kayLorraine

20/20 Hindsight – a #poem of retrospective hope

20/20 Hindsight

Speak to me not
of lost chances
and dashed hopes.
Dwell not
on opportunities seen
too late, then
passed over in the rush for more blatant,
immediate gratification.
Sing to me no songs
of remorse
over loves untended,
passions unkindled,
when the world smothered
the wayward sparks of your youth with the march
of police and dogs, and a series
of concurrent overdoses and
assassinations
that robbed you of your palpable hope.

No, tell me no stories
of folly and failure, don’t describe
how it all might have been
different.

Instead —
speak to me of the hopes that once
were, and will be
all over again.
Tell me how your unslaked thirst
drove you on past mirages
to drink at the waiting oasis.
Dwell on the fact that opportunity
did knock, once upon a time.
And hold precious your fantasies
of what never was — sweeter, to be sure,
than what truly could have been.

From Depth Perception – Selected Poems by Kay Lorraine

Sharing from DIVEDAPPER // D.A. Powell

…

Instead of looking at thirty or forty poems, you’re looking at two hundred poems and saying, “Here are the forty best ones, now make a book.”

Yeah. So I’m in that mode of resisting the convention of materiality and productivity. I feel like in a capitalist society we put so much emphasis on end product. Writers do it to each other. It’s a kind of unconscious shaming that writers will sort of say to one another, “So, are you writing? Are you working on anything?” Like, “Are you an actual writer?”

Oh, yeah. As if to say no is to admit some sort of deficiency.

In every other aspect of our lives, we have periods of rest where we don’t worry about the fact that we’re not in our office. We take time off from practically everything in life, except, for some reason, in the arts we feel like we always have to be working. I think that we’ve made a kind of enslavement of our own creativity. Like it’s a genie whose lamp we rub and summon, and we have to do it numerous times otherwise we’re not legitimate. So I’m enjoying being illegitimate.

Read the whole piece here: DIVEDAPPER // D.A. Powell

Hegel on Knowledge, Impatience, the Peril of Fixed Opinions, and the True Task of the Human Mind – Sharing from Maria Popova @ Brain Pickings

“Impatience asks for the impossible, wants to reach the goal without the means of getting there.”

I frequently lament a particularly prevalent pathology of our time — our extreme impatience with the dynamic process of attaining knowledge and transmuting it into wisdom. We want to have the knowledge, as if it were a static object, but we don’t want to do the work of claiming it — and so we reach for simulacra that compress complex ideas into listicles and two-minute animated explainers.

Two centuries before our era of informational impatience, the great German idealist philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770–November 14, 1831), who influenced such fertile minds as Nietzsche and Simone de Beauvoir, addressed the elements of this pathology in a section of his masterwork The Phenomenology of Mind (public library).

Read the rest of this at: Hegel on Knowledge, Impatience, the Peril of Fixed Opinions, and the True Task of the Human Mind – Brain Pickings

Notes from the Resistance: A Column on Language and Power | Literary Hub

It is a bright cold day in December, and the clocks are striking thirteen. To the past or to the future, to an age when thought is free, from the age of Trump, from the age of Wikileaks, from a dead woman, greetings.

This is to be a column about language, but before I get to that, and why, we’ll need to get a few things straight.

In George Orwell’s 1984, the first act of rebellion undertaken by Winston, the protagonist, is to acquire a blank book and begin to write down his thoughts and memories. He does so despite the glare of a Big Brother poster, and under the watchful eye and keen ear of the two-way telescreen.

I write to you now from my laptop with its two-way listening and seeing devices. I have a smartphone in my bag that does the same thing. I use these instruments to watch and listen and in return people can watch and listen to me. I operate under the impression that it is I who chooses which people can and can’t do this, but we all know it is already legal for that not to be the case.

Read the rest of this great piece here:: Notes from the Resistance: A Column on Language and Power | Literary Hub

7.345 million teachable moments

clocks flying through space I just counted the amount of time between this past election day (9th November, 2016) and when the Electoral College votes in 2020.

All told, there are 1501 days separating them, and as each one has 24 hours, with 60 minutes in each hour, that gives us 7,345,440 minutes to pass till the next president (after this next one) is installed.

