Month: November 2016

It’s been a tough week, but it is time to get back in the saddle.

Some principles as we go forward

1 of 3. Self-care: Plan time with family; plan a vacation; start up that hobby you’ve been putting off.

We’re looking forward to the holidays with family. I’ve already decorated a Christmas tree,  and bought a quart of egg nog, which I usually stave off till after Thanksgiving. We got airline tickets to Columbia and the British Virgin Islands. I’m doing a Roman study: reading a biography of Caesar, Cicero’s In Defense of the Republic, and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall… I’m blogging about each episode of Star Trek The Original Series. This will keep me preoccupied well beyond Inauguration Day.

2 of 3. Plan your information pathways: buy a newspaper subscription

Considering the high stakes of the next few years, I’m feeling the need to keep even more informed than usual–and from diverse sources. In addition to my subscriptions to The New York Times and The Atlantic, I’m adding the following: The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and National Review. I’ll be seeking out prominent black and Hispanic/Latino bloggers/writers as well. Any suggestions? It will do us all good to read serious reporting on the economy. And since conservatives are in charge of the government, and there is an open question as to how conservative their new leader actually is, it will be important to keep tabs on how the conservative intelligentsia and policy wonks respond to Trump’s presidency.

As for social media, it’s a question of how much you want to engage, and to what end. I don’t know… Don’t go down any rabbit holes that will waste your time or take your eye off the ball.

3 of 4. Keep an open mind–Talk to a Trump voter.

National elections in a country as big and diverse as ours are mysterious things. It’s almost as if a collective spirit sweeps across the land every four years. There can never be a simple, ironclad explanation for why the country picks one person over another. There’s a matrix of reasons all valid. If you really believe in democracy and the genius of our Constitutional pluralism, then you have to accept that the collective will of the voters always contains wisdom, that there are important lessons about the country that their decision is charging us to learn. If you believe that election outcomes contain wisdom only when your side wins, that’s your prerogative. But it’s better to hear the other side out, just as you’d hope they’d hear you out. This seesaw from one ideological view to the other is going to continue for the rest of our lives–as it was designed–so we better get used to it.

Talk to a Trump voter. They’re everywhere! Even in New York and New Jersey. Trump won 85% of the country’s counties! Don’t debate, don’t interrogate, but interview them. Hear them out. They are not raving, ignorant, racist Troglodytes. I bet whomever you would find would be a normal person that does not harbor extreme views. They might just put you a little more at ease.

4 of 4. Keep your powder dry.

There will be–already is–a firehose of information to react to, to protest, to celebrate. Some things might make you angry or happy, and the compulsion to lash out or taunt will be strong. Hold your fire. We will not know what anything really means, or have a clear idea of what is about to happen until after Inauguration.

If you oppose Trump, protesting and raving now, when there is no specific issue to galvanize the country around, will look too much like sour grapes to those in the middle. We need to be careful about being painted as costal, liberal elites out of touch with the rest of the country, because we will be seen as unreasonable when we have real cause to fight next year. There is still the possibility that Trump will not be as bad as we fear. Hold.

If you support Trump, he and the media narrative is going to press you into service to respond to every attack and perceived slight. Whenever a person of color gets mouthy with the administration or newspapers report on Trump’s business conflicts of interest, be wary of lending your name to Trump’s defense. You don’t know how this is going to turn out either. Hold, hold.

Let’s not fight now over nonsense and innuendo, but instead wait until there is an actual bill or executive order and then try to persuade everybody (Democrat and Republican) to get behind it or fight against it.

It is in your political interest to vote for Hillary, and here’s why. During a Hillary presidency you can participate in activism that pushes her policies more to the left, and if she is still not to your liking in 2020 you can always primary her. You and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders will be on the march. It will be fun, and the most influential the left has been in many years.

If Trump wins, your issues and your passions will be overwhelmed and diluted by the tidal wave of opposition to Trump that will rise up from every group in the country. No one–not even you–will have time to worry about income inequality, college debt and health care when all our activism is focused on Trump’s walls, deportation forces and wars with whoever snubs him. If any one issue becomes prominent in activism it will be minority rights. Black Lives Matter will become the big player, and a Latino Lives Matter will form. And in 2020, the Democrat Party (its voters and its party apparatus mind you) will entertain a leftist candidate like Sanders. They will pick the most moderate, milquetoast, unoffensive candidate available. Because by then they will be facing a deeply unpopular Trump, and will pick the safest path to defeating him. Many in your own ranks will agree with this too. Passions on the left will be muted like they were in 2008. After Trump, there will be little appetite to fight with Democrats. And the leftist holdouts will walk into the voting booth and vote for Jill Stein, and no one will notice or care. The energy the left has generated in 2016 will not be replicated until 2024 or 2028. It does not have to be this way! Vote Hillary!

You should vote for Hillary, and here’s why. A single Trump term will coat your principles in so much horse shit that Republicans will be out of power until the 2030s at the earliest. I know, I know… that’s liberal claptrap, and Trump will make America great again. But you admit that he will be a chaos President. It’s what you are hoping for. Disrupt the system! But you know in your heart–conservative that you are–that disruption is no way to progress. You know that there are scores of ways for the federal government to make even small mistakes that cause grave damage to the country and the world. You know that order is a delicate thing that is maintained by steady, humble leadership. You know that one man in government cannot solve complex social problems, and if he tries, power corrupts and innovation is stifled. More than this, you should know what happened the last time a Republican president flamed out (see Iraq, and 2008 Great Recession). We got eight years of a Democrat in the White House. If Trump wins next week, you know–you know–he will flame out more spectacularly than George W. Bush ever could have. And then your ideas will be discredited. You will get eight or more years of a liberal president–maybe he will even be black, or, Heaven forbid, Latino; he will not be a woman since Democrats will have learned that lesson. Your cries about free markets, and business inovation, and job creation will be met from the vast majority of voters with a shrug. “But you were with Trump,” they will say, if they bother to say anything to you at all. Don’t do this to yourself: vote Hillary. And don’t take my word for it, here is an actual conservative: The Dangers of Donald Trump

To my leftist friends, as you are trying to get your policy shop in order for the next four years, you should seek out ideas in the ballot initiatives some states will vote on next week. Colorado has one for state-wide guaranteed universal health insurance. It is basically BernieCare for Coloradans.

I have a lot of respect for the leftists in Colorado because they are pushing a bold but detailed idea while also being honest about how it will be paid for: “a 10 percent payroll tax would be implemented, with employers paying 6.67 percent and employees paying 3.33 percent. Other non-payroll income would also be taxed at 10 percent.” If the left wants to ever be empowered to enact actual laws from their policy ideas, they need level with the voters about the costs and the benefits.

We are seeing why some prominent leaders on the left have been afraid to do just that. This ballot initiative has only 30% support in Colorado, and is not likely to pass. More than half of Democratic voters in Colorado oppose it. Food for thought as we wonder if the Democratic Party’s problem is that they nominated someone too conservative.

Colorado’s Amendment 69