A Mea Culpa… Of Sorts-Down With The
Trump Government!- Build The Resistance-Support The General Strike On February
17, 2017
A while back, last year, during the
American presidential election campaign of 2016 at a point where the two major
contenders, now President Donald Trump and now failed contender Hillary Clinton
had been nominated by their respective organizations, I was under constant and
hard-core pressure from personal friends and political associates to let up on
my opposition of support to the candidate of either of the major parties. I had
planned, and had made my stance clear early on to one and all, that I planned
to cast a protest vote for Green Party candidate once socialist Vermont Senator
Bernie Sanders’ campaign went down in disgraceful flames (disgraceful because
of the horrible way he was treated by the Democratic Party establishment which
went out of its way, way out of its way, to favor weak-kneed leading candidate
Clinton). On November 8th I did just that here in Massachusetts
whose Electoral College votes were overwhelming won by Mrs. Clinton.
The gist of my opposition to the two
major party candidates was that I could discern no qualitative difference
between war-hawk Clinton and war-hawk Trump, the issues around war and peace
being the central reason that I have steadfastly opposed both major parties
since my military service during the Vietnam War. A war whose long duration like
the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were started by one party’s president (Johnson
in the case of Vietnam and avidly pursued by another before the fall of Saigon,
Nixon/Ford). While I was not, and have not been, agnostic on my differences on other
social and personal liberty issues that war and peace issue has always anchored
my politic perspectives since the old days. And those personal friends and political
associates have known that as well. Yet as the general election campaign
progressed, if that is the right word for the down and dirty slug-fest between both
candidates which nobody could rightly accept as reasonable political discourse,
they continued their drumbeat. Something in that hard sell twisted me to become
more adamant in my opposition-in my seeing that there was as the late great
American novelist Gore Vidal no stranger to mainstream politics only “one ruling
party in America with two branches-Democratic and Republican.”
I wrote a number of blogs and other commentaries
as a result all along this line which not only included my opposition to the
two parties but my fervent desire to get on with the real business of people
with my brand of politics-organize against the endless wars and home and abroad.
Here is a sample of my thinking at the time:
“Now several years ago, maybe late
2007, early 2008 when one Barack Obama made his presence felt on the American
national political stage and sought to slay the dragon, to slay what we would
come to find out was the dragon lady but who just then was in the first blush
of her endless drive to win the Oval Office I noted that the Hillary-Obama race
for the Democratic Party nomination looked like a breath of fresh air and
although I would not have voted for either for love nor money I decided to try
to chronicle the beginning storms of the campaign that year. (In the interest
of full disclosure I voted for Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of the Green
Party that year a natural choice as a black and woman with a political past
which she need not be ashamed of and who had at least a passing acquaintance
with the truth-a big plus that year after all the bullshit was cleared away)
“Early on though somewhere around the
aftermath of the New Hampshire primary (which Hillary had won late by a hair and
kept her campaign alive) in 2008 I gave up the enterprise as so much blather
and as so much hot air and realized that the “promise” of 2007 had turned to
ashes as neither candidate could give the approximate location of the truth in
a time when all hell was breaking loose in the economy and working people, the
working poor were being beaten down mercilessly by what would be called the
Great Recession of 2008. And as we witness in 2016 working people, hard-working
working people of all ethnic, racial and gender identifications have been
taking it on the chin lo these many years. Taken it on the chin so they have in
some cases fervently listened as one Dump the Trump (sorry I could not resist
that slam, not the worst thing that will ever happen to that ill-bred bastard)
lulls them to sleep with his balderdash, with his contempt for those who have
so fervently supported him despite any good sense. We will find no truth coming
from anywhere in that precinct. Worse this year milady Hillary has lost all her
slight girlish charms from 2008 and is frothing at the mouth in anticipation of
next week’s coronation as war-monger-in-chief.
“Here is the hard truth, the truth
neither billionaire Donald nor Wall Street Hillary have a clue about. For
working people, for the hard-working people of this country who have been put
up against the wall and blindfolded for a while now there is no salvation this
side of capitalism, this side of that defunct system that has had its day
and had long ago lost any progressive content that it had in its golden age.
“Speak the truth no matter how bitter” and that is the bitter truth as we will,
once again learn over the next dreary four years. Yeah, Leon Trotsky, one of
his books the place where I first read the truth of that “bitter” phrase, would
have said it himself if he was not beyond the pale. You heard it here-think
about it okay.”
I was almost as surprised as everybody
else come the morning of November 9th to find one Donald “Dump The
Trump” (no apology for that now) had been an upset winner of the 2016 American
election. Although maybe not as surprised as most as I kept hearing a small
drumbeat from working class guys and gals too whom I would meet in my work, or somebody
would tell me about that there something underground in the political world, something
down at the base was happening for Trump. Hell I even heard stuff when I played
golf with guys on public golf courses (not Donald’s private ones) in places
like Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire that Trump was their guy for jobs,
for keeping black and Latinos down, keeping the fucking immigrants out and making
America an armed fortress.
Then as the transition began its awful cycle on the turnover
Trump daily almost shocked me, and everybody else like me, with his choices for
who would aid him in his government. This is where the “mea culpa” of the title
of this piece comes in. I now am ready to concede that there is some qualitative
difference between a Trump government and what Hillary’s would have looked like-
if only because she would leave us alone. I still stand by my vote of “no confidence”
and am still glad, very glad, that I cast my protest vote for Jill Stein but we
are in a mess for the next four years no question. Practically speaking though
I was down in Washington on January 20th to express my opposition,
no, my resistance to the Trump government on day one.
Down with the Trump government!-Build
The Resistance
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