We are stuck. It looks bad. Every day brings news of more destruction but a flabby response is all we are hearing from our institutions. Some days it feels like no one is fighting for us, the real Americans. The ones who actually believe in a working government and laws that apply to everyone. Where are the institutions to stand up to the fascists? How can they let 250 years of work slip through their fingers?
This seems like mass dereliction, if not incompetence. Every institution that could possibly mount a resistance - government, higher ed, media, military and corporate - is giving in to Trump’s extortions. Everything has become politicized, and every precious right and endeavor is destroyed to please the obscenely wealthy, our leaders are turning to us apologetically and shrugging. They probably think it will be over in 4 years, and can just hold their breath until then. They point to us, and say ‘do something! It’s on you, not us.’
That strikes me as a childish response, if genuine, and malign if not. More than anything, massively, hugely selfish. Selfish, I’ll say it again. Self-satisfied, and self-serving. Everyone in Congress has the income to survive the next four years, and the connections to make personal crises go away. Corporate leadership, Institutional leaders, media owners, all are in the top 10% who are actually going to benefit from Trump’s policies. So are their friends, their fellow board members and their donors. They are all beholden to wealth, so the short term goal of protecting the wealthy in their aggressive bid to recast America in Robber Baron style is being greenlit by people we trusted.
And who are these leaders, these titans who feel that fascism is tolerable for us and profitable for them? And what percentage of them are white men with family money?
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During my first real career, I was included in a business retreat weekend at the ad agency I worked for. I remember sitting through the conversations and listening, not really involved because I was one of the “creatives.” The Account Reps and Directors drove the conversations, but I still had thoughts. And when, repeatedly, my thoughts showed up 15, 20 minutes down the road but voiced by the white guys (everybody but me and the Director’s secretary) I realized that I was pretty much as sharp as they were and a bit quicker. I started speaking up. Was I listened to? Not really. Even male creatives were thought of as less than intelligent, so I was patronized quickly and ignored. But I never again believed that I wasn’t as smart as a guy.
Now I wonder if the mass hypnosis of the Patriarchy isn’t keeping us all from seeing the truth - white men are not all that in the brains department, nor much use in the spine department either. The kind of short-term policy making I see in male leaders is doomed to failure because they won't do the work to make a better policy, when donors have cash ready for those who will slow walk or disappear that policy.
In past tweets and posts, I’ve suggested that Never Trumpers form a third party and run against Trump (both in 2020 and 2024) in order to split his vote and make him lose to the Democrats. Basically, fall on their swords for Democracy while rebuilding the reputation of their party. Now it’s too late, MAGA has devoured the party apparatus and the government itself.
And speaking to that, I posted in January 2017 that the departing Obama administration should form a shadow government in exile, to monitor and protect important relationships and intelligence while Trump was in office. That didn’t happen in either Obama's or Biden's administration, even though it was OBVIOUS what was going to happen in Trump's second term. Maybe just obvious to me.
Honestly, I am not in government, and have no analyst training as such, but even I foresaw the dangers. Why didn't the white guys?
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I am not the only one seeing the danger. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is aware, but powerless to overcome both the MAGA lies AND the undermining by their old and entrenched Dem leaders. And it’s mostly the Black women and Muslims who are making the most sense, while getting the most public abuse from their own institutions.
So we are now seeing sexism, racism and religious profiling in our own leadership. Not surprising, when the majority at that level of power are wealthy white men.
Maybe it’s the vast acceptance of the ‘Men are Smarter than Women’ idea, even among liberal men, that is hampering the punishment of the Trump administration. It’s the not-so-secret sexism and racism of the mediocre white men who feel threatened by each accomplishment women and minorities make. In fact, if MAGA is the very model of a modern white man, they are comparatively slower, lazier and less accomplished than women, and especially black women. This just twists their knickers because aren’t they supposed to be In Charge of Things, no matter how incompetently? And isn't that the story the whole Trump administration tells daily?
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Preying on children is not a social good. Not only are there biological consequences, but also lasting psychological harm that continues to reverberate through the generations. Pedophilia does not make our society better. We are about to see a campaign that makes the opposite case, to shield Trump and his fellow rapists. There is no logic to condoning this obvious social taboo other than that there are a lot of rich white men who want to be allowed to break it. And Trump is their poster boy. (Musk too).
The selfishness, the unearned privilege, the arrogance of the white men** in this society has to be blunted and put into the correct perspective - they are preventing progress, and actually destroying or selling our common assets. They are rejecting new ideas, better policies, more broadly supportive efforts, rather than allow women and minorities into the power centers of our institutions. We are entering the Dark Ages of America, where life is cheap for the powerless and gilded for the rich. This can’t be continued without the whole nation broken up and sold off to wealthy and immoral men, and the women who aid and abet them.
Accountability is the first step. Stop voting for the white guy with the glib answers. Bring the women, the black women, the young and diverse activists into power and they will start to turn the fascist machine around. Stop listening to the wall of white male media - they are only committed to returning the Patriarchy to its former invisibility.
* The strict father model is discussed by George Lakoff in his books, including Moral Politics,Don't Think of an Elephant, The Political Mind, and Whose Freedom?. In these books, the strict father model is contrasted with the nurturant parent model. Lakoff argues that if the metaphor of nation as family and government as parent is used, then conservative politics correspond to the strict father model. For example, conservatives think that adults should refrain from looking to the government for assistance lest they become dependent.
** Wealth and power makes men in minority groups feel similarly empowered to exploit, lie and cheat to get more and more wealth. It is ultimately Capitalism that is the virus in our society; it's just that white men are the most vulnerable to it.
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