In Times of Trouble the Crème Rises to the Top

 

In times of trouble the crème rises to the top…such as the insights and creativity, from such people as Lucian K. Truscott.

I just read his Substack post:

“This is Our Rosa Parks Moment.” 

Truscott writes:

“Politics is not the only mechanism by which democracy works.”

“Democrats tried and failed to end the Vietnam war in 1972 with their votes for George McGovern and lost. Richard Nixon carried 49 of 50 states and won the popular vote by 18 million votes.

“The protesters at Fort Benning wanted the war to end, but it didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen.

In 1973, the soldiers were brought home, and two years after that, the war ended because we lost it and pulled out of Vietnam militarily for good. It was unrestrained power and idiocy that started the war in Vietnam. It wasn’t the power of the vote in our democracy that ended that war.

It was the hundreds of thousands of protesters just like those at Fort Benning who did it.”

Peter Greaves commented on Truscott’s post. The president-elect was only elected by 32% of those eligible to vote. He was allowed to be elected by 38% of eligible voters who chose not to cast a ballot.

He does not have a mandate.

Nine days before Election Day, Donald Trump delivered his closing argument at a Madison Square Garden rally that drew comparisons to a 1939 pro-Nazi rally in the same arena and characterized by similar anti-democratic themes: demonization of immigrants and political enemies, invocation of strongman leadership, threats of violent retribution, denunciations of the press.  

Enough Americans bought it to elect him.

We must conclude that most voters want what Trump is offering.

Or it could be that they have been gaslighted into believing his lies.

I know people are angry and want to strike out—we’ve been stirred up for the last nine years—people are on tenterhooks. Don’t you know, folks, it was planned that way?

From Paul Rosenberg:

“Like the conman in the original film “Gaslight,” Trump spun elaborate fictions, claiming that Obama had come out of nowhere, demanding to see his college transcripts and inventing a team of investigators sent to Hawaii (who did not exist). That got the anti-Obama base fired up, while presenting a pseudo-serious facade to the broader public. This is how he gaslights routinely in politics, rarely engaging directly with the right-wing mythologies he taps into, but freely improvising his own fantasy extensions.  

In this election, Trump relied on five key themes of gaslighting in various different ways, all of them adding up to an overarching sixth theme: Democrats are the real threat to American democracy, and Donald Trump is its savior. 

“It is the upside-down logic used in abusive relationships.

“Gaslighters may lie all the time, but when the chips are down, they gaslight.”

For example, “The hate you saw was really love, and if you can’t see that, you’re the hateful one.”

(Google— “How Donald Trump Gaslit America,” by Paul Rosenberg.)

 

Wow, that President elect isn’t stupid, he is devious.

Or, could it be that the idea that a woman of color could possibly become President is so repugnant to many that they would elect a rapist, misogynist, amoral man who cannot even take pleasure in winning but must still rail at the Democrats?

Doesn’t he know that an athletic event (since he likes fighting so much—as displayed on the Joe Rogan show) has two sides?

(The fighting they were so enamored with is extreme fighting where they kick to break their opponent’s legs, and sometimes the fighters carry a razor blade to cut themselves to make their injuries seem worse.)

If you win, you celebrate, but you do not want to annihilate your opponent, they were there so you could win.

Didn’t your coach teach you anything about sportsmanship?

The country elected a man by a democratic voting system—even Latino men whom he has threatened to deport voted for him. I’m boggled.  

I’m ashamed. When hate opens the door it gives other haters permission to be their worst. Some far-right men have taunted social media women, “Your body, my choice.”

That tells me the abortion ban is not about saving babies. (Nobody wants to kill a baby.) It’s about sticking it to women. It’s about control.

I always wondered when I saw how maligned an unwed mother was, how she was hidden, set off, made ashamed, and ridiculed. Sometimes, the man just ran off. Then, after the baby was born, “Oh, how cute it is.” Now, it is a person. While it was in the woman, it was a shameful sexual act, a biological blight that made the woman swell up and commit to the act of pushing what feels like a watermelon out of her body. And let’s make sure she did it, and hopefully in pain. (Evidenced by some nuns who facilitated childbirth.) The Bible said a woman was unclean after giving birth and had to spend a certain number of days to cleanse.

Back to the question I posed in an earlier blog—and it is not why Harris lost. Why did Trump win?

“Trump’s voters turned out because they believed him when he stood up there at his rallies and claimed that he would fix all their problems, whatever they were.  For them, it was what passed for leadership, so they followed him.  He won’t fix things, he doesn’t even know what their problems are, and he doesn’t care.  But that doesn’t matter right now.

“What matters for us is that the time for complaining is over.  Here is how my father told me to get over myself: 

“Buck up.  There are things to figure out and work to do.  We have the tools; we’re smart; we can do it.”

—Lucian K Truscott

The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
 
“Before he (the President elect) enters on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:– I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
 
Fourteenth amendment: Section 3 

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Why haven’t we acted on this?

There Has been a Great Disturbance in the Force

Women, we didn't pull off the blue tsunami. 

I don't know why.

And 58% of men looked at the rapist and said, "Hell yeah, That's my man."

I was on the planet when Hitler ran amuck over Europe. I remember the end of World War II when a Taxi driver sped down our street with his victory shirt flapping out the window.

I never thought I would live under a fascist regime.

I pray that will not happen.  

Is the United States an experiment that failed? Are all those liberties we fought so hard for being swept away? 

I went to bed the night of the election feeling that defeat was coming and awakened the following morning to the fact that it had.

