Like many of you here, the last few weeks have been pretty challenging for me, from a political perspective. At first, my attention went to trying to find a silver lining with the (remote) possibility that The Donald may have used all of that outlandish rhetoric just to get elected, but certainly would try to be a more mainstream president in order to get reelected.
However, after seeing his selections for various cabinet posts, and despite that Trump appears to have obtained the White House by only the narrowest of margins, he’s signalling that he is not just going to double-down on his outlandishness, but triple-down on it.
His appointments leave us progressives with literally nothing to point to demonstrating any degree of reason.
In addition to appointing several of his elitist billionaire friends who will use their positions, like him, to feather their own nests even further, he has selected people who have made no bones about their desires to kill off public education, Medicare, civil liberties, civil rights, voting rights, consumer protections, reproductive rights, religious rights...and a whole lot more.
In fact, his cabinet looks like one of the biggest groups of misfits, in terms of their collective antipathy toward pluralism itself.
Despite all of that, and despite my being unable to find a silver lining in anything about the Nov. 8 elections so far (including the blatantly unfair and outrageous political shenanigans and dirty tricks that seem to have enabled Trump’s campaign to get to 270 electoral votes), something has been stirring in me for these past few weeks that seems to have crystallized into something more coherent and, oddly enough, a bit more optimistic.
Let me ask all of my fellow progressives to put aside for a few minutes all of our collective angst, anxiety, disgust, shock and disbelief just long enough for us to take a step back and give a completely different look at where we are since this otherwise depressing series of events that began Nov. 8.
Join me for just a few minutes in giving an alternative perspective on things:
Based on the behavior, actions, appointments and rhetoric of The Donald and his team of misfits known as his incoming “administration,” it appears that he is preparing to put together one of the most extremist, right-wing administrations in our country’s history (isn’t it odd that almost every time a new Republican gets elected lately, they try to put together an even more extremist, right-wing administration than ever before; this happened with Reagan, George Walker Bush and now Trump (the one exception being George H.W. Bush whose administration was, essentially, an extension of Reagan’s)).
Every single policy proposal that The Donald's incoming administration has revealed so far includes long-standing dreams of the radical, right-wing extremists from whence his team of misfits come. They seem to, collectively, represent the views of the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, A.L.E.C., Opus Dei and other right-wing groups all rolled into one.
But there's one thing we progressives need to keep in mind when considering the possibility that we will be battling and, more importantly, debating, these groups on every single conceivable subject for the next four or eight years: Who has the winning stance on most, if not all, of these subjects? Is it them or us?
If you think about what all of these groups have in common, it is, essentially, that they all want a return to the way things used to be. Each and every major policy position of these groups (and Trump the Grump himself) has already been tried... and failed. Just take a little closer look at these issues and where they want to take us. It is almost always intended to bring us backwards.
When it comes to what role government should play, they want to undo as many (if not all) of the regulations in the guise of claiming that they hinder corporate success (despite the fact that corporations are making more profits than ever before even with all of these so-called “oppressive” rules and regulations).
Their goal is to go backwards in time and return us to the days when corporations were free of government restraints and restrictions, the days of the Robber Barons, when millionaires and billionaires ruled and had complete control of our federal, state and local governments.
They want to “privatize” Medicare. There is nothing at all new about that proposal. Before Medicare, what we had was a completely, 100 percent privatized health insurance system. Privatized health care and health insurance has already been tried...and it failed miserably. The same is true of Social Security. We already had a 100 percent privatized retirement system in this country before Social Security, , and it proved to be an unmitigated disaster and failure, to the point where people were demanding that their government do something about it. In fact, on issue after issue, their solution is almost always to return to the exact same policies that failed before. Even on the subject of abortion, their solution is nothing new at all, it is simply a return to the days of back alley abortion, when all abortions were illegal. Once again, a policy that’s already been tried and failed.
And from the looks of who he is installing at the Department of Education, Trump is signalling his desire to kill off public education by diverting public education money to those people who send their kids to private schools. We once had a 100 percent privatized education system in this country, too, and just like all of the other examples above, it, too, failed miserably.
On issue after issue, the “solutions” that are being offered by the right-wing billionaires and oligarch wannabe's that are so well represented on Trump’s team can be summed up in one simple phrase: a return to the same failed policies of the past.
With “solutions” like those, we progressives should welcome a full, ongoing debate on all of these matters. If nothing else, a Trump administration offers us such an opportunity.
When you think about it, we really should have nothing to fear. Their solutions are all tried and proven failures. Progressive solutions, on the other hand, have worked. Many have been very hard fought and come after decades...even centuries...of struggle by our progressive predecessors.
In fact, on specific issue after issue, the American public actually agrees with the progressive agenda more than the right-wing agenda, and has for a long time. Even when the public, collectively, buys into cleverly couched right-wing talking points and demagoguery wrapped around vague concepts and rhetoric like security, freedom, liberty, the flag, motherhood and apple pie, the American public still gravitates to specific progressive solutions.
We should welcome a full and free discussion and ongoing series of debates on everything political, from the appropriate role of government to the appropriate role of religion in our government, and all other issues that encompasses. We have not only facts, but history on our side. They simply want to return to the same disastrous policies of the past. We have nothing to fear with such a debate.
We should welcome the debates that a Trump administration will spark because we have the winning arguments, almost across-the-board. When it comes to which political party and, just as importantly, which political philosophy, is truly based on doing what is morally and ethically right for individual citizens regardless of what social strata they may come from, we progressives have the winning solutions and have a long history of success to prove it. We shouldn't cower from any debate on any subject ever. We may not win the argument short-term, in terms of being able to stop horrible actions every single time, but we can still win the debate and lay the groundwork for a progressive resurgence where our policies will prevail.
You may call this rationalization, but it’s not. We’ve been dealt a pretty unsavory hand by the Nov. 8 election, but it is what it is. We can moan and complain all we want, but we still have to face facts. So, what is the best thing we progressives could possibly do under these circumstances? First of all, we should welcome a full-throttled debate on anything and everything the right has to throw at us.
If nothing else, the results of the Nov. 8 election appear to be offering us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in this country for such a debate about what the best solutions are for our citizens now and for future generations to come. It could actually offer a fresh, exciting opportunity for progressives to win the hearts and minds of a majority of this country's electorate for decades to come.
There's an old saying that when you are dealt lemons in life, it's time to make lemonade. On Nov. 8, we progressives were dealt bags full of electoral lemons. However, instead of just making lemonade, we have the opportunity to make a lot more than just that. We can make not only lemonade, but lemon meringue pie and lemon chiffon cake and lemon tarts, among other things. And in the process we could even enjoy a few good old fashioned lemon pie fights, and we probably will, right here on this site as we debate not just what the appropriate role of government should be, but the appropriate role of religion, how best to frame the issues, what the best solutions are and how best to get them implemented.
On one level, if we play our cards right and approach these debates correctly, this fight will be delicious as the right goes on defense for a change and we go on full offense.