begin quote from:
Donald Trump, domestic terrorist: The man who tried to kill democracy — and why we had it coming
| Salon | - |
I
can tell you one thing for sure: Donald Trump, the terrorist to whom I
refer, is not the real problem. And defeating him at the ballot box,
although preferable to the alternative, is not in any sense the
solution.
Trump gains on Clinton, poll shows 'rigged' message resonates
When was this mythical era of supposed normal government, exactly? Before the election of Barack Hussein
Obama, an event that hit the bloodstream of the American right like a
blend of Dr. Pepper, crystal meth and pure adrenaline? Before 9/11, and
the disastrous Bush v. Gore election of 2000? Before the Monica Lewinsky
scandal, and all the right-wing conspiracy theories
depicting Bill and Hillary Clinton as criminal masterminds (rather
than, say, shameless political opportunists)? Before all of the above,
in the days when the bluebird sang o’er the lemonade springs on the Big
Rock Candy Mountain?
Republicans who pine for the halcyon days of functional government at least have something to look back to: the Reagan era, when a newly empowered and energized American right set about slashing taxes on the rich, dismantling the welfare state and pumping up the Cold War, with the suspiciously eager compliance of a terrified Democratic majority in Congress. If the whole thing was an elaborate fantasy, the long-term consequences were horrendous and the damage may never be undone, you can’t claim that nothing ever got accomplished in Washington.
Democrats can’t even agree which version of the political past to mythologize; they’re all contaminated in one way or another. Bill Clinton’s legacy of financial deregulation, welfare “reform” and right-wing appeasement looks worse all the time, even as he prepares to coast back into the White House as the first First Gentleman of American history, a spindly ghost of his former self. Lyndon Johnson used his political power to force important systemic changes, in the process exposing the racist hypocrisy at the heart of the Democratic coalition that had dominated American politics since Woodrow Wilson, and also led the nation into the most disastrous foreign policy blunder of the 20th century.
advertisement
Saturday, Oct 22, 2016 09:00 AM PDT
Donald Trump (Credit: Getty/Paul J. Richards)
Recently a British journalist asked me whether I thought the United States had become so politically paralyzed and ideologically divided as to be ungovernable. When we have a major-party presidential candidate, trailing in the polls, who threatens not to accept the election results, and a well-respected senator who vows to oppose any possible Supreme Court nominee put forward by the other candidate, the question answers itself.
I have argued all year long that it’s a dangerous mistake to assume that the madness afflicting American politics and American society has affected only Republicans or “conservatives” (a word that, along with “liberals,” bears almost no relationship to its original meaning). As the primary contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders should have made clear — the first Democratic campaign to be waged on fundamental ideological questions in more than 30 years — Democrats face the same internal struggle between their base voters and their Beltway leadership as Republicans, albeit in less overt and less acrimonious form.
But there are other and bigger errors at work behind that blithe liberal overconfidence, errors that I see as epistemological in nature, meaning that they have to do with what we know (or think we know) and how we know it. Electing Hillary Clinton as our next president is now both necessary and inevitable — there are literally no other options. I suppose I would suck it up and vote for her myself, if I lived in a state that anyone, anywhere, thought was likely to be important in the electoral arithmetic. But to believe that Clinton in any way represents a departure from the path of political entropy and paralysis, or that her victory will cause the ants inside the Trump snakeskin to crawl back into their underground nests, is willfully naive.
Those supposedly normal and sensible grownups who read the New York Times and recycle No. 2 plastic and attend parents’ night at the middle school with concerned but nonjudgmental expressions have seen the current polls and heaved a half-sigh of anticipatory relief. Now they’re reassuring themselves, Well, once we get past Election Day and all the right-wing wailing and gnashing of teeth that is likely to follow, maybe we can get back to some semblance of normal government. They are inhabiting a state of near-Trumpian delusion.
