Kind of interesting from the view at 30,000 feet, but I don't know how much longer I'll bebe able to maintain my distance from the roiling unrest in the streets, nor do I have any real insight into how far it's going to spread.
There were said to be 100,000 in the streets of LA yesterday protesting the elevation of Trump to the Presidency. If it was reported that way, the number was probably quite a bit more given the media tendency to low-ball "leftist" crowd estimates.
Gee.
The protests in Portland have been called "riots" and the police have responded by firing into the crowds with "rubber projectiles," gas and smoke grenades and flash-bangs after assuring us that the protesters threw "objects" at them. A sniper apparently fired live ammunition at a protester, wounding him.
And so it goes.
On the other side, Trump partisans are either claiming the protests don't matter -- after all, the protesters are so few and they're just losers, whiners, and no accounts -- or they are Soros-funded attempts at a domestic "Color Revolution" -- and they don't matter, because Soros, and who cares, anyway?
Well, I'm not aware of any Color Revolution aspects -- yet. But the protests have been growing and spreading, and they are destabilizing wherever they pop up. There was a demonstration in Albuquerque the other day (I think it was Wednesday, I forget!) in which about 600 participated. A handful of what I assume were anarchists targeted a restaurant along the route for vandalism, and sure enough, that's what caught the local media eye (they are always on the lookout for protester "violence.") Another protest was apparently announced for Thursday night and all the mechanisms for suppression were marshaled by the authorities, but whoopsy! The protest didn't happen.
I have to say Albuquerque's local protest community is well experienced in psyching out authority, and apparently they've been doing that. Bless their hearts.
But what I'm seeing reported in the media about protests around the country should be starting to alarm Our Rulers. It's not a Color Revolution yet, but it could become one -- or something like one -- very quickly.
Personally, I wouldn't want that to happen, partly because the results where they have happened have not necessarily been what their participants intended -- sometimes they've been closer to the opposite. They tend to cause the institutionalization of a neo-liberal, exploitative and extractive power structure that acts against the interests of the People. We already have that, duh. But if a Color Revolution type general protest occurs in this country, Trump will be toast. I don't know of any target of a Color Revolution who has managed to survive the... um, process. I could be wrong, but it wouldn't look good for the survival of the current wildly corrupt and purposefully contrary power structure.
While that might be desirable in the abstract, what would take its place?
That's the problem. While there are many, many reasons to take to the streets over this appalling and outrageous (s)election, no one I know of is able to articulate an alternative. What are we supposed to do, and what sort of difference is supposed to be made?
Are we supposed to install Hillary instead of Trump? I don't see that as viable. First of all, she is saying -- along with the entire political class and the media -- to "accept" the results essentially without question and get used to Trump-the-President. The people in the streets refuse.
While Hillary has a widening popular vote lead, now estimated to top out at 2 million, but it might go to three or even four million by the time all the votes are counted, and if that happened, that would give her a clear majority in the popular vote, no one has yet looked closely at the "battleground" state totals that so surprisingly "flipped" from Clinton to Trump by a very narrow margin at the last minute -- giving him an Electoral College victory without the need for a popular vote plurality or majority.
Given all the talk about rigged elections and Putin's interference (OMG! Putin!) it's remarkable that after Trump's "shocking" "historic" "upset" no one said a word about rigging or interference again.
The Memory Hole sucked it right down.
How... interesting.
Clinton, for her part, is telling donors she "lost" because of Comey's interference. Wait. What about PUTIN????!!!!! No word.
Of course because Trump "won" he no longer has anything to say about "rigged elections," does he?
Jeebus.
They must think the Rabble are complete idiots. Well...
All right, I don't know what happened in the "battleground" states. The excuses I've heard for the "surprising" flip Clinton to Trump in those states -- and those states alone -- are that white women broke for Trump at the very last minute (because Comey -- that was Hillary's excuse) and there were all these hidden white rural voters who came out of the woods to vote for Trump, and what could you do, it was just enough to give him an EC victory, and that's it. Just accept it.
The people in the streets are saying, "No! Fuck No! Not. This. Time!"
We were told the same thing when Bush2 was handed the Presidency by a lawless Supreme Court. "Just accept it." And many did. A lot said "No," but that time, they were ignored. 60,000 or more protested Bush's inauguration in DC on the day, and there was almost no mention of it in the media. It went right down the Memory Hole too, and today hardly anybody knows it happened. "Get over it" was the constant refrain of the Busheviks, but many never did, and the outrages that Busheviks committed were so appalling and so destructive that today it's almost impossible to believe such a damaging regime was allowed to do what it did by the entire political class cheered on by a captive media. What were they thinking?
Millions took to the streets to protest the Iraq War, and they were ignored. But many, many others protested practically every aspect of the Bush Regime, and except for Cindy Sheehan sitting in her ditch in Crawford shaming Bush the Lesser, you practically wouldn't know there were any protests at all these days, because most of them were ignored at the time, and forgotten.
But they happened nonetheless and had the cumulative effect of destabilizing the regime. Not that it did any good, but it happened.
The horrors of the Bush2 Regime are not forgotten, despite the fact that the protests largely were, and I think part of the motivation of the current protests is a recognition that Trump is like Bush2 on steroids, raging and champing at the bit to commit even more mayhem to more people, faster and harder than the Busheviks did.
We will not willingly repeat that horror show.
Trump and his gang of thieves, mountebanks, torturers and warmongers have done nothing to assure us they won't engage in the kind of monstrousness the Busheviks did. In fact, they've been pretty clear they'd "finish the job" the Busheviks left undone by dismantling Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and any other remnants of a social safety net they can find, by deporting every brown person they can round up, building a higher wall to keep them Messicans out, by suppressing every aspect of dissent they can, by restricting the voting franchise to only People Who Matter, by dispensing favors to loyalists, denying them to everyone else, by going hog-wild with extraction and transport of fossil fuels (damn the Indians acting against the Dakota Access Pipeline, Trump himself stands to profit from it, get outta the way, ya damn savages!), restoring official torture programs, glassing any opposition to hegemony in the Middle East, by re-engaging in acts of war against Iran, by allying the United States with every rightwing/fascist regime on earth and on and on and on. That's the program Trump and his R cronies in Congress have been laying out, essentially daring anyone to do anything about it.
His defenders insist we must give him the benefit of the doubt because of all the Good Things he's going to do. Never mind the Bad. He's promising to increase infrastructure spending to create "jobs" -- for whom, doing what? Well, we don't know, do we? But not to worry, it will be Wonderful, and long overdue! He'll get rid of that Obamacare abomination, leaving -- perhaps -- the "prior conditions" denial of coverage provisions and offspring coverage on parents' policies until age 26 as remnant sops to the takers, losers, and whiners. But that's it. Nothing else. 20 some odd million to lose coverage, and wonder of wonders, to lose any ability to get coverage. Tough luck, suckers!
He won't start WWIII with Putin, so that's good, no? He will start a war with Iran and China and whoever else gets in his way or defies him, but they deserve it, right?
Gah. On and on.
"Give him a chance!" And more and more of the People say, "No. Not this time."
I don't know what will happen. I don't want to think the worst, but it's hard not to under the circumstances. This man and his cronies must not take office. Period.
God save us.
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