There’s a lot of blame getting thrown around right now over the election of Donald Trump. Center liberals are blaming third party voters and non-voters, left-liberals are blaming center-liberals, and the left is blaming itself in various capacities. One thing that I’ve been noticing a lot, however, is that no matter who blames who, it’s always just one thing that is at fault. I would argue that this is not the result of any one single issue, rather, this is the culmination of a myriad of issues: some of the most general ones being hubris, liberalism, racism, and capitalism.
HUBRIS:
Hubris, of course, is the concept that belongs most to the Clinton Campaign, but it is also shared by the ruling class media. Hillary Clinton had wanted to be president for a long, long time. To achieve that end, she and her campaign would stop at nothing and were absolutely ruthless during the Democratic Primary. Her campaign and the media colluded in order to raise Donald Trump, as they believed he would be the easiest Republican to beat. Her campaign and David Brock colluded in order to smear Bernie Sanders for various things (like being a gun nut that caused Sandy Hook, for example). Once the primary was over though, the second stage of her hubris took in: Complacency.
She believed that she would win. She KNEW that she would win. She knew so much, that she didn’t campaign in Wisconsin. She did the bare minimum to mobilize working class people of color in Florida and other places. She cared more about wooing neocons and talking about “good billionaires” than she cared about the poor and working class. She barely ever talked about issues pertinent to peoples’ lives, instead choosing to deflect by talking about the evil Russians or Trump’s (very real) misconduct. This was not a campaign about real material problems: it was a campaign of symbolism and fear. It was a campaign that catered to wealthy liberals, who were also dead certain that Hillary would win, and mocked anyone who thought otherwise during the Primary, where she was considered the most “electable”.
Unfortunately for Hillary, most of the nation is not wealthy liberals.
Thus, Clinton lost, in a way nearly befitting of a Greek Tragedy. She had many flaws, but her fatal one was her hubris.
LIBERALISM:
Liberalism, historically, has never been able to defeat fascism. The most easiest example to turn to is Germany in the 1930s, where social democrats and liberals united to elect Von Hindenburg, who then gave a position to Adolf Hitler. While directly comparing Trump to Hitler at this stage is a false equivalence, you can see already that liberals today are doing something similar to their ancestors. After calling Trump an evil, fascist, misogynist demagogue for months, they’re now pleading with people to accept his leadership and declared that they want to “work with” him and wish him “success”.
Liberals believe that you can work with fascists. Liberals believe that fighting fascism is “uncivil”, and to be uncivil is to be a fascist yourself. They uphold decorum above all else — even left-liberals like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, the latter of whom was fine with yelling at Clinton all he liked during the primary but was cowed almost immediately once the general election began. He had to obey the rules. That was more important than the fact that Clinton polled far worse against Trump than he did. That was more important than the fact that she was ridden with scandals (some of whom he was fine mentioning earlier, so it wasn’t like he didn’t know they existed). Following the rules and appearing “principled” and “civil”, to liberals, is paramount.
Many liberals fashion themselves as sort of Christ-like figures: turning the other cheek, loving their enemies, and rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. This self-righteousness, of course, does little to nothing in the face of fascism. Neither does meaningless vulgarity, which is something that liberal comedians enjoy (and something that I‘d warn comedians to the left of them to take heed of ). They believe themselves to hold a special power: call Donald Trump “Drumpf” enough, and they’ll save the world. Many liberals also believe themselves to be intellectually superior by nature: that they are liberal because they are biologically just smarter, and everyone else is just a simple idiot that should be brushed off and ignored. Liberals are cultured. Refined. Self-righteous. Hilarious. And everyone else is worthless. Of course, we see where all of these lines of thought turned out. People can see through them, and some don’t know how to react outside of an id-driven violent rejection.
RACISM:
To ignore racism’s role in this election would be an absolute mistake. Some people want to believe that this is purely an economic class issue; that the liberals rejected the white working class and that’s that. This is a reductive idea and one that must be avoided if we are to move forward. The liberals did not just reject the white working class, first of all. They rejected the working class as a WHOLE. They rejected poor latinos and black people by locking them up in record numbers, privatizing their education, and turning a blind eye to their crumbling communities. Much of the poor and working class, of all colors, stayed home on November 8th. They didn’t see much of a future for them. When poor people of color did try to vote, especially in places like North Carolina or Wisconsin, they were often disenfranchised. The people who truly turned out the vote for Trump were middle class white people in rural communities: the soundbite about poor whites being Trump’s base was largely false. Interestingly, though Clinton’s campaign touted hopes that women would vote for her in overwhelming numbers, 53% of white women voted for Trump instead — someone who proudly bragged about assaulting women.
To ignore racism’s role in this is to ignore the sharp rise in organizing from groups like the KKK and other neo-nazi organizations, who have been quite a bit more active as of late than they have been in awhile. If this wasn’t about race, why would they be around, hovering like vultures? Racism has been in this country’s blood since its very formation. The US committed genocide against indigenous people; enslaved and lynched black people; exploited immigrants. This is a history we never truly got over, and it often rests just under the surface. The GOP was very good at riling up racist anger against Obama in recent years, but somehow didn’t realize that this dog-whistling could possibly lead to overt speech and action. And here we are. The GOP stoked racism, the liberals provided no real alternative to it and capitulated to the GOP in many cases, and continued to divide the left, which was already very weak. And here we are.
CAPITALISM:
Fascism is often considered the last defense of a failing capitalism. While Trump and his administration are not full-blown fascists at this point in time, this is still certainly something to keep in mind. In either case, though, both the democrats and the republicans are dedicated to the perpetuation of capitalism. And this system, which is built upon exploitation of workers and the poor, which is built to bring success to a very small handful of people, has played a large part in giving us the candidates we ended up with. Clinton is a multimillionaire. Trump is a billionaire. Both of them have done quite a bit to perpetuate capitalism and both of them were/are dedicated to continuing this as president. Both of them were absolutely transparent about this, but Trump was able to do it in a way that still made him appear to be an “outsider”. He gave lip-service to being anti-TPP and anti-NAFTA; he hammered home the “crookedness” of Clinton; he put on a show. Clinton, on the other hand, was plagued with the liberal desire to appear poised and professional, and tried to make a dedication to helping out the crooks on Wall Street sound like a decent status-quo idea to a country fed-up with the status quo. Both of these candidates were godawful in this regard, and obviously offer(ed) no true solutions to the people.
The economy is very precarious at the moment, and a crisis is looming. Under capitalism, crises will always loom. Capitalism requires crises from time to time in order to maintain itself. Each of these crises ruin the lives of more and more people that are looking for help and for answers. Believing that we can change this country within the confines of capitalism is a mistake. Instead, we must strive for socialism: a system in which workers have the power instead of the wealthy ruling class. A system truly run by the people, for the people would not leave people to suffer without healthcare, housing, food, or water. A system truly run by the people, for the people would provide true liberation to all oppressed people, instead of propelling a precious few to the ruling class be figureheads and symbols while leaving the rest behind. This system, incidentally, has been one of the most effective in fighting fascism. I’d say, at this point, it’s time to give it a chance.
