Dear Trump voters,
Your man is already double-crossing you. You elected
him partly on a platform of economic populism and Drain-The-Swamp disgust with
crooked Clintonism and establishment politics. Several states voting Trump also
passed ballot initiatives for raising minimum wage hikes and getting money out
of politics, and rightly so. I find many of your grievances legitimate. But it's
only been three days and Trump is already starting his transformation into a
Hillary Clinton imitator: He's hired seven of Clinton's D.C. lobbying firms.
He's tapped a Goldman Sachs exec as possible Treasury Secretary. Establishment
consultants are convincing him to soften his rough edges and he's suddenly gone
press-shy a la Clinton. Corrupt Democrats (many undoubtedly hoping to avoid
jail) are seeking "conciliation." If you don't pressure him to keep his promises
of a better economy for everyone, single payer healthcare, saving social
security, investing in infrastructure, ending the Bush/Obama/Clinton foreign
policy of failed/wasteful foreign invasions, and holding corrupt politicians
accountable, then Trump is just another phony Washington politician making
suckers out of you. May I also suggest that sometime soon, once your victory
celebrations die down, you quietly ask yourself if you and your family really
are actually safer with a government whipping up anti-Islamic hysteria or massed
gun ownership. Also consider that any president who rips up climate agreements
is destroying the lives of your own children.
Dear Clinton die-hards,
It is time for you to get out of the way. Your
right-centrism, neoliberalism, meritocratic elitism, corrupt incrementalism and
"that's just the way politics works" defeatism just committed suicide on live TV
with the world watching. Your worldview is an abject failure. All the
professional pundits, paid operatives, colluding journalists, Beltway insiders,
self-proclaimed polling experts, campaign consultants, faux-progressives,
helpful war criminals and mansplaining snobs whose pro-Clinton deceptions we've
tolerated for the past year are utterly disreputable now, and should be shunned
from power or influence. Forget the myths the media has created about
Team-Clinton luminaries like Donna Brazile, John Podesta, Howard Dean, Paul
Krugman, Kurt Eichenwald, Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz,
Colin Powell, John Chait, Jamil Smith, Joan Walsh, Jamelle Bouie, David Plouffe,
Hillary and Bill Clinton. The truth is these people are amoral and not very
bright.
Dear progressives,
Thanks to Clinton pocketing 99% of the DNC fundraising
money meant for down ballot races, both houses of Congress will now be
Republican. For the next two years, our government will provide no checks and
balances on Trump's power whatsoever. You are now the only ones standing between
us and oblivion. What to do? There's no more need for the sensationalism and
fake smears that just handed Trump the presidency. Real Trump is bad enough and
anyway Trump loves that stuff and so do his fans. Screaming "Fuck Trump" does no
more to generate positive policies than did the Tea Party/GOP screaming
"obstruct Obama" for eight years. The Clinton strategy of setting wacko Trump
apart from other Republicans has totally backfired, and also legitimizes all
those other Republicans who actually hold similarly perverse views.
If we are confused and scared by Trumpocalypse and don't know what to do, I
suggest looking to those movements that have already been enduring their own
various apocalypses for years: the world's indigenous and impoverished peoples
whom climate change already affects disproportionately (think of No DAPL,
anti-fracking, and anti-fossil fuel, the ones Clinton said should "get a life"),
those already enduring racial injustice (movements like Black Lives Matter, BDS,
anti-bigotry groups), those already having their lives destroyed by American
wars (refugee advocacy and support, Doctors Without Borders), the anti-war
movement (both in the US and in the nations we bomb), the No Nukes movement, the
anti-corporatist cause (like No TPP, labor unions, Occupy Wall St), the
pro-choice movement, the feminist movement, the gun-control movement, the LGBT
rights movement, non-electoral/non-heirarchical democratic movements (OWS, Nuits
Debout), progressive media (like Democracy Now, TYT, The Intercept, Znet),
whistleblowers, those advocating media accountability, those fighting mass
incarceration, mass surveillance, police brutality/militarization, and the
corrupting influence of money in politics. These are the causes that deserve our
attention, contribution and participation.