That’s all assuming, of course, that we have the right to vote in another 4 years. There are some who justifiably believe it’s a long-shot.

If nothing else, the next 1,462 days should be interesting (perhaps in the sense of the Chinese curse?). And the last thing we should do, is let them go to waste. If it all goes to hell in a handbag, and we only stand around wringing our hands and/or looking ahead to the distant future when we’ll be saved from the machinations of… those people… we are losing out on a critical opportunity to learn. And possibly even grow.

Surely, we have to start doing that sometime. For the level of discourse has been so degraded over the past year, and so many decent lessons have gone unlearned, due to partisan blinders and the partitioning of Uh’Murica into competing camps, replete with all the glorious rhetoric, propaganda, ‘n’ whatnot, that each side has effectively rendered itself incapable of learning a damn’ thing.

Parties have been so caught up in defending their RightNess… so entrenched in defending their sacred rights to believe whatever they believe from the attacks of those who believe just as fervently in their own RightNess… so invested in marking their territory… that the sort of self-critical eye required to truly and genuinely learn, has been blinded by the ongoing frenzy of attack-parry-attack-parry politicking that’s held our queasy attention for far too long.

Case in point: An article The Tainted Election by Paul Krugman, which was forwarded to me by a friend. It was apparently the most emailed piece at the New York Times on the day it came out. And what I found within was every bit as unsettling to me, as much of the stuff coming out of the other camps.

All in all, it was a pretty familiar lamentation about the impending Trump presidency. A big ole glaring “internal bullhorn” issue with this excellent article, however, was triggered by this partisan admission:

Another course of action, which you’ll see many in the news media taking, is to normalize the incoming administration, basically to pretend that everything is O.K. This might — might — be justified if there were any prospect of responsible, restrained behavior on the part of the next president.

So, as long as the results favor you, it’s justified? As long as things work in your favor, you can accept them?

Uh, no. The ends do not justify the means. It is NOT okay to normalize an administration that’s taken power with a coup and pretend all is well, on the chance that it might just work in your favor. That’s cynicism, wrapped in sackcloth and ashes.

Where has any semblance of principle gone? Normalizing this sequence of events and its expected outcome cannot be justified, under any condition — even if people agree to play nice afterwards. Like that’s going to happen, anyway. That kind of obliging capitulation would be even worse than how it is now — softening the blow of a hostile takeover… rendering us essentially a wholly owned subsidiary of Putin’s empire, without so much as a whimper. Because… maybe it won’t be so bad after all.

Additionally…

This president will have a lot of legal authority, which must be respected.

Spare me. How can we respect an abuser of legal authority? That smacks of cultural residue from an outmoded belief system, where God tells you you’re supposed to be on really good terms with people in power, because they’re “closer to Him”. Huh. Maybe in 1683, but not today. I don’t buy it.

And this I have a hard time believing:

Politics being what it is, moral backbones on Capitol Hill will be stiffened if there are clear signs that the public is outraged by what is happening.

I think the right word is “may”, rather than “will” (be stiffened). Politics being what it is, backbones on Capitol Hill will stiffen only for what is most beneficial to whatever spine they’re using, that day… and whatever will further their ends. Public outrage…? Dunno. I’m not convinced it’s a prime motivator in and of itself.

The piece is till a good read. And it’s good to know so many people have emailed it. At the same time, these traces of a really strange blend of optimistic naivete and partisan cynicism, are really the things that set off the toxic fumes alarm with me. It’s like pulling up the birdcage from the mine and seeing the canary dead as a doornob, as your friends and family descend the shaft in the elevator.

I’m becoming increasingly convinced that none of the sides (Democrat / Republican / Bernite / Trumpist) is actually capable of learning diddly about much of anything at all. To do that, you’d have to be willing — and able — to examine yourself, your ways, your thoughts, your actions, and ferret out the faults so you can address them. Change your path. Alter your course. Make amends. And so forth. But everybody’s in damage control and/or attack mode, which lends itself Not At All to the act of receptive self-examination.

