Working-class people weren't supporting Trump.
And if they were, it was only because they were botched humans. Racism was the only conceivable reason for lining up with the Republican candidate."
Frank is rightly pointing out that these were all arrogant and disrespectful lies of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party. Frank concludes with the understanding that the Democrats lost the election that was handed to them on a silver platter, not only because they wanted the gold platter all to themselves, but because "They chose insulting the other side instead of trying to understand what motivated them," and further down, "Maybe it's time to consider whether there's something about shrill self-righteousness, shouted from a position of high social status, that turns people away."
In the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, two political movements rose up just about simultaneously: the fascists and the anarcho-syndicalists. The anarcho-syndicalists created worker collectives, solidarity movements and public-education outlets -- largely through their alternative-media outlets -- and brought together a strong wave of effective work and visionary practice. The Communist Party, then in power, found it necessary to crush this movement as swiftly as it could. Indeed, the anarcho-syndicalists were seen by the population and the Communist Party as more of a threat to the establishment than the fascists, because the communists knew that the anarchists offered a more attractive alternative to the fascists than the communists themselves could. The communists knew they needed the anarchists out of their way if they were going to be the alternative to the fascists, if they were going to hang onto power. The communists succeeded in making themselves the only alternative to the fascists in a desperate attempt to hang onto power by crushing the solidarity movement of the anarchists, and the population quickly turned to fascism as the only alternative to the Communist Party (see Noam Chomsky's essay, "Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship.")
If we compare this scenario to our current situation, the Clinton camp is to the Sanders movement what the communists were to the anarchists. (Note, the anarchists went a lot further than Sanders, but in sentiment the scenario is quite similar.) The polls still show that in a hypothetical scenario in which Sanders is running against Trump, Sanders wins by eleven points, and if you are a liberal who accepted the narrative that supporting Clinton was necessary to beat Trump as the primary races were ending, that number should make you throw up in your mouth. There was never a point when Clinton did as well in the polls against Trump as Sanders did. Not even yesterday. There was an alternative to supporting Hillary after Sanders dropped out, and there still is, and that alternative remains now what it was then: nonviolent, open, class warfare and open rebellion. If it was not clear then, it could not be clearer now.
If you are afraid, calm down. You are not trapped. There is a way out and it is this: start freaking out. I assure you, our leaders are like dogs: they are dangerous and capable of hurting you, but ultimately, they are more afraid of you than you are of them, and that is why they are willing to hurt you.
We are not stuck with Trump. Trump is stuck with us.
Before I lay out the ways in which we can effectively and productively organize to "freak out," let us take a moment to examine how we got here.
Part II: Who the F*ck Are We?
Let's begin with some basic comparisons between Donald Trump and Charlie Sheen, with the commentary on Charlie Sheen being in the context of his public meltdown of a few years ago.
They both come from families of wealth while they pride themselves for their individuality. They share very complicated, predatory, and hyper-masculine values and experiences around sex. They are both deeply obsessed -- again, in a hyper-masculine way -- with so-called "winning," going so far as to tout their greatest failures as their greatest victories. Much of the public saw both of them, for a long time, primarily as sources of humor. The media, as it propped them up as sources of humor, also speculated a great deal about both of them struggling with mental illness. They both claimed their hatred was a form of "passion" (see this interview with Sheen). They were both in the news 24/7. And the more the news paid attention to them, the more they both glorified their own antics. They are both racist (though Trump is more racist, if such a scale even exists). And, finally, perhaps the most telling parallel, Charlie Sheen said at the end of his Comedy Central roast, in defense of a racial slur he made to his boss at CBS, "I did the one thing in America everyone really wishes they could do: I told my boss to f*ck off," and he was right. That is what everyone in America wishes they could do. And that is what many Americans think they just did to their establishment bosses by electing Donald Trump as president.
In fact, the only real difference between Donald Trump and Charlie Sheen is that, sometimes, Sheen can string an interesting and eloquent sentence together.
When I think back to the Sheen fiasco, and when I reflect on what just happened with Donald Trump, the important question, which most liberals fail to understand, is not "what are these figures doing to our society?" or "how are these figures shaping our society?" but rather, how is our society shaping these figures? They do not create us. We create them -- by not offering, as the Democratic Party did not, a powerful, creative, and constructive alternative to the powerful and destructive one as a reaction to the forces arrayed against us -- forces of which the illusions that entertain us are mirrors.
If you are looking for someone to blame for the rise of Donald Trump, look no further than these three groups of people: those who supported Donald Trump, those who supported Hillary Clinton, and all of us, myself included, who do not devote every day we live to tearing down the corporate, militaristic, ecocidal narrative that tells the story of our lives.
Are these figures, Trump and Sheen, really surprising? Are they really entertaining? Is it really a mystery what their relation is to us? Consider the rhetoric of this US Army commercial as compared to Sheen and Trump's obsessive language about "winning:" "We operate in a complex world," the commercial brags, "with one simple mission: win." Democrats and Republicans alike stand by this message, as do those of us who do not live every moment in stark opposition to it. Charlie Sheen and Donald Trump are our children. They are the logical conclusion to our illogical narrative.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
