The Die Was Cast in November of 2016

The people of Hong Kong are showing us how people should act in a democracy. We are failing the test.

In recent weeks I have been increasingly angered and unnerved and the lack of political action by opponents of the current regime. Trump keeps escalating, whether it be through suppressing the Mueller Report, claiming he would accept foreign help in the election, putting immigrants in concentration camps, putting said camps under military jurisdiction, engaging in a massively destructive trade war, manipulating the census to rig elections, and engaging in naked political corruption. In response to this, Nancy Pelosi won't even begin impeachment. The massive protests of 2017 have not repeated themselves.

These last few weeks I have felt an overwhelming urge to be on the barricades, but there's no one to lead the way or even to join up with me. I have never felt more frightened or downhearted since Trump has come to power, because back during the Muslim ban and last summer's family separation, people were taking action. Nowadays they are paralyzed.

Part of this is due to the poor leadership of the Democratic Party, which has been narrowly focused on electoral politics. Once the House was taken, all the fight seems to have been gone, even though winning the House was supposed to be the beginning, not the end of the story. Another part is the fact that so much of the "Resistance" is made up of comfortably middle-class suburban whites who are too complacent, protected, and numbed to be able to engage in the direct action necessary to fight back.

I also think, however, that so many have lost faith because they now believe, quite rightly I am afraid, that the die was cast in November of 2016. The bedrock fact is that Donald Trump holds the highest office in the land and has rigged the Supreme Court in his favor. He has weaponized all of the tools of the imperial presidency granted by the Cold War. Once in power, he was never going to allow himself to lose it. The next election will not be a free and fair election, and beyond voter suppression, gerrymandering, and God knows what other tactics our social media will be flooded with disinformation both domestic and foreign.

Just the fact of him becoming president was the product of the complete failure of our Constitutional system. The electoral college, which was created partially to stop a demagogue like Trump from being president, enabled him to win despite his loss of the popular vote. The country is so divided that the system is not going to be changed, so it will now essentially be a tool to ensure minority rule through the electoral college, Senate, the now-packed courts, and its tolerance for manipulating voter qualifications. The nagging thought I keep having is that we are not in a fight against creeping autocracy, we are instead merely flailing against an autocracy that grows stronger with each passing day.

I know I can do nothing else in this situation, other than fight. I have been calling my representatives and begging them to act with the urgency the current moment demands, but they are not. They, like everyone else, are just trying to close their eyes and go on as if nothing has changed. Perhaps I'm a fool for even bothering to still fight.

Progressives Need to Stop Celebrating and Start Organizing

A note to my progressive brethren: I know you are happy about today's SCOTUS decision, but this is no time for gloating or complacency.  Remember back in 2008, when Barack Obama was elected?  You guys showed up in unprecedented numbers to his inauguration, declared an end to thirty years of Reaganomics, and generally behaved as if the other side would somehow concede defeat and acknowledge the popular mandate behind the new president.

If you remember, conservatives responded by letting loose the dogs of political war.  Glenn Beck was on television every day comparing Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler, Republicans in Congress began filibustering and obstructing just about every progressive initiative, and the moneymen on the right astroturfed a pitchfork-wielding army of angry resentful White people, otherwise known as the Tea Party.  The complacency and lack of fight in the progressive ranks gave us the current wingnut House and governors like Scott Walker who are hell-bent on destroying collective bargaining rights.  The ass whupping the Democrats received in 2010 happened largely because the other side dropped any pretensions of civility or centrism and got their hordes to the polls in big numbers while many Obama voters stayed home.

Progressives seem to forget that the opposing political party is not a rational institution, but that it has become a batshit-crazy vehicle for an extremist Christo-libertarian ideology.  You don't have to go far to find evidence of this.  In the aftermath of the SCOTUS ruling today, the former spokesman for the Michigan GOP called for armed rebellion against the provisions of the healthcare law.  Indiana Republican Mike Pence compared the ruling to 9/11.  You cannot let your guard down around these types of people for even a second.

The other side will gnash their teeth and wail about today's Supreme Court decision, but they have plenty of loaded guns waiting to be fired.  Today they censured the attorney general in an unprecedented move that now appears to be based on utter falsehoods.  They are currently doing their best to restrict voting under the guise of limiting "voter fraud" in ways that are both racist and nakedly intended to win the election in swing states.  Speaking of disenfranchisement and racism, the Republican Party of Texas in its official platform has called for the repeal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the piece of legislation that has made the 15th Amendment a reality.  (I would even hazard a conspiratorial guess that the attacks on Holder are intended to stop the Justice Department from interfering in the disenfranchisement campaign.)  The conservative movement has marshaled unprecedented financial power, and is manipulating the law to set up massive piles of untraceable cash to be used in all kinds of negative propaganda against the president.

President Obama will be outspent by his opposition in this campaign, thousands of people who will want to vote for him will be turned away from the polls, and the nation's most popular cable news network acts effectively as the propaganda arm of his opponents.  So please, fellow progressives, stop gloating on Facebook about today's decision.  Now is the time to help explain the benefits of the health care law to those who are still fuzzy about it (and with good reason.)  Now is the time to get out the vote and to fight to make sure all of the votes get counted.  Don't make the same mistake you made in 2009-2010, because the people who are against you will stop at nothing, including fanning the flames of white racial resentment, misogyny, and homophobia, disenfranchising voters, and spreading scurrilous lies to put their extremist ideas into practice.  This is not a time to celebrate, but a time to organize, mobilize, and to fight.