Meh. I can’t help but think, So what? Who cares? I mean, that’s what the parties do. That’s what party operatives do. But as an un-enrolled independent, I have other choices. I’m actually allowed to think for myself.

The next 1462 days (or so) will offer us countless opportunities to examine the situation before us… and hopefully do some honest soul-searching. We’ve been super-keen on the magically insulating divine dispensation of American “exceptionalism” for far too long, and this is our chance to come to grips with the realities of our situation, our natures, our tendencies, our susceptibilities. If we sit back and just hope for 2020, as well as expecting the mid-term elections to save us, heaven help us.

We need to use this time for what it’s good for — a much-needed dose of medicine that forces us to take a closer, more realistic look at ourselves, get out of that incredibly tired partisan mindset, and come up with some new ideas for where we’re going as a country… and why.

This challenge is a gift. We should make use of it.

And so I shall.

I encourage you to do the same.

White people aren’t just privileged. They’re also spoiled.

upside-down tattered American flag — Things only look upside-down, if you expect them to stay right-side up

For the record, I am pretty sick and tired of SWEEPs — Straight White Educated Entitled Privileged folks — lamenting about how their kids won’t do as well as they have — or as well as their parents did. The tone of the conversation often sounds passive, as though America will naturally march in the direction that favors them, just ’cause they’re here.

There’s so much presumption that goes along with that. So much presumption behind the expectation that an education alone will guarantee you a job. That the world will necessarily work a certain way, because your straight outlook tells you that’s correct. That having to actually compete for a job, rather than proving your worth to your employer on a regular basis, is somehow beneath them.

Like, once you’re here, and once you’ve set up shop, you’re entitled to keep that status indefinitely, because, well, you’re here.

It all sounds like socio-economic ideological equivalent of squatter’s rights.

And it’s tiresome.

I’m also sick and tired of the belly-aching about the election results, when it’s clear we’ve been lied to, we’re being lied to, daily assaults on common decency are taking place… and white folks sit around wringing their hands, not wanting to make a fuss that might offend their white peers (who may or may not agree with them). Worse yet, is how people flock to secret Facebook groups to commiserate, but they won’t actually stand up and say in public This is Wrong, and if You Don’t Think So and Try To Normalize This, You’re Aiding and Abetting the Dismantling of the United States. You’re an Enemy of the State.

Nobody’s guaranteed anything, here. We all have to work for it. We all have to defend the rights and freedoms we feel entitled to. We all have to put our shoulders to the wheel, or the things we take for granted are just gonna go away.

If the past month isn’t plain evidence of that, I don’t know what is.

Yah, we’re not just privileged. Or entitled. Or any of those other consciousness-raising terms.

White people — any people — who take everything for granted and don’t think they’ll have to work for what matters most to them, are more than that. They’re spoiled.

Sharing: A ‘Safe Space’ For White People, Otherwise Known As ‘The Two-State Solution,’ or ‘Disunion As Solution’ | The Huffington Post

It’s time, America. It’s either a two-state divorce, or “Heil, Trump” will be coming to your neighborhood as it has already come to mine.

We are in a civil war. Not very hot — yet — but in which tension is building daily. Neo-Nazis party in my neighborhood of Chevy Chase, unnoticed by the Leader, while he attacks the cast of Hamilton instead. Clinton keeps racking up votes, now with a 2,000,000+ vote lead, while no one is yet auditing the states that swung the Electoral College (itself a vestige of slavery). Liberals are turning in on themselves, while conservatives stand stunned, buried at the foot of the wreckage of the Republican party while the kakistocracy takes shape.

All this because a few hundred thousand Rust Belt citizens, repeatedly fed misinformation and disinformation in our era of Big Data, decided to first destroy the Republican Party, which had betrayed then for forty years (fool me once…), and then take down the entire country in a fit of pique for an encore. Now they will learn what pain really feels like, as they’ve given unlimited power to a demagogue (“Hamilton’s besetting fear was that American democracy would be spoiled by demagogues who would mouth populist shibboleths to conceal their despotism.”) while emasculating themselves. Their new Karl Rove fancies himself as Darth Vader, Dick Cheney and Satan, though on a good day he elevates his narcissistic neo-Nazi self-image into Thomas Cromwell (who ended up executed by the Crown, but no matter).

