Post election blues over seeing red

Please forgive my mixing of puns. It isn’t that I don’t take this seriously. My nerves are as frayed as those of many of my readers. But coming up with a title that wouldn’t drive my readers away screaming wasn’t easy.

A title is supposed to tell you why you should read a particular post, but it is often hard to put into a catchy phrase. Why look back at this messy and painful election? Why dwell on a future that is still uncertain? Trump lost. Sometimes that feels like the only thing that matters.

But this really was a vote about the soul of the nation. And we’ve got to look at that soul, once it’s bared. Otherwise, we’ll end up having to go through the same painful things again and again and again. That’s why I didn’t give in to the strong temptation to write about herbs instead. So, bear with me if you are in need of some steadying or even if you just want a space to bounce your thoughts off of.

We finally got a moment of celebration, but it is likely to be very brief. I hear and read people all across America and in other countries marveling that so many American voters were still willing to vote for that uncouth, hateful and psychologically unhealthy man. We were all well aware that he still had supporters, but it seemed like many people had dropped their support for him.

It doesn’t surprise me that fundamentalist Christians didn’t change their tune, regardless of their posturing about “character” and “values” when it comes to other politicians. It doesn’t even surprise me that some Hispanic voters went for Trump. It is time America realized that this is a very diverse group of citizens with widely differing interests. And the Democrats did take them for granted and ignore them after all.

But what both surprises and dismays me is the gains Trump made among white women. I stand stunned. What could possibly possess more than half of white female voters to support a man who has made his opinion that women are objects and only valuable if they please men very clear? How could MORE of these women support him this time after having to endure his sewage-mouth for so long?

It’s been through a battle and the war ain’t over. Creative Commons image by John M. Cropper

This is part of the sickness we have found in the nation’s soul. One of the ways I try to comprehend this soul is by reading Christian bloggers to get a perspective that is definitely outside my bubble. One of those I read on occasion is Kieth Giles, who grew up in a right-wing, white Christian environment in Texas. He’s made the mental trip across the big divide in America and while I still may not agree with him on lots of things, his perspective on what makes Republican voters tick is invaluable.

“Republican Christians tend to care about the unborn, the traditional family, and the right to bear arms,” he wrote in a recent post. “Therefore, they vote for Republican candidates who at least ‘say’ they care about overturning abortion laws, defending traditional definitions of marriage [anti-gay marriage, etc.], and protecting the Second Amendment.”

Add to this that many right-wing, white Christians have been surrounded by a highly charged bubble of constant media messaging on these three topics and what you have is a deeply passionate response. They don’t just care about abortion. They are torn apart by the thought of innocent babies being killed. They don’t just dislike the idea of gay sex, they fervently believe that traditional families are the last defenders of all that is good in this messed up world. And feeling under threat, they truly fear gun snatchers.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard any of this, but it is maybe the first time I’ve sat down and taken a good hard look at the emotions behind it. I always kind of figured that anti-abortion activists didn’t really care about the babies. They just cared about controlling what they see as “loose women.” They cared about punishing those they saw as breaking religious purity laws. That was what I believed.

But what this election and its fallout are telling us is that the leaders may have started the movement that way. The pundits who push the propaganda may be coming from that cynical perspective, but many white women are buying the message about protecting babies on a deep and emotional level.

The same goes for the issue of the “traditional family.” Now, I really don’t doubt that there is an element of hate mongering going on here. A lot of people have gotten caught up in the us-and-them game. People who abide by gender norms are on one side and those who don’t are on the other. Just like with sports teams, a lot of people can get whipped up into a frenzy of antagonism over something that doesn’t need to take over a person’s identity. But what I am seeing now is that there is also a deeper emotional element.

We can all relate to the root emotion—the overwhelming anxiety over the troubles in our world. Whether you are focused on climate change, pervasive racism, vast inequity and the finite nature of the earth’s resources or the loss of authentic opportunities, disconnection from spirit, fractious tribalism, endless consumerism or the addictive pitfalls of substances and entertainment, the world really looks like it’s going to hell in a hand basket a good share of the time. Our biggest differences aren’t usually in what we think the problems are but in what we think the solutions are.

Many women have subscribed to the idea that family is the one good thing in all that mess. Despite any unpleasantness, micro-aggressions, suppression of spirit or acrimony in family life, it is still the one thing we can really hang on to. My mother and I recently came to the same conclusion in one of our long, meandering discussions on life, politics and the meaning of the universe. So, we aren’t really that far away from these women either.

But the Trump supporting women have absorbed a worldview that narrows family to a very traditional model. And given the threatening pressures from outside and that sense that family is our only real haven, their attachment to that traditional view of family is authentically passionate.

How exactly that leads them to enthusiastically support Trump, rather than supporting him with the kind of resigned frustration that so many progressives feel for the Democrats, I can’t say. That is a mystery the Christian bloggers have yet to reveal.

I have tried my damnedest to be understanding in all this. I’m not writing people off as hateful and authoritarian just because their primary issues have to do with things that seem at first glance to be mainly about limiting someone else’s autonomy, whether that’s the ability of women to make crucial life choices or the rights of everyone to form loving relationships in the way that is most natural for them. I’m making the effort to see the heart behind these stances.

And I still find the soul of the nation in peril.