Donald Trump, domestic terrorist: The man who tried to kill democracy — and why we had it coming
Yes, Trump is dangerous, but he's not the real problem — and Hillary Clinton definitely isn't the solution
Topics:
2016 Presidential Campaign,
Bernie Sanders,
Domestic Terrorism,
Donald Trump,
Editor's Picks,
Elections 2016,
John McCain,
Republican Party,
Terrorism, News, Politics News
Donald Trump (Credit: Getty/Paul J. Richards)
A
domestic terrorist is trying to destroy America. You can’t say we
didn’t have it coming. Our arrogance and grandiosity and paranoia, and
even our visionary sense of our own greatness, have brought us right to
the precipice. Can America be saved from this orange-hued assassin, and
from the nihilistic movement he represents, which is far more dangerous
than the specter of “radical Islamic terrorism”? I don’t know — the
poison has spread more widely, and altered our perception of reality
more profoundly, than most of us are willing to recognize.
I
can tell you one thing for sure: Donald Trump, the terrorist to whom I
refer, is not the real problem. And defeating him at the ballot box,
although preferable to the alternative, is not in any sense the
solution. At most, Trump is the shaman who has invoked the American
disorder in its nastiest form, and the channel through which it has
expressed itself in this election. To use a famous metaphor once
employed by the great 1960s filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, Trump is like a
snakeskin full of ants — he appears to be alive and moving on his own,
but it’s an illusion produced by the forces working through him.Recently a British journalist asked me whether I thought the United States had become so politically paralyzed and ideologically divided as to be ungovernable. When we have a major-party presidential candidate, trailing in the polls, who threatens not to accept the election results, and a well-respected senator who vows to oppose any possible Supreme Court nominee put forward by the other candidate, the question answers itself.
I have argued all year long that it’s a dangerous mistake to assume that the madness afflicting American politics and American society has affected only Republicans or “conservatives” (a word that, along with “liberals,” bears almost no relationship to its original meaning). As the primary contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders should have made clear — the first Democratic campaign to be waged on fundamental ideological questions in more than 30 years — Democrats face the same internal struggle between their base voters and their Beltway leadership as Republicans, albeit in less overt and less acrimonious form.
But there are other and bigger errors at work behind that blithe liberal overconfidence, errors that I see as epistemological in nature, meaning that they have to do with what we know (or think we know) and how we know it. Electing Hillary Clinton as our next president is now both necessary and inevitable — there are literally no other options. I suppose I would suck it up and vote for her myself, if I lived in a state that anyone, anywhere, thought was likely to be important in the electoral arithmetic. But to believe that Clinton in any way represents a departure from the path of political entropy and paralysis, or that her victory will cause the ants inside the Trump snakeskin to crawl back into their underground nests, is willfully naive.
Those supposedly normal and sensible grownups who read the New York Times and recycle No. 2 plastic and attend parents’ night at the middle school with concerned but nonjudgmental expressions have seen the current polls and heaved a half-sigh of anticipatory relief. Now they’re reassuring themselves, Well, once we get past Election Day and all the right-wing wailing and gnashing of teeth that is likely to follow, maybe we can get back to some semblance of normal government. They are inhabiting a state of near-Trumpian delusion.
VIDEOPolitical Backfires
Republicans who pine for the halcyon days of functional government at least have something to look back to: the Reagan era, when a newly empowered and energized American right set about slashing taxes on the rich, dismantling the welfare state and pumping up the Cold War, with the suspiciously eager compliance of a terrified Democratic majority in Congress. If the whole thing was an elaborate fantasy, the long-term consequences were horrendous and the damage may never be undone, you can’t claim that nothing ever got accomplished in Washington.
Democrats can’t even agree which version of the political past to mythologize; they’re all contaminated in one way or another. Bill Clinton’s legacy of financial deregulation, welfare “reform” and right-wing appeasement looks worse all the time, even as he prepares to coast back into the White House as the first First Gentleman of American history, a spindly ghost of his former self. Lyndon Johnson used his political power to force important systemic changes, in the process exposing the racist hypocrisy at the heart of the Democratic coalition that had dominated American politics since Woodrow Wilson, and also led the nation into the most disastrous foreign policy blunder of the 20th century.
No comments:
Post a Comment