Thursday, November 05, 2020

#Protectthevote. It's worth it.

Too tired to analyze this morning. Still phoning to cure screwed up Dem ballots in Nevada and boost turnout for peaceful #ProtecttheVote rally in Philadelphia this Saturday.

But others have plenty to say. Here are a few takes you might have seen and some you might not have encountered, concluding with thoughts from Erudite Partner.

I'm not thrilled by this one, but I think it might be true. That democracy thing we claim to defend sometimes reveals its own wisdom:

To the credit of Democratic primary voters, they picked perhaps the one candidate who could patch together an electoral majority. To the credit of staffers on the Biden team, they knew what their task was and they executed it. ... if the country wanted someone who would beat Trump and heal the country, it picked the right guy. Jennifer Rubin

A wise Texan, FaceBook friend Katie Sherrod, reminds us of some home truths: 

If Biden wins, it's a political victory. but it's not a moral one. We have failed this moral test as a nation. WE created Trump, out of the racism, misogyny, and xenophobia that's been in our national DNA from our founding. Our double helix strands are woven from genocide, white supremacy, patriarchal entitlement, misogyny, racism, sexism, and free floating fear and hate of the "other."

So while I am deeply dismayed by this election, I am not surprised by it. So much for the shining city on a hill.

More like some hamlet on a landfill.

But the four year process of resisting Trump and the GOP, including working the election, has been empowering for many. Who knows where that energy might lead? Here's another FaceBook friend, Jason Negrón-Gonzales, who sees promise.

It's not the victory that I wanted, I'm sure you feel the same. It's clear that there is a lot of work to do - which would have been true regardless, but has been made abundantly clear yet again. But, the experience on the knocking doors in Arizona, and seeing that translate into the results we saw there gives me a lot of hope. It really underscored for me how critical the organizing on the ground is - there is hope and potential there.

Rayne, a survivor of many struggles, who writes at Emptywheel, is tired of what she sees as progressive whining:

The American left — or at least those comfortable voting for and identifying with members of the Democratic Party — is in the throes of their predictable mortification, self-flagellating atop their hair shirts.Why wasn’t the massive turnout an obvious and immediate repudiation of the deeply racist and misogynist Trump? Why weren’t the numbers evidence of a blue tsunami in spite of the massive push for increased voter participation?

... We need to snap the fuck out of it. We didn’t get our heads on straight going into the count last night, and we weren’t ready for Trump’s fascist bullshit lie claiming victory.

We are winning the White House. We are going to take back the entire executive branch, including new cabinet members who aren’t wholly corrupt motherfuckers (Jesus, Wilbur Ross is still serving on the board of a Chinese bank even though he’s been called out in the media about it).
We’re going to have a new attorney general and a civil rights division which will do more than sit on its thumbs and spin. 
Investigations which have been corruptly shuttered or squelched before they could launch will begin. 
We might stand a chance at making traction against climate change; we might even rejoin the Paris Agreement from which the U.S. formally withdrew yesterday. ...

Erudite Partner, who busted her butt to turn Nevada blue, waxes philosophical:

My favorite scene in Gillo Pontecorvo's classic 1966 film The Battle of Algiers takes place at night on a rooftop in the Arab quarter of that city. Ali La Pointe, a passionate recruit to the cause of the National Liberation Front (NLF), which is fighting to throw the French colonizers out of Algeria, is speaking with Ben M'Hidi, a high-ranking NLF official. Ali is unhappy that the movement has called a general strike in order to demonstrate its power and reach to the United Nations. He resents the seven-day restriction on the use of firearms. "Acts of violence don't win wars," Ben M'Hidi tells Ali. "Finally, the people themselves must act."

For the last four years, Donald Trump has made war on the people of this country and indeed on the people of the entire world. He's attacked so many of us, from immigrant children at the U.S. border to anyone who tries to breathe in the fire-choked states of California, Oregon, Washington, and most recently Colorado. He's allowed those 230,000 Americans to die in a pandemic that could have been controlled and thrown millions into poverty, to mention just a few of his "war" crimes. Finally, the people themselves must act.

On that darkened rooftop in an eerie silence, Ben M'Hidi continues his conversation with La Pointe. "You know, Ali," he says. "It's hard enough to start a revolution, even harder to sustain it, and hardest of all to win it." He pauses, then continues, "But it's only afterwards, once we've won, that the real difficulties begin. In short, there is still much to do."

Yes, there is still much to do.

1 comment:

Joared said...

Yes, much to do and will we have the patience for the time and effort which will be required? This wont be any quick fix.