I will allow that a moral, thinking person can feel strongly about protecting babies or saving the traditional family. But in either case, Donald Trump doesn’t look like a choice to promote those causes. His actions are about as much for the traditional family as a gay stripper might be. And he clearly is happy to endanger the lives of immigrant babies.

Guns? Well, I guess it is legit to say he isn’t out to snatch the guns of rural and suburban white folks. But I have a hard time seeing defending one’s guns as an issue with heart.

Now pundits ask us to “come together” and heal the divide in our country. That would be a lot easier if the other side had concerns that were not focused on controlling or harming other people. The common ground isn’t there, because that is a deal breaker for most of us.

There is one thing I think we can find comfort in, despite the lack of a clear “blue wave” in the election. There was a sand bar in the way.

What this election showed about America, yet again, was that the majority has always been far more progressive than the politicians. And the political status quo is maintained by several anti-democratic mechanisms. One is the winner-take-all voting system where everyone has to vote for one of two major candidates or have their vote effectively turned against their interests. Another is the Senate system that gives preference to states with low population and thus primarily to rural, conservative states.

And most egregiously there is the Electoral College which was specifically designed to protect the institution of slavery and prejudice elections in favor of rural, conservative voters at the expense of urban, progressive voters.

Among my English-as-a-second-language students are adult professionals from the Czech Republic who mostly came of age around the time of the Velvet Revolution, when young activists overthrew the totalitarian Communist regime. They believed that America was the guiding light of democracy and now they come to me confused. Their Czech-language media has started to describe the US Electoral College for the first time and they are alarmed.

“How did the American election system get broken?” they ask.

“It didn’t,” I explain. “It’s working exactly the way it was meant to.”

I give them a history lesson—with grammar and pronunciation points in English to make sure class time is used well. The Electoral College is working just as it did two hundred years ago to extend the lifetime of the American slavery system far past the time when slavery was abandoned by Canada, Britain and Western Europe. It achieved this by weighting votes to give greater voice to rural conservatives. And it is still doing that today.

The fact is that a lot of people still voted for Trump, but more than four million more voted for Biden, a lack-luster candidate if there ever was one. In any country with a modern democracy it would not have been considered a close race. It might not have been a blue wave, but that also might be because of the artificial sandbars set up to make sure we never see a blue wave and the widespread voter suppression that acted as a flood break.

On Tuesday, November 10, I finally received my mail-in ballot for the 2020 election. I usually receive my ballot a month earlier than that and receive it automatically. This time new voter suppression rules by the Trump administration meant that I had to specifically request my ballot in the summer. Then, the Trump administration sabotaged the US Post Office so that even though my county elections office mailed the ballot two months ago, it still arrived a week after it had to be physically back in Oregon five thousand miles away.

This is voter suppression at work. It isn’t generally considered “election fraud” but it is fraud’s sneakier cousin.

I was lucky. I got caught up in only the fringes of voter suppression efforts and my county office was ready and eager to help. They had a backup system to allow me to vote via email and even though it took specific attention to a single voter, they made it possible for me to cast my vote legally and securely. But the point is that I was certainly not the only one hit by voter suppression measures and in many cases that cost Biden and Congressional Democrats votes, because these measures were made to impact groups that were expected to vote against Trump.

People in other western democracies look at the images of Americans waiting in line for hours with masks and umbrellas to vote in the United States and they shake their heads in bewildered sympathy. That is the kind of treatment voters get in Belarus. That is how regimes behave when they know the voters are not their friends.

So, despite the fact that I am disappointed and even ashamed that 55 percent of white women voted for Trump… again, I know that the soul of the nation is still there. It is tattered and torn from way too many battles, but despite a rigged, weighted voting system and voter suppression directed at voters expected to be less than enthusiastic for Trump, such as people who use mail-in ballots, we’re still here.

Sea change

Old folks who live by the sea talk about the "sea change." Visitors note how the water is at dramatically different levels morning, noon and night. Some may even get out charts and calculate when high or low tides will come. But only those who have spent their lives by the sea and in close communion with it can sense the change from rising to ebbing tide without such charts.

It's like a solstice when the sun stops its daily drift toward the southern horizon, appears to hold steady for three days and then moves incrementally back up the sky. None of the changes seem that dramatic in the moment, but the change in the tilt of the planet or in the tide is actually massive.

The tide comes in--huge volumes of water rise unstoppably--and then in a moment between one identical wave and the next... it stops. You can't see the switch from the beach. You wouldn't be able to tell for another hour, unless you're an old salt. But the sea has changed.

In that moment, the tide stopped coming in and the moon subtly began to pull it from the depths of space, so that it is receding. 

Sea change - massive change that appears incremental and inconsequential, that cannot be perceived in a short period of time, but in the end, is profound.

Scientists warn us that climate change is like that. We don't know exactly when our burning of fossil fuels and release of methane into the atmosphere will trigger the shift of some massive system into an unstoppable slide toward a vastly different world that may well be either unimaginably hot or brutally cold, depending on which shift is triggered. 

October every four years feels a bit like that too as votes trickle in and the tide of popular opinion is measured. But especially this time. While we fear the sea change of the climate, we desperately hope for this other one. So many small actions of resistance have gone into it, building up over the past two years toward desperately needed change.

