President Donald Trump is a very unfortunate aberration. He does not have a mandate and he will not be able to govern effectively. The population of America is approximately 325,443,245 individuals. There were 231,556,622 eligible voters in last month's election. 62,979,879 voted for Trump. Of the 93,986,623 ineligible voters many will become voting age today, tomorrow and every day for the next four years. He will steadily lose even more voter support for the next 1457 days.
The reasons he won have been reported and debated ad nauseum. Now it is time to act. He must be made to bend to the will of the majority or he must go. His election was not a coup nor do we mollycoddle despots.
He has surrounded himself with liars, propagandists, soldiers and thugs, as do all tyrants. He is desperately trying to intimidate and silence the press. He is trying to drag the intelligence community and the military into his perverted delusion of grandeur -- they are not going easy. There is no doubt that he is an American fraud. He abhors the traditional protocols and restraints of constitutional power. He is a secular, artless fauve; a fascist salesman.
Many are writing about Trump in defeatist, dystopian terms. They either are too young or have forgotten -- we have been here before. President Richard Nixon was also paranoid and dangerous to the health of the Republic. He was exponentially more potentially dangerous than Trump by several degrees because he was very bright and an experienced, practiced politician. The press and the public brought him down. Nixon had the support of his party until almost the end. Trump's own party does not support him. They use him. They fear him.
This past weekend's women's march around the country was exhilarating for so many reasons: it brought back memories of the struggles and victories of the Civil-Rights movement, the anti-Viet Nam War protests, Caesar Chavez and Delores Huerta leading crowds down the highways of California and, most importantly, watching my daughter proudly march, sign in hand, to the capital building in Austin. We couldn't go but we giddily wore our p*ssy hats, cheering.
So, it's time to cut the defeatist, hyper-analytical crap and simply mobilize, make a plan and hit the streets. It happened forty-nine years ago. It happened forty-three years ago. It happened six years ago. It happened two days ago. Make it happen again.
We have an art gallery and are in the process of starting a movement to raise awareness and fight the inevitable assault on the arts and humanities.
What are you going to do?
(Article changed on January 24, 2017 at 14:17)