Read the rest here: A ‘Safe Space’ For White People, Otherwise Known As ‘The Two-State Solution,’ or ‘Disunion As Solution’ | The Huffington Post

What if we’re all not as bad… as that?

An interesting thing happened to my perspective, over the past couple of weeks. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, wreathing myself in the virtual equivalent of sackcloth (Facebook posts) and ashes (Tweets), I’ve slowed down and started paying attention to recurrent themes after the election.

One theme, in particular, stood out — The Russian influence over the election.

Okay, people, here’s the weird thing: We’ve known that the Russians were “meddling” in our election politics for many months. President Obama warned about a Cold War-style ‘cyber arms race’ with Russia back in September – and even before that, there were ongoing concerns about Russian influence in the election (including hacks on the DNC in June). Nobody paid much mind, really, even when Donald Trump publicly asked Russia to produce emails of his opponent. Yeah, we’ve known about it. But for some reason, nobody paid much mind.

Now, we come to find out that there’s been a veritable firehose of disinformation / fake news – okay, let’s call it what it is: propaganda consistent with Russian patterns that’s flooded the social media scene and effectively eclipsed actual, real-world news. To quote the Washington Post:

On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times.

Okay, so what? you may ask. Big deal. But consider:

The Daily Beast debunked a particularly widely read piece in an article that reached 1,700 Facebook accounts and was read online more than 30,000 times. But the PropOrNot researchers found that the version supported by Russian propaganda reached 90,000 Facebook accounts and was read more than 8 million times. The researchers said the true Daily Beast story was like “shouting into a hurricane” of false stories supported by the Russians.

That means Russian-backed propaganda has been seen — in just one instance — over 266 times for every one view of the real article.

Here’s a link to the list of “fake news” — ahem — propaganda sites from PropOrNot.com. You will probably recognize at least some of them, as a one-time “trusted source” for yourself. I actually do. And that’s disconcerting, to say the least.

Which means that our brains have been hacked.

Our minds, our hearts, our election, our country have been compromised by a hostile entity that within my lifetime was seen as a mortal foe.

And they may have been up to no good during the primaries, as well. Which made the GOP into one of the biggest ~~b*tches~~ patsies of the Kremlin, of all time. I mean, seriously. If that’s true (and I don’t doubt it could be), they really got taken for a ride.

And meanwhile, the “discussions” we’ve been having with each other in ever camp — intra-party, inter-party, and across the full political spectrum, have been a relentless shit-show. Many, many conversations have not been productive, tons of them have been anything but civil, and countless exchanges have been downright abusive… and everything in between. We’ve come apart at the seams as a formerly civil society, in no small part because people who are a whole lot smarter than a lot of us, and who know our weaknesses even better than we know our strengths, made a hell of a lot more effort to ~~trick and mislead~~ fuck with us, than we made the effort to stay responsibly informed.

“So, what part of this is good?” you may be asking…

Well, consider this: The only way that Trump and his illk (double “L” is intentional”) could get into their position, is by cheating — by teaming up with a bunch of crafty Russians with the firepower to pull this off. He couldn’t do it himself. And he couldn’t do it honestly. He couldn’t possibly win by playing by the rules, so he broke them. No, he didn’t even break them. He moved the whole dynamic into a parallel universe where the rules supposedly didn’t even exist. And we fell for it. Many of us, anyway.

Now, lest you get your libbral knickers all self-righteously a-twist and start feeling smug about how Trump’s camp never would have prevailed on a level playing field, don’t forget that plenty of prior elections have been fraught with questionable results, themselves. I can’t recall there ever being an election, where allegations of fraud weren’t leveled. And the results in 2008, when it seemed to so many of us that Hillary was commanded by the DNC to step down, so Obama could take the lead, just made her presumptimve “in the bag” victory that much more satisfying in 2016.

Not having that happen… well, that stings. Again.