Image via Pixabay

And in the end what really matters is not Trump but the shift in the hearts and minds of the nation. Even if that did not determine the outcome of the election, a shift toward empathy and science is really what is most needed.

This year I'm also undergoing a personal sea change. A path I set out on thirty years ago is ending or at least dramatically changing. The tide that carried me far from my childhood home is shifting back, drawing me back to the mountains of Eastern Oregon. And yet at the moment nothing much seems to be happening on the outside.

I am caught at that moment of shift, at the lowest ebb of the tide. The force that used to pull me away from my home and family has slackened and I feel a deep tide begin to tug me back. But I'm not moving yet. There is too much momentum to my life—a house, a garden, family, people, work, stuff, animals... It has all been headed in one direction for a long, long time and this place still demands me for another season.

But the shift has come. The decision has been made.

I am going back to Oregon. I will likely make the first part of the move sometime next summer. I have a provisional place to live and a rudimentary plan for how to survive materially. That’s the shift, having a feasible plan.

Why? I’ve decided this just before yet another election in which many of my fellow citizens are vowing that if things go badly they are really leaving the country this time. And I am going back.

I suppose the election could derail that. If violence really does break out in some massive way, I may not be able to come so soon. But the pull has shifted. My life is now pulling me back there, while for at least thirty years I was pulled out into other countries.

The reasons have many different levels. On one level, my kids need the change.

The schools in the Czech Republic, and particularly in our little town here, have proved disastrously inadequate. The curriculum is uninspired and guaranteed to deaden all curiosity and interest in learning. The teachers are indifferent to their craft. Some are more than happy to take advantage of the Covid crisis in order to flagrantly neglect their students. There certainly is little help for kids with the complex special needs my kids acquired with their difficult start in life.

Beyond the schools, the entire society here is hostile to my kids because of their Romani ancestry. I had hoped that our family could compensate for that, and we do to a large degree. Some Romani children might have been resilient enough to hold their heads up and find a positive identity despite the bigotry and negative stereotypes surrounding them in society. But these children have too many other struggles and that resilience has taken a beating. They need a society where they are at least not public enemy number one from birth.

The US is far from perfect on race and ethnicity issues. Many people will likely think I’m naive or worse in this part of the decision. But the fact is that while black and brown people in America encounter terrible prejudice, danger and hostility on a daily basis, people with olive skin and striking dark eyes are not the main focus of that bigotry. Here in the Czech Republic, they are. If my kids’ ancestry was African, I might well be making the opposite choice.

They will no doubt have to struggle in America—being non-white kids with English as a second language after all. But all things together, they’ll stand a better chance.

As for me, I need the change too. I started out well in this country twenty-five years ago. As a young, healthy, up-and-coming journalist able to live on next to nothing, this place took me in and let me flourish. The tight public transportation network was exactly what a young blind professional needed. The booming cosmopolitan atmosphere of the 1990s resonated in my soul.

But I’ve taken a few major hits over the years. The vibrant world of journalism I came here for disappeared after 9/11 due to economic and political circumstances. Prague’s scene changed and became more harsh and polarized. I had health trouble and am no longer the physical powerhouse I once was.

More than anything, my life shifted from the city to a small town and in fifteen years of trying I have failed to be truly accepted by that town. Pulling up my roots in the town of Mnichovice is the easiest part of this shift. I’ll simply have to tell the school my kids are transferring and say goodbye to exactly five pleasant acquaintances. That’s it. Not much to show for fifteen years of attempts to participate in community life and make friends.

Leaving my physical home and garden is the hardest part. When things were tough and my professional, social and community efforts were thwarted at every turn, I channeled my energy into my home and garden. And that effort has born delightful fruit.

Despite a cold, north-facing slope at a northern latitude, I have managed to sculpt it into a little paradise with greenhouses, herb gardens, a sauna, animals I love and a home specifically designed for the needs of a visually impaired person. I will likely never have that level of physical beauty and comfort in a home again.

It’s also likely the beginning of the end of my marriage. My husband agrees that the children desperately need this move and that I have been unfairly isolated and ostracized by the community here because of my vision impairment, but he cannot and does not want to leave himself. His professional work isn’t transferable and he has never had any interest in living anywhere else. He doesn’t like the United States that much, and because he isn’t a citizen, it would be a major struggle to get the papers for him to be able to live there.

So the partnership that started with practical necessity, fun late-night discussions and mutual respect may well end with a similar lack of fireworks. Or maybe it will endure in some transformed, long-distance state, but it is no longer the strong bond that held me here for so many years.

This fall the few last cords binding me firmly to this place snapped and when they gave way the weaker bonds went with very little resistance. Now I feel that giddy weightlessness like. you do at the end of the arc of a swing with a very long chain.

Wheeee!!! For a moment, you feel utterly free.

But I know that this is only a momentary illusion, a dizzy moment. There is another place waiting to pull me back and its pull has been strong for years already. Now without the momentum of something else to pull me away and with the needs of my children clearly pulling that direction, I will be coming home at last.

I hope that my sea change will coincide with a long awaited sea change for the whole world and for the United States specifically. I hope that we’ll look back on 2020 as the year people finally stopped ignoring climate change and a critical mass of people became willing to change business as usual in order to avoid catastrophe for future generations.

