Forces Debates

This is a summary of what I'm reading. People are scrambling to explain the results of the presidential election. 

There is the Russian efforts for Trump (NY Times). 

This is added to the right wing media machine that maybe even created Trump (Michael Tomasky). My issue is that MSNBC exists, and I know a lot of people who watch that, and Fox news is popularity is over exaggerated. I know personally, talking to people who have been brainwashed by Fox, that that misinformation exists.

Americans focused on grievances and Trump has grievances (Ben Rhodes). 

It's illiberal populism (Tom Nichols).

To me protecting against women and minorities taking over (me). Gabriel Winant doesn't feel that explains enough.

The suggestion is to keep fighting (David Frum).

We have known the disaster that is Donald Trump, Heather Cox Richardson writes about it, this is how the south won the civil war all over again, and the information environment that allowed him to be elected. Who knows if Trump is really going to try and enact his disastrous agenda. 

There are counter forces. A movement from South Korea is to not have children when there's a unappealing ruler, called 4B. Here's my question, would Trump even notice if people stopped having children for the next 4 years? He's got a 4 year term and then he's going to live off his grift, he's going to be 82 when he leaves office. He snubs his children, sees everyone as how he can exploit them, so I'm not sure he really cares how much he wrecks up America. America could do with lower population. Happiness, compassion, equanimity and love are revolutionary in this environment. 

Sales of dystopian novels soars, as people grasp for ways of how to survive the next 4 years. It's kind of horrifying to imagine building towards the next 4 years. People want to imagine strong resistance.

To me the people that say they will be OK, and watching the leopard eat our faces, isn't appealing. 

Gabriel Winant suggests: "virtually every historical moment of substantive liberal triumph has been made possible by social movements that imposed themselves from below, often over the protest of liberal policymakers and thinkers, registering their objection to the means despite their abstract support for the ends. Universal adult suffrage, the welfare state, equal protection under law—such is the story of each of these."

She ends: "As Brecht also observed, “those who are against Fascism without being against capitalism, who lament over the barbarism that comes out of barbarism, are like people who wish to eat their veal without slaughtering the calf. They are willing to eat the calf, but they dislike the sight of blood. They are easily satisfied if the butcher washes his hands before weighing the meat.” To tell the truth instead is not in itself a solution, but it is the necessary, and only possible, first step."

Frum suggests: "Many of those shattered by this result will be tempted to withdraw into passivity—or recoil into performative radicalism. Reject both. We should focus, instead, on how to win back to the cause of liberal democracy a sufficient number of those Americans who voted for a candidate who denigrated this nation’s institutions and ideals."

I was hoping voting would be done with this, but it's not enough, there needs to be a fight. 

Students say they're going to "fight" for the environment.

Rachel Maddow wants to keep fighting. They look for counter indications about a mandate. The second video of Chris Hayes points out that Trump was stopped with largely unpopular policies, and that because 3 out of 100 people changed sides, that doesn't mean that everything is fore ordained. More people marched to protest Trump than people attended his inauguration. Maddow suggests you contest everything. I think about Obama was resisted by the right. Being despondent and checking out is what the right wants. The press needs to really fight. Legislature needs to fight. Judiciary needs to fight. People need to act in the grass roots. She suggests to be a pirate and have fun opposing. Keep fighting. 

This is kind of chilling though: "The U.S. military needs to give the people of this country binding assurances that they will not deploy military force against the civilian population." I think Trump uses these kind of chilling threats to get his way. 

Finally Bhikkhu Bodhi:

“The danger, I would contend, emanates not from the crowds wearing the emblematic red MAGA hat but from those in the background pulling the strings from behind them. It comes from the multi-billionaires who feed on the fears and resentments of the adulating masses they manipulate to their advantage. It comes from the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and the Christian Nationalists—the architects of Project 2025. It comes from Big Oil and Big Gas and Big Tech, and from all the other regressive coalitions, interest groups, and alliances that devour our natural and human resources as if they were dishes at a banquet.”