This time around, it’s different, though. Because an outside nation has gotten involved, from all the evidence. A slew of bogus websites have strewn clickbait “news” across Facebook (a company which couldn’t even see fit to block the ones which were known to be fake — not a difficult thing for them to do, by the way). And an All-American army of naive millions have gleefully passed along the propaganda, an eager extension of Putin’s reach into the hearts and minds of conspiracy-theory-loving “information consumers” who couldn’t be bothered to fact-check. On Twitter, Russian trolls (who are easy to spot because their foul-mouthed accounts are full of nothing but Trump promotions), unleashed campaigns for and against, whipping unsuspecting tweeps into a frenzy. All the while, the different sides have escalated their vitriol against one another.

And I can’t help but wonder how much Russia had to do with the Hillary hatred that boiled in the depths of the hearts — and on the tips of the tongues — of all those Bernie supporters.

So, again, how is this good? Because — contrary to the common belief that Hillary is a total loser and couldn’t win, if she tried — it shows that she’s actually such a formidable opponent (and a shoe-in for the job of CEO of America), that Trump was helpless to do it alone. And the only way he could do it, was with a little lying-cheating-stealing help from his friends over yonder.

That puts things in a whole new light.

I, myself, have thought, if Hillary can’t beat a self-proclaimed serial sexual assaulter who’s said he’s more attracted to his daughter than his wife (the paper removed that quote, btw, maybe ’cause it wasn’t nice), who brags about not paying any taxes, incites racial violence at his rallies, is a poster-child for ISIS recruitment, promotes nuclear proliferation, talked about “walking” (out) on our NATO allies, whose idea of good policy is imprisoning his opponent (whom he stalks on-stage during a debate)

trump-stalks-clinton

and deporting the very people he employs to the other side of a wall he thinks he’s going to build, and was endorsed by a North Korean dictator who shoots, poisons, and burns alive his foes as punishment, who the hell CAN she beat?

But maybe the answer is, in fact, “Trump.”

Maybe the answer would have been “Anybody and everybody”. Absent the influence of a highly sophisticated program of hacking and psychological meddling, maybe, just maybe she could have beaten anybody else who stepped up to challenge her. We’ll never know, because the playing field, this time around, was about as even as the golf course in the movie “Caddy Shack” after Bill Murray’s character went after the gopher with all the explosives.

So, for all those who are #StillWithHer, that’s actually something. And it should give the whole country pause. Likewise, it should give us pause, that Trump was so distrusting of the American people, that he HAD to make sure we were lied to, deceived, misled, misdirected, and whipped into a frenzy of fight-flight haze that pumped us full of cortisol, which suppresses the immune system and damages (and kills) the brain cells responsible for remembering what just happened. The only way he could prevail over the American people, was to literally make us sick… waging a clandestine campaign of psychological and physiological warfare on us, lie to us, cheat us of the truth, and bully us into his brand of submission.

Whether it actually works or not, is anybody’s guess. I’m sure we’ll find out.

We’ll find out a lot of things. Yes, MI, WI, and PA all seemed destined for Trump, but people are actually doing something about following up to make sure. Forget about Florida in 2000 (if you can). We’re actually getting a recount in Wisconsin, thanks at least in part to Jill Stein, a third-party candidate who may or may not being doing this for the noble cause of election legitimacy. And we might just get recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania, as well. People have contributed over $5 million (of the requested $7 million) to make it happen, and the number keeps rising.

So, there is hope.

Most of all, the hope I take away from this — no matter what happens — is that even though we’re a fickle bunch who will oh-so-eagerly turn against each other in times of distress and disappointment… even though we turn into a rude and vicious mob at the drop of a hat, “liking” lies and passing them along with chortling glee… even though the candidate who could have requested recounts in WI, MI, and PA at no additional charge to us (but left us, her constituents, to foot the multi-million dollar bill and push the initiative forward)… even though we apparently can’t tell truth from lies, anymore, and prize our democracy so little that we run around calling for ~~capitulation~~ unity before the Electoral College has even voted, never once realizing that when we surrender to this sort of evil, we’re complicit in it… this hardly would have happened, if a world-class psychological warfare program weren’t unleashed upon us over the course of months, maybe even years.

And the people who did this know that the only way they can actually beat us is by cutting out our hearts and turning our prodigious energy and influence against each other.