 

When I was about ten, our Town of The Dalles, Oregon, had the worst snowstorm we had ever experienced. The Columbia River that flowed past our town had chunks of ice the size of Volkswagen busses. However, it was not snowing the night my Australian Shepherd/Cocker Spaniel dog Silver got sick.

It gave me a window of visibility when I went outside to check on him and saw tracks pressed into about two feet of snow leading down our long driveway.

As I trudged through the snow following his tracks, I feared the worst, that he was wandering away to die. I knew that sometimes dogs do that. I found him, picked him up and carried him home.  When I sat him on the kitchen floor his head was being pulled back, and he collapsed. My mother said, "He'll be dead by morning."

We placed him in the warm living room, and Mom sent me to bed. I prayed for my dog until I fell sleep. When I awakened in the morning, heart in my throat, I gingerly crept into the living room, fearing what I would find.

Silver was in a chair!

However, his hindquarters became paralyzed, and he lay helpless for days that spanned into weeks. My folks kept encouraging me to let them put him to sleep.   

Nope, Nada, No.

I spoon-fed him broth and water and cleaned up after him.  (We gave him castor oil, for he refused to eliminate it in the house.)

He lay helpless until, one day, his tail wagged. Mom and I were jubilant.

Silver recovered!

Silver lived to move to the farm with us, to run with the horse and me, to go camping with us, to protect me, to bond with the baby duck we hatched so that even as adults, they played together. Silver would catch errant chickens and hold them for us until we put them back in their yard. Silver lived to father a pup, that as a grown-up dog, saved a little boy's life.

For the rest of his life, Silvers's legs quivered after a run, and my dad got the message that you don't allow your kid to play with the dog in the house during the daytime, then put him outside at night during winter.

 

Right now, I am grieving like that little ten-year-old waiting through the dark night of the soul for her dog to live. My daughter is in the depths of despair. Almost 50% of us are suffering somehow. (People, support each other.)  Mary Trump, bless her heart, wrote her column "The Good in Us," where she told us over and over what sort of immoral man her uncle was. Few listened.

Mary Trump said that in the Trump family, cruelty was currency, that the man this country voted into the Presidency was a bully as a child, picking on his younger brother constantly.

It didn't matter.

We found out that he routinely visited the Epstine complex where they trafficked and used girls was young as 12 years old.

He assaulted a woman in a dressing room.

It didn't matter.

He grabbed women because he was a celebrity and because he could.

It didn't matter.

He had never read the U.S. Constitution that day he placed one hand on the Bible and the other in the air and responded "yes," to the vow to uphold it. We didn't know then, but we knew before this election.

Some say he wants to abolish that very Constitution, the cornerstone of the land he will again vow to uphold.

It doesn't matter.

He can wish a firing squad on someone, and it doesn't matter.

He can seek revenge on his opponents, and it doesn't matter.

Honor and decency don't matter.

Why didn't it matter?

Some want to diagnose why Kamala Harris lost. Better yet, why did Donald Trump win?

I can offer little hope to you except the belief in the goodness of people, and that they want change and are grasping at straws to get it. They and I see a different picture.

I hope it isn't as dire as it appears to me right now. Clearly, many people don't think so. Nobody in their right mind would vote themselves into a tyrant's grasp. Many would put down women and like to return to 1770s where once T. said he liked because they could deport Immigrants. Is that where he would place us to "Make America Great Again?"

The 1770's was before all those freedoms we fought for had been put into effect. It was before The New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, Separation of Church and State, Public Education, Birth Control, Civil Rights, and Roe vs Wade.

Why do some men hate women so?

Why would a woman vote for her own shackles?

Yesterday, I had errands to run, and that all seemed normal. People wished me a "Good day." I felt that a bomb had gone off, and no one had seen it or heard it.

Today, the sun came out. No one is sending flowers that our democracy has died; nobody is bringing casseroles. Nobody has flown the flag at half-mast.

 Am I all wet?

 

 

“The Resistance Starts Now”

From Robert Reich (Substack). Author, professor, Lawyer, political commentator, Rhodes scholar Graduated Dartmouth AB summa cum laude.

“I still have faith in America, but we must mobilize to protect those at risk if Trump achieves his worst impulses.”

Robert Reich

Nov 06, 2024

“How will we conduct this resistance?

“By organizing our communities. By fighting through the courts. By arguing our cause through the media.

‘We will ask other Americans to join us – left and right, progressive and conservative, white people and people of color. It will be the largest and most powerful resistance since the American revolution.

“But it will be peaceful. We will not succumb to violence, which would only give Trump and his regime an excuse to use organized violence against us.

“We will keep alive the flames of freedom and the common good, and we will preserve our democracy. We will fight for the same things Americans have fought for since the founding of our nation – rights enshrined in the constitution and Bill of Rights.

“We the people will resist tyranny. We will preserve the common good. We will protect our democracy.

“This will not be easy, but if the American experiment in self-government is to continue, it is essential.

“I know you’re scared and stressed. So am I.

“If you are grieving or frightened, you are not alone. Tens of millions of Americans feel the way you do.

“All I can say to reassure you is that time and again, Americans have opted for the common good. Time and again, we have come to each other’s aid. We have resisted cruelty.

“We supported one another during the Great Depression. We were victorious over Hitler’s fascism and Soviet communism. We survived Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunts, Richard Nixon’s crimes, Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam war, the horrors of 9/11, and George W Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We will resist Donald Trump’s tyranny.

“Although peaceful and non-violent, the resistance will nonetheless be committed and determined.

“It will encompass every community in America. It will endure as long as necessary.

“We will never give up on America.

“The resistance starts now.”