I hope that 2020 will not only mark the removal of Trump from office but the beginning of a long swing in the opposite direction, toward science-based policy, earth-centered economics, inclusive society and human solidarity. It’s all up to a shift in the hearts and thoughtful consideration of many people.

Getting the ballot to the box

What does voter suppression look like?

As most of my readers know, I've never been a good party-line holder. Not of any party and least of all the Democrats. I told them flat out after the debacle of the 2016 primary that I was pulling my primary registration and giving it to whoever showed a backbone.

The staffer on the phone, sighed and said, "Yeah, I get it." And in his tone of voice I heard that he probably really did. I'm not a good party member, but I don't judge people for making their own call. 

Volunteers for the Democrats kept calling me anyway and around about early August this year I was glad they did. "Send in a form to request your ballot," one of them told me.

"But I'm registered and we've had mail-in ballots forever in Oregon. They just send it to me automatically," I protested.

"Not this year. There's trouble with ballots. Fill out the form." 

So, I did. I may not be a good soldier on the party line, but we are on the same battle field and at the moment headed in the same direction. I appreciated the heads-up.

And it came none to soon. My ballot did not show up in September as it used to. By the first week in October, I had to wonder. So, I called the county clerk. Sure enough, they had sent my ballot three weeks earlier in response to the request form, but it never arrived.

Not only that but the county worker told me the rules have changed. No one cares about your postmark anymore. The ballot has to be in the box at the county by November 3 or it's all over. And my ballot already had less time to make the return trip than it had taken to get to my remote location.

Creative Commons image from the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association photostream

Another volunteer from the Democrats called again. "Did you do it?"

"Yup. But I've got a problem," I told them.

This year the usual machinations around voting have become cut-throat, they tell me. Everything before was like child's play. Now everyone's dead serious and the lengths some will go to in order to keep people from voting are shocking. 

In just my situation, there was the unannounced rule that you have to request a ballot months in advance. Then there is the intentional crippling of the postal service, resulting in major delays. And finally, if you somehow manage to get your ballot, you have to get it back on a timeline you can't control or it's all for nothing.

I'm not even one of the people who has to take unpaid leave and stand in line for hours in the midst of a pandemic. I'm not even in danger of having my ID questioned or my registration pulled because my name shares three letters with that of a convicted felon. 

My husband, shakes his head, observing from the comfortable distance of a European. "Those lines..." he says. "You see lines like that in countries like Belarus, when they actually let people vote. You never see people waiting in line to vote in normal countries. It's just the countries with questionable democracies and... the States." He paused long before finishing. 

I had been telling him for a long time that there is trouble in American democracy, but I think this was actually something that shook him a little. 

This year of all years, there is more voter suppression in the US than anyone has seen before. Pundits on TV say that this is because Trump and his people know he can't possibly win if everyone votes. 

Voting is suddenly harder than ever and it has never mattered more than it does now.

One rainy afternoon, I lie on the couch with my ten-year-old son listening to a radio program. They play a clip of Trump telling white supremacists and neo-Nazis to "stand back and stand by" in that ominous way he did. 

My son, who is a dark-eyed, olive-skinned naturalized American, shudders and raises up on an elbow, fixing me with his round pools of serious soul. "Mama, I don't think we should go to America. It's too dangerous." 

We are, in fact, more than considering moving back to the mountain valley of my birth--for better special education services for the kids and for the cohesion of local community. I don't blame my son for being nervous. He may not even realize that he could specifically be a target of those racists, but he knows well enough that our little family always stands out with unmatching skin tones, a blind mother and a lot of free thinking. 

Like most, I can't guarantee the safety of my children. I can't personally hold a line and be sure they will be protected. But this vote does matter. My ballot may not matter any more than it has before--one card in a sea of paper--but if I'm feeling the pinch, so are a lot of others.

The Republicans have attempted to suppress the vote among people of color for generations. The reason is clear enough. While a few people in such areas might vote for them, the statistics are clear. Most people in diverse and disadvantaged areas vote for the "anyone but the Republican" candidate. Not to put to fine a point on it but it really isn't accurate to say they habitually "vote Democratic." 

The same holds true for civilian voters abroad. I wonder if overseas military bases are awash in voting options. They might be. It likely depends on the stats, though I know quite a few soldiers who have seen a thing or two of the world and are ready for change. But it doesn't take a sociologist to figure out that overseas civilian voters are going to vote for "anyone but..." 

That's likely why the hammer has come down and my ballot is AWOL. 

And more importantly, that means a lot of other ballots are AWOL, as the volunteer on the phone confirmed. There are also statistics showing that Democrats vote by mail far more often than Republicans, hence the dismantling of the postal service and attacks on mail-in ballots in general.

Oregon does supposedly have the option of email voting, which I've never tried, so I go back to the county clerk's office and ask if I can do it that way. Finally, after two months of persistence, I get a ballot. It's via email and it doesn't look much like the ballots I'm used to but it's the best shot I have. 

I spare a moment of thanks for the staff of our county clerk's office, who logged multiple emails and phone calls over one ballot, and the Democratic party volunteers, who are working like their lives depend on it. 

I'm sick with an intestinal parasite and my son is going back on Covid lockdown as his school is closing tomorrow. I can barely get out of bed but I"m going to get through the paperwork for the email ballot. This is the time we have to fight for our votes. 

