Sunday, November 27, 2016 1:41 PM
The Election was followed by Thanksgiving, which allowed us to pivot—now that we aren’t concerned with lack of progress, lack of change, from our president—we can just be thankful for every day that things remain as they are, instead of getting much worse. If you close your eyes, you can almost believe that Trump won’t do any serious harm for four years, and then we’ll get a real president in there, and get back to work in 2020.
Perhaps the homunculus that ate at the center of Castro’s heart has given up the ghost because it finds a much more welcoming and powerful host, just a few miles North of Cuba. Trumpland—Viva el Nuevo Cuba!
We continue to block the news, here at the Dunn house. As I’ve remarked to many friends, I don’t need four years of the details on the bad news—I’ll wait for the movie to come out. Claire still reads the NY Times, so some news still leaks in—but at least we don’t have to wonder if it’s BS or not.
I’m curious how the ACA issue will play out. The way I see it, they have two options—they can just cold-bloodedly repeal the healthcare act—and let the medical costs just eat us alive again, with no security that it’ll cover us when we actually need it, or that we can even get coverage when we’re sick—or they can try to reform the existing legislation.
But the only way to really fix Obamacare is to make it single-payer, like it always should have been in the first place—and they can’t do that, can they? That would hurt the insurance industry—and god forbid they suffer—that’s why Washington fought it in the first place—and it’s the reason they can now claim it isn’t working.
The anti-socialized-medicine crowd hobbled the ACA so as to keep Capitalists in the game, to retain their ability to profit off of our suffering—so my money is on them trashing the whole thing. Why not? The time to stop them was November 8th—and that’s already past. Once the people have spoken, the lobbyists can get back to work—and they’re willing to do whatever they can to screw us out of money, even if it kills us.
So lobbyists are a big problem—as is business’s all-around choke-hold on our democracy. And the 25% of voters who voted for disaster are a problem—and the 50% of voters who just didn’t bother to vote are a problem. Our new president will not do anything to change that, or fix those problems—he is the result, not the cure.
People are eager to protest and petition and dispute the election—they don’t get it: the Election was the protest we were supposed to show up for—and nobody came. Well, that’s not entirely true—at last count, two million more Americans voted for the loser than the winner. But it wasn’t enough—and a protest after the fact is a pretty futile response—I mean: are we protesting Trump, are we protesting the Electoral College, are we protesting the stupidity of the American voter? What are we doing here? You can’t un-ring a bell.
I admire their spirit—but their timing sucks. Social media has given us all hot pants—we can’t sit down and plan for two years from now, or ten years from now—we have to organize a protest for next week or whatever. Why? Protesting isn’t an artistic expression—it’s a political statement. We can’t just run into the streets and yell about our feelings—we have to have a plan. We have to lengthen our timeline, build an engaged base, and strategize the hell out our next move—or this nonsense will never end.
America, you are headed down the wrong road—it looks like the same direction, but we’ve taken an unseen turn due to changing conditions. We’ve embraced too many of the cut-throat practices that enabled other countries to catch up to us—when we should have kept our lead by out-innovating other countries, instead of this panicky adoption of all their worst habits.
That whole Japanese thing in the 90s about working 20-hour days worked for them, but for us, it just made it harder to stop and think about what we’re doing. Other changes have similarly-tainted sources and similarly-tainted results. And now Americans either don’t have jobs, get underpaid, or get worked like a hated mule.
Capitalism needs a good kick in the balls. Its advantages shrink and its dangers loom larger and larger. I know it was our ‘battle standard’ during the Cold War, but that was then. It’s okay now—if Capitalism needs a ‘time out’, we have to give it one. We can’t be squeamish about it—Capitalism certainly isn’t going to scruple at sucking us dry. With the election of a debased billionaire, America has proven that making money has ascended above any other American ethic—and the destruction of two big buildings in NYC has made us a nation of cowards. We have to nut up—and start living as if we had money, instead of money having us.
I say we stop buying stuff. No, of course, I know we can’t do that. I don’t know—maybe we could buy less stuff? Maybe we could determine some things to be unnecessary? Maybe we could try to maximize our local purchases, replacing purchases from the big stores? I really don’t know how you kill Capitalism—but I think the democracy thing comes into it—if enough people start doing something new, the old thing dies, right? Maybe the best first step is to recognize our enemy for the deadly threat it’s become. All I know for sure is that electing a brainless billionaire, just because he’s a billionaire, is a giant-step in the wrong direction.
But enough about politics—I was never much for team sports anyhow.