When we’re united against a common foe, we Americans have a habit of winning (for better or for worse). But when we turn against ourselves… God help us. And heaven help the rest of the world.

If only we knew that as well as the KGB.

Why so quick to sink the ship of “identity politics”?

Pirates approaching a sinking ship — It’s pretty clear, what’s happening

This stream of thought occurred to me this morning, after I read a few pieces heralding the imminent demise of “identity politics” — you know, the political orientation that acknowledges the diversity of our society and addresses the individual needs of disparate portions of the population?

I tweeted a series of thoughts about it. And I’ll elaborate on that more below. Original tweets are bold. My thoughts here are not

Maybe I’m not paying attention enough, but it seems to me everyone calling for an end to “identity politics” is straight, white, and male. Granted, I haven’t dived deep into all the pieces coming out about it now. I’ve been sick with a nasty sinus infection & flu-like symptoms, so my capabilities are somewhat limited. But from what I gather, it’s time to “get beyond identity politics” and start gathering the Democratic party around our shared values, etc.

I dunno… abandoning the recognition of our inherent diversity seems… fraught to me. In my experience, whenever we’re pushed towards “unity”, the conversations and priorities very quickly center on the priorities of straight, white, abled, privileged (you know you are, let’s face it) males, who feel entitled to push their agendas. That’s for a bunch of reasons, not least of which is that the guys who start calling the shots have the time, energy, and resources to push their agendas over the rest of us — who have been at a disadvantage for a long time, due to the lack of recognition of our individual situations and needs which exist in parallel universe to the guys who say our concerns are “irrelevant” or “distracting”.

To this queer, intermittently disabled gal, it seems like getting rid of “identity politics” is another form of erasure. I mean, seriously, it’s just pathetic, to hear a straight, white guy whose wife has been making it possible for him to do his thing for all these years (Bernie Sanders, in the case I’m thinking of), and whose roster of accomplishments just pales compared to his onetime political opponent, it’s the ultimate kick in the face. The thing that actually drew me to HRC over Bernie, was that she got the deal with disability, and she’d actually done something about it — rather than suggest yoga and deep breathing for chronic pain, as Bernie had done. Never once, was I convinced that anyone other than Hillary even a glimmer of recognition about the true nature of disability, let alone had plans for how to address our issues. I’ve been in and out of chronic pain for 30 years, and it’s no fucking fun. Likewise, to be constantly told that being queer is “no big deal” and that I can be every bit as mainstream as the next person, is a slap in the face, all too often handed out by well-meaning straight folks who prize uniformity as the greatest accomplishment of all. To have individual situations like mine – and worse – glossed over during the campaign by every single candidate as Hillary… and then have those who failed to acknowledge the importance of our differences summarily dismiss them as “irrelevant”, is a double-whammy of indictment against this idea of pitching identity politics out the window. Maybe, just maybe, the reason that Hillary got so many more votes than Trump was exactly because she embraced “identity politics”.

PLUS, if there’s Any discussion of HRC’s campaign “weaknesses” can only be taken seriously in light of a 100% trustworthy result, free of voter suppression hacking influence, voter intimidation, absence of threats of violence, etc. We all know there were issues. Hell, Trump himself encouraged the creation of those issues – veiled references to armed intimidation, veiled threats against his opponent. And members of his campaign actually came out and announced proudly that they had three different types of voter suppression in play. And when the NSA says the Russians had an influence over the election, and talk of hacking had been making the rounds for months prior. So, no, nobody who’s been paying attention would say any of the above was possible.

And all the facts indicate those were NOT the conditions we had. You don’t have to say it out loud, but you do have to acknowledge the facts.

So, no – it’s NOT ~~accurate~~ good form to loot the shipwreck of the HRC campaign b/c they steered their ship onto the shoals. Everyone is carrying on now as though it was the HRC campaign that screwed up. They did this wrong… they did that wrong… the DNC was a love-fest of American Exceptionalism that ignored the plight of suffering Americans, a sign of things to come. Hillary’s message didn’t resonate. She didn’t do well enough. She was totally off-base about everything. So, hey, let’s all climb onto the foundering frigate and start dismantling the ship for its hardware and booty. We can take the pieces we need… like, all her disappointed followers looking for a plausible ideological reason she “failed” so miserably. And we can kick her even more when she’s down, because if you can’t win against a raving, bigoted, Nazi-quoting, misogynistic, serial sexual assaulter who can’t even let his wife vote without looking over her shoulder, what good are you? Maybe all her internal Democractic opponents, the ones who recognized her relevancy and power, who wanted a piece of the action, but could never fully commit to her for whatever purist rationale, think it’s good form to board the foundering ship and start dismantling it, but guess what – you’re killing the goose that laid the golden egg. And you don’t even care.