And I'm also adding my voice to the rising warning about voter suppression. Get your votes in early. Make sure you're still registered the way you thought you were. Make sure you've got your ballot. Take no chances. There are no done deals. If enough people can be prevented from voting, anything can happen. 

Blessings from my hearth to yours. May you be warm, safe and well. 

In the spiral toward Fascism: White resentment and identity crisis

When Donald J. Trump spoke of "the forgotten men and the forgotten women" of America the morning after the election, I sensed instantly that he was dividing the country based on race. 

There was plenty in his campaign to lead both supporters and opponents to the conclusion that his message is intended to separate people along racial lines. He often protested that he has "a great relationship with the blacks" or that he loves Hispanics. Yet he made statements describing Mexican immigrants as a group of criminals and rapists and he depicted black neighborhoods as unending hells of crime and poverty. He argued that a Hispanic-American judge shouldn’t hear a case involving Trump businesses simply because of the judge’s background.

Creative Commons image by Gage Skidmore

A professor at the University of California Irvine by the name of Michael Tesler decided to take a statistical look at the racial trend of Trump's support in the summer of 2016. He compared the voting preferences of Republican primary voters in 2008, 2012 and 2016 with the voter's scores on a "racial resentment" survey. The study found that the more  resentment against people of color a voter expressed, the more likely that voter was to vote for Trump in the primary. Interestingly these same voters had mostly voted for failed Republican primary contestants in 2008 and 2012. They had simmered with resentment and frustration because even the Republican nominees who lost to Barack Obama were unsatisfactory to this group.

Despite his protestations that he is "the least racist person," the terms and focus of Trumps speeches make it clear that there is a norm, which is white and Christian. Trump's repetitions of the slogans "America first!" and "Make America great again" are placed so as to imply white America. 

It has become fashionable in intellectual circles to contend that support for Donald Trump stems primarily from economic, rather than racial, tension. Yet an analysis by USA Today's Brad Heath shows that Hilary Clinton lost most unexpectedly in counties where unemployment had fallen during the Obama administration. And now everything Trump actually does harms the working class and enriches a handful of the wealthiest.

If it was about class, Trump's appeal would be very thin indeed. His support comes primarily from the frustrations and identity crisis of a group that is defined both by race and by class--that is the white, mostly Christian core of small town and suburban America.

If we want to call this group "working class" we have to reassess the term. "Working class" tends to evoke images of coal miners and line operators, but that isn't the mainstay anymore. If you look at the income distribution graphs for the US, the "working class" could conceivably be considered everyone who is not in the bottom ten percent (the very poor) and not in the top ten percent (the extremely rich). 

That gives you 80 percent of the nation, a group of people in which the top 10 percent is only ten times wealthier than than their poorest group members. That may sound like a big internal difference for a group, but in the scheme of things--when compared to the astronomical wealth of those Americans who are too wealthy to be in the group--this middle 80 percent really is a class in itself and largely they are people who actually work in one form or another for a living--thus working class. 

And if you take that middle 80 percent and divide it by race, singling out the white Christian majority of it, you have the group targeted by Trump's message. They work, they struggle, they look at the boggling wealth of the wealthy and feel the fear and the siren's pull of the mostly non-white poor. They have been told in a myriad ways in recent years that they have no culture or that their culture is shallow and silly. They have been told that they once had a divine destiny, but that was deemed morally wrong and now they are not special, not ordained in any way. They live reasonably well but feel stifled and frustrated.

Creative Commons image by Gage Skidmore

I doubt Trump or even his speech writers looked much into the historical references of the "forgotten men and forgotten women" phrase, but I did. The first widely known figure to use "the forgotten man" gimmick was William Graham Summer in 1883. Summer was a social Darwinist, meaning that he promoted the idea that survival of the fittest should dictate which humans get to survive to adulthood in society. It was kind of a precursor to eugenics I suppose, the idea that they could breed "better" humans by letting the weak die of hunger and disease. 

In a speech titled "The Forgotton Man," Summer made a case that could easily have been a template for Trump's campaign strategy, claiming that hard-working people needed to be freed from the dead weight of useless poor people. 

Summer divided society into the hard-working "forgotten man" type and the "nasty, shiftless, criminal, whining, crawling, and good-for-nothing people." The second category was supposed to be that bottom ten percent that Trump degrades as well, but like Trump, Summer inflated it to appear much larger and more threatening without actually including his target audience in it.

Since Summer's day, several American presidents have played with the rhetorical concept that there is some group of Americans who do not complain, who work hard quietly and ask nothing of society, a mythical deserving class. Reagan's "silent majority" was one of the more blatant but that never reached the level of Trump's appeal to white people in small towns and suburbs to see themselves as the unsung victims in society. 

One world leader did go this far and built a fast-rising, brilliant and brutal regime based on exactly this concept. He started it with a book entitled in translation "My Struggle," which sought to teach his fellow white citizens to see themselves as wronged and to instill a righteous thirst for revolutionary vengeance.

That was, of course, Adolf Hitler. And while I'm sure,. you've probably seen Trump compared to Hitler so many times in the past few months that you find this predictable and even boring, I want to call your focused attention to something that is NOT merely a rhetorical comparison, using exaggerated connections. 

