We can talk for weeks on the failure of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Party to realize that the Eastern education stick they’ve got up their bums is a huge turn off to anyone west of the Atlantic coast. They did not connect with average Americans, nor did they separate themselves from the political establishment in the eyes of the voters.
But to discuss this is a crime unto itself. Too much time spent arguing over why Trump was able to achieve victory gives more time for Trump’s cronies to dig their thumbs further into our eyes. I mean this rather literally; they’re blinding us. Gag orders on federal agencies, “alternative facts” and announcing the media as the new opposition party are all methods to blind the public and exact control.
Why the Democrats lost doesn’t matter anymore.
What we should focus on now, as they lick their wounds in preparation for the fight for Congress in two years, is the why and how of Trump’s populism, and by extention his blatant fascism, and his move towards control. If we understand their battle strategy, we can circumvent their forces and beat them.
What they want is rather simply put: total control.
Most of the GOP just spent the last eight years watching Obama do everything they wouldn’t have, (ACA, ending secret prisons, commuting sentences, emissions standards) while liberals called them racist and homophobic, still attaching the GOP to the caricature of George W. Bush that was fresh in our minds after two mistaken invasions.
They want revenge.
They aren’t just in politics, they’re in a war. A war of culture and social ideals. And the only victory is total victory. Their goal is to rewrite everything the Democratic Party and Obama did out of the history books.
With a Republican controlled Supreme Court, a chauvinistic President and a firm hold on both houses of Congress plus 30+ state legislatures/governors, this is check.
Populism has always been the drug of choice for those who have been convinced that their voices were lost in the sound. The people who lived in towns too small to be politically valuable to visit. The people who, like the crew of the Serenity, always lose the big fight. They gorge on anyone who will stand in front of a microphone and tell them that they, and the political decisions that most impact them, matter. Their fiends for the stuff.
Phrases like “silent majority” and “middle-class” denote not actual groupings of citizens in what I’m referring, but politically charged spear-tips, designed to pierce the flesh of the establishment and improve the chances of survival of the speaker.
This is also the idea behind the humiliation of the media. Attack them from all sides, brand them as liars and finish them off by promoting Fox News as the newly appointed State Media network. It increases their survival chance if the media they don't agree with isn't trusted by the public.
That’s been Donald Trump’s entire shtick since the day he announced his candidacy. And it’s a good one. Throw out the rule-book, claim the whole system is bungled and wrap your arms around poor, uneducated voters who have been left in the dust because the political issues that matter to them no longer are on the top of the list in Washington.
I’m not trying to put these people down, or say that what they care about doesn’t matter. Donald Trump made an objectively smart move by collecting the vote in manufacturing heavy areas, addressing NAFTA and how it turned entire towns into rust and ghosts when it became cheaper to move production to Mexico or Canada.
Though, he's making a less intelligent move now by attempting to straddle some invisible line between capitalism and globalization. Just so we're clear: the two are symbiotic.
But these people are being duped. A con-artist is running the show. Banning Muslims from countries in the Middle East, except for countries where he has business dealings. Considering moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, effectively legalizing illegal Israeli settlement of Palestinian lands. Repealing a healthcare law before they’ve even had a dream about what to replace it with.
If we had a list of everything a fascist government might do in their first days, everything Trump's administration has done so far would be on it.
This man is not your friend. The people who appointed to his side are not your friends. They seek power. And your blind trust gives it to them.
Resist.