They were torpedoed. They were. And worse yet, WE were. People don’t seem to get it. Team-sport politics has blinded us to the realities that the hacks, as well as the voter intimidation and suppression were an attack on us ALL, a direct hit to the heart and soul of this nation. Regardless of your political leanings, if you do NOT demand an audit of the vote and an investigation into fraud and outside influences, you are contributing to the problem. And you’re attacking your own country at its most fundamental level.

And anyone who gorges themselves on the “lessons of history” (tsk-tsk-tsk) about how to NOT run a campaign & steers political discussion in a direction away from the HRC focus on acknowledgement of ALL and inclusion of those not white, not straight, not male, not 100% abled is taking advantage of a situation created by outside influences – anti-American influences – and that makes them complicit in it as well. Ultimately, do any of the Ones Who Think They Should Run Things really give a damn about principle, as long as the principles don’t favor them? I’m quite tired, actually, of people getting all high ‘n’ mighty about principles when they’re losing… and then suddenly think they’re irrelevant when they’re winning. For some reason, those who feel they’re entitled to tell everyone else what to do, are ever so quick to disenfranchise those of us who were actually served by the discourse of identity politics, falsely drawing conclusions about its “failure”, when what really failed was our democractic process, as well as our vaunted Office of Homeland Security. Where the fuck where they, anyway, when all the hacking evidence was rolling in? It wasn’t like they didn’t know. For months ahead of the election.

Which is NO cause for celebration. There’s a taint of Schadenfreude to this whole sordid aftermath, something out of a post-apocalyptic movie, where the losers along the way are taking advantage of this for their own needs. That’s why Bernie Sanders will never, ever have my full support. And I’m cooling to Elizabeth Warren. Where have they been, in defense of our most fundamental right? Where have they been, in defense of the Constitution? Everybody’s “girding for the good fight”, and never once lifting a finger to prevent that unwarranted, illegitimate fight, to begin with.

Sign of the times: sell out your very own democratic process for a “win”. Because a Trump victory gives you the chance to showcase your own brand of Democratic progressivism, and it will stand in sharp contrast to your own platform. And now you’ll have four years to perfect your message and build your base, build your mailing list, build your political connections. It’s all about strategy, now. Screw the American people.

Note: You’re *not* winning. And at least some of us will remember this, in the years to come.

Sharing: Vengeance Is Mine | from Jacobin

Fantastic writing…

Watching the results on Election Night was like what I’d imagine living in an eighties teen horror movie would be like — the summer camp air curdling into one of vague suspicion, as a strange dawning sensation of doom takes hold. Slaughter: Ohio, Florida, Michigan — all bloody and prone. Who will be picked off next? Pennsylvania? Wisconsin? Minnesota? Your state? The vote is coming from inside the house.

Trump didn’t think he was going to win — not him, not his cracked, wincing campaign manager, not the sozzled Nazi werewolf chairing his presidential bid, not the jackal pack advising him, not the rival camp, not the media. Trump, that demented circus peanut, knew that he had lost every debate, that he had failed to appeal to the mystical moderate voters who determine elections, that he had trailed in most every poll.

And yet when the ballot boxes were locked and the results came filtering back, Clinton was in trouble. A few hours later, she was dead meat. DOA.

There was no grand strategy here. Trump was obviously petrified and unsure of himself, woozily winding his way onto the Hilton dais to claim victory at 3:00 in the morning. This plainly wasn’t supposed to happen. Trump, pea-brained gurnard that he is, only swims downstream; he’s never supposed to reach the spawning ground.

Read the rest here: Vengeance Is Mine | Jacobin