I have been watching the reactions of white Americans and others of similar Caucasian-Christian background around the world with growing unease. 

A year ago, it was a dull throbbing drumbeat, occasionally mentioned but generally ignored. Since the election it has been steadily ramping up. That is the modern concept of white people as silent social victims. And it is not limited to the United States.

Last year I might have seen a comment along the lines of, "You say 'prejudice' but you're just virtue signalling," once every week or so.  Now a day doesn't go by when I don't run across some version of the argument: "So called 'white privilege' is an quitter's excuse. When you get right down to it everyone has some sort of disadvantage. The only question is who tries harder." 

Creative Commons image by Fibonacci Blue 

The trend is easily observable both on-line and in the real world. Even my ESL students in a small Bohemian backwater have heard the arguments and some nod along with them and say that Trump has finally allowed people to say "what everyone was thinking all along."

On a few occasions, I joined one of these discussions and laid out the host of facts demonstrating that white privilege is alive and well. I cited statistics showing systematic disadvantages that still plague people of color. I gave my own personal experience as a white woman with a significant disability. I have experienced both sides of the privilege paradigm. I know what it is like to not have the privileges of others. And I have seen white privilege work even for me in many situations, including when I fervently wished it wouldn't.

I never see any indication that my reasoned arguments sway anyone who has already fallen under the spell of this rhetoric. And I rarely go to the mat over it anymore, though I do make a point of speaking up against it. The eventual exhausted silence of people who know better is one of the the things this kind of propaganda counts on. 

But the other thing it counts on is our lack of understanding for the identity crisis of the white working class. I am certainly not going to subscribe to a doctrine that says they are the victims of the past fifty years of domination by mythical "liberals" and people of color grabbing all the hard-earned spoils. But they do have grievances against the corporate-tilted economy which leave them vulnerable to scapegoating propaganda.

Across the board, that middle 80 percent of Americans have lost wealth and income in recent decades. Even the top bracket-the 80th to 90th percentile of the US economy, the people just poorer than the top ten percent of all Americans--has declined in wealth. Their financial strength has seeped toward the wealthiest ten percent.

To say this may seem like whining. The top half of this middle 80 percent is not suffering terribly in material terms. They have large homes, on average several vehicles, security, travel, health care, college education...

Why would they complain?

Because their fortunes are declining, not growing and the American ethos is all about growth and making sure one's children have it better and easier than the current generation. And for decades that has clearly been impossible for the middle 80 percent... especially for those who are white.

Why do I say "especially for those who were white?" Again, I'm not talking about the poor white victims.

The white people were in that middle 80 percent and they lost ground. But with the growth of populations of color as well as civil rights laws and expanded educational opportunities for two generations, some people of color have seen improvement in their circumstances over the past few decades. Not the majority of people of color, but a few.. It isn't improvement of their wealth bracket but rather that some individuals have climbed the ladder of wealth brackets to take their places along side those white members who were already there. 

Creative Commons image by Gage Skidmore 

White people did not lose ground to people of color. The white middle 80 percent lost ground to the white top 10 percent. But if you're living in a suburb where you can't see the top 10 percent and you can see the newly well-off black people next door as well as your own slowly eroding security, it is easy to draw the wrong conclusions. 

Add to that several harsh generation gaps that have cut white Americans off from cultural roots and created a sense of empty identity. Pile on top the misinterpretation of integrated history to be a litany of white collective guilt. And there is a recipe for resentment, anger and frustration that we are now seeing rise like an unstoppable chemical reaction between baking soda and vinegar.

Trump has been elected and some have taken his election as a sign that it is now more possible to vent racial resentments. But instead of releasing tension this has only intensified the tenor of the frustration. In the end, we may find that Trump is the least of our worries and that a much greater danger threatens the nation and the rest of the western world. 

In the study of ethnic conflicts around the world, it has becomeclear that violence between ordinary people stems most often from the resentment of a privileged portion of the society when it sees its monopoly on power slipping. According to a paper in World Politics in 2010, a statistical analysis of 157 cases of ethnic violence--including that in Chad, Lebanon and the Balkans in the 1990s--showed that the decline of privileged groups is highly correlated to extreme violence.

Most unfortunately Trump is only a symptom of a disease--one that has spread well beyond the borders of the United States. It is past time, we acknowledged this. Simple suppression of racial tension and resentment will likely result in a more explosive reaction. It will take much more to avert violence and strengthen our open, multi-racial society to meet the challenges of climate change and resource shift. 

It is time to listen to one another. It is time to seek allies across racial lines. If Trump and his ilk wish to divide us by race, that is the first thing we must resist. 

If democracy is losing, let's change the rules of the game

I know discussing "elections" can be like being forced to take a math test with something smelly smeared on it.

Now the stakes are much higher than a grade in math class. Tackling fair elections may be the only way to save our own lives, avert climate disaster and have any hope of a vibrant and successful community.

Creative Commons image by  James McNellis

So grab a cup of tea and settle in. I'm going to make this as painless humanly possible.

What stops us from having universal health care, rail-based public transportation, economically sound and family-friendly immigration policies, a fair and environmentally responsive tax system, solar energy as high a priority as coal or oil, sober leadership for those who choose to fight for our country and a host of other things most developed countries have that we don't? 

