The American people have reached out to touch the face of fascism and decided to embrace it. This virulent strain is well documented through history. Tonight it sprouted and it's bound to grow from here.
I served in the military but never had to fight the sort of war we were equipped and armed and trained to fight. No, not that Afghanistan sort of conflict. We were prepared to fight a much greater, far more dangerous evil.
The generation before me did have to fight. One uncle didn't make it home. My dad was horribly wounded - he and his family lived with that all our lives. Another uncle, who flew too many combat missions with enormous PTSD, not then diagnosed, lived his postwar life a shattered, besotted man. Our parents taught us that they did this, made these sacrifices, endured the decades of loss and suffering afterward because it was the right thing to do, the necessary thing to do. Maybe that was the only way they could find peace with what they went through, what they did, what they brought home. They had to defeat the evil. The most amazing thing is, despite how it played hell with their lives in the decades afterward, they never whined about it. They sought no one's sympathy.
They fought and suffered in the naive hope of salvaging a world that a good many Americans tonight discarded like some fast food packaging.
I finished my night of binge watching NetFlix only to let the impossible sink in. The man with the most debased instincts, the angry, compulsive, vindictive, anti-democratic sub-human will be America's next president.
He won't be able to deliver on many of his promises, not without scuttling America's vaunted Constitution but he won't be the first to do just that. He won't be the first to have a captive horde backing him up.
There are many tonight in Canada, our countrymen if not our fellow citizens, who will rejoice in Trump's victory. We've seen their kind before in Austria in March, 1938. They engineered what we today know as Anschluss when the Fuhrer's forces swarmed in to take control of Austria.
Let's recall Edmund Burke's caution when he warned, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Will our good men, the Liberal government, Justin Trudeau, do nothing? Will they rehabilitate and reinforce Canadian democracy to withstand the southern contagion? Or will they, true to course, go limp and, on behalf of our people - past, present and future - succumb?
Leave it long enough and we'll be consumed. History proves that much, again and again.
Junior has to realize he has two choices. He either has to cleave to what's happening, consigning Canada to the same fate, or he has to stand against it - as his father would have.
Trump's victory?
ReplyDeleteIt shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, really.
The left in the USA's been decimated for ages. No foundation to build upon, as what FDR had left behind for them had been dashed by decades of Reaganism.
All we are witnessing is the first tolling of the bell signaling the Age of Reagan's closing. There'll be a 100 more to come in the next hour to let people know to rush back to get in before the gates close.
Trump's just the start of a new political age, and it's probably an awful one, sadly.
There was no challenge from the left to replace the Age of Reagan with a viable alternative. The best they could muster was Bernie Sanders, and he was a retiring sort, willing to concede to Clinton rather than put up any sort of fight. He was more than willing to step aside when it was obvious the Democratic establishment would by any means necessary never have him as their candidate. It was Hilary or bust for them, and, for whatever reason, the doubt of her actual campaigning skills never crossed their minds.
There was never any actual analysis of her actual competency to win. I could see it a million miles away; she's a loser. Well, not in life, obviously. She's a winner there, in real life being a millionaire and all, but in campaigning skills, she's a loser. She barely even beat Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, and it was rigged in her favor. She'd lost the primary eight years prior to an upstart named Obama. There should've red flags. In May, I was saying she was the sort who pull defeat from the jaws of victory. In May, I began to worry she'd lose this election due to hubris. Because it was her election to lose, she'd do just that.
She never campaigned to win, just not to lose, and then she did.
Ah well, the left in the USA can't be concerned with her. Nor Trump. They need to rethink what they're doing, because it's obviously not working. They need to rebuild. Bring in fresh blood, and try to develop it to become the leaders of the next election.
Well, that's what we here in Canada need to do, too. We're losers, continually losing in elections we should be winning. We don't know how to win. We should be viable alternatives, but our political parties keep turning to neo-liberal shills such as Mulcair and J. Trudeau. It should be obvious that what we're doing isn't working, and that we need to rethink how we're going to become viable to Canada. We need a rebuild of our progressive political parties, starting right now.
Well, there's so much I want to say, but it's gotten late, and I don't even know what the hell I'm talking about anymore.
Good luck, United States. You're gonna need it.
There was one other comment I wanted to make, and it concerns just how blindsided the Democrats were. How flat-footed they appeared to be. How comfortable they acted, without realizing they were losing their footing.
ReplyDeleteWhat this election boils down to. What it's all about, and why they lost when they should have won. It's all very simple. And they never did a damn thing about it.
It was about the rural versus the cities. The farming communities versus the metropolitan elites.
Had the Democrats ever at any time spoke in this form, they could've eked out a victory, somehow.
They misread everything, allowing Trump to take the rural without a damn fight. He spoke for them, even though what he said was blatantly racist. Perhaps, had the Democrats ever thought to be better words in their mouths, they could've been celebrating tonight. Instead, it's a bottoming out. An epic collapse.
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ReplyDeleteSuch doom and gloom....
ReplyDeleteBoth horrible candidates, both liars and manipulators.
The difference? One represented the bankers and the political establishment...
Bernie Sanders could have won - except he was for change and the Dems weren't about to let that happen.
"The American people have reached out to touch the face of fascism and decided to embrace it."
ReplyDeleteSo say craven neoliberals who supported a bribe-taking government-by-global-oligarch war-profiteering super-predator.
Just STFU with all your melodramatic emotionally-manipulative clap trap. Trump is not a fascist. In fact, after talking to many conservative Americans during this election I have found that they actually cherish liberty, freedom and democracy.
The same cannot be said of these goddamn Baby Boomer liberals who look down on democracy as "populist" and prefer the establishment looters being in control of the government.
Don't worry. This is not the end of the world. In 4 more years, the Democratic party can once again run on reviving the Cold War with Russia and starting WW3! There is always HOPE!
I think I'll move to Ushuaia. It'll be one of he last places the fallout reaches...
ReplyDeleteN.
Toby, you're right about how blindsided and flat-footed the Dems were. I think the voter turnout numbers tell the story of the election:
ReplyDelete2004 (Bush) 62,040,610 2004 (Kerry) 59,028,444
2008 (McCain) 59,948,323 2008 (Obama) 69,498,510
2012 (Romney) 60,933, 504 2102 (Obama) 65,915795
2016 (Trump) 59,041,303 2016 (Clinton) 59,117,303
Trump was beatable - he didn't mobilize the base as much as Dubya, McCain or Romney. But the Dems couldn't capitalize, their voters were apathetic. As Plato once said about voter indifference: “The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
Cap
AT troy.
ReplyDeleteTrump's victory?
It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, really.
The left in the USA's been decimated for ages.
There is no left! in the USA , never has been.
North Americans have been conditioned to think that any hand out to anyone but private enterprise is Socialism.
Anyone with a social conscience is a lefty!
Charity not social care should come from the churches or just trickle down from the top!!
Sadly this attitude has just been re written in stone.
TB