she's funny, she has a great laugh, her smile lights up the room, she's a brilliant listener, she cares. Her 'unlikeability' has nothing to do with who she is.

It's not just an American thing. Julia Gillard, Australia's first female prime minister, learned it the hard way too. When she was first elected, she said she expected the supportive and the negative rhetoric but believed it would dissipate after a while and that she would be treated as any normal prime minister. It didn't happen. The misogyny she encountered, such as the Leader of the Opposition's comment "If it's true that men have more power generally speaking than women, is that a bad thing?" and "what if men are by physiology or temperament, more adapted to exercise authority or to issue command?" The misogyny ramped up over time until Julia Gillard had had enough and said so.

Her 'misogyny speech' went viral. Recently on GPS she said it probably resonated with every woman who has ever met with misogyny and longed to speak out but missed the opportunity as it arose. Fareed Zakaria also asked her if she thought Hillary Clinton was being held to a different standard. Her answer was a categorical yes.

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama have been exposed to the same bullying, spite, murderous persecution driven by white male identity crisis—although the role played by conservative women in supporting it shouldn't be underestimated. For the last eight years it's been like the Civil War take 2, except that the first was never really won. The Obamas have triumphed with tremendous dignity and in doing so have renewed, strengthened and invigorated all that's good about America.

Now it's Hillary Clinton's turn. She too has survived everything that's come at her and never let it thwart her and now that she's running for president she's looking the monster right in the eye. By standing her ground against the worst she's exposing it in all its glory for sane Americans and the world to revile.

The first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and the GOP candidate had the most viewers in US history. More than 80 million watched Clinton behave like an outstanding president. Close to 70% saw her as a winner.

They saw that she was ultra-prepared, which telegraphed that she respected them enough to do her homework well. They saw her confronted with bluster, lies, misogyny, rank stupidity, horrific racism, disrespect—bullying of every kind. She didn't once lose her composure but more than that, she knew how to deal very effectively with it without returning kind for kind. Hillary Clinton conducted herself with humor at times but never stooped to being snide. She was graceful throughout but there was never any doubting her steel, which Trump, for all his puerile and disgusting but considerable arsenal, couldn't get past. It showed what she'll do when she encounters that same behavior as president, which she will, in Congress and internationally. It also showed that she learns through challenges—referring to decades of facing the same kind of obstacles—without a hint of bitterness.

About 66 million watched the second debate and saw the same woman. When asked questions her answers were, as always deeply thoughtful and insightful. Her opponent's were incoherent, as always. 57% saw Hillary Clinton as the winner.

At least 50 million people for the 1st debate and 37 million for the 2nd got and believed the message that Hillary Clinton respects them, takes her task seriously, has the capacity to overcome barriers, and can be trusted with the job as president. I think the tide finally turned with this debate, not because her opponent had a meltdown—which he did—but because she rose to a very challenging occasion in a big way, which she has done her whole life.

It's no surprise that the NYT puts Hillary Clinton's chances of winning at 90%. Talk about triumph through adversity. Which is what America is really about.

The photo is from the video of Hillary Clinton's interview on In Focus in 1979.
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