People will say various things in response to that questin--the two-party system, the swamp, politicians, corporate money in politics, etc... Essentially though, they all come down to the same thing. The people in office are not responsive to the voters.

American public opinion has been percentage-wise vastly more progressive than our elected representatives for decades. Sure, there are Americans with non-progressive viewpoints. I'll bet some readers of my blog don't identify as progressive. But given your tolerance for my posts, it is very unlikely that you are happy voters of the Democrats or Republicans. You may be more fiscally conservative than progressive or concerned with individual freedom or interested in living wages.

Whatever your stance, if it is not directly in alignment with one of the major parties, we share the same number one problem.

That is our system of voting. 

Now I am not dissing the founding fathers. They did pretty darn good for their time. They only had a few European examples of semi-democracy to go on and they took some ideas for the US constitutin from the Iroquois.

Creative Commons image by Alisdare Hickson

Still--due respect to the founding fathers granted--let's face it. As good as it was for its time the Electoral College was a system set up to handle the problem of carrying ballots on horseback over hundreds of miles of open country. And the party system was also based on a pre-technological world. 

We have better options today.

The primary reason for changing our voting system is that it would allow for representatives who more accurately reflect the views of the citizens to be elected. And it would mean that those representatives would be more responsive to the concerns of constituents, because they would know that party loyalty will not balance out lack of popularity among voters. 

You are no doubt familiar with the concept of "spoilers" in elections. That's where you have two main candidates for a position, one from the Democrats and one from the Republicans. And then along comes a third party candidate.

If the third candidate is a Green, it is possible that some of the voters who vote for the Green would not have stayed home if the Green didn't exist. They might have voted for the Democrat. If the candidate is a Libertarian, the voters for that candidate might have voted for the Republican if the Libertarian didn't exist.  

The logic is that if you are a concerned and responsible voter, who really cares about your country, and you go to vote, you must vote for a major party candidate who has a "real chance of winning," because a vote for a third party candidate is just like staying home. It means your vote is wasted and it could have been used to help the better of the two major party candidates.

Creative Commons image by Master Steve Rapport

And when the worse of the two major party candidates bears a striking political resemblance to an early-years Hitler or Stalin, that becomes a real problem. 

Every single American I know has been in that very unpleasant bind while voting, whether they chose to buck the system and vote for an outsider or to tow the line and hope for the best. Whether you're one of those people who says we should vote for the Democrats to avoid people like Trump or one of those who says we have to vote our conscience, we aren't really two different camps. We've been through the same anxiety and frustration.

A change in voting system is an issue that a vast swath of Americans can get behind. Our political, strategy and policy differences don't matter in this, because in the end a voting system that allows each voter to vote their conscience without fear of spoilers is a system in which everyone wins.

Well, almost everyone. The top brass of the Democratic and Republican parties and their corporate backers will lose. And we'll all drink to that just before we part ways and start having a real democracy in which it isn't a dire problem that we disagree on everything else.

So, here in a nutshell is the technical explanation you've been waiting for:

Score Run-off Voting is a system in which the voter gives every candidate on the ballot a score. It's kind of like a beauty contest except it's a policy contest. You rate each candidate on how much you like their stated policies, track-record, ethics and statements. You have a scale of, for instance, 5 to 1, and you look at each candidate in turn and decide if you like them a lot, a little, or don't care, dislike them a little or a lot.   

Let's say you score an independent candidate as a 5 (because you know them well and believe in everything they stand for), a Green as a 4 and a Libertarian as a 4 (because you like most of their policies but not all), a Democrat as a 3 (because you aren't crazy about them but could survive them) and Trump as 1 (because your child will die of type 1 diabetes if he repeals the ACA).

Your scores along with everyone else's scores contribute to each candidate's overall score. You have supported the Democrat over the Republican and you have given support to several possible candidates, while giving the most support to the one you want most. Those scores will be tallied by a fairly simple computer program and two top winners will emerge. 

The computer will then run-off those two candidates using your score for each.

If--as Democrats and Republicans are always predicting--the top two candidates are still the Democrat and the Republican, then when those two are run-off your vote, in the example above, will be a vote for the Democrat. If you gave the Democrat a 3 and the Republican a 1, you have essentially voted for the Democrat in the run-off. 

But because the fear of spoilers would be taken away and the two major parties would no longer have a stranglehold on resources or an argument to journalists and voters claiming that other candidates are irrelevant, it is altogether possible in local and national races that the run-off could be between, say, your favorite independent and the Libertarian you sort of liked. In that case your vote in the run-off would go to the independent and even if she didn't win, you'd be better off than you are now.

Score Run-off Voting has a difficult and technical name and this whole thing may seem like a little technical issue, but in reality everything else develops from the voting system. That is why I argue that if there is one single issue to focus your finite energy for political involvement on, this should be it. Whether you're concerned about the environment or education or Black Lives Matter or health care or a living wage. it all comes down to this. 

We must have a realistic hope of electing those who back policies we need and a guarantee of un-electing those who don't follow through. 

Here are the reasons why:

• Score Run-off Voting is the system that would actually break the two-party stranglehold on elections. Some other run-of or "approval" systems would help and can be supported as interim measures, but this one is the clincher.
• It would undermine corporate influence.
• And it is achievable. Through state-level initiatives for Score Run-off Voting the change can be made within a few years, whereas strategies such as "taking back the Democratic Party" or building up another party have an outlook of decades and a small probability of success. 

