monkinetic the blog

Daily Digest for Thursday, Nov 10, 2016

☀️ Earliest posts come first.

American Me: What's Next?

I made it clear that I was voting for Hillary, and why, in a post earlier this year. I was skeptical of the huge lead most of the polls projected, but I still thought she’d beat the foolish candidate of racism and misogyny.

Boy did we screw that up.

I’ve been grieving for the last 36 hours, and am just now starting to come to terms with the new reality, and what I’m going to do about it. Right now everything in my head is a mess, but I need to process it, and writing is as good a way as any. So, the following is a very-loosely-connected set of links and thoughts.

Liberal White Shock

Courtney Parker West wrote a piece on Medium about the shock and dismay that liberal white voters are expressing at the “racism revealed” by the election. I have to count myself among them (perhaps more independent than liberal, but that just means I had an even more rosy view of the state of racism in our culture) and Courtney’s article kinda broke my brain.

On “Woke” White People Advertising their Shock that Racism just won a Presidency

> But the real trigger has been the shock. The absolute unpreparedness. The need to proclaim this astonishment and all but out yourself as having been blind and truly unbelieving *of what we already done-told you was our reality* — all whilst being down for the cause.

(Emphasis mine) Courtney is spelling out that those of us who are out-and-out clutching our pearls over the racism unleashed in public during this campaign and in the aftermath has always been there, and people of color have been telling us about it since before there was a nation here.

> Don’t tell me you “just can’t imagine” because some of us — my little black and Indigenous ass — have a real big imagination when it comes to the racism and bigotry that has ruled our country for hundreds of years.

There’s more I’m still digesting, in particular the bits on institutionalized racism. Read it.

Scalzi on Racism

So… I did not personally vote for our President-Elect, but I have family and friends who did, and had a few things gone differently in my life, I might have as well.

John Scalzi (science fiction author of the Old Man’s War series and others, and general good thinker) came up with a metaphor to help us understand how we can’t separate our intentions/personal reasons for making a choice from the result of that choice.

The Cinemax Theory of Racism

> Pop quiz: In this scenario, did you just subscribe to Cinemax?

You can guess where it goes from there:

> And you say, no I’m not, I hate racism.

> And others say to you, but apparently you like these other things more than you hate racism, because you agreed to the racism in order to get these other things.

I know the exact reasons that some people did vote, and I would have voted in the past, for Trump. But there are disastrous consequences to not hating the evil enough to give up some hoped-for modicum of good.

Going Independent in Arizona

On a side-note, I’ve been a registered Republican for as long as I’ve been a voter. This year I marked a bunch of Ds on my ballot (but not all) and today, I re-registered as an independent in Arizona (“No Party Preference”). Arizona has open primaries, and you can bet I’ll be taking part in the future. To my shame, I stayed home for the primaries this year, not believing in the slightest that Trump had a chance.

![](http://i.imgur.com/eO1HcT0.jpg?2)

Dark Visions of America

Sullivan on Trump

Via Dave Winer: Andrew Sullivan writes in New York Magazine, The Republic Repeals Itself:

> This is now Trump’s America. He controls everything from here on forward. He has won this campaign in such a decisive fashion that he owes no one anything. He has destroyed the GOP and remade it in his image. He has humiliated the elites and the elite media. He has embarrassed every pollster and naysayer. He has avenged Obama. And in the coming weeks, Trump will not likely be content to bask in vindication.

Don’t expect a power-seeking narcissist to embrace reason after a victory.

> They will not let [the levers of power] go easily. They will likely build a propaganda machine more powerful than Fox and Breitbart — and generate pseudo-stories and big lies that, absent any authoritative or trusted media, will dominate the new centers of information, Facebook or its successors.

Don’t forget that Stephen Bannon, head of the “Alt-Right” (far-right racists, misogynists) publisher Breitbart, was Trump’s most recent campaign “CEO”.

Andrew points out, rightly, that Trump’s promises to the far- and alt-right cannot all realistically be kept. But rather than face backlash, he and his supporters will be ready with a host of “others” and “outside forces” to blame:

> The only sliver of hope is that his promises cannot be kept… But hope fades in turn when you realize how absolute and total his support clearly is. His support is not like that of a democratic leader but of a cult leader fused with the idea of the nation. If he fails, as he will, he will blame others, as he always does.

> so there will have to be scapegoats — media institutions, the Fed, the “global conspiracy” of bankers and Davos muckety-mucks he previewed in his rankly anti-Semitic closing ad, rival politicians whom he will demolish by new names of abuse, foreign countries and leaders who do not cooperate, and doubtless civilians who will be targeted by his ranks of followers and demonized from the bully pulpit itself.

As with all these links, take the time to read Andrew’s piece – it’s dark, but paints a not-unrealistic picture of what may come.

Winer on Sullivan

Dave goes on to share some notes responding to Andrew’s piece. In particular, he outlines a few ways that Trump can actually build on, and take credit for, Obama’s successes in healthcare and immigration – all while convincing his supporters that he’s fulfilling promises to tear down and dismantle. This is a man adept at taking credit for others’ work.

> He can repeal ObamaCare by getting rid of the worst parts (so he will say) and replace it with TrumpCare which contains just the good parts. He’ll present it as something all new. What he’ll care about is putting his name on it…

> People don’t know that Obama is deporting illegals. Trump won’t tell them. He’ll just provide the numbers that he’s deporting and say they’re the worst ones, real rapists and murderers, and call it progress, and that “issue” will fade away too.