Solidarity on the left is so important as we move ahead after this disastrous election. And yet I don’t know how to talk to my friends who never got past Hillary Clinton getting the nomination. They both voted for Jill Stein after Bernie Sanders didn’t get the nomination. I’ve been trying to focus on all the common ground we have. I have two freinds on Facebook in this category who don’t know each other, and yet seem to have similar talking points that they are getting from somewhere.
First, they post things on Facebook about what utter bullshit the inquiry into the Russian influence on the election is. Okay. Can we at least be curious about whether the intelligence community is out to get Trump or if there is some vailidity to their reports and concerns about interference from a foreign government?
“No. It is a bullshit diversion. Besides, look at all the interference we have done in foreign elections. it’s hypocritical."
Okay, that is a point I can grant, but it doesn’t change the fact that there is some motivation that Putin has for influencing our election. You aren’t curious about that?
“It’s bullshit. It is probably about being able to drill in the oil fields being uncovered in the article because of global warming."
Bingo! Common ground! I agree that this is likely. So, we agree that that is important, right?
“It’s nothing new.” The importance gets acknowledged and tersely dismissed at the same time. Okay, on to another issue I think we will have common ground on--the fact that Trump is racist, sexist pig who brags about sexually assualting women. I would consider both of these friends, one a man and the other a woman, to be feminists, but there is a blind spot with Trump that just mystifies me. It isn’t exactly that they excuse his behavior. It is that they put his horridness on equal footing with what they see as Hillary Clinton’s (and Obama’s) horridness. This makes my brain explode. I can hear (and have been reading) the critiques of where the democratic party has missed some things, has been too tied to the corporate status quo, are too engaged militarily in the world, etc. I share some of these concerns and have tried to not dismiss the concerns/critiques that I don’t find as compelling. But (call me crazy!) I really can’t dismiss President Obama and Secretary Clinton as terrible people who have never done anything good in their lives who are somehow “just as bad” as Trump.
My admiration for President Obama is on a more emotional level than my admiration for the things that Hillary Clinton has accomplished. Full disclosure, I teared up watching Cecile Strong and Sasheer Zamata pay tribute to him singing “To Sir With Love” on SNL. This doesn’t mean that I don’t have any critiques of or disappointments with him. I don’t think I’m stuck in “hero worship,” as one of them was accusing people of that expressed gratitude towards him on his way out.
But I do have a visceral response to either Obama or Clinton being placed on a level playing field with Trump. It actually disgusts me, and the conversation is kind of over for me. The broader issue here, of course, is how many people are in the camp my two freinds are in? Is dialogue possible? And, given the similarity of the their “talking points,” where is this coming from? I’ve actually wondered a bit about fake news playing a part in this. Whose agenda is being served here?