There are currently initiatives in Oregon for Score Run-off Voting and interest growing across the country. 

Staring down my ballot

I envision Americans all over the world--Americans living abroad that is--sitting and staring at this letter the way I am. Americans abroad get to vote quite a bit early.

I'm sitting at the kitchen table with the envelope in front of me. I am glad it made it given the funky postal system these days. I'm also grief stricken. And terrified. I hate the damn thing. And I'm grateful that this at least remains to us.

A ballot.

How many people fought for this? Women. People of various colors. People with disabilities. Immigrants. If you belittle it, you are either an ass or just plain ignorant of history.

We all know that.

It's a great thing to have a ballot. My neighbors and my husband don't get one. The issue of who will be the next American president will impact them nearly as much as it impacts me. But they don't get a vote. I do.

And I don't know what in Hades to do with it.

I do know it's one in a hundred million. My ballot does not mean squat. If I ball it up and throw it away in disgust no one will care. Clinton will win or Trump will win, whether I do it or not.

I don't get political, I mean actually election-political, on my blog very often and I swear I'm not even doing that now. I'm not going to tell you how to vote because I don't know how to vote this time around. 

"Knock me over with a feather!" I can hear some of you shouting. "Arie doesn't have a political opinion for once."

Oh, I've got opinions. I've got a gazillion of them. That isn't the problem. 

I'm going to hazard a guess here. I'll bet I don't have very many readers who are Trump supporters. (Except you, Andy. And we love you anyway.) He's sort of a family member and you know how that goes.

But the rest of you... well, who reads my blog? According to my Google stats some people actually do, for which I am immensely grateful.

And from comments I'm guessing some of you are general treehuggers, like me, and you know you're not voting for Trump. Then there are the non-Americans who read my blog, and you wouldn't be voting for Trump even if you could. There are quite a few people with disabilities who read my blog and Trump would just as soon see us dead. Same goes for my Romani and otherwise non-white readers.

A lot of readers are also variously Pagan and Goddess inclined. Now one could theoretically argue about whether or not Trump will make America "great" again, but we know for sure he'll make it Christian-or-else again, so that sort of settles who Pagans aren't voting for.  

Therefore, I'm not going to tell anyone not to vote for Trump because it's pretty safe to assume that no one reading this is planning on it, except possibly that guy Andy. And he's only reading this to humor my mother.

Instead I'm going to commiserate with you.

Because if you aren't voting for Trump, what are  you going to do?

Okay, there's the question. Vote for Clinton or don't vote for Clinton? Clinton is one of the least popular politicians in history even before the election and with good reason. You may be one of those desperate people demanding that every decent person vote for Clinton because "if you don't, you're signing the country over to Trump and thus signing your own death warrant!" 

I get it. I really do. When I look at Trump. I think of course there's no choice. That Green on the ballot might as well not even be there. No real choice.

And then I put my head in my hands and cry. Because... remember all those people I mentioned, the ones who fought for this ballot. And now the ballot is as good as useless. There's no real choice. 

Every single election in my adult life (that's since 1996) I've been told, "There's no choice. Just vote AGAINST that guy!" whichever guy it was. Who I was supposed to vote for did not matter.

So, we grit our teeth and do our duty. We vote for slime, for lies, for candidates who care as much about us as they do about the gum they stepped on when they got out of their LImo last night. 

It's only harder this time because we had hope for a little while. I knew it wouldn't last. Admit it. So did you.

If we were right about the way the political system works, if you actually believed what Sanders was saying (including Bernie Sanders himself), you had to know that he would never be allowed to compete for actual votes cast by people.

He said the system is broken and rigged. And it is. So Clinton participated in a blatantly rigged primary to deny us our right to vote. And now we'll vote for her because... we have no f---ing choice!

I try to comfort myself. Clinton mentioned climate change. She actually MENTIONED it. Bernie did that at least. He has forced her to at least say a few taboo words. We all know she won't do what needs to be done, that she doesn't care and that these are all just words to her, but maybe I should throw my vote her way as a sort of "thank you" for the mention of the single most important security crisis facing us (according to official US military analysis and everyone else worth their salt). At least she didn't completely ignore reality. 

And I do have a daughter. She's seven and she's into Lego Friends, who first rush home to change their clothes and put on make-up every time they are called out to rescue endangered animals. Think about what it would mean if the president is a woman--a woman who does not even make coquettish noises every two sentences. My daughter could grow to her teenage years with this woman's face as the supreme power in the world. That is worth something isn't it? No matter how much of a liar and conscienceless shell she may be.

That is something to vote FOR, isn't it?

My gut feels like a sack of rotten potatoes. If you've ever smelled rotten potatoes--really rotten--you know what I'm talking about this election.

So, good luck when you get your ballots, America. You've got my sympathy which ever way you toss your lack of choice. Just remember that NOT voting is still part of the game and there may be consequences.

I'm going to go out tonight and wish on a star. I wish just once in my life to vote FOR a president, rather than against. Even if my choice doesn't win. Please just once. I want to cast my vote for a candidate I trust and admire. 

And that wish is light in the darkness. We may have to fight for the right to vote, really vote, all over again. Don't